The Sheep Look Up (33 page)

Those stinking symbols were everywhere. They’d had three painted on the car, for instance, which Jeannie had had to clean off—trying not to damage the cellulose—wasting an hour or more on each occasion. If only, when it came to getting rid of one of the cars, they’d been able to keep the Stephenson ... But it was so much smaller, so much harder for him to get in and out of, and of course the trade-in value of an electric was far higher than that of any gas-driven car nowadays, and since they had to find the money for their new refrigerator ...

Damned silly not being able to get the old one repaired! But none of these kids nowadays would have anything to do with technical matters. Like it was black magic, and just touching it put you in the devil’s power. They’d been expecting to recruit kids quitting school this year as trainee fitters at Prosser Enterprises. And hadn’t hired half what they needed: maybe nine or ten, when they’d planned on thirty.

And now this trouble with the clogged filters. He was handing out two six-packs of the things as replacements under guarantee for every one sent to a new purchaser. Alan was talking about suing Mitsuyama, but that was talk and nothing more. You couldn’t touch a billion-dollar corporation like that one, foreign or domestic. Best would be if the same problem hit, say, Bamberley in California or some other, bigger franchise holder who’d be prepared to make the suit a joint one.

Jeannie wasn’t her usual talkative self today, but that was fine by him; he wasn’t in a chatty mood himself. Anyway, she needed to concentrate. There was a lot of traffic. They were headed for Towerhill, to have lunch with her family, so they were on the road which led to many things not only tourists but local people out for a ride wanted to see: the site of the avalanche, the scene of the sixty-three deaths at the hydroponics plant, the burned-out remains of the Trainite wat ...

Is it true the Syndicate was responsible, trying to kill these daily louder rumors about the quality of Puritan food? Have to be a real bastard of that kind to do what he did! It’s one thing to object to Trainite demonstrations and sabotage and all, something else to kill children asleep in their beds.

“Say, honey, look!” Jeannie exclaimed. “There’s a bird!”

But he was too slow, and missed it.

Half a mile out of the city she said, “Pete, what’s doing it?”

“What?”

She pointed to the sere yellow hillside they were passing. The plants on it were dusty. Shabby. Like untended house-plants in an overheated room.

“Well, pollution, I guess,” Pete said uncomfortably.

“Sure, I know. But what does that really mean?”

He forgot to answer. Around the next bend they came in sight of a highway patrol car drawn up on the hard shoulder. A couple of officers had got out and were walking up the slope to inspect something new, a monstrous skull and crossbones at least thirty feet overall, etched into the dry grass with some dark viscous liquid, maybe used lubricating oil. The driver still sitting in the car was an old acquaintance, so Pete called and waved, but the guy was yawning and didn’t notice.

Further on Jeannie said suddenly, “Honey!”

“Yes?”

“I ... Do you still think we ought to call him Franklin?”

That wasn’t what she’d been going to say; he was sure of that. Still, he said, “I like it. Or Mandy for a girl.”

“Yes, Mandy.”

And then in the same breath, in a rush, “Pete, I feel so dirty inside!”

“Baby, how do you mean?”

“Like—like all my bones need to be taken out and washed!”

“Now that’s foolish talk,” Pete said gently.

“No, I mean it,” she muttered. “I don’t have too much to do all day now, while you’re at work. Not having the garden any more, or a whole house to keep clean ... I can’t help thinking about it, honey, not when there’s a baby growing inside me!”

“The baby’s going to be okay,” Pete declared. “You couldn’t have a better guy than Doc McNeil to see you through.”

“Oh, sure, and I always do just like he tells me. Eat the right kind of food, drink canned water, never touch milk or butter ... But—Pete, what the hell kind of world are we going to bring the kid into?”

She snapped a harsh stare at him, lasting only a second, but long enough for him to recognize the real terror in her eyes.

“The doc says I probably won’t be able to feed him myself. Says practically no mothers can. Too much DDT in their milk!”

“Baby, all that shit was banned years ago!”

“So how many times did you book someone peddling it?”

Pete had no answer for that. Even during one year of service in the police he had helped to arrest five or six people home-brewing illegal chemicals: not just insecticides, but defoliants, too.

“And proper food costs so much, too,” Jeannie worried on, signaling right as she slowed for the Towerhill turn. “A dime here, a quarter there, without knowing it you’re spending twice as much as you expected. And it’s going to get worse. I was talking to Susie Chain the other day. Ran into her in Denver, shopping.”

“Ah-hah?” She was referring to the wife of his former sergeant at Towerhill.

“She has cousins in Idaho, she said, and they’ve told her they’re only going to bring in about a quarter of the potato crop this year. The rest’s been spoiled by
jigras.”

Pete whistled.

“They eat anything, she said. Corn, beets, squash ... Say, you seen the Trainite wat?” She pointed across the valley. Blurred by the haze, but visible in enough detail to be gruesome, the hollow shell of the wat lay like a rotted lobster. Small parties of sightseers were wandering around it, poking at the wreckage in search of souvenirs.

The local fire chief had said on TV how many warnings he’d issued about building in Fiberglas and scrap plastic. Worse than timber. Something about the poisonous fumes given off.

“Is that the way our kid’s going to go?” Jeannie said bitterly. “Burned alive like those three were?”

Pete reached over to pat her comfortingly on the knee. But she rushed on. “Think of all the things he’ll never be able to do, Pete! Swim in a river, or even row a boat on it—pick fruit right off the tree and eat it—take off his shoes to walk in wet grass, all squelchy and thick!”

“Oh, honey, you sound like Carl,” Pete chided.

“Why not?” She sniffed. “Carl’s the bright one in our family, always was. Wish he’d write and let me know how he is ... You know, I’d half like to catch this brucellosis that’s going around, so there wouldn’t have to be a baby.”

“Shit, you mustn’t say that!” Pete exclaimed in horror. “If we miss on this one, we may never—”

But at that point the road gave a shudder. It was as though every one of the hundreds of cars in sight simultaneously ran over a rock. He reached for the radio and switched it on, to find out whether the quake was going to be serious. It wasn’t. And in another few minutes they were at Jeannie’s mother’s home and they had to try and pretend that everything was fine, just fine.

FED UP

...
purchases of Nutripon to supplement welfare stocks, currently at their lowest level for years owing to the unforeseen impact of unemployment in resort areas deserted by tourists, where ordinarily casual jobs in hotels and restaurants absorb much surplus labor from June through September. Discounting fears expressed by black and poverty-group spokesmen, Secretary for Welfare Barney K. Deane pointed out that the Bamberley plant has been refitted to an extremely high standard, close to what you get in an operating theater, quote, unquote. Asked whether the plan would be extended later to relieve the impact of scarcity prices on underprivileged families, he said the question was actively under consideration but no decision had been reached. A call to ban exports of food to the United States was today issued by ...

BACK

Not much changed. Garbagecans fuller than ever and stinking. Buzzing flies. Kitty Walsh was pretty high. She stood for a while looking at the flies and wondering—not very seriously—where they’d come from. Imported, maybe? Last year, or the year before, or something, there hadn’t been any at all.

But finally she picked her way among the cans and went indoors, trying to take off her filtermask as she went. It got kind of entangled with her hair. She’d let it grow while she was away.

The air inside was full of fumes, too, but that was pot. The windows were taped to keep the stench out. It was very hot.

“Christ, it’s Kitty,” Hugh said, and rolled away from Carl. They were both naked. And she was nearly: just a dress, slit up the front, and sandals.

“Where you been, baby?” Carl demanded.

“Places.” She threw down the canvas airline bag which was all she’d brought with her and reached for the joint they were sharing.

“Met this cat when I got busted at the fireworks party,” she said after a while. “We went to Oregon. I didn’t know it was so good up there. We had like three days of blue sky. Maybe four.”

“No shit!” Carl said.

“No shit. Even found a lake we could swim in. And I got a tan, see?” She skinned her dress up under her armpits, and she was just a trifle brown.

After that there was silence for a while. It was the high. There was radio music coming soft from the back room, the gloryhole. She realized that finally and straightened her head, as far as she could. “Who’s in back?” she inquired, glancing around. “And—say! You put a padlock on that door!”

Hugh and Carl exchanged glances. But it was after all her apartment.

“Hector Bamberley,” Hugh said.

“What?”

“You didn’t hear about that deal?”

“Christ, of course I did. You mean ...” She almost rose to her feet, but fell back on the mattress-spread floor in a burst of helpless laughter.

“You mean right here? Like under the snouts of the pigs? Ah, shit! That’s fantastic!”

Carl sat up, linking his hands around his knees, and chuckled. Hugh, though, said, “Not so funny. His stinking father won’t play. And it’s getting to be a grind, keeping watch all the time. Mustn’t leave the pad empty, of course.
And
he’s sick.”

“Playing sick,” Carl grunted. “It was one of the first ideas he hit on, trying to make us bring in a doctor he can talk to. Now he’s back at the same game. It’s getting me down to throw away so much expensive food.”

“Huh?”

“All from Puritan. Ossie insisted. He’s masterminding the deal.”

Hugh exclaimed. “Say, isn’t it about time we fed him again?”

“Could be,” Carl nodded. “Kitty, any idea of the time?”

She shook her head. “Ossie?” she said. “You mean Austin? But you know he’s not for real, don’t you?”

“Oh, sure,” Hugh sighed. “Been thinking of giving the name up, too. Says he’s sick of waiting for the real one to come out of hiding and
do
something.”

“If he did,” Kitty said, “he’d raise the biggest army in history, just by snapping his fingers. Up in Oregon I saw—Hell, never mind. I’ll take the food in. Always wanted to meet a millionaire’s son. Where is it—in the icebox?”

“Sure, all ready on a tray. And when you come out, bang the door for us to unlock. One, one-two.” Carl demonstrated. “So we’ll know it’s you and not him.”

“Okay,” Kitty said, and took one more drag on the joint before going to the kitchen.

Hector was lying asleep, his back to the door. She made a space for the food tray among a mess of books and magazines, mainly porn—German and Danish, good-quality stuff. Then she went around the bed and found that he had his fly open and his hand clasped around his prick. Half-hidden under the pillow was another porn magazine, a lesbian one. On the floor, a soiled tissue. Wet. She dropped it into the chamber pot.

Well, so that was what a millionaire’s son looked like. Kind of ordinary.

But cute with it, she decided after a while. Handsome kid. Silly thin fuzz of beard showing on his cheeks. Hmm. Pussy cat.

Wake him?

Wait him out?

She sat down on the floor with her back to the wall and stared at him, not particularly thinking. She was adrift. She’d been floating already when she arrived, and that last extra charge from the joint Hugh and Carl were using had blown her way
way
up. Somehow it seemed like too much trouble to rouse him.

After a while, though, the sight of that open fly had its effect. She parted her legs and started fingering her crotch. It was good when she was as high as this, very slow, almost getting there and then not quite, but not getting lost either. Like climbing a snow-slope, slipping back a little at each step but never quite as far as where you’d been.

She almost failed to notice when his eyes opened and he realized she was in the room. She didn’t stop what she was doing when she did notice.

“Who are you?” he demanded in a thin voice.

She looked at his prick. It was filling out. He realized, and dragged a corner of the sheet over it. The bedding was all tangled.

“Kitty,” she said. “I guess it’s kind of boring for you in here, huh?”

“What?” Shakily, he was trying to sit up.

“I mean like is that all you got to pass the time?” Pointing with her unoccupied hand at the magazine poking out under the pillow.

He blinked at her several times, rapidly. Then he flushed bright pink.

“You’re cute,” she said. “Kind of good-looking, too. Say, I made myself pretty horny by now. You too?”

“What the hell’s keeping her?” Hugh said muzzily, a long while later.

“Probably screwing him,” Carl said indifferently. “Ever know Kitty to miss the chance? But what the hell? The poor kid deserves it. I mean like he’s been cooperative. It’s only his stinking old man who’s holding out.”

CHECK AND BALANCE

Petronella Page:
Friday again, world, the night we break the regular rules and go clear around the planet. Later, we’ll be talking to a senior officer from the famed Special Branch at Scotland Yard, London, about the new British computerized system for control of subversion, widely praised as among the most modern in the world, and then we’re going to Paris to talk about the weird weather they’re having there, with snow in August, yet Right now, though, we’re going to tackle a subject closer to home. Waiting in the Chicago studios of ABS is a noted educational psychologist with strong views on a matter that concerns everyone with kids—or who’s intending to have kids. He prefers to remain anonymous because his views are controversial, so we’re going to bend our own standing orders and allow him to be called Dr. Doe. Are you there—?