Before I go he makes me take his stuff. The mini-stove, the alarm-clock vidscreen, all his junk.
“You’ll need this,” he says. “I know how it works with the gangs.”
So I take his crummy stuff. I rip the old geez off. I feel weird and sort of sick about it, but it doesn’t matter, because I’ll never see him again. And if you can’t see something, it doesn’t really exist, right?
Right?
ON THE WAY BACK to my cube I get sighted by a proov, which scares me halfway dead.
I’m cutting through this old falling-down place they call the Maximall, which used to be full of trade stalls in the backtimes. They say every stall was piled high with jewelry and fancy clothes and mysterious gizmos and lots of shiny things nobody really remembers anymore. They say there were stalls with ten thousand different kinds of choxbars instead of just the one. Probably that’s a lie about the choxbars, but I’d like to believe it. There are still a few traders at the Maxi, but they’re protected by bristlebars and cutwire, and the teks will beat you with stunstiks if you haven’t got anything worth trading.
I’m keeping my distance when a takvee pulls up to one of the stalls. “Takvee” is slang for Tactical Urban Vehicle, the heavily armored, cyber-driven vans that proovs use to get around the Urb. If you’re paying attention, you already know a proov is a genetically improved human being. They’re the people who own the world, or at least the part of it they call Eden.
You can always tell a proov because they’re all tall and beautiful and healthy-looking. The other way to tell a proov is how they look at you if you’re a normal. A proov can’t help shuddering inside when he sees a normal. We give them the creeps. We’re a reminder of what human beings are like when they’re not born perfect, and I guess if you’re a proov, the very idea of imperfection makes you want to throw up.
Anyhow, a bunch of teks — that’s short for Technical Security Guards — get out of the takvee. Six of them, all talking to each other in their implanted headsets. When they take up positions and give the all-clear, the takvee doors fold down, and out comes this proov. A female dressed in a shimmering white gown that you can almost see through but not quite. She’s got beautiful gray sky–colored eyes, and perfect skin, and short hair that sort of glows, like the sun is always shining on her.
I’m staring at her. You can’t help it with a proov. It makes me ache inside and feel scummy on the outside, like I should hide myself from her perfect eyes. But I don’t hide — there’s no place to go — and for some reason she notices me. Her hand goes up to her face and she touches her perfect ear. Communicating to the teks on her implant.
I’m thinking, run, boy, they’re going to jolt you into a coma just for looking. But suddenly there’s a tek close behind and I can’t get away.
“Halt!” he goes, and I do. Like most teks, he’s wearing a protective face mask, so I can’t see his expression. Is he going to jolt me with his stunstik or what? I’m bracing myself for the buzz and hoping it won’t set off spasms when he goes, “Follow me.”
What he does is, he takes me to the proov. Which is like unheard of, a proov allowing a normal to approach. But that’s what happens. And I can see the proov girl is young, maybe my age. Proovs don’t wrinkle much, because of their genetically improved skin, but you can still tell whether they’re young or old, if you get close enough. And this one is definitely young, maybe fourteen or fifteen. And her teeth are white, not yellow like normal teeth. I wonder if all proovs have white teeth. So perfectly white.
“Do you have a name?” she asks me.
I want to say, What do you think, just because we’re not perfect, we don’t have names? But all I can manage to get out of my choked-up throat is, “Spaz.”
“Spaz,” she says. Like she’s tasting it on her tongue, and isn’t sure if she likes it. “How odd. All of you seem to have such strange and interesting names down here in the latches.” Then she points to one of the teks and goes, “Provide for him,” and just like that she turns away and strides into the trade stall as if she’s already forgotten that I exist.
Another tek pokes me in the back with a stunstik. The charge is set low so it doesn’t knock me down or anything. “Stop staring, you!” he orders me. “Your eyes are dirty!”
There’s nothing wrong with my eyes, but I do what he asks and stop looking at the beautiful proov while she goes trading. And the tek hands me a small plastic bag with edibles inside. Protein bars and carboshakes and choxbars and stuff like that. The way he does it makes me think the proov girl does this all the time: hands out goodies to normals, to make herself feel even more perfect than she already is.
I should hate her for that, for the way she feels, but I don’t. I can’t. You can’t hate a proov when you’re near one, because you want to be like them, you ache to be like them. You want to be perfect, too, and you know if you were improved you’d act just like they do, and feel what they feel, and glide through the world with sky-colored eyes and hair like sunlight, and nothing dirty or broken could ever touch you.
Then, when you’d had your little adventure in the big bad dangerous Urb, you’d go home to Eden and live happily ever after.
Me, I go home to the Crypts.
My cube is small and dingy, with a chunk of foam on the floor, not a real bed, but it’s way better than not having a place to sleep or just hang, even if the door doesn’t lock from the inside.
That’s a rule in the Crypts: no door locks, because the Bangers want to be able to enter anytime they feel like it. They take what they want, too, but for some reason they let me keep an old 3D, which is better than nothing. Nobody but me cares about watching 3Ds anymore, because why waste your time with a crummy hologram movie when you can boot up one of the brand-new mindprobes and see the whole show inside your head, like you were really there?
Anyhow, I toss the gummy’s stuff in a corner and turn on the machine and start watching this 3D I’ve seen like ten thousand times. The one where Coley Riggins has to fight his way across the solar system, planet by planet, to rescue this gorgeous female who thinks he’s dead, so she’s going to marry this other guy, which would be a big mistake because the other guy is the one who keeps trying to kill poor Coley. You’ve probably seen it, if they still have the old 3Ds when you read this. If not, trust me, it’s a really cool story, and usually I can get right into it and have fun pretending I’m as big and strong and good-looking as Coley Riggins, but today I can’t concentrate on it. Instead, I keep thinking about the old geez, and what he said about those who will be alive at some future date.
For some reason the idea of “future” gets inside my head and won’t let go. Future. That’s like a time that doesn’t exist yet. A world full of people who haven’t been born yet, doing things that nobody’s thought of yet.
Also I keep flashing on the proov girl with the sky-colored eyes, like somehow she’s all mixed up with what happened in the stacks. Even though I know she doesn’t have any connection to the old gummy they call Ryter.
I eat some of the stuff the proov girl gave me, which is better than the tasteless protein chunks you get from a food chute, but I can’t stop thinking about Ryter, and how he said, There are things about your life that are specific only to you. Secret things.
What I don’t understand is, how did he know? Does it have anything to do with that pile of scratch marks he calls a “book”?
There’s one thing I do know: Sooner or later I’ll have to go back to the stacks and find out.
I’M SOUND ASLEEP when the Bully Bangers invade my cube.
“Spaz! Spaz boy! Wake up!”
The Bangers are kicking through my stuff, checking out the goodies. One of them is pawing the edibles the proov girl gave me when Billy Bizmo smacks him. “Leave it!” Billy says, grinning at me. “You with us, Spaz boy? You with us or against us?”
“I’m with you,” I say, trying to get my brain in gear.
I’d been deep inside this crazy, confusing dream about Coley Rig
gins rescuing the proov girl, or maybe the proov girl was rescuing him. Doesn’t matter. What matters is paying attention to Billy Bizmo, because you never know what Billy is really thinking, and that’s just one of about a thousand different things that makes him dangerous. Billy with his sharp, crooked nose, and curly hair like tufts of rusty iron, and his ratty yellow teeth, and the pale scars on his neck and jaw where somebody tried to kill him once and missed. Somebody no longer among the living, guaranteed.
“This junk come from the stacks?” he asks me, even though he already knows the answer. “That’s all he had, the one they call Ryter? You sure he’s not hiding nothing rich? Nothing special?”
“He’s just an old gummy,” I say. “That’s all he had.”
I can’t believe I’m lying to Billy Bizmo, boss man of the Bangers. What do I care about the old man or his stupid pile of papers? But it’s too late to take back the lie, and anyhow Billy seems more interested in the edibles.
“Explain,” he says, holding up a carboshake.
So I tell him about the proov girl. How she came to the Maxi with her teks and told them to provide for me.
“Provide for you?” Billy says, fingering the scars on his neck as he mulls it over. “Why you, boy? Why you in particular?”
I shrug. “I was there, I guess.”
“You mean this proov girl was looking for a charity case?”
“I dunno what a charity case is, Billy.”
“Never mind. What did you say to her? Tell me exactly what you said.”
“She asked me what they call me. I told her.”
“And that’s it? Your name?”
“That’s it.”
Billy crouches so he can study my eyes and see if I’m lying. That always makes me feel like I’m lying even when I’m telling the truth, which I am about the proov girl. The thing that makes Billy scary isn’t his size, because he’s not that much bigger than me. It’s in his eyes. Sometimes his eyes are bright and interested and that makes you want to please him, and then he blinks and his eyes are dead and you’re scared he wants to make you dead, too, just for the cool of it. Just because he can.
“Hmmm,” he goes. “I’ve heard about this proov girl. She’s a slummer. You know what a slummer is, Spaz? Huh?”
“No,” I admit.
“A slummer is a proov who likes to mix with the rest of us. Gives ’em a thrill they can’t find in Eden. You know what happens to a normal who gets mixed up with a proov, if the rest of the proovs find out?”
“No.”
Billy makes a slicing sign across his throat. The idea seems to amuse him. “Forbidden, Spaz boy. They’ll splash you. They’ll cut your red. They’ll blow you into particles. So keep away from the proov girl. You see her again, run like your life depends on it. Because it does. Do you believe me?”
“Yes.”
“Good boy. Always believe Billy. That’s rule number one. And what’s rule number two?”
“Always obey Billy,” I say.
“Excellent! Third rule?”
“Always speak true to Billy.”
“Fantastic!” He’s acting delighted with me, but I don’t know if it’s for real or a game he’s playing. “Not bad for a spaz boy! Keep it up, kid! Follow Billy’s rules and you may live to be as old as that gummy you ripped off.” He hands me the proov girl’s carboshake. “Go on,” he says. “Enjoy. Have a taste of Eden.”
A moment later they’re gone and I’m alone in my cube. For some reason I’m shaking. No, not for some reason. Because I lied to Billy Bizmo. I broke his rules. If he finds out, he might decide to have me canceled, or he might decide to let me live but ban me from the Crypts. “Disfavor,” they call it, which means you’re on the curb, fending for yourself without protection or shelter.
Death or disfavor. I don’t know which is worse, and I don’t want to find out.
LATER THAT DAY I go back to the stacks. My plan is, I’ll finish ripping off the old gummy and take his worthless papers, the junk he calls a book, and give it to Billy Bizmo, like I should have done in the first place. That’s my plan, but in the end it doesn’t work out that way.
This time Little Face pops up as soon as he sees me coming. “Choxbar!” he chirps, holding out his dirt-colored hands.
I go, “You know any other words? Huh?”
He shakes his head. “Chox! Chox!”
I get one out of my pouch and give it to him, and he gulps it down and holds out his hands again.
“You know the way,” I tell him. “Take me to Ryter. Then you get another choxbar.”
So Little Face guides me through the rows of stackboxes like before, only this time the old gummy is standing in the door, waiting for me.
“Don’t be surprised,” he says with a smile. “Bad news travels fast in this part of the world.”
I don’t know why, but that hits me hard, the idea that I’m bad news. Of course it’s true — me coming back to the stacks is bad news, what else could it be? But he looks so hopeful, like he’s sure I’ll prove him wrong, that my plan to rip him off again goes right out the back of my head.
Not today, I’m thinking, I’ll steal his stupid “book” some other day.
“Come on in,” Ryter says, stepping to one side. “Make yourself at home.”
He’s got this look in his watery old gray eyes, like he knows something I don’t, but for some reason that doesn’t make me mad. It just makes me want to know, too. But what, what is it he knows? He sees the look on my face and goes, “Something happened. Is it the Bangers? Have they canceled me?”
I shake my head. “Not yet.”
“Not yet,” he says, sounding real thoughtful. “Thank you for being honest with me. If you’d said ‘nothing to worry about’ I’d know it wasn’t the truth. And I always want to know the truth.”
Right, I’m thinking, just like Billy Bizmo.
Inside, it’s cool and shadowy and of course there’s no furniture, so I sit on the floor with my legs crossed. The old geez sits on the crate box he uses for a desk. The way light comes in, I can’t see his face, and his baggy, old one-piece makes him look thin and shapeless at the same time, like he’s lost inside his clothes.
“I’ve been thinking about you,” Ryter says. “About your story.”
“I told you,” I say. “I don’t have a story.”
His head turns and now I can see his eyes, how big and old and kind they are. “What you’re really saying is, you don’t have a story worth telling,” he says. “Let me be the judge of that.”
I want to stand up and shout that he’s got no right to tell me what I really mean — what makes him think he knows so much? — but instead I sit there and keep my mouth shut, maybe because underneath it all I know what he says is true.
“Start at the beginning,” he suggests. “What’s the first thing you remember?”
The first thing. That’s easy. The first thing is when I got my little sister, Bean. The thing about Bean is, she isn’t really my sister — we’re not blood — but I didn’t know that then, because I didn’t know that Kay and Charly weren’t my real mother and father. All of that came later, when I started to grow, but when Bean came along I was maybe four years old, and that’s the first thing I remember.
This tiny, widgy little face wrapped in a soft blanket. Her squinty eyes and her tiny little lips all smooched up like she’d been sucking a lemon. How she smelled like warm milk. Baby stuff — she was only a few days old, okay? But what I really remember is what happened when she saw me staring down at her. Her whole face smiled and her little hand came up and tried to grab my nose and that was it, I loved Bean right from that moment and it never changed. No matter what happened, all the bad things later, and me losing my family unit because of her, it never made me love Bean any less.
“So you were a foundling,” Ryter says. “And Bean is your adoptive sister.”
“Foundling?”
“An old word,” he says, “but useful. Like you were found on the curb and
taken in. Do you have any knowledge of your origins? Your birth mother? Father?”
I shrug like “Who cares?” because it doesn’t matter. Nobody wants to claim a spaz boy, that’s for sure.
“Never mind that part for now,” Ryter says. “Tell me more about your sister. Tell me about Bean.”
The thing that’s really important to understand about Bean is that she only sees the good in people, and never the bad. Because my foster dad, I suppose he’s basically okay, but he’s got this bad side, too, and Bean never saw it. Like she’d erased the idea of “bad” from her mind. So when everything blew up and Charly — that’s his name, Charly — so when everything blew, and Charly got it fixed in his head that I was growing up dangerous and that somehow Bean might get infected with whatever it was that made me a spaz, Bean never saw it coming.
When Charly finally told me I had to leave, that he was banning me from the family unit, Bean tried to hug me and tell me it couldn’t be true, he didn’t mean it. Big mistake. Because Charly pulled her off me and smacked her right in the face and called her terrible names, names she didn’t even understand, names no one should ever have to hear.
“What did Charly think?” Ryter wants to know. “Did he think you and Bean were luvmates?”
“I don’t know what he thought,” I say. “I’d never touch Bean that way, not ever. Even if she isn’t blood she’s still my little sister.”
Ryter watches me for a while, like he’s waiting for something to happen, for me to react, maybe. And then when I don’t say anything more, he goes, “I wish I could say I’m surprised by your foster father’s reaction. But the prejudice against epileptics is as old as the human race. Do you know the story of Alexander the Great?”
I shake my head.
“Remarkable man,” Ryter says. “He conquered the world, a long long time ago.”
“Yeah,” I go. “So?”
“He had epilepsy, too. Many great humans have been epileptic. It’s as if the brain compensates by increasing intelligence and ambition.”
The Last Book in the Universe Page 2