Clarkesworld Issue 27

by Clarke, Neil

  “Of course, ” said the Senator. “I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  These were the conditions. It was going to be on Patriots’ Day August 6, which was Senator Ball’s birthday, as well as the anniversary of the Enola Gay dropping the bomb on Hiroshima. Mr. Arnaz Arnaz y de Acha III would be wearing a suit. There would be a large photo of President McCarthy in the background. Something tasteful from his third term. The interview would focus on good things — the chow, the access to TV, the rec room. It would be pointed out that Mr. Arnaz Arnaz y de Acha III not only still had relatives living in Cuba but that his father had actually returned there.

  The Pantex management would view it before it aired.

  There were five minutes of pleasantries.

  Yes the prisoners had cigarettes, TV, pool and chicken fried steak on Fridays. They could grow their own vegetable gardens. They could read the newspaper, get books from the bookmobile, and they were loaded onto the bus to visit the Diary Queen once a month.

  It was far, far better than anything they would have got in a Communist country.

  Then there was the part that was not aired.

  “But you don’t understand, Senator, you and I are the same. We just want something better for people like us.”

  “What do you mean, Mr. Arnaz?”

  “We both come from political families. My father was the mayor of Santiago. When the Batista revolution happened in thirty-three, we lost everything. We came here seeking a new life.”

  “But your father went back to Cuba.”

  “That was before the problems now. I am an American.”

  “You were organizing Cubans.”

  “Yes. To vote. To become citizens. Then one night there is the knock at the door. ‘Desi you have some things to explain.’ I can’t explain my family. I can’t explain history. I can explain myself. I am not the evil at the heart of Cuba.”

  Then it happened and the dam broke. It had been in place for over twelve years, ever since Senator McCarthy’s Lincoln Day speech where he revealed he knew of the fifty-seven Communists in the State Department. Congresswoman Ball had heard the echoes of the words, and knew someday they would find out. Someday she would be hung as a witch just like those women from Salem. Somehow her wyrd had been laid down when Charleston had been founded. Somehow it was time for her to hang. She looked at the most beautiful man in the world and said it.

  “I can’t explain my family either Senor Arnaz. My grandfather was a Communist. He asked me to register once in the Communist party. I did it as a favor to him.”

  The camera stopped rolling. The lights were shut off. Jess Oppenheimer cleared his throat.

  They didn’t even let her leave Pantex that night. They put her in a little room with a cot. A bare light bulb hung down and Jess Oppenheimer stood over her. She lay in the same dress as the interview, her makeup not washed off except where her tears had done the job.

  “Why did you tell them, Senator?” asked Jess, “If nobody had found out by now, they would have found out. It wasn’t your mistake. It was your grandfather’s.”

  “My Grandfather thought it was helping the working man. He didn’t know about Stalin and the camps, and look at us, we have camps now.”

  “You didn’t have to say anything. You aren’t helping Mr. Arnaz. He was a lost cause the moment he began to complain. You can’t help people like him.”

  “No, I have helped. I will be able to speak until they silence me. I am still the Queen of Television.”

  “I got a wire. I am not to let you leave. Ever.”

  “So I disappear here, a little loudmouth among the bog bombs?”

  “Yes. I am not supposed to tell you, but I shared a steak with you.”

  “Will I be kept here for a long time?”

  “No. There will be an accident tomorrow.”

  “Do I get any last requests?”

  “Sure, what do you want?”

  “One 72 ounce steak dinner and Mr. Arnaz to help me eat it.”

  He shook his head “no” but headed out of the room. She had given up hope of seeing the man she had so inconveniently fallen in love with, when they called her.

  It was nearly midnight. They had put a little table with a clean white tablecloth and nice china and silver on it next to an assembly line. Someone had poured red wine and lit candles. It was Amarillo, Texas so they had iced tea in addition to their wine.

  He still sore the suit they had given him for the filming. She had washed her face.

  “It’s very lovely,” said Mr. Arnaz. “Thank you, Senator.”

  “You can all me Lucy.”

  The assembly line began to hum. Desi smiled.

  “Do you know what that is?” he asked.

  “No,” she said. “They tell me much about the workings of the plant.”

  “Plutonium enriched parts come by. You don’t work in this part of the plant unless you are wearing a heavy lead lined floor length coat. Even then you visit only for brief inspections and they slow down the line as you walk through. But sometimes there are ‘accidents.’”

  “People trapped in the room getting too much radiation.”

  “Exactly.”

  “They run over to those doors that are securely locked.”

  “They yell a great deal and then they die.”

  “Let’s not do that.”

  “I agree. So Lucy you’ve got some ’splain’n to do. Why are you here?”

  The parts had begun moving down the line, each sending out an unseen death. They ate with their shrimp, sliced it with their four and half pounds of steak, smashed it into their potatoes, and enjoyed it with their salads. As the machinery grew louder they had a hard time hearing each other, but greater and greater comfort in speaking. They told each other their dreams and secret wishes, stories from their families, and even sang songs. It was as though in a very few hours they lived out an entire married life. They did not waste time on regrets or politics — they knew the unseen clock was ticking, beaming a thousand thousand X-rays of them into space.

  He poured wine, and she wished she could have added a trip to the beauty parlor as part of the last meal. She had always wanted to be a blonde or maybe a redhead.

  About the Author

  Don Webb teaches creative writing for UCLA extension. He grew up in Amarillo, Texas where the assembly of atomic and hydrogen bombs was a major employer. He is among the people interviewed in the documentary Plutonium Circus, a comic look at plutonium storage in Amarillo. His living literary heroes are Ramsey Campbell and Michael Morecock. He is dyslexic, but good-looking.

  “The Completely Rechargeable Man”

  by Karen Heuler

  He was introduced as Johnny Volts, and most guests assumed he was a charlatan — the hostess, after all, was immensely gullible. But some of the guests had seen him before, and they said he was good, lots of fun, very “current” — a joke that got more mileage than it should have.

  “Do you need any kind of extension cord?” the hostess, Liz Pooley, asked. She wore a skintight suit of emerald lame, and had sprayed a lightning bolt pattern in her hair, in his honor.

  Johnny Volts sighed and then smiled. They all expected him to be something like a children’s magician — all patter and tricks. “No extension cord,” he said. “Where can I stand?” He caught his hostess’s frown. “I need an area to work in — and appliances, not plugged in. I’m the plug. No microwaves. A blender, a radio, a light bulb. Christmas lights?”

  The guests were charmed at first and then, inevitably, they were bored. Even if it wasn’t a trick, it was pretty limited. He could power a light, but not a microwave. He could charge your cell phone but not your car. He was an early adopter of some sort, that was all; they would wait for the jazzed-up version.

  Johnny Volts had a pacemaker with a rechargeable battery, and he had a friend who was a mad scientist. This friend had added a universal bus to his battery port, and hence Johnny Volts had a cable and a convertible socket. He coul
d plug things in; he could be plugged in. This was a parlor trick as far as the public was concerned — and a strange, unsettling, but sill somewhat interesting way of earning a living as far as Johnny Volts was concerned. He knew — he understood — that his pacemaker powered his heart, and his heart recharged the pacemaker in a lovely series of perpetual interactions. He had no issue with it.

  In Liz Pooley’s party, as Johnny Volts lit a lamp, turned on a clock radio, and charged an iPod, he was watched by a frowning man in a checked shirt whose companion seemed quite happy with Johnny.

  “Why he’s worth his weight in gold,” she said. “Imagine never having to pay an electric bill.”

  “Small appliances,” the man grunted.

  “Well now it’s small appliances, Bob, but he’s just the first. Wait till he can really get going, he’ll have his own rocket pack. Remember rocket packs, Bob? The Segway of long-lost memory.” She put her hand on Bob’s arm and rolled her eyes. “I was but a mere child of course, when I heard about those rocket packs. Shooting us up in the air. A new meaning to the term Jet Set, hey? Or is that phrase too old? I bet it’s too old. What are we called now, Bob?” She lifted her drink, saluted him, and winked.

  “We’re called only when they’ve run out of everyone else, Cheree.” Bob was idly thinking about what would bring a man to this: plugging in small irrelevant things into his own violated flesh. “Irrelevant,” he said finally. “They call us irrelevant.”

  Cheree frowned. “You’re turning into an old man, Bob. You’ve lost your spark.” She gave him a small motherly peck on the cheek and walked forward, powerfully, her lemon martini firm in her hand, straight to Johnny Volts, who was looking around, waiting to be paid. “You looking for a drink?” she asked. “I could get you one.”

  “Oh — well, all right,” he said, surprised.

  “You wait right here,” she said. “I want to know all about you, electric man.” And she turned until she found a server and came back with a dark liquid in a tumbler. “Now tell me — how does it feel? I mean you’re generating electricity, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. Not much. After next week it should be more. I’m having an upgrade.”

  “Lovely. How does it feel? Like little bugs up and down your spine?” She had a heady grin, a frank way of working. Johnny liked it.

  “It’s a beautiful kind of pressure,” he said. “It feels like I could fill the room with it, lift everything up, kind of explode — only I hold on to the explosion.” His eyes got internal.

  “Do you like it?”

  He was open-mouthed with surprise. “Yes. Of course. It’s wonderful.”

  She tilted her head a little, studying his face, and he found it embarrassing at first, and then he got used to it. He looked back at her, not lowering his eyes or glancing away. She was older than he was, but she had a bright engaging air about her, as if she made a point of not remembering anything bad.

  “Here you go,” the hostess said, her arm held out full length with a check at the end of it like a flattened appendage.

  Johnny took it and turned to leave. “Hey!” Cheree said, grabbing at his arm a little. “That’s rude. Not even a fond farewell?”

  “They usually want me to leave right away,” he said in explanation. “Before I get boring.”

  “Boring,” she said companionably as they headed together for the door. “That bunch? They think other people are boring?”

  He noted that she was walking along with him as if she belonged there. “So where do you see yourself in five years?” she asked. “That’s a test question. So many people can’t think ahead.”

  “Do you think ahead?”

  “Not me. I’m spontaneous. Then again, I’m not at all electric, so I don’t have to worry about running out of juice.”

  “I don’t run out,” he said. “I recharge. And I’m getting an upgrade to photovoltaic cells next week. I have to decide where to implant them; do you mind if I run it past you?” He rubbed his hand over his head as they took the elevator down. “The obvious thing is to replace my hair — it’s a bit of a jolt, though. I can lose it all and get a kind of mirror thing on top — a shiny bald pate, all right. Or fiber optic hair. But it will stick out. Like one of those weird lamps with all the wires with lights at the end? What do you think?”

  “Fiber optic hair,’ she said without hesitation. “Ahead of the times. Fashion-forward. I bet there’ll be a run on the hardware store.”

  He stopped — they were on the street — and frowned at her. “Your name?”

  “Cheree.”

  “Cheree, you’re glib.”

  “I am glib, Johnny,” she said in a soft voice. “It’s because my head doesn’t stop. You know the brain is all impulses, don’t you? Bang and pop all over the place. Well, mine is on superdrive, I have to keep talking or I’ll crack from all the thinking. The constant chatter… I can only dream of stillness.”

  He shook his head in sympathy. “That sounds like static.” He stopped and reached out for her hand. “Maybe you produce energy all your own?” She held her hand out, and Johnny hesitated, then touched the tips of their fingers together. He closed his eyes, briefly. There was a warmth, a moistness, a lovely frisson. He took a deep breath. He felt so tired after those parties, but now a delicious delicate rejuvenation spread through him. The back of his neck prickled; the hairs on his arms — even his eyebrows — hairs everywhere rose, he could feel it in his follicles. It rose up in him until suddenly Cheree was thrown backward slightly.

  “What was that?” she said tensely.

  He nodded. “Sorry. Volts. A little discharge. It won’t hurt you.”

  “Still,” she said uneasily. “Can’t say I know what to make of it.”

  They were at a crossroads, specifically Houston and Lafayette. “Where do you live?” he asked.

  “East Seventh.”

  “I’m uptown.” They stood for a moment in silence. “Will you come with me?” he asked finally.

  Her face broke into a smile, like a charge of sunshine.

  They were utterly charming together, they were full of sparks. Toasters popped up when they visited their friends — though did people really still have toasters? Wasn’t that, instead, the sound of CD players going through their disks, shuffling them? Wasn’t it the barely audible purr of the fan of a car as they passed it, sitting up and noticing as if it were a dog? They were attractive, after all; they attracted.

  “If we moved in together,” Johnny said after they’d known each other for a month, “we’d have half the bills. We could live on very little, we could live on what I make at the parties. You wouldn’t have to work as a waitress. In fact, we could be free.”

  “And give up my dreams of rocket science?” she asked, her eyebrows arched.

  “I thought you were a waitress.”

  “That’s just till I sell my first rocket.” Nevertheless, she decided to move in, and it was working out fine, except for the strange way that objects behaved around them.

  Small electrics followed them like dogs sometimes — they could turn down the block and hear a clanking or a scraping behind them. Eager little cell phones, staticky earphones, clicking electronic notepads gathered in piles on their doorstep.

  “We have to figure out a budget,” Cheree said after she moved in. “Until I sell that rocket. Rent, not much we can do. We should get bikes, that will save on transportation. But, you know, we’re still paying for electricity, and it’s pretty high, too. What do we really use it for?”

  Together, they went through their apartment, noting: refrigerator, lamps, clock, radio, stereo, TV, microwave, coffee maker, hair dryer, iron, laptop computer.

  “Well,” Johnny said. “All quite useful in their own way, but we can make coffee without electricity. And I already recharge the computer myself.”

  She considered it all. “You can recharge most of it, really, if we get the right kind of thing. If we look at everything that way — I’m sure there are rechargeable lamps, fo
r instance — why are we paying electric bills? We could save a lot of money by doing it ourselves.”

  They canceled their energy provider, a savings right there of $70 a month. They would plug a different item into Johnny at night, so they would never run out. It was a brilliant solution.

  That gave him even more motivation for the photovoltaic upgrade. When he went to his mad scientist friend, she went with him, and they mentioned the strange way they seemed to be accumulating electrical appliances. The mad scientist was sitting across from them, taking down Johnny’s recap of the past few months, when the scientist felt his skin begin to tingle. He shook himself briefly, as if buzzed by a fly. He was a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon, a Mexican genius who did illegal cable and satellite hookups to make some money, and was always looking over his shoulder. Johnny Volts was his ticket to fame and fortune; once the process was perfect, he would offer it to a medical or electronics company and bring millions down to his hometown of Tijuana, where he would go to retire.

  The scientist ran a voltmeter over Cheree and whistled. “This is lovely,” he said. “Exciting, even.” He grinned at Johnny. “She’s got a field. You see, you two match. You kind of amplify each other — understand?” He looked at them happily, waiting for them to catch up with his thinking. “You match.”

  It took a moment. “You’re saying we’re related? Like siblings?”

  “Oh — no, no, I mean your energy matches. It doesn’t mean anything really, other than that you’re sensitive to each other’s waves. You two have sympathetic electricity — I’m making the term up — so you use less energy when you’re together than you do when you’re apart, because you’re actually attracting each other’s charge. The byproduct is, you attract things that charge. Get it?”

  “Oh, honey, yes,” Cheree said. “I get it.” It was like their little electric hearts went thudder-thump when they came near each other. Cheree was aware of it as a little sizzle in her brain.

  They noticed a few things: He was a thoughtless hummer, and when he hummed he gave her a headache. She was an adventurer, wanting to go out and about, here there and everywhere, while he liked to think and write and test how strong his recharging was.