"Hey, you! Get out of here!"
The voice was muffled by the gas mask, but Ralph had no doubt that the cop's gesture was aimed at him. He pointed down the street in a single attempt to maintain a shred of dignity. "I live right down there."
"I don't give a damn where you live. Get the hell off the street."
Ralph knew it was pointless to protest. As he turned, he remembered the Vietnam movie that he had seen a few days earlier on the late show when he had been up with insomnia. What was that phrase they had used? Winning the hearts and minds of the population?
FRANCIS XAVIER BARSTOW WENT INTO A feelie once a year. It was the shortest one available, just six hours. He had to save all year to be able to afford it. Of course, he'd have liked to have actually experienced it on Easter weekend, but that wasn't possible. There were extra charges for his particular feelie if you had it on Easter weekend.
Francis Xavier Barstow had been through the same feelie so many times that he almost knew it by heart. The yelling of the crowd, the smell of the primitive city, the chafing of the rough, homespun robe, the pain of the whip cuts across his back, and, above all, the weight of the huge, wooden cross that bowed his shoulders.
He knew that a lot of people thought he was crazy. His neighbors and the people he worked with all thought he was a religious fanatic. He found some consolation in telling himself that they would think that about anyone who still tried to worship a god. Religion played no big part in this soulless age.
Sometimes he worried about his annual adventure in the feelie. He knew he was supposed to live in the image of Christ. Sometimes he wasn't too sure that it was right to seek the help of a lot of electronic gadgetry.
He'd asked the priest, but the priest hadn't been much help. He was one of the new kinds of priest, all psychology and social conscience. He told Francis Xavier that there was no harm in the feelie, but Francis Xavier had suspected that the priest didn't think there was much good in it either.
Francis Xavier knew in his heart that he was right. They had invented the feelies, and the least he could do was use them to get closer to his god. It was better than all those other people who wanted to be samurai killers, prostitutes, and perverted Roman emperors.
Sometimes he felt that he was bracketed with those people. He didn't like the way the receptionist women looked at him when he went in to book his feelie time. He got the impression that he was seen as some sort of sexual weirdo, a masochist or something.
This time there seemed to be something a little different about the experience. What was left of his conscious mind couldn't quite get a grip on what exactly had changed. Somehow everything was a trifle more intense. The colors were brighter and appeared to shimmer. The pain was much more severe than he remembered. In previous experiences, it had been a tolerable background. In this one, it was almost more than he could stand.
The part of his mind that was still Francis Xavier Bar-stow pretty much knew the sequence of the crucifixion program by heart. He was coming up to the part where he stubbed his toe and stumbled under the weight of the cross.
Just like every time before, he found himself staring down at his dirty sandaled feet. There were flecks of dried blood. The ground was dry and cracked. Each footstep produced small puffs of dust. Then a small green lizard scuttled from under a rock. As far as he could sluggishly remember, that had never happened before.
Francis Xavier wasn't about to ponder on the significance of these changed details. In the middle of a feelie, it wasn't possible to ponder on anything. The greater part of his consciousness was too busy being Jesus Christ on the home stretch to Calvary.
He could see the small rock coming up. There was nothing he could do to avoid it. His foot hit it and…
Pain, flashing burning jagged colors swamped the desert landscape and the brown faces that pressed in on him. A scream like ripping steel blotted out all other sounds. There was nothing else but stabs of red, orange, and yellow, rolling sweeps of purple split by white forked lightning, and the unbearable pain.
Then it stopped, just as suddenly as it had started. He also found that he was more than a dozen yards farther up the road. It was like a sudden jump in a film. Something was wrong. A much greater part of him was now detached from the Christ personality.
The things around him were also changed. The visual images seemed washed out, insubstantial, almost transparent. The sound was fuzzy and muffled. There was enough of Francis Xavier Barstow outside of the feelie to know that something was wrong. There wasn't enough of him to know what to do. He felt he ought to scream or thrash about. There ought to be an alarm, a button he could push or a lever he could pull. Instead he just kept plodding toward the Place of the Skull, until the pain started again.
If anything, it was worse than the first time. The colors and the noise were even more violent. The detached part of his mind wasn't detached enough not to suffer. It felt as though a blowtorch was being run lovingly over every nerve ending in his body. He was convinced he was about to die.
Then it stopped again. The color and noise vanished as though it had never existed. There had been another jump. He was lying spread on the cross. Two Roman soldiers knelt beside him. There was something reassuring about the burnished bronze, well-polished leather, and coarse red fabric of the uniforms. Francis Xavier had asked for their forgiveness so many times that they almost felt like friends. He even knew their faces. One had a deep brown, earthy face with a broad flattened nose like an ex-boxer. The other's was thinner, more sensitive… But it wasn't. He wasn't the same. He had a ridiculous false mustache and eyebrows. A fat cigar was clenched between his teeth. The absurd eyebrows were jerked rapidly up and down. The face split into an insane grin.
"Would you mind crossing your feet? We've only got three nails!"
SAM LET HIMSELF INTO HIS MINUSCULE room. Max the black and white cat was lying curled up on the bed with his tail draped around the tip of his nose. He woke up, yawned, and then got to his feet stretching languidly. He padded toward Sam, flexing his claws and digging them into the covers. Sam sat down on the bed. The cat butted his upper arm. Sam smiled and patted him.
"Hi, Max, how you been?"
The cat yowled.
"Hungry, huh?"
The cat yowled again. Sam picked him up.
"You better keep the noise down, or we'll both be in trouble."
He tried to pet the cat, but Max squirmed out of his arms. Still yowling, he ran to the small alcove the landlord liked to call a kitchenette, and then back to Sam.
"Will you shut up, Max? When are you going to realize you're against the rules?"
Sam climbed reluctantly to his feet, still trying to hush the cat. Max danced around his feet, alternately yelling and purring loudly. Sam opened a small wall cupboard with a cracked glass door and took out a pack of Kitty Krunch. He filled a small plastic bowl. The bowl was red and bore the legend "Present from Rio de Janeiro." Sam couldn't remember where the bowl had come from. He had certainly never been to Rio. He set the bowl down in front of the cat. Max threw himself, single-mindedly, into the task of eating. It was the high point of his day.
Sam went back to the bed and sat down. He watched the cat. In between mouthfuls, it would pause to purr joyfully. Cats, in fact pets of all kinds, were totally outlawed from all cheap-lease rooms. The rules had been made some ten years before, when an urban rabies scare had started City Hall on a vast antipet drive. The campaign had not worked, but the rules remained. Max was Sam's single, but continuous, act of rebellion.