How blessed to rest. She still dreamed as Cougar Lou, but when she woke, could not remember those dreams.
She dozed, but did not sleep, and came awake disoriented and confused. She stared at the underbrush, wishing that once, just once, an unprogrammed animal would come slinking out to greet her. Lou turned over and watched clouds traverse the high-resolution blue sky.
Steal from the rich, give to the poor . . . That had come from Macy and the dusty, tattered pages of an ancient book.
What am I doing? she thought. How can I re-create a past that probably never existed? Whom am I helping helping helping helping . . .
* * * *
Wake up, wake up, whispered the night wind. Lou jerked upright. “All right,” she said. “I’m awake.” The forests blinked out and Lou was alone in the small gray room.
Outside, Nels waited for her. He was clearly agitated. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought you ought to know. Macy and Richard are fighting.”
She rubbed her eyes. “What about?”
“You.”
“I’m still asleep,” Lou said. “Why should they fight over me?”
“Come on,” said Nels. He tugged her toward the hallway.
“Why me?”
Nels stumbled over the words. “It’s your family. We heard you’re going back. You’ll keep only one husband—”
“Let’s go.” They hurried along the corridor, Nels’s bony legs pacing her. “Who told you?”
Nels looked at her uncomfortably. “It was my cousin Ingrid. Her maid’s aunt is second housekeeper to the Olvera-Landis household. The aunt heard a discussion about you at dinner and couldn’t keep it to herself.” He ducked his head. “I’m sorry. I told Richard; then he and Macy got into it.”
“They’re idiots,” Lou said.
They clattered down the main stairs. Richard and Macy were in the dining hall. The table had been shoved to one side and the two men stood in the cleared space. Each was clad only in a pair of baggy white pantaloons, tied securely at waist and ankles. The two men jumped up and down, screaming epithets.
Lou stopped at the bottom of the flight. She wondered whether to laugh. “What are they doing?”
“Their pantaloons,” Nels said, pointing. “Each of them dropped a resurrectronic ferret in there. The first one whose ferret gnaws its way free through the cloth wins.”
“That’s stupid!” Lou cried. She ran into the dining hall and grabbed Macy’s shoulder. Without taking his eyes from Richard’s face, he shoved her aside.
“Leave us be,” said Richard. He was stocky, with long arms and head as smooth as a desert stone.
High-pitched squeaks came from the men’s trousers.
“Idiots!” Lou screamed. “When the ferrets are through, neither one of you’ll be fit for a husband!”
“Get away,” said Macy. “We have to settle it. First us; then Nels.”
“Nels, help me stop them.” Lou grabbed one of the spindly dining-room chairs and smashed it at a suspicious bulge on Macy’s calf. Her husband yelled and fell sideways. Something jerked and twitched under the fabric of his pantaloons. Lou swung again with the broken chair leg and heard sophisticated circuitry break.
“Damn you,” said Macy. He reached to stop her hand. She kicked him in the face.
Lou turned and found Nels and Richard rolling on the floor. Nels legs were locked around Richard’s waist. Jack-knifed forward, he pummeled a lump on Richard’s ankle.
“Richard! It’s over.” Her second husband glared up at her, then took his hands away from Nels’ throat.
The four people surveyed one another. Macy wiped his bloody nose with his hand. Lou gave him a napkin from the sideboard. Nels massaged his own throat gingerly. Richard sat up, looking sullen.
“You stupid pricks,” said Lou. “Is Nels the only one with any sense?”
“It’s true, then? You’re going back to your family?” Richard demanded.
“Who gets discarded?” said Macy.
“Anita came to see me today. That’s what she wanted.”
“So what are you going to do?”
“I haven’t decided. But I do know I don’t want you fighting over me like stud bulls.”
“Aren’t you the great romantic?” Macy said spitefully.
Lou turned on him. “No, not this way. Now all of you, get out. Just leave me alone.”
The three men stared at her. “Do you want to see any of us later on tonight?” Richard asked.
She shook her head. “I’m sore and I want to be alone.” Lou turned back toward the stairs. They watched until she disappeared past the upper landing.
* * * *
She sat on the topmost parapet of the highest turret of the old house and dangled her feet into space. She drew the cloak about herself. The simulated cougar fur was proof against the night wind off the ocean.
Who am I? she thought. I’m Cougar Lou Landis.
No, replied Mary Elouise Olvera-Landis. I’m an ugly, awkward girl who finds only vicarious marvels. My heroes are in books and tapes and story computers. I am locked inside a walking fantasy. But that doesn’t change me. I’m still Mary Elouise.
I’m the new reality, thought Cougar Lou. I exist in my strength and grace.
You will always be Mary Elouise, answered Mary Elouise.
No. No?
Cougar Lou stared out toward City Center where the stars twinkled faster and became a blur. Tomorrow, she thought, Anita will return for me. I’m such a child; I’ll do as she asks.
I wish I were the hero I’ve pretended.
The scattered lights of Craterside Park spread below her. One of the tiny stars marked the home of Josephus the Administrator. “Yakov,” she whispered. “Little gardener, you’re my last chance for self-respect.”
Cougar Lou stood and balanced easily on the stone parapet. . . . steps. Stairs were the hardest. At first, the new perspectives came slowly. She stepped or reached, and often missed. The fine, lithe body throbbed with new bruises. She looped one end of a line around a crenelation and knotted it. Then she tossed the coil into the darkness. She clipped the rope around the break-bar secured to her belt, then looped the rope around her hips and began to rappel silently down from the tower.
* * * *
As a young girl, she had attended garden parties at Josephus’ estate. Cougar Lou knew the route. She took alleyways and climbed over rooftops, avoiding Craterside Park’s safe streets.
Two patrolmen sat telling each other ghost stories beside the gateway to Josephus’ estate. “. . . out of the closet, jaws gaping . . .” The words floated across as she crawled through the shrubbery.
Cougar Lou anticipated little difficulty in getting to Josephus. There would be few safeguards. Craterside Park was relatively free of wrongdoing. The patrolmen patrolled because Chief Brosklaw had liked good appearances.
Once past the gateway, she ran across the checkerboard lawns. She reached the back of the house. A window turned silently inward and Cougar Lou let herself into Josephus’ kitchen. Pausing to orient herself to the new darkness, she searched back through her adolescence and remembered the master bedroom was on the second floor, south wing. Negotiating the stairs and hallways took a few minutes. Soon she was in front of the correct door. She slid it aside and took a cold metal cube from her belt-pouch. . . brought us memories of a better life. Why?”
She looked away from twisted limbs and shriveled souls. “You’ve never had riches.”
They stared at her.
Lights glared on. Across the room, Josephus sat up in bed and smiled at her. “Mary Elouise, how nice to see you. You were expected.”
Cougar Lou whirled, but the hallways were filled with black-uniformed patrolmen, stunners in hand. She turned back to the bedroom, ready to break past Josephus and dive through a window.
The administrator raised his hand, and she saw the wand of a stunner. “You must be tired. Sleep now, and we’ll talk in the morning.” She felt a momentary sting, then nothing else.
* * * *
Mary Elouise awoke slowly. She stared at the dark, slender man and wondered who he was. The woman beside him also looked familiar. She blinked and realized the woman was her mother. The man was Josephus. She whimpered and tried to roll over, to go back to sleep. Josephus grasped her shoulders and shook her.
“Have some tea, dear,” said her mother. They waited while she sat up and drank. After several minutes, her eyes focused and she put down the cup.
“Anita?”
“You’re home, dear. Josephus brought you in quite early. It appears you’ve been bad.”
Josephus chuckled. He upended his palm and three metal cubes rolled onto the table. “Memory cubes. You planned to use one on me?”
“It was for Yakov,” Mary Elouise said. “I promised.”
“Whom?” said Anita.
“My former gardener, an incompetent. I was rather harsh on him.” He fingered the cubes. “Stolen memories . . . There was Brosklaw, of course. Who else? We’ve had several reports.”
“There were three more; a woman, two men. They were lucky people with power and accomplishments. They were gifts of birth. I gave their memories to cripples I found wandering out beyond the greenbelt.”
Anita pursed her lips. “You’ve been a very bad girl.”
“Me?” Cougar Lou glared. “Don’t condescend like that. I’m not a girl any more.”
Josephus slapped his palm down hard on the table and laughed. “Who is condescending? Do you think that murder by memory-theft and the gift of those memories to persons you deem less fortunate isn’t condescending?”
“No.”
“Child, you’ve got a lot to learn.”
“What are you going to do?”
Anita said, “You must be disciplined.”
“Punished,” said Josephus. “It’s an ugly word, but it’s more what I had in mind.”
“The steel rod?”
“Nothing so brutal. You must realize that memory retrieval holds a good deal more than the historical romances you absorbed for so long. You’ll experience some of the less pleasant memories.
My special selection.”
“You disgust me,” said Cougar Lou.
Josephus grinned again. “I think about a thousand subjective years will be appropriate. Then you’ll get your old body back.”
“I’d already decided that.”
“What do you mean?”
Cougar Lou smiled; then the smile slowly diminished. “You were waiting. How did you know?”
“How do you think?”
They took her out then, and in the hall her three husbands were waiting.
“Which one of you sons of bitches was it?” Cougar Lou demanded. “Who betrayed me?” She glared at Nels. “You? You got me the cubes from the institute.”
“It could be any one of us,” said Macy. “Or all. You talk in your sleep.”
“Was it you?”
“Who’s to know which you would have rejected?” Macy spread his hands noncommittally. “It doesn’t matter. Who loved you more? To whom would betrayal matter the most?”
“It matters the most to me.”
“From what book did you steal that?” said Macy.
She stared at him until he looked away. “No book,” said Cougar Lou. “My life.” Josephus reached for her elbow, to lead her out; she jerked free.
<
* * * *
FREE CITY BLUES
by Gordon Eklund
In the three or four years since Gordon Eklund began writing science fiction he’s published an impressive number of excellent stories, ranging from his very first, the well-remembered novelette “Dear Aunt Annie” through novels like Beyond the Resurrection. The reasons go beyond mere style or craft: Eklund’s stories are enlivened by the talents of a real storyteller who likes the people he writes about. See, for instance, this not entirely picaresque novelette about a girl with psi powers in the San Francisco dome-city of tomorrow (a story which incidentally comes complete with an auctorial bow in the direction of Charles Dickens).
* * * *
WHEN THE dome clock struck twelve noon, sending shivers of sound reverberating brightly through the green square of the park below, the two ladies—equally middle-aged and first-degree—turned to each other, smiling benignly, and bowed from the waist. One of the two was rather tall, though not quite seven feet, and exceedingly thin, while the second was nearly as round as the other was long. Together, they stood poised upon the top step of the concrete stairs that led from the green park below to the flat gray deck of the observation platform above. The platform itself was already fulsomely occupied by a massive moving statue of a forty-niner miner, who panned for mineral wealth in the narrow blue river which swept majestically across the platform, disappearing inside the concrete at both ends.
After the ringing of the clock, the ladies turned back, gazing once more at the milling crowd which filled the park below. The thin lady moved her eyes carefully, shifting her gaze quickly, like the motions of a hawk circling an unsuspecting chicken flock. The fat lady did not seem to be able to make herself stand still. She kept moving from flat bare foot to flat bare foot in a rhythmic graceless shuffle step.
Then the thin one saw something. Her arm jerked like an arrow shot from a crossbow and she cried, “Oh my Lord! Look! Don’t miss this! Have you ever seen such a sight?” Her finger pointed at a solitary figure amid the crowd below.
“Oh my,” the round lady said, frowning. “No—no. I swear that’s a real sack she’s wearing.”
“It is.” The thin lady waved her pointing finger furiously. “And her hair. My God, I have to swear. I say you could raise chickens in that. . . that thatch.”
“No,” said the other, with a heavy, limping smile. “You’re wrong. Not chickens—no—but eagles. You could raise eagles in there.”
Hearing this, the thin lady became serious. “I imagine it won’t be long until the lesser elements find her. I frankly think it is a real pity. The poor girl. Can you imagine . . . ? Well, I do wish . . . They prey on her sort.”
“They have no real choice in the matter,” the round lady answered crisply. (And frankly.) “These girls come here looking for it. They seek humiliation. Openly. I’ve seen it often enough. Working down there among them. Trying to help. I ought to know.”
“They are a stupid lot,” the thin lady admitted.
“But—of course!”
“And also—oh my God! Look! I swear she’s coming this way. Do you think she could have heard?”
“No. Hush. Yes. Don’t pay her the slightest attention.” Whisperings : “She ought to know better.”
Silence ensued as a lone figure emerged from the milling crowd and ascended the stairs. The girl paused on the step just below the two ladies. Her dress was a loose floppy sack, her feet were bare and black, and her hair would have made a fine nesting place for hens. The girl surveyed the two ladies with contempt.
Then, as quickly as she had come, she faded back into the crowd.
“Well!” said the round lady. “Have you—?” Then she laughed shrilly. “My God, the nerve of that. . . that. . .”
“The police will hear of this. I can assure you I will go—” And then this lady—it was the thin lady—stopped talking. Instead, she began to squawk and cackle. Her hands slid neatly into her armpits, as though accustomed to residing there, and her elbows began to flutter. On dainty tiptoes, she pranced down the steps, leaping from one to another, squawking all the while, cackling passionately, arms fluttering like the wings of a landlocked bird. With a graceful swoop, her nose glided down to the concrete and her tongue flicked out, gathering in bits of refuse and spilled food. She pecked furiously at the steps, cackling as she savored each delicious morsel of garbage, the volume of her cries rising as she proceeded inexorably toward the grass below.
Meanwhile, the round lady, who had at first watched her companion silently, now began to moo. She drew one breast—a hefty elongated structure
closely resembling a flattened cannonball— from within her bodice and waved it mournfully at the crowd, as if pleading. “Moo,” she cried painfully. “Oh, moo.”
Moo?
Squawk?
Cackle?
Two such fine ladies as these—so carefully certain and pure in their first-degree?
So it was.
Some ten yards from the platform, arms and legs firmly latched around the width of a lamppost, the girl in the sack, her hair flaring as a wind emerged, watched the scene, laughing with unrestrained glee. Her teeth glistened fiercely white as she laughed, and so genuine, so wonderful was her joy that Andrew could not help approaching.
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