Yarn (6 page)

Tossing the fabric samples aside, I turned on the driver's mirror and looked at myself. A wrinkle, which dipped slightly above my nose, scored my forehead. My eyebrows had recently begun to wane. The left, especially, seemed to have thinned from the depth of its youth. On my chin, I touched the single black hair that grew there, tugged at it, and pulled a tiny spike of skin taut. If I tugged another quarter of an inch, I would yank it out and a bead of blood would grow in its place.

Did I feel like a fake? I was indeed a successful and desired tailor. I had taught myself everything from yarn composition, fiber texturizing, backing, weaving and de-weaving, stitching, tailoring, pressing, and all the hundreds of skills I employed with unconscious dexterity. But somewhere else in me, beyond the polished palladium suit racks, the black nano-velvet shirt boxes, the walrus ivory collar stays, the rhino-leather soled shoes, I had never left the cornfields of my youth-still struggling to help the crop, honor M-Bunny, and be loyal to my reps.

The clan I once belonged to had grown stronger and larger. The slubs of my childhood had stretched from Wiskon to Seattlehama, but now reached even farther, pressing north and south. M-Bunny men even worked the land in Antarctica. And while M-Bunny once existed as parts of a larger patchwork with the soy, potato, and truck clans, now it had become a near monoculture up and down the continent.

The hormones previously sprayed onto our B-shirts and shorts were an abandoned practice and so, too, was the gentleness with which we treated one another. Gone was the reverence for corn above all. And instead of the strange loyalty-based mating system, women were allowed in special reproductive zones. The life I knew had vanished.

Despite the hardships-and there were many-my early years had been filled with blissful delusion. I believed that M-Bunny was going to save the world, that our subservience to the crop, our worshipping and genuflection before the ears, was making a difference-and that those greedy and selfish creatures who lived in the towers were ruining everything.

And then, when I was seventeen, I had an insight that changed everything. I realized just how awful M-Bunny's shirts were. Back then they were made of a stiff and scratchy non-woven corn fiber. They went "on sale" twice a year after the spring and fall harvests. It was one per man, which meant we wore the things for six months. We didn't care. We didn't know better. Besides, we were making a sacrifice; we were saving the planet.

I, like many, developed a rash from the front of the neck hole. Our armpits grew sore where the stiff fabric bunched up, and for those who had put on weight, the things didn't stretch gracefully over the belly, but tore in long frayed lines.

One night, I took off my B-shirt and laid it flat on the floor. The neck hole was cut at the top and the sleeves stuck out at ninety degrees, but as I studied my body and the structure of others, I understood that it didn't match. Our necks didn't come straight up out of the top of our shoulders, but angled forward. And, of course, our arms didn't stick straight out but hung at our sides.

In the beginning I was confused. I asked my rep why M-Bunny's shirts didn't fit.

"We don't ask questions," I was told.

I came to understand that M-Bunny's shirts weren't made for us. They were stamped out of the material without regard to our bodies and our movements. It was wrong. Worse, it seemed easy to fix. And when I told my rep, he forbade me from talking about B-shirts again.

"Another word, and you'll be recycled!"

I felt betrayed! And worse, it meant that if M-Bunny wasn't right about B-shirts, she might not be right about anything.

For weeks I tried not to think about it. I didn't speak to my rep or tell any of the men. I told myself it was my own problem, that I didn't understand something larger. And then, one evening when I had tugged the front of my shirt from the sore spot on my Adam's apple for the millionth time, I headed out into the dim of the cornfield outside the house. Using a bit of wire and some corn silk, I tacked down the front of the neck hole so that it fit. The difference was so wonderful and freeing, I spent the next several days giggling.

Soon other men in the house asked me about it and they wanted me to do the same for them. After I had done half the house, our rep noticed and called me aside.

"It's done with corn silk," I told him. "It's not against M-Bunny."

He told me to stop, but then two days later came back and had me fix his shirt. When he slipped it over his head, he felt the same instant relief.

Soon I was fixing the B-shirts of other reps. And even as I was noticed and being praised for helping M-Bunny, for adding to her splendor, assisting her men, down deep, I was the worst kind of disbeliever.

I woke from my daydream seconds before the Nug Yar exit. If I missed it, I wouldn't be able to turn around until the Greenland exchange, another fifteen minutes away. "Cut me!" I whacked down the emergency lever, slapped the off button that electrified the fast fibers, grasped the steering rods, and nosed the Chang-P down the ramp to the speed reduction Loop-the dreaded thing for which the highway had been named.

Only ten of these Loops still functioned. Improvements in road control and car navigation had made them nearly obsolete. It was only foolish drivers like myself, who actually controlled their cars, who ever needed to decelerate in the Ferris-wheel-shaped things. Basically, it was an enormous loop-the-loop of specialized elastometric and polarized road, which could slow a car to ramp speeds in less than a half-mile of space-that is, if the tremendous centrifugal forces didn't crush the vehicle or kill the driver.

As soon as I entered the Loop and pressed the brake, the road rose straight up into the sky. At first the momentum pulled me toward the windshield, but as the car began to climb, I was slammed back. Weights seemed stacked on me ten deep. I couldn't keep my eyes open. Blood pooled in my feet and ankles.

The dash was awash in warning lights, and every muscle in my body tensed as if to keep my skeleton from flying apart. I couldn't take in air. My lungs were flattened. I couldn't open my mouth.

The Earth spread out below like a celestial dish.

I'm not sure at what point I blacked out. Somewhere near the top, when the Chang was upside down, I imagined I was in a glass gazebo. Blaring light filled the place. Someone else was there, but in the glare I couldn't see. I reached out as if to shake hands, but the figure attacked. I saw my body hit, fall, and lay on the ground.

Next, I was sitting in a plush seat. A distant mechanical tone sounded. Before me was a blurry checkerboard of orange lights. Slowly the dash came into focus. The reset button for the emergency system was flashing desperately. Reaching a hand- with exactly the sense of detachment one might have operating a robotic arm-I weakly pressed it. The car went silent.

I had come to a stop at the end of an emergency ramp. The car was still on the road, but at a thirty-degree angle. I wasn't sure who I was. My sleeves were dark charcoal. I brought the right one closer to my face, and I could see that the weave was a low-twist, dual-satin that formed a satisfying pebbly texture on the surface. Something about it seemed familiar, but the idea was slippery.

Then it came to me: I was Tane Cedar. I was a tailor and fabric designer. I was driving my Chang-P to Nug Yar, to talk to a jobber about getting Xi yarn for Vada. I was on a dangerous expedition and needed to be extremely careful. I knew I had just been warned.

SEATTLEHAMA: WITH EXTREME LOVEEFFORT

I couldn't go back to Withor. I hadn't ripped the drap-de-Berry yarn, and no matter what I told him, I knew he wouldn't believe me. Worse, I worried that he had known the woman was going to be killed. Maybe some designer had wanted a yarn from a murdered woman in drap-de-Berry. Whatever Withor was up to, I wasn't going to play his slubber. But he still had my papers. Once I completed the rip, he'd said he would give them to me so that I could be free.

What was I supposed to do now? I couldn't report what happened to the satins. As a former slubber who didn't have his papers, I knew I wasn't supposed to be stealing yarns. I didn't think I was even supposed to be this high up in the city.

I didn't know where I was heading, only that I needed to get away. At the entervator port, my MasterCut was rejected.

"You'll have to see one of our credit and debit dungeon masters at the window," intoned the woman at the gate. I headed straight out of the port and threw the purple card into the first entertrash can I saw.

When I found showstairs, I started down. Ten flights later, in a large glassy atrium, I stopped dead. Straight ahead was Casper Union. Kira Shibui, the t'up with the beautiful eyes and impassioned speech, had mentioned it. Grateful for something even remotely familiar, I headed inside.

The space was large. Masked customers stood around tall plinths decorated with female mannequins in nothing but yellow skivvé. At the back, a band playing water-pipes and odd machines filled the air with an endless train of percussive thuds and raspy squelches. Saleswarriors in short white plasticott dresses were everywhere. Long, yellow, empty root-tubes hung from their crotches.

One sashayed toward me, all blue eyes and corn silk hair. Her mouth was tiny and as red as a wound. Her skin was as smooth as organza. Her tube swayed with each step.

"The properties of unison and union," she said, her expression firm and serious. "Your skin became
her
skin."

"Listen," I whispered, "I met Kira Shibui a couple of weeks ago…"

The woman's eyes-large before-grew huge as her mouth tightened to a knot. "How dare you come to our motherfloor and speak the identity of our enemy!" Turning, she spoke to two other warriors. "A traitor customer just uttered the wrinkled sound of
Python Duck Weapon
and that sad and starchless traitor, Kira Shibui." She then spat on the floor. "Even the shape of her name acidifies my tongue."

I didn't know what I'd done wrong. "I just wanted to ask a question. She told me her address. It was 609 something… I don't remember the building."

"Kira Shibui will soon be stuck upon the cold metal of my needles. And that will be her final residence!" The saleswarrior pulled out a pair of long, golden, connected knitting needles from a container at her waist.

"I didn't mean anything. Do you know where she is?"

Other saleswarriors gathered around us. One crossed her arms. "Leave now, sorry shopper, or Josephone will knit your intestines."

Josephone jabbed her needles toward my gut with an angry grunt. I had to jump back or she would have stabbed me. Her face was red, her eyes, furious. She was completely rot! Turning, I fled.

I wandered the hallways feeling suffocated by the city and its endless stores, shoppers, and crazy saleswarriors. I passed some shoe boutique and a woman in fluttering red stepped before me. "The destiny of your journey rests in the crotch of my desire."

Reversing my direction, I began to run. My head felt filled with rot. I passed a large group of shoppers all dressed like crying bears. Another group wore black clothes covered with worms.

Frantic to get away, I jogged down a seemingly endless series of staircases and came to a kiosk. The blonde smiled at me. "Hi. I'm your friendly, sultry infofighter, Sheila Top, with tourist, shopping, and fashion fornication information. May I help you in your reality, sir?"

"I'm looking for a woman," I said between breaths. "She's a knitter… Kira Shibui… She said something about 609… I don't remember the building."

"The fashion company you're looking for is Python Duck Weapon Men's Fantasy Skivvé," said the infofighter with a glaring smile. "It's in the lovely and practical Velour Building." She handed me a stack of cards. "Here's a complimentary Enterpass. Here's a complimentary city map… plus a coupon for a free Sweet and Unpleasant Throat Gusher from Melancholy Mouse Burger." She tilted her head to the side. "Seattlehama is the finest reality fantasy destination on the Rim. Have you gotten off in our city yet, sir?"

I said yes, thanked her, and turned.

From a nearby port, I headed back up a hundred floors in The Flying Drop, exited in the Velour, and soon found Python Duck Weapon. The store wasn't a tenth of the size of Casper Union and sat empty except for a single t'up woman who occasionally jangled the strings of a water-guitar. In the center sat a black table with three headless and armless mannequins in blue skivvé with long, narrow root tubes. Since no one was around and the musician didn't seem to be paying attention, I touched one. The fabric felt incredibly smooth and light.

I felt a presence and stood straight. Kira Shibui was three feet away, dressed in the same orange sailor suit. Around her waist, hanging from a belt with a bow, was a long, open pouch. In her right hand she held a pair of knitting needles at me.

I put up my hands. "We met before."

She peered at me for a long beat. "Ah, yes! I smell it now… the smoke of recollection." She tucked her needles into the pouch and then closed it. "You are the lost consumer from the shopping evening I acquired the Stanton-Bell." Her mouth quirked into a small smile. A scatter of freckles across her nose made me think of the beautiful dotted surface of a fried TakoDrop.

I pointed at the display skivvé. "You knit these?"

"On the legendary Stanton-Bell Tex-knitter 222," she intoned, turning toward the displayed skivvé. "The Stanton is an arrogant and glorious sister in the long war of our lives. A sweet sister, but one later tainted by the echo of spilled love." Whipping around, she glanced toward the front door. A second later, she turned toward the musician. "No percussion! In this crisis, I must hear every loathsome footfall!" She looked me up and down. "Come. We will talk in the safety of the design room."

She led me through a hidden door into a room piled with boxes, cloth, notions, and half a dozen complicated machines. It was silent, and the smell was of cloth and concentration.