Unwelcome Bodies (17 page)

Joseph felt his heart sink into his stomach. “What in the name of God has happened to these people?”

A strange expression settled on María Luisa’s face. “Do you believe in God, Joseph?”

“Of course. With all my heart.”

María Luisa looked out the window. “It’s been a long time since I’ve heard someone say His name. I tried praying when I first got here, but…” She shook her head. “I don’t think He can hear us anymore.”

Joseph grabbed her hands, shocked by his own forwardness. “I don’t think I can do this alone. Please, I beg of you, don’t leave tomorrow. Please stay.”

She smiled sadly and pulled her hands from his grip. “They won’t let me. If I’m not at the transport to the ag-op first thing tomorrow morning, they’ll bring me to it by force.” She rolled her eyes. “Me, a city girl, raising chickens. But at least it’s as far away from these people as I can get.”

“But…” He looked around the strange, bare room with its strange, extruded sofa, and his hands fell limply to his sides. “What am I supposed to do?”

María Luisa rested a soft hand on his knee and said, “Do whatever it takes to survive.”

* * * *

She showed him how to control the furniture and walls in his room, helped him order some appropriately modest clothes, and then left him alone.

Joseph buried his wonderfully smooth face in his wonderfully normal hands and let out a long sigh.

For the first time since he was a tiny boy, he was completely normal. Only he was living in an abnormal world. He’d gone from one world that had no place for him to one that he couldn’t find a place in.

Voluntary freaks? He shuddered.

No, no, he wouldn’t judge them. He couldn’t. Not after all he’d been through. After all, he’d attempted to make a living by exhibiting his deformity, touring Britain with people of all shapes and sizes: bearded ladies, two-ton men, the limbless, the foreign. At least these future bodies were deliberately chosen. At least they could be easily fixed.

And this particular future body
was
magnificent. He wondered just what he could do in it. Did they have sports in this future? Could he go running? Play badminton? Swim?

Could he even find himself a lady friend?

He clapped his hands over his suddenly-warm cheeks, then let himself smile.

Smiling. That was also something he hadn’t been able to do since he was a small boy.

He stood up and said, “Computer, silver wall.”

A warm brown face smiled back at him.

He could get used to being a Negro, given a little time.

And in exchange for this body, he would get used to this future. It seemed a fair enough trade.

* * * *

Dinner was llama curry. Giancarla wrinkled the flat spot where her nose should have been and said, “British food from your period looked so inedible that I decided to make something from a century later. Apparently, Indian food will be all the rage in late twentieth-century London.”

Joseph had to admit, the curry was delicious. And it had been so long since he’d been able to chew normally that he’d forgotten what a simple joy it could be. He wondered how much food this body’s stomach could take, because he wasn’t particularly eager to stop filling it.

Throughout the meal, he did his best to look at Giancarla without flinching, but it was difficult, especially when she opened her massive mouth to put another bite of llama in it. And the room again looked different. The square dining table hadn’t been here earlier. The same went for the thick navy carpet. And the walls were projecting a brilliant view of the night sky, complete with fiery, twinkling stars, which made it feel as though they were eating out of doors. María Luisa had already told him that it wasn’t the actual view, but he didn’t care. It didn’t make the sight any less magnificent.

Giancarla folded the spidery fingers of both sets of her hands together and said, “Well, now I understand why Jean-Pierre asked me to reset his body last week. Oh, the modifications he wore. He was my finest creation.”

Joseph put down his fork. “I thought his father was a surgeon.”

“We prefer to be called sculptors,” Giancarla said. “His father cut him off when he reached adulthood, so he came to me, and I’ve been doing his work ever since.”

Joseph felt a knee brush against his under the table, and widened his eyes at María Luisa, who winked back at him.

“Would you like some body modifications of your own?” Giancarla asked. “I’d be more than happy to run some designs past you.”

María Luisa’s mood abruptly soured, and she silently touched her burn scar under its curtain of hair.

Joseph looked from her to Giancarla, and shook his head. “No thank you. This body is healthy enough.”

“Of course you’re healthy,” she said. “I just wondered if you’d like a different look. I could understand if you wouldn’t want to wear Jean-Pierre’s face.”

“I’ve had surgery before, and I mean no offense to you and your profession, but I would rather not repeat the experience.”

Giancarla raised her eyebrows. At least they still looked like a normal human body part. “You had surgery? I was under the impression that surgery was a frequently lethal proposition back in your day.”

“It was dangerous, yes, but I had no choice. The growth on my mouth—” He gestured, only a moment later realizing that he’d drawn an elephant’s trunk in the air with his fingers. “It had gotten so large that I could barely chew.” He scooped some spicy peas and potatoes onto his fork and delivered them to a mouth that had no such problems. Oh, if only he could sit and eat forever.

“Well, this will be nothing like that. There’s no pain, no recovery time. A simple facial reconstruction can be done in a matter of hours. And you wouldn’t have to look like me.”

He set down his fork and sputtered, “Ma’am, I apologize if I’ve given offense—”

Giancarla laughed, her mammoth mouth opening so wide that he could see partway down her throat. “Please, Joseph, I know what I look like to you. I’m sure you find my modifications just as horrifying as I find the corsetry from your time.” She shuddered, then picked up her wine glass and took a deep gulp. “Just think about it, Joseph. If you’d like to look like someone else, I can do it for you.”

“This is the third face I’ve worn today,” Joseph said. “That’s all the change I can handle for quite some time.”

Giancarla raised her glass and said, “Fair enough.”

He offered to help with the washing up, but she showed him how the table could clean and store the dishes without any human intervention. He wondered what astonishment looked like on his new face. It was such a gift to have an expressive face again.

María Luisa took his hand and led him to his room, limping ever so slightly on her artificial leg. “We just have tonight.”

“Teach me everything.”

She pulled her dress over her head, and he blushed furiously and turned away. “Miss Hidalgo, I—”

She took his hand and placed it on her bare bosom, and he felt his knees weaken. “Please let me do this for you, Joseph. I don’t want your first time to be with one of them.”

“How did you know I’d never—?”

“Because I know how people from our times must have looked at you.”

She pulled his shirt over his head, pressed her bare skin against his, and he was lost.

After, as he lay trembling in her arms, he murmured a quiet prayer of thanks and penance against her skin.

She stroked the back of his head and crooned, “It’s not a sin anymore, Joseph. Nothing is. I don’t think these people even know the meaning of the word.”

He slept with his smooth head tucked in the crook of her sweet, brown neck.

And when he awoke, he was alone.

He stretched his hand across the empty bed, trying to find an indentation in the mattress to prove that he hadn’t just dreamed the previous night.

There was none.

He sat up and looked behind him to see if his own body had left any trace on the mattress.

No. It was as smooth as if it had never been slept on.

He wondered if all of 2304 was this impermanent.

He felt tears welling up behind his eyes and blinked them back. No, there’d been too much crying in his life. This new start wasn’t going to have any more crying.

Across the room, María Luisa had left a final message on the wall. “I’m sorry, Joseph.”

“Don’t be,” he said, and the image faded away.

He’d never understand this future.

But he had to try.

And the first step was getting out of bed. He palmed open the closet, looked at the skimpy offerings inside, and instead put on the previous day’s clothes, which were at least a modicum more modest. He silvered the wall, shook his head at the wild state of his long, curly hair, and ran a fat-toothed comb through it before tying it back with a slim band. Then he slid on his sandals and entered the main room of the apartment—

—where Giancarla was standing at a high table, bare-breasted, and sipping what smelled like coffee. She turned to him with her ear-to-ear smile and said, “Ah, Joseph, you’re awake.”

Joseph tried not to stare at her bosom, failed, and forced himself to look at the floor. “I’m sorry, ma’am, I didn’t realize—”

“Don’t be so prudish,” Giancarla said. “I’m wearing a skirt.”

He peeked up, saw that she was indeed wearing stiff, striped, floor-length skirt, and was grateful that his skin was likely too dark to show the flush that he could feel burning at his cheeks. “I’m not used to this, Mrs. Baratella.”

“Please, my name is Giancarla. If you want to have any hope of fitting in, you’ll have to lose the formality and the antiquated titles.”

He saw a set of bare feet shuffle into the room, and peeked up again to see what appeared to be a young man walk into the room. His face looked like a limestone angel that had spent too many decades out in the rain, his features strangely blurred and softened. All he wore were a pair of tight briefs that were the same shade of brown as the rest of him.

“Ah, my son stirs,” Giancarla said. “Give mother a kiss, LeShawn.”

He ignored her and touched a glowing button on the wall, revealing a cupboard.

Giancarla rolled her eyes. “He’s a committed Do-Nothing. And yes, it’s exactly what it sounds like.”

“The leisure society is corrupt,” LeShawn said, pulling a wrapped bar from the cupboard. “I choose to protest by not participating in society at all.”

“He’ll outgrow it,” Giancarla said. “Joseph, I think your new clothes should be delivered soon. You shouldn’t have let María Luisa help you design them. I’ll bet she talked you into long pants and buttons and other outdated nonsense.”

“I just wanted to look…” He trailed off, realizing he was about to insult his bare-breasted host.

“Decent,” she said, completing his sentence. He looked up again, this time managing to get to her face after only a few seconds lingering on her bosom. “You don’t have to worry about insulting me. You, at least, are doing your best to be polite. I learned many colorful twenty-first century curses from María Luisa the first month we had her.” She took one last sip of her coffee, then said, “I’m sorry, but I have to go to work. LeShawn will take care of you—won’t you, dear?”

LeShawn, who was now eating the bar, wrapper and all, nodded dumbly.

Giancarla waved two of her four hands at Joseph, and breezed out the door.

LeShawn turned his dull gaze to Joseph and asked, “Hungry?”

“Actually, yes, if it’s no trouble.”

He took another wrapped bar out from the cupboard and handed it to Joseph, then pulled a scroll from the back pocket of his improbably tight shorts and handed it over as well. “Here’s a tour guide. You should go see the city. Enjoy your leisure before it consumes you.”

Joseph put down the food bar and unrolled the small, slippery sheet. It lit up, displaying a map of San Antonio. He ran his index finger over the ribbon of blue winding through the middle of it, and the image zoomed in, showing him an animation of the Riverwalk.

“What else does this contraption do?”

“Everything the computer wall does. I’ve set it so its default view is the map.”

“But… You won’t be coming with me?”

LeShawn shrugged. “I’m too busy doing nothing. I’ve got a couple of friends coming over in a bit, and we’re all going to do it together. You’ll understand eventually.”

“Your mother doesn’t seem to approve.”

“My mother doesn’t care.”

“But she’s your mother.”

“She hasn’t cared about me in years. Why do you think she has you?”

Joseph opened his mouth to apologize, but LeShawn waved him off, so instead he stood with his mouth agape as the young man shuffled back out of the room.

He looked at the little map in his hand and took a deep breath. Yes, he could tour the city himself. After all, he’d successfully made his way across the English Channel back when he was a huddling, misshapen wretch, swaddled under a shapeless cloak, peering out at the world from a single eye-hole. Touring San Antonio in this body shouldn’t prove to be a challenge after that.

Looking down at the scroll, he said, “Computer, silver the sheet.”

The face gazing up at him was becoming more and more familiar by the moment.

He picked up his meal and headed back to his room. He prodded at the wrapper, which felt exactly like paper, but he decided to take it on faith that LeShawn wouldn’t have eaten it if it hadn’t been nutritious. So he bit all the way through. The wrapper melted on his tongue into the richest chocolate he’d ever tasted, and moments later, the bar exploded with the taste of berries. Oh, it was spectacular. He’d never tasted anything more lovely. It was these little things that he’d have to remind himself to hold onto in these first chaotic days.

And his closet door was blinking. Did that mean— Yes, he now had modest clothing. He had no idea how it had been transported to his closet, but the less he thought about it, the easier it was to accept. He pulled on a pair of chocolate brown linen pants, a long-sleeved cream-colored shirt, and a pair of soft black shoes.

“Computer, silver the walls.”

Now that was what a gentleman of the future looked like.