The Universe of Things Page 8

  “It’s kind of private.”

  “Let the kid go, boy. She won’t hurt anything.”

  Bella bounced free. “I won’t hurt anything,” she parroted smugly.

  She was gone, beyond arm’s reach. Gustave was lifting her up to peer inside the poor tortured car. Johnny felt sweat breaking out delicately all over his body.

  “Look. This is not necessarily the truth, but… I’m after the source of a kind of legend. You had a nuclear accident hereabouts, two years ago?”

  The reading in God’s eyes flickered upwards again. Johnny had better not dwell on this subject — nuclear poison, two-headed babies, that kind of insulting stuff.

  “We had an incident.”

  “Okay, I’m looking for…this will sound crazy, unless you know something already, but I’m looking for a diamond mine.”

  “Diamonds.”

  “It’s like this. When you get a melt — er, an incident of that kind, a massive amount of heat and pressure is generated. The safer the plant, the less of it gets dissipated outward. It has to go somewhere, it goes down. You’ve got coal-bearing strata around here, not all of it even mapped. Under pressure, that old fossil fuel can be transformed into another kind of pure carbon. What I’m looking for is a deposit of blue clay, a blue clay that’s new to this area. From the blue clay, you get the diamonds.”

  Johnny needed all his professional skill to measure God’s reaction. He couldn’t use it. His attention was painfully focused on Bel: her position in the stinking cavern, who was touching her, was she being led near a door. It didn’t matter. God was stone-faced, neither twitchy nor incredulous.

  “I don’t know if this is exactly a news-lead,” Johnny went on. “It’s my own long shot. I haven’t decided yet if my employer would have an interest.”

  God laughed softly, and shook his head in reproof (we superbeings must stick together).

  “If you dig up a diamond mine on your boss’s time, I guess those are her diamonds, boy. Take a closer look at that employment contract of yours, you’ll find I’m right. Which leaves you with nothing to sell, and here you are in the market. That could be an embarrassing position.”

  Johnny would have to agree. God didn’t ask his opinion. He tucked away his rag and thrust out a hand, which Johnny shook obediently.

  “I’m the schoolmaster around here. Schoolmaster and mechanic. I’ve seen boys like you. I’ve liked boys like you: smart and sweet, and a trifle off the rails. Don’t you go too far, Johnny. Stick to what’s right.”

  Potato-headed young Gustave, with the scoured red complexion, came over and delivered Bella into her Daddy’s arms.

  “You’re a mite loaded down, kid. If you need anything else from the car, you better point.”

  He shook his head. God was being sarcastic: the city slicker’s distrust had been noted. God nodded, and considered Bella.

  “She’s a pretty little girl. You’re young to be her Daddy.”

  Johnny was young to be anybody’s Daddy, as anyone would know if they knew the way things worked indoors. Not only a city slicker, but a rich fucking gilded youth. Oh, shit.

  “Can you prove she’s your child?”

  The hotel had rooms over a bar that was also a diner. Johnny walked into the desolate lobby with his escort. Gustave leaned over and took one of the keys, an archaic looped shank with wards of metal and a tag, number 5, dangling. The woman behind the desk glanced up.

  “Hi Donny.” She studied the new guest. “This the eejay?”

  He’d been in town two hours, plenty of time for the grapevine. He was surprised the desk clerk wasn’t more excited. She looked at him solemnly, a little too long — and still without gushing, exclaiming, or using his name. Johnny felt a prickling in his belly. Maybe she was just a serious-minded girl.

  There were other guests, but Johnny was the only stranger. While the rain sheared down outside everybody gathered: the men and youths around Johnny, the women and children several tables away, beyond the single screen tv that kept babbling away on a cable channel Johnny had never seen before.

  There were, discernibly, at least two rival camps. But nothing bad happened. No guns were pulled.

  These people got married. They had family life, of a kind. But they’d forgotten anything they ever knew about sexual equality. Not one of the gaunt and battered looking females would dare to come up to the men’s group, sit directly in front of the screen: get between a man and anything remotely like the goodies. None of them, of course, could talk to Johnny. It was one of those things you must not mention. The men’d be outraged and disgusted if you hinted there was anything weird about this arrangement. The women too, probably.

  The guys were prodding for details of life “inside the dome.” Their technique was to make a casual remark, about the electro-paralytic force-field or the death-rays wielded by the android guards — and watch the effect it had on Johnny. He was kept busy protecting their egos. He knew better than to contradict them directly over anything. It would be a dangerous kindness.

  He felt like the Wizard of Oz.

  Bella got bored and went to stare at the local kids. The women petted her, admiring her plump arms and legs: her strapping size compared to their own toddlers. Johnny discussed diamond mining with bared teeth, and needles of controlled panic rammed under his fingernails. The women were far more scary than the men. If one of them was to take Bel and go, out into the drenching purple night, what could he do?

  Meanwhile, the desk clerk, who was also the waitress, kept passing to and fro. She was breaking the rules, but she seemed to have some kind of special license. Every time she passed she would find a way to flirt: leaning over a nearby table to show her neat butt, reaching up to a shelf to give him the taut curve of her breast and waist. Every small town has to have its bad girl. The younger men hooted and flicked her behind. The other women, young and old, pretended not to notice.

  The party broke up at last. Johnny lay staring at the grey ceiling of room 5, and at the inevitable cam-eye circled with its thoughtful message for your protection. The rain had stopped. The main street outside was noisy with the home-going populace. Must’ve been about every able-bodied soul in town.

  He’d brought Bella out before, but never so far, and nothing had ever gone wrong. He considered how important it was for him to believe that it was safe. No danger, no harm, there are decent people everywhere. The upholding of some kind of liberal ideal was apparently worth more to him than his child’s life and safety.

  They could take Bella away from me.

  Walking into that bar with her had been like shooting his cuff to display an antique gold Rolex. Madness! He could try to tell them Bel was a perfectly ordinary little girl, produced by traditional methods and complete with organically-grown blemishes (she had a crowded mouth, and a tendency to stand over on her inherited weak ankles). You wouldn’t get people out here to believe it, when they saw her next to their own scrawny, undersized, scabby-faced kids. To believe Bella was ordinary they’d have to accept that Johnny wasn’t weirdly privileged, Johnny was normal… They’d have to see how far they’d fallen.

  You wouldn’t want to wish that on them.

  Two hundred miles from NYC. There was no protection, no law, no appeal. From the moment that tow truck appeared he had been in trouble. He would be criminally crazy not to cut his losses and get out — even if he were alone. But he hated to give up. He was on the track of a story, and he knew he was in the right place. If God didn’t know why the fuck he was here: if God was convinced by the spurious dazzle of irradiated gemstones — somebody must know better. That somebody would come to Johnny. He didn’t have to do anything but wait.

  He linked his hands behind his head, and thought about sex. He recalled Bella’s experiment in the school hall. She was her father’s child all right. She’d made that vital connection so naturally — doubt and danger and a mellow hint of violence…whoo, up we go. It wasn’t likely that Johnny was heading for a real amorous adventure. Thin
gs weren’t so different in that area, inside the city or out. But the sex stuff could come in useful, just because it was in short supply. It was a greed that could cover for anything.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Come in.”

  The desk clerk shut the door and sat down on the edge the bed.

  “Hi, Johnny.”

  She seemed older than he was, but she was probably a teenager. She had stringy dark blonde hair cut in a bob. Blue eyes, a wiry unkempt body in a faded overall, an out-of-doors suntan that was ruining her skin. She smiled with her eyes and touched his pants leg, as if she was testing if it was still damp.

  She glanced upward. “It’s okay, Donny’s minding the store. He never checks the screens, and this one don’t work anyhow. I put you in here on purpose.”

  A heavy, warning wink told him he wasn’t meant to be reassured. Donny, aka Gustave, was undoubtedly glued to the most promising peephole in town.

  “Well, stranger, can we do business?” She took her hand from his leg and touched herself, both palms smoothing the slick worn fabric over her breasts. “I don’t want money. I want a ride. I don’t belong to anyone, you’ve no need to worry.”

  She was in a big hurry, but that was reasonable enough. Johnny would be gone tomorrow.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Cambridge.”

  “That’s the name of a city.”

  “I know. My momma liked the sound. You ever been there? The English one? I like to think it’s the original I’m called for.”

  “No, I can’t say I have.” Johnny watched her, not moving a muscle. “I can’t get you into the city; you know that. I suspect you’re an agent provocateur, ma’am.”

  “Hey, no way. I’m not going to get you into trouble. I just want a ride down the road, a change of scene. And I can get you out of the trouble you happen to be in.”

  She winked her steamroller wink again. “Get rid of those ants in your pants, city boy?” She squeezed his thigh, and giggled. Her eyes, which the camera couldn’t see, were deadly serious.

  “If a girl wants to get on, she has to be ready to act fast. That’s the shape of things to come, don’t you think? You can’t act like the old technology, sit there waiting for the current. You gotta be able to change yourself, to fit what’s coming at you.”

  Johnny was wrestling with his conscience. This could so easily be a trap. He would accept the clerk’s offer (what city slicker would refuse a loose woman?). The vigilantes would burst in. There would be some kind of ersatz legal procedure, God probably presiding. The boondocks were hot on sexual restraint. Notwithstanding her behavior downstairs it would be Johnny’s fault. The stranger caught in the act of fornication — maybe statutory rape — would be declared unfit to be in charge of a minor. All he knew about the “blue clay” could be beaten out of him on the side. He could see how tempting it looked. They’d have Bella and the diamonds. Johnny would be dumped naked out on the road — dead or alive. Dead, for preference, rather than explain himself to Izzy. He should not even dream of taking the risk.

  On the other hand, all his instincts promised that the clerk was not laying that kind of trap.

  “I don’t know if you have the right idea about me. I take risks; that’s my job. But not for trivial reasons.”

  “I felt that. I can read people…pretty well.” She smiled, ruefully. “This may sound crazy, but I’ve always thought I could have been an eejay. If someone like me could have the chance.”

  “I wish that everyone could have the chance,” said Johnny.

  She nodded, head bent.

  “Mr. Micane’s got you all wrong, in my opinion. This blue clay that you’re looking for, it doesn’t represent any kind of material gain. The diamonds don’t mean anything…to you. What you really want is, like, a sense of living meaning in your life. Something rare and magic that could unite everyone.”

  “It’s true, living with meaning is a dream of mine,” he agreed — with the accent on the two special words.

  “I’ve had that dream too.”

  She gave him a long and tender look. It thrilled Johnny to the core. This was a real contact. He wondered how much she could be persuaded to tell.

  Cambridge tossed back her hair. “Okay, mister eejay. After the highfalutin come on, do we have a deal?”

  He glanced around the room, swiftly up and away at the “defective” camera. “Um — can we go somewhere?”

  “You want me to take you home?” She walked to the door. Leaned there, in a pose from some ancient movie. “I come off shift in an hour. There’s a dark blue Nissan in the parking lot. I’ll meet you beside it.” She grinned up at the eye in the ceiling. “I’ll take you where there’s no protection. Can you do it without an audience, eejay? Ever tried?”

  Johnny put his gear together. He was rapturously busy for a few minutes, during which Bella vanished as she had by the roadside. Then he remembered her. He stared at the sleeping baby, chewing his lower lip.

  Next to the Japanese antique there was an ancient pickup, the color of its paint indeterminate in the yellow light of the oil lamps that guarded the hotel’s rear. Cambridge looked out of the dark cab. She was silently amazed.

  “I couldn’t leave her. She’d wake and be scared.”

  She looked him over. “Is that a gun in your pocket?”

  “No, it’s a spare diaper.”

  The clerk shook her head, pushed open the other door for him. He clambered, arranging Bel’s warm bulk in the baby carrier on his knees. They were jolting away, lightless, through the dark town, before she managed to come up with a comment.

  “In my world, men don’t bring up kids. They just own them.” She chuckled. “Hey, what happens when we get to our love nest? Does she like to watch, or have you trained her to take part?”

  Mental tape: a long drive. The darkness was haunted by the ghosts of well-kept lawns and scampering retriever dogs, boys on bicycles, flung newspapers, and mailboxes on sticks. It was a world that Johnny had never known — inaccessible now except on records as hard to decipher as incunabula to an eye reared on print. How did people make out that stuff? Depthless, even colorless. Johnny imagined skills lost to him forever, the genes for watching b&w tv switched off in his decadent blood. He hugged Bella in her frame sling. The feel of her was so immensely reassuring, he thought all secret agents should have a baby to carry. When you can’t trust anyone, and it’s against the rules for you to be sure what’s going on — you hug your baby, and she keeps you sane.

  They parked among trees.

  “What the fuck was all that nonsense about jewelry, anyway?”

  Johnny shrugged. “Best I could do. I didn’t expect to be picked up like that. Had to send out some kind of signal. I could see I wasn’t going to get much chance to nosey around asking questions.”

  “You’re right. And you’re lucky. Micane’s not stupid, you know. He’s just short of information. Like all of us out here. Okay, come on. You take some tape of the crown jewels, and hurry the record back to your magic dome.”

  “Please. I don’t live in a ‘dome.’ I live in an overgrown shopping mall. With dirt in the corners, and plenty of problems.”

  Cambridge smiled, humoring him. “Sure you do.”

  She opened a door, steps led down. When he realized they were going underground, he understood the dazzling truth. She wasn’t leading him to a bargaining rendezvous with the cadre. She had brought him straight to the goods. The room was shadowy, echoing, with a low and bowing ceiling and a strange incline. The walls, replying to Cambridge’s pencil light, gleamed phosphorescent pale.

  “What is this place?”

  “It was a swimming pool,” she said. “Olympic pool. It’s been drained and boarded over for years. No water. Rest of the building’s derelict.”

  She’d changed into pants, jacket, and a sweater. The rain had made the night cool. Her clothes were as squalid, strange-colored, and ill-fitting as the things the men wore, but not filthy. Sh
e pulled a clunky black plastic remote out of her waistband and keyed lights. Must be a generator on site.

  Johnny stared. The glass and ceramic labyrinth: the vats. It was the real thing, a coralin plant in full production. He’d spent time in legal protein-chip production, in his apprenticeship — if only in virtuality. It wouldn’t have helped. The processing here was too makeshift to be precisely recognizable. But he’d also been tutored, unofficially, by people who knew the wild side.

  He took the time to settle Bella on his shoulders. She had woken up in the pickup, but only to ask a few drowsy questions. “What’s her name…? What’s this car’s name?” She was asleep again (and the pickup was called Laetitia). He was proud of her. She was really the perfect child.

  “I can make tape?”

  Cambridge nodded. “That’s the deal eejay. We’ll get you away from Micane. You tell the folks back home what we have here.”

  He mugged amazement, let her know how thrilled he was to find this spore of civilization outside the citadel: wondering all the while where the rest of the group was, where they’d gotten the starter, all sorts of questions to which he ought to get answers. But he already knew that Cambridge was going to tell him everything. He was stunned by her group’s trust, embarrassed by the power of his job’s reputation.

  It had been obvious before the end of the twentieth century that the future of data-processing and telecoms was in photochemistry. Chlorophyll in green plants converts light — energy into excited molecules without thinking twice about it. The “living chip” was inevitable: compact and fast. They called the magic stuff of the semi-living processors “blue clay,” because the original protein goop was blue-green in color. Embedded in a liquid crystalline membrane, blue clay became a single surface of endlessly complex interconnections. Under massive magnification it looked like a coral: hence the other name, coralin. Clay? Because you can make it do anything.

  So much for the technology. But then the networks, silicon and gallium-arsenide based, had crashed in the explosion of virus infection that ended the century. Coralin wasn’t greatly superior, at that point: but it was immune to the plagues. In a deteriorating political situation — a foundering economy, wave upon wave of environmental disasters — the blue clay had became political dynamite. It meant power.