Clade (5 page)

“You gonna play or not?” he says.

“Sure.”

“What color do you want to be?”

“You pick first.”

“How about if you’re red?” he says, making the decision for her. “That way, it’ll match your lips.”

Add fashion-conscious to his repertoire. “Fine.”

She picks up the appropriate joystick, adopts a seriously competitive attitude. A lot of times, kids harboring pent-up anger go out of their way to run cars off the track at high speed, or crash them into one another by switching lanes. Then, she can ask them why they felt it was necessary to do that, why it made them feel good. In psychoanalysis, toys are the equivalent of mental can openers. On the surface, nothing is what it appears to be. Thus, the cars might metaphorically represent family members, friends, or even the multiple selves in a disassociative personality, which actually happened once. Not this time. After a couple of minutes, the time it takes to make three complete circuits of the track, Ibrahim sets his joystick down.

“Your turn to pick,” he says, affecting boredom, disinterest.

“We didn’t play that one very long,” Anthea tells him. “It’s still your turn. You should choose instead of me. To be fair.”

So they play a little hacky-sack, volleying a soft foam ball, purple, between them with only their feet and knees. “You win,” he says after a couple minutes, following an obvious miss on his part.

What he really wants to do, she realizes, is turn the tables. See what she’ll do so he can analyze her. “All right,” she tells him, as if an idea has suddenly occurred to her. “Let’s draw.”

“Draw?” Definitely not what he expected.

Anthea smiles. “You know. Like graffiti, or a tattune.”

She digs out a couple sketchpads and fiber-optic paintbrushes, sits cross-legged on the floor, and starts to draw a landscape. It takes Ibrahim a while to settle in—for several minutes, he just stares at the blank page—but eventually he picks up the brush and begins to doodle. Random squiggles and lines at first, as he gradually warms to the task. The next time she glances at him his eyes are pinched shut. It looks like he’s in excruciating pain. Constipated. She almost asks him what’s wrong, if he’s okay, but the fiber-optic tip of the brush is tracing out lines on the pad, spreading broad swaths of color. He’s drawing blind, either too afraid to look at the images taking shape in front of him or focused on some internal mindscape that’s only visible behind closed lids. It takes an effort not to stop what she’s doing and watch. She doesn’t want to interrupt him. Fortunately, every stroke is being recorded. If need be, she can go back later and reconstruct exactly how the picture was drawn.

He’s really getting into it, attacking the sketchpad with an intensity that borders on psychotic. The brush has become a weapon, stabbing and slicing the screen. Good thing it’s not a knife. No telling what he’d try to slash next.

Gashes open up on the sketchpad, suppurating wounds of red, green, and yellow. Bubbles of saliva fleck the corners of his mouth. His chest heaves, as if he’s suffocating. His fingers begin to tremble, then shake. An uncontrollable spasm races up his hand, travels along his arm and into his body, jolting him. He jerks once, stiffens, jerks again. The brush clatters to the floor.

The words
gran mal
condense in her mind. She lunges toward him on her knees. Afraid that he’ll hit his head, she gathers him into her arms and holds him tight to keep him from hurting himself and her. Still, his head bruises her chin, batters both collarbones.

Now what?

She can’t let go . . . can’t get help. All she can do is hold on for dear life and hope that she survives—that they both survive. There’s no retreat, no stepping back. They’re in this together, for the duration. Anthea hugs him tighter, the only protection there is for both of them. It feels like she’s in an earthquake. The shaking goes on and on. After what seems like an eternity the spasms finally subside, degenerate into sobs. First his, then hers.

“It’s okay,” she says, “it’s over. Everything’s going to be all right.” Reassuring herself as much as him, now that they’ve survived the cataclysm.

Unscathed? It’s too early to tell at this point.

She finds that she’s rocking him in her arms. Her ribs ache where they’ve been gouged by his elbows and the ax-blade-sharp edges of his shoulder blades. She kisses him lightly on the top of the head, presses one cheek against it. His tear-matted hair is bristly as a coconut’s. The taste of salt lies heavy on her lips.

Anthea sniffs, blinks to clear her vision. She glances at the sketchpad on the floor.

The rabbit hole has really taken an unexpected turn this time—deposited her in bizarre and disturbing territory. Like Alice, she’s trapped, has no clue how she’s going to find her way back home.

FIVE

Dinner with Anthea and Josué, who’s tagging along unexpectedly.

Instead of the Asian Rose, which serves Sri Lankan food—far too exotic for the taste buds of a nine-year-old—they end up going to the Pontiac Grill for tofu burgers, fries, and soyshakes. The Pontiac, a 1950s historical, has been around for over a century. It still has red-speckled linoleum floor tile, black Formica tables banded with polished chrome, a soda counter, and red vinyl barstools and seats. Originally the place was a car dealership, a showroom for dinosaur-powered automobiles. Consequently, it has big floor-to-ceiling windows that soak up glare.

The room is awash with early evening twilight and tourists. Mounted on the wall behind the soda counter, just above the service window to the kitchen, the detached grille of a Pontiac grins at them like the preserved jawbone of some Paleolithic shark exhumed from the fossilized seabed of Americana. Old photographs and press releases of classic Pontiac sedans decorate the walls. There’s a picture of a 1946 Silver Streak, several 1941 Torpedoes, a ’53 Dual Streak, and a Star Chief Catalina. Jukebox music plays in the background: Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, The Drifters, and Southern Culture on the Skids. A real trip down memory lane. The nice thing about a tourist trap like Santa Cruz is that most of the places aren’t heavily claded. Just about anyone can get into most of the shops, VRcades, and restaurants. A few exclusive art galleries and haut couture beach-apparel stores raise their noses to the riffraff. But for the most part, SC has retained its beatnik and counterculture roots. It’s a haven for the dispossessed, which is part of its charm.

“I’m really sorry,” Anthea whispers, all apologetic, when Josué trundles off to the restroom. “Malina called at the last minute. . . .”

“It’s okay,” Rigo says, only a little disappointed.

“No problem.” He’d been hoping to spend some quality time alone with Anthea. Just the two of them. But Rigo likes Josué well enough, so it really isn’t an issue. In addition, by not being pissed off, he’ll score major points with Anthea, who’s been a little cool tonight. Preoccupied, or withdrawn for some reason. Distracted.

Rigo sucks on the straw of his chocolate shake, cheeks hollowing. “Everything all right?” he says.

Anthea, slurping a cherry soda, looks up at him across the table. Nods. “How was your day?”

“We had a problem with one of the vats.” Rigo explains about the malfunctioning sensors and the datasquirt to Xengineering. How he had to recheck the sensors, confirm the data link.

“You sound tense,” Anthea says.

“Yeah. Well . . .” He offers a lame shrug, leaves out the part about the tear in the biosuit.

Anthea reaches across the tabletop, gives one of his hands a supportive squeeze with her twig-thin fingers. “I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”

“I hope so.” Rigo strokes her hand, tracing the bones beneath the skin, as if they can reveal all there is to know about her. It feels bad, not telling her everything. Wrong. He should be able to talk to her about anything, shouldn’t he? Even the delivery for Beto. But he holds back, too embarrassed. Doesn’t want to admit he might have fucked up. Doesn’t want her to think he’s a total dumbshit.

“What about your day?” he asks.

Anthea withdraws her hand, sits back, and sighs. “I got a new kid today. He’s super cute, but a mess. I mean, I could hardly get him to play. He was too grown-up—you know? Didn’t know how to have fun.”

Rigo relaxes. Tells himself this is what’s got her all out of sorts, the reason she’s distant. “How old is he?”

“Eight. A year younger than Josué. It’s sad.” A pained expression creases her face.

“Is he violent?” Rigo asks, glancing at the scratches on her arms. She’s been hurt more than once by gang kids who see her as an easy target. Someone to vent their anger or frustration on.

“No, nothing like that.” Anthea props her chin in the palms of her hands. “He’s just really scared, I think. Afraid to talk.”

Abused, Rigo thinks. These days, that goes without saying. “Any idea where he’s from?”

“No. The police picked him up at a pod station. I guess he’d been hanging there a while, trying to get somewhere.”

“Maybe you should buy him a ticket. See where he goes.”

Anthea shrugs, bony shoulders falling as she exhales. “I’ve got another session with him tomorrow. We’ll see how it goes.”

Anthea’s good at getting people to open up. It’s a gift. Complete strangers walk right up to her and spill their guts, bare their souls. Rigo feels that same tug, the urge to unburden himself in her presence.

Then Josué returns and it’s off to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk instead of a romantic walk along West Cliff under dust-blurred stars.

The Boardwalk is a long, wide strip of garishly lit concrete guarded by a seawall fifteen meters high. No beaches. Those are long gone, wiped out in the first temperature
entafada
of the Greenhouse Years. Global warming has raised the level of the oceans worldwide by about ten meters. Now waves crash against the barrier, sending an occasional rainlike spray of water over the top, onto the tourists waiting in line at the rides, fast-food stands, and carnival games. Half a kilometer to the north, the old pier is still visible at low tide. The restaurants and stores it once supported are long gone, battered into flotsam by waves. All that’s left are a few creosote-and tar-soaked timbers.

A lot of the original rides, like the Giant Dipper roller coaster, are museum pieces, way too antiquated and dangerous to actually ride. Mostly they’ve been preserved for atmosphere, a kind of time-warped nostalgia that includes cotton candy, hot dogs, and the sensuous aroma of buttered popcorn. Blinking neon strips decorate the undersides of the UV umbrella palms, turning them into kaleidoscopic parasols that pinwheel crazily in the offshore breeze.

“Can we go up?” Josué pleads, staring up at the flags stirring above the top of the barrier. “Please?”

Anthea glances at Rigo, who shrugs. Why not?

The seawall is wide enough on top to walk along. A pleasant stroll, hand-in-hand, behind the safety netting while Josué races ahead of them, bouncing from one souvenir booth to the next with the energy of a billiard ball. Breakers crash thunderously against the face of the wall.

Anthea leans into him, tentative. “Nice night.”

“Beautiful,” Rigo agrees. “Just like you,
mami
.”

Her smile, thin as the curve of the moon, slices through the misty gauze of ocean air. Neon light from the Boardwalk beads on the carbyne mesh like dew on spider silk, a glittering rainbow pattern of gemstones. The rhythmic pulse of the waves is seductive, gentle yet carnal in its slow ebbs and violent outbursts.

“It feels good,” Anthea says.

“So do you,
mi amor
.”

Rigo pulls her close, feels her gradually surrender to the embrace. First her arms, then her back and shoulders. They pause to stare at the scalloped surface of the water, moonlight on the half shell. Venus watches from near the horizon.

“Aunt Thea!” Josué shouts. “Spec that.” He points excitedly at something down on the Boardwalk, an old-fashioned carousel with plastic horses galloping in a circle, and then trots off.

Anthea disengages herself and they follow Josué onto a spiral walkway that corkscrews into the ground. Josué’s not interested in risking life and limb on any of the more stomach-wrenching, adrenaline-inducing rides. He seems content to observe from a safe distance. Even the Xtreme virtualities aren’t his cup of tea. No surfing on hundred-meter-high waves, or rock climbing on the vertical face of one of the kilometer-deep trenches on Mars. So they spend a lot of time exploring the Psience and Xperience exhibits on the Beach Flats, remote-linked to bitcams embedded in the pupils of exotic wildlife and offworld microbots.

In one VRcade they look through the eyes of a condor as it navigates thermals over the Andes; watch the infrared image of a desert mouse stalked by a rattlesnake; carry bits of food down the tunnels of a termite mound in Africa. In another VRcade they actually get to control an aquabot at the bottom of the Marianis Trench, and a swarm of aerobots floating in the clouds of Venus. Now that the bots have outlived their scientific usefulness, they make great toys.

The only bad part is the adware, bits of airborne viral code that stimulate specific synapses and neural responses. Rigo’s mouth waters with acute, debilitating cravings for such exotic culinary offerings as anchovy sorbet, pickled peanuts, and cotton-candy-dipped bananas. Exerting superhuman effort—the kind of self-denial exercised by celibate priests—he manages to resist. Anthea and Josué aren’t quite as strong-willed and, much to their gastrointestinal distress, end up succumbing. There’s also some irritating riboware floating around. At one point Josué ends up with a clown face, painted by tincture bacteria that blossom beneath his skin in different colors. Rigo gets a tattune on his left forearm, an animated pen-and-ink drawing of a politicorp security guard in fatigues who salutes him while a recruiting jingle streams through his IA. The tattune is clade-specific. For some reason it thinks he’s prime grunt material. Rigo feels Varda’s snigger as an electric tickle in his spine.

Very funny.

“This is the last VRcade,” Anthea warns Josué as he slips on the eyescreens for a telepresence unit that pilots a lunar rover across the Sea of Tranquillity.

“But, Aunt Thea—”

“No buts. It’s time we did something all of us can do. Together.”

Rigo helps Josué adjust the eyescreens. As he steps back into the crowd a man jostles him. Dumps a banana-kiwi-flavored snow cone down the front of his white shirt.

“Son of a bitch.” Rigo jumps away from the cold shock of shaved ice.

The man—a retired Eurocauc judging by his wooly vernacular and fondness for velvet—brushes at the yellow and green streaks of syrup that are bleeding into Rigo’s flimsy cotton gauze. “Sorry to bump into you like this.”

Not much of an apology. “Just get away from me.” Rigo knocks the Eurocauc’s hands aside.

Anthea rushes in to head off a confrontation. “It’s okay,” she states, looking at Rigo. Firm. “No big deal.”

Rigo gets the message, decides to back down. No sense causing an international incident. “Forget it.” He holds his wet shirt away from his skin. A couple of meters to the side of them, Josué is oblivious, ensconced behind the eyescreens.

“I have an extra T-shirt,” the man says. He fishes a travel-size sprayon out of a mesh pocket in his trousers and offers it to Anthea because Rigo has his hands full with his shirt, trying to keep it from sticking to his stomach.

Anthea reaches for the sprayon. “Thanks.”

“How’s Ibrahim?” the man asks, not quite relinquishing his grip on the ampoule.

She stops. Leans forward as if she’s misheard him amid the crazed ruckus of the VRcade. “Excuse me?”

“I want to help,” the man says.

“Who are you?”

“I’m with the ICLU.” He lets go of the sprayon, which drops to the ground when Anthea fails to take it.

“We don’t know any Ibrahim,” Rigo says, careful to annunciate. “You got the wrong people. Our kid is over there.” He motions to Josué and at the same time takes a casual glance around to see if anyone’s watching them. The last thing he needs is to be seen associating with an extremist human rights org.

Radical sympathizer. Conspiracy to subvert the status quo. That will look good on his upcoming performance review. Along with: questions authority, opposes the dominant paradigm, and doesn’t play well with others. The list goes on. Agitator. Trouble-maker. Civil disobedient . . .

“Don’t worry,” the man says, bending down to retrieve the sprayon. “I’m alone. No one’s watching and we can speak freely.” He stands, clutching the ampoule in one hand. “Trust me.”

Right, Rigo thinks. He squirms under the ghostly scrutiny of the tattune security guard. Wipes sweaty palms on his shirt, glad he’s got the snow cone stains to cover his act of nervousness.

“There’s nothing you can do for him,” Anthea whispers, barely audible over the din of white noise.

“I can protect him,” the man says. “Take him someplace safe.”

“That’s not what he needs. Right now, he could use some serious therapy and consistency in his life.”

“If you keep him, you’ll be putting him at risk.”

“He’s already at risk. Nothing you can do will change that. Not in the long run.”

“Can we at least talk to him? See what he wants?”

“Forget it.” Anthea turns toward Rigo. “Come on. We’re leaving.” She stomps off to get Josué.

The agent offers Rigo the ampoule, like it’s a business card. “If you change your mind—”

Rigo shakes his head—“If you bother her again, we’ll contact the police”—then hurries to catch up with Anthea. When he glances over his shoulder, the dude is gone, disappeared back into whatever hole he crawled out of.

“Let’s go see the Angel Tree,” Anthea says, suddenly. “I haven’t been there in years, not since I was a kid.” She seems anxious to put the conversation with the ICLU agent behind her. Clear her mental palate, and recapture the carefree mood of the first part of the evening.

Josué doesn’t bother to protest, evidence that even his level of tolerance has hit a wall. Overstimulation is great to a point, but it can be exhausting. While they pod a few kilometers into the coastal foothills, Anthea tells them the story.

Nearly a century earlier, just before the turn of the millennium, an angel appeared to a man splitting fire-wood. The apparition hovered mysteriously for a short time, bestowing a cryptic Mona Lisa smile, and then vanished. As soon as she was gone, the man had the urge to split another log. When he did, the wood inside bore the image of the angel and the man was cured of terminal cancer. Word of the miracle quickly spread, and in no time the split log, now part of a table constructed by the man to preserve the image, had been turned into a religious shrine. For years, sick people have been making pilgrimages to the Angel in the Tree to partake of her healing benediction.