The Color of Paradox Read Free Page B

of a daft young widow?”
    She nodded. “Just in case someone unauthorized gets a look.”
    “Whatever Peter does to bring on your Souring,” I said, “it’s bound to be one story. They chose him because he’s key, am I right? Because he’s a simple target?”
    “So?”
    “The Project must tell me which story. If he sees me as a friend, an older brother, or even a father figure—his own father died in the flu epidemic—”
    She flinched, for some reason.
    “It’s why he’s working as a paperboy, to support his mother. In any case, I’ll keep him off that one story.”
    “You’re proposing to chum around with him for years?”
    “Why not? I’ll make myself useful meanwhile: keep investing money, reporting gossip, maybe help dig out the next basement . . .”
    “Jules.”
    “. . . I’d need someone to explain the engineering to me, obviously. How
does
one secretly dig a second basement in a house that already exists?”
    “Jules.”
    “I needn’t live here in the house if you don’t want me underfoot.”
    She pulled herself upright in her chair, sitting as prim and proper as a schoolteacher. I imagined I heard her sleeve tearing, and thought about running my tongue over the freckles on her arm: how far did they go? She folded her hands, seemed to fight an urge to wring them, and waited for me to run down.
    “What is it?”
    She said. “The timepress uses a radiant form of energy. It’s what makes us so sick. They told you that, didn’t they?”
    “I’m not going to relapse on you. I live, I know it.”
    She didn’t smile. “Chances are you will die of cancer within the year.”
    “Chances?”
    “Rufus has survived almost fifteen months, but...”
    She meant the sickly Negro man.
    “You have no great span of time in which to befriend Peter Rupert. You can’t jolly him along for a decade and hope to break his leg before he leaves for Japan. You—”
    I was across the room before I knew it, grabbing at her, tipping the rocking chair. We ended on the floor, my hand wrapped around her jaw, and again that red desire swam up. To smash, to smash, to taste of her blood on my knuckles.
    “You’re. Not. Dead,” I snarled. “It’s been years and you’re not dead.”
    A little flicker. Fear? I am ashamed to admit I hoped so. I needed to see something beyond pity or contempt in her.
    “Go ahead, then,” she said, and I realized my other hand was resting atop—was squeezing—one of her strangely firm breasts.
    Trying to buy her life? Well, she’d all but opened her legs now: I gave her blouse a swift tear as my defeated sanity—the despairing, quashed part of me that knew better—protested.
    I found: a padded bodice, formed like a woman’s body.
    I pushed it aside, exposing her belly...
    ...and found nothing but scars.
    The slices had been pulled up and then stitched tight. Everything below her collarbones was purple and red, twisting lines of hashed-together tissue.
    “About a week after I finished my mission.” Her words were distorted by the grip I had on her—she couldn’t really move her jaw. “I woke up with a terrible feeling. It wasn’t physical—I’d never felt so well.”
    “Feeling?” I was staring at her torn-up body; I couldn’t look away.
    “Panic, pure and simple. I went to a surgeon and paid him to cut away everything that made me a woman.”
    I gagged, released her, and pushed myself back, back, until I was almost in the fireplace. I got entangled with her knitting bag and it came with me, my slippers trailing a half-knit Christmas stocking and strands of red and green wool.
    Willie sat up. “This city is full of sweet, bright, talented boys, Jules.”
    “But the future won’t have anyone, bright or otherwise, unless I fulfill my mission. Is that what you’re saying?”
    She struggled to anchor her bodice over the ruin of flesh under her throat. Those empty scoops. Then she hunted on the carpet for the buttons I’d torn off her dress. She got to her feet,