to pummel her. Joelene was stronger and knew the fighting arts. In one second, she had Mother in a headlock and called the satins.
“Let go of me, you bitch!” screamed Mother. “Let Michael come with me and find out the truth!”
“Mother!” I said, wishing she wouldn’t be like this. “I know the truth.”
“Let go!” she said, thrashing in Joelene’s grip. “Let go or I’ll bite.”
Two especially tall, satin beasts, with angular but impassive faces, rushed in and grabbed her. One held her arms; the other, her legs, and they carried her out as if they were dealing with so much meat.
“Get these things off of me!” she shrieked.
“Joelene’s only trying to protect me,” I said, as they came to the door.
“Your father is a mutation!” she screamed. “Ask him what that means! Ask him!”
The door slammed shut.
Plopping onto my grey wool couch, I slumped forward and told myself that I hated her. Every time I saw her, she wound up screaming and ranting. I had the worst parents. They were loud, obnoxious, selfish, and awful.
Joelene sat beside me and stroked my shoulder. “Eventually,” she said, “we
“I don’t want to see her ever again.”
Joelene’s hand slid off my back. “Judith Rivers-Zssne,” she pronounced Mother’s name slowly as if she were going to define the words, “has led a difficult life. As have all the women who have been with your father. I know she loves you, but she expected too much from her marriage and… ” After she glanced at me gently, she said, “She probably thought you would save her.”
“Me?” I asked, as if it were absurd. “From what?”
“Unhappiness,” she said, staring into space. Her eyes found mine. With a shrug, she added, “Years ago, your mother tried to fight the system. She petitioned the families to let her change her identity. Of course, they refused, as that’s wholly illegal—tantamount to treason. Since then, she’s done the best she can.”
I didn’t want to think about Mother and her problems. I didn’t want her in my bed when I came home, and I certainly didn’t want her asking me to hold her clothes while she stripped. I said, “She scares me.”
Joelene folded her hands in her lap and tilted her head in just that way she had when regurgitating her facts. “Reports indicate that she’s taking a combination of self-administered color therapy and an illegal and powerful painkiller, strengthener, and mood shaper: ARU.”
“ARU?”
“Actually, it’s an amazing and useful drug.” She frowned. “The families have exaggerated the dangers of everything the ’Ceutical Warlords make. Whatever else they are, the slub rulers are masters of biochemistry.” I thought she was going to continue in that vein, but she shrugged. “In any case, your mother’s group, Tanoshi No Wah, is losing money. You would be a huge draw, of course.”
“Everyone just wants to use me,” I complained.
She pursed her lips as if she were going to speak, but stood abruptly. “We have a meeting.”
Instead of being driven to the business building across the compound, Joelene suggested we walk along the oxygen gardens and the reflecting pool. It sounded like a good idea, but the temperature-regulated air and the filtered sunlight didn’t lift my spirits. Instead, I felt crushed under the vast, ashen sky. While nothing that had happened was Mother’s fault, her tantrum made me feel doomed. I would never escape my family. I would never escape their wishes and their desires for me. As we approached the wood-shingled office building, I asked Joelene, “Why?” knowing she would understand.
She stopped before the door and spoke quietly as if telling a secret. “I have diverted some of your discretionary funds to Tanoshi No Wah to try and help your mother and her friends. They have a lot of medical needs, and I believe they’re poorly managed. It’s the best we can do now.”
I didn’t even know I had discretionary funds. “But why is she with a carnival in the slubs? Why did she leave us for that?” I felt she did it to embarrass me, like everything else she did.
Joelene glanced to her right as if she were trying to think what to say, but then she stood there, as if momentarily transfixed.
I turned to see that she was staring at the PartyHaus. At one time it had been the crown jewel of the compound, but now its black and gold Rococo facade was matted with dirt and dust. From the roof were long, pale green lines of oxidation. And at the top of the stairs, the enormous front doors were splattered with droppings as thousands of birds had made nests in the intricately carved fornicating animals. It was a combination disco, hotel, brothel, and amusement park where I had spent the nights of my youth at one hundred and fifty beats per minute.
When Joelene’s eyes met mine, I felt that we both had the same mood: a nebulous sense of defeat, under- painted with the caustic dread of seeing Father.
Finally, she nodded toward the door. We entered the building, and found meeting theater five. The three- hundred-seat auditorium was empty, dark, and cold. Joelene located the controls, and as she turned on house lights, I sat in one of the orange, over-stuffed chairs toward the front. Above the stage hung an enormous, glowing estimator clock—a family antique. Across the top it read: Hiro Bruce Rivers Arrival Time. Below were the stylized, red numbers.
“Joelene,” I said, at once relieved and annoyed to see that it read: one hour and thirty-three minutes. “I’m not waiting.”
“That can’t be right,” she muttered as she opened a screen and checked with his people. “They say five or ten.”
As if the estimator clock had heard, the glowing numbers on the clock’s face flickered then read fourteen minutes eighty-one seconds and began counting down.
“The freeboot who shot you,” said Joelene, reading from her screen, “is suspected to have been from Antarctica. The family council reports that the medicated bullets were prototypes stolen in Europa two weeks ago. They suspected he was a lone gunman. What little has been discovered suggests that he trafficked contraband including ARU and other pain caustics.”
The details of my shooting bored me. They changed nothing. They brought Nora no closer. “What does Father want?” I asked, not sure I wanted to know.
“We’ll cover your health, debrief your date and the aftermath. He may want to strategize. And it’s possible he might apologize.” Joelene shrugged as if to say the last was unlikely.
“It’s his fault!” I said.
“It’s no one’s.”
“He ruined the company.”
“That,” she said, stretching the word, “is a different issue.”
“So, it is his fault. RiverGroup should have protected me! That’s failure. It was the most important day of my life! The most important moment in history! Just when everything was so perfect!” I put my head in my hands. As much as I detested everything that had happened, I hated to whine like a spoiled child. The clock’s numbers twinkled, and now it read fourteen days, five hours, and sixty-three seconds. “Look at that,” I said, standing, “he’s not coming.”
“Wait,” said Joelene as the lights sputtered and blinked. Then it said five seconds. Four seconds. Three seconds. I flopped backward into the chair. An instant later, though, the clock read five minutes and was counting up.
“This is impossible!”
The clock numbers flashed, then spun backward again to four seconds. Three seconds. It skipped two and stayed on one for half a minute.
Just as I gave up and started to stand again, the house lights went black. An announcer’s voice boomed, “Straight from the highest profit quarter on record, President, CEO, CFO, COO, CIO, CPO, Chief Programmer, and all-around Super Code Bastard, give it up for Hiro Bruce Rivers!”
As a catastrophically loud drumbeat kicked in, and we covered our ears, orange and blue fireworks exploded across the front of the stage. At the back, a figure rose from the floor before a giant vibrating blue RiverGroup logo. For several beats, he stood there, his head down, his arms flexed, as if posing like a monster wrestler.
When a throbbing, super-deep bass and a whining singer, who sounded like he was either in a state of
