Gladiator-At-Law

Chapter Eleven

Norvell was lying on a cake of ice. He kept trying to explain to someone enormous that he was sorry for everything and he'd be a good and dutiful son or husband or friend or whatever he was supposed to be if only the someone would leave him alone. But the enormous someone, who couldn't have been Norvell's father because Norvell didn't even remember a father, only put his hand before his mouth and tittered and looked down from a long flight of stairs, and then when Norvell was least expecting it, reached out and swatted him across the ear and sent him skidding across the enormous cake of ice into the tittering face of Alexandra and the jagged, giant teeth of Virginia. . .

Norvell woke up.

He was very cold, very stiff. He looked dazedly around him.

The living room. But—Yes. It was the living room. With the wall patterns off and no light except a sickly dawn from outside. All of the walls were on full transparent and he was lying on the floor. The bed he had dialed out to sleep in had folded into the basic cube, dumping him on the floor. And the floor was cold.

No heat. No power. The house was turned off.

He got up, wincing, and hopelessly sidled to the window control. It didn't respond; the windows remained full transparent.

He knew what had happened, and swore between clenched teeth. The skunks. Turning off the place without a word of warning, at daybreak, without even giving him a chance—

He wearily began picking up his clothes from the floor where a rack had dumped them as it returned to folded storage state. Through the indecently transparent windows he saw the other bubble-houses, all decently opaqued with only their nightlights and entry lights and here and there a warmly lit upstairs window. By the time he was dressed he began to hear a clamor upstairs. His wife and daughter charged down in negligee, commanding him to do something about it.

"Get dressed," he said, and pointedly disconnected his hearing aid.

He rambled about the house while they did. Absently he tried to dial coffee and gave up with a self-conscious laugh when the water would not flow. The closets, drawers, and dressers had rejected all their contents, upstairs and down. Pushers had calmly shoved them out and the doors had closed and locked—to him, forever. He contemplated the disordered piles of clothes and kitchenware, and began to pack a traveling case.

Two bored policemen wandered in while he was doing so; the door, of course, was no longer on lock. He plugged in his hearing aid, taking plenty of time about it. He said to them, "Well?"

They told him he had plenty of time; they weren't in any hurry. Take an hour if you need it, bub. They'd tote him and his family and their stuff out to Belly Rave, help him pick out a good place. And—uh—don't take this too hard, bub. Sometimes when people got busted out of contract status they—uh —got panicky and tried to, well, knock themselves off.

The moving had one golden moment. One of the cops helpfully picked up a suitcase. Alexandra told him to remove his filthy hands from—

The cop clouted her and explained what they didn't take none of off of Belly Rave brats. The police car handed Norvell a jolt. It was armored. "You—you get a lot of trouble in Belly Rave?" he guessed. The friendlier of the cops said, "Nah. Only once in a while. They haven't jumped a squad car in six months, not with anything but pistols, anyway. You'll be okay." And they pulled away from Monmouth G.M.L. Unit W-97-AR. There was no sentiment to the parting. Norvell was sunk in worry, Alexandra was incandescent but still. And Virginia had not said two words to anyone that morning.

The car paused at the broad beltway circling the bubble-city, motor idling and the driver impatiently talking into his radio. Finally two more police cars rolled up and the three of them in convoy left the city roads for the cracked asphalt that led to Belly Rave. Once the road they traveled had been a six-lane superhighway, threading a hundred thousand commuters' cars morning and night. Now it wound through a scraggly jungle, the toll booths at the interchanges crumbled into rock piles and rust.

They bumped along for a couple of miles, then turned off into a side road that was even worse. The first thing that hit Norvell was the smell. The second thing was worse. It was the horrible feeling of betrayal as he looked on Belly Rave. A man can reconcile himself to anything. If life is doomed to be an eternity of agony with duodenal cancer, or the aching and irremediable poverty of the crippled and friendless, he can manage to survive and make the best of it. But when he has steeled himself to disaster . . . and the event is a thousandfold worse than his fiercest nightmare ... the pockets of strength are overrun and nothing remains inside him but collapse.

And Belly Rave, in its teeming ruin, was worse than anything Norvell had dreamed.

The police cars swayed around a corner, sirens blasting, and stopped in the middle of a long, curving block. The convoying cars pulled up ahead and behind; a cop got out of each and stood ankle-deep in weeds and refuse, hand idly resting on his gun.

Norvell's driver said, "This one will do. Let's go."

The act of moving their possessions into the house in the driving rain, ringed by an audience of blank-faced Belly Ravers, was mercifully blurred in Norvell's mind. At one moment he was sitting in the police car, staring in disbelief at the wretched kennel they offered him; at the next, the police cars were gone, he was sitting on a turned-up suitcase, and Alexandra was whining, "Norvell, I've got to have something to eat before I absolutely die, it's been—"

Virginia sighed and stood up. "Shut up," she said levelly to her daughter. "Norvell, help me get the big suitcase upstairs."

She kicked a heap of rattling cans out of her way and headed for a flight of steps, ignoring her daughter.

Norvell followed her up the narrow stairs, the treads, ancient and patched with a miscellany of boards and sheet-metal, groaning under them. The upper floor (Expansion Attic for Your Growing Family) was soggy with rain, but Virginia found a spot where no water was actually dripping in. He dumped the suitcase there. "Go on down and watch the other stuff," she ordered. "I'm going to change my clothes."

Before she got down they had company.

First to arrive were three men in ragged windbreakers. "Police," one of them said, flashing something metallic in Norvell's face. "Just a routine check. You people got any valuables, alcoholic beverages, narcotics, or weapons to register?"

Norvell protested, "The police just left."

"Them's bubble-town police, buster," the man said. "They got no jurisdiction here. If you want to take my advice, you won't give us arguments. Come on, buster, what've you got to register?"

Norvell shrugged feebly. "Nothing, I guess. Unless you count our clothes."

The men moved purposefully toward the bags. "Just clothes?" one of them flung over his shoulder. "No guns or liquor?"

Virginia's high, clear voice came down the stairs. "You're God-damned right we have guns," she said tensely. "You bums turn around and get out of here before you find out the hard way!" Norvell, eyes popping, saw an old fashioned revolver in her hand.

"Just a minute, sister," one of the "police" objected.

"Beat it!" she clipped. "I'm counting to five. One, two, three—"

They were gone, swearing.

Virginia came down the stairs and handed the gun to Norvell. "Keep it," she said coldly. "Looks better if you use it. Just in case you were wondering, there aren't any cops in Belly Rave."

Norvell swallowed. He hefted the gun cautiously. It was surprisingly heavy, far heavier than his unskilled imagination, not considering the mass needed to contain bursting gunpowder, would ever have guessed. "Where did you get this thing?"

Virginia said drearily, "I've always had it. Used to be Tony's, before he died. There's lesson one for you: You don't live here without a gun."

Alexandra came forward with shining eyes. "You were wonderful," she breathed. "Those detestable brutes—heaven only knows what would have happened to me if only Norvell had been here."

She started to plant a wet kiss on her mother's cheek. Virginia shoved her daughter away and studied her coldly.

She spoke at last, in a strange, dry voice. "We'll have no more of that cack, Missy. From now on you're going to level with me—and with Norvell, too. Hear me? We can't afford lying, faking, doublecrossing, or temperament. You'd better learn it, and learn it fast. The first bad break you make and I'll sell you like a shot."

Alexandra's face was a study in terror.

Her mother said dispassionately, "Sink or swim—you're in Belly Rave now. You don't remember; but you'll learn. Now get out of here. If you can't scrounge something to eat, go hungry. But don't come back here until sundown."

The child stood blankly. Virginia took her by the shoulder, pushed her through the door; slammed it behind her.

Norvell looked through a chink in the boarding of the cracked picture window and saw Alexandra plodding hopelessly down the battered walk, weeping.

He uncertainly asked Virginia—the new Virginia—"What was that about selling her?"

She said, "What I said. I'll sell her. It's easy, you can always find a fagin or a madam for a kid. I don't know how prices run; when I was thirteen, I brought fifty dollars."

Norvell, his hair standing on end, said, "You?"

"Me. Not Wilhelmina Snodgrass or Zenobia Beaverbottom. Me. Your wife. I guess I was lucky—they sold me to a fagin, not into a house. He ran a tea pad; I helped him roll the clientele. That's where I met Tony. Now, if there are no more useless questions, help me unpack."

Norvell helped her, his head whirling. Without shame or apology she had demolished the story of her life—the story he had painstakingly built up from her "accidental" hints and revelations over the years. She "hadn't wanted to talk about it" . . . but somehow Norvell knew. The honest, industrious parents. The frugal, rugged life of toil. The warmth of family feeling, drawn together by common need. The struggling years as a—as a something she had never exactly specified, but something honorable and plain. The meeting with Tony Elliston—glamorous cad from the Field Day crowd. Not a bad fellow. But not love, Norvell—not what we have. . . .

He had thought himself clever. He had pieced it together into a connected tale, chuckling privately because she couldn't know how much he knew.

And all the while she had been a pickpocket in a dope joint, sold into it by her parents.

There was a knock on the door.

Virginia said through her teeth, "If that brat's come back before I told——" and swung it open. She screamed.

Norvell, greatly to his surprise, found he had the revolver in his hand. He was pointing it at the middle of the hulking, snaggle-toothed figure in the doorway.

The figure promptly raised its enormous hands over its small, shock-haired head and told him, grinning, "Don't shoot, mister. I'm harmless. I know I'm not pretty but I'm harmless. Came here to help you out. Show you where to register and all. The name's Shep. I'll give you a fair shake. Show you the best places for firewood, wise you up on the gangs. Hear you have a little girl. You want to sell her, I'll get you a price.

You want to go into business? I can put you next to a guy who'll start you out with hemp seed. If you got real money, I know a sugar dealer and a guy with a still to rent. I'm just Shep, mister. I'm just trying to get along."

Virginia said, "Keep the gun on him, Norvell. Shep, you come in and sit down. What do you want?"

"Surplus rations," the giant said, with a childlike smile. "Cash, if you have any. Always I'm desperate, but now I'm out of my mind." His arm swept at the open door. "See the rain? I have to catch it. It's the front end of the rainbow, mister. See it? I have to catch it; I never saw it before. And to catch it I've got to have some crimson lake. Some other things too, but the crimson lake. You don't see crimson in it, do you? Well, you won't see crimson in the canvas, but it'll be there—in the underpainting, and because it's there I'll have the pot of tears, the bloody, godawful rainsweep caught gloom-driving down on two hundred thousand desolations."

Norvell, lowering the pistol, said stupidly, "You paint."

"I paint. And for fifty bucks I can get what I need, which leaves me only the problem of getting fifty bucks."

Virginia said, "With your build you could get it."

Shep shrugged apologetically. "Not like you mean, not with rough stuff. Not since I started painting," he said. "You can't be half a virgin. So I run errands."

He put his hands down, peering at them out of his Neanderthal skull. "Any errands? I've got to raise the fifty before the rain stops."

Virginia appeared to come to a conclusion. "Norvell, give Shep fifty dollars." He shot his wife a horrified look; that would leave them with eighteen dollars and sixty-five cents. She said contemptuously, "Don't worry. He won't skip; there's no place to hide for long in Belly Rave." She told Shep, "You'll work for it. One week's hard work. The outhouse is probably brim-full. The chimney looks like it's blocked. We need firewood. This place needs patching all around. Also my husband doesn't know the ropes and he might get in trouble. You'll watch him?"

"For fifty, sure!" he glowed. "Want me to watch the kid?"

"No," she said shortly.

The giant nodded, his eyes dark. "You know what you're doing, lady. It'll be rough on her. Can I have the fifty now? It'll take two, three days to get the stuff. Ten bucks for the kid who does the running. I can't miss this rain."

Norvell counted out fifty dollars and handed them over. "Okay!" Shep boomed happily. "We'll get my crimson lake out of the way, then registration."

They walked through the driving rain to a tumbledown building guarded by a ratfaced boy of twelve. Shep told him cryptically, "Got a message for Monmouth."

The boy raised his head and hooted mournfully, "Wa-wa-wa-wa-wabbit twacks!"

Norvell blinked his eyes. Kids! Everywhere. From nowhere. Ratfaced, gimlet-eyed, appearing from the rainshroud, silently and suddenly before him as though they had condensed out of the watery air.

Shep told them, "Like last time, but with crimson lake too. Got it?"

A haggard girl of perhaps thirteen said dispassionately, "Cack like last time. The Goddams joined up with the Goering Grenadiers. It'll be a busted-bottle job getting through the West Side."

Shep said, "I'm in a hurry, Lana. Can you do it or can't you?"

She mildly told him, "Who said 'can't,' you or me? I said it'd be a busted-bottle job."

The ratfaced twelve-year-old said sullenly, "Not me. They know I was the one got Stinkfoot's kid brother. Besides—"

"Shut your mouth about Stinkfoot's kid brother," Lana blazed. "You stay here; I'll talk to you when I get back." The boy cowered away. Lana called to the kids, "Bwuther wab-bits, inspection harms!"

Jagged glass edges flashed. Norvell swallowed at what they implied.

"Good kids," Shep cried, and handed Lana the fifty dollars.

"Wa-wa-wa-wa-wabbit twacks!" She hooted mournfully, and the kids were gone, vanished back into the shrouding rain.

Norvell swallowed his questions, trudging after Shep through the floods. He had learned that much, at least.

The Resident Commissioner lived in an ordinary house, to Norvell's surprise. He had expected the man who was responsible for the allowances of thousands of people to be living in a G.M.L.; certainly his rank entitled him to one. There were only twenty commissioners scattered through Belly Rave.

Then Norvell saw the Resident Commissioner. He was a dreary old hack; he told Norvell dimly, "Carry your cards at all times. Be sure and impress that on your wife and the little girl. There's all kinds of work to getting duplicate cards, and you might go hungry for a week before they come through if you lose these. As head of the family you get a triple ration, and there's a separate one for the wife. Is the little girl a heavy eater?"

Norvell guessed so. He nodded vaguely.

"Well, we'll give her an adult ration then. Lord knows there's no shortage of food. Let's see, we'll make your hours of reporting on Wednesdays, between three and five. It's important to keep to your right hours, otherwise there's likely to be a big rush here sometimes, and nobody at all others. Is all that pretty clear? You'll find that it's mostly better to travel in groups when you come down for your allowance. Shep can tell you about that It—it prevents trouble. We don't want any trouble here." He tried to look stern. And pathetically added, "Please don't make trouble in my district. There are nineteen others, aren't there?"

He consulted a checklist, whispering to himself. "Oh. Your ration cards entitle you and the whole family to bleacher seats at all bouts and Field Days." Norvell's heart was torn by the words. The rest was a blur. "Free transportation, of course—hope you'll avail yourself—no use to stay home and brood—little blood clears the air—door always open—"

Outside in the rain Norvell asked Shep: "Is that all he does?"

Shep looked at him. "Is there something else to do?" He swung around. "Let's get some firewood."