He, She and It (53 page)

In his world, only poor women looked like Riva, and there were few enough of those. Cleaning robots did what such women would once have done for him and his colleagues. Old ladies still fitted costumes, carried out the delicate work done by hand—beading, embroidery—women who lived in the local equivalents of the Glop: the barrios, the slums, the Deek, for decayed quarter, the Casbah, Le Vieux Quartier. Here was somebody who looked as if she should sew fish skin into sheaths for Mala Tuni, at just enough an hour to keep her in vat food and a hook the size of a narrow bed and folding table. But Riva walked in like a general reviewing his best razors. She swaggered, she looked every man and woman straight on in the eyes.
Here Gadi and the others were on sufferance. Riva was the reason they had not been killed. She was their passport into the stronghold of Lazarus. Riva enjoyed some kind of local celebrity, of the sort Gadi was accustomed to wherever he went.

Gadi’s discomfiture soothed Shira a little. She stayed close to Yod on the floor, feeling his presence, silent, alert and always, always aware of her and for her. She slid her hand toward him. After an instant his hand covered hers lightly, its dry warmth radiating into her. Her hand was cold with nervousness and fatigue. She was swept by a wish to be alone with him. It was a desire not for sex, except for the comfort and the warmth of the embrace, but for their own intimacy. Of late, she had grown used to real conversation. After she had left college and the friendship of her roommates and colleagues, she had not lived a life examined with accomplices.

Since coming home, she had grown used to chewing over the details of actions and reactions, first with Malkah and lately also with Yod. He was fascinated by human interactions. Much he did not understand, but he brought his full intelligence to bear on the problem of comprehending motive and feeling. The result made for an interesting companion. One who was not judgmental. Who took her as the measure of a woman and of all good things.

“Notice that they eat vat food here,” Riva said meaningfully.

“Everybody in the Glop eats sludge. What’s to notice?” Gadi smiled winningly at Riva.

“Other gang headquarters serve real food. It’s one of their perks. Lazarus eats what everybody eats. That’s what’s to notice.” Riva did not bother smiling back. “And they don’t buy it from a multi.”

Leesha took them on a tour and with pride pointed out the chambers where the algae were grown and the factory where it was processed into soup, imitation chops and burgers, sweets. “So we can never be starved into submission,” Leesha explained.

Shira only nibbled on supper. Y-S was not into algae farming, so she knew little of the process by which two multis fed much of the world—poorly, carelessly, but at least with stuff that kept people alive and nourished. After the Famine, that seemed a great accomplishment. Starvation had killed so many in the decade of her birth that she had grown up into a world in which nobody, not even the multis, could take food for granted. So-called real food, food actually grown in soil or from the bodies of live animals, was precious and rare, a luxury
like gold and cashmere and paintings, just for the upper echelons. Vat food grown in vast algae factories was what most people lived on. It came with many labels and in a variety of colors and flavorings, but it all had a similar texture in the mouth. Shira always imagined she could taste the seaweed under the chemicals that gave it the name strawberry or chicken or refried beans. But food had ceased to be a private matter before she had been born. She had read about people who were passionate about their choice of one cuisine or type of nutrition over another. Now people ate what was available in their enclave or their barrio or their town. When it was real, you appreciated it; when it was vat grown, you shoveled it in. “It’s touching,” Gadi said, “how proud they are of such miserable things. Those little cubicles for families they showed us.”

“Those little rooms are heated and safe,” Riva said. “The children go to school here. The Coyotes are what we call a New Gang. They’re an autonomous political development just beginning to make connections.”

Lazarus came briskly in, followed by five lieutenants of varying colors and sizes, all taller than he was. “What do you make of me?” he asked Yod.

“In what sense?” Yod responded politely, rising.

“What am I?”

“Your guards are enhanced in various ways. You are not.”

“Just flesh,” Lazarus said bluntly, assuming a commanding position in dead center of the room. “Now, the redheaded popanook is enhanced more than any of my warriors. And you’re so enhanced you bum out my instruments. Gadi is only fancied up—no use to all that cutting and pasting. And that bat there”—he led with his chin toward Shira—“is like me, pretty much the way her mama made her. So we got two civvies and two warriors here, how I see it.”

“We come on a mission from our free town, Tikva, to see if we have goals in common and if we can work together, exchange information, anything that can help you and us to survive,” Shira said.

“I come from … farther away.” Nili rose gracefully to face Lazarus. “I can offer you nothing yet except my interest. If you’re attacked while I’m here, I’ll fight for you.”

“My old amie here, she say you come from the Black Zone.”

That was one of the common names for the interdicted zone, because on contemporary maps it was a uniform black, with no features shown at all.

“Maybe,” Nili said. She was not relaxed but poised on the
tips of her toes, as if she considered attack possible at any moment.

“I guess if that’s your hook, you got to be raw armored inside and out.”

Nili grinned at him. “But I come with good will and a keen curiosity about what you’re doing around here.”

“Surviving, just surviving. And looking to survive some more tomorrow.”

“More than that was going on downstairs,” Shira said.

“Surviving can be a tough business in the Glop. You wires in the towns, you got it easy. You’re mollies for the multis. So are we. All just movable slabs to them. But we do all the dirty grabs, while you do the clean ones.”

“We’ve lost seven people this year to direct attacks on our Base,” Shira said. “We had a firefight with Y-S outside the Cybernaut enclave.”

“We had a buzz of that. Rumor always stretches what it tells of. Says you slabbed nine of them, including four apes, two assassins and two high dukes.”

Gadi spoke up. “Pretty good eyes you got. You’re not leaning on rumor for that level of info.”

“We see everything their spy-eyes see. Film got to be processed. It’s automated, but always some rod got to touch it. Some lowlife rod tubed in and tubed out, not good enough to live in the enclave. Who comes home to the Glop.”

“We’re building our own net,” Riva said calmly. “Outside theirs, alongside theirs.”

“But the Net is public,” Shira said.

“So is ours,” Lazarus said. “Different publics.”

“What do you want?” Nili asked. “What are you trying to do?”

“Get some power into the Glop. Make my people less helpless. Give us the strength to take back a piece of the pie.” Lazarus took a step closer to Nili. “What are
you
looking for?”

“We, too, want to survive, under far more extreme conditions than you have here. We want to know if we can find allies. We have developed different technologies, and we’re interested in trades—people to people. Information. This alternate net sounds useful.”

“You two. Your town sent you. Why?”

“Because of our little war with Y-S, we’re looking for allies. We didn’t know about you until Nili told us. We volunteered to come.”

“And silver man, what do you want?”

“I’m along for the ride. The Glop is who my virons are made for. My grab is Uni-Par, but I also work for you. And besides …” Gadi gave Lazarus a sly grin. “Warrior woman is my duffel of the mo. I watch my jack.”

Shira glanced at Riva, who was presumably finding this out. How would she react? She did not appear to be listening. She was deep in a silent conversation with Leesha and a male warrior, communicating in a sign language. A language of the deaf or some variation?

“That’s one tall bat. She’s yours, you must be more rod than you look, duke.” Lazarus knocked his fist against Gadi’s upper arm.

Nili seemed to have no reaction at all. She was not looking at Gadi or at Riva but kept her gaze fixed on Lazarus. However, every time a warrior moved, she observed, sharply. She never relaxed vigilance. Lazarus, too, noticed this. He seemed to approve.

“I have this idea by ‘n’ by, but I got to line up the other noid papas all in a row, or it won’t work. I got the idea that instead of a little payoff from the multis for our workers, we offer them as a block. What one’s paid, the other gets the same nut. All or none.”

“You’re talking about a union,” Shira said.

“A what?” Lazarus looked at her blankly.

“It’s history. You’re talking about what was called a labor union.”

“Did they work?”

“For about a century. When the multis moved the jobs out of the country, they were easy to break. The top got fat. They didn’t like to organize in places like the Glop. But for a long time they did work. I can send you lots of information on them.” She wondered if Lazarus could read. Most kids in the Glop went to work at ten, never having learned to read or write. The only history they knew was picked up from the stimmies, so Robin Hood, Zowie the Flying Dog and Napoleon were equally historical and all simultaneous.

“Raw,” Lazarus said, looking her in the eyes with a sweet warm smile. The man had charisma. He could charm. “We’ll set up channels.” He nodded at Gadi. “Duke, tell the niños here about the time Uni-Par tried to jack prices on the Bloodsuckers.”

Gadi paused a moment, then said simply, “The Bloodsuckers sent their own assassins in and took out three of the top administrators.”

“See, we’re all as good at that game as the multis. We got assassins badder, faster and just as maxed. We got troops, we got assassins, but we hungry for the techie lore. We can maybe trade.”

When Lazarus left them, it was close to midnight, and everybody except Yod was exhausted. Riva left with Lazarus and his warriors as if she were part of his party; since they had arrived, she had not behaved as if she were with Shira or Nili. Riva was about her own business. She did not seem to mind their presence nor judge it particularly important to her. Shira felt she would never understand the woman who had given birth to her.

A boy carried in a pile of futons and sheets. They had sleeping bags in their packs, even Yod, who had objected but was overruled. He had to pretend to need sleep when they were under observation. Shira drew Nili aside. “Riva hardly spoke to you. Is she angry with you because you’re with Gadi?”

Nili’s brows rose in surprise, her lips parted slightly. “Was she angry? I didn’t think so.”

“I don’t understand how it is between you two.”

“It isn’t a romantic relationship, Shira. We’re on the same side. We trust each other.”

“Obviously she trusts you more than she trusts her own mother or me.”

“She felt you had to think she was dead to behave convincingly. You want her to be jealous of Gadi?” Nili smiled, shaking her head. She put her hand on Shira’s shoulder. “What nonsense! If she wanted me to go along with her now, I’d send him home and go.”

“Just like that? So you don’t care about him?”

“I care about all of us. But Riva is a prophet, a mountain, a hawk—and Gadi is a little warbler. Understand, I’m here for my people.”

“Then why not go with Riva anyhow?”

“She has her own business to attend to. In three months I go home with her or without her. She’ll come to our rendezvous then or she won’t. But whenever Riva comes, I drop everything and listen. Right now she wants nothing from us.”

“I’ll never understand her.”

The hand on her shoulder gave a firm squeeze and then rose. “Don’t give up, Shira. In time you will.”

Nili was assuming that Shira wanted to understand that strange spiky woman. “I’m shutting off the lights,” Shira announced. “Okay?” She crossed through the stuffy darkness to Yod and undressed.

“We can join the bags together. They’re the same kind. If you like.” He spoke in that controlled soft voice that would not carry.

She brought her mouth to his ear. “There’s no privacy. But we can talk.…”

Both sleeping bags were the town’s standard issue. They made them into one double bag and lay down on it together. It was far too warm to sleep inside. Shira pulled a sheet over them. It was dark but for the line of light around the door, the harsh cheap pinkish lighting of the Glop. “You’re disturbed about your mother,” Yod said softly.

She explained as best she could, aware that perhaps Yod was the only person with whom she could be completely honest about her petulance.

“Such relationships are foreign to me. But if Riva were not your mother, what would you think of her?”

“I suppose I’d admire her, but I wouldn’t much like her personally.”

“That seems to cover your feelings nicely. That she gave birth to you has little relevance in the present.”

“But I’m flesh of her flesh. How can my own mother be so alien?”

“How can you have a machine as a lover? How can your best friend be your grandmother? How can it be that we must steal your son, that your little son is a pawn in a vast corporate game to gain possession of me? How can an ill-assorted collection of misfits do battle with Y-S?”

“How can I not adore you when you’re so smart?” She hugged him against her. They fitted together perfectly. All the awkwardness was gone.

“How can I be smart about living? My experience is severely limited.”

“But you extrapolate well.” She laid her cheek against his. It was fortunate they had not bothered to give him a beard. That touch of realism had slipped both their minds, Malkah’s and Avram’s. Or perhaps it had been one more improvement of Malkah’s. She must get her hands on Malkah’s log. Her grandmother kept putting her off. When she got back, she would insist.

Little wet sounds were reaching them from the darkness. Gadi and Nili were making love. Shira felt like calling out in the dark to Gadi, Hey, she’d leave you in a minute if Riva wanted her to come along. It felt disrespectful that they were making love in front of her and Yod. She was sure that Gadi enjoyed
having her as audience. She could not bring herself to return the favor. It felt gross. “Yod, don’t watch. What shall we do about Ari?”