Stone Gods (3 page)

Heartless. Gorgeous. Even so, I have never seen one as impressive as the one they took with them to Planet Blue. She was built especially for the job, but did she need to be so beautiful too?

Inter-species sex is punishable by death.

Looking down the street at the numbers, it seems that my client is throwing a G party. In the past, people had birthdays. I have charted all of that through the Central Archive. Now birthdays don't matter because they mark the passing of the years, and for us years don't pass in the way that they once did. G is the day and year you genetically fix. It's a great day to celebrate.

I park the Solo on the meter outside the house.
Hi there!
says the hateful familiar voice. I ignore it and key in my override code, which Enhancement officers can do when on work-related calls.
All set! See you later!

I kick it for fun. Nothing happens, of course.

The house — number twenty-nine — is festooned with pink pumped-up balloons. There are enough balloons on this house to qualify it for personal take-off. Batting aside the ones in my way, like giant mammaries, I lift the knocker.

A pink LoBot opens the door and brushes my (black) trainers with a pink brush.

Ducking under more pink balloons to follow the LoBot, I am able to enter the rosy sitting room. It should be a sitting room, in that it is off the hall and on the ground floor, but it is faked out like a teenager's bedroom, and stuffed with celebrity holograms the way people in the past used to stuff their lounges with china ornaments. The problem with the hologram craze is that even if you scale them down you're still surrounded by dwarf-size replicas of movie stars and pop idols. Of course, you can walk right through them, but I find it creepy. This place is like a Hall of Fame. I can hardly shift for three-foot-tall Goliaths of the film industry. The LoBot is at just the right height to dust them top to bottom. She gets out a pink duster and sets to work.

'I love celebrity,' says my client, Mrs Mary McMurphy, 'but they need dusting. Even holograms attract dust. A lot of people don't realize that so they get allergies — from the dust, y'know, trapped in the hologram.'

Celebrities are under pressure, no doubt about it. We are all young and beautiful now, so how can they stay ahead of the game? Most of them have macro-surgery. Their boobs swell like beach balls, and their clicks go up and down like beach umbrellas. They are surgically stretched to be taller, and steroids give them muscle growth that turns them into star-gods. Their body parts are bio enhanced, and their hair can do clever things like change colour to match their outfits. They are everything that science and money can buy.

'I want to look like her,' says Mrs McMurphy. 'Like who?'

'Like Little Senorita.'

Little Senorita is a twelve-year-old pop star who has Fixed herself rather than lose her fame. She sees no point in growing up when she is famous for not being grown-up. Understandably, as she has no talent, she wants to live in the moment for as long as she can.

Her parents support her. Her boyfriend says he's delighted. 'My husband is mad about Little Senorita. I want to be her.'

'Are you sure you want to be her for the rest of your life?'

'I can change later if it doesn't work out.'

Yes and no. Genetic reversal has strange effects on the body. The last time it was done, the reversal couldn't be contained, and the girl got younger and younger until she was a six-feet-tall six month-old baby.

Fixing is simple. Unfixing to age naturally is pretty simple, though it is only ever done for medical research. I am explaining this to Mrs McMurphy and getting nowhere.

'My husband likes girls.'

'Legal sex starts at fourteen,' I reply.

'But everybody does it younger. Y'know that!'

'Does he have underage sex at home?'

'Oh, no, he always goes out. But I don't want to lose him.'

'Why not?'

She seems baffled by this question, and shifts among her cushions the colour of Turkish Delight, then hitches her school uniform, her pink school uniform, slightly higher. Any higher and it will just be a scarf round her neck, or maybe a hairband.

'Do you think you can stop him having sex with young girls by becoming one yourself?'

'Y'know, that's not my aim. He can do what he likes as long as he doesn't do it in the house,' she makes him sound like a golden retriever, 'and as long as he comes home now and again and does it with me.' He is a golden retriever. 'We don't have sex any more. He says I'm too old.'

A pair of Kitchenhands, got up to look like pink rubber gloves, comes into the sitting room, bearing two tall tumblers of a foaming liquid.

'I swear by Nitrogen Ginseng,' says my client.

While Mrs McMurphy takes and drinks hers eagerly, I take the opportunity to look more closely.

I guess she has been Fixed at twenty-four. Now that everyone is young and beautiful, a lot of men are chasing girls who are just kids. They want something different when everything has become the same.

'I need to speak to your husband too.'

'He's not here.'

'Well, he should be here. This is an official appointment. Where is he?'

'He's at the Peccadillo.'

She has the grace to blush — no, I think she's blushing because it matches her outfit and the cushions and the wallpaper. It's all one childish, knowing, pre-teen turn-on. There is no point in staying. I gather my things and get up to leave. The hovering Kitchenhands lace their separate fingers and park quietly on top of a pot plant. The LoBot scurries towards the door.

'Are you excited about Planet Blue?' I ask Mrs McMurphy, by way of ending the conversation.

She looks vague and smiles. 'Yeah, y'know, it's a great idea. I'm entering the celebrity competition to win a trip. The beaches look amazing.'

Outside, the windshield of my Solo is flashing yellow. What? This is crazy. Have all the stupid parking meters gone crazy? I don't even bother to ring the blonde pixellated robot on the DUE TO line. I ring Manfred. He sounds shifty.

'Have you got all you need for your report?'

'I have to find the husband. He's at the Peccadillo.'

'You can't go there in work time.'

'Then I can't make my report. I need to speak to her husband.'

'We have to nail this, Billie. Media want to interview her, and they'll need your notes before the story breaks. This Human Rights case is going to be the Next Big Thing after Planet Blue.'

'You mean that when we're bored to death with the news of a new world, the one we dreamed about for millennia, we'll go back to sex stories?'

'You're always so negative!'

'Sorry, you're right, it's going to be wonderful here on Planet Lolita. Why go anywhere else?'

'It's not your job to moralize.'

'So I'm going to the Peccadillo?'

'Yes.'

'And you'll clear my parking?'

'Yes.'

We both hang up trying to hang up first. It's time I found a new job. Even polishing LoBots would be better than this. Even getting a job as a BeatBot would be better than this.

At the Peccadillo parking is private, so I drive underground, leave the keys with Security, and take the elevator up to the Members' Floor. A hunchback bows me in.

There are a couple of translucents serving behind the bar.

Translucents are see-through people. When you fuck them you can watch yourself doing it. It's pornography for introverts.

Peccadillo is a perverts' bar, and we're all perverts now. By that I mean that making everyone young and beautiful also made us all bored to death with sex. All men are hung like whales. All women are tight as clams below and inflated like lifebuoys above. Jaws are square, skin is tanned, muscles are toned, and no one gets turned on. It's a global crisis. At least, it's a crisis among the cities of the Central Power. The Eastern Caliphate has banned Genetic Fixing, and the SinoMosco Pact does not make it available to all its citizens, only to members of the ruling party and their favourites. That way the leaders look like star-gods and the rest look like shit-shovellers. They never claimed to be a democracy.

The Central Power is a democracy. We look alike, except for rich people and celebrities, who look better. That's what you'd expect in a democracy.

So, sexy sex is now about freaks and children. If you want to work in the sex industry, you get yourself cosmetically altered in shape and size. Giantesses are back in business. Grotesques earn good money. Kids under ten are known as veal in the trade.

Today at the Peccadillo it's a Veal Special so I'm not surprised to see a blond-haired guy, who looks like a golden retriever, heading for the Jacuzzi with a ten-year-old boy on his shoulders and a ten-year-old girl in his arms. Both of them are Caliphate kids. We buy them. We wouldn't do it to kids born in the Central Power because (a) it's illegal and (b) we're civilized.

As I hurry across the floor, my way is barred by an enormous woman with one leg, hopping along on a diamond-studded crutch. I am on a level with her impressive breasts — more so, because where I would normally expect to find a nipple, I find a mouth. Her breasts are smiling, and so is she.

'Are you hungry for a playmate?'

'No, thank you. I'm just visiting the Jacuzzi.'

'Oh, don't waste your time in there. That's for kids. Come to the Fun Room. I can take four men at a time — front, rear, here and here.' She pats her accommodating breast-mouths, or is it mouth -breasts?

'I'm a girl.'

'Yeah, but you can watch, and when the boys are done, we can have some FUN. You're not straight, are you?'

'Not exactly.'

'Well, then, come along.'

'Look, I have to catch up with a guy who looks like a golden retriever. '

'Does he work here? I don't recall a Dog Man. We have a Dog Woman, hounds included.'

'No. He just looks like a golden retriever.'

'Cute. Well, when he's done what a dog has to do, you know where to find me. Just listen for the tap, tap, tap.'

She puts her crutch down and swings off. The one leg is for easier access.

Am I a prude? Am I a moralist? Am I letting life's riches pass me by? Why do I want to go for a walk in the woods and say nothing until you turn to me and I take your face in both hands and kiss you?

I don't even know who you are.

A voice comes from behind me. 'Who R U? Whaddya want?' Big questions. For a moment I don't know what to say. Then I remember. 'I want to talk to Mr McMurphy.'

'You can't. He's busy.'

I explain my situation. The boss-guy, bouncer-guy, whatever he is, nods and says he'll pass the message on.

'Well, go in there and ask him why he wants his wife to look like Little Senorita.'

'You stupid or what? We all want our wives to look like Little

Senorita.'

'Why is that?'

'Coz she's hot, and this town is frigid.'

'Do you have a wife?'

'Not yet. I'm getting one from the Eastern Caliphate - it'll be legal, believe me, but she's nine years old and I'm gonna Fix her.'

'Children cannot be Fixed. That is the law.'

'Little Senorita — '

'Is fighting a legal battle, which she will lose. '

'You don't know that.'

'You don't know that she will win.'

'Oh, no? There's plenty of guys who want her to win, and you know what? They're all in the gang. Judges, politicians, you name it.'

But I don't want to name it.

'It's like every other Civil Rights and Equal Rights battle, OK? You had Blacks at one time. You had Semites at one time. You had mixed marriages, you had gays. All legal. No problem. We're just victims of prejudice and out-of-date laws.'

'It's called "paedophilia".'

'That's just a word, like "homosexual".'

'No, it's not a word like "homosexual", it's a word like "goat-fucker".'

'What's a goat?'

Let me try again. 'The kids are too young.'

'Sure not. They love it. Listen ... '

He props open the door into the Jacuzzi room with his jackboot. I can hear kids splashing and playing. I push past him and look inside. Sure enough, the place is wet with kids running and diving and throwing themselves through the fountains and down the slides, and there are four guys with hard-ons like concrete breakers waiting to catch them.

'Mr McMurphy!' I shout. He turns and smiles his playboy smile.

He comes over to the edge of the wet room, stroking himself. 'About your wife .. .'

'Yeah, whatever she wants, I'm behind her all the way. Her choice. I believe that women should make their own choices. Whatever she wants, all the way.'

The boss-guy, bouncer-guy manoeuvres me firmly out of the door and gives my bum a little squeeze. 'This is the future, honey.'

'Do you ever think about a world where there are no grown women at all? Just little girls?'