Authors: Wayne Wightman
Mr. Strickman stepped out of his office and frowned. He put his hands behind his back. He tilted his head down a little while still looking at her. He'd learned these moves from a vid. “And why might that tardiness be?” Good word, tardiness. Made him look sharp. He loved this: an issue to attack, decisions to be made. It would make him look good to Mr. Roeg.
“Sir? Loris yesterday told me it would be on time.” She spun pointed at Loris, even though Loris's desk was four rows back. “Didn't you tell me that? You did.” Then a slow turn back to Mr. Strickman. “Three hours late, sir.” Every part of her face was indignant.
“It shall be dealt with.” He turned, actually on a heel, hands behind his back, returned to his office, and closed himself in.
Mr. Roeg awaited as Mr. Strickman had left him a few moments earlier, in the failed attempt to forestall Bethina. “Food product delivery,” he said. “It's late. People gotta eat, Mr. Roeg, as you well know.”
Mr. Roeg nodded, as much as his small twisted body would allow. He wore oversized, specially fitted police-blue shirts which were draped around his body and the top of his electrical conveyance. Nothing but his head had ever been seen, although everyone had seen what appeared to be knees or elbows or something jabbing around inside the loosely fitted shirt.
Mr. Roeg rarely said anything beyond his several grunts, periodic snorts, and a kind of nasal groan in a rising pitch which sounded like a questioning whine, so whenever he did that, Mr. Strickman rambled on at length about whatever he was mentioning at that moment. That, as far as Mr. Strickman knew, was Roeg's purpose — to listen to him randomly discourse about the overall operations of Acro D's food product processing. Roeg was checking on him, as he'd heard by rumor that he also did at the other acros.
Sometimes a message arrived advising Mr. Strickman to discuss subject x, y, and/or z. Today the note said, “1. Fooprod quality. 2. Office help.” And Mr. Strickman had made some notes, on which he had already begun to elaborate. Then Bethina interrupted.
He now continued: “Respectfully, late is not our fault. But once we get the fooprod here, we're very efficient. We can process almost a ton an hour, sir, and we produce the whole line of fooprod variations. Two kinds of meat, each with variations. Five lookalike root vegetables — the carrots are highly authentic, and orange. Fooprod pastas, and our fooprod bread recipe is getting better, sir.”
Grunt.
“Office help. Yes, sir, if we could step... uh, roll....”
Mr. Roeg's conveyance zipped forward. The office door opened in advance for him.
“...out here, Mr. Roeg. Yes. Well, there's Bethina, who you heard. She's the office manager, and the office works pretty good. That's Loris Clare she was talking to. She's quiet. Gets a lot done. Quiet.” He went on through Wallace Roscoe, Vera Kham, and Olson Dolor, and then interrupted himself. “You know, I don't think Loris over there has ever spoken to me. Loris?”
“Sir?” She didn't look startled. She looked ready.
“Could I speak to you?” He gestured for her to come over.
She crossed the office and stood in front of him at office attention.
Mr. Roeg hummed dully.
“Well?” Mr. Strickman said pleasantly to Loris.
“Well what?”
“Well... how are you doing today? Do you like it here?”
Loris looked from Mr. Strickman to Mr. Roeg and back. “Fine and yes,” she said.
Mr. Roeg snorted. At that point, Mr. Strickman started in surprise when he realized that Mr. Roeg's conveyance was whining into higher registers; an instant later, it shot off toward the office doors which opened not quite quickly enough and the conveyance double-banged through them and disappeared down the concourse.
After a polite pause, Loris returned to her desk. Bethina's eyes followed her.
Mr. Strickman broke into the full sweat of relief and bolted back into his office, hearing Bethina shrill across the office, “Back on task! Eyes on your duty!”
Mr. Strickman began listing what shortcomings Mr. Roeg might have seen. Sweat dampened his shirt. He had looked weak. He had looked incompetent. He seized up, his breath caught in his throat.
He could be tested and expelled.
If that happened, he knew he would die before nightfall.
....
Lloyd liked his freshly pressed work uniform. It smelled really good the first evening he would wear it, as night watchman at the Acro D underground, station twelve. Subsequent nights his uniform lost its crispness along with its artificially fresh smell. Since there wasn't much to do, he noticed such things. Every Tuesday and Friday for twenty minutes, he stood aside as security escorted anywhere from five to two hundred people into the underground, off to one of the other acros, for whatever reasons. Or even to be expelled, he thought in a whisper.
To pass the rest of the time, Lloyd played games with his flashlight, making patterns on the wall or flipping it around. He also practiced singing a bit. He knew he was not very good, but the echoes in the long concrete room made him sound better. Lloyd hoped to someday surprise Loris by singing her a song, perhaps at her birthday, or after the next time they were intimate. He figured he'd have at least two months to practice.
He was awakened by someone talking to him. He struggled to sit up on the bench where he'd fallen asleep. Cameras probably caught it. Lloyd staggered to his feet, trying to get his eyes and tongue and brain on the same page.
“Howdy,” the man said. “Don't mean to trouble you.”
“Hi.” Lloyd straightened his hat. “I almost dozed off.”
“My name's Albert,” Quentin said. “I was walking by and thought, 'Darn, I've never been down there,' so here I am.” Arms and eyes wide in surprise.
“It's where people go to the other acros. This station isn't used a lot.”
“I've never been to another acro. Have you?”
“Not me. This is as close as I ever got. But security escorts people down here, and they leave.”
Quentin pointed at the wide door of the underground tube. It had an unusual latch. “What's that?”
“It's a latch. But you have to take training to open it, so it works like a lock.”
Quentin bent over to look at it. Surreptitiously he took a ten-second multi-angle vid of it. “It really is complicated,” he said, stupidly emphasizing syllables with abdominal contractions.
“It is. I could never do it. The security people can do it real fast.”
“And,” Quentin said, lowering his voice to a whisper, “I hear that in the tubes there are doors to the Outside.” He said it with a capital O.
“There are. They're called hatches. I don't know how many there are, but there's one in this tube, just down a little way. A hatch.”
“Wow, I wouldn't want to go out there. You got good surveillance here, that's good, so you won't get mugged or whatever.”
“Workers come down here two three times a month to work on the wiring. I think the dampness wrecks it or something.”
“Yeah,” Quentin goofed, “or maybe evil spirits do it!”
“Yeah, the ones that make wires break!” Lloyd said. “Hey, I got a extra sandwich. Want it?”
....
“I declined the sandwich,” Quentin said, “and I don't like where this coversation is going.”
Today they had met at a mall restaurant. It was loud.
Loris was glued to the playback of the intricate latch. She held her hands around the player so it wouldn't be conspicuous to others. They had several empty beer glasses in front of them, and, as atmosphere, a recent grab-it song, “Hit Me Like I Like It” played out of the ceiling. Quentin was glad that Loris could ignore her surroundings. The tastes of these people no longer provoked her vocal expressions of indignant disgust.
“Where do you think this conversation is going?” she murmured, still focused on the vid, running it back and forth.
“I think it's going to lead to you leading me down there to try to open that door so you can get into the tube to the exterior door. The hatch. And go outside. Or try to, and find out if what's out there is what the vid says is out there. Am I close?”
“I'll give you a prize.”
“It's dangerous outside, Loris, and they'd probably arrest you.”
“I can open this. With another set of hands—” (she looked at his eyes) “—Quentin.”
“I should never have gone down there. Lying to your partner. Getting you further into your... project. And now you want me to do something illegal. And dangerous.”
“It could take as little as five minutes. How many times have I asked for a favor?”
Quentin turned the warm glass in his hands. “Never,” he said.
She looked up from the glow of the vid. “Would you help me for the promise-land of my thighs?”
“I guess. Yes.”
“Are we amazed that a biological whim swamps the screaming voice of reason?”
“No,” he said. “It's still screaming. I can't believe I'm doing this.”
....
Lloyd needed counseling. In order to see the Reverend Fenn, he sat through some random group theological discussion (“Can a person be conscious who doesn't have a soul?”) but didn't understand most of it and tried to look preoccupied, but the group finally saw him and forced him say what he thought. Hot and wet under his arms, he mumbled some words together. He just wanted them to ignore him. “How could you tell if there was a soul there, either way?”
After a moment of silence, they all yelled things at him. Eventually a bell rang and Reverend Fenn told everyone what a joy it was, etc. Finally, the two alone, Lloyd looked up at him and said, “Reverend Fenn, I have a moral question.”
He told the reverend about “someone” he knew who had been asking him a lot of questions about the underground tube and he thought this person was going to go into the underground tube station where he was a watchman, or maybe one of the others, and go out to the outside, and if this happened, what should he do if reporting on this “someone,” which it was his job to do, would get him in trouble with a really really good friend?
The reverend poked out his mashed lips and pondered. “What tube is this you speak of ?”
“The tube that goes to the other acros.”
“Ah yes, certainly.” He folded, unfolded, refolded his old hands. “I was thinking of another tube. So — ” Again, lips mashed out, he pondered. “What do you need to know?”
Lloyd went through it again. But he didn't mind. People often needed to go through things a couple of times for him. Except with Loris. She was quick. “So do I report on this person?” he reconcluded.
“Well now. Imagine the best person in the world. What would that person do?”
“I can't do things like that, your honor. My imagination is bad, and that's why I'm asking you about this case I have.”
“Well now. I thought your point, earlier, on consciousness was well taken.”
“But... do I report this person?”
“A good question. You should sleep on it. Well. Ta-ta till next week. Next week....” He checked a paper from his pocket. “Next week, it's 'Is It Better To Be Good Or Not?' You be there. It'll be lively.” Reverend Fenn slapped him on the back and was out the door before Lloyd quite knew he was going.
He suspected he hadn't asked his question right. So that was forty-five minutes shot for not being able to explain things like Loris. Being stupid was time-consuming.
....
Raff gave Bethina a slack-jawed grin as he shambled past her. Bethina nodded and returned the briefest of pseudosmiles. Raff, or
Mr
. Raff, if Bethina had to address him, had a regular official appointment with Mr. Strickman, though why, Bethina could not fathom. Raff was a wall-duster, a despicable occupation, in her considered judgment.
Raff was seen all over this level, waving those long dusters of his across the walls, so he was always dusty when he came in, and every time, Bethina had to go in and vacuum the chair where he had sat in Mr. Strickman's office. She resented that. She was going to make someone else do it from now on. Give it to that Loris person who acted like she was better than everyone.
....
Raff bumped through the door to Mr. Strickman's office as though he were neurologically impaired. He made his way to a chair as the door to the office snapped shut, and there he dropped himself, releasing a poof of dust.
“Mr. Raff, Mr. Raff,” said Mr. Strickman said, short-stepping over to him with a glass and a decanter, from which he poured a long drink and handed it to him. Raff's eyes sparkled as he grasped it in his dusty fingers. “So, how've you been, Mr. Raff?”
Raff licked his lips and said, “Fine okay.” He tossed back the drink and made a loud long “A
aaaaaah
. Good. More.”
Mr. Strickman short-stepped across the office again and refilled the glass.
“Let's not go too fast, Mr. Raff. I need some guidance here and I'm looking to you to help me with that.”
“Yah.” He sipped a little this time. “Okay. Fix the....” Finger twirl. “Get stuff ready.”
“Yes, sir; yes, sir.”
Mr. Strickman bustled around the office, dimming the lights, lighting three candles —
purple
candles — in a triangle, lighting some smelly incense that in his personal opinion smelled like raw meat. But it was all for getting their psyches aligned, their chakras co-satoried, like on the same page, very important.
He got out his Cloth of Meaning from a bottom drawer, spread it on his chair, and carefully sat down. Oh, the ritual! He loved this so much! His psychic receptiveness and Raff's wisdom had already helped him out with a couple of women — one whose hand he held briefly and the other the ravenous Fawn, who frightened him. Sometimes Raff gave him good ideas that he then sent off for vid presentations. Sometimes he told him things he needed to know. The wall-duster! No one would ever guess! Stupid people.
“Ready,” Mr. Strickman said, taking up a handpad to record any necessary notes.
Raff sipped, wheezed an exhalation, and said, “Simple is good. Smart is way overrated. Smart people get sad a lot. They have crazy ideas and get into trouble. Simple people enjoy simple pleasures, simple entertainments, simple foods. Don't you?”
Strickman noted furiously. Then he looked up, startled. “Me? Yes, I do. Simple food. I like soup. Our fooprod yellow-ball soup. I like that.”