Woman on the Edge of Time - Marge Piercy [146]
“You’re vegetarians?”
“What’s that?”
“You eat only vegetables?”
“Who’s a vegables?” Gildina swished out of the corner in annoyance. “You’re only a dud slot, so don’t high-top me.”
“Things that grow in plants. You know. Like carrots and peas. Beans. Corn.”
Gildina shrugged, waving her hand with its inch-long mauve-and-yellow nails. “I know the richies eat queer things, sort of … raw. Stuff from, you know, live things. They practically eat them alive. I can’t suppose that’s good for you, our stomachs aren’t made of Cybernall. I never had any of that … strange stuff. You trying to tell me you had that richie food? That live stuff?”
“Sure. Poor people couldn’t buy a lot of it, but everybody had it sometimes.”
“We got enough troubles. I got chronic colonic malachosis myself and Cash has ulceric tumors. I can’t imagine how the richies survive. I heard they eat animal tissue even. The idea makes me dizzy. I mean except as a sexy idea. I mean I seen it on the Sense-all, but it doesn’t float me.”
“Well, where does your food come from?”
Gildina shrugged. “Out in the Roughlands, big corporate factory-farms. They mine it, you subscribe, and it gets delivered every week.” Gildina took the plate and plasticware from her and put them into a box in the wall, where they promptly disappeared.
“Where did they go?”
“How would I suppose on that?” Gildina looked shocked. “It’s a service. All middle-flack plexes have platos. You take the clean stuff out and you put the dirty stuff in. Look, I’ll show you.” She opened another sliding door. But nothing happened. She pressed a button on the wall again. “Double stymie. It’s broke again. I hope they get it fixed by the time Cash comes home, that’s all I can say. Oh, well, I’ll get him to take me to the mutual on the floor. Or even upstairs, maybe, if he’s in the spending slot.”
“A restaurant? Like a place everybody eats?”
Gildina nodded. “But if I decide to do that I got to start prepping.”
“What time does he get home?”
“Not for two hours, but it takes that long, for display. The painting is what counts.”
“You mean making up your face?”
“No, leg painting. It costs a heart and a kidney, but if you try to do it yourself, you look like a joke. You have to go to a real artiste. There’s a fem on this floor who’ll do me even at the last minute. I’ll flash her a transie.”
“How come she’ll do you?”
“She owes me … . I know a few things about her. She skipped on a contract. She’s in the crazy slot, she even paints her walls, but she does a good job cheapo with no appoint. So I should turn her in to the organ banks? It’s no silc off my ass! They say the richies take the ones who are real good for the platforms.”
“Gildina, the richies—who are they, really?”
“The same as in your time—the Rockemellons, the Morganfords, the Duke-Ponts. They’re ancient. I mean some of them were alive in your time, I suppose, if you’re for real. Wait till Cash gapes you. He’ll figure it out.” Gildina paraded past, smirking. “He’s had SC, did you suppose on that?”
“What’s escee?”
“Sharpened control, reallike. He’s been through mind control. He turns off fear and pain and fatigue and sleep, like he’s got a switch. He’s like a Cybo, almost! He can control the fibers in his spinal cord, control his body temperature. He’s a fighting machine, like they say. I mean not really like a Cybo, but as good as you can get without genetic engineering or organ replacement. He’s still a woolie—that’s what the richies and the Cybos call us, who are still animal tissue. But he’s real improved. He has those superneurotransmitters ready to be released in his brain that turn him into just about an Assassin. I mean not really, he’s fourth level, but he’s in that direction, if you gape.”
“Remember, I’m just a dud from the past. They haven’t told me a lot of this stuff yet.”
“Yeah, the Age of Uprisings and all that stuff. Before they automated the boondocks—the old UD countries, when they had all those useless animals and wild plants and dumb people