The Year of the Sex Olympics and other TV Plays (21 page)

DEANIE
: We got scales under them.

She works the bell to end the round. The referee, a little man who has been hovering by the booth near the halfway mark, turns to assess the scores. Attendants jump forward and open up the booth and free the custardy contestants from their canvas. As they step out the referee lifts the arm of the winner, to a roar of synthetic applause . . . this is a purely conventional noise, with almost no pretence to realism.

As attendants get busy preparing the booth for the next round, Nat turns Deanie aside.

NAT
: What’s with Keten?

DEANIE
: I saw her two days ago.

NAT
: You said she sick?

DEANIE
: A bit sick.

NAT
: Just a bit?

DEANIE
: Some virus. All okay now, but—

NAT
: Then why all this “Nat, we got to talk” stuff?

DEANIE
(carefully)
: Can we go see her, both the same time? Do her good, they say.

NAT
: I don’t know—

DEANIE
: Long time since we did.

NAT
: Got a lot of work.

DEANIE
: I know.

NAT
: The Sex Olympics. How old she now?

DEANIE
: Nine years.

He looks at her, remembering.

NAT
: Okay, you fix it. I come if I can.

He dips a finger in the tub of custard and tastes it. He grimaces.

DEANIE
: Fish.

She smiles—the first time she has—and he is reminded again. After a moment, he glances round for something to wipe the fish custard on, notices an Audience Sampler monitor set in the wall close by. Its screen is blank. He presses the button beside it and the usual collection of apathetic faces appears. He offers his blob of custard to one. Deanie laughs.

DEANIE
: Nat!

Nat wipes the custard on the screen, on an unseeing face.

NAT
: Don’t like it.

DEANIE
: Not meant to like it.

She turns to the booth, now nearly ready for the next contest.

NAT
: Your work . . . cosy in it?
(She shrugs)
My work.
(He scrutinises the screen, the blank faces)
Put ’em off food, put ’em off sex. Or . . . explosion.

DEANIE
: It works.

NAT
: Still two hundred of ’em to each one of us in Output. Just sitting. Get their babies done at fifteen and then just sit. For most no work to do, all autoed for ’em. Just sit. Dead by thirty.

DEANIE
(catching his arm)
: Nat—
(Turning, he notices her face is suddenly haunted)
People ever get sent out there?

NAT
: Out with them?

DEANIE
: Yes.

NAT
: Sometimes, to work—

DEANIE
: No, to stay. To be like them.

NAT
(incredulously)
: How can we? All high-drive people in the networks. Out there it’s low-drive. How can we be sent? Look at them . . . low-drive.
(He watches the unseeing faces on the screen for a moment)
What are they
for!

On an impulse he smears the blob of custard all over the screen, blurring the faces.

DEANIE
: Keten had a test.

NAT
(after a moment)
: What?

DEANIE
: A metabolic test.

NAT
: And?

DEANIE
: I don’t know.

NAT
: Clever kid . . . got two high-drive parents.

DEANIE
: But not
like
us.

NAT
: How not?

DEANIE
: More slow and . . . quiet. Nat, if she got low-drive—

NAT
: How can she?

DEANIE
: Just if. Nat?

He says nothing. He glares at the dim faces on the screen. He hits the button and the screen goes blank behind its permanent caption.

RECREATION AREA

Along one wall of the Recreation Area is a huge screen, at present filled by an Artsex show. The fleeting glimpse we get of it gives the general idea—a montage of bosoms and swirling drapes, like ‘artistic studies’ in motion but quite unteasing, almost unerotic.

Nobody here is taking the slightest bit of notice of it. This is a meeting-place for off-duty Output personnel. There are a dozen or so here, all with their backs to the screen. A few are sucking brighteners, others nibbling globular meringue-like confections, sitting or standing round a circular bar, talking animatedly.

There are two or three things like pin-tables, labelled “Auto-Chess”. A thin young man is settling down at one of them, picking a plastic programmer from a shelf of “Ploys”. He presses it into a slot. Instantly the machine buzzes, and lights up. Its chessmen start to move by themselves, playing both sides of the game at once . The young man crouches, watching concentratedly. He has a sensitive, nervous, tense face.

Nat and Deanie come into the recreation area. They take brighteners from a dispenser.

NAT
: Fix it for tomorrow if I can. We both go see her, find out about this . . . test.

DEANIE
: Thanks, Nat.
(For a moment they say nothing)
What girl you got now?

NAT
: Oh . . . some girl name Misch. You?

Deanie nods at the young man at the Auto-Chess. He is frowning in utter absorption and has not noticed them.

DEANIE
: There, waiting for me. Name Kin Hodder.
(The name means nothing to Nat, who shakes his head)
Works in Artsex. Got time to meet?

NAT
: Well—

DEANIE
: We quick it up.

She crosses to the young man and puts her arm round his neck. He starts, then sees who it is and is enormously pleased, like a puppy. He kisses her. He is several years younger than her.

KIN
(indicating the Auto-Chess)
: Just trying this—no good, no real help.

DEANIE
: Coddy, this—Nat Mender.

KIN
: Oh. Kin Hodder.

NAT
: Sportsex.

Kin tries to look interested.

DEANIE
: Nat and me got a baby.

KIN
: Oh.
(After a moment)
You not told me.

DEANIE
: Long time ago.

NAT
: Not a baby now.

DEANIE
: Nine years old.

NAT
: We were picked.

KIN
: I see. Top material.

Nat shrugs modestly. But Kin does not look as impressed as he should.

NAT
: You work in Artsex?

Kin nods. He indicates the big screen.

KIN
: That stuff. I do drapes.
(They look, without enthusiasm. In Kin’s face there is ironic disgust)
See that side, behind her? I fix that side, all that shiny, hanging . . . Ah, real pretty, they said. And she said, it sets off my skin super kingstyle. A real artist, she said. True? True. I work in Artsex so I must be . . . an artist. A drape artist.

He turns away from them and stares down at the trundling chessmen. Deanie picks up a handful of empty brighteners from the top of the case.

DEANIE
: Kin, you had all these?

NAT
: No hurt if he did.

DEANIE
(concerned)
: Kin—

NAT
: Effect cancels after number ten.

DEANIE
: But he
wanted
’em.
(Gently)
Kin.

NAT
: I better go now.

Kin twists round to face him. He looks wretched.

KIN
: No, wait. Nat Mender, you like this Deanie? Anywise, you did then. So maybe we got some ideas the same.

NAT
: Maybe.

KIN
: You in Sportsex, the top show. You can help me.

DEANIE
(firmly)
: Kin, he got to go.

KIN
: He can help me!
(To Nat)
Tell me why to do this. Give me a reason. Make me want to do it!

His hand is outflung at the screen. Nat is conscious that talk has stopped round about. They are being watched.

NAT
: Hard to make it all clear right now.

KIN
: You make it clear . . . ever? You can?

NAT
: If you quiet down.

KIN
: Oh. Then you tell me? No need to tell me when you start like that. I can guess it.

NAT
: What you mean?

KIN
: “Quiet down”! You want to quiet down the whole world, all the time. All them outside. We got to do our work for them, that it? Keep ’em like the rule says, cosy and comfy?

NAT
: We got to, you know that.

KIN
: And if not?

NAT
: There be tension.

KIN
: I want tension!

There is a faint gasp at this raw heresy from one or two of the onlookers. Deanie grabs Kin by the arm and pulls him aside. She looks appealingly to Nat and he follows.

DEANIE
: Come sit down—

NAT
: Tension! He know what he’s saying?

DEANIE
: It gets him like that, crazy—

NAT
(to Kin)
: Listen, you not happy? You want to switch jobs?

KIN
: I want to do . . . what I want.

DEANIE
: I tell him, try for Patterning.

NAT
: Good idea. That’s artistic—

KIN
: Patterning?

NAT
: They do a lot. They need people—

KIN
(with contempt)
: Help computers, make little moving shapes? In between the shows, to keep the audience calm and—
(Almost pitifully)
Know what I want to do? I want to make pictures.

NAT
: Well, that’s making pictures.

KIN
: Pictures that stay.
(Baffled, Nat looks to Deanie)
She knows.

DEANIE
(with a drawing gesture)
: He makes them.

KIN
: When I get what to make them on.
(Suddenly, fiercely)
I want to show them! To them out there . . . to the whole world I want . . . to make ’em see! I want them to hurt!

Nat stares at him.

DEANIE
: Nat—you look at them?

NAT
: They hurt?

Deanie nods.

DEANIE
: They do more than that.

NAT
(after a moment)
: Let me see ’em.

Even at this small gesture of help Kin’s aggressiveness suddenly melts. He gives a quick grin. He looks vulnerable and almost young enough to be Deanie’s son, not her current lover . . .

INSIDE NAT’S ROOM – NIGHT

We seem to be on the summit of Mount Everest with Nat and Misch. Both are wearing parkas made of brightly coloured fun-fur, which flutters in the howling wind.

The pair turn, watching the moving panorama of icy peaks. And we see that apart from their fun-fur hats they are wearing hardly anything else at all.

Misch points to a likely peak and shouts above the roar of the wind:

MISCH
: That the North Pole?

NAT
(points to another)
: No, that one.

MISCH
: Which one?

NAT
(pointing to yet another)
: Over there.

Misch turns to look. He gives her a sudden shove from behind. She throws up her arms, fighting for balance and squealing with delicious fright. Recovering, she makes a little rush at him and he totters in his turn. He drops out of sight . . . then bobs up into shot again, waving his arms.

NAT
: Save me! Help!

She studies him coldly for a moment, arms folded. Then she grabs him to her and kisses him, almost violently.

MISCH
: Poor coddy! Nearly fell off the top!
(Then, rapidly losing interest in the kiss, she looks bleakly about)
Think it real? True?

NAT
: What?

MISCH
: All that. Any place look like that? All that white? Crazy. Oh, change it.
(Nat presses a button on the remote-control unit he holds. The background performs a zip pan and they are in space, standing in their near-nudity to look down at the earth from a height of several hundred miles. Misch is immediately bored)
Oh, not this again! This old space thing! Try again!
(Nat presses the button. Another zip-pan and they are staring at the glittering ice-shelf of the Antarctic. Misch is furious)
Not more white! Nat!

NAT
: The way it’s set . . . Hey, look at this!

They are bathed in crimson light. Behind them a volcano is in full, thunderous eruption. Great gobs of molten rock shower everywhere.