Woman on the Edge of Time

She got up from her bed and moved wearily around the ward, with Sybil at her side. Drs. Redding and Morgan were right thinking they had cured Skip, she thought, fighting the tilting aisle. Before he had only been able to attempt suicide, cries for help carved on his body. They had cured him of fumbling, of indecision. They had taught him to act, they had taught him the value of a quick clean death.

FIFTEEN

“Sha! You’re the sharpest piper I ever gaped!” The woman was propped on the bed surrounded by mirrors—mirrors on the ceiling, the back of the bed, and one side.

Connie stood flatfooted in the center of the windowless room, staring. She had tried and tried to make contact with Luciente, but she had been unable to feel her presence all day. Finally, in a stubborn fury she had cast herself forward, demanding that Luciente receive her.

The woman’s hair, stippled mauve and platinum, was arranged in an intricate tower of curls and small gewgaws, dripping pearls like a wedding headdress. She wore a long dress of slippery substance that changed color as she moved and emitted a tinkling sound; it was slit away up the side and cut out here and there so that her breasts occasionally peeked out or her navel appeared and reappeared. When Connie had materialized, the woman had been lying back on a mound of ball-shaped pillows smoking a pipe and chewing what looked like orange marshmallows from a small bowl on the hairy coverlet. The room was air conditioned cool.

“Someone’s playing a joke on me, sending a private trans. I don’t think it’s even a slightly funny. When I find out, you’ll be sorry! Cash won’t put up with that! And he has means to find out, you dudfreak, whoever you suppose to be!” She popped off the bed and stood facing Connie, quivering with anger. They were about the same height and weight, although the woman was younger and her body seemed a cartoon of femininity, with a tiny waist, enormous sharp breasts that stuck out like the brassieres Connie herself had worn in the fifties—but the woman was not wearing a brassiere. Her stomach was flat but her hips and buttocks were oversized and audaciously curved. She looked as if she could hardly walk for the extravagance of her breasts and buttocks, her thighs that collided as she shuffled a few steps.

“How’d you get in here anyhow? Nobody but contract girls and middle flacks stack in this complex. It’s strictly SG’ed.”

“SG’ed?”

“Segregated and guarded—are you cored? How did you get in here? Well?” She stomped to and fro on small—ridiculously small—feet. She looked as if any minute she might fall over through imbalance, the small feet and tiny ankles and wrists, the tiny waist, the small head with the tower of Pisa on top.

Somehow Connie had wound up in the wrong place. She had missed Mattapoisett and hit some other place in the future. “Maybe I am in the wrong place, but they let me in. See for yourself. So where am I?”

“They never let you in. Ha! Nobody would take you for a contracty. You’ve never even had your first grafts. If you ever had a beauty-op, you’ve reverted. They’d never leave you with that hair and that skin! You’re as dark … I mean I’d have been on that side myself. But of course I had a full series! When I was fifteen, I was selected, and I’m still on the full shots and re-ops.”

“Where am I, though? I’m not in Mattapoisett, obviously.”

“You dud, you’re in New York. Where else?”

“Where in New York?” She looked for a window, but there were none. “My name’s Connie. I’m sorry I got in here by mistake.”

“You bet you’re sorry. I’m contracted to a fourth-level SD.” She batted her eyelashes, fully an inch long, and waited for the effect of her statement. Her eyes had a tendency to droop, the lids pulling down under the weight. “This is 168th and General File, and this whole plex is reserved for contracties and middle flacks. There’s nobody here except medical, legal, security, and transport flacks of the middle level. Anyhow”—she tossed her head carefully, while the tower of hair trembled—“I’m Gildina 547-921-45-822-KBJ. You’d better give me an expla how you got in here or I’m about to beep.”

“Time traveling.” Connie smiled with sophistication. It was almost fun. She imagined how Luciente must have felt laying down the unbelievable truth to naïve ears. Now she was the visitor from elsewhere. Somehow talking with Gildina was a little like talking with Dolly on speed, and a little like conversation with a poodle. “There’s a project, you know.”

“Yeah?” Gildina was trying to decide whether she should pretend to know or not. “Cash knows that stuff—after all, he’s fourth level. What’s that got to do with slamming in to my parment?”

“All the kinks aren’t out. I’ve been in 1976. I was supposed to wind up back here, but not in your parment, believe me.”

“Ha! You’re a dud and you look old too—you must be twenty-five or six! You’re a fem too, even if you aren’t opped. They’d never pick you to time travel. They’d pick a Cybo or an Assassin!”