War Surf (12 page)

Sheeba turned to me with that ardent expression—as if she expected me to
do
something. But what the heck could I do? Eventually, the gunfire stopped, and the thrumming, whuffing and sluicing sounds vibrated through the steel walls again.

Vlad sighed. “That one didn’t last so long. You did fine, Kaioko. Next time, it be easier.”

The girl gazed straight ahead with unfocused eyes. At least, she’d stopped chirping.

“Kai-Kai,” the medic said softly, “tell me how many splints you brought.”

“I don’t know,” the girl murmured almost too low to hear.

“Count them.” Vlad tapped the tray to get her attention.

Kaioko glanced around the room, seemingly lost, till she noticed the tray on the floor beside her. Slowly, she picked through the items, reciting numbers aloud like a preschooler. I began to think she was addled.

Then the door banged on its hinges, and Geraldine rushed in. “Kai-Kai, you all right? You shouldn’t be down here when the guns go off. Vlad shouldn’t bring you here.”

The medic slid away from Kaioko with an uncomfortable shrug. “She handled it fine.”

Geraldine flared her nostrils at him, then shouldered between them and elbowed the medic away. She squared her jaw with a kind of fierce nobility. But when she turned to Kaioko, the lines of her face softened. Tenderly, she adjusted the folds of Kaioko’s head cloth. “Come with me, babe. You don’t have to nurse this commie.”

“Commie!” I bristled at the slur. Protes used that term to insult Com executives.

But Shee put a restraining hand on my arm and shushed me.

“How your head feel?” Geraldine whispered in a gentle hush. Like night and day, she’d changed from bruiser to turtledove.

“I well. Gee. Please don’t worry.” Kaioko drew close to Geraldine, and her dainty white hand glided along the dark girl’s muscular arm.

I hadn’t lived 248 years without learning to recognize that kind of touch. The quickening glance between them, the unspoken communication, I knew at once they were lovers. But what a pair. Geraldine—brawny, brown and rude, yet despite the scar, I admit she had a striking face. Kaioko—just the opposite, small, pale, graceful, and ugly. And both just children.

“I gotta get back to the plant,” Geraldine said. “Come with me.”

Vlad spoke up. “I need her here.” There was no trace of a dimple now. He’d withdrawn to the foot of my blanket, doing his best to hide his raw, juvenile jealousy.

“She ain’t no servant.”

“Please, Gee, I want to stay.” Kaioko leaned against Geraldine’s chest and brushed some dirt from the front of her uniform. “You go to your work. I fine.”

“Don’t let these ‘xecs boss you. Liam said not to talk to ‘em.” Geraldine planted a showy kiss on Kaioko’s lips.

As they hugged, Sheeba elbowed me in the ribs. Evidently, Shee found this soap opera as droll as I did. Geraldine shot one last menacing frown at Vlad, then stomped out.

Poor Vlad. Misery painted his sagging features. He took a folding ruler out of his pocket, fumbled with it, men put it back. “Kaioko, I set this patient’s leg. You hold him steady?”

“Yes sir.” As the girl moved briskly around to the head of my pallet, Vlad followed her with his eyes. She moved as gracefully as a ballet dancer. Maybe mat’s what attracted him.

Sheeba said, “How do you move like that, Kai-Kai? The spinning doesn’t bother you at all.”

“Spinning?” The girl ducked her head.

“Kaioko born here.” Vlad gazed at her admiringly. “She move like a sunbeam. Down on your Earth, maybe she have a hard time. Maybe her bones break.”

Three creases formed between Sheeba’s eyebrows. “Do you mean Kaioko has never been to Earth?’

“None of us. We all born here.” He tapped his wrist joint with his fingers. “Our bones too thin to go groundside.”

Sheeba gave me that ardent look again. I opened my hands, pretending ignorance. As far as she knew, I had no connection with Provendia.

This news affected her badly though She hugged her knees and studied Kaioko’s tiny feet. The girl’s weak bones were part of the Reel, and my solution was never to think about the Reel. Getting too involved in local scenarios hampered my reaction time. But Shee was a newbie. She hadn’t developed a surfer’s emotional blocks. All the more reason to get her out of this place as soon as possible.

“Gee told us you come from Nordvik,” Vlad was saying as he fiddled with the gear on the tray. “Have you seen mountains—”

“Skip the travelogue. Vladimir, you seem to be a steady young man. We don’t belong here. If you return our EVA suits, we’ll leave in peace. I’m perfectly willing to pay.”

Vlad shrugged. “It not up to me. Liam decide.”

“Liam! That punk? He’s barely past adolescence. Who elected him god?”

“Liam is oldest,” said Vladimir.

Sheeba said, “Nasir, they have a right to choose their own foreman.”

I ignored her naive remark. “Let me talk to some of the adults. They’ll see reason.”

Vlad said, “Please, I just here to set your broken leg.”

At the mention of setting my leg, the little girl grasped me under the armpits as if she meant to hold me till the end of days.

“Let go, you devil.”

I made a grab for her hands but succeeded only in wrenching off her head scarf. Underneath the cloth, her bald scalp was hideously blistered. The sight gave me such a shock that when the girl seized her scarf, I didn’t let go at first, and it ripped in two.

“Oh Mass.” Sheeba picked up the shredded cloth.

Then the girl’s ugly face mottled and creased. Molto pathetic.

“Hell, I didn’t mean to tear your scarf. Stop moaning. I’ll get you a new one.”

“And where you get a new scarf?” Vlad glowered at me.

He caressed the weepy girl and shielded her head with his hand. His level glance seemed far too acute for a mere prote. It smacked of impertinence.

“It was an accident. I didn’t mean to embarrass her.” The girl’s livid burns made me wince.

“How about this smartskin?” Sheeba tugged the pant leg of her longjohn. “Maybe I could cut it and make a scarf.”

“No, don’t do that.” Vlad took off his lab coat and ripped it at die seam. The frayed synthetic came apart easily in his hands, and he tore out a neat white square of fabric. Sheeba helped Kaioko tie it to cover her unsightly head.

“Prettier man ever,” said Vlad.

“It makes you look like a nurse,” Sheeba added.

The girl nodded at their pack of lies. Without looking at me, she got up and solemnly left the room.

“So much for my assistant.” Vlad’s homely cheek dimpled. “Sheeba Zee, will you go hold the patient while I align these bones?”

“How many times do I have to say it? You’re not touching my leg.”

“Nass, listen.” Sheeba’s fingertips drew slow, soothing circles over my forehead and down the bridge of my nose. “We may be here a while. Better to have your leg set and splinted. You’ll be in less pain.”

“But he’s a juve.”

“You can have it redone later,” she wisely noted.

Sheeba took her place at my head and grasped under my armpits as the little bald girl had done, while Vlad positioned himself at my feet and gripped my right ankle.

“Are you ready, Sheeba Zee?’

“Yes, Vladimir. And just call me Sheeba.”

“Then please, call me Vlad.”

“Will you two stop flirting and do this?” I said.

Provendia chose that moment to launch another volley of noisemakers. This was a heavier round. The deck shook beneath me like a drumhead.

“That sounds close,” said Shee.

Vlad pointed at the floor. “It right outside the hull.”

I jerked free of Sheeba’s hold and sat straight up. “You quartered us where the gunship’s firing? There must be some law in the Geneva Convention about that.”

“Liam say the gravitation on One feel more like Earth. He say you be more comfortable here.” Vlad gently forced me back down.

“Liam says,” I grumbled.

Vlad and Sheeba held me stretched out between them like a piece of meat, waiting for the barrage to end Sheeba raised her voice just enough to make herself heard. “How did Kai-Kai get those burns?’

Vlad frowned. “Justment. Hot soup flying around.”

Hot soup did that? My scalp prickled at the thought. Sheeba had no time to follow up because two seconds after the barrage ended, Vlad gave my ankle a terrific yank. There was a loud pop, a louder scream—-from me—and my artificial hip wrenched out of its plastic socket. Oh, fine.

“Recite your mantra, beau.” Shee kissed my eyelids and acupressed my pain points.

For the next several minutes, until Sheeba and Vlad snapped my plastic hip joint back together, the agony in my ligaments was so intense that I could only blather. The IBiS vibrated my thumb like a jackhammer.

“You’re going to be fine,” Sheeba cooed in my ear, while the juvenile medic tortured me with his fingertips.

“Almost,” he kept saying, half closing his eyes and setting my broken bones by feel.

Sheeba stroked my forehead. “No painkillers, huh?”

“Nada.” Vlad pressed down hard, and I almost bit through my tongue.

A pause full of rough breaming and strain. Then Sheeba asked, “Are you the only medic?”

Vlad nodded. “I training Kaioko.”

Another labored pause, then Sheeba continued, “Do you need another assistant? I know first aid.”

What a bright girl, I thought between bouts of agony. She was devising a scheme to get out of this closet and find my sat phone.

“You know biology.” Vlad mumped my kneecap. “Maybe you teach me some things.”

“But you’ve had more field experience.” Shee racked my shoulder joints.

“Oh no, my skills puny. You be a tremendous help.” What gush. They sounded like schoolchildren.

“We’d better ask Liam, since he’s foreman,” said Shee.

Vlad nodded. “We should.”

Liam, that infernal clod. Did he arbitrate every decision in this orbiting purgatory?

“Do you know where he is? We could go ask him together,” Shee said.

While the boy medic played havoc with my bones, my left thumb shivered with endless IBiS alerts. Finally, I lost patience. “Young man, take Sheeba with you. She’s the most gifted physical therapist I’ve ever known.”

Vlad grinned and launched into a new, more ingenious cruelty. Using the stiff nylon netting, he bound my leg and interlaced the flat hard scraps of plastic between the layers. Pressing it down with one hand, he pulled the nylon tight with the other.

Sheeba said, “Maybe if we talk to Liam together, he’ll say yes.”

“All done,” said the medic, as he bound the bizarre dressing in wire.

All done indeed. My leg shouted pain with every bursting pulse of blood.

“Good job.” Sheeba sprang to her feet, and when her socks slipped on the steel deck, she caught herself against the wall. “So…we’ll go see Liam?”

Vlad was gathering his leftover materials. “Okay, we go.” “Transcendenzic!” Shee stooped and peeled off her socks for better traction. Then she gave me a hasty kiss and skipped toward the door. “You’ll feel a lot better now.” Who in hell was she talking to? Not me.

Since the Crash of ‘57—and the unspeakable months that followed—I have never enjoyed peaceful sleep. Especially in these last few years, the sense of missing time makes me nervous, although I sometimes nod off without meaning to. Then I doze through fitful nightmares and wake with an urge to urinate and hawk phlegm—reassuring signs of liquidity, I suppose.

After dropping off a second time in Heaven’s dark cell, I woke to the sound of a drumming so powerful, it rattled my spine. Was the gunfire getting closer? Was that sinister lightbulb dying? Was my tightly bound leg going to explode? I sat up with a chill sense that something disastrous had happened. Sheeba was gone.

She should have been back by now. Callow child, she had no instinct for the zone. I should never have let her out of my sight. Worse, she’d gone off to find that punk, Liam. The brute who grabbed her in his arms. I could still see the greedy lust in his eyes. Rapist eyes.

In haste, I pushed myself up to one knee, caught a glimpse of the W painted in the corner, and immediately smashed my chin on the floor. With a groan, I rolled over and straightened out my injured leg. Then I took inventory of the E, the W, the pair of A’s. The rough brown blanket. The plastic cup. I seized the cup, sat up and relieved myself.

A tray by the door held a fresh water sack and a bowl of oily gruel. I recognized the mess—Provendia’s protein-stew. The stuff was barely palatable, but I was so hungry, I ate it all, and I gulped the water to wash away the taste. Those busy NEMs were chewing through a lot of blood sugar, repairing my injuries, and they needed sustenance.

My IBiS still showed the net not responding message, and other memos as well. I’d missed a telomerase infusion, a dental cleaning and a pedicure. It irked me how thoroughly the medical profession hamstrung my NEMs. Safety precaution, ha. I rubbed my teeth with my index finger and grumbled.

At least the nanomachines had begun to heal my fractures. At length, I struggled to my feet. Sheeba had been right about my leg. With the fractures tightly bound, my leg didn’t hurt as much. I leaned against the wall and kept my weight on my good left leg.

But acclimating to artificial gravity wasn’t so simple. Between the bizarre effects of centrifugal force and Coriolis, even turning my head threw me off balance. It was like standing at the bottom of an enormous bucket mat was swinging around in a fast, tight circle. Three times per minute, Verinne had said.

Oh Verinne, if you could see me now. Only a few hours ago, I’d been winging across the firmament, cutting sleek pirouettes through a hail of missiles. Now I couldn’t even take a step without toppling over. But the glass man inside me was alive and kicking. Slowly, that Nasir-shaped lattice of silicon was mending my carbon-based flesh. I intended to master this artificial gravity shtick and find my Sheeba.

So I hopped on one foot toward the nearest hand-painted W, toppled against the wall, caught myself, toppled again. It felt like riding a Tilt-A-Whirl. Now for the E. East meant prograde. The tank was spinning in that direction. Theoretically, when I moved that way, I would spin faster, and the increased centrifugal force would make me heavier.

Picture me sweeping my arms out, lifting my right foot and squatting on my good left leg to spring. That’s how the guard found me when he pushed open the door. I gasped and tumbled.

“Man, you gonna hurt yourself doing that,” said the imbecile guard.

I bared my teem at this new agitator, another juve of course. This boy had a round baby face the color of caramel and a pair of huge brown eyes. His thick lips were wreathed in coarse black facial hair, and his wide, pimply nose wrinkled when he grinned. Bus, his eyebrows ran together in the middle. What a beauty.

All the other protes wore standard-issue Provendia uniforms, but not this boy. He’d turned his gray coverall inside out so the fuzzy seams showed, then he’d hacked off the sleeves and rolled up the pant legs to show his thick hairy legs. He leaned against the oval doorjamb, scratching his elbow and watching me.

“Give me your hand,” I ordered.

The boy flexed his unibrow in surprise.

“Didn’t you hear what I said?”

He shrugged and pulled me to my feet. When the room whirled, I grabbed his shoulder. He was a few centimeters shorter than me, and that put his shoulder at a convenient level. Like his blond chieftain, this boy wore a braid down his back, but his hair was dark, and he’d woven colorful strands of plastic-coated wire among his plaits. Green. White. Red. Yellow. Very ornamental.

“What’s your name?” I demanded.

“I’m Juani.” The boy started guiding me back toward the blanket.

“No, not that way. The door,” I said.

“You need the toilet?”

“That’s it. Yes, the toilet. How old are you?” I wanted to keep him in a subservient mindset.

“I not supposed to tell you anything.”

“That’s ridiculous. Who am I going to talk to?”

The oval door had a raised sill, maybe ten centimeters above the floor. Anyone with two good legs could easily step over it, but for me, hopping on one foot, it was like an Olympic hurdle.

“Jump. You can do it,” said Juani.

He grasped me around my middle and lifted me. By leaning heavily against him, I managed to bound sideways through the door and land outside in the corridor. Liberty at last.

But the corridor felt even more claustrophobic. Provendia’s engineers had wasted no space in A13’s floorplan. The corridor was so narrow, I had to turn sideways to avoid brushing against the walls. And it didn’t run straight—-it curved.

“That way.” The boy pointed clockwise. “Four doors on the left.”

“You wait here.” I pushed him aside and bobbed down the narrow corridor, staggering against one wall, then the other. Dead surveillance cameras drooped from the ceiling. Several meters down, I nearly tripped over a gaggle of children who had chosen that spot to congregate. Can you imagine, they were running up and down the public hall.

“Whoa!” My crash sent them squealing in every direction.

“Man, don’t turn your head so much. You go get dizzy.” Juani pulled me up and offered his shoulder again. “See that E? Lean into it. Yeah, there you go. You getting the idea.”

My breath came in gasps as I hopped down the corridor, clutching Juani’s arm. We passed more prepubescent types, leaping about like popeyed toads. Some of them crawled on all fours, too young to walk. Soft little arms and feet, squeaky voices, oversized heads and noses like buds, such half-formed grotesqueries should be kept out of sight until they reached normal size.

As we passed one oval door after another, I noticed scribbles and childish drawings scratched into the wall just at knee level. One of the toads must have run amuck with a penknife. Was there no discipline in this place? More and more, I leaned on Juani’s shoulder.

“This the toilet.” He wrenched open an oval-shaped metal door and switched on the light. Yes, you could call the tiny cupboard a toilet. It had the correct gear, but it was microsized. Smaller man the lavatory on a jump-jet. Juani wrinkled his pug nose at me.

“Very well, you can return to your post,” I said.

I tried shooing him away, but he held the door and waited. I had no choice but to accept his assistance to hop inside, where I promptly banged my good knee on the metal toilet lid. Juani winced and made a comical face, then eased the door shut.

Take it from me, using a prote toilet in an orbiting satellite factory qualifies as Reel. The flush made an eerie grating noise, the sink lacked a mirror, the tap yielded only a fine mist of disinfectant, and there were no wipes. The defunct surveillance camera grazed my temple. I growled at the roll of rough synthetic paper. Liam and his thugs must have commandeered the executive lavatory. Still, I scrubbed my hands and used some of the paper to clean my teeth.

When I opened the door, Juani offered his elbow like an usher.

“I’m going for a walk,” I said, trying and failing to navigate the raised doorsill on my own.

Juani grabbed my waist and lifted me over the sill. “You can’t go past here. This the outside limit.”

“I need exercise,” I said.

“Uh-uh,” said Juani.

I shoved him away and took a few hops down the hall. What could he do, shoot me? He had no weapons. He was barefoot. And, ye gilders, he was a teenager.

“Stop, man. Don’t make me come after you,” he said.

I laughed and kept hurtling along, sliding my hands against both walls, ignoring the dizziness and the rude little toads who got in my way and tried to trip me. Freedom went to my head like wine, and I seized one of the door levers. It was unlocked, and when the door fell open, I saw more youngsters and blankets on the floor. Before I could observe anything else, Juani’s bare foot landed a kick at the back of my good knee, and I went down hard.

“By all the freaking gold-plated gods.” I cradled my throbbing broken leg.

Juani grabbed the back of my longjohn and started dragging me along the floor. He hauled me back toward my prison, knocking my head against one wall and my injured leg against the other. The prepubescents scattered and giggled.

I said, “Let go, zit-face. You’re killing me.”

“Man, you a real sharp blade.”

“I’ll pay money. I’ll get you a transfer, a better job, shorter hours, more perks. I’ll tell Provendia you helped me, and they’ll give you a pardon.”

The boy didn’t slow down.

“What do you want? I’ll get it for you. Please let me go.”

He said, “Be calm, blade. You too sharp for me.”

He dragged me back to my den, slammed the door, and in cruel retribution, turned off my incandescent lightbulb. My first attempt at freedom—nipped in the bud.

Basking in cold dark misery, I pressed my ear to the fungus-covered door—hoping, I suppose, to hear Sheeba coming back. Why did Shee leave me alone to go traipsing after that twentysomething foreman? Would she massage his shoulders and tell him his aura “looks like smoke”? The possibility made me quiver.

What I heard instead was Juani singing. Something about wagons and stars—his voice broke on the high notes.

Molto frustration. How could I get that imbecile kid to let me go? Well, if a newbie surfer like Sheeba could beguile agitators, certainly I, with my centuries of worldly experience, could do it better.

“Juani!” I yelled through the door. “Open up and let’s talk.”

He opened the door a crack and poked his shiny nose through. “What does zit-face mean?”

I sighed. “Use your brain. I’m a rich man. Treat me well, and I can do good things for you.”

The boy’s single eyebrow knotted like a fuzzy worm. “You mean, like magic wishes?”

“I can buy you things, okay? New clothes. Music discs. Air scooter. Just name it.”

Juani glanced down the hall in both directions. His lean, muscled shoulders rolled up and down in the ridiculous inside-out coverall. Then he moved closer, and I noticed the startling clarity of his dark brown eyes. “Will you go tell me about Earth?”

“Sure.” I nudged my shoulder into the door the way Sheeba had done, so Juani couldn’t close it. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything. Tell me what she look like.”

“Haven’t you browsed the Net?”

“I mostly been in the factory.” He wiggled into a more comfortable position. “Once I went spacewalking. Yeah, I see Earth very completely then.”

“You’ve been EVA only once?”

He reddened and scrubbed his neck with his stubby fingers. “Sooner later, I go again. Tell me what she look like under the clouds.”

The kid had a thirst for details. He knew almost nothing. What the hell, I told him how Earth’s sky was yellow instead of black and how all the people lived near the poles where the weather was mild. He asked ridiculous questions, like could we walk on the clouds. I told him the clouds held lots of useful chemicals that we harvested. He moved his mouth as if savoring the taste of my words. Ignorant cub, he amused me.

So I kept going. I told him how everyone on Earth lived underground or under sealed domes, and how the best shops were always high in the towers, while the best music clubs were deep down where the protes lived. Juani needed to know what a shop was, and a tower and a music club. He wanted to know how many people lived on Earth, and when I told him 12 billion, he gave me a skeptical grin. That’s when I noticed his front tooth was missing. He kept rubbing his hairy legs and asking more questions.

“Twelve billion people? Blade, you lie. How they remember each other’s names?” He sprawled on his belly in the corridor, leaned on his elbows and gazed up at me as if I held the light of the world. The soles of his feet were crusted soot-black. Soon, a few of the tiny toads joined him. They clustered around my door.

I said, “Believe me, most people are not worth remembering. That’s why wars are so handy. Natural population control.”

Juani said, “What does ‘natural’ mean?”

“It means free. You don’t have to pay for it.”

“I thought free had a big price,” he said.

“Now you’re getting into semantics.”

Playing guru was fun, but after a while, I’d had enough. “I told you about Earth. Now make yourself useful, and get my sat phone.”

“What’s a sat phone?”

I forced myself not to growl. Talking to this juve felt like biting through concrete. “Help me get out of here, and I’ll buy you a cybrary.”

“What’s a—”

I held up both hands. “Put it on pause. A cybrary is an earring that tells you the meaning of words. Game session over, okay?”

Juani had a way of crinkling his eyes to slits as if he half suspected I was making everything up. He poked his tongue through the gap in his teeth and made a fluttering sound.

I tried pleading. “Kid, I’m going nuts in here. I need exercise. A change of scene. A window for godsakes. Please let me out.”

“What’s a window?”

“Grrrr. Let me out, kid, or I’ll do something harsh.”

Juani kicked his dirty toes against the wall. “Liam’ll bust me.”

The infernal Liam. “What does your foreman think I’ll do, blow up the factory? Look at me. I’m utterly harmless.”

“It’s because…” Juani chewed the corner of his mouth. “Gee say you come from that gunship.”