What's Fair: And Other Short Stories Read online

  After the funeral, the police came to see me, but there was nothing to say about it. He’d been mashed up by that machine, so there was no evidence. They just said it was tough for me to go through this, now that I was responsible for Mom and Em, and asked what I would do. And I told them that it was okay – I had a way to take care of things.

  That afternoon, I drove over to the big agricultural machinery store to see the boss, Mr. Ebsen. I told him about our new specially-aerating mechanical plow, and showed him some of Jimmy’s papers from his desk. His eyes lit up. He asked if he could come out and see it. I told him I’d give him a ride.

  When we got to the barn, I didn’t even hesitate. It was quiet in there, which I wasn’t used to, but I knew that my fortune was lying inside. And I knew that all I needed to do was to hit the little red button.

  “Now, watch if you please, sir, Mr. Ebsen,” I said, in my best fancy voice. “You are about to see the machine that will revolutionize American agriculture.”

  And I hit the button.

  And nothing happened.

  I could feel the sweat start up under my collar.

  “Hold on, Mr. Ebsen,” I said. I got down on my hands and knees, and I crawled underneath the machine that had killed my brother. It was still rust-colored from his blood. I hadn’t cleaned it off yet.

  I don’t know what Jimmy had done under there, but it didn’t look like any normal plow. It was totally changed. So I hit it a couple times with a wrench, then got out and smiled. “Let me try again, Mr. Ebsen,” I said.

  I hit the button again. And again, nothing happened.

  Mr. Ebsen looked at me and shrugged. “Well,” he said, “when you get it working again, come and let me know. I think we can do business together.” He walked toward the door. “And sorry about your brother. He was a genius with those things.”

  Then he was gone.

  I walked back to the house. It was empty, except for Mom. Em was gone, too.

  And I’ll tell you right now, it wasn’t fair. None of it. I just didn’t have the breaks Jimmy had. I wasn’t born smart like him. I didn’t get the education. I didn’t get the luck or the girl.

  So now, I’m sitting here, messing with this damn contraption. And I’ve got Jimmy’s rusty blood on my hands. And Mom’s in the house, waiting for me. And the house is awful quiet.

  From The Pit

  September 19: I am now just five days and a wakeup from the end of my term. And I’m still alive.

  It’s lonely work, ever since Phillips was killed. Didn’t think I’d ever say this, but I miss him.

  I spent today traversing the caverns. Very few crobes. We’ve done a masterful job of taking them out. It’s been weeks since the last wave of mites got Phillips. I still remember the wave. Like giant, malevolent spiders, their scaly tentacles reaching, squirming, their stench overpowering, Phillips firing his laser but its power source dry, Phillips stumbling backwards, me firing, thinking of Amy, and then the mite was on him, sucking him dry, stripping the skin from his muscles with its massive pincers, Phillips screaming …

  But thinking about it makes me sick.

  I never thought the territory could be so vast. Before the downsizing, the territory was no bigger than a large room. Now, of course, it seems vast, miles upon miles of endless caverns, followed by the dropoff: a cliff that feels hundreds of feet high, plunging down into a soft forest of polyester.

  It’s nearly seven o’clock. The light still burns above, but the climate is temperate. That’s the good news about being an Anti – at least the climate’s always good. The power of indoor climate control.

  The Whale is rumbling above. His thunderous voice is overpowering. Does he ever shut up? He’s working on a transnational trade again, something to do with steel and carbon manufacture. A stock trader could make a fortune by listening to him. But I’m just a simple guy. I just want to get home to Amy.

  Two years. That was the length of that damnable contract. I though the money would enough – a guaranteed pension for life, an endless income, a nice house above the bay with the wind blowing off the sea, Amy in my arms. She warned me against this. She was right. I was wrong.

  But now it’s nearly over. The reversal process begins in two days. It took them three days to get me down to this size; it’ll take three days the other way, too. They say it hurts. But at this point, I wouldn’t care if they had to skin me to get me home.

  The light’s winked off now. Another day over. I’ll pitch the Halo and get some shut-eye.

  September 20: Four days and a wakeup. I hate hunting in the dark. But that’s what I’ll have to do today – it’s Saturday, so there’ll be no light, just the hurricane sound of the cleaning woman’s vacuum. And the mites are back. I could see a wave of mites today from inside my Halo; to them, I just looked like another crobe. I think they’re coming from the ashtray; they’ve always loved the ashtray. For an obsessive-compulsive clean freak – the ultimate clean freak – The Whale’s addiction to cigarettes is a weird one. But then again, he can afford the lung cleansing day after day, the whooshing that lifts the ash from his lungs.

  I pop on my night-vision goggles and put on my boots. Then I step outside the Halo, which automatically deflates to fit in my gearbag. The last mite turns around a nearby corner. I follow.

  When I get to the ashtray, the final ashes are still smoldering from his cigarette. It looks like a gigantic white tower, at an angle. I’ve seen pictures of the Leaning Tower of Pisa – it’s like that, but with the bottom end broken and trailing into black dust. A few sparks dance near the base.

  The mites are all over the cigarette. All over it. They cover the top of the cigarette, swarm it, clawing at the chunks of The Whale’s saliva. Best to get them now, before they disperse and hide in the crevices of the desk.

  And so I climb. When you’re at full size, a cigarette looks like a smooth, precisely calibrated cylinder. Only when you’re climbing one do you realize that it’s full of footholds and handholds. The mites are above me, but they haven’t sensed me yet. I take out my hook from my belt, and tear it into the cigarette wall with a satisfying thunk. Then I lash it through my belt and lean back. The mites are silhouetted against the foamboard ceiling. I have a clear shot.

  I take the first mite out with a single laser beam, watch it plummet down the cigarette and smash into the table below, split in two. Before I have a chance to silently celebrate, though, the other mites – God, there have to be at least two hundred of them – turn and face me. This is the moment where they’re stunned, before they realize what’s happening. This is the moment for the laser grenade. I’ve done it a thousand times already, so many times that it’s a matter of course.

  But I haven’t done it while hanging from a cigarette in the dark alone.

  I reach behind me, into my gearbag, searching for the grenade. Damn it, I should have thought of this before firing on the herd. They’re climbing down toward me now, their great bulky frames picking up momentum as they plunge their claws into the body of the cigarette. They’re covered in the crusted saliva of The Whale, and their smell is overpowering. I retch, grasp deeper into my gearbag. My hand closes around the grenade – but now the herd is closing. I can see the black maw of the lead mite opening as he chunks his way down the cigarette. I close my eyes and scream and fling it upward.

  It’s not a good throw; it seems to flutter in the air before gravity takes hold of it. It reaches the top of the parabola – and it suddenly occurs to me that this damn thing could go off as it passes me on the way down. Of course, by that time, I’ll be mite food.

  But then the mite reaches down with its pincers and gobbles it up. I count to four – it’s already been a second – and the mite explodes outward, blowing a dozen of its repulsive brethren off the cigarette, into the chasms below. The wave from the explosion almost blows me off the cigarette, but the belt holds me tight.

  But the second wave of mites is still coming down for me. They’re creeping more slowly, more w
arily. That’s not good for me. My only chance is that they panic; I can never make it down the cigarette in time to escape them.

  They’re not panicking though. They’re getting smart. Their beady eyes scope me out as they tip-toe almost daintily down the cylindrical tower. I fire a couple times to pick two of them off – it’s hard to miss at this distance – but my heart is pounding and my throat is dry.

  Shattering light.

  It’s a Saturday … what the hell is going on here? Somebody turned on the light, and it’s as bright as the brightest day. Thank God for that – the mites hate the light, and they’re scurrying down the cigarette butt, trying like hell to get to the darkness of the desk grooves. They completely ignore me, rush around me. I shout in glee. I’m saved!

  Then I hear it. The voice of The Whale, grumbling from above. Something about an emergency in Tokyo. The earth starts shaking beneath me as The Whale searches for his cigarettes, cursing. He always needs his cigarettes when he’s under stress. And this one must be a doozy.

  BANG! He’s opened the top drawer of his desk, and slammed it shut, turning the air blue with invective.

  BOOM! The entire desk shudders with the weight of his massive, meaty fist – I can see it from atop the cigarette, and it looks like an avalanche of human flesh, punctuated by thick black hairs on his knuckles, tree-trunk thick.

  “Dammit,” he says. Then I look up.

  His broad, fat face stares down at me.

  He can’t see me, of course. I’m too small to be seen by the naked eye. But I can see him. It’s like the moon, rising massive during harvest season, massive and puffed and bloated and sweaty. An enormous droplet of sweat forms on his eyebrow, lingers for a moment, then falls down like a bomb toward the desk. It detonates, washing three or four mites away with it.

  Why is he looking at me?

  Then I realize what he’s looking at. And it isn’t me.

  Oh, God.

  I struggle frantically to unbelt myself from the cigarette. The belt’s too tight, though, and I can’t work myself free of it.

  And then I’m hanging by my belt, horizontal, parallel with the earth. And I’m rising, falling backwards, sliding down the cigarette, the hook tearing tobacco out of the cigarette as I slide toward his fat, blubbery lips, specks of spit oozing from his gaping mouth. I try to stop myself, grabbing at the surface of the cigarette, but the mites have left it slick, thick with their ooze mixed with The Whale’s spittle.

  The surface of the cigarette is getting hot, now. I look behind me, and the damn thing is on fire. The blasted Whale has gone and relit the butt. Hot ash begins sweeping beneath me, under the paper, as The Whale breathes in, scorching my legs.

  But before I can worry about it, The Whale takes an enormous puff. The sucking is like an unstoppable hurricane, drawing me toward its eye.

  Down, down I go, until I plunge into his open mouth. It’s the movement from fire into water. I retch again as I’m immersed in waves of his saliva, stinking of yesterday’s food, a toxic mix of bile and phlegm. I try to swim toward the surface of his mouth, but it’s too far – I’ll never make it, not with a rocket pack, before he shuts that blubbery hole forever, locking me in his body, swirling me down his throat and into his intestines.

  Then I remember the Halo.

  I rip it out of my gearbag and hit the button. It automatically inflates. I scramble inside the airtight space as the Halo’s buffeted on the waves of spit. Then The Whale swallows. The Halo – and I – go flying backwards, down his throat, past the blimp of his uvula, down his thorax, into the vast blackness beyond. The air pressure changes, and I fall into the simultaneous darkness of unconsciousness.

  September 21: I don’t know what day it is. I assume it’s three days and a wakeup. When I opened my eyes this morning (or is it afternoon?) I couldn’t see much; I lit my hand lantern and looked around. I seemed to be in an enormous dark cave – almost a huge, ugly, veined dome. It must be The Whale’s stomach. The Halo’s caught near the top of the bean-shaped space, which shines with a weird, pale reflection from the lantern. It’s pink and slimy and ridged, except for two anomalies: a red hole, filled with pus and blood, and an odd yellow patch, thick, pulsating like an enormous caterpillar.

  The Halo has an oxygenator, so at least I won’t suffocate. And I have nutrition packs to last me a week. Thank God the Halo caught me at the top of the stomach – I can’t imagine that allowing The Whale’s antibodies to attack me in the intestines would be a healthy process.

  They’re going to need to find a way to extract me, though. The reversal process is set to start tonight, and while The Whale’s big, he isn’t that big. If they don’t get me out of here, I’ll tear right through his stomach wall, right through his abdomen. I’d better alert them.

  I reach into my gearbag and pick up the beacon. I hit it once; the light flashes bright, illuminating the stomach like an enormous palpitating monster. And then I hear Jensen. My former best friend. The guy I went to school with. For the first time since Phillips died, a human voice, adjusted for pitch. I almost cry.

  “Kemp, is that you, over?”

  “Roger, Jensen. God, man, it’s good to hear your voice. Over.” There’s a pause on the other end.

  “Where the hell are you?”

  I’m puzzled by this. Can’t he see where I’m calling from? The beacon has a tracker on it.

  “Say again, Jensen? I’m in The Whale.” Another pause. A long pause this time, broken by static.

  “Describe your status, Kemp.”

  “I’m in his stomach.”

  “Understood. What do you see?”

  “His stomach, Jensen. What the hell else would I see?” I look around again. He has to be getting at something.

  Then it hits me all at once. That yellow mass. It’s a tumor.

  The Whale is dying.

  Suddenly, thoughts are whirling through my brain, almost too fast for me to keep up. I’m probably the only one outside his doctors who know. He runs a billion dollar empire. His stock price would drop through the floor if the public knew he had months to live.

  I’m a wealthy man.

  But all I want to do is get home to my wife.

  “Jensen,” I say, “you tell The Whale that I don’t want anything from him. All I want is to go home. Get me the hell out of here, and I won’t say a word about the tumor. Not a word. Affirm, Jensen. Affirm.”

  The beacon goes dead.

  I haven’t prayed since I was a child. I don’t believe in God – no God would play the cosmic joke of letting The Whale fall into so much wealth, then curse him with an obsessive-compulsive dislike of dust mites so strong that he’d spend half that wealth developing the shrinking system and hiring duds like me to man it. It’s all too absurd.

  But I’m praying nonetheless now. Just listen to me, I whisper to The Whale. He can’t hear me. But somewhere, beneath those layers of fat, he’s got to have a heart. He certainly has a stomach.

  Like an answer to my prayers, though, the beacon clicks on again. “Jensen!” I shout. “Jensen!”

  There’s no answer. But the beacon’s transmitting. I hear the beacon bumping around Jensen’s pocket. And then, from outside The Whale, I hear the thump of a door opening. And from the beacon, the voices emerge:

  Jensen stammering: “Sir, I have something you need to know.”

  The Whale, cool and collected, replies, “So tell me.”

  “Do you remember Kemp? One of the Antis?”

  “No,” says The Whale, “why would I? I hire thousands of Antis a year.”

  “Well, this one is in your stomach right now.”

  I feel the Halo jostle jarringly upward as The Whale stands. “Are you insane?” he says. “Then he would know.”

  “I know,” says Jensen. “But he says he’ll never tell. He says he just wants to get back to his wife.”

  The Whale is silent. He sits again, heavily, and the Halo bumps against the top of his stomach. His grumbling baritone makes my whole b
ody rumble.

  “No.”

  Jensen protests, “He wouldn’t lie to me, sir. I’ve known Kemp for a decade.”

  “Have you known Kemp in a situation like this? Where a fortune could be at stake?” says The Whale, his voice dangerously even.

  “No,” says Jensen.

  I shout into the beacon: “I promise! I swear to God! I don’t give a damn about the money!”

  But nobody hears me.

  “So how much time do we have?” The Whale asks.

  “He’s due to begin his reversal process tonight.”

  “Perfect. We must act quickly. Call the doctor. You know the one. He treated Shangri. And Chrystal.”

  Jensen swallows. I can hear it all the way across the room, not even through the beacon. “Sir,” he says, “that would be pure murder.”

  “Yes,” says The Whale. “But it’s my body. And what’s in it is my purview. That’s the law. Look it up. But look it up after you call the doctor.”

  From outside The Whale, I hear screaming. It takes me a moment to realize I’m hearing my own screaming from that damn beacon. Damning Jensen to hell, The Whale to hell. Then the screaming goes silent. They turned the beacon off.

  I break the beacon with my bare hands. They can’t know where I am precisely in the stomach. No reason to make their task easier.

  I have three options, as I see it. One is unthinkable: drop from the roof of my prison, and risk the intestinal tract, the colon, and all the rest. There’s no guarantee that if I drop, I’ll be better off. What if I make it all the way to the end of the track, then get flushed down the toilet? The thought of it almost makes me laugh. This is the stuff of low comedy, and now it might be my choice of death.