Jack Dann - Dangerous Games

“Yeah,” Fred said emphatically. His image wavered. The slime was still messing his clothes.

Jerry continued, “And we collected some interesting gossip about Chumlig.” The students maintained their own files on faculty. Mostly it was good for laughs. Sometimes it had more practical uses.

“What’s that?”

“Okay, this is from Ron Williams. He says he got it firsthand, no possibility of Friends of Privacy lies.” That’s how most FOP lies were prefaced, but Mike just nodded.

“Ms. Chumlig was never fired from Hoover High. She’s moonlighting there. Maybe other places, too.”

“Oh. Do the school boards know?” Ms. Chumlig was such a straight arrow, it was hard to imagine she was cheating.

“We don’t know. Yet. We can’t figure why Hoover would let this happen. You know those IBM Fellows they were bragging about? All three were in Chumlig’s classes! But she kinda drifted out of sight when the publicity hit. Our theory is there’s some scandal that keeps her from taking credit… Mike?”

Mike had stopped in the middle of the path. He shrugged up his record of this morning, and matched Big Lizard’s English usage with Chumlig’s.

He looked back at the twins. “Sorry. You… surprised me.”

“It surprised us, too. Anyway, we figure this could be useful if Jerry and I have serious grade problems in her class.”

“Yeah, I guess it could,” said Mike, but he wasn’t really paying attention anymore. It suddenly occurred to him that there could be something beyond top agents. There could be people who helped others on a time scale of years. Something called teachers.

Here’s a wry but poignant look at an impoverished future America desperate for almost any kind of entertainment… and at the down-and-outers desperate enough to provide it for them…

Jonathan Lethem is one of that generation of talented young writers who came along in the ’90s and the Oughts to date, and whose reputation spreads far outside the usual genre limits. He has worked at an antiquarian bookstore, written slogans for buttons, and lyrics for several rock bands (including Two Fettered Apes, EDO, Jolley Ramey, and Feet Wet), and is also the creator of the Dr. Sphincter character on MTV. In addition to all these certifiably cool credentials, Lethem has also made sales to magazines as varied as Asimov’s Science Fiction and The New Yorker, as well as Interzone, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, and McSweeney’s Enchanted Chamber of Astonishing Stories. His first novel, Gun, With Occasional Music, won the Locus Award for Best First Novel as well as the Crawford Award for Best Fantasy Novel, and was one of the most talked-about books of the year. His other books include the novels Amnesia Moon, As She Climbed Across the Table, Girl in Landscape, and The Fortress of Solitude, and two collections of his short fiction, The Wall of the Sky, the Wall of the Eye and Men and Cartoons: Stories. His novel Motherless Brooklyn won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 2000. His most recent book is a nonfiction collection, The Disappointment Artist: Essays. Coming up is a new fiction collection, How We Got Insipid.

WHEN we first saw somebody near the mall Gloria and I looked around for sticks. We were going to rob them if they were few enough. The mall was about five miles out of the town we were headed for, so nobody would know. But when we got closer Gloria saw their vans and said they were scapers. I didn’t know what that was, but she told me.

It was summer. Two days before this Gloria and I had broken out of a pack of people that had food but we couldn’t stand their religious chanting anymore. We hadn’t eaten since then.

“So what do we do?” I said.

“You let me talk,” said Gloria.

“You think we could get into town with them?”

“Better than that,” she said. “Just keep quiet.”

I dropped the piece of pipe I’d found and we walked in across the parking lot. This mall was long past being good for finding food anymore but the scapers were taking out folding chairs from a store and strapping them on top of their vans. There were four men and one woman.

“Hey,” said Gloria.

Two guys were just lugs and they ignored us and kept lugging. The woman was sitting in the front of the van. She was smoking a cigarette.

The other two guys turned. This was Kromer and Fearing, but I didn’t know their names yet.

“Beat it,” said Kromer. He was a tall squinty guy with a gold tooth. He was kind of worn but the tooth said he’d never lost a fight or slept in a flop. “We’re busy,” he said.

He was being reasonable. If you weren’t in a town you were nowhere. Why talk to someone you met nowhere?

But the other guy smiled at Gloria. He had a thin face and a little mustache. “Who are you?” he said. He didn’t look at me.

“I know what you guys do,” Gloria said. “I was in one before.”

“Oh?” said the guy, still smiling.

“You’re going to need contestants,” she said.

“She’s a fast one,” this guy said to the other guy. “I’m Fearing,” he said to Gloria.

“Fearing what?” said Gloria.

“Just Fearing.”

“Well, I’m just Gloria.”

“That’s fine,” said Fearing. “This is Tommy Kromer. We run this thing. What’s your little friend’s name?”

“I can say my own name,” I said. “I’m Lewis.”

“Are you from the lovely town up ahead?”

“Nope,” said Gloria. “We’re headed there.”

“Getting in exactly how?” said Fearing.

“Anyhow,” said Gloria, like it was an answer. “With you, now.”

“That’s assuming something pretty quick.”

“Or we could go and say how you ripped off the last town and they sent us to warn about you,” said Gloria.

“Fast,” said Fearing again, grinning, and Kromer shook his head. They didn’t look too worried.

“You ought to want me along,” said Gloria. “I’m an attraction.”

“Can’t hurt,” said Fearing. Kromer shrugged, and said, “Skinny, for an attraction.”

“Sure, I’m skinny,” she said. “That’s why me and Lewis ought to get something to eat.”

Fearing stared at her. Kromer was back to the van with the other guys.

“Or if you can’t feed us-” started Gloria.

“Hold it, sweetheart. No more threats.”

“We need a meal.”

“We’ll eat something when we get in,” Fearing said.

“You and Lewis can get a meal if you’re both planning to enter.”

“Sure,” she said. “We’re gonna enter-right, Lewis?”

I knew to say right.

THE town militia came out to meet the vans, of course. But they seemed to know the scapers were coming, and after Fearing talked to them for a couple of minutes they opened up the doors and had a quick look then waved us through. Gloria and I were in the back of a van with a bunch of equipment and one of the lugs, named Ed. Kromer drove. Fearing drove the van with the woman in it. The other lug drove the last one alone.

I’d never gotten into a town in a van before, but I’d only gotten in two times before this anyway. The first time by myself, just by creeping in, the second because Gloria went with a militia guy.

Towns weren’t so great anyway. Maybe this would be different.

We drove a few blocks and a guy flagged Fearing down. He came up to the window of the van and they talked, then went back to his car, waving at Kromer on his way. Then we followed him.

“What’s that about?” said Gloria.

“Gilmartin’s the advance man,” said Kromer. “I thought you knew everything.”