See, according to paragraphs 2, 4, 6, and 12 of Ordinance 3, In-Zone employment was strictly voluntary. Officially, no one was forced to work. Anyone was free to quit their job on two weeks notice, no questions asked. The only catch was, quitting your job, or not showing up, for whatever reason, without some kind of authorization in writing, clearly demonstrated “failure to sustain a consistent pattern of work behavior,” which immediately got you knocked down a class, and earned you a spot on the IntraZone watch-list. So Cassandra quitting was out of the question. No, the plan at the moment (Taylor’s plan) was that Taylor would bribe Cassandra’s foreman, Santobal Prosky, or threaten him, one. Or maybe threaten him first, then bribe him. Or maybe not even bother to bribe him. In any case, however he did it, get this guy to put Cassandra on the Temporarily Work-Disabled list. Which, he figured, that wouldn’t be hard to accomplish. Taylor didn’t know this Prosky asshole, but Cassandra made him sound like one of your typical A.S.P. 1-type weasels. Taylor had no doubt that he was. Most of the 1s, and especially the foremen, were spineless little brown-nosing punks, which was why they had been promoted to foremen. The trick with sniveling cowards like that was making them more afraid of you than they were of IntraZone Waste & Security, which wasn’t going to be a big problem for Taylor.
Adam and Sarah listened patiently to Taylor’s plans to intimidate Prosky, or bribe him, or some combination thereof, and informed him that he was out of his fucking mind and that all that shit was out of the question. They’d take care of Prosky, they informed him, as well as all other “operational details,” most of which Taylor would not be privy to, and the rest of which he would be advised of on a need-to-know basis as time went by. Taylor’s job was to deal with Cassandra, to keep her fed, entertained, and otherwise physically and emotionally healthy during the “sequestration period” (so officially December to officially April). That, and discourage her nosy roommates from sniffing around outside her door, and knocking and asking if she needed anything ... as if they possibly gave a shit. If the roommates somehow detected her pregnancy, Taylor was instructed to “take no action” and “not to deviate” from his normal routine, other than to promptly report said detection to Adam and Sarah, who would deal with it themselves.
They could not over-emphasize this point. Taylor was to take “no independent action,” was not to “engage with any threats,” and was not, for any reason whatsoever, to “deviate from his normal routine.”
“I got to take a shit,” Adam announced. He slid out and presumably went to do that. Sarah waited until he was gone.
“Questions for us?”
Taylor couldn’t think of any. She reached across the table and took his tobacco.
“You haven’t asked what we do with the babies.”
“Everyone knows what you do with the babies.”
“Do they?”
“Yeah. You smuggle them out.”
“Out to where?”
“The Autonomous Zones.”
“And you believe they exist?”
Taylor smirked.
“This isn’t about the baby,” he said.
“What’s it about then?”
“It’s about the mother.”
She licked the glue on the rolling paper. Her eyes were probing him.
“Why not abort it?”
“She doesn’t want to.”
“She doesn’t want to.”
“We don’t want to. What difference does it make?”
She struck a match and lit her cigarette.
“I’m just trying to get to know you, Taylor.”
“What’s to know?”
“Why you’re doing this.”
She exhaled smoke through both her nostrils.
“Most of the fathers just walk away. They’re mostly 1s with factory jobs.”
“1s are a bunch of candy-asses. ”
“The mother’s a 1.”
“She’s an exception.”
“What about you? Are you an exception?”
“To what?”
And there was that look again. She leaned in towards him and lowered her voice. “This isn’t just about the mother. There are other ways to deal with babies.” She pushed his tobacco across the table. “You came to us because you don’t want to kill it.”
“Yeah. So?”
“So why does it matter?”
“It doesn’t. What are you trying to get at?”
“What you want.”
“You know what I want.”
She smoked.
“What you really want.”
Taylor took the cigarette from her.
“It ain’t that fucking complicated.”
A second passed. Then she smiled. Her upper lip was beaded with sweat. Taylor took a drag off the cigarette. Then he handed it back across the table. He reached down and slid the sleeve of her tunic up her arm to expose her tattoos, a series of spiral Celtic triskelions, way too good to have been done in the Zone. She gave him time to get a good look, then pulled her arm back and shook her sleeve down. She did it calmly, staring right at him. He could smell her sweat from across the booth. He couldn’t quite put his finger on it, but something about her was definitely off. Or something about her reminded him of someone. Or something. There was definitely something about her. Something foreign yet somehow familiar. He knew he wanted her. He knew that much. But then Taylor wanted, or thought he wanted, pretty much every other woman he saw, assuming she wasn’t totally toothless or some kind of giant sea cow or something. In Taylor’s experience, more often than not, these women also wanted Taylor. He could tell by that look they got in their eyes, not that look that some women gave him, the one designed to make him want them, which didn’t mean anything other than that they wanted to see if they could make him want them ***** ... that other look, that serious look, the one that came from deep inside their brains where they weren’t even consciously thinking. He could also tell these women wanted him by the way the vast majority of them dug their fingernails into his back and screamed while Taylor fucked their brains out. This was usually a telltale sign, and what he was thinking he would do to Sarah, who definitely wanted him ... she had that look. He was sitting there across from her, looking right at it. However, although she had that look, something about it was somehow off. It wasn’t that she was faking it or anything, because you couldn’t fake it, not that look, but rather, that what it looked like she wanted was sex, yes, was serious sex, sweaty, desperate, back-straining sex, but was more than just sex, which was making him nervous. It felt like she was using her eyes, or some power that she controlled with her eyes, to pry him open, to force her way in ... as if she wanted unlimited access to some deeper or ultimate level of Taylor, which Taylor himself had never explored, and which he wasn’t even sure was down there. Maybe it was something about her eyes, which he had sworn were brown, but which were actually hazel ... or maybe they had changed to hazel ... which he knew was impossible, so that wasn’t it. Her irises had these imperfections that looked like miniature spiral galaxies ... gold at the pupil, shot with sinuous streaks of dusky greens and blues. The longer Taylor stared into them, the less he felt he could read what was in them. Except for that look. He could read that look. But it wasn’t just her eyes, or her tits, or her lips, which he could tell were unbelievably soft. No, there was something else that was less specific, and that wasn’t physical, or wasn’t merely physical, or was some kind of purely pheromonal-type thing ... whatever it was, she radiated some irresistible female something that in spite of the fact that she was obviously a Terrorist, and possibly even a faith-based Terrorist, he felt he needed to put his dick in ... but no, he told himself, not this time.
Sarah sat there watching Taylor, nostrils ever so slightly flaring, nipples hardening through her tunic, as all these thoughts raced through his mind in the space of maybe three or four seconds.
“You sure?” she asked.
“Sure about what?”
“That it isn’t that fucking comp
licated. ”
Walking home that night from the Pussyhorse, reflecting back on what had just happened, and the now current status of the baby problem, Taylor was feeling pretty good about himself. His plan, or at least this part of it, was working. He’d established contact with the baby smugglers, and had passed his interview, or whatever that was. Now, assuming he could follow all their rules, and not deviate from his normal routine, in six months they would take the baby and smuggle it out to the Autonomous Zones ... which, OK, there were no Autonomous Zones, but they would hide it in one of their safehouses somewhere, or their underground tunnels, or whatever they did with them ... after which life could go back to normal and it would be like nothing had ever happened. And as far as this thing with Sarah went, Taylor decided, right then and there, as he came to the end of Muybridge Lane, Taylor, despite his Anti-Social nature, and his deeply ingrained lack of restraint, and his total absence of impulse control, and generally goatlike inclination to disperse his seed as profusely as possible, Taylor Byrd, the Class 3 Dog, made the clear and conscious choice to, once, just this once, he resolved, to forgo this spooky but fine piece of ass, about whom there was definitely ... something ... something seductive, or irresistable, something that maybe scared him a little, and that he sensed would scare him a whole lot less if he could hold her down and fuck her, forcefully, not like to hurt her, but to ... what? own her? to control her? tame her? ... he did not know ... he couldn’t even put this stuff into words ... all he knew was what he wanted to do, or what some part of him wanted him to do, which was what he was not going to do this time ... because no, he owed Cassandra that much ... not to fuck this whole thing up by fucking Sarah, and pissing off Adam, who wasn’t in charge of the baby smuggling thing, because pretty obviously Sarah was, but who was either fucking her, or wanted to be fucking her, or in any case wouldn’t want Taylor to be fucking her, and also for a host of other reasons, which Taylor couldn’t quite remember at the moment, all of which led to the same conclusion, which was, basically, no spooky ass for Taylor. No sir. Uh-uh. Not this time. No, this time, he was going to act like a grown-up and do the right thing for once in his life. He would keep this on a businesslike basis, and tolerate whatever Terrorist bullshit he had to tolerate to see it all through. Yes, this was how it would go. By the numbers. Until the day. Upon which he would deliver the baby, thank them kindly for all their efforts, wish them well with their totally decentralized autonomous revolution or whatever, and, OK, after all that was over, go ahead and throw a quick fuck into Sarah, who regardless of whatever shit she was into looked like she could really use one. She looked like she either wasn’t getting laid, or was getting laid by Adam, poorly, which was why she was so wound up and intense and involved in all that faith-based bullshit, and whatever that was she did with her eyes ... it was all that pent-up sexual hunger. She’d probably come in, like, ninety seconds, gasping and hyperventilating, which Taylor would go ahead and get that over with, after which he would fuck her properly, making her come again and again, relentlessly, until her brain stopped thinking ... but afterwards, once he had handed off the baby, because what could it possibly hurt at that point? All right, good, so that was settled. Just one quick one. Nothing serious. One hot fuck and sayonara ... or two or three nights at the absolute most. After which they would both agree that getting involved would be a bad idea, and would get dressed and go their separate ways, after which life would go back to normal ...
He turned up out of the deep Inner Zone and headed north on Wallace Lefferts, a desolate former business thoroughfare lined with gutted office towers, low-rise stores and residential buildings, the ruins of some ancient city center. Someone was walking along the rooftops off to his right, but that didn’t mean anything. People walked along on rooftops. This was no time to start getting paranoid. Up ahead, at the end of the avenue, a Public Viewer was running some Content in which a middle-aged Normal couple, whose names apparently were Tom and Tina, were being accosted by a leering host who looked like an android with too much make-up. Tom took hold of this enormous roulette wheel (or a simulation of such a wheel) that was mounted on a stand that faced the camera so the viewers at home could see the series of concentric circles comprised of panels lit up in alternating primary colors and covered with arcane letters and symbols that only the fans of the show understood ... and pulled it, Tom did, and sent it spinning. Tina hopped up and down in place and smiled insanely and clapped her hands and squealed hysterically into the camera with her protuberant eyeballs and rictal grin like maybe she was going to just shit herself from joy. Tom reached over and took her hand and joined in hopping, and smiling, and squealing. The host stood just behind them, grinning. The wheel kept spinning, faster and faster ... round and round, round and round, colors bleeding into other, symbols blurring, disappearing, and ...
Severance
On rare but emotionally scarring occasions, back in that three-bed, two-bath condo on Chestnut Court where Valentina grew up, when her mother, Catherine, was off her meds, she would chase Valentina around with the Hand, waving it at her, laughing and cackling, as Valentina shrieked in terror and hid behind furniture and feared for her life. Valentina never saw it coming. Her mother would storm into the living-room, where Valentina was coloring or something, or loom out of a doorway suddenly, as she was trying to walk down the hall to her bedroom, clawing the air with the hand, and cackling. Valentina would pee her jammies and run as fast as she possibly could. Catherine would be right on her heels, cackling, groping for her with the hand as she ran. She’d reach with it under the dining room table, driving Valentina out the other side. She’d chase her down the hallway with it. Valentina would hide in the bedrooms, wait for Catherine to come inside and clear the door, then run out behind her, and look for some other place to hide. Catherine would be wearing her filthy bathrobe and those big fuzzy hamster-like slippers she wore. Her hair would be sticking out every which way, her eyeballs bulging like hard-boiled eggs. She’d chase Valentina around with the Hand, laughing and coughing, until she started to choke. Then she’d sit down at the dining room table, or sometimes on the living room sofa, and disgustingly spit into one of the wadded up tissues she always kept in her robe.
Catherine, in the condition she was in back then, found this game uproariously funny. Valentina did not find it funny. Valentina found it emotionally scarring. For years she’d had these recurring nightmares in which her mother, who was white-eyed psychotic, was chasing her down a series of hallways clawing at her with her black plastic hands. She’d discussed her deep emotional scarring in her expensive sessions with Doctor Graell, who’d knowingly nodded for several seconds, and then upped her Zanoflaxithorinal dosage. Somewhere in her mid-to-late thirties, the recurring nightmares had finally stopped, and at some point she’d forgotten the Hand.
That is, until Catherine’s pantomime in the Seaview Unit reminded her of it, and the memories all came flooding back. She knew exactly where to find it. She knew that because she had put it there herself. The week after Catherine took up residence at Breckenridge Village, “a Retirement Community,” she’d wrapped the Hand in several sheets of recycled plastic translucent bubble-wrap and sealed the ends up with cellophane tape. She’d done this in her mother’s bedroom, while her mother sat and stared out the window of the Seaview Unit at the toxic lagoon. Her father had sat, alone, in the living room, watching some purported Historical Content regarding the Early Age of Austerity, which he didn’t appear to be watching as much as staring forlornly at the screen and drinking. She’d stripped the dreaded Hand of its rings, and the chains that were draped between the fingers, then bubble-wrapped it and carefully packed it into a 10-cube EasyStore Storage box. Then she’d packed up the rest of Catherine’s things. Later that day, the EasyStore Storage men had loaded the box, Box 1 of 13, into their bright blue EasyStore Storage van. They’d driven it out to 1317 N.E. Corporate Perimeter Road, dollied it into the EasyStore storage complex, and stacked it neatly in Storage Cubicle 6344923.
There it had sat for fifteen years, until that humid February evening when Valentina, upon her return from her visit with Catherine in the Seaview Unit, called the EasyStore Emergency Hotline at a cost of sixty-three cents per second and requested overnight delivery of the box to 3258 Marigold Lane.
The box arrived the following morning, at 0530 the invoice said, just as Kyle was leaving the house on a three-day trip to Region 20, where the Hakuhodo Chayevsky Foundation was holding some kind of Informatics seminar where Kyle was giving a presentation about which Valentina couldn’t have cared less.
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