Kalifornia (5 page)

Sandy
shrugged. “They must have been pretty disappointed
when they came looking for El Dorado and found Los Angeles instead.”

Sandy
searched desperately for another familiar face,
any excuse to get away from the Reverend Governor. This was like one of his
childhood birthday parties: hundreds of strangers smiling and calling him by
name.

He was about to baldly excuse himself when someone came up behind
Halfjest and slipped her arm around his crystal-clad waist.

“Ah, there you are, my darling,” said Halfjest, turning to kiss
the young woman. “I’m sure you remember Santiago Figueroa.”

For a moment, as their eyes met, Sandy thought she was the one
wearing the sex pherofume. But she didn’t need to wear anything to arouse him;
in fact, when she wore nothing it was best of all. He grew warmer, pulse
quickening. The sight of her, and the memories that came along, made him blush.

She had her father’s red-gold hair, but hers was long and thick,
flowing down in waves to break on the backs of her thighs. Bare thighs. Her
short skirt and blouse were striped gold and black. Like her father, she was
decked from head to toe in crystals and diamonds, a delicate tiara woven
through her hair, jeweled ankle bracelets tinkling, and little stones of ten
colors gleaming on her toenails.

“Dyad,” he murmured, his throat dry.

“Hi, Sandy. Where you been?”

“Up . . . up in Humbo,” he said. “On my ranch.”

Dyad took Sandy’s hands in hers. She lifted them to her mouth and
kissed each palm. It was like plugging his arms into a wall socket.

“Three years,” she whispered. “Seems like forever.”

“I was just telling Sandy about the contest, darling.”

“Yeah, Dad.” She moved closer to Sandy, putting one arm around his
waist; her fingers ran down to grip his ass. “Come up with anything?”

“No, but something’s coming up.”

She brought one of his hands to her mouth again and began to suck
on the back of his thumb, nipping at the skin of the first joint. Sandy’s legs turned to water, but he was torn with indecision. The last (and first) time
he’d gotten involved with Dyad—the night he’d lost his virginity—had started as
the best experience of his life and ended up the most humiliating. Like her
father, Dyad was live. When she had fucked Sandy, so had legions of horny teens
(he tried not to think about his large audience of elderly adorers) who’d been
waiting for the moment.
our night with sandy!
For
months afterward, their fanzines had been full of lush, overblown, almost
worshipful descriptions of the act.
super sex with the sandman!
It was
recorded and duplicated and traded among the teenie fans while Sandy went crazy with embarrassment.
TASTE HIM YOURSELF
—
TONIGHT
AND EVERY NIGHT!
He had
avoided Dyad ever since. And although he was no longer wired, she most
certainly was. Some of his old fans, no longer quite so teeny, might still be
waiting for a second chance to get it on with him vicariously. That thought was
enough to shrivel his orchids quicker than a plunge into a penguin’s swimming
hole.

“What do you think, Sandy?” Thaxter asked. “I haven’t heard
anything very imaginative yet, but I’m sure we can outdo those old Spaniards.
Goldia, Orangette, New Atlantis.”

“Libidopolis,” Dyad mumbled around his thumb.

He had not taken his eyes from hers for nearly a minute.

“See you later, Dad,” Dyad said, breaking off her ministrations.
“Sandy and I have some catching up to do.”

“I need his opinion, Dyad. Maybe he’d like to be one of the
contest judges.”

“You can talk later.” With that, she pushed Sandy into the crowd.

“I thought we’d never get away,” Sandy said with a laugh when they
were free. “But look, Dyad, I don’t know if this is such a tan idea.”

“Oh, it’s coppertone, baby. I’m not S/R anymore. Haven’t been live
for months. I’m RO like you. We’ll have some real privacy this time.”

“Tortious,” he said. And then: “Oh, no.”

Cornelius had appeared at Dyad’s shoulder.

“Your father is ready to see you, Sandy.”

Sandy
swore under his breath, cursing the time he’d
wasted on Halfjest’s filibuster. He and Dyad should have been downstairs, in a
dark office beneath the waves, making up for lost time.

“Can’t you put him off a while?”

Cornelius looked uncomfortable. “I’m already bringing him enough
bad news. I would greatly appreciate your support.”

Sandy
sighed.

“That’s tan,” Dyad said. “I’ll find you later.”

He nodded. “I’ll look for you.” Turning to Cornelius he said, “You
owe me one.”

Dyad ducked away without so much as a kiss. Perhaps she thought it
would make their parting simpler, but it only added to his frustration.

This floor at sea level, and a few more in the bright waters just
below, belonged to the CEO, board chairman, and seascraper owner—in short, to
Alfredo Figueroa. Executive windows looked out upon green glimmering vistas of
fish and dangling seaweed, while lesser employees spent their days staring out
at a cold perpetual darkness, where not so much as a flashlight fish relieved
their unrewarding vigil. At the bottom of the building, mail-room and cafeteria
staff labored under extremes of pressure. A course of psychic decompression
was a necessary part of employee orientation.

The hall to Alfredo’s office was lined with ferns and potted
palms, with here and there a humanimal—mainly seals, teegee bodyguards and
butlers—standing motionless among the plants.

Cornelius opened the door. “After you, Santiago.”

Sandy
hesitated, sniffing. He had tracked the lusty
pherofume to its source. It belonged to someone in his family. And he thought
he knew who.

Inside, as on a vast flatscreen, the hated moon shone over the
restless sea. Foam slapped the full-wall window and fell away, seeming to drip
from the baleful, bone-colored ball. Anger and grief rose up in him as always
at the sight of the satellite.

A semicircular desk was pulled up nearly to the glass so that the
old man seated there seemed trapped between sea and sky and seascraper. Alfredo
Figueroa’s face seemed to glow with an inner light, like a carved pumpkin,
every wrinkle etched deep by a knife of fine Swiss steel. But this pumpkin
was rotten, pouchy and soft on the outside if not within. The gold eyes
flickered like candle flames, still youthful, though the hair was so sparse
that at first Alfredo looked completely bald. When his head moved, a few
strands glinted against the pate like fine cactus needles.

“Shut the door, Santiago. Have a seat.”

Sandy
looked for a perch. His younger brother
Ferdinand, engulfed in a huge orange Jell-O-chair, waggled a finger at him.
Miranda, nine years old now, lay stretched out across a loveseat. He couldn’t
help staring at her. Somehow, surgically, she had acquired a hypervoluptuous
body in the last year. Her breasts were enormous, her waist wasp-thin, her hips
wide. Facial augmentation had given her a sultry, sexy expression: thick lips
perpetually gleaming, eyes like coals in a barbecue. The smell that wafted from
her, a distillation of pure sex, was totally terrifying in this context. The
room reeked of incest. Not to mention pedophilia.

Mir gave Sandy a satiated smile and stretched luxuriously, then
pulled her legs up to make room for him. Patting the cushion, she said, “Come
sit here, bro-bro.”

Sandy
choked on the pherofumes and backed away sweating,
his chain mail clinking. “I’m all right.”

“What’s the matter, Sandy?” said Ferdinand sarcastically. “Don’t
you love your sister?”

“Ferdinand,” said their father warningly.

“Never mind then,” Ferdi said. “I’ll sit with you, Miranda. Sandy can have my chair.”

“All right, I’ll accept that. Even though you’re not much of a man
yet, Ferdi.”

“How do you know
I
haven’t
been to the body shop?” He dropped down in the loveseat and they began to
explore each other with their hands. Ferdi nibbled Mir’s throat till she began
to purr.

“God,” Sandy muttered. “You two are worse than ever.”

Miranda gave him an icy look. “And what are you? A born-again
Puritan? Don’t tell me what to do. Just because pleasure frightens you . . .”

“That’s enough,” Alfredo said. “I didn’t bring you here to argue.”

“Then why are we here, Father?” asked Miranda. “It’s what we do
best.”

“I wanted to be with my family. I wanted to feel some of the old
magic.” He rubbed his knobby fingers roughly, as though trying to work the
knuckles out of them.

“You’re pathetic,” said Miranda. “If you want old magic, you
should’ve summoned demons. Speaking of which, where’s that gypsy slut of
yours?”

“Maybe you’re my demons.” Alfredo looked sharply at Cornelius.
“Where’s the baby?”

“I’m afraid there was some trouble, sir. Poppy wouldn’t come with
me. I don’t know exactly what happened, but—”

“Were you in a fight, Cornelius?”

“Couldn’t be helped, sir.”

“Poppy wasn’t violent, was she?”

“Good grief, sir, no! There was trouble on the set of her
spin-off. It seems the baby—”

A sudden pounding on the door startled them. A sealman poked his
head into the room and said breathlessly, “Sir, the news! Channel Ninety!”

“What are you on about?”

“Poppy’s child, sir. Your granddaughter.”

“What the . . . wait a minute.” Alfredo
pressed a button on his desk. The seascape faded from the window, to be
replaced by a live projection of a wild Franchise street. Revelers raised
their glasses to the wall as if toasting the Figueroas, hamming it up for the
cameras. Sandy was grateful for the flatscreen image because he didn’t feel
like riding the wires at the moment. Most news programs were broadcast both
flat and by wire, so that viewers could either watch a sometimes violent
reality at a comfortable remove, or enter a wired journalist’s body to
participate in fast-breaking stories. He certainly didn’t want to rush into a
mob scene like the one on the wall. It looked a bit too real.

A newscaster stepped into view. The body was female, but, like all
Channel 90 ‘casters, she wore the trademarked androgynous Channel 90 plastex
mask.
The News You Need From the Face You Heed!
Only
the voice and choice of attire betrayed any slight individuality, but they
weren’t enough to make any one ‘caster less indistinguishable or trustworthy
than any other.

The newscaster was saying: “  . . . followers of the popular
program, ‘Poppy on the Run,’ will get an unexpected surprise when they tune in
for their regular feature tomorrow. The crew was recording a special
bicentennial episode in the building behind me, when trouble struck the set
tonight. We’ve known for some months that the newest Figueroa has been growing
in the womb of Poppy Figueroa, but not even industry tattlers knew until now
that the baby’s birth was timed to coincide with California’s bicentennial.”

“I knew it was a bad idea,” Alfredo growled.

“It wasn’t your choice,” Miranda said. “She
carried
the
twerp. Her contract
ruled.
”

The camera pulled back to show the exterior of an ancient hotel.
Lights glowed in some of the windows. People crowded the upper ramps of a
rickety fire escape. Below, children bounced on the padded sidewalk.

Newsbody 90 went on: “The session went as expected, according to
the crew, with young Poppy pursued down this fire escape by actors playing the
henchmen of President McBeth. But something went wrong when she dropped the
newborn daredevil into a passing wagon.”

“She did what?” Alfredo leaped to his feet. “What kind of stunt is
that? I never heard—We never allowed anything so stupid on our show, so
dangerous! The baby’s injured, isn’t she? God, this new vaudeville is
monstrous. . . .”