Idolon (4 page)

The homeless shelter in Santa Cruz had once been an elementary school, back when
kids
attended class in person. Even though those days were long past, the
wide
halls of the three-story building still reverberated with the sporadic outbursts of children... loud, violent squalls that ended as quickly as they began. The elderly residents were worse; their moans drooled endlessly into the night.

Because Nadice was pregnant, she had been assigned a semiprivate cubicle in a second-floor classroom. The cubicle contained a futon that folded into a couch, a collapsible cardboard table, and stackable white plastic trays in which to store her belongings. She shared the classroom with an aged woman who snored when asleep and wheezed when awake. A sun-faded alphabet clung to the walls near the ceiling, Cheshire As, Bs, and Cs stenciled on the ancient plaster. Instead of whiteboards and chalkboards, several Vurtronic screens hung from the earthquake-cracked walls. One was tuned to time- lapse cloud formations. Another followed flocks of migrating birds under the hygienic white glare of the LED track lights. The room's only nonvirtual window faced east and overlooked the ruined tarmac of a fenced playground.

"You can stay a week," one of the social workers who volunteered at the shelter had said when she first arrived. "I'm afraid that's the best I can do. After that..." Her voice trailed off, vaguely apologetic.

The woman's face was pinched, but resolute. Nadice wondered what government regulation lay behind the one-week limit, but didn't argue. "I should be able to find a new place by then," she said. A week was better than nothing.

They sat in a cubicle in a first-floor classroom that had been subdivided into work spaces using recycled sound-absorbent partitions. The tatty fabric on the privacy screens was programmable, and appeared to be networked. All of the screens displayed the same Chinese restaurant motif of golden dragons, verdant, mist-shrouded mountains, and generic pink blossoms.

"Do you have a job?" the social worker asked.

Nadice peeled her gaze from a white crane balanced on one leg in concentric rings of pond water. "I worked for Atherton, Lagos. But I quit after they transferred me here."

"They wanted you to give up the baby for adoption?"

Nadice shook her head. "Abortion."

The social worker grimaced in sympathy, then nodded. It was an all-too-familiar story. The woman rephilmed the palm of her hand, activating a compact d-splay. "You were employed by them in what capacity?"

"Housekeeping."

Information populated the d-splay. "Contract work?"

Nadice nodded. "Five-year indentured." More text scrolled.

"How much time left?"

Nadice forced her gaze from the d-splay. "One year, seven months."

Give or take. She had stopped counting the days and hours. It made the time slow to an agonizing crawl.

The social worker frowned. The red and white horizontal bands on her face twisted as she focused on Nadice's cataract-dull 'skin. The alternating red and white lines were a classic Rudi Gernreich, popular in Africa. "Have you been"—the woman pursed her mouth—"naturalized?"

A tactful way of inquiring if Nadice had been issued a work authorization permit or officially applied for asylum.

"Not yet." Nadice picked at a dry burr of skin on her lower lip. "My manager said that they couldn't file the application until the baby was..." Her lip stung. Nadice tasted blood and pressed the burr back into place.

"I see." The social worker moistened her own lips. "What about the father? Where is he?"

"Lagos."

"Is he going to come after you? Cause trouble?"

"No."

The social worker's eyes narrowed, skeptical. "You're sure?"

"Yes."

Because there was no father. But she couldn't say that, no one would believe her. Sometimes she didn't believe it herself.

"Is anyone else going to come looking for you?"
the social worker said. "Besides domestic security, I mean."

"I don't think so."

"No family? Friends?"

"No," she lied. If Atherton Resorts ever found out about her grandmother, the company would use the old woman to get to Nadice or garnish her for what Nadice still owed on her contract.

The social worker checked the d-splay on her palm, glanced up. "Anything else I should know about? Medical problems. Drug use. Like that."

Nadice shook her head. No way the social worker would take her in if she knew Nadice was working as a mule, smuggling illegal ware. Ditto the salesperson at the cinematique. She would never have given Nadice the antitoxin: too high-risk—at least until the ware was delivered and she was clean. And maybe not even then. Nadice couldn't take the chance. It was a gamble, waiting to take the antitoxin, but it was better than not having it at all. Or a safe place to stay.

"All right." The social worker stood and the d-splay went blank, replaced by her Rudi Gernreich philm. "Try to get some rest. I'll make some calls, see what we can do."

The crumbling blacktop outside of the window was guarded by netless, doddering basketball hoops. The skeletal remains of a jungle gym, swing set, and slide haunted a sandbox off to the side, the salt-bitten metal little more than cobwebby threads of rust. When she closed her eyes, she could picture the kids that had once played there, laughing and yelling, boiling over with excitement. She could almost imagine herself with them, plugged into a different past, a different life.

A few hours after the social worker talked to her, she was visited by Sister Giselle. The nun, philmed after
a
character in an old television program, wore a habit with a goofy cornette. Nadice couldn't recall which program, only that it had been revived a few years back. There were times Nadice wished she could fly like the nun in the sitcom. Have the wind pick her up and never put her down.

"I don't want to be deported," Nadice told Sister Giselle. "I can't go back." That much, at least, was true.

The nun sucked on uneven, tea-stained teeth. "I know someone who might be able to help."

Nadice gripped one of the nun's hands. "Thank you." The bones felt thin and frail under her smooth, unwrinkled 'skin.

It had been a mistake to let Mateus talk her into smuggling for him. But she had been desperate, willing to do anything. Or almost anything.

She checked the time. Not quite three. Plenty of time until her six o'clock parley with him.

_______

She'd met Mateus in Lagos, a month after he'd been hired by the resort. He seemed nice enough at the time. Polite, respectful. He didn't try to feel her up. Not like some of her shift managers.

He worked security.
She
wasn't sure if the philm he wore
—
something he called H-town crunk, whatever that meant—was part of the job or not. He looked like he'd done time in a supermax, philmed
head to toe in badass prison tattoos. The black line art didn't sing or dance or do anything except radiate attitude. His muscles bulged with crucifixes, rose petals that dripped blood, twisted strands of barbed wire and fiery skulls that laughed with predictable scorn.

"I can get you out," he whispered to her one night, a week when she was working graveyard. "Treal."

His word for true and real.

"Anyplace you wanna go," he promised. Then, as if in answer to her unspoken question, "All I got to do is arrange for a transfer. Knowmsayin?"

They stood in a laundry room, where she was recycling used linen, the hum of a big commercial UV sterilizer muffling their words.

"In return, I give you some luggage to take with you. Simple as that."

She met his gaze. Was he trying to bait her? Trap her? His eyes, flat as tarnished brass, revealed nothing.

"What kind of luggage?"

He winked at her. Grinned.

"No." Her jaw tightened.

"Think about it," he said.

When he was gone she'd swallowed, out of fear and relief; felt the votive flicker of possibility warm her waxy breath.

And quickly snuffed it out.

Two weeks later, one of the bellboys didn't show up for Work. He'd taken a job in Moscow, a coworker told her.

A few days later, another boy took his place. A new hire. It went on like that, once every few
months. Quietly, unobtrusively, employees transferred to another world, and to a new life. Nadice sensed Mateus watching her, the fishhook snag of his gaze tugging at her, wearing her down.

It was only a matter of time. He seemed to know this, even if she didn't. He could see things she couldn't. Signs written on her face that were invisible, or unrecognizable, when reflected in a mirror.

Then the baby came.

It was as if his eyes had... not put the child there, but watched it take shape inside of her.

Somehow he'd known that she would find herself in this position. He'd known that at some point she would need a way out. He wanted to help her, he said. But in return he expected to be helped.

Nadice hadn't even known she was pregnant until a routine biomed scan brought it to the attention of the Atherton on-site physician.

"Conception occurred four days ago," the doctor informed her.

Nadice sat in a sterile white examination room, the pink crepe gown pulled tight across her thighs. Chill air caressed her spine. "That's impossible."

The doctor nodded at the wall-mounted d-splay in front of her, where an image of a womb appeared. Her womb. A magnified inset showed a globular clump of cells.

"Fertilization occurred earlier this week. This is the resulting blastocyst, following implantation in the endometrium, the lining of the uterus.”

"That's the baby?"

"Yes."

"I don't understand." Shaking her head. It didn't seem real. Not the baby, not what he was saying. None of it.

"You should have been more careful," the doctor said. His tone, as stringent  as the walls, stripped away all pretense.

"But I didn't—"

"Any unauthorized pregnancy is grounds for termination," he went on. "Those are the terms of your contract."

Nadice bit her lip, diffident. Despite his benign exterior—he had philmed himself as Albert Schweitzer, wrinkled with compassion—she found him intimidating. Rumor among the staff was that Atherton hired inexperienced interns, fresh from medical school, because it was cheap. The philm concealed incompetence or insecurity, which he tried to hide by being stern.

Feeling exposed, she smoothed the crepe gown across her lap. "What are you going to do?"

"That depends."

"On what?" The thin paper dimpled under the clammy pressure of her fingers.

"What you decide to do. It's your choice."

So she had gone to Mateus. What choice did she have? Without him, she would lose either the baby or her job. With him, she might keep both.

"When one door closes, another opens." She mouthed the Spanish proverb, heard her grandmother's voice in the words. The old woman's parting gift, whispered in her ear just before Nadice boarded the magtrain from Tangiers to Lagos, where she expected to spend the next five years and maybe the rest of her life.

_______

Now she was carrying not only the baby, but something else. What that might be, she wasn't entirely sure.

"It's better if you don't know," Mateus had said, just before he dosed her. They sat in a room in a cheap modular hotel, halfway up a tower of stacked hexagons. He'd philmed the room in blue, pink, and yellow stucco. Mediterranean or Mexican, she thought. Beyond the flimsy graphene-coated walls, Lagos sweated, the breath of the city congested, thickly phlegmatic.

Her chest tightened. "Is it dangerous?"

"Don't worry. Everything will be fine. Trust me, gurl. I've done this before. Lots of times."

He handed her the dustware. She stared at the purple bubble cap, uncertain what to do. Was she supposed to carry it by hand? Swallow it?

"You have to breathe it in." He sniffed, his nostrils flaring.

Fingers trembling, she inserted the capsule into one nostril, hesitated, her gaze fixed on Mateus, then pinched and inhaled.

Acrid vapor coiled into her, a damp oily smoke that smelled of dead geraniums and hot metal filings.

Mateus caught her by the wrist, lowered her hand, and took the spent capsule from her. "How you feelin'?"

She clenched her empty hand into a fist, forced a deep breath, waited for her pulse to slow. "Customs won't know about it?"

"Naw. 'Cause it's there, but it ain't there. Like that. Soon as they go to look at it, it changes. Mutates into something else."

She could feel the ware now. An erratic, insect-fast fluttering somewhere inside her. She wasn't sure where. Everywhere and nowhere. The fibrillation was hard to nail down. It flitted around, banging against bones, tendons, and nerves, like a moth trying to free itself from a cocoon, struggling reflexively toward light.