Part 7 (1/2)
”I'm in trouble,” he said. It was blatantly irrational for him to tell her this, since she had no recollection of any sort of him. But over the years he had become accustomed to laying his troubles before her--and listening to hers--and the habit had not died. The habit ignored what he saw the reality situation to be: it cruised on under its own power.
”That's a shame,” Heather said.
Jason said, ”n.o.body remembers me. And I have no birth certificate; I was never born, never even born! So naturally I have no ID cards except a forged set I bought from a pol fink for two thousand dollars plus one thousand for my contact. I'm carrying them around, but, G.o.d: they may have microtransmitters built into them. Even knowing that I have to keep them on me; you know why--even you up at the top, even you know how this society works. Yesterday I had thirty million viewers who would have shrieked their aggrieved heads off if a pol or a nat so much as touched me. Now I'm looking into the eyes of an FLC.”
”What's an FLC?”
”Forced-labor camp.” He snarled the words at her, trying to pin her down and finally nail her. ”The vicious little b.i.t.c.h who forged my papers made me take her out to some G.o.dforsaken broken-down wop restaurant, and while we were there, just talking, she threw herself down on the floor screaming. Psychotic screaming; she's an escapee from Morningside, by her own admission. That cost me another three hundred dollars and by now who knows? She's probably sicced the pols and nats _both_ on me.” Pus.h.i.+ng his self-pity gingerly a little further, he said, ”They're probably monitoring this phone line right now.”
”Oh, Christ, no!” Heather shrieked and again hung up.
He had no more gold quinques. So, at this point, he gave up. That was a stupid thing to say, he realized, that about the phone lines. That would make anybody hang up. I strangled myself in my own word web, right down the old freeber. Straight down the middle. Beautifully flat at both ends, too. Like a great artificial a.n.u.s.
He shoved the door of the phone booth aside and stepped out onto the busy nocturnal sidewalk. . . down here, he thought acidly, in Slumsville. Down where the pol finks hang out. Jolly good show, as that cla.s.sic TV m.u.f.fin ad went that we studied in school, he said to himself.
It would be funny, he thought, if it were happening to someone else. But it's happening to me. No, it's not funny either way. Because there is real suffering and real death pa.s.sing the time of day in the wings. Ready to come on any minute.
I wish I could have taped the phone call, plus everything Kathy said to me and me to her. In 3-D color, on videotape it would be a nice bit on my show, somewhere near the end where we run out of material occasionally. Occasionally, h.e.l.l: generally. Always. For the rest of my life.
He could hear his intro now. ”What can happen to a man, a good man without a pol record, a man who suddenly one day loses his ID cards and finds himself facing . . .” And so forth. It would hold them, all thirty million of them. Because that was what each of them feared. ”An invisible man,” his intro would go, ”yet a man all too conspicuous. Invisible legally; conspicuous illegally. What becomes of such a man, if he cannot replace . . .” Blah blah. On and on. The h.e.l.l with it. Not everything that he did or said or had happen to him got onto the show; so it went with this. Another loser, among many. Many are called, he said to himself, but few are chosen. That's what it means to be a pro. That's how I manage things, public and private. Cut your losses and run when you have to, he told himself, quoting himself from back in the good days when his first full worldwide show got piped onto the satellite grid.
I'll find another forger, he decided, one that isn't a pol informer, and get a full new set of ID cards, ones without microtransmitters. And then, evidently, I need a gun.
I should have thought of that about the time I woke up in that hotel room, he said to himself. Once, years ago, when the Reynolds syndicate had tried to buy into his show, he had learned to use--and had carried--a gun: a Barber's Hoop with a range of two miles with no loss of peak trajectory until the final thousand feet.
Kathy's ”mystical trance,” her screaming fit. The audio portion would carry a mature male voice saying against her screams as BG, ”This is what it is to be psychotic. To be psychotic is to suffer, suffer beyond . . .” And so forth. Blah blah. He inhaled a great, deep lungful of cold night air, shuddered, joined the pa.s.sengers on the sea of sidewalk, his hands thrust deep into his trouser pockets.
And found himself facing a queue lined up ten deep before a pol random checkpoint. One gray-clad policeman stood at the end of the line, loitering there to make sure no one doubled back in the opposite direction.
”Can't you pa.s.s it, friend?” the pol said to him as he involuntarily started to leave.
”Sure,” Jason said.
”That's good,” the pol said good-humoredly. ”Because we've been checking here since eight this morning and we still don't have our work quota.”
6
Two husky gray pols, confronting the man ahead of Jason, said in unison, ”These were forged an hour ago; they're still damp. See? See the ink run under the heat? Okay.” They nodded, and the man, gripped by four thungly pols, disappeared into a parked van-quibble, ominously gray and black: police colors.
”Okay,” one of the husky pols said genially to Jason, ”let's see when yours were printed.”
Jason said, ”I've been carrying these for years.” He handed his wallet, with the seven ID cards, to the pols.
”Graph his signatures,” the senior pol told his companion. ”See if they superimpose.”
Kathy had been right.
”Nope,” the junior pol said, putting away his official camera. ”They don't super. But it looks like this one, the military service chit, had a trans dot on it that's been sc.r.a.ped off. Very expertly, too, if so. You have to view it through the gla.s.s.” He swung the portable magnifying lens and light over, illuminating Jason's forged cards in stark white detail. ”See?”
”When you left the service,” the senior pol said to Jason, ”did this record have an electronic dot on it? Do you remember?” Both of them scrutinized Jason as they awaited his response.
What the h.e.l.l to say? he asked himself. ”I don't know,” he said. ”I don't even know what a”--he started to say, ”microtransmitter dot,” but quickly corrected himself--soon enough, he hoped--”what an electronic dot looks like.”
”It's a dot, mister,” the junior pol informed him. ”Aren't yqu listening? Are you on drugs? Look; on his drug-status card there isn't an entry for the last year.”
One of the thungly pols spoke up. ”Proves they're not faked, though, because who would fake a felony onto an ID card? They'd have to be out of their minds.”
”Yes,” Jason said.
”Well, it's not part of our area,” the senior pol said. He handed Jason's ID cards back to him. ”He'll have to take it up with his drug inspector. Move on.” With his nightstick the pol shoved Jason out of the way, reaching meanwhile for the ID cards of the man behind him.
”That's it?” Jason said to the thungly pols. He could not believe it. Don't let it show, he said to himself. Just move on!
He did so.
From the shadows beneath a broken streetlight, Kathy reached out, touched him; he froze at the touch, feeling himself turn to ice, starting with his heart. ”What do you think of me now?” Kathy said. ”My work, what I did for you.”
”They did it,” he said shortly.
”I'm not going to turn you in,” Kathy said, ”even though you insulted and abandoned me. But you have to stay with me tonight like you promised. You understand?”
He had to admire her. By lurking around the random checkpoint she had obtained firsthand proof that her forged doc.u.ments had been well enough done to get him past the pols. So all at once the situation between them had altered: he was now in her debt. He no longer held the status of aggrieved victim.
Now she owned a moral share of him. First the stick: the threat of turning him in to the pols. Then the carrot: the adequately forged ID cards. The girl had him, really. He had to admit it, to her and to himself.
”I could have gotten you through anyhow,” Kathy said. She held up her right arm, pointing to a section of her sleeve. ”I've got a gray pol-ident tab, there; it shows up under their macrolens. So I don't get picked up by mistake. I would have said--”
”Let it lie there,” he broke in harshly. ”I don't want to hear about it.” He walked away from her; the girl skimmed after him, like a skillful bird.
”Want to go back to my Minor Apartment?” Kathy asked.
”That G.o.dd.a.m.n shabby room.” I have a floating house in Malibu, he thought, with eight bedrooms, six rotating baths and a four-dimensional living room with an infinity ceiling. And, because of something I don't understand and can't control, I have to spend my time like this. Visiting run-down marginal places. c.r.a.ppy eateries, c.r.a.ppier workshops, c.r.a.ppiest one-room lodgings. Am I being paid back for something I did? he asked himself. Something I don't know about or remember? But n.o.body pays back, he reflected. I learned that a long time ago: you're not paid back for the bad you do nor the good you do. It all comes out uneven at the end. Haven't I learned that by now, if I've learned anything?
”Guess what's at the top of my shopping list for tomorrow,” Kathy was saying. ”Dead flies. Do you know why?”
”They're high in protein.”
”Yes, but that's not why; I'm not getting them for myself. I buy a bag of them every week for Bill, my turtle.”
”I didn't see any turtle.”
”At my Major Apartment. You didn't really think I'd buy dead flies for myself, did you?”
”_De gustibus non disputandum est_,” he quoted.