The Year of the Flood

  I threw my arms around Toby and hugged her, but she said I should watch that -- a laundry-room girl hugging the manager. Then she said I shouldn't get too involved with Amanda: Amanda had a tendency to go too far, she didn't know the limits of her own strength. I wanted to ask her what she meant, but she was walking away.

  On the day of the visit, Toby told me that Amanda had been alerted that I was coming; but the two of us should wait until I was inside the door before hugging or shrieking or other demonstrations. She gave me a basket of AnooYoo products to deliver, as an excuse in case anyone stopped the van and asked where I was going. The driver would wait for me: I would have only an hour, because it would look odd for an AnooYoo girl to be wandering around in the Exfernal too long.

  I said maybe I should go in disguise, and she said no, because the guards would ask questions. So I had to put on my pink AnooYoo top-to-toe over my work smock and cotton pants and go off with my pink basket, like Little Pink Riding Hood.

  I got delivered to Amanda's falling-apart condo by the AnooYoo minivan, as planned. I did remember what Toby had said. I waited until I was inside the door, where Amanda was waiting, and then we both said, "I can't believe it!" and held on to each other. But not for long; Amanda had never been much of a hugger.

  She was taller than when I'd last seen her in the flesh. She'd got a tan -- even through the sunblock and hats -- from doing so much outdoors art, she said. We went into her kitchen, which had a lot of her designs pinned up on the walls, and some bones here and there; and we had a beer each. I've never liked drinking alcohol that much, but this was special.

  We started talking about the Gardeners -- Adam One, and Nuala, and Mugi the Muscle and Philo the Fog, and Katuro, and Rebecca. And Zeb. And Toby, though I didn't say she was now Tobiatha and managing the AnooYoo Spa. Amanda told me why Toby had to leave the Gardeners. It was because Blanco from the Sewage Lagoon was after her. Blanco had the street rep of snuffing anyone who'd annoyed him, especially women.

  "Why her?" I said. Amanda said she'd heard it was some old sexual thing; which was puzzling, she said, because sexual things and Toby had never fitted together, which was most likely why we kids had called her the Dry Witch. And I said maybe Toby had been wetter than we'd thought, and Amanda laughed, and said obviously I still believed in miracles. But now I knew why Toby was hiding out with a different identity.

  "Remember how we used to say, Knock knock, who's there? You and me and Bernice?" I said. The beer was creeping up on me.

  "Gang," said Amanda. "Gang who?"

  "Gang grene," I said, and we both snorted with laughter, and some of the beer went up my nose. Then I told her about running into Bernice, and how she'd been as crabby as ever. We laughed about that too. But we didn't mention dead Burt.

  I said, "What about the time you arranged that superweed treat for me with Shackie and Croze, and we all went into the holospinner booth, and I threw up?" So we laughed some more.

  She told me she had two roommates, who were artists as well; and also, for the first time in her life, she had a live-in boyfriend. I asked if she was in love with him, and she said, "I'll try anything once."

  I asked what he was like, and she said really sweet, though moody at times because he was still getting over some teen-lust girlfriend. And I said what was his name, and she said, "Jimmy -- maybe you knew him at HelthWyzer High, he must have been there about the same time you were."

  I got a very cold feeling. She said, "That's him on the fridge, two pictures down, on the right." It was Jimmy all right, with his arm around Amanda, grinning like an electrocuted frog. I felt as if she'd stuck a nail right into my heart. But there was no point in spoiling things for Amanda by telling her that. She hadn't done it on purpose.

  I said, "He looks really cute, and now I have to go because it's time for the driver." She asked if there was anything wrong, and I said no. She gave me her cellphone number and said next time I came to visit she'd make sure Jimmy was there, and we'd all have spaghetti.

  It would be nice to believe that love should be dished out in a fair way so that everyone got some. But that wasn't how it was going to be for me.

  I went back to the AnooYoo Spa feeling totally dumped out and hollow. Then, just after I got back, when I was carting the towels around to the rooms, I almost ran right into Lucerne. It was her time to have her face lifted again: Toby had warned me about it each time she came so I could lower my profile and evade her, but because of Amanda and Jimmy it had gone right out of my head.

  I smiled at her in the neutral way we'd been trained. I think she recognized me, but she blew me off like I was a piece of lint. Although I hadn't ever wanted to see her or talk to her, it was a very bad feeling to know that she didn't want to see me or talk to me either. It was like being erased off the slate of the universe -- to have your own mother act as if you'd never been born.

  At that moment I understood that I couldn't stay at AnooYoo. I needed to be on my own, apart from Amanda, apart from Jimmy, apart from Lucerne, even apart from Toby. I wanted to be someone else entirely, I didn't want to owe anyone anything, or be owed anything either. I wanted no strings, no past, and no questions asked. I was tired of asking questions.

  I found the card Mordis had given me, and left a note for Toby thanking her for everything, and saying that for personal reasons I couldn't work at the Spa any longer. I still had the day pass I'd used for Amanda, so I left right then. Everything was ruined and destroyed, and there was no safe place for me; and if I had to be in an unsafe place it might as well be an unsafe place where I was appreciated.

  When I got to Scales, I had to talk my way past the bouncers because they didn't believe I was really looking for a job there. But finally they called Mordis, and he said oh yes, he remembered me -- I was the little dancer. Brenda, wasn't it? I said yes, but he could call me Ren -- I already felt that comfortable with him. He asked if I was really serious about the job, and I said I was; and he said there was a minimum undertaking because they didn't want to waste the training, so would I be willing to sign a contract?

  I said maybe I was too sad for the job: didn't they want a more upbeat personality in their girls? But Mordis smiled with his shiny black-ant eyes and said, as if he was patting me: "Ren. Ren. Everyone's too sad for everything."

  54

  So I did go to work at Scales after all. In some ways it was a relief. I liked having Mordis for a boss because at least it was clear what pleased him. He made me feel safe, maybe because he was the closest thing to a father I was ever going to get: Zeb had vanished into thin air and my real father hadn't found me very interesting, and in addition he was dead.

  But Mordis said I was really something special -- I was the answer to every dream, wet ones included. It was so encouraging to be doing something I was good at. I didn't like the other parts of the job that much, but I did like the trapeze dancing, because nobody could touch you then. You were up in the air, like a butterfly. I used to picture Jimmy looking at me, and thinking that it was really me he'd loved all along, not Wakulla Price or LyndaLee or any of the others, or even Amanda, and that I was dancing just for him.

  I do know how useless this was.

  After going to Scales, I was only in touch with Amanda by phone. She was away a lot, doing her art projects; also I didn't want to see her in person. I'd feel uncomfortable because of Jimmy, and she'd pick up on that feeling and ask about it, and I'd either lie or tell her; and if I told her she'd be angry, or maybe just curious; or she'd think I was being stupid. There was a hard side to Amanda.

  Jealousy is a very destructive emotion, Adam One used to say. It's part of the stubborn Australopithecine heritage we're stuck with. It eats away at you and deadens your Spiritual life, but also it leads you to hatred, and causes you to harm others. But Amanda was the last person I'd ever want to harm.

  I tried to visualize my jealousy as a yellowy-brown cloud boiling around inside me, then going out through my nose like smoke and turning into a stone and fall
ing down into the ground. That did work a little. But in my visualization a plant covered with poison berries would grow out of the stone, whether I wanted it to or not.

  Then Amanda broke up with Jimmy. She let me know about it in a roundabout way. She'd already told me about her outdoor art landscape installation series called The Living Word -- how she was spelling words out in giant letters, using bioforms to make the words appear and then disappear, just like the words she used to do with ants and syrup when we were kids. Now she said, "I'm up to the four-letter words." And I said, "You mean the dirty ones, like shit?" And she laughed and said, "Worse ones than that." And I said, "You mean the c-word and the f-word?" and she said, "No. Like love."

  And I said, "Oh. So Jimmy didn't work out." And she said, "Jimmy can't be serious." So I knew he must've cheated on her, or something like that.

  "I'm sorry," I said. "Are you really pissed off at him?" I tried to keep the happiness out of my own voice. Now I can forgive her, I thought. But really there was nothing to forgive her for because she hadn't done anything hurtful to me on purpose.

  "Pissed off?" she said. "You can't be pissed off with Jimmy." I wondered what she meant by that, because I was certainly pissed off with Jimmy. Though I still loved him.

  Maybe that's what love is, I thought: it's being pissed off.

  After a while, Glenn started coming to Scales -- not every night, but often enough to get discounts. I hadn't seen him since HelthWyzer -- he'd been with the brainiacs, doing science at the Watson-Crick Institute -- but now he was a top guy at the Rejoov Corp. He wasn't shy about bragging, though with Glenn it was more like stating a fact, the way you'd say, "It's going to rain." What I picked up from listening in on his conversations with the Mr. Bigs and his funders was that he was in charge of a really important initiative called the Paradice Project. They'd built a special dome for it, with its own air supply and quadruple security. He'd assembled a team of the best brains available, and they were working night and day.

  Glenn was vague about what they were working on. Immortality was a word he used -- Rejoov had been interested in it for decades, something about changing your cells so they'd never die; people would pay a lot for immortality, he said. Every couple of months he'd claim they'd made a breakthrough, and the more breakthroughs he made, the more money he could raise for the Paradice Project.

  Sometimes he'd say he was working on solutions to the biggest problem of all, which was human beings -- their cruelty and suffering, their wars and poverty, their fear of death. "What would you pay for the design of a perfect human being?" he'd say. Then he'd hint that the Paradice Project was designing one, and they'd dump more money on him.

  For the finales of these meetings he'd rent the feather-ceiling room and order up the drinks and the drugs and the Scalies -- not for himself, but for the guys he'd bring with him. Sometimes he'd even entertain the top CorpSeMen. They were sinister, those guys. I never had to do the Painballers, but I had to do the CorpSeMen, and they were my least favourite clients. It was like they had machine parts in behind their eyes.

  Occasionally Glenn would rent two or three Scalies for the whole evening, not for sex but for some very strange things. Once he wanted us to purr like cats so he could measure our vocal cords. Another time he wanted us to sing like birds so he could record us. Starlite complained to Mordis that this wasn't what we were paid for, but Mordis only said, "So, he's a loony. You've seen those before. But he's a rich loony and he's harmless, so just humour him."

  I was part of the threesome the night he gave us a sort of quiz. What would make us happy? he wanted to know. Was happiness more like excitement, or more like contentment? Was happiness inside or outside? With trees, or without? Did it have running water nearby? Did too much of it get boring? Starlite and Crimson Petal tried to figure out what he wanted to hear so they could tell the right lies. "No," I said. I knew what Glenn was like. "He's a geek. He wants us to say what we honestly feel." Which confused them a lot.

  He never asked us about sadness, though. Maybe he thought he knew enough about that.

  Then he started bringing a woman -- an Asian Fusion body type with a foreign accent. He said she wanted to familiarize herself with Scales because ReJoov had picked us as one of their prime test venues, and she'd be explaining a new product to us -- the BlyssPluss pill, which would solve every known problem connected with sex. We had been awarded the privilege of introducing it to our clients. This woman had a ReJoov executive title -- Senior VP Satisfaction Enhancement -- though her real job was Glenn's main plank.

  I could tell she'd been one of us: a girl for rent, of one kind or another. It was obvious if you knew the signs. She was acting all the time, giving nothing away about herself. I'd watch them onscreen: I was curious because Glenn was such a cold fish, but he could have sex all right, just like a human being. This girl had more moves than an octopus, and her plankwork was astonishing. Glenn acted like she was the first, last, and only girl on the planet. Mordis used to watch them too, and he said Scales would pay this girl top dollar. But I told him he couldn't afford her: she was way out of his price range.

  The two of them had pet names for each other. She'd call him Crake, he'd call her Oryx. The other girls found it strange -- the two of them being lovey-dovey -- because it was so out of character for Glenn. But I thought it was kind of nice.

  "That Russian or something?" Crimson Petal asked me. "Oryx and Crake?"

  "I guess," I said. They were extinct animal names -- every Gardener had to memorize a ton of those -- but if I said it the girls would wonder why I knew.

  The first time Glenn came to Scales I recognized him right away, but of course he didn't recognize me, in my Biofilm Bodysuit and with green sequins all over my face, and I didn't let on. Mordis told us not to forge personal bonds with the customers, because if they wanted a relationship they could get one elsewhere. He said that Scales customers didn't care about your life history, they just wanted epidermis and fantasy. They wanted to be carried away to Never-Never Land, where they could have sinful experiences they'd never, never be able to have at home. Dragon ladies winding around them, snake women slithering over them. So we should save our private emotional crap for people who actually cared about us, like the other Scalies.

  One night Glenn arranged an evening of extra-special treatment -- for an extra-special guest, he said. He ordered up the feather room with the green bedspread, plus the most powerful Scales and Tails martinis -- "kicktails," they called them -- plus two Scalies, me and Crimson Petal. Mordis picked us because Glenn said this extra-special guest preferred the slender body type.

  "Does he want the schoolgirl sailor suit thing?" I asked; sometimes that's what "slender body type" meant. "Do I need to bring my skipping rope?" If so I'd have to change, because right then I was in full glitter.

  "This guy's already so shitfaced he doesn't know what he wants," Mordis said. "Just give him your all, baby bunny. We want to see the high-number tips. Make those multiple zeroes shoot right out of his ears."

  When we got to the room, the guy was lying on the green satin bedspread as if he'd been thrown from a plane, but happy about it, because he had a whole-body grin.

  It was Jimmy. Sweet, ruinous Jimmy. Jimmy, who'd trashed my life.

  My heart flipped over. Oh shit, I thought. I'm not up to this. I'm going to lose it and start crying. I knew he wouldn't know it was me: I was covered in glitz, and he was flying so high he was almost blind. So I just slid into the usual act and started in on his buttons and Velcro. We Scalies used to call it "peeling the shrimp." "Oh, nice abs," I whispered. "Honey, just lie back."

  Did I hate this or love it? Why did it have to be one or the other? As Vilya always said about her boobs, Take two, they're cheap.

  Now he was trying to pull the scales off my face, so I had to keep taking his hands and putting them elsewhere. "Are you a fish?" he was saying. He didn't seem to know.

  Oh Jimmy, I thought. What's left of you?

  SAINT DIAN,
MARTYR

  SAINT DIAN, MARTYR

  YEAR TWENTY-FOUR.

  OF PERSECUTION.

  SPOKEN BY ADAM ONE.

  Dear Friends, dear Faithful Companions:

  Our Edencliff Rooftop Garden blooms now only in our memories. On this Earthly plane it is now a desolation -- a swamp or a desert, depending on rainfall. How changed is our situation from our former green and salad days! How shrunk, how dwindled are our numbers! We are driven from one refuge to another, we are hounded and pursued. Some former Friends have renounced our creeds, others have borne false witness against us. Yet others have tried extremism and violence, and have been murderously spraygunned in the course of raids carried out against them. We remember in this connection our dear former Child, Bernice. Let us put Light around her.

  Some have been mutilated and tossed into vacant lots to sow panic among us. Yet others have disappeared, snatched from their places of refuge, to vanish into the prisons of the Exfernal Powers, denied trial, forbidden even to know the names of their accusers. Their minds may already have been destroyed by drugs and torture, their bodies melted into garboil. Because of unjust Laws, we cannot learn the whereabouts of these, our fellow Gardeners. We can only hope that they will die in unwavering Faith.

  Today is Saint Dian's Day, consecrated to interspecies empathy. On this day we invoke Saint Jerome of Lions, and Saint Robert Burns of Mice, and Saint Christopher Smart of Cats; also Saint Farley Mowat of Wolves, and the Ikhwan al-Safa and their Letter of the Animals. But especially Saint Dian Fossey, who gave her life while defending the Gorillas from ruthless exploitation. She laboured for a Peaceable Kingdom, in which all Life would be respected; yet malignant forces combined to destroy both her and her gentle Primate companions. Her murder was horrific; and equally horrific were the malicious rumours spread about her, both during her lifetime and after it. For the Exfernal Powers kill both in deed and in word.