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of possible challenges."
"Of course," Mary says. The attending jail clerk and her police arbeiters
surround the caretaker.
"What does it matter?" the man says jauntily as he leaves with them. "If I
go to jail, I'll feel good. I'm happy and at peace wherever I go. There isn't
a thing you can do to change that. Best move I ever made."
Nussbaum has left the house and is removing his coldsuit. He brushes his
clothes down with one hand and approaches Mary, looking at her from hooded
eyes, tired in that way only a PD can get tired: a vital living weariness that
carries as much suppressed anger as exhaustion.
"So, what is he?"
"He's happy," Mary says. She looks around the patio. So precisely and
beautifully designed. A wall-rack for soil tools, a cabinet for plant
nutrients and soil treatment products, a trellis made of real wood, as yet
empty. She imagines a young pretty high comb wife working here, choosing
flowers from the
EuGene Pool Catalog or creating her own varieties with a home kit.
"We'll sober him," Nussbaum grumbles. "The courts go rough on happy harrys
these days."
"Anything useful inside?" Mary asks.
"We have inventory and we can trace all the supplies. We've tracked the
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70 GREG BEAR
runaways. Trying to make it by riding the wienie in the big city. Two from
around here, all involved in sleaze Yox, all put out of work recently because
of the demand for psynthe."
Mary ports her pad to Nussbaum's and transfers the interview. Nussbaum watches
her solicitously. "What were they looking forward to?" he asks.
"What's it like to change your body and look different?"
"I was never so extreme," Mary says quietly.
"Yeah, but why change at all?"
"I was short, had fat legs, no upper body strength, wispy brown hair--"
Mary begins, then stops. "Is this idle curiosity, sir, or are you really
looking for insight?"
"Both," Nussbaum says. "All the boys ignored you?"
"I thought my body didn't match my inner self. I wasn't strong enough and I
couldn't do what I wanted to do. So--I went to a very professional transform
surgeon in LA. I was going to apply for a job in PD. I had him design the
perfect PD body. He thought it was a challenge."
Nussbaum gives her a mild smirk. "And men looked at you."
"Sex had remarkably little to do with it, sir."
"But men looked at you."
"Yes, they did." She tries to be patient with Nussbaum. She has known many
ranks in public defense, and most have Nussbaum's hunger for the grit.
They want to believe that even therapied folks are capable of wide swings in
behavior, the extremes of which become PD business. Or perhaps it's just
simply monkey logic.
A natural, Mary knows, is even more suspect. Nussbaum only trusts himself out
of habit.
He pokes his thumb back at the house. "Men and not a few women would have paid
to look at them. Freaks from Mount Olympus having sex the likes of which
ordinary mortals can only dream of. Sheiks in Riyadh, commodities
trillionaires in Seoul, Party capitalists in Beijing, comb bantams in London
and Paris, happy husbands and wives seeking a little variety in Dear 52. More
attention than any little girl could ever want. And psynthe transform is legal
in forty-seven states, all legal and very, very expensive, too expensive for
most."
Mary patiently waits for him to finish. Nussbaum lifts his face and gives her
a weary PD smile. I'll tell personnel you're moving over to active crime."
Of course he wouldn't ask her, and of course he would not need to ask. He's
good at tuning in. Mary nods. "Thanks."
"Tell me more, later, if you'd like," Nussbaum says. "I'm a son of a bitch for
living details."
Mary checks out for the day via her pad and thumbs through her touches as
, ,-n I.. I.. l.a (,, tho ,,m¼u. Not much of interest; she
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SLANT 71
OKs the reskedj for tomorrow, though she is not sure she will make that one,
either, if this psynthe case gets complicated.
The pad's secure in-box contains a set of replacement prescriptions from
Sumpler's office on her transform reversal; her present stage is regulated by
thousands of tiny monitors, similar to those used for mental therapy, and
they'll need replacement in the next few weeks. She feels fine; checks the
small bumps inside her armpit, which had been a little sore yesterday but
today are smaller and not at all painful. In three months she will be stable
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and can drop all monitors and supplements.
The streets outside the autobus window are dark, with lights glowing softly
along the curbs and overhead. Big cubic apt complexes line the north side,
older single homes on the right. Arbeiters are busily taking down three old
frame houses to make room for another complex. Soon, she thinks, the Corridor
will be as congested as Southcoast. She feels sympathy for just an instant
with the isolationists in Green Idaho--and then snaps back.
In Green Idaho, they would never tolerate a transform, even a reverted
transform. She crinkles her nose: Little pus pocket of untherapied
se/f-righteous atavists your daughters come in a rush to the Corridor or even
Southcoast and they are so ignorant they end up in the hands of the freakers,
cooked, dead. And you harden your little self-righteous hearts and forget all
about them. You think, "Serves them right, they go wrong the5' deserve--"
Mary cuts this line of thought abruptly. Her stop is up. She walks down the
aisle, past seats filled with temp lobe sods riding north from the towers.
A few look up at her; most are absorbed in their pads. She steps out into the
night.
The air is cold and damp. The stars are gone this evening and the clouds are
moving quickly. There might be a storm. She will stay up to watch if the wind
blows fast to see the famous Convergence Zone Light Show, the brilliant
flashes of cloud-to-cloud lightning in two colors, bright electric green and
sour orange. She's only seen the phenomenon once and would love to see it
again, especially this evening, when she might not sleep at all.
The twelve-unit complex where she lives stands shoulder-to-shoulder on the
side of a hill overlooking the dark waters of Silver Lake. She finds it
amusing that in LA her last apt had been in the Silverlake district; names
follow her.
She is in the elevator when her police pad vibrates in her pocket. She gets
off at her floor and answers the official touch.
It is Nussbaum. His face seems red on the pad's vid. "Ms. Choy, we have a new [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]