Val shook his head. MR made him nervous.
“Don’t be afraid. We’ll watch you so you can’t go mushroom,” she coaxed.
“It isn’t that,” he said. “I just don’t like visiting heaven on a round-trip ticket. Molecular heaven or not, I’d rather not try perfect happiness and have to come back here afterwards. This life would look too bleak by comparison.”
“It’s not that big of a letdown,” she said. “And you can always take another trip—”
Val shook his head again.
She started around the circle. Old Walter already had his hand up—shaking his head. Busch preferred his drink.
Arthur waved her away: “Not right now. I have my dance to do—and don’t you take it, Bitter. I need you for a partner.”
Jo Jo was silent, brooding. He accepted the MR and retired to a corner with his visions.
Walter turned to Val questioning: “You aren’t afraid of MR, are you? It is perfectly safe. We use it all the time for hunters—”
Val frowned at his senior from Hunter Controclass="underline" “Maybe the hunters really need it. I’ve seen some pretty swollen muscles and dark smoky urine—rhabdomyolysis. I imagine that is very painful. Molecular Reward probably makes it easier on them. The only other place I see it used officially is on the elderly retired. You don’t see many of them around very long.”
Walter protested.
“MR can’t prolong life. Nothing can. All we can expect from Big ES is a happy life span of twenty-five or thirty years—MR helps bring that happiness. It is one of Big ES’s favorite rewards.”
Val studied his drink silently. An ounce of viscid red fluid coated the inside of the tall glass. The warmth of his hand raised aromatic vapor.
Music leaped from the dispenser as neutral Arthur adjusted the sound. The screen flowed with dancing figures.
“We are ready for our dance,” announced Arthur formally. “Bitter—?” he said, extending his hand to the seated female. She rose and went into his arms. They moved slowly, studying the screen—trying to match the motion of the figures. Val watched for a while, fascinated by their complete inability to match the throb of the base rhythm. Then he concentrated on eating and drinking. Busch fell asleep. The meld lasted well past his usual bedtime.
“Might as well sleep here,” offered Walter, handing Val a pile of issue tissue bedding.
Val blinked sleepily and nodded. They helped Jo Jo into his cot and broke up the meld at three hundred hours.
“Want to read from my ESbook before you turn in?” asked Walter.
Val was already asleep.
Blue Bird studied his feather fingers and pink feet. The nest around him contained bright red feathers and fragments of white shell. The sun was warm. Pretty orange and purple flowers danced and flew by on wing-like petals. Mother Bird flew up to the edge of the nest and dropped a delicious chocolate grub into his beak. It tasted brown. A soft wind stirred the pink leaves. Mother called him out. He tried his wings and flew easily—soaring high. Mother led him higher among cottony vanilla clouds that tasted white as he flew through. Blue Bird was happy. When his mother returned to the nest he did not want to stop flying. She scolded. Her cries hurt. Pretty flowers turned ugly. Fragrances became stink. His blue wing-feathers curled up into grotesque bent fingers. Lost, he searched for his mother. She was gone. Below he saw his home nest. Struggling, he tried to return to its soft safety. He dove down toward it. Wind pressed his face, stirring his eyelashes. The nest rushed up to him—changing—slowly—into SHAFT BASE.
Morning brought Val and Busch grumbling to the dispenser. Bitter set out utensils and distributed her morning ritual hugs—wheedling extra flavors for her platter. She warmed the refresher and set out issue tissue garments for her working men. Old Walter waddled in wearing a wrinkled dusty tunic.
“Sleep well?” she asked, smiling at Val.
He nodded.
“I sort of missed our warm meld,” she pouted.
Busch growled something about there being other ways of soulsharing besides across mucous membranes. Arthur came in and accepted his calorie-basic from the chute. He paused, waiting for Walter or Busch to OK a flavor allowance… flavors from their work-credit allowance.
“Isn’t Jo Jo giving you any flavors these days?” complained Busch.
“I guess he doesn’t appreciate my efforts,” said Arthur.
Walter nodded to the dispenser. It extruded a segmented sandwich of vitamin flavors. When Val stood to leave he glanced around the circle of faces saying his goodbye.
“Where’s Jo Jo now?” he asked.
Bitter glanced at Val. “Didn’t you see him leave? When I got up to fix the table his cot was already empty.”
Val shrugged. “Must have gotten up awfully early.”
A fading scream interrupted them—a jumper!
Busch leaped from his chair and crawled quickly to the spiral. Looking down into the salt-and-pepper crowd at shaft base, he saw ripples around the body of the suicide. Before the ripples closed back over the broken body, he recognized Jo Jo’s tunic.
Busch returned to the breakfast table and announced jubilantly: “Jo Jo is giving a party—right now.” He went to the dispenser and began ordering expensive high-flavor items as fast as he could. Platters heaped up.
“Right now?” burped Bitter.
Val stood in the door awkwardly. Another meld?
Abruptly the dispenser stopped delivery on Jo Jo’s account. A sensor at shaft base had recorded cessation of life functions.
“Jo Jo has died. His calorie credits go back into the general account,” announced the class thirteen. The chute closed on the center of a large protein sausage.
“You knew?” said old Walter—shocked.
“Robbing the dead,” gasped Val. They stared at the pilferings.
“Of course,” said Busch. “I just wish the crowd had the simple decency not to trample him so soon. He had landed well—horizontal. Had no femurs in his belly. Skull splatter was small. Jumpers from our level usually live a lot longer. A couple of hours at least.”
Bitter eagerly sorted through the foodstuffs for staple items she could use for bartering. “What kind of love is it,” she rationalized, “when you take your calories with you? We were his family, after all. If he wanted to go, the least he could do would be to throw a party first.”
“We all can use a few extra pounds of flavored protein,” added Arthur, joining in the food-sorting.
Walter opened his mouth to criticize. Then his own feelings came to the surface.
“I guess I’m as guilty as the rest of you,” sighed old Walter. “Jo Jo was a worker, and I was counting on his flavors after I retired. Now we’re widdled down to a family-4.”
Bitter stared at Val questioning. He shook his head.
“We need another member for our family,” she said.
Walter gathered his wits and ushered Val toward the door. “Bitter, you and Arthur stay here and interview applicants for Jo Jo’s replacement. We can’t hold on to a place this size very long without five. Val and I will go with the Sampler to check Jo Jo’s remains for IA and MR. I’ve got to know why he died.”
Arthur spoke to the screen and returned saying: “We should have a replacement for Jo Jo by tonite. Applicants are on the way.”
“Pick one with a good job,” said Walter in parting.
An impatient Sweeper meck waited eagerly beside the corpse while the Sampler teck loaded eight vacuum drums into his needle gun. Val and Walter tried to keep the crowd back while he worked.
“Brain,” said the teck, clicking the first drum in place and holding the needle-gun barrel against the crepitant skull. Snap! The gun jumped. The drum turned pinkish-gray. Fifty grams of sample cooled.
“Heart,” he said, holding the barrel over the chest. Snap! Red drum. Lungs, blue drum. Spleen, purple drum. Liver, brown drum. Kidney, gray drum. When the drums were full he lifted them out and placed them in a chamber on his cart. Sweep moved over the body, mopping and sucking. Soon the area was scrubbed up—rose-water stains and all.