Yarn

by Jon Armstrong

  Undeterred, I caressed the flat bottom of Sir Admiral Dooganberry enticingly, and then turned and headed out into the sulfur-filled air outside. I strolled toward the Chang P, leaned against the side, and waited.

  There was something tragicomic about the single-minded machismo ire of the modern slubbers as they oscillated from horny to angry and back again. In the last ten years, freedom and sympathy movements in the cities had put an end to the harsh chemicals and hormones once added to the B-shirts. But given this new alternative, my placid childhood in the corn had been a blessing.

  I examined the bottle in my hand. The man on the front- Dooganberry I supposed-was elaborately decorated with medals and ribbons on his white jacket, golden epaulettes, a thick black handlebar moustache, a monocle, and a pink iguana on his shoulder.

  After a few minutes, the man who had laughed at my joke exited the bar and started toward me. When he was fifteen feet away, he stopped, and pointed at the Chang-P. "This thing go?"

  "Xi yarn?" I confirmed.

  He nodded. We both got in and zipped off.

  "The bottle." He held out a worn and trembling hand.

  I tightened my grip on Dooganberry's neck. "Once we find the mill."

  After a tremendous sniff, the sort of slubber thing I had forgotten about, he raised his chin toward the road. "Ten miles straight." He reached for the bottle.

  "When we get there." I nestled the prize in the storage bin of my door.

  "Don't believe me?" he grumbled.

  "Yes and no."

  In my peripheral vision my passenger eyed me suspiciously. "You from the cities?"

  "Yes and no," I repeated.

  "It's one or the other!" he argued, confusion lining his voice.

  "It's both." Turning to him, I met his stare. "Right?" I asked when the road forked ahead.

  "Yeah." The man sniffed again. "The Xi for you?"

  "Yes."

  He loosed a typical two-huff slubber laugh. "Got yourself spun on it?"

  "Basically." This man could have been me, had I stayed. I wanted to ask him about his life, what it was like out here these days, but I didn't want to get too friendly either… too close to my past.

  Two more amused huffs. "No one liked you at the bar."

  "No new friends," I agreed. "A shame."

  We drove a mile in silence. Then suddenly, as if the question had been building up inside him, he blurted out, "What are you?"

  "A tailor."

  "For clothes?"

  "Exactly."

  "Okay… up here," he said, pointing. "Turn here. Past that tank… turn left. Then it's down there until we get to a gate. It's blue. I forget what it says."

  We had been driving past warehouses, sheds, non-descript factories, and stacked containers colored with logos of shipping concerns, the ornate flags of ports, and the stylized fury of taggers.

  We passed a large beige cinderblock building on the left. Beyond it was a small road under a blue sign. "That it?"

  "No. It's bluer. And it's a gate gate." A beat later he asked, "What kind of car is this?"

  "A Chang-P," I told him. "You're riding in the 660 with fifteen custom forward engines."

  He snorted in disbelief. "How fast?"

  "Quite."

  "Hard to drive?"

  "Somewhat." I felt bad for the man, for how little he knew, for how little he had experienced… and for how far I had come in comparison.

  "Okay," he said, pointing, "up there. Past that barrel on the right."

  I slowed. A blue gate was open. From one of the sides hung a jangle of chain and several locks. Beside the road a sign read: Warning. Clearance Required-By Order of M-Bunny Corporation a Division of MB-I. I didn't see a guard-or anyone-for that matter. I nosed the Chang through the gate and continued. The road sloped down and to the right past more forgettable buildings. We passed a fenced courtyard, where a dozen slubbers stood. Several watched us pass.

  "How much farther?"

  "Uh… well… not much." His confidence seemed to be fading.

  I wondered when my friend was going to make a move, or if he had called ahead to arrange a trap with his buddies. I glanced at him, the wet shine below his nose, the filth in his matted beard, and told myself he didn't have communications; he probably didn't have friends.

  The buildings grew more and more sparse. Between them sat fields of junk planted with gloomy, undersized corn.

  "Stop here!" the slubber barked, his voice startling me in the silence.

  The Chang came to a crunching stop. To our right was a pile of slag and sand; to the left, another windowless two-story structure.

  When I glanced back at the man, he held a six-inch serrated knife in his right fist. The tip was slightly bent. "I'm an honest corn," he began, his voice tight, "and I want to help you. It's just that things cost more in Antarctica… especially for a shirt tailor." He punctuated his sentence with a laugh.

  Here it was, I thought. "What do you want?"

  "You tossed three papers at Pricilla. Five is good for me."

  I glanced around at the buildings and nothing outside. "So, you're saying there's no Xi?"

  The man laughed again. "There's Xi here. Pay me and I'll tell you where."

  I pretended to consider his offer for a moment, then grasping the Admiral by his neck, I flipped open the door, and jumped out before my knife-wielding friend had even moved. I closed the door and glanced about. Straight ahead were three buildings guarded by men holding flash sticks.

  I heard the slubber pounding on the windshield from the inside. After rolling my eyes, I said, "Passenger door." The lock clicked open. His breath was swear-strewn as he scrambled out and stumbled around the front of the Chang with his knife extended. "Don't corn me again!"

  "If you cut the yak upholstery," I told him, "I will skin you and use your hide it to repair the seat. Now, do you want to earn the pink mash or not?"

  The slubber stopped and squinted at me for a long beat. In the orange light, his eyes were hazel, complicated, and beautiful. A bubble of saliva formed at the side of his mouth as his whole face twisted into a disappointed frown. Then his eyes dropped from mine to the dusty bottle I held at my side and, just as quickly, his urgency and power faded. Turning, he gestured with the bad tip of his knife. "It's the far one."

  I started for the building, but after five paces, turned, and tossed the bottle to him. The bottle somersaulted through the air. Flinging the knife to the side, he caught the bottle in both hands, but then fumbled and juggled it all the way down. The glass clinked against the dry hard ground, but didn't shatter. Relieved, he blew out a sigh, and wrenched off the top for a long desperate drink.

  PACIFICUM OCEAN: FORWARD OBSERVATION PORTAL

  We flew a hundred feet above the vast floating garbage-covered surface of the Pacificum Ocean. Near the Hawaiian Islands, roped-together junks, floats, rafts, and hulls formed masses that stretched for hundreds of miles. Since we weren't doing shows and I didn't have any costuming duties, I spent most of the time on my stomach in the small forward observation portal sharing the eyescopes with Gregg.

  "There's a couple over there!" he said, handing me the scopes. "He's sewing her cut hard."

  I took the scopes, but I didn't seek his find, instead scanning the dirty faces of the algae and seaweed brandclan slubbers that gazed up at us. Children often threw things at the Pacifica Showhouse as we passed-until their parents smacked them when the debris inevitably came raining back down. "It's all sad," I said.

  With a disappointed snort, Gregg snatched back the scopes. A minute later, the ship having drifted, we were past the couple and he raised his head. "We'll be in Baja in two days." He shrugged. "I haven't been sand chipping in years."

  I didn't know what that meant and didn't ask. These slubs seemed far worse than the corn. I couldn't imagine living on floating garbage and subsisting on little but the emerald algae that filled the water.

  "Over there," Gregg pointed to the right. "Is that a cut-ko getting un
dressed?"

  I just shook my head. Gregg frowned at me for a moment and turned back to watch. "She's going swimming," he said. "Wait… never mind… it's a man." He took the scopes from his eyes and stared ahead glumly. Turning, he glanced over his shoulder and spoke quietly. "Vada's had others along for her show tours."

  The news didn't surprise me. "Oh?"

  "But she's different around you."

  I raised my head.

  "She's nice to you." He frowned and scratched his nose. "I can see she really likes you." He laughed and then whispered. "I'm afraid of her, but it's juice that you guys are fashionable."

  Although I pretended I didn't care one way or another, my chest fluttered with a strange mix of joy, relief, and worry. It confirmed exactly what I wanted to believe and exactly what I was beginning to fear.

  "You floaters, looking for tits again?" Marti stood glaring at us. I rarely saw her these days, as she was always on the bridge helping Xavier. She poked her head into the organza bubble.

  "Cut off!" said Gregg. "There's not supposed to be more than two in here!"

  "Shut up!" To me she smiled and asked, "You doing it?"

  "They've been doing it the whole time!" said Gregg, before I could speak. "Don't you hear them?"

  "I'm talking about him getting Bunné, floater!"

  "Getting?" I asked. "I'm just supposed to rip a yarn."

  "Rip a yarn?" Gregg scoffed.

  "No," said Marti. "I heard you're cutting her."

  Vada sat at her desk staring at her open notebook. Folding it closed, she spoke toward the wall, exasperation in her voice. "You were talking to the crew."

  "Is it true?" I stood just inside her cabin's door.

  She turned and faced me. "We need the yarn."

  "You told me I'm ripping a yarn. Marti says I'm cutting Bunné."

  She sat up. "You're not cutting her, whatever that means. Marti probably means that the information we can get from the yarn-as we understand it-could take her down. You might only be setting off a long chain of events."

  I chewed that for a moment. "Okay," I said slowly, "and it's the end of us?"

  Her gaze fell away from me. "Each of us-I mean everyone in this cell-will go a separate way. We'll go under the heavy blankets for months… maybe years."

  It was then, standing in her cabin with the gentle vibrations of the ship thrumming beneath my feet and the sunlight filtering down through the ballonets, that I finally saw, understood, and began to accept the end-the end of my adventure, the end of my affair with the showhouse entervator entertainer, and maybe the end of everything I had known. I hated it, but didn't know what I could do to stop it.

  Vada frowned. "I know you're angry."

  "No," I lied. "I'm not."

  She pursed her lips. "For us to be together like you want, you would have to give up your life."

  "I would."

  "You don't know what you would be giving up."

  "Isn't that my choice?"

  She shook her head slowly. "It's not fair to you. You're supposed to sew, not do what we do." She sighed. "I love how I looked in your work and, believe me, a part of me wants you just for me, but that's not fair to you and your talents."

  "That's your excuse," I told her. "I'm the one who decides about me and my shit talents."

  Her head slumped forward wearily. "Look… there are other things, too. I'm older than you think, and I've done terrible things. You have to understand who I really am. I'm not just the entervator entertainer you think I am."

  "I know that!"

  "I'm wanted by all the cities!" she said loudly, angrily. She covered her face with a hand and whispered. "I'm even wanted in Budai. And those people don't give a stitch if you cut out your own mother's lungs and eat them."

  "I don't care about any of that."

  Vada sighed. "And I wish I didn't either."

  Two days later, after hundreds more miles of polluted ocean, I heard the call Baja ahead! from the bridge. For the next several days we flew north along the coast, closer here, farther there. We passed huge metropolises of G-Diego, Lax, Esefoh, and mile after mile of slubs everywhere in between.

  "M-Bunny is pushing inland against L. Segu," said Vada. She and I lay on our stomachs in the forward observation port. "She's got masses of M-Bunny men as far down as Pelu. There's another corn clan down there called Rima, but they have been decimated with pox skirmishes. No one knows how many dead."

  "Are you telling me so I'll be angry at Bunné?"

  Vada paused. "I am."

  "You don't have to."

  "I just want you to understand."

  "I do understand."

  She frowned at me, but I ignored her, staring at the iridescent blooms of color in the water below.

  Vada pushed herself up slowly. "I'm tired."

  After she had gone, I lay there alone, a tingling fury racing up and down my body like charged electrons. I had to fight hard not to punch, kick, or scream.

  Then the floor shifted. I turned, expecting Vada, but her brother Xavier lay beside me. I had barely even seen him on the ship over the past several months. He was always on the bridge. I glanced at the clump of chewed gum that had once been his ear.

  He stared forward at the landscape below. "We're both a little bit doomed."

  I didn't want his pity, or worse, to think that she had sent him to deliver the final blow, to tell me how impossible and tragic and different they were.

  "We've both been hurt," he added. "In different ways." He stopped and shook his head. "Listen, all I know is that she thinks you're special. If she could… I think she might have run off with you." With that, he stood, and headed up the stairs to the bridge.

  I know he had meant to comfort me, but his assurance only made it worse. It was close, he had meant. Just not close enough.

  I didn't go to my room that night, but stayed there in the observation portal. Around dawn I fell asleep. When I woke in the afternoon, I used the toilet, ate, and then returned to the portal, where I spent the rest of the day staring blindly ahead as the earth flowed past.

  I didn't see Vada.

  Finally, we stopped in some slub place that Marti called Union. The tenting, the stage, and much of the gear was unloaded to lighten the ship. The crew was pared down with Gregg and Haas staying behind. At dusk, we turned north, and it wasn't long before I could see the top edge of the glowing towers of Seattlehama in the distance. I had imagined that I would feel some sense of homecoming and relief, but it was the opposite. I felt dread.

  Through the eyescopes, I located Bunné's building, the Zea, and could see the lights of the open-air amphitheater on top, above her boutique. They were preparing for the show Vada had mentioned: The Suicital. I lowered the goggles. The stitches on that dress in Bunné's Boutique had been exactly seven hundred warp yarns apart. Standing, I hurried down the cloth corridor to the costume storeroom. Most of Vada's costumes and notions had been unloaded in Union, but a few remained, and after scrounging around in the darkness, I found the blouse I was looking for-a simple off-white number with black pick stitching. I checked the material: two-up twill with a high-twist blend warp and a low-twist weft. I guessed it was satellite silk as the hand was soft, supple, and coolly logical. With my thumb, I felt the pick-stitches and started counting the yarns.

  A moment later, I tossed the blouse aside and made my way to Vada's room.

  "I understand something."

  Vada turned slowly from her notebook, her face grave. "Button the door."

  I stepped in and closed the cloth behind me. "You're sisters."

  ABOVE SEATTLEHAMA

  Turbulence rumpled the walls and floors. I touched the twill beside me and waited. Vada closed her book and put it away. I could see her lick her lips and heard the tiny click of saliva. She didn't seem surprised, just resolved to provide the facts that were my reward. "We are sisters. Although, originally she was a boy. Her name was Qem." She snorted. "I don't know where that name came from. Maybe that's the
reason… I mean… maybe that's when the problems began."

  "You said you had a baby brother who died."

  "I… well, that was a lie. That was Bunné. And my brother did die. She changed back then. And I don't mean her gender operation. One day I saw something in his eyes that scared me. I tried to help him. We snuck away to Umsterdam. I thought that surgery would help. We both thought that would fix her. But it didn't. I remember sitting next to her in recovery and her staring up at me with this awful sadness. It was like both of us knew we were fighting something else." She was silent for a long time. "Something inside her."

  "You never told me much about your parents."

  "That was another lie. We didn't have parents. The Toue custom is for the group to raise the young."

  "But you loved Bunné," I said.

  Vada nodded, and for a moment seemed to be lost in thought. "I still do… in a way." Her voice wavered. "I love who she might have been. Not who she became and who she is. These days, honestly, I can't be proud of even the good things." She sat up.

  "I just keep counting my regrets like fibers in a yarn."

  "I don't understand what happened."

  "No one does. I've gone over our childhoods a million times. Everything seemed normal. We had our looms, our secrets, our time scavenging. She was so happy in the beginning. You know what I've come to think? Some illness came over her. Some personality disease… some narcissism ailment… I don't even know." She slumped forward. "Mostly I blame myself. Maybe I could have done something else… something more."

  I sat on her bed. "So you're trying to kill your sister?"

  "You have to understand that we are part of a special generation. We're different than most Toue. We were bred to save the world." She laughed as if it were now just a joke. "We're smarter and we're stronger. We're more talented. We smell like shit petunias." She paused and stared at me for a long moment, as if trying to fix me in her memory. With a shrug she began again. "At least that's what we were told. So we set out to change the world. And then we were going to do the same in Seattlehama. Only in the end, once Bunné had assassinated the bastards, she decided she was going to run it. She made herself into the celeb… you know that part of it… and over time the city seemed to adopt her as some lost queen." Vada's laugh was laced with bitterness.