Yarn

by Jon Armstrong

  "Why are you illegal?"

  "Basically my very talented and proud ancestors couldn't get along with anyone. We've been labeled and hated."

  Vit's words came to mind when he and Withor were accusing me of Izadora's murder: Corn boy slubber. The words felt like they burned my skin. I wanted to bash him. While the satins chased me down, he and Withor had watched like it was a sport. "Bunné makes the satin's clothes," I said with a sad laugh. I had seen the perfect stitching on the cuffs and pockets. "Their suits were beautifully tailored."

  Vada snorted angrily. "Her personal army of cut men." The way she spoke, it almost sounded like a slogan. "A lot of them are recruited from the slubs. And she's got colonies all the way down to Antarctica now." Vada stopped and looked up. Through the ceiling and the ballonets, we could see a white moon.

  "What do you mean, cut men?"

  "Bunné's a castrator." She gazed at me sadly. "Even of herself. She's got a love-hate relationship with the male organ." Vada twisted her mouth left and then right. "Mostly hate, I suppose."

  "Like that epic of hers with Warrior Remon called Sensitive Dead Penisless Boys."

  Vada rolled her eyes. "Right! And the real shame about Bunné is that she's brilliant and fascinating and wonderful-if morbid, crazy, and deadly. In many ways she… well, she was a wonderful person." She stared ahead, lost in thought. "She's one of those rare geniuses in history. When she was five she was weaving jacquard, building electronics, and composing music." Her voice lost its edge and volume. "I haven't seen her in years. But, from what I've heard, she's not the same person."

  "How do you know her?"

  "Know thy enemy." She didn't continue.

  "Why did you want me to rip a yarn from her?"

  "Xavier came up with the idea. She's turned herself and her clothes into her own data-processing repository. Somehow if you could have gotten close and had taken a yarn, we might have gotten something very useful."

  I feared Vada wouldn't be happy about what I was about to say, but I wanted to tell her everything this time. "I went to her store."

  Her eyes darted toward me. "Whose?"

  "Miss Bunné."

  "What happened? Was she there? Did you see her? Did she see you?"

  "No. It wasn't anything." I shrugged. "A saleswarrior just took me around."

  Vada grit her teeth. "Just a saleswarrior?"

  "And two others."

  Vada closed her eyes-had I ruined everything, again? "Documenters?" she asked. "One had a light-gathering wand?"

  "Yeah, but all I did was buy a shirt." I remembered the beads pressing into the flesh of the saleswarrior's throat, her face going white. "I just bought a mini-T that said Bunné Hurts." The ice of panic filled my chest. "I had the mini-T in my pocket when the satins got me!" In that instant I finally awoke. "And the yarn from my father! I forgot about it! It was in my pocket too!" It felt as if my spleen had been torn from my gut.

  "We recovered them."

  I could hardly breathe for the relief. Her words were salve. "Where are they? Do you have them?" When she didn't immediately answer, I said, "I'm sorry about going to her boutique."

  "No." Vada frowned thoughtfully. "It doesn't sound too bad. As long as she didn't see you." She motioned toward the hallway. "The things are in your room. I thought you'd found them already."

  I stood and stepped to her door. "I just need to see my father's yarn."

  "Look for a twill bag in the bottom of your closet."

  I started to unbutton the door.

  "Tane," she said, "you're absolutely sure you didn't meet Bunné? And there wasn't anything unusual about shopping, was there?"

  I told myself that a saleswarrior almost choking to death wasn't rare. "No." I stopped unbuttoning. "Why?"

  Vada pursed her lips. "If she recognized you… if she saw you again… she would almost certainly strike." She gazed at me apprehensively. As I opened her door, she said, "And I need a costume designer."

  "What?"

  "It's my weakness," she pouted playfully. "My one real weakness. I love clothes. And no offense, but I don't want any of those creepy skivvé with dicks and balls! I want beautiful, gorgeous, luxurious, and wonderful things."

  Her unabashed greediness made me laugh. As absurd as it was, mingled with my horrifying memories, such frivolity seemed a release. I found myself answering, "I can do that." The last thing Zanella had told me was: design for women next. A wash of gratitude filled me. "I'd love to… I'd be honored to."

  "I need a new costume for each show." She held up her hands as though I had protested or was about to. "I know! The vanity… the narcissism… Well, there's that, but I've found that it keeps the show fresh. And the costumes are not really so new. We recycle old ones and use every scrap, so you'll have to be inventive and resourceful."

  "Shows?"

  She blinked at me with theatrical surprise. "Good gracious, lovely shopping consumer, of course we're still doing our shows! And over the years, I've done many more shows in the slubs than in the cities. These are the people who really deserve some…" She paused as she thought of a word. "Entertainment."

  PERFORMANCES IN RAM-POOR, MANIRA, SHI-ON, ZAK3, K'KOM

  We flew mostly at night and stopped in clearings, muddy fields, or the crazed macadam of former parking lots early in the morning. While turbulent near-crashes seemed to be Xavier's specialty, all that we suffered were small abrasions, popped seams, spilled soups, and bruised elbows. Once landed, we would spend most of the day assembling the stage and getting ready. At dusk we would put on a show. In the darkness we would pack up and sail off.

  Since Xavier's voice wasn't strong, Gregg did the barking. He also sang and accompanied himself on a crank electro-static harmonium. Marti wore flash pants, juggled glass spheres and knives, and sometimes told funny bawdy stories. But of course, the star of the show was Vada. She told fortunes, sang ballads, danced, stripped, told jokes, and ate fire.

  I never tired of watching her, and now that I was living and sleeping with her, I saw and understood her performances differently. She gave of herself on stage in a way that she didn't-and probably couldn't-in the rest of her life. It was like a switch turned and the only emotions that came through were pleasure, happiness, and power. It wasn't that she was unhappy the rest of the time, but when onstage, the enthusiasm that radiated from her was like heat from glowing coils. Often the best moment of the day was when she would come to me at the side of the stage after a show, exhausted, but smelling of lilac and sweat.

  "The audiences are so quiet," I complained after one of her first shows in a dusty, forlorn place called Ram-Poor. "It's like they're dead."

  "It's the slubs," she said. "Multiply their response by ten." She exhaled deeply and laughed. "I'm telling you, they absolutely loved it."

  "Well," I said, kissing her, "I did."

  She pushed me away and whispered, "Not in front of the others!"

  Each evening, once we were airborne, Vada and I would retire to her room for a fitting. She would strip to her foundation, and I would carefully drape and pin the various parts and pieces I was working on. As I made my adjustments, she, unstitched from the day, put her hair up in spools, and massaged in her face creams.

  While I never grumbled about the tools aboard the Pacifica, they had a terrible assemblage of dirty, sticky, bent, and corroded satin pins, needles, thimbles, shears, rippers, and rulers. Worse was the irritable, balsa wood, pedal-powered Singa sewing machine that never really worked. The fabric and notions came from the storeroom, which was filled with shreds and pieces of old costumes. I recognized a few things from her shows on the Europa.

  But while the materials were difficult and the tools sad, it was during those eight months-those tiring, endless days and nights-as I first repaired and patched mag-gowns, ribbed corsets, and Jupiter dresses, and then, as I got to know the curves of Vada's body and became familiar and confident with the conventions of woven fabric: the darts, the seams, the finishes, I began to create my
own dresses, skirts, corsets, and gowns, that I became not a ticker, a knitter, a stitcher, an apprentice, or student of fashion, but a real tailor.

  "It's a little tight here," said Vada as she stood before me in a low-bust bodice and cantilevered symbol skirt.

  I quickly re-pinned the edge and allowed for more ease at her waist.

  "Yes," she said, smoothing the skirt over her hips. "It's beautiful. I love how it flows. It's like… high clouds… or water in slow motion."

  Once our fitting was over, she would put on her robe and settle into her desk to write in her notebook. I never asked but assumed it was a diary.

  While she wrote, I sewed by the moonlight that seeped through the oil organza ballonets, or by oil lamp. Some nights, when we passed Bankok, Lumpur, or Malay, and we were dark, I sewed by feel in the pitch-black. Once she finished, I would lay down my needles, and, as Xavier steered the Pacifica over mountains, meandering rivers, and dark valleys of the world's slubs, we explored the landscape of each other's bodies.

  One night, a month after I had boarded the Pacifica, Vada and I lay across her bed, the sweat of love cooling my forehead and back, I confessed, "I love being here with you. I love watching you in the things I make for you."

  She unfurled a long, low, satisfied growl, exactly the sort of sound one would expect from a panther. "Your creations are celestial."

  "I want to do this forever." I sat up and faced her. "You know what I mean?" In the dim of that evening I could just make out her face, but not her expression.

  "I do." Her tone was disappointingly cool. I had hoped she might say that all she wanted was to tour the slubs, with me designing her costumes.

  Glancing up at the silhouette of the moon just visible through the ballonets, I asked, "Where are we going?"

  She laughed softly, sadly. "Eventually… back to the city."

  She meant Seattlehama. "Why? You're not going to get another entervator, are you?"

  "No."

  "This is good. We're happy. I see how the shows make you feel. We can keep doing this. You don't have go back."

  She exhaled slowly. "I'm not."

  I felt elated for an instant, but then I understood. I flopped back down and stared up at the faint scratch of high clouds in the night sky. "I'm not going back either."

  For a minute there was only silence and the occasional vibration of turbulence. A moment later the ship bounced hard, and I heard two seams pop. By that point I could tell from the timbre of the thread where the split had occurred. It was my duty to find and fix tears.

  Vada spoke softly. "Were you happy in the city?"

  "I'm happy now."

  "What about the slubs?"

  "No!" I laughed. "I mean, in a way, yes, I was. I loved the corn. I worked at growing it and tending to it. I had friends. But I was only happy because I was so ignorant. But even so, when I looked up at Seattlehama, I just knew there was something else, that there was something I was meant to discover." I touched her arm and found it cool. "I like this. I like you." I waited for a reply and then heard the slow even rhythm of sleep. I lay there, watching the filmy haze of illuminated clouds through the layers of organza. "I love you," I whispered, and kissed her cheek.

  The next day we set up our stage south of a city called K'Kom. That part of the world was dominated by the rice clans: Mitsu, Senter, and Wan. Most of slubbers were docile, emaciated, and sad-looking in their rice-cloth tunics, in their reds, blacks, or blues. As we set up the stage and the tent covering, a crowd began to grow and by the time the show was ready to start, there were a thousand instead of our usual several hundred. And unlike most slubbers, these men were boisterous and angry.

  "Cover me up," said Vada as I helped her dress for the show in a red beach peignoir. "There's testosterone in the air." When I laughed at her, she frowned. "The Senter clan is strong here, but the Wans are trying to push in. So what do the brandclans reps do?" I shook my head. "They change the hormones in the clothes so the men get aggressive and angry."

  I found a white petticoat and helped her slip it over her ruffled polka-dot panties. "Did M-Bunny ever go to war?"

  Vada's expression darkened. "Not around Seattlehama. To the south, it's constant war. There, Bunné is ruthless. Originally, the slubs were her labor and manufacturing base, but now it's her lab to culture new war diseases."

  I had been fixing her collar, smoothing the fabric around her neck, when I stopped. I had spit the pesticide gum all over my dad's chest desperate to save him. "Why did my dad burn Xi?"

  I heard her swallow. "It was fashionable then. He did a lot of fashionable things." Her voice was small and distant. "Toward the end of his life he was brokenhearted. I never really understood."

  "He was in love with someone?"

  She nodded.

  "He was covered with sores when I saw him in the slubs." I laughed at myself sadly. "I thought it was some corn smut or something. I chewed this pesticide gum and spit it all over him. I had no idea what to do!"

  She focused her coffee-brown eyes on me. "I'm sorry. I guess he knew the local reps wouldn't know a Xi sore from a corduroy patch."

  "M-Bunny paid me a bonus because they thought it was a new disease."

  "Oh, that's what happened!" She shook her head. "They wouldn't pay much just for recycling. I'm very sorry, Tane. I didn't realize he gave himself up for incubation. That's terrible!"

  "He wanted me to take the bonus money and use it to run away, but I couldn't. I tried, but as soon I would see Seattlehama sinking over the horizon, it felt like I was leaving home."

  "If it's any consolation, M-Bunny didn't get anything from his Xi sores."

  "Why does M-Bunny pay for diseases?"

  "From weapons to medicines. A couple of years ago, Bunné realized that the slubs were perfect for incubating new viruses. There's some pox that she just used in the lower Californias. It was reported that seventy million L. Segus died."

  I imagined piles of bodies amid dying soybean plants. It seemed impossible. "Bunné and M-Bunny seem so far away." I closed the button on her right sleeve. "Even so, I feel guilty… like I got away, and all those other M-Bunny men never will."

  She frowned. "It's not fair."

  Gregg started the show early, but the crowd wasn't interested in him, and soon I couldn't hear the twangs of the electro-static harmonium over the shouts and boos. When Marti appeared in her light-green spread suit they howled with approval, but when they realized all she meant to do was juggle, they grew restless again.

  Vada stood at the side of the stage with her arms folded over her chest, her frown etching lines around her mouth. She shook her head. "Tell Xavier to start the motors."

  "You haven't even gone on."

  She let her arms flop to the sides of her long gown. "This looks bad."

  As if on cue, a man holding a pointed bamboo pole rushed onto the stage. He pulled up his tunic and flashed his semi-erect root at Marti. She shoved him back as two more came up. One swung at her. She stumbled avoiding the blow and fell.

  Vada, Gregg, and I rushed out. I tried to shove one of the slubbers off the stage, but even though he probably lived on a half cup of cyst rice a day, he was surprisingly strong. He twisted around and knocked me backward. Pushing myself up, I saw Vada lean to one side, supporting herself on just the fingertips of her right hand, and leap horizontally to kick one of them with both feet. The man flew off the stage and into a gang who were climbing up behind him. In a cartoon it would have been accompanied with the crash of scattering bowling pins.

  More men rushed the stage. One held a pole, but Gregg ripped it from him and used it to hold the others off while Vada kicked two of them back down. The crowd loved it.

  While Marti held back the crowd with a rifle, the rest of us knocked down the stage, bundled it up, and threw it into the storage hatch of the ship. Meanwhile, Xavier started the engines and began adding the lift to the ballonets. In just thirty minutes, the Pacifica was off the ground and Gregg, Vada, and I were climbi
ng the rope ladder to the sky.

  By then the crowd had thinned, but those remaining began throwing rocks. One hit Gregg in the face and he lost his grip. I grabbed his jacket, but the fabric strained and started to tear. Vada reached down, grabbed the golden sash around his middle, and hauled him up like he was little more than a laundry bag.

  It was then that I heard the pop. One of the slubbers had speared the ship with a bamboo pole. The gases soon pushed the pole from the hole, the ballonets began to soften, and the ship began to sink.

  From above Vada said, "We have to set down and repair it."

  The crowd below was screaming, stones flew through the air.

  "No! Keep going. I'll fix it."

  Since the dirigible wasn't fully inflated, I was able to grasp the loose organza in my hands and climb out below the hole like someone hanging from jungle gym bars.

  The slash was just five inches long, but if it wasn't stitched up we were going to lose all the half-hydrogen. I had a needle and thread in my pocket, but as I hung there, constantly re-gripping the fabric so I didn't plummet into the mob below, I realized I didn't know how to fix it.

  "Tane," shouted Vada, hanging from the lower portal. "You'll fall. Come back!"

  "Keep going!"

  "We have to set down. Climb back!"

  "I've got it!" I still didn't know what to do. Just then the powder engines turned on, and the ship lurched forward. Desperate not to fall off, I jammed my hand into the tear and felt the cold half-hydrogen rush down my sleeve and into my shirt. With my hand inside the ballonet, I grasped the seam allowance with my nails and found I could support myself with just one hand. With the other, I retrieved the threaded needle from my pocket, I sewed my sleeve to the ship, securing myself and sealing the hole in one move. The only problem was that now I had to dangle there as rocks whizzed past my head.

  Vada called down from her perch on the ladder. "Hang on! We're landing up ahead!"

  "I fixed it!"

  She gazed at me proudly, and for that absurd, dangerous, yet perfect instant, I knew she loved me exactly as I loved her.