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."He looked at it from all angles, taking his time.He thought it would be too painful to put into words,but he gave it a try."She could keep me, or she could keep her body.She couldn't keep both.""I'm afraid that's the equation.There's a rather complex question of self-respect in there, too.I don'tthink she figured she could save much of that either way.""And she chose the machine.""You might have, too.""But she loved me.Love is supposed to be the strongest thing there is."file:///G|/rah/John%20Varley%20-%20Blue%20Champagne.htm (69 of 255) [2/17/2004 10:34:58 AM] Blue Champagne"Get your brain out of the television set, Q.M.""I think I hate her.""That would be a big mistake."But he was no longer listening.He tried to kill her, once, shortly after the tape came out, more because it seemed like the right thingto do than because he really wanted to.He never got within a mile of her.Her security had hisnumber, all right.The tape was a smash, the biggest thing ever to hit the industry.Within a year, all the othercompanies had imitations, mostly bootlegged from the original.Copyright skirmishes were fought inHollywood and Tokyo.He spent his time beachcombing, doing a lot of swimming.He found that he now preferred flatwater.He roamed, with no permanent address, but the checks found him, no matter where he was.The first was accompanied with a detailed royalty statement showing that he was getting fiftypercent of the profits from sales of the tape.He tore it up and mailed it back.The second one was forthe original amount plus interest plus the new royalties.He smeared it with his blood and paid tohave it hand-delivered to her.The tape she had left behind continued to haunt him.He had kept it, and viewed it when he feltstrong enough.Again and again the girl in the wheezing sidekick walked across the room, her faceset in determination.He remembered her feeling of triumph to be walking, even so awkwardly.Gradually, he came to focus on the last few meters of the tape.The camera panned away fromMegan and came to rest on the face of one of the nurses.There was an odd expression there, assubtle and elusive as the face of the Mona Lisa.He knew this was what Megan had wanted him tosee, this was her last statement to him, her final plea for understanding.He willed himself to supplya trans-track for the nurse, to see with her eyes and feel with her skin.He could let no nuance escapehim as he watched Megan's triumphant walk, the thing the girl had worked so long and hard toachieve.And at last he was sure that what the woman was feeling was an uglier thing than mere pity.That was the image Megan had chosen to leave him with: the world looking at Megan Galloway.Itwas an image to which she would never return, no matter what the price.In a year he allowed himself to view the visual part of the love tape.They had used an actor to standin for him, re-playing the scene in the Bubble and in the steam-boat bed.He had to admit it: she hadnever lied to him.The man did not even resemble Cooper.No one would be studying hislovemaking.file:///G|/rah/John%20Varley%20-%20Blue%20Champagne.htm (70 of 255) [2/17/2004 10:34:58 AM] Blue ChampagneIt was some time later before he actually transed the tape again.It was both calming and sobering.He wondered what they could sell using this new commodity, and the thought frightened him asmuch as it had Anna-Louise.But he was probably the only spurned lover in history who knew,beyond a doubt, that she actually had loved him.Surely that counted for something.His hate died quickly.His hurt lasted much longer, but a day came when he could forgive her.Much later, he knew she had done nothing that needed his forgiveness.Tango Charlie and Foxtrot RomeoThe police probe was ten kilometers from Tango Charlie's Wheel when it made rendezvous with theunusual corpse.At this distance, the wheel was still an imposing presence, blinding white against thedark sky, turning in perpetual sunlight.The probe was often struck by its beauty, by the myriad waysthe wheel caught the light in its thousand and one windows.It had been composing a thought-poemaround that theme when the corpse first came to its attention.There was a pretty irony about the probe.Less than a meter in diameter, it was equipped withsensitive radar, very good visible-light camera eyes, and a dim awareness.Its sentient qualities camefrom a walnut-sized lump of human brain tissue cultured in a lab.This was the cheapest and simplestway to endow a machine with certain human qualities that were often useful in spying devices.Thepart of the brain used was the part humans use to appreciate beautiful things.While the probewatched, it dreamed endless beautiful dreams.No one knew this but the probe's control, which was acomputer that had not bothered to tell anyone about it.The computer did think it was rather sweet,though.There were many instructions the probe had to follow.It did so religiously.It was never to approachthe wheel more closely than five kilometers.All objects larger than one centimeter leaving the wheelwere to be pursued, caught, and examined.Certain categories were to be reported to higherauthorities.All others were to be vaporized by the probe's small battery of lasers.In thirty years ofobservation, only a dozen objects had needed reporting.All of them proved to be large structuralcomponents of the wheel which had broken away under the stress of rotation.Each had beendestroyed by the probe's larger brother, on station five hundred kilometers away.When it reached the corpse, it immediately identified it that far: it was a dead body, frozen in avaguely fetal position.From there on, the probe got stuck.Many details about the body did not fit the acceptable parameters for such a thing.The probeexamined it again, and still again, and kept coming up with the same unacceptable answers.It couldfile:///G|/rah/John%20Varley%20-%20Blue%20Champagne
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