“He can’t get any sort of employment, then?”
“Nothing that suits his qualifications, no. A laborer, maybe. I don’t know. For any kind of manual job he’d be competing against all those people from the underclass guilds. They’ve got an inside track on the junk jobs. Somebody falling down from salaryman level is going to have a hard time getting anywhere, when there are so many ahead of him in the underclass who have clean records. A high IQ isn’t exactly the thing that gets you to the front of that line.”
“So he’s completely screwed. He’s entirely out of the system, unemployable. That’s hard to believe.”
“I’ll try to think of something,” Rhodes said.
“Yes. You should.”
But what? What? His soul overflowed with compassion for his old friend; but his mind was empty of solutions for Carpenter’s plight. Dismissals were so rare, in the megacorp society. Recourse was so iffy.
This was very new for him, to be fretting about Paul. All their lives it had been the other way around, Rhodes in trouble or a state of bewilderment, trapped in a mess of some sort, and Carpenter coolly, carefully, explaining how he should deal with it. It was a novelty to think of Carpenter now as vulnerable, damaged, helpless. Of the two of them, Carpenter had always been the more capable one, serenely making his way through life with a sure sense of direction. Not as intelligent as Rhodes, no, not gifted in any particular way, but shrewd, self-directing, moving in an easy confident way from assignment to assignment, from city to city, from woman to woman, always knowing what his next move would be and where it would take him.
And now.
One bad moment, one faulty decision, and here was Carpenter cast loose, washed up, flung by a crazy twitch of fate onto the deadly barren shore of an unforgiving world. Suddenly the whole dynamic of their friendship had been turned upside down, Rhodes saw: Carpenter the puzzled and needy one, and he the finder of solutions for knotty problems. Except that he had no solutions.
He would have to find one, Rhodes told himself. He owed Carpenter that much. And more. Something has to be done for him, he thought. By me. There’s no one else who can help him. But for the moment he was stymied.
Rhodes’ mood began to decline precipitously. He found himself imagining Carpenter under Chicago’s sweltering filthy skies, ambling around at loose ends in a strange city, in a toxic environment that made tonight’s bands of sky gases here seem like jolly Christmas decorations.
“Bed,” Rhodes said again. “How about it?”
Isabelle turned. Smiled. Nodded. Her eyes were warm, eager, beckoning. Paul Carpenter and his problems receded from the forefront of Rhodes’ mind. A burst of love for Isabelle suffused his spirit.
I will tell her about the Kyocera job tomorrow, he promised himself. Maybe not the Wu Fang-shui angle, but the rest of it, the bigger laboratory, the greater slope, the increased corporate support. She would understand that it was important for him to persevere and succeed in his work. Important not only for him, but for everybody, the whole world.
He thought of the Christmas present he had had from her last year, the holochip with the six-word mantra that defined the chief zones of his adapto project:
| BONES | KIDNEYS |
| LUNGS | HEART |
| SKIN | MIND |
She understood. She ultimately would not let his work come between them, of that he was convinced. For all her love of mouthing trendy antiscientific political slogans, she was aware, on some fundamental level, that it was necessary for human bodily modifications to be made before the atmospheric conditions grew much worse. And they would grow worse, despite all that had been done to halt further damage to the environment and undo what had already been done.
BONES LUNGS SKIN. KIDNEYS HEART MIND. Five of the six would have to be radically changed; the key to the task, Rhodes knew, was seeing to it that the sixth remained more or less the same, that when his work was complete the mind within the bony housing was still recognizably a human mind.
Isabelle crossed the room, leaving a trail of clothing behind her. Rhodes followed her, watching with keen pleasure the play of muscles in her lean tapering back, the delicate knobby line of her backbone clearly visible against her taut skin, the breathtaking inward curve of her narrow waist. Her great wiry nimbus of vermilion hair stood out like a flaming crown above her long slender neck.
Just as she disappeared into the bedroom the telephone rang.
At this hour?
Rhodes flicked it on automatically and Paul Carpenter’s face, red-eyed, drawn, appeared in the visor. Speak of the devil, Rhodes thought.
“I’m sorry to bother you so late, Nick—”
“Late?” Well, yes, it was. But Rhodes tried to shrug the fact away. “It isn’t all that late here. But it must be the middle of the night in Chicago. Are you still in Chicago, Paul?”
“For the time being.” Carpenter’s voice sounded thick and slurred. He was either drunk or very, very tired. “I’m going to leave here tomorrow, I think. Coming back to California.”
“That’s fine, Paul,” Rhodes said cautiously. “I’m glad to hear it.”
There was a little pause. “It’s been a good stay for me, in Chicago. I’ve got my head straightened out a bit, maybe. But the friend I’ve been visiting—well, she’s got her own life, I can’t just dump myself down on her for an indefinite time. And this is an awful place to live, really awful. So I thought— California—a new start—”
“Fine,” Rhodes said again, hating the empty blandness of his tone. “The land of new beginnings.” Rhodes wished he had something specific to offer, and felt hollow and futile because he did not.
He stared at the visor. Blurry weary eyes looked back at him. It seemed to be a struggle for Carpenter to keep them focused. Carpenter was definitely drunk: Rhodes was sure of that, now. He knew the symptoms as well as anyone.
“I called Jolanda just now,” Carpenter was saying. “Thinking maybe she could put me up for a couple of days, until I had my bearings, you know, figured out what next, so on and so forth—”
“She’s still up in L-5,” Rhodes said. “Supposed to be coming home tomorrow.”
“Ah. I thought she might be.”
“She’s still got that Israeli with her. He’ll be coming too. And someone else, someone that they met up there. It sounded like she had a whole goddamned entourage.”
“Ah,” Carpenter said. “I better not figure on staying with her, then.”
“No.”
Another spell of silence, a sticky one.
Carpenter said, “I wonder, then, Nick, if—well, if it would be all right—”
“Yes. Of course it would,” Rhodes said quickly. “With me, here? Of course, Paul. You know you’re always welcome.”
“I won’t be in your way?”
“Don’t be an asshole. Listen, call me when you get on the road, and then call me again when you’re a day or so from the Bay Area. Leave messages, or whatever. Let me know when I can expect you, so I’ll be sure to be here. —Are you all right, Paul?”
“Terrific. Really.”
“Money?”
“I can manage.”
“See you in—what, three days? Four?”
“Less,” Carpenter said. “Looking forward. Say hello to Isabelle for me. You still with Isabelle?”
“Of course,” said Rhodes. “Matter of fact, she’s right here. If you want to talk to her yourself, I’ll—”