Glasshouse (10 page)

“Oh, we're doing really well!” Jen says expansively, letting go of me.

“We were just about to stop for a coffee,” says Angel. “Would you like to join us?”

“Sure,” I say. There doesn't seem to be any polite way to say no. Plus, I haven't had any human contact except Sam for the past hundred kilosecs, and I wouldn't mind a chance to pick their brains. So I follow them into Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe, and we sit down at a booth with shiny red vinyl seats and a bright white polymer-topped table while the waitrons attend to our needs.

“So how are you settling in?” asks Angel. “We heard you had some trouble yesterday.”

“Yes, darling.” Jen smiles brilliantly as she nods. She's wearing a bright yellow dress and some kind of hat that vaguely resembles a ballistic shuttlecraft. She's applied some kind of paint-powder to her face to exaggerate the color of her lips (red) and eyelashes (black), and something she's used on her skin has left her smelling like an explosion in a topiary. “I hope you're not going to make a habit of it?”

“I'm sure she won't,” Angel chides her. “It's just a natural settling-in mistake. We can all expect to make a few, can't we?” She glances sideways at the waitron: “A double chocolate iced latte made with fair-trade beans and whipped cream, no sugar,” she snaps.

“I'll have the same,” I manage to say just as Jen starts rambling about
the contents of the price board above the counter, changing her mind three times before she reaches the end of every sentence. I study Angel while I'm about it. Angel is wearing a jacket-and-skirt combination—a “suit,” they call it, though it doesn't look like the version permitted to males—and while it's darker and drabber than Jen's outfit, she's got some shiny lumps of metal stuck to her earlobes. I can see it's meant to be jewelry, but it looks painful. “What's that on your ears?” I ask.

“They're called earrings,” Angel tells me. “There's a salon up the road that'll pierce your ears, then you can hang different pieces of jewelry from them. Once the hole heals,” she adds, with a slight wince. “They're still a little sore.”

“Hang on, that's not glued onto your skin or properly installed? They shoved it
through
your ear rather than rebuilding your ear around it? And it's
metal
?”

“Yes,” she says, giving me an odd look. I don't know what to say to that, but luckily I don't have to because Jen finishes ordering her cafe americano and turns back to focus on us.

“I'm so pleased we ran into you today, darling!” She leans toward me confidingly. “I've been doing some research, and we're not the only cohort here—in fact, all six will be meeting at Church tomorrow, and we wouldn't want anyone to let the side down.”

“I'm sorry?” I ask, taken aback.

“She means, we need to keep up appearances,” Angel says, with another of those expressive looks that I can't decode.

“I don't understand.”

A faint frown wrinkles the skin between Jen's eyebrows. “It's not just about
yesterday
,” she emphasizes. “Everyone's entitled to their little mistakes. But it turns out that in addition to our points being averaged within the cohort, each cohort in the parish gets to talk about what they've achieved in the preceding week, and the other cohorts rate them on their behavior before voting to add or subtract bonus points.”

“It's an iterated prisoner's dilemma scenario, with collective liability,” Angel cuts in, just as one of the operator zombies twiddles a knob on a polished metal tank behind the bar that makes a noise like a pressure leak. “Very elegant experimental design, if you ask me.”

“It's an—”
Oh shit.
I nod, guardedly, unsure how much I can reveal: “I think I see.”

“Yes.” Angel nods. “We're going to have to defend your behavior yesterday, and the other groups can add points or subtract them depending on whether they think we deserve it and on whether they think we'll hold a grudge when it's their turn in the ring.”

“That's really devious!”

“Yes.” Angel again.

Jen smiles. “Which is why, darling, you're not going to show up the side by violating the dress code, and you'll be suitably remorseful about whatever the silly incident yesterday was about—no, I don't want to know all the sordid details—and we'll do our bit by backing you up and trying to bury the whole matter as deeply as we can under a pile of every other cohort's sins. Won't we?” She glances at Angel. “We're the new group, we can expect to be picked on. It's going to be bad enough with Cass, as it is.”

“What's wrong with Cass?” I ask.

“She's not settling in,” says Jen.

Angel looks as if she's about to open her mouth, but Jen waves her hand dismissively. “If you've been getting any silly phone calls from her, just ignore them. She's only doing it to get attention, and she'll stop soon enough.”

I stare at Jen. “She told me Mick's threatening to hurt her,” I say. The zombie delivers the first of our coffee cups.

“So?” Jen stares right back at me, and there's a cold core of steel behind her expression: “What business of ours is it? What's between a wife and her husband is private, as long as it doesn't threaten to drag our points down or get our whole cohort in trouble. Apart from the other thing, of course.”

“What other—”

Angel cuts in. “You get social points for fucking,” she says, her voice self-consciously neutral. Again, she gives me that odd look. “I thought you'd have figured it out by now.”

“For
sex
?” I must sound faintly scandalized, or shocked or something, because Jen's face relaxes into a mask of amusement.

“Only with your husband, darling.” She sips her coffee and looks at me calculatingly. “That's something else we've noticed. I don't want to hurry you or anything, but . . .”

“Who I fuck is none of your business,” I say flatly. My coffee arrives, but right now I'm not feeling thirsty. My mouth tastes as dry and acrid as if I've just chewed half a kilogram of raw caffeine. “I'll dress up for the Church meeting and say I'll be good and do whatever else you want me to do in public. And I'll try not to cost you any points. But.” I tap the table in front of Jen's coffee cup, insultingly close. “You will not,
ever
, tell me whom I may associate with or what I will do with my chosen associates. Or with whom I have sex.” The silence grows icicles. I take an unwisely large gulp of hot coffee and burn the roof of my mouth. “Do I make myself clear?”

“Quite clear, darling.” Jen's eyes glitter like splinters of frozen malice.

I make myself smile. “Now, shall we find something civilized to talk about while we drink our coffee and eat our pastries?”

“I think that would be a good idea,” says Angel. She looks slightly shaken. “After lunch, how about we buy you something suitable to wear to Church?” She asks me. “Just in case. Meanwhile, I was wondering if you've used your washing machine yet? It has some interesting features . . .” And she's off into an exploration of techniques for gaining points in the women's world, generated by game theory and policed by mutual scorefile surveillance.

BY
the end of our lunch, I think I've got a handle on them. Angel means well but is too calculatedly fearful for her own good. She's afraid of stepping out of line, unwilling to jeopardize her score, and worried about what people will think of her. This combination makes her an easy target for Jen, who is flamboyant and aggressively extroverted on the outside, but uses it to conceal an insecure need for approval, which leads her to bully people until they give it to her. She's as ruthless as anyone I can recall meeting since my memory surgery, and I've met some hardcases around the clinic. The surgeon-confessors tend to attract such. (What's even more disturbing is that I have faint ghost-recollections of
knowing similar people before, but with no details attached. Who they were or what they meant to me has sunk into the abyss where memories go when their owners no longer need them.)

The two of them, working by unspoken assent, appoint themselves as my personal shopping assistants for the afternoon. They're not crude about it, but they're very persistent and make no real attempt to conceal their desire to modify my behavior along lines compatible with their enhanced scorefiles.

After coffee and cakes (for which Angel pays), they escort me to a series of establishments. In the first of these I am subjected to the attentions of a hairstylist. Angel sits with me and chats interminably about kitchen appliances while Jen goes off somewhere to do something of her own, and the zombie immobilizes me and applies a fearsome array of knives, combs, chemical reagents, and compact machine tools to my head. Once I get out of the chair, I have to admit that my hair's different—it's still long, but it's several shades lighter, and whenever I turn my head it moves like a solid lump of foamed plastic.

“Perhaps we should get you some clothing for tomorrow,” Jen says, smiling broadly. It's phrased as a suggestion, but the way she says it makes it an order. They lead me through a series of boutiques, where I am induced to present my credit card. She insists that I try on the costume, and while I'm showing her how it looks, Angel gets the store zombies to parcel up my stuff. I end up looking like one of them, the ladies who lunch. “We're getting there,” Jen says, something almost like approval on her face. “You need a makeover, though.”

“A what?”

They just laugh at me. Probably just as well; if they told me in advance, I'd try to escape. And, as I keep reminding myself (with an increasing sense of dread), I'll have nearly a hundred tendays—three years—in which to regret any mistakes I make today.

THE
lights are turning red and sinking toward the tunnel at the edge of the world when the taxi we're crammed into stops outside my house, and the door opens. “Go on,” says Angel, pushing my bag at me, “go
and surprise him. He'll have had a long day and will need cheering up.” I realize she's using the generic
he
—they don't care who
he
is, all they care about is the fact that he's my husband, and we can earn them points.

“Okay, I'm going, I'm going,” I say, harassed. I take the bag, and as I turn, something bites me on the leg. “Hey!” I look round but the taxi is already pulling away. “Shit,” I mumble. My leg throbs. I reach down and feel something lumpy stuck in it. I pull it out. It's some sort of lozenge with a needle coming out of one end.
“Shit.”
I stumble up the path in the new shoes they insisted I buy—the heels are steeper and less comfortable than the first pair—and in through the door. I dump the bags and head for the living room, where the TV is on. Sam is lying in front of it, his eyes closed and his tie loosened, and I feel a stab of compassion for him. The injection point on my leg aches, a cold reminder.

“Sam. Wake
up
!” I shake his shoulder. “I need your help!”

“Whu—” He opens his eyes and looks at me. “Reeve?” His pupils dilate visibly. I probably smell weird—Jen and Angel tried half the contents of a scent bar on me, for no reason I can fathom.

“Help.” I sit down next to him and hike up my skirt to show him the mark on my thigh. “Look.” I hold up the ampoule where he can see it. “They got me. What in seven shades of shit
is
that stuff?” My crotch is unnaturally sensitive and I feel slightly dizzy, worryingly relaxed and unstressed in view of what's just happened.

“It's—” He blinks. “I don't know. Who did this to you?”

“Jen and Angel. They dropped me off from a taxi and I think Angel got me with this thing as I left.” I lick my lips. I'm feeling distinctly odd. “What do you think? Poison?”

“Maybe not,” he says, staring at me. Then he picks up his tablet and pokes at it. “There,” he says, holding it for me. “Must be their idea of fun.”

I thrust my hands between my thighs and clamp them together, my eyes blurring as I read. My crotch is tingling. “It's a—huh!” Fury washes over me. “The bitches!”

Sam shakes his head. “I've had a really tiring day, but it sounds like you've had an exciting one. Coming home dressed like a—and your friends, spiking you for sexual arousal.” He raises an eyebrow. “Why
did they do that, do you suppose?” Sam can remain analytical and composed in the most trying situations. I wish I had half his grace under pressure.

“I—” I force myself to move my hands. “Bitches.”

“What's going on, Reeve? Is the peer pressure really that compelling?” He sounds concerned, sympathetic.

“Yes.” I grit my teeth. He's sitting too close to me, but I don't want to risk moving. The drug is hitting me hard in warm, tingly waves, and I'm afraid of leaving a damp patch on the sofa. “It's the social points. We knew the points were shared with our cohort, but there are extra compulsion mechanisms we didn't know about. Jen and Angel told me about them, but I didn't . . . shit. And then you can score points for . . . other activities.”

“What other activities?” he asks gently.