“No,” I answered, but not as loud as last time.
Jesse gestured at my flute. “You’ve been playing the wrong instrument, man.”
I looked at him. In that moment I could have pushed him away with my mind. That’s something else I can do, and it always works. It’s like I’m reaching out and pulling strings that make the other person dance, and I can do it to a bunch of people all at once. I’ve been able to do that for about three months now.
The first time was by accident. I was on my way home from busking with two kesh in my pocket when a big guy grabbed me and another one put a knife to my neck. A third one was with them. I was too scared to even think. I just shoved at them with my mind. I’m not sure how to describe it. It was like I could feel this… place around me, and I reached through it to them. I reached hard at two of them, and they just froze where they were. The third one got scared, and I reached through that place and flipped his switches and make him really scared. He ran away.
I haven’t told anyone about that, either. Not Jess or Grampy Lon, and definitely not Mom. I don’t know if it’s related to flashing on what people feel. It probably is, but who can I ask?
“Listen, just help me this once, okay?” Jesse said. “You don’t like it, you don’t have to do it again, but you’ll still have that fifty. Twenty minutes, man.”
I looked at the guy. His hair was lighter than mine, almost brown. At least he wasn’t ugly. Jesse had told me about some jobbers who were really fat or who didn’t wash, but this guy looked okay. Fifty kesh. More than a month’s rent.
“What’s he want us to do?” I asked.
Jess grinned and lead me across the street.
At least the guy didn’t want anything strange. Jess was right-all I had to do was lay there with my eyes shut. I didn’t know whose mouth was on me or who was making the bed shake. The hotel room was stuffy and musty-smelling and the sheets were a little damp. The mouths and the motion seemed to go on and on, and I just wanted to get the hell out of there.
And then I reached out with my mind the way I did to those two guys. I didn’t want to touch this guy like that, but I did. I reached through that place and found him all hot and horny. I flipped his switch and gave him the mother lode of all orgasms. He yelled, and something warm spattered my leg. Then he flopped down to the mattress. I kept my eyes shut. My teeth were clenched so tight my whole head hurt.
“Shit,” Jess muttered. “He fainted.”
Jess wet a washcloth from the bathroom, wrung some water over the jobber’s face, and then wiped my leg. When I opened my eyes, the guy was up and dressing. He had a big smile on his face.
“Any time you boys are up for that again,” he said, “I’ll pay double. Glory.”
He gave me and Jess another twenty kesh each and left. I glanced at the clock. Twenty minutes. Seventy kesh.
“What the hell happened?” Jess almost whispered, staring down at the kesh in his hand. He was still naked.
“I don’t know.” I pulled my clothes on. “Look, is that it? Are we done?”
“We’re done, man, unless you want to file for taxes.”
I didn’t laugh. I just left.
Now I’m in my room. Mom’s getting ready to go to a meeting. Her whole life is meetings. She’ll probably want me to go and take care of the little kids, but I think I’ll tell her to fuck off.
Well, probably not like that. I love Mom and all that, but sometimes she’s a real pain. She’s always dealing with some neighborhood disaster at some neighborhood meeting. She acts like the whole place will fall to pieces if she doesn’t keep it up.
I wonder what she’d say if she knew what happened? I bet she’d throw a cat. So how the hell am I going to tell her about the money?
I’ll save it. If I get enough, maybe I can buy us passage of this rockball and we can move someplace where the wind doesn’t smell like fish.
Huh. The only way to get that kind of money is to keep tricking, and I’m not doing that again. Not in a hundred years.
Mom’s coming. Better sign off.
DAY 8, MONTH 10, COMMON YEAR 987
I did it again. I shouldn’t have, probably. What if I got caught? It isn’t just the Unity, but the houses, too. The houses have it all staked out-who can trick where, what they can do. And they beat the shit out of anyone who bugs in on their territory.
Anyway. I started off down in the market with my flute, not planning to trick. It was a good day-got two kesh in less than three hours. But every time someone dropped a coin in my hat, I kept thinking about how I got seventy kesh in twenty minutes.
Jesse was tricking a ways up the street from me. He saw me and gave a little wave. A couple minutes later a guy-not the same jobber as before-walked up to him. They talked for a minute, then went off together, Jesse still limping. I looked down at the little coins in my hat. Then I thought, The hell with this.
I collapsed my flute and shoved it into my pocket, then sort of casually walked over to the spot where Jesse had been standing. I left my hat where it was. Someone grabbed it and ran, but I didn’t care. My heart was beating hard enough to choke my throat. I leaned against the wall and hooked my thumbs in my pockets like Jess did. After a second I realized he did that to tighten his pants across his crotch. I felt like everyone was staring at my privates, but I didn’t move my hands.
It ain’t sex, I told myself. It’s money. M-O-N-E-Y.
My mouth dried up like a raisin. I didn’t know what the rules were. Do you look at people? Tell them you’re for rent up front? I should’ve asked Jesse.
Just to make things harder, the voices started whispering at me again. I concentrated hard, tried to make them go away. I can never quite make out what they’re saying, and it’s scary. Sometimes they come at night, and that’s the worst. It sounds like ghosts breathing on me.
And then this woman walked up to me as easy as you please and said, “Glory. You look like you’re lost.”
Whisper whisper whisper whisper.
I started to deny it, then realized the woman knew I wasn’t lost. What should I say? What would Jesse say?
“Glory,” I answered. “It’s hard to find your way around this place.”
“You need a ride somewhere?” She was about ten years older than me, a little heavy, with short brown hair. Her clothes looked really expensive.
Whisper whisper whisper.
“Um, sure,” I said. “I could use a ride.”
“Then let’s go.”
Her aircar-aircar! — wasn’t that far away, but I was so nervous I could hardly walk. I wouldn’t get anything done if I was scared, so I started pretending I was Jesse. Jesse knew which way was up. I was Jesse, strong and smart.
The voices faded a little bit, and that made me feel even stronger.
In the aircar, the jobber put her hand on my thigh, but I was in control by then. “It’s a hundred,” I said, pulling the number out of thin air. She handed it to me.
Her place was a rooftop penthouse, which meant she was a high-placer in the Unity. She landed on the roof near a door. A maid let us in. The jobber treated the maid like she didn’t exist, so I did the same. The maid ignored me, too.
I tried not to stare at the penthouse, but it was hard. Thick carpets covered the floors, paintings and statues were everywhere-real ones, not holograms-and her bedroom was bigger than my whole apartment. I figured she liked the color blue because everything in her room was done in it. Blue carpets, blue walls, blue bedspread.
The jobber shut the door and pulled me down on the bed without saying anything. I figured she wanted me to undress her, so I did. I was Jesse, who knew what to do. I opened up her shirt-she wasn’t wearing underwear-and pulled off her skirt. She just lay back on the bed with her eyes shut and didn’t move.
That sort of startled me. She didn’t try to undress me or kiss me. She just lay there. Her breasts were like little pillows with spots of pink on each. I stared at them-I had never seen a woman naked before. I was hard as a rock. (See? I told you I wasn’t into guys.) That was when she started talking.