In the last ten years, I have worked in security, in entertainment holovids, in county politics, in furniture manufacture franchises (more than one), in ’bot law, in catering, in education, in applied syncography, in sanitation. Nothing ventured, nothing lost. And yet David, who was after Russell who was after Anthony who was after Paul who was after Rex who was after Eugene who was after Claude, never called me “mercurial.” Which is certainly indicative of something.
I hadn’t reacted to Stephanie’s jibe, so she repeated it, smiling solicitously. “You’re a donkey, Diana. You do useful work.”
“I’m about to,” I said.
She poured herself another drink. “Will David be at this Colin Kowalski’s party?”
“No. I’m sure not. But he’ll be at Sarah’s campaign fund-raiser on Saturday. We both accepted weeks ago.”
“And are you going?”
“I don’t think so.”
“I understand. But if David and you are really finished with each other—”
“Go after him, Stephanie.” I didn’t look at her face. Since David moved out, I’d lost seven pounds and three friends.
So — say I joined the GSEA because I was jilted. Say I was jealous. Say I was disgusted with Stephanie and everything she represented. Say I was bored with my life at that extremely boring moment. Say I was just looking for a new thrill. Say I was impulsive.
“I’m going to be out of town for a while,” I said.
“Oh? Where are you going?”
“I’m not sure yet. It depends.” I gave a last look over the railing at the smashed, semi-sentient, pathetic and expensive dog. The ultimate in American technology and values.
Say I was a patriot.
The next morning I flew down to Colin Kowalski’s office in a government complex west of the city. From the air, buildings and generous landing lots formed a geometric design, surrounded by free-form swaths of bright trees bearing yellow flowers. I guessed the trees were genemod to bloom all year. Trees and lawn stopped abruptly at the perimeter of the Y-field security bubble. Outside that charmed circle the land reverted to scrub, dotted by some Livers holding a scooter race.
From my aircar I could see the entire track, a glowing yellow line of Y-energy about a meter wide and five twisting miles long. A platform scooter shot out of the starting pod, straddled by a figure in red jacks that, at its speed and my height, was no more than a blur. I had been to scooter races. The scooter’s gravs were programmed to stay exactly six inches above the track. Y-cones on the bottom of the platform determined the speed; the sharper the tilt away from the energy track, the faster the thing could go, and the harder it became to control. The driver was allowed only a single handhold, plus a pommel around which he could wrap one knee. It must be like riding sidesaddle at sixty miles per hour — not that any Liver would ever have heard of a sidesaddle. Livers don’t read history. Or anything else.
Spectators perched on flimsy benches along the scooter track. They cheered and screamed. The driver was halfway through the course when a second scooter shot out of the pod. My car had been cleared by the governmet security field, which locked onto my controls and guided me in. I twisted in my seat to keep the scooter track in view. At this lower altitude I could see the first driver more clearly. He increased the tilt of his scooter, even though this part of the track was rough, snaking over rocks and repressions and piles of cut brush. I wondered how he knew the second scooter was gaining on him.
I saw the first driver race toward a half-buried boulder. The veliow line of track snaked over it. The driver threw his weight toward center, trying to slow himself down. He’d waited too long. The scooter bucked, lost its orientation toward the track, and flipped. The driver was flung to the ground. His head hit the edge :: the boulder at over a mile a minute.
A moment later the second scooter raced over the body, its energy cones a perfect six inches above the crushed skull.
My car descended below the treetops and landed between two beds of bright genemod flowers.
Colin Kowalski met me in the lobby, a severe neo-Wrightian atrium in a depressing gray. “My God, Diana, you look pale. What is it?”
“Nothing,” I said. Scooter deaths happen all the time. Nobody tries to regulate scooter races, least of all the politicians who pay for them in exchange for votes. What would be the point? Livers choose that stupid death, just as they choose to take sunshine or drink themselves to oblivion or waste their little lives destroying the countryside marginally faster than the ’bots can clean it up. Envirobots used to be able to keep up, when there was enough money. Stephanie was right about one thing: I don’t care what Livers do. Why should I? Whatever my mother might have done forty years ago, today Livers are politically and economically negligible. Ubiquitous, but negligible. It was just that I had never seen a scooter death that close before. The crushed skull had looked no more substantial than a flower.
“You need fresh air,” Colin said. “Let’s go for a walk?”
“A what?” I said, startled. I’d just had fresh air. What I wanted was to sit down.
“Didn’t the doctor recommend easy walks? In your condition?” Colin took my arm, and this time I knew better than to say My what? The old training returns fast. Colin was afraid the building wasn’t secure.
How could a government complex under a maximum-security Y-field not be secure? The place would be multishielded, jammed, swept constantly. There was only one group of people who could even remotely be suspected of developing monitors so radically undetectable—
I was surprised at myself. My heart actually skipped a beat. Apparently I could still feel an interest in something besides myself.
Colin walked me past a lovely meditation garden out to an expanse of open lawn. We walked slowly, as befitted someone with my condition, whatever it was.
“Colin, darling, am I pregnant?”
“You have Gravison’s disease. Diagnosed just two weeks ago, at the John C. Fremont Medical Enclave, from your repeated complaints of dizziness.”
“There’s no complaint files in my medical records.”
“There are now. Three complaints over the last four months. One misdiagnosis of multiple sclerosis. Your medical problems are one reason David Madison left you.”
Despite myself, I flinched at the sound of David’s name. Some locales are full of gleaming skyscrapers built on infertile, treacherously shifting ground. Japan, for instance. And then there are places like the Garden of Eden — lush, warm, vibrant with color — where only bitterness is built. Whose fault? The Garden dwellers, obviously. They certainly couldn’t claim deprived childhoods.
Nothing is more bitter than to know you could have had Eden, but turned it into Hiroshima. All by your two unaided selves.
Colin and I walked a little farther. The weather under the dome was mild and fresh smelling, without wind. Colin’s hand on my arm felt pleasant. Stephanie was wrong; he was handsome, even if his looks weren’t genemod. Thick brown hair, high cheekbones, a strong body. Too bad he was such a prig. Religious reverence for one’s own job, even if the job is worth doing, is a sexual turnoff. I could picture Colin inspecting his naked lovers for GSEA violations. And then turning them in.
I said, “You’re rushing ahead, darling. Why the medical record changes? I haven’t even said I’m willing to play.”
“We need you, Diana. You couldn’t have contacted me at a better time. Washington has cut our funds again, a ten percent drop from—”
“Spare me the political lecture, Col. What do you need me for?”
He looked slighty offended. A prig. But of course his funds had been cut. Everybody’s funds had been cut. Washington is a binary system; money can only go in and out. More was going out than was coming in. Lots more: supporting a nation of Livers was expensive when the U.S.A no longer held the only world patents for the cheap Y-energy that had made it possible in the first place. Plus, aging industrial machinery, long kept underrepaired, was breaking down at an accelerating rate. Even Stephanie, with all her money, had complained about that. The public sector must feel it even more. And deficit spending had been illegal for nearly a century. Didn’t Colin think I knew all that?