Mutual Advantage

MUTUAL ADVANTAGE
by J. Dean Randall

         Sky towers overshadowed the New-City surface streets, Kalhaven sector. In some places, they perched on huge legs, like stilts, above the buildings of previous centuries. The Surface belonged to Zero-Level Citizens and Illegals. They were called Zeros, Surfacers, and were considered Non-Participants in New-City society. They lived beneath, disregarded and, by most, nearly forgotten. But not forgotten by Jaim Dafoe, Surveyor of Genetic and Mental Potentiality. He walked among them every day.

         Sunlight was an expensive commodity in the New City, only enjoyed by the rich and powerful, the genetically and mentally valuable. It was never bright on the Surface. However, this pervading darkness did not bother Jaim, nor did working among Zeros and illegals. He enjoyed the long walks from the too-few tube train stations scattered on the Surface, and he was accustomed to long hours. At night he went home to his own dim sky tower apartment and tried to forget the Zeros amid the convenient distraction of virtual reality. No, the reason he hated his job was simple and essential: the Overvoice.

         Jaim’s recruitment had come as a surprise to him. He had scored high on a mentality survey given to him by Reed Hoejke. The survey had also discovered his concern for Surface dwellers. At a word from Reed, he had been raised to Level Three Citizen and had been placed with Reed’s own corporation. GenLife had then implanted his mind with the standard nano memory enhancements, enabling him to learn quickly and retain almost perfectly. GenLife called this the Overvoice, one of a thousand cute terms for things Jaim could tell he was not supposed to question.

         The Overvoice keeps us in sync, a whole company together, of one mind, Reed had said, and the Overvoice reminded Jaim of it constantly. It was the legal Voice of the corporation, a Voice that trickled down from CEO and policy makers, through executives and middle management like Reed Hoejke, to associates like Jaim. The Overvoice, but Jaim could only think of it as Reed’s Voice, because Reed had trained him, and it was Reed’s Voice that he heard in his head.

         From the time he woke up, his mind was a jitter of activity. File structures and data flows ticked, reminding him of every word he should say, every regulation he must remember, every appointment, every message he must, though he detested the caller, respond to. There was no leaving, no turning it off.

         So it was a tired and nearly incoherent Jaim Dafoe who walked by the surface-alley at the corner of Old Gull and Avenue H while sucking on his fifth nicotine stick. He was late, as usual, and the day was not getting any brighter, when a voice called to him from the alley. Not the voice of his automated filing-cabinet-mind, but a real voice: human and distinctly speaking to Jaim.

         Not a good place to stop, said Reed’s Voice in his head. Yet stop he did, and approached the alleyway, dank between two sky towers after a morning rainscrub that had already passed. There were no doors, no windows there, and a man leaned out of the shadows.

         He was too thin, thought Jaim. His hair fell in shaggy locks around a bushy-bearded face.

         “It will be to our mutual advantage, friend, if you’ll just listen for a moment,” said the man.

         Obvious sales tactic, offered Reed’s Voice, and Reed would know. However, something in the man’s words held Jaim’s feet to the alley in spite of Reed’s warning. It may have been the clearly spoken words, suggestive of gain, or, more likely, the clear French accent with which the man spoke them, that sold Jaim on further investigation. He looked around, and upwards, at the kilometers-high sky towers, tops above the clouds. Seeing no one, he stepped deeper into the dark alley as Reed’s Voice continued to badger him: A good salesman never lets himself be sold. He keeps control of the situation.

         “What do you want?” Jaim asked. “Keep it quick. I have somewhere to be. I’m a Level Three citizen.” He tapped the underside of his left wrist, clearly showing a Comport marked with the identifying three-point star. It was a tactic Reed had taught him, a way of conjuring the weight of New City authority as a warning against aggression. Surfacers did not lightly attack Participating citizens of any level.

         “I see.” The man showed his teeth in a smile full of gaps, still more proof of his Non-Participant status. If he had possessed the sponsorship of a corporation, his missing teeth would have been regrown. “Congratulations on such early attainment of Third-Level. Born to it, were you?”

         Answer a question with a question, said Reed’s Voice. Regain control.

         Jaim shook his head, frustrated at the constant intrusion. He spoke to Reed as much as to the man. “That’s not how it works. I have an appointment.” He began to walk away, but the man’s sharp laugh turned him back.

         “Not how it works, you say? I would think an arriviste such as yourself would walk no more, that he would hover in his air car wherever he wanted to go. Not true?”

         “It doesn’t work that way. Level Three is still—”

         “Just Level Three? How I know it.” The man’s voice turned dark, matching the alley. “You’ll never get there, my friend,” he said, pointing upwards, “to the top. No sixth point to your star.”

         Implied need. The salesman waits for a response, pulls you in.

         “Who said I wanted to go to the top?”

         “Tres bien. Then you will be interested in what I have to offer.”

         Here comes the pitch.

         “And what is it?” Jaim was impatient with both the man’s smooth salesmanship and the Overvoice in his own head. Also, the man’s French-speaking was bothersome. Jaim’s father had been a Frenchman; his had been the last New-City generation to grow up with a working knowledge of their national language.

         It only seems like he knows you. A good salesman knows every type of person. He can be any person he needs to be and can talk with anybody. Still, better watch him closely, or, better yet, leave.

         The man’s eyes had glazed over for a moment, as if looking far away, and when he looked back his eyes met Jaim’s and held them. “Out,” said the man. “It is what I have that you do not. The way out. Of these New Cities that are one City. Of this life, of Levels Zero to Six. I can get you out.”

         Jaim laughed. The idea was tempting; from such a dirty character, the offer was absurd. He had heard there were ways to get out, ways to survive the wasteland Earth had become. Rumors said there were whole communities out there. And of course, there were the Free Cities, if you could get to one. Jaim laughed again. “No thanks. I’m not quite ready to give up on it, yet. Besides, getting ‘out,’ as you say, isn’t looked well upon if you’re caught.”

         A good salesman never interprets a no as no, said Reed’s Voice. A reason “why not” is nothing more than a way forward through objection, a hurdle to jump on the way to closing the sale. He’s almost got you.

         The bearded man studied Jaim as if he knew he was in a competition with another voice. “Oh, they don’t look favorably on deserters, eh? Very well.” The man turned away, with a cheerful look of surprise, and began walking further into the dark alley. “You will change your mind, one day. I will be here.”

         He’s trying an old technique, once called reverse psychology. Let him go.

         Jaim waved a dismissive hand, a gesture he had picked up from Reed, and resumed his walk. He could not help looking back one last time, but the man was already gone, having disappeared between the door-less sky towers, which had no Surface access. One must find a way up through citizenship.

         As he walked, he shook his head and wondered if he had just conversed with an AI. To disappear so quickly, the man must either be a ghost or a construct of virtual reality. The “man” could just as easily be a VR routine that popped up whenever the right person walked close to the alley. Somehow it had sensed Jaim’s connection with France and had brought the French-speaking bum to life. But he didn’t want any help from virtual personalities. He had grown up with one, and that had been enough of that.

         His father had grown up in France, during the Viral Wars. Those wars had sealed the direction in which the global New City would go. Though Jaim had barely known the real Mortimer, he knew his father’s voice through the neurorecording that had preserved his personality. The neurorecording captured a person’s entire inner being for one snapshot of time. Mortimer still “lived” with Jaim’s mother as an AI routine with VR support that made him seem almost human, but Jaim could not stomach his virtual father. The few memories he had of his real father were of a strong, confident man. Mortimer’s AI replacement was a moping, depressed version—an infected version of his father, recorded just before Mortimer’s death.

         So he had left home as soon as he had been able. He had traded a Fifth-Level life with his mother for First-Level. He had refused any and all aid the mention of his father’s name could have procured. Mortimer Dafoe had been an important man, a revolutionary social thinker. His views about the rights of Zeros had been radical, ill-liked, and popular. Some even said that Mortimer’s sickness and death had been an assassination, but that had never been proven. As a Fifth-Level with a Sixth-Level mind, his knowledge and genetic code had been preserved by the New City for all time, and had been quickly forgotten.

         Jaim, if he even wanted to achieve the same, wanted to do it himself.

         He was now getting close to the tenement that was his ongoing survey assignment. Public transport, and all other public services, were set to their minimum grade down here, and a good pair of legs was necessary. Surface cars, though still legal, were impractical given the state of the chopped up roads and the unavailability of fossil fuels. Though a few still had vehicles that ran on hydrogen or solar power, these were also expensive and one did not go hitching rides. Anyone with a working surface car was likely in the employ of a cartel boss.

         By letting the Surface stagnate, Zeros were encouraged to join the life above, to Participate. It’s like coaxing a fish to breathe air, said Reed’s Voice. Though we can grow a fish with lungs, we can’t make the fish use them. Sometimes you have to leave them in the water, content with gills. It’s hard to break down millennia of instinct, but we’re progressing.

         He found it impossible to accept that dynamic. As a Surveyor of Genetic and Mental Potentiality, every Zero he conversed with seemed to have latent human possibility that could not be tracked or recorded by GenLife’s tests. GenLife needed proof of either genetic rarity or an already developed, advanced mental state before it could induce the New City to pay its finding fees. This was how the credits flowed, from government to GenLife Corporation, and from there by percentage down through the ranks of its executives and associates. Much that Jaim thought of as human potential went wasted, left on the Surface because the New City could not afford to offer more than a cramped First Level existence, minus the freedom of Surface life. That was a hard choice that few Zeros were willing to make.

         The old tenement loomed in front of him, and he hesitated.

         It’s a numbers game, said Reed’s Voice. The more you cast, the more likely you’ll catch a fish. The more fish you catch, the more likely you’ll find a lunker. That could mean another point to your star.

         In five months time, he had found only two keepers, and neither had been “lunkers.” Only two, after a thousand interviews, cold calls, leads from past GenLife clients, and chance meetings. There was no directory of Zeros, as such, no infrastructure down here to aid one in finding a person. Business was done verbally in the overshadowed world of the Surface City. The wars of the previous fifty years had changed things. One either got on board with the New City, or huddled in nineteenth-century conditions right under Participating society’s impenetrable nose.

         Jaim took a breath of relatively clean air before mounting the steps to the crumbling brick building that had once been a hospital. Now it was packed to its top floor—a measly eighth story—with sweating, starving, sick, and impoverished Zeros. His nano-enhanced undersuit automatically deadened his senses to the stench. GenLife insisted he could neither wrinkle his nose nor cover his face if he were to successfully reach out to the Zeros.

         With a weak smile, he picked his way through the humanity scattered inside the entryway. Some were strung out on Surface drugs. A man lay across the tiled floor beside a pool of vomit. A woman tugged at an unwilling child’s hand. With her other arm, she held an infant on her hip and paid Jaim no attention. He remembered the woman and her children without trying, a property of the Overvoice implant. Lawrence, Sophia, age twenty-five; no domestic partner; children: Katrina, age five, Jonathan, age one; GRS: .05%, .039%, and .04%, respectively; M and I Probability, low; First-Level approved, timestamp 2151.2.01.18:35; declined by client, timestamp 2151.2.03.14:51.

         Jaim could not stop the flow of information as he traversed the crowded hallway. Here were all races and skin colors. Most were of mixed descent, and these were the least likely to find an invitation into Participating Society above First Level.

         First Level: a stark alternative to their present state: small rooms, family members often separated from one another in the artificially bright, crowded lower floors of sky tower complexes; rampant sexual abuse, unchecked by New-City authorities; thankless and redundant work, as human hands in an overpopulated world were still more economical than the intelligent machines that waited on high-level citizens who could afford them; room and board and medical care for free, but low pay, and slight chances for betterment in the rigidly controlled social structure. All this while Fifth- and Sixth-Level citizens were allotted whole floors of sky towers for their personal use. All this based on the combined values of one’s Genetic Rarity and Mentality/Intelligence scores. The higher the score, the more use a person was to the Corporate Conglomerate. Thus, the more willing a particular corporation was to pay the New City authorities for placement within their corporation, and the higher the finding fees for GenLife and similar agencies.

         The main tradeoff, thought Jaim, as he began the long climb of stairs to the seventh story, was freedom. For good or ill, Zeros did what they liked all day, and if they survived it was up to them; it was, unarguably, their own, personal accomplishment. That kind of survival was moment-to-moment, and it frightened Jaim. He couldn’t even climb up the stairs without New-City help. The nanotech undersuit he wore, provided as part of his citizenship status, aided his muscles by supplying extra oxygen when he exerted himself. It cooled him in his rapid ascent up the crowded stairway. The Zeros parted before him, bodies turning reluctantly sideways to make space, heads and eyes down. Yet Jaim believed it was he who felt the most shame. Without Third-Level status, what would he be? Sure, he had studied to get there, earned his way through an advanced course of schooling while working a demanding First-Level replication job. He had then built custom-replicated violins, which had raised his mentality score more than his schooling had done. But he had no idea how to survive on his own, as these did. His every necessity was provided through the Corporate Conglomerate, his sponsored and funded citizenship.

         A flight below his intended exit point, a man touched his arm. The man’s broken speech stung Jaim with recognition, even before Reed’s Voice began to relate the statistics of their meetings. “Please,” the man said, “Second-Level. Remember? I, I—seven children. First-Level, apart!” He made a breaking gesture with his hands. “Second-Level, together!”

         Jaim pulled away from the man’s worry-lined, dirt-smudged face. He tried to suppress Reed’s Voice, but could not. He ran from it, but could not stem the thoughts that rushed like a reopened wound. Husseini, Akmed, age thirty-eight; wife, unnamed—religious reasons stated; children: Kabal, oldest son, Uri, next oldest son, Karim, youngest son: ages not given—unexplained reluctance; four daughters, unnamed—religious reasons stated; GRS: .31%, .25%, and .27%, Akmed, wife, and children, respectively; M and I probability, low; First-Level approved, timestamp 2151.2.14.17:56. No definite response given.

         Akmed called out to Jaim as he fled: “When Second-Level? When? When?!” Jaim had tried to tell him, tried and tried. Akmed wouldn’t take no for an answer, would not even acknowledge the offer of First-Level. And Jaim couldn’t blame him.

         He stumbled through a huddle of adolescent girls thronging the seventh-story doorway. All were dressed provocatively, with low necklines and visible curves, like the virtual girls he enjoyed, with a guilty conscience, in his own apartment. Always he said it would be the last time, and always the loneliness would take him, the advertisements would grasp him, and he would relent, feverishly, hungrily. But these were real, flesh-and-blood girls. He could not meet their eyes and did not respond to their offers.

         Reed’s Voice droned on, reciting similar cases to Akmed’s from the GenLife database. He gave examples of how to deal with the situation. By the time Jaim knocked on door 738, where he had left off the day before, he was mentally exhausted. Earlier, Reed had left him a message asking him to get caught up, if he could. The tenement should have been finished a week ago, Reed had said. “No pressure though, we’ll get there.” Jaim didn’t know which he hated more: Reed’s actual voice, or the Overvoice that sounded like him.

         Inevitably, rather than catching up, Jaim would fall further behind today. The surveys always took longer than GenLife said they were supposed to. He would spend an hour, or two, with each resident who would sit down with him. Rarely was the whole household present, so follow-ups would be rescheduled on subsequent days. These appointments were almost always forgotten, of course, and would be rescheduled several times before everything hit right.

         The appointment that should have been the shortest of this day turned out to be one of Jaim’s longest ever. The old couple in 742 would not allow him to begin polling their data until he had adequately described the processes of genetic and mental sampling half a dozen times for each of them. No sooner would he answer a question than one of them would pose the same question a different way.

         All part of the job. Maintain a pleasant face and voice, and don’t show signs of weariness. If you don’t seem to care, neither will your potential client.

         “Potentiality. Everything comes down to demonstrable potentiality,” he said, openly weary.

         “But what will ensure that I won’t be cloned? I don’t want to be cloned,” the old lady said. Helen was her name.

         “No one is cloned unless the need is vital. This has only happened in the rarest of circumstances: always after the subject’s death and in response to a specific directive from the highest New-City authorities. In each case, the subject has been a Sixth-Level citizen.”

         “How many times has that happened, did you say?”

         “Twenty-seven, to date.”

         You have to tell them how many are pending, advised Reed’s Voice.

         “There are forty-five thousand claims pending, but only a small percentage of these will ever be cloned back to life and be supplied with their restored mentality. Maybe four or five of these have valid claims. Shall we begin the tests now?”

         Not, “Shall we begin?” but, “Let’s begin,” or, “I’ll start the test now.” Use an assumed close and you’ll bypass a lot of trouble.

         He had never mastered the assumed close, that tactic that Reed had so effortlessly demonstrated during his training. He was too sympathetic, Reed had noted, wanting the potential client to feel good and ready before proceeding with what amounted, in Jaim’s mind, to an invasion of privacy.

         It’s not an invasion of privacy. Certainly, we examine what may seem more or less private, depending on the potential client’s viewpoint. But what we’re really doing is trying to make their life better. Hopefully, much better.

         And neither did it hurt GenLife.

         When he finally left with the old couple’s survey data, Reed’s Voice tried to prod him on to the next door. Jaim held up a halting hand, as if Reed himself were there in front of him. “No,” he said aloud, “No more,” and started toward the stairs. He found his way out through a side entrance on the ground level—a man-door with narrow steps leading down to a back street, butt against a huge sky tower construction site that was barred with energy ribbons.

         The narrow stair was relatively vacant. He made a mental note of it, for future use. Only a few drugged-out Zeros dotted the steps. One of the women reached a gnarled hand out to grab at his feet as he passed. She held him for a moment, and he found a young pair of eyes locked with his own. Young, he thought, so much younger than her body looked. Worry—and unfiltered substance use—often made Zeros look decades older than they should. The New City would not give them roads or energy, but they did allow the Zeros to keep up a raging black market that fueled the Surface economy.

         Jaim wriggled free but could not stop turning to look at the woman as he descended further. He stopped and said, “Can I help you? Do you need help?”

         The woman nodded and motioned him closer. “You have to see her. My grandmother. I’m going to die, I know it. No one to take care of her. See her.”

         “Are you sure—are you sure I can’t do something more?”

         The woman shook her head. “Go see her. Walk that way.” She pointed toward a hill visible down the dead-end street, a hill Jaim had always avoided. It was an authentic greenspace, one of few left in Kalhaven sector. “Go over the hill. You’ll find Parchmount—old road. Go left until the dead end. Number 451.”

         “Are you sure—”

         “Just go, damn it. Tell her.”

         “Okay. I will.”

         The woman slumped over and seemed to fall unconscious.

         Unexpected meetings, said Reed’s Voice. Leads that pop out of nowhere. Sometimes these are the most valuable. Get as much information about a contact as possible. At least get a name. You can always find a name.

         “What’s her name?” He bent over to look closely at the woman. Was she dead?

         “Len. Ask for Len.”

         Jaim turned to look at the greenspace. He chewed the inside of his cheek as his medical advisor had warned him not to. Could cause a cancer someday, she had said. Almost anything might. Not too big a deal—a minor treatment—but a hassle nonetheless.

         The greenspace.

         Better to avoid areas noted for dangerous or illegal activity: black market deals, open drug use, sexual activity engaged in by fertile couples. Reed’s Voice was nonchalant, which meant he thought Jaim’s passage through the greenspace to be unthinkable. Yet Jaim’s feet moved in that direction, steadily pacing, as if alive in themselves. He pulled out a nicotine stick and sucked deeply. By the time he reached the end of the street and struck a meandering path up the hill, he was on his second. He hated the dependency, and needed it. His nanosuit was set up to monitor and aid his body’s filtration. It was set up for safe drug use, for keeping Jaim alive despite the things he did. The woman on the stairs, a Zero, had no nanosuit. That was the only difference between them.

         The nanosuit felt too close to his skin, now. Sweat dripped from his forehead where the suit did not cover him. The greenspace rose around him as he walked. He tugged at the collar of his outer suit, the custom-replicated material. He had not been able to feel the woman’s cracked fingers on his leg. At the same time, he had been able to feel them totally, as if raw, skin to skin. He had never interviewed her before. Though Reed’s Voice babbled about comparable cases to her own and the instances of those cases having turned up a client of valuable genetic or mental properties, there was no hard data on the woman. She was blank; she could be helped, and this drove him onward.

         The greenspace seemed surprisingly deserted, and he wondered why until he noticed the darkness gathering overhead, deepening the ever-dark of the thickly wooded hill. There was a rainscrub coming. He struck another path that seemed to lead straight up the hill, in a sudden hurry not to be caught in the rainscrub. He pulled out another nicotine stick, sucked once, then threw it away in disgust as he imagined the minute adjustments of his nanosuit. What was he doing? He could imagine Reed asking him that. In fact, Reed’s Voice was rambling about wasting time, about sticking to plans and the successful way of life.

         But, What am I doing? It was his own inner voice; he liked hearing it, but it demanded of him something more than a physical explanation. What could he possibly hope to do for this nameless woman’s grandmother, for Len, that would fulfill the heart of the woman’s request? He had nothing, only a holoprojector to show a propaganda movie about GenLife. Only empty words in the face of suffering people. Even if he took Len’s survey, the likelihood of her having genetically unique traits or an officially substantial mentality, beyond what the New City had already collected, was nil.

         Still he marched on through the thickening tree growth. The rainscrub began with a little trickle on his brow, then broke loose in cleansing sheets of water. He breathed the suddenly clean air and wondered what the Outside was like. Maybe it wasn’t all desert, nuclear waste, and virus-infected organisms.

         Jaim lifted his hands to the downpour. His nanosuit kept him warm and dry, though his outer clothes were soaked. At the hill’s summit was a rocky clearing. The rainscrub let up, and he caught a brief view of sky towers in the distance, of shimmering radiation nets, like lightning against the dimming sky, which kept the killer viruses of past wars from entering. Then the rain increased, cold and pelting. Rainscrubs kept the City’s atmosphere clean and regulated the temperature. Even storms were planned and controlled in the New City.

         The view having clouded over, he plunged down the other side of the hill, which leveled off toward the road that must be Parchmount. There a row of ancient houses perched between the trees and the backsides of Kalhaven sector’s largest sky towers. It didn’t take long to find house 451, a number that must once have located it but now was meaningless in any official sense. He stood for a moment, noting the squarish, sturdy brick home and how absurdly close the sky towers had been built to it, dwarfing, not even acknowledging the home’s presence.

         A dim light shone through the curtained picture window, calling him in. He took a deep breath. There’s no one you can’t help, said Reed’s Voice in the background of his thoughts. Maybe, for once, his Overvoice would be right. He could at least offer what he had. Starting up the broken stone walk, he observed everything he could about the place. Any little detail might tell him how to sell Len on having a survey done. An overgrown lawn resided fitfully in the shadow of the surrounding trees and sky towers. A handwritten sign—unusual in the City above but commonplace on the Surface—adorned the front door with scrawling letters that said to go around back. In back, a wire cage housed three rabbits huddled in one corner. A crab apple tree grew near the cage, new apples forming on its twisted branches. Dogs barked inside, already aware of his presence.

         He knocked on the door and waited, forcing a smile while Reed’s Voice encouraged him that activity equals attitude. There came a muffled sound of several locks being turned, and the door opened a crack. Two small, green eyes appeared from behind a pair of the glasses that Zeros fought over, stole, and would almost kill for.

         “I’m Jaim Dafoe,” he said. “Your daughter said I should come talk to you. Len, right?” The grey-haired woman looked him up and down. He must be a mess. “I got caught in the rainscrub. May I come in?”

         Len undid the chain on the door and waved him in with a chubby hand. She turned away, not in rudeness, Jaim thought. Shaking hands and cordial greetings weren’t her way of doing things. But she had let him in, and without asking what it was he was peddling.

         “Don’t mind the dogs,” she said. Something like a Rottweiler, and the other a Pekingese—both freebred mutts—met Jaim a step inside the door.

         Make friends with the dogs, or you might as well leave, came Reed’s Voice.

         “I love dogs. My father loved dogs. These are freeborn?” He used the word tentatively, unsure if it would offend.

         Len’s voice was tired, but not offended. “Hurt strays. I take ‘em in. Somebody’s gotta look after ‘em.”

         Jaim could feel the absence of Len’s eyes on him as he bent to scratch the dogs’ heads and ears. The Rottweiler-mix happily licked his face and hands. Len seemed not to pay any attention to the fact that her dogs had taken to a stranger. She shuffled further into the house, and he followed. He was about to suggest they sit at the kitchen table, until he noticed it held a pile of refuse. Flies buzzed around the counters, which were strewn with dirty dishes.

         He followed Len into the next room, instead. Something bumped his leg from behind. He looked back to find the Pekingese mutt, like a short pile of hair on the floor. There was a stub where its back left leg should have been. Why hadn’t he noticed the missing limb, before? Something white shot out from underneath the kitchen table. A kitten, he thought, and the Pekingese gave limping chase. Several other cats melted into the shadows of the room.

         A pile knee-high of ancient computer parts and wiring filled the center of the living room. Len made her way carefully around the pile, which blocked the front door, to a metal folding chair. That accounted for the sign saying to go to the back.

         He took a seat for himself, in a wobbly rocking chair, and for the first time noticed Len’s feet and ankles. She was obviously obese; he had seen that from the start, but her bare feet and ankles were swollen like overripe fruit. Could she walk, or manage to wear shoes? Her grey-green toes faded into pasty white feet. Her ankles were yellow and blue, a single large bruise. Jaim’s hope sank. He couldn’t help this lady. She needed medical attention, for one thing. And this house—he knew already she would never leave it. She would have to leave her animals behind.

         Len picked up a length of wire and a paring knife and began to strip the casing off the wire. Her movements were deft; she had the casing off in mere seconds. She wound the copper wire into a ball and tossed it into a box that was full of such balls. There were several other bins and jars scattered around her chair, each containing different grades of wires and categories of components. He watched the old woman work while trying to ignore her feet. She had barely acknowledged his presence, yet neither did she seem offended by him. She simply had to work. She was a scavenger, and this was her life. He was lost in it. To find himself he would either have to leave or pick up a knife and start stripping wires.

         In some cases, with persons who seem diseased and possibly contagious, you may have to leave without giving a presentation or attempting to get a survey. GenLife knows this. In such cases, you should file a report for review.

         Jaim shook his head and found a knife. He began stripping wire as if that was what one did, in this or any other living room. “I saw your granddaughter. She said to come here. Said you needed help.”

         Len grunted. “Which granddaughter?”

         He hadn’t gotten the young woman’s name. Only Len’s had been important. The urgency of the woman’s request had driven him on, as if her name had meant nothing.

         I’m going to die, I know it, she had said.

         “I’ll guess,” said Len. “Must have been Irene. She’s always been in trouble. I tried to get her to work, but she wouldn’t, you know?”

         “Yes,” Jaim said, though he wasn’t sure, “it was Irene.”

         “What’d she do? Kill someone again? Someone important this time, I guess. She got into that black market crowd that killed my daughter, her mother.”

         He exhaled the breath he had been holding. “I really don’t know about any of that. I’m not here to extract some kind of payment from you, if that’s what you think. She asked me to look in on you, and—”

         Len’s close-set, tiny green eyes, met his for the first time. Her pudgy face broke into something that might have been a smile if it could have gotten all the way out. Obesity, or maybe grief, kept it from doing so. “She did? How is she?”

         Jaim started to panic. What to say? The truth, that her granddaughter might be dead as they spoke? That he had seen her strung out and had left her on the steps of a run-down hospital, far from help? He cut viciously at the wire in his hand. The knife slipped and cut his palm. Blood seeped slowly, cleaning the wound.

         “Let me get you a bandage,” said Len, struggling to her feet. In a few moments she returned with a clean cloth and a strong antiseptic. “This will sting,” she said, and went to work.

         “The truth is,” Jaim said, and winced. Reed’s Voice was pounding in his mind, telling him not to get personally involved. “The truth is—Irene—isn’t well. I think—I know she’s on drugs and, as you know, they don’t control substances down here. She said she knew she was going to die, and she asked me to help you. So let me know what I can do to help. I’ll do what I can, but I have to warn you, I don’t have much of anything. It’s—it’s all virtual up there. Nothing’s real. I can’t bring much of anything down to you. Maybe a little replicated food.”

         It had all come out in a rush, and Len had finished the bandaging without a pause. She looked at him, nodded, and went back to her chair to strip wire. “Copper pays best,” she said. “Easiest to come by for the price it fetches. The cartels smuggle it out and sell it in the Free Cities, I guess. I have all sorts of people bringing it to me, and I give ‘em a cut. It helps to keep the hoodlums away, and I get all the food I want.” She almost smiled at him. “Real food, not replicated. The black market is where to find quality.”

         “That doesn’t sound too bad,” said Jaim.

         He picked up the knife again, and got to work. He stripped wires into the night, while they talked of life on and above the Surface. It was almost midnight when he left, feeling more satisfied than he could remember. He paused at the alley where the bearded man had offered to get him out of the City. Tomorrow, he thought, and the inner voice was his own, tomorrow I’m going to look for the bearded man. I’m going to get out of here, if I’m able.

         He turned away, but a French-accented voice held his feet. The voice reminded him of his father. “It will be to our mutual advantage, friend, if you’ll just listen—oh, it’s you. I knew you’d be back today.”