Ambient

by Jack Womack

  "His waiting room blew. It drew close."

  "Was la puta laced?"

  "Avalon, mayhap?"

  "AO."

  "Wasn't even hurt. Her skin unblemmed."

  "Sauce for drake's duckling, then," said Enid.

  "Much was on her mind," I said.

  "Not her alone and sole. You're under shrift to her wet scent til the walls pour warm and steaming."

  "We may be going away for a while."

  "To pass this way again?" she asked. I didn't respond at once. "Seamus?"

  "Of course."

  "So deep in mystery you tread. May we hear?"

  "In a while."

  "Say what upsets you so," she said. "Your dreams?"

  "No worse than ever."

  "The nightmare rides you hard, but at morningshade you're left whole and freshly dewed. What else bends you twice?"

  "Nothing."

  Enid punched off the TVC; she looked troubled. "Then bed and bideaway if words fail," she said. "Care's nurse calls loud. Sleep in easeful dream."

  Enid and I understood one another perfectly; Ambient speech, like everything, grew on you. To set themselves even further apart Ambients at an early age had developed their own cant: a little Spanglish, some obsolete English; whatever slang they liked or developed on their own. The raison d'etre for Ambient speech was that only in word and not in image could true beauty be found, and no inherent horror could ever disguise or disfigure it. Even the uninitiated found the phrasing musical.

  Enid picked up her bottle, I lifted my glass, and we passed into the bedroom. I took off my clothes and sat down on the bed. When she disrobed, I turned away. Since she'd had her breasts removed I'd had difficulty vizzing her with her shirt off; the doctor-the same one she'd known, who'd implanted the spikeshad, upon being requested to do this as well, left enormous scars. Enid was just as glad.

  To be an Ambient was sometimes unavoidable, never illegal, often disturbing, and always subversive. The original Ambients were those children born to parents living on Long Island twentysome years before. Of those originals there were fewer than three hundred, but even before the faithful began to join them, there always seemed to be many, many more.

  Had it not been for the accident . . . on that windy day snow fell like ash over most of the island. In its wisdom the government assured those penultimately affected that there was small chance of lasting effects being suffered. The innocents went about their lives after that for a couple of years, and then new effects, everlasting, set in. First, across the island there emerged from troubled wombs Siamese twins, dwarves, giants; the armless, legless, noseless, earless; children with quiet twins forever nestling halfway into their own bodies; living snakes, prancing imps, the ill-mixed and unmatched; albinos, popeyes, dogboys, harelippers, gator girls, seal women, and elephant men. Under the old Famplan, abortion was-and is-punishable by death; there was nada for the parents to do but have and have at, as the government kept tight eyes on them all the while. Not long after, the second effect occurred; the parents' cancers began to blossom, flowering as if in a hothouse.

  The dying parents gathered up their different children, fleeing into the city as so many began to leave, where they found acceptance if not solace; the government that demanded their birth felt it needless to concern itself with their life. So as their parents died, one by one by one, the young marvels bonded fast; through attendance at the schools their parents devised for them, they all knew one another, and they were all fabulously bright. By the time the last parent died, the progeny's group was formed; their own name given by their own.

  Enid-like me-was born full-formed in the city, but there were many among the city's disconcerted who saw in Ambients a chance to add their support to the statement already made; Enid saw early. By altering the body in unappealing ways and thus becoming voluntary, the non-Ambient might not only find kinship but could as well demonstrate the iniquity of a society that forced one to do such. I am not much for dogma, myself.

  "Is your fat tongue yet loose and flapping?" she asked, pulling her sheet over her.

  "Not so much," I said; my glass was empty.

  "Beat me. Dim our dark room, grace."

  I switched off the light, laying down on my side of our beds.

  "Speak. My ears hear my copesmate's cry."

  "I've a proposition offered," I said.

  "That yields such suck to sorrow? What gives?"

  "Mister Dryden wants me to kill his father."

  "Such prospect pleases?" she asked, breaking what silence had settled. "Assayed by the signs you viz?"

  "I told him I would."

  "Paused on the blade of the knife?"

  "Yeah. "

  "You can't hack and slash till bitter end, Seamus."

  "I think I'm too preoccupied right now."

  "With?"

  "Avalon."

  "She loves the smoke yet hates the fire?"

  "Oh, no," I said. "She's willing to help."

  "What ills, then?"

  "I'm scared for her. For both of us."

  "Beat the bush and snatch the bird. It's sure she's a big, big girl, brother-o. Handling herself should go natural."

  "AO."

  "Sight your own risk first."

  "AO," I said again.

  "What afears you most, then?"

  "A lot. Everything."

  "And this eve you feel to be strewing moss over still rocks?"

  "In a way."

  "So overslip till morningshade," she said, kissing me goodnight, careful not to poke me with her nails. "Toss it high and glory. "

  "All right."

  We lay down, my head on my pillow, her head on her block of foam. She'd tried styro, but tired of pulling it up with her whenever she rose or turned. The room was hazy; my eyes stung and burned. Smog crept through the hole in the bedroom ceiling, over our beds. I made a note to myself-again-to nail something over it. Before I slept that night I spent boozhie notions, thinking to myself that, as it had gone, no matter how well I did, it would never be so well as it should have been. That it would now be seemed-possible, endearingly possible. My pain slept before I did. Ambients rejoiced that these were the last days, wished and prayed that they were, and would have given over their souls to whoever wished to keep them if in so doing an end might be delivered to the world that ran raw around them. I didn't mind, so long as it was done right.

  I dreamed of Avalon, and of myself; we sat in a dark green gondola floating down Fifth Avenue, through a fine mist that speckled our skin. An unseen boatman steered us. We stopped, drifting silently; Avalon speared fish in the water: shiny bream, turbot and sea-robin, bass, blue, monk and weak. A crowd on one of the high bridges between buildings above quietly applauded. She brought one wriggling to her mouth; bit off its head. I dreamed.

  When morning showed I arose, brushed off the soot and looked through the window bars, pushing aside the old newspapers we used as drapes. I was bonestiff, and felt I'd been starched. The sky was overcast again; a glorious day were it to rain, though then the streets would flood. The Serena-mild evening drizzle that passed over, most days-helped; only on rainy days did the air clear enough so that breathing didn't cause you to feel you were participating in one of the more strenuous Olympic events.

  "Light?" Enid murmured, rising slowly, as if from a swamp. She shook her head; bits of foam drifted to the floor. "Time?"

  "Ten. Rise and shine."

  "Fuckall," she said, sitting up and lighting a cigarette before her third breath left.

  "Shine," I said, "Not whine."

  Enid reached into the bed, extracted an old newspaper from the mattress; torched it with her lighter and threw it at me. I stomped it out. Suspecting further comment would pass unappreciated, I broke for the door and went down the hall. I examined the locks on the front door, determined that no wanderers of the late had tried to check in as we slept. I switched on the TVC; the news was coming on. The screen filled with computer-coded blurs and smears of color
; after a moment it coalesced into the form of an anchorperson. You couldn't tell any more whether the anchors were real or not, it was all so smoothly assured.

  For breakfast I rehydrated some seaweed and sauteed it with parsnips in a margarine sauce; Margot had made off with much of the food during the week, and so I made do. I popped a straw into a box of Pepsi and drank it as I ate, and watched the news. The anchor was midsentence as I upped the vol.

  "-fierce fighting reported along the Zaire border. In Libya victory was claimed-"

  Enid emerged after so long, wearing a pair of my pants and a tee on which were imprinted the words CULT FIGURE. She gargled with a new bottle of vodka. She drank as if someone might steal it from her before she could pass out.

  "Thirsty?" she asked, waving the bottle before me.

  "Bite your own dog," I said, that morning feeling no desire for alky.

  "Out the wrong side you tumbled." She grimaced. "Too much life too with it too soon. " She moved over to the stereo, banging into the furniture as if playing dodgem-cars.

  "If you'd deafen this early," I said, "might we hear tunes recorded in a recognizable language?"

  "Bloody bloody balls."

  "-that killed the senator and six Health Department officials during yesterday's Human Life Day celebration continues to reverberate-"

  A roach scampered across the sofa arm, attempting to sidle by me. I was reaching out to flick it when a stupendous roar boomed through the apartment; for a second I thought a raid was going under. The roach disappeared, as if vaporized. I looked over; Enid hopped along with the music she'd turned on. At intervals her motions reminded one of rhythmic movement.

  "How does it kill the rats?" I shouted.

  "Que?"

  "That noise. Will the rats bleed to death or are they just sterilized by it?"

  "-police say the bloody trail of the Ripper leads to this abandoned trailer parked on a Hackensack landfill-"

  "Sounds as if they're pushing the singer's head through a Dispoz," I remarked; she smiled.

  "I'm hearthappy. Margot gifted me last eve. With pleasure pure and lilting smiles."

  I "-speaking from the Hall of Nixon in Zeiching-"

  "She's so thoughtful," I said. "Where'd she dig it up?"

  "Courtesy Grassy Knoll cassettes."

  "Has this group a name?"

  "Nad. The bassist was in Theory of Hell. Our hough they once graced, begoneaday."

  11 -stated in the Bull that only God can decide when children are to die, and therefore, that child abuse centers in Switzerland should be banned-- anned-"

  "No workaday today?" she asked, her stomp unceasing.

  "I'll need to leave around one or so," I said.

  "To set sail your deeds over bitter water?"

  "We'll be going to the estate."

  "For two days gone?" she asked.

  "Longer."

  "-said the successful treatment of little Tamoor demonstrates-"

  "What wind, then, shall stir your hair?" she asked, turning down the stereo. "When the moon stares down in deadlight where will you wait to gaze?"

  "I'm not sure. Europe, probably. I think Leningrad."

  "Your mind's set?" she asked. "No ho your art?"

  "No ho," I said, "I told him I would."

  "Actions decide. Words stick fast in lie's mire. Where will your actions lead?"

  "-in denial, the president said that all the cameras show is what they chose to see-"

  "Somewhere better, maybe."

  "My suspicions wail and make wary, Seamus," she said. "I eye you and I viz a puss long soaked in brine. You cleave yet to speak?"

  "It'd do no good."

  "So you say. AO. Go as you list, then. I go as I. Margot and me skim Brooklyn shores meantime, before Sunday service."

  "Why?"

  "To meet and greet. Your fear fools will tread us?"

  "It's dangerous over there, Enid-"

  "And my concern buys less for you?" she asked; she was mad. "Off we each to the gone world. You viz my need. Blind me as to yours. Fair's unfair, Seamus."

  She was right. I still didn't want her to go to Brooklyn, though she, and most Ambients, often did.

  "You never tell me why you go," I said.

  "For we'll ever return," she said. "Can you promise like truth?"

  I shook my head. There were reasons that bridges and tunnels to Long Island were sealed; reasons for mines to besprinkle the East River, the Sound, and the ocean immediately south. Queens and Brooklyn were treated as extensions of Long Island; the Army was at war with Long Island, and Brooklyn was considered the city of the dead. During the most troubled time of the Ebb, during the Goblin Year, the government formed the Home Army from the old National Guard, sending troops wherever disturbed masses needed minding. Long Island's citizen, not forgetting the accident some years earlier, proved not so keen about such assistance as most people in most places thought it best to be. From Brooklyn, now, most of the terror groups operated as well, sending forth citizens in night's dead to strike Manhattan again and again. That anything remained in Brooklyn, or in Long Island-and much did-caused illimitable annoyance to the Home Army. Fresh units went in monthly; nightly bombing runs continued without cease. The war had lasted fifteen years and would likely last fifteen more.

  If Ambients were hooking into anything over there, none of them-not even Enid-ever told me, so I suspected that they weren't. But, after all, I wasn't an Ambient, and so wouldn't have been told. I had a hunch why they went there, just the same, and for whom they forever searched.

  "You're right," I said.

  "Tell all if you can," she said.

  --looking for a short-term Manhattan loft, saying the energy level here is fantastic, and that he can't wait-"

  "I'll speak. Your advice'll be good to hear."

  "Beat me," said Enid, sticking her elbow between the window bars and rubbing away dirt in a slow, sweeping motion. She looked at the dark gray sky once her view was clear. "Rain away all. Wash and be done."

  "It's eleven A.M.," the anchor said, fixed and grinning. "Do you know where your children are?"

  "Shop with me, Seamus, before you away. Things we wish will wait no more, whether you wait to use or not."

  "All right."

  We donned our ankle-length Krylar coats and, going downstairs, found Lester and Ruben hosing the club. Drains in the floor let the water flow back into the tank, where it could be refiltered. We told them we'd be traveling. Lester smiled (showing the glass stones in his broken front teeth), snared his dagger, and bounded up the stairs to keep guard. His enthusiasm was infectious; I felt new lightness in my own step. Ruben and Lester lived in a small space behind the club; it was more reasonable, and cheaper, to give them that than to pay them salary-90 percent of which would have been lost to taxes, for by receiving anything they would be considered to live in the midmen bracket, and thus liable.

  "Something I have for you, if you wish to skip light with such jabbernowls. Kick memory and stir when we pass back."

  "Beautiful day," I said as we pushed into the street, wondering what she had for me. A fourth-floor resident of the next-door building dumped the contents of her chamberpot out the window, missing us; she hurried off for more.

  We moved uptown, toward Sloan's. The crowd wasn't bad; we stepped from the sidewalk only to avoid mounds of rubble, or where holes had been left, dug deep by scavengers of old pipe and wire. Rats scurried with pigeons and sparrows amidst the feet of the crowd. I held a scented cloth over my nose and mouth to muffle the odors; Enid claimed to be used to it, but she smoked so much that if she retained any sense of smell, it was entirely atavistic. We were lucky, in one way, living here; Loisaida was so full of Ambients, and in such disarray in comparison even with other Twilight Zones, that the most hard-pressed boozhie wouldn't approach. Our stores and our neighbors remained our own.

  "So liptight and woeful," she said. "Such drawn eyes. Speak, then. What concerns so?"

  "I've worries about
this," I said.

  "Porque?"

  "It's such a troubling plan that he has," I said. "Something's off. "

  "Plan's plain as I viz," she said. "Drop the golden oldie."

  "What if it makes things worse?"

  "For whom?"

  "Me," I said. "Avalon. Everyone."

  "How?"

  "I don't know."

  "Why beef doing the do? Your feature attraction, isn't it?"

  "But the Old Man never did anything to me-"

  "What has he done for you?" she asked.

  We passed myriad vendors; those of the outback, not of the city, might call them colorful. Their wares were spread along the sidewalks, lying on rags and on yellowed newspapers. For barter there were reckers of all kinds, knives, bolts of burlap and of polyknit, pocket computers, battered furniture of worn wood and split plastic, counterfeit lottery tickets, every size of battery, paste jewelry, bathroom fixtures and good copper pipe, and and vid cassettes, portraits of E painted on crisp black velveteen, and back issues of National Geographic. In food stalls, and from portable hibachis, others hawked fried things on sticks; clouds of acrid smoke wafted from their grills as if from a crematorium.

  "That's not the point," I said.

  "What is the point?"

  "Why do something that causes no good?"

  "Chary thing to hear your lips drop. Where is this good to be found so freely?"

  "Somewhere-"

  "Answer here, then. What do you get for the use of your hands?"

  "I'll be in charge of the company," I said, "and Avalon will be with me."

  "You'd wish other?"

  "The same," I said, "in a different way."

  "Your fears whelm over for love of your owners?"

  "No."

  "What will they obtain? One shuffles off the coil-"

  "The other inherits the blessings."

  "Deserved?"

  "I suppose so," I said. "But I'm not sure."

  "Have his senses bid long goodbyes, as you say?"

  "He wasn't always like this, you know. Just in the past year -'9

  "The snow drifts thick?"

  "Two rhinoplasties he's had. You could make a tea service out of his nose."