left as punctually. The soft one who had the midnight-to-sixshift was lazy and late, and generally staggered in at twelve thirty, grumblingabout his tiredness. George knew how to deal with the soft ones, though -- hisfather had brought him up surrounded by them, so that he spoke without hisfather's thick accent, so that he never inadvertently crushed their soft handswhen he shook with them, so that he smiled good-naturedly and gave up arealistic facsimile of sympathy when they griped their perennial gripes.
His father! How wise the old man had been, and how proud, and how _stupid_.George shucked his uniform backstage and tossed it into a laundry hamper, notingwith dismay how brown the insides were, how much of himself had eroded awayduring his shift. He looked at his clever left thumb and his strong right thumb,and tasted their good, earthy tastes, and then put them away. He dressed himselfin the earth-coloured dungarees and workshirt that his own father had stolenfrom a laundry line when he left the ancestral home of George's people for thesociety of the soft ones.
He boarded a Cast Member tram that ran through the ultidors underneath PleasureIsland's midway, and stared aimlessly at nothing as the soft ones on the tramgabbled away, as the tram sped away to the Cast housing, and then it was justhim and the conductor, all the way to the end of the line, to the cottage heshared with his two brothers, Bill and Joe. The conductor wished him a goodnight when he debarked, and he shambled home.
Bill was already home, napping in the pile of blankets that all three brothersshared in the back room of the cottage. Joe wasn't home yet, even though hisshift finished earlier than theirs. He never came straight home; instead, hewandered backstage, watching the midway through the peepholes. Joe's Lead hadspoken to George about it, and George had spoken to Joe, but you couldn't tellJoe anything. George thought of how proud his father had been, having three sons-- three! George, the son of his strong right thumb, and Bill, the son of hisclever left thumb, and Joe. Joe, the son of his tongue, an old man's folly, thatleft him wordless for the remainder of his days. He hadn't needed words, though:his cracked and rheumy eyes had shone with pride every time they lit on Joe, andthe boy could do no wrong by him.
George busied himself with supper for his brothers. In the little wooded areabehind the cottage, he found good, clean earth with juicy roots in it. In thefreezer, he had a jar of elephant-dung sauce, spiced with the wrung-out sweat ofthe big top acrobats' leotards, which, even after reheating, still carried thetang of vitality. Preparing a good meal for his kind meant a balance of earthythings and living things, things to keep the hands supple and things to makethem strong, and so he brought in a chicken from the brothers' henhouse andcovered it in the sloppy green-brown sauce, feathers and all. Bill, being theclever one, woke when the smell of the sauce bubbling in the microwave reachedhim, and he wandered into the kitchen.
To an untutored eye, Bill and George were indistinguishable. Both of them big,even for their kind -- for their father had been an especially big specimenhimself -- whose faces were as expressive as sculptor's clay, whosechisel-shaped teeth were white and hard as rocks. When they were alone together,they went without clothing, as was the custom of their kind, and their bodiesbulged with baggy, loose muscle. They needed no clothing, for they lacked theshame of the soft ones, the small thumb between the legs. They had a morecivilised way of reproducing.
"Joe hasn't returned yet?" Bill asked his strong brother.
"Not yet," George told his clever brother.
"We eat, then. No sense in waiting for him. He knows the supper hour," Billsaid, and since he was the clever one, they ate.
#
Joe returned as the sun was rising, and burrowed in between his brothers ontheir nest of blankets. George flung one leg over his smallest brother, andsmelled the liquor on his breath in his sleep, and his dreams were tainted withthe stink of rotting grapes.
George was the first one awake, preparing the morning meal. A maggoty side ofbeef, ripe with the vitality of its parasites, and gravel. Joe came forbreakfast before Bill, as was his custom. Bill needed the sleep, to rest hiscleverness.
"God-_damn_, I am _hungry!_," Joe said loudly, without regard for his sleepingbrother.
"You missed dinner," George said.
"I had more important things to do," Joe said. "I was out with an Imagineer!"
George stared hard at him. "What did the Imagineer want? Is there trouble?"
Joe gave a deprecating laugh. "Why do you always think there's trouble? The guywanted to chat with me -- he likes me, wants to get to know me. His name isWoodrow, he's in charge of a whole operations division, and he was interested inwhat I thought of some of his plans." He stopped and waited for George to beimpressed.
George knew what the pause was for. "That's very good. You must be doing a goodjob for your Lead to mention you to him."
"That little prick? He hates my guts. Woodrow's building a special operationsunit out of lateral thinkers -- he wants new blood, creativity. He says I have aunique perspective."
"Did you talk to Orville?" Orville was the soft one who'd brought them fromtheir father's shack to the Island, and he was their mentor and advocate insideits Byzantine politics. Bill had confided to George that he suspected Orvillewas of a different species from the soft ones -- he certainly seemed to knowmore about George's kind than a soft one had any business knowing.
Joe tore a hunk from the carcass on the rickety kitchen table and stuffed itinto his mouth. Around it, he mumbled something that might have been yes andmight have been no. It was Joe's favorite stratagem, and it was responsible forthe round belly that bulged out beneath his skinny chest.
Joe tore away more than half of the meat and made for the door. "Woodrow wantsto meet with me again this morning. Don't wait up for me tonight!" He left thecottage and set off toward the tram-stop.
Bill rolled over on his bedding and said, "I don't like this at all."
George kept quiet. Bill's voice surprised him, but it shouldn't have. Bill wasclever enough to lie still and feign sleep so that he could overhear Joe'sconversations, where George would have just sat up and started talking.
"Orville should know about this, but I can't tell if it would make him angry. Ifit made him angry and he punished Joe, it would be our fault for telling him."
"Then we won't tell him," George said.
Bill held up his hand. "But if we don't tell him and he finds out on his own, hemay be angry with us."
"Then we should tell him," George said.
"But Joe and this Woodrow may not get along after all, and if that happens, thewhole thing will end on its own."
"Then we won't tell him," George said.
"But if they do get along, then they may do something that would make Orvilleangry," Bill looked expectantly at George.
"Then we should tell him?" George said, uncertainly.
"I don't know," Bill said. "I haven't decided."
George knew that this meant that Bill would have to think on it, and so he lefthim. He had to catch the tram to make it to his shift, anyway.
#
The soft one with the six-to-noon shift left as soon as George arrived, withouta word. George was used to soft ones not having anything to say to him, andpreferred it that way. He was better off than Bill -- soft ones always wanted totalk to Bill, and he hated it, since they never had anything to say that Billwanted to know. The weather needed no discussion, Bill said. And as for thecomplaints about the shift's Lead, well, one soft one was just about the same asany other, and Orville had told them that at the end of the day, they worked forhim, not for any Lead.
Joe liked talking to the soft ones. Joe liked to talk, period. He told the softones lies about their childhood in the shack with their father, and told themabout how his brothers tormented, and even talked about the weather. When he gotback home, he told his brothers all over again, everything he'd told the softones.
George had memorised the SOP manual when they came to the Island, five yearsbefore. It clearly said that the floor of the booth would be disinfected everythree
hours, and the surfaces polished clean, and the pots and machinesrefilled. The soft one with the six-to-noon shift never did any of these things,which could get him disciplined by their Lead, but George didn't complain. Hejust wiped and disinfected and re-stocked when he arrived, even though he had tobe extra careful with the water, so that he didn't wash any of himself away.
Boys ran up and down the midway, baking in the mid-day sun. They reminded Georgeof the boys he'd gone to school with, after the social worker had come to hisfather's shack. They'd teased him to begin with, but he'd just stood with hishands at his sides until they stopped. Every time he started a new grade, or anew kid came to the school, it was the same: they'd tease him, or hit him,
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