Yarn (27 page)

When one of the men laughed at my joke, she swiped his drink away and scooped up my bills in the same motion. A moment later, she smacked a bottle of Sir Admiral Dooganberry's Hot Pink Mash down in front of me. Then, in a clearly practiced move, she sucked the dong far into her mouth only to spit it back out in disgust, before turning on a heel to retreat behind the filthy curtain.

A show barely worth one Calvin
. I unstuck the bottle, slipped off the stool, feeling the plasticott momentarily cling to the high-twist wool of the seat of my pants. Holding up the bottle like a lure, I spoke over the music, "I'm looking for a Xi yarn mill around here."

For several beats, no one even moved. Then a man with a red-and-gray-peppered beard knocked back his drink, and burped. Glaring at me, he blew out and let a wad of snot hang from his right nostril. A moment later, as if playing yoyo, he sniffed it up.

Undeterred, I caressed the flat bottom of Sir Admiral Dooganberry enticingly, and then turned and headed out into the sulfur-filled air outside. I strolled toward the Chang P, leaned against the side, and waited.

There was something tragicomic about the single-minded machismo ire of the modern slubbers as they oscillated from horny to angry and back again. In the last ten years, freedom and sympathy movements in the cities had put an end to the harsh chemicals and hormones once added to the B-shirts. But given this new alternative, my placid childhood in the corn had been a blessing.

I examined the bottle in my hand. The man on the front- Dooganberry I supposed-was elaborately decorated with medals and ribbons on his white jacket, golden epaulettes, a thick black handlebar moustache, a monocle, and a pink iguana on his shoulder.

After a few minutes, the man who had laughed at my joke exited the bar and started toward me. When he was fifteen feet away, he stopped, and pointed at the Chang-P. "This thing go?"

"Xi yarn?" I confirmed.

He nodded. We both got in and zipped off.

"The bottle." He held out a worn and trembling hand.

I tightened my grip on Dooganberry's neck. "Once we find the mill."

After a tremendous sniff, the sort of slubber thing I had forgotten about, he raised his chin toward the road. "Ten miles straight." He reached for the bottle.

"When we get there." I nestled the prize in the storage bin of my door.

"Don't believe me?" he grumbled.

"Yes and no."

In my peripheral vision my passenger eyed me suspiciously. "You from the cities?"

"Yes and no," I repeated.

"It's one or the other!" he argued, confusion lining his voice.

"It's both." Turning to him, I met his stare. "Right?" I asked when the road forked ahead.

"Yeah." The man sniffed again. "The Xi for you?"

"Yes."

He loosed a typical two-huff slubber laugh. "Got yourself spun on it?"

"Basically." This man could have been me, had I stayed. I wanted to ask him about his life, what it was like out here these days, but I didn't want to get too friendly either… too close to my past.

Two more amused huffs. "No one liked you at the bar."

"No new friends," I agreed. "A shame."

We drove a mile in silence. Then suddenly, as if the question had been building up inside him, he blurted out, "What are you?"

"A tailor."

"For clothes?"

"Exactly."

"Okay… up here," he said, pointing. "Turn here. Past that tank… turn left. Then it's down there until we get to a gate. It's blue. I forget what it says."

We had been driving past warehouses, sheds, non-descript factories, and stacked containers colored with logos of shipping concerns, the ornate flags of ports, and the stylized fury of taggers.

We passed a large beige cinderblock building on the left. Beyond it was a small road under a blue sign. "That it?"

"No. It's bluer. And it's a
gate
gate." A beat later he asked, "What kind of car is this?"

"A Chang-P," I told him. "You're riding in the 660 with fifteen custom forward engines."

He snorted in disbelief. "How fast?"

"Quite."

"Hard to drive?"

"Somewhat." I felt bad for the man, for how little he knew, for how little he had experienced… and for how far I had come in comparison.

"Okay," he said, pointing, "up there. Past that barrel on the right."

I slowed. A blue gate was open. From one of the sides hung a jangle of chain and several locks. Beside the road a sign read:
Warning. Clearance Required-By Order of M-Bunny Corporation a Division of MB-I
. I didn't see a guard-or anyone-for that matter. I nosed the Chang through the gate and continued. The road sloped down and to the right past more forgettable buildings. We passed a fenced courtyard, where a dozen slubbers stood. Several watched us pass.

"How much farther?"

"Uh… well… not much." His confidence seemed to be fading.

I wondered when my friend was going to make a move, or if he had called ahead to arrange a trap with his buddies. I glanced at him, the wet shine below his nose, the filth in his matted beard, and told myself he didn't have communications; he probably didn't have friends.

The buildings grew more and more sparse. Between them sat fields of junk planted with gloomy, undersized corn.

"Stop here!" the slubber barked, his voice startling me in the silence.

The Chang came to a crunching stop. To our right was a pile of slag and sand; to the left, another windowless two-story structure.

When I glanced back at the man, he held a six-inch serrated knife in his right fist. The tip was slightly bent. "I'm an honest corn," he began, his voice tight, "and I want to help you. It's just that things cost more in Antarctica… especially for a shirt tailor." He punctuated his sentence with a laugh.

Here it was
, I thought. "What do you want?"

"You tossed three papers at Pricilla. Five is good for me."

I glanced around at the buildings and nothing outside. "So, you're saying there's no Xi?"

The man laughed again. "There's Xi here. Pay me and I'll tell you where."

I pretended to consider his offer for a moment, then grasping the Admiral by his neck, I flipped open the door, and jumped out before my knife-wielding friend had even moved. I closed the door and glanced about. Straight ahead were three buildings guarded by men holding flash sticks.

I heard the slubber pounding on the windshield from the inside. After rolling my eyes, I said, "Passenger door." The lock clicked open. His breath was swear-strewn as he scrambled out and stumbled around the front of the Chang with his knife extended. "Don't corn me again!"

"If you cut the yak upholstery," I told him, "I will skin you and use your hide it to repair the seat. Now, do you want to earn the pink mash or not?"

The slubber stopped and squinted at me for a long beat. In the orange light, his eyes were hazel, complicated, and beautiful. A bubble of saliva formed at the side of his mouth as his whole face twisted into a disappointed frown. Then his eyes dropped from mine to the dusty bottle I held at my side and, just as quickly, his urgency and power faded. Turning, he gestured with the bad tip of his knife. "It's the far one."

I started for the building, but after five paces, turned, and tossed the bottle to him. The bottle somersaulted through the air. Flinging the knife to the side, he caught the bottle in both hands, but then fumbled and juggled it all the way down. The glass clinked against the dry hard ground, but didn't shatter. Relieved, he blew out a sigh, and wrenched off the top for a long desperate drink.

PACIFICUM OCEAN: FORWARD OBSERVATION PORTAL

We flew a hundred feet above the vast floating garbage-covered surface of the Pacificum Ocean. Near the Hawaiian Islands, roped-together junks, floats, rafts, and hulls formed masses that stretched for hundreds of miles. Since we weren't doing shows and I didn't have any costuming duties, I spent most of the time on my stomach in the small forward observation portal sharing the eyescopes with Gregg.

"There's a couple over there!" he said, handing me the scopes. "He's sewing her cut hard."

I took the scopes, but I didn't seek his find, instead scanning the dirty faces of the algae and seaweed brandclan slubbers that gazed up at us. Children often threw things at the Pacifica Showhouse as we passed-until their parents smacked them when the debris inevitably came raining back down. "It's all sad," I said.

With a disappointed snort, Gregg snatched back the scopes. A minute later, the ship having drifted, we were past the couple and he raised his head. "We'll be in Baja in two days." He shrugged. "I haven't been sand chipping in years."

I didn't know what that meant and didn't ask. These slubs seemed far worse than the corn. I couldn't imagine living on floating garbage and subsisting on little but the emerald algae that filled the water.

"Over there," Gregg pointed to the right. "Is that a cut-ko getting undressed?"

I just shook my head. Gregg frowned at me for a moment and turned back to watch. "She's going swimming," he said. "Wait… never mind… it's a man." He took the scopes from his eyes and stared ahead glumly. Turning, he glanced over his shoulder and spoke quietly. "Vada's had
others
along for her show tours."

The news didn't surprise me. "Oh?"

"But she's different around you."

I raised my head.

"She's nice to you." He frowned and scratched his nose. "I can see she really likes you." He laughed and then whispered. "I'm afraid of her, but it's juice that you guys are
fashionable
."

Although I pretended I didn't care one way or another, my chest fluttered with a strange mix of joy, relief, and worry. It confirmed exactly what I wanted to believe and exactly what I was beginning to fear.

"You floaters, looking for tits again?" Marti stood glaring at us. I rarely saw her these days, as she was always on the bridge helping Xavier. She poked her head into the organza bubble.

"Cut off!" said Gregg. "There's not supposed to be more than two in here!"

"Shut up!" To me she smiled and asked, "You doing it?"

"They've been doing it the whole time!" said Gregg, before I could speak. "Don't you hear them?"

"I'm talking about him getting Bunné, floater!"

"
Getting?"
I asked. "I'm just supposed to rip a yarn."

"Rip a yarn?" Gregg scoffed.

"No," said Marti. "I heard you're
cutting
her."

Vada sat at her desk staring at her open notebook. Folding it closed, she spoke toward the wall, exasperation in her voice. "You were talking to the crew."

"Is it true?" I stood just inside her cabin's door.

She turned and faced me. "We need the yarn."

"You told me I'm ripping a yarn. Marti says I'm
cutting
Bunné
.
"

She sat up. "You're not
cutting her,
whatever that means. Marti probably means that the information we can get from the yarn-as we understand it-could take her down. You might only be setting off a long chain of events."

I chewed that for a moment. "Okay," I said slowly, "and it's the end of us?"

Her gaze fell away from me. "Each of us-I mean everyone in this cell-will go a separate way. We'll go under the heavy blankets for months… maybe years."

It was then, standing in her cabin with the gentle vibrations of the ship thrumming beneath my feet and the sunlight filtering down through the ballonets, that I finally saw, understood, and began to accept the end-the end of my adventure, the end of my affair with the showhouse entervator entertainer, and maybe the end of everything I had known. I hated it, but didn't know what I could do to stop it.

Vada frowned. "I know you're angry."

"No," I lied. "I'm not."

She pursed her lips. "For us to be together like you want, you would have to give up your life."

"I would."

"You don't know what you would be giving up."

"Isn't that my choice?"

She shook her head slowly. "It's not fair to you. You're supposed to sew, not do what we do." She sighed. "I love how I looked in your work and, believe me, a part of me wants you just for me, but that's not fair to you and your talents."

"That's your excuse," I told her. "I'm the one who decides about me and my shit
talents
."

Her head slumped forward wearily. "Look… there are other things, too. I'm older than you think, and I've done terrible things. You have to understand who I really am. I'm not just the entervator entertainer you think I am."

"I know that!"

"I'm wanted by all the cities!" she said loudly, angrily. She covered her face with a hand and whispered. "I'm even wanted in Budai. And those people don't give a stitch if you cut out your own mother's lungs and eat them."

"I don't care about any of that."

Vada sighed. "And I wish I didn't either."

Two days later, after hundreds more miles of polluted ocean, I heard the call
Baja ahead!
from the bridge. For the next several days we flew north along the coast, closer here, farther there. We passed huge metropolises of G-Diego, Lax, Esefoh, and mile after mile of slubs everywhere in between.

"M-Bunny is pushing inland against L. Segu," said Vada. She and I lay on our stomachs in the forward observation port. "She's got masses of M-Bunny men as far down as Pelu. There's another corn clan down there called Rima, but they have been decimated with pox skirmishes. No one knows how many dead."

"Are you telling me so I'll be angry at Bunné?"

Vada paused. "I am."

"You don't have to."

"I just want you to understand."

"I do understand."

She frowned at me, but I ignored her, staring at the iridescent blooms of color in the water below.