SEATTLEHAMA: FAR ABOVE EVERYTHING

"Engage," Vada told Red Hat. He had tucked his candy away, stepped before the control board, pushed several buttons, and then pulled a lever. I felt the ship's hook catch a cable, and we started up.

"Where we going?" I asked.

Vada stood. "Tonight," she said, her voice loud as if the ship were full of consumers, "without further compunction, doubts, and delay, we will venture to see both the shimmering highs and the sinister depths of our brilliant and festering world. We will head to the peak of the city, to the night star, where exists the boutique and the epicenter of shopping, where resides the queen of the epics, the de facto sovereign of Seattlehama: the infamous, dangerous, mysterious, and glorious Miss Bunné!"

That first yarn, the sparkling strand I'd taken from my father's pocket-Kira had said it was from Bunné. I tried to keep the tremor from my voice. "She's one of the big celebs."

"Correction: she's the celeb. The apex celeb. Seattlehama's mega-celeb."

I played back what she'd said a moment before because I'd never heard her called Miss Bunné before. "Are Miss Bunné and M-Bunny related?"

Vada pointed at me as if I had won a prize. "Yes, good customer in the front and back row! Excellent deduction and gastromolecular computation." Her eyes glowed. "They are, in fact, the very same."

"What does a t'up celeb have to do with the slubs?"

"Ah, the workings, the mechanisms, and the logic. The key and the rhythm of the history and the chronicle!" Vada put her wrist at her forehead and assumed a woeful pose. "How can it all be revealed and explained?"

"Tone it down," complained Red Hat. "You're scaring him."

Vada let her arms drop. "Shut up. We're just having fun."

I glanced between them and despaired. They were definitely a couple.

"Anyway," she said, narrowing her eyes at him. "Yes… it's odd. It's strange, but Bunné runs M-Bunny. She has consolidated her authority and her reach. It's high art and low power. It's a vast and vertically integrated business, and it's her psychosexual playground. The city and the slubs are in fact connected at one deadly fulcrum."

Red Hat peered at his screen and then hurriedly yanked a lever. "I got the master cable!" he crowed. The ship lurched hard. Vada crashed on top of me. I almost tumbled off my chair but managed to stay on and held her up.

"Thanks." Stepping back, she brushed herself off. "Sorry about that." The theater was gone from her voice. She picked up her fallen chair and sat.

Out the windows, I could see that we were moving up at three times the normal speed. I whispered to Vada. "You don't weigh anything."

"My bones are light like a bird's."

"So you are genetically patented?"

She smiled as if glad I had remembered the line from her introduction. "I suppose you could say that all the last Toue were."

"Toes?"

"Toue!" she said with ire and amusement. "We're an ancient line from the lost tribe of weavers." Her expression darkened. "Now, we are a dying few."

I figured this was more of her version of warTalk.

"One hundred stories," said Red Hat.

"The Toue were as talented and strong as the fabrics we wove, but we were persecuted for our art and our insular ways. We were thrown from our homeland, and for years lived in the depths of Europa10. Despite the conditions, we produced beautiful fabric, but, sadly, we became more militant, more paranoid, and we lost our way." She glanced at Red Hat, who was concentrating on the controls. "Before the treaty that protected us ran out, the elders tried to create a new breed who would carry on the tradition. We are a part of that sorry lot." She paused for a long, thoughtful beat. "At least that's the official storybook version."

I nodded, but I had gotten lost. "So, you knew my dad?"

Vada spoke in a serious and thoughtful tone. "Mark Tar Octopus was your dad's nom de fashion."

The name sounded ludicrous. "Mark Tar Octopus?"

Vada laughed as if she agreed. Red Hat said, "Two hundred."

"Textiles, texturizing, and non-wovens were his original focus. That was before we knew him. Later, he became CEO of a fabric company and changed his name again. I never liked that name or persona." Her mouth shrunk thoughtfully. "He traveled all over the world for his business, and I think it was through the travel that he saw how things truly worked and the desperate imbalances. I'm not sure when it was, but he decided to fight and that's about the time we met him."

Traveled the world? I felt a clenching inside my chest. "I knew him as an M-Bunny rep." Beyond the windows the lights and textures of the buildings sped by.

"Three hundred stories," said Red Hat.

Vada glared at me skeptically. "He could do just about anything he wanted."

This explained why I almost never saw him, but then I remembered when he showed up in the slubs bruised, battered, and covered with Xi rash. "What happened to him?"

Vada seemed reluctant to speak. "For now, let's just say that he tried to assassinate someone and failed. If you'll be patient, the goal of our journey is to help you understand. So a better question is: How many men are recycled in the slubs?"

I couldn't think. I stared out a window as the city raced by and wondered why my father hadn't told me anything? He wasn't just an important M-Bunny rep who traveled to different regions. He was a city man who did all sorts of things. The idea-while impossible-didn't actually surprise me. There had always been something different about him.

"Four hundred stories," announced Red Hat.

In the end, I hadn't known him at all. Maybe my father hadn't liked me, hadn't loved me. Maybe he hadn't thought me worthy. He had left me out in the corn like an unwanted child, an orphan. "He wanted to be recycled for the bonus. He had a Xi rash-I didn't know that-and he wanted me to switch clans. I didn't know about anything else."

"Your dad came to think of recycling as a terrible crime."

"A crime," I repeated. "He wanted it. I wanted to try and cure him, but he fought the whole time. I bought stuff from the COM, but he didn't even want it!"

Vada pursed her mouth sadly.

"I was there when he died… or almost there. He wanted to be recycled." I stopped and began to choke. "All he wanted was to help the corn."

"Maybe yes… maybe no." Vada gestured beyond the ship. "In the slubs, corn is put ahead of human life." She bit her bottom lip. "And maybe that is the way to save the world. Or part of the world… or some concept of the world. Or… maybe it's just a marketing ploy and a way to rationalize cheap labor." She paused for a moment and looked me over as if unsure she should go on. When she did, her voice was softer. "What I'm saying is that your dad didn't believe that was the way to save the world, that a world like that was worth saving. In fact, he thought it was better to fight against it."

I remembered one of the few days we'd been together, walking through the early summer fields. The corn had been as tall as me. I had looked up and it was as if his eyes had gone gold with the joy of it. He'd seemed more at peace than I had ever seen him. When I spoke, I couldn't stop my voice from vibrating. "He didn't say anything to me."

Vada swallowed. "I know. I am sorry."

"Coming up on seven hundred."

"Shit!" Vada jumped up, and slapped a red-gloved hand on my shoulder. "Give me a boost!" She lifted her chin to the ceiling and I saw a round doorway I hadn't seen before.

"What for?"

"Hurry! You'll see."

I didn't feel like doing anything. I wanted to find some empty corner of the city and unravel. Knitting my fingers together, I bent my legs, and when Vada put one of her red-booted feet in my hands and stepped up, she was like a bird in my arms. Balancing with a hand on top of my head, she stepped up onto my shoulders. For a moment I was inside the hush of her long red dress. The smell was of honey and musk. Her stockinged legs were patterned with the lacy octagons of the city's towers.

Her hips twisted to the left and she grunted as she worked them. I peeked up at her crotch. There, held in with two small straps, was a gleaming pair of silver scissors with three-inch blades. I felt afraid of and for her.

She lifted herself through the opening onto the roof and turned to peer at me as the wind tussled her hair and dress. "Stand on a chair. I'll help you up."

I was still caught in the weave of desire and fear I'd found in the curtain of her dress. Was she going to cut me up there? Was I really safe? I stepped onto my chair. Vada reached down, I, up. Grasping my wrist, she pulled me up onto the roof of the ship with one arm as if I were the one who weighed nothing.

Outside the plush interior of the entervator, I suddenly felt every inner chill made real on my skin. It was like being thrust from the womb. The ship wasn't moving up anymore, but was gently rocking back and forth.

"Hold on!" The wind quickly whisked away her words.

Circling the roof portal and the cable mechanism was a thin metal guardrail. I grabbed at the icy metal, unmoored. From here we could see the rooftops, the points, the spires, and the antennas of the other buildings. Leaning forward, I peered over the edge of the Europa. It was like looking down the lit barrel of a gigantic cannon. All lines focused on the wide atrium a mile below. Beyond the buildings the rest of the word was black. I shivered and imagined myself falling-spinning back down to earth for hours.

Above us loomed only one tower-Bunné's, which was called The Zea. I could see the edge of the enormous open-air amphitheater atop the high rise.

I turned to Vada. "It's amazing!"

She grinned. "Scary, right?"

"Yes."

Vada glanced to her right. The air fluttered her hair. "The wind tonight makes this a little more dangerous to navigate, but I think we'll be fine."

I glanced up at the Zea. I thought I heard sounds coming from the top of the building-the cheering of a crowd and the hammer of a party beat. It suddenly seemed a horrible distortion-the music of my suicide. I wanted desperately to return to Pilla, to the simple chains of her expectations.

A strange smile passed Vada's face, and she shouted, "We're ready!" down the porthole.

The lights inside the entervator shut off one by one. It felt like the two of us were floating in space.

"Go ahead!" came Red Hat's reply. "Release."

My heart stopped, but I knew he could not mean release the ship. "What are we doing?" As if to answer, Vada pressed her cheek to mine. Her skin was soft and warm. As I pulled her toward me I realized she had extended her right arm behind my head. Turning I saw that her gloved hand gripping a thick brass lever connected to the cable hook.

"Ready?" Without waiting for an answer, she cranked the lever to the right.

With a ratcheting sound, the hook opened. The cable seemed to shoot up into the darkness as the ship began to plummet. Vada's dress blew up into our faces, a fluttering tulip. Every corpuscle in my body screamed No!