Nobody bothered us walking to the Labour Exchange: the Bluefish saw to that. They showed me off round the exchange with great swagger. We met another Pinball Champ with his fighters; had a fairly friendly drink. He talked about nothing but the credits he’d won. His right hand was never still, pulling on that invisible handle.
The Dome of Musicians, where all the noise came from, was a sad place, divided into small booths round its walls. In most booths was a group, bawling into microphones, prancing, endlessly fiddling with light shows and banks of amplifiers. A few spectators watched, like ghouls at a road accident. All the music seemed to meet in the middle of the dome, an endless cacophony with a life of its own, against which each group seemed to mouth in silence.
One booth had just been abandoned by a very large group, to judge from the amount of wreckage. Among the debris, a girl sang on alone, holding a dead mike; tall and thin, wearing a man’s shirt hanging on two buttons; her eyes great grey pools of weariness. Nothing of what she sang could be heard, but she didn’t seem to care. She was singing for herself. I watched her for a long time. She smiled a little, letting me have all her eyes to myself.
“C’mon,” shouted George, plucking my sleeve. “Another drink?”
We ducked into a bar. It had reached the disgusting stage—floor littered with Coke cans and crisp bags. Everybody was staring into space…
Until somebody dropped an unopened can of Coke. Somebody else kicked it violently against the wall. Then everyone was kicking it. It flew round the room like a hunted thing, smashing into people’s shins, once hitting the ceiling to enormous cheers. Then it ruptured against the wall, splattering everybody, glugging its contents across the floor. Everybody leaped into the foaming stream of Coke, stamping in it, kicking it over their friends, making incredible patterns of black footprints.
Then, suddenly, total inertia again. The guy who’d owned the Coke went and got another…
There were eight different dispensing machines— Coke, shandy, orange, whisky soda.
“Whaddya want?” asked George. “They all taste the same.” Three of the dispensers were already out of order, jammed cans hanging halfway. Still, the noise was human, not electronic; the lighting steady, not flashing. The walls seemed red plastic, painted with huge murals of clean, tidy, twenty-first-century teenagers having fun, grinning inanely, making meaningless, jolly gestures. Tables and chairs stood on steel columns thick as gun barrels, bolted to the red plastic floor. Every table swam with drink.
“What a pigsty!”
“Be spotless in the morning,” said George. “I been here early, as soon as the gates are open. Everything clean an’ polished. Never think anyone had ever been here. Look!” He took out a big knife, tried over and over to scratch “G” on the tabletop. Without effect, though the muscles of his neck stood out with the effort. “Table’s bonded steel; so’re the walls and floor. Can’t make a mark anywhere. Aerosal graffiti just wash off, when the cleaning machines come. There’ll be nothing to remember us by, man, once we’re dead.” He drew a brown finger in a savage zigzag across the wet tabletop. Immediately the liquid closed in again, obliterating it.
We sat silent. George didn’t drink his drink the normal way; he kept flexing his Coke can, so the drink oozed up onto the lid. Then he’d lick it off round the rim. Flex, flex, went his big brown arm muscle. I felt my own hand tightening with tension round the smooth, frail surface of my can… which was painted with the same vacuous,
grinning teenage faces as the walls. I began to flex my can, too, in time to the beat of the cacophony coming in through the door.
“Watch it,” said George. “Slag!”
The girl from the music dome was hovering in the doorway. Hair hanging down each side of her face like black wings; breasts showing frailly under that voluminous man’s shirt. Our eyes met across the room.
She wasn’t welcome in the bar. The girls formed tight circles of humped backs, keeping her out of their groups. She gathered her courage and spoke to a group of boys.
One boy short-armed her into the middle of the floor. She tripped and lay in a pool of fizzy liquid, looking at me.
I walked across to her. George tried to stop me, but I shook his hand off. I started to bring her back to our table.
The guy who’d shoved her tried shoving her again. I grabbed his hand and twisted; got a close-up of his pale hatchet face, a plastic-leather jacket torn with the weight of badges. Then he was bending back helplessly to the floor. God, how weak he was! As he hit the floor, I felt his wrist snap. God, they had bones like broiler-house chickens!
He gathered up the contents of his mouth and spat at me; but his mates turned away indifferently, began playing a stupid game of banging their drinks together and yelling as spouts of fizz shot up.
I took the girl back to our table. George was gone. I wiped a seat dry with the remains of my handkerchief, a filthy black rag.
“Thanks. I’m Vanessa.” She took a fag out of her bag with trembling fingers, tried to light it. I took her lighter and lit it for her.
“Thanks.” She took out a little mirror, inspected her face without interest. Then shook back her long hair, with a sensual movement of her long neck that stirred my guts.
“You new?” she asked.
“Fairly new.”
“I’m not. They all hate me.”
“Why?” I looked at her long, fine-boned face and sad, sad eyes. “Why?”
“I’m ex-Est.” She began to cry, tears running down cheeks near-transparent with weariness.
“Let me get you a drink. …”
“Will you take me home, please? I’m frightened to walk on my own.”
We left to a storm of jeers. I felt like punching the whole chicken-boned room into silence… but I was getting too fond of hurting. Instead I relaxed my fist and put it round her waist, feeling her leaden tiredness, but also the smoothness of her skin.
People watched us, all the way out of the Labour Exchange.
The noise and lights faded. Blue night and silence; footsteps echoing through tall, empty streets. Blue night and weariness, wrapping us together like a blanket. I tightened my grip on her waist; she didn’t object. She felt like a present someone had suddenly given me. I stopped abruptly and kissed her. Kissed her and kissed her. She gave in wearily; easy as pulling on a sweater. It was finally me, ashamed of taking advantage, who thrust us on.
“I live here.” A dark doorway; no windows lit anywhere. It wasn’t like the estates. I wanted to ask her why she didn’t live on an estate, but I didn’t want to be rude. “Good night, then. …”
“Please… see me upstairs. Vermin … on the landings.”
I followed her up several flights, along passages. Dim bulbs clicked on in front of her, off behind. Blanketing us safe in silence and dark. The vermin must be on strike tonight.
“My door.” She was quick with her key.
“Good night.” I wondered if I could find my way back, through the network of stairs and corridors. Would the overhead lights click on and off for me?
But as she put her key in the door she swayed, nearly fell. I held her up with one hand, turned the key with the other.
A big room, dimly lit crimson. A huge, low divan. I almost had to lift her onto it. She was light, but she turned awkwardly inside my arms, so my hands slid across her breasts. She had nothing on under her shirt. I expected her to shrink from my hands, but she just hung there.
I dropped her, embarrassed. She lay silent, face down. More embarrassed, I looked round to see where the rosy light was coming from. Huge goldfish tanks, in which goldfish swam smoothly, red, red. A luxury room, an Est room.
“I’ll be going. …”
She roused herself. “Don’t go for a minute—sit down— let me explain.” But the moment I sat next to her on the bed (there seemed to be no chairs in the room), she jumped up nervously; crossed the room and stood staring into one of the goldfish tanks, hands clasped in front of her. I could tell from the move
ment of her elbows that she was lacing and unlacing her fingers, nervously.
“You see—I have this problem. …”
She turned, flinging her arms wide, and her unbuttoned shirt with them. Her jeans fell in a pile at her feet. She stepped out of them, dropping her shirt on top.
My mind couldn’t catch up. One second I’d been worrying over a hunched figure on the verge of weeping. The next, the girl was swimming toward me like one of her own sleek goldfish. Red-gold light from the fish tanks slid over her round breasts and small belly. She pressed her tiny navel onto the end of my uncomprehending nose. The world was full of the warm smell of girl. All I’d ever dreamed of, back in my lonely little bed at the Centre…
But I didn’t trust dreams in Unnem land. I stood up abruptly, somehow knocking her down onto the carpet.
“Sorry,” I said. Offering her a hand up. She took hold of it, but lay, looking up at me; eyes like pools, waiting for me to dive in. But it was too easy.
“I’ll be going,” I said.
She let me get my hand on the door handle, then said, “Please don’t go.” Still lying there, looking totally forlorn. “Please—I only wanted to keep you here. When I’m alone, I just can’t sleep. Please stay till morning, or I don’t know what I’ll do. I slashed my wrists, once.” She held up a bare arm: there were thin, pink scars.
“Look!” I said decisively. But I went back and sat heavily on the bed. She got up and moved about. The squares of light from the fish tanks slid across buttock and breast. “Would you like a drink?” she asked.
“I’d like you to put something on.” My sense of humour was catching up with me.
“Why—am I so ugly? It is my room—I feel freer, naked—it helps me wind down.” She was so indignant, I nearly apologised. “God—I could sleep for a week.” She yawned, holding her hand, Est-like, to her mouth. “I don’t mind if you keep your clothes on.”
“Thanks.” The drink she’d given me was so aromatic, the fumes went right through my head, making me close my eyes. “I’ll sleep on the floor.” The deep-pile carpet seemed a lot softer than George’s old bed.
“Please don’t—there’s plenty of room on the bed. I’ll behave—if you put your arm round me.” She curled up round me, where I sat. Before I’d finished the drink, her breathing had deepened to sleep. In the red dimness, dark lashes lay on her flushed cheeks. She looked happy, asleep, like my kid brother.
The bed was soft; cuddling a sleeping girl was no pain. I put a tentative stiff arm around her. She sighed, pressing it onto her breast with both hands.
I was on the edge of sleep when she turned and swept over me like a sinuous wave. Far too late to resist.
I wakened in the dark, thinking how sad, flat, disappointing. If that was all it was… My jeans were round my knees, where she’d left them. The shirt she’d unbuttoned was wrinkled up under my armpits, and my mouth was like the bottom of a birdcage. She was sleeping half on top of me, totally trusting.
I had to have a drink. Every credit I’d won, for a glass of cold water. Not another drink like she’d given me before… No way!
I eased her off me, inch by protesting inch. I wondered where the light switch was. If I got up in total dark, I’d wake her, falling over the furniture. I lay and thought about it.
She’d fiddled with a switch just above the bed head … on a length of flex. I groped up and found it, pressed the button. No lights went on. It must be broken. I lay there and fumed, thirstier than ever.
Click!
The tiniest sound. The kind you only hear when you can’t sleep, in black silence, in the middle of the night. Maybe a death watch beetle; or the tiny click of phlegm in my own windpipe…
I held my breath, till I nearly choked.
Click! There it was again, coming from the wall above the bed head. I reached up an exploring hand. Touched a small, round button set in the wall, cold like glass.
Click! There was a square of wall around it; marked out by a hairline crack; colder than the plaster of the wall.
I pressed on the cold square and it fell, heavy and solid, into my hand. I knew what it was then, an automatic Polaroid camera. I got up now, all right, not caring who I wakened. Pulled down my shirt, pulled up my jeans. Bashed round the room in a fury, looking for an overhead light switch. Found it.
Overhead light is cruel. I saw the huge cracks in the ceiling; the velvet-faced wallpaper bulging off the walls, the damp spots where the fishtanks had dripped condensation on the ill-fitted carpet. And the girl on the bed, too long, too thin, fish-pale with pelvis bones like fish bones.
Worse, as I pressed the release button on the camera, a string of infrared photographs fell onto the floor. In excellent focus, correctly exposed, and leaving nothing to the imagination. My own face, open-mouthed, looked animal and stupid.
I ripped the first photo into bits smaller than a postage stamp. Then she was on me, scrabbling for the photos like a beggar scrabbling for food. Under the harsh light, I suddenly saw how she would look when she was old. It was the only thing that stopped me hitting her.
“Please, do what you like, but don’t take my photographs.”
“If you’re thinking of blackmail, forget it. Techs don’t have any parents left to shock.”
“That’s not what they’re for!” She didn’t sound like a blackmailer, somehow.
“What, then?”
“I take them to the Labour Exchange. They give me forty credits a bloke.”
“Futuretrack Six?” I sneered. “The oldest profession?”
She drew herself up with a touching naked dignity. “It’s not just whoring—I’m trying to get into the Sisterhood.”
“The what?”
“It’s run by women, for women, somewhere out in the country. An old nunnery, among big green trees. They make you well again, and you never have to go near a man, unless you want to. And they teach you the female mysteries… forseeing the future… clairvoyance. I know I’ve got second sight—I can find things people have lost. When a friend of mine, a Racer, was killed, I knew. …”
“What’s the snag?” I asked, suddenly suspicious of such unlikely Est benevolence.
“I have to sleep with five hundred men within a year— every one different. Most girls reckon it’s impossible, but I was doing so well. Boys wanted me because I was all pretty and glossy from having been an Est. Then some clever dick like you spotted my camera and the word got around. Now I can only catch green newcomers. …”
“Like me. What number was I?”
“Four hundred and twenty-one. I’ll never make it now—I’ve only got two months to go.”
“What happens if you don’t make it?”
She shuddered.
I thought I’d hated the system when Idris died. But nothing like this. Finally I took her thin hand in both of mine. “Don’t worry, Vanessa, you’ll make it. I’ll see you make it.”
She fluttered in my hands, like a desperate bird. “How can you? It’s got to be a different man every time. They feed the photos into a computer that keeps the score.”
I began to laugh, but it felt more like crying. “Girl, if there’s one thing computers are bad at, it’s reading photographs. Wear a false moustache, paint yourself with coffee grounds, wear spectacles, change the lighting, you’ll fool a computer. They’re babes in arms. …”
She managed a wan smile of disbelief. “I’ll settle for a cuddle until morning.”
She slept; I lay awake. At first, full of glee at my plans to send my love, or at least my love making, back to Laura. I had no doubts about my power to fool her. Computers are lousy at 2-D images. I only hoped my old sex-starved mate Sellers didn’t while away his boring duty hours looking through Laura’s dirty-photograph files. He’d recognise me for sure…
Then I began to have doubts. Did Vanessa’s Sisterhood really exist? Or was it a lousy Est con-trick? To weed out Unnem-girls of determination and drive, who might have special and dangerous gifts. Certainly I’d never heard of
a Sisterhood, either as an Est or a Tech. Could it be another name for the lobo farm?
It was a labyrinth. How little any of us knew what was really going on. The Ests didn’t want to know, providing they had their little comforts, their little party games. The Techs didn’t want to know: too busy fighting among themselves. But somebody must know; somebody must be planning it all.
For some reason, I thought of Scott-Astbury. I tried to laugh myself out of it, remembering his paunchy prancing. Then I remembered the peculiar pale blueness of his eyes. People laughed at Scott-Astbury, but he never laughed.
I poked Vanessa awake.
“Oh, God, it’s not morning, is it?”
“No. Listen. Did you ever hear of a man called Scott-Astbury?”
She blinked at me Wearily.
“Think! It’s important.”
She rubbed a thin, beautiful hand across red-rimmed eyes.
“When I was an Est… Daddy used to go on about Scott-Astbury. He said that what Scott-Astbury was doing in the Scottish Highlands was wrong. But he and Mummy always shut up when they saw I was listening. Aw, let me sleep, Sellers!”
That was all I ever got out of her.
Chapter 8
The morning of the Championship, I felt great. Vanessa had been to the Labour Exchange twice: none of her photographs had been rejected. I’d fooled dear, distant Laura’s photoscanners forty times in four days.
George didn’t approve; neither did the Bluefish. “Let me show you a real woman,” said George, as they collected me.
“Straight through,” said the Bluefish, massively. There were twelve of them now, though George explained I wouldn’t have to pay the extra wages till I was Champ of the Month. Bluefish, old and new, were pretty high. Grinning from missing ear to missing ear, a catlike joy in their lope. They kept on trying to pick me up and carry me; kept whispering about a rumble.
“What rumble?”
“Leave them be, man, they’re happy. Come and meet this real woman.”
I let them persuade me. I was tired of being paraded around the domes like the FA Cup.
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