by David Ohle
Midway to Bum Bay was the Witching Well, a must-see for passing shiftees. The well, nested at the bottom of a great land-subsidence, was about eighty rods across and said to be bottomless. The water was black and very sour to the taste. The ground sloped at a low angle up from the well to the flat table-land above where hundreds of imps rooted for grubs.
"That's the Reverend's imp farm up there," a fellow shiftee informed Ophelia. "Lots of experiments going on. I read in the City Moon that they've developed one that can give meat without dying. You can cut off all the steaks and ham you want. The next day, there they are, whole again. I've eaten enough starch to keep a laundry in business. Some bloody meat would be a welcome change."
"I would agree," Ophelia said. "I like starch well enough, but somehow it doesn't fully satisfy."
Ophelia arrived in Bum Bay on the warmest day of the year and was put to work within hours at the hair mill, where imp tails and manes were dried, ground into a fine powder, mixed with urpglue and run through machines that spun out artificial hair for use in the doll and mannequin trade. Because the repetitive actions of her single daily task, tying the hair into small bales and packing them in boxes, left her feeling anxiously energetic in the evenings, she began to follow the methods of Yogi Vithaldas. Before eating a light supper, she first performed the Nety Kriya, one of the six processes of purifying the body. She threaded a soft, wet cotton chord into her nostril, then steered it downward by way of the pharynx into her mouth. Then she grasped the end of the chord with tweezers, worked it back and forth and dislodged the night's accumulation of mucus. After that, it was time to clean her stomach by the process of Dhoti Kriya, which involved swallowing a long, wet piece of gauze, then rotating the stomach muscles. Again, it was to dislodge accumulated mucus, which came out along with the gauze. She drank a small glass of her urine every morning while it was still warm, and whenever she had to make a decision of any kind, she threw yarrow stalks out on the rug in her assigned quarters and consulted the I Ching. She kept time the Mayan way, in terms of two permutating cycles. One cycle consisted of eighteen twenty-day months. Its days had names like Pop, Ik, Akbal, Mac and Zac. The other cycle was called the Vague Year, with five dreaded, unlucky, days at the end, days that accumulated because the Mayan calendar had a slight variance with the solar year.
That winter Ophelia's mate appeared on the scene. She met him in Hooker Park.
"Ophelia Balls. Nice name," he said. "I'm Carleton Manson. I'm not a mater, you understand. But I sell suppositories, of my own prime jit."
Manson, a Hookerite, was a scruffy, suntanned little tramp with a knotted beard who smelled like urpflanz and whose eyes appeared to be upside down. He wanted to wholesale a hundred suppositories, his entire lot, for eighty bucks, a good price by Bum Bay standards.
As soon as she was in his presence, and could smell him, Ophelia sensed that Manson had hypnotic powers, that he might psychically influence her to the point of automatic obedience. In retrospect, she wished she hadn't, but she invited him up to her quarters to talk over the deal. She thought she could sell them to some of the females at the hair mill and make a decent profit. But she insisted that Manson leave the suppositories with her on faith. She had accumulated very few bucks at the time. He said he would leave half the lot and when he returned from a weekend doing other business in the Tektite Desert area, they would make the final bargain. Ophelia wondered why anyone would have business in the Tektite Desert, where the soil was ninety-five percent bone dust and the sun ogled all day.
Before leaving her quarters, Manson asked Ophelia if he could shower in her stall. She told him there was scarcely any trickle at all after noon, but that he could try his best. On his way to the shower stall, he said, "Hey, sister, it's a beautiful day. You want to try one of these?" He held out a shiny, gray ball of willywhack. "It's pure. Ten times normal strength in this tiny hunk. It's the best and the purest. Expect a complete cool-down of the endocrine system, low metabolism and sky-high energy. Never a dull or worrisome thought. I'll let you have it free. You can pay me from the profits to come."
She swallowed the willy and lay on her pallet. In a few moments, a wave of tranquility washed over her, body and spirit.
"Raise that dress, girlie, and pull those underdrawers down to your knees," Manson ordered.
When Ophelia complied, he inserted one of the suppositories, pushing it into her as far as he could with his thumb. Afterward he licked his fingers, smelled them, and grinned like a billy goat. "Pull up your drawers. I'm finished."
"I feel so good. Thank you."
Manson showered quickly and vacated the premises with the rest of his suppositories.
When Ophelia awoke the next morning and tried to squat over her slop jar, she blacked out, fell backward and spilled its contents over the floor. Her first thought was that the willy had slowed her metabolism far too much. She felt bodiless. She squirmed about the tiny room, trying to stand, covered in her own waste.
In three month's time, without a sign of menses, and with sickness every morning, she requested a meeting with her supervisor at the hair mill. The two talked as the supervisor made her rounds, checking the machinery, begging her shiftees to work harder. "We've got a warehouse full of dolls waiting for hair. Please, hurry."
When Ophelia came to the point of the meeting, she said, "The workers' handbook says we are to report to you if we become pregnant."
"That's a tricky predicament. I suggest you abort it. Was it by suppository?"
"Yes, I think so. Parts of it slid down my leg. It looked like wax."
"He offered you willy, am I right?"
"Yes, he did."
"He asked you to take down your unders."
"Yes."
"He made his deposit, then he was gone."
"He's never come back."
"We know that operator. Carlton Manson. Goes around planting his seed in the innocent and gullible. They're after him, the Guards, but they haven't caught him. I urge you again to abort that thing. He's fathered hundreds, all male, all ill-tempered hulks with inbred criminal tendencies."
"I'll think about it."
"Let me know tomorrow. We'll have it done in the clinic here. You'll be back at your machine in an hour. A physician is on call Mondays and Wednesdays. He'll get in there and take care of things for you."
That night, to help make her decision, Ophelia consulted the Reverend's Field Guide, randomly opening it with her eyes closed and pointing blindly to one of the entries, which was: "Thunder rolls beneath heaven-simple action and simple movement, in accord with the creative flux of the universe."
To her, the imbedded instruction was clear-to disregard shifting regulations and to leave Bum Bay for good. She would search for the right place to give birth, somewhere remote from the Chaos and despair of the shifting programs. She would pay no attention to her supervisor's warning about ill tempers and criminal propensities. She would do the simple thing, as the Field Guide had directed. And what could be simpler than packing a bag and walking away? Any direction would serve, wherever the roads took her.
The first outpost Ophelia came to, after a day and a half on the hot, dusty road, was a small stinker settlement called Harpstring. The thirty or forty stinkers who lived there slept in tents and survived primarily on commodities like starch bars and urpmeal from the Administration. Despite their low circumstances, the stinkers took Ophelia in. They were kindly, peace-loving, and happy to let her have the baby there. A former midwife in the group would assist with the delivery.
For the next few months Ophelia's pregnancy followed a normal course, with one exception-the fetus was unusually large, and the midwife confided to others that she anticipated a difficult passage. "She'll have to have it in a water bath," she said. "Plenty of rags and hot water will be on hand."
Ophelia spent all her time, night and day, lying in a rope harness. Beneath a covering tent, the apparatus hung from a rigid framework of wooden beams and had an open area in its hammock-like webbing for her bu
lging abdomen, should she wish to turn over. When she lay in this position, a bystander could appreciate the mass of the fetus. The midwife estimated its weight at that time to be eight or ten pounds.
When the time came, Ophelia's hair was tied into a top knot and she was made to lie in a shallow trough of heated water. A stinker was positioned at her head and another at her feet. Children stood by with bottles of vinegar. The midwife used a rag soaked with chloroform to render Ophelia unconscious. With stinkers standing around singing happy songs, the hours-long delivery produced an eleven-pound male infant with one foot that was twice the size of the other, flat, without bone structure and as round as a pie.
Confident that the malformed child would be in more responsible hands with the stinkers, Ophelia rested a few days, then, still a bit too weak to pedal very far, left her Q-ped behind for the stinkers, mounted a good riding imp and fled the settlement in the middle of the night.
The imp carried her overnight to the outskirts of Pisstown. There she would spend the night at a hostel, let the imp rest, and ride out again in the morning. Having left her Field Guide with the Harpstring stinkers, she was indecisive in trying to establish her next destination.
What course did she want to take? Which ones were even open to her? Would she be sent to Permanganate for leaving her post at Bum Bay? She asked herself these questions over and over again, often out loud. But no answers ever came. Perhaps it would be best to act randomly, without thought, reason, or care, to follow any impulse, no matter how whimsical or dangerous. In this scenario, death would have no dominion.
After tying her imp outside, she went to the check-in window at Hostel 210 on Industrial Road. The long ride, without food or water, had left her lightheaded and her walk was wobbly.
"You okay, lady?" the night-clerk asked.
A room, please."
"With or without a view? Without's cheaper."
"Without, then."
"That will be one buck. Nice imp you got."
"She's a good ride."
"There's a stable around the corner. Ask for Mr. Hobson. Get your imp bedded down. Ring the buzzer three times when you get back. I'll let you in."
"Where can I get a Jake around here?"-
"Next to Hobson's, a little place called the Flamingo. Two good shows tonight. Moldcnke and the Doolittle girl."
"0 h, very good."
"That Jake'll be warm. Their cooler don't cool anymore. We ran out of ice two and a half years ago when the ice house burned down. Can't keep meat fresh, either. It's all we can do to keep the flies off it and pick out the worms.
Ophelia's imp took her at a fast trot around the block to the stable, where she found Hobson sitting on a bench outside his livery, whittling.
"Help you, Miss?"
"I'd like to bed down this imp for the night."
"Only got one empty stall, the most pricey one. I'll throw in a bucket of groats and a pail of clean water. We got stud service here. You innarested?" He struck a match and lit a gel can on the ground. The dazzling blue flames gave off a minty odor.
"Can't you see, it's a gelding."
"Sorry, Miss. I'm half-blind. Doc says I'm infested. It starts in the eyes. Your vision gets lost."
"I'm so sorry to hear that. My grandmother was infested. I know what a trial it can be."
"Like I said, the stall's pricey, a buck and a half, but it's all I got. Tomorrow's Coward's Day and there's a lot of rough riders in town to give them heck."
"It costs more to lodge an imp in this town than it does a person."
"How about this. You take your imp in there and you feed it and water it and in the morning, you clean the stall. I'm getting too stiff to do much anymore. I'll cut the price to a buck."
Ophelia peeked into the stable. "Even in bad light I can see three or four empty stalls."
"Those are reserved for very important people. Reverend Hooker, for one. He's been known to ride into town with a couple of his Guards late at night, looking for fun."
"I'll pay now. It's getting late."
"You seem to be a good natured young lady, so I'll make you another offer. Back behind the stable here, I got a nearly new, seldom used, Q-ped that I'll trade you even for that imp of yours and of course there wouldn't be a charge for the stall."
Tired and anxious for a Jake, Ophelia agreed to have a look at the Q-ped in the morning light before making a final decision.
"She's a slick machine," Hobson said. "Belonged to my brother, Hobby. They sent him to Permanganate Island for something or other. I forgot what it was. Me, I can hardly pedal, stiff as I'm getting. Easier just to sit on an imp and go places that way."
Ophelia said good night to Hobson, who cautioned her to use the side entrance to the theater to avoid the crowd of shiftees waiting in line at the front. "It says no admittance, but don't pay that any mind. Go on in and down the stairs. The Flamingo's been running a one-man show lately. Calls himself Moldenke of the Afterworld. He claims he's been there and back. I think you'll like it."
"Thank you so much for your help."
Hobson nodded, blew out the gel can and sat in the dark. "You can't miss the theater," Ophelia heard him say. "It's the only place around with electric lights."
Ophelia could already see a dome of light beneath low clouds only a block or two away. Before ducking around to the side entrance, she stopped to look at the hundreds of shifted males standing in line, some of them fighting to keep their places. All were engaged in trading ideas about what mating techniques they planned to attempt. Some were showing their organs to others.
On the stairway down to the Flamingo, Ophelia smelled urpflanz cigars and heard light applause. She found an empty set of pedals and ordered a Jake. Moldenke hobbled onto the stage without introduction or preamble and told another tale of his post-life experience: "It wasn't too long before I was ordered to get aboard the Amber Princess, a vessel that seemed out of time. There were flying imps perched in the rigging, a flock of a hundred or more individuals. Their legs were thorny and chitinous and they had thickly-clawed, parrot-like feet. I had never seen such a being over here on this side. You felt a jolt of static electricity if you got too close to one that was laying an egg. Rather than make a nest, the imps launched their eggs from the rigging and watched them break apart on the deck.
"The ship's mates, whom we seldom saw above deck, wore clothing that was styleless, featureless and poorly made. If it wasn't gray, then it was brown, or black. They looked gaunt and sick and seemed perpetually wracked with pain. They had craggy, liver-spotted, misaligned faces, dotted with hairy moles.
"The Princess was a wooden ship. Whether it was propelled by wind and sails or a steam engine, I was never certain. I could hear a dull rumble from below, as if from boilers, yet I saw masts, rigging and rope above deck, though I never heard the flap of canvas, even on the windiest days.
"We workers slept in bags under the stars, sometimes awaking covered with frost. Some of us were struck in our sleep by falling imp eggs. When the ship made its ports of call, we combed beaches and shores for teeth. We were given sealskin bags to carry them in. We turned in our bags when we got back to the ship and the teeth were sent below decks for processing.
"Once I found a cluster of teeth as big as a cabbage. I dug it out of the sand and washed it in seawater. The surface was rough, scarred and barnacled, but when I held it up to the sun I could see sixty or seventy distinct teeth inside, uniform in size, and filled with gold. This was quite a puzzle, how this ovoid cluster of teeth had come to be cemented together by barnacles. As I was standing there mulling over what the answer might be, one of the ship's mates came along the beach and said, 'That's a valuable piece. Finders keepers. Listen to me. Don't go back to the ship. It belongs to you, kit and caboodle. Yet I feel I'll be owed something for not turning you in as a thief. We'll take that to a tooth cutter. What's inside is priceless, worth at least a hundred bucks.'
"Taking the mate's advice and allowing him to come along, I venture
d on foot all the way across the Fertile Crescent to Bum Bay, where tooth cutters were abundant.
"The mate said, 'Your kind are always getting into trouble. My presence will be a mollifying influence if any monkey business gets started.'
"At the first cutter's shop we passed in Bum Bay, a master tooth cutter and two apprentices were at work polishing and cutting lapis. I lifted my bag to the countertop and the master cutter turned to the task of assessing my chunk of teeth, which he remarked was the biggest he'd ever seen. He broke it in half with a blunt, thick knife and a small pry bar. One tooth fell away from the rest. The cutter examined it. 'It looks like gold in there,' he said, `but is it?' Gold is easily charged with electricity, so he rubbed it with a cloth and it quickly became so charged that a coin would jump six inches and cling to it. And a visible, painful spark struck the cutter's finger when he tried to pry the coin loose.
"There was another test. Tooth gold burns with a yellow flame and gives off a strong, resiny odor. The cutter shaved a tiny sliver of it with a surgeon's scalpel and held it over a candle. It flamed up bright yellow and gave off a strong odor. He was satisfied it was pure and genuine.
"The mate and I turned back across the Fertile Crescent and walked for five days, stopping only once at Jacob's Well, where a dredging operation was going on. The clam-shaped dredge, manipulated by a steampowered crane, was raised from the murky depths and dumped a load of mud, bones and rotting vegetation on the shore. At the same time a man in deep-sea diving equipment surfaced with a basket of silver bracelets, jade necklaces, copper chisels, statuettes, other vessels and valuable ornaments.
"The mate said, `You see, the settlers who once lived here believed that in order for something to be a sacrifice, it must be of great value. That's why so many small bones are dredged up. Sometimes they threw their children in.'
"`I suppose I have no choice, then,' I said, and threw the two halves of my tooth cluster into the water, much to the chagrin of the mate, who made every effort to throw me in, too, although I managed to hold my ground until he had calmed down."