Yarn (32 page)

"Kill that intruder!" shouted Pilla from the top of the stairs. She held a wad of bloody fabric to her face, her eyelids now unpinned. The leash at her neck was pulled taut. Pointing at me, she yelled, "Get some shears and cut him down! I order you to kill him."

The woman came closer, but as I held up my hands, ready to fend off a blow from the golden brush, she stopped again.

"Damn it! Do something, you little cut!"

"Where is the Xi spun?" I asked her, determined to get what I needed and leave. "I need pure Xi yarn." She shook her head vaguely. "Where is it?"

"Attack him! I'll kill you if you don't!"

Stepping close, I grasped the worker's mask and yanked it off. Above fearful brown eyes, damp curls of wavy blue-black hair clung to her skin. "I'm sorry about this, but I need pure Xi."

Cowering, she sputtered, "Spools are in the spinning room."

"You're trapped in there, Tane. The guards are outside-you'll never make it. And get away from the girls!"

"Where's the spinning room?" I asked the worker.

She flustered a hand in the direction she had come.

"Come." Gripping the back of her yellow suit, I hurried her beside me as we passed through rows of Xi girls. A few of them moaned softly as if Pilla's shouts had woken them. At the back of the factory, I found a large metal door.

"This is it," the worker confirmed, tears trickling down her cheeks.

When I opened the door, the loud hum of machinery burst through, carried on the cool air. To the right, I saw a cart filled with spools of brilliant white yarn. I had found it! When I released the worker, she turned and ran, knock-kneed and frantically. A few steps later, she tripped and fell flat.

I couldn't find a label on the cones or the racks. Carefully wedging my pinky finger into the top of a spool, I picked it up, but didn't see any marks inside. Holding it toward the light, I studied the yarn itself, but other than the almost luminous glow, I saw nothing.

Steeling myself, I placed my palm directly on the thread. It felt cold and slick, like a water-repellant monofiber. Within a second, a stream of warmth began traveling up my arm, like an injection of honey and compassion. It was pure! A whole rack of pure Xi! I had ten times what I needed.

An instant later, the warmth turned hot and felt like molten metal traveling through my veins. Worse, I smelled an acidic smoke and when I yanked my hand from the yarn, I saw that my palm had been seared. Through charred holes in my skin I could see clumps of yellowish fat, muscles, and tendons. Screaming, I threw the cone to the floor, but the burning raced up my arm and into my chest. Fire raged in my lungs, searing the delicate tissues. It travelled into my throat and a cloud of black smoke curled from my mouth.

Falling to my knees, my whole body convulsed. And then the pain eased. I checked my hand. It tingled and smarted, but the flesh was whole and pink.

In the distance I heard voices and footsteps. Leaving the cone of dark Xi where it had fallen, I stood and checked the next cart. Grasping one, I flattened my palm against it.

The yarn felt cool and slick just like the previous one. And that was all. I waited, but nothing happened. Was this even Xi? And then I laughed out loud. And I kept laughing with the kind of cleansing near-hysteria that can surpass orgasm. An instant later, I saw myself standing before Kira, my rigid member encased in the expanded fabric of my perfect Troy and the tip an inch from the tight buttonhole of her Ten Million Yarn Super Channel-Haier. Then it wasn't Kira, but Vada in the same coat, and we were on the Europa entervator surrounded in purple and gold. She and I stood on the stage and the crowd was cheering us on. Over her face was a delicious Pearl River Love Mask, and I was kissing the infinite tender knit that covered her chin and neck. As I did so, my eyes were wide open, watching the intricate mathematics of the cloth playing over her skin.

And then I was flat on the floor, the room spinning around me. My heart slowly returned to normal and my body, which had seemingly expanded to fill the universe, to contain all the atoms and all the galaxies and all the power and all the energy, gradually shrank to the shape I knew, that of my two legs, two arms, and a head. And even as I was relieved to have my body back, a part of me considered wrapping the rapture Xi around me, cocooning myself in its genius and love.

Someone hammered on the door.

Pulling the crochet hook and my snips from my jacket, I hurriedly unwound a foot of the pure Xi, balled it on the hook like spinning spaghetti on a fork, cut the end, and without touching it with my fingers, nudged the ball into the bloody hole in my chest. The bleeding and pain stopped instantly. Touching the cardboard cones, I stacked five spools one on top of the other, turned, and was about to start for the door, when I stopped, struck by an idea. I scooped up the cone of dark Xi. With all six stacked on top of one another, I was like a child balancing a huge cone of ice cream scoops. Whoever had been beating on the door had stopped. I pushed through with my back.

The worker woman held a pair of shears larger than her head.

"Stab him!" Pilla's voice came from above. "Stab his neck or gut!"

On command, the worker thrust forward. Swinging a foot, I knocked her hand and sent the scissors clattering on the floor. The woman let out a squawk and stumbled backward.

"Shit!" screamed Pilla. "You're a useless cut! Tane! Tane, come here! You can have all the Xi you want, just come up here. I have to tell you something."

I ran past the moaning Xi girls, and as I swerved around the stairs that led up to the crystal room, where Pilla's stream of shouts and pleads fell upon me like welding sparks, I passed the first girl I had seen. She opened her mouth and let out a plaintive little groan, a cry, a lament. I slowed for an instant, gazed at her sewn-shut eyes, but then kept going.

At the far end, I could see large doors outlined in glowing light from the sun-but after a dozen more steps, I slowed, stopped and gazed questioningly at the cones of Xi in my arms. I had all I came for, and yet, I couldn't leave. Hurrying, I returned to the Xi girl's side and imagined what it might have felt like to have my eyes sewn shut.

Still balancing the spools with one hand, I tugged the feeding needles from the jelly on her neck. She flinched, but hopefully not in pain.

"It's okay," I told her, not sure she could hear or understand. Then I set the spools of Xi on the floor. I couldn't believe what I was about to say: "I'm taking you away from here."

"Stop!" shouted Pilla. "Don't touch her, damn it! Get away from her."

Once I had unlatched the seatbelt that held the girl down, I raised her in my arms. She couldn't have weighed more than sixty pounds. Draping her over my left shoulder, careful not to touch her hair, I could feel how skeletal and fragile she was.

"She'll die! You take her away and she'll die!"

"You're going to be fine." I told her. Crouching, I picked up the stacked spools of Xi, and like some kind of circus plate-balancing act, made my way to the doors again. A man stood before them.

Bunné's arms wilted and slipped from me like vapor. She staggered backwards. Grasping the yarn rip between my index and thumb, I turned and immediately pushed through the crowd toward the back of the stage.

A second later, Bunné's scream burst in the air-loud, horrible, and animal. Glancing back, I saw her on the black stage, writhing in pain. And though I didn't quite believe her, figuring this as an exaggerated display, another show-a sick knot settled in my stomach.

"Contain!" a satin shouted as he rushed toward her. "Contain the area."

"Secure Bunné."

"Get the medics."

"Emergency red! Emergency red!"

A satin tried to grab me, but the satin material of his gloves on my super-float jacket was like oil on grease. His hand slid off, and I raced past.

Flashing lights made the air into a vibrating storm. I turned again to see a Pink Dollop Boy dash toward Bunné as if to help, only for a saleswarrior to pull out her water-shears and, with a compressed hiss, slice him in half. The torso keeled over. The legs toppled a moment later.

I wedged myself past a group of Choky Bears and crawled the rest of the way to the wall. From here all I had to do was scale the partition and make my escape. But just as I laid my hand against my pounding heart, I realized that I no longer held the yarn I had just ripped.

Frantically, I glanced all around the black floor, but couldn't find it. Then I raised my eyes and saw it. Up above-floating over everyone's heads, caught in an updraft of the crowd's wild frenzy, flew the sliver of yarn.

"You?" I wanted to smack my forehead in surrender, but of course I was carrying both the Xi and the Xi girl.

"I'm
terribly
afraid so." He lingered on the word
terribly
, riding the first syllable over a hill and then the second and third down a wide ironic gully. As he spoke, he patted his black-and-whitepatterned tie with his hand, checking the links, locks, pins, and bars that held the cravat in its un-fashionable bondage. "And," he continued, arching this word like a suspension bridge as he eyed the girl over my shoulder, "I'm doubly afraid to see you still acting like the talentless slubber, corn worm you always were."

Withor appeared almost exactly as I remembered him except that his hair was a shade darker, his teeth brighter, and his skin taut, not with youth, but stretched like an overripe plum.

I laughed. "You run this hell hole?"

"Put the creature down," he said, flatly.

"She's not a
creature
."

From far back, I heard Pilla. "I have this under control! He's not getting out with her!"

Nodding behind me, I asked, "What's she doing here?"

"In fact," he frowned bitterly as he tugged at the knot of his tie, "that cut is my wife. We have a devotion-disgust relationship." He smiled toothily. "She is devoted to me. I find her disgusting." Muttering, he added, "I should have tethered up the useless cut years ago."

I had always wondered about their connection. Adjusting the weight of the Xi girl on my shoulder, I said, "You're the brains and she's the muscle."

"In a manner of speaking."

"But what the hell are you two doing here?"

"In Antarctica? I'm here for exactly the same reason I find your miserable countenance before me. The mysteries of Xi." He patted his clipped-down necktie as he spoke. "Fashion has its cycles, and while we still have a small but lucrative market, we are poised for a new wave of popularity. It's starting to happen, only this time, consumers want to explore the dark side of the yarn."

"This damn factory is a nightmare!"

"Hardly! Bombyx mori used to be dropped into boiling water to preserve their precious silk! Our yarn-makers live until old age. They're fed. They're wiped clean every couple of days." He pulled a ceramic knit revolver from a pocket. "Anyway, enough of these dreadfully unpleasant pleasantries. Put the creature down and hand over that Xi."

I stared at the object in his hand. I knew little about guns, but it looked deadly enough. I stepped toward him. He grimaced as I handed her over, and while he warily adjusted her on his shoulder, keeping her hair away from his skin, I quickly plucked the MiniAir-Juki sewing machine from my pocket, pinched a thread of the dark Xi between my fingernails, and stabbed it into the uptake hole. I ran the silent Juki up and down the shirt sleeve of his right arm sewing a messy zigzag with the dark Xi.

"The hell?" Withor pulled away.

Dropping the Xi cones on the floor for a distraction, I palmed the Juki and tucked it away. "Shit!" I stooped to gather the yarn.

"Don't get the product dirty, corn!" He waved the gun at my head. "Hurry up, you incompetent rot!"

As I worked carefully to stack them up again, I snuck a look at his sleeve. When I had tried the Mini-Air-Juki back in the studio, it had been badly out of adjustment leaving snarled knots of extra thread on the bottom of the piece of test muslin. I hoped it had spewed a similar mess of dark Xi on the inside of his sleeve.

Reaching awkwardly around the girl, he peered at what I had done. "What is this shit?" Just then the girl began to howl. "Shut up!" he barked, giving her a rough shake.

Come on
, I urged the dark Xi.
Start working
.

In the background I could hear Pilla. "You got that slubber Toue? I caught him. He counts as a kill!"

"What a cut!" Withor rolled his eyes.

It wasn't enough dark Xi. I had wasted my one chance at escape.
What else could I do
?

"Corn boy, take those back to the spinning room… and then we'll… we'll have to…" Withor stopped and a strange sickly expression came over his face. Pushing the girl farther up on his shoulder, he inspected the sleeve I had sewn. "Is that… that dark? You slubber shit!" His eyes bulged. He frantically tried to unknot his tie and take off his shirt, but all those clips, bars, and tacks made it impossible. His lips shrunk from his teeth and a ghastly sound boiled up from his gut.

I knocked the gun from his hand, and took the girl as his knees buckled, and he hit the floor.

"You… shit… you… fucking slubber shit!" In a spastic maneuver, Withor tried to grab at me, but flopped face down on top of the cone of dark Xi. He began to shriek and writhe. "No! Help I'm burning! Damn it! Kill! Shit!"

Gathering up the cones, I glanced down at my former boss. His impeccable hair wild, skin flushed, he sputtered and writhed on the ground like an animal trapped in a sick nightmare. Using the heel of my Celine-Audi, I kicked open the doors and started up a set of worn stone stairs into the light and haze of Antarctica.

"Stop!" The fat guard stood silhouetted by the sun. "Put that… that…" his eyes bounced from the yarn to the girl, "those things down."