Brave New Worlds

by John Joseph; Ursula K. Le Guin; Cory Doctorow; Paolo Bacigalupi; Orson Scott Card; Neil Gaiman; Ray Bradbury; Philip K. Dick; Kurt Vonnegut; Shirley Jackson; Kate Wilhelm; Carrie Vaughn; John Joseph Adams Adams

  His face contorted suddenly, perhaps with anger. "And I had to keep this god-damned aisle between them, the whole time. "

  "So?" said Lou, unmoved.

  "So," said Royce, and gathered himself in. He wiped the moisture from his face. "So I know a lot about prisons. So, some of those kids are dead now. The boys and the girls wanted each other. That must be an ideological quandary for you, Lou. Here's a big bad guard stopping people doing what they want, but what they want to do is het-ero-sex-u-ality. " He turned it into a mock dirty word, his eyes round.

  "No problem," said Lou. "All women are really lesbians. "

  Royce stared at him for a moment. Then he began to laugh.

  "I wouldn't expect you to understand. But the first experience of physical tenderness that any woman has is with her mother. "

  "Gee, I'm sure glad my old aunt Hortensia didn't know that. She would be surprised. Hey, Alice. Are you a dyke?"

  Lou went pale, and lines of shadow encircled his mouth.

  "Yes," said Alice, the camera.

  "Well, I'm a faggot, but it doesn't mean everyone else is. "

  Lou launched himself from the bed, in a fury. He was on his feet, and shouting, flecks of spit propelled from his mouth.

  "You do not use demeaning language here!" His voice cracked.

  Alice had been working nine hours, and now she was alone, on the night shift. She had been watching, silently, for nine hours. Now, she wanted to talk.

  "I had a girlfriend once who was straight," she said. "No matter how hard she tried, women just didn't bring her off. Mind you, that's better than those lust lesbians. They just want your body. Me, I'm totally dedicated to women, but it's a political commitment. It's something I decided. I don't let my body make my decisions for me. "

  "Yeah, I know what you mean," said Royce. "It's these lust faggots, I can't stand. " He cast his eyes about him at the Boys, and they chuckled.

  "We do not use the word ‘dyke' in this station," said Lou.

  Royce looked rather sad and affectionate, and shook his head. "Lou. You are such a prig. Not only are you a prig. You are a dumb prig. "

  The floor seemed to open up under my feet with admiration. Only Royce could have said that to Lou. I loved him, even though I did not love myself. The Boys chuckled again, because it was funny, and because it was true, and because it was a little bit of a shock.

  "Alice," said Lou. "He has just insulted women. "

  "Funny," said Alice. "I thought he'd just insulted you. "

  Lou looked like he was in the middle of a nightmare; you could see it in his face. "Alice is being very tolerant, Royce. But from now on, you talk to and about the women with respect. If you want to live here with us, there are a few ground rules. "

  "Like what?"

  "No more jokes. "

  Royce was leaning against the bar at the foot of our bed, and he was calm, and his ankles were crossed. He closed his eyes, and smiled. "No more jokes?" he asked, amused.

  "You mess around with the women, you put us all in danger. You keep putting us in danger, you got to go. "

  "Lou," said Alice. "Can I remind you of something? You don't decide who goes on the trains. We do. "

  "I understand that, Alice. " He slumped from the shoulders and his breath seeped out of him. He seemed to shrink.

  "Lou," said Royce. "I think you and I are on the same side?" It was a question.

  "We'd better be," said Lou.

  "Then you do know why I talk to the women. "

  "Yeah," said Lou. " You want to show off. You want to be the center of attention. You don't want to take responsibility for anything. "

  He didn't understand. Lou was dangerous because he was stupid.

  "I've been a prison guard," said Royce, carefully. "I know what it's like. You're trapped, even worse than the prisoners. "

  "So?" He was going to make Royce say it, in front of a camera. He was going to make him say that he was talking to the Grils so that they would find it hard to kill us when the time came.

  "I'm talking to the women, so that they'll get to know us," said Royce, "and see that there is a place for gay men within the revolution. They can't know that unless we talk to them. Can they?"

  Bull's-eye again. That was the only formulation Lou was ever likely to accept.

  "I mean, can they, Lou? I think we're working with the women on this thing together. There's no need for silence between us, not if we're on the same side. OK, so maybe I do it wrong. I don't want to be the only one who does all the talking. We all should talk to them, Lou, you, me, all of us. And the women should feel that they can talk with us as well. "

  "Oh yeah, I am so bored keeping schtum," said Alice.

  Lou went still, and he drew in a deep breath. "OK," he said. "We can proceed on that basis. We all communicate, with each other and with the cameras. But Royce. That means no more withdrawing. No more going off in a corner. No more little heart to hearts on the mound. "

  "I didn't know that was a problem, Lou. There will be no more of those. "

  "OK, then," said Lou, murmurous in defeat. Royce strode toward him, both hands outstretched, and took Lou's hand in both of his.

  "This is really good, Lou. I'm really glad we talked. "

  Lou looked back at him, looking worn and heavy, but he was touched. Big Lou was moved, as well, and he gave a slightly forlorn flicker of a smile.

  So Royce became head of the Station.

  He gave me a friendly little nod, and moved his things away from our bed. He slept in Tom's; Tom never did. It didn't matter, because I still had my little corner of goodness, even if we didn't talk. Royce was still there, telling jokes. I was happy with that because I knew that I had deserted him before he had deserted me; and I understood that I was to be the visible victory he gave to Lou. None of that mattered. Royce had survived. I didn't cry the first night alone; I stopped myself. I didn't want the Boys to hear.

  Things started to change. The cameras stopped looking at us on the john. We could see them turn and look away. Then one morning, they were just hanging, dead.

  "Hey, Rich!" Harry called me. It was me and Harry, unloading the food cart, as winter finally came. Harry was hopping up and down in front of the camera. He leapt up and tapped it, and the warm-up light did not even go on.

  "They've turned it off, Rich! the camera's off. It's dead!"

  He grabbed my arms, and spun me around, and started doing a little dance, and I started to hoot with laughter along with him. It was like someone had handed you back part of your pride. It was like we were human enough to be accorded that again.

  "Hey Royce, the camera in the john's off!" shouted Harry, as we burst through the canteen doors with the trolley.

  "Maybe they're just broken," said Gary, who was still loyal to Lou.

  "Naw, man, they'd be telling us to fix it by now. They've turned it off!"

  "That so, Alice?" Royce asked the camera in the canteen.

  "Oh. Yeah," said Alice. Odd how a mechanical voice could sound so much more personal than a real one, closer somehow, as if in the middle of your ear.

  "Thanks, Alice. "

  "'S OK," said Alice, embarrassed. "We explained it to the Wigs. We told them it was like pornography, you know, demeaning to us. They bought it. Believe me, you guys are not a lovely sight first thing in the morning. "

  I could see Royce go all alert at that word "Wig," like an animal raising its ears. He didn't mention the Wigs again until later that afternoon.

  "Alice, is our talking ever a problem for you?"

  "How d'you mean?"

  "Well, if one of the Wigs walked in. . . "

  Alice kind of laughed. "Huh. They don't get down this far. What do you know about them, anyhow?"

  "Nothing. Who are they?"

  "Mind your own business. The people who run things. "

  "Well if someone does show up and you want us to shut up, just sneeze, and we'll stop talking. "

  "Sneeze?"

  "Well, you coul
d always come right out and say cool it guys, there's someone here. "

  "Hey Scarlett," said Alice. "Can you sneeze?"

  "Ach-ooo," said Miss Scarlett, delicately.

  "Just testing, guys," said Alice.

  Big Lou hung around, trying to smile, trying to look like somehow all this was going on under his auspices. Nobody was paying attention.

  The next day, the train didn't show.

  It was very cold, and we stood on the platform, thumping our feet, as the day grew more sparkling, and the shadows shorter.

  "Hey, Butch, what's up?" Royce asked.

  "I'll check, OK?" said the camera. There was a long silence.

  "The train's broken down. It's in a siding. It'll be a while yet. You might as well go back in, have the day off. "

  That's how it would begin, of course. No train today, fellas, sorry. No need for you, fellas, not today, not ever, and with what you know, can you blame us? What are ten more bodies to us?

  Trains did break down, of course. It had happened before. We'd had a holiday then, too, and the long drunken afternoon became a long drunken day.

  "Well let's have some fun for a change," said Lou. "Charlie, you got any stuff ready? Let's have a blow-out, man. "

  "Lou," said Royce, "I was kind of thinking we could get to work on the hot water tank. "

  "Hot water tank?" said Lou. "Are we going to need it, Royce?" there was a horrified silence. "So much for talking. Go on, Charlie, get your booze. "

  Then Lou came for me. "How about a little sex and romance, Rich?" Hand on neck again.

  "No thanks, Lou. "

  "You won't get it from him, you know. "

  "That's my problem. Lou, lay off. "

  "At least I can do it. " Grin.

  "Surprise, surprise," I said. His face and body were right up against mine, and I turned away. "You can't get at him through me, you know, Lou. You just can't do it. "

  Lou relented. He pulled back, but he was still smiling. "You're right," he said. "For that, he'd have to like you. Sucker. " He flicked the tip of my nose with his fingers, and walked away.

  I went and sat down beside Royce. I needed him to make everything seem normal and ordinary. He was leaning on his elbows, plucking at the grass. "Hi," I said. It was the first time we'd spoken since the inquisition.

  "Hi," he said, affectionate and distant.

  "Royce, what do you think's going to happen?"

  "The train will come in tomorrow," he said.

  "I hate it when it comes in," I said, my breath rattling out of me in a kind of chuckle, "and I hate it when it doesn't. I just hate it. Royce, do you think we could go to work on the tank?"

  He considered the implications. "OK," he said. "Charlie? Want to come work with us on the tank?"

  Charlie was plump with a gray beard, and had a degree in engineering, a coffee tin and a copper coil. He was a sort of Santa Claus of the booze. "Not today," he said, cheerily. "I made all of this, I might as well get to drink some of it myself. " It was clear and greasy-looking and came in white plastic screw-top bottles.

  Charlie had sacrificed one of the showers to plumb in a hot water tank. We'd hammered the tank together out of an old train door. It was more like a basin, really, balanced in the loft of the Station. There were cameras there, too.

  Royce sat looking helplessly at an electric hot plate purloined from the kitchen stove. We'd pushed wiring through from the floor below. "Charlie should be here," he said.

  "I really love you, Royce. "

  He went very still for a moment. "I know," he said. "Rich, don't be scared. You're afraid all the time. "

  "I know," I said, and felt my hand tremble as I ran it across my forehead.

  "You gotta stop it. One day, you'll die of fear. "

  "It's this place," I said, and broke down, and sat in a heap. "I want to get out!"

  He held me, gently. "Someday we'll get out," he said, and the hopelessness of it made me worse. "Someday it'll be all right. "

  "No, it won't. "

  "Hi, guys," said Alice. "they're really acting like pigs down there. "

  "They're scared," said Royce. "We're all scared, Alice. Is that train going to come in tomorrow?"

  "Yup," she said brightly.

  "Good. You know anything about electricity?"

  "Plenty. I used to work for Bell Telephone. "

  Royce disengaged himself from me. "OK. Do I put the plate inside the tank or underneath it?"

  "Inside? Good Lord no!"

  So Royce went back to work again, and said to me,"You better go back down, Rich. "

  "The agreement?" I asked, and he nodded yes. The agreement between him and Lou.

  When I got down, the Boys looked like discarded rags. There was piss everywhere, and blood on Lou's penis.

  I went up to the top of the mound. All the leaves were gone now. For about the first time in my life, I prayed. Dear God, get me out of here. Dear God, please, please, make it end. But there wasn't any answer. There never is. There was just an avalanche inside my head.

  I could shut it out for a while. I could forget that every day I saw piles of corpses bulldozed and mangled, and that I had to chase the birds away from them, and that I peeled off their clothes and looked with inevitable curiosity at the little pouch of genitals in their brightly colored underwear. And the leaking and the sudden hemorrhaging and the supple warmth of the dead, with their marble eyes full of seeming questions. How many had we killed? Was anybody keeping count? Did anyone know their names? Even their names had been taken from them, along with their wallets and watches.

  Harry had found his policeman father among them, and had never stopped smiling afterwards, saying "Hi!" like a cartoon chipmunk without a tail.

  I listened to the roaring in my head as long as I could and then I went back down to the Boys. "Is there any booze left, Charlie?" I asked, and he passed me up a full plastic bottle, and I drank myself into a stupor.

  It got dark and cold, and I woke up alone, and I pulled myself up, and walked back into the waiting room, and it was poison inside. It was as poison as the stuff going sour in our stomachs and brains and breath. We sat in twitchy silence, listening to the wind and our own farts. Nobody could be bothered to cook. Royce was not there, and my stomach twisted around itself like a bag full of snakes. Where was he? What would happen when he got back?

  "You look sick," said Lou in disgust. "Go outside if you have to throw up. "

  "I'm fine, Lou," I said, but I could feel a thin slime of sweat on my forehead.

  "You make me sick just looking at you," he said.

  "Funny. I was just thinking the same about you. " Our eyes locked, and there was no disguising it. We hated each other.

  It was then that Royce came back in, rubbing his head with a towel. "Well, there are now hot showers," he announced. "Well, tepid showers. You guys can go clean up. "

  The Boys looked up to him, smiling. The grins were bleary, but they were glad to see him.

  "Phew-wee!" he said, and waved his hand in front of his face. "that's some stuff you come up with, Charlie, what do you make it out of, burnt tires?"

  Charlie beamed. "Orange peel and grass," he said proudly. I thought it was going to be all right.

  Then Lou stood up out of his bed, and flopped naked toward Royce. "You missed all the fun," he said.

  "Yeah, I know, I can smell it. "

  "Now who's being a prig?" said Lou. "Come on, man, I got something nice to show you. " He grabbed hold of Royce's forearm, and pulled him toward his own bed. Tom was in it, lying face down, like a ruin, and Lou pulled back the blanket. "Go on, man. "

  Tom was bleeding. Royce's face and voice went very hard, and he pulled the blanket back up. "He's got an anal fissure, Lou. He needs to be left alone. It could get badly infected. "

  Lou barked, like a dog, a kind of laugh. "He's going to die anyway!"

  Royce moved away from his bed. With Tom in it, he had no place to sit down. Lou followed him. " Come on, Royce. Come o
n. No more pussy footing. " He tried to put his hand down the front of Royce's shirt. Royce shrugged it away, with sudden annoyance. "Not tonight. "

  "Not ever?" asked Lou, amused.

  "Come on, Royce, give it up man," said Harry. He grabbed Royce playfully, about the waist. "You can't hold out on us forever. " He started fumbling with the belt buckle. "Hell, I haven't eaten all day. "

  "Oh yes you have," said Lou, and chuckled.

  "Harry, please let go," said Royce, wearily.

  The belt was undone, and Lou started pulling out his shirt. "Let go," warned Royce. "I said let go," and he moved very suddenly. His elbow hit Harry in the mouth, and he yelped.

  "Hey, you fucker!"

  "You turkey," said Lou.

  And all the poison rose up like a wave. Oh, this was going to be fun, pulling off all of Royce's clothes. Gary, and Charlie, they all came, smiling. There was a sound of cloth tearing and suddenly Royce was fighting, fighting very hard, and suddenly the Boys were fighting too, grimly. They pulled him down, and he tried to hit them, and they held his arms, and they launched themselves on him like it was a game of tackle football. I thought, there is a word for this. The word is rape.

  "Alice!" I shouted up to the camera. "Alice, stop them! Alice? Burn one of them, stop it!"

  Then something slammed into the back of my head, and I fell, the floor scraping the skin of my wrists and slapping me across the cheeks. Then I was pulled over, and Lou was on top of me, forearm across my throat.

  "Booby booby booby booby," he said, all blubbery lips, and then he kissed me. Well, he bit my upper lip. He bit it to hold me there; he nearly bit through it with his canine teeth, and my mouth was full of the taste of something metallic: blood.

  The sounds the Boys made were conversational, with the odd laugh. Royce squealed like a pig. It always hurts beyond everything the first time. It finally came to me that Royce wasn't gay, at least not in any sense that we would understand. I looked up at the camera, at its blank, glossy eye, and I could feel it thinking: these are men; this is what men do; we are right. We are right to do this to them. For just that moment, I almost agreed.