The Core of the Sun (6 page)

LOVE STORY

Excerpt from
Femigirl
National Publishing (1958)

“No, I could never consider Elanna as a spouse,” Torsti said in a firm voice, pulling Nanna into his manly embrace. Nanna trembled in the tight hold of his strong arms. “You're much nicer and prettier. And Elanna is . . . well, she's careless of her freshness.”

“No!” Nanna gasped. “Poor Elanna! I feel sorry for her. Every femiwoman should know how important freshness is.”

“I think I fell in love with you the moment I noticed how wonderful you smelled, Nanna,” Torsti said. He bent toward her and pressed his passionate, powerful lips on hers. Nanna shivered under the bliss of that kiss.

As they pulled away from each other for a moment, Torsti looked deep into Nanna's eyes. “Nanna, will you be my wife?”

“Gosh! Of course I will!” Nanna exclaimed, her voice trembling. “Oh, Torsti, I'm so happy! I have a feeling I have Fresh Scent to thank for this!”

Torsti smiled. “The most important thing is your sweet, humble nature—but I must admit that Fresh Scent may have had something to do with it!”

* NOTICE *

The sweet smile of a real eloi

will bring a husband pride and joy.

But to attract a handsome gent

you also need a nice Fresh Scent!

Be dainty-fresh when love is near

and a sweaty smell you need not fear.

Fresh Scent will make you clean and nice,

and at such an easy price!

So buy some Fresh Scent and don't tarry

if you ever wish to marry.

Fresh Scent

The First Choice in Femi-Freshness

Fresh Scent is a registered trademark of the State Cosmetics Corporation. Available from all well-stocked chemists.

VANNA/VERA

October 2016

I shout and rage at Jare. It gives me a moment's relief from the adrenaline.

Then I collapse and cry, and the black water in the Cellar splashes over my chilled feet. My knees. My thighs. My stomach. My heart.

Especially my heart, because the water seeps in from every side and chills me to the core.

I shout and rage at Jare.
Why don't you do something? Why don't you help me? Why don't you act? Why isn't anything happening? You could at least do something!

Even though I know that there's nothing he can do.

Manna. Manna. Manna.

If I could just
know
what happened to her!

Or if not, at least get a fix, from somewhere.

I shout and rage at Jare in sheer powerlessness.

I wish I could harness all my intelligence, all my cleverness, to find out what happened to Manna. Or to find some dope. But I live in a glass box.

The walls of the box are transparent, the world is almost within reach—I can almost touch it. The sun is shining in the sky, trees are swaying in the wind, the horizon glimmering in the distance, but when I try to take a step in any direction my head hits a glass wall. I can pound it, kick it, try to scream through it, but it doesn't budge, doesn't even tremble. It's there to protect you, the builder of the box says. You'll never be cold, never feel the wind, never wander out and get lost in the dangerous world. Plus you'll always be handy if I happen to need you.

And all I can do is press my nose and my hands against the smooth transparence until it hurts, all I can do is bang my fists against the immovable surface, tear my own nails out against the sheet of tepid ice, shout and rage and curse and shriek, cry and berate and rebuke the smothering hothouse I'm trapped in.

Some of the people who live in the glass box don't even notice it, can't even begin to imagine life outside it.

And then there is the Cellar, where just trying to keep my nose above the water takes so much energy that every little thing that comes along almost crushes me. If a spoon falls on the floor when I'm eating my oatmeal in the morning I burst into tears. If my mascara clumps again on my lower eyelashes I slam the brush on the counter. I'm jumpy and irritable; things my classmates do make me shudder, demands crowd in on me, and there's nothing I can do about it. I've been in eloi school for a year and I should be used to certain things, but they stretch my nerves to the breaking point.

Makeup, for one thing. Of course I understand that life is full of unpleasant things that you have to do again and again. You have to get food every day, even if you ate a huge meal the day before. That's understandable. Your body needs fuel continuously.

But the way an eloi has to darken her eyelashes every morning, cover her skin with colored cream, powder her nose and forehead all day so it doesn't shine, freshen her lipstick over and over, and then take it all off at night. It's like the myth of Sisyphus in Hades, rolling the rock up the hill just to watch it roll down again.

Just for fun I once calculated that by spending an hour every day on this stuff, in two years' time I would have wasted an entire month of my life.

If the point of it is to fool mascos, the logic of it falls apart. Of course the mascos know. Cosmetics are advertised in magazines, on the radio, on television, and mascos see those same ads. They know my eyelashes aren't really thick and black and my eyelids aren't naturally blue. They can see elois going into the restroom and coming out with redder lips; they can see the traces of lipstick on the edge of a drinking glass. The same goes for hair. Curling and fluffing and spraying.

Who do the elois think they're fooling? Each other?

Of course the state cosmetics industry makes a tidy profit from this farce, but I simply can't imagine that mascos really think elois always look the way they pretend to look. Even if elois are secretive about it, even if almost every outfit has a belt or a ruffle with a hidden pocket so you can keep your makeup on hand when you don't have a purse with you.

I've tried to think of makeup as a kind of evolutionary feature. Even if the deception is obvious, maybe mascos think that the more effort an eloi makes to attract them, the more eligible she is. Like those species of birds that demand elaborate mating rituals and display behaviors from prospective mates to show that they're committed. Or birds that are influenced in their choice of mate by gender markings like larger head crests or more colorful plumage, even though those traits have nothing to do with an individual's basic fitness—like whether he can find worms for the chicks.

I guess you can't compare humans to birds. Humans are rational beings. They're not just creatures without any sense of responsibility, ruled by drives and instincts, as our teachers at eloi school keep impressing upon us. Human beings are the pinnacle of creation, able to use rational, organized methods to place themselves outside nature, to control nature. But no sooner have they said that than they start invoking what is “natural,” and to whom, and how such and such is the “natural order” of things. And for some reason these definitions are almost always applied to elois.

MODERN DICTIONARY ENTRY

eusistocracy
— The social order of Finland, the “reign of health.” Derived from the Latin
eu
(good) and
sistere
(remain), literally “to remain in good condition.” See
eusistentialist
,
eusistence. Example:
“In a eusistocratic society the government's most important task is to promote the overall health and well-being of the citizens.”

R
EPORT

Social Studies 101
Vanna Neulapää 1B
October 15, 2016

Why Finland Is the Best Country in the World

We live in a eusistocracy. A eusistocracy is the only Society where all the people really have a good life. Eusistocracy is the system of Finnish Society. The highest governing body is the Health Authority. Eusistocracy means the people always knows what's best for them and how they should be if they want to live healthy and a long time. That's why it should be the Health Authority who tells us how to eat and do other stuff.

The opposite of Eusistocracy is Hedonist Democracy, and it has lots of things wrong with it. People choose to do things that aren't Good for them. They even choose to do things that are dangerous. For instance in Decadent States you can drink Alcohol and buy it from Alcohol stores even though it's poisson. And theres other poisson things like Caffeine and Nicotine. So if there's no Health Authority then people won't know how to take care of their health and then they get all kinda diseases and Decadents in their body and that's the greatest resource to the Society. If we don't take care of our Physical Body then the whole world will degenerate like a pencil that isn't sharpened and just makes a mess.

The most important thing for a person in a Eusistocracy is to keep useful to the Society and that's why Eusistocracy is the best way to live in the world and that's why Finland is the best place in the world to live.

Teacher's Notes:
Excellent content, but pay attention to your grammar. The comparison to a pencil sounds like something you might have heard from someone. Remember—a well-mannered eloi never presents another person's idea as her own. 8/10 points.

VANNA/VERA

October 2016

Every time I go out for a walk the realities of an eloi's life are breathing down my neck.

When I got home from school I washed my makeup off and brushed the hair spray out of my hair. Now if I want to go out I have to build the whole disguise again.

But I just can't bring myself to do it all. I make do with as little as I can—wrap my hair in a loose bun, put on just a little eyeliner and lipstick, leave my corset at home.

I don't remember ever having such a long dry spell.

Jare has good, reliable contacts. He's been skillful at locating shipments coming on the market, knows where to find sailors on freighters willing to take risks, people who are planning a trip abroad or foreigners visiting Finland for some reason, people with diplomatic immunity or enough connections in government that their bags aren't searched too thoroughly at customs. But some new kind of net has closed tight, some new step has been taken. The authorities are always learning more about users' behavior, the smuggling channels, the methods the mules use. It wasn't very long ago that you could supposedly depend on the customs officials not even knowing the difference between canned cherry tomatoes and whole cayenne peppers. Now it seems that nothing gets through their filter.

Jare heard a rumor that another mule was killed in a raid a week ago. The same seller who robbed me at the cemetery. I don't know if I should be afraid or glad.

I walk as quickly as I can in an eloi's shoes, trying to make my stride seem purposeful, to look as if I have some errand to run—some shopping to do—or a date. Stopping for even a moment would be a signal to any masco that I wanted company.

I cross Hämeenkatu into the park, and go around the block of wooden houses. Some of the oldest houses are scheduled to be torn down to make room for modern three-story cement buildings. When I get to the corner of Rongankatu I freeze.

A bulletin board.

A primitive means of communication but effective, perhaps for that very reason.

The wall of a building slated for demolition is covered with obscenity, typical pubescent masco drawings of genitalia, dirty words, and initials. Among the swamp of filth, you sometimes find messages that mean something quite different from what they seem to say.

My eyes immediately fix on one of the drawings. It's childish looking, a cartoonish scribble of a hedgehog wearing a hat, and underneath it says in crooked letters “Dandy” and “Oct. 18, 2016.”

I can see that it was drawn several days ago. The rain has smeared the lines a bit; the marks of the felt pen are slightly faded.

Today is the eighteenth.

There's no way for me to get in touch with Jare. He's working in the field somewhere outside town.

This is the first shipment I've heard of in a long, long time, and I can almost taste the satisfying heat in my mouth; my salivary glands activate at the mere thought of it.

I check how much money I have on me. A pretty paltry amount even if I wanted only a gram for myself, but maybe I can make a contact. Reserve a batch and swear that he'll get a good price for it.

But this isn't my turf. That scares me.

What if the seller is jumpy when I approach him and know the code? Whenever I'm around dealers Jare warns them well ahead of time that he has an eloi for an assistant.

But what could the guy do? Call for a policeman?

The thought almost makes me smile. And another thought. Maybe I can get a sample.

Even just a little one.

The Hedgehog refreshment bar is just a couple of blocks away.

A hedgehog.

Wearing a hat.

I step into the bar and glance around at the customers. Many of the mascos have their hats on a corner of the table, but only a few are sitting alone; the rest have eloi companions. I buy a cranberry juice and look around like I'm trying to find someplace to sit. Just then a couple of new masco customers come in, and one of the men in the bar starts to rub the brim of his hat, as if in thought.

Got it.

I walk up to his table. In a low, flirty voice I say, “Hi there. That's sure a nice hat you've got. You must be quite a
dandy
.” I breathe the last word in a sexy whisper.

The masco's eyes snap open. I'm startled by his reaction—almost too surprised, the smell of fear spitting into the air—but then I realize he's looking past me, over my shoulder, and a firm hand from behind me grabs my arm and moves me aside, sloshing my cranberry juice.

The masco with the hat has risen to a half-standing position and is looking around in a panic for an escape route, but there is none; the two mascos who've just come in are blocking his way. One of them takes a blue card out of his pocket and shoves it in front of his face.

The Authority.

The Authority.

My knees are knocking so hard that I collapse into a seat at the next table. One of the mascos takes out a pair of handcuffs; the other deigns to look at me and gives me a lecherous wink.

“Sorry, sweetheart. This fellow's off the market.”

When they've left, I sit for about a minute before my heartbeat settles down.

My thoughts are racing.

The seller must have thought—has to have thought—that my use of the password was pure coincidence. But he still might mention it when he's questioned, so maybe it's a good thing I wasn't wearing my normal makeup. They probably won't be able to connect me with the usual public me.

There is a risk, though. I can't just put it out of my mind, can't just forget.

The net is tightening.

I can't tell Jare about this.