Woman On The Edge Of Time (41 page)

“How’d you get in here anyhow? Nobody but contract girls and middle flacks stack in this complex. It’s strictly SG’ed.”

“SG’ed?”

“Segregated and guarded—are you cored? How did you get in here? Well?” She stomped to and fro on small—ridiculously small—feet. She looked as if any minute she might fall over through imbalance, the small feet and tiny ankles and wrists, the tiny waist, the small head with the tower of Pisa on top.

Somehow Connie had wound up in the wrong place. She had missed Mattapoisett and hit some other place in the future. “Maybe I am in the wrong place, but they let me in. See for yourself. So where am I?”

“They never let you in. Ha! Nobody would take you for a contracty. You’ve never even had your first grafts. If you ever had a beauty-op, you’ve reverted. They’d never leave you with that hair and that skin! You’re as dark … I mean I’d have been on that side myself. But of course I had a full series! When I was fifteen, I was selected, and I’m still on the full shots and re-ops.”

“Where am I, though? I’m not in Mattapoisett, obviously.”

“You dud, you’re in New York. Where else?”

“Where in New York?” She looked for a window, but there were none. “My name’s Connie. I’m sorry I got in here by mistake.”

“You bet you’re sorry. I’m contracted to a fourth-level SD.” She batted her eyelashes, fully an inch long, and waited for the effect of her statement. Her eyes had a tendency to droop, the lids pulling down under the weight. “This is 168th and General File, and this whole plex is reserved for contracties and middle flacks. There’s nobody here except medical, legal, security, and transport flacks of the middle level. Anyhow”—she tossed her head carefully, while the tower of hair trembled—“I’m Gildina 547-921-45-822-KBJ. You’d better give me an expla how you got in here or I’m about to beep.”

“Time traveling.” Connie smiled with sophistication. It was almost fun. She imagined how Luciente must have felt laying down the unbelievable truth to naïve ears. Now she was the visitor from elsewhere. Somehow talking with Gildina was a little like talking with Dolly on speed, and a little like conversation with a poodle. “There’s a project, you know.”

“Yeah?” Gildina was trying to decide whether she should pretend to know or not. “Cash knows that stuff—after all, he’s fourth level. What’s that got to do with slamming in to my parment?”

“All the kinks aren’t out. I’ve been in 1976. I was supposed to wind up back here, but not in your parment, believe me.”

“Ha! You’re a dud and you look old too—you must be twenty-five or six! You’re a fem too, even if you aren’t opped. They’d never pick you to time travel. They’d pick a Cybo or an Assassin!”

“I was born in 1938. You want to see my welfare ID?” Actually, of course, she didn’t have it; it was back in the hospital.

“What eye-dee?”

“What you show—a card so they know who you are.”

“But everybody’s implanted. What’s the good them knowing who, if they don’t know where and how?” Gildina threw herself on the bed. “Maybe too much Rapture. I really ride out on Rapture. Cash says I ream it too much. But it makes me float.”

“I’m no hallucination.” Connie felt like giggling. It was so weird to be reassuring somebody else. “Feel me!”

“Don’t be lesby. You got no contract on me.”

“What’s a contract?”

“Maybe you
are
from the ancient past. Are you quiring serious?”

She nodded, sitting carefully on a roundish object that appeared to be filled with air.

“All the flacks make contracts. Contract sex. It means you agree to put out for so long for so much. You know? Like I have a two-year contract. Some girls got only a one-nighter or monthly, that’s standard. You can be out on your ear at the end of a month with only a day’s notice. That’s no life. Course once in a while some real bulger, she ends up with a ten-year contract. I never met one, but I beared of them.”

“But suppose you get tired of him before?”

“Then he can sue. Besides, you can’t get out of a contract unless you’re bought out. Unless you get a lot saved, and who makes that much? Course if he breaks it, unless he can prove negligence or adultery, then you got him cold and he has to pay or at least settlement you. My contract isn’t just support either. I get enough to maintain my shots and re-ops and clothes and a little for all the Rapture and other risers I like to ream.”

“What happens when your contract runs out?”

Gildina shrugged nervously. “Sometimes they renew. The first time I was on a yearly I got renewed by that flack—he was a lower-level ground transport smasher. If you’re dropped, sometimes you got a prospect. Sometimes you get by on one-nights or weekends till you turn up a prospect. But it drains you. Always worrying about maybe you’ll end up in a knock-shop. Sometimes you can’t keep up maintaining, and then your chances of getting even a lower-level flack run down.”

“Can you get married?”

“This is. I mean you know the richies marry old-style. I heard they figure back generations. But this is how it is for us.”

“Suppose you have a baby?”

“If it’s in the contract. I never had a contract that called for a kid. Mostly the moms have them. You know, they’re cored to make babies all the time. Ugh, they’re so fat!”

“But suppose you wanted a kid.”

“What would I do with it? It couldn’t live here at Cash’s. He can’t stand noise. I can’t requisition housing. Who ever supposed on a contracty living alone?”

“What about your mother?”

“She’s gone to Geri. You know, she was over forty! I kept getting transies for a year maybe, but I haven’t had one in ages, so I suppose she’s ashed.”

“Ashed? She’s dead?”

Gildina blanched. “Watch your language! What are you talking about? I didn’t hear you. Remember this is my mother we’re supposing on.”

“But forty—isn’t that young?”

“She must’ve been forty-three. How long do you suppose to live? Only the richies live longer, it’s in their genes. Like they say, it’s all in the genes.”

“How long do the richies live?”

“Oh, maybe two hundred years. Depends on what they can afford—you know, the medicos, the organs. I’ve never actually met one, of course, I never been off the surface—”

“What do you mean, off the surface?”

“Upstairs! The space platforms. The richies don’t live down here. Too much … thickness. The air’s too thick, like they say. Not in here, of course. Middle-and upper-level flacks are all conditioned. But you should see where I was born! You’re born coughing and you pass off to Geri coughing, like they say. I always thought the sky was yellow till I came here. Now I know it’s a real pale gray-blue, just the prettiest color. I did my hair like that for a couple months after I came here, I was so silly … . Even if you look like a dud, you’re not too bad to talk to. It’s funny, talking to somebody during the day.”

“Don’t you ever go out? Or have friends over?”

“Out where? Cash seals me in most of the time, he’s a jealous slot. Part of being SD, I suppose. He don’t trust anyone. Besides, I have everything I need here. You can’t leave the plex, because of security. It wouldn’t be safe out there!”

“Not even to take a walk?”

“Walk?” Gildina looked embarrassed, as if she had said something about bathroom functions. “I’m middle level, you know! I suppose on duds walking. I wouldn’t remember, myself.”

“Duds are below lower-level flacks? Poor people?”

“It’s not like they’re people. They’re diseased, all of them, just walking organ banks, like Cash says, and even half the time the liver’s rotten. It isn’t like they have any use. I mean some are pithed for simple functions, but they live like animals out where it isn’t conditioned. Such a sight—if you could see far, it would stretch forever. It’s lucky you can’t see more than a few feet.”

“But you don’t have any women friends to visit? Like from apartment to apartment?”

“What for? I got everything I need. You want a Rapture? Or whatever you float on. Have a gape—I got a good selection.” She pointed to an automated pill dispenser beside the bed.

“Drugs?”

“Risers, soothers, sleepers, wakers, euphors, passion pills, the whole works. What’s your poison?”

“Nothing right now, thanks. I been on them kind of heavy lately.”

“Just so you don’t cross out, you know? Mixed reacts? You got to check the combos on the Digitab. So many fems cross out just because they don’t check it. Me, I almost CO’ed once when I was a kid. Takes just a minute to Digitab, right?”

“You don’t have to see the doctor for pills anymore, huh?”

“See
a doctor?” Again Gildina looked embarrassed. “I’m only middle level. I been to a medimated clinic, you know, like everybody else middle. You wait in line and then you talk with the computer. But see a doctor! Well, there’s service medicos here who repair the medimated clinics and the medimats. Supervise organ collection. Do the actual extractions and vacuum seal for transport upstairs. But I never actually
seen
a doctor. They’re high-level flacks and some of them even live upstairs. I see a lot about them on the HG, of course. Some of my favorite shows are about doctors. The fight against senility. Thrusting back the frontiers of life. All that stuff. But they’re too busy prolonging life to hang around down here, you know.”

“HG. Is that … holigraph?” They probably had the same thing they called holies in Mattapoisett. “Every so often you have a three-dimensional ritual or story?”

“It’s on twenty-four hours if you subscribe. But we have a Sense-all. See?” Gildina pointed to what Connie had thought was a fancy hair dryer suspended over the bed. “That’s much better. If it didn’t cost a heart and a kidney, I’d be in it all day. But Cash is at me already for the bill I stacked two months ago. It’s much realer. Cause you’re in it. Didn’t you ever try?”

“Never.”

“I’d vite you but Cash is at me already, like I said. It’s like dreaming, only you’re awake, and it’s real exciting. Like, look at the catalog.” Gildina passed her a well-thumbed Sense-all catalog for September. It was full of ads for drugs and cosmetics and gadgets, services and knockshops, body designers, protection devices. This could not exist simultaneously with Mattapoisett. Could not. Or else they were at war and she had ended up somehow in the enemy camp. Maybe that was the
war they were fighting. She forced herself to calm, using easercises Luciente had taught her, then she scanned the catalog.

“What’s the FD 20 stuff?”

“Time and price—what do you suppose on?”

She read:

“Men and women haven’t changed so much,” she said, thinking of Times Square. She was surprised by how cheerless that prospect seemed.

“So why go out?” Gildina went on, bouncing a little on her bed. “Unless some contracty lousy with credits is about to loan you her Sense-all. By the bim, the HG’s not bad. Lots of trans I watch.”

“Show me the rest of your apartment, okay?”

“The rest?” Gildina looked blank. “You mean the cleano?”

The bathroom was bigger than it would have been in her time, with more devices: devices for cleaning shoes and what was probably like dry cleaning. There was no tub, but a shower with many hard sprays of water that would hit different places on the body, and a meter to time the amount of water. The shower had a disinfectant light as well plus nozzles for shooting out hot air. The toilet was big and fancy but still a toilet. Over the washbowl hung a device for drying hair instantly. But the bathroom lacked a window.

Around the other side of the mirror along the bed, the walls were of nubbly stuff and the carpeting thick and green like imitation grass. Here she finally saw a window. They were at ground level, looking out on a lake with fancy skidboats scooting to and fro and lots of people in glowing metallic swimsuits sunbathing and climbing in and out of the water.

“There’s a lake in Manhattan now? I mean besides in Central Park?”

“What’s with you? You talk like a dud from the Rough-lands. Look, it’s a picture. We got five of them.” She pressed a switch and the scene changed to a mountain with skiers and superfast snowbuggies skimming across the snow and hovercraft hanging in the brilliant air. Gildina flicked the switch again and a bunch of men dressed in Roman tunics began chasing a lot of women around and pulling their clothes off. She flicked again: hand-to-hand sword combat in medieval costumes, with bloody hands flying off. The last scene was a herd of zebras grazing, while some lions stalked, but something was wrong and it was very speeded up and jerky. “That one’s broke.” She changed back to the lake.

“Can you make it so we can look out? I’d love to see what New York looks like now.”

“What’s with you? Out where?”

“Isn’t that a window?”

“What’s that?”

“So you can look out Glass.”

“Like a viewing port? There’s one in the lounge. And from the sun plaza you can look around. There’s glass on all sides. At first it made me terribly dizzy—I wanted to hold on. All that space. But I didn’t let on. I didn’t want them spitting about me being a dud and never saw the sun before. Of course I’d never been in the sun. It scared me but I just made out like I been in the sun every day. I had a tan from my last re-op, so how could they tell anyhow?”