IT WAS in rain-time springtime that Little Sister danced across the planned-greening yards, one of her tiny hands lumped into a fist as though she concealed great treasure. She stopped outside his bubble dome orange-screaming door that was marked with the flying FW in fresh-peas green, the alphabet’s winged sixth and twenty-third letters designating “formula worker.” “DADDY!” she shrieked in her “normal” voice that was often these days apt to be near-hysterical, “come see what came in the mail tube. TODAY! It’s here! I sent a thousand dollars for it. TWO WEEKS AGO. I ordered out of an old Learner’s Catalog! And now it says, ‘See Daddy or Mother. FOR HELP!’ ” With the hand that was not a fist she waved; the waving contained a green sheet that had yellow and purple and pink and blue and red and orange writing on it in a kind of rainbow show, or in the Old Days it would have been so designated. Probably.
He moved like a man stung by a sudden pang in the head; he lurched and stared, still sitting in his Formula Worker’s hip-snug, strapped in. And he peered carefully and long out through the tube of his Outer Scan to make sure the voice was really that of Little Sister and not some Enemy come disguised. After a good scanning while and after a goodly number of voice-a-grams had been analyzed and declared authentic, without-doubt Little Sister, he thumbed the switch that would alert Control a thousand miles away that he wanted loose from his chair bands. After a while of authenticating and negotiating over Formula Worker’s long-com, Control gave the go-ahead and he came loose from the metal straps of that place where he sat at work.
Control windings unwinding, harsh restrainers metal-mumbling along the floor, free he lurched up at last. Tall and tottery he stood for a bit, a whit wild-headed and uncertain just for a while, for it had been more than a month now since he had been free of the bands. He shook his head to clear it and make peace with the strange height he was suddenly in and he called on all the reserves of his pride as a vaunted FW to keep him now from the dark disgrace of suddenly tumbling down. His thoughts sloshed furiously in the metal brain pans and went back a long way as he sought to rearrange and pattern into sense his unaccustomed feeling at the voice that had just said, “Daddy,” and had also said, “See Daddy or Mother.”
Was the chance worth it? Could he trust his analyses? Could he even trust the Outer Scan to accurately gather the impressions for the analyses? What if his eyes were just that nth part “on the blink” today for out-viewing, after all that close work in? But everything said yes, this really is Little Sister outside your door. And yes, he did want to believe them. But oh, the world is such a place of tricks now. What if it wasn’t Little Sister, but a walking doll bomb come made-up, disguised, a calamity device designed to blow him at a handshake, at a hello, to high shrieks and all winds-and-skies and thus weaken Control by one Formula Worker less? Who would want to? Oh, anyone who was against Control would want to. And there are always those—OH YES!—those who would pick the Beautiful Precision to pieces and set the imprecision of choices loose in the world, in the name of Freedom. Boooo brrrrrrkkkkkk blaaahhh boooo. And he belonged to Control. He was Control! and Control was he! one and one and always one, bonded in inseparable union for greater for greater for greater for—It boggled; the metal brain pans died to a stop for an instant; he moved, not knowing why, on some older far-back Plan. He whistled the signal at his orange-screaming door; the door, never disobeying the signal, seemed eaten by the wall it slid into, and the proud flying FW was gone. He pressed his button for a voice.
“Hello hello HELLO, Little LITTLE Sis-Sister.” Damn! after this long, talking was VERY hard. He stood as though frozen to the floor. He looked out and down at her from the exaggerated and very skinny height of his metaled feet and legs. Then he took five agonizingly slow and clanking steps toward his door. Exactly at the edge of his door he drew himself up. He planted himself in all his flying-FW dignity—drawn up and planted, yes! Next he did the “toeing of the line.” Exactly to the edge, but no more. No Formula Worker, except in the most extraordinary of circumstances (called in the jargon of Control an E.O.C.) ever recrossed the edge of his door. Once in was IN. It was all too fraught with BIG CHANCE, BIG DANGER, such leaving, and besides, where would they go? Out to meet a girl FC (Formula Checker) in some mad rendezvous of clanking hot metaled sex and randy sloshing brain pans crying LOVE? Ah no. The State (Control) needed them too badly; only an E.O.C. could break them out past their door.
“A thousand—” he started to explode, some older far-back set of values nudging him, and then he thought, why, this is Little Sister, and this is spring. Forgetting for a little the iron urgency of his formula, he said, pressing the right button for “general small talk with close relative” on his voice box phfluggee-phflaggee. “What have you there, Little Sister, what have you got?”
She opened her fist-squeezed hand to reveal two ancient seeds that looked like pumpkin seeds, and she said, “Really now! Glad you asked. According to the Programs, I’ve got Nature’s Packaged Life. As it used to be. And they showed a picture, like two big suns on the ground. And they claimed these two little teensy tiny things once could cause those two big giant things to come out and LIE IN A FIELD! If you followed instructions right. And tended everything right, in the Old Days. WITH DIRT. Oh my. Hmph! And water. And they said something about sun-sunlight. Do you think so? Whattya think, Daddy? Whattya think? WHAT’S DIRT?”
He cleared his throat and, deep out of gullet darkness, he spit up a tiny fleck of gold (his throat had been lined thus against cancer one year ago) and he moved his two metal feet just slightly at the “toeing of the line,” but still toeing, ah yes. And he wanted so much to run back to the safe-and-known of his hip-snuggle chair, and prisoner bands and the cool calm programming into the formula, to help Control, to die—or—die for State.
But Little Sister was at him and he knew it might not be easy. Little Sister was just past five, oh sure, but what if she, forgetting all the training of the Programs, should revert to that true age and start up her machine-gun questioning: “Whattya think, Daddy? whattya think, Daddy? whattya think?” while she danced in great expectancy and demanded to be informed. Oh God. She might even start her patented fit-dance, where she shrieked and fell to the ground and kicked. He remembered.
Now, oh now, he needed her mother whole, instead of that female jig Mother had become, worked all in metal and plastic in all the replaceable places, with the giant star-diamond rings on those fabulous removable fingers and the blue almost-all-replaced eyes staring, now always staring, like two very small fuzzy full moons out of a green settling fog while she had those long daily rubs, oh, every day! with the plastic man. “Why don’t you just go to your mother?” he said. “It’s more a little girl’s place in the spring to question her mother.” He warmed to the inspiration, to the idea of “getting out of it.” “Just drop by Little Brother’s place and both of you then run over to Mother’s place and see what you can get started. See if she’ll give you a little time from old Jon. Find out if her phfluggee-phflaggee’s still working. Or is it all rubs now, with Mother?” He hated himself for this, this slicing underhanded attack on Mother and her plastic boyfriend. He had no right to do this, really, he a proud Formula Worker for the State and surely above such shabby cheap caring and flesh-jealousy concern as to whether or not Mother, or even the most beautiful woman in the world, was rubbed.
“Going to Mother’s a real bummer now—no good,” Little Sister said. “And taking Little Brother with me is not the least bit of help in this world. They’re both too far out, if you ask me. Mother’s always on the bed for a rub and a bounce, and Little Brother’s either blasting off in his little Universe-Scoot sports space rocket, or getting ready for launch. Just play, you know, but it takes up his time; hmmph! space probes are his whole entire life.” She paused now and sized him with those hard-hard eyes she had, and he wondered how she would hit and where, knowing hit she would. —“Remember, Daddy, remember how BAD you helped me at Xmas? About my tree star? That fell?—When they let you out for one of those BIG EOC’s. And you got mad and threatened to castrate Santa Claus. What’s castrate? —Let’s show now you CARE!”
He ignored everything but his own terrible aching dread now. He could not help it; he had to ask, and the words from his trembling phfluggee-phflaggee came on almost self-propelled and hit out like space probes: “Have you—did you ever—oh, could you tell me, Little Sister—about Mother and—?”
“Sure can. And it’s not just rubs, and don’t you ever think it!” Little Sister cocked her head and looked at her daddy in a very sly-josh way. I think this manner of looking would prompt just about anyone to wonder just how far this little missy’s knowledge had traveled already along the road of the facts of life, packaged or otherwise. And he suddenly remembered that the Programs had probably told her all already about “how it used to be” in their supposedly VERY scientific approach to getting her ready for “how it was to be.” But sometimes it all doesn’t work as planned with little girls. Just as now, some “communication gone astray” in the Programs, probably, was what had prompted Little Sister to bootleg this order for pumpkin seed to that criminal seed house over the line in Olderan. Unaccountably now, he found himself wishing it were sunflower seed. He had once loved those big “suns,” some the size of dinner plates, rioting in the hell-hot simmering fields of high summer across a great midwestern land.
He came back to NOW, with a terrible thud in his thoughts. Cold and cold it took him and cold and cold he asked from the hurts that are not to be described: “What What WHAT—does he do—DO—to her—besides. Besides—Besides—rubs?”
“He gouges her every once in awhile, sorta hard, with his little old short fat stick he’s got on him that pops up every so often. SPRINGY! Sorta BIG!”
“Why Why WHY does he—DO—do—THAT?”
“How should I know!? Sometimes they get stuck together. Because she wants him to, I guess. And because she wants him to want to, I guess, and he certainly does, I guess, hee hee huk.”
He looked at his little daughter laughing there. He wanted to run. He wanted to scream. He wanted to tear himself to pieces. He wanted to throttle her. He wanted to lash out at everything. He couldn’t talk. His phfluggee-phflaggee refused to do its job. He pressed the button marked WAILS and finally he wailed.
“Oh Daddy, pipe down, shut that thing off—it’s just fun, Mama-boyfriend fun. And whatever they’re doing, it sure looks humpy-good to me. I stand there and laugh and laugh. I like to watch ’em, though, whenever I can, through this secret peep I’ve got. And when they get going good, I just jump around in sight and yell, ‘Hi! Mama! Mama! hi! old Plastic Guy! you old pot.’ And you should see how they scramble to sit back in shape and pose natural! You’d probably have to press your Ho-Ho button on that silly thing you’ve got there and die laughin’. But, according to the Programs, it’s not supposed to be anything to hide and be ashamed of. Just good old hotsy-totsy fun between two consented, as they say. REALLY wantin’ it BAD! Huk huk hee.”
The gold came on up in his aching throat—fleck after fleck after fleck now and fell to the floor, sounding like, in the Old Times, rain-pats as he gasped. He just looked at Little Sister, expanda-vision tuned to Horror-Gaze Gaze-on. He couldn’t speak a sound. She seemed at a great distance. He waved to her with his hand that had all gone tin and his arm that was like a ton. She waved back. He screamed with his button screamer for a full fifteen seconds, for it seemed that might help some, some noise, some manifestation of outrage.
“I don’t think it’s what it oughta be at all,” Little Sister said flatly, when the button screaming had subsided. “Too much of a racket. Since Mother’s mostly tin and old Plasto-Jon’s mostly plastic, they make an awful lot of commotion going after it the way they do—juga-boom splat splat rattle rattle shake-a-shake rumple rumple ragh-a-ragh-a-ragh-a-ragh ohhhhhhh ummmmmmm.” (Little Sister went jerky-jumpy and did little-girl bumps and grinds to illustrate her sounds.) “And they really breathe hard sometimes, both of them, with their breath bags pumping like CRAZEE! He takes off all Mother’s clothes first, every stitch, just before they start—nylons and nasties tossed all over! Also his. They sorta undo each other. Otherwise they’d get too hot. Probably. Whattya think, Daddy? Whattya think, Daddy? Whattya think?”
He fell forward. Or more, he just crumpled to a heap on his Formula Hut floor and became right before her eyes a very sad pile of quite expensive “replacement” metal and flesh-strip in a swoon. “Daddy’s sick!” she said, mumbling worriedly to herself and the whirring emptiness around her. “I wonder why Daddy’s sick? I wonder what I should do? Oh well—”
She eyed him with a little girl’s real love for her daddy for a couple of seconds or so and she decided that he would probably eventually be O.K. on his own, or, if not, the State could just melt him up and start over as she had seen it done in the Programs. So why was she standing around, and who cared how it turned out anyway? He sure as heck wasn’t any help to her right now, and never had been, really. Neither had Mother. And Little Brother—brrrkkk boooooo—bad news all the way. So she took off, running as hard as she could across the planned-greening yards, all up with the metal grass now after Seasons finally had set the wheels right to put old winter on the skids and under on the giant yard-sheet Control rolls, all over Moderan.
But she still didn’t know how in the world she was going to find some dirt, and sneak it, to grow those “punkins.” She did know, though, one thing: Daddy had certainly been as useless as usual in helping her solve a problem.