One Million Tomorrows M

by Bob Shaw

  “I’m back,” he announced unnecessarily. “I got here as quickly as I could.”

  Athene did not move. “That’s really something, Will—being neutered hasn’t slowed you down at all. That’s great.” The words were delivered with a cold savagery which appalled Carewe.

  “I’ve got to talk to you, Athene—there’s something you don’t know.”

  “The217;s something you don’t know, lover. Catch!” She threw a small glittering object towards him and he snatched it out of the air. It was a silver disc with a red spot in the center of one face.

  “I don’t get it,” he said slowly. “This looks like a pregnancy telltale.”

  “That’s exactly what it is. Getting neutered hasn’t affected your eyesight either.”

  “But I still don’t see … Whose is it?”

  “It’s mine, of course.” Athene sat up and faced him, her left eyelid drooping. “I licked it this morning and it turned that pretty color.”

  “You aren’t making any sense. You couldn’t be pregnant because it’s less than a month since I took my last pill and …” Carewe stopped speaking as a cold perspiration prickled out on his forehead.

  “Now you’ve got it.” Athene’s eye was almost closed and her face was a priestess-mask of calm fury. “You were right about me all along, Will. It seems I just can’t live without regular ess-blank-ex—you hadn’t been away two days before I had another man in your bed. Or should I say, another man had me in your bed?”

  “I don’t believe you,” he said weakly. “You’re telling me a lie, Athene.”

  “Really? Watch this.” She picked up another silver disk from a side table and, with the air of a magician performing a trick, placed it on her tongue. Her eyes were filled with cool amusement as she withdrew the telltale and held it out for him to see. The side which had been in contact with her tongue had a deep red spot on the center. “Now what do you say?”

  “Here’s what I say.” The surroundings of the room receded to stellar distances as he listened to his own lifeless mouth telling Athene what he thought of her, using every obscene word he could muster, until they became meaningless with repetition.

  Athene smiled mockingly. “A good performance, Will—but verbal rape is no substitute for the real thing.”

  Carewe inspected his hands. Each finger was making stiff little movements on its own, independent of the others. “Who was it?”

  “Why?”

  “I want to know. Who is the father?”

  “What are you planning to do—make him take it back?”

  “Tell me right now.” Carewe swallowed noisily. “You’d better tell me right now.”

  “You bore me, Will.” Athene closed her eyes. “Please away.”

  “All right,” he said, after an arctic eon had crept by. “I’ll go away—because if I don’t I might kill you.” Even to his own ears the words sounded futile and ineffectual.

  Athene was still lying on the couch, smiling peacefully, as he walked back out to his bullet and drove away.

  V

  “My wife is pregnant,” Carewe said carefully and took a sip of his coffee, watching to see what reaction his words would inspire.

  Barenboim and Pleeth formed a little tableau behind the blue-and-red desk, a re-creation of the morning on which Carewe had first visited the president’s suite. The older man’s hands were pressed together to form a steeple over which his deep-set eyes stared thoughtfully; Pleeth bounded complacently on his invisible QueenVic chair, his pink-stained eyes gleaming and his mouth forming a tight, up-curved arc of satisfaction.

  “Are you certain about this, Willy?” Barenboim’s voice was perfectly controlled.

  “Positive. She checked with two telltales.”

  “And is the pregnancy a new one?”

  “Within the last week.” Carewe spoke steadily, determined not to reveal any of his inner feelings to Barenboim’s two-centuries-old eyes.

  “Well, I would say this is it then—the ultimate proof that E.80 is everything we hoped it was. What do you say, Manny?”

  Pleeth stroked the gold cigar-like ornament on his chest and the radius of his mouth tightened in triumph. “Agreed, agreed,” he said. “This is what we’ve been waiting for.” The two men eyed each other in satisfaction, communicating without words in a way that only cools with many years behind them could do.

  “What happens now?” Carewe intruded. “A public announcement?”

  “No!” Barenboim leaned across the desk. “Not at this stage. Secrecy is more important than ever until we get the formula for E.80 covered by patent.”

  “I see.”

  “Also—I hope you won’t mind my saying this, Willy—it would be advisable to wait and see that the pregnancy goes the full term and that the child is perfect.”

  “No, I don’t mind you saying that, Hy.”

  “Good boy.” Barenboim leaned back in his chair. “Manny! What are we thing of? Here we are discussing nothing but the business aspects, and completely forgetting to congratulate young Willy on his achievement.”

  Pleeth beamed happily, but remained silent, the scrubbed pink of his boyish face deepening.

  Carewe took a deep breath. “I don’t want any congratulations, Hy. As a matter of fact Athene and I have split up. For a trial period, that is.”

  “Oh?” Barenboim’s eyebrows drew together in a calculated display of concern. “This seems an odd time to separate.”

  “It’s been brewing up for a year or more,” Carewe lied, remembering how he had stormed out of his dhome within seconds of Athene’s verbal blow. “And with a baby coming we decided this might be our last chance, our best chance, to find out exactly where we stand with each other. I hope it won’t hurt your plans.”

  “Not at all, Willy. But what are you planning to do now?”

  “Well, that’s what I wanted to talk to you about. I know I’m important to the E.80 trials—a billion-dollar guinea pig, Manny called me—but I thought I’d like to go abroad for a while.”

  Barenboim looked unperturbed. “That can be arranged easily enough. Farma has offices in quite a few cities across the world—but I don’t need to tell you that, Willy. Where were you thinking of?”

  “I wasn’t thinking of a city job.” Carewe shifted uneasily on his chair. “Does Farma still have field contracts with the Fauve teams?”

  Barenboim glanced at Pleeth before he replied. “We do. Not as many as we used to, but we still supply and administer biostats in quite a few theaters.”

  “That’s what I want to do, Hy.” Carewe spoke quickly, anxious to state his case before he was interrupted. “I know that under the circumstances I have no right to place myself in physical danger—but I’ve got this urge to get away from things for a while. I’d like to volunteer for work on a Fauve team.” He waited for Barenboim’s refusal but, incredibly, the president was nodding thoughtfully, the suspicion of a smile touching his lips.

  “So you want to cool a few Fauves? They sometimes kill themselves, you know, rather than submit—think you could face that?”

  “I think so.”

  “As you say, Willy, there’s a certain amount of risk from the organization’s point of view.” Barenboim again glanced at Pleeth. “But on the other hand, it would get you off stage for a few months—which may not be a bad idea at this time. Once we begin filing patent applications the security situation is going to get even trickier. What do you think, Manny?”

  Pleeth considered his unguessable triumphs. “There’s a lot in that, but I wonder if young Willy knows exactly what he’s letting himself in for. Perhaps the worst possible violation of a human being is to force immortality on him against his will.”

  “Nonsense!” Barenboim’s voice had a harsh edge to it. “I’m convinced Willy can face up to a few months on a Fauve team. Take it in your stride, won’t you, boy?”

  Carewe hesitated, then he remembered Athene and knew he had to travel far and fast in case he should be weak enough or crazy eno
ugh to forgive her. “I can face it,” he said bitterly.

  An hour later he was riding the dropshaft down to ground level with an official transfer to the Farma contingent of a Fauve team in his pouch. It was a few minutes after quitting time and the building’s reception area was still crowded. Carewe looked curiously at the passing technicians and office workers, wondering why the fact that he was going to Africa in the morning should make everybody else look slightly strange. This isn’t real, he thought. I got out too easily …

  “Ho there, Willy,” a voice said close to his ear. “What’s this I hear about you breaking out of the nursery? It isn’t true, is it? Tell me it isn’t true.”

  Carewe turned and saw the bristled face of Ron Ritchie, a tall blond funkie in his early twenties, who was a junior sales coordinator in the biopoiesis division.

  “It’s true enough,” he said reluctantly. “I got restless.”

  Ritchie twitched his nose and smiled. “I’m proud of you, boy. Other guys your age who’ve just tied off start reading philosophy, but you kick up your heels and head for Brazil.”

  “Africa.”

  “I knew it was somewhere like that. Let’s have a drink and a drag to mark the occasion.”

  “I …” Carewe hesitated, for the first time truly understanding that he had no wife and no home around which to build his evening. “I’ve been drinking too much lately—thought of cutting down on it.”

  “Spheres to that.” Ritchie put his arm across Carewe’s shoulders. “Do you realize I might never see you again? That’s bound to be worth a glass or two to one of us.”

  “I guess it is.” Carewe had always considered he had nothing in common with Ritchie, but the alternative was killing the evening alone. Earlier he had half-expected Barenboim to invite him to dinner or to spend a few hours discussing his severance from the office—after all, he was an important part of the biggest thing Farma had ever done—but the formalities had been completed with magical swiftness, and Barenboim and Pleeth had hurried away t keep an appointment. Going to Africa had been entirely his own idea, but somehow he felt exactly as though an unknown person had put the skids under him. “Now that you mention it, I could use a drink.”

  “Good man.” Ritchie rubbed his hands together and showed his narrow dental arch in a grin. “Where’ll we go?”

  “The Beaumont,” Carewe said, thinking of its tobacco-colored walls, deep chairs and ten-year-old whiskey.

  “Double spheres to that. Come on—I’ll drive you somewhere worthwhile.” Ritchie caught the end of his own codpiece, aimed it theatrically at the doorway and hurried after it as though being drawn onwards by an invisible force. His thin but muscular legs took him across the reception area in a few strides, to the accompaniment of laughter from a group of girls who were emerging from a side corridor. Marianne Toner was among them.

  “I haven’t had a chance to tell you, Marianne,” Carewe said. “This is my last day here. …”

  “Mine too,” she interrupted, her eyes fixed on the disappearing figure of Ritchie. “Goodbye, Willy.”

  She turned away disinterestedly and Carewe’s hand flew to the smooth bristle-free skin of his face. He stared after her for a few seconds, outraged, then hurried to the door in pursuit of Ritchie. The younger man lived close by in Three Springs and so drove a low-slung roadcar which Carewe found strange in comparison to the comfort of his more staid bullet. He slumped in the passenger seat beside Ritchie and stared moodily through the side window during the short ride into town. Marianne Toner had shocked him with her sudden inability to see him as a human being. The question was—would he feel so annoyed if he really were a cool? Athene was his wife, but in a way he had almost expected her transformation; Marianne was nothing more to him than a woman who used to signal her availability, but in an obscure way he had been convinced his appearing to have tied off would have made little difference in their friendship.

  “Here we are,” Ritchie said as the car swung into a parking lot.

  “Here we are where?”

  “Astarte’s Temple.”

  “Drive on,” Carewe snapped. “I never had much interest in brothels when I was a funkie, and …”

  “Relax, Will.” Ritchie switched off the turbine. “You don’t have to go upstairs, and you don’t object to me making a little money, do you?”

  The feeling that he was being manipulated, steered like a sheep, returned to Carewe but he got out of the car and walked to the entrance of the temple. A slim girl clad in the brilliance from a blue-and-violet light necklace approached them carrying a cash receiver. She looked at Carewe’s smoothly shaven chin, lost interest immediately and turned to Ritchie, who took a hundred-newdollar bill from ouch and dropped it into the receiver.

  “Astarte invites you to enter,” she whispered, and ushered them into the huge bar which occupied the building’s entire ground floor.

  “I don’t get it,” Carewe said. “I thought the whole point of these places was that the girls paid you.”

  Ritchie sighed heavily. “Are all accountants so dreamy? Of course the girls pay you, but the house has to make its percentage too. The hundred bucks admission charge keeps the place exclusive and pays the overheads—besides, somebody like me can still make a profit from the tributes from the girls “

  “Oh! How much tribute do they pay you?”

  Ritchie gave an elaborately casual shrug as he made his way through the crowded varicolored dimness towards the bar. “Twenty newdollars per satisfaction.”

  “Now I see where the house makes its profit,” Carewe said wryly.

  “What are you hinting at, cool fool?” Ritchie demanded. “You think I won’t get that hundred back again? Just you wait and see, cool fool. What are you drinking?”

  “Whiskey.”

  Ritchie reached the mirrored counter and pressed his credisk against a barkeep’s eye. “One Scotch, one potch,” he said into the grill. Two frosted glasses slid out, one of them rimmed with oyster-pink radiance to indicate that it contained more than alcohol. Carewe lifted the inert glass and sipped the bland spirit, taking stock of his surroundings. Most of the people around him were funkies of varying ages. Girls of the house, clad in light necklaces, moved among their tables and booths like columns of frozen flame. There were a few cools present, all of them, Carewe was relieved to notice, wearing conventional clothing and engaged in normal seeming conversation with their companions.

  “Relax, Willy.” Ritchie appeared to have read Carewe’s thoughts. “This is a straight house—nobody’s going to proposition you.”

  Carewe’s doubts about spending a whole evening with Ritchie suddenly intensified. “I’m not a great believer in the social necessity for taboos,” he said conversationally, “but has nobody ever told you that nonfunctional males have strong aversion to being categorized as potential homosexuals?”

  “Sorry, professor. What did I say?”

  “Why should any man proposition me?”

  “I said I was sorry.” Ritchie swallowed most of his drink and grinned. “Don’t get all heated up, cool fool—I just think all taboos should be broken. It’s the only intelligent way to live.”

  “All taboos?”

  “Yup.”

  “You’re positive?”

  “Of course.” Ritchie set his glass down. “Let’s have another drink.”

  “Have this one—I’ve hardly touched it.” Carewe pulled the top of Ritchie’s hose out from his stomach, emptied his glass into the pouch he had created, and let the elasticized material snap back.

  “What the … ?” The words seemed to tear Ritchie’s throat. “What are you doing?”

  “Breaking the taboo against pouring one’s drink down other people’s hose—I want to live intelligently, too.”

  “You’re crazy!” Ritchie glanced at the stain spreading down his thin legs and looked up in growing rage, clenching his fists. “I’ll pulp you for that.”

  “If you even try it,” Carewe said seriously, “I promise
you’ll forfeit all of that hundred newdollars you paid to get in here.”

  “The boys were right about you.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning you’re as queer as a two-dollar watch, that’s what.” Ritchie thrust his face close to Carewe’s. “We all know why Barenboim’s been pushing you along so fast, Willy. Where did the two of you go while you were supposed to be down at Pueblo?”

  Carewe, who had never hurt another being in the whole of his adult life, drove his fist into Ritchie’s throat. The blow was inexpertly delivered but the taller man fell to his knees, squawking as he struggled to breathe. A squad of burly women in leather helmets materialized out of the swirling dimness, gripped Carewe’s arms and ran him out of the bar. In the entrance hall he was held motionless for an instant in front of a scanner, while the house computer memorized his appearance for blacklisting, then he was escorted down the steps and released. Men going into the temple made speculative jokes about the reasons for a cool being thrown out of a brothel, but Carewe felt no embarrassment. He had needed to hit somebody for a long time and he was grateful to Ritchie for making it so easy. Echoes of the blow tingled through his right hand and arm like electric currents, and he almost felt at peace about Athene.

  It was not until much later, when he had swallowed more whiskey than was good for him, that he began to worry about the way in which Ritchie, a comparative stranger, had been able to speak knowingly about his “secret” relationship with Barenboim. Both Barenboim and Pleeth had done their utmost to insure that no hint of Carewe’s connection with E.80 should leak out. Had something gone wrong?

  Perilous centuries stretched ahead of Carewe as he fell asleep and once again,n te dreams, his body was made of glass.

  VI

  Above the airport the morning sky was filled with eye-pulsing brilliance and clear except for the huge column of mist which surrounded the main noise-abatement tubefield. The comparatively warm air of ground level was leaking into the tube through imperfections in the field and rising fast, turning it into an insubstantial jet engine which exhausted into the upper atmosphere. Carewe, who had arrived early, watched several aircraft taxi into the base of the cloudy pillar, rise vertically and vanish. He tried to see them spew out the top as they set course, but the brightness of the sky hurt his eyes and he was forced to give up.