Yarn (28 page)

Vada pushed herself up slowly. "I'm tired."

After she had gone, I lay there alone, a tingling fury racing up and down my body like charged electrons. I had to fight hard not to punch, kick, or scream.

Then the floor shifted. I turned, expecting Vada, but her brother Xavier lay beside me. I had barely even seen him on the ship over the past several months. He was always on the bridge. I glanced at the clump of chewed gum that had once been his ear.

He stared forward at the landscape below. "We're both a little bit doomed."

I didn't want his pity, or worse, to think that she had sent him to deliver the final blow, to tell me how impossible and tragic and different they were.

"We've both been hurt," he added. "In different ways." He stopped and shook his head. "Listen, all I know is that she thinks you're special. If she could… I think she might have run off with you." With that, he stood, and headed up the stairs to the bridge.

I know he had meant to comfort me, but his assurance only made it worse. It was close, he had meant. Just not close enough.

I didn't go to my room that night, but stayed there in the observation portal. Around dawn I fell asleep. When I woke in the afternoon, I used the toilet, ate, and then returned to the portal, where I spent the rest of the day staring blindly ahead as the earth flowed past.

I didn't see Vada.

Finally, we stopped in some slub place that Marti called Union. The tenting, the stage, and much of the gear was unloaded to lighten the ship. The crew was pared down with Gregg and Haas staying behind. At dusk, we turned north, and it wasn't long before I could see the top edge of the glowing towers of Seattlehama in the distance. I had imagined that I would feel some sense of homecoming and relief, but it was the opposite. I felt dread.

Through the eyescopes, I located Bunné's building, the Zea, and could see the lights of the open-air amphitheater on top, above her boutique. They were preparing for the show Vada had mentioned:
The Suicital
. I lowered the goggles. The stitches on that dress in Bunné's Boutique had been exactly seven hundred warp yarns apart. Standing, I hurried down the cloth corridor to the costume storeroom. Most of Vada's costumes and notions had been unloaded in Union, but a few remained, and after scrounging around in the darkness, I found the blouse I was looking for-a simple off-white number with black pick stitching. I checked the material: two-up twill with a high-twist blend warp and a low-twist weft. I guessed it was satellite silk as the hand was soft, supple, and coolly logical. With my thumb, I felt the pick-stitches and started counting the yarns.

A moment later, I tossed the blouse aside and made my way to Vada's room.

"I understand something."

Vada turned slowly from her notebook, her face grave. "Button the door."

I stepped in and closed the cloth behind me. "You're sisters."

ABOVE SEATTLEHAMA

Turbulence rumpled the walls and floors. I touched the twill beside me and waited. Vada closed her book and put it away. I could see her lick her lips and heard the tiny click of saliva. She didn't seem surprised, just resolved to provide the facts that were my reward. "We are sisters. Although, originally
she
was a boy. Her name was Qem." She snorted. "I don't know where that name came from. Maybe that's the reason… I mean… maybe that's when the problems began."

"You said you had a baby brother who died."

"I… well, that was a lie. That was Bunné. And my
brother
did die. She changed back then. And I don't mean her gender operation. One day I saw something in his eyes that scared me. I tried to help him. We snuck away to Umsterdam. I thought that surgery would help. We both thought that would fix her. But it didn't. I remember sitting next to her in recovery and her staring up at me with this awful sadness. It was like both of us knew we were fighting something else." She was silent for a long time. "Something inside her."

"You never told me much about your parents."

"That was another lie. We didn't have parents. The Toue custom is for the group to raise the young."

"But you loved Bunné," I said.

Vada nodded, and for a moment seemed to be lost in thought. "I still do… in a way." Her voice wavered. "I love who she
might
have been. Not who she became and who she is. These days, honestly, I can't be proud of even the good things." She sat up.

"I just keep counting my regrets like fibers in a yarn."

"I don't understand what happened."

"No one does. I've gone over our childhoods a million times. Everything seemed normal. We had our looms, our secrets, our time scavenging. She was so happy in the beginning. You know what I've come to think? Some illness came over her. Some personality disease… some narcissism ailment… I don't even know." She slumped forward. "Mostly I blame myself. Maybe I could have done something else… something more."

I sat on her bed. "So you're trying to kill your sister?"

"You have to understand that we are part of a special generation. We're different than most Toue. We were bred to save the world." She laughed as if it were now just a joke. "We're smarter and we're stronger. We're more talented. We smell like shit petunias." She paused and stared at me for a long moment, as if trying to fix me in her memory. With a shrug she began again. "At least that's what we were told. So we set out to change the world. And then we were going to do the same in Seattlehama. Only in the end, once Bunné had assassinated the bastards, she decided
she
was going to run it. She made herself into the celeb… you know that part of it… and over time the city seemed to adopt her as some lost queen." Vada's laugh was laced with bitterness.

"When did she start M-Bunny?"

"M-Bunny." She paused. "That was one of the first things she did. She overhauled the prisons. She was going to
save the men
." Vada shook her head slowly and then focused on me. "You have to understand that before you… I mean years ago… the slubs were terrible in other ways. They were violent wreckages. Bands of gangs roamed around… killing… beating… you heard stories that there were ten million rapes a night out there in the darkness." Vada put her elbows on her knees. "Bunné neutered them all. She gathered them up, clothed them with her shirts. She made them into sexless simpletons.
They're happier
, she said.
We've done a good thing for them
. Maybe they were." Vada gazed at me sadly. "Anyway, it was a huge success. The city wasn't being attacked; the tourists came. That's how it all started. And she was just a kid then. She was nineteen."

"She's the one in the posters." In the COM in M-Bunny buses and on the back of the fry trucks were posters of a smiling young woman, maybe fourteen, with apple cheeks and clear eyes. In most of them she is holding a basket of corncobs. In others, she stands amid rows of corn with sunshine blessing her hair.

"I know!" Vada said, as if I had said it a hundred times before. "Those paintings… I did those."

I thought of all the years I had stared at those posters in awe. "You painted those?"

"I tried to stay close. I tried to steer her as best I could. I painted her how I wanted her to be." She rolled her eyes. "I've never seen any royalties on those, either!"

"I remember staring at those posters at the COM. I didn't even know what she was, but I grew up loving her."

"I know," she said softly. "I know."

"She started with M-Bunny and built her empire from there?"

"She invented those B-shirts with the hormones in them. From there, she just kept going."

"Why are those so awful? That's the one thing I just can't fathom. Why isn't the neck hole even right?"

Vada stared at me for a beat and then laughed. "You are crazy!"

"I hate those shirts!"

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't laugh. I've never worn one very long." Vada shrugged. "What else can I say? She can sing. She can dance. She knows how to tell a story. It doesn't hurt that she's gorgeous. She's a brilliant researcher. I've told you all the things she's invented. As soon as she had her gender, she never looked back. And there were people begging to help her."

Through the front of the ship, I could see the glowing towers straight ahead. They were only a few miles away. "You sound almost jealous."

"No…" she said with an exhale. "It's not jealousy. I'm in awe. Or I was. All that she's done is amazing. It's just that now there's no one to tell her to stop."

"Except her older sister."

Vada snorted bitterly. "She'd cut me if I did."

From behind a dozen layers of oilcloth and organza, I heard Xavier slur from his wounded mouth, "Begin city ascent!" The nose of the ship began to rise, and I could feel the strained harmonies of the powder motors.

Vada's voice sounded a thousand miles away. "Let's get you ready."

As I re-dressed in black super-stain, fingerless gloves, and Jacque 24 chameleon sneaks, and applied my yarn pulls, the Pacifica began its long climb to the top of the city making a slow corkscrew around the buildings. Once I was ready, Vada and I slipped into the forward observation port. The height of the city, the dazzling kaleidoscope of colors, the humming spires, towers, and constellations of color and geometry seemed to so fill our senses that for several minutes we didn't utter a word.

Here, at last, was the communion I had expected to feel upon my return. I was taken back to the wonder of my first dazzling sight of Seattlehama as a boy. And even as I remembered the endless hallways, the miles of souvenirs, and the costumed t'ups in their worm coats, elaborate hoop gowns, chrome chokes, giraffe heads, and ball-shirts, I couldn't help but be awed by the structure of the city itself.

Vada nestled beside me and we kissed. And then in the confines of the observation-little more than a sleeping-bagsized bubble of the organza-we said goodbye.

"Three hundred," came Xavier's voice just as we were redressing.

"We should get down to the mudroom," said Vada. "You've got everything?"

"Yarn pulls," I said, holding up my hands. Patting my pockets, I continued, "Suicital pass… Gecko gloves… and my dad's yarn."

Vada smiled. Just then the ship lurched to the right, and I heard a wall seam pop.

"She going to make it?" I asked as we felt our way down the now-sloped corridor to the bottom of the ship.

All Vada said was, "Hope so."

Marti stood inside the mudroom, her arms crossed. "All finished with your biological farewell?"

"That will be enough," said Vada.

Marti frowned, and pointed toward the floor. "Don't unbutton the hatch until we give the call-we need the aerodynamics." She held out a hand. "Good luck."

I shook it and thanked her.

When she left us, Vada and I huddled in the growing cold. The engines began to choke as the air thinned and the balloon's lift stalled, and I found myself straining as if to raise the craft with sheer resolve.

"Eight hundred stories," he called out. It seemed to take forever as the ship strained for each inch. Winds buffeted the ballonets and sometimes it felt like we were plummeting hundreds of feet at a time. Outside, the city continued to slowly spin around us. When we finally crested the neon green static of Infinity Tower, Xavier announced, "Nine hundred."

Slipstreams of cloud and haze filled the air giving the buildings a crystalline glow. I heard several more seams snap.

Marti whispered through the speaking tube, "Open the hatch!"

Vada crouched down to undo the buttons, letting in the freezing night air. Straight down it was pure black and cold, but when I leaned far to the side, I could see the vista of the buildings stretching a mile down through layers of mist. I grasped the walls and held on. Above us, the ballonets quivered like soap bubbles. They seemed barely able to support us. The ship trembled and when I peered down to check, I could see that we had come to a stop.

"We're not moving."

"Shh!"

More threads snapped. Several sounded like they were far above and I worried that the ballonets had broken. On either side of the gondola the motors were vibrating so violently that I feared they would rip from their moorings.

Vada leaned toward me. "Tane," she murmured, "I do love you."

Her words arrested me. And it was the first time in my life I heard them. My heart swelled, my throat tightened, and for the next minute-maybe more-I could barely breathe, let alone speak. I nodded my head, but knew she could only see the barest outline of watercolor on black from the city lights.

Xavier's voice stretched down the tube. "Is the hatch open?"

"I told them already!" came Marti's voice in the background.

"That's why there's too much drag!"

Ignoring the argument on the bridge, I put my arm around Vada's waist. "I love you."

She kissed me, but in the darkness her mouth missed mine so that her upper lip knocked into my teeth. She pulled back with a yelp. I think she was cut.

"Sorry!"

"Shh!"

Through the open hatch, I saw that we were now fifty feet above Bunné's huge, scalloped, open-air amphitheater at the top of her building. Rows of seats were filled with thousands of costumed t'ups. Through the gusts of air I could hear snatches of applause and the thump of a beat.

"Destination target approaching," said Xavier.

Vada grasped the flax rope and held it for me. "Good luck."

"Twenty feet!" called Xavier.

I took the rope in my gloved hands and stepped to the edge of the hatch. In the cover of darkness, the Pacifica was invisible.

Because of the music and the noise, the motors were inaudible. It was eerie watching the costumed t'ups below so oblivious to our presence.

"Fifteen feet."

Some were eating; others, laughingly throwing back glasses of brightly colored liquor. I saw a row of men, each dressed as Warrior Remon of Loin, dancing back and forth. Farther to the right I saw two Choky Bears fashioning each other.

"Ten feet."

We were nearing the stage and the mosh, filled with women dressed as Maiden Hunk, Pricilla Filth, and several Fine Sensual Rats. Grasping the rope tightly, the muscles of my arms and legs shook from cold and excitement.