The Not Yet Read online

  I grabbed the two of them around the chests, and held them off long enough for Serpent to escape. When he had his throat back, he urged, “Take that Petto, drive—they mean to kill you—”

  “Will kill you—” I said, pulling him with me. We made a break—I led Serp, and Peet followed—but only a few seconds later, on the steps backstage, two more took Serp by the shoulders—his bowl legs dangling—

  But I was surprised, he gathered his strength, and cast them off like old clothes—they fell off the steps, literally, and their Heirs below were horrified, shouting at us as loud as Heirs could.

  “We’ll make it out,” I said, as we got onto a balcony where you could glimpse the sea. We had a moment. I said, “She called me blind.”

  “Not now you aren’t!” he said. “I see that, so do you.”

  “Dock over there! Bebum.” Peet pulled Serpenthead away. “Split up—mob coming.” Dimly, in the distance, I saw some of the launches and yachts that brought the audience.

  “Malc? Don’t follow me! Get North!” he shouted galloping over the wall between balconies, in the opposite direction from the parking lot, Peet behind him.

  “I’m going with you!” I said to Serp, for I wanted to follow him, but one stray lilac had found me, grabbed my bad side, my injured ear, and I screamed—pushed back. He covered my eyes. It was a struggle to overcome him. When I looked up, Serpent was nowhere, and I saw Gepetto, fresh from his cheerleading. I said, “Your car!”

  “Okay, if you are going to be so dramatic.”

  I covered my head in my jacket to protect from the assaults, and with my other arm pulled Gepetto off the balcony into an empty office.

  I rushed down the steps, all eighteen floors—no more elevators—found the lot, Gepetto beside me. For a moment, we were by the sea, and everything was eerily calm.

  “Why can’t we stay for the fun?”

  “They were trying to kill me,” I said again. “Kill Serpenthead too. Peet.”

  “The best part. Nothing like it. Don’t believe it really happens anymore. It’s so unlikely. So spooky.”

  “So you knew?” I asked.

  “Of course.” Cruel little grin.

  I dragged him to his car. He didn’t want to leave.

  “START THE THING,” I shouted. He opened the door, and I pushed him in.

  “Okay,” he said, turning it on with a slender key, beginning to edge out of the lot.

  “Please. Can’t this thing go?” I asked, pushing down on his knee, which pressed on the fuel, so we pulled out. I was giddy with the energy of anger.

  “How many in the audience knew?” I asked once we were moving.

  “Knew what?” Gepetto paused, and then he raised his ridiculously thin eyebrows. “Oh that of course,” he said. “All of them I suppose, though they would deny it. The Far Easterners were very clever, escaped the censure of the authorities. After all, who was going to complain? So popular these days—tickets to births, to the removal of bloody tissues, very delightful, the rage. Everyone likes the way it’s underground. Sometimes, of course, these deceiving enclavers don’t really, really—I mean, I think we have a right to have it verified, to feel the body. Don’t you think we paid for that right? Don’t you think that should be understood? If the Heirs are willing to be defiled like that. I don’t know why they got so touchy right there at the end. Do you realize what we paid?”

  I couldn’t bring myself to answer him.

  *

  REG++CY in the rearview, now. “Don’t you think there is something wrong with—” I asked.

  Gepetto said, “Wrong isn’t really a current term.” We were out past the marsh, past the elevated highway, on the same pot-holed road we’d come on. The sky still an umber, even more brown than black now. The compass pointing “north.”

  “Speed up,” I ordered him. He’d seen me manhandle Heirs, think nothing of it. I hadn’t had time to think anything, anything. I’d picked them up and thrown them down without asking—“Wrong was always such an uneven word,” he continued. “I love these shows. We go to them all we can,” he said. “But being backstage—ultimate. I owe you.”

  “Where do you all get the money?” I asked. I’d heard “we.”

  “Oh, that,” he said. He turned to me, said nothing else.

  In that sharp, focused light, I saw the secret of the loose folds about Gepetto’s lids—he had added wrinkles, so he looked like an Imposse. Makeup. Thin rubbery pink layers, now coming off in shreds—glue weakening, all those hours under stage lights.

  I reached, and ripped them off. Underneath, the tight lids of the T’s. I didn’t even think of the fact that I was touching him. “Why are you wearing that stupid Imposse stocking? Aren’t you hot? Aren’t you embarrassed by such cheap—?”

  Gepetto jerked away, lost his grip on the wheel. “I had you fooled. Ha-ha to you. Just some rube Nyet. Think you know things. Too clever by half. You think what’s real is made, what’s made is real—you thought that wretched creature and her relatives were—”

  I tore off his fake stocking, and got to the real one underneath.

  “Stop, stop, I’m trying to drive,” Gepetto said, swerving. I stretched over and stepped on the brake. Gepetto was too weak to stop me. The car screeched it stopped so fast, skidded.

  “What now?” Gepetto asked, in more of the natural rasp of a true Heir, not with the other tone, the high-pitched “Gepetto” voice he’d been using most of the night.

  “Get out,” I said.

  He was out of the car, standing in front of the scrub forest, the buzz of cicadas solid as a wall. “What now you scaredy Nyet? Stopping?” he taunted me.

  I grabbed Gepetto’s actual overskin, yanked it off from his prodermis. He said, “You didn’t answer. Why did he want to be a real boy when he could have all the excitement without that? He really, really could. I do.”

  “What?”

  “Knot of pine, so foolish, I think. That’s metaphysical. He was a fool. Better off if he had stayed wood. He would have lived forever if he’d stayed wood—but he wanted to be bleed-able, pierce-able—sloppy, able to be crushed, cut, changed. He could have run away. He didn’t. Real, you die. You defended those diers! You woke up and defended those black biters, those—”

  “What do you want?”

  “I am just as you are,” he said, pleading. “I am just as you are. Sensation,” he said, pleading. “All that is boiling in you right now, what a recipe: indignation, rage with a dollop of pride on top—”

  I had his prodermis right at the seam. One rip and it would be off.

  “I dare you,” he said, puffing up, eyes getting round, rotating towards me.

  We were beside the rough little road, a few feet from the car—high pines on both sides. No lights in any direction but our headlights. The car still running….

  “Not pain, never pain, but the intensity, always that—so delicious, even the longing is delicious—oh, you are going to do it, aren’t you? Flay me out here? Aren’t you? What are you? I heard that Tamara ask. You know what I am but what are you?”

  The gesture had to be over. I threw him down into the ditch beside the shoulder. He rolled over a few times, his thin gown catching in the weeds. His prodermis unattached a little, so his face was losing all expression, sagging like a sock pulled off the toes.

  I scrambled away before he could stand, drove off in his car.

  Not ten minutes later, as I was speeding down the road, the WELLMED helicopters appeared, calling out to their poor lost Heir, searchlights rolling. They wouldn’t look for me, not right away, only there to rescue him, in these hinterlands, lower a chair on a cable—I’d seen this before—and haul him up into the arms of two or three nurses, so he could ride back to wherever he came from, his palace, his remove. They might charge him some fines; use some cartiliform to reattach his prodermis, fill out reports. Slumming in the DE-AX, an old story—rescued—

  North. “They will know you,” Serp had said.

  At some po
int while driving, hours later, I realized the trees I’d just passed, were the ones I’d already passed hours before. The same for the clumps of abandoned houses behind them, the same for the holes in the highway.

  Around daybreak I parked and got out of the car to urinate, heard a growling noise in the woods, like a wild dog. Packs of them in the empty towns Peet had told me, places where they had taken over completely, the old brick slab ruins were their dens.

  But two figures in dark shirts, big Nat men, at the periphery of my vision, held a ridiculous wide yellow net. When I turned to look, one jumped on my back, brought me down. I heard, “Don’t bang him, don’t bang him, don’t you see his face? Who he is?”

  A hood around my head, a needle in my thigh.

  “Ooh, his ear is torn, he bleeds,” I heard a high voice say. And then, “Don’t hit him so hard, he’s good…”

  Everything started to fade. I felt some relief, since the war inside me was ending. I was conquered, bagged, like game. I couldn’t fight.

  IX

  3:20 PM October 10, 2121

  Port Gramercy Customs House

  Northeast Gulf De-Accessioned Territory, U.A. Protectorate

  That very afternoon, after Lydia had finally been hauled off by her equals for Memphis, I asked Serio to take me to the New Orleans Islands. He said no, that communications were down, towers out everywhere, problems because of the predicted storms—but I begged him. I had already waited a very long time because of Lydia, and Horace. Then in the morning he woke me early and said he could take me, if I didn’t mind a stop in Port Gramercy to pick up a tool, a miter saw, that he was buying from a man named Thibodeaux. So I put on my pale stone-colored jacket, my transparent black shirt and canvas pants, and took the little bit of money I’d saved, as well as Lazarus’ note, and the tags Ariel had sent, to return to my guardian. I packed no bag. I’d wash the shirt when I got to Audubon. As we sailed, Serio mentioned I could stay on the boat in the harbor in Gramercy, or come into town. It didn’t matter to him.

  It was a beautiful, breezy day, the grandest possible blue, as it could be after rains, especially in October. I wondered later, if it had been overcast, and mean, would I have had such bright, dangerous thoughts—I asked if they didn’t have a good sugar café in the city. He said, yes, the best. But wasn’t I going to start fasting?

  “I can have some sugar in my coffee,” I said. But I had already started thinking of possibilities. Port Gramercy wasn’t a big town—I was ashamed of myself, my conscience came by—

  After we did pull in, Serio and I had to wait in line in front of the Port Gramercy Customs House to get day passes. There were Nats in front of us and behind, in all sorts of rusty, preposterous vehicles—cars pulled by mules, others spewing black cornosene exhaust, electric motorcycles with cabins on the rear and seats for three or four people, ancient terrain transports with makeshift benches built out from the frames. There was apparently a party, for the next few days, Cycle Fest. Something to do with the cane fields, the harvest. It had been postponed because of the storm. The officials let most of them through pretty quickly. When it came to our turn, they told us to get inside. Someone behind us said, “Go, move on.”

  “Who does this guy think he is?” Serio asked to me. He was talking about a bowl-legged dark-yellow skinned Yeared behind us in line.

  Serio turned and snapped to the fellow I learned later was Serp, “Back off,” using the tone enclavers used to those below them. Surprising, Serio being rude.

  Then a captain with beady eyes, a head fat and wide as a cantaloupe, and a tight khaki suit, took a look at my Nyet collar. He used the code on it to get into my basic ID screen. “What’s the story here? Twenty by count give or take? Still have your nature? Don’t you Nyets have to declare and go under,” he asked, his small eyes tightening. “The knife?”

  “I haven’t put in yet—so I haven’t—” How attached these were to their reproduction, how superstitious.

  “You close?” He seemed skeptical. “Give me your financials pass.”

  “I won’t,” I said.

  “You want to get into Port Gramercy?”

  I was interested in the world she came from—wanted to see it. Camille. “Just for a few hours.”

  He didn’t like me. “Okay, you type it, I won’t look.”

  The screen light cast on the captain’s broad and ugly face suddenly went from chartreuse to a cold blue. He said, “Look. Your numbers.” His face relaxing, his shoulders dropping, his neck stretching out, so he was suddenly looking down on me. “Why didn’t you say so?”

  “It’s there,” I said, though I was ashamed.

  “But got a lien on it. Your jack, your dinero. I wouldn’t get any operations done either I was you.” He rolled out the word “operations,” as if it were a marble in his mouth. “Maybe you better make other plans?” Bead-eyes, like a pigeon’s going round in mock delight.

  “There is some mistake. I’m going home to get that matter straightened out.”

  “You, right?” He held his hand over the figures at the bottom, and showed me my documentary existence: Malcolm de Lazarus/Registered Enrolled Full Dependent Sponsored Not-Yet/WELLFI TRUST #1329087666…. Trust Sponsor: H. R. Lazarus De Gold of Audubon Foundling House Audubon Island, New Orleans Islands, etc. etc.

  “See that right there?” Meaning the color orange, an oblong field, running behind my big healthy number.

  I was humiliated. “It’s a mistake. Why don’t you call?” Perhaps I could get through on their lines. Maybe Lazarus would answer them.

  “Towers out to the Islands, Horace the Hurricane. Got to wait for the Rouge Gaists to come fix them. What genius in the U.A. put out that contract I’d like to know?” He paused, continued, “Your kind are kinda on your own till your ship comes in aren’t ya? All or nothing bet? I’d keep my options,” he said, making an obscene gesture with one hand, and then he picked up a tiny mike, the length and width of the tip of his smallest, chubby digit, and spoke into it to his deputies. “Bring the little guy over.”

  In an instant, Serio was between two deputies, bristling. They’d made him take off his shoes, his belt, even unscrewed the precious ink pen Mimi had given him, into three parts, turned the lining of his hat inside out. His bright smile was missing.

  “Out of town by sundown. Before the Festival—hear?” Leaning over, the captain took a slim pad of blue newsprint out of his pocket with a roughly stamped FREE WHEEL insignia on it, and scribbled his signature on the bottom. He handed one to me and one to Serio.

  “Like this is some paradise,” Serio said under his breath as we were turning to go, but he wasn’t daunted. I saw the thought of adventure in him, after everything.

  All I wanted to do was to find a screen and write Lazarus, again. Serio was telling me about the pleasures of this sad town, while I berated myself—

  But then I was forced to stop thinking of my trouble, or rather, to stop thinking.

  *

  As if it had been pre-set, pre-arranged—

  She was so lovely, lovelier than I’d never seen her, sitting there in a black dress. In her hometown. In the sugar café. At a table with a checked cloth. At the same moment that I rejoiced, I accused myself of wanting this, of planning it.

  At first, I felt a sinking song of a feeling, dipping down like a weight tugging on me.

  You were younger then—and besides, there was nothing between you—nothing compared— I said the words to myself, but looking at her, couldn’t believe them.

  “Well there you are. I was thinking of writing you. Telling you. How could you know that?” she asked directly as if there was no reason to be formal with a person you hadn’t seen in two years, a person of another caste. Was there a reason? In her presence, none.

  “Tell me what?” I was as direct as she was.

  “I lost Landry,” she said, softly.

  She was a widow. Black, of course.

  “It’s been ten weeks,” she said. “First day I’m allowed by
the custom to be in public, see people outside the family.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Serio interrupted—or to me, it felt like an interruption. For Camille and I were the only people in the room, didn’t he see that? “How long were you together?”

  “Married two years next June.”

  “What happened?” Serio again.

  “Get your coffee,” she said to us, eyeing the waitress. Everyone in the cafe tracking her—“Go on, please, order.”

  Serio’s quick slight body an asset, his sweetness, his attentiveness, apparent again, like the sun coming through clouds. “He had an accident,” she said. “Welding a seam on a syrup tanker. Underwater. We already had enough from his family’s cane fields. He thought we needed more. I married without my full dowry. He was all hung up about that. You remember.” She looked at me. And that web grew over me, but I was going on, to my life. I was in love with Lydia. I was going to be with her. I had promised.

  Her husband had broken the first rule—welding, he had pulled back before the current was turned off, and been electrocuted. Repairing a vessel of syrup for the fugue countries, where the prices were rising—

  Then, I felt it again. I was anointed, when she looked at me. Camille’s plump arm, the wrist that was showing at the end of her sleeve, obsessed me. I trembled.

  “Staying? Come for the festival?” she asked, when she had finished the recitation about her husband. Or perhaps to cut my gaze short, stop me from thinking.

  “On the way to see Lazarus.”

  “Your Boundarytime?” she breathed quickly, leaned away, said what seemed false, “Oh. Wonderful.” Then she turned to Serio. I felt abandoned.

  Behind us, two entering the café.

  “Why you still here loitering?” The captain from the Customhouse. “Stand,” he said.

  “You know who I am. Honestly, there is no need—we were leaving. No need—”

  Camille straightened, blooms of red out on her neck. “Ronny, leave them alone. They aren’t—”

  “He’s a haughty Nyet, not fixed,” the Captain, Ronny, shouted back, and the women in the café gasped in a chorus.