The Not Yet Page 9

“You’re really old,” he said. “Thirty. I bet.” He was silly, I knew he was fake. I understood that, and despised it, pretty much. I couldn’t get this place, all these danger-seeking Heirs and Imposses and Altereds—it didn’t make sense. In a flash I wondered if I could find a water taxi this time of night—but couldn’t afford it. I ought to get out. I was being corrupted already.

  “Well, I am telling the truth, unlike some people,” I said, winking. “I’m young. I’m what I say I am.”

  He winked back. So that puzzle was solved. He as good as admitted it, that he was Imposse. I looked down, to avoid his gaze for a moment—after this exchange, these secrets, how could we go on talking?—and I saw the dirty floor of the place. Then I looked up and saw a line of Heirs forming at the counter where the brosias were sold. It didn’t make sense for them to be in this place, the true Heirs, so well-dressed and turned out. The kind who inhabited every Walled Urb in the U.A. It was risky, beyond that—

  “You using telemeron?” Gepetto asked me.

  “What?” I said. You didn’t ask things like that. “It’s illegal,” I said. “I am twenty. That’s my count.” I could have been put off by this invasion of privacy, but curiously, I wasn’t. I looked at my glass. I had drunk about half my second, or perhaps my third blue-green drink. The girl had come by with the pitchers. Things were getting—what—more fluid.

  “Come on—” Gepetto said.

  A shell was stuck on the floor. This was some kind of crisis. A puzzle to be solved. I saw rather quickly, with no evidence, actually, that the shells all over the floor were glued to the paving stones, under a thick clear varnish. The pattern of them was too interesting to be random. This came in the form of a revelation. The broken shells and little puddles and discarded feelers were there to give the illusion of a dirty floor. That made the most sense because, otherwise, how could it exist at all? Since it had such a fascinating pattern. Like so many other things in the Sunken Quarter, designed, for the highest effect. Like the Altereds, like this Imposse, like the shining picturesque coated buildings, the gleaming stadium style stairs that rimmed this place, kept out the Old River. I touched the table under the mat the waitress had put down. On the face of it, it was carved with initials by old lovers, but it was obvious this was a replica of a rotten old table, rendered by an artist. There was something too—studied about the carvings, the placement of the grime. It had to have been made that way. How else could this fit into itself so well—an artist had done it. A producer. Like the way they made the weather in the big Urbs. But on a more meticulous scale.

  I could practically see the artist doing the whole room, making it the perfect replica of a seedy dive where all kinds mixed, and creatures were boiled alive, and at the same time completely sterile, safe, so the Heirs could come down to the Sunken Quarter and mix with rough types and have their dangerous evening. All this dirt and these cracks and the seediness and the costumed creatures were a form of trompel’oeil. I saw it all.

  “You have some telemeron?” Gepetto asked me. The drug was popular with Imposses. The Venus Gaists had mentioned it. It kept Imposses looking young.

  “I don’t take anything!” I said. “I have been living in the country, nothing is available.” And then I was thinking, so this isn’t dangerous, this is play-dangerous. One day I will live where there are tunnels for bullets, where there are domes over the cities, where sunset is designed months in advance, and rain showers come with music—even the dark side, the danger, is covered with polymer—I was getting closer. It was what I’d been promised, and I would have it. I was breaking out in a sweat, remembering my traveling days, my working life—

  Then, I heard a voice, scolding, saying, “Drink the blue drink—what, you crazy?”

  Serpenthead was at my side, somehow. I hadn’t noticed his approach. He took the drink from my hand. “With the Q, the Quanderie? Nobody ever tell you anything? Oh my Malcolm, you think you going to steer that boat up the Old River, or the Tchoup Canal? Where you been, you don’t know this?” He reached over and tried to take my pulse.

  “I’m fine,” I said to Serpent. To Gepetto, I said, “As I was saying, in the country. I’ve been in the country.”

  “He’s a rube,” Serpent interjected. “Don’t even know what Q is.”

  “I’m not familiar with the nomenclature,” Gepetto said, using a haughtier tone with Serpenthead than he used with me.

  “No experience in rude life,” Serpent said, jutting his chin at him a bit. “A rube. A bumpkin. He trusts the wrong people. Perfect strangers, weirdos too. You know what I’m talking about? What really goes on? He’s idealistic.” He paused, turned to me. “Malcolm. Let me get a look at you.” He cupped my chin in his hand and peered into my eyes for a second. I let him, it didn’t bother me. Why this concern? He glowed a little, when I looked straight at him—odd. “Oh,” he said. He shook his head. “My boy, you are in for it.”

  VIII

  March 6, 2118

  Curing Towers Re-New Orleans South Central District, U.A.

  Solitary confinement was rotten.

  I repented, reminded myself what Lazarus promised: that we could work with the surface. Only with the surface. I had to return, be reasonable, material. I tried. Sometimes I couldn’t keep myself from having the fantasy that I’d run away with Camille, that I’d lose my Nyet status and take off, like Jeremy, pick her up on the way to the wild west, or whatever territory we could find that would let us in.

  Eventually Greenmore called for me. To fire me, I believed.

  She was in her summer office, in the North Tower. I trekked over there in my baggy prisoner clothes. I’d hardly eaten while alone. I was gaunt. She seemed happy to see me, told me I was a free man, then went on.

  “Well, after the other night, I know you are aware that we treat very old Heirs here, who are called Chronics? The technical term is ‘Clustered Anomalies?’ I guess I don’t have to explain too much. We need to talk—about them.”

  “May I speak? Freely?” I asked.

  “Yes. What is it?”

  “You aren’t sending me out?”

  “No, I’m not sending you out, if you mean back to the islands, no,” she said. “I punished you. Why do you have that look on your face? What happened to your body? You look so miserable.” Eat. You have to eat while you are a Not-Yet.”

  “You aren’t sending me out? You aren’t?”

  “No. I have a job for you.”

  I could not understand her generosity. I felt enormous relief, and also, to my shame, disappointment—there would be no running away, no finding Camille.

  Dr. Greenmore obviously didn’t think any of it was worth discussion. She was going on with her monolog. Her nostrils narrowed. She was so phenomenally smart. I saw all the things she knew organizing themselves into armies, nations, in her brain. She knew about Heir lives. About what was important.

  “I’ll be frank. The disease—if it is one disease or a group of them we don’t even know that—is not well understood. After all, these are people over one hundred and ninety by count. We have never had to deal, in the history of man, with the conditions of people of this count.”

  She described the syndrome. With Heirs, very old, from a certain era, even when the Re-jobs went well, and the Re-descriptions, a small percentage were returning home and developing catatonia. When they were conscious, they also exhibited knowledge of remote events, also, less well documented, rapid changes in temperature—metabolic chaos. There were even a few examples of Heirs in New New York “catching on fire in a closed room.” Also, unexplained heat and moisture about the body, like a very local atmosphere, noted by caregivers. When they were given sedation, they sometimes demanded to be taken off the medications, so they could have their “anomalies” again. They apparently got addicted to these altered states, claimed they were—“achieving something,” “getting somewhere.”

  “We have to confine them. Frankly,” she said, rolling her beautiful crafted eyes, lids taut, streamli
ned. “WELLMED and WELLFI dismiss every single case as an isolated incident. They like to say these effects have been seen only in Albers Protos, and many first tier Protos are unstable. But now some of the Chronics we are seeing here are First Wave, I’m getting more and more reports of cases in the northern U.A. Now, about where you come in,” she said.

  “Me?”

  “Yes, you. Are you ready to travel for me? Can you go to the other Curing Towers and collect the raw evidence? It can’t be done on the Net or the Broads—WELLFI is listening. I have correspondents in every Walled Urb—New New York, Snow White, Memphis, Upper Houston—Can you do this for me? Pose? Be a spy?” she asked. “You understand that to travel in these areas of the U.A., the interior, is going to require a disguise. They are more rigid in the north—they don’t have any mixing. Strats are strict. Nyets cannot move freely in most districts. If you went as you are now, they would have all kinds of suspicion. Securitas doesn’t look the other way. You will have to pose, be an Imposse, in other words. Have the Heir privileges.” She smiled. “I want to trust you Malcolm. And think of it—you get a taste.”

  She expected me to respond. I couldn’t think what to say.

  “You don’t think you can handle it?” she asked. “You don’t want the opportunity? To see all the Urbs? To travel?”

  I sat up straight. I said, “Of course.” No matter how bad I was, no matter how low my fantasies, some good Heir was always looking out for me. It was true. I was lucky.

  “Well, then,” she said. “I’ll have the technicians come see you. Get you outfitted. The best, so no one will detect you. Would you like some lunch?” she asked. “Brosia?”

  I’d try it.

  “I’ll have the girl bring some in,” she said. “Come over here, to the table.” She’d never offered me a seat at a table with her before.

  “About the other night, you do understand.” Her lids dropping, her chin back. “How enclaver Nats such as that girl can’t be given any freedom, they don’t understand our enterprise. They are enemies among us. It’s best not to fraternize. Certainly it is always a mistake to take a Nat’s part. It’s—for Nyets, it’s a betrayal. It isn’t done. No matter the circumstance. You heard her. She has false beliefs, she’s mad—”

  “I was at fault,” I said.

  “I won’t hear it. Forget that stupid—forget—You are a Not-Yet, aren’t you? Committed? Right? You don’t have any—scenarios of, intimations of—” She looked at me rather strangely. It was not so much scouring as watching, waiting the way fishermen did, for one swimming by.

  “Intimations?” I looked back at her. Did I have to confess?

  The brosias came then. I shoved one in my mouth, then another. I was very privileged to be eating them, I reminded myself. Odd, exotic flavors. Fish, caramel, spice, some I didn’t recognize. I concentrated, tried to enjoy.

  But it was always the same with the stuff—no matter how exciting the pieces could be going in, they always melted into fuzzy, toneless lumps before I could swallow them.

  She was a fisherwoman, letting me off the hook. I had to do better. I wanted another nature. As an Heir I supposed, I’d have one. I hoped.

  “Lazarus trained you well,” she said, after a silence. “Even if I disagree with his methods.” She paused. “You have never travelled in the Walled Urbs much. Now you will have the chance. Cheer up. Change of scenery is what you need. Forget all the complications you’ve encountered here. All the fraternizing with Lowns like that smelly girl. I would never have let her near you if I could have imagined—your poor taste—”

  That stung. I wanted to protest, shout at her, but she came very close to me, scared me a bit—her hand formed the curve, as if she were going to cup my cheek. She stood, while maintaining that gesture, looking at me very deeply. To make sure I was with her. Her face was all points, her eyes, golden, slanted, perfect. “Don’t stand up for her,” she said. “It’s not right. It’s just not right. You betray your strat and your fate.” A long pause. I squirmed. “Don’t speak of her to me ever again. I won’t either. Now to work.”

  *

  It was about a week later. There was a knock on the door, and I answered it.

  “WE ARE HERE TO FIT YOU,” a pair said almost in unison, a man and a woman. They both wore fuchsia, with Venus Gaist insignia on their breasts. “H. R. Dr. Greenmore sent us? For your assignment?”

  I had been sleeping. I’d worked until very late, cleaning the kitchen. What did these fancy people want?

  “We do specialty o-skins.” The woman said, the taller of the two. She was broad-shouldered. “Would you like to see?” She carried a portable screen. She opened it, so she could show me the styles.

  I sat down to look—a few gaudy T’s, or so I thought—

  “No,” the other one said. “Stand up.” His hair was burgundy, in a frizz around his head. A Gaist fashion. “I have to measure you. Arms up.”

  Jeremy had measured me hundreds of times, but not for an o-skin. Heirs were offended if we played them, even though they found Imposses amusing. Jeremy could never overcome the prejudice. So he always produced period pieces. I was typecast, strictly twentieth century, with a few excursions into the nineteenth. Once he put me on a raft and set me out in the Old River, in honor of a “Classic of the Ancient Regime.” I was a ragged boy, with a straw hat. They put pale makeup on me, and freckles. A big Outliar man whose body they blackened with dye was beside me.

  The burgundy-headed one took out what looked like tongs, and jabbed me in the waist. I thought, but didn’t say, ouch.

  “High tolerance, huh?” he asked. “Figured you would scream.”

  “He was a child rental,” the woman said. “The old Unabridged Sims.”

  “Oh, that explains it,” the man said.

  “Can he wear one?” the woman asked.

  “Wear what?” I asked.

  “P. P. D.,” she said. “You are Malcolm? That’s what they call you?”

  “Yes.”

  Burgundy said, “Sit down.” He lowered his tongs. “You don’t know what we are doing here? What they hired us for?”

  “They?”

  “We don’t like to name our clients. People, persons, Heirs, you work for. Those they.”

  “Yes?”

  “If you are thin enough we will fit you with a P. P. D. Pseudo-prodermis. Full suit.”

  “What do you think? Should we fast him?” Broad shoulders said, as she pressed the tongs to pinch one of my thighs. She got about an inch. “It’s up to you. How would you be more comfortable? With a full dermis overlay—we have about fifteen styles, extremely lightweight, virtually the same material? Or would you just prefer some cosmetic patches and filler? Our patches never slip. You are good looking, how much work have you had?”

  “Work?” I asked.

  “Surgeries, amplifications, augmentations, refits, stretches?”

  “None,” I said.

  “Well you are one lucky—” Her hand slid down my torso. I didn’t like it.

  Burgundy asked, “Why don’t you let him take a look?”

  They sat me down so I could see the screens. She pressed a button and keyed on a fashion show. Display after display of handsome Heirs in a variety of styles—hard-edged, rippled, sculpted, hyper-defined, all the pseudo-prodermises completely visible, because the Heirs were in transparent sheaths. Some were loudly dressed, a few were rough Nuovos, with the gold braid they were wearing lately, the barbaric “troll” headjobs from a few years back. Except they weren’t Heirs. They were Imposses.

  “Every one of these pictures is a Nat, do you believe it?” Broad shoulders asked.

  “Amazing,” I said. “But I’d rather not fast.” I was already underweight.

  “Fine, really. We can work with filler, patches here and there. You are a nice cut to start with. Good outline. I think style 92.”

  Burgundy got out the calipers again, and a measuring wand. “Just a few centimeters around the chest.”

  He made me
raise my arms again. I was starting to sweat. She noticed, and said, “Not to worry, not to worry. All of us are Nats here. These overskins have a wicking system. Never hot. And they shine just like the real thing. They breathe. The pores are as invisible as any in the UA. See we wear them just for the comfort—you thought we were Heirs?”

  “No,” I said. I didn’t think that. They touched me. “But why don’t they just hire an Heir to do this job?”

  “Maybe somebody wants you to get out of town,” one of them mumbled.

  “Say what?” I asked.

  “We didn’t say anything,” they both said at once.

  *

  The suits did breathe, I noticed later that month, when I was transformed into the (Imposse) H. R. “Lucretius.” I was disguised as a Second Wave professional, patterned on screen 92, complete prosthesis for my face, that thick look Heir faces had, that made their expressions so subtle and slightly delayed, entrancingly out of sync, Jeremy used to go on and on about how beautiful they were. The pores of my fake overskin were larger than the overskins on true Heirs—my metabolism required more porosity than a true Heir would, but the fabric was iridescent, and the shine camouflaged the holes.

  I travelled for months, went to Curing Towers deep in U.A. Territory. The raw landscape was horrible, I’d never seen it. Sometimes, I caught a glimpse of the empty ruins, the garbage towns, that weren’t needed anymore. Why not just knock them down?

  But mostly I travelled in the bullets and saw nothing of these depressing scenes. Instead, gorgeous rolling hills, populated by galloping herds of fanciful creatures—lavender elephants, lions that shone like silver jewels—which did not seem to be holos at all, but real landscapes of amazing depth. They were projected onto the walls of the tunnels. On some lines, they continued right up until the moment the bullets pulled into the huge terminals, inside the domed cities, none of the offense of the raw land.

  The cars were practically empty, even though travel was easy. Why had Greenmore been concerned? Nothing ever happened. I knew WELLFI had been discouraging travel for a decade—it was what brought down Jeremy’s Sims. Risk brought injury, which was costly for Heirs—required switching out the metabolism, speeding it up, Re-description, millions. WELLFI needed to save.