The Tomorrow File (47 page)

“I know, I know,” Paul said. Impatient now. “But
how
?”

I told him.

“Nick.. . .’’he said. Almost choking. “You’re either mad or a genius.”

“Can’t I be both?” I asked.

I had decided to grow a beard and mustache. No reason that I could analyze. Just whim. I wanted something vaguely Vandyke, but perhaps a bit more squarish.

I had showered and was standing naked in front of the nest mirror. I was inspecting five days’ growth of beard, debating whether it was long enough to trim, when my doorbell chimed. I padded out.

“Yes?”

“Nick, it’s me. Paul.”

I let him in, relocked the door. He followed me back to the nest. He sat on the toilet seat lid, watched me fuss at the new growth with a little pair of fingernail scissors.

“Itch?” he asked.

“It did the first few days. What’s on your mind?”

“You don’t really want to know, do you? Not everything!”

I sighed, put down the scissors, pulled on a robe.

“All right, let’s have a nightcap. Just one. Then you can tell me.”

He followed me into the living room, sat on the sofa. On the edge. I knew his moods. He was winding himself up to something. I brought us each a petrorye on Jellicubes, and sat down opposite him.

“All right, Paul,” I said, “let’s have it.”

“Your father’s application for permission to manufacture, distribute, and sell the Die-Dee Doll came across my desk today.”

“And?”

“I’m going to reject it. As being ‘Inimical to the public interest.’ ”

“Yes. You told me you would.”

“Nick, I’d like a chance to explain the reasons for rejection to your father.”

“You know I’ll probably overrule you on the doll?”

“Yes, I know that.”

“But you still want to explain your position to my father?”

“Yes. It may sound silly to you, but I keep thinking I can get him to withdraw it.”

“No way,” I said. “He smells love. But you rate a try. Paul, we’ve both been serving hard. Suppose we take a threeday together to Michigan?”

“Sounds good,” he said. Brightening. “Let’s do it.”

“Fine. ” I rubbed the new hair on my chin. “Maybe by the time I get back objects will stop asking if I forgot to shave.”

He tried to smile. That night he looked—somehow sad. He had the look of an em who had come to some momentous decision he meant to carry out, though it would bring him no profit.

I came close to bringing out the bottle of petrorye and asking him to stay the night. I believed then, and I believe now, that he would have accepted gladly. I also believe that it would not have altered what happened.

We took the Bullet Train to Detroit, treating ourselves to a compartment. With two bottles of natural wine to lubricate the trip. It was October 8. There was a threat of winter in the air: wind with a bite, smell of snow, a lowering sky. The feel of things coming to an end.

This time the copter pilot was an em—was my father changing his religion?—but wearing the usual Chinese red zipsuit with the usual logo embroidered across the chest. On the short flight to Grosse Pointe, he told us Father was out of town but was expected back the following day.

Miss Catherine had prepared a cold supper for us, served by M/s. McPherson in the echoing dining room. Both Paul and I were ravenous, and ate hugely. The meat dish was some kind of processed pork substitute, a cold, lardlike loaf. Side dishes came from a nearby food factory where fruits and vegetables were grown in enormous plastic greenhouses. Humidity, temperature, artificial sunlight, carbon dioxide, soil nutrients, and water were rigidly controlled. The resulting produce was enormous in size but, though unquestionably natural, was something less than tasty. They were “working on the problem.” I suspected it was the soil used: reprocessed and dried sludge from Detroit sewers.

We dawdled over ersatz coffee and my father’s decanter of natural plum brandy. Our conversation was meandering and rather bawdy. Mainly, it concerned the government’s puzzlement over what to do about an international airline that had recently started “The Sultan’s Flight,” US to Europe. The ticket cost included, according to the advertisement, “a single act of normal coitus” with one of the young hostesses aboard. Consummated in small, curtained cubicles called “Harem Huts.” It all seemed to be legal.

Finally, before midnight, we straggled upstairs.

We wasted the following day—a delightful experience. Somehow it made us superior to time, to spend it in such a profligate manner. We wandered about the grounds, had a lazy lunch on the terrace, skipped stones over the water (Paul was quite good), and chased a squirrel through the woods.

When my father arrived, late in the afternoon, we were waiting for him on the porch. He came bounding up the steps, grabbed me in the usual bear hug, shouted “Nick-ol’-as!” several times, stroked palms with Paul, bundled us into the library, shouted for a tub of Jellicubes, vodk^, Smack. When Mrs. McPherson brought the tray, I noticed my father was using up what remained of my mother’s natural potato vodka. I couldn’t expect him to pour it down the sink. I don’t know why I felt a pang.

He immediately began a loud and enthusiastic account of what he had been doing: rushing from Connecticut to Indiana to North Carolina, setting up production facilities for the Die-Dee Doll. Paul’s lips compressed, his face congealed, he set his drink slowly and carefully on the floor alongside his chair.

“Mr. Flair—” he started. Voice cold and steady.

“—an entirely new concept,” Father burbled on. “A system of snap-together assembly that should—”

“Mr. Flair,” Paul repeated. Louder now. He stood up.

“—in terms of—” my father said. And paused. Suddenly. “I’m going to reject your application to produce the Die-Dee Doll,” Paul said. Again loudly. Distinctly. “As a matter of fact, I already have. As being inimical to the public interest.”

“What?” Chester K. Flair said shakily. “What are you talking about?”

“Yes, sir. The Die-Dee Doll. I’ve rejected your application to produce.”

“Jesus Christ,” my father breathed.

He sat down heavily, took a long pull of his drink, looked at us, back and forth, with hurt, bewildered eyes.

A marvelous act. Paul would never know. But I saw at once that my father had already considered the possibility of rejection and computed how to handle it.

“ ‘Inimical to the public interest’?” he said. Incredulously. “How can you
say
that?”

Paul repeated, in greater detail, the reasons he had already stated to me. I thought they were valid arguments. Finally—this was a new one—the concept of burial in the ground in a plastic coffin conditioned disobedience to the federal law requiring cremation.

My father listened closely, and gave every evidence of growing perplexity.

“Paul,” he said, “it’s just a toy. Nothing more. I’m not out to condition or recondition the kids. I must tell you—and I swear it—I really don’t compute what you mean. How could a toy do what you say it does? Listen, I’ve got the signed statements of some of the best child psychologists in the country. Really big names. They all say the same thing: The Die-Dee Doll will do no harm. In fact, it will do good.
Good,
Paul. ‘Emotional catharsis.’ ‘Normal adjustments to stopping. ’ ‘Relieves irrational childish fears. ’ I’ve got the papers to
prove
it, Paul. All right, if you insist on the last part, about the burial, I’ll change it. Instead of a coffin, we’ll supply a little cremation oven. How about
that,
Paul? The kid can burn up the stopped Die-Dee Doll, oven and all. Will that do it?”

Paul looked at me with a kind of wonderment, shaking his head. “I’m sorry, Mr. Flair,” he said. “My rejection stands.”

He turned, marched from the room, closed the door softly behind him. My father watched him leave, then stared at me.

“What’s
with
that little butterfly?” he demanded. “He eats my food, drinks my booze, sleeps in my house—and then he pulls this kaka?”

“He’s doing what he thinks is right,” I said mildly.

My father grunted. He mixed us fresh drinks. He took his to a club chair opposite mine, slumped into it, regarded me gravely over his raised plastiglas.

“You can overrule him, can’t you, Nick?” he asked quietly.

I nodded.

“You going to?”

“I haven’t made up my mind yet.”

“Well. . . .’’He sighed. “Do what you think is best. Don’t let our father-son relationship affect your service. Just judge me like any other applicant.”

“I will,” I said solemnly. He was hilarious.

“Now let’s talk about other things,” he said. “You been getting those private data bank reports on Angela Berri and Art Roach?'’

“Yes,” I said. “Thank you. They’ve been very helpful.” “Good,” he said. “I had a lot of trouble setting that up. But as long as the reports are getting to you and helping you, that’s all I care about. And the love? Have any trouble with the transfer from the Detroit banks?”

“None whatsoever,” I said. “The love was there when I needed it.”

"Glad to hear it," he said. "Anything I can do for my boy really makes me happy. Well, Nick, let me know what you decide on the Die-Dee Doll.”

“Of course,” I said. “As soon as possible.”

Suddenly he was looming over me, grinning down at me, his great paw crushing my shoulder.

“Thanks,
son,”
he said. “Now I think I’ll take a little stroll and relax.” 

“Who is she?” I asked.

“Who?” he asked innocently. “Oh.” He laughed. “Oh ... in the guesthouse. Well . . . she’s a musician.”

I held up a hand, palm out.

“Please,” I said. “Don’t tell me what she plays.”

He was still laughing when he went out the library doorway, banging the frame on both sides with his wide shoulders as he went through.

I finished my drink. Then, from the library phone, I called Millie Jean Grunwald. Thankfully, she was at home. Better than that, she was entertaining a girlfriend. They were watching a Spanish Bull-fight on the telly, via satellite, and eating sandwiches of prorye spread with premixed peanut butter and grape petrojelly. “Yum-yum,” Millie said.

I asked how she and her girlfriend would enjoy the company of two young, homy ems.

“Yum-yum,” Millie said.

I went up to Paul’s room, walked in without knocking. He was standing at a window, staring out into the darkness. Hands thrust into his pockets.

“Come on,” I said. “We’re going into Detroit.”

“What for?” Dulled.

“Life.” 

“No. You go ahead without me, Nick.”

“Don’t you want to meet my girlfriend?”

He turned then to look at me. I knew; he
was
curious. “Three’s a crowd,” he said cautiously.

“Four, in this case. She’s got a girlfriend visiting. Don’t know who. I probably never met her.”

“Well. ...” He hesitated. “Listen, Nick, what did your father say after I left?”

I told him exactly what my father had said. He was aghast. “My God,” he said. “Between father and son? That kind of interaction?”

I shrugged. ‘ ‘That’s the way we are. That’s the way we all are. ” “I’m glad I never knew who my father was.”

“It can be an advantage,” I admitted. “At times.”

“Then you’re going to overrule my rejection? Approve the Die-Dee Doll?”

“Do I have any choice?”

“Nooo,” he said slowly. “I guess not.”

I thought it time to bring him up to speed.

“Before you hate him, or me, too much, Paul, remember that what he did for me also benefited you. Enough of this kaka. Let’s get tracking.”

On the ride into Detroit, we stopped for a two-liter jug of red petrowine. I think we were both in the mood for something harsh and primitive.

Paul was shocked, perhaps a bit frightened by the dark, bricked street down near the river. The suppurative smell of things. Echoing footfalls. Feeble pools of light from obso streetlamps. The apartment over the porn shop. A display of dusty phalli.

“Nick,” he said. Looking up at the cracked windows. “Do you come here often?”

“Every time I’m in Detroit.”

“And you’ve never had your throat slit?”

“Every time I'm in Detroit.”

He laughed. “Now I understand your bruised ribs. You were lucky.”

We rang, were admitted, climbed the creaking stairway. The efs awaited us at the top of the stairs, arms about each other’s waist. Millie, with all her bountiful blessings, looked like the mother. The girlfriend’s name was Sophie. No last name volunteered or requested.

During the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, for almost a decade, a series of great droughts and famines had bloomed like a firestorm across Southeast Asia, India, Africa, South America. It was said that 500,000,000 objects stopped. That may have been operative. No one would know. The “developed nations” (what does that mean?) did what they could with token shipments of proteins, fats, vitamins, etc. It was all useless. The world listened to the chuckles of Malthus.

The famines were, at first, given heavy media coverage. Until it became a bore. We stared at staggering animals, stopping objects, cracked earth, withered foliage. Heard the cries of the victims, animals and objects. So similar. What impressed me most was the expression on the faces of the very young. Outrage.

Sophie had much that same look. And curiously, she had the physical appearance of a famine victim: joints poking out against parchment skin, thinness to the point of emaciation, faintness of speech, eyes abnormally large. I guessed that, like Millie, she was one of a flawed clone group. Paul didn’t flinch.

We drank quite a lot of the red petrowine. We danced. I recall that at one point, Paul and I engaged in a kind of adagio routine with Sophie, throwing her back and forth between us. She was a loose rack of bones. She adored the rough play, urging us on with piggish squeals. Millie couldn’t stop laughing.

What else? Paul crawled across the floor on hands and knees, Sophie perched on his back. Her sleazy shift was pulled up to her waist. The naked pelvis was a shadowed hollow. Bones jutted whitely. Wiry hair bristled. Millie and I applauded this performance wildly. We were then sitting up in bed. About Millie’s neck, suspended from a leather thong, the silvery snowflake hung between sweated breasts. My gift to her.