~ * ~
Got him!... Give it to Ma, Jane. Well you hit it, you eat it; you can pick it too! Hey, was that ... What is it, Denise? See something? ... Yes, working round the back he is. Maybe it’s a dog he’s seen. Or a fox. Well, I wouldn’t whistle; never hear us through the pane, catch is all rusted up, and I don’t want to smash the glass just yet; besides, John’s blocked by those two buildings; he’d never hear anyway. Still, might turn Gibson. You run downstairs and scream through the doorway — just once. Then if I whistle scream again. Quick now — he’s creeping back.
Whhh!!
Too sharp he is, give me that aerial and a cata. Run up and lookout till one of us comes back.
~ * ~
11.17. Ran up against Mike Gibson from the next block; he was queuing for the transir. Why don’t you visit with us more often? he said. Says Larry’s doing fine. Told him I was off to Jim’s, but the transir intervalled us too far to finish the story. This higher-pigment type had slid between us, what Maggy’s programs call a real overtan — h’mhm ... Mike, as I was saying — oh here comes the terminal.
11.38. This must be a hill over there. Wonder where it is. It’s all cultured too, and the lumimobile gives it panash. Sodding rain, you need a splash of colour ... Travel broadens the mind ... Should’ve brought the instruxopak ... I’ll turn on the woosic.
12.11. This auto method’s fine. Last time it was self-drive waycars all the way. Of course you can personalization this kind too. Nice and low-volume too.
Do you know, I could have sworn this ma in the integrator called me a garnet, under her breath. Just because of this lot re the higher-pigment type ... How about the car woosic, now?
~ * ~
What the hell are you skulking up there for? ... Mind your own business and I’ll mind mine! ... You move a step and I’ll murder you, you thug! ... You dare move another step and I’ll bash your face in!... Keep off our manor, you thieving bastard or I’ll bash your head in! ... Don’t you dare come down any further! ... You come past that house and I’ll lay your face open! ... And you’re another! ... Scared are you, got to have your bloody brat to face me out, have you? Ya, Larry, that’s right, come rushing down, two against one, that’s right! ... All right, don’t you two come any further! You keep to your own manor, let me stay in mine! ... Attack women, would you? Threaten a woman, eh? Maggy’s worth two of you. Give it ‘em, Maggy! ... By hell, this is our house and the man that lays a finger on the hedge’ll be the last thing he ever does! ... Go home you bastards! Ya! Home! Ya!! Home!! Ya!!! Home!!! Virus get you, you bastards!!!
Hell, that was a near thing. I’m hoarse — aren’t you, Maggy? Thank you for turning up. I think John got away. Here he is, round the back. My, we drew ‘em off OK, didn’t we? Lucky they hadn’t any catas. Johnny my son, you made it. What, you got a — two hedgehogs, by hell! Smashing! Did they see you really, do you think? Who cares anyway, we’re all safe and sound, and two hedgehogs to the good. John, you’re a master! No, Denise, they won’t dare come right down. I think it was your mother that really put the fear of hell into them. Now what do you say to a fire and a clay bake? Johnny can keep a lookout at the front, just in case. Denise, you can be cook.
~ * ~
13.02. I’m at Jim’s. I’m putting you on, so’s we can have a record of our visit. Jessie’s off to rest, but we can dialogue.
‘You saw what she’s like. It started over Bill.’
What happened?
‘They beat him up. Bill. Barons. Working for the estate mafia and having a bit of fun on their own this time, I opinion. Last winter. Left him for dead near the lift shaft. Health squad got him in. Ended up in a cereb forty kilometres out—’
How’s this? Where did you say?
‘A cereb — a casualty home. He’s not classified for rehabilitation, only minimal prosthetics. So he’s there for good. I’ve been businessing all on my own ever since. Jessie visitationed twice: this set her back. Then she started thinking the mafia were after Juju — and him no more than an infant. Besides, I’ve always kept right side of them — monster gifts from the store, forgetting to program debits, exetra. And I’m all right with the block king too. AJCO he is —Junior Cleansing Officer. He’s all right if you stand dead still when he passes by, and stand him a drink at the drinkateria. It’s the ones with sexational wives and daughters need to worry ... No, the block king and the mafia are on my side. No fear there. Couldn’t get Jessie to see it, though.
‘Then she started saying she was a wicked woman, she’d neglected Bill, been the cause of it all, wasn’t worthy to live. By spring, I couldn’t do anything with her: she wouldn’t take any telemedication or even let me connection the diagnosticator. In the end I hooked the doctor (twenty thousand to care up on to, he’s hard to get) and he got her certified for temporary care. I was at my wit’s end re Juju; even when she was here I was scared she’d do something to him; but in the end I got Cousin Amy to mission up and care on to him. I only managed to visitation Jessie once, prior to the HVT engineers’ strike. Then she came back around day 180, but she’s still to be sedationed. They say she classificationed against metapsychic drugs, otherwise she’d have been rehabilitationed long ago. Agitated depression, they call it. Juju’s picked up a mob of fears from her kinky ways.’
But she’ll reclamation in time, with you, I expect?
‘A year or two, they said. And then things aren’t ideal here. The block alarm is pooff. Someone smashed it. If the corridor TVs haven’t registered the trouble, you have to call up the cops yourself- if the channel’s functioning. Takes ten minutes to get through, average. And they won’t act if they think it’s a mafia job.’
Sod it, I’ve left it fine. Got to get back and take in the megastore today. Your wall-chron’s slow by my wrist-chron. Listen, try and call me up every five, ten days. You might get better luck than I did on the channel. I’ll just look in on Jessie and off.
~ * ~
Maggy, I think I’ve found it. About an hour from here. It’s an old garage block, top of a hill. The house is fallen in, but the garages are OK. Face south-east. Good view all round. Marshy below the hill. That’ll keep ‘em off. Woods, old orchards, on the slope. Nettles, badgers, birds, cats, berries, apples, pears, snails, owls. No good hanging on here. Set off now. In twos, Johnny in the rear, keep each other just in sight. Whistle and we’ll freeze ... I don’t care if the Gibsons do think they’ve scared us out, Virus get ‘em. Get moving now.
~ * ~
23.17. It was so late when I got away, I decisioned a detour via the megastore. Found Pete missioning there. He was saying the mail was so slow and the set so blinky, he was considerating tabling purchase of a private lasercom just to liaise with Droffield’s and Willenhausen’s. They’re both in eyeline, all three being so high. I said right, go ahead, peg in my name with it. The versionizer hasn’t come yet, how we’re going to cope with the Jap mergees I don’t know; they aren’t in resonance with Commart English.
When I homed in on the unit Maggy was connectioning her matebureau business. Jane was culturing the creepers. A sparrow shot past me ... Time Jane initiated tapping a non-talk write-set. Must call up one her size keys.
Anyway I was glad to shed my wear and relax. Maggy had a horror story, though. ‘You know a man got caught today,’ she said, ‘in a paternoster, a vertipater, not a horipater, crushed, killed? Well, what they’re saying at the salebox is, it wasn’t an accident. They say the block mafia are running a transplant supply, undercover.’
‘How do they calculate it could have been done?’ I said.
‘Someone pushed in with him,’ she said, ‘staged the rest, they say. They say they’ve a health squad in their pocket, zipped him off. Been a crop of “accidents” like that. Always young, healthy ones, ideal for transplant donors.’
‘They’re fictioning!’ I said; but all the same ... Then to cheer her up, I asked re her horoscope. I’d just missed out on the horocast. It was a bright one for her
and fair for all of us, as it happens, so we dialogued this-ward a bit. The twins came in, so this was all right. Then there was a screen-and-button ‘puterpoll for Midlandia parliament on the alternatives for the new airport site. Maggy and I voted for the Northsea platform and new HVT links. Johnny and Denise griped it isn’t fair, they should poll too; serious. The rest of the evening we had educasts and spottoquiz. The colour was a bit blinky, though. Have to file a mendation order. Time for bed.
~ * ~
See what I mean. Got possibilities. No ants either. We’ll use this big one for us, see, the front rolls up and down, and there’s a peephole in the roller. Next one for stores. This one here for wood and such. Escape staircase’ll do for lookouts, over by the house. Salvage some things there, chairs, exetra. Might manage to knock a hole from one garage to the next, in case of trouble. Soon get dark now — you settle in, I’ll have a quick butcher’s round the house, what’s left.
~ * ~
2000. 224. 23.35. Must have been religion day or something. First a Jove’s Witness, then an Anglican Methodist, then a Yogist called up. Made short work of the AM; but the Witness and the Yogist persistented. The Yogist call must have been a computerized interview — you could tell from the pauses. Clever how the ‘puters analyze your vocabulary and switch in the right reply. Only this must have been pitched for high persistence, it wouldn’t take no for an answer. Endwise I had to operate the control and fade him out in mid-gesture. Then sod it if a neo-Marxist didn’t screen up. He was personalized but even more persistent. Had to control him out too. Following this an Ortho-Catholic who was easy stuff, especially as he called just following an aggressive redecoration rep who brain-rinsed me to exhaustion; to rehabilitation, I’d just ingested a pep with a real kick, when the O-C screened up.
Next thing was a door call. Imagine our surprise when Uncle Ned and Aunt Olga screened up. When they came in they said they were transiting and could they visit a couple of days with us. I had to miss my hour’s exercise at the autosquash court, sod it. Aunty said, My, wasn’t Denise a ‘sexy’ bird already; she’s going to be quite sexational, I opinion, and she imaged this then, with some jewellery that really resonated. They’re all in bed now. Uncle’s aged up, really in the higher-succession bracket, you’d opinion: at sixty-odd he images well over seventy; almost ready for a gerry, a retiring home. Aunt Olga actually wears wear indoors now — to act parallel with him, I suppose — although she’s only forty-five; brought a shift and floorwear with her. First news we watched, Uncle started on his usual gripe re the news being anaesthetized, not like in his young days. Thank goodness this is only a couple of days they’re staying. I was hoping to see the musical of Kafka’s The Castle, but now they’ve come we had to switch to another channel and see the underwater ballet of West Side Story. Maggy doesn’t even like underwater ballet. The sparrows didn’t either, they kept nuisancing around during it. One positioned momentwise on Aunt’s head. The block’s infested with them. The twins fed their predecessors when they were infants and now they’re triple-hardened.
Uncle keeps on boring us re he used to roar round Brands Hatch when he was young, or how there used to be woods where our blocks stand, or recalling back to the rationing when he was an infant, in the Welsh mountains because grandmother was evacuated there in the 1939-45 war. Aunt Olga isn’t on the same wavelength: edgy and never announces. She was a great free-sexer for years, prior to settling down with Uncle. I suppose that’s why she doesn’t interface with infants or pre-inductees — Jane especially just emigrates when she’s around — and why she images so dehydrated.
Following the children had blasted off to bed, though, she told us she had it on the salebox grapevine that the Heyns-Suit Babies are demanding all the key positions in forecasting, industry and government, otherwise they’ll organize a brain drain. Where would they go, I said, to the US? No, she said, to Scandinavia apparently, Japan, and NZ. Seems the Panpacific Alliance has them drooling. These HSBs think they’ve got it made, as Uncle would say, but who wants all these brains around? I wouldn’t give a nupe for them. We’ll outvote them a thousand to one at next week’s centregov screen referendum, anyway.
~ * ~
Living off the fat of the land, we are. Oh ray stomach. Acorns. Truffles. Garlic. A thrush and a pheasant. Not to mention these dogs ... Maggy, come here, Maggy, come on now, yes, come on ...
~ * ~
2000. 225. 19.45. My hairstyler’s off the blink now, thank goodness ... That cartoon of Moby Dick was a riot. Went on too long though. The whale had some funny numbers. Something more serious, though. I didn’t tell Uncle and Aunt -they’re next door just now — but I saw Larry Gibson on my way back from the megastore where I’d missioned to get away from them for a bit. Larry was in a crowd of all pigments, all queuing for the vertipater. Quite a sexational low-pigment bird in partywear was standing in front of him — and the wear was more minus than plus, of course. I was orbiting and trying to get through transit. The crowd pushed him and he just about knocked the bird down. He turned round — there was a higher-pigment type just in rear of him — and shouted, ‘Get back you!’ A neon-dearth-al-looking lower-pigment type close by, who I think was trying to make the bird, shouted out something, and Larry ripped out some object, rammed him in the diaphragm, and pulled twice. It was all over so quickly. The neon-dearth-al collapsed, blood all over the place, screams everywhere, the cops homed in in microseconds (the corridor TVs will have picked it up), and there’s Larry standing shaking over the corpse. What he’d done was use an instapeg wall-hook gun. One peg must have cut a big blood vessel, the second must have targeted on the vagus nerve or something. Says he, ‘Bastard called me a racist!’ Cops quizzed me. I said, yes, it sounded just like this. Course, this would be justifiable homicide. But I knew sodding well he was sodding well errored — it was only ‘rapist’. Anyway they took my word for it. By good luck, the bird had stayed grounded, and she relayed me to the nth. The ‘puter’ll never convict, now.
I had to tell somebody or something, so now I told you. Shaking, I was, had to have a pep when I got in. Just told Maggy quietly Larry had killed a man up the corridor, and I hoped it would be OK.
~ * ~
Denise shouldn’t have gone off like that, even with the fence post with her. Been all day now and she’ll never make it in the dark. I’ll sit up a bit and wake you later, Johnny. Let Ma have some sleep till dawn. Might hear something, perhaps.
~ * ~
2000. 226. 13.18. The supply-tube milk’s changed. The flavour’s queer and it’s more green. Have to try with natural cow milk for a bit, if we can call it up. Anyway, this is something: the old couple are gone. I opinion, if it wasn’t for the drier being cold they’d have stayed much longer. I put in ninety minutes autosquash to make up for yesterday exetra.
The lunchtime edscreen is on early literature. Maggy likes it, but me-wise it’s a drag. I could never understand these great historical novels like The Sotweed Factor and The Spire, and I don’t make much interface with socio-philosophy ones like Ulysses or The Trial. Anyway I’d sooner call up my lunch and ingest it in peace. I don’t mind listening to a magazine in parallel of course.
Maggy keeps impacting with Johnny for saying ‘followings’ instead of ’afters’. Personally I don’t mind what a pre-inductee says. Anything for peace at meals. It’s different with Jane, she’s still an infant. This lark re speaking right, it’s all alf garnet, I don’t resonate with it.
The megastore held a telecommittee this morning. We decisioned to production several new lines. They agreed to the lasercom too. In the middle in came Jane and started announcing. I had to alarm Maggy to come and incentive her off. As Maggy was calling over for the matebureau, Jane wasn’t very popular.
I was going to visitation my cousin Michael at his disability home. He’s an LSD baby — his parents used the stuff. Born too early to get classified for prostheses. But when I called up the spa they said his viability had diminished and he wouldn�
�t survive long; he was sedationed and wouldn’t be worth seeing now. That’s what they said, anyway. I opinion they’ve initiated culling the inmates.
~ * ~
I know why Denise ran off like that: you were trying to mate with her, last night in the garage after that blowout we had. I didn’t realize then, but I know now. Don’t say no, your face gives you away. Trying your own sister, you — you — I’ve no words ... I bet she was a match for you, anyway, for all she’s no older than you. I’m right, aren’t I? I heard the roller door in the middle of the night. She must have gone then to hide in one of the other garages. Or else that’s when she went off for good.
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