Yarn (33 page)

"Withor's dying!" I snapped with as much panicked authority as I could muster. "The mill's on fire. Get the other girls out!" He stood staring. "The girls! They're inside. There's a fire! Get them out!"

Once he rushed in, I headed across the dust and gravel. The Chang-P was where I left it. I saw Mash man leaning against the driver's side. As I neared him, the girl began to moan and sob. "It's okay," I soothed her. "Everything's okay now. The bad couple is gone."

Mash's head was down. Straightening, he blinked. "There you is!"

"Please, get off the car's finish."

 
"No… wait… sorry… listen…" he slurred. "I want to say this: I'm sorry about before… you know… with the knife. I'm… listen… the thing is… I really admire you!" Between his blurry gaze at my face, and the upraised bottle, I wasn't sure who was the lucky object of his affection. For a moment he seemed confused at what was over my shoulder. "Syrup!" he cried, his eyes growing wide. "Let's plant her!"

Stepping to his right, I lifted my leg and placed the sole of my shoe against the side of his shorts. Then, as he gazed down at my Celine, curious and confused, I gave him a solid push. With the mash lubricating his joints and sense of balance, he stumbled, and fell in a cloud of dust, snot, and profanity.

Setting the yarn on the roof of the car, I opened the door, and gently placed the girl in the passenger seat. She muttered fearfully.

"You'll be fine," I said, not sure she could even understand.

I heard a shout and saw two other guards running toward us. One held a 'tricity stick in his hand. I tossed the Xi cones into the back. While I was careful to only touch the cardboard, a few fibers must have come in contact with my skin, as once I was in the driver's seat with the door closed, I began to giggle uncontrollably.
The guards are coming
, I told myself. The idea seemed hysterical.
And they've got a 'tricity stick! Those can shoot lightening bolts and fry a man to a carbon crisp!

Slapping my face a few times, I finally got the car in a forward gear, and jammed the accelimeter. First I swerved around Mash, who was scrambling after the slowly emptying bottle, then turned hard, and headed straight for the two guards. I gunned the forwards, scattering them, squealed away at the last second, and headed back to the highway, back to my life.

Two saleswarriors carried in the hospital bed from the show and set it beside Bunné. Through the bodies moving back and forth, I saw her rise, with help, and lie down. She was alive, then.

"All exits are sealed. Remain in your positions!"

"Be calm."

"We will be searching everything and everyone."

I kept my head down, pulse pounding as I wove my way through the panicked swarm of woolen Dead Breeders and sheer Maiden Hunks. Every few seconds, I looked up to spy the yarn floating above us, now caught in some powerful current, twisting and turning, falling and rising like a dandelion puff along the back of the stage, taking my fate with it.

ANTARCTICA EXTENSION-NORTH

"Xi yarn?" Pheff laughed nervously over the car phone.

 
"You're fashioning me!"

"No. I'm not."

"That's completely 'boo! We'll be arrested! They'll take us away."

"Pheff, listen to me, you'll be fine. If there are any repercussions, I will take full responsibility. But we must do our best for our clients."

"Who wants Xi? People have died from touching it!"

"Relax. Everything is under control. I'll explain later." Reaching into the glove compartment for something safe and interesting to occupy the girl's hands, I continued, "Listen carefully, we'll need to blend it somehow. The stuff is absurdly powerful." I found a pack of titanium satin pins and quietly deposited them safely in my door pocket. "Oh, and research compatible dyes." Back in the glove compartment I found some blue tapestry yarn. Where it had come from, I couldn't remember, but after I sniffed it to make sure it was clean, I handed it to her. She had already spent several minutes feeling my gloves, a stack of non-woven napkins, several bubble chips, and a stack of cloth samples I had left in there from a recent conference in Kong.

"He went and got Xi yarn!" Pheff laughed to himself. "That's what he was doing."

Maybe I should have warned him about my journey earlier.

 
"Pheff, you with me?" He affirmed that he was. "Get us a supply of gloves. Are you researching dyes?"

"Uh… yeah. I got something here. What color do you want?"

Vada hadn't specified anything, though tradition would call for either white or black. "Red. Get the cover to Love Emitting Diode's
Third Symphony Note,"
I said, recalling the graphic-liquid blues that changed to purples and then reds near the edges. "Match a dye to the bottom right corner, half an inch in from the edge."

The girl began to cry again. The blue yarn rested in her lap. In the pocket on my door, I found a plastic spoon and handed that to her. Her moan rose from a dark unhappy to a curious murmur.

"Tailor," Pheff asked, his tone incredulous, "what's that sound?"

Farther down in the pocket, I found a stack of pop magnets, part of a spongy Nexilla bar wrapper, a small Rux screwdriver, two Juki-Decker bobbins, several small frogs, a small coil of black yarn, and a swatch of double-felted perpetuity cotton. The last was a treasure, I suspected, as it had the softest hand in the world.

"That was nothing," I told my assistant.

"No, I thought I heard… like a cry?"

"Indigestion," I said.

"Wow… okay. So, when are you going to be back and when do we need this job?"

"I'll be back soon. The job is due tonight." I heard nothing.
 
"Pheff?"

"Tonight? Cut me! Oh! I forgot to say: the Diplomat police from the Security Board were by again. Okay, I've got something here! For red Xi…" he said as if reading from something, "tymethikoke 9. But that needs kiln drying." "We'll have to re-spin it with some supersaturated fibers." "Right. Well… I'll figure out something." I heard a muffled sound and imagined he had plopped onto a chair. "Tailor, are you sure about this?" I watched the girl gently caress the double-felted perpetuity cotton like a child might eagerly and adoringly pet a baby rabbit.

I'd done good,
I told myself. "Yes. One more thing: check the Yarn and Fiber Guide for self-renovation accidents."

He laughed. "Self-renovation accidents?"

"I think there was something about a self-destructing magnetic yarn a few years ago." The Xi girl yawned. Her teeth were tiny. I wondered if they were her baby set. "Oh… and a couple more things actually." I was sorry I wasn't there to see the action of his eyebrows. "Pick up some soft foods-gurts and vegi-blends-and a pack of diapers for a small adult. And get a bunch of toys… some blocks… and a ticking clock." For a long beat, I heard nothing.

"Wait… what'd you say?"

"Play it back," I said, unwilling to repeat myself. "And one last thing… I need a copy of the Miss Bunné's
Life and Love Compendium Volume 100 Lover Epic Collector's Super Good Gold Edition Three
-I think that's what it's called."

Pheff laughed that little blip of a laugh of his. "What the cut, Tailor? Xi yarn, diapers, and Bunné's
Gold Edition?
You're fashioning with me, right!"

"No. I'm not."

"Tailor," said Pheff, his voice low, "… are you… are you, like, really okay?"

"I'm fine," I said, and terminated the call. I glanced at my passenger, ready to give her the double-felted cotton, only to discover that she had fallen asleep. In the quiet, I studied her face as I hadn't been able to before.

There was a pinched and frail quality around her eyes and nose, but her mouth and chin were larger and more rugged. Instead of the angelic beauty I had seen in the mill, I imagined if she had had been raised normally, she might have been something of a tomboy, spending her afternoons at the edge of some pond, looking for mutated tadpoles or racing a remote-controlled hydrofoil she had built herself.

Hopefully she wasn't blind under her sewn lids, or had some irreparable brain damage from the chemicals they had been giving her. Hopefully she could learn to speak and read and function. I imagined I would have to feed her from a bottle until her system acclimated to solid food.

Several times, I panicked that she had died, only to see her chest rise a moment later. Once, when I couldn't determine that she was breathing, I pressed my ear to her chest to confirm her heartbeat.

I was going to have to come up with a good story about where she came from. No doubt I was going to have to bribe some agency or official along the way. I'd
kidnapped
her from an illegal Xi mill. The word
kidnapped
sounded unthinkable and foreign, but I liked that I had gotten her away from there. In that moment in the factory, maybe I had taken her in spite, or overwhelming sympathy, maybe I saw myself in her. Whatever the reason, I felt determined that this Xi girl was going to blossom.

I switched on ZZZZ's "Infinite Nothing"-the sound of one ton of sand being dropped grain-by-grain onto a pile of timpani and woodwind instruments. As the quiet sounds filled the Chang, I tried to get a few moments of rest by letting my eyes defocus on the oncoming rush.

SEATTLEHAMA: SPIN

Clasping my hands over the top of the wall at the back of the stage, I discovered that it wasn't one thick pane, but two, and that between them blew a powerful slipstream of air. I guessed the purpose was to keep the atrium warm and shielded, but this was the current holding the yarn aloft!

I hoisted myself up using the sticky soles of my Jacque 24 chameleon sneaks, and stood atop the wall. I didn't want to look over the edge, but that was the first thing I did. It was like balancing on the edge of a mile-tall rifle. The other buildings completed the barrel, and in the chamber, partly hidden in a filmy layer of cloud about halfway down, were the specks of the entervators set against the distant lights of the atrium. Even as I tore my eyes away, it was impossible not to imagine myself plummeting to a final instant of pure white pain.

"There's one on the wall!"

"Get him down!"

Above me, the yarn was spinning in the air jet four feet above my head. Jumping, I tried to snatch it, but missed. My right foot slipped over the edge. For an instant I was falling, but I smacked the glass with one of my Gecko gloves. It snapped on like Velcro, and I managed to haul myself back up.

"Terminate the intruder!"

Spotlights were turned on me. Shouting voices argued and ordered.

"He's the one who hugged Bunné!"

Meanwhile, eddies of air around my body seemed to push the ripped yarn farther away. Arms outstretched like a tightrope walker, I took four steps until I was under it and then jumped. I had it! I had the ripped yarn. I was complete.

A purple satin shoved one of the Choky Bears out of the way and stood below me. In the blazing light, he looked like a mannequin. His skin was a chalky orange, his hair looked hard and plasticott. In his right hand he held a 'tricity stick, trailing smoke from one the end. He raised it toward my leg. "You are prohibited!"

I turned toward the circular city, toward the pointed crystals and the hellishly deep lines of perspective. For an instant, I let my toes dangle over the edge of the glass wall. Then, before the satin could move, I leaned far forward, and jumped.

FASHION STUDIO

Pheff and I had never worked so hard or fast before. I was proud of my assistant, the way he had anticipated problems and ran to the storeroom a dozen times to fetch things I didn't even realize I would need. The Xi was difficult to work with especially in our masks and gloves. Had we more time, I would have sent it out to be re-spun, but we did our best with our equipment and materials. Once the fabric had been woven, Pheff finished it with several acidic washes to try to soften the hand. While we had some success, it was still too stiff for my liking.

While Pheff washed it again, I draped a jacket in muslin on a form that I had adjusted to what I guessed was the current size and shape of Vada's body. From the drape, I quickly made a pattern, and then fed the finished cloth into the Juki-Decker for cutting and sewing. Pheff took it to the buttonhole machine and then stitched on matching covered shanks he had made. I fabricated a belt and attached a buckle. Finally, he dressed it on a female mannequin that stood in the center of the studio and arranged it into a fashion pose.

"Too seductive," I told him. He lowered the right arm and let it hang, while the other perched on the jutting hip.

The jacket we made was red-and-white-striped with light princess darts, a softly rolled collar, capped and tapered sleeves, a waist seam, the belt, and was slightly flared below. And the more I stood before it and studied the line, color, and silhouette, the less I liked it. It was the old Vada, the one I had sewn for, the one I had fallen for. I feared it wouldn't fit the current one. But there was no time to make changes.

Out the windows, the sky was at its deepest purple. I was exhausted. My shoulders ached and my back hurt, I felt like a huge spool of yarn was tightly wrapped around my insides. While Pheff was in the storage room, I pulled off my long plasticott gloves, undid my shirt, and investigated the wound in the middle of my chest. The Xi had stopped the bleeding and ended the pain, but I worried about infection.

"Wish I could sleep that deeply!" said Pheff, his voice buoyant and giggly. "She's like completely plonked!"

"Don't touch her hair!" I reminded him, quickly buttoning my shirt.

"I didn't!" He tried to suppress a giggle, biting his lips as his face turned fuchsia. "Cut me, but I'm just… No! I mean, I didn't mean to."

I glared at him.