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86 GREG BEAR
"But some women choose the wrong men all their lives, not just when they're
young. When the time comes for a man to make his choice, the best men pass
these women by . . . They're tainted. They don't feed a man's self-respect.
I mean, they go to bed with fools and bastards. Where's the prize in them,
knowing that?"
The spike is white-hot now. Alice wants out. "You need to be my protector,"
she says with forced humor.
"Maybe," the man says, and chuckles again.
"You want me to choose men you approve of. You want to share me with your
buddies. That's really generous." Hand me over to your cronies, co/leagues,
and business partners, members of your tribe, for the next round. Maybe your
bosses or superiors, for a little clan elevation. You son of a bitch.
Suddenly, his pattern clicks. She's studied male psychology enough to see the
simple, bold conflicts in this shaded, hidden man. Raised pious New
Federalist, son of the Moral Surge, whose God is power and wealth and stylish
living, whose insides churn with repressed fascination with the basic
functions, the kind of man who likes women who laugh nervously when someone
says pee-pee. Puppy of the twisted social order.
Alice stands. "I need to clean up."
The man rises on one elbow. "Do you wipe it off... Or do you just flush it?"
"I don't worship it, if that's what you mean."
"So much effort, so little result," he murmurs.
Alice flinches. Her thought in his mouth.
"Restart, reboot, improve our lot. I thought we'd never get anywhere without
that." He is babbling. She cannot see his expression but his voice is taut and
the next words are spoken with a painful edge. "It's done. No one can help me,
I certainly can't help myself. Mea culpa, Alice. Mea maxima culpa. You are the
lamb. Everybody like you has to suffer. I apologize for all that's going to
happen. I suppose it has to, but I wish I understood."
Alice blinks rapidly, genuinely frightened. She steps back three paces,
mumbles some excuse, and lets a few blinking lights along the floor guide her
to the bathroom.
In the bathroom, she locks the door and cleans herself, sits on the toilet,
relieves the painful nervous pressure, wishes she could piss out the entire
evening.
The bidet warmly rinses her and applies a subtle florid perfume that she does
not like. Using a large plush charcoal gray towel, she stands and wipes
herself again and again until her thighs and labia are pink.
The toilet says, "Excuse me, but you show signs of an infection of unknown
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character, perhaps centered in your nasal passages or bronchial tubes. You
should refer to your physician for more detailed tests."
Alice stares at the toilet's hard snail curl, the marble pallor, its lips an
oval of observant surprise. "What?" she asks, stunned.
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SLANT 87
The toilet repeats this appraisal of her discharged fluids.
"Maybe it's him," she says.
"Analysis is of your urine."
She has never heard such words from a toilet. All diseases are known, nearly
all easily treatable, mutations predicted, ranked and evaluated worldwide
within days, tailored monitors and phage hunters sent after microbial
intruders...
She has never in her life been infected by a venereal disease, or any other.
"That's stupid," she tells the toilet. She wraps herself in her garment and
opens the door.
"Thank you," the male says from the bed. He has put on a robe and tied it
shut.
She looks longingly down the hallway and beyond the prints of men forcing
treaties on their defeated and dejected inferiors.
"Please listen to me," he says. "You'll have to leave soon. I have another
appointment in a few minutes." He pulls up the sleeve of his robe. "They have
a long plan. I'm a part of it. Watching our belly buttons until all the rabble
pass away and we take our rightful place. It's very secret. You're so
beautiful, and so unlike my wife. It was a pleasure to meet you. I don't think
it was pleasant for you. You deserve better."
She takes one last look at the blur, applies the last few seams of her
garment, and crooks her lips into a spasmodic smile.
None of this means anything. Let it end on a purely professional note. "You're
welcome," she says.
'I'll credit the agency account as soon as you leave," the male says.
"You've already been billed," she says. It's a weak rejoinder.
In the hall beside the lift, she taps her foot impatiently. The lift door
opens and she is surprised to encounter a powerful, stocky man and a tall,
elegant looking woman with mahogany skin, both Seattle PD. She nods to their
greeting, stands aside to let them pass, and then enters the lift. The woman
looks over her shoulder at Alice, dark green eyes steady and appraising. Alice
shudders.
The woman's face is like a beautiful mask through which imperfections are
beginning to emerge, making her even more striking. She's a transform--her
skin is too perfect and polished.
The door slides silently shut. Alice holds the steel rail with one hand,
stares at her manicured fingers, the wrinkled knuckles, the finely textured
skin stretched over the tendons on the back of her hand. She does not believe
in
God, she is not pious, she believes in self-honesty, in seeing what is before
your eyes, but she has no idea what it is she has just seen, what she has just
experienced.
And why the PD?
A buzzing between her ears, quiet inner conversation below comprehension...
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88
GREG BEAR
The limo waits for her and the door opens. She flops into the warm interior
and shuts her eyes. Cows lowing in terror, knives being sharpened. She opens
her eyes with a little moan to escape the scouring sensation.
"God damn it," she cries after the door has closed. "God damn you, Lisa!"
She fumbles for her pad, pulls it from its pouch, keys in her account codes.
The transaction has already been made. She is seventy-four thousand one
hundred and fifteen dollars and thirty-seven cents richer. A little short. The
number in the income column flashes red, and then green; transfer confirmed
and locked.
Alice smoothes her ragged breath and slowly pieces her calm back together.
"Hooker, or girlfriend?" Nussbaum asks in an undertone. Terence Crest's unit
is the largest in the building, which has four other tenants--
"They're not called hookers now, sir," Mary says. She has seen the woman's
face before, but can't place where.
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