Slant (34 page)

208 GREG BEAR

"Will you sign my pad and give me permission to put you under my protection?"

"Yes," Alice says, and signs the pad with a shaky hand.

"Your agency hasn't treated you very well, Alice. If you want to contact an outside advocate, let's do that now. Then you'll come with me."

Alice stands on shaky legs. "Minstrel is so sweet," she tells Alice, as if confiding a secret. "He has never been anything bur the sweetest friend. Roddy

killed him just because he was with me. Can you believe that?"

"Who's Roddy?" Mary asks.

In the PD car, Alice tells Mary what little she knows.

Mary listens closely as the car takes them to her home. None of it makes sense. This is the work of an amateur, a cruel and immensely powerful amateur,

but still ...

A child.

It's absurd, but at least now the problem is assuming a form, and it has a name.

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THE COOL, ALL-SEEING I

Alas! Money is not the root of all evil. Money is just a symbol. It is the greed for symbols that debases us; money buys other symbols that represent all our lacks and deficits, while not filling any real voids. We are encouraged to accept this exchange by the faux heroes and heroines on the vid and Yox, images of accomplishment as inhuman as any prosthetute, and not a whit as sympathetic.

They feel sawdust sadness, tinsel gladness.

Kiss of X, Alive Contains a Lie

Chloe has been moved to a recovery room (the chart on the door informs him; the doctor is not available), and has been talking with a specialty therapist and placed under constant monoamines level check. It is eleven in the morning and Jonathan has spent exactly two hours at the Nutrim tower workplace and one hour at home, trying to catch up on essentials; but he is still way behind. He can't sleep.

He enters Chloe's private room. She sits by the window, wearing a hospital gown and her own robe, sent to her by Penelope, and Yox glasses. Hospitals do not allow patients in Chloe's category to access fullband Yox.

The room is simple and attractive, soothing creams and browns and pale greens. It is a vast improvement over the blue-curtained emergency and diagnostic center.

"I'm here," Jonathan says. He does not come any closer: something about her position in the chair, the tension visible in her cheeks, the slow movement of her lips. "Hello, Chloe." Slowly, Chloe removes her glasses and swivels her chair to face him. She stares at him steadily.

"Did you know that neutral is neural with a T?" she asks. Then she looks away and smiles, shaking her head as if she has been all too clever. "Hello, Jonathan."

"Feeling better?"

"Much different, thank you." Her face wrinkles as if she is suppressing something. "I'm still angry, if that's what you mean. But better.., more sure of myself. Yes."

"Dr. Stringer tells me it might be some time before you're feeling okay."

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"Penelope and Hiram have been waiting to see you. They're at school now,

"I don't want to see them with you. They're my kids, I love them, but I don't want you here." Jonathan feels once more the sensation of being reduced to a husk. "Wasn't I clear enough last time?" she asks. With an effort, her head canted to one side, Chloe tries to control a flow of random words filling the back of her throat. Jonathan catches only ugly fragments, spat at him like little rocks: uck, shi, er, head, miss, dog, muh. She straightens her head and composes her features. "I am so... fucking angry and disappointed I can hardly see straight. It won't get any better." Again the canting of her head, the tension in her hands, the sounds. "I hate this," she says. "Leave me alone." Jonathan stares at her, silent. "It's over. I thought I told you that already." He jerks and twists his mouth as he looks to one side. "I don't believe it. I've made my life around you and the children." "Then you should have treated me with more respect. It's been years since I cared about you. Now I'm sick of the sight of you. You've never known how to treat me. I don't trust you. Thank you for coming, Jonathan. Now get the FUCK out of here." Her face peaks at full-blown rage as she spews that word. "This is just the illness," Jonathan says weakly. "This is the way I am. I've come to my senses. I'm hiring an advocate... as soon as this.., place gives me back my rights to take action. Nothing's going to change. Get the fuck out of here." Milder, used to it. But again the 4contortion, the fragments: Uh, Muh, Ick, Uck, Shi. God, nuh, am, shi. She turns away and puts the glasses back on. Her cheeks tense. You knew better than to come again, but you did. She told you this last time, in different words. He doesn't want these defenses, his intellect knows what this is all about and can handle it, thank you; she will get better. But instinct says no. He cannot cancel that impression. He turns and walks out of the room. The hospital feels cold and the walls echo and the air outside is so cold it seems to weaken him. To counter the cold, he banks the heat of his own anger. On the autobus, he places a message to Penelope's sig and tells her he's set the house to make dinner and he's going to be late. He has no idea where he will be then; perhaps at Marcus's house. He is on automatic. He is doing things without thinking, his limbs moved by deeper rhythms, and the rage and fear curled up inside are like a fire. The old Jonathan is crisp to the touch, ready to flake away.

/ SLANT 213

Marcus Reilly answers his own front door and reacts with surprise to Jonathan's appearance on his doorstep. "Why, Jonathan, I thought you were less than convinced." "I had to think about it," Jonathan says. "You're on compassionate leave, I understand," Marcus says as they step into the foyer. The house is huge, bigger than Jonathan had expected, and is situated on five acres of prime Medina waterfront overlooking Lake Washington. "Chloe's in the hospital," Jonathan says, and no more. Marcus probably knows all about it, knows all about everything. Jonathan does not want to talk about Chloe or indeed his family or any part of his messed-up life. "We're in the back study," Marcus says. "The center of our little recruiting group. We had work to do whether you showed up or not, but I'm glad you're here." "Wouldn't miss it," Jonathan says. Marcus confronts him in the hall by the massive living room. Jonathan stares in mingled shock and admiration at a wall frieze above the long white couch: a pack of man-sized prehistoric monsters, dinosaurs. Their black fossil bones poke from the wall as if it were a veil of fog, and the animals seem ready to leap on whomever is in the room. For a moment, he almost misses what Marcus is saying. "There's an edge in your voice, Jonathan." "Ah--it's been a rough night, Marcus." Marcus gestures to the back of the house. "Back in the study," he says. "They're very sensitive, like a pack of wolves. They can sense any kind of hesitance and believe me, they'll pounce on it." Jonathan nods solemnly and visualizes a pack of fully fleshed dinosaurs in the study, dressed in longsuits and smoking pipes, waiting for him. He doesn't care. Anything would be better than what he faces now. "We have a lot at stake here. Even though I've vouched for you, they're men of independent judgment." "All men?" Jonathan asks. "All men in this group," Marcus answers. "Good," Jonathan says. Marcus half turns to continue their walk and Jonathan touches his arm. "I'm sorry, Marcus. I'm together on this. It's the rest of my life that's a shambles..." "Well, maybe we can do something about that. Give a fellow some purpose.'' Jonathan smiles and hitches his shoulders forward, makes as if to roll up his sleeves. "Ready," he says. The walk seems to stretch forever, past room after room of cases packed with beautifully bound art books and rare literature, glass cabinets filled with ceramic figurines, high-back leather chairs; the carpet is white wool, not meta 214 GREG BEAR

bolic yet clean as can be and enormously expensive. The walls are period pale wood, ash or birch from the twentieth century, when the house was made. There is no vid or Yox in evidence; even Jonathan has allowed a vid room in their house.

"It's big," Jonathan says as they approach a large oaken door. Outside, sun has emerged again and yellow warmth glows through French doors in an exercise room to their right.

"Twelve thousand square feet. Built by one of the Medina software moguls in the late nineties. A fiowtech classic. He had the dinosaurs installed. They're

real fossils, not casts. Peculiar taste, but I like 'em."

"They're charming," Jonathan says.

Marcus opens the door. The room is blue with cigar and pipe smoke. It smells herbaceous, like a fire in an exotic jungle. Tobacco of this high quality is very expensive, however; Jonathan estimates there's about a thousand dollars' worth of smoke in the study. Jonathan does not smoke himself, though he has no objections to it. With cancer a worry of the past, a number of vices have resumed their place in upper-class American life.

Five men sit or stand in the haze. They stop talking and stare at Jonathan expectantly. The room is small, only twenty feet on a side, and filled with comfortably worn older couches and chairs. Here, scattered on the built-in bookshelves, is a less fancy selection of real books: tattered popular novels, and what used to be called hardbacks, in casual disarray. Jonathan's grandfather would have felt comfortable here.

Against one wall, an open shelf supports a collection of antique calculators, "laptop" computers less powerful than a modern dattoo, and early chemical film cameras, of the sort called autofocus.

The shortest in the is brown-skinned and about

man

room

Jonathan's

age.

He has a round, funny face with large staring eyes and a quick smile. He's

dressed in exercise togs; they all are.

Only two of them are currently smoking, though the ashtrays are filled with

the wasted long butts of cigars. RRziaL Jonathan thinks.

"So who's this, Marcus?" the short man asks. There are two men ten or

fifteen years older than Jonathan, of Marcus's generation, though with the

healthy, exercised, hard faces of the studiously well-off. The remaining two are

tall and serious and younger than Jonathan, out of their social depth but game

enough and smart enough. Four of the five are Caucasian. The short man is

probably East Indian.

"This is Jonathan," Marcus says. "He's our candidate for this week."

They all murmur greetings. Then the five sit. Jonathan and Marcus remain

standing.

"Jonathan, do you recognize any of these men?"

"No, sir," Jonathan says.

"And do you recognize Jonathan?"

/ SLANT 215

"You've been given Jonathan's CV in a cleansed form, without particulars. The group's personnel director has vetted the facts. Jonathan comes through with even more purity than most of us."

The others laugh. Then the faces get somber. This is not funny. Marcus pulls out a straight-backed wooden chair and Jonathan sits in it.

"Jonathan, we're all in deadly earnest here. I'm going to ask you some questions, and if you answer the way I expect you will, I'll ask you one final question. If you answer that with a yes, you're in and you can't ever leave...

Our group, I mean, not the house."

Nobody smiles this time.

"All right," Jonathan says. If somebody were to pull out a fiechette pistol and ask him if he wants three of them in his chest, right now, he might answer yes; he feels deeply sad and betrayed and so much love for Chloe that a chill ache fills his body and paralyzes half his judgment. He can't think of anybody in his family who would not be better off if he were removed from this life. This is the modern equivalent of trying out for the French Foreign Legion, he thinks, but then doubts the truth of it.

"Jonathan, is this world in good shape?"

Jonathan looks up over his shoulder at Marcus. Marcus points to the five: face them.

"No," he says decisively.

"Does this world meet the standards you would set for a lively, interesting

kind of place, a good place to live?"

"No," he says more softly.

"What would you say to the possibility of living in a better place?" "I'd like to know where it is." "Would you go there if you could?" "Yes," Jonathan says.

"We're making that world right now," Marcus says. "A place where pioneers and reasonable men can raise their families in peace and security, without facing the hideous, soul-destroying temptations of a society mad with its own lust."

Jonathan looks at the others nervously. The words soul-destroying and lust stick in his head.

"Would you work very hard, and make some substantial sacrifices, if you knew you could live in a better, moral, rational place?"

"Yes," Jonathan says in a whisper. A moral, rational place would not have allowed Chloe to damage herself; she would be his alone, and he would never have damaged her.

"I didn't hear that," one of the older men says.

"Yes," Jonathan speaks up, and clears his throat. The short darker man pours a glass of water from a pitcher and hands it to him.

"What if the means of getting there were.., troublesome. What if you had to leave much of what you cherish in this world behind, to get to this better

216 GREG BEAR

Jonathan feels like a fish on a griddle, all the juices broiled out of him. "I don't have much here," he murmurs. "This new world is not some airy-fairy dream," Marcus continues. "You won't get there on a magic bus or by stepping through some secret garden gate. We have to make this world ourselves. "All the men and women in this new world will have undergone rigorous filtering. They'll have proven themselves to be strong folks who know how to work hard and get along with others. The basic old schoolroom virtues. Does that describe you?" "If his CV is correct," the second older man says, "then we all believe that it does." Jonathan is relieved not to have to answer. He feels no inner confidence and does not know why the others should be confident of him. He keeps staring ahead, though not directly at any of the faces. They remain focused on him and his reactions. "You may have to sacrifice everything, even your own limited sense of what is right and wrong," Marcus says. Jonathan looks at Marcus, puzzled. "It's the old equation," Marcus says. "Usually formulated by madmen and tyrants with no moral sense. We have the moral sense to formulate the equation correctly." "All right," Jonathan acquiesces.