Slant

by Greg Bear

  “I’ll get you together with some people. Patience,” Marcus says. “I’ve waited four years so far to see this happen. We might have to wait ten more.”

  TRIBUTARY FEED

  (Freelink tempter SUBCONT IND Nama Rupa Vidya) 1,2,3,4…

  GO HIBAND

  DEEPBACK!

  Dataflow hits India like snakebite! Two billion people, hungry for success, 80% literate and willing to be educated… Cheap satlinks and then fibes bring them together in a way they’ve never known before, and opens the entire world to them. Cultural, religious, geological, and political boundaries go down in a few years, and the entrepreneurial spirit rises like Shiva triumphant over the fuming corpse of the old. India is reborn, reshaped, rivals Southern China and Korea and Russia within ten years. India produces more software and Yox entertainment in a month than the rest of the world does in a year… The rupee becomes standard currency in Asia, and vies on the rim markets with dollars and yen, pushing the Japanese and Korean dominance back, back…

  WOWAH! The rupee becomes valued at four hundredths of a second open search on the World Feed, beating out the $US, in 2035.

  STRIDERS! India becomes the world’s major source of phantom spiders, sliders, riders, hiders, and the ultimate, striders—those autopoieticdef1 autonomous searchers that hide for nanoseconds in the metabigwidth delivery systems, then take up residence in your business hardware, your house monitor, your fibe link filter, your LitVid display and Yox set, feeding hungrily on data files like catfish in an aquarium. Striders bring home the goodies to crowded little freetrade floors in data-hungry India, where traders remarket the relevant and usefuls to a worldwide unlicensed market of subterranean knowledge. India denies any such…

  INTRATAINMENT, EXTRATAINMENT! India becomes rich, ingenious, quirky India, where every day and every night gods and goddesses and almond-colored, almond-eyed super-children are mirrored and karaoked by nine hundred million connected consumers, where every day the consumers create and register two million derivative new stories, characters, and branch worlds for franchised Yox programs and five hundred thousand new LitVid and Yox extratainment products, making the North America feed look like a trickle of molasses.

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  IMMEDIA

  Updated for your filter/searcher every .0001 sec.

  19

  Jack Giffey believes in being very gentle with women. (It’s the women who have been cruel to him—a small dark voice tells him; but actually; he can’t remember any cruel women—why is that?)

  He is gentle with Yvonne. She is surprisingly elegant in his bed, anticipatory and supple and enthusiastic without seeming a slut. She keeps her eyes on his eyes, she watches his motions with intense interest; it has been sometime since he has felt the urgency of a younger woman, and even among her age group, Yvonne is a pistol, a classy pistol indeed. He feels very lucky, like a sacrificial victim given the pick of a town’s beauties before his ritual comes to its inevitable end.

  Giffey does not enjoy tongue kisses, but oddly enough, he enjoys using his lips and tongue everywhere else. He read somewhere years ago about men of his type, the particular molecules they enjoyed and which spurred their own satisfactions, but that was chemistry not sex and he really does not care what the reasons are.

  Yvonne lets him know, without resorting to specifics, that few men of her acquaintance are so generous. Giffey feels proud and within an hour they have completely exhausted each other.

  “You are some lady,” Giffey says as they lie back. The room is not expensive and does not have much in the way of comforts, but he keeps a bottle of bourbon in the cupboard and there is ice in the small ancient enameled refrigerator, and he offers her a drink. He feels very mellow toward her and even a little protective.

  “I don’t normally like liquor,” Yvonne says. “But it seems right. Let’s make it a toast—to you.”

  “Thank you,” Giffey says.

  While he is up getting the glasses poured, Yvonne sits up on the bed with the covers draped just over her knees, and he appreciates the flow of her breasts and the twin rolls of her bunched tummy. Giffey does not like tummies that are artificially taut. Yvonne has sufficient numbers of the lovely flaws of untampered nature to almost convince him that there is nothing he’d like better than to spend more days and of course nights with her, many more.

  “What do your friends call you? Do they call you Jack?” Yvonne asks, scratching her nose with a fingernail.

  “My best friends call me Giff,” he says. “But very few people on this world ever call me Giff.”

  “May I?”

  Giffey brings the glasses over, ice clunking within the pale brown bourbon. “What would Bill think if I let you call me Giff?” he says.

  Yvonne narrows her eyes. “I need you, this,” she says. “It’s none of his damn business.”

  “Sorry I brought it up.”

  “That’s all right,” Yvonne says, and gives him dispensation with a wave of her glass, then takes a sip.

  “I wish I could do more,” Giffey says.

  “I’m not asking for more,” she says.

  He feels his deep layer of occasional honesty rising to the surface. He knows he can’t suppress it; he cares for this woman a little, and he will not deceive her. “What I mean is, you move me like no woman I’ve met in years.”

  “I have that effect on some men,” Yvonne says with such innocent truthfulness that Giffey knows she is not boasting. “I just wish they were quality, like you. Why can’t you stay a while?”

  “I’ll be here, but I’m going to be busy,” Giffey says.

  “Backwoods business, probably,” she says.

  Giffey grins but does not nod.

  “I know all about what men do here to make money. We’ve brought the hard times on ourselves. I wish to God I could just pack up and move to Seattle, get a job there.”

  Giffey shakes his head. “Bad idea, unprepared.”

  “We’ve talked about this already,” Yvonne says.

  “We have.”

  “I—”

  She is interrupted by heavy knocking on the door. Giffey is up and has his pistol out of a drawer before the third knock. The knock is followed by a loud male voice.

  “Yvonne, this is Rudy. We know you’re in there with somebody.”

  “Go to hell, Rudy, I am not yours to bother!” Yvonne shouts back. She stands on the bed and looks for her clothes. Giffey bunches them up in a fist from the chair and throws them to her.

  He is standing naked with his gun in one hand, and she tilts her head to one side and closes her eyes. “Dear sweet Jesus,” she whispers.

  “Bill’s friends?” Giffey asks softly.

  “Yeah.”

  “Will they hurt you?”

  “No,” she says. “They are such clucks.”

  “Will Bill hurt you?”

  “They don’t tell him,” she says, exasperated. “The bastards think they’re watching out for me. They think I’m Bill’s property.”

  “I see. You’ve been here before.”

  “Haven’t you?”

  Giffey chews this over for a moment, and then his wise old smile returns. “Not for some time.”

  There is this other woman, whose name and face he can’t quite recall He shakes that cold little sliver of memory out of his thoughts.

  Yvonne sees his expression and her face wrinkles in disappointment. “I’m sorry,” she says.

  “They tangle with me and they are going to be hurt. You get dressed, and get out there. It’s been a pure pleasure, Yvonne.”

  “For me, too, Giff.”

  “Yeah, well, call me Jack,” he says, a
nd retires with his clothes and gun to the bathroom, shutting off the light. He hopes Yvonne is smart enough to close the door and let it lock on her way out, before the men decide they have to do something more.

  He hears them talking on the walkway outside. He doesn’t hear the hotel room door close.

  There are two men and they sound like they’re about Yvonne’s age, maybe younger. He hopes they do not come into his room.

  Footsteps on the room’s threadbare carpet. Giffey’s senses become very keen, in the dark behind the bathroom door. Whoever is in his room—just one person—is taking it slow and easy, looking things over.

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” the young man, Rudy, says. “I just want to talk things over. Let me know Where you are.”

  Giffey keeps quiet. Quiet is spookier.

  “Come on. Just talk.”

  Yvonne tells Rudy to get out of the room, they should just leave.

  “This bastard isn’t worth it,” the other young man says. “Let him go.”

  “Yeah. Well, he should know something, that’s all. You listening? Where are you, you fucker?”

  “Rudy,” Yvonne whines, “he’s a pro. Federal army. He’ll kill you.”

  Giffey cringes.

  “Pro what? Pro federal woman-stealer? Talk to me, or I’ll shoot through the goddamn walls!”

  Giffey holds up his pistol and pulls back the automatic target seeker switch. It makes a small sliding click. Through the door or the wall, it won’t be very good, but it will give him a better chance if the man decides to jump into the bathroom. Some of these young Ruggers are just crazy enough to do a thing like that.

  “Around here, we don’t, mess with another man’s woman!” Rudy says, his voice hoarse. He’s not happy with this quiet.

  “Oh, Rudy, puh-leeze!” Yvonne says.

  “I’d go home if I were you, Mister, back to fucking District of Corruption or wherever you call home. Leave this town to the good-people, the ones who know better than to—”

  “Rudy,” the other man calls. “Let’s go.”

  Rudy thinks this over. He hasn’t come any closer to the bathroom door.

  “Yeah, crazy bastard,” Rudy murmurs. The footsteps retreat.

  Giffey stays in the bathroom for ten or fifteen minutes, listening. He can’t hear a thing outside the room, though car and truck noises from the street could mask some sounds. There’s a couple of minutes of almost complete silence, and slowly, he emerges from of the bathroom.

  He feels like a crab scuttling out from under a rock with gulls wheeling overhead.

  The room is empty.

  When he is sure the hall and the street outside the building are clear, he packs up everything in a small suitcase and leaves. Giffey does not want anybody knowing where he is, or where he might be, tomorrow or after that.

  He is furious with himself for losing sight of his goal. This could have ended it all early and stupidly, for nothing, he thinks.

  For nothing at all.

  20

  Night is coming on to dark morning and the storm is gentled, the light-show is off. All the house shutters are drawn and the monitor is set to store and be quiet. Alice has calmed Twist and given her some fast OTC anxiolytics. She is not hyperventilating now and she lies on Alice’s couch with a cold cloth over her eyes, her thin wrists corded, fingers curling and uncurling. She has stopped sobbing. Alice is exhausted but she watches over the young woman with feelings of irritation and peculiar gratitude.

  She can rely on Twist to always have more urgent and tangled problems. Twist’s words tumbled out of her as soon as she came through the door—her awfulness was back, she said, in force, and she could hardly see straight. She has cycled in and out of total darkness, “Like looking at a black dog with sick eyes,” she said; skirted slashing her wrists, listened to the most awful silent urgings, and imagined the most vivid hells. Some of these she described while Alice fixed her some food and dosed out the anxiolytics. Alice listened, grimly sympathetic.

  Twist is having one severe fallback, no doubts. Tomorrow they will talk about her temp situation and see where some long-term medical and therapy might be gotten.

  But now it is peaceful. A slow drizzle falls outside, little finger-taps of rain barely audible on the blanked windows, and all there is in the world exists within these walls.

  Alice puts on her plush robe and curls up on the chair beside the couch, drawing up her knees, eyes closing of themselves. She feels like a squirrel after it has been chased by a cat. Her thinking comes in slow waves of reason mixed With soft tremors of fantasy.

  21

  Mary Choy has filed her request with Seattle Citizen Oversight to get the records she needs. Humans have to make that decision and they are all at home asleep, and so, after checking in with Nussbaum and finding that he has gone home, she hooks a police shuttle, empty but for her, on its ride to the north.

  At her apt, she undresses. Showers.

  Sits staring at the rain on the antique thermopane plate glass windows. Busy day, little girl.

  It is a day she would not mind forgetting. Nussbaum could have tried her out on something a little less gruesome, a little less disturbing and pointless.

  Her legs stretch long and her back slumps in the soft chair. She is not ready for sleep yet. She stands and performs a slow dytch, tai-Chi and aikido moves choreographed to her own dance rhythms, until her muscles and attitudes relax and allow her basic status self, ground and reference for all her endeavors, to come to balance and emerge like the moon from behind clouds.

  She yawns. The images are tightly bottled. She will release them tomorrow, and with them, the professional anger that does not burn so much as freeze.

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  THE HUSBAND:

  I have always been courteous and sweet, and thought of you. You yourself told me I was the best lover you ever had. I watched with dismay the cooling, the change from excitement to responsibility, to keeping the home on course…

  When I am gone, I hope you’ll look back and realize what opportunities you missed. You’ll think of all those times you could have felt more and done more, and as you’re lying there, completely alone in bed, you’ll have so many regrets…

  That’s what I dream of. The body’s reckoning.

  THE WIFE:

  Yes, he is conscientious, but lord… After he is gone—and I do hope I survive him—I can spend all morning in the garden, and then have toast and a little marmalade for breakfast. I hope I am too old and withered for men to pay me any attention. I will travel with my friends and read whenever I wish. I suppose he thinks I will miss him in bed, but really, after, what will it be, probably, forty years of having to service him—that’s what he himself calls it sometimes—wouldn’t any reasonable human being hope for a vacation?

  That’s what I dream of. A long vacation.

  22

  In the back of Marcus’s limo, without Marcus, Jonathan is on his way home. He is gray smooth neutral now; he feels he has been manipulated into tracking a slick fast groove he does not think can lead anywhere good. By feeling neutral he can let himself think there is some way out, some room to maneuver; he has not really made any decisions. Marcus’s offer sounds so very ridiculous, nineteenth-century; a secret society, perhaps, with handshakes and fezzes, Ancient Revelations Unveiled upon signing a binding pact in blood…

  What he feels, most of all, is lost, like a small boy. He wants to belong someplace, but where—with Marcus and his unknown opportunity? With Chloe and her hidden emotions and reluctance?

  Jonathan travels in someone else’s car to a house where he is no longer at home.

  God, I’m feeling sorry for myself, he thinks. Time to get maudlin and look for a s
ympathetic shoulder.

  But he is a mature man and playtime is long over.

  He can see his house from the road. The limo pauses at a crossing. He wonders whether Chloe is still awake.

  Penelope and Hiram have gone to bed. The house is quiet. Chloe stands by the living room window watching the clouds tatter.

  Chloe’s thoughts have been more and more ragged and bitter through the evening, veering between self-judgment and self-justification. Yet there is nothing she can blame specifically for her mood. Jonathan has done nothing unusual to irritate her. The children have simply been themselves, and she is used to that sort of stress.

  Maybe she can blame a crazy toilet that says they are sick; it has even told her now, based on a straightforward pee, that she is the one who has a viral cold. She has phoned in a repair order, though the toilet’s own opinion of its condition is that there is nothing wrong.

  No member of the family has ever had a cold. She hardly remembers what the symptoms might be.

  For reasons she cannot fathom, she has been thinking with sharp persistence about the months before and after she met Jonathan, that time when she could have reliably bedded a new man every week, sometimes two, and often did. Back then, she would not have hesitated to call it fucking around; now the term seems crude. She is a mother, after all, and a good and responsible one.

  Jonathan at first seemed just another of those men, less handsome than most, but from the beginning she treated him differently. Even as she dated and bedded others, she would not immediately give herself to him, give him what her mother called “the physical privilege.” No privilege—just sex, delightful exercise. But with Jonathan—

  She felt differently about Jonathan, not strongly attracted Sexually, yet not uninterested; he moved her in different ways.