New Worlds 4

by Edited By David Garnett

  The youth skipped round to stand directly in front of him. Quentin’s eyes took in the scrawny form. The unnatural tallness, the result of an (artificially) overstimulated thyroid, the emaciated flesh of the fasting artist, the drug- and famine-induced pallor-all were marks of today’s brand of youthful alienation. All in stark and deliberate contrast to the flabbiness of middle-age. Quentin felt acutely aware of his own corpulence beside this pale Watutsi of the malls.

  ‘Well? Can’t you see I’m hungry? Haven’t eaten for days!’

  The youth made a grab for the bag. Quentin jerked it away, but the kid’s long fingernail caught it, sliced the hopelessly flimsy plastic. The bag split, spilling its contents over the mosaiced floor of the mall.

  The kids dived. ‘White bread! You sick shit!’

  ‘Chocolate!’

  The leader recoiled. ‘Can’t eat that. I’m diabetic!’ He laughed, and pulled out a carving-knife, pointing with a skeletal digit at Quentin. ‘I’ll carve me a haunch of prime fatass!’ He winked at his victim. ‘Pound of flesh, right?’

  Quentin dodged backwards, sending a can of beef stew rolling across the floor. Two kids darted forwards to grab him. He felt a bony fist sink into his stomach.

  ‘What a mover!’ laughed one of the boys. ‘See the tits on him? Wobble, wobble!’

  ‘I’ve landed a three-hundred-pounder at least,’ sang the leader, slipping his arm round Quentin’s throat. ‘Come and get it, boys.’

  A flurry of movement somewhere behind Quentin made the would-be butchers pause. There was a sharp hiss, and two of the kids cried out. Something wet splattered over Quentin.

  ‘Get the fuck outa here!!’

  They released him suddenly. His knees sagged and gave way. The kids’ boots clattered on the tiles, and a jet of purple lanced out, splattering the fleeing fugitives.

  Someone knelt beside Quentin. ‘You’re safe now, pal. Are you OK?’

  Quentin struggled to get his breath. ‘I... I think so.’ He squinted round at his saviour.

  A red, sweating, multiple-chinned face was frowning anxiously back at him.

  ‘What was that purple stuff?’ Quentin asked weakly.

  ‘Dye. We spray it on ‘em. It takes weeks to clean off. Makes ‘em easily recognizable. They use it in riots.’ The fat man helped Quentin to his feet. He was wearing combat fatigues.

  Two other fat people were returning, both wearing identical uniforms. One, a woman, had a device like a flame-thrower strapped to her back. She shook out a few drops of the dye from the hose, then reattached it to the unit.

  ‘We doused ’em good,’ she announced. ‘They won’t be hangin’ round this mall for a while.’

  ‘Good work, Beulah,’ said the man. He nodded at Quentin. ‘What’s your name, friend?’

  Quentin told him. He grunted. ‘I’m Jim. This is Beulah, this is Carl. We’re members of FAT - Fat Action Taskforce. Heard of us?’

  Quentin nodded vaguely. It was one of the urban vigilante groups that had sprung up to combat the increasing harassment of fat persons. The groups were comprised of angry and sometimes militant volunteers. They called themselves fatsos, defiantly adopting the very term of abuse that thin people hurled at them, just as reviled blacks and gays had appropriated the hate-words nigger and queer as subversive self-definitions.

  ‘We’re a voluntary organization. We formed ourselves to fight the persecution of overweight people. I think we just saved you from a nasty encounter there, Quentin; maybe you’d like to consider joining us? We’re always looking to recruit new members. Oh, we’re not just a vigilante force - FAT offers you a means of making new friends, meeting people like yourself. We all need that kind of community spirit in days like these. Right, Quent?’

  ‘I guess.’

  Jim paused. ‘Think about it. If you ever want to get in touch with us, ring this number.’ He handed Quentin a card.

  ‘We’ll escort you back to your car; can’t be too careful.’

  As they crossed the parking lot, Quentin thought, I can’t take any more of this. Involuntarily, he looked up to where the Moon hung like a fat smiling face in the sky. And as he watched he seemed to see another such face forming there, grinning and saying, If you ever want a job, Quent, you know where to come.

  It was only when he had waved goodbye to his benefactors that Quentin realized he had left his groceries scattered over the floor of the mall. But it didn’t matter.

  Somehow he didn’t feel hungry any more.

  ~ * ~

  Quentin found his seat and strapped himself in. Then he slipped on the headphones and let the piped music lull him into a pleasant lassitude.

  He was roused by the arrival of the inflight meal. Sausages, mushrooms, waffles, fried tomatoes, eggs, bacon, kidneys, white breadrolls, washed down with red wine. All in the form of paste, of course - but no less tasty for that. An agreeable change from the starvation rations normally dished up by airlines. They didn’t skimp on the portions on the Luna run, he noted with approval.

  Across the aisle, an unabashed belch confirmed that others too were satiated. A man, ubiquitously fat, glanced across at Quentin and grinned cheerfully.

  ‘That’s better. I needed that.’ He wiped his mouth with the serviette, then stretched out his hand across the aisle. ‘Phil Gardner.’

  Quentin grasped the hot, pudgy hand with his own. ‘Quentin Fischer.’

  ‘Pleased to meet you, Quentin.’ Phil grinned. ‘I would ask where you’re from; but that’s not important, is it? It’s where you’re going that matters.’

  Quentin agreed.

  ‘So what made you decide to head for the Moon?’ Phil enquired.

  ‘New job. I signed a contract to work for LunaColony.’

  ‘Oh yeah? What doing?’

  ‘Hydroponics. They extended the plant recently, and I’ve been appointed supervisor of the new wing. They’re trying out some new processes - self-replicating yeasts, Vernon strains, stuff like that. ‘ He smiled self-deprecatingly. ‘I guess it’s not that interesting to the layman.’

  Phil chuckled. ‘On the contrary, Quentin, I’ve always had a keen interest in anything to do with food!’

  ‘Me too,’ agreed Quentin. ‘In fact, that’s one of the reasons I went into hydroponics in the first place; used to think it was a great idea - to be able to produce enough food to feed the world’s hungry billions.’ He laughed sourly. ‘I always had an idealistic streak in me.’

  ‘Everyone needs some ideals - especially when they’re young,’ declared Phil. ‘You gonna be working for Dr Mund?’

  Quentin shrugged. He decided against mentioning that he and Mund were old friends; it might seem like boasting. ‘Aren’t we all, indirectly? He’s the Director, after all.’

  Phil nodded. ‘I must say, I admire the guy. He’s got some pretty strong ideas about where Fatland should be going.’

  Quentin raised an eyebrow. ‘Fatland?’

  ‘Sure - that’s what the colonists call it. I got friends up there. They tell me it’s like nothing you’ve ever experienced before - that first small step on the Moon, your own Giant Leap for Mankind. The sensation of near-weightlessness - it’s fantastic! All those pounds just vanishing into nothing.’ He laughed with anticipatory delight. ‘I tell you, Quent, I used to go on a lotta diets; but they tell me that you never lose so much weight in so little time as when you first set foot on the Moon.’

  Quentin nodded, captivated by the idea. It was this instantaneous loss of weight that had drawn so many fatsos to the Moon. With the advent of affordable space travel, thousands of chubby Westerners had joyfully thrown away their dieting books, their peeled grapes and their lo-calorie wholefood slop, and made straight for the Moon, munching all the way. People who had been made to feel guilty about eating, people whose lives had been endless medieval penances of fasting and a denial of the flesh, were suddenly free to eat, and go on eating, knowing that it didn’t matter any more.

  ‘Like I said, I got friends on Luna,’ said Phi
l happily. ‘In fact - I’m going to be married to one of ‘em! Jemma, her name is.’

  He grinned as Quentin congratulated him, then went on, ‘Jemma says it’s easy to make friends on the Moon - there’s so many of us up there.’

  ‘I hope I like it,’ murmured Quentin.

  ‘You will. You’ll have to! It’s a one-way trip, remember.’

  A one-way trip. The reason for that was obvious: once a fatso had accustomed himself to lunar gravity, his body would never again be able to readjust to the crushing weight of Earth’s - even if he wanted to go back, which was unlikely.

  Quentin stared up at the orb of the Moon, looming large on the vidscreen, big and white and full of promise.

  ~ * ~

  Fatland was a revelation to Quentin. No amount of media hype, none of the lengthy orientation sessions he had attended on Earth, could prepare him for the reality.

  It was like walking on air, goddamnit! To be able to hop, to skip, to jump, to sail gracefully through the air like a flying phalanger filmed in slow-motion. It was a transformation of all he had been. It was like becoming young again.

  The new colonists were met at the space terminal by a friendly fatso in a LunaColonyCorporation jumpsuit.

  ‘Hi!’ she beamed. ‘Welcome to LunaColony! My name’s Sally. I’m here to show you to your new quarters.’

  ‘How big is LunaColony now?’ one of the Earthsiders asked as they were whisked away by monorail.

  ‘Around two million. And growing.’

  ‘Two million!’

  ‘It sounds like a lot when you consider that every one of those people has to be accounted for in the planning of the colony, that the consumption requirements of every individual has to be taken into consideration. But it’s not so many when you consider the total population of Earth, and the rate at which that is still expanding unchecked.’

  They glided on, through landscaped parks, carefully tended microcosms of the home planet. “You’ve certainly got it looking nice here,’ Quentin observed.

  Sally beamed at him. ‘We’ve imported over four hundred species from Earth. Our scientists have been working on developing lunar varieties of terran species - plants and animals which are tailored to the lower gravity here. You’d be surprised at the difference it makes.’

  As they went, Sally pointed out various landmarks. The buildings were new, sleek postfunctionalist architecture which combined an economy of line with an agreeably understated style. Sally explained that as LunaColony became richer, it was gradually replacing the cheap structures of its earliest phases with more enduring buildings. LCC produced much of its own food and other necessities, but there was an area in particular that was the key to the Moon’s prosperity: energy.

  A sizable area to the west of Lunaport, which had become known as Mare Solarium, was covered with a continuous solar-sensitive skin that soaked up the sun’s rays and stored them in a perpetual circuit.

  ‘For a colony like this to survive it has to be self-sufficient,’ Sally was saying. ‘We still import some luxury items, but in essentials like power and foodstuffs we’ve been autonomous for some years. The factories can design and synthesize practically anything these days, from a set of overalls to an AI.’

  In her voice was the pride of the autonomous settler, a spiritual descendant of the Pilgrim Fathers. ‘Oh, and not forgetting food,’ she added with a smile. ‘The hydroplant and synthetic food plants fulfil all our nutritional requirements.’

  The monorail took them to Henry VIII Boulevard, where the new arrivals had been allocated quarters. Sally conducted them up pristine, zigzagging escalators to their apartments.

  ‘There’s a party tonight over at Fosco Precincts,’ said Sally as she handed each fatso their doorcard to personalize. ‘It’s not far from here. All of you would be very welcome to come along.’

  There were pleased smiles and nods of assent all around.

  Sally beamed again, chubby cheeks dimpling. ‘Great! See you there, then.’

  And with a wave, she slid off down the escalator.

  ~ * ~

  Fosco Precincts was halfway between the residential and business sectors of Lunaport. Thus far the buildings had been planned in a more or less centralized way, the high cost of materials necessitating an intensive use of space; but now that the Moon had become a largely self-supporting colony, a certain expansiveness was becoming evident, the mood of the colonists being reflected in the beginnings of a sporadic ribbon development. Perhaps in a few decades the entire surface of Luna would be covered in a bland sprawl of characterless ‘burbs.

  The party was in full swing when Quentin arrived. At his buzz, the door slid open to reveal Sally, wearing a flowery dress and a big smile.

  ‘Hi! Come on in! Glad you could make it!’

  She ushered him inside. He found himself in a room crowded with heaving bodies. A lively beat was thumping from hidden speakers. Quentin squeezed himself around the edges of the room, where happy onlookers clapped and whooped, and passed through a doorway into an adjoining room.

  Here things were quieter. Some dozen or so people sat around, sipping drinks, gobbling at snacks and chatting idly. Quentin took a drink from a tray, and wandered over to one of the groups.

  ‘ ... What this colony needs is vision,’ one of the group, a squat, balding man in his fifties, was saying, clenching a fist decisively. ‘We’ve gotta have an idea of where we’re going. And Mund is the guy who has that vision. He’s the only one who can give Fatland the strong leadership it needs.’

  Another man shook his head emphatically. ‘Mund has vision, I’ll grant you that. But he’s trying to go too far too fast! Some of his ideas are sheer nonsense - terraforming Luna, for God’s sake! There’s a thin line dividing the visions of a genius from those of a lunatic. I’m just afraid that Mund strays a little too often from the one into the other.’

  ‘Terraforming Luna is not ridiculous!’ cried the bald man. ‘It could be done! The technology’s practically with us! It just needs a mind bold enough to conceive of how Fatland could become, and the will to make it a reality.’

  The two men fell to arguing over the practicalities of terraforming the Moon. Quentin took a swallow of synthetic bourbon. His old pal had clearly been busy. He wondered at Mund’s reclusiveness... Would the latter ever decide to renew their friendship?

  It had been at MIT, in his sophomore year, that he had first met Ed Mund. Then, Mund had been a Technology major with a talent for self-promotion. Theirs had been an unlikely friendship, the unassuming Fischer and the outspoken Mund. They had been close, and yet at the same time Quentin had always been conscious of a certain remoteness in the fatter man, a dark side of Mund’s personality that would always remain obscure.

  He turned to his neighbour. ‘Would you mind telling me what all this is about? I keep hearing of this Mund guy. Why do people get so wound up over his ideas?’

  The man eyed him speculatively. ‘New, huh? Well, Dr Mund, whom you’ve heard so much about, has always been a vocal champion of Fat Rights. Since he became Director of LCC five years ago we’ve made great strides towards real autonomy .’ The man’s expression became one of glassy-eyed admiration as he warmed to his theme. ‘He’s ...he’s taken on Earth governments and showed them that they can’t push us around the way they used to when we lived down there. He’s won our industries contracts to supply the skinnies with food and energy and a whole lot more...! And he’s got plans for Fatland that’ll make us the most advanced technological society anywhere.’

  The man turned to Quentin, his glazed eyes slowly refocusing. ‘Don’t you want to be a part of it?’

  ‘Oh... Sure...’ Quentin edged away uneasily. He glanced back into the other room, where gaily-attired colonists danced, strobe lights gleaming off their glistening faces. All he had seen and heard that evening only served to deepen the mystery surrounding the man he had once known. What had Mund done that he could command such fanatical devotion among the colonists?

  An
other guest, remarkable for his rare slimness in a crowd where obesity was the norm, nodded at Quentin.

  ‘You new here?’ he enquired.

  At Quentin’s assent, the man held out a bony hand. ‘My name’s Blakey, Merv Blakey. I work over at the Falstaff Medical Centre.’

  ‘Falstaff Medical—?’

  ‘That’s right; “I have more flesh than other men, and therefore more frailty.” Henry IV part 1. So what brought you to Luna?’

  ‘Partly my job, partly the reasons all fat people come up here: to lose weight.’

  Dr Blakey snorted. ‘Not everyone’s come for that reason; some seem to want to do just the reverse.’ He cast a jaundiced eye at the partygoers cheerfully stuffing themselves as they talked. He glanced at Quentin sidelong. ‘Dr Mund, for example.’