Yarn

by Jon Armstrong

  I wandered toward the entervator port clasping Zanella's book to my chest. I didn't want him to go. I didn't want anything to change. I didn't even want to head back down, so I plunked myself in a chair.

  After idly paging through the book and finding his article about gravity's effects on cloth, I glanced up at the t'ups, the holidays, and the costumed customers around me. I did not yet belong among them-as I had wished for so long-but I was beginning to sense who I was and what I could do.

  More and more my thoughts were dominated with the shapes I could make, the seams I might sew, the folds I might make, and the bodies I might hide and reveal. Of the pants, vests, shirts, jackets, skirts, and gowns around me, the colors were wrong, the silhouettes, unseemly, the fabrics, squandered. I was here to shape them as I could.

  I wanted to laugh. None of these t'ups knew it yet, but I was the one. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but as I sat there, holding Zanella's book, I felt all-powerful. All I needed was sharp shears, a tape, and some needles, and I could heal all that was broken.

  Before I had seen just the yarn, or just the fabric, or just the darts and fasteners. My nights of fashioning bodies in what amounted to sensual foundation and my days of designers, lines, and ideas fused. It wasn't just about cloth. It wasn't just about skivvé, or jackets, or skirts. It was about the bodies inside.

  As for Zanella, I knew I would never see him again. I had hugged him, thanked him a dozen times, and wished him well. I knew I was taking a small piece of him forward.

  The Europa Showhouse arrived to take me down. I took a seat in the front on the far right, and after the door closed and the lights dimmed, Vada appeared in a red gown covered with beads as small and shiny as fish roe. Her hair spiraled around her head and something about her eyes seemed especially attentive and bright.

  Shading her hand from the lights, she peered toward the back. "I am looking for a brave shopper who wonders about the price of happiness and the depth of credit. I need someone who is not afraid of the shine on the cosmos tonight. Someone from out of town, preferably!"

  Since she always picked someone from the back, I was shocked when she pointed her red-gloved hand at me, and said, "You!"

  My body froze. All I could do was quiver my head in an approximation of no.

  "Cram your cut!" said the t'up woman beside me.

  "Go on up!" shouted someone farther back.

  My face must have been as red as her gloves when I finally stood. Someone next to me pushed me forward and I stumbled up onto the little stage. My hands were shaking. My mouth was dry.

  "Are you a fan of mine or is your taste in vertical transportation simply purple and rococo?"

  I shrugged, and once I had unstuck my tongue from the roof of my mouth, I said, "I like you." The words slipped out, but as I tried to explain them away, I was drowned in the crowd's screamed approval.

  "Well," said Vada to the audience, "more white for my goblet… more muscle for my plate… another needle for my cut." While several in the front rows stood and whooped, she grasped my elbow and pulled me closer. Leaning in, she sniffed my face the way one might a freshly baked pie. "My olfactory intuition tells me that my very good new friend is just twenty-one years old…" She lifted my right hand and inspected my fingers. "My ocular intuition tells me that he has flair for certain materials."

  Those in the crowd who seemed to think everything she said was innuendo screamed, but I wondered if she actually meant cloth.

  "But what we must know," she said to the crowd. "What we must know is what is inside his suit. What secrets are inside the lining?" Turning toward me, she grasped the lapels of my navy jacket as if she were threatening me, yanked it toward her, and somehow removed my jacket without tearing the back. She was now holding it up for the audience's approval.

  And it was that moment that I saw someone I knew sitting toward the back of the ship. He alone wasn't cheering. He alone wasn't smiling and clapping. Vit, one of the two city boys Withor had hired to rip yarns, recognized me. From his odd, conniving expression, I got the feeling he was just waiting to run to Withor and tell. What that meant, I wasn't exactly sure, but knew it wasn't good.

  "The cloth touches the skin," continued Vada, "the skin touches the blood… the blood touches the heart." She held the jacket open and then, with a dramatic sweep of her arm and a loud tearing sound, ripped it in half-as she did, a spatter of red liquid burst from the lining. Several t'ups in the front leaped out of the way. Red dots freckled one woman's cheeks and nose.

  "Inside the heart," Vada continued, her voice filling the ship, "is the talent and the quiver… and inside the quiver is the mind and the trust." As she spoke, she wadded up the torn jacket and reared back. "And in the trust, there is nothing but the smoke of love." She threw the jacket. It burst into flame.

  Someone screamed. Most applauded. Many waved their arms as if in apoplexy. I saw a woman pat her hair as if it might have been singed. I stared at the dissipating puff of smoke and felt like I had been punched.

  "And in the natural realm of the vaulted if extinct imagination of our lives, just as the snake molts to grow, you too-my new friend-you have grown before us. You have expanded your air and your mind." Stepping behind me, Vada said quietly, "Hold still." She wiggled her hands under my arm, which tickled. Several in the crowd whooped salaciously.

  "After the last shopping hour tonight," she whispered in my ear, "come to the entervator Keep below the city atrium and join."

  Before I could answer, she grasped the placket of my shirt and tore the starched material. Below the shirt was my navy serge jacket and my shirt and tie just as before.

  "Check the veracity and impunity," said Vada, as she stepped to my side. "We will have no dread of the truth. Speak the reality!"

  Hurriedly I undid the jacket button to check the lining.

  "Tell us! Is it yours? Is it yours exactly?"

  "Yes," I said to the crowd. "This is my jacket!"

  Vada bowed and the audience roared with approval.

  SEATTLEHAMA: FREEDOM FIGHTER, SABOTEUR… TERRORIST

  I stood outside of Pilla's door for several minutes, not sure I should go in. I liked Pilla, I loved Pearl Rivering with her, but Vada wanted to see me. She wanted me to join. I hoped that meant join her, as in fashioning, but maybe all she wanted was to offer me some job carrying boxes, or vacuuming the purple carpet and drapes. But whatever it meant, I had to go to her and find out.

  Pilla and I hadn't talked about our relationship-we just put on Pearl River Love Tights and jumped into the piles of bodies at her store-but there was something unscrupulous about her. As much as I liked her and trusted her, I knew that all she really wanted from me was to make piles of money and show up Withor somehow. For all she had done for me I did owe her, but somehow, tonight, for the first time, I had to get away.

  It didn't help my nerves that Vit had approached me in the Showhouse. As we exited, he had stepped before me. "You're in big trouble."

  I rolled my eyes at him. "I am not."

  "You're supposed to be dead."

  "No, I'm not!"

  "Yeah, you were supposed to die on that last rip!"

  Did he mean drap-de-Berry? Had the invisible person meant to kill me?

  "You are a corn. You're a prisoner. You're an illegal slubber!" He shouted as if to shame me in front of the other exiting passengers. "I'm telling Withor I saw you. He's going to get you, corn boy."

  I flitted a hand at him. "Go away, Vit!"

  He smirked at me, turned on a heel, and sauntered off. I didn't know the laws, but I wasn't supposed to be in the city unless I had the papers that Withor possessed. I hated to imagine being transported back to the corn, and shoved out off the back of a truck into the dirt. I couldn't live down there again. How could I eat another TakoDrop or, worse, ever put on a B-shirt?

  If I ever saw Vit or Flak again I would have to run. I cursed my most recent makeover because I had reversed all that Kira had done and I looked like I had when I worked f
or Withor. If I had been dressed-and looked like-Warrior Remon of Loin, I doubted Vit would have recognized me.

  Before I went in to Pilla's, I wondered if I could say I was sick and later sneak out? Or should I tell her the truth? Unsure, I pressed my hand to the door.

  Pilla sat in one of the blue chrome study chairs that overlooked the atrium windows. In one hand she held a tall glass of Unhappy Rhino. Around her shoulders she had draped a Xi scarf. Her gaze was distant. "You say goodbye?"

  For a second, I thought she was talking about maybe Vada or Vit. "You knew Zanella was going?"

  Pilla laughed at me. "He told me he was impressed with you." She took off the Xi scarf and set in on the arm of her chair. On the right side of her neck she had developed another sore. She had six by my last count.

  "There's a haberdashery in the Coin Building in the three hundreds. Not the greatest place, but a hundred light years from YeOld#1." After sipping her Unhappy Rhino, she laughed maliciously. "The owner of the place has been burning hard every night, and he's deeply indebted. Tonight I'll introduce you and propose that you start there tomorrow."

  I resented her presumptuousness. "Actually… tonight," I said, as I gazed out at the flow of shoppers in the atrium, "I was thinking that I'd go out alone and window-shop."

  "What?" Her thin eyebrows knotted over her nose. "Why?"

  "I want to think about what Zanella said today."

  "What did he say about me?"

  "Not you." I laughed at her paranoia. "He said I should design for women and that I have more to learn. I just want to think about that." I wanted to get away from her. I thumbed at the door. "I'll be back later… maybe late."

  "Wait!" She pushed herself out of the chair and stood there swaying back and forth the way Xi made one move like a cornstalk in a breeze. "You must be careful."

  "I'll be fine."

  "I've pulled a lot of threads for you. Tomorrow you will be working that haberdashery." She frowned. "Do you understand?"

  She was just like Withor. "Yeah."

  "Listen," Pilla shook her head, "I'm not bad. I'm really not." She stepped toward me. "We are everything, Tane. Together we are the make. And I've risked everything on you." The expression on her face reminded me of Kira and her visions of Remon of Loin.

  "I'm just going window shopping for a little while," I told her, as I pointed toward the door. "I'll be back. I promise."

  I feared she would follow, but maybe she was too burnt. I checked a few times, but didn't see her. I hated that she saw me as a slubber who was supposed to do exactly what she wanted. I didn't want to work for some Xi burner at a haberdashery in the Coin Building in the three hundreds. A part of me didn't even want to see Pilla again. At the same time, though, I knew that was selfish, that at any point along the way, I had felt grateful and guilty for all she was doing for me.

  As I crossed the atrium, I kept my face turned from her window, but imagined that she was watching me the whole way. Mindful of her gaze, I zigzagged my way from cuisine court to fashion shop, to club entrance, to souvenir shop. After a few minutes of wandering, I headed into the lower floors of the Harmony Building, where I lost myself among the shoppers, tourists, and saleswarriors.

  At a cuisine court I ate and wondered if my fascination with Vada, my secret rendezvous, was just a way to separate myself from Pilla. And maybe I'd overreacted. If Pilla really had risked all her credit on me, like she seemed to have said, maybe she was just worried that I was going to run off. She had introduced me to Zanella and for that I owed her. I would work at haberdashery, I told myself. I was acting like I was already a designer, but I wasn't. Zanella would have been the first to tell me.

  When the stores finally began to close their doors and gates, however, I started down into the darkness of the entervator Keep… and Vada.

  As I descended, the air began to taste of dampness and grease. Uncluttered by traffic, the thick cables of the entervators revealed themselves streaking into the heights of the city.

  At the end of the line, the dimming schedule board was clustered by a choir of jangling vending machines. Only a few of the entervators were still in service. Vada's entervator, The Europa Showhouse, had come ten minutes before.

  The birds of the city, most entervators were brightly colored with small wings, fins, and tails. One was painted like a tuna. The one beside it, pink and shaped like a phallus. I came to the purple-skinned Europa.

  The door was closed. When I knocked, the sound seemed hollow. I waited, breathless, but heard nothing. I chided myself that I had misunderstood. Join was some t'up word or warTalk that meant something completely different. She had probably said that she was glad I had joined her fans. I knocked again. I was a fool! They weren't even here.

  I jumped back when the door opened and the man in the red suit and top hat glared at me.

  "Hi. I was on the ship earlier this evening…" Not a muscle had moved in his face. "Vada did a trick with my suit jacket. She took it off me, made it explode, but then it was okay." I wondered if he were deaf. "Well, she said I should come by after shopping midnight… I think she said join."

  He stepped back. "Come in."

  It was an invitation, but hardly inviting. Now I wasn't sure this was a good idea. I didn't really know anything about them. They might be planning to rob me or beat me to death just for fun. I stepped inside, my heart hammering in my ears. The house lights were dimmed; the stage was black. Most of the upholstered chairs were stacked to the side. The air smelled of smoke and claustrophobia with a swirl of perfume.

  "Sit." Red Hat pointed at one of two chairs near the stage.

  As I did so, he closed and bolted the door behind me. He was an inch taller than me and looked muscular. The only weapon I had to defend myself was a tiny pointed pair of scissors in my sewing kit. I wondered if he was Vada's husband, if he was possessive. "Is Vada here?"

  Leaning against the control board, he took a crumpled purple box from inside his jacket, opened the top, and pointed it toward me. Confused, I shook my head. He shrugged and from the thing extracted what looked like a black bead twice the size of a corn kernel and set it on his tongue. I could hear the hard thing click against his teeth. "So, he hid you?"

  Even as I asked, "Who?" I knew he was talking about my father.

  Red Hat tossed another black bead into his mouth. "He was a good man."

  "The exploding jacket went beautifully, didn't it?" Vada stepped before me, in a long red dress and red gloves. The rouge dots on her cheeks and the thick lipstick were gone. She looked both younger and older. "You have to pick someone who has the right sort of jacket. Then it's a matter of cloaking the clothes without the mark noticing." She turned to Red Hat. "We haven't done that in a long time. What has it been? A couple of months?" He just shrugged.

  How could she be so casual? "You wanted to see me?"

  "Yes, I did." Turning the second chair to face me, she sat. She smelled like some exotic dessert flavored with honey and pepper. Her dark eyes darted toward my hands. "We know you can steal yarn."

  "No," I said. "I mean… I don't do that anymore." With a nod toward Red Hat, I asked, "He said something about someone hiding me?"

  She glared at Red Hat indignantly. "What are you telling him?"

  "Nothing."

  She rolled her eyes and then focused on me. "What did your father tell you?"

  I glanced from her to him and back again. "What about my dad?"

  She smiled. "We knew him. Mark was a special man. A very graceful, intelligent, and prideful man. There aren't so many men like him anymore, don't you think?" She glanced at Red Hat as though to confirm. He ate another candy. She smiled at me. "In the end he fought with us, even if we didn't always realize it. He was one of the most talented men at espionage I've ever met. We'll miss him terribly. And we need your help."

  I didn't want to believe that these people could have known my father. I wondered what would happen if I stood to go. "Who are you fighting?"

  Smiling s
adly, Vada turned to Red Hat. "It's uncanny, isn't it?"

  "Eerie," he agreed, with a bored shake of his candy.

  I didn't like that they were being so flippant. "What do you want with me? And what do you know about my dad?"

  Vada sat straight and seemed to glare at me. "He became one of us." She smiled for an instant, but it quickly faded. "He was a corporate saboteur who was on a mission that happened to be intertwined with our strategies. If you want to know who he was, that's not easy. I'd guess if you talked to those who knew him, you'd never hear the same thing twice. I don't know, maybe that's an exaggeration. But there were probably too many of him for us to know. For us he was a showman, an actor, a con man, and in the end a terrorist."

  SEATTLEHAMA: FAR ABOVE EVERYTHING

  "Engage," Vada told Red Hat. He had tucked his candy away, stepped before the control board, pushed several buttons, and then pulled a lever. I felt the ship's hook catch a cable, and we started up.

  "Where we going?" I asked.

  Vada stood. "Tonight," she said, her voice loud as if the ship were full of consumers, "without further compunction, doubts, and delay, we will venture to see both the shimmering highs and the sinister depths of our brilliant and festering world. We will head to the peak of the city, to the night star, where exists the boutique and the epicenter of shopping, where resides the queen of the epics, the de facto sovereign of Seattlehama: the infamous, dangerous, mysterious, and glorious Miss Bunné!"

  That first yarn, the sparkling strand I'd taken from my father's pocket-Kira had said it was from Bunné. I tried to keep the tremor from my voice. "She's one of the big celebs."

  "Correction: she's the celeb. The apex celeb. Seattlehama's mega-celeb."