Slant (10 page)

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He smiles with as much patient tolerance as he can muster. "I thank you for the arrangements." "You're paying," the oldest man says with a shrug. He rubs one ear like a cat about to clean itself, then says, "Want to inspect the merchandise? I take it you won't want it delivered until--" "I'll look at it, make sure it's what I ordered," Giffey says. The old man seems to want to make the facts plain to everybody. This is just all too thrilling for him. Ken Jenner grins at Giffey, gives a small shake of his head. Jenner is likely to be pretty essential in this scheme, so Giffey hopes he won't be compelled to kill the young man just to stop that unnatural scalp from moving. The old man leads them through gloomy hallways to the back of the house. The ceiling here is black, and thick with wiring arranged to mimic the heat signature of something other than what is actually in the long, cool room. Here on a pallet are four canisters of MGN, Military Grade Nano, not very old--dated June 19 2051. "This is good stuff, not easy to get, but here's what really takes the prize," the old man says. The brothers watch everything with religious awe. Jenner's scalp for once is still. The old man steps around the pallet and pulls back a tarp threaded with more wire. Two more canisters sit beneath the tarp. "The real stuff," he says. "Military complete paste. Just mix 'em and--wow." Giffey looks at the drums of MGN and complete paste. He has never seen so much of it in his life except in pictures and vids. They never had this much in all the time he was in Hispaniola. If they had, Yardley would have won in an hour instead of a week. "Bet you never seen more than a pint or two of this stuff all at once," Jenner whispers to Giffey. "Never," Giffey says. Jenner is proudly convinced he's responsible for the procurement. Giffey won't try to disabuse him. Military grade nano can be programmed to manufacture a large variety of weapons from many kinds of raw material available in a combat zone. By Geneva rules, however, it cannot manufacture or contain, prior to actual use, the ingredients necessary to make high explosives. The manufacture of military complete paste is closely monitored. It's the kind of thing that makes Green Idaho's legislature cry with economic self-pity: that the outside world won't let them make their own nano or complete paste. They are denied such essential pleasures. "Your first payment went through last night," the old man says. "Much appreciated. It was a pleasure getting this stuff, a real challenge." The old man also wants Giffey to believe he had a major hand in this procurement. The more hands take credit, the less clear a trail to the real source. "I'll enjoy thinking about it for weeks." "I'll bet," Giffey says. "Can I poke?"

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"Be my guest," the old man says. Giffey takes a metal rod with a small wire on one end and hooks the wire to his pad. Then he goes to the canisters of paste and opens a valve in the closest. He pokes the tube into the canister and looks at his pad. The numbers come up triple zeroes. It's what he ordered, all right. Giffey decides against checking more than one. The men around him are as sensitive about honor as a bunch of teenage thugs. The old man is talking again, aiming his words at the brothers, who listen eagerly. "There's enough paste there to take care of all of Moscow. Unbelievable bang per gram. Every man, woman, and jackrabbit from here to--" "That's fine," Giffey says, staring hard to get him to shut up. The old man works his lips, nods in understanding--no need to say too much, no need. Then he offers Giffey a beer. "Best assignment I've had since emancipation," he says. "I'd like to toast it, for luck." There's time--just barely. "Sure, I'm grateful," Giffey says. The old man hustles back into the filthy kitchen to open a refrigerator. Giffey calls out to him, "You have the delivery arranged?" "Tonight at seven-thirty. Address?" Giffey writes the address on a piece of paper, an old industrial warehouse on the west side of Moscow. Giffey will not be there, but people he trusts will receive the goods and give final payment. Jenner will accompany the goods to their destination and stay with them. The old man brings out a bottle for everyone. The beer is good. Jenner's scalp is asleep. He almost looks normal. "Sald," Giffey says, and they all slug back the thick dark brew.

Outside, Jenner joins Giffby at the roadside, waiting for the bus to take them back into Moscow. "How long you been out of the service?" Giffey asks Jenner. The young man smiles and shakes his head. "I was never really in," he says. "I got my training at Quantico and Annapolis. Special Operations. I had some trouble and they shipped me out and annulled my enlistment papers. They were training me for sensitive jobs." Giffey nods. He can tell from the man's expression and posture that Jenner is reluctant to say any more. Jenner knows the ins and outs of military nano, so Giffey's sources say; that's enough. "How about you?" Jenner asks. The bus is coming back on its long circuit around the country roads. They can see it on the horizon. "Federal Army, honorable discharge, three years in extranational service." "I'd like to do that sometime," Jenner says. His Adam's apple bobs. "Missed

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equal and an expert, or a conscript noncom. Jenner is twenty-two or twenty-three at most. Very young. That, however, is not Giffey's concern.

YOXIN' ROX! Tonight on PRANCING PREMIERE FIRST TIMER! Gene is angry at Fred because he's dropped some WHOOPEE on Marilyn, and the whole studio's about to crumble! Will they ever dance together again? Will Marilyn tell Fred about (CLASPERS, GASPERS!) the BABY? And next street over, in PASSION FRUIT, you're FREE (Hunh! KAH-Thunk!) to peek behind the PAISLEY CURTAIN and see what Billie and Johnnie C. are really FRYING UP in that WA YBACK ROOM! ALL PAY-UP THEATER and All Brought to you (40% off!) by Rememory, Longterm results for Short-term prices! ($$$, 3070 and 3080 Patches required.)

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9 DARK BITS

The household of Jonathan and Chloe Bristow flashes, screeches, roars with bright colors and jagged sounds. Their adolescent children, Hiram and Penelope, are up the stairs and down, shouting over a pretty stone one of them found in the garden. They have gone red in the face with their shouting and Chloe has stopped by the stairs to stand stiff as a tree, prematurely aged by violent winds. She waits with some apprehension for Jonathan to come up from the basement and try to straighten things out; she knows that his intervention is not necessary, that all this will pass. Penelope is fifteen and Hiram thirteen. Dark-haired Hiram sometimes appears a little loutish even in his mother's tolerant eyes; Penelope is white-blonde and lithe as an alder. Like alders, she tries to be a clone of the other girls in her part of the forest. Chloe waits for the storm to pass. She worries that Jonathan will only add to the din and the color with his very loud voice and dark hues. Chloe sees all situations in this household in colors; she has heard about that in the LitVids which arrive on her pad every morning, gathered from around the earth like fresh bouquets and generally just as wilted and worn within a week. Today is a loud orange and black day. "I did NOT give it to you, you swtt/" Penelope shouts. Hiram tries to hold the rock out of her reach but she is taller and grabs his c],=*a,-hitr ,C;,- TI. ......... k- .--

64 GREG BEAR "Watch out--" she begins; but she sees they are in no danger and draws her lips tight shut again. She wonders what a su'tt is. "You promised I could have it," Hiram claims, his voice high and loud and sad. Hiram is her Caliban; a slow and dark fellow with fine black hair covering the back of his neck. Soon he will need to shave. She never tells her children what she really thinks of them--certainly not the temporary down things that flit through her mind. It is easy to tell them about the permanent things--about her love and admiration for them--because these are so constant they hardly seem important enough to hide. It is the temporary observations, trenchant and of mixed truthfulness, the insights that make her laugh or question her fitness to be a mother, that she keeps inside, where they are soon buried and seldom recalled. "Give it to me, I swear I'll--" "What is a sw/tt?" Chloe asks from the entryway. Penelope turns her blazing green eyes on her mother. Her hair is in disarray and she looks ready to kill. "Mother, he is goating that rock, and I found it!" Goating is what her grandparents would have called hogging. Chloe does not think the word is any improvement. "What's so important about a rock?" Intuition tells her Jonathan will appear in about ten seconds and she would like the situation to be duller and quieter, for his sake but mostly for hers. "It's rose quartz. I found it and I need it for school." "She put it down in the yard," Hiram says. He looks worried. Chloe wonders if her son can see in her face that she no longer thinks he is beautiful. When he was a baby he was beautiful. "She didn't want it." "Tro merde, that's a lie! I put it down on another rock to save it." Jonathan is coming up from the bedroom. His step is fast and his footfalls heavy. Their bedroom is on the bottom floor, below the entry level, with big bay windows facing rear gardens that are now rather dismal despite a few banks of Jonathan's hardy year-rounds. "Give it to her, please," Chloe says. "Mother!" Hiram appears genuinely shocked. "You believe her?" "If she needs it and she found it, why not let her keep it? Why do you need a piece of rose quartz?" Hiram stares down at her with the same expression Caliban must have worn when Ariel played a prank on him. Chloe feels a whirl of regenerating pique. "For God's sake, Hiram, it's just a rock!" Penelope grabs the rock from her brother's hand and takes it upstairs. Hiram squats on the stairs. He is physically adept and he goes into a perfect lotus but his face is far from calm. Jonathan arrives and turns to look up the stairs at Hiram, then looks back at Chloe. Penelope is on the second floor and in her room. Jonathan's mind is elsewhere.

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Chloe says, "What's a swutt?" "It's someone who tries to be offensive in a fibe social space," Jonathan says. Chloe seldom ventures into the ribes. She uses her pad mostly for a calendar and phone, LitVid and mail. The direct projectors might as well be removed and she will not allow Yox players, much less patches, in her house. "Offensive, how?" she asks, heading into the kitchen. She knows she has saved Jonathan getting angry before he goes out into the night. And she has saved herself from another spike of irritation at her husband. "Blow-off, slumfacing," Jonathan says, following. He is dressed in formal longsuit for his night with the Stoics, the local cadre of the John Adams Group, all well-to-do New Federalists. "A swutt is someone who's rigged an untraceable face and goats it, you know, butt and run, cut touch. Thymic misfits." Chloe looks at the kitchen. The lights have come on automatically at their entrance. The compound curves of the sink and food counter, the alcove hiding the dormant arbeiter, the stove pillar, and the air-curtain cooler are gray and black with yellow accents, really quite pretty; she is reminded of something from the nineteen thirties, a car, the Bugatti Royale, the one they only made a few of, that the famous Yox comedian Wilrude races on that track in Beverly Hills . . . On top of the comb reserved for stars . . . She turns to Jonathan and allows him to kiss her. His kissing is attentive. Jonathan, she thinks, has never delivered a bad kiss. "A little stiff tonight," Jonathan says. He is not apparently concerned, if she is being stiff, but it's the third time in as many days he's made the comment. Chloe and Jonathan have been married long enough, she hopes, not to put too much significance into brief moods. Still, the irritation--a shadow on the edge of her thoughts--concerns her. In his longsuit and tails, Jonathan might be going to a nineteen thirties party. The nineteen thirties were big two years ago; now the Sour Decades are on the sly spin. Chloe really dislikes the nineties. They remind her of now, and ,ow frankly leaves her cold. "What's on for the meeting tonight?" Chloe asks. Hiram enters the kitchen at a gallop and asks if he can port dinner. Chloe allows that the family is fragmented anyway; he grins and takes his food from the cooler to the prep chef by the oven. "A scientist is giving a talk about neural somethings," Jonathan explains. He watches Hiram tap his fingers on the counter, waiting for the tray of food to be processed and heated. Chloe wonders if Jonathan actually loves his son; whether men have any capacity for the deep sort of love she feels so often, and for which she is given so little credit, and so little in return. But then-- Where did that come from? Chloe says, "That sounds exciting." Jonathan hums his bemused agreement. "High comb. Good connections."

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high comb and is not particularly sympathetic toward his ambitions. Hiram almost drops his tray of hot food and Chloe catches her breath. Jonathan loudly tells him to watch it. "You twitch all the time!" he says to his son, who hangs his head to one side, clutching the tray at a dangerous angle. "My God, you're not five years old." Chloe hates the sound of Jonathan's voice when he corrects the children. It scrapes her like broken glass. He seems such a hair-trigger around them, the slightest thing sets him off, and he carries the correction on for minutes longer than she thinks is necessary. She supposes she is being too sensitive--some-times she sounds screechy and harsh in her own ears--but... Jonathan takes Hiram's tray by the edge and straightens it. "Nothing dropped, nothing messed," Hiram says with patient dignity. Chloe feels a sudden sadness for him, a wrenching prescience about the difficulties life will hold for Hiram. And nothing I can do. He carries the tray out of the kitchen. Jonathan makes a face, turns to her and says, "I'll be back around twelve." Men can turn off their loud voices so easily, switch from what sounds like wartime rage to calm in a flash. Chloe cannot. If she had yelled at Hiram, she would cycle for about half an hour, the deed generating the equivalent mood. And of course, Chloe realizes, she does yell at the children, at Hiram, too often. But it must be a matter of degrees; it is also a matter of perceptions. Women are simply better with children. Of this she is sure. If she had raised the children entirely without Jonathan's help, they might have avoided some problems... "Good hunting," she tells him. So many little resentments this evening, all building to a head, and she does not like it. She hopes Jonathan will leave and the kids will hide in their accustomed nooks before she snaps out something regrettable. Just minutes will do the trick. Alone so that she can close her eyes and take a breath or two all her own, with nobody expecting anything from her. She barely has any space that is exclusively hers. In her family, the way she was raised, both spouses working is a tradition of generations, an example for the children of efforts and rewards, an expression of the equality of partners. Jonathan's family, old-liners that make even the New Federalists seem clever and innovative, supported him every step of the way when he requested she stand down from her work before having children. But why does she think of this now? Because her husband is going off to hear a talk by a scientist that might actually be interesting? What does he care for her mind, her thoughts? "Set for your own dinner?" Jonathan asks solicitously. "I'm fine," she says. "Don't be late. So many gray longsuits to impress'" lonathan gives her a wry look, lifts her hand, and kisses it. He leans back,