Yarn

by Jon Armstrong

  The worker woman held a pair of shears larger than her head.

  "Stab him!" Pilla's voice came from above. "Stab his neck or gut!"

  On command, the worker thrust forward. Swinging a foot, I knocked her hand and sent the scissors clattering on the floor. The woman let out a squawk and stumbled backward.

  "Shit!" screamed Pilla. "You're a useless cut! Tane! Tane, come here! You can have all the Xi you want, just come up here. I have to tell you something."

  I ran past the moaning Xi girls, and as I swerved around the stairs that led up to the crystal room, where Pilla's stream of shouts and pleads fell upon me like welding sparks, I passed the first girl I had seen. She opened her mouth and let out a plaintive little groan, a cry, a lament. I slowed for an instant, gazed at her sewn-shut eyes, but then kept going.

  At the far end, I could see large doors outlined in glowing light from the sun-but after a dozen more steps, I slowed, stopped and gazed questioningly at the cones of Xi in my arms. I had all I came for, and yet, I couldn't leave. Hurrying, I returned to the Xi girl's side and imagined what it might have felt like to have my eyes sewn shut.

  Still balancing the spools with one hand, I tugged the feeding needles from the jelly on her neck. She flinched, but hopefully not in pain.

  "It's okay," I told her, not sure she could hear or understand. Then I set the spools of Xi on the floor. I couldn't believe what I was about to say: "I'm taking you away from here."

  "Stop!" shouted Pilla. "Don't touch her, damn it! Get away from her."

  Once I had unlatched the seatbelt that held the girl down, I raised her in my arms. She couldn't have weighed more than sixty pounds. Draping her over my left shoulder, careful not to touch her hair, I could feel how skeletal and fragile she was.

  "She'll die! You take her away and she'll die!"

  "You're going to be fine." I told her. Crouching, I picked up the stacked spools of Xi, and like some kind of circus plate-balancing act, made my way to the doors again. A man stood before them.

  Bunné's arms wilted and slipped from me like vapor. She staggered backwards. Grasping the yarn rip between my index and thumb, I turned and immediately pushed through the crowd toward the back of the stage.

  A second later, Bunné's scream burst in the air-loud, horrible, and animal. Glancing back, I saw her on the black stage, writhing in pain. And though I didn't quite believe her, figuring this as an exaggerated display, another show-a sick knot settled in my stomach.

  "Contain!" a satin shouted as he rushed toward her. "Contain the area."

  "Secure Bunné."

  "Get the medics."

  "Emergency red! Emergency red!"

  A satin tried to grab me, but the satin material of his gloves on my super-float jacket was like oil on grease. His hand slid off, and I raced past.

  Flashing lights made the air into a vibrating storm. I turned again to see a Pink Dollop Boy dash toward Bunné as if to help, only for a saleswarrior to pull out her water-shears and, with a compressed hiss, slice him in half. The torso keeled over. The legs toppled a moment later.

  I wedged myself past a group of Choky Bears and crawled the rest of the way to the wall. From here all I had to do was scale the partition and make my escape. But just as I laid my hand against my pounding heart, I realized that I no longer held the yarn I had just ripped.

  Frantically, I glanced all around the black floor, but couldn't find it. Then I raised my eyes and saw it. Up above-floating over everyone's heads, caught in an updraft of the crowd's wild frenzy, flew the sliver of yarn.

  "You?" I wanted to smack my forehead in surrender, but of course I was carrying both the Xi and the Xi girl.

  "I'm terribly afraid so." He lingered on the word terribly, riding the first syllable over a hill and then the second and third down a wide ironic gully. As he spoke, he patted his black-and-whitepatterned tie with his hand, checking the links, locks, pins, and bars that held the cravat in its un-fashionable bondage. "And," he continued, arching this word like a suspension bridge as he eyed the girl over my shoulder, "I'm doubly afraid to see you still acting like the talentless slubber, corn worm you always were."

  Withor appeared almost exactly as I remembered him except that his hair was a shade darker, his teeth brighter, and his skin taut, not with youth, but stretched like an overripe plum.

  I laughed. "You run this hell hole?"

  "Put the creature down," he said, flatly.

  "She's not a creature."

  From far back, I heard Pilla. "I have this under control! He's not getting out with her!"

  Nodding behind me, I asked, "What's she doing here?"

  "In fact," he frowned bitterly as he tugged at the knot of his tie, "that cut is my wife. We have a devotion-disgust relationship." He smiled toothily. "She is devoted to me. I find her disgusting." Muttering, he added, "I should have tethered up the useless cut years ago."

  I had always wondered about their connection. Adjusting the weight of the Xi girl on my shoulder, I said, "You're the brains and she's the muscle."

  "In a manner of speaking."

  "But what the hell are you two doing here?"

  "In Antarctica? I'm here for exactly the same reason I find your miserable countenance before me. The mysteries of Xi." He patted his clipped-down necktie as he spoke. "Fashion has its cycles, and while we still have a small but lucrative market, we are poised for a new wave of popularity. It's starting to happen, only this time, consumers want to explore the dark side of the yarn."

  "This damn factory is a nightmare!"

  "Hardly! Bombyx mori used to be dropped into boiling water to preserve their precious silk! Our yarn-makers live until old age. They're fed. They're wiped clean every couple of days." He pulled a ceramic knit revolver from a pocket. "Anyway, enough of these dreadfully unpleasant pleasantries. Put the creature down and hand over that Xi."

  I stared at the object in his hand. I knew little about guns, but it looked deadly enough. I stepped toward him. He grimaced as I handed her over, and while he warily adjusted her on his shoulder, keeping her hair away from his skin, I quickly plucked the MiniAir-Juki sewing machine from my pocket, pinched a thread of the dark Xi between my fingernails, and stabbed it into the uptake hole. I ran the silent Juki up and down the shirt sleeve of his right arm sewing a messy zigzag with the dark Xi.

  "The hell?" Withor pulled away.

  Dropping the Xi cones on the floor for a distraction, I palmed the Juki and tucked it away. "Shit!" I stooped to gather the yarn.

  "Don't get the product dirty, corn!" He waved the gun at my head. "Hurry up, you incompetent rot!"

  As I worked carefully to stack them up again, I snuck a look at his sleeve. When I had tried the Mini-Air-Juki back in the studio, it had been badly out of adjustment leaving snarled knots of extra thread on the bottom of the piece of test muslin. I hoped it had spewed a similar mess of dark Xi on the inside of his sleeve.

  Reaching awkwardly around the girl, he peered at what I had done. "What is this shit?" Just then the girl began to howl. "Shut up!" he barked, giving her a rough shake.

  Come on, I urged the dark Xi. Start working.

  In the background I could hear Pilla. "You got that slubber Toue? I caught him. He counts as a kill!"

  "What a cut!" Withor rolled his eyes.

  It wasn't enough dark Xi. I had wasted my one chance at escape. What else could I do?

  "Corn boy, take those back to the spinning room… and then we'll… we'll have to…" Withor stopped and a strange sickly expression came over his face. Pushing the girl farther up on his shoulder, he inspected the sleeve I had sewn. "Is that… that dark? You slubber shit!" His eyes bulged. He frantically tried to unknot his tie and take off his shirt, but all those clips, bars, and tacks made it impossible. His lips shrunk from his teeth and a ghastly sound boiled up from his gut.

  I knocked the gun from his hand, and took the girl as his knees buckled, and he hit the floor.

  "You… shit… you… fucking slu
bber shit!" In a spastic maneuver, Withor tried to grab at me, but flopped face down on top of the cone of dark Xi. He began to shriek and writhe. "No! Help I'm burning! Damn it! Kill! Shit!"

  Gathering up the cones, I glanced down at my former boss. His impeccable hair wild, skin flushed, he sputtered and writhed on the ground like an animal trapped in a sick nightmare. Using the heel of my Celine-Audi, I kicked open the doors and started up a set of worn stone stairs into the light and haze of Antarctica.

  "Stop!" The fat guard stood silhouetted by the sun. "Put that… that…" his eyes bounced from the yarn to the girl, "those things down."

  "Withor's dying!" I snapped with as much panicked authority as I could muster. "The mill's on fire. Get the other girls out!" He stood staring. "The girls! They're inside. There's a fire! Get them out!"

  Once he rushed in, I headed across the dust and gravel. The Chang-P was where I left it. I saw Mash man leaning against the driver's side. As I neared him, the girl began to moan and sob. "It's okay," I soothed her. "Everything's okay now. The bad couple is gone."

  Mash's head was down. Straightening, he blinked. "There you is!"

  "Please, get off the car's finish."

  "No… wait… sorry… listen…" he slurred. "I want to say this: I'm sorry about before… you know… with the knife. I'm… listen… the thing is… I really admire you!" Between his blurry gaze at my face, and the upraised bottle, I wasn't sure who was the lucky object of his affection. For a moment he seemed confused at what was over my shoulder. "Syrup!" he cried, his eyes growing wide. "Let's plant her!"

  Stepping to his right, I lifted my leg and placed the sole of my shoe against the side of his shorts. Then, as he gazed down at my Celine, curious and confused, I gave him a solid push. With the mash lubricating his joints and sense of balance, he stumbled, and fell in a cloud of dust, snot, and profanity.

  Setting the yarn on the roof of the car, I opened the door, and gently placed the girl in the passenger seat. She muttered fearfully.

  "You'll be fine," I said, not sure she could even understand.

  I heard a shout and saw two other guards running toward us. One held a 'tricity stick in his hand. I tossed the Xi cones into the back. While I was careful to only touch the cardboard, a few fibers must have come in contact with my skin, as once I was in the driver's seat with the door closed, I began to giggle uncontrollably. The guards are coming, I told myself. The idea seemed hysterical. And they've got a 'tricity stick! Those can shoot lightening bolts and fry a man to a carbon crisp!

  Slapping my face a few times, I finally got the car in a forward gear, and jammed the accelimeter. First I swerved around Mash, who was scrambling after the slowly emptying bottle, then turned hard, and headed straight for the two guards. I gunned the forwards, scattering them, squealed away at the last second, and headed back to the highway, back to my life.

  Two saleswarriors carried in the hospital bed from the show and set it beside Bunné. Through the bodies moving back and forth, I saw her rise, with help, and lie down. She was alive, then.

  "All exits are sealed. Remain in your positions!"

  "Be calm."

  "We will be searching everything and everyone."

  I kept my head down, pulse pounding as I wove my way through the panicked swarm of woolen Dead Breeders and sheer Maiden Hunks. Every few seconds, I looked up to spy the yarn floating above us, now caught in some powerful current, twisting and turning, falling and rising like a dandelion puff along the back of the stage, taking my fate with it.

  ANTARCTICA EXTENSION-NORTH

  "Xi yarn?" Pheff laughed nervously over the car phone.

  "You're fashioning me!"

  "No. I'm not."

  "That's completely 'boo! We'll be arrested! They'll take us away."

  "Pheff, listen to me, you'll be fine. If there are any repercussions, I will take full responsibility. But we must do our best for our clients."

  "Who wants Xi? People have died from touching it!"

  "Relax. Everything is under control. I'll explain later." Reaching into the glove compartment for something safe and interesting to occupy the girl's hands, I continued, "Listen carefully, we'll need to blend it somehow. The stuff is absurdly powerful." I found a pack of titanium satin pins and quietly deposited them safely in my door pocket. "Oh, and research compatible dyes." Back in the glove compartment I found some blue tapestry yarn. Where it had come from, I couldn't remember, but after I sniffed it to make sure it was clean, I handed it to her. She had already spent several minutes feeling my gloves, a stack of non-woven napkins, several bubble chips, and a stack of cloth samples I had left in there from a recent conference in Kong.

  "He went and got Xi yarn!" Pheff laughed to himself. "That's what he was doing."

  Maybe I should have warned him about my journey earlier.

  "Pheff, you with me?" He affirmed that he was. "Get us a supply of gloves. Are you researching dyes?"

  "Uh… yeah. I got something here. What color do you want?"

  Vada hadn't specified anything, though tradition would call for either white or black. "Red. Get the cover to Love Emitting Diode's Third Symphony Note," I said, recalling the graphic-liquid blues that changed to purples and then reds near the edges. "Match a dye to the bottom right corner, half an inch in from the edge."

  The girl began to cry again. The blue yarn rested in her lap. In the pocket on my door, I found a plastic spoon and handed that to her. Her moan rose from a dark unhappy to a curious murmur.

  "Tailor," Pheff asked, his tone incredulous, "what's that sound?"

  Farther down in the pocket, I found a stack of pop magnets, part of a spongy Nexilla bar wrapper, a small Rux screwdriver, two Juki-Decker bobbins, several small frogs, a small coil of black yarn, and a swatch of double-felted perpetuity cotton. The last was a treasure, I suspected, as it had the softest hand in the world.

  "That was nothing," I told my assistant.

  "No, I thought I heard… like a cry?"

  "Indigestion," I said.

  "Wow… okay. So, when are you going to be back and when do we need this job?"

  "I'll be back soon. The job is due tonight." I heard nothing. "Pheff?"

  "Tonight? Cut me! Oh! I forgot to say: the Diplomat police from the Security Board were by again. Okay, I've got something here! For red Xi…" he said as if reading from something, "tymethikoke 9. But that needs kiln drying." "We'll have to re-spin it with some supersaturated fibers." "Right. Well… I'll figure out something." I heard a muffled sound and imagined he had plopped onto a chair. "Tailor, are you sure about this?" I watched the girl gently caress the double-felted perpetuity cotton like a child might eagerly and adoringly pet a baby rabbit.

  I'd done good, I told myself. "Yes. One more thing: check the Yarn and Fiber Guide for self-renovation accidents."

  He laughed. "Self-renovation accidents?"

  "I think there was something about a self-destructing magnetic yarn a few years ago." The Xi girl yawned. Her teeth were tiny. I wondered if they were her baby set. "Oh… and a couple more things actually." I was sorry I wasn't there to see the action of his eyebrows. "Pick up some soft foods-gurts and vegi-blends-and a pack of diapers for a small adult. And get a bunch of toys… some blocks… and a ticking clock." For a long beat, I heard nothing.

  "Wait… what'd you say?"

  "Play it back," I said, unwilling to repeat myself. "And one last thing… I need a copy of the Miss Bunné's Life and Love Compendium Volume 100 Lover Epic Collector's Super Good Gold Edition Three-I think that's what it's called."

  Pheff laughed that little blip of a laugh of his. "What the cut, Tailor? Xi yarn, diapers, and Bunné's Gold Edition? You're fashioning with me, right!"

  "No. I'm not."

  "Tailor," said Pheff, his voice low, "… are you… are you, like, really okay?"

  "I'm fine," I said, and terminated the call. I glanced at my passenger, ready to give her the double-felted cotton, only to discover that she had fallen asleep. In the
quiet, I studied her face as I hadn't been able to before.

  There was a pinched and frail quality around her eyes and nose, but her mouth and chin were larger and more rugged. Instead of the angelic beauty I had seen in the mill, I imagined if she had had been raised normally, she might have been something of a tomboy, spending her afternoons at the edge of some pond, looking for mutated tadpoles or racing a remote-controlled hydrofoil she had built herself.

  Hopefully she wasn't blind under her sewn lids, or had some irreparable brain damage from the chemicals they had been giving her. Hopefully she could learn to speak and read and function. I imagined I would have to feed her from a bottle until her system acclimated to solid food.

  Several times, I panicked that she had died, only to see her chest rise a moment later. Once, when I couldn't determine that she was breathing, I pressed my ear to her chest to confirm her heartbeat.

  I was going to have to come up with a good story about where she came from. No doubt I was going to have to bribe some agency or official along the way. I'd kidnapped her from an illegal Xi mill. The word kidnapped sounded unthinkable and foreign, but I liked that I had gotten her away from there. In that moment in the factory, maybe I had taken her in spite, or overwhelming sympathy, maybe I saw myself in her. Whatever the reason, I felt determined that this Xi girl was going to blossom.

  I switched on ZZZZ's "Infinite Nothing"-the sound of one ton of sand being dropped grain-by-grain onto a pile of timpani and woodwind instruments. As the quiet sounds filled the Chang, I tried to get a few moments of rest by letting my eyes defocus on the oncoming rush.