Bruce Sterling - Heavy Weather

Alex digested this strange speech, and reached the only possible conclusion. His throat was really starting to hurt.

"Are you telling me you've been fucking Leo?"

Carol stared at him, guilt written all over her face. "I hope I never hit you, Alex. Because you're not the kinda guy that I. could hit just once."

"It's okay," he said hoarsely. "I figured Leo must have some plant inside the camp. That's why I didn't tell anybody yet. I'm still trying to figure how to break the news to His Highness."

"You want me to tell Jerry about it?"

"Yeah. If you want to. That might be good." He drew a breath. "Tell Jerry that I wouldn't let Leo in camp, unless Jerry said it was okay first."

"You know what Leo is?" Carol said, slowly. "Leo is what Jerry would be, if Jerry wanted to hick with people's heads, instead of fucking with the whole universe."

"I don't know what Jerry is," Alex said. "I never saw anything like Jerry before. But Leo-you can ask any dope vaquero in Latin America about a guy like Leo, they all know what he is, and what he's doing. They may not know up here in Estados Unidos, but down in El Salvador they know, in Nicaragua they know, they all fuckin' know, it's not any secret to anybody." He broke into a fit of coughing.

"What the hell is with you, Alex? You look awful."

"That's the other part I have to tell you," Alex said. He began, haltingly, to explain.

By the time he finished, Carol had become quite pale.

"They call it a lung enema?" she said.

"Yeah. But it doesn't matter what they call it. The point is that it works, that it really helps me."

"Lemme see that jug."

With an effort, Alex hefted the plastic medical jug onto the workbench. Carol squinted at the red-on-white adhesive label.

"Palmitic acid," she read aloud, slowly. "Anionic lipids. Silicone surfactant. Phosphatidylglycerol

Jesus Christ, this is a witches' brew! And what's all this other shit down here, all this stuff in Spanish?"

"Isotherm of a PA/SP-B1-25m on a NAHCO3-buffered saline subphase," Alex translated swiftly. "It's just a Spanish-language repetition of the basic ingredients."

"And I'm supposed to put a tube down your throat and decant this stuff into you? And then hang you upside down?"

"That's pretty much the story, yeah."

"Sorry, no way.

"Carol, listen. I'm sick. I'm a lot sicker than anyone here realizes. I've got a major syndrome, and it's coming down on me hard right now. And unless you help me, or somebody helps me, I could die here, in real short order."

"Why don't you go back home?"

"They can't help me at home," Alex said simply. "All their money can't help me, nobody can fix what's wrong with me. Not that they didn't try. But it's not just encephalitis, or cholera, or one of those things that kill you quickly. I'm not that lucky. What I've got, it's one of those complicated things. Environmental. Genetic. Whatever. They've been patching me up since I was six days old. If I'd been born in any other time but now, I'd have died in my crib."

"Can't you get somebody else to do this fucking thing for you? Janey? Ed? Ellen Mae?"

"Yeah. Maybe. And I'll ask 'em, if I have to. But I don't want anybody else to know."

"Oh," Carol said. "Yeah, and I can see why not.. Y'know, Alex, I've been wondering why you've been hangin' out here with us. Anyone can tell that you and Janey don't get along for hell. And it ain'j because you like to play games with rope. It's because you're hiding. You're hiding something."

"Yeah, that's right," Alex told her. "I was hiding. I mean, not so much from those contrabandista medicos that I burned down in Nuevo Laredo-they're a tough outfit in their way, but hell, they don't really give a shit about me, they've got a line of no-hope suckers outside that clinica that's longer than the Rio Grande. I was hiding here from my own goddamn life. Not my life, but that thing that I do, that other people call living. I am real close to dead, Carol. It's not all in my head, I'm not making this up. I can't prove toyou what's wrong with me, but I know it's the truth, because I've lived in this body all my life, and I can feel it. There's not much left of me. No matter what anybody does, no matter how much money anybody spends, or how many drugs they pump into me, I don't think I'm gonna make twenty-two."

"Christ, Alex."

"I'm just hiding up here because it's like-a different life. A realer life. I never do very much for the Troupe, because I just can't do much, I'm just too sick and too weak. But when I'm here with you people, I'm just some kid, I'm not just some dying kid." He stopped a moment, thinking hard. "But Carol, that's not all of it, either. I mean, that's what it was like at first, and it's all still true, but it's not the way I really feel anymore. You know what? I'm interested."

"Interested?"

"Yeah. Interested in the F-6. This big thing that's been hanging over us. I really believe in it now. I really know it's there! I know it's gonna really happen! And I really want to see it."

Carol sat down, heavily, on a folding camp stool. She put her head in her hands. Strong, wrinkled hands. When she looked up again, her face was wet with tears.

"You had to come pick on me, didn't you? You had to come tell me that you're dying."

"I'm sorry, Carol, but you're the only one here that I really trust."

"Because I've got a big soft heart, you little flicker. Because you know you can pick on me! Christ, this is just what I went through with Leo. No wonder you scoped him out so fast. Because there's not a dime's worth of difference between you and him."

"Yeah, except that he kills people, and I'm fucking dying! C'mon, Carol."

"We didn't kill anybody," Carol said bitterly. "All that structure-hit stuff-it's just killing things, is what it is. Leo knew. Hell, Leo was the best we ever had. You never saw us just mow people down, even though we could have done that real easily. We were just trying to kill the machineiy. 'Get rid of it. All that junk that had killed our world, y'know, the bulldozers and the coal plants and the logging machines and the smokestacks, the Goliath, the Monster, Behemoth, the Beast. It!" She shook herself, and wiped at her cheeks with the backs of her hands. "'Cause it was too late to stop it any other way, and we all knew damn well what was a ning to the world... . And if you think the Underground is all gone now, well, you got it wrong! They're not gone at all. Hell no, they're just real different now. They've got power now, a lot of 'em. They're actually in the government, what passes for the govermnent these days. Now they've got real power, not that hopeless pissant rebel shit with the Molotovs and the monkey wrenches and the builshit manifestos, I mean real power, real plans, terrible power, terrible plans. They're all people like him."

"Sorry.

"Guys like you, though ... you new kids, you hopeless little chickenshits... People will get used to anything, yeah, if they're young enough! People used to scream their heads off at the thought of dying of stupid slit like Th or cholera, now you don't even raise your voice, you just make it your own little secret, and you keep watching TV until you drop dead discreetly on the couch. People just put up with living in hell! They just ignore it all, and they're sure the world is always, always gonna get worse, and they don't ever wanna hear about it, and they're just grateful they're not in the relocation camp."

"I'm not giving up, Carol. I'm asking you to help me. Please help me."

"Look, I'm not a medic. I can't do anything like that. It's too awful, it's too much like it was in the camps."

"Carol," he grated, "I don't care about the weather camps. I don't care about your crazy Luddite friends. I know it was heavy then, and I know it was horrible then, hut I was only five years old then, and it's all history to me, it's dead history. I'm living in a cam p right now', this camp right now, and if I die in a camp I'll think that Cm lucky! I'm not gonna have any history. I'm not even gonna make it through another year! I just want to see this thing that's coming, that's all that I'm asking of you!" He leaned against the table, heavily. "Frankly, I kinda hope that the F-6 is gonna kill me. I kinda like that idea, it's worthwhile and it saves a lot of trouble all around. So now, if you'll just help me out here, I think I'm gonna be able to see it while I'm standing up on my own feet, that maybe I can pass for a human being while I'm busy getting killed. Will you help me please, Carol? Please!"