by Moira Crone
“What would you have to drink?” a new girl asked me as she rolled out a plastic sheet to cover my table.
“I am here waiting,” I told her. I wasn’t familiar with the protocols of restaurants. I had never been able to afford them. I held up Peet’s tile.
But she said, “Drinks are on the house this hour. Joy Dusk—” With that, she picked up her two pitchers—in one the drink was pale blue-green, in the other, something pink. I chose the first. When she leaned over to give me a glass and pour, I saw the little brass pin on her white blouson, FREE WHEEL NORTH COUNCIL. And I recalled a sweet voice and when I’d first seen that symbol.
How weak I was once, I thought.
I was better now. Yes, I was over all that. Finally. (Though there was that incident in Port Gram.)
VI
Evening
November 1, 2117
Curing Towers
Re-New Orleans, South Central District. U.A.
She had a melody when she talked, it was constant, never too high. “You Malcolm de Lazarus from Audubon Foundling House in the DEAX? Down in the drowning Islands? The Sim rental boy they sent? You had an interview with Dr. Greenmore at lunch?”
The office door had suddenly opened. This seemed miraculous—I’d been locked inside a long time. A round face. A brown haired Nat, in a beret. A girl. I thought she came from some kind of dream—her features so broad across her face, cat-like. Her arms, and cheeks, and her dimple. Oh no, I thought.
“I blew it.” For hours, I’d been sitting there, wallowing in all the things I did wrong in the interview. I was sick, an idiot.
“If you think they hung the moon, you’ll do fine. They think so too,” she chirped.
But she was really going to show me out, not give advice, I thought. Back to the Sky Rail.
She added, “I’m here to get your body to your room. Okay?”
I had no idea who she was, or what she was talking about. Honestly, I’d never seen one quite like her: young, young as I was, plump, healthy, amber-eyed. She was wearing an opaque black shirt and slacks, cream colored. Loved the beret. Later I’d learn that all the attendants wore these. But that night, I considered it her personal style. She was carrying a cloth sack. The strongest, strangest scent floated up, filling my nostrils with a rich, blue-red warm explosion.
“Let’s get you going,” she said.
I was used to skin and bones. I could see the Free Wheel insignia with the words Port Gram on her lapel. I knew the logo Strict. Famous for adhering to the fertility codes. I’d only seen males from that enclave; they didn’t let their women out often in the DE-AX. So she was something new. She took my arm and led me out into the hall. All the other doors along it were closed. The ceilings were high, glowing, and the floor, stone.
“This is a hospital, but they call it a Curing Tower,” she said. “We take care of the Protos. Some First Wavers coming in now. Heirs only, of course.”
A few raspy voices complained from behind the closed doors. What are you doing to us? Why must we endure this? That stench again?
I said, “They don’t get sick—” as we pushed through the thick fire doors at the end of that corridor, and came outside. I was shocked to see it was night. The air was cooler, compared to the heat of the indoors.
“They don’t like our food, how we smell, all that rot, you heard all this, before, I guess.”
I nodded.
“Oh, we do mental here. I guess you will get to that. They are amazing in some ways. Alive in the age of Disney or Dylan, or Elvis, I mean, saw the archaic wars in the Fugue Age—knew Albers, personally, they—” she caught herself. “Sorry, I have to eat. Dr. Greenmore came up to me right at my supper hour, and told me to go get you.” Without a hesitation she offered me half her sandwich. Then, she asked, “You eat regular victuals, right? You can’t go in for years, right?”
Stunning inside my mouth, gelatinous, dark, dense. I remembered the name. Hamburger. Only had it when things were flush, when I was very young. Those last few years with Jeremy’s shows, the commissary was spare. Vee almost always made fish at the Home, mostly shrimp and crawfish, he didn’t allow flesh of beef or pig. Chef Menturians were Afro-Vietnamese, he’d told me. They had their “old Buddhist rules, modified.”
“For an Heir, I think Greenmore’s okay. Actually helps some of these,” she said.
“You haven’t said what’s wrong with them.” She had said for an Heir, as if she could judge.
“I said you will get to that. Didn’t you hear me?”
“Well what can we talk about?”
She pouted, shrugged. Oh, her mouth.
I tried, “You an enclaver? Free Wheel. How is that?” Free Wheel had it pretty good, relatively speaking, I had heard. They got a Charter early, when the terms were more generous.
“We’ve got our system. The place isn’t full of rapscallions. You been to Chef Menteur? Open enclave, everybody looking for an angle, leaving their own kin behind? And the rich getting out, the rest starving? All them poor houses up on stilts ‘bout to drown? Twenty feet in the air? Not like that. We are orderly, we are on the cycle. We have a natural levee we live on, high ground, up here, north shore of the Sea. We don’t toss out.” She let her chin rise, then she dropped it. “Never. Criminal offense. Everybody gets a Procreation Certificate when they marry, that’s the end of that. The same for all. We have the Free Wheel principles. Populations Stasis. I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
“Is that right?” I asked, mocking her. I knew every enclave tossed out, some hid it better.
“Yes, that is right,” she snapped back. “A lot have the Free Wheel charter, we follow it.”
Then she explained to me that she was born and she was going to have two children with her husband who was already picked out for her, and then, after a long life, she was going to do the so-long, which she called dying and later, her progeny were going to do the same. She used the word “dying” as if she didn’t know she was cursing. She went on at some length before she said, “Why you looking at me like that? You never seen an enclaver who believed before? No Gramercian?”
“And the Fertility Codes?”
She drew back from me a bit, one open hand on her beautiful breast. “They are what make it all work. They are the core. We have enough for everybody.”
Jeremy once called enclavers like her, “doctrinal lunatics.” He didn’t even like to hire the males to set up the tents, build the sets, work the props. They were too prudish, too by-the-book. Never stayed for the overtimes, put a limit in the contract on the encores. Walked away after mere 14 hour shifts. He used to ask me who they thought they were.
I mocked her. “You really believe all of it? Every bit?”
She hesitated. “Huh? Yes. Yes. Of course I do.” Then she turned, sharply, and yanked me through another courtyard, and another, the walls covered with beautiful, intricate mosaic murals, abstract and swirling—greens, blues, reds. I was impressed to see the Towers were so well-designed. Her fresh cheek in that coral light, her hair lit from above, dark, shining. The whole time, she talked about her enclave and how wonderful it was—but I thought maybe she protested too much, as Jeremy used to say.
And, I couldn’t put aside absurd, filthy ideas: a man like me, if he were another sort of man, could leave, cash in his Trust, get a fast electric, and go after one like her. What if I were that stupid, I thought. Good I’m not.
Jeremy tried taking back all he’d said about enclavers, those last days before his Trust was rescinded. They have a kind of life, he allowed. It has its sturm und drang, its ferocious momentum. I mean, after all, imagine—NO encores. ONE chance at it all.
She led me toward a tall building on piers. We climbed the stairs, entered, went down a corridor. She punched a code to unlock my door. Not much in there, just a bed, a desk. But mine, all mine. My own room. She stood back, in the hall, behind me, silent. As if I were suddenly a stranger, after all that talk.
“Good night,” she said, abrupt
ly, her hand on her collar. Then she pivoted, practically ran down the hall, her little beret sliding off. Well, she was trouble, I knew that.
*
The next morning, there she was again.
“Malcolm de Lazarus, you in there? I have to give you something.” She paused. She had more to say, apparently. (How was this a surprise?) She was just outside the door. “You know, don’t you, that I’m betrothed, you heard of that? My husband-to-be is named Landry. Landry from the Domino Clan. I’m here working on my dowry, that’s it. You heard of that? We’ve applied for our P.C., that’s for Procreation Certificate? You understand? We are due two babies. Two in the Domino line. Like I said, we have strict Fertility Codes and we enforce—”
Why did she have to go over this all again? I was not trying anything. I knew better. She insisted. “I am not an idiot,” I mumbled through the door.
“Promise. Mean it. You know what I’m worried about?” she asked. “Or have you had it done—you know?”
“No not fixed.” Jeremy had said not to get it too young, it was bad for your “drive.” In fact, he’d told me even to the last, he had not been cut, he had been planning to get to Memphis for that.
I had done it, if that was what she wanted to know. The Sim staff found girls so I could do it. Outliars with sterility tattoos, certificates. Just so you know, Jeremy had said. Just so you know and can put all that out of your mind. You know about the DNA Securitas? They find one living, or even so-longed, anywhere, even tissue—they look at it all, scan every piece that turns up, they have their ways—no poor girl gets an evacuation without them snooping around—they have dogs in the sewers, along the river banks, in the dumps, no form of disposal is safe—they find you produced offspring, even an itty bitty embryo, you will never be Treated. They will not let you through. All this is for naught. You understand? You are good looking, Nat girls will like your shoulders, your height, your hard brow, your hair, even your unusual mouth. These things get them giddy. They will try to trick you. So you will have to learn to keep them off—I have the tools.” And he handed me condoms thick as rainboots, which is what he called them.
Skinny girls with indigo S’s on their chests, and shaved little pubises had shown up later in the evening, at my door. Another smaller “S” there, right above the slit. These were toss-outs, not from a Home. Sheltered by Outliars from the canal houses, probably, but had to work, or came from the floating slums. Who knew where they lived? They always requested hard currency. Enclaver crowns, U.A. notes, they didn’t care—but not promises, no credit. And they examined the rainboots with a special light their agents gave them—before and after. Their eyes were flat. They always, always, even before we got started, had an obsession with the shower—how long could they use it when we were done? How many gallons of heated water, approximately? And they came with their own wads of paper towels. Cleaning up the fluids, any spills. Even with the condoms. Which Jeremy requested after, and threw into boiling water as soon as I handed them over, “to kill any cheeky survivors,” he said. The girls burned the paper towels after they stripped the bed, put the sheets in laundry tubs, checked the temperature of the water, made sure it was close enough to boiling. I had tried to put it all out of my mind—except, except, the fact of their faces when I entered them—I looked, even though they told me not to, Jeremy told me not to, I did look. I hurt them. I knew exactly how much I hurt them, but it hurt me, too. That was my secret: I hated it because I saw how much I hurt them. That seemed weak, or wrong, but it was true. I didn’t ask for them often. But now, in this girl’s presence, things came back, from those awful shameful nights. Even seeing their pain, something broke open in me, even with those bored, scared, little reptile girls—and after, I knew it was wrong, forbidden, but I wondered what had happened to them—
I looked at Camille through the crack of the door, and all those explosive, shameful moments flew up at me. It occurred to me she was right, she shouldn’t come in. She was just the sort I wanted to squeeze, hold tight. I could have sworn I had held her already, many times before. That was the funny thing. How familiar she was. Of course I let her in.
“You pick your husband? They let you pick?”
“None of your business,” she said, glancing to the right. “Look,” she said, her tone now meant to calm me, settle me. “I have my orders.”
“What did she say? Dr. Greenmore?”
“She didn’t let you know?” Pointing those pools at me. Which were not vacant—but daring, sharp. She quoted from a mobile screen she took out of her pocket. “‘He goes through an inundation, with Galcyon. He will be educated, formally. Camille, monitor him.’” She looked up and blushed. “That’s me, Camille.” Then she continued to read from the screen, in a monotone. “‘His guardian Lazarus already gave permission. So say that if he asks. He does whatever his guardian says. The process will be four months, maybe. Then we will take a break, see how he does on his trials.’ Those are the orders, come right down from the Shade.”
“You call her that?” I asked. “She’s your Heir. You work for her!”
She said, “Not to her face.” She looked down, then up again, fiercer now. “I am not taking any advice from you. You have no standing with me. I’ve seen Nyets before.”
“What do you think of us?”
“Cold as a frosty morn,” she said, and she showed me her chin. It was such a pretty chin, with a dimple. “That’s what they say where I come from.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because they think they are like the Shades, they are stuck up—by association—rule over everybody when they got nothing but a lick and promise those snakes will break—” she said. “So I hear?”
“You heard lies,” I said, stung. I changed the subject—I was scared of Galcyon. Ariel told me once it could kill you—addictive as well as expensive. O used to give it to him, he’d said once, without elaborating. For fun, O called it.
“So?” Camille said. “Like Heirs care you get addicted?” Her eyes cast about. “Now take a good look at this room, this space, this floor. Get used to it. This is where you are. Don’t forget. It might throw you later.”
I looked up at her, concerned.
“Don’t worry. I take you through it.”
I believed her.
It was charming how she stood back and thrust the cup toward me. The odor of almonds filled the air.
“What is it made of?” I asked.
“The chemicals? Don’t know. Why don’t you read the pharmacology screens in a couple of months and tell me?”
“Read?” I couldn’t.
“Just you wait,” she said. “This stuff will have you knowing it all in no time.” She sat on the gray saddle seat at my desk, her short feet in soft slippers curling on the floor. “I won’t leave you. Some are allergic.” She whispered, leaning forward so I could see a bit inside her blouse. As soon as she realized this, she sat up straight again. “You’ll do okay. Now drink up.”
I obeyed.
Sometime in the middle of the night my dreams went from pastels to the most startling crimsons and emeralds and ceruleans. They took on amazing detail—the spinning of metal fans in the corners, the way the curtains blew, the color of the toenails of women, Ariel walking down to the end of an enormous hall, everything around him glowing orange. I awoke and saw Camille in a chair, her head down on my desk. She startled, then her eyes smiled at me, and she said, “Malc? Okay?”
Malc. (Ones at the Home—Vee, especially—called me Malc, how did she know?) I said, “Okay.”
“Got you covered,” she said, waving at me as if I were an old friend. In my dream I grabbed her, held on tight, and began to fall, and fall—
*
The light. “You are going to learn a few things this morning,” a recorded voice said. “You can go in any order you like on this tier.”
A screen now where the window was. The pictures started. Jeremy had taught me some sight words. I knew perhaps a hundred. That was all. And I had
the alphabet. But that day there were thousands of words, in order, in lists. There were mouths on the screen telling me the meaning of each one, at the same time as I saw those written—ten, twelve a second, then repeated. Every fifteen minutes or so, pathway trials. I recalled almost everything asked. It was easy. Somehow my brain had bloomed. The voice came on, said, “Good for you, Good for you.”
Blink.
The next week, arithmetic. I couldn’t close my eyes for long, I might miss something. Parts of my head actually hurt but I couldn’t rest—I was too alert, my awareness too crisp, too sharp. Division, around dusk. “Good boy, Malcolm. Good boy.” Percents. What one hundred was really, one thousand, how many years were meant by the number, the year, we were in: 2117.
*
At some point, days or weeks later, I had no idea of time at that point, Dr. Greenmore checked in, in the body, in the flesh, with a meal, a flat round bread with red topping. She said she loved “pizza” when she was of my strat. Friendly, it was odd. I was snot in our interview. I had no idea why she’d hired me, much less, why she was paying me this kind of attention.
She looked at me a long time, very curious, but said nothing. When she sat down in the chair close to me, she made a gesture, as if she were going to push the hair out of my eyes, but of course, she couldn’t—wouldn’t. I was surprised, interested, then, she pulled back.
“So is this pace all right?” she asked.
She was rather frightening to see in this state. I mean, in my state. Her rate of breathing, its awful threatening slowness, her fingertips, oval and circular underneath the beige overskin. The noise her transparent dress (golden) made on the paper blanket of my bed. The sad gush of her voice. She said to me, “Put out your wrist.”