of lying that paid for every week of pleasure? That the vast majority of men and women, when they spoke honestly, regretted the day they had ever married?”
“We have no power!”
Micah made a disgusted noise. “Nobody has any power. On Earth, for every privilege, men had six obligations. I’m sorry you feel that something has been taken from you. If you feel that way, I suggest you work on building your own relationships. Get married, for pity’s sake. Nothing is stopping you.”
Erno grabbed Micah’s wrist. “Look at me!”
Micah looked. “Yes?”
“You knew I was your son. Doesn’t that mean you’ve been paying attention to me?”
“From a distance. I wish you well, you understand.”
“You know I was responsible for the explosion at the meeting! The constables arrested me!”
“No. Really? That sounds like trouble, Erno.”
“Don’t you want to ask me anything?”
“Give me your number. If I think of something, I’ll call. Assuming you’re not banished by then.”
Erno turned away. He stalked down the row of hydroponics.
“Come by again, Erno!” Micah called after him. “Anytime. I mean it. Do you like music?”
The next man down was watching Erno now. He passed through the door out of the Ag tube, tore off the mask and threw it down.
Some of the permeable barrier must have brushed Erno’s face when he passed through, because as he left East Five he found he couldn’t keep his eyes from tearing up.
“The Grandstand Complex”
Two motorcycle racers have been rivals for a long time. The one telling the story has been beating the other, Tony Lukatovich, in every race. Tony takes increasing risks to win the crowd’s approval, without success. Finally he makes a bet with the narrator: whoever wins the next race, the loser will kill himself.
The narrator thinks Tony is crazy. He doesn’t want to bet. But when Tony threatens to tell the public he is a coward, he agrees.
In the next race, Tony and another rider are ahead of the narrator until the last turn, where Tony’s bike bumps the leader’s and they both crash. The narrator wins, but Tony is killed in the crash.
Then the narrator finds out that, before the race, Tony told a newspaper reporter that the narrator had decided to retire after the next fatal crash. Did Tony deliberately get himself killed in order to make him retire?
Yet, despite the news report, the winner doesn’t have to retire. He can say he changed his mind. Tony hasn’t won anything, has he? If so, what?
Erno had not left the apartment in days. In the aftermath of his police interview, his mother had hovered over him like a bad mood, and it was all he could do to avoid her reproachful stare. Aunt Sophie and Lena and even Aphra acted like he had some terminal disease that might be catching. They intended to heap him with shame until he was crushed. He holed up in his room listening to an ancient recording, “Black and Blue,” by Louis Armstrong. The long dead jazzman growled, “What did I do, to feel so black and blue?”
A real man would get back at them. Tyler would. And they would know that they were being gotten, and they would be gotten in the heart of their assumption of superiority. Something that would show women permanently that men were not to be disregarded.
Erno opened his notebook and tried writing a poem.
When you hit someone
It changes their face.
Your mother looks shocked and old.
Alicia looks younger.
Men named Cluny get even stupider than they are.
It hurts your fist.
It hurts your shoulder.
The biggest surprise: you can do it.
Your fist is there at the end of your arm
Waiting
At any and every moment
Whether you are aware of it or not.
Once you know this
The world changes.
He stared at the lines for some minutes, then erased them. In their place he tried writing a joke.
Q: How many matrons does it take to screw in a light bulb?
A: Light bulbs don’t care to be screwed by matrons.
He turned off his screen and lay on his bed, his hands behind his head, and stared at the ceiling. He could engineer the GROSS virus. He would not even need access to the biotech facilities; he knew where he could obtain almost everything required from warehouses within the colony. But he would need a place secret enough that nobody would find him out.
Suddenly he knew the place. And with it, he knew where Tyler was hiding.
The northwest lava tube was fairly busy when Erno arrived at 2300. Swing shift cousins wandered into the open clubs, and the free enterprise shops were doing their heaviest business. The door to the Oxygen Warehouse was dark, and a public notice was posted on it. The door was locked, and Erno did not want to draw attention by trying to force it.
So he returned to the construction materials warehouse in North Six. Little traffic here, and Erno was able to slip inside without notice. He kept behind the farthest aisle until he reached the back wall and the deserted airlock that was being used for storage. It took him some minutes to move the building struts and slide through to the other end. The door opened and he was in the deserted lava tube.
It was completely dark. He used his flashlight to retrace their steps from weeks ago.
Before long, Erno heard a faint noise ahead. He extinguished the flash and saw, beyond several bends in the distance, a faint light. He crept along until he reached a section where light fell from a series of open doorways. He slid next to the first and listened.
The voices from inside stopped. After a moment one of them called, “Come in.”
Nervous, Erno stepped into the light from the open door. He squinted and saw Tyler and a couple of other men in a room cluttered with tables, cases of dried food, oxygen packs, scattered clothes, blankets, surface suits. On the table were book readers, half-filled juice bulbs, constables’ batons.
One of the younger men came up to Erno and slapped him on the back. “Erno. My man!” It was Sid.
The others watched Erno speculatively. Tyler leaned back against the table. He wore a surface skintight; beside him lay his utility belt. His hair had grown out into a centimeter of red bristle. He grinned. “I assume you’ve brought the goods, Erno.”
Erno pulled his notebook from his pocket. “Yes.”
Tyler took the notebook and, without moving his eyes from Erno’s, put it on the table. “You can do this, right?”
“Erno’s a wizard,” Sid said. “He can do it in his sleep.”
The other young men just watched Erno. They cared what he was going to say.
“I can do it.”
Tyler scratched the corner of his nose with his index finger. “Will you?”
“I don’t know.”
“Why don’t you know? Is this a hard decision?”
“Of course it is. A lot of children will die. Nothing will ever be the same.”
“We’re under the impression that’s the point, Erno. Come with me,” Tyler said, getting off the table. “We need to talk.”
