Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World
- Автор: Мосли Уолтер
- Год: 2001
- Язык: английский
- Год: Aspect / Warner Books
- ISBN: 978-0-446-52954-9
- Жанр: Научная фантастика
Электронная книга - «Futureland: Nine Stories of an Imminent World». Краткое содержание книги:
“Somethin’, huh?” Yasmine Mü said. She was standing next to them. “I know an even older guy who’s got one-half again as long. He has to hold his up when he walks around ’cause it hurts his muscles.
“Hey, Yas,” Jamey said.
He hugged the young brown-skinned woman. She was wearing a clear plastic full-length jacket and a G-string.
Harold had forgotten all about leaving. He was looking at Yasmine, unable to speak.
“Hi, Harold,” the Iranian emigré said.
“Hey.”
“I wondered if you guys’d come,” Yasmine said in her newly acquired American accent.
“We wanted to see you, Yas,” Jamey was saying. His attention was distracted by the older man’s approach to the elderly, young breasted woman.
“See me like that?” she asked.
“Uh,” Harold said. He wanted to say yes before Jamey could, but the word was stuck in his throat.
“As long as you don’t see us like him,” Jamey said.
Yasmine laughed.
“Harold wants you to be his prettygirl,” Jamey said. “He wants to juggle brass pots with you. That’s what he said.”
Harold had said it, three years earlier when he and Jamey first signed on with L&L Leasing. But he didn’t expect Jamey to remember or to speak for him. They had both lusted after Yasmine while she was busy bumping with uppers in storage rooms and doored cubicles. Back then Yas wasn’t interested in cyclers sexually.
But now she smiled and took Harold by the hand. They walked across the mostly empty room of tablebeds toward the far exit. This led to another dank hallway lined with brick and bright light decals. They passed several doors and various men and women along the way. They had to step over three lovers who had fallen to the floor between decals, rutting wild.
Finally they came to a door that sprang open at a word from Yasmine. It was a small room containing only a fiberplas mattress and a hotplate altar with three brass pots on it. Weak candle decals flickered when they entered. There were no decorations on the wall, no carpeting on the floor.
“They move all of this stuff every week?” Harold asked.
“Take off your clothes,” Yasmine answered.
Harold’s andro-alls were off with a quick gesture. He looked down seeing how small his erection was compared to the man in the main room.
“I guess I won’t need the hot pot on you, Harry,” Yasmine said.
She was still the most beautiful woman he had ever seen in person. Tall — his height — and dark-skinned in that Middle Eastern way. She had large eyes that slanted upwards, black as liquid space, and a mouth that was meant to eat only sensuous fruits and honey cakes. Harold had dreamt of Yasmine at least once a week for the past three years.
She moved close to him and took the erection gently in her hand.
“Your card will be decremented by the minute, two dollars a minute. Do you understand?”
“Yuh.”
“I have to say that, Harold. It’s the rules.”
“I know.”
“How long do you want me?”
“As long as I can get.”
“How much money do you have?”
“Three thousand, I think.”
“How much to spend?”
“All of it,” he whispered.
She began stroking his erection in a loose grip. The rest of Harold’s body stiffened.
Yasmine was looking him in the eye.
“Tell me before you come,” she said. She seemed to be studying something that was going on in his head.
He felt his legs buckle. Yasmine supported his buttocks with her free hand.
“Don’t fall. Put all your mind into your cock. Try to come but tell me before you do.”
“I... I... now... now,” Harold rasped.
Yasmine reached down to the altar in a deft motion and brought a brass bowl under his nose. Instantly his diaphragm went into spasm and the feeling of orgasm subsided.
“How’s your heart?” she asked.
“Okay, I think.”
“Because I’m going to do things to you that would kill that old man in the grand hall. Bust his heart open like a rotten peach.”
Harold blinked and almost lost consciousness.
“No sleeping, no sitting,” she said. She held another bowl under his nose and started the gentle stroking again. “I will bring you up to the edge twenty times or more if I want. And every time you have to tell me and every time I’ll pull you back. Okay?”
“What if I said no?”
Yasmine wagged her head slowly from side to side. She smiled and he wondered if his heart was strong enough to last the night.
4
“... three men — captured after apparently trying to contaminate a children’s immunization center in Rockland, Oregon — have all committed suicide while in custody of the Rockland police.” The newsman, Letter Phillips, wore a lavender T-shirt. His hair was brown and thick. He sat forward on his tall stool and spoke seriously, without personal appeal. This switch from his usual wisecracking manner was effected to tell the audience that this was real news. “Our correspondent in Oregon, Couchy Malone, has more.”
A beautiful waif with surgically enhanced eyes appeared in the curve. Her skirt was short and her thin legs seemed unsteady.
“Thank you, New York,” said the freckled child, striped flu marks on her arms. “Police sources have informed this reporter that a map of some sort was found among the possessions of one of the prisoners. This map identifies immunization centers around the Midwest, Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. Each center’s location has been circled in red and some of these had been marked with a black check sign.” Couchy disappeared and a red circle marked with a black check, floating in space, replaced her.
“Was the Rockland site checked, Couchy?” Letter’s voice inquired.
“That’s the problem, New York,” the child said as she reappeared. “It was not checked. The police and the FBI fear that the checked centers may have already been contaminated. These centers work all through the school year. Thousands of children are immunized each day.” The strain of fear, real fear, came into Couchy Malone’s voice.
Harold put down his shrimp and noodle cup to concentrate on the news report.
“This could be the tip of the iceberg, New York,” the young ITL freelancer said. “It could be a very real act of monstrous terrorism.”
“Can you tell us which immunization sites, centers, have been marked with the black check?” Letter asked quickly, as if he were trying to drown out her fears.
“No. No, New York. My sources wouldn’t or couldn’t identify the marked centers.”
“Thank you very much, Couchy,” Letter Phillips said.
Couchy Malone looked as if she wanted to say something else, but her image faded as Letter Phillips returned to the curve. Harold wondered if she wanted to call out some kind of warning to her family or loved ones.
“In another disease-related story, seven cases of Jeffers’s Disease have been reported in and around the Denver area. Named after the doctor who identified it, this new syndrome speeds up the body’s metabolism, depleting certain essential elements for blood and skin maintenance. We have Dr. Jeffers on satellite hookup to talk to us about this new disturbing disease.”
Above the anchorman’s head appeared a patch in which was the head of a man with a thin face and large ears. In childhood he was probably cute.
“Are you with us, Dr. Jeffers?”
“Yes, Letter.”
“Seven cases of this terrible illness,” Letter said. “How many have been fatal?”
“All of them.”
“How long did they suffer?”
“Three days, at least. No one lived out the week.” Dr. Jeffers looked as if he had been frightened and now he was numb.