The extra, p.4
The Extra, page 4
Rod, still restive at Val’s quiet irony about immortalizing, was looking around for some thought to repair his standing. He took a cue from where Kate was looking. Waved at the Zoo. “Well, we’re giving them a day off tomorrow, Val. All that talk about social programs for the lowlifes, we’re the ones, you’re the one who cuts their crime rate in half for weeks after every extra call. They oughtta do a study about that when they whine about live action.”
Val went absolutely still. So did Kate. Dear god, the arrogant carelessness! Rod had gone beyond digging just his own grave. He had seriously insulted one of the most powerful men in the vid industry. Called him an executioner of the poor. When you put hurt on a man that size, put him in a mood to lash out, every lesser being in his immediate neighborhood was likely to go flying. Kate’s heart was hammering. Even Rod was alerted by Val’s stillness.
“Actually, Rod,” Val said pleasantly, “I think your study would disappoint you. The lowlifes who live by crime tend to be more secure. It’s likely to be their victims, desperate for escape from them, who’ll crowd the tubes tomorrow morning to come here.”
“And we’re giving them something real!” blurted Kate. She instantly knew the error of saying anything at all at this juncture, but she had to speak, had to separate herself from Rod, who stood blinking, struggling to process Val’s words. “Aside from their bounties, I mean. We’re giving them a kind of quest, glory, a chance to be heroes right there on the screen for billions to see!”
Oh Christ, how lame it sounded in her own ears! The tone of it was worst of all, protesting Val’s innocence. She had made as grave an error as Rod had made. She had tried to excuse Val Margolian!
She watched Val take it in, saw him discover in the words her intent to ease his conscience, and discover in this her belief in his guilt. And she knew at once that those few reckless words were a major disaster for her career.
Val touched his com again. “Willy.”
“Yeah, boss.”
“Get me the Showboat up here, would you?”
“Comin’ up.”
For a few heartbeats Kate thought that awful moment would be forgotten. The Showboat was the director’s throne, a raft with massive banks of monitors accessing every camera in the set. Since about 25 percent of the doors in this little city accessed actual interior sets, and every room of every interior was multiply camera-ed, the Showboat monitored more than ten thousand video feeds—and this wasn’t counting the cameras mounted on all the APPs, whose camera eyes recorded their own footage as they pursued and killed the extras. Val had taken his pet assistants aboard the Showboat on previous shoots. But when the big boat hovered near, and extended its gangway, and they turned to follow him aboard, Val turned to them with a gentle, detaining gesture.
“Kate. Rod. I want to tell you how much I value your directing skills. Real talent there. Real talent. I want to nurture that talent. But there’s a danger in rising too swiftly, too smoothly to the top, as both of you are, perhaps, in danger of doing. A director needs to feel the action, the flow of a production, from the ground up, from the front lines, as it were. I’ve been remiss, too busy to really monitor your training. But live action is explosive, it’s dangerously fluid, and subject to catastrophic shifts. This is actual war after all.”
He let that hang there a moment, watching them. They nodded gravely. Kate didn’t worry about Rod speaking—he was utterly clueless at this moment—but her own heart was hammering away.
“You’ll both get directors’ credits, draw your checks per contract, but on this shoot I’ve decided I want to repair the deficiencies in your training. I want the two of you flying a payraft. Please tell me now if this isn’t acceptable.”
“Val,” Kate blurted out, glad the suspense was ended at least. “I’m grateful. To put me . . . this close to the biggest live action ever shot. . . . If I’d been smart enough, I would have thought to ask it of you. I’d be proud to do it, Val.”
His smile still had a touch of frost to it. “That’s my Kate. Rod?”
“Why sure, Val . . .” He sounded like he’d been stomach-punched. “I’d be glad to. I’m grateful too!”
“Outstanding. Take the raft down to Accounting. I’ll com them, and I’ll tell Payboats to prep you a raft. Good luck. I know you’ll make the most out of this priceless experience.”
Kate piloted them down toward the hotel rooftop at center-set, beneath which Panoply’s administrative offices were concealed. “What the—” Rod began.
“Don’t say a word. Not a word.” She struggled for composure. If only Rod had fallen out of the raft while he’d stood there, pronouncing the fatal words. If only she’d pushed him out while Val wasn’t looking, before he’d had a chance to open his mouth!
“Just listen, OK? Val doesn’t gloat over how quiet the Zoo will be after the deaths of ten thousand lowlifes tomorrow. You congratulated him on being a mass killer. The result? We’re going to fly a payboat tomorrow. If you have any reservations about doing it, leave me when we land. If you have any thoughts about flying a payboat, other than just flying the fucking thing and doing your job, do not give those thoughts the form of speech. I don’t want to trade another unnecessary word with you.”
She’d ended a lot angier than she’d started. Saw his stunned face, and struggled to soften it. “Rod, you’ve—we’ve both offended him. You’ve got to get used to it. If we run the raft well, he might decide that’s enough.” (Not likely!) “We’ve just got to focus, follow his orders, and concentrate on doing a good job.”
As they landed on the hotel roof, and entered the elevator down to Accounting, Rod was quiet. But as they approached the teller’s window, he got his back up again, for the grittiness of tomorrow’s work was coming home to him. They were picking up payboxes of four million clacks because they would be making payouts to extras who made kills during the shoot. And the raft they would be doing this from would be a far bleaker, more serious little craft than Val’s luxury ride. This little raft’s banks of monitors would, tomorrow morning, be swarming with shots of mayhem and death, and its cruise level would be scarcely six stories, on average, above all that mayhem and death, into which the raft must plunge, again and again, to drop kill-bonuses. Naked-eye and -ear work all shoot long, carnage at close range, the raft’s high-powered engines and hissing vents growling and gasping with the work. Poor Rod’s jaw clenched tighter and tighter. His dad was a major Panoply stockholder! This couldn’t really be happening to him.
No breakfast tomorrow, Kate thought grimly, and not just because of the rough riding. She was already realizing how her customary director’s perspective had sanitized death—and tomorrow it would be her choice of death she’d be seeing so close! Who would have dreamed Rod would sell it to Development? Would actually get thousands of people killed in that unspeakable way? Till this moment, she’d imagined it through monitors, through a kind of glass condom! But tomorrow there would be nothing but a short stretch of empty air between her eyeballs and their dying, and their screams would reach her ears.
Rod erupted as they emerged from the elevator doors. “I can’t do this! That bitch Roz in Accounting! She won’t say anything—she wouldn’t dare to actually say a word! She won’t have to, though. She’ll just look at me, say it all with her eyes! I can’t do this!”
Kate stared at him. He still had the power to astonish her. She burst out laughing. “You were screwing her, right? You were a godlike assistant director, and she was a lowly worm who’d topped out in Accounting? I can just imagine how you condescended to her, even while you were screwing her. Rod, wake up! You’re not even thinking about what we’ll be doing tomorrow. All this means to you is status loss!”
Down in Accounting, Kate almost enjoyed herself. While one of the clerks was counting out their bonus cash, Kate chatted amiably with Roz. “Look at him,” she said. Rod turned his back on them. “You know, his absolute singleness of purpose looks like strength at first.”
“Yes! That was it!” said Roz. “And then you realized that he only had one thought, his image. That’s what made him seem so focused.”
Kate laughed. “I wish we’d talked sooner. Now we’re both pay-techs. It was inevitable he would say something to dig his own grave. Why didn’t I see that?”
“Well . . .” Roz was more solemn now. “You’ll be seeing something tomorrow, honey. . . .”
“I know. But you know, suddenly . . . I feel I deserve to. And it kind of helps.”
Roz nodded gravely. “Hold on to that, Kate. Just remember that staying focused is the way to give them the best break you can.”
“Thanks, dear. I’m holding on to that.”
LEAVE-TAKINGS
Jool paused awhile amid the trees inside her compound, listening to the leaves whisper in a light breeze from the west. She could smell the jasmine, and the earthy scent of geraniums Momma cultivated close to the house, the spicy pepper tree, the carob with its faint semen scent, honeysuckle and passion flower vines that everywhere added their delicate tang, and all the shrubs and grasses their pleasant bitterness.
But the monoxide-and-asphalt smells of the Zoo over-laid it all. That’s what you did here, you dug the sweetness out of the pollution, the tranquillity out of the danger. Even as she took in the whisper of greenery, she listened for the sound of stealthy feet betrayed by the deep dead leaves left lying everywhere, a natural alarm system. . . .
Inland lay the west foothills of the Sierras, and upland, the Trinities . . . broad stretches of Oregon and Washington. There were a lot of vital little towns, whole counties of working towns out there. A quarter mil in the municipal account made you a taxpayer in good standing with five years’ credit and bought you some decent fire and law enforcement protection; another quarter mil bought you up to twenty acres of plantable soil, water. A hundred grand more would buy your vehicle, tools, and building materials besides whatever stone and lumber you harvested on your acres.
Over a million, that was the reality, the hard figures. And what did extras really walk out with, those who did walk out? They got a quarter mil survival fee, flat rate. If you just found a place to hide on the set, and lived, you could come back here and be taken care of for years, except that people would know you had that cash, and you’d be doing double-compound guard shifts the whole time. You could put it in a bank, and then risk a hundred separate trips for cash over those years, because checks were a joke in the Zoo.
But if you had a weapon, or found one on the set, you could hope for kill-bonuses. Street word put bonuses around a hundred, a hundred-plus K, but who knew? And what were the odds of bonusing big, big enough? You heard this and that, but people who bonused big and hung around here afterward rarely told the straight story, which would basically be telling people This is how much you could rob me for. She just had no way to guess the odds.
But if you could make it out into a town? Even if you had the entry clacks, nothing would be really settled till you’d worked, planted, and helped your neighbors, and everyone knew that you were gonna make something solid, pull your own weight. Oh how happy Momma would be if Jool could set them up in a place like that!
Her jaw was trembling! She was blinded by the tears streaming down her face. Get a grip, you silly bitch! Stow these feelings, fool! You can have them when you get out and have a life. Then you can bawl your stupid head off. You can cover Momma’s face with kisses and get her bawling too.
She scrubbed her face with her sleeve, and took deep, shuddering breaths, and squatted down on the path in the dark under a bush until her eyes were clear and she could see properly. It wasn’t her guard shift, but she was always on full alert when she was out on the grounds. Whacks on dust, once they got into a compound, could sit as still as stones for hours under cover till they saw the moment to move in on your house.
All four houses had twenty-five watters mounted outside above windows and doors. It gave you a shot at anyone who got close enough for a break-in attempt. Her own front porch had a heavy grill across it—she could just make out Momma’s armchair inside it, in the shadow of the bougainvillea. Could see the neighboring wall of Chops’s place next door, and farther in the shadow glimpses of the back porches of Millie’s and Rick’s places, and centered between all four the locked steel shed that housed the generator they all shared. They’d just had Gas Bill come by last week, so the generator’s tank was topped off, a hundred gallons. The pump for the water tank ran off the same gas, and the water tank was full, five hundred gallons—that was water for dishes and cooking. City water was still OK for toilets and watering and baths if you didn’t get it in your mouth.
Everything was topped off, and Momma’s cupboard was full. Jool hadn’t planned it, so this readiness seemed like an omen, a sign that tomorrow was meant to be.
There was a stealthy step from around a bend in the path. About time Chops showed up. Softly she spoke: “Proclivity.”
“An inclination to. Exiguous.”
“Extremely slight or small.” Invader scum tended to have small vocabularies.
He stepped into view, his sawed-off at port arms, wiry, bald little Chops, all tattoos.
“All cool, Chops?”
“All cool, Jool.”
“C’mere a second.”
When he got close she wrapped a hug around him. He was startled, but after a second got his shotgun out of the way and hugged her back. Very shy, Chops, even after their years as neighbors and friends. He’d been fucked with in prison. A couple years back, she’d finally managed to get him into bed with her, and with a tender, relentless patience, had made love to him, and made him happy. Started some healing going, got some of the poison out of him. He would never become a lover, be someone who had a lover, but since that first time, every so often she dragged him to bed, sometimes just holding him, sometimes making him more completely happy again. “Just so you don’t forget,” she’d scowl at him afterward. “Deal is, as long as we’re partners, you’re gonna have to pay up.” Lately, she’d been getting a real smile out of him. Smiles and personal communication weren’t Chops’s thing. But he really surprised her one morning a while back.
“Jool . . . ,” he’d said, looking miserable and uncomfortable, visibly wondering what he was doing opening his mouth like this.
“ ‘Jool’ what?”
“Jool . . . My life for yours, Jool. Any time, always. My life for yours.”
She’d had to hug him then, completing his discomfort. “I love you too, Chops.” And understanding how this would scare him, she added, with an impish smile, “Look, Chops. You gotta pay up, but what we’re about is an always thing. Like we’re family. My life for yours too. Always.”
And Chops, solemnly, relieved, “Yes. That’s right. Always.”
But this last hug was something different, and she could tell he sensed it. No point in beating around the bush with Chops. She had to hit him with it quick before he made up his mind he was coming with her. Held him at arm’s length. “I’m tubing to Panoply tomorrow morning, brother, and the day after tomorrow we’re all heading out of here. Don’t say anything. You told me your life for mine, right? Well, I can’t do this without you here to take care of Momma. No way. It’s got to be me,got to, I decided first, so I take the turn. And I’ll die for sure in there if I think that Momma’s unprotected. Don’t let me down, Chops.”
Silence. Not a word for the longest time, his eyes working darkly. “. . . OK. I take your patrol tonight. You sleep.”
She gave him the clacks and the piece from the two ’Rise-asses, and that was that.
Jool went through her door as quiet as a house breaker, and her prayers were answered. Momma was snoring in her recliner, a book on her ample bosom. Jool sneaked out onto the porch, and settled into the armchair for some sleep. She’d be gone before Momma woke.
Thinking about all they’d done to this place, her mind strayed through the compound around her, home to her since Momma’d moved in with Aunt Mae when Jool was ten. That very same year, Aunt Mae had stepped out of Punjab’s Mini-Mart with some groceries, and died instantly, a “bonus” casualty of a drive-by. Then the house was just hers and Momma’s, who gave reading lessons there to support them—there was some market for them, the schools being the hardscrabble operations they were.
Jool got her first job at thirteen. She might have gone the safe, dirt-work route—an Ag job was always easy to find. Half the L.A. Basin had reverted to the gardens and groves of its earlier era, with the population cut in half and half its sea of houses burned away, and with the soil and sun as good as it ever was. Picking, trimming, tractoring—for a tight, tough little thing as she already was, she could have had full-time work right out of the gate. Or, well-read as she was, could have joined one of the many Literacy Coops running all over the Basin.
She chose instead to make real money, and so her first gig—never described to Momma, who thought she was Ag-working—she got from the dad of one of Momma’s pupils. That income had put up the house’s fireproof siding and roofing. She’d been so proud of that job, riding shotgun for Snakepit on his regular route as a crystal courier from Sanberdoo, been so proud of encasing Momma in extra safety earned by her own wits, her own nerve!
The generator shed was bought with more shotgun money, this from Spade Trade on his in-City smack route. Spade was a sweet guy, a nonstop talker, who believed in “adequate precautions, not fuckin’ luck.” He had steel plate instead of side windows, but they’d got him through the supposedly bulletproof windshield. Jool had grabbed his bag, tucked and rolled out, ducked and run. She got away and wholesaled it to a dealer the next day. You did what you had to do to protect your own. . . .
After Spade Trade’s death, she had managed survival more skillfully. She turned to firearms, which seemed less evil than drugs, and worked out a delivery job for A-Rab. A-Rab’s flea market down in Culver City was a collection point for—among other under-the-counter items—handguns. His site was an ancient drive-in theater where the huge screen had been cut into six-foot slices to fence the lot, and the old speaker posts supported the long tables.
