population is descended from the families who were here before the Unification or who came here right after; they're inbred, ignorant, mean, self-satisfied—and they despise immigrants. 'Steelies,' they call us. Because of the bracelets. Even after we take them off.'
He took his gun-belt from the seat and put it around his hips. 'We call them 'lunkies,'' he said, fastening the belt's buckle. 'Only don't ever say it out loud or you'll find five or six of them stamping on your ribs. That's another of their pastimes.'
He looked at them again. 'The island is run by a General Costanza,' he said, 'with the—'
'That's who took the boat!' they said. 'Darren Costanza!'
'I doubt it,' the young man said, smiling. 'The General doesn't get up this early. Your lunky must have been pulling your leg.'
Chip said, 'The brother-hater!'
'General Costanza,' the young man said, 'has the Church and the Army behind him. There's very little freedom even for lunkies, and for us there's virtually none. We have to live in specified areas, 'Steelytowns,' and we can't step outside them without a good reason. We have to show identity cards to every lunky cop, and the only jobs we can get are the lowest, most back-breaking ones.' He took up the flask. 'Do you want some more of this?' he asked. 'It's called 'whiskey.''
Chip and Lilac shook their heads.
The young man unscrewed the container and poured amber liquid into it. 'Let's see, what have I left out?' he said.
'We're not allowed to own land or weapons. I turn in my gun when I set foot on shore.' He raised the container and looked at them. 'Welcome to Liberty,' he said, and drank.
They looked disheartenedly at each other, and at the young man.
'That's what they call it,' he said. 'Liberty.'
'We thought they would welcome newcomers,' Chip said. 'To help keep the Family away.'
The young man, screwing the container back onto the flask, said, 'Nobody comes here except two or three immigrants a month. The last time the Family tried to treat the lunkies was back when there were five computers. Since Uni went into operation not one attempt has been made.'
'Why not?' Lilac asked.
The young man looked at them. 'Nobody knows,' he said. 'There are different theories. The lunkies think that either 'God' is protecting them or the Family is afraid of the Army, a bunch of drunken incapable louts. Immigrants think— well, some of them think that the island is so depleted that treating everyone on it simply isn't worth Uni's while.'
'And others think—' Chip said.
The young man turned away and put the flask on a shelf below the boat's controls. He sat down on the seat and turned to face them. 'Others,' he said, 'and I'm one of them, think that Uni is using the island, and the lunkies, and all the hidden islands all over the world.'
'Using them?' Chip said, and Lilac said, 'How?'
'As prisons for us,' the young man said.
They looked at him.
'Why is there always a boat on the beach?' he asked. 'AZ-ways, in Eur and in Afr—an old boat that's still good enough to get here. And why are there those handy patched-up maps in museums? Wouldn't it be easier to make fake ones with the islands really omitted?'
They stared at him.
'What do you do,' he said, looking at them intently, 'when you're programming a computer to maintain a perfectly efficient, perfectly stable, perfectly cooperative society? How do you allow for biological freaks, 'incurables,' possible troublemakers?'
They said nothing, staring at him.
He leaned closer to them. 'You leave a few 'un-unified' islands all around the world,' he said. 'You leave maps in museums and boats on beaches. The computer doesn't have to weed out your bad ones; they do the weeding themselves.
They wiggle their way happily into the nearest isolation ward, and lunkies are waiting, with a General Costanza in charge, to take their boats, jam them into Steelytowns, and keep them helpless and harmless—in ways that high-minded disciples of Christ, Marx, Wood, and Wei would never dream of stooping to.'
'It can't be' Lilac said.
'A lot of us think it can,' the young man said.
Chip said, 'Uni let us come here?'
'No,' Lilac said. 'It's too—twisted.'
The young man looked at her, looked at Chip.
Chip said, 'I thought I was being so fighting clever!'
'So did I,' the young man said, sitting back. 'I know just how you feel.'
'No, it can't be,' Lilac said.
There was silence for a moment, and then the young man said, 'I'll take you in now. LA. will take off your bracelets and get your registered and lend you twenty-five bucks to get started.' He smiled. 'As bad as it is,' he said, 'it's better than being with the Family. Cloth is more comfortable than paplon—really—and even a rotten fig tastes better than totalcakes. You can have children, a drink, a cigarette—a couple of rooms if you work hard. Some steelies even get rich—entertainers, mostly. If you 'sir' the lunkies and stay in Steelytown, it's all right. No scanners, no advisers, and not one 'Life of Marx' in a whole year's TV.'
Lilac smiled. Chip smiled too.
'Put the coveralls on,' the young man said. 'Lunkies are horrified by nakedness. It's 'ungodly.'' He turned to the boat's controls.
They put aside the blankets and got into their moist coveralls, then stood behind the young man as he drove the boat toward the island. It spread out green and gold in the radiance of the just-risen sun, crested with mountains and dotted with bits of white, yellow, pink, pale blue.
'It's beautiful,' Lilac said determinedly.
Chip, with his arm about her shoulders, looked ahead with narrowed eyes and said nothing.
Chapter 5
They lived in a city called Pollensa, in half a room in a cracked and crumbling Steelytown building with intermittent power and brown water. They had a mattress and a table and a chair, and a box for their clothing that they used as a second chair. The people in the other half of the room, the Newmans—a man and woman in their forties with a nine-year-old daughter—let them use their stove and TV and a shelf in the 'fridge' where they stored their food. It was the Newmans' room; Chip and Lilac paid four dollars a week for their half of it.
They earned nine dollars and twenty cents a week between them. Chip worked in an iron mine, loading ore into carts with a crew of other immigrants alongside an automatic loader that-stood motionless and dusty, unrepairable. Lilac worked in a clothing factory, attaching fasteners to shirts. There too a machine stood motionless, furred with lint. Their nine dollars and twenty cents paid for the week's rent and food and railfare, a few cigarettes, and a newspaper called the Liberty Immigrant. They saved fifty cents toward clothing replacement and emergencies that might arise, and gave fifty cents to Immigrants' Assistance as partial repayment of the twenty- five-dollar loan they had been given on their arrival. They ate bread and fish and potatoes and figs. At first these foods gave them cramps and constipation, but they soon came to like them, to relish the different tastes and consistencies. They looked forward to meals, although the preparation and the cleaning up afterward became a bother.
Their bodies changed. Lilac's bled for a few days, which the Newmans assured them was natural in untreated women, and it grew more rounded and supple as her hair grew longer. Chip's body hardened and strengthened from his work in the mine. His beard grew out black and straight, and he trimmed it once a week with the Newmans' scissors. They had been given names by a clerk at the Immigration Bureau. Chip was named Eiko
