by E. E. Knight
"You and your hobbies," Oriana said quietly.
Fran Paoli turned up the music, but Valentine could still hear if he concentrated. "So I like to go to bed with more than a good book."
"Someday it's going to bite you."
"Mmmmm, kinky. But don't fret. I can handle this hillwilly."
"He's after status and that's it. Don't fool yourself."
* * * *
Valentine looked for Reapers in the woods as the truck approached Xanadu, but couldn't see or sense them. The security guard hardly used his flashlight when the SUV reached the gate. Fran Paoli waggled her fingers at him and he waved twice at the gate, and the fencing parted in opposite directions.
She drove up a concrete, shrub-lined roadway and pulled into a gap under the south tower. "Two-one-six, entering," she said into her mouthpiece, working a button on the dashboard, and a door on tracks rolled up into the ceiling. The SUV made it inside the garage—just—and parked in the almost-empty lot. A few motorbikes, a pickup, some golf carts, and a low, sleek sports car were scattered haphazardly among the concrete supporting pillars like cows sleeping in a wood. A trailer with an electric gasoline pump attached was set up on blocks near the door.
"You'll like the Grand Towers. You mind helping with the groceries?"
Valentine took two crates, Oriana one.
They walked past a colorful mural, silhouettes of children throwing a ball to each other while a dog jumped, and Fran Paoli passed her security ID card over a dark glass panel. An elevator opened. It smelled like pine-scented cleanser inside. Soft music played from hidden speakers.
"Home," Fran Paoli said, and the elevator doors closed.
"You don't have to hit a button?" Valentine asked.
"I could. It's voiceprint technology. A couple of the techs on the security staff like to tinker with old gizmos."
"I wish they could get an MRI working," Oriana said.
Valentine looked in his boxes on the ride up. Foil-wrapped crackers, a tin of something called "pate," a bottle of olive oil with a label in writing Valentine thought looked like Cyrillic, artichokes, fragrant peaches, sardines, a great brick of chocolate with foil lettering . . .
The elevator let them out on a parquet-floored hallway. If there was a floor higher than twelve the elevator buttons didn't indicate it. Lighting sconces added soft smears of light to the maroon walls.
Fran Paoli held Oriana's groceries while she let herself in. "Good night. Call if you want your rounds covered."
"Thanks, O."
Oriana thanked Valentine as she took her box of foodstuffs— slightly more mundane instant mixes and frozen packages with frost-covered labels. Her door had a laminated plate in a slide next to it: ORIANA KREML, MD.
"I'm at the end of the hall, Tar-baby," Fran Paoli said.
She led him down, putting an extra swivel in her walk. Valentine clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth in time to her stride. She twirled her keys on their wrist loop.
The door at the end read EXECUTIVE MEDICAL DIRECTOR. She opened it and Valentine passed through a small reception office—a computer screen cast a soft glow against a leather office chair—and a larger meeting room with an elegantly shaped glass conference table. Floor-to-ceiling windows reflected only the darkness outside and their faces. Lights came on as she moved through the space to a frosted-glass partition. Valentine marked a telescope at the glass corner she passed.
A casual living space and then a kitchen. Valentine set the boxes down on a small round table, and extracted the fresh fruits and vegetables.
"Stay for a drink?" Fran Paoli asked.
* * * *
Fran Paoli snored softly beside him in postcoital slumber.
Her makeup was on the sheet, him, and the oh-so-soft pillowcases, and she gave off a faint scent of sweet feminine perspiration and rose-scented baby powder. She made love like some women prepared themselves for bed, following a long-practiced countdown that evidently gave her a good deal of pleasure.
Valentine thought of "Arsie," the professional he'd met at that Quisling party in Little Rock. Was this how it was for her? Did she feel like her body was an apparatus as her customers took what they wanted ?
Valentine engaged in the lovemaking with—perhaps clinical detachment was the right word. It had been fun; Fran Paoli's hunger for him, the way she discovered his scars and touched them, licked them, gently as though drawing some mixture of the pain they represented and taking pleasure from them, both motherly and sexual, healing and arousing; while he'd become instantly erect at the first touch of her full, falling breasts and flesh-padded hips. She touched his erection, squeezed it as though testing its tensile strength, clawed and gasped and bucked out her satisfaction with its quality, and then brought him back again after he spent himself into the black-market condom—a thin-walled novelty that made Southern Command's prophylactics feel like rain ponchos.
"You can get a shortwave radio easier than these," she said, and she passed him the second plastic oval.
But he'd learned little, other than Fran Paoli's expertise with a bathtub razor, from the "pillow recon." She still wouldn't talk about what she did.
* * * *
She woke him briefly when she got up, though she tried not to. Valentine dozed, feeling the sun change the quality of the light in the apartment, heard a vague whirring sound, remembered that he'd seen some kind of pulley-topped treadmill. Then she woke him for sex; sweaty, clean-faced, with her hair tied in a ponytail and her muscles hot from exercise. In the morning light the dark circles under her eyes showed, along with the sags at the backs of her arms, and the topography of the deposits on her thighs, but he came erect and she rode him like a final exercise machine.
"Tar, you are a treat for sore thighs," she said, and collapsed backward, still straddling him. He felt her hair on his ankle. He couldn't see her face, and had the strange feeling he was speaking to her vulva.
She pulled herself up. "I need a shower. There's another bathroom right next to the outer office if you need to use it. You can help yourself to anything you like in the kitchen. No homesies for your Aunt Betty, though. Poppy-seed crackers and Danish Havarti are too hard to come by."
"I should check in at the barn," Valentine said. "The livestock don't take days off."
"If I'm still in the shower when you're dressed, feel free to just leave. When I got up I phoned down to the security desk and let them know you were my guest last night. Just take the yellow card on the counter for the elevator."
He investigated the kitchen, and found bananas and orange juice. The "orange" juices Southern Command issued had a grainy taste, but this had real pulp in it. Valentine ate two bananas and explored the apartment. There was an office off the conference room, but it was locked. He could jimmy or pick it easily enough with something from the kitchen, but after she walked naked from the bathroom to go to her bedroom dresser for clean underwear he decided against it.
Fran Paoli didn't keep much that revealed anything about herself as a person in her apartment. He saw a photo in the bedroom of her as a teenager, atop a horse, in a khaki uniform with a peaked cap tipped saucily on her head. A gray-haired man in a tweed sport coat, with a forced smile, hung in a frame on the wall. A sad-eyed china spaniel sat on top of what might be a candy dish on the kitchen counter. It was chipped and scratched, but the dish contained nothing but a couple of bands for her hair.
He looked out the windows. The conference center looked out on the grounds, barns, and wire in the distance. The living room was set so you could look at the other three "Grand" buildings. All had the tall windows at the top, and he saw a few desks and living room furniture in the others. The rows of windows below were darkened and many were shaded. They told him nothing except that if there were one room per window, that made a lot of rooms, over three hundred per building. Twelve hundred rooms.
Between the four "Grand" buildings was some kind of common space, nicely laid out with lots of bistro tables around the edges
near trees and planters, and a long pool at the center under greenhouselike glass. People were swimming what looked like laps, but in a leisurely fashion. He couldn't tell much about them thanks to condensation. Others were sitting at the bistro tables, enjoying what remained of the soft fall air, but from so high up he could tell little by the tops of their heads. All were wearing either blue or pink scrubs.
Pink and blue. Pink and blue.
He set his glass of orange juice down on an end table. Valentine strode into the conference center and looked at the telescope. He tried lifting it. He could stagger, just, with it. He looked at the smaller "finder" scope—it could be detached from the larger. He twisted a screw, freed it, and went back to the living room. He looked from pink to pink down in the plaza.
The patients were all women. He'd expected that. They were thin, some sickly looking, most with tired, limp hair. He'd expected that too, as he'd seen it often enough in the Kurian Zone.
Almost all were pregnant. Some bulging, some with just a swelling.
He hadn't expected that.
The shower turned off. Valentine picked up his orange juice and drained it as he returned the spotting scope to its rest, lined up with the telescope. He hoped he hadn't screwed up the alignment too badly. He pointed the large scope at the barn, adjusted the counterweight, and made it clear that he'd been screwing with the optics.
When Fran Paoli came out of the bathroom, her hair in a towel, he was washing his glass in the sink.
"Just leaving," he said.
She gave him a kiss on the neck.
"I don't suppose you'd like to come to my place, next time," he said.
"You're cocky." She unwrapped the towel and began to work her scalp with the dry side.
"No next time?" he asked.
"Of course there will be, Tar-baby. You're so tight. I don't feel like I've begun to unwrap you yet."
“I’m in room—“
"While there's a certain thrill in those old, stained mattresses down there, I'm a bit worried about fleas. How about we meet halfway? I might work in a picnic tomorrow—I've got a spare afternoon. You can tell me where you got those hot-assed pants. I would love to have a skirt of that leather. Is it kid?"
"More like bug."
"Is Michiver still running things out in the fields?"
Valentine tried to read her brown eyes, but failed. "Yes."
"I'll get you the afternoon off tomorrow, if I can make it."
"Great."
"And tell that old knob we need a golf course, not more cows. I'm really sick of the one-hole wonder on the north forty."
"I'm the bottom man in the totem pole in the barns, Fran-tick."
She laughed. "Frantic. Tar-baby, I love it. You'd better go, or you'll really see frantic. I'm due on my rounds."
Valentine slapped her thin-robed bottom as he headed for the door. She stopped him with a whistle and passed him a yellow piece of plastic. "Here. Elevator won't work without this. Just slide it into the slot above the buttons. There's a diagram."
"Thanks."
He winked as he closed the door behind him and walked down the hallway. The lighting had been altered; it was brighter and cheerier this morning. He went to the elevator, feeling like a male black widow spider who's crossed the female's web and inexplicably lived.
He swiped the card in the reader according to directions. As an experiment, he hit the button for the sixth floor, but the elevator took him to the ground floor.
Valentine exited at a high-ceilinged lobby. Cheerful, primary-colored murals of square-jawed agricultural workers, steel-rimmed medical men, and aquiline mothers told him that those who passed through this lobby were
CREATING A BETTER TOMORROW
and that
PROGRESS COMES WITH EACH GENERATION
A rounded, raised platform held a few of the security staff. Two women in blue scrubs, one holding a plastic water bottle, the other a Styrofoam coffee cup, chatted near a bank of wide-doored elevators that evidently didn't go all the way to the top floor. Valentine walked toward the doors leading to the patio and pool area.
"Hey, hand!" one of the security men called.
He couldn't pretend not to have heard. He turned. "I'm sorry?"
"Your yellow building card. Turn it in."
Valentine fished it out of his pocket, reached up to place it on the desk. "Here you go."
He went back toward the doors, pretending not to see the other exits.
"Am I getting smarter or are they getting dumber?" the security desk said to his friend. "Hand!"
But Valentine was already passing out the doors.
He headed across the slate bricks. The intertower area smelled like flowers and cedar chips, which were spread liberally around the landscaping. Two women in pink, both copiously pregnant, nibbled at ceramic bowls, eating some kind of breakfast mix with beat-up spoons. Valentine's nose detected yogurt. Both were rather pallid and looked as though they needed the morning sun.
Another group of four, no visible swelling inside the loose pink outfits, kept company by one in blue, worked on each other's hair and a pitcher of tomato juice. Valentine passed through the greenhouse doors and down a short ramp to the swimming pool deck. Chlorine burned his nostrils. Two dozen heads bobbed in the wide lap lanes. Others were lined up at one end of the pool, talking, waiting their turn.
No two swimming suits were alike; there were hot pink bikinis and big black one-pieces. Maybe the pool was the one place the women got to express themselves with clothing.
"Come on, ladies," a man in shorts with a coach's whistle exhorted from a short diving board. "Keep swimming. Gets the blood flowing. Gets the bowels moving. I want to see healthy pink cheeks—yo, can I help you?"
The last came when he spied Valentine.
But the words barely registered.
Gail Foster, formerly Gail Post, waited at one side of the pool with the next group.
Her hair and cheeks were thinner, but the big green eyes and delicate, upturned nose were unmistakable. With her hair wet and flat, idly kicking the water as she talked to the woman next to her, she appeared childlike, so unlike the ID photo from Post's flyer where she stared into the camera as though challenging the lens to capture her. She didn't even look up as the man with the whistle hopped off the board to approach Valentine.
"Just taking a shortcut," Valentine said, tearing himself away from Gail's face.
"Don't disturb the expectants. Turn right around and—"
"Right. I'm going." Valentine retreated back up the ramp.
He walked around the greenhouse to the east side of the patio, looking for a hose, a rake, anything. But there were no groundskeepers or tools in sight. He removed his work boot and went to work on the leather tongue with his pocketknife, tearing it. If questioned, he could say that he was trying to get rid of an irritating flange.
He managed to idle away a half hour. A new group of women marched out of the south tower in single file, white robes held tight even in the warm morning air. Valentine looked at the knobby knees and thin legs, and wondered what kind of diet the women were on. They looked like gulag chars who hadn't been on full rations of beans for weeks. Once they passed in another group walked two-by-two back into the tower, led by one of the medical staff in blue scrubs.
Valentine went to work relacing his boots so the laces presented fresh material to the eyelets.
Like clockwork, another group came out, this time from the west tower, and Gail Foster's exited. It was hard to tell under the robes, but all seemed to have about the same level of swelling in the midsection. Same routine, led like chicks behind a blue mother hen.
Damn. West tower.
Valentine put his boots back on and hurried back to the road leading to the pastures.
A faint beep sounded from behind. The vet, Dr. Boothe, sped up on her little four-wheeler cart. "Want a lift?"
My weekend to be offered rides by women.
Valentine hopped into the seat next to he
r. The trail tires kicked up gravel as she set the electric motor in motion again. "What did I tell you about falling for the bullshit here?"
"I like being indoors every night. I've seen too many bodies in the woods."
She looked at him and away again, quickly. "Impolite to bring up such matters."
"It's all the same bullshit, Doc. Depends on how much you want to shovel off."
"Give me a break. You're part of it now. You were, even in Kentucky."
"There's being a part and taking part. Your assistant, for example. How'd she get past the genetics defect laws?"
"Pepsa? She wasn't born that way. She's from a tough neighborhood in Pittsburgh. She complained once too often, and that's what happens to complainers there. They ripped out her tongue. She still complains—just does it on that little pad of hers."
"So what's with all the pregnant women?"
She took a breath. "They're highly susceptible. You know how the Ordnance is about birthrate."
"I don't, actually."
"They're here so the babies can be saved."
"Don't want anyone going before it's decided. Nice and orderly." Price had that right, anyway.
"Don't talk to Michiver that way, Ayoob. I wish you weren't talking to me."
She pulled up to the veterinary station. The guard dogs in their kennels barked a welcome.
"I imagine you're supposed to turn me in," Valentine said.
"If it comes to protecting my position, don't think I won't. You and the Grog are nothing to me. Nothing."
"Except someone you can be honest around."
"You want honest? I don't like people. That's why I'm a vet. Now get out, I've got some cows to inseminate."
Valentine got out and went over to greet the dogs. He nodded to Pepsa, busy cleaning out the kennels. Dr. Boothe stared at him for a moment, then drove away.
