Yarn (2 page)

He popped his magnitron on his eye and inspected my hand. "What's the purpose of this? I told you to stop that disgusting yarn snatching!"

"They aren't frayed anymore!"

He glared at me. "I really should have you sent back down to the slubs and get a slave who isn't a criminal nuisance." Then he eyed my fingers again. "You mean you actually cut a single yarn with those?"

"Yes."

In the hallway, he pointed to a t'up in a butterfly hat, vermillion clack shoes, and a long white crepe floor jacket.

I ripped a high-twist yarn and handed it over.

"Ha!" he said, as he examined it with his magnitron. "I should have guessed. Cheap irradiated cellulose!" He let the magnitron drop from his eye socket and caught it in his right palm. "And indeed… it is perfectly cut." Narrowing his eyes, he fiddled with the pin and bolt near his tie knot. "This is nothing! I could do it easily myself." He stared forward for a beat. "Quite easily. Cutting a single yarn from cloth and extracting it. It's nothing at all…"

Three days later, Withor directed me to sit in the guest chair across from his desk for the first time. "I mentioned that odd talent of yours to an associate," he began in that languid rhythm of his as he fiddled with the bondage of his necktie. "Well,
talent
is not the right word. What you have is a perversion of sensibilities."

From his desk he picked up a square of black cloth and kissed it to his lips. "I would have ignored him, but he is offering a substantial reward." He set the cloth down and glared at me. "I fully expect that you will fail. You might even be maimed or killed." He laughed dryly. "Such a tragedy that would be!" He leaned far back on his chair and spoke toward the ceiling. "Oh, I had such hopes for my life… for artistry and grandeur, but it has become overgrown with
deals
. And now another contemptible scheme has found me." Sitting up again, he finished, "But I would be a fool not to investigate the possible lucrative side of your repugnant little
ability
. In any case, this associate happens to have a wet spot for the repulsive and saccharine Tinyko 200. Namely he wants a bit of yarn from her little puff skirt."

It would have been impossible to escape Tinyko 200. As the Celebrity Executive Officer of Bias-Anderson-CommonwealthBurlington-D her image, sounds, and brands saturated the city in the form of engineered alloy, fan engines, pumps, diagnostics, extruders, fabricators, and a popular line of dresses, gloves, eyeglasses, and radio underwear. Tinyko herself was a tiny, young woman with wide blue eyes and a pert mouth. She was famous among the young Cute Bubble Active style girls, but since her recent birthday, had started venturing into the mature market, or as it was called, Wetting the Show.

So that I would blend in as an IMG collector, Withor bought me my first suit and tie. I remember staring into an audience of mirrors and marveling at how I looked. I was no longer a boy, a slubber, an indent worker, but a city man. To finish my costume, Withor also bought me a knit mask. "IMGs wear these silly cloaks, so you have to too."

The thing was like a super-fine stocking made to fit over the head and obscure and soften the features. With it on, I looked like a mannequin. With the necessary pass in hand, I headed to the banquet hall at the top of the city, and slowly worked my way toward the stage.

The others all held their photo-cams, sight-cannons, airtricity gauges, infra-and ultra-meters, waiting for a glimpse, a peek, for the chance to cut an image of Tinyko's tongue momentarily caught between the raspberry of her lips and her milk-glass teeth, her soft fuzzed cleavage as she leaned forward to laugh, her delicate and slender fingers frozen in an inappropriate pose seemingly about to caress the tiny spike of her left nipple through a silken skullcup of a bra.

Beside me in the crowd, another masked man said, "Last show, I got a shot of her crotch so tight you can smell the salt scrod of her cut." He smacked the black, dimpled barrel of his cam and laughed. I nodded as if in appreciation but soon slipped away. His passion seemed desperate and alien.

Moments later, atom lights flashed. Torrents of blue smoke shot from around the crystal stage and the thundering beat of Tinyko's newest song began to vibrate my gut. A phalanx of dancers and strippers ran out and genuflected as from the center came a roar of a fan-jet and there, in an elongated bubble of orange light, was Tinyko. She waved at the crowd, flashed her fluorides, and then opened her mouth wide and screeched her first note with an ultrasonic intensity. One of her slender fingers riffled through the chiffon at the front of her skirt and for a split second revealed the glistening ultra-white of her radio panties. Like piranha, the crowd pressed forward and spattered her face, chest, and crotch with ricocheting white, green, and pink flashes.

Going sideways, right shoulder first, I jockeyed through the men, pushing an elbow here, nudging against a moist twill there, and made my way toward the right side of the stage where the stairs were guarded by a dozen men who wielded smoking-hot scimitars. Between the men sat black guard dogs with long hypodermic teeth. According to the program, after her flash song, she would come down the stairs, let several fans feel her breasts, and auction off a thimble of her virgin love-juice. It was then that I had my best chance to get close enough to rip a yarn from the puff around her nineteen-inch waist.

As I got closer, it actually became easier to swim through the bodies because most of the others were pushing themselves under the lip of the clear stage and pointing their lenses up. And just as I reached the edge of the long glass stairwell, close enough to smell the rubber and asbestos of the guard's safety jackets and the red-hot of their curved blades, she started down.

Her steps were shaky and clumsy. And up close, I could see the depth and opaqueness of her theatrical make-up, her horsehair-thick lashes, and the way her lipstick was drawn beyond her natural lips. In person, she seemed small, artificial, and awkward.

As she came to the bottom of the steps, I squatted, and when she neared, reached between the legs of one of the guards toward her skirt. The infinity chiffon was the softest thing I had ever felt. It was like fresh corn silk and distant whispers and I touched it a split second longer than I might have just to experience its excruciatingly tender hand. I couldn't see my fingers in the haze of the fabric, but found one of the micro-denier yarns, cut it and yanked it. Next, I dropped to the floor and twisted away just as the thick arms of one of the guards twitched. He smashed his scimitar blade a foot deep into the carbon-cement floor right next to my ear.

Standing, I turned and pushed my way through the worshipping throng, my heart pounding.

SEATTLEHAMA: THE VOLCANO-POWERED SEX AND SHOPPING CAPITAL OF THE WORLD

I looked up at the city of Seattlehama every day of my nineteen years in the slubs. The mile-tall circle of buildings- constructed atop Mount Rainier-was often just barely visible in the ginger haze of the morning sunlight. During the days, as I worked in the corn, the towers split the yellowed sky and tore long holes in cloudbanks. And at night, I would often sneak out and stand in the dark of the fields and the dilapidated and unlit houses where slubbers slept dozens per room and watch as the sky faded to charcoal and purple and the curves and spikes of the towers gleamed like the frozen flames of an enormous rocket ship heading straight into the heavens.

Years later I would learn that the ring of skyscrapers of Seattlehama were not like the tall buildings of other cities. Instead of glass-covered boxes, these were built of woven ceramic. Up close they were covered with fabriclike patterns. Not only was each strong and flexible in ways that older buildings weren't, but the city was built around a mile-wide atrium with the circle of buildings all linked in such a way that supported and was supported by all the others. I've heard it said that half the city's towers could be removed in an instant and the rest would barely sway.

For my first six months inside Seattlehama working for Withor, I lived near the bottom, just a few floors above the simmering pools of the lava that was drawn from Mt. Rainier to power the city's massive turbines. The place was known as the slubber slum, where several hundred brandclanners lived in a dozen dim sleeping and eating cafés. Most of the men worked below with the toxic biofilms that held back the lava, replaced valves on the steam turbines, or fixed the pipes and made repairs on the dark undercarriage of the city. My cleaning and errand-running job with a textile jobber was unusual, and I never mentioned it to the men who returned from the day filthy and bleeding.

In many ways the ghetto was worse than the slubs. There was no view, no sky, no sweet scent of the ripening corn tassels in the fall. It was filthy and uncomfortable. The food was awful. And worst of all, the slubber transplants grew angry, fidgety, unsettled, and unpredictable.

"Watch it, soy boy!" someone would shout.

"You're a corn smut!" another would reply.

Each night it was always the corn-eaters versus the soybeans versus the potatoes, all crops of the major brandclans. Soon someone would throw a punch or a kick and a melee would rage until men in purple satin came in and beat everyone with their long electric sticks. And every few days someone died at their job, or was bashed over the head by the satins, or just didn't wake up. The next day a new man from below was brought up to fill his place.

But the instant I had handed over the pale, almost weightless and invisible yarn from the chiffon puff from Tinyko's skirt, everything changed for me.

"Excellent condition," said Withor as he examined it under his magnitron. He cackled brittlely. "I have three more orders for yarn plucked from the sad asses of our city's blessed corporate celebrities." He glared at me. "You will snatch them as quickly as possible."

While I thrilled at the idea of taking more yarn, I knew I was being used. "What do I get?"

"You're a slubber! You should be happy just to be in our glorious shopping city, away from the retched squalor of that corn all around."

I stared at him unhappily.

"What you do is trivial. Trivial and trifling. I could certainly do it all myself-and much better-if I so chose." His right hand fiddled with the pins on his black-and-white-striped tie. He flit his hand in the air. "Keep that suit and tie."

While I loved my first suit, I shook my head. "The yarns I take are worth more."

"You're a corn slubber! You're a fly! You're a lint caught in the ass crack of another lint! And you don't tell me what something is worth. You don't negotiate with me! You don't even beg. You take my orders and you carry them out and you are glad."

I worried that I had gone too far. In the beginning I had been impressed with Withor as I had with everything in the city. And while I now secretly hated him, what he said was true. Below my suit, minus my yarn ripping, I was a slubber. I was lucky to be away from the drudgery, the labor, and the politics of life in the corn.

"Fine!" he sighed. "I'll give you point one percent of net." From a drawer he pulled out a small rubbery purple card and tossed it at me. "And with that you can purchase all the trinkets and trash you can… well… you can
afford
. All of Seattlehama takes MasterCut."

At the end of the day, I was heading down the familiar stairs that led to the slubber ghetto when I stopped, and fished the card from my pocket. The purple surface was tacky and shiny, and if I tilted it back and forth, I could see a t'up inside it wearing a strange stringy shirt that cut lines across the neck, shoulders, and swollen chest. Below, I heard someone shout, "Soy boy, play with your tiny toy!"

Someone else yelled, "You're corn rot!"

Tucking the card into a pocket, I adjusted my lapels, tightened the knot in my tie, and turned to the city proper. I wasn't a slubber anymore. I had a fashion job collecting valuable yarn. And most of all I had a purple MasterCut!

The first thing I did was head to a store called The Highly Profitable Epicurean Frosting Franchise not far from Withor's office and order a Chocoa 99.71%. I had seen dozens of t'ups walking around gleefully stuffing themselves with the stuff. The sticky brown paste came piled high in a double-D bra cup and was served with a long ivory spoon. It was a dozen times sweeter than M-Bunny cola and like nothing I had eaten before. After just one spoonful, the sugar and butterfat coated my mouth. After three, a buzzing nervousness trembled my fingers and my stomach was filled with lead. I dumped the rest in a noisy and blinking entertrash basket.

Still, the joy of holding up my MasterCut-as I had seen Withor do when purchasing notions for the office-and having the t'up behind the crystal counter nod and then hand over the frosting confirmed everything I wanted that day.

Down another hallway I found the cloth stores. Inside it seemed a rainbow of everything I had ever wanted to see, touch, feel. I found black cloth so black it didn't seem to exist. I saw colors so bright they hurt my eyes. I saw wools, polys, cottons, rayotts, pricons, flaxes, silks, bamboos, and metals. I smelled cashmere, flax, ramie, abaca, basalt, and camel. I marveled at the crispness of the satellite silks; the springiness of the spandicotts, the softness of the French puff-flannels. I inhaled the starch in the taffeta. I rubbed crepe on crepe and enjoyed the sandy grit.

From there, I found a thread and yarn store and laughed out loud at the thousands of colors, sizes, twists, weights, sheens, lusters, plies. This was more than I had dreamed of. This was more than I had ever imagined. I read a sign that said: 46,231 more shades of red available by special order.

In another store I found fashion machines: acoustic jacquards, card punches, loom beams, air-jets, deweavers, flash seamers, water-knitters, flux steamers. Standing before a Control R&H projectile loom, I traced my eyes as yarn might travel along spool holders, through weft tensioners, across conveyor wedges, up and over shedding boxes, through eyeholes, down to spindles, the tooth blocks, guide scissors, and out of the heddles through the wormwheels.