Bright's Light (7 page)

Fon gasped and clutched the pink hard hat to her chest.

“No!” she said. “It’s Bright’s. No one can touch her stuff, which she bought with her own credits, unless she says it’s okay!”

Bright looked down at her feet.

Grassly had violated yet another prime directive inside the Store. No one was allowed to confiscate anyone else’s goods for any reason—or even handle them without permission. It simply wasn’t done.

Still, he had to try. There were lives on the line.

“I must insist,” he said.

“What’s with you?” breathed Fon, aghast.

Grassly puffed out a breath. He thought Bright would have given him the helmet if she’d been alone; after all, she’d seen what it could do. But she wouldn’t give it to him in front of Fon.

The client in the IndieBouncer had begun to make noises that didn’t sound like enjoyment.
Ooof, wheeze. Ooof, wheeze.

“Fine,” he said. “Just don’t turn it on until you receive further instructions from me.”

“He can’t tell you what to do with your gear,” Fon whispered to Bright.

But Bright nodded at him. “Okay,” she said.

He began to improvise, feeling pleased with his intellectual agility. “If you turn on the light, you may draw the attention of … less exclusive people.”

“Oh! So that’s the secret,” breathed Fon.

Grassly felt himself start. Which secret did she know?

“The helmet. It’s from the House of It. Right?”

Fon spoke to Bright, as though Grassly had no ears with which to hear. “The House of It uses performance tests to decide who gets promoted there.”

It does? thought Grassly.

“The helmet is a test,” continued Fon. “The House of It is testing us.”

Then she fixed Grassly with an unnervingly direct gaze. “The House of It wants us to protect the light helmet, right? And the first part of the test was whether we’d let you take it.”

“Yes,” he said, because he couldn’t think of a suitable response to her bizarre conclusions.

They could hold on to the helmet, to which they’d become strangely attached, and believe whatever they wanted about some promotional test. His concern right now was figuring out how to get people to the Natural Experience and from there onto his ship.

“Does it matter which one of us wears it?” Fon asked.

“No,” he said.

Fon smiled triumphantly and pointed a finger from herself to Bright. “Working together. Sharing the helmet,” she said.

“That’s right,” he said. “You will work together. Just remember. Don’t turn the light on again until you receive further instructions from me.”

Bright put up her hand, as though she were in a classroom. “Are there going to be any more tests this shift?” she asked. She gave a sidelong glance at the tall, thin client, who was wobbling unsteadily inside the IndieBouncer, hitting the sides and sliding back down. The woman’s legs appeared to be buckling more each time she landed.

“We have a leisure unit meeting after shift, and I’m better at doing tests when I’m rested,” continued Bright. “So maybe we should get off early?”

Grassly took in the client’s grey face, a smear inside the IndieBouncer. “That’s fine,” he said. “Just go about your business and wait to hear from me. You’re doing a fine job, Bright. And Fon.”

Bright smiled at him, and for the first time since he’d come into the room, there was nothing but happiness in her face.

He hurried out of the Bounceteria and headed toward his workshop, thinking hard about what to do next.

As he cleared the doorway, he heard one of them say, “He’s kind of nice for a PS officer.”

He stopped in case they said more.

“Well, he’s boring like a PS officer.”

“PS officers are
supposed
to be boring. He’s probably especially good at being boring because he’s from the House of It.”

He was far too busy to be eavesdropping, Grassly decided.

For reasons that made her head hurt to consider, the rules about avoiding unproductive attachments seemed less important when Bright looked at Slater, a favour from the House of Boards. He was nineteen and three-quarters, but he
looked
seventeen. A young seventeen. And he
acted
sixteen. A person would never know he was staring release in the mirrored shades. Bright always tried to sit next to him during leisure unit meetings. Not that he was a good conversationalist or anything. He’d been bred for hard muscle and soft skin.

During leisure unit meetings, favours got to behave in ways they couldn’t any other time. They scratched, picked, prodded, and poked themselves. They burped, sighed, and looked bored. Even light complaining was tolerated. It was glorious. Almost as glorious as watching Slater shake out his bleached hair.

He had this habit of looking deep into her eyes and saying, “Oh, Bright, dude, I love your style.” Just like that. He had never, to her knowledge, said those words to Fon. For that reason, Bright liked him more than anyone else she could think of, save Pinkie.

Bright and Fon had been assigned to leisure unit 7 as soon as they arrived at the House of Gear after graduating from the Party Favour Training Centre, where they’d been in separate classes. The unit met at different houses in the Partytainment District. Favours were supposed to use the time to discuss their purpose and ways to improve their productivity, but meetings were really an opportunity to gossip about clients and new surgeries and Mistresses. Favours were on display at work, in public, and any time they weren’t alone in their rooms. Some of them even slept in glass bedrooms so that sleep lookers could watch. Party favour was one of the most 24/7-365 jobs there was, and they needed their down-but-still-fun-time.

The meeting was being held at the House of Gear this month, in an unoccupied lure dressing room on the second floor. Bright waited for Slater to say that he dug her style. She wanted to tell him about the helmet and the light, about the client who went bizarre after she shone the light on him, about the PS officer who was so strange but also kind of nice, and about the extremely important test she was being given by the House of It. But having too many unusual things happen to you was unattractive.

Slater shook out his blond hair again, closed his eyes, and scratched his abdomen, which, she couldn’t help noticing, wasn’t quite as washboardy as it used to be. His six-pack had turned into more of a four-pack.

A wave of tenderness swept over her and she tamped it down. She snuck a nervous glance at the parachute pack she’d brought to the meeting. Inside it was the pink helmet,
which, test device or no, made her uneasy. The pack slouched against the far wall of the silvery room. The mirrors and makeup chairs of a standard dressing room had been removed and replaced with comfy ergochairs and semi-beds for lounging.

“Did you hear about that favour at our house?” asked Jane-Smith, who worked at the House of Office. She unbuttoned her beautifully cut suit jacket and the top of her blouse, then unpinned her bun. Her dark hair tumbled down her shoulders. “One of her clients went all blurgh, and she got released.”

“That’s terrible,” said Bluefoam, from the House of Splash. “A favour in our house drowned three weeks ago.”

Cirque, from the House of Bends, wrapped a leg around her head with one hand and inspected the nails on her other hand.

“Hey, you guys,” said Slater. “Let’s keep discussions positive and productive.” With a sidelong glance at Bright, he adjusted his board, which leaned against his lounger, and grinned to show that he wasn’t being a downer.

Bright thought it must be a challenge for Slater to have to carry a surfboard, skis, or a snowboard everywhere he went. At least at the House of Gear the favours could change into off-duty outfits, like the skydiving outfit she had on. Rumour had it that the House of It favours had only to carry their own hotness around.

“So this favour who drowned,” Bright said. “Was it an accident? Or was she released?”

People who were released came back better than ever.

People who died accidentally were just gone, which was depressing and embarrassing.

Bluefoam shrugged. “They just said she drowned. But it was kind of strange because she was in the pink bubble splash pool, which is only like three inches deep. One of the other favours who was there said she kept trying to dive under the water.”

Attempting to sound casual, Bright said, “Like she was trying to find something?” She was thinking about the bizarre behaviour of her client, and all his talk of looking for the light.

Bluefoam yawned and picked one of her shiny white teeth with a pointy blue fingernail, painted to match her modified mermaid outfit, which trapped her legs so close together she had to shuffle. “I don’t know. I don’t pay attention because I have a permanent sinus infection from being wet all the time. Sometimes—” Bluefoam’s voice dropped so low that Bright had to lean in close to hear her—“I think the Deciders messed up by putting me in a water house.”

“A favour at our house fell off a balcony a few months ago,” said Slater. “He kept saying, ‘Blinded by the light, yo! I’m blinded!'”

Bright cast another anxious glance at the parachute bag. Was the one on her helmet the only light? Was the House of It doing a recruitment drive? She and Fon must be lead candidates. Except for a little passing out, they’d had no problem with the light. A thrill ran through her at the thought that she could soon be working in the most superelite house in the Store.

“Life happens,” said Fon, awkwardly turning her whole body until her haloed head faced Slater and Bright. “It’s best not to think too much.”

Bluefoam shrugged inside her glittering, scaly blue bodice. “I second that,” she said. As she moved her legs into a more comfortable position, she knocked over a tray of All-Health Post-Op fruit-like drinks.

No one moved to clean them up. There were service bots for that.

And just like that, the discussion moved on to who had the highest credit score and what awesome things they were going to buy and experience with those credits.

Fon was, as usual, at the top of the charts. She thought she might have as many credits as some of the favours at the House of It, only they didn’t report their credit scores. They were too elite for that.

Jane-Smith took her smart but sexy glasses off and allowed two frown lines to form in her forehead. She had left that part of her face untoxed for that express purpose. She leaned toward Fon. “Your ability to stay on top, week after week, is a major inspiration to me,” she said.

“I agree,” said Bluefoam. “Even though my sinuses are killing me all the time and sometimes my eyes get so fogged up that it’s hard for me to see, let alone pay attention, I still admire you and your scores.”

“Hey, you,” whispered Slater. His lips brushed Bright’s ear. “Did I ever mention that I dig your style?” He always seemed to know when Bright needed to hear something nice. Her jealousy at the compliments being firehosed all
over Fon eased. She felt herself growing warm all over, almost like when she got a second-release accessory or was one of the first in line for a new surgery.

The power of her emotion was so strong that she said, “Anyone want to go to Mind Alter?”

“I do,” squealed Fon. “I can drive us!”

Bright looked at Fon’s blankly perfect face inside the brilliant halo of pink twinklers and thought of how the halo might affect Fon’s driving ability, which was weak to begin with.

“Great,” Bright said. “But I’ll drive.” She looked at the others. “When should we meet?”

Slater said once he got back to the House of Boards it would take him forty-five to fifty minutes to prepare a good look. Jane-Smith said she’d need an hour and a quarter to change into Librarian Gone Wrong, which was what she always wore to Mind Alter. Bluefoam debated whether she should change out of her mermaid costume and decided against it. “It’ll take me a full hour just to resurface my nose, I’ve been blowing it so much,” she said. Cirque, who was extremely nimble, said fifty minutes.

Fon broke into an enormous smile that revealed gleaming veneers. “It will take me an hour and a quarter,” she reported. “Or two hours if my halo shorts out while I’m blasting my hair.”

At that moment, the door to the meeting room crashed open and three favours fell inside. One was bleeding from her leg. Another had a man’s wig in her hand. The third fell to her knees and threw up in the corner. While she vomited, the other two laughed and laughed.

It took them several moments to realize the room wasn’t empty.

“Oh my job!” screamed the one with the wig in her hand. “This isn’t our dressing room! It’s not even our floor!”

“Aaaaah!” shrieked the other one. “Ahhhhhh!”

The third stayed on her knees, staring into the watery puddle on the floor.

“Meeting adjourned,” said Bright.

Grassly told himself to stay calm and access the logical part of his brain. This was no time to get emotional, nor was it time for feats of physical prowess, of which he, like all 51s who hadn’t yet joined up with their Mother, was quite capable.

He strode to his worktable. He was now sure that the flicker had rendered the favours immune to the light. His own physiology had reacted by becoming intolerant. He would have to eradicate the flicker if he wanted to enlighten the whole population. It would be so much easier if he could just gas the lot of them and drag them onto his ship. But that was not the way of the Sending. The ancestors had to actively participate in their own rescue.

The good news was that his light carriers couldn’t accidentally enlighten themselves, but it was still best to play it safe.

He had enough supplies to build perhaps six more lights. How many people could be enlightened by a mere half-dozen lights carried by a highly erratic workforce? How many of the enlightened would actually make it to
the Natural Experience so he could entice them onto his ship. Lucky for him, it was one of the largest Sending ships, capable of transporting between twelve thousand and fifteen thousand ancestor-sized beings. It would be a tight fit, but once they were on board and under way, he would put them to sleep for the journey.