F. Wilson - Dydeetown World

"Why didn't you tell me this before!" It would have made things so much easier!

He shrugged. "Din think — "

"Never mind. What color was it? Red, yellow?"

"Pointy silvee star w'long silvee tail."

"Any words?"

He shrugged again.

Right. Remembered he couldn't read. No matter. Starting to get real excited about this case. A stylized comet in silver. Obviously a company logo. Now we were getting somewhere.

Or so I thought.

Boedekker North housed thousands of lessees. We sorted through the entire midsection directory and looked up every single firm or store that might conceivably have anything at all to do with drugs, medicine, research, doctors, even kids. Then we ran a match search to see if any of these had a silver comet in their logo.

No match.

Another run looking for the word "star" or "comet" or "meteor" or any celestial body associated with their company name.

No match.

So we searched for any company name that contained any reference to outer space. Even checked out names related to speed. We found quite a few, but none of them had a silver comet for a logo.

We came up equally empty on the top-section and under-section directories.

The hours had slipped by. It was dark out. We found a roving soyvlaki cart and I treated B.B. to a couple. He wolfed them down as we sat and watched a lot of the workers head home for the night.

"Howc y'don work l'them?"

"You mean a steady day job?"

He nodded.

Thought about that. Maggs had asked me the same question maybe a million times during our marriage. Couldn't come up with a new answer on the spot so I gave him the stock reply: "Too much like being a robot."

He gave me a strange look so I explained.

"You know — everything on a schedule. Be here now, get there then, do this before lunch, do that before you go home. A regimented existence. Not for me. Like to make my own hours, be my own boss, go where I want, when I want. Work for myself, not some big corporation. Be a corportion of one."

He gave me a halfhearted nod, like he wasn't really convinced. Couldn't believe it. An urch who'd lived by his wits all his life — how could he have the slightest doubt?

"Don't tell me you'd want to be like them!"

He watched the scurrying workers with big round wistful eyes. His mouth was pulled down at the corners and I could barely hear his voice:

"Love it."

Couldn't fathom that at all. Struck me speechless for a moment. Then I understood.

Here I was talking about bucking the system to a kid who'd have to spend his entire life scratching out an existence in the shadow economy, who would never get a hand on the bottom rung of the system's ladder no matter how hard he wished, hoped, or tried. From where he was, that bottom rung looked like heaven.

Somebody should have come by then and daubed my face white, painted my nose red, and turned on a calliope. What a clown, I was. An idiot clown.

Suddenly my appetite was gone. Offered the kid my second soyvlaki. He took it but ate it slowly.

When he was finished he said, "Where fr'mere?"

Wasn't sure. Tired. Knew we weren't finished here at Boedekker North, but didn't want to go back to Brooklyn tonight and have to tube up here again in the morning. Wanted to milk this trip.

"Back to the directories," I told him. "We're going to go through the midsection firm by firm and look at every logo of every lessee in Boedekker North until we find something that looks like a comet."

"Cou b'wrong," he said.

"About the comet? Don't think that hasn't occurred to me. That's why you aren't going home till I do."

We seated ourselves at the directory console, queued up the ads of each lessee in alpabetical order, and let them run in the holochamber. Started getting bleary along about "J" and was nodding around "M". Suddenly B.B. was yanking on my sleeve.

"It, san!" He was bouncing in his seat and pointing at the chamber. "It! It!"

Opened my eyes and stared at the holo. Felt my blood run cold at sight of the name:

NeuroNex .

But the logo was all wrong.

"That's no comet!"

The kid's finger was wiggling in the chamber, intersecting with the NeuroNex logo. His voice had risen to just shy of a screech. "It, san! It!"

And then I saw what he meant. Underlining the NeuroNex name was a stylized neuron trailing a long axon — all silvery gray in color. It did look like a comet.

Found it!

Noticed the kid looking at me with something like adoration in his eyes.

"You plenty smartee, Dreyer-san."

"If I were really smart," I said, trying to hide my dismay as I stared at the NeuroNex logo, "I wouldn't be involved in this at all."

"Where place?"

"Doesn't matter," I told him. "Place is closed now anyway. Be open tomorrow. I'll come back then."

"We — "

" No! I. Me. Alone. You can't get into a NeuroNex shop — no minors allowed — and you might give it away if you did." Stood up. "Come on. Time to get back to the island."

He was pouting as I guided him to the tube platform. The pod came and I spent most of the trip home staring through the wall at the progession of lighted stops and semidark in-betweens, thinking of NeuroNex.

NeuroNex. I hadn't included it in the sort, probably because I hadn't wanted to see that name.

Of all the places that could have been involved, why did it have to be NeuroNex?

Something bumped my arm. Looked around and saw that the urch had fallen asleep and was leaning against me. The other people on the tube probably thought he was my kid. He shivered in his sleep. Put my arm over his shoulder. Just to keep up appearances.

"My stop's next," I said, jostling him awake. Got to my feet as he yawned and stretched.

"Tired," he said. "Sleep y'place, san?"

Shook my head. "No chance."

He looked surprised. "Please? Tired. Nev spen night in real compartment."

"Haven't missed much. Once you're asleep it's all the same. Besides, I've got work to do. Can't have an urch hanging around."

"I can help," he said in his best Realpeople talk.

Could see he was getting too attached, imprinted on me like some baby duck. Had to introduce a little distance here.

"No, you can't. Check with my office in a couple of days. May have something for you then."

The tube stopped and I got out. Walking away, I felt his hurt gaze on my back like a weight until the tube shot him further downtown. Could have used some company but I had to be alone tonight. No witnesses.

Learning that the "comet" we had been seeking was part of the NeuroNex logo was pushing me toward a decision. A big one. One I wasn't sure I was ready for yet.

Years ago, NeuroNex had wired me for my button. Now NeuroNex — or at least this particular branch office — was linked to the snatches and deaths of a couple of urchins. And I'd managed to get myself tractored into finding out the who, the why, and the wherefore.

Which meant I had to find a way of presenting myself to NeuroNex and asking lots of questions without raising too much suspicion. There was a foolproof way of for me to do that: Get myself unbuttoned.

Not a pretty prospect. Been preparing myself to have it done, been planning to have it done…someday. But not so soon. Next year maybe. Next quarter maybe. Sure as hell not tomorrow.

Not tomorrow!

But what better way to get next to NeuroNex? Tried desperately to think of one and came up blank.

Dropped into my new formchair — just like Elmero's — and buttoned it to adjust to my posture. Sat there looking down the hall through my door. Watched for a while but nothing was moving out there so I rode the chair over to the button drawer and opened it. Sat staring at those little gold disks. A lot of money invested in those things over the years. Some where played out but I kept them anyway. Nostalgia, maybe. The Good Old Days — when a good simple single-input orgasm was quite enough for a long while. But then I graduated to doubles, then triples. My latest was a five-couple orgy multi-channeled into a slow build that crescendoed through a series of minor eruptions into a major simultaneous explosion.