Chimera (26 page)

Ms. Datapad gave a speech when everyone had arrived. Her name was Carol O'Grady, but for the time of our indenture, it was God, and her chosen delegates were archangels. She had six, big men and women whose uniforms had a crisp silver sheen. They carried control wands at their hips—the reason we should worship them. The wands controlled the Little Angels. If a Little Angel went off by accident, the archangels could stop it. If we annoyed the archangels, they could set off our Little Angels. Frederick hadn't mentioned that. I would've bet there were other things he hadn't mentioned. I would've won.

Two ancient buses stinking of gasoline and oil carried us to an air field where an equally ancient charter plane with a similar stench flew us to Duggan, Montana. The service was lousy. No in-flight HV, no attractive attendants. The archangels brought us bowls of cold Nutrigruel. When I asked if it was vegetarian, the archangel laughed and said the bosses weren't paying for meat for untrained indentures.

Montana cold came as a shock to a California boy, but I didn't notice it as much as I might have. I was looking for Zoe. Shivering on the runway by the plane, I watched flatbed trucks cross the snow to fetch us, then searched for her among the drivers. They were all sullen humans in archangel silver.

The drivers passed out coarse blankets and had us climb on the backs of the trucks. A short ride took us to Duggan Indenture Camp, a complex built during the Prison Boom at the end of the last century. When the Libertarians legalized adult drug use, the U.S. suddenly had twice the prison space it needed. Fortunately, indenture camps required cheap housing, so everyone was happy, except for the inmates—excuse me, indentures.

I looked for Zoe on the orientation tour, in the work halls, kitchen, laundry, mess hall, green house, and exercise room. There were almost as many chimeras as humans, but none of the chimeras was a small woman with jaguar hair.

After I was given a cell with a dour little man, I looked for her among my floormates. Only human men and women were on my tier. At the ten o'clock lights out, I lay on my hard bunk thinking she must be sleeping in one of the chimera wings and wondering what my next year would be like if the bad guys had already gotten to her. Driving through the camp gates, I had seen a new grave like an open wound in the snow-covered cemetery. Just as I was about to fall asleep, I heard someone, far away, crying hopelessly. I didn't know whether to hope it was Zoe. I listened to the crying until it stopped, maybe five minutes, maybe two hours, and then I slept.

The work day began at six with an alarm. We had half an hour for the communal toilets and showers. My morning habits were shortened by the bosses's decision that men would be better off facing the Montana winter with beards.

The camp provided the same breakfast every day: a dense brown bread that I rather liked, hot Nutrigruel, orange-flavored VitaJoy, and coffee as dense and flavorful as dirty dishwater. For indentures with funds, a second food line called the credit counter served scrambled eggs, fried potatoes, grits, bagels, pancakes, waffles, orange juice, milk, espresso, and cappuccino. The prices weren't posted; they just scanned your ID and charged your account.

On that first morning, I asked the archangel at the credit counter how much a few things cost—the answers were four times higher than the most overpriced hotel restaurant food I'd ever eaten. But money, as the archangel pointed out, was no object; the camp would extend you credit so long as you extended your period of indenture. I said "Uh huh" and got into the camp food line.

Human indentures took the near side of the hall; chimeras took the far. I carried my tray to a table on the border where an old dogman was reading a coverless copy of
Anna Karenina
. I said, "Morning."

He didn't look up. "It's real nice that you're not prejudiced, but if you don't get over with the skins in twenty seconds, you'll be using your gruel for shampoo."

"Name's Max. I'm looking for a cat called Zoe."

"Five seconds."

I got up. "She throws herself under a train."

None of the humans looked like they wanted a critter-lover at their table. I spotted a familiar face in a group of newcomers and joined them, saying, "Hey, Cho."

He gave me a wary nod. A wiry Hispanic man said, "Don't you know nothing, man? You got to be careful, got to learn how the game is played."

"I get tired of games."

A black woman laughed. "Then you must be tired of life. That why you're here?"

I shook my head.

She said, "I was turning tricks and investing my money in my arm. Now I'm going to make me a nest egg and get a new life." I looked at the plate of bacon and eggs in front of her, and didn't comment. She said, "They call me Ginger, 'cause I spice up life."

The Hispanic man said, "Then stick your finger in my gruel, Ginger. This shit's flavored for Anglos."

I took a taste of mine. "It's not flavored for anyone."

"Then it for us," Cho said sadly. "We not anyone."

If you managed to finish breakfast early, you could hang out in the mess hall, your cell, or the company store. Like the second food line, the store's credit terms were generous, and so was the mark-up. A porn vid, a pack of cigs or hemp, or a bottle of alcohol cost as much as an indenture earned in two days. The presence of smoke and drink in the camp surprised me, until I saw that the company wanted you sober for work and didn't care what you did in your off hours. Anything that made you more content with your fate made them more secure that you wouldn't do anything desperate. They can't make a profit from a suicide.

Lines formed for work details at 7:30. If you were late, you got a shock for each minute that had passed—the guards called them "'centives," based on the language of our contracts. Cho took too long in the toilet after breakfast, and had two 'centives. When I pointed out that it was his first day and he didn't know better, I got one for wasting work time and another so I would know better.

Work came in many forms. Indentures who were a few years into their service took care of the camp, washing clothes, mopping floors, cleaning dishes, mixing and heating food for the camp line (nothing that I ate there could properly be said to have been cooked). Skilled indentures did high-grade labor, which ranged from making clothes for designer shops to tending the hydroponic garden beds where they grew exotic vegetables for pricey grocery stores. The rest of us did shit jobs, which took the most literal form in turning human and animal waste into fertilizer sold online through upscale gardening sites, but also included sorting and cleaning truckloads of waste excavated from garbage pits and landfills.

I was assigned to D&D, dump and display. The crew boss gave me an old military parka, heavy gloves, insulated boots that no longer fastened, and instructions to the loading docks where I learned the routine.

Trucks heaped high with the last century's garbage came through the big doors every twenty minutes. That had the advantage of letting in fresh air to clear the smell and the disadvantage of letting in the Montana winter. As soon as a truck butted up to a dock, we scrambled on board and unloaded its frozen haul.

At first, the most disgusting parts were visual as you discovered what accompanied the things that the pit crews thought might be useful. The worst I found was a decaying cat's head that fell out of the back of a radio cabinet, but I heard stories of dead babies in blankets and murder victims in oil drums. I never saw anyone volunteer to open a refrigerator.

Once the truck was unloaded, it took off, and we D&Ders moved from dumping to displaying by doing a quick sorting of what we found. The goods ranged from the remarkably well preserved where landfills had remained airtight to the bizarrely mutated where strange chemicals had worked, alone or in combination with other industrial concoctions, on everything around them.

Anything that might be damaged by water—TVs, toasters, typewriters, clothing, bedding, books, magazines, etc.—went on one side of the dock. Anything that might not—chairs, tables, china, plasticware, etc.—went on the other side to be hosed down. That was when the most disgusting part of the job usually became the stench freed by the warm water. That was also when you could make new and more dramatic unpleasant discoveries as hidden things were washed out of the things you cleaned.

If you made an honest mistake in sorting or washing, the archangels didn't mind. The more thorough cleaning and examination came later in the C&E rooms where no one needed parkas for warmth. But if you made a blatant mistake like putting a notebook computer down for hosing, expect a 'centive or two.

The carting teams took over then. While we D&Ders began dumping the next truck, the carters put the goods we'd displayed onto long handcarts and pulled them to the C&E rooms. There, anything recognized as a true antique was set aside to be auctioned in L.A. or New York. Of what remained, anything fixable was mended with patches, paint, or parts to be sold to people seeking history or kitsch. Anything usable that couldn't be restored to an especially fine state went to the Second Chance chain of stores owned by Duggan Enterprises. Anything unusable with viable parts was disassembled. Anything left that was inorganic was shredded, melted, or shattered, then sold as raw materials. Anything organic was composted. There was a fortune in America's hills of garbage, so long as you had people to do dirty, dangerous work for low pay.

The D&D crew included a young, heavily tattooed ferret named Betty. During a brief lull between trucks, I said, "Do you know a catwoman named Zoe Domingo?"

"I don't know anybody."

"If you did know a catwoman named Zoe, could you tell her Max is in the camp and has a way to help her?"

"If I did, I could. If she was in the camp."

I don't know what my face did. Several thoughts struck simultaneously: Prosperity Indenture Services had lied. I would have to work out my contract, then start all over next year. Zoe could be slogging slime for thirty years. Or she could be killed before I could find her.

Betty said, "You a furry?"

I shrugged. "Zoe's the only chimera I've cared for."

"How's she feel about you?"

"She's doing thirty years because she saved my life."

"Jesus." Betty looked away, tugged on a brown-furred ear, then met my gaze. "I'll ask around."

"Thanks."

"You best be telling truth. If the cat says you're trouble, you'll hurt. Critters look out for critters here."

"Good."

At 10:30, a kitchen crew brought mugs of Baby Puke, a hot green algae drink with a disgusting texture that was remarkably restorative. A credit cart also came by with coffees, teas, and pastries. I asked how much for a cappuccino, then drank my Baby Puke.

Morning break lasted five minutes. You were also entitled to a toilet break during the morning shift. You got it by raising your hand and asking permission. I felt like I was back in kindergarten.

Lunch started at 1 PM and lasted thirty minutes. On the first day, the Nutrigruel smelled like minestrone soup and had a few bits of string beans in it. The oldtimer at my table, a large bald man called Monty, rolled his eyes when I said it wasn't bad. He was eating a cheese steak sandwich with thin-sliced french fries and a strawberry shake. He told me to give him my opinion in a week.

By the end of the first week, I saw Monty's point. The camp line rotated Italian (tomato-oregano), Mexican (tomato-chili), and New England (potato-onion) for lunch, and Indian (curry), Japanese (miso), and Swiss (soycheese) for supper. By the end of the third week, they all tasted alike.

The smells of the credit line's daily specials became more tempting every day. But I did the math: Three days of paying to eat cost a day of work. Most of the long term indentures chose the credit line at least once every day or two. At each meal, as I picked up my bowl of Nutrigruel, I wondered how long I would go before trying the other line.

On the afternoon of my first day, Betty didn't say anything to me, not during work, which I had expected, or during the 4:30 break for Baby Runs, the brown version of Baby Puke which, if you had a powerful imagination, would remind you that chocolate tasted something like that, only good. I worked until we quit at 7:30 pm with a growing sense of despair that I rarely felt so early into a job.

What threw me was that I had trusted Prosperity. Frederick and his boss may've seemed like exploitative slime, but they had seemed like honest exploitative slime. I had anticipated many variables in coming to Duggan. Zoe's unexplained absence wasn't one. Call me a fool if you want. You won't come up with anything worse than I called myself.

I wasn't hungry for camp food by the end of the first day's work—the Nutrigruel smelled all right, but it looked like the slurry I'd been washing from trash. I ate it for three reasons. I needed my strength to find Zoe, I didn't need any 'centives to finish my food, and I wasn't going to pay to eat from the credit counter. I could've pled illness, but then I would've been sent to the infirmary and gotten my 'centives after they had concluded I was malingering.

Meals and sleep were mandatory because the bosses wanted efficiently functioning workers. We couldn't leave the camp because we might not come back. We couldn't order anything to be delivered to us, as much to keep us from getting weapons as to preserve the camp store's monopoly. Within those constraints, once we'd done our twelve hours, we were free to do what we wanted. For all practical purposes, that freedom was exercised between the end of supper and the ten o'clock lights-out.

My dour cellmate spent his time drinking beer and watching sex vids on a tiny HV set. As I strolled the camp, I saw that maybe half the indentures found similar ways to leave their world. The other half looked for communal distractions. A place called The Club looked like any bar in any underclass North American neighborhood. It was packed with people trying to celebrate enduring another day, but the music was too loud for human speech, so I passed it by. The Theatre consisted of three little rooms with folding chairs and HV sets. That didn't look like a good place to talk, either. I found four rooms used by religious groups, two Christian, one Muslim, one Spiderist. They were all deep in their services. I started to walk into the chimera wings, but near the entrance to each of them, large chimeras informed me that I must be lost in a way that suggested I should be, so I turned back.