The Girl With a Symphony in Her Fingers

by Michael G. Coney

  I remembered leaving Carioca’s house and, after a short interval, getting into my hovercar. I remembered the way the light from the front door slanted across the grass which was already sparkling with dew, while the two women watched me from the doorway, black silhouettes and long black shadows which I tried not to see, in case I saw details I wanted to forget.

  I remember being able to think again, to think slowly and begin perhaps to understand. I was somewhere in a suburb of Louise, although I forget how I got there. I saw pale houses and dark shadows, and here and there the lissom shape of a guard shark. I drove out of Louise then, and along the Marine Drive.

  I remember stopping somewhere, lighting a cigarette and looking out at the blackness of the night sea. I took a flask of scotch from the glove compartment and drank, and I remember being scared that there wasn’t enough in the bottle. Something caught my eye on the seat beside me; it was the small box containing Joanne’s present. I tried not to blame her for what had happened; she was a bonded S. P. girl and she had no rights in the matter; such is the law.

  I remember watching some fool night-gliding, slipping quietly across the sky like a pale, swift bat. Somewhere a state prisoner might be watching that tiny shape, too. He might be wishing the pilot dead, but he would never wish him injured. I remember wondering just how badly Carioca’s hand had been bitten.

  There is a derogatory nickname for state prisoners based on the initial letters; it is seldom heard, but it came into my mind that evening.

  At least I’d had the wit to bring Joanne’s present away with me.

  What good was a pair of slithe-skin gloves to my used Spare Parts girl?

  “I know you don’t mean that, Joe. You don’t mean that, do you, Joe?”

  I looked into her face. I’ve often wondered why Marigold was so fair, while her parents and brother were such typically dark Latin people. She had pretty blonde hair and a golden tan which made the darker girls on the beach look merely dirty. “Not in the way I wish I meant it,” I replied.

  “It is good; you feel better now. I think a ghost was walking on your grave.”

  “You’re right. But it’s gone now.” It would be back, of course, but at least I felt I could look it in the face. “Come on,” I said, standing and pulling her to her feet too. “Let’s go for a walk. I want to go where your brother can’t find us.”

  “I think I know the place,” said sweet Marigold.

  We climbed the hot rocks at the northern end of the beach and walked along a brown rutted path beside a banana plantation; the tall plants were beginning to bloom and the tops had bent over with the weight of the heavy, suggestively shaped red flower. Marigold walked ahead of me, and I watched her provocative bottom moving under the thin cloth of the bright bikini. She led me between the rows of plants; I glanced back once but brother Jon seemed to have lost us. The leaves were dense and I turned back to follow Marigold, satisfied that we were safe from pursuit.

  She stopped and turned to face me, a faint smile on her lips. The sun dappled her body as she reached up and took hold of one of the firm, heavy banana flowers, weighing it in her hand. I could see the undercurve of her breast as I stood beside her, and moving my viewpoint slightly, I caught sight of a pink nipple.

  “You didn’t look at me like that before,” she said softly, still feeling the red flower, pulling it down toward her, laying it against her cheek as she watched me. Her bare feet shifted in the coarse grass, her left arm cradled under her breasts, lifting them from the scanty cloth, bringing hard little pink tips into plain view. “Why don’t you, if you like to?”

  “Your brother … was always around.” I was having difficulty in speaking; my hand reached out of its own volition while a huge pulse hammered in my chest. My fingers were stroking the erect nipples; I found my breath was coming faster. I wondered briefly how this foreign girl whom I didn’t love could affect me like this; then my mind seemed to stop thinking and I think I groaned as I pulled her toward me, and she let go of the red flower which sprang up and away, and she took hold of me instead.

  We must have stayed in that plantation for three hours or more and yet, as I watched her lead the way back toward the sea, I was still overcome with desire at the sight of her and had to seize her from behind while she struggled and giggled and at last gave in with a groan of delight. Afterward we slipped down to the beach and quickly into the sea, before Jon, who sat on a nearby rock in saturnine frustration, could see us. The cool water brought us to our senses, and by the time we emerged, I think we were quite lucid. Anyway, after a brief glance of suspicion Jon appeared satisfied, and made no move toward his knife.

  That afternoon of pure, unthinking lust was the catharsis I needed, and the following day I decided I could face the return to the Peninsula. When they saw me off on the bus Marigold kissed me in brief sisterly fashion, while Jon scowled and shook my hand. I invited them all to come and stay with me at the farm, and they accepted. As the bus moved off I was hoping they would come, although I knew they wouldn’t. They were poor, the fares high. I tried, later, to work up a guilt feeling over Marigold, but I couldn’t achieve anything worth condemning myself for. I took the slow route back, and a few days later arrived home.

  Dave Froehlich greeted me with a question about the new breeding stock; he spoke as though I’d never been away. There was a different bunch of S. P. girls working in the factory; it later emerged that we had suffered a strike over working conditions while I’d been gone. Dave admitted this grudgingly and it gave me no small satisfaction. Although the method of solving a dispute with the S. P. girls is simple—we merely hire a different crew—the fact that any problem should have reached strike proportions bore testimony to Dave’s lack of tact. Maybe it was not just me he hated. Maybe he hated everybody.

  That evening as I sat in my living room, back to the realistic view of the stormy winter Strait with the euphoria of the south just a memory, I wondered how to face the Peninsula again. I called the state penitentiary for a start, and soon the face of Heathcote Lambert appeared on the screen.

  “Joanne Shaw?” he repeated. “Yes, I recall her. She was bonded to Carioca Jones.”

  “Was? You mean she’s been released now? She’s a free-woman?”

  “Oh, no. She’s back in the pen. Wait a moment.” He disappeared from view and I found I’d finished my scotch without remembering the first gulp. “Here we are,” he said after a while, holding a card. “Yes. She drew a stiff sentence in the first place—I can’t tell you why, of course, Joe. Then she had a one-third remission for contracting into bondage, plus a further one-third for—I see she made a donation.”

  “That’s right,” I managed to say.

  “Then Miss Jones released her from bondage with a good reference and she came back here to serve out her term. She’s due for release in September. The sixth, it says here.”

  September the sixth … it was about eight months away. “Why did Miss Jones release her from bondage?” I asked.

  “I’ve no idea. Provided the references are good she still gets her remission, and that’s all that concerns us. Although—” He hesitated. “I hear Miss Jones has been speaking out against the Penal Reform Act recently.”

  “Christ, that’s a switch. Are you saying she doesn’t believe in bondage anymore?”

  “I’m just throwing out a suggestion, Joe. You can make what you like of it. But there was a lot of trouble while you were away and it transpired that Miss Jones had made herself unpopular over the, uh, circumstances of Miss Shaw’s donation. A whole lot of people reckoned the donation was unnecessary and Carioca Jones found herself socially ostracized.”

  “Oh, now isn’t that just too bad.”

  “Seriously, Joe, it means a lot to a woman like Carioca Jones. My betting is that she’s trying to make amends, and the first step was to release Miss Shaw. Then she made a big thing out of sending her damned shark to the Kennels for psychiatric therapy. I see her name around a lot; she seems to be trying to get
involved with the Fine Arts Club, and the Louise Amateur Dramatics, and the Victims of Tycho Fund, and all that crap.”

  I thanked him, told him I’d see him at the club on the weekend, and hung up. I poured myself another scotch and watched the lights of an antigrav shuttle glide across the black sky. Joanne was due for release on September sixth. I wished I’d asked Lambert about visiting days. The scotch, plus the undeniable pleasure of being back in familiar surroundings, induced a sensation of optimism. Cautiously I thought again of Marigold and found only pleasure in the recollection, allied to a considerable amount of honest lust.

  It occurred to me only briefly that I would have been better advised to love Marigold, rather than the enigmatic and disabled girl in the state penitentiary.

  5

  On the following morning I awoke refreshed and alert, a sign of having consumed exactly the right quantity of alcohol the previous night. My bedroom was bright with watery sunlight and the ceiling reflected moving ripples from the murmuring ocean outside; there was almost a touch of spring in the air. It occurred to me that I might go along to the club later in the day; it was time to start making arrangements for the start of the new sling-gliding season. I dressed, watched Newspocket while I drank my coffee, then went out to the yard.

  Dave Froehlich was squatting beside one of the pens, repairing the netting. He looked up as I approached.

  “We lost two animals last night,” he said shortly.

  “Sharks?”

  “I don’t think so. Look. The netting has been pulled away from the post. No shark could do that.”

  In one corner of the pen the remainder of the slithes huddled uneasily, their skins still bearing traces of the yellow tinge of fear. They regarded me with sad, reptilian eyes and even the sight of Silkie at my feet could not persuade them to approach.

  “So what do you think it is?”

  He rose to his feet, dusted his hands off, and accompanied me toward the workshop. “I don’t have any idea,” he said. “There’s been a lot of talk recently about people abandoning their pets, turning them loose.” He opened the factory door and we entered. The S. P. girls were working quietly and, so far as I could tell, efficiently. “Some of these people think it’s cute to have a tuna as a pet—then after a few days they find tunas need constant moisturizer and food. And they’re boring; all they do is lie around gasping and stinking. So they have the choice of turning them loose, having them put down, or eating them. It’s easiest just to turn them loose and forget about them. I hate to think what might be out there, in the bush. Somebody ought to do something about it. We need an active organization, like the Foes of Bondage. They’d close down that Marjoribanks woman quick enough.”

  “From what I’ve seen of the Foes of Bondage I’d call them a bunch of nuts,” I said incautiously.

  There was a twitter of indignation from the S. P. girls and I found myself the center of instant hostility. One rat-faced woman had sprung to her feet.

  “The Foes are the only thing that keeps bastards like you under control!” she shrilled. “The Foes are a fine body of women and I won’t have any goddamned freeman saying otherwise. You’re just an idle slave-owner, going off on vacation and leaving poor Dave here to run your goddamned farm for you!”

  It was too early in the morning for this kind of thing. “Take her name and send her back to the pen, Dave,” I snapped. “How the hell did you get to pick a weirdo like her?”

  “Don’t let him tell you what to do, Dave!”

  The women were all on their feet now, crowding around me, and I wondered who was going to throw the first punch or whatever it is that enraged women do. I had a hunch that someone would hit me from behind first—and only then would the rest of them summon up courage to attack me from the front. So I backed quickly against a bench and bunched my fists. In such a situation I have no scruples whatever; it was, quite simply, them or me. I still found time to be surprised at how quickly the storm had blown up.

  Apparently there was still some talking to do before the action began, however. “Look at the coward, frightened of us women,” someone shouted uncertainly.

  I felt a rising tide of temper at the unfairness of this confrontation. “Dave,” I snarled, “I want you to tell these fools the score. As a freeman there are three ways I can make things hot for you people. Firstly, I can misuse you as a bonded man. Have I ever done that? Secondly, I can ill-treat these S. P. girls. Have I ever done that? Thirdly, I can apply to the Ambulatory Organ Pool for a graft or a transplant. Have I ever done that? Tell them, you bum. Tell them that you elected for bondage of your own free will, because you wanted the remission. Tell them that!”

  He swallowed as they all turned on him. “Yes, but you go sling-gliding. How do I know you won’t get yourself smashed up? Because you have a bonded man they won’t let you use the Pool. I’m the one who’ll have to donate.”

  “Then why the hell did you apply for bondage?”

  “I … I guess I wanted the remission.”

  “Look, Dave. I keep you here because you’re a good worker, and I’ve told you I’ll see you right when your sentence is up. Isn’t that worth waiting for?” I stared at him; his eyes dropped. “I just can’t understand your problem.”

  The rat-faced woman reentered the fray, sensing that the battle was degenerating into a logical discussion. “You’ve created a race of second-class citizens!”

  This was a new one to me; it sounded like a slogan of the Foes of Bondage, but I hadn’t heard the group down south use it. “Have I?” I asked, puzzled.

  An unexpected male voice spoke. “Of course you haven’t, Joe. That’s Evadne Prendergast’s latest catch-phrase, designed to make you feel guilty.” Doug Marshall stood in the doorway, large and comforting. With him was his man Charles, equally stalwart. “It conveniently ignores the fact that the reason state prisoners are second-class citizens is because of the crimes they committed—not because of anything honest men did.”

  “You!” squealed the rat-faced woman. “You there, Charles Wentworth. You’re a bonded man. Are you going to stand there and take all this horseshit? What sort of a man are you?”

  Charles was leaning against the door, grinning lazily. “Too much of a man for you, lady. I got five years for rape.” He scrutinized her scrawny frame with pretended interest, then shook his head. “Although I think I’d draw the line at you.”

  The scream of temper was drowned by the general outburst of mirth from the other girls and the bad moment was passing. Charles followed up his thrust with a short pep talk on the advantages of playing ball with one’s employer, and the whole affair fizzled out.

  As we left the factory I asked Doug Marshall, “Who the hell is Evadne Prendergast?”

  “President of the local chapter of the Foes of Bondage—although not for long, if Miss Carioca Jones has anything to do with it. I think our movie star has her eyes on the title.”

  I stared at him. “Are you seriously trying to tell me Carioca Jones has joined the Foes of Bondage?”

  “Casting aside all worldly possessions, including Joanne Shaw,” he affirmed. “There’s nothing strange about it. Politicians change viewpoints all the time, so why not aging 3-V stars? I tell you, your friend Carioca is really going places.”

  “I just don’t get it,” I muttered. “I can’t even understand why they should admit her to membership.”

  “A convert is the best advert,” he said. “Particularly a notable like Miss Jones. Her presence will have more impact than a dozen ordinary honest women. I only hope they don’t take it into their heads to foul up the opening day of the gliding season with some goddamned demonstration. The Foes have been making their presence felt around here, recently. By the way, we have a Club Committee meeting later this afternoon. Are you coming?”

  “Sure.” It would be good to talk gliding again. We discussed the President’s Trophy—which is awarded to the winner of the first race of the season—then we caught sight of a hovercar moving thro
ugh the scrub.

  “I’m getting out of here,” said Doug abruptly, hurrying toward his car. “That looks like Carioca Jones.” Charles followed, the doors slammed, the car rose and fled down the track in a scattering of dead leaves.

  I leaned against the gate, waiting for Carioca Jones and wondering how the hell to handle her.

  Her car sank to the ground and there was a pause while she collected her things from the seat beside her; I could see her tucking gloves and keys into her purse and making a show of peering under the dash for her shoes—but I knew that she was playing for time; that, like me, she was uneasy about the confrontation.

  She walked toward me, dressed soberly in black. “Hello, Joe,” she said quietly.

  “Let’s go into the house,” I said.

  She sat by the window in the living room and I handed her a drink, taking a large one myself. My hands were shaking and I didn’t know whether I hated her or pitied her. I didn’t know why she was here; I could see no reason why we should ever have needed to meet again—except that we both knew Joanne.

  She watched me with her hard black eyes but the usual calculation was not there; rather, she looked uncertain. Not surprisingly.

  “Joe, I don’t know what to say,” she said at last. “I want you to believe me when I say I’m truly sorry for what happened. I was a stupid and jealous woman and I should have been imprisoned for what I did, but the law doesn’t work that way.”

  “No, it doesn’t.”

  “How … are you? I mean, how are you feeling, Joe? I heard you were … sick, before you went away.”

  “I needed a change, that’s all.”

  Her drink was finished, as was her first cigarette. I refilled her glass and she fumbled another cigarette from the packet and held it to her lips with trembling fingers, with young fingers, looking to me for a light. I saw a bright tear starting around her lower eyelid; they teach actresses to do that. She looked beaten, like an old prostitute.