The Brave New World 49 The Sweet Taste Of Glass

Amanda Queen stood at the window on the top floor of her house in Seattle, smoking a cigarette and looking down at the kidney-shaped swimming pool that was one of the many luxurious features of her home. And just like the other luxurious features, it was useless, and covered with sc.u.m to boot.

Life had been getting increasingly difficult, even though there was now limited electric power: just for a few hours a day, and with no more than 200 watts' worth of lighting or appliances switched on at any time. She was almost out of food. The enormous freezer in the bas.e.m.e.nt below the kitchen had been empty for quite a while; they'd eaten its contents first, fearing that they would spoil because of the power cut.

They had subsequently eaten everything else in the house, including the pets they'd taken for replication in the New World. That included the dogs, although souvenirs of their stay at the house remained. She grimaced: from where she stood, she could see several dried dog t.u.r.ds decorating the area around the swimming pool.

She would have to hire new help for the house. Jamie Scott, the amiable alcoholic gardener that had taken such excellent care of the grounds, was dead. Amanda had to ride her bike halfway across the city to find that out: the Scotts did not have a stationary phone. His wife, or rather widow, tearfully informed Amanda that Jamie had suffered a heart attack. There had been no ambulance to call for help, no possibility of calling anyone.

Amanda had talked to her for a while in an attempt to comfort her. She stopped when the widow confessed Jamie hadn't actually died of a heart attack. Deprived of his favorite drug, he'd taken to drinking anything with alcoholic content. He had poisoned himself with methylated spirit.

The maid that had always kept the interior of the house spotlessly clean had disappeared, too. So did the cook, and the butler who had doubled as the driver of the giant limousine parked in the garage alongside Amanda's red Ferrari. Now both vehicles were so much junk. Just the other day, Amanda had learned that all vehicles with vehicle data transmitters would remain unusable until further notice. That basically meant nearly all vehicles everywhere, and she had a premonition no further notice would be forthcoming.

Vehicle data transmitters had been introduced worldwide a few years earlier in an attempt to control rising crime, and limit energy consumption: countries all over the world had been introducing vehicle-free days to reduce the smog choking city dwellers. There were two transmitters per vehicle, one embedded in the car frame, and one in the cha.s.sis: they had been meant to be impossible to remove by any means, and so they were.

The transmitters communicated the location of the vehicle via satellite, and had practically eliminated overnight all crimes involving road vehicles. It was possible to instantly immobilize any vehicle by sending a signal to its transmitter, which would then cut all the vehicle's electric circuits. Destroying the transmitter's link with the satellite by installing special shields was impossible: the transmitter automatically cut all the circuits when it couldn't link up.

It was very fortunate that all of the Amazons owned bicycles. Without them, thought Amanda, we'd have been well and truly f.u.c.ked.

It was all getting to be too much. It had made her start smoking again. The stores that had been open did not have any food, but they had plenty of cigarettes. She'd bought a couple of cartons, which was met with much derision by her health-conscious bandmates. But all of them were smoking by now, trying to cheat their bodies by the act of putting something in their mouths.

They had to find food. There had been promises that the Army would deliver a week's worth of rations to every household in the city, but that had still not materialized. Amanda fancied that the promised delivery would come pretty late if at all, given all the difficulties with transport.

They also had to move their settlement in the New World. There was absolutely no metal ore of any kind in the nascent Empire of Amazonia. And there was a constant stream of new settlers that had to be fought at least once every New World week. That was what today's meeting was about: moving the settlement.

Amanda stubbed out her cigarette, and went downstairs.

Sheila and Mary were in the kitchen, trying to make some sort of salad from plants they claimed were edible: the two sisters were committed vegetarians. She had enormous trouble convincing them to at least eat fish in the New World; they resisted valiantly, but their hunger got the better of them after a couple of days on the brink of starvation.

They didn't turn to look at her when she entered the kitchen. They were working with grim determination on the harvest they'd brought in: a mess of last year's plants and leaves that looked and smelled fit for the compost heap.

Amanda turned and left the kitchen without saying anything to them. There just wasn't anything to say.

Her bandmates were all gathered in the dining room. They had broken some of the empty bottles from the liquor cabinet, and were busy licking the sediment off the shards of the bottle that had contained Grand Marnier. Amanda felt a rush of anger. She wouldn't have minded a taste of something sweet, even if it was just a taste and nothing more. But she controlled herself: it was important that she appeared to be above it all, that she remained the impervious empress with an iron will.

"We need to make up our minds about the settlement," she said, walking to the circle of girls seated on the floor around the broken gla.s.s.

"We have," said Linda, and Amanda noticed there was blood on her lip: she had cut herself licking the shards.

"You have. I have. Sharon and Fiona have. But Betty and the Wailing Sisters haven't. Am I right, Betty?" Amanda had taken to calling Sheila and Mary the Wailing Sisters because of the hysterics they engaged in whenever the Amazons killed a settler during a fight.

"I think we should stay on the coast," Betty said stubbornly.

"I thought you didn't like having to fight all the time."

"I don't. But I don't mind it as much as I used to. And maybe we could change our policy a little. Admit some of those people into our settlement."

"There will be no change of policy," Amanda said firmly. "We will expand our settlement by recruiting fresh people once the situation in the city has improved. They will all have been carefully selected by us beforehand. We will not jeopardize our colony by admitting random people into it just because they happened to be there."

"But they'll keep coming," Betty said. "More and more of them, too. You know that."

"No they won't. There will be less and less of them actually, with the cops constantly patrolling the park."

"I thought they stopped once the cube was gone."

"They didn't."

"Well, other settlers will keep coming," Betty said stubbornly. "You know this as well as I do. It's a prime spot. Good drinking water, plenty of fish, and lots of wild food in the forest. That's why we decided to settle there, isn't it? And that's why I think we shouldn't move. We should work out a new policy for dealing with the settlers."

"I have," Amanda said. Everyone looked at her expectantly, but she ignored the questioning glances. She said:

"Is anyone on guard there, by the way? You guys seem to be totally focused on licking bits of gla.s.s."

"Chill," said Sharon, a little too impertinently for Amanda's taste. "My girl and Linda's are on the ball. But what's with that new policy of yours? Tell us."

"It's very simple," Amanda said. "Next time we do battle, we don't bury the bodies. We leave them there. Or, even better, we cut off the heads and mount them on poles around our perimeter. They will make excellent 'no trespa.s.sing' signs."

She could see that even Linda was shocked. And Linda was a tough cookie. A New World month earlier, one of the trespa.s.sing settlers had wounded her in a fight. He had subsequently went down under the blows of the Amazons that had rushed to help Linda, but he wasn't killed outright, just seriously wounded. Linda had tortured him to death with her stone knife. Even Amanda was impressed.

"I'm not sure I'm up for that," said Fiona.

"I'm sure I'm not," said Betty, looking sick.

"Well then, maybe you could reconsider your views on moving the settlement," Amanda said sweetly.

"But there's no guarantee it won't happen again, at whatever new place we choose to settle in."

"There are no guarantees, period," said Amanda.

"I have an idea," said Sharon. They all looked at her.

"I have a cousin that lives, I don't know, half an hour's drive out of town. In Skykomish. It's practically in the mountains. There's even an old abandoned mine nearby. We could get him on the act, and he would scout out the New World country over there. He's got a girlfriend and a sister as well. They could sort of set up things for us, and we would have two settlements."

"He?" said Amanda, with heavy scorn.

""Okay, he's a guy, but he's cool. A sweet guy, really. You could come with me and meet him. Then you can decide."

"There is no such thing as a sweet guy," Amanda said. "You of all people should know that."

Sharon winced. A few years back, long before the Amazons had formed, she had been in love with a man that had turned out to be a total a.s.shole. It had taken her over a year to get over him. Amanda had been the recipient of many tearful secrets, many weepy confidences: she and Sharon had been friends since primary school.

Sharon said:

"That's why you should trust me when I say he's all right. I've got an inbuilt a.s.shole detector."

Amanda thought about it for a moment. Maybe this wasn't such a bad idea. She knew that sooner or later, they'd have to admit some men into the Amazon empire. Men tended to be stronger physically than women. They made good laborers. And she had plans to increase the population of their colony through natural means, too. There was no artificial insemination in the New World.

"Okay," she said eventually. "Done. We'll go to visit your cousin soon. But first, we have to deal with something that's getting to be a bad, bad problem."

She waited for Betty to stop f.u.c.king around with a piece of gla.s.s that had already been licked clean anyway. When Betty looked at her along with the others, she said what she used to say all the time in the New World:

"We have to find some food."

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