Gaia's Toys

by Rebecca Ore

  The Hispanic woman said, “I remember that pattern.”

  Little Red said, “Laurel, when did we decide to be that scrupulous?”

  Then Willie started not to remember Laurel’s voice. He and Little Red sat in the restaurant in Stuart talking about the ball game.

  Little Red told Willie, “The point of the ball game is winning. Attachment to the players isn’t the important thing. If we could find better players, they’d be on our team instead of the folks we’ve been playing with.”

  Willie wondered if they were really discussing ball. He knew they weren’t really in the restaurant.

  The next morning, Willie woke up in a sleeping bag. Laurel said, “Willie, are you really that sexually dysfunctional because of the hallie bugs? You seem lonely for women.”

  He looked up at her, saw her eyes, and said, “I don’t want to be a pity fuck.”

  “Do you mind if I sit down by you?”

  Willie said, “Okay. But I’ve got to get back to my mantis.” As soon as he said that, he felt weird, like he’d mated with an insect.

  Laurel said, “Willie, you should be getting compensation for war-related injuries, not treated like a welfare case.”

  “I need to get back to my mantis,” Willie said. He wanted to be alone if he was going to feel this weird.

  “We’ll drive you.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of being seen with me?”

  “Your masters don’t care that much about what you’re doing. Besides, we’ve had people watching your house ever since you talked to Little Red. That Jones could have had his girl in Stuart let him know when you went under the wires in Roanoke again. We just made sure that someone was always around. Favor to you.”

  “I have to sell the stuff. I didn’t want to sell it all at once.” Willie wondered what these people did, really. “Seems pretty strange you watching my house for me when I was under the wires.” He got up out of the sleeping bag, pissed in their composting toilet, washed his face, loaded his bike in back of the van, and climbed in beside Laurel.

  Little Red popped up a seat in the middle and pushed it real far forward so he could lean against the front seat. “Willie, we’d like to replay your next session under the wires.”

  Laurel started the van. Willie asked, “Why?”

  Little Red told him, “You found the brain pattern of an old friend of ours who supposedly died in Southern Louisiana when a refinery blew up.”

  Laurel said, “She didn’t know us personally though.” Little Red leaned back in the van and didn’t say anything more.

  Willie said, “She was a drode head and she was getting hacked and raped by some white-eyed boys.”

  Laurel said, “We’ll take your art now, sell it for you, either through the net you saw or other ways. Maybe not sell it, but pay you fair value for it. But we’d like to find out more about this woman.”

  “They rebuilt her, I think,” Willie said. “You’d never recognize her. I don’t think I’m the only one looking for her, either. She disappeared during a training exercise, but I’m not supposed to know that much.”

  Laurel said, “Loba can recognize any brain pattern, any retina scan, the personal body style. Harder to change the personal body style than the retinas.”

  Loba must be the Hispanic woman, Willie figured. He knew her name meant bitch wolf in Spanish. Willie said, “She’s sort of run away from the Feds, but she sort of hasn’t. I was confused.”

  When the van pulled in beside Willie’s house, he saw a fully enclosed recumbent bicycle tilt to upright by the old falling-down barn across the street. It looked like a fiberglass bullet, but so black it seemed to absorb light. The windscreen was opaque, hardly distinguishable from the body of the cowling. Feet moved the thing to the road, then disappeared under the cowling to pedal away.

  Laurel said, “Willie, could you put your mantis in an enclosed space? Like a gallon jar with a lid?”

  “I’ve got her a tank. I could put plastic over it, but maybe she’d smother.”

  Little Red asked, “How big is she?”

  “Maybe a foot since her last molt.”

  “Can you tell us where the things are, then take her outside?” Laurel asked.

  “She’s not going to addict you so quick,” Willie said. “I can leave her for whole days.”

  Little Red sighed. “Go check her. We can wear nose plugs.”

  “We’ll still hear her,” Laurel said.

  “Why are you so upset?” Willie said.

  “We don’t know where they come from,” Laurel said. “We tried to see what the Feds knew and they’ve got it narrowed down to a couple of labs. Some recombinant DNA lab is doing pirate work.”

  “Maybe they just mutated,” Willie said. “I’ll put her in the bathroom and put a wet towel under the door.”

  Laurel helped Willie get his bike out from the van, then waited at the door. Willie saw an almost invisible membrane tear away when he pulled the screen door back. Remembering booby traps, he wanted to scream and duck, but Laurel rubbed the door jamb with her hand, then spun the membrane into a thread between her fingers.

  “Ours,” she said. “We got it off before you came home from Roanoke.”

  Willie went in and found the mantis waiting in the dining room for him. It had pushed the tank cover aside and gone foraging for spiders and cockroaches, judging from the husks it left on the dining room table. It raised its arms toward him—spiders and roaches weren’t enough. Willie lured it to his forearm with a mantis kibble and walked with it perched on his wrist to the bathroom. He opened the tub tap just a little so water would drip, then set the mantis down on the tub edge.

  Waves of happiness washed over Willie. He had new friends, an adventure, a mantis. First laying down a few more kibbles, he remembered to wet the towel and sealed the mantis in the bathroom.

  The air outside the bathroom seemed lonely. Willie walked back to the door and said, “You can come in now.”

  The nose filters made Little Red and Laurel look like pigs. Willie wondered if he should be hanging with such people. He let them in anyway. They followed him in to the dining room. Little Red stared at the walnut cupboard under its cheap paint. He asked, “Why the paint?”

  “Underneath’s walnut. Too valuable for a drode head to own,” Willie said. “I was supposed to sell all my assets that weren’t utilitarian.”

  “That’s a linen table cloth,” Laurel said. She went close enough to see the mantis’s dinner remains and stepped back. “The mantis runs loose?”

  “She pushed the tank cover aside,” Willie said. “Mostly she eats kibble, but she gets insects from time to time. That’s why I could stand to have her around. She kills dangerous bugs.”

  “Oh, I feel better already,” Little Red said. “So, let’s see what you’ve got that you want to sell.”

  Laurel asked, “Where did you get a linen table cloth?”

  “Been in my family long as the walnut cupboard. Got a chest of linen made back in the 1890s.” Willie saw that Laurel didn’t approve of mantises eating on linen, but then he didn’t understand why she was so squeamish. Willie unlocked the closet that lead to the space between the ceiling and the rafters that wasn’t quite an attic. “In the summer, I don’t go up because of wasps,” he said. “You have to climb up the shelves and then go through the trap door.”

  Willie began climbing. Little Red followed him. They got all itchy from fiberglass insulation. Glass wool ran up under their fingernails as they pulled various curios out from where Willie had buried them.

  “Damn,” Little Red muttered.

  The biggest pieces were in the basement in the old water tank. Mantis gas settled down by the bathroom water pipes, so by the time Willie and Little Red finished getting the big pieces out, they were both laughing.

  “You gonna put the tank together again?” Little Red asked.

  “No, gonna leave it like I burglarized myself,” Willie said. Both of them held onto the standing Buddha and laughed.
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  “Mantis tranquilizer goes in through the lungs, doesn’t it?” Little Red said.

  “You lose lot of the effect if you don’t take it by nose. Goes in die little gizmo inside the nose that picks up sex pheromones. Guess I should have caulked better,” Willie said. “It’s not so bad, is it?”

  “Mantis usually give off this much?”

  “Must be pissed, getting locked up in the bathroom like a bad feist dog,” Willie said. Little Red shook his head for some reason. Willie wondered if Little Red knew what a feist dog was, sure he did, coming from the country where men keep the little rat-and-ankle-gnawers.

  They heard wingcase music and paused for an instant before continuing up with the Buddha.

  Laurel had cleaned off the dining room table while they were gone. “How come they don’t put other people in with you?”

  “Veterans get to keep their houses.”

  “This is your house?” Little Willie asked. “You’ve got title to it?”

  “Why, yes,” Willie said. He felt proud. “The country does well by its veterans.”

  Laurel said, “They let you keep your house.”

  Willie didn’t know what precisely in her voice made him feel foolish.

  Little Red said, “Amazing all it takes to make someone happy,”

  Willie said. “How much are you going to give me for the Tibetan stuff?”

  Laurel and Little Red unwrapped all the different artifacts and lined them up on the dining room table. Willie wondered if Laurel would clean up this mess the way she cleaned up after the mantis.

  Little Red said. “We’ll give you half of what we get for them, or seven thousand dollars right now. But how would you account for it?”

  “Jones gave me sixty dollars for one of them,” Willie said, lying slightly. “You’re not a better deal.”

  Laurel said, “Willie, we won’t cheat you.”

  Little Red said, “And we’ll add a bonus if you let us read you.”

  “How will you give me the seven thousand dollars?”

  “You’d prefer that to a share in the sales?” Laurel asked.

  Little Red said, “He doesn’t want to see us again.”

  Laurel asked, “You want the money in cash?”

  “Well, I can’t hardly take it in something I’ve got to explain.”

  Little Red said, “We’ll give you ten thousand dollars on a traveler’s card. If you let us read you.”

  “I don’t know.” Willie wondered if getting money had been all there was to his plan. Scrounging around for the little bits extra, having a dream in his head to make him think he had a goal. Now, confronted with $10,000, he realized he didn’t even have a way to keep it safe. Today, it might be his $7,000 to $10,000. Tomorrow, anyone could take it away. If he enrolled in a study program, someone might wonder where a welfare drode head got $7,000 in cash. He could pick up five, ten, even fifty from time to time. No one expected drode heads to be honest, and the law didn’t mind as long as you kept the theft petty. But serious money? Willie asked, “How much do training institutes check where the money came from?”

  Laurel said, “Willie, what is it you want to do?”

  Little Red said, “He wants to feel like he’s not just another drode head.”

  Willie said, “I’m not just another drode head.”

  Laurel said, “There’s no such thing as just a drode head.”

  Willie remembered the men who put the war machines together. He said, “I could learn electronics and fuel cell maintenance.”

  Laurel said, “Anything legitimate, you’ll have to give them test scores, references. And are you going in with the drode holes or a cheap wig?”

  Little Red added, “Nice wig goes for around six hundred dollars. Operation for the drode hole would cost you most of what we’re offering.”

  Laurel said, “Or you could let us invest the money for you, come in, let us read you. Then, after a year, we’ll take you with us.”

  Little Red asked, “Have you discussed this with anyone else, Laurel?”

  Laurel said, “It’s been discussed.”

  Little Red said, “He’s not one of us.”

  Laurel stepped over to Willie and took his head in her hands, whipped off Willie’s wig, and bent Willie’s neck to point the drode holes at Little Red. “You want to tell me he’s not industry-damaged ? ”

  “Sure, but he didn’t sue.”

  “They said what I faced was a hazard of war. I couldn’t sue.” Willie twisted his head out of Laurel’s hands.

  Little Red said, “I’m not happy. Willie, if you trust me, I can give you fifty bucks a week for three years. You’ll have some extra, but not so much as to attract attention. If you get robbed one week, you’ll still have more fifties to come.”

  Willie picked his wig up off the floor and said, “Laurel, you’re a bitch. Now I’ve got to sterilize it.”

  Laurel said, “I still want to hear what you plan to do.”

  “Why should I tell you? If you can’t protect your friends better than to get them raped and fucked over, shit…”

  Little Red said, “My offer still stands.”

  Laurel said, “But we want to help our friend. Eventually, you’ll get a brain infection. You won’t live to see sixty. The Feds are working out better links, subdermals, but you won’t get one. You’ve been used up.”

  “I didn’t realize I’d come into money this fast.”

  “If anyone audits your daily memories for this period, you’re going to forget we helped you with the art and discussed this. I can say I’ve got so much and you’ve got so little that I decided to help you out.”

  “How am I going to account for my stuff being missing?”

  “You’ll remember that it was stolen.”

  Willie realized they could have stolen it for real. But they hadn’t. He remembered the brain pattern, the contact with the woman. “Give me time to decide.”

  Little Red said, “We’ve got to take the stuff with us now.” Willie knew Little Red thought he was a loser who’d thought the world had been fair to him because he got to keep his house. “I’ll take the fifty dollars a week, but out of half of what you sell the stuff for.” He stopped, wondering if the house was worth killing a drode head for. “If I help you, will you take the drode out when you take me with you?”

  Laurel said, “We’ll do our best to help you. Now, I’ve got to rework the memory lock before we leave today, so come back out to the van.” As they walked to the van, she continued, “After you’ve come back from Roanoke, spend some time before talking to Little Red. We don’t need the information instantly. Don’t establish a pattern.”

  Willie sat down under the squid and got to remember what they’d agreed on when he walked away. If he was audited, the memories would dive, but he’d remember again when he saw Little Red. Right now, Willie both trusted Laurel and wondered if Laurel ran a brain program that made him trust her.

  Walking back to the house, Willie felt like he’d been shot and was now dead, but the body didn’t know it yet. The old Willie died under the squid, but then a man couldn’t live for a house and an insect.

  Willie hunted for the brain pattern the next time he was under the wires, but she wasn’t online.

  When he got back to his house, the walnut cupboard was gone, leaving a clean triangle of pine boards covered with things that had been in the cupboard. Willie stared at the old letters, farm ledgers, and broken dishes piled on the floor and wondered how he’d held onto the cupboard this long.

  The mantis crept out from under the plastic covered sofa to greet him. One wing was broken, sticking off at right angles to her body. She tried to move it.

  “Hell, baby, you’ll have to wait to next molt to sing to me,” Willie told her. He found scissors and clipped the wing at the break. It oozed bug juice at the veins, then the juice hardened. He could remember the deal he made with Laurel and Little Red. He hadn’t been audited. Once they had his stuff, they’d stopped watching his house
. That pissed him off, but they had saved his stuff long enough. Now he wished he’d sold them the walnut cupboard, too.

  The thieves came in wearing nose plugs, but they couldn’t afford not to hear. They broke the mantis’s song wing. Willie visualized big men in ski masks, nose filters white in the gloom. The plasma center bitch told Jones where he lived.

  Still, Willie went back to the plasma center because he never quite believed Little Red would continue to pay up. An audit would send Willie’s memory of the deal way down and how’d he know what Laurel did would make the memory come back? Everyone cheated Willie. He would try to cheat them back. He knew the plasma center bitch set him up, but he’d have to spend time finding a new plasma center that wouldn’t report him.

  The plasma center bitch asked, “What more do you have to sell Jones?”

  “Got robbed,” Willie said. “Tell Jones he owes me for the walnut cupboard and I didn’t appreciate him hurting my mantis, either.”

  The bitch said, “Welfare people not supposed to have equity over thirty dollars in furniture. Welfare people not supposed to be selling plasma either.”

  She sat him down in a different chair, one rigged to go manual. Willie pulled his arm away from her needle. She was looking at him like he was dead and didn’t know it yet. “Chair’s broke today, so I gotta do your plasma in the machine in back,” she said. “So we’re using an old chair.”

  Willie realized she’d planned to fuck him with wrong type red blood cells in the return, shock him out. The mechanical chairs always gave you back your own cells, type O-positive for Willie, but mistakes could be mixed with a general centrifuge.

  “I’d better not sell, then,” Willie said.

  “Better never try to sell plasma anywhere,” the bitch said. “Nobody gives a fuck about people who sell plasma illegally.”

  “You doing me a favor telling me there’s a blacklist.” Willie left and walked over to the restaurant where Little Red held court.

  Willie said, “I nearly got killed over a walnut cupboard.”

  Little Red said, “Willie, order whatever you want to, my treat.”

  Willie said, “Good of you. I ain’t gonna sell my blood no more.”