Futureland. Part 5

5.

The celebrations that followed the Konkon fight were spontaneous. It wasn't a championship fight. The Fijian was only ranked eighth in the world. But there was something about Fera's heart and about her man, Pell. Everyone watching the fight knew how much he loved her. They saw how deeply his pa.s.sions went.

THE MAN BEHIND THE WOMAN, the cover of Sports Ill.u.s.trated announced, displaying the photograph of Pell's contorted face between rounds at the Konkon fight. Sixty Minutes did a fifteen-minute piece on the vulnerability and valor of her drug addict father and Backgrounder friend, Pell. Fera was being asked to speak at political fund-raisers and feminist luncheons around the world.

"But what do I have to say to these women?" Fera asked Selma Ho, publicist for the Green Party and SepFem sympathizer.

"You don't have to say anything, dear."

"Why invite me if they don't want me to say anything?"

"People talk to explain things, to prove a point. You are the proof, M Jones."

Lana Lordess, governor of Ma.s.sachusetts, head of the vote-strong FemLeague, came to visit Fera at the Fifth Business three days before the Zeletski fight.

"It would be better if we talked alone," Governor Lordess said as she sat on the overstuffed couch. Pell sat on the edge of the stone fireplace. Leon reclined in his portable electric chair, shocks jolting his thin frame every forty-three seconds. It was one of many therapies he was to try in order to stave off the collapse of his brain.

"This is my family," Fera said.

Lana Lordess was only five foot four, but her presence was large. Even if Fera had not seen pictures of Lordess on the news every night, even if the FemLeague wasn't the third largest party in the Congress, even if Lana had not personally led a march of ten million women in Washington, D.C., even if Fera had never heard of this small, overall-wearing woman, she would have still felt the power of those eyes.

Leon's shoulders jerked.

Pell stared at the floor.

"I don't discuss woman-business in the presence of men without having my lawyers present," Lana said.

"Then get the f.u.c.k out," Fera replied.

Lordess's security guards both stiffened. They were big women with chemically enhanced muscles. Fera knew the black one from the ring.

"Watch yourself," the black guard said.

"While I do I suggest that you count your teeth."

Pell snorted out a laugh.

A shock went through Leon. His head twisted and shook.

"I don't want to fight," Lordess said, reaching out with both hands.

"No, you don't," Fera a.s.sured her.

"Can we have a word?" Lana asked.

"My father always taught me to make my presence known from the first second I'm in the ring," Fera Jones said. "If you lose the first few seconds, he always says, then the fight is lost until you make up ground."

"I come here as a friend."

"You came here 'cause I won fights against men."

"That makes us allies."

"I never saw you out there with me. I never saw you when me an' Daddy were poor and down."

"But I'm here now."

"I'll tell you what," Fera offered. "You send the girl guards out in the hall, and I'll ask Daddy and Pell if they'll wait in the kitchen."

"As leader of the FemLeague I am bound to defend myself from harm. I cannot be left unprotected."

"Then there's no more to say," Fera said firmly.

Lana Lordess rapped her knuckles upon a denim knee, her dark eyes staring straight into those of the boxer. But Fera Jones was not worried. She'd stared down men who had threatened to beat her to death in the ring. They had tried and failed.

"The FemLeague wants you for our pinup girl." Lordess fell right into the discussion when she realized that she could not expel the men. "Women all over the world adore you. Your heart and spirit and strength are examples for all of us. Millions of women on the line between their false male consciousness and their true self-interests will flock to you. Join our party and you join a real fight, the fight for true equality and for sanity. We will stem the corporations, we will end the senseless starvation, we will stop the insane militias. Your help, just yours, Fera, will make the difference for the future of womanhood."

Fera had heard the same words, except for her name, on the vid three weeks before. They were even more moving in person. She believed in woman power. She wanted the world to be different.

"Will men have a political voice in your new world?" Fera asked.

"All qualified citizens will have their say over the condition of the nation," Lordess answered. "Honest, hardworking citizens will be our guiding members."

"I'll think about it," Fera said.

"We must strike now, sister. Now, just before your greatest trial. Join us and then defeat Zeletski, your words will be diamond."

"I said I'll think about it."

"Can I call on you tomorrow, then?"

"I'm in training, M Lordess. Talking distracts me. I need to concentrate on the fight."

"But we need an answer. Is there nothing I can say?"

"No." Fera had a dim notion of what she should do. But the idea was still totally submerged, rising only slowly, like a slumbering whale from the darkness of the deep.

"What if I could tell you the truth about your mother?"

"Ungh!" Leon Jones grunted. His head flailed back and a foot lashed out.

Fera and Pell ran to his side.

"We'll have to talk later," she said to the governor. "My father is going through deep neuronal therapy."

"Hear me out," Lana said.

"Leave," said Fera, a threat and a command.

6.

". . . I never told you about her because it hurt me too much," Leon was saying. "She was just about seventeen when she came into my adult school intro to history cla.s.s. She looked all crazy. Eyes different-color browns, skin just a touch'a green under eggsh.e.l.l tan. Little and weakly, sharp as a pin. She came to every cla.s.s like she was burnin' to know something, who knew what?" A shock went through Leon, and he bit his lip. "Whenever I tried to talk to her, to get to know what she was about, she'd shy away. If she hadn't had to sign up I wouldn't have known that her name was Nosa an Letona."

"Nosa an Letona," Fera mouthed.

"I told the cla.s.s on the first day that each and every one had to come to my office to defend their final paper. I told them that without that they couldn't get credit." Fera dabbed her father's b.l.o.o.d.y lip with a fiber napkin. The next shock made his hands jump. "I didn't think I'd see her even for a pa.s.sing grade, but she showed up. Her paper was full'a Fem-Lib stuff. How women were the first citizens and how men tricked them over and over again. She talked about genetic plots and the purpose of gender. When I asked her how old she was she said she didn't know."

"She must'a known near about," Pell said. "Even White Noise kids know near about." White Noise kids, the children of unemployable Backgrounders, lived under the city, in Common Ground. Without taxpaying parents they could get no education and lived by their wits.

"She said that she didn't remember being a child. All she knew was an all-girl orphanage. When I asked her did she run away she said that she was there to talk about the paper. I told her that it was very well written and that I liked how clear her ideas were and how strong the language was. She asked did I agree with her ideas and I told her that n.o.body knows history--"

"--because history doesn't really exist except in the leaky jars of our heads," Fera said, finishing the words that she had heard from childhood.

Leon grinned at her memory and then grimaced from an electric shock.

"When I said that, she blinked, blinked like she had just seen something that she had never suspected was there. After a minute she crawled into my lap and put her arms around my neck. That's when I realized that she was hot. Not s.e.x, but her body temperature was way up there. I thought she was sick but she said that that was normal for her. I'm ashamed for what I felt for that child but I refuse to be sorry. I asked her where she lived and she said in a hole that she dug under a bridge just outside of the town. A hole in the dirt. I took her to my house. What else could I do? I didn't mean to do anything. She was a child. She needed to be held, wanted it. I held her and held myself back at the same time. We never stopped touching for the next few days. If I let her go she got nervous and shaky. We ate side by side and even went to the bathroom together. It wasn't like s.e.x. It wasn't s.e.x at all. It was more like puppies or kittens all on top of each other all of the time.

"I missed my cla.s.ses. We ate outta plastic cans. Finally I told her that she needed more clothes and that I would buy her some, but she told me that she had another dress in a shelter she had built just outside town. I drove her out there. I remember it so well because I was miserable in that car. That young thing reached out to my heart and I was helpless.

"I was wrong. I crossed the line into unemployment and lawlessness and I didn't even remember making a decision.

"The hole had been torn up pretty bad but only one thing was gone."

"Maybe it was an animal," Pell argued.

"But there wasn't an animal mess, and the only thing missing was her record book from the orphanage. Someone who didn't want her records to be public had gone in there. If she hadn't been at my house they might have taken her too."

"RadFems?" Fera asked.

"I never knew and neither did Nosa." The hunching of his shoulders was deepened by a therapeutic shock. "All she knew were the sisters and a book full of charts and graphs that she was supposed to keep with her at all times.

"She was so scared that it infected me. She said that some of the other girls had disappeared. Nosa said that when her friend t.i.tania had gone missing she decided to go out in the world and look for her. The teachers had taught them that the world was an evil place and that if a girlchild was lost out there the man-demons would destroy them. Men would break them open and bleed poisons into their guts. Then they would torture them with slavery, brutality, and brainwashing. The sisters told them that a girl tainted by the world would have to be put to sleep in order for another girl to come alive. She said that a few girls had disappeared and that they were always replaced by somebody new."

"What did you do?" asked Fera.

"Well that was twenty-one years ago, but even then the government of Ma.s.sachusetts, especially out in the west, was dominated by the FemLeague. I didn't know what to think and so I drove us to New York City. I cashed all my accounts and drove away from every bit of security I had ever known. I was forty then and it was the dumbest thing by far I had ever done. I had an ex-wife. I had a family. But I left all that behind. We were married. Nosa had you and then she died."

"What did she die of?"

"The doctors thought it was natural causes. You see, Nosa was the product of genetic tinkering. She was grown in a laboratory."

"But the doctors who tested me said that I was normal," Fera protested.

"You are. One generation down and being coupled with natural DNA and you're fine. Better than fine. You're the most perfect woman in the world. You're my girl." A long thrumming shock went through Leon then, but he never lost his smile or his eye contact with the strongest woman in the world.

7.

"My sources tell me that you are due to get ten billion dollars from tomorrow night's fight," Allison Laurie told Fera Jones.

Fera heard the words and understood them but there were too many other things on her mind.

"You know that I represent Randac Corporation. We aren't the largest company in the world, but on the island of Madagascar we're the big dog. We have five seats in the parliament and a place on the prime minister's advisory cabinet."

"So? Good for you."

Pell sat nervously at Fera's side. He had begged her to take this meeting even though she was due to fight Zeletski in less than six hours.

"Of course you've heard of our theme park."

"Uh-huh. Luna Land. Pipi and I wanna go one day."

"If I can get you to say that to the cameras after you win the fight tonight, we will give you another ten billion dollars."

Even the haunted images of her mother from the three small photographs that Leon had kept dimmed slightly at the mention of so much money.

"Ten billion?"

"Paid in Madagascar, where there are no personal income taxes."

"Why? I mean how can you? I mean . . ."

"It's advertising, Fera," Pell said. "Millions of people will plan their vacation hoping to see you or to be where you were. You'll make it look like something really important if you just say the word."

"That's right," Allison added. "Women and men all over the world look up to you. You're an example for everybody."

It wasn't until after the Luna Land rep left that Fera remembered.

"That's almost exactly what Lordess said."

"What, Fifi?"

"That stuff about people lookin' up to me. It's almost exactly what Lordess said."

"Only," Pell pointed out, "Randac will pay ten billion on the nail."