The Old Reactor (3 page)

“There were no accessories when they brought her here, I can tell you that. If she spent any time in the waiting ward, the staff are a bunch of thieves. By the time we get them here anything worth anything is gone. They’ve been stripped. Sorry. Any effort you make to get them back will be futile.”

“All right, I’ll take your word for it.”

The business of getting Moldenke’s aunt rolled into the dirty, worn rug and tied off with twine went well enough and was over in a few minutes. The attendant hefted her to Moldenke’s shoulder, making sure the weight was balanced. “There, that’s the ticket. Should be smooth sailing. What will you do with her? You should’ve had her cremated.”

“She always said she wanted to be planted in the earth like a flower bulb. I’ll see she gets a decent burial.”

When Moldenke was satisfied he had a good grip and that his aunt wouldn’t tip too far down in front or back, the attendant opened the door to let him out. “Take care, Moldenke. The weather is changing badly. A storm’s coming.” Moldenke stepped onto the broken sidewalk and looked up at a dark sky. A rising, cold wind nipped at his face.

He thought better of taking the body to the house on Esplanade and digging a hole in the back yard. How could he dig deeply enough in frozen ground? If he buried her at all, it would be in a shallow grave and loose dogs in the neighborhood would dig her up. He was in a quandary until he thought of a place at the end of the streetcar line where the ground would be warmer.

Near Altobello, a suspicious red cloud dumped an extra-heavy dose of radio poison on the Black Hole Motel, occupied by five free people and ten jellyheads. “Had they continued to live there,” Scientist Zanzetti said, “they could have contracted radio fever.” The motel has since been deserted and Altobelloans are up in arms over the needless downwind danger. “Will the deadly clouds ever stop?” a druggist asked Zanzetti. “Not in our lifetimes,” he replied.

When the streetcar stopped, Moldenke boarded with the rug-wrapped body. Though he tried his best to be careful, when he reached into his pocket for carfare one of his aunt’s cold feet struck the driver in the face.

“For Christ’s sake, man, what are you trying to do here? This is a streetcar, not a hearse.”

Moldenke handed the driver three folded fifties. “I want to go all the way to the end of the line. I’ll pay triple fare. Look, the car is half empty. None of them care at all about

anything.”

“Four, you cheap son of a bitch.”

Moldenke gave him four. “There, I hope you’re happy—now I’m completely penniless.”

“Sit in the far back, you stupid idiot.”

Moldenke shifted his aunt from one shoulder to the other.

It was two hours or more before the streetcar reached the end of the line. By then, Moldenke was the only passenger. Not only had he soiled himself again, but the aunt had begun to thaw, dripping from both ends and wetting the rug.

The driver stood up and stretched. “This is it. City Dump. End of the line. Leave out the back with that stiff.”

“Can you wait? It won’t take long, just a small ceremony.”

“You got another four? For that I’ll wait maybe a half hour.”

“I’m busted. Show some mercy. I can’t walk all that way.”

“Is that shit I smell on you?”

“I have a condition. It can’t be helped.”

“Get off.”

Moldenke’s shoulder, already sagging under the half-frozen aunt, sagged further. Not getting back to the Tunney would mean a night spent either trying to sleep on the frozen ground above the steaming pit or climbing down the slope to one of the ridges below where it was a few degrees warmer and provided enough room to lie down and sleep.

He knelt at the edge of the pit, bowed his head and said the only rhyming thing he knew. “Roses were red, violets were blue. You were a good aunt, and
I
loved
you
. Thanks for the money and the house. Bye-bye.”

He untied the twine and unfurled the rug. There was little light other than a new moon. He could see only a hazy dark form rolling and bouncing down into the pit. The rug slipped from his grasp and followed her down, rising now and then on the pit’s heat like a magic carpet.

In news from Altobello, the famous golfing jellyhead, Brainerd Franklin, received the heart of a free woman, Edith Farr, who was killed in a fall while visiting the Old Reactor ruins. Scientist Dr. Zanzetti performed the surgery. “Studies confirm the efficacy of human-jellyhead exchanges,” he said. “Economically significant jellies like Franklin tend to reject the hearts of other jellies, but not of human females.”

At age forty, Franklin was quite old for a jellyhead and too weak to walk the links and fire off those legendary drives. A donor was sought Bunkerville-wide, though none was found. It was thought that all hope for Franklin was lost, until a compatible donor became available. Now that the Farr heart has been transplanted, golfing enthusiasts are full of glee.

Just a day before his departure, for the little offense at Eternity Meadows, an officer of the court informed Moldenke that his stay in Altobello would be indeterminate. There would be no set date for his release.

Before going he would have to either board up or rent the house on Esplanade. Boarding it would be on the strenuous side if he tried to do it himself. There were a few tools in the shed, but he had no skills at measuring, cutting, or nailing. Hiring someone to do it would be expensive, take too long, and still, persistent thieves would eventually break in and help themselves. He asked around among his pro-labor friends if anyone needed a place to stay Someone suggested Ozzie, Moldenke’s old high-strung associate. Moldenke found him in an alleyway on the poorer side of town. sleeping on the ground, quilted over with burlap sacks and newsprint.

“Ozzie?” Moldenke kicked him lightly. “Wake up. I have a place you can live.”

“I won’t pay the going rate. It’s way too high. Landlords are nothing but blood suckers. I will not pay it.”

“I’m talking about my aunt’s house on Esplanade. I’m being sent to Altobello for a while. I guess they need people there. I won’t charge you any rent at all. Just watch over the place until I get back.”

“There’s a sweet deal, brother. I can’t pass on that.”

“Do you still have that pistol?”

“I had to sell it.”

“All right. I’m leaving tomorrow. I’ll put a key under the flower pot on the gallery. She’s left a fund for fixing things when they break.”

“Where is it, this fund?”

“Don’t worry. Arrangements will be made. Send me a letter once and a while, general delivery, Altobello, and let me know what’s what. That’s all I ask. No rent will be charged.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know. It’s indeterminate. A week, a year, the rest of my life.”

Ozzie sat up and threw off the sacks. “I’ll go on over there tomorrow. We’re still picketing the Meadows today. You want to come with us?”

“I can’t, really. My bowel is angry as hell. I’m afraid it’ll happen again.”

“Well, brother, I can’t thank you enough. It’s hard out here on the streets when it gets cold.”

“Don’t forget the letters. I’ll be living in the house when I get back. So I want it to be kept up. Please let me know if anything goes wrong.”

“Nothing to worry about, I guarantee it. I’m a clever person when I want to be. You know what I mean? I make friends easily, even with jellyheads.”

“I do. I know.”

“Good luck over there. I hear all that freedom can be pretty scary.”

“I’ll get by. I’ll make the best of it.”

As he waited in line to board the freighter
Pipistrelle
for the voyage to Altobello, Moldenke read the brochures made available to him. They covered the history of the liberation, gave general directions for getting around, lists of accommodations and streetcar schedules and the like. His plan was to settle down and make the most of his months or years of freedom. Maybe he would get a wild hair and sign on as a net mender on one of the big mud fish trawlers that went in and out of Point Blast Harbor or work on the docks unloading supplies from Bunkerville.

Zanzetti has completed a round of experiments that suggest jellyhead gel sacks contain living microscopic organisms and that these organisms may be communicating with similar life forms far beyond the moon.

He took a gel sack from his lab, set it on a stone in the sun outside, then attached wires to it and ran them into a simple galvanic device nearby. There he waited, sometimes as long as eight hours, for the signals to come in. He sipped tea and when the needles jumped and the green-faced scopes danced with lifehe rushed into action, jotting down figures and doing calculations. He said he doesn’t understand the meaning of the signals but he is sure they come from somewhere beyond all the twinkles we see in the night sky. He said there was a general chatter going on between distant animated life and the organisms in the gel sacks.

Zanzetti tried for six months to break the code. When it is finally broken, he warned, the vision of our species may change entirely. “We may no longer view ourselves as the paradigm of all living creatures on this globe but as perhaps the lowest form of all, which is suggested by the newest evidence coming in through these sacks.”

And why would minute life forms want to communicate with jellyheads? Zanzetti offered this explanation: “They’re not communicating with jellyheads. They’re communicating with gel sacks. The jellies are unaware of what is happening to them. They get impulses from the sacks and they act, for example, when they cut off the heads of their loved ones. That instruction comes from the gel sacks, which have a limited lifespan. Older jellies sometimes die of sack rot.”

When asked how far off he thought the source of the signals was, he said, “This chatter is coming from at least ten thousand miles distance, a little shy of where we think the moon is. It defies belief that any kind of signal could travel that far. Our own devices are primitive by comparison.”

On arriving at the Point Blast wharf, where newly freed people disembarked, Moldenke filled out all the forms necessary to get his pass card. He was issued light khaki pants and an equally light khaki waist-jacket. In another room he was fitted with underwear, linen shirts, a tie, sturdy boots, and several pairs of wool socks.

“Will I get a heavy coat? I hear the cold snaps here can be brutal.”

“No coats. Wool shortage. Maybe in a few months.”

“What do I do now? How do I get into Altobello proper?”

“Have some breakfast at Saposcat’s. The Altobello car comes at noon. Catch it right in front. Show your card—it’s free.”

Moldenke headed down Wharf Street toward Saposcat’s. Most of the residents of Point Blast were net menders or deck hands, often out to sea on one of the trawlers. But there were always free people coming there from Altobello to get commodities and mail sent over from Bunkerville. Their patronage allowed the Point to maintain a small Saposcat’s with a limited menu.

Moldenke shifted his weight from heel to toe to keep blood flowing to his cold feet, waiting for the place to open. Along the sidewalk came a man and a girl of fourteen or fifteen, perhaps older. “I’m Udo. This is my daughter, Salmonella.”

Udo carried a long, paper-wrapped package under one arm. The girl had a canvas bag over her shoulder. “Hello, mister,” she said. “You look a little stupid. Are you?” She grinned. “Just kidding.” Her teeth were mottled with blue, like a jay’s egg.

“The name’s Moldenke. I’m painfully shy, but not stupid.”

“You a new arrival?” Udo asked.

“Just now checked in. Got my uniform, my pass card, my maps, but no coat.”

“You’ll freeze,” Udo said. “Cold spells around here come up quick and hard.”

“They said I might get a coat in about a month. The shortage should be over soon.”

“Don’t bother. They just say that. You’ll never get one.”

“The scrapple is good here,” Salmonella said. “I really, really like it.”

“They make it with pigeon, you know,” Udo said.

“Whatever it is, I like it.”

In the alleyway, outside the back door of the deli, a kitchen worker dipped pigeons into hot water to loosen the feathers for plucking then dressed the birds and tossed them into a bucket.

Udo shrugged. “Moldenke…you want to kill a jelly or two?”

“I’ve never tried it.”

“It’s a sublime experience. They’re out there by the Old Reactor like herds of wildebeests. I pop them all the time.” Udo hooked a thumb behind his canvas belt. “Didn’t they tell you? You get time off for every ear valve you bring in. They got a valve return office in Point Blast.”

“No, they didn’t tell me that. And it wasn’t in the brochures either.”

“Well, let
me
tell you. Cutting off those valves is pretty disgusting. The stuff that squirts out’ll make you gag. It’s got cadaverine in it, and it smells like a dead body.”

For Moldenke, the idea of killing jellies and cutting off their valves wholesale seemed a little distasteful. Besides, his sentence was indeterminate. How could he shave time from that?

“He’s my daddy, but I don’t love him for the way he loves killing jellies,” Salmonella said. “It makes me sick.”

Udo raised his open hand. “I’ll slap you if you don’t shut down that tongue of yours.”

Salmonella folded her arms and looked away.

When Saposcat’s doors finally opened, the three new acquaintances were seated at a booth. Udo’s tightly wrapped package rested beside him.

A waitress took orders.

Moldenke said, “The mud fish, please.”

Salmonella ordered scrapple with a side of fried kerd and a glass of green soda.

Udo waived the waitress off. “A bowl of meal, that’s all.”

Moldenke said, “I’m told new arrivals can get a streetcar outside that goes to the downtown, to the west side. I think I’ll catch it. That’s where I’ll be going. It’s the address they gave me at relocation.”

Udo shook his head. “You’ll wait all day. I’ve got my motor parked around the corner.” He indicated the wrapped package. “We came here to get a new water tube for it, shipped in from Bunkerville. We’re driving back to Altobello. You want to ride with us?”