by Jim Stark
And all those things are my fault, Victor felt—and that made him laugh inside, and smile on the outside—that ... feeling. Not a single Helliwellian neuron bought into “the blame” thing, but ... feelings have their own rules, he reminded himself for perhaps the last time. Let that stuff go, he thought. It will just get in the way of phase two ... not that I'm needed on that front any more ... personally.
"Mr. Helliwell?” came a solemn male voice from behind him.
Victor jumped. There was a uniformed man parked on his lit-up MIU screen ... I left that fucking machine turned off ... looking straight at him, someone who could apparently arrive uninvited into his private domain. “Big Brother just shows up whenever he wants to now?” Victor asked acidly. “Why don't you just fuck right—"
"I think you might like to hear me out, sir,” said the man as he removed his military cap and ran wrinkled fingers through thinning and artificially darkened hair. “My name is General Juarez, and I—"
"The short version,” demanded Victor harshly, “or I'll unplug the unit."
"I am sorry for the intrusion,” said the general, “but you don't answer your Netmail, and this is important. The WDA is committed to revamping Peace Day this year. General Brampton won't be speaking at all, and every year from now on, we're planning to honor one person whose contribution to world peace has made a real difference. I would like to ask you to accept the distinction of being this year's honoree, Mr. Helliwell, because we are—” The general stopped talking. It was quite impossible to converse with a man who had collapsed onto the floor and was ripped up by laughter. “Excuse me?” he tried.
Victor used his hand to rub the warm seawater from under his eyes, and tried to gain control of himself. “You got ... some fuckin’ ... nerve,” he managed in broken bits. “I'll ... grant you that.” The laughing made his head hurt more than usual.
"Mr. Helliwell, there has been no public announcement about all this,” said General Juarez, “and of course my approach to you today is strictly unofficial, but we feel that by honoring you ... you know, while you are still well enough to attend ... the WDA could show a completely new direction on June the eleventh, to make up for past neglect, and also to demonstrate a new appreciation for—"
"Oh, for the love of Christ,” Victor blurted out as he stood up and walked over to his MIU. He bent forward and placed his face right in front of the screen, so that this General Jaurez character wouldn't miss a nuance. He also pressed the “archive” button ... so that future generations can enjoy this. “You just don't get it, do you?” he asked rhetorically. “You work for, and you are a key part of, an illegitimate and criminal organization. No person and no national government ever voted the WDA any powers of any kind. You, sir, do not have any ‘honor’ to give."
With that, Victor turned around, still bent over at the waist, yanked up his caftan, and mooned the world body. If he could have farted, he'd have done it, but he just didn't have it in him at that exact moment. He dropped the caftan back down, reached underneath his desk, and unplugged his MIU ... maybe forever ... after which he returned to his gaze-at-the-Earth spot. Now, where was I? he asked himself.
Chapter 66
SST FALLOUT
Tuesday, April 19, 2033—3:25 p.m.
Julia had put on the flimsy white dress that showed off her body so well, and decided after long deliberation to forego the red bikini panties she'd always worn underneath when she was on duty in the E-tery. There was no reason she knew of why customers or anyone else should be deprived of a long look at her entire body, if they wanted, and her body was so much more interesting now that she was visibly preggers.
She danced into the packed restaurant on tippytoes, twirling, with her arms aloft, her dark green canvas bag swinging high, hoping that the boys and girls and men and women wouldn't fail to notice and enjoy the fluffy tumbleweeds of blond hair in her pits. “Hello everybody,” she called out as applause rose. “I'm going to be a mommy before it's next Christmas, and that's going to be so fun, eh? There'll be one more beautiful little person for you to laugh with and have fun with."
"Boy or girl?” asked a young mother of two, much to the surprise of her husband and their kids.
"Who cares?” sang Julia, with no shading of an implied judgment. “I like boys and girls."
Customers went back to their meals and conversations as Julia danced in behind the counter, with the Normal men and children taking a longer last peek than their wives or mothers.
Julia hung her canvas bag on a hook, carefully. “Hi Claire,” she said as she planted a kiss on the cheek of the head cook. A friend for so many years, they both thought. “So ... how's it going up at the till? Does everyb—"
"Almost all of them pay now,” said Claire. The E-tery wasn't supposed to be a Social Service Terminal, but there were some Normal poor people whose greatest need was for a good meal. So, with the tentative support of the Victor-E governing council, the E-tery had made paying optional—optional-but-highly-recommended—in effect, an SST for all those who really needed it to be so. “It's almost the same as before,” said Claire, “except now they don't have to pay."
"And we got that wonderful SST on Bubble Street!” chirped Julia as she carefully filled glasses of ice water and loaded them onto a tray. “People really like the SST!” she beamed. “Can I go over there instead of taking out the water in here?"
It had shocked Claire when the E-tery staff voted to try out the “honor system,” but customers were plopping the correct amounts—or more—into the wooden “pay-box” on the counter. I guess they realize that if we don't make money at the E-tery, the real SST wouldn't get funded, she thought. “Sure,” she said, belatedly. “We got lots of staff on ... and some customers help out now too. They put on hairnets and everyth—"
Julia kissed her again without even waiting for the end of the sentence, grabbed her canvas bag, and went skipping into the Mainspoke. It was truly and splendidly spring now. The windows in all the spokes were left open, and the doors had been removed. She loved to run, and in a few months she'd be too big to do much more than waddle, so she ran ... ran as fast as she could do without falling or accidentally losing her canvas bag. The wooden floor of the spokes made a nice thumping sound at every footfall—she had always enjoyed that. “Hi guys,” she said as she overtook two teenaged boys, whose eyes were too busy for their mouths to respond. “Want to come and help me at the SST?” she yelled as she ran on ahead of them.
Now there was the sound of six feet thumping through the Mainspoke. Julia turned on the afterburners. “Last one there is the rotten egg,” she yelped. The boys caught up easily, but were little inclined to pass her until they had reached the heavy turnstile into the hub. “Good thing you guys are Human Three,” said Julia as they held the outside air-lock door and gawked at her sweaty breasts. “Sexy stuff is great, eh?” she asked, rhetorically. She passed through the normal doors and swept dramatically into the revolving door ... and then banged into a pane of shatterproof plexiglas. The boys had started rotating the large three-paneled door for her, but now they were holding her in there, between two panes, preventing the door from turning ... and they were laughing!
"Not funny,” she said. “You could have hurt me, or the baby.” It could have smashed her Sniffer or the other breakables she had in her canvas bag, too, but those things could always be replaced. “You were mean,” she said, holding back tears.
They released the door, followed her through, and stood still, watching her stomp off down the elevated rim towards the exit into Spoke West, which led to several sleeperies and then on out to Bubble Street. “Sorry,” one of the boys shouted.
"Forgiven,” hollered Julia, turning around to face her former captors. “C'mon, let's go love people."
* * * *
Sébastien Roy—pronounced “Rwah,” with a trilled “r"—parked on Bubble Street and slammed the driver's door. This was definitely not his idea, coming here to Victor-E. He was terrified of running into some
one he knew, or someone who knew him—maybe one of his former students, all grown up and sporting Evolutionary colors ... or the parents of one of his former students.
"Mr. Roy,” as everyone had always called him, was a tall, slim redhead, thirty-six years of age, and still nattily dressed in spite of his newly acquired state of poverty. He had the standard two kids, Chantal, seven, and Rejean, eight, but no woman. He used to be the dad in a very unexceptional family, but his wife “wasn't the working kind,” as she put it, and she just couldn't or wouldn't handle the last two years she'd spent with him, years that were marked by his unemployment and their mounting unpaid bills. She had eventually “copped a man,” as Sébastien put it when he hung out at the local pub, a habit he'd acquired mostly to save what was left of his sanity—never mind what it did to his once-stellar pride. He would call his sixteen-year-old niece to come over and sit the kids, then he'd dress way down, go to Kilarney's on Shawville's Main Street and tie one on.
"The fucker had tons o’ dough,” he'd slur to any drunk or barkeep who had nothing better to do than listen to him. “She fucked right off, left her own kids, lives in England now, and she's hardly ever home when the kids try to raise her on the Net ... the bitch! Now I'm fuckin’ broke, living off the fuckin’ dole, if you can call that living—and it's because of them fuckin’ Evolutionaries that I lost my job in the first place. And now my kids want to drag me out to that fuckin’ ‘free store’ they got set up out there on their ... whatchacallit ... clansite.” He'd learned the language of the streets in order to fit in, just as he'd mastered the lexicon of academia some fifteen years earlier.
Every now and then he'd use his “bar-time” to make a minor effort to get laid ... only to go away pissed off when he failed, or chicken out whenever things started to look sort of promising. The end of every binge was filled with determination and hope that he'd restrain himself from “bumping uglies” with his more-than-willing niece when he finally staggered home. It was a pointless concern. He was impotent, and had been ever since his wife left him for a greener man. Impotent and in denial.
Truth be told, he wasn't much interested in getting laid ... or in finding work of some other kind, either. He was a gentleman and a teacher, point final, and the only thing that kept him in the hunt for work at all was the kids ... well, the kids plus the authorities at the welfare office. But mainly it was the kids. He loved them, and they loved him ... not that any of them had much of a choice on that score.
"C'mon guys, move your sorry butts,” he snarled at little Chantal and Rejean, both of whom had inherited his untamable red hair. “And lock the damn doors."
"Nobody steals here,” whispered Rejean to his sister as he looked up at the row of big Pliesterine bubbles.
"Why would they?” Chantal whispered back. “The stuff's free anyway, if you got no money."
Nobody steals anywhere, remembered Rejean, except for real young kids, who don't know any better.
Sébastien took their tiny hands in his and walked through the sunshine to the door of Bubble #6, Victor-E's SST, faster than the children's legs could manage without doing a skippity-hop, which was okay with them. They'd both grown like beans in the past year, and Daddy couldn't afford all new clothes for them, and they'd heard from their friends that anybody could get really good stuff for free at the SST. “You can pay full price or whatever you got or not pay at all—they don't care which it is,” the word was. If people got greedy, there wouldn't be any stuff left, of course, but there was always lots of stuff there—at least that's what the kids heard from their little friends at school. And there were toys in there too, they'd heard. They'd asked their father a whole bunch of times if they could go, just to look around, and he had finally caved ... though not with any grace, and with a few muttered epithets that he'd always told his children were “bad” words.
He opened the outside air-lock door, then shepherded everyone through the revolving door. The kids rushed in to see what this new air-supported miracle place had in store for them. “Wait for me ... and don't get lost,” he warned them. The place didn't seem very busy, but there were a half-dozen Evolutionaries huddled inside the entrance, waiting for customers—or “friends,” as they called them.
"Oh, they won't get lost,” announced Julia to the new customer as she broke out of the group and approached. “I got two helpers today, two nice boys, so each of your kids can have one. My name is Julia,” she beamed, holding out her hand to the man. “I love kids."
Sébastien was mortified ... and aroused! That hadn't happened for quite some time—the “aroused” part—but this woman was practically naked ... and pregnant! She had straight blond hair—not that he was concentrating on that particular feature—and she had a dark green canvas bag, like an oversized purse, hanging over one shoulder of her see-through white dress. She seemed to be in her late twenties, and she had an attractive, un-made-up face—not that he was concentrating on that particular feature either.
"Sébastien,” he said from behind a red face, carefully not volunteering his surname. He shook Julia's hand minimally, as if he feared an electric shock, or an STD. He knew that Evolutionaries were at ease with visible human bodies, but ... Normals weren't—at least not unless they paid for it, and not always then. His kids were dumbstruck, but there was no way Sébastien could hide this part of 21st-century life from them forever. “This is Chantal,” he said, prying his eyes off Julia's crotch and putting a hand on his daughter's head to assure her that it wasn't really a bad thing for a grown woman to wear practically transparent clothes and not seem to give a hoot.
"Chantal,” said Julia, bending over and shaking hands with the girl, “this guy here is Alexander.” She pointed to the shorter of her teenaged fans ... now helpers ... who had sauntered up to flank their new mentor. “He's a real nice boy, and he has a little sister just about your age, so you take his hand, and he'll show you around all the stuff we got, and try to help you pick out some nice stuff that you really need, okay? Or ... that you really want."
Chantal took the lad's hand with trepidation, and looked up to Daddy to make sure this was okay. Daddy nodded and smiled, and he gave Rejean the same assurance as he was paired up with Maurice, the other teenaged lad. As the two children headed off to explore what seemed an endless supply of maybe-free things, Sébastien waved a tentative goodbye. “Just ... take what you really need, you guys,” he warned them.
"They're so pretty!” said Julia as the two children looked back one more time for a final security check from Dad ... and another good peek at the first practically-naked fully-grown woman they could remember seeing. “So ... let's you and me have some coffee and talk about stuff,” suggested Julia, slipping her hands around the man's left biceps. “Jeeze you're skinny!” she said inoffensively. “I'm getting fat, eh? I'm going to be a mommy before it's next Christmas ... October, I think."
She led Sébastien over to the enclosed “nosh” corner at the front of the bubble, and made sure that a platter of donuts was brought to their table along with his coffee and her apple juice. “You're very lucky to have two nice kids,” she said as she sat down opposite her charge. “Do they live with you?” she asked as she laid her canvas bag carefully on the floor. “Or with the mommy?"
"With me,” said Sébastien irritably. “Their mother ran off to England with a rich guy ... and it's partly your fault, actually."
"No it's not,” said Julia seriously. “You made a bad mistake, Sébastien—I don't even know the mommy! You must think I'm somebody else."
"Yeah right,” mumbled the man as he launched into a frosted chocolate donut. It's hard to get really testy with bare breasts staring at me like that.
"Do you like to work?” asked Julia. “I sure do! It's so fun!"
Sébastien Roy figured Julia for a former “special ed” student. He washed down a wad of donut with a sip of too-hot coffee before answering. “Yes—uh ... Julia, you said your name was?"
"Yeah."
"Yes,” repeated S�
�bastien as he made a second assault on the donut. “I love to work,” he said with his mouth full, something his kids had to write punishment lines for doing. He glanced up ... well, just above the far edge of the table-top, where Julia's breasts were ... and wondered why he, an award-winning math teacher, was accepting charity from a dim-witted exhibitionist ... and making small talk, very small talk.
"So ... what do you do?” asked Julia. She pulled her long hair from her back over her shoulders, so that it fell down her front, almost to her waist, on both sides.
"Nothing,” mumbled Sébastien.
"How come?"
"I lost my job."
"How come?"
"They closed the damned school."
"Why did they do that?"
"Because more and more parents were sending their kids over to your school, if you really must know,” he hissed.
Julia didn't get it—what he said about “if you really must know"—but she also didn't get it why this man was angry at her, or seemed to be, by the tone of his words ... and by the words too, she thought.
"Are you mad at me?” she asked. “I just came here to—"
"To what?” asked Sébastien Roy. “To gloat? Do you even know what ‘gloat’ means, Julia?"
The man seemed to have abandoned interest in his chocolate donut and coffee, and Julia didn't understand why he was looking at her so sternly, so hard, as if she had done something wrong. She also didn't know what “gloat” meant. “I ... love you,” she said lightly.
Sébastien rolled his eyes despairingly and went back at his snack. It's like that “love-bombing” routine that cults used to do, he thought. “No,” he said dirtily, “'gloat’ doesn't mean ‘love.’”