The Jagged Orbit by John Brunner

created a space adequate for the performance.
    The audience had already begun to assemble when Reedeth switched on his comweb screen to watch the proceedings. He had never had the least intention of insisting that he be physically present, but he had been unable to resist the chance of making Ariadne blush. He chuckled as he glanced over the green-clad patients entering the room, but his amusement faded the instant he realized that among the first of them was Harry Madison.
    There must be some way to return that man to the outside world! Mogshack ought to have done it months ago; why he hadn't was hard to understand . . . unless (and a familiar demon rode the concept, snickering) he was indeed hoarding his patients like a miser. Perhaps one could confront him and argue that having one solitary kneeblank under his care was a potential source of disturbance for his other patients?
    Reedeth sighed. If one were to pursue the implications of the Madison case to their ultimate conclusion, one might far too easily decide that anyone so totally unpredictable must be, by definition, unsuited to ordinary society. Those modifications to the desketary, for instance: could a normal person have done them so deftly and rapidly? Without being an expert, Reedeth was better grounded in cybernetics than the average layman—had to be, since so much of modern psychotherapy depended on computerized insights—and he was prepared to swear that the designer couldn't have envisaged these changes.
    Additionally: asked to guess whether Madison would be interested in watching a pythoness, he would at once have answered in the negative. All the psychoprofiles ever raised for him had indicated strong opposition to anything that smacked of the unscientific or the supernormal. Yet here he was not only turning up but arriving ahead of time, as though eager.
    So what had persuaded him to accept the invitation —mere boredom? That alas was all too likely. Madison's impassive demeanor, Reedeth noticed, was a complete contrast to that of the other green-clad patients. They without exception were visibly nervous. It was plain that they were relieved at this breach of their customary isolation, but at the same time alarmed at being in the real-Life company of so many other people after weeks, months and in a few cases possibly years of contact via comweb screens.
    Come to think of it, that meant—and Reedeth clapped his hand to his forehead as the point struck him—he was witnessing an event unprecedented since the foundation of the Ginsberg. And it was Ariadne, of all people, who had brought it about.
    "That girl must be a Conroyan at heart!" he said to the air, remembering to add a rider and instruct the desketary not to store the comment.
    So who was this girl Lyla Clay whose reputation had sustained Ariadne through what must have been a long and difficult argument with Mogshack? He had a vague general idea of what pythonesses were supposed to do and why people liked to watch them doing it. One could hardly live in twenty-first century America and not number a handful of pythoness-fans among one's acquaintances—not to mention hi-psi fans, Lar-worshippers and people even further off the traditional western orbit. But he had never actually watched a pythoness at work, and the name of this particular girl was strange to him even though Ariadne had assured him that she was among the most talented of all. Abandoning the room where she was scheduled to perform, he switched from one to another of the more than three thousand cameras he could pipe into his screen, wondering if he could spot her on the way up.
    Shortly he caught the image of a dark-haired young man riding a pediflow in the right direction, accompanied by a girl in a bullet-proof yash. The pythoness and her mackero, presumably—yes, it must be, for Ariadne herself was coming to greet them at the next intersection in due compliance with Mogshack's code of good manners. That prescribed condescension