The Best of Bova

by Ben Bova

  Her name? Oh yeah, I forgot you’re tapin’ all this. How do I look? Not bad for a guy goin’ on twenty, huh? Yeah, yeah. Her name’s Jade Diamond, keenest-looking piece of— No, that ain’t her real name. ’Course not. Her real name was Juanita Dominguez. I knew her before she changed it. And her eyes. Like I said, she was real beautiful. Naturally. Without the implants and the eye job. They changed her eyes ’cause most of the big spenders are Japs.

  Anyway, she was supposed t’be protected just like all the hookers. Except that the [deleted] [deleted] Controllers don’t take nobody’s payoffs—that’s what they say, at least.

  So there was Jade in the holdin’ jug down at city hall and here was me makin’ a living out of old TV sets and tape players, anything to do with electrical stuff. Where? In the junkyards, where else? You don’t think I stole anything, do you? Why would I have to risk my butt goin’ into the tracts and breakin’ into people’s houses when they throw away their stuff every year and it all winds up in the junkyards?

  Yeah, I know the stuff is all supposed to be recycled. That’s what I do. I recycle it before the [deleted] recyclers get their [deleted] claws on it.

  Look, you wanna know about the Chairman and Jade and me or you wanna talk about business?

  Okay. I was in love with Jade, that’s why I did what I did. Sure, I knew she was a pro. You’d be too if you’d grown up in the city. We don’t exist, y’know. Not legally. No records for any of us, not even the [deleted] police bother to keep records on us anymore. Not unless we done somethin’ out in the tracts. As far as your [deleted] mother-[deleted] computer files are concerned, we weren’t even born. So of course we don’t die. If we don’t bury our own, the [deleted] sanitation robots just dump our bodies into a pit and bulldoze ’em over. After they’ve taken out all the organs they wanna use for transplants, that is. And we sure don’t get nuthin from your sweetheart of a government while we’re alive. Nuthin but grief. Lemme tell ya—

  Okay. Okay. Jade and the Chairman.

  None of it would’ve happened if the Controllers hadn’t picked up Jade. I guess they picked her up and the other girls ’cause the Chairman was cornin’ to Philly to make a speech and they wanted the streets to look clean and decent. First time I saw a sanitation robot actually cleanin’ the [deleted] street. First time in my life! I swear.

  Anyway, there Jade was in the tank and here I was at the junkyard and all I could think of was gettin’ Jade out. I knew I needed help, so first thing in the morning I went to Big Lou.

  His name’s kind of a joke. You know? Like, he’s even shorter than me, and I been called a runt all my life. His face is all screwed up, too, like it was burned with acid or somethin’ when he was a kid. Tough face. Tough man. I was really scared of Big Lou, but I wanted to get Jade outta the tank so bad I went to him anyway.

  The sun was just cornin’ up when I got to the old school building where Big Lou had his office. He wasn’t there that early. So I stooged around out in the street until he arrived in his car. It was polished so hard it looked brand new. Yeah, a regular automobile, with a driver. What’s it run on? How the hell would I know? Gasoline, I guess. Maybe one of those fancy other fuels, I don’t know.

  At first Lou told me to get lost, like I figured he would. I was just small-time, a junkyard dog without the teeth, far as he was concerned. See, I never wanted to be any bigger. I just wanted to live and let live. I got no hatred for nobody.

  But while I’m beggin’ Big Lou for some help to spring Jade he gets a phone call. Yeah, he had a regular office in the old school building in our neighborhood. I know, they shut down all the schools years ago, before I was even born. They’re supposed to abandoned, boarded up. Hell, most of ’em were burned down long ago. But not this one. It’s still got a pretty good roof and office space and bathrooms, if you know how to turn the water on. And electricity. Okay, sure, all the windows were smashed out in the old classrooms and the rest of the building’s a mess. But Lou’s office was okay. Clean and even warm in the winter. And nobody touched his windows, believe me.

  Y’know, down in South Philly, from what I hear Oh yeah, you people don’t know Philly that well, do you? Where you from, New York? Washington? Overseas? What?

  Okay, okay. So you ask the questions and I do the answerin’. Okay. Just curious. Where was I?

  Big Lou, right. He had an office in the old school building. Yeah, he had electricity. Didn’t I tell ya that already? There was a couple TVs in the office and a computer on his desk. And he had a fancy telephone, too. I had put it together myself, I recognized it soon as I saw it. Damned phone had its own computer chips: memory, hunt-and- track, fax—the works. I had sold it to Lou for half a peanut; cost me more to put it together than he paid for it. But when you sell to Big Lou you sell at his price. Besides, who the [deleted] else did I know who could use a phone like that?

  Anyway, I’m sittin’ there in front of his desk. Big desk. You could hold a dance on it. I had figured that Big Lou could talk to a couple people, put a little money in the right hands, and Jade could get out of the tank before the [deleted] Controllers fried her brains and sent her off to Canada or someplace.

  Lou gets this phone call. I sit and wait while he talks. No, I don’t know who called him. And he didn’t really do much talkin’. He just sort of grunted every now and then or said, “Yeah, I see. I gotcha.” His voice is kinda like a diesel truck in low gear, like whatever burned his face burned the inside of his throat, too.

  Then he puts down the phone and smiles at me. Smiles. From a face like his it was like a flock of roaches crawlin’ over you.

  “I got good news for you, Vic,” he says. “I’m gonna help you get your spiff outta the tank.” All with that smile. Scared the [deleted] outta me.

  “The hearings for all the bimbos they rounded up are three o’clock this afternoon. You be there. We’re gonna make a commotion for you. You grab your [deleted] and get out fast. Unnerstand me?”

  I didn’t like the sound of that word commotion. I wasn’t sure what it meant, not then, but I figured it would mean trouble. All I wanted was for Big Lou to buy Jade’s way out. Now it sounded like there was goin’ to be a fight.

  Don’t get me wrong. I’ve had my share of fights. I’m on the small side and I’m sure no jock, but you can’t even exist in the city if you can’t protect yourself. But I didn’t like the idea of a fight with the city police. They like to beat up on guys. And they carry guns. And who knew what in hell the Controllers carried?

  “You unnerstand me?” Big Lou repeated. He didn’t raise his voice much, just enough to make me know he wanted the right answer outta me.

  “Yeah,” I said. My voice damned near cracked. “Sure. And thanks.” I got up and scooted for the door.

  Before I got to it, though, Big Lou said, “There’s a favor you can do for me, kid.”

  “Sure, Lou,” I said. “Tonight, tomorrow, when? You name it.”

  “Now,” he said.

  “But Jade—”

  “You’ll be done in plenty time to get to city hall by three.”

  I didn’t argue. It wouldn’t have done me no good. Or Jade.

  What he wanted was a fancy electronic gizmo that I had to put together for him. I knew it was important to him because he told one of his goons—a guy with shoulders comin’ straight out of his ears, no neck at all, so help me—to drive me all the way downtown to the old navy base. It had been abandoned before I was born, of course, but it was still a treasure island of good stuff. Or so I had been told all my life. 1 had never even got as far as the electrified fence the Feds had put up all around the base, let alone inside the base itself. You had to go through South Philly to get to the base, and a guy alone don’t get through South Philly. Not in once piece, anyway.

  But now here I was bein’ taken down to that fence and right through it, in a real working automobile, no less! The car was dead gray with government numbers stenciled on the driver’s door. But the driver was Big Lou’s goon. And Littl
e Lou sat on the backseat with me.

  Little Lou was a real pain in the ass. Some people said he really was Big Lou’s son. But he sure didn’t look like Big Lou. Little Lou was only a couple years older than me and he was twice Big Lou’s size, big and hard with muscles all over. Good-lookin’ guy, too. Handsome, like a video star. Even if he hadn’t been a big shot he could’ve had any girl he wanted just by smilin’ at her.

  He was smart. And strong. But he was ugly inside. He had a nasty streak a mile and a half wide. He knew I wanted to be called Vic. I hate the name my mother gave me: Salvatore. Little Lou always called me Sal. Or sometimes Sally. He knew there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it.

  I tried to keep our talk strictly on the business at hand. And one eye on my wristwatch. It was an electronic beauty that I had rebuilt myself; kept perfect time, long as I could scrounge a battery for it every year or so. I kept it in an old scratched-up case with a crummy rusted band so nobody like Little Lou would see how great it was and take it off me.

  It was noon when we passed through a gate in the navy-base fence. The gate was wide open. No guard. Nobody anywhere in sight.

  “So what’s this gizmo I’m supposed to put together for you?” I asked Little Lou.

  He gave me a lazy smile. “You’ll see. We got a man here with all the pieces, but he don’t know how to put ’em together right.”

  “What’s the thing supposed to do?”

  His smile went bigger. “Set off a bomb.”

  “A bomb?”

  He laughed at how my voice squeaked. “That’s right. A bomb. And it’s gotta go off at just the right instant. Or else.”

  “I—” I had to swallow. Hard. “I never worked with bombs.”

  “You don’t have to. All you gotta do is put together the gizmo that sets the bomb off.”

  Well, they took me to a big building on the base. No, I don’t remember seein’ any number or name on the building. It looked like a great big tin shed to me. Half failin’ down. Walls slanting. Holes in the roof, I could see once we got inside. Pigeon crap all over the place. Everything stunk of rust and rot. But there were rows and rows of shelves in there, stacked right up to the roof. Most of ’em were bare, but some still had electronic parts in their cartons, brand new, still wrapped in plastic, never been used before. My eyes damn near popped.

  And there was a guy there sittin’ in a wheelchair next to a long bench covered with switches and batteries and circuit boards and all kinds of stuff. Older guy. Hair like a wire brush, a couple days’ beard on his face, grayer than his hair. One of his eyes was swollen purple and his lip was puffed up, too, like somebody’d been sluggin’ him. Nice guys, beatin’ on a wheelchair case.

  I got the picture right away. They had wanted this guy to make their gizmo for them and he couldn’t do it. Little Lou or one of the others had smacked the poor slob around. They always figured that if you hit a guy hard enough he would do what you wanted. But this poor bastard didn’t know how to make the gizmo they wanted. He had been a sailor, from the looks of him: face like leather and tattoos on his arms. But something had crippled his legs and now he was workin’ for Big Lou and Little Lou and takin’ a beating because they wanted him to do somethin’ he just didn’t know how to do.

  He told me what they wanted. Through his swollen, split lips he sounded strange, like he had been born someplace far away where they talk different from us. The gizmo was a kind of a radar, but not like they use in kitchen radar ranges. This one sent out a microwave beam that sensed the approach of a ship or a plane. What Little Lou wanted was to set off his bomb when whatever it is he wanted to blow up was a certain distance away.

  Electronics is easy. I heard that they used to send guys to school for years at a time to learn how to build electronic stuff. I could never understand why. All the stuff is pretty much the same. A resistor is a resistor. A power cell is a power cell. You find out what the gizmo is supposed to do and you put together the pieces that’ll do it. Simple.

  I had Little Lou’s gizmo put together by one o’clock. Two hours to go before I hadda be in city hall to take Jade away from the Controllers.

  “Nice work, Sal,” Little Lou said to me. He knew it got under my skin.

  “Call me Vic,” I said.

  “Sure,” he said. “Sally.”

  That was Little Lou. If I pushed it he would’ve smacked me in the mouth. And laughed.

  “I got to get up to city hall now,” I said.

  “Yeah, I know. Hot for that little [deleted], ain’tcha?”

  I didn’t answer. Little Lou was the kind who’d take your girl away from you just for the hell of it. Whether she wanted to or not. And there’d be nuthin I could do about it. So I just kept my mouth zipped.

  He walked me out to the car. It was hot outside; July hot. Muggy, too. “You start walkin’ now, you’ll probably just make it to city hall on time.”

  “Walk?” I squawked. “Ain’t you gonna drive me?” I was sweatin’ already in that hot sun.

  “Why should I?” He laughed as he put the gizmo in the car’s trunk. “I got what I want.”

  He shut the trunk lid real careful, gently, like maybe the bomb was in there, too. Then he got into the car’s backseat, leaving me standin’ out in the afternoon sun feelin’ hot and sweaty and stupid. But there wasn’t a damned thing I could do about it.

  Finally Lou laughed and popped the back door open. “Come on in, Sally. You look like you’re gonna bust into tears any minute.”

  I felt pretty [deleted] grateful to him. Walkin’ the few miles uptown to city hall wouldn’t have been no easy trick. The gangs in South Philly shoot first and ask questions afterward when a stranger tries to go through their turf.

  About halfway there, though, Little Lou lets me know why he’s bein’ so generous.

  “Tonight,” he says, “nine o’clock sharp. You be at the old Thirtieth-street station.”

  “Me? Why? What for?”

  “Two reasons. First we gotta test the gizmo you made. Then we gotta hook it up to the bomb. If it works right.”

  He wasn’t smilin’ anymore. I was scared of workin’ with a bomb, lemme tell you. But not as scared as I was at the thought of what Little Lou’d do to me if the gizmo didn’t work right.

  So I got to city hall in plenty time okay. It’s a big ugly pile of gray stone, half failin’ apart. A windowsill had crumbled out a couple months ago, just dropped out of its wall and fell to the street. Solid hunk of stone, musta weighed a couple tons. It was still there, stickin’ through the pavement like an unexploded bomb. I wondered what would happen if the statue of Billy Penn, up at the top of the Hall’s tower, ever came loose. Be like a [deleted] atomic bomb hittin’ the street.

  Usually city hall is a good place to avoid. Nobody there but the suits who run what’s left of the city and the oinks who guard ’em.

  Oinks? Pigs. Helmet-heads. Bruisers. Cops. Police. There are worse names for them, too, y’know.

  Well, anyway, this particular afternoon city hall is a busy place. Sanitation robots chuggin’ and scrubbin’ all over the place. A squad of guys in soldier uniforms and polished helmets goin’ through some kind of drill routine in the center courtyard. Even a crew of guys with a truck and a crane tryin’ to tug that windowsill outta the pavement. Might as well be tryin’ to lift the [deleted] Rock of Gibraltar, I thought.

  They were goin’ through all this because the Chairman of the World Council was cornin’ to give a speech over at Independence Hall. Fourth of July and all that crap. Everybody knew that as soon as the Chairman’s speech was over and he was on his way back to New York or wherever he stayed, Philly would go back to bein’ half empty, half dead. The sanitation robots would go back to the housing tracts out in the suburbs and Philly would be left to itself, dirty and hot and nasty as hell.

  I felt a little edgy actually goin’ inside city hall. But I told myself, What the hell, they got nuthin on me. I’m not wanted for any crime or anything. I don’t even exis
t, as far as their computers are concerned. Still, when I saw these guys in suits and ties and all I felt pretty crummy. Like I should have found a shower someplace or at least a comb.

  I didn’t like to ask nobody for directions, but once I was inside the Hall I didn’t have a [deleted] idea of where I should go. I picked out a woman, dressed real neat in kind of a suit but with a skirt instead of pants. Even wore a tie. No tits to speak of, but her hair was a nice shade of yellow, like those girls you see in TV commercials.

  She kind of wrinkled her nose at me, but she pointed up a flight of stone stairs. I went up and got lost again right away. Then I saw an oink—a woman, though—and asked her. She eyed me up and down like she was thinkin’ how much fun it’d be to bash me on the head with her billy. But instead she told me how to find the courtroom. She talked real slow, like I was brain-damaged or something. Or maybe she was, come to think of it.

  I went down the hall and saw the big double-doored entrance to the courtroom. A pair of oinks stood on either side of it, fully armed and helmeted. A lot of people were streamin’ through, all of them well dressed, a lot of them carrying cameras or laptop computers. Lots of really great stuff, if only I could get my hands on it.

  Then I saw a men’s room across the corridor and I ducked inside. A couple homeless guys had made a camp in the stalls for themselves. The sinks had been freshly cleaned up, though, and the place didn’t smell too bad. I washed my face and hands and tried to comb my hair a little with my fingers. Still looked pretty messy, but what the hell.

  Taking a deep breath, I marched across the corridor and through the double doors, right past the oinks. I didn’t look at them, just kept my eyes straight ahead.

  And then I saw Jade.

  They had her in a kind of a pen made of polished wood railings up to about waist-level and thick shatterproof glass from there to the ceiling. She was in there with maybe three dozen other pros, most of ’em lookin’ pretty tired and sleazy, I gotta admit. But not Jade. She looked kind of scared, wide-eyed, you know. But as beautiful and fresh as a flower in the middle of a garbage heap. I wanted to wave to her, yell to her so she’d notice me. But I didn’t dare.