Woman on the Edge of Time

by Marge Piercy

  “Don’t be lesby. You got no contract on me.”

  “What’s a contract?”

  “Maybe you are from the ancient past. Are you quiring serious?”

  She nodded, sitting carefully on a roundish object that appeared to be filled with air.

  “All the flacks make contracts. Contract sex. It means you agree to put out for so long for so much. You know? Like I have a two-year contract. Some girls got only a one-nighter or monthly, that’s standard. You can be out on your ear at the end of a month with only a day’s notice. That’s no life. Course once in a while some real bulger, she ends up with a ten-year contract. I never met one, but I beared of them.”

  “But suppose you get tired of him before?”

  “Then he can sue. Besides, you can’t get out of a contract unless you’re bought out. Unless you get a lot saved, and who makes that much? Course if he breaks it, unless he can prove negligence or adultery, then you got him cold and he has to pay or at least settlement you. My contract isn’t just support either. I get enough to maintain my shots and re-ops and clothes and a little for all the Rapture and other risers I like to ream.”

  “What happens when your contract runs out?”

  Gildina shrugged nervously. “Sometimes they renew. The first time I was on a yearly I got renewed by that flack—he was a lower-level ground transport smasher. If you’re dropped, sometimes you got a prospect. Sometimes you get by on one-nights or weekends till you turn up a prospect. But it drains you. Always worrying about maybe you’ll end up in a knock-shop. Sometimes you can’t keep up maintaining, and then your chances of getting even a lower-level flack run down.”

  “Can you get married?”

  “This is. I mean you know the richies marry old-style. I heard they figure back generations. But this is how it is for us.”

  “Suppose you have a baby?”

  “If it’s in the contract. I never had a contract that called for a kid. Mostly the moms have them. You know, they’re cored to make babies all the time. Ugh, they’re so fat!”

  “But suppose you wanted a kid.”

  “What would I do with it? It couldn’t live here at Cash’s. He can’t stand noise. I can’t requisition housing. Who ever supposed on a contracty living alone?”

  “What about your mother?”

  “She’s gone to Geri. You know, she was over forty! I kept getting transies for a year maybe, but I haven’t had one in ages, so I suppose she’s ashed.”

  “Ashed? She’s dead?”

  Gildina blanched. “Watch your language! What are you talking about? I didn’t hear you. Remember this is my mother we’re supposing on.”

  “But forty—isn’t that young?”

  “She must’ve been forty-three. How long do you suppose to live? Only the richies live longer, it’s in their genes. Like they say, it’s all in the genes.”

  “How long do the richies live?”

  “Oh, maybe two hundred years. Depends on what they can afford—you know, the medicos, the organs. I’ve never actually met one, of course, I never been off the surface—”

  “What do you mean, off the surface?”

  “Upstairs! The space platforms. The richies don’t live down here. Too much … thickness. The air’s too thick, like they say. Not in here, of course. Middle-and upper-level flacks are all conditioned. But you should see where I was born! You’re born coughing and you pass off to Geri coughing, like they say. I always thought the sky was yellow till I came here. Now I know it’s a real pale gray-blue, just the prettiest color. I did my hair like that for a couple months after I came here, I was so silly … . Even if you look like a dud, you’re not too bad to talk to. It’s funny, talking to somebody during the day.”

  “Don’t you ever go out? Or have friends over?”

  “Out where? Cash seals me in most of the time, he’s a jealous slot. Part of being SD, I suppose. He don’t trust anyone. Besides, I have everything I need here. You can’t leave the plex, because of security. It wouldn’t be safe out there!”

  “Not even to take a walk?”

  “Walk?” Gildina looked embarrassed, as if she had said something about bathroom functions. “I’m middle level, you know! I suppose on duds walking. I wouldn’t remember, myself.”

  “Duds are below lower-level flacks? Poor people?”

  “It’s not like they’re people. They’re diseased, all of them, just walking organ banks, like Cash says, and even half the time the liver’s rotten. It isn’t like they have any use. I mean some are pithed for simple functions, but they live like animals out where it isn’t conditioned. Such a sight—if you could see far, it would stretch forever. It’s lucky you can’t see more than a few feet.”

  “But you don’t have any women friends to visit? Like from apartment to apartment?”

  “What for? I got everything I need. You want a Rapture? Or whatever you float on. Have a gape—I got a good selection.” She pointed to an automated pill dispenser beside the bed.

  “Drugs?”

  “Risers, soothers, sleepers, wakers, euphors, passion pills, the whole works. What’s your poison?”

  “Nothing right now, thanks. I been on them kind of heavy lately.”

  “Just so you don’t cross out, you know? Mixed reacts? You got to check the combos on the Digitab. So many fems cross out just because they don’t check it. Me, I almost CO’ed once when I was a kid. Takes just a minute to Digitab, right?”

  “You don’t have to see the doctor for pills anymore, huh?”

  “See a doctor?” Again Gildina looked embarrassed. “I’m only middle level. I been to a medimated clinic, you know, like everybody else middle. You wait in line and then you talk with the computer. But see a doctor! Well, there’s service medicos here who repair the medimated clinics and the medimats. Supervise organ collection. Do the actual extractions and vacuum seal for transport upstairs. But I never actually seen a doctor. They’re high-level flacks and some of them even live upstairs. I see a lot about them on the HG, of course. Some of my favorite shows are about doctors. The fight against senility. Thrusting back the frontiers of life. All that stuff. But they’re too busy prolonging life to hang around down here, you know.”

  “HG. Is that … holigraph?” They probably had the same thing they called holies in Mattapoisett. “Every so often you have a three-dimensional ritual or story?”

  “It’s on twenty-four hours if you subscribe. But we have a Sense-all. See?” Gildina pointed to what Connie had thought was a fancy hair dryer suspended over the bed. “That’s much better. If it didn’t cost a heart and a kidney, I’d be in it all day. But Cash is at me already for the bill I stacked two months ago. It’s much realer. Cause you’re in it. Didn’t you ever try?”

  “Never.”

  “I’d vite you but Cash is at me already, like I said. It’s like dreaming, only you’re awake, and it’s real exciting. Like, look at the catalog.” Gildina passed her a well-thumbed Sense-all catalog for September. It was full of ads for drugs and cosmetics and gadgets, services and knockshops, body designers, protection devices. This could not exist simultaneously with Mattapoisett. Could not. Or else they were at war and she had ended up somehow in the enemy camp. Maybe that was the war they were fighting. She forced herself to calm, using easercises Luciente had taught her, then she scanned the catalog.

  “Hot Dog”: A bulgy contracty amuses herself while her man is away with a large boxer dog. HD 5.

  “Tremors on Platform Texaroyal”: A top-level SDman goes after the Assassin who got his zec. Another Studs Jerker extravago with contracty harem, degutting, many explos, and lesby sex. FD 20.

  “What’s the FD 20 stuff?”

  “Time and price—what do you suppose on?”

  She read:

  “Sorrinda 777”: Story of a love never supposed to be, between a low-level medimat swab and a doctor in service to a nuke fission family; her faithfulness, her suffering, her shining love: will she give the ultimate sacrifice of her heart to
replace his legal contracty’s coronary dystrophy? FD 15.

  “Good Enough to Eat”: Top-level bulger ignores warnings from family and romps in Roughlands. She is captured by mutes. Mass rapes, torture (inch-by-inch close-up with full Sense-all). Ultimate cannibal scene features close-ups. DD 25.

  “When Ferns Flung to Be Men”: In Age of Uprisings, two fem libbers meet in battle—kung fu, tai chi, judo, wrestling. Stronger rapes weaker with dildo. SD man zaps in, fights both (close-ups, full gore), double rape, double murder, full Sense-all. HD 15.

  “Contract Null and Void”: A dud woman blackmails a re-op tech into a series of beauty-ops, enters career of social scramble from level to level (costumes by Rang-up, full Sense-all) till she falls for Dirk, Assassin to Spaceport Mobilgulf. FD 15.

  “Men and women haven’t changed so much,” she said, thinking of Times Square. She was surprised by how cheerless that prospect seemed.

  “So why go out?” Gildina went on, bouncing a little on her bed. “Unless some contracty lousy with credits is about to loan you her Sense-all. By the bim, the HG’s not bad. Lots of trans I watch.”

  “Show me the rest of your apartment, okay?”

  “The rest?” Gildina looked blank. “You mean the cleano?”

  The bathroom was bigger than it would have been in her time, with more devices: devices for cleaning shoes and what was probably like dry cleaning. There was no tub, but a shower with many hard sprays of water that would hit different places on the body, and a meter to time the amount of water. The shower had a disinfectant light as well plus nozzles for shooting out hot air. The toilet was big and fancy but still a toilet. Over the washbowl hung a device for drying hair instantly. But the bathroom lacked a window.

  Around the other side of the mirror along the bed, the walls were of nubbly stuff and the carpeting thick and green like imitation grass. Here she finally saw a window. They were at ground level, looking out on a lake with fancy skidboats scooting to and fro and lots of people in glowing metallic swimsuits sunbathing and climbing in and out of the water.

  “There’s a lake in Manhattan now? I mean besides in Central Park?”

  “What’s with you? You talk like a dud from the Rough-lands. Look, it’s a picture. We got five of them.” She pressed a switch and the scene changed to a mountain with skiers and superfast snowbuggies skimming across the snow and hovercraft hanging in the brilliant air. Gildina flicked the switch again and a bunch of men dressed in Roman tunics began chasing a lot of women around and pulling their clothes off. She flicked again: hand-to-hand sword combat in medieval costumes, with bloody hands flying off. The last scene was a herd of zebras grazing, while some lions stalked, but something was wrong and it was very speeded up and jerky. “That one’s broke.” She changed back to the lake.

  “Can you make it so we can look out? I’d love to see what New York looks like now.”

  “What’s with you? Out where?”

  “Isn’t that a window?”

  “What’s that?”

  “So you can look out Glass.”

  “Like a viewing port? There’s one in the lounge. And from the sun plaza you can look around. There’s glass on all sides. At first it made me terribly dizzy—I wanted to hold on. All that space. But I didn’t let on. I didn’t want them spitting about me being a dud and never saw the sun before. Of course I’d never been in the sun. It scared me but I just made out like I been in the sun every day. I had a tan from my last re-op, so how could they tell anyhow?”

  “We used to have windows, everybody did. It was just glass so light could come in.”

  “Light? How? From outside? Oh, I guess when you get up high enough. This is just the hundred twenty-sixth floor. But even up on the sun plaza what’s to see except the sun and you can only look straight at that for a while before you begin to see funny spots—maybe five or ten minutes. The sky’s nice when you get used to it—it’s that gorgeous pale gray color. Once in a while some real weather clouds. I can ride into them, really—they give me a boost. But if you gape too much, flacks think you’re lower. You have to pretend to take it for granite.”

  “Can’t you see the city?”

  “You can make out some other towers in this plex. But you can’t see down or any farther. How could you? It’s thick. It’s air. How could you see through air?”

  “Where’s your kitchen?”

  “Huh?”

  “Where you cook food?”

  “Cook it?” Gildina led her to a corner by the outside door, which looked like a bank vault’s. There was nothing in the corner she could identify as a refrigerator or a stove. A drawer opened automatically when a button was pressed, to dispense transparent packets Gildina demonstrated for her. She opened one with a hiss of inrushing air that seemed slowly to soak through the mass inside. She was surprised to see it begin steaming.

  At Gildina’s invitation she tasted the food on a thin shiny plate. The food was heavily spiced but ultimately tasteless and gummy. “What is it?”

  “Vito-goodies ham dinner.”

  “This is supposed to be ham?”

  “What’s ham? That’s the name of the flavor.”

  “But it doesn’t taste anything like ham.”

  “Ham?” Gildina made a face of incomprehension. “Everything comes in packets. It’s made from coal and algae and wood by-products.”

  “You’re vegetarians?”

  “What’s that?”

  “You eat only vegetables?”

  “Who’s a vegables?” Gildina swished out of the corner in annoyance. “You’re only a dud slot, so don’t high-top me.”

  “Things that grow in plants. You know. Like carrots and peas. Beans. Corn.”

  Gildina shrugged, waving her hand with its inch-long mauve-and-yellow nails. “I know the richies eat queer things, sort of … raw. Stuff from, you know, live things. They practically eat them alive. I can’t suppose that’s good for you, our stomachs aren’t made of Cybernall. I never had any of that … strange stuff. You trying to tell me you had that richie food? That live stuff?”

  “Sure. Poor people couldn’t buy a lot of it, but everybody had it sometimes.”

  “We got enough troubles. I got chronic colonic malachosis myself and Cash has ulceric tumors. I can’t imagine how the richies survive. I heard they eat animal tissue even. The idea makes me dizzy. I mean except as a sexy idea. I mean I seen it on the Sense-all, but it doesn’t float me.”

  “Well, where does your food come from?”

  Gildina shrugged. “Out in the Roughlands, big corporate factory-farms. They mine it, you subscribe, and it gets delivered every week.” Gildina took the plate and plasticware from her and put them into a box in the wall, where they promptly disappeared.

  “Where did they go?”

  “How would I suppose on that?” Gildina looked shocked. “It’s a service. All middle-flack plexes have platos. You take the clean stuff out and you put the dirty stuff in. Look, I’ll show you.” She opened another sliding door. But nothing happened. She pressed a button on the wall again. “Double stymie. It’s broke again. I hope they get it fixed by the time Cash comes home, that’s all I can say. Oh, well, I’ll get him to take me to the mutual on the floor. Or even upstairs, maybe, if he’s in the spending slot.”

  “A restaurant? Like a place everybody eats?”

  Gildina nodded. “But if I decide to do that I got to start prepping.”

  “What time does he get home?”

  “Not for two hours, but it takes that long, for display. The painting is what counts.”

  “You mean making up your face?”

  “No, leg painting. It costs a heart and a kidney, but if you try to do it yourself, you look like a joke. You have to go to a real artiste. There’s a fem on this floor who’ll do me even at the last minute. I’ll flash her a transie.”

  “How come she’ll do you?”

  “She owes me … . I know a few things about her. She skipped on a contract. She’s in the crazy slot, sh
e even paints her walls, but she does a good job cheapo with no appoint. So I should turn her in to the organ banks? It’s no silc off my ass! They say the richies take the ones who are real good for the platforms.”

  “Gildina, the richies—who are they, really?”

  “The same as in your time—the Rockemellons, the Morganfords, the Duke-Ponts. They’re ancient. I mean some of them were alive in your time, I suppose, if you’re for real. Wait till Cash gapes you. He’ll figure it out.” Gildina paraded past, smirking. “He’s had SC, did you suppose on that?”

  “What’s escee?”

  “Sharpened control, reallike. He’s been through mind control. He turns off fear and pain and fatigue and sleep, like he’s got a switch. He’s like a Cybo, almost! He can control the fibers in his spinal cord, control his body temperature. He’s a fighting machine, like they say. I mean not really like a Cybo, but as good as you can get without genetic engineering or organ replacement. He’s still a woolie—that’s what the richies and the Cybos call us, who are still animal tissue. But he’s real improved. He has those superneurotransmitters ready to be released in his brain that turn him into just about an Assassin. I mean not really, he’s fourth level, but he’s in that direction, if you gape.”

  “Remember, I’m just a dud from the past. They haven’t told me a lot of this stuff yet.”

  “Yeah, the Age of Uprisings and all that stuff. Before they automated the boondocks—the old UD countries, when they had all those useless animals and wild plants and dumb people and stuff.”

  “But who are Assassins?”

  “Sha! You don’t talk about them.” Gildina looked around. “Of course we’re monitored like everybody else, so SG knows I’m talking to you. So like if I’m doing anything wrong, they’ll stop us.”

  “Monitored?”

  “From the Securcenter here, what else? For versive acts and talks. They pull you in and put a scanner on you so they can tell what you’re thinking to the questions, even if you don’t talk. From the electrical impulses in your brain. You can’t lie to them, unless you’re a trained SD man or an Assassin. Assassins work for the richies. That’s how they deal with each other when they’re at odds. Every richie clan and all the multies have armies of genetically engineered fighters. Instead of sex drive, they have a basic killer drive and obey center. You can’t tell exactly what they are—some are woolies genetically specialized. Some are real Cybos. No animal issue. Entirely improved.”