The Future, Imperfect: Short Stories Read online

  "Hope I'm not interrupting anything," an amused voice came from the open door behind him.

  Dane started. He knew that low voice — Leah.

  He turned and stared. The sight of her sent the blood pumping through his veins, mixing memory and desire. Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly.

  She'd felt it too.

  Three years since he'd seen her. Now there she stood, long, lean, and dark, resting one shoulder casually on the door frame, gazing at him with the same intensity he remembered, that focused forcefulness of personality that had waylaid him the moment he'd first met her. He'd known she was in San Rafael, but he hadn't expected to see her.

  And he certainly hadn't expected her to seek him out.

  "I take it you two already know each other?" Marie asked, looking from him to Leah and back. She sounded faintly resentful.

  Dane glanced at her. "We were in college together in Eugene."

  "It's been a long time," Leah said.

  He nodded. Her voice was like rich chocolate slowly melting in the sun, warm and dark and sweet. They hadn't gotten involved all those years ago because of his girlfriend Karen. Now he and Karen had split up, and she was married to a man he'd never met.

  He was free and she had a husband.

  "How's Karen?" she asked, as if she could read his mind.

  He shrugged. "I haven't been to Eugene very often since she joined corporate culture and we called it quits."

  "She didn't join corporate culture. Her university did."

  "So did yours."

  She didn't have an answer for that one. When Berkeley had been incorporated by Sosostris Enterprises, Leah had gone underground rather than become corporate property; Karen had gone along with the take-over of the University of Oregon by PNGE, saying that working within the system would do more good for their cause than becoming an outlaw.

  "And how's your husband?" he asked.

  Leah pushed away from the door frame and strode over. She placed both hands flat on the table top and fixed her intense gaze on Dane. "He's the reason I wanted to talk to you. I heard you're on your way south."

  "Yes."

  "I want to come along. Carlos went down to Anaheim a week ago, and I haven't heard anything from him for two days. Marie doesn't have another armored car to lose."

  "I told her you'd be heading south through the valley to deliver the spores," the burb boss said. "Anaheim wasn't on your list, though, was it?"

  Dane shook his head. But how could he possibly say no? And how could he look for Leah's husband with her, be alone with her for days and keep his mind on charity?

  "What did he go down there for?" he asked. Anaheim was hardly a vacation site. When the Big One hit, it was the beginning of the end for the L.A. area. It had damaged the San Onofre nuclear power plant and destroyed the research facilities at the California Institute of Technology and nearby firms. The fires and riots and looting had lasted weeks. No one had ever determined precisely all the substances besides radionuclides let loose in the L.A. basin as a result, but whatever they were, it was a poisonous mix, and companies and individuals who could afford to relocated. All that was left down there now were squatters, the poorest of the poor.

  "They wanted to consult a medical expert on the increase in birth defects in their kids," Leah said. "Hermaphroditism. Before we left Berkeley, we did some work on the connection between that and environmental estrogens."

  "Did he say anything about problems before you lost contact?"

  Leah grimaced. "Plenty. He said civilization is just a veneer, and a lot more in that vein. But he didn't mention any danger of being cut off."

  "Why didn't you go with him?"

  Leah's eyes grew almost impossibly darker. "Believe me, I've asked myself that too."

  Dane looked at her and nodded shortly. "When can you be ready to go?"

  "I already am."

  * * * *

  "No one. Just like the last town." Dane turned to Leah, squinting. The glare of sunlight behind her back reduced her to a dark shadow and glanced off the weapon at her hip. With her stance, stature, and short hair, much shorter than his own, it would have been hard to say in this blinding light if she were a man or a woman. But he was all too aware she was a woman.

  "It's eerie," she said.

  He glanced down the street at the empty store fronts. "Main Street, USA — ghost town style."

  She chuckled, a rich, throaty sound, more earthy and full of promise than the ground beneath their feet.

  Dane kicked a stray rock down the middle of the deserted street. The sound it made striking the pavement, once, twice, three times, echoed between the empty buildings. "Maybe the corporations are responsible."

  "Or maybe they aren't. This place looks pretty bleak without any help from them. The people living here might just have given up and left." A trickle of sweat teased the dark skin of her temple, lingered briefly on one high cheekbone and skittered down her cheek. Dane looked away.

  If only he'd been able to smuggle the spores out earlier. If their crops had been able to survive on less water, this town might have been a little bit less barren and a little bit less deserted.

  Assuming the corporations hadn't driven them out, that is.

  He headed after the rock he'd kicked. "Let's check it out. Maybe it's not as dead as it looks."

  The door of the first store on his right was unlocked and he pushed it open. Leah was a step behind him, one hand on her gun. Before he could enter, he heard a scuffle and swiveled, his own weapon coming up almost without volition. It was only a wild dog, digging in a pile of trash in an alley across the street. Nearby, a ball rolled down the gutter.

  "I wonder what he's got," Dane said, stepping back out onto the empty pavement.

  Leah put her hand on his elbow. "Careful, Dane. A dog like that is worse than a wolf."

  Dane looked down at her hand and back up into her eyes; she slowly pulled her hand away without breaking eye contact. He was the first to look away.

  The small store still had some canned goods on the shelves, and more were on the floor, some torn open by the animals that had taken over the town.

  "If the people left town, why didn't they take supplies like this with them?" Dane asked.

  She looked at him and shrugged. Just a few inches and he could touch her again, feel her warm skin beneath his fingers.

  They left the store without another word and headed down a side street, past a row of deserted, dilapidated houses, the lawns brown, the bare roots of dry bushes clutching stony rubbish. The brown lawns didn't tell them anything about how long the town was deserted — water was too precious a commodity in Southern California to waste on grass. Somewhere a cricket chirped, an incongruously cheerful sound in the middle of the silence.

  Leah strode beside him through the abandoned streets. "They may not have had enough water to go around."

  Ahead was an empty square which must once have been a park. A tortured sculpture of corroded metal and wood stood in one corner, the remnants of a playground.

  "But if they left, why did they leave so much behind?"

  "I don't know."

  Dane stopped in front of a dead tree, a handful of leaves from the year before still clinging to the branches, offering no shelter from the brutal midday sun.

  He watched Leah surreptitiously while she took a radiation reading. Perhaps he was imagining things, imagining reciprocal attraction when it was only one-sided, but he didn't think so. His awareness of her was like a hum in his blood, hot, insistent. He imagined falling into the dirt with her, here beneath the dead tree, dust rising around them like a cloud, imagined her making so much noise it scared the ever-present dogs away.

  Too bad she had a husband.

  "Radiation levels barely above normal for this area. We're not far enough south yet," she said.

  He reluctantly abandoned his fantasy to concentrate on their surroundings. "So that's not it."

  She shook her head. "I would have been surprised
if it was. Levels were never even close to Chernobyl or Cosne sur Loire, especially not here."

  "Which leaves us with either the water supply or the corporations driving people out."

  "It's not always the corporations, Dane. Look at this place." She swung around, the sweep of her arm taking in the dusty road, the ramshackle houses, the bare trees. "Why would Sosostris or Softec bother with a podunk town like this, struggling to survive? What threat is it to them?"

  They turned down another street, dry stone and concrete, bordered by patches of dead lawn and empty houses. No one to help and no way to find out why.

  He called up a map on his wrist unit. "Bakersfield is less than half-an-hour away. I'd like to stop there and make some inquiries."

  Leah hesitated. He knew she wanted to get to Anaheim as quickly as possible, but he was her ride south. She was dependent on his goodwill. Some part of himself that he didn't want to examine too closely liked having her in his power.

  She looked at him with those honest brown eyes of hers. Dark brown. Decadently so. "If you say so."

  "It's the most likely place to look for answers."

  She shrugged, and Dane felt a twinge of remorse.

  Together they turned back to their armored car, cutting across a field of brown grass.

  "Wait," he said, stopping. There was a patch to the right darker than the grass, and he strode up to the edge, Leah close behind. A splotch of color marred the turned earth, testimony to the work of an animal, probably another wild dog or a coyote. The animal had uncovered a shoulder and arm, taking the arm away at the elbow, and the faded pattern of a red and blue checkered shirt disfigured the brown field like a scar.

  "Do you still think they all just left?" he asked quietly.

  She didn't answer. They stood together, leaning into each other, staring at the swatch of fabric.

  * * * *

  No corporation had bothered to absorb Bakersfield yet, so they didn't need Dane's fake ID. There weren't many places this far south that the corporations were interested in buying up, but as they drove into the city, it was obvious Bakersfield had more resources than the other unincorporated towns they'd seen since leaving San Rafael. One home they passed even sported a garden of blue hyacinths, a splash of extravagant color in a sea of sandy beige. They both stared at the gaudy splotch of bright blue. Here they obviously had more than enough water. The affluence didn't make the natives friendly, however. A woman hanging up children's clothes in a yard bordering the street spotted their car and dashed into her house, the screen door slamming wildly behind her.

  Leah and Dane looked at each other. "From her reaction, you'd think things are worse here than in the burbs. But it doesn't look like it."

  "Maybe she'll talk to us."

  "She didn't act too friendly, Dane."

  Ignoring her sarcasm, he braked and backed up the car to the house. The place appeared deserted, no sound, no sign of life except the clothes whipping in the breeze and the barking of a dog somewhere down the street.

  Dane knocked on the woman's door. "Ma'am?" He knocked again.

  "She's not coming out," Leah said.

  "Psst!"

  They both turned, hands going to their weapons. An old woman was peeking through the screen of the house next door, her hair a frizzy cloud of white around her head. She motioned them over to her porch.

  "Lou won't talk to you, you know," the old lady told them, nodding her head vigorously. "She's spooked. Three kids, and they'll likely all be freaks, just like the rest. But she thinks she can save them."

  "Freaks? What kind of freaks?" Leah asked.

  The woman darted a glance up and down the street as if fearing someone could overhear her. "Hermaphrodites," she whispered.

  Leah sucked in her breath and looked at Dane.

  "The men are gone," the old woman continued. "You can stay for a spell if you want. People don't visit much anymore." She pushed the screen door wide and they stepped through into a sparse, dingy kitchen, musty with the faded scent of synthetic perfume.

  "The men are gone? What do you mean?" he asked.

  She gestured with her hand out the window, vague and far away. "The men, the ones who call themselves the Purists. They go away sometimes." She led them into a neat living room, bare of tech but full of knickknacks and souvenirs, withered stumps of time. Old color photographs from the previous century covered the walls, a wide seven-branched candelabra graced a chest of drawers, and a stone chessboard stood on a low table in one corner, a souvenir of a trip to Mexico half-a-century earlier perhaps, when tourists still sought the sun.

  He turned to the old woman. "Do you know where they go, Mrs. ...?"

  "Porter. May Porter." She shook her head. "They go out, and we don't ask. It's best not to. Would you like a cup of coffee? All I have is chicory, but I'm used to it now."

  "No, thank you. Is there anyone like a mayor or a burb boss here in Bakersfield?" he asked.

  Mrs. Porter started, glancing quickly at the door, but if there had been any sound, it was nothing more than the wind. The old lady was obviously almost as spooked as her neighbor. She looked at Dane and Leah, her eyes wide. "The Purists downtown run things, but you don't want to go to them. They don't like strangers. Or freaks."

  "Why not?"

  "Need and fear. Fear always wins, you know." She shook her head. "My nerves are bad today. I'd like you to stay, but the men might come back before you leave."

  "Why are you afraid of them?"

  "Not for me, young man. For your young lady."

  Leah started. "For me?"

  Mrs. Porter nodded. "They might take you. The women in this part of the valley bear mostly freaks."

  Beside him, a sharp intake of breath. "Dane, we'd better go before they come back."

  May Porter nodded regretfully. "Your young lady is right. It's selfish of me to bring you in. But people don't visit much anymore."

  "That's all right, Mrs. Porter," Dane said. "I'm glad you were willing to talk to us."

  "Call me May."

  "Good bye, May." They all shook hands and Leah and Dane hurried back to their armored car, got in, and slammed the doors behind them, hitting the locks.

  Dane started the car, shaking his head. "It's like a war zone down here."

  "Stealing women and water," Leah murmured, her voice nearly without inflection. "It must be a lot worse than Carlos was led to believe."

  Carlos. The husband she was so desperate to find. Dane headed back to the freeway, staring at the dusty road. "You told me about the hermaphrodites yourself."

  "But we had no idea it was this widespread."

  He nodded, staring at the bleak landscape ahead. The signs of civilization faded away as they left the town and the colors behind them. The hot afternoon stretched out before them, long and dry like the San Joaquin Valley to their north. The hills to the south were little more than a medley of browns and golds and grays. Somewhere to the west was the empty bed of Buena Vista Lake, testimony to the way the desert was growing, taking over what had once been fertile land. Here there was no water, only rock and dust and the sandy road. Not enough to keep the thread of civilization from snapping.

  He glanced over at Leah. She was staring out the window, her eyes on the landscape of brown and beige, but her gaze was far away.

  "So what do you think this is all about?" he asked.

  She dragged her attention away from the window, away from the fascinating view of rock and dust and more rock, and regarded him steadily. "Nature develops its own defenses."

  "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "The earth is healing itself by making us infertile."

  "Why infertile?"

  "If this is what I think it is, infertility is one of the side-effects."

  "The hermaphroditism you studied with your husband."

  "Yes. Caused by environmental estrogens."

  "Is it in the water?"

  "In the water, in the earth, in the air, in the livestock. But I can't kno
w for sure without tests."

  A breeze from the window stirred the hair at his temple, air that carried barrenness. He and his spores were too late. The dust had taken over.

  * * * *

  A rat crept through the brown vegetation outside what was left of the former hotel, headquarters of the burb boss of Anaheim. They stood in front of the burned-out shell, sunset violet at their backs. The last rays lit up the building, making the lighter surfaces of the facade glow brightly, a stark contrast to the darkened windows and doors, like dozens of empty eyes. The scent of fire still lingered in the air, but the destruction seemed to be at least a couple of days old. To judge by when Leah had last heard from her husband Carlos, most likely three.

  "Damn," Leah muttered.

  Dane stole a look at her. Her eyes were dry but hard as she stared at the old hotel. A sermon of fire, written on the face of the building. He had been worried about her leaving the car after what May Porter had told them about the Purists, but she'd insisted. Part of him was glad the place seemed deserted. He just barely suppressed the other part of him that was glad her husband wasn't here.

  "Come on," he said gently. "Maybe we can find something, some kind of clue to where everyone went."

  "If they went."

  "I'll get the flashlight," he said.

  The doors to the foyer were gone, and they walked into a wide lobby full of charred rubble. On the opposite side were openings where doors had once been, leading to a central courtyard. Dane picked his way through the remains of low walls, furniture and broken glass, shining the flashlight down corridors to the left and right. At least there weren't any bodies.

  "No telling where the offices of the burb boss were," he said, stepping out into the courtyard.

  "Probably somewhere central and easy to defend," Leah suggested.

  Dane nodded. "Ground floor, single entrance, good view of who's coming." He turned slowly in a circle beside the pool, the bottom now covered with a thin film of standing water, and examined the empty window frames on the first floor. On the other side of the courtyard, a hallway led away from an opening the width of a pair of double doors. "There, let's try that."