You’re going to be late, squilch.
Give me a break, Edie. I just fought a battle … two battles … to the death.
That’s nice. Your appointment is in seventy-seven minutes. You smell bad.
Malila rolled her eyes. No one was a hero to her frak.
Of course, Lieutenant Chiu. On an unrelated topic, we are getting full of ourselves—are we not, squilch?
Don’t call me a squilch, frak.
Don’t call me a frak, Second Lieutenant.
Malila thrust a gesture, equivalent to a small child with a wetly extended tongue, in the mental direction of her tormentor.
All right, metaphract, have it your own way.
You have received a number of offers on methods to improve pleasure-sex, another dozen offering to contact your spirit guide in the multiverse of your choice, one from a foundation requesting funds to combat the heartbreak of facial hair, and a message from Command Outland Signals.
I’m not going to deal with that now. Show me some music.
The Femtosense Grunge Philharmonic selection that Edie chose swelled within her. Malila experienced it in all her senses, feeling a breeze and receiving the sharp taste of spring rain. The music played upon her emotions, and she abandoned her will to its wanderings. Perceptions, which Malila interpreted as being “outside,” slid over the input of her eyes, ears, and other senses. These were a level “above” what she detected with her corporal body.
Metaphracts like Edie originated as interpreters of the interface for those receiving the O-A brain implants as children. Most of the boys taught their metaphracts to play tricks on one another and discarded them with puberty. Most of the girls decorated them with childish fashions, retaining them after puberty but keeping them unused in their mental closets. Malila had been unusual in embellishing hers with wit, a face, and a personality … or at least as much as a Turing metaphract could imitate. Edie was, for Malila, a convenient construct of the CORE interface, coming when she called and doing the scut work of daily life.
In contrast to the metaphract, her O-A was a constant presence … with the constant potential danger of slipping across and becoming lost to reality. Those who ignored the warning suffered a living perdition. The first few victims had been immediately prohibited an interface with the CORE and had erupted in bloody rage. Thereafter the COREd-out had been left to dwindle away, lost both to the Unity and to their own shriveling personalities.
Perhaps it was just a tale, but some truth was embedded in it. The CORE interface was seductive. Once, when Malila had gotten too close, warning lights, a vile shade of green, had strobed across her inner eye. Now she only looked in that direction from the corner of her mind when she felt secure. Most feared to look at all.
A claxon sounded inside her head.
You are going to be late for your lunch appointment unless you—
Fleckafather!
Malila scampered across her room, shedding the robe as she went, knowing the chamber would retrieve it and sort it into the appropriate category: bureau drawer, closet hangers, or laundry chute. Malila stepped into her bathroom and quested, mentally accessing the CORE, with her O-A. The room warmed and misted to her specifications.
Within the hour, Lieutenant Chiu was dressed in the uniform of the DUFS: form-fitting black Produra cloth with the subdued holographic markings of her rank on her shoulders. This sleek envelope, surmounted by a black helmet covering most of her features, made her anonymous in the crowded streets of the Unity. Malila was ready to meet her friends for lunch.
Once on the street, Malila stepped onto the descending beltway and after a few minutes navigated to the express belt “For S24 and Above Only!” Malila’s specialist level, her rank within the Unity, was just high enough for her to use the belt.
Detecting Malila’s presence, the beltway comm’nets blossomed with a weltering array of advertisements, PSAs, and lepto-mercials of numerous flavors. Malila ignored them as much as she could, seldom finding the enthusiasm for anything other than a few sporting spectacles, like her beloved kirshing, the daily melodrama of politics, and especially the news.
At that moment the news was showing two people, a man and a woman, both handcuffed, being led to a waiting DUFS skimmer.
This fascination with news borders upon the macabre, Malila.
Nonsense, I’m being a good citizen. Does it occur to you that they brought it on themselves?
You think they brought that on themselves?
Bruises marked the prisoners’ thin bodies. The woman’s dress fell around her waist as she walked. The assembled crowd laughed at her attempt to cover herself.
They must have tried to resist arrest, frak. They were running an illegal phantom shop, after all.
One you have used yourself!
Edie, don’t be difficult! Here come the policoms,4 I need to see these.
Major political analysts numbered about a dozen, and the long-time leader of the pack was James J. Gordon. He possessed an uncanny ability to ferret out scandal, hypocrisy, and political disloyalty in its many forms, using the flensing knives of parody, innuendo, and sophistry for the loyal citizenry.
Best to keep your head down around here with people like Gordon about.
That could be construed as a disloyal statement, frak.
Then it is you that should worry, isn’t it, squilch? I am but your humble servant, nothing more than your own program, am I not?
So when does the humble thing kick in?
I’m assertive only in your best interests, Lieutenant. Allow me to mention again that your messages await your attention.
Not now, frak!
Malila took an ascender and emerged immediately in front of the People’s Museum of Natural History. A huge banner proclaiming “Triumph of the Will” emblazoned the entrance in the state colors of red, white, and black.
Entering, Malila looked up, as she did on most visits, to the three pale-blond stony depressions, surrounded by darker stone, far over her head.
I wonder why they chiseled them out in the first place, Malila. What could have been so obscene or seditious that they had to deface the whole building?
There you go again, getting us into trouble, frak.
No, I’m not! It was an honest question. For all I know it was done by the Sisis.
The possibility that senile senior citizens, those who no longer contributed, had once more conspired to injure her homeland was distressing.
The wisdom of the Unity in retiring the elderly had been proven out time and again. Once removed from society, the role of the aged in past mistakes became evident. Even now, the practice of compassionate retirement ensured new ideas and new vigor came daily to the forefront of national life. Young and vital citizens had nothing to hinder them in their rise to greatness. In the past, it had taken decades of public service before younger leaders could ascend to their rightful level of responsibility. But now, citizens could assure their ascendancy if they were able to arouse the ardor of the citizens and to formulate most adroitly the aspirations of the state.
Malila brushed past the guards and into the lobby.
CHAPTER 3
LUNCH WITH THE GIRLS
Stealing a glance at the model of a blue whale suspended in the lobby, Malila avoided the packs of ululating children, E3 couples looking for secluded spots, and the state nannies.
One child, who had to be less than six years old, had unfastened himself from the harness and made a break for the worn marble steps. A nanny, brightly painted in a cheerful abstract, wheels smoking, cut him off before he gained the tactical advantage of the first step. The young malefactor was gripped, none too gently, and brought stumbling back to his place.
As they neared, Malila heard the nanny above
the noise.
“Janes Brigham Cherbourg, you have violated field trip rule number three. You have brought shame on Créche Alinsky 188 … and you have made me very … disenchanted … with your behavior.” The rest of the machine’s remonstrations were lost in the bustle, but Janes Cherbourg did, indeed, appear penitent.
Malila entered the restaurant, and the gabbling of the children subsided.
Malila had first met her friends while they had all been crèchies. They each knew more embarrassing details about the others’ lives than bore consideration. The table Hecate had reserved for them was delightful. Delicate gilt chairs surrounded expanses of white linen and shining silver. Nearby a string quartet played some Dutilleux. Exuberant vines wound around lattices along several of the walls, burdened with pale trumpet-shaped flowers that perfumed the whole room. Malila was the first to arrive, but she did not have to wait long.
Two of her friends appeared together: blonde Alexandra in her well-tailored academia-blue suit and Hecate in her government gray. Only after they had been seated did Lucy sweep in with a dramatic dark-red cloak, arriving with her glad exclamations and pointed accusations of neglect.
Lucy was still holding forth when their final component arrived; Tiffany, trotting with her head down, her long white coat fluttering behind her, always came last.
“Now we can all breathe. All present and accounted for! It has been so very long … six months? I was worried you all had forgotten me!” said Lucy, throwing back the red cloak and making as credible an imitation of neglected virtue as the small stage allowed.
“You don’t fool us, Luscena! You have been the one that always has to sleep to noon and uses the ‘I have a matinee’ excuse, aren’t you?” said Alexandra, smiling.
Before Lucy could respond, Tiffany cut in. “Alex, don’t! That is just going to get you the ‘I am merely a pawn of my craft … a victim of my artistic genius’ soliloquy, you know.”
Luscena opened her mouth briefly and closed it to peals of laughter.
Attentive waiters arrived and passed them elegant menus. Having already decided on the filet de sole au citron vert herself, Malila listened with plagiarized interest to her friends’ choices and indecisions.
“Everything looks so good! I love the fettuccine here … but I’ll just have the garden salad,” said Tiffany Collins, to Malila’s right.
Malila suppressed a smile, thinking her friend was on yet one more diet. Tiffany had auburn hair and was dressed in a pale shade of her league’s green. She seemed even more professionally preoccupied than usual. As children, while Malila and Luscena had been egging each other on, Tiffany had been the one to mollify juvenile rage at imagined insults.
In contrast to Tiffany’s soft and melodious voice, Lucy’s projected to the corners of the room. Lucy used her talents well. Malila was pleased for her. As Luscena Kristòf, a rising star of the legitimate theater, she had just won accolades in the revival of Memoir of a Protégé.
Lucy, who was on Tiffany’s right, ordered an herb omelet and a glass of wine without consulting the menu and immediately started her own interrogations.
“Alexandra, my love, I understand you are on the Art Task Force for this year? Are you going to fund the New-Artist Grants better? Phillipa—you know, Phillipa Dvorak—actually had to wait tables last year to make ends meet while she was staging her new thing. What’s it called, Malila? I know you remember.”
Before Malila could answer that she did not remember, the quicksilver of Luscena’s interrogations had moved on to complaining about the woeful delays in the scheduling of aesthetic surgical procedures.
“It’s not like this is vanity, Tiffany. I need my breast augmentation, you know. It is a necessity for my craft. After all, our bodies are our …” said Luscena, unwisely pausing for dramatic effect, allowing her companions to say in unison, and with choreographed dramatic poses. “… instruments. They are the brushes we use to paint art on the canvas of the stage!”
The women, absent Luscena, dissolved again into peals of laughter.
Tiffany, a health care provider, hurried on. “But, Lucy, the boob jobs are handled in turn. I have nothing to do with scheduling, honest.” Tiffany, compassionate and hardworking, even if not the most astute, served her profession well, a young and vital population needing little medical care other than obligatory immunizations, euthanasia for the chronically ill, and plastic surgery. Tiffany was always authentically distressed at Lucy’s dilemmas.
The waiter took the rest of the orders while Luscena pouted. By the time the food arrived, she apparently had forgiven everyone for their plebian attitudes and was delivering a convoluted tale that appeared to be merely an occasion for the flinging forth of Names.
Finally reaching a stopping point, Luscena paused to attack her omelet. “Fathercock! It’s cold.”
“Don’t be crude, dear Lucy. It’s only cold because you talk so much … and we all want to hear every word you have to say, my love,” responded Alexandra at Malila’s left.
Malila laughed with the rest. Alexandra O’Brian had her own ways of grabbing attention. While very young, the other four children had adopted her when they’d fathomed the vicious wit she could deploy for the general welfare. Then cripplingly shy, Alexandra had been too timid to bend a breakable rule. She’d found her remedy in academia. After gaining a BA, MA, and two PhDs (theology and political science) at Yal-Vard, she had assumed the Sharpton Chair of Practical Democracy at Nyork City University in 73.
“You should talk, Alex. I see you on the ’nets more than I see Gordon,” Malila inserted.
Alexandra smiled her trademark smile and patted Malila’s hand. “Just trying to do my little part for the Unity when I’m asked.” Malila always wondered who did the asking but admired the liberties it brought Alexandra. Malila self-consciously ran a hand through her short, straight black hair.
With her blonde shoulder-length hair, smooth brow, and large blue eyes, Alexandra always radiated a sincerity politicians lusted to emulate. More than once, she had turned down an offer to join the government, saying she could never make the hard choices that governing required. The solemn woman to her left understood.
Hecate Hester Jones was in government. She was medium: average height, medium-brown, and medium build. She and Malila had arrived at Unity Crèche Maddow #213 within days of each other, both “illegals,” children raised by private citizens before being discovered.
Usually finding it difficult to break into the torrents of words issuing forth from Luscena and Alexandra, Hecate was satisfied to dabble in the back eddies of their conversations. Today she was even more withdrawn, Malila noted, but while arranging the luncheon yesterday, Hecate had been animated, even excited. The contrast disturbed her.
Malila’s O-A, usually quiescent during meetings, came to life.
Very good, Edie.
The combination of sights, sounds, and gustatory sensations rose up to overwhelm each of the others. Faces became fixed, eyes dilated, and hands carrying glasses of wine froze before returning to the table. No one spoke. After a moment, Malila played it for herself as well.
Once more breaking through the plume of blood to surprise the huge Movasi, her sea avatar attacked. She luxuriated again in the sharp metallic smell-taste of blood as she passed through it. She sensed the juddering thrill as her beak sliced along the smooth green flank.
Mesmerized by what their inner senses were witnessing, all the young women paused. Luscena was the first to react.
“Father me, Mally! You are a fecking c
elebrity! How marvelous! Isn’t that exciting?”
“And what a thrill to be able to use the best equipment the Unity has to offer,” added Alexandra.
Tiffany turned a little pale but said, “Excellent hunting, Mally! That is going to fill a lot of dinner plates. You are so brave!”
“How could you be so courageous, Mally? Those monsters were three times bigger than you, at the very least, and there were two of them!” said Luscena.
“So much blood, Mally. I had no idea they were so big,” murmured Hecate at the last.
“That is going to get you a birth certificate for sure, my love!” continued Luscena.
“Do you think so?” Malila said.
“Absolutely. I got a birth certificate last month just for appearing at the Equinox rallies. You’re a shoo-in, without a doubt,” said Alexandra.
The comment took Malila by surprise. Birth certificates entitled the holder to the use of a state-owned breeder. She had never met one, nor did she wish to. They were gross, slow-moving puddles of flesh, Sapped—drugged to eliminate higher brain functions—and maintained for reproduction alone.
Another citizen with another birth certificate typically provided the other half of the genome. After that, all the messy business of selection, implantation, gestation, and birthing would be the duty of the Department of Reproductive Services. After its birth, caring for the child until it was at least E4 would be a crèche responsibility. Malila could put “certified parent of a child” on her résumé, and others would notice. The Unity was serious about its assertion that all production, even reproduction, belonged to the state.
“Who is going to be the father, Malila?” asked Tiffany.
“Don’t be crude and sexist, Tiff. She hasn’t even got the thing yet,” Alexandra said.
“I’m not being sexist. She wants to have the chance of having a boy or a girl, doesn’t she? You need sperm for that.”
Outland Exile Page 2