Slant

by Eikeltje

  his cheeks and nose.

  The remaining two may be brothers, hawkish smiling men between thirty

  and thirty-five years of age, but Giffey will not even learn their names. They

  act as if all this is beneath them, but when Giffey talks, they lean forward on

  the folding plastic chairs and listen intently. Giffey hopes they aren't informants.

  There's something a little false about them.

  "All right, let's get started, you only got half an hour," the oldest man says

  "I've done my part."

  Giffey looks up at the ceiling and sees a pair of antique car bumper stickers

  pasted on a composite beam. One reads: QUESTIONAUTHORITY. The other,

  I: .... I., I--, .... tl ir. I7lo'm,'/c5)

  /

  SLANT 61

  He smiles with as much patient tolerance as he can muster. "I thank you

  for the arrangements."

  "You're paying," the oldest man says with a shrug. He rubs one ear like a

  cat about to clean itself, then says, "Want to inspect the merchandise? I take it

  you won't want it delivered until--"

  "I'll look at it, make sure it's what I ordered," Giffey says. The old man

  seems to want to make the facts plain to everybody. This is just all too thrilling

  for him.

  Ken Jenner grins at Giffey, gives a small shake of his head. Jenner is likely

  to be pretty essential in this scheme, so Giffey hopes he won't be compelled

  to kill the young man just to stop that unnatural scalp from moving.

  The old man leads them through gloomy hallways to the back of the house.

  The ceiling here is black, and thick with wiring arranged to mimic the heat

  signature of something other than what is actually in the long, cool room.

  Here on a pallet are four canisters of MGN, Military Grade Nano, not very

  old--dated June 19 2051.

  "This is good stuff, not easy to get, but here's what really takes the prize,"

  the old man says. The brothers watch everything with religious awe. Jenner's

  scalp for once is still. The old man steps around the pallet and pulls back a

  tarp threaded with more wire. Two more canisters sit beneath the tarp. "The

  real stuff," he says. "Military complete paste. Just mix 'em and--wow."

  Giffey looks at the drums of MGN and complete paste. He has never seen

  so much of it in his life except in pictures and vids. They never had this much

  in all the time he was in Hispaniola. If they had, Yardley would have won in

  an hour instead of a week.

  "Bet you never seen more than a pint or two of this stuff all at once," Jenner

  whispers to Giffey.

  "Never," Giffey says. Jenner is proudly convinced he's responsible for the

  procurement. Giffey won't try to disabuse him.

  Military grade nano can be programmed to manufacture a large variety of

  weapons from many kinds of raw material available in a combat zone. By

  Geneva rules, however, it cannot manufacture or contain, prior to actual use,

  the ingredients necessary to make high explosives. The manufacture of military

  complete paste is closely monitored.

  It's the kind of thing that makes Green Idaho's legislature cry with economic

  self-pity: that the outside world won't let them make their own nano

  or complete paste. They are denied such essential pleasures.

  "Your first payment went through last night," the old man says. "Much

  appreciated. It was a pleasure getting this stuff, a real challenge." The old man

  also wants Giffey to believe he had a major hand in this procurement. The

  more hands take credit, the less clear a trail to the real source. "I'll enjoy

  thinking about it for weeks."

  "I'll bet," Giffey says. "Can I poke?"

  62

  GREG BEAR

  "Be my guest," the old man says. Giffey takes a metal rod with a small wire

  on one end and hooks the wire to his pad. Then he goes to the canisters of

  paste and opens a valve in the closest. He pokes the tube into the canister and

  looks at his pad. The numbers come up triple zeroes.

  It's what he ordered, all right.

  Giffey decides against checking more than one. The men around him are as

  sensitive about honor as a bunch of teenage thugs.

  The old man is talking again, aiming his words at the brothers, who listen

  eagerly. "There's enough paste there to take care of all of Moscow. Unbelievable

  bang per gram. Every man, woman, and jackrabbit from here to--"

  "That's fine," Giffey says, staring hard to get him to shut up. The old man

  works his lips, nods in understanding--no need to say too much, no need.

  Then he offers Giffey a beer.

  "Best assignment I've had since emancipation," he says. "I'd like to toast

  it, for luck."

  There's time--just barely. "Sure, I'm grateful," Giffey says. The old man

  hustles back into the filthy kitchen to open a refrigerator. Giffey calls out to

  him, "You have the delivery arranged?"

  "Tonight at seven-thirty. Address?"

  Giffey writes the address on a piece of paper, an old industrial warehouse

  on the west side of Moscow. Giffey will not be there, but people he trusts will

  receive the goods and give final payment. Jenner will accompany the goods to

  their destination and stay with them. The old man brings out a bottle for

  everyone.

  The beer is good. Jenner's scalp is asleep. He almost looks normal. "Sald," Giffey says, and they all slug back the thick dark brew.

  Outside, Jenner joins Giffby at the roadside, waiting for the bus to take them

  back into Moscow.

  "How long you been out of the service?" Giffey asks Jenner. The young

  man smiles and shakes his head.

  "I was never really in," he says. "I got my training at Quantico and Annapolis.

  Special Operations. I had some trouble and they shipped me out and

  annulled my enlistment papers. They were training me for sensitive jobs."

  Giffey nods. He can tell from the man's expression and posture that Jenner

  is reluctant to say any more. Jenner knows the ins and outs of military nano,

  so Giffey's sources say; that's enough.

  "How about you?" Jenner asks. The bus is coming back on its long circuit

  around the country roads. They can see it on the horizon.

  "Federal Army, honorable discharge, three years in extranational service." "I'd like to do that sometime," Jenner says. His Adam's apple bobs. "Missed

  / SLANT 63

  equal and an expert, or a conscript noncom. Jenner is twenty-two or twenty-three

  at most.

  Very young. That, however, is not Giffey's concern.

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  9 DARK BITS

  The household of Jonathan and Chloe Bristow flashes, screeches, roars with

  bright colors and jagged sounds. Their adolescent children, Hiram and Penelope,
/>   are up the stairs and down, shouting over a pretty stone one of them found

  in the garden. They have gone red in the face with their shouting and Chloe

  has stopped by the stairs to stand stiff as a tree, prematurely aged by violent

  winds. She waits with some apprehension for Jonathan to come up from the

  basement and try to straighten things out; she knows that his intervention is

  not necessary, that all this will pass.

  Penelope is fifteen and Hiram thirteen. Dark-haired Hiram sometimes appears

  a little loutish even in his mother's tolerant eyes; Penelope is white-blonde

  and lithe as an alder. Like alders, she tries to be a clone of the other

  girls in her part of the forest. Chloe waits for the storm to pass. She worries

  that Jonathan will only add to the din and the color with his very loud voice

  and dark hues.

  Chloe sees all situations in this household in colors; she has heard about

  that in the LitVids which arrive on her pad every morning, gathered from

  around the earth like fresh bouquets and generally just as wilted and worn

  within a week. Today is a loud orange and black day.

  "I did NOT give it to you, you swtt/" Penelope shouts.

  Hiram tries to hold the rock out of her reach but she is taller and grabs his

  c],=*a,-hitr ,C;,- TI. ......... k- .--

  64

  GREG BEAR

  "Watch out--" she begins; but she sees they are in no danger and draws her

  lips tight shut again. She wonders what a su'tt is.

  "You promised I could have it," Hiram claims, his voice high and loud and

  sad. Hiram is her Caliban; a slow and dark fellow with fine black hair covering

  the back of his neck. Soon he will need to shave. She never tells her children

  what she really thinks of them--certainly not the temporary down things that

  flit through her mind. It is easy to tell them about the permanent things--about

  her love and admiration for them--because these are so constant they

  hardly seem important enough to hide. It is the temporary observations,

  trenchant and of mixed truthfulness, the insights that make her laugh or question

  her fitness to be a mother, that she keeps inside, where they are soon

  buried and seldom recalled.

  "Give it to me, I swear I'll--"

  "What is a sw/tt?" Chloe asks from the entryway.

  Penelope turns her blazing green eyes on her mother. Her hair is in disarray

  and she looks ready to kill. "Mother, he is goating that rock, and I found

  it!"

  Goating is what her grandparents would have called hogging. Chloe does

  not think the word is any improvement. "What's so important about a rock?"

  Intuition tells her Jonathan will appear in about ten seconds and she would

  like the situation to be duller and quieter, for his sake but mostly for hers.

  "It's rose quartz. I found it and I need it for school."

  "She put it down in the yard," Hiram says. He looks worried. Chloe wonders

  if her son can see in her face that she no longer thinks he is beautiful. When

  he was a baby he was beautiful. "She didn't want it."

  "Tro merde, that's a lie! I put it down on another rock to save it."

  Jonathan is coming up from the bedroom. His step is fast and his footfalls

  heavy. Their bedroom is on the bottom floor, below the entry level, with big

  bay windows facing rear gardens that are now rather dismal despite a few banks

  of Jonathan's hardy year-rounds.

  "Give it to her, please," Chloe says.

  "Mother!" Hiram appears genuinely shocked. "You believe her?"

  "If she needs it and she found it, why not let her keep it? Why do you need

  a piece of rose quartz?"

  Hiram stares down at her with the same expression Caliban must have worn

  when Ariel played a prank on him. Chloe feels a whirl of regenerating pique.

  "For God's sake, Hiram, it's just a rock!"

  Penelope grabs the rock from her brother's hand and takes it upstairs. Hiram

  squats on the stairs. He is physically adept and he goes into a perfect lotus but

  his face is far from calm.

  Jonathan arrives and turns to look up the stairs at Hiram, then looks back

  at Chloe. Penelope is on the second floor and in her room. Jonathan's mind is

  elsewhere.

  I SLANT 85

  Chloe says, "What's a swutt?"

  "It's someone who tries to be offensive in a fibe social space," Jonathan says.

  Chloe seldom ventures into the ribes. She uses her pad mostly for a calendar

  and phone, LitVid and mail. The direct projectors might as well be removed

  and she will not allow Yox players, much less patches, in her house.

  "Offensive, how?" she asks, heading into the kitchen. She knows she has

  saved Jonathan getting angry before he goes out into the night. And she has

  saved herself from another spike of irritation at her husband.

  "Blow-off, slumfacing," Jonathan says, following. He is dressed in formal

  longsuit for his night with the Stoics, the local cadre of the John Adams Group,

  all well-to-do New Federalists. "A swutt is someone who's rigged an untraceable

  face and goats it, you know, butt and run, cut touch. Thymic misfits."

  Chloe looks at the kitchen. The lights have come on automatically at their

  entrance. The compound curves of the sink and food counter, the alcove hiding

  the dormant arbeiter, the stove pillar, and the air-curtain cooler are gray and

  black with yellow accents, really quite pretty; she is reminded of something

  from the nineteen thirties, a car, the Bugatti Royale, the one they only made

  a few of, that the famous Yox comedian Wilrude races on that track in Beverly

  Hills . . . On top of the comb reserved for stars . . .

  She turns to Jonathan and allows him to kiss her. His kissing is attentive.

  Jonathan, she thinks, has never delivered a bad kiss.

  "A little stiff tonight," Jonathan says. He is not apparently concerned, if

  she is being stiff, but it's the third time in as many days he's made the comment.

  Chloe and Jonathan have been married long enough, she hopes, not to

  put too much significance into brief moods. Still, the irritation--a shadow on

  the edge of her thoughts--concerns her.

  In his longsuit and tails, Jonathan might be going to a nineteen thirties

  party. The nineteen thirties were big two years ago; now the Sour Decades are

  on the sly spin. Chloe really dislikes the nineties. They remind her of now,

  and ,ow frankly leaves her cold.

  "What's on for the meeting tonight?" Chloe asks.

  Hiram enters the kitchen at a gallop and asks if he can port dinner. Chloe

  allows that the family is fragmented anyway; he grins and takes his food from

  the cooler to the prep chef by the oven.

  "A scientist is giving a talk about neural somethings," Jonathan explains.

  He watches Hiram tap his fingers on the counter, waiting for the tray of food

  to be processed and heated.

  Chloe wonders if Jonathan actually loves his son; whether men have any

  capacity for the deep sort of love she feels so often, and for which she is given

  so little credit, and so little in return. But then--

  Where did that come from?

  Chloe says, "That sounds exciting."

  Jonathan hums his bemused agreement. "High comb. Good connections."

  66 GREG BEAR

  high comb and is not
particularly sympathetic toward his ambitions. Hiram

  almost drops his tray of hot food and Chloe catches her breath. Jonathan loudly

  tells him to watch it. "You twitch all the time!" he says to his son, who hangs

  his head to one side, clutching the tray at a dangerous angle. "My God, you're

  not five years old."

  Chloe hates the sound of Jonathan's voice when he corrects the children. It

  scrapes her like broken glass. He seems such a hair-trigger around them, the

  slightest thing sets him off, and he carries the correction on for minutes longer

  than she thinks is necessary. She supposes she is being too sensitive--some-times

  she sounds screechy and harsh in her own ears--but...

  Jonathan takes Hiram's tray by the edge and straightens it.

  "Nothing dropped, nothing messed," Hiram says with patient dignity.

  Chloe feels a sudden sadness for him, a wrenching prescience about the difficulties

  life will hold for Hiram. And nothing I can do. He carries the tray out

  of the kitchen.

  Jonathan makes a face, turns to her and says, "I'll be back around twelve."

  Men can turn off their loud voices so easily, switch from what sounds like

  wartime rage to calm in a flash. Chloe cannot. If she had yelled at Hiram, she

  would cycle for about half an hour, the deed generating the equivalent mood.

  And of course, Chloe realizes, she does yell at the children, at Hiram, too often.

  But it must be a matter of degrees; it is also a matter of perceptions.

  Women are simply better with children. Of this she is sure. If she had raised

  the children entirely without Jonathan's help, they might have avoided some problems...

  "Good hunting," she tells him. So many little resentments this evening, all

  building to a head, and she does not like it. She hopes Jonathan will leave and

  the kids will hide in their accustomed nooks before she snaps out something

  regrettable.

  Just minutes will do the trick. Alone so that she can close her eyes and take

  a breath or two all her own, with nobody expecting anything from her. She

  barely has any space that is exclusively hers.

  In her family, the way she was raised, both spouses working is a tradition