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You know you can't sleep without a deep, don't try and tell me you can. We're
out, someone will have to order more.
Neil Leipzig stands up. I'll order them; finish your dinner.
He goes into the main room and punches out the order on the board. He codes it
to his mother's personal account. Let her pay, he thinks. The confirmation
tones sound, and he returns to the table. From the delivery chute comes the
sound of the spansules arriving. He stands there staring down at his parents,
at the top of his father's head, black and hairless, faintly mottled; at his
mother's face, pale and pink, heavily freckled from the treatment machine she
persists in using though the phymech advises her it is having a deleterious
effect on her skin: she wants a tan for her own reasons but is too fair and
redheaded for it to take, and she merely freckles. She has had plasticwork
done on her eyes, they slant in a cartoon imitation of the lovely Oriental
curve.
He is brown.
I have to go out for a while.
His father looks up. Their eyes meet.
No. Nothing like that, he lies. His father looks away.
His mother catches the exchange. Is there something new between you two?
Neil turns away. She follows him with her eyes as he starts for the tunnel to
his own apartments.
Neil! What all this? Your father acts like a burnout, you won't eat, I've
had just about enough of this!
is
Why do you two continue to torment me, haven't I had enough heartache from the
both of you? Now you come back here, right here, right now, I want us to have
this out. He stops.
He turns around. His expression is a disguise.
Mother, do us both a favor, he says, quite clearly, kindly shut your mouth
and leave me alone.
He goes into the tunnel, is reduced to a beam of light, is fired through the
tunnel to his apartments seven miles away across the arcology called London,
is retranslated, vanishes.
His mother turns to her husband. Alone now, freed of even the minor restraints
imposed on her by the presence of her son, she assumes a familiar emotional
configuration. Lewis.
He wants to go lie down. He wants that very much.
I want to know!
He shakes his head gently. He merely wants to be left alone. There is very
little of the Catman now; there is almost too much of Lewis Leipzig. Please,
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Karin...it was a miserable shiftday.
She slips her blouse down off one perfect breast. The fine powder-white lines
of the plasticwork radiate out from the meaty nipple, sweep down and around
and disappear under the lunar curve. He watches, the film over his eyes
growing darker, more opaque. Don't, he says.
She touches a blue-enameled fingernail to the nipple, indenting it slightly.
There'll be bed tonight, Lewis.
He starts to rise.
There'll be bed, and sex, and other things if you don't tell me, Lewis.
He slumps back into his round-shouldered dining position. He can hear the
whine of generators far back in his memory. And the odor of dead years. And
oil slicks across stainless steel. And the rough sensuality of burlap.
He was out tonight. Robbery on the ninetieth level. He got away with three
tubes of the Antarean soul-radiant.
She covers her breast, having won her battle with nasty weaponry, rotted
memories. And you couldn't stop him.
No. I couldn't stop him.
And what else?
I lost the panther.
Her expression is a combination of amazement and disgust. He destroyed it?
Her husband nods;
he cannot look at her. And it'll be charged against your account. He does
not nod; she knows the answer.
That's it for the promotion, and that's it for the permutations. Oh, God,
you're such a burnout...I
can't stand you!
I'm going to lie down.
You just sit there. Now listen to me, damn you, Lewis Leipzig.
Listen!
I will not go another year without being rejuvenated. You'll get that
promotion and you'll get it bringing him in. Or I'll make you wish
I'd never filed for you. He looks at her sharply. She knows what he's
thinking, knows the reply; but he doesn't say it; he never does.
He gets up and walks toward the dropshaft in the main room. Her voice stops
him. You'll make up your mind, Lewis.
He turns on her. The film is gone from his eyes. It's our son, Karin. Our
son!
He's a thief, she says. The edge in her voice is a special viciousness. A
thief in a time when theft is unnecessary. We have everything. Almost
everything. You know what he does with what he steals.
You know what he's become. That's no son of mine. Yours, if you want that kind
of filth around you, but no son of mine. God knows I have little enough to
live for, and I'm not going to allow your spinelessness to take that from me.
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I want my permutation. You ll do it, Lewis, or so help me God-
He turns away again. Hiding his face from her, he says, I'm only permitted to
stalk him during regulation hours, you know that.
Break the regs.
He won't turn around. I'm a Catman. I can't do that. I'm bound.
If you don't, I ll see that someone else does.
I'm beginning not to care.
Have it your way.
Your way.
My way then. But my way whichever way.
He vanishes into the main room and a moment later she hears the dropshaft
hiss. She sits at the
table staring into the mid-distance, remembering. Her face softens and flows
and lines of weariness superimpose themselves over her one hundred and
sixty-five year old youthful face. She drops her face into her hand, runs the
fingers up through her thick coppery hair, the metal fingernails making tiny
clicking noises against the fibers and follicles. She makes a sound deep in
her throat. Then she stiffens her back and rises. She stands there for several
moments, listening to the past; she shrugs the robe from her slim, pale body
and follows her husband's path to the dropshaft.
The dining salon is empty. From the main room comes the hiss of the dropshaft.
Menials purr from the walls and clean up the dining area. Below, punishment
and coercion reduce philosophies to diamond dust and suet.
Seven miles away, the thief reappears in his cool apartments. The sights and
sounds of what he has overheard and seen between his parents, hidden in the
main room till his father left his mother, tremble in his mind. He finds
himself rubbing the palm of his left hand up the wall, rubbing over and over
without control; his hand hurts from the friction but he doesn't stop.
He rubs and rubs till his palm is bloody. Then he vanishes, illegally.
Sub-level one:eleven-Central was converted to ocean. Skipboats sliced across
from Oakwood on the eastern shore to Caliban on the western cliffs. In the
coves and underwater caves sportsmen hunted loknesses, bringing home trophies
that covered large walls. Music was bubblecast across the water.
Plankton beaneries bobbed like buoys near the tourist shores. Full Fathom Five
had gotten four stars in
The
Epicure and dropshafts carried diners to the bottom to dine in elegance while
watching the electro stims put on their regularly scheduled shows among the
kelp beds. Neil Leipzig emerged into the pulsing ochre throat of the reception
area, and was greeted by the maitre d'.
Good evening, Max. Would Lady Effim and her party be here yet?
The maître d' smiled and his neck-slits opened and closed
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to reveal a pink moistness. Not yet, Mr. Leipzig. Would you care to wait at
the bar? Or one of the rooms?
I'll be at the bar. Would you let them know I'm here when they arrive?
The thief let the undulant carry him into the bar and he slid into a seat
beside the great curved pressure window. The kelp beds were alive with light
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