Yarn (7 page)

She folded her arms. "Fill the air with your reasons."

"I remembered you," I said with a shrug. "I liked your kitting."

Her mouth was twisted to one side sourly. "You are not a scout, nor customer… I say you're not a tourist either."

I was much worse. I was a yarn ripping, paperless slubber who had run after some ghost-killed drap-de-Berry. "You told me to come by to learn about knitting." Her expression didn't change. She had laughed so easily at the knitting machine store.

"I do not recognize the slippery edge of your tongue." She narrowed her eyes. "Where are you from?"

While I tried to think of anything but the truth, I just came out with it. "The slubs."

Her eyes widened in horror. "Cut me," she muttered. "I thought I tasted the slur of a flat man… of a prisoner from the thirsty wormholes of the impoverished."

"I'm not a prisoner!" I told her. "I'm from the slubs."

"
Slubs
," she said, with a laugh. "A prosthetic word.
Prisoner
carries the moral and repentant weight of the dead lives lived. And yet, I understand your indignation as you surely can't be blamed for the devastation of that wide and sad monoculture." Pursing her mouth, she folded her arms. "And your presence… Why are you before me?"

"I'll do anything for food and a place to stay."

She scowled. "Python Duck Weapon requires no warriors of design, credit, or transaction."

My heart sank. She showed me to the front door. I muttered awkward thanks as I stepped out into the shopway. For a while I just stood thinking. I couldn't return to the slubber ghetto. I couldn't go to Withor. Casper Union was out. Could I live on cuisine court samples and sleep in some hallway? Pressing my thumb gently against the sharp of the yarn pull glued to my middle finger, I wondered if I could rip yarn and sell them to the t'ups in the hallways. A woman in a see-through gown and furry black mask strolled by.
Would you like me to steal a yarn for you?
I imagined myself saying. I knew that was foolish.

I started down the hallway looking for a cuisine court where I might get some samples. The only other thing that came to mind was to try to find my way back to the infofighter to get more coupons. I figured I could last for several days like this, but after that, I didn't know. Nearby, I found another information booth, but just stood near and watched the screens for anything about drap-de-Berry. All I saw were commercials for clothes, cosmetics, and costumes.

"Man of dirt!" Kira Shibui stopped and looked me over.

Had she heard about drap-de-Berry? Was she about to turn me in? I thought about running, but she didn't seem like she was about to accuse me of anything. She pushed my shoulder as if testing my weight and then poked at my bicep with an index finger.

"Python Duck Corporate requires a Friday Officer. It's not a prestigious title, but one of muscle and bone."

I was so happy, I laughed. "Thank you! I had a good feeling about you. And I was really impressed how you knit." Her expression was serious. I nodded like I might have to an M-Bunny rep and said, "I'm happy to help."

Now her expression turned dark. "
Help?"
She shook her head slowly. "We are in fashion battles for our lives and we will only survive with true and extreme
LoveEffort!
Nothing will be required but
everything
." She glanced up and down the hallway anxiously. Then she glared at my TearDrop suit with disgust. "We must shop immediately."

AN UNEATEN TWO-POUND FLUFFY BURGER AND AN UN-DRUNK KITTY PINK KOLA

How close had I just come to dying on the Loop? Once I blacked out near the top, the Chang-P's safety intervention logic had kept the car on the road. But if I had lost consciousness a few moments before and maybe twisted the wheel to one side as the g-forces began to pull, I might have flown off the up ramp, launched myself a mile up, and gotten my baked remains on all the major one hundred thousand feeds.

"You should pull over and rest," advised one of the Loop officials. "Get your neck and spine checked."

While it was probably a good idea to have a full work-up, I had a deadline and had no intention of stopping before I got to Ryder's office. But as I drove away my hands were vibrating slightly and my throat was dry. Worse, the movies of what might have happened were so bright and loud I found it impossible to concentrate. Just a few junctions later, I pulled into a rest stop. Beyond the station were two family restaurants. I had my choice of the saccharine pink and yellow Melancholy Mouse Burger or the saccharine yellow and pink Fluffy Fun Bunny. I chose the latter because it was closer. Before I went in, I stuffed my ears with grey cotton yarn to cut down on the clatter of bomb-blast happy melodies and shrill sing-alongs.

The place was enormous. A moving walkway whisked me half a mile away to the tables, where a jittery teen girl dressed in what looked like the offspring of a dandelion and a chimp stepped beside me and rattled off the specials.

"Just a regular burger," I told her, "and a normal drink."

She pouted at me. "Well, golly poo! Our superevil desert warlord, Mister Krunchy Smack Tart, will be so glad you're not treating yourself to one of his yummy chocolate and karabola face pies!"

"Good."

I found an empty table and chair and sat. Seconds later the girl returned.

"One mouth-tingling two-pound, Fluffy Bunny meat burger," said the same dandelion chimp girl. "And a frosty, frigid super-bladder Kitty Pink Kola." She plopped a pink plasticott box before me. Blindingly bright cartoon critters, slogans, and logos covered every inch. She leaned in and whispered. "I added six hand-carved Europa1 golden-toasted beef-flavored snap-fries for you to try for free! If you like them, let me know-I can get you half off a Fat Daddy Porker order." She giggled ferociously and was gone.

I used to feel it was critical that I get out of the studio more often, see and smell the world, taste its food, listen to its voice, music, and dreams, but in the last several years, whenever I ventured out, I usually ended up despairing the sheer ugliness of it all-the ever more intensive glare of the colors and the painful jangling of life's soundtrack. Most often I would retreat to my studio and head to my magazine humidifier for a copy of Pure H to cool my retina on the silky black-and-white photos and text.

It was times like that I was most reminded of my client, Michael Rivers. Of course he had been born in the epicenter of the world's noise and chromatic violence, and I had come from the opposite direction. For him the rejection of color was rebellion; for me it was more complicated. It was rejection of the brutality of city color, but it was also, in a way, an embrace of an abstracted version of the corn, of those days at the height of the pollen drop at the end of the summer, when the sun baked away color and left only light and shadow.

For years, I had been pure grey. I assiduously removed all colors from my work, even at the microscopic level. My yarns were finished in such a way never to refract a tiny rainbow. My weaves and knits were created so that moiré patterns would not create interference colors. To white fabrics I added oxygenated films to instantly ameliorate possible stains. To blacks, I endlessly checked that there were not hidden tints introduced in the twists of the yarns and the mathematical dance of twills.

After a decade of religious colorlessness, it was time for a change. Not just for myself but my clients. Fashion must change and even our anti-fashion had worn its jacket too long. After a week of sleepless nights, I chose another color: green-dark green-hunter and phthalocyanine green. And the achromatic dance I had been dancing came to an end. I was afraid of what my customers would think of that first dark green suit I crafted, and, indeed, when the fashion automaton came out into the studio wearing it that nervous day, my biggest buyer sat up, made a face and seemed about to protest. But a moment later, something changed in him, or more likely-I guessed-he understood that he too had evolved, and that his outside would now imitate, mirror, and amplify that.

My client had at last found the vector of his life and stepped into the role he had been raised for. While it might be argued that green was the wrong shade-it wasn't the color of his family company, it held no special history-maybe because it came to him without meaning, he was able to give it his own.

For me, of course, green had significance. But I hadn't chosen the greens of the fields and leaves I remembered-this green was dim, overcast. And as much as I liked the nebulous emeralds in my latest clothes, I wasn't quite sure if this new shade meant future or past, forward or withdrawal.

Focusing on the plasticott food box before me, I snapped open the top and removed the jewel-case-enclosed burger, the sculpted bear blaster drink cup pricked with five straws, and the gratis tray of fries, each individually wrapped and resting beside drops of several gourmet sauces. This was exactly the sort of chaff that Pheff lived on. Every other day I would find the disassembled boxes, cups, trays, and the scraps of peculiar, fashionable food in the office trash.

For a moment, I felt sorry for him. Although he was both talented and competent, I feared he lacked the sand and gravel needed for a life in fashion. His life, from what little I knew, was exactly like this meal: hyper-processed, sweet and smooth, but ultimately safe.

By now, my hands were no longer trembling and my heartbeat felt like it had finally slowed. But I just sat there staring forward the golden-orange of the drink cup seemed the color of the sun setting in the slubs.

I had been coming out of the corn syrup processing factory into the burnt orange of afternoon. Six feet ahead-in silhouette- stood a man. I didn't recognize him-I didn't even pay him any attention-but started toward the bus stop that would take me back to the house where I lived.

The man said, "Tane."

His voice wasn't the same-it had shrunk in depth and tenor- but it stopped me instantly. Gradually, as my eyes adjusted to the light, I saw his face. A dark bruise covered his right cheek. The left side of his mouth was covered with a bloody scab. Worse, his arms and what I could see of his neck through the tear of his B-shirt were covered with pinkish sores. I hadn't seen him for more than nine years. "Dad!"

"I found you." He sounded exhausted, and I got the feeling he had been searching for a long time.

"What happened?"

He shook his head slowly as if counting the abuses and tragedies.

"Were you in a fight?" I figured he had clashed with a group of

L. Segu men, but what really worried me was his rash. M-Bunny reps were always on the lookout. While some diseases could be cured with doses from the M-Bunny COM, if it were bad or unknown, the man would have to be recycled.

He looked me over and eked out a smile. "You're good."

"How'd you find me?" Before he answered-not that he seemed about to-I continued. "I never heard anything since you left that night. I was only at that house for another year before they moved me. I asked the reps and the man at the COM all the time, but no one heard anything."

He pulled himself straighter and looked me in the eyes. "I don't have much time." He scrunched his wrinkled mouth to one side as if in thought. "I'm dying."

My mouth was so dry, I couldn't swallow. I shook my head.

"I've got a day… I don't know… maybe two."

I forced a smile. "You're just hurt and… and… tired and probably hungry." As I tried to think of something more positive, my eyes lit on the sores that peeked out the neck of his shirt. It looked like his chest was covered.

"Go south to the slubs around Ros Begas."

"Ros
where
?" I was still trying to keep my tone light, but the intensity of his glare made me fearful. "Why? What's going on?"

"There's a Europa brandclan there called Bestke. Switch to them."

"Switch?" I knew of the concept, but had never met anyone who had actually changed. The rumor was that most L. Segu men wanted to switch to Bunny, but maybe that was just propaganda. And all I knew of Bestke was that it had something to do with potatoes. "Dad," I said quietly as several M-Bunny men walked past eyeing us suspiciously, "let's just get you a dose or something."

"Do as I say!"

"I will," I said. "But, please, let's get you something at the COM."

"Bestke," he repeated. "I've told them about you."

"Shh!" The idea that he had talked to another brandclan terrified me. I had no intentions of switching and didn't want my reps suspicious. "I'm sure there's some M-Bunny dose that will help you.

I know a guy at the COM. He's good. It's near the house."

"You have to go. Promise me you will."

I knew what happened. Dad was debranded! He had destroyed corn somewhere, he had not recycled, or maybe he had killed a rep! When a man did something against the corn or M-Bunny, he would not just be recycled, but his father and his sons would be taken away. That's why he wanted me to go. "Dad," I said quietly, "what'd you do? What happened? Did you do something to the crop?"

He sighed and stared down at his feet.

Disappointment and shame began to harden in my body like another skeleton. In that moment that dad had been debranded it felt worse than his death. "Let's get the bus. The COM's near my house. We can see what they say."

"Promise me."

I was sure I could see disgrace in his eyes. And then I noticed that the sores weren't on his face, neck, or hands. "How'd you get that… those… that stuff on your arms and chest?"

"Promise me!"

My frustration shattered like a pane of glass. "Nine years ago you just walked away! You turned down the path. And I don't know if you know it, but I followed you. As far as I could, anyway." I don't know if I wanted to surprise him or demonstrate my sorry longing. His mouth pinched. "Dad, I figured you were recycled."