“We’d love to,” Spanner said. Lore nodded. She had no choice, not really. She knew what was happening.
“And then perhaps a film afterward.”
Outside, the night was very immediate. The man misstepped in the doorway and swayed. The woman laughed and slid one arm through his, another through Lore’s. “We probably all need support.”
Instead of heading for the slide pole, the woman stopped by a small black car. Lore realized she was not surprised. “Yours?”
The woman nodded. “We’re here,” she told the car. Lore heard the locks click back. There was one driver’s seat on the right-hand side, and three other seats arranged in a triangle. “Take us home,” the woman said once they were all inside, “and let’s have some privacy.” The windows polarized to black. The man sat in the driver’s seat but appeared to go to sleep.
The drive took twenty minutes. Lore had no idea in which direction they were going. In the close quarters of the vehicle, Lore could smell the woman’s perfume, a surprisingly light fragrance, one she found familiar. She wondered if this woman had ever attended one of the low-voiced dinners with family representatives, where crystal flashed and deals were made between one course and the next. Crystal, Lore thought fuzzily, like silverware, reflected a distorted version of reality. Look in a spoon or into the bottom of a glass and what looked back at you was swollen and grotesque.
The car pulled into a driveway. The wheels crunched on old-fashioned gravel. It was too dark to see the apartment building as they were led inside, but Lore got the impression it was big. She smelled the close greenery of a formal shrubbery; a brick wall enclosed the courtyard.
Food was already laid out on the low table in the living room. They sat down, Lore and Spanner on the outside leather couch, the woman and man on chairs opposite each other. They ate and talked. The man seemed almost not to be there. Gradually they stopped paying attention to him. There was icy, sparkling wine, dry as carbon dioxide.
Then the food was gone, and the woman was pushing the table aside. Her cheeks were flushed. Even in her thin dress, Lore was hot. Spanner looked serene and detached, untroubled by the heat.
“The film now?” the woman asked, ignoring the man. Lore, pleasantly heavy-eyed, nodded. Whatever the woman wanted: she was paying. Or Lore assumed she was.
The screen unfolded from the ceiling, opposite the couch. The woman dimmed the lights.
There were no titles, and the music was lush and eerie. Figures walked and ran and whirled in various locations—beach, moor, desert—and Lore began to wish she had not had so much to drink. She could not make sense of anything.
“I’m a little warm,” she said.
“I would rather keep the temperature as it is,” the woman said softly.
“Why don’t you just unbutton your dress if you’re uncomfortable?” Spanner asked. “I’m sure no one will mind.” She raised her eyebrows at the man and the woman. The man was staring at the carpet. The woman shook her head.
“No, please go ahead. Make yourself comfortable. No one minds a bit of flesh if you don’t.” And she turned back to the screen.
It felt like a suffocating dream. This was it. Spanner, and the woman, wanted her to take her clothes off. She wanted to jump up and scream, demand to know if anyone else would be naked.
I have been naked too much!
But she knew she would not do that. This time she had a choice.
On the screen, the characters were talking, then eating breakfast. Half of them were not wearing clothes. The scene changed, and one woman was lifting a teenage boy onto what looked like an altar.
“Unbutton your dress,” Spanner whispered. “I won’t let either of them touch you, or take pictures.”
The woman was watching the screen, rapt. As Lore watched, the woman took off her jacket and laid it aside, not glancing back at the couch The man seemed to be asleep.
They needed the money, and it was just a dress. In a dream, Lore unbuttoned her dress and pulled it down to her waist. She sat back in the couch. The leather was cool against her naked back. On the screen, the woman was positioning herself over the naked teenager, and the onlooking audience—or chorus, or whatever they were—were touching each other slowly. The heat, the alcohol, the film all made Lore feel as though she were under water. A trickle of sweat rolled down between her breasts.
“You still hot?” Spanner asked. “Why don’t you take the dress off?”
“Aren’t you hot?”
“No.” Spanner smiled. “Come here.” She held out her arm. Lore slid over next to her. “It’ll be fine. Just take the dress off.” Spanner kissed her on the forehead, stroked her neck. “It’s dark in here anyway.”
Lore shook her head, trying to clear it, and wondered when the drug would start to work, when she would stop caring. The heat decided her. She stood up, pulled off the dress, then her underwear, and dropped them on the carpet. The woman turned briefly, nodded, then turned back to the screen. Lore snuggled back next to Spanner. Spanner had said she would protect her.
Spanner turned, smiled, ran a finger under her chin, then turned back to the screen.
As if being naked had freed something, all of a sudden Lore could smell the shampoo in Spanner’s hair, the musk of her skin. She kissed her neck below the ear. Spanner’s hand, resting on Lore’s shoulder, began to stroke her neck absently. The woman was still watching the screen. Lore laughed quietly and slipped her hand under Spanner’s tunic.
“Kiss me,” Lore whispered. Spanner turned away from the screen. “Kiss me,” she said again.
Spanner put her hands on both sides of Lore’s face and kissed her very, very gently. “More. . .” Spanner did it again. Her lips were like fruit, soft and ripe and very slightly moist. Lore leaned forward, pushing, wanting Spanner to kiss her harder, wanting to feel the warmth of Spanner’s body. Her breath was harsh and rapid.
“Sshh, quietly.” Spanner glanced over significantly at the rest of the room. The man was asleep. The woman was still watching the film. She would notice nothing if they kept very quiet. It was a game.
Spanner turned to face Lore, stroked her shoulders and upper arms, across her throat and the top of her chest. Lore tried to sit up, so that the stroking hands would brush her breasts. Spanner smiled and put a finger to her lips. Then she unbuttoned her tunic. Lore climbed right up onto the couch and reached for her. Spanner held up her hand: no. Lore sat still, knees hunched under her chin. The leather was warm now, and soft, like skin. Her hairless vulva felt swollen and slippery. Spanner stood up, got off the couch carefully, slowly, so that the woman would not see them in her peripheral vision. She got back on the couch behind Lore. Hard nipples rubbed Lore’s back below her shoulder blades. A hand came around and cupped one of Lore’s breasts.
“Ah.” Lore was moving now, unable to keep still. Her belly was full of lava and blood ran thick and heavy under her skin, making her feel slow and liquid.
“Yes,” whispered Spanner, “yes. Oh soon, soon.” Her hand was running down Lore’s ribs now, cupping her hipbone, running back up to her breasts. Then it began to move slowly, very slowly down the center of her body. It held her stomach, pressed. On the screen, bizarre images of red and purple flowers shimmered; the music was rising to a deafening crescendo.
Spanner had both arms around her now, both hands moving rhythmically over her body, belly, flank, thigh, inside her thigh, back to her belly, over and over, “Please, Spanner. Oh, please,” and Lore no longer cared whether or not the woman heard, no longer cared whether or not she saw. She writhed in Spanner’s arms, trying to thrust herself onto Spanner, any part of Spanner, just so that she could feel hot, live skin between her legs. And the room was thick with her own smell, sweat and need and sex, and Spanner’s, and she wanted to spin inside her need forever, without touching, but now Spanner was urging her, turning her to face the back of the couch, belly against the leather, breasts over the top, legs apart. She heard the soft
zzt
of Spanner’s zipper and felt breath on the back of her neck, Spanner’s thigh pushing between her own. She arched backward, trying to make the connection, but then Spanner’s hand came around the front to dip slowly, teasingly, through her labia. “Ah. . .” She shuddered. “Please Spanner, oh please.” But Spanner was positioning herself, wet and hot against Lore’s moving buttocks, and suddenly the couch cushion sagged to one side as the woman, naked from the waist down, climbed onto the couch. She touched Lore’s hair with one hand. The other was between her own thighs. She was looking at Spanner.
“Now,” she said, and Spanner slid her finger deep inside Lore and Lore’s muscles were clamping down around it, she was straining, humping, and Spanner was gasping behind her, pulling herself up and down, leaving hot, wet trails, and the woman was flushing deep deep red and laughing and crying out and their triple need tore up inside Lore, right up into her guts until she screamed and every muscle in her body went rigid and she slid sideways onto the cushions, Spanner still inside her.
It was still hot. The man snored gently. The screen was blank.
The hardest part of the shift for me was always half an hour after the break, when there were still nearly four hours to go and my blood sugar was low. Today, I felt restless and tense and hot. At the readout station I pushed the hair off my face with the back of one hand and just hoped there was nothing toxic on my glove. Hepple, though he was keeping a low profile since Magyar had hinted I was a Health and Safety spy, was still demanding hourly readings.
The readings were normal, absolutely normal, but something nagged at me. Maybe it was just the fact of Hepple’s demands, but something seemed not quite right. I checked everything I could think of, even the enzyme levels and secondary by-products like dichloroethylene. Everything on the button. It must be the heat making me tense. I waited for my neck muscles to relax. They didn’t.
I missed Paolo, wondered what he was doing now, but it wasn’t that. I was waiting for something to happen. I just didn’t know what, or why.
I downloaded the latest results onto a slate and went to find Hepple. He was in his glass office.
Instead of motioning me to put the slate on his desk, he reached for it immediately. He was looking the numbers over thoroughly when I left.
Maybe he was expecting something, too.
I went back to trough forty-one, decided to replace some of the rushes, just because I was restless, then changed my mind and went back to the readout station and checked the monitors. Everything was fine. So why wasn’t I happy about it? Think. Start at the beginning. The plant and equipment itself? Everything seemed in order. The influent? No. Nothing wrong with that. Nothing wrong with the bugs, either; they were standard tried-and-true van de Oest series. Guaranteed, as long as they were supplied with . . .
And then I remembered.
The puddles, the truck, the driver calling, “Sorry about that!” The logo: BioSystems.
I swore, ran a sample on the bug food. Took down one of the slates and after a few minutes’ fiddling managed to access some old records. Compared the two. Just as I thought. I picked up the phone. “Magyar, I need to talk to you.”
“What’s happened?” Even over the line I could hear her tension. She was waiting for something, too.
“Just get here.”
I felt savage. If Hepple had appeared right then I think I would have kicked him until he bled. Four million gallons a day, straight into the city’s mains, and he was risking it all for the sake of shaving half a percent from the plant’s operating costs.
Magyar arrived, breathless. “Tell me.”
“Hepple. Stupid bastard.” I was so angry I could hardly speak. “The bug food. Hepple bought the cheap stuff. Generics.”
The folds around her eyes seemed to swell slightly, making her eyes look smaller. “How bad is that?”
“Right now, not very, but I don’t know how long it will stay that way. I can try adjust the nutrients by hand until we can replace it. The system should catch any big swings—ones that are within known parameters, anyway—but the van de Oest proprietary nutrients have got to be restored.”
“How much time do we have?”
“Hard to tell. These bugs are genetically designed to fail without exactly the right ingredients, but given the mixture of microbes and varying substrates available here, I couldn’t begin to predict when or what form that failure will take.”
“But you’re sure they’ll fail.”
“Yes.”
A beat of silence. “Give me your best estimate of how much time we’ve got.”
“A week? It depends on what we get down the line.” All it would take was one big spill . . . “I can’t believe Hepple’s done this.”
“Oh, he’s probably got some very plausible-sounding reasons.” She sounded vicious.
“Then you’ll need to go over his head.”
“I’ll try.”
“Try hard. Meanwhile. . .” I started pulling down all the slates, feeling about on the shelf. Empty.
“If it’s the manual you’re looking for, I’ve got it. Oh, don’t look so surprised. I knew Hepple was up to something. I just didn’t know what. I decided to prepare for disaster.”
I felt foolish for underestimating her.
She read my expression and gave me a tight, amused look. “What do you know about emergency and evacuation procedures here?”
“Not much.” Which is why I’d wanted to take another look at that manual.
“We’ve got just about enough sets of emergency escape breathing apparatus, if you include the SCBAs and the moon suits. But I haven’t had the chance to check them and find out if they’re properly maintained. And I don’t know how many of the shift know how to use them. Which is why I need you. I don’t know who you are, or why you’re here, but I’ll use you if I can.”
I took the manual home. There were two messages waiting. The first was from Ruth; she was smiling. “Hope you enjoyed the dinner the other day. Let us know when and we’ll come and help you redecorate.”
The second was Spanner: “It’s just before midnight. I’m on my way out. I should have the money we need by morning. I’ll call you.”