Age Of The Pussyfoot Part 4

"Anyway," he said, "Hara had some records. She lived nearly fifty more years, died in her eighties of the third ma.s.sive stroke. She'd been partly paralyzed for some time." He shook his head, trying to visualize small, blonde Dorothy as an ancient, bedridden beldame.

"Had enough?" asked Adne.

He came back to present time, faintly startled. "Dinner? Why, I guess so. It was delicious." She did something that caused the table to retract itself and stood up. "Come over here and have your coffee. I ordered it specially for you. Would you like some music?"

He started to say, "Not particularly," but she had already turned on some remote recording equipment. He paused to listen, braced for almost anything, with visions of Bartok and musique concrete. But it turned out to be something very like violins, playing something very like detached, introspective Tchaikovsky.

She sank back against him and she was very warm and fragrant. "We'll have to find you a place to live," she said.

He put his arm around her.

"This is a condominium building," she said thoughtfully, "but I think there might be something. Do you have any preferences?"

"I don't know enough to have preferences." He caressed her soft hair.

She said drowsily, "That's nice." And in the same tone, a moment later, "But I think I should warn you I'm natural-flow. And this is about M day minus four, so all I want is to be cuddled." She yawned and touched her mouth with her hand. "Oh! Excuse me."

Then she caught a glimpse of his face. "You don't mind, do you?" she asked, sitting up. "I mean, I could take a pill-Charles, why are you that color?"

"Nothing. Nothing at all."

She said apologetically, "I'm sorry, but I don't know much about kamikaze ways. If there's a ritual taboo . . . I'm sorry."

"No taboo. Just a misunderstanding." He picked up his gla.s.s and held it out to her. "Any more of this stuff around?"

"Charles dear," she said, stretching, "there's all you want. And I have an idea."

"Shoot."

"I'm going to find you a place to live!" she cried. "You just stay here. Order what you want." She touched something that he could not see and added, "If you don't know how, the children will show you while they're keeping you company."

What had seemed to be a floor-length mural opened itself and became a doorway. Forrester found himself looking into a bright, gay room where two small children were racing each other around a sort of climbable maze.

"We ate our dinner, Mim," cried one of them, then saw Forrester and nudged the other. The two looked at him with calm appraisal.

"You don't mind this, either, do you, Charles dear?" Adne asked. "That's another thing about being a natural-flow."

There were two of them, a boy and a girl, about seven and five, Forrester guessed. They accepted him without question. . . .

Or not exactly that, thought Forrester ruefully. There were questions.

"Charles! Did people really smell bad in the old days?"

"Oh, Charles! You rode in automobiles?"

"When the little children had to work in the coal mines, Charles, didn't they get anything to eat?"

"But what did they play with, Charles? Dolls that didn't talk?"

He tried his best to answer. "Well, the child-labor time was over when I lived, or almost. And dolls did talk, sort of. Not very intelligently-"

"When did you live, Charles?"

"I was burned to death in 1969-"

The little girl shrieked, "For witchcraft?"

"Oh, no. No, that was hundreds of years earlier, too." Charles tried not to laugh. "You see, houses used to catch on fire in those days-"

"The Shoggo fire!" shouted the boy. "Mrs. Leary's cow and the earthquake!"

"Well-something like that. Anyway, there were men whose job it was to put the fires out, and I was one of them. Only then I got caught and died there."

"Mim drowned once," the little girl bragged. "We haven't died at all."

"You were sick once, though," said the boy seriously. "You could have died. I heard Mim talking to the medoc."

Forrester said, "Are you children in school?"

They looked at him, then at each other.

"I mean, are you old enough to start lessons?"

The boy said, "Well, sure, Charles. Tunt ought to be doing hers right now, as a matter of fact."

"So should you! Mim said-"

"We have to be polite to the guest, Tunt!" The boy said to Charles, "Is there anything we can get you? Something to eat? Drink? Watch a program? s.e.x-stim? Although I guess you ought to know," he said apologetically, "that Mim's natural-flow and-"

"Yes, yes, I know about that," Forrester said hastily, and thought, Sweet G.o.d!

But when in Rome, he thought, it was what the Romans did that counted, and he resolved to do his best. He resolved it earnestly.

It was like being at a party. You got there at ten o'clock, with your collar too tight, and a little grouchy at being rushed and your starched shirt front still damp where the kids had splashed it as you supervised their bedtime tooth-brushing. And your host was old Sam, who'd been such a drag; and his wife Myra was in one of her nouveau-riche moods, showing off the new dishwasher; and the conversation started out about politics, which was Sam's most offensive side. . . .

But then you had the second drink. And then the third. Faces grew brighter. You began to feel more at ease. The whole bunch laughed at one of your jokes. The music on the stack of records changed to something you could dance to. You began to catch the rhythm of the party. . . .

Oh, I'll try, vowed Forrester, joining the children in a sort of board game played against their own joymakers. I'll catch the mood of this age if it kills me. Again.

Six.

Up betimes, and set out to conquer a world. The home that Adne found for him was fascinating-walls that made closets as he needed them, windows that were not windows but something like television screens-but Forrester resolutely spent no time exploring its marvels. After a disturbed night's sleep he was up and out, testing his new world and learning to cope with it. The children were marvelous. He begged the loan of them from Adne, and they were his guides. They took him to the offices of the Nineteenth Chromatic Trust, where a portly old Ebenezer Scrooge gravely examined Forrester's check, painstakingly showed him how to draw against it, severely supervised his signing the necessary doc.u.ments to open an account, and only at the end revealed himself by saying, "Man Forrester, good day." They took him to a t.i.tanian restaurant for lunch, a lark for them, but for him a shattering test of nerve, since the t.i.tanians ate only live food, and he was barely able to cope with an aspic that writhed and rustled in his spoon. They showed him their playschool, where for three hours a week they competed and plotted with their peers (their lessons were learned at home, via their child-modified joymakers), and Forrester found himself playing London Bridge Is Falling Down with fourteen children and one other adult, symbolically acting out the ritual murder and entombment in the bridge's foundations that the nursery rhyme celebrated. They took him to where the poor people lived, with half-fearful giggles and injunctions against speaking to anyone, and Forrester found himself out of pocket change, having given it all away to pale, mumbling creatures with hard-luck stories about Sol-burn on Mercury and freezer insurance firms that had gone bankrupt. They took him to a park-indoors, underground-where the landscaping was topologically grotesque and a purling stream flowed through a hill's base and up the other side, and where ducks and frogs and a feathery sort of Venusian fish ate morsels of food the children tossed them. They took him to a museum where animated, enlarged cells underwent mitosis with a plop like a cow lifting her foot from a bog, and a re-created Tyrannosaurus rex coughed and barked and thumped its feet clangorously, its orange eyes glaring straight at Forrester. They showed him all their treasures and pleasures. But they did not show him a factory, or an office building, or a store of any size. For it did not seem that any of these existed any more. They showed him all around Shoggo until their joymakers chided them, and Forrester's own said severely, "Man Forrester! The children must be returned for their naps. And you really must receive your messages."

The children looked at him with woe. "Ah, well," said Forrester, "we'll do it again another day. How do we get home from here?"

"A cab," said the girl doubtfully, but the boy shouted, "Walk! We can walk! I know where we are-ten minutes will do it. Ask your joymaker if you don't believe me."

"I believe you," said Forrester.

"Then this way, Charles. Come on, Tunt." And the boy led off between two towering buildings on the margin of a gra.s.sy strip, where huge hovercraft swished by at enormous speeds.

The joymaker complained, "Man Forrester, I have dichotomous instructions. Please resolve them."

"Oh, G.o.d," said Forrester, tired and irritable. "What's your trouble now?"

"You have instructed me to hold messages, but I have several that are high priority and urgent. Please reaffirm holding order, stipulating a time limit if possible, or receive them now."

The boy giggled. "You know why, Charles?" he demanded. "It tickles them when they're holding messages. It's like if you have to go to the bathroom."

The joymaker said, "The a.n.a.logue is inexact, Man Forrester. However, please allow me to discharge my message load."

Forrester sighed and prepared to contemplate reality again. But something distracted him.

Besides the steady whush, whush of the pa.s.sing hovercraft, besides the distant chant of a choir-they were pa.s.sing some sort of church-there was another sound. Forrester looked up.

A faint tweeting sound of communications equipment was coming from a white aircraft, gla.s.s-fronted, hanging overhead. It bore the shining ruby caduceus, and behind the gla.s.s a dark-skinned man in blue was regarding Forrester gravely.

Forrester swallowed.

"Joymaker," he demanded. "is that a death-reversal vehicle overhead?"

"Yes, Man Forrester."

"Does that mean-" He cleared his throat. "Does that mean that crazy Martian is after me again?"

"Man Forrester," said the joymaker primly, "among your urgent priority messages is a legal notice. The twenty-four-hour hold period having expired, and appropriate notices and action having been filed and taken, the man Heinzlichen Jura de-"

"Cut it out! Is he after me?"

"Man Forrester," said the joymaker, "yes. As of seventeen minutes ago, the hold period having expired then, he is."

At least the crazy Martian wasn't in sight, thought Forrester, scanning the few visible pedestrians. But the presence of the death-reversal aircraft was a poor omen.

"Kids," he said, "we got troubles. I'm being chased."

"Oh, Charles!" breathed the boy, fascinated. "Will you get killed?"

"Not if I can help it. Look. Do you know any short cuts from here? Any secret ways-through cellars, over rooftops-you know."

The boy looked at the girl. The girl's eyes got very big.

"Tunt," she whispered, "Charles wants to hide."

"That's it," said Forrester. "What about it, son? You must know some special way. Any kid would."

The boy said, "Charles. I know a way, all right. But are you sure-"

"I'm sure, I'm sure!" snapped Charles Forrester. "Come on! Where?"

The boy surrendered. "Follow me. You too, Tunt." They turned and dived into one of the buildings. Forrester took a last look around for Heinzlichen whatever-his-name-was. He was not in sight. Only the hovercraft thrumming past, and the few uncaring pedestrians . . . and overhead the man in blue in the death-reversal vehicle, staring down at him, his expression both surprised and angry.

When he was safely back in the condominium building, the children returned to their own home to await the arrival of their mother, Forrester hurried to his apartment, closed the door, and locked it.

"Joymaker," he said, "you were right. I admit it. So now let's have all those messages. And take it slow, so I can understand what they're about."

The joymaker said serenely, "Man Forrester, your messages follow. Vincenzo d'Angostura states that he is still available for legal representation, but will not call again under Bar a.s.sociation rules. Taiko Hironibi feels there was some misunderstanding and would like to discuss it with you. Adne Bensen sends you an embrace. A doc.u.ment package is in your receiving chute. Will you receive the embrace?"

"Hold it a minute. Gives me something to look forward to. Is any of the other stuff important?"

"As to that, Man Forrester, I have no parameters."

"You're a big help," said Forrester bitterly. "Get me a drink while I'm thinking. Uh, gin and tonic." He waited for it to appear and took a long pull.

His nerves began to feel less like tangled barbed wire. "All right," he said. "Now, what was that about a package?"

"You have a doc.u.ment package in your receiving chute, Man Forrester. Envelope. Approximately nine centimeters by twenty-five centimeters, less than one half centimeter in thickness, weighing approximately eleven grams. Inscription: 'Mr. Charles Dalgleish Forrester, Social Security Number 145-10-3088, last address while living 252 Dulcimer Drive, Evanston, Illinois. Died of burns received 16 October 1969. To be delivered upon revival.' Contents unknown."

"Hum. Is that all its says?"

"No, Man Forrester. There are machine-script handling instructions on the doc.u.ment. I will phonemize them as closely as possible: 'Sigma triphase ooty-poot trip toe, baker tare sugar aleph, paraphase-' "

"Yeah, well, that's enough of that. I mean, is there anything in English? Anything I could understand?"

"No, Man Forrester. Faint carbonization marks are visible where the envelope has been creased. There are several minor discolorations, which may represent latent human skinprints. At some time a mild corrosive liquid was spilled-"

"Say, joymaker," said Forrester, "I've got an idea. Why don't I open it up? Where'd you say it was?"

Retrieved from his receiving chute, the envelope turned out to be a letter from his wife.

He stared at it and felt something tingling in the corners of his eyes. The handwriting was very strange to him. The signature was "Still with affection, Dorothy" . . . but the hand that had formed those letters scrawled and shook. She had even abandoned her little finishing-school affectations of penmanship, the open-circle dots over the i 's, the flowing crosses on the t 's. He could read it only with difficulty.

Dear Charles, This is, I think, the tenth or eleventh time I have written this letter to you. I seem to do it every time there is a death or bad news, as though the only gossip I have that is worth the effort to pa.s.s on for what may be another century-or more!-is that which has to do with troubles. Not your troubles, of course. Not any more. Usually the troubles are mine.

Although I must say that really my life has not been a burden to me. I remember that you made me happy, Charles. I must tell you that I missed you terribly. But I must also tell you that I got over it.

To begin with: You will want to know what you died of, I know, and perhaps the people who bring you back to life will not be able to tell you. (I am a.s.suming that you will be brought back to life. I didn't believe it at the time-but since then I've seen it happen.) You were burned to death in a house fire on Christie Street on October 16th, 1969. Dr. Ten Eyck, who was with the first aid squad, p.r.o.nounced you dead and, with some difficulty, persuaded them to use their death-reversal equipment to freeze you. There was some trouble about lacking glycerol for perfusion, but the whole fire company, you will be glad to know, dug into their liquor closets and came up with several bottles of bourbon . . .and it was that which was used as a buffer. (If you woke up with a hangover, you now know why!) There was some question as to whether too much time had elapsed, too. They thought you might have spoiled during the discussion, you see. But as it was cold weather for October they decided to take a chance, and you were ultimately consigned to a freeze-dormer at liquid helium temperatures. Where, as I write this, you now lie. . .and where, or in one like it, I expect to be myself before long.

I should tell you that I didn't pay for any of this. Your fire company insurance, it turned out, was adequate to cover all the costs and was in fact earmarked for that purpose. If it had been up to me I don't think I would have gone to the expense, Charles, because after all there were the children to bring up.

What can I tell you about them? They missed you very much.

Vance, in particular, played truant from school for the best part of a month, forging notes to his teacher, persuading some adult- I suspected our cleaning woman at the time-to phone the princ.i.p.al to explain his absence, before I found out about it. But then he joined a Boy Scout troop and, as they say, developed other interests.