Tomorrow Page 3

  In Vancouver we have both mountains and ocean, and overall life’s been good—lots of hard work to keep a decent roof over our heads while squirreling money away—but we’ve also seen the killer whales swimming off the Pacific Coast. Porpoises, sea lions, bald eagles, and seals too. And we’ve been skiing, hang-gliding, board-sailing, and white water rafting.

  In the beginning we had a shitty apartment and equally shitty jobs and could barely save a dime. Now the job and money situations aren’t bad, but we’re working so many hours that we don’t have much time together. We both picked up second jobs over at Expo, the World’s Fair being held in Vancouver this year. Freya also waits tables at a restaurant on West Broadway while I tend bar at a place in Gastown called Greasy Ryan’s.

  There are lots of things we’ll miss about Vancouver when we go, but neither of us wants to share a country with the director’s security team forever and relocating south of the border sounds like it would be worse—crawling with U.N.A. forces dedicated to changing the path of human history. I hope they succeed, but knowing what their methods are like, we need to stay out of their way. They didn’t trust anyone to keep their secret, not even most of their own security personnel. They’d have butchered our minds or killed us rather than risk the truth about the future coming to light.

  “I didn’t think I even drank much,” I tell her, squeezing her hand back. “I guess I was just tired to start out with.” Neither of us usually overdoes it with alcohol. I’ve only seen Freya out of her mind drunk once since we got here and the other three times were more like tonight.

  “We’ve both been working hard,” Freya says. “And you never sleep.”

  “I sleep,” I counter, because I don’t feel like getting into this again. “Lately I sleep almost as much as you do. Or I did—until I started trying to give up smoking.” I’ve mentioned the eerie middle-of-the-night feeling once or twice, but there’s nothing Freya can do about it so what’s the point? Jumping back seventy-eight years in time screws with your head. That’s just how it is. And we’ll never see the people we left behind, never even know what happened to them. These aren’t easy things.

  Freya’s eyebrows pop up to form sharp slants. “You’re blaming your sleep issues on giving up cigarettes? C’mon, you had problems before you ever started smoking. And it’s not like you’ve even quit yet.”

  No, I haven’t quit yet. I want to, but there’s a nearly full package of smokes crammed in my jean jacket pocket that’s calling my name. “Look, what do you expect me to do? If I can’t sleep, I can’t sleep, okay? Harping on it doesn’t help.”

  Freya inclines her head up to meet the rain. “Saying the word ‘harping’ doesn’t help either.”

  This is how our arguments usually start. Swinging in from nowhere. I say something that she doesn’t like and then she says something that I take the wrong way and before you know it we’re on opposite sides of an issue that didn’t need to be an issue.

  This morning it was the laundry. Freya was supposed to have done it two nights ago but didn’t get around to it. I tried to do a load or two before heading over to Greasy Ryan’s yesterday afternoon, but one of the machines downstairs was broken and someone else’s clothes were spinning around in the other two. I left Freya a note asking if she’d throw our stuff in the washing machine, but she forgot. So this morning I had to pull a dirty shirt out of the hamper and put it on, which shouldn’t matter except the little things seem to add up, even when you think you’re not keeping track.

  Things like me oversleeping too often and slowly poisoning my lungs, and her wanting to talk certain things to death and leaving wet towels on the floor, her clothes in a heap in the bedroom, and piles of dirty dishes in the sink. But none of these issues are the real problem. It’s just that I’m only nineteen and Freya’s only seventeen. Our paperwork lends us a couple of extra years but essentially we’re what people in 1986 would call ‘playing house.’ We’re not used to being half of something bigger and it’s tricky. Before this neither of us had a job or had to keep on top of cleaning, cooking, and hitting the supermarket. Where we’re from, the laundry did itself. And on top of that, we’re the only two people who know what each other’s been through. The pressure builds quickly.

  “Bad choice of words,” I apologize. “I didn’t mean it.” I look Freya square in the eye so she can see I’m sincere. Her hair and skin are damp. So are mine. Vancouver Mays are drier than winter but that’s not saying much. “And I’m too tired to fight again tonight.” I run my fingers along her wet cheek.

  “Yeah, me too.” Freya leans her head against my shoulder as we walk. She’s only about five inches shorter than I am, less in the heels she’s wearing, and she has to tilt over a little to do it. “But we’re so good at it.”

  I let go of her hand so I can wrap my arm around her waist and pull her closer. “We’re good at a lot of things.”

  Whether we’re fighting or not.

  We’re almost home now. Only steps from the apartment. Freya stops on the sidewalk and turns to face me. Her eyes are definite; she knows what she wants. I do too, and I reach for her. Freya presses her wet lips against mine, sinks her hands into my back pockets and clutches my ass. The rest of her begins to melt into me in slow motion. Her thighs, her hips, her breasts. It happens by degrees but takes no time at all. She quiets my head and does the opposite to the rest of me. It’s amazing how that works. Almost as simple as flicking a switch. I kiss her back, my hands on her waist and my tongue on fire.

  It was never like this with anyone else. Not that there were many other girls back then, but I don’t think it would’ve made any difference. I can’t imagine feeling this way about anybody but Freya.

  We make each other spark.

  Like this moment, in the rain, when we’re getting so heated out on the sidewalk together, drops running off my face onto hers and our bodies already not our own, that it’s hard to stop and walk away, even for a minute, even just to get inside. But when I feel Freya shiver in my arms it wakes me up. I tear my mouth from her skin and tell her I’m taking her upstairs.

  She doesn’t answer. She just walks into the building alongside me, starting things up again in the elevator. When the door pops open I make a beeline for our apartment, fumbling for the keys in my jacket pocket. We stumble inside, heading for the bedroom, hurling ourselves at each other on the unmade bed.

  Shortly after coming out west we went to a clinic that gave Freya a prescription for birth control pills. Waiting for them to take effect was rough, but the last thing we wanted was to drag a third person into the equation, so we managed it.

  In the beginning I thought it might be harder for her to get used to being together like that, never having been in the grounded movement. But it seemed like second nature to her. When I whispered that to Freya during our second time together, she folded her hands across her bare chest and said, “It’s because it’s you.”

  I grinned so hard that she covered her face with one arm, embarrassed. I pried it gently away and leaned over her to say, “It’s the same for me. It’s you.”

  Now neither of us says anything. We peel off each other’s clothes, tonight the same as so many other nights we’ve spent together in the past fifteen months, our hands sliding frantically in and out of curves and my mind nowhere but on the girl laid out next to me on the rumpled bedspread.

  Three: 2063

  Michael Neal told me it was difficult to find volunteers of my calibre and level of commitment and that he’d be happy for me to assist him in the Fairfield camp again that coming Saturday. On August fourth I caught a commuter train to Great Falls, where the camp had sent a trans to bring me the rest of the way to Fairfield. The U.N.A.’s high-speed rail network, the Zephyr, didn’t have stops in Fairfield or Great Falls, so the journey was always slow. It’d been blistering hot the day before, impossible to stay outside for more than a few minutes without enhanced protective clothing and the help of a porto-cool that interfaced with your clothes to act
like an air conditioner. Today there was a storm warning in place, and the winds buffeted the trans around like it was a toy as I stared out the window at the dark clouds closing in on me.

  Most people didn’t think Fairfield was much to look at, malt barley fields almost as far as the eye could see, dissolving into the mountains in the distance. A mammoth hurricane/flood/earthquake-proof domed structure rose up out of the farmland like a mutant mushroom. But it was unusual to see crops growing out in open ground rather than in the vertical farms that were common in the day, and every time I went to the camp I found myself mesmerized by the golden fields. There were some traditions the U.N.A. didn’t like to give up, and one of them was the illusion that Americans had a sacred relationship with the land, which meant maintaining farmlands like those in Fairfield long after they’d let the environment in other states bake to the point where life had become too expensive to continue to support it.

  You couldn’t call the Fairfield camp itself ugly but it wasn’t pretty either. Bening liked to describe it as “a Greek village on steroids.” A village where ninety-eight thousand people lived in the same immense white stone building. While the child residents were sent to a school in Great Falls during the day, the adult Cursed toiled for their food and keep, either working in the barley fields (weather-permitting), performing menial jobs in a Ro plant in Helena, a filtration facility in Denton, or various tree and vegetation planting sites throughout the state.

  Because Billings was the U.N.A. capital and a big manufacturing centre, Montana’s unemployment rate was the lowest in the country and the Fairfield camp was one of only three social welfare camps in the state. Whenever anyone from the grounded movement campaigned in favour of more rights for the unemployed, others would inevitably counter that the Cursed had everything they could ever need and were already too pampered.

  It was true that there was no sickness, hunger, or physical abuse in U.N.A. social welfare camps. Like so many other industries in the U.N.A., the camps were operated mostly by Ros, and robots had no interest in actively abusing people. All they did was follow orders.

  But as I got out of the trans and was scanned by a waiting SecRo, my stomach began to sink the way it usually did when I entered the camp. The china in my bag clattered with every step but the SecRo clearly hadn’t considered the contents a threat and said nothing. I’d paid a specialist in Moss to successfully restore the plate that had broken neatly into two halves. The other dish was still in pieces.

  Inside, a domestic Ro led me through an airy long white corridor to the usual consultation room I shared with Michael Neal. He must’ve caught an earlier train, before the weather began to turn, because unlike me he was on time and already conferring with a client. That was what Michal Neal insisted on calling them, ‘clients,’ although no one in the camps had any way to pay him.

  “This is Garren Lowe, my assistant,” Michael said to the woman seated in front of him. “Garren, this is Lucy Garcia. She’s been telling me about a property issue she and her husband have been having.”

  “His father willed us the place,” Lucy explained, reaching out to shake my extended hand. “He said it was fully paid for but the government had papers saying otherwise. They evicted our family.”

  I’d heard similar stories a dozen times; people’s property usurped because the government felt they had a better use for it. They knew people like Lucy didn’t have the means to fight them very hard. If it weren’t for lawyers like Michael, the Cursed wouldn’t have any legal assistance whatsoever, and as it was he was continually stonewalled by the governments and its allies, facing an uphill battle on nearly every occasion. Lucy would be lucky if she and her family were offered even a small settlement sum.

  Michael repeated the details the woman had already told him and I wrote them out by hand in a paper notebook. In practical terms the action was unnecessary, as everything we said was being recorded. But people liked to see the activity—it made them feel as though something was being done.

  During Michael’s questioning it came to light that Lucy was a descendent of a woman named Marian Anderson, a delegate to the U.N and the first African American to sing a leading role with the Metropolitan Opera. She’d sung at President Dwight Eisenhower’s inauguration. John F. Kennedy’s too.

  I watched Michael begin to get excited as he probed further and then disappeared behind his eyes to confirm Lucy’s information on gushi. “Now, this will help your case immeasurably,” he said, swiftly returning his attention to us. “The government won’t want to be seen mistreating the descendent of such an esteemed American historical figure. If we threaten to pass that info on to the grounded movement we’ll certainly be able to get a healthy settlement out of them.”

  “But my relationship to Marian Anderson has nothing to do with the facts surrounding the property,” Lucy countered, an anger line slashing her forehead. “That shouldn’t have any bearing on the outcome of the case.”

  “It shouldn’t,” Michael agreed. “But it will. If you want me to leave the fact of your relationship to Ms. Anderson out of the case, I can, but it would be to your detriment. One has to use whatever leverage they have these days and this is your best chance.”

  Lucy looked at me and slowly shook her head, disappointment settling on her features. “What a world we’re giving you,” she murmured. “What happened to this country?”

  “Ros and fascists,” I mumbled, before I had a chance to stop myself. I wasn’t in Fairfield to spout my personal beliefs; I was supposed to be helping Michael.

  “Ain’t that the truth,” Lucy said, sounding like someone from an old-time movie.

  I suddenly remembered the Abraham Lincoln quote grounded hackers had splashed over the Dailies one morning in April. “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” But I’d said too much already and bit my tongue, the quote repeating in my head.

  “Do whatever you have to,” Lucy advised Michael. “We’ll worry about the rest later.”

  Michael smiled as if she were joking, but there was a quiet steeliness about Lucy that told me otherwise, and when she was leaving the consultation room later I excused myself, pretending that I’d missed breakfast earlier and wanted something from the dining hall level. I followed Lucy stealthily down one corridor and then another, trying to formulate a question about the dishes in my bag that wouldn’t sound suspicious.

  “Have you lost your way?” she asked, turning to look at me.

  “Not exactly. I… Do you know many of the people who live here?” I patted my bag, the fragments clanking in response. “I met a man from here who wanted me to give these things to his wife but I never got his name. Or hers.”

  “Names would’ve been useful,” Lucy said, arching an eyebrow. “You won’t get far without names. Thousands of people live here. You know that.”

  I lowered my voice. “This one was an AWOL. It was his second offence. I ran into him in Moss last Sunday, trying to buy back some china that had belonged to his wife’s family. The Ros took him. I wasn’t sure if he’d be back here yet or—”

  “Or serving a detention period,” Lucy finished. “That narrows things down. You’re looking for the wife of a man who’s been missing from the camp since last Sunday.”

  “Saturday,” I corrected. “He was out in Moss all night on Saturday. That was the reason they picked him up.”

  We’d paused in the hallway and a lanky, bearded man who was probably Michael Neal’s next client marched by us. Lucy reached out and gripped my wrist, urging me forwards. “Look, this man isn’t wanting for anything serious, is he? Because I can’t be involving myself in any—”

  “No, no.” I matched her stride, not knowing where I was going. People in the camps were skittish—they’d already lost so much—but most people would’ve acted the same way as Lucy under the circumstances. You had to be fierce, insane, or desperate to risk aligning yourself with a future wipe and cover
case. “I don’t have any reason to think there were any serious charges. He was only skipping curfew. I just thought that his wife should have these because he’d been buying them for her when he was taken.” Aside from the single repaired dish, they were only pieces that used to be something. But he’d gotten arrested for them. That made them important.

  “I can show you the way to one of the dormitory levels,” Lucy said. “Since you have clearance that shouldn’t be a problem. But I don’t know anybody like you described. You’ll have to make inquiries yourself.”

  I thanked Lucy and followed her into the nearest elevator where she requested level nine. Personally, I’d only been inside the dorms once, on my first visit. One of the few human administrative staff had directed a domestic Ro to give me a full tour. The Ro had started at the second sub-basement level and guided me through a lengthy expedition of the camp—from the medical floor to the swimming pools and sporting/games level up to the general auditorium, then to the administrative floor, running track, cleaning and sanitation level, the shopping concourse (stocked with minor items that had to be worked additional hours for), dining hall/food prep section, and finally the dormitories. If you were Oliver Twist, most of the camp would have looked like paradise, but when you reached the dorms it was a slightly different story.

  As we arrived at level nine Lucy wished me luck, her hand on my back giving me a gentle push out into the dormitory. I stumbled away from the elevator and directly into the overcrowded space where a portion of residents slept. It was several times the size of a football field and arranged in endless alternating rows of bunk beds, stacked three high, and seating areas for people to socialize or lounge in. On my first visit to the camp I’d been surprised to find many of the recreational levels empty. But I should’ve suspected it would be that way—the unemployed weren’t any different than anyone else—they spent the majority of their leisure hours on gushi.