Cyberpunk

cornsilk fell over his face and he tossed it back. “Eat your soup. They want to go again shortly.”
    “No.” I touched my lower lip, thickened to sausage size. “I won’t sin for Man-O-War and I won’t sin for you. You want to pop me one again, go to. Shake a socket loose, give me aphasia.”
    So he left and came back with a whole bunch of them, techies and do-kids, and they poured the soup down my throat and gave me a poke and carried me out to the pod so I could make Misbegotten this year’s firestorm.
    I knew as soon as the first tape got out, Man-O-War would pick up the scent. They were already starting the machine to get me away from him. And they kept me good in the room—where their old sinner had done penance, the lady told me. Their sinner came to see me, too. I thought, poison dripping from his fangs, death threats. But he was just a guy about my age with a lot of hair to hide his sockets (I never bothered, didn’t care if they showed). Just came to pay his respects, how’d I ever learn to rock the way I did?
    Fool.
    They kept me good in the room. Drunks when I wanted them and a poke to get sober again, a poke for vitamins, a poke to lose the bad dreams. Poke, poke, pig in a poke. I had tracks like the old B&O, and they didn’t even know what I meant by that. They lost Featherweight, got themselves someone a little more righteous, someone who could go with it and work out, sixteen-year-old snip girl with a face like a praying mantis. But she rocked and they rocked and we all rocked until Man-O-War came to take me home.
    Strutted into my room in full plumage with his hair all fanned out (hiding the sockets) and said, “Did you want to press charges, Gina darling?”
    Well, they fought it out over my bed. When Misbegotten said I was theirs now, Man-O-War smiled and said, “Yeah, and I bought you. You’re all mine now, you and your sinner. My sinner.” That was truth. Man-O-War had his conglomerate start to buy Misbegotten right after the first tape came out. Deal all done by the time we’d finished the third one, and they never knew. Conglomerates buy and sell all the time. Everybody was in trouble but Man-O-War. And me, he said. He made them all leave and sat down on my bed to relay claim to me.
    “Gina.” Ever see honey poured over the edge of a sawtooth blade? Every hear it? He couldn’t sing without hurting someone bad and he couldn’t dance, but inside, he rocked. If I rocked him.
    “I don’t want to be a sinner, not for you or anyone.”
    “It’ll all look different when I get you back to Cee-Ay.”
    “I want to go to a cheesy bar and boogie my brains till they leak out the sockets.”
    “No more, darling. That was why you came here, wasn’t it? But all the bars are gone and all the bands. Last call was years ago; it’s all up here now. All up here.” He tapped his temple. “You’re an old lady, no matter how much I spend keeping your bod young. And don’t I give you everything? And didn’t you say I had it?”
    “It’s not the same. It wasn’t meant to be put on a tube for people to watch.”
    “But it’s not as though rock ’n’ roll is dead, lover.”
    “You’re killing it.”
    “Not me. You’re trying to bury it alive. But I’ll keep you going for a long, long time.”
    “I’ll get away again. You’ll either rock ’n’ roll on your own or give it up, but you won’t be taking it out of me any more. This ain’t my way, it ain’t my time. Like the man said, ‘I don’t live today.’”
    Man-O-War grinned. “And like the other man said, ‘Rock ’n’ roll never forgets.’”
    He called in his do-kids and took me home.

BLUE CLAY BLUES

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    By Gwyneth Jones

    Somewhere on the outskirts of town, the air suddenly smelled of rain. The change was so concrete and so ravishing that Johnny stopped the car. He got out, leaving Bella strapped in the back seat. She was asleep, thank God. The road punched straight on, rigid to the flat horizon. The metaled surface was in poor repair. It seemed to have been spread from the crown with a grudging hand, smearing out into brown dirt and gravel long before it reached the original borderline. There were trees at the fences of dusty and weed-grown yards; clapboard houses stood haphazard amid broken furniture and rusted consumer durables. The town went on like this, never thickening into a center, as far as the eye could see. The rain was coming up from the south, a purple wall joining sky and earth. It smelled