Slant

by Eikeltje

  of generations, an example for the children of efforts and rewards, an expression

  of the equality of partners. Jonathan's family, old-liners that make even

  the New Federalists seem clever and innovative, supported him every step of

  the way when he requested she stand down from her work before having

  children.

  But why does she think of this now?

  Because her husband is going off to hear a talk by a scientist that might

  actually be interesting? What does he care for her mind, her thoughts?

  "Set for your own dinner?" Jonathan asks solicitously.

  "I'm fine," she says. "Don't be late. So many gray longsuits to impress'"

  lonathan gives her a wry look, lifts her hand, and kisses it. He leans back,

  /

  SLANT 67

  history vid from the nineties. "Somebody has to sacrifice his soul, or there's

  never going to be real progress," he says in his deepest hero voice with a late

  New Received Broadcast accent, perfectly mocked. She laughs despite herself.

  "Go," she says, and pushes on his chest.

  "You should lock them up and steal a couple of hours, all to yourself."

  "I think they'll stay away from me quite willingly," she says. 'I'll have my

  time."

  "Good." Jonathan approaches the front door. "Save some energy for me

  later." She gives him a steady, noncommittal look. Lately she has taken to

  responding only when he presses, and to showing him little or no reaction

  when they are intimate, other than what is strictly mandatory. It is a walling

  off that gives her some of the privacy she needs, and lets her keep her sense of

  dignity.

  The door opens, a puff of cold enters, and then he is gone, half running

  down the block. They gave up their car last year; it was costing them more

  than a hundred grand a year, just to hook it to the grid and park it. The taxes

  and fees pushed them over their limit. Now Jonathan lets his pad coordinate

  with the autobuses. He professes to enjoy himself even more, sensing the social

  spin better while shuttling to the towers for his meetings.

  Her father, a space engineer, did not approve of the car; he thought working

  over the ribes was just fine, and that one could do any conceivable business

  remotely. Jonathan believes in handshakes and direct eye-to-eye contact. He

  has mentioned several times, lightly but not jokingly, that they should move

  to one of the towers to be less distant from real life. But she prefers this century-old

  house, and she would hate being stacked five hundred high.

  Where Jonathan is conservative, she is liberal, and where he is trendy, she

  pulls back. Together they are almost a whole human being, she thinks, and

  tells herself she means that as a joke.

  Chloe goes to the front sitting room and stares out over the next lower row

  of houses at the deep blue-gray of Lake Washington. The sky is clear and

  dimming nicely. A couple of ribbons of orange cloud make it seem properly

  balanced, garish sky brights against subdued Earth darks. This is the gloaming,

  she thinks; lovely word.

  She takes the big chair and feels it mold to her with little purring sighs.

  The house is silent. She hopes the children are involved in something worthwhile.

  They are too old for her to watch them every moment, too old to control.

  They are coasting into their own free-fall orbits now, and what's holding them

  in place is the history of their launch phase and the gravity of culture. Father's

  way of putting things.

  But then she hears them shouting and rolls her eyes up in her head.

  Penelope stomps down the stairs. Chloe turns to look at her, eternally attentive

  and patient but weary.

  "Mom, the toilet says somebody is sick, but I feel fine, and so does Hiram,"

  68

  GREG BEAR

  "Nobody's sick. I wouldn't worry about it," Chloe says, looking back to the

  window.

  "But the toilet's never wrong!"

  Chloe gets up from her chair. Her anger spikes with surprising speed, but

  she does not show it. "You know how to run the check," she tells her daughter,

  but Penelope makes a face; that sort of thing is not one of her duties. Chloe

  smiles grimly and goes upstairs.

  The world is simply not hers. Not tonight, perhaps not ever again.

  10

  Mary Choy spends the hour before the end of her shift in the exterior patio of

  the tombed house, interviewing the caretaker of the vacant housing block. He

  is in his fifties, with mellow eyes but a slow, knowing smile. He does not

  appear nervous. "The houses were going to waste," he says. "They're just sitting

  here empty. Everybody's losing money. I just made a little arrangement. So

  what'll it cost me?" he asks.

  "First, your job," Mary says. "You'll probably be charged with felony collusion.

  And depending on what the others testify . . . You might become an

  accessory." Everything is being transcribed on her police pad: voice, vid, and

  Mary's observations typed in as they talk.

  The man still smiles. Mary knows this expression; he's on permanent mood

  adjustment. No matter what happens in his life, he feels cheerful and capable.

  Guilt will not enter his thoughts. That kind of adjustment is illegal to do, for

  a therapist, but not illegal for a patient to have had done. Mary's level of

  irritation rises.

  "Let's go through it one more time. The doctor you rented the place to said

  it was for a party. He paid you in freewire dollars. Basically, you did this so

  you could dip into expensive, high-level Yox."

  "What else is there?" the caretaker asks. "Better life than you'll find on this

  Earth."

  Mary takes a deep breath. She keeps seeing the psynthe transforms, a frightful

  comment on how much stimulus the human audience demands. "Have you

  been inside the house to see?"

  "Of course not," the caretaker says. "It's tombed."

  "Your assistant reported the bodies."

  "Yeah."

  "He knew nothin about your deal."

  /

  SLANT 69

  "Our forensic team has found traces inside the house that match your boots.

  You entered the house after the victims died."

  The caretaker's eyes gleam. "How do you krou, that?" he challenges, like a

  man involved in a good game of chess. "I mean, they were cooked, weren't

  they? How do you know when they died? Body temperature doesn't do it--"

  "Trust me, we know," Mary says.

  "Nano screws up everything. Not admissible in court."

  "How can you be sure you're not in trouble when you can't get over being

  so happy?"

  The caretaker shakes his head. "I shucked a few high Yox credits. I

  didn't know anything about what the guy was doing. I'll testify when you

  catch him."

  "He's already been caught," Mary says. "He was on an outbound swan to

  Hispaniola. They turned around and he's back in Seattle, and from what I see

  on my pad, his story doesn't match yours." She taps her pad off. "I'm done

  with you for now."

  She turns to the caretaker's proxy attorney, an arbeiter from QuickLex,

  standing beside some potted tiger lilies in the corner of the patio like a garden

  ornament. "He's going to Seattle Maximum. You can che
ck his accommodations

  after induction. Do you have any immediate complaints with our procedures?''

  The small steel arbeiter resembles a bishop in chess. It is less than a meter

  high, and Mary knows that most of its bulk is for show. "We reserve discussion

  of possible challenges."

  "Of course," Mary says. The attending jail clerk and her police arbeiters

  surround the caretaker.

  "What does it matter?" the man says jauntily as he leaves with them. "If I

  go to jail, I'll feel good. I'm happy and at peace wherever I go. There isn't a

  thing you can do to change that. Best move I ever made."

  Nussbaum has left the house and is removing his coldsuit. He brushes his

  clothes down with one hand and approaches Mary, looking at her from hooded

  eyes, tired in that way only a PD can get tired: a vital living weariness that

  carries as much suppressed anger as exhaustion.

  "So, what is he?"

  "He's happy," Mary says. She looks around the patio. So precisely and beautifully

  designed. A wall-rack for soil tools, a cabinet for plant nutrients and

  soil treatment products, a trellis made of real wood, as yet empty. She imagines

  a young pretty high comb wife working here, choosing flowers from the

  EuGene Pool Catalog or creating her own varieties with a home kit.

  "We'll sober him," Nussbaum grumbles. "The courts go rough on happy

  harrys these days."

  "Anything useful inside?" Mary asks.

  "We have inventory and we can trace all the supplies. We've tracked the

  70 GREG BEAR

  runaways. Trying to make it by riding the wienie in the big city. Two from around here, all involved in sleaze Yox, all put out of work recently because

  of the demand for psynthe."

  Mary ports her pad to Nussbaum's and transfers the interview. Nussbaum

  watches her solicitously. "What were they looking forward to?" he asks.

  "What's it like to change your body and look different?"

  "I was never so extreme," Mary says quietly.

  "Yeah, but why change at all?"

  "I was short, had fat legs, no upper body strength, wispy brown hair--"

  Mary begins, then stops. "Is this idle curiosity, sir, or are you really looking

  for insight?"

  "Both," Nussbaum says. "All the boys ignored you?"

  "I thought my body didn't match my inner self. I wasn't strong enough

  and I couldn't do what I wanted to do. So--I went to a very professional

  transform surgeon in LA. I was going to apply for a job in PD. I had him

  design the perfect PD body. He thought it was a challenge."

  Nussbaum gives her a mild smirk. "And men looked at you."

  "Sex had remarkably little to do with it, sir."

  "But men looked at you."

  "Yes, they did." She tries to be patient with Nussbaum. She has known

  many ranks in public defense, and most have Nussbaum's hunger for the grit.

  They want to believe that even therapied folks are capable of wide swings in

  behavior, the extremes of which become PD business. Or perhaps it's just

  simply monkey logic.

  A natural, Mary knows, is even more suspect. Nussbaum only trusts himself

  out of habit.

  He pokes his thumb back at the house. "Men and not a few women would

  have paid to look at them. Freaks from Mount Olympus having sex the likes

  of which ordinary mortals can only dream of. Sheiks in Riyadh, commodities

  trillionaires in Seoul, Party capitalists in Beijing, comb bantams in London

  and Paris, happy husbands and wives seeking a little variety in Dear 52. More

  attention than any little girl could ever want. And psynthe transform is legal

  in forty-seven states, all legal and very, very expensive, too expensive for most."

  Mary patiently waits for him to finish. Nussbaum lifts his face and gives

  her a weary PD smile. I'll tell personnel you're moving over to active crime."

  Of course he wouldn't ask her, and of course he would not need to ask. He's

  good at tuning in. Mary nods. "Thanks."

  "Tell me more, later, if you'd like," Nussbaum says. "I'm a son of a bitch

  for living details."

  Mary checks out for the day via her pad and thumbs through her touches as

  , ,-n I.. I.. l.a (,, tho ,,mu. Not much of interest; she

  /

  SLANT 71

  OKs the reskedj for tomorrow, though she is not sure she will make that one,

  either, if this psynthe case gets complicated.

  The pad's secure in-box contains a set of replacement prescriptions from

  Sumpler's office on her transform reversal; her present stage is regulated by

  thousands of tiny monitors, similar to those used for mental therapy, and they'll

  need replacement in the next few weeks. She feels fine; checks the small bumps

  inside her armpit, which had been a little sore yesterday but today are smaller

  and not at all painful. In three months she will be stable and can drop all

  monitors and supplements.

  The streets outside the autobus window are dark, with lights glowing softly

  along the curbs and overhead. Big cubic apt complexes line the north side,

  older single homes on the right. Arbeiters are busily taking down three old

  frame houses to make room for another complex. Soon, she thinks, the Corridor

  will be as congested as Southcoast. She feels sympathy for just an instant with

  the isolationists in Green Idaho--and then snaps back.

  In Green Idaho, they would never tolerate a transform, even a reverted

  transform. She crinkles her nose: Little pus pocket of untherapied se/f-righteous

  atavists your daughters come in a rush to the Corridor or even Southcoast and they are

  so ignorant they end up in the hands of the freakers, cooked, dead. And you harden your

  little self-righteous hearts and forget all about them. You think, "Serves them right,

  they go wrong the5' deserve--"

  Mary cuts this line of thought abruptly. Her stop is up. She walks down

  the aisle, past seats filled with temp lobe sods riding north from the towers.

  A few look up at her; most are absorbed in their pads. She steps out into the

  night.

  The air is cold and damp. The stars are gone this evening and the clouds

  are moving quickly. There might be a storm. She will stay up to watch if the

  wind blows fast to see the famous Convergence Zone Light Show, the brilliant

  flashes of cloud-to-cloud lightning in two colors, bright electric green and sour

  orange. She's only seen the phenomenon once and would love to see it again,

  especially this evening, when she might not sleep at all.

  The twelve-unit complex where she lives stands shoulder-to-shoulder on the

  side of a hill overlooking the dark waters of Silver Lake. She finds it amusing

  that in LA her last apt had been in the Silverlake district; names follow her.

  She is in the elevator when her police pad vibrates in her pocket. She gets off

  at her floor and answers the official touch.

  It is Nussbaum. His face seems red on the pad's vid. "Ms. Choy, we have a

  new story from our doctor suspect. He claims he's only a middle man and he's

  telling us all about finances. Sounds fascinating. Looks like we may have a

  circle worm here, high comb money. Very high comb. You ever hear of Terence

  Crest?"

  "I think so, sir. Entertainment finance, right?"

  "Local big boy. I'll meet you
at the Adams--you're in the north end, I

  '2 GREG BAR

  clues on her pad; it's an exclusive residence complex in downtown Seattle, tro

  spin.

  'I'll be there."

  Mary Choy opens the door to her own small and still undecorated apt, ports

  her personal pad, listens to the home manager's report, reaches down to scratch

  her red-and-white cat on the haunches and check the jade-colored arbeiter,

  resets the home manager, and then she's out again, no dinner, but she feels

  much better.

  She'd rather be working than sitting alone with the afternoon's memories.

  On her way to the autobus pylon, she hears a sharp electric hoot and a white

  and yellow PD cruiser hums up beside her. The door slides open and she sees

  two young half-ranks making room for her in the back circle of the vehicle.

  "Join the game, Ms. Choy," says the first, buzzed mousy brown hair over

  small black eyes and a long eagle nose. He waves a hand of paper cards at her:

  poker. Mary has not yet learned this game, but she smiles, packs in beside

  them. The second, with silky Titian hair and a broad innocent moon face,

  sweeps the cards from the little table and reshuffles the deck. The door slides

  shut and the cruiser accelerates.

  "Adams, next stop," moon-face says, and smiles. "My name is Paul Collins,

  and this is Vikram Dahl."

  "Congratulations, Miz Choy," says Dahl. "We're betting you'll become

  Nussbaum's next burnout. He goes through five or six each quarter. It all starts

  by letting them get right up to their doors for a quiet evening at home--then