Dydeetown World Read online

  DYDEETOWN WORLD

  © 1989 by F. Paul Wilson

  Foreword

  Dydeetown World began back in 1984, inspired by an opening hook that had lain fallow in my notebook for years. The plot, characters, tone, milieu, just about everything in the story sprang from that one sentence. (It opens section 4 of Part One, if you're interested.)

  I originally intended it as a short story—five, maybe six thousand words, tops—a quiet little SF tribute to Raymond Chandler whose work has given me such pleasure over the years. I was going to use all the clichés—the down-and-out private eye, his seedy friends, the tired, seamy city, the bar hang-out, the ruthless mobster, the whore with the heart of gold.

  The working title was "Lies" because that's mostly what it's about. We all say we revere the truth, but sometimes a lie can be stronger than the truth, better than the truth. There are vital lies—the ones that can give you hope, can give you the strength to keep going when the truth would break you. And sometimes, under the right circumstances, a lie can become the truth

  I set it in the far future, one I had developed for the LaNague Federation science fiction series (four novels* and a handful of shorts). But "Lies" was going to be different. Rather than bright and full of hope like its predecessors, this story was going to be set on the grimy, disillusioned underbelly of that future. I wanted to move through the LaNague Earth at ground level, take a hard look at the social fall-out of the food shortages, the population-control measures, the wires into the pleasure centers of the brain—things I'd glossed over or mentioned only in passing before.

  But despite the downbeat milieu, the story would be about freedom, friendship, and self-esteem. Beneath its hardboiled voice, its seamy settings, and violent events (Cyber/p-i/sci-fi, as Forry Ackerman might have called it) were characters trying to maintain—or reestablish—a human connection.

  I disappeared into the story, so much so that it came in at three times the projected length, with a new title: "Dydeetown Girl."

  A novella. One that none of the sf magazines wanted because it was too much like detective fiction; and which the detective mags rejected because it was "sci-fi." I began to fear that my ugly-duckling hybrid would be doomed to perpetual orphanhood. But thanks to Jim Baen and Betsy Mitchell it found a home in one of the Far Frontiers anthologies. From there it went on to reach the Nebula Awards final ballot for best novella of the year. It didn't win, but just seeing it listed was sweet vindication.

  Betsy Mitchell prodded me into writing more in the "Dydeetown milieu. Her simple suggestion, "Why don't you do something with those urchins," sparked two more novellas, "Wires" and "Kids" (oh, those plural nouns). She also suggested splicing them into a single story.

  The result was Dydeetown World

  Although written for adults, the novel wound up on the American Library Association's list of "Best Books for Young Adults" and on the New York Public Library's recommended list of "Books for the Teen Age."

  The ugly duckling had become a swan.

  One scene in "Dydeetown Girl" involves a Tyrannosaurus rex used as a guard animal. That’s right: in a story written in 1985 I used a dinosaur cloned from reconstituted fossil DNA, but I tossed it off as background color.

  If only I’d thought to stick a bunch of them in a park…

  DYDEETOWN WORLD

  Part One

  Lies

  If your sister were a clone, would you want her working in Dydeetown. (datastream graffito)

  -1-

  Jean Harlow.

  Or rather, Jean Harlow-c.

  Couldn't place her face at once, but you don't hardly ever see white skin like that. Then it came to me. Seen her before in the flesh. The too-blond hair, the too-white skin, the puggish face. Hard to forget her even if, like me, you weren't particularly attracted to the look despite the way she filled out the dark blue clingsuit.

  "You're Mr. Dreyer, aren't you?" she said in a tinny voice as the door slid closed a couple of centimeters behind her.

  Suddenly became interested in my desktop where a few cockroach droppings adhered to the surface. Flicked one off as I told her, "You can find your way back out the way you came in."

  "I want to hire you."

  Held my temper and kept after the roach chips. Was tired from a long string of long days sitting here waiting for something to do.

  "Don't work for clones."

  Not completely true, but didn't advertise the truth.

  Her breath made a raspy sound as she sucked it in.

  "How—?"

  "Never forget a face," I said, finally looking up at her.

  Did a search for a Dydeetown girl a while back. Cued up the library for background and watched a vid on them and the history of Dydeetown. Got to know a lot of their faces and the stories behind them during the search. This Harlow was a big thing in her day, which was Way Back When. The clone before me wasn't a perfect match—they never are—but pretty damn close. Couldn't see what anyone saw in her, but maybe tastes were different then. Why anyone would want to hunt up her leftovers, steal a piece, and clone out a new Jean Harlow was beyond me.

  But then, I don't waste my thumb in Dydeetown.

  "You worked for Kushegi. She told me."

  The roach dung became interesting again.

  "That was a special case."

  "What was so special about it?"

  "None of your dregging business."

  Truth was, I'd been more broke than usual then—my thumb was getting more red lights than Dydeetown's east wall. My stomach was used to at least one meal a day and the rest of me had other appetites. Briefly put, I was what you call desperate back then. Hadn't come a long way since.

  "Hear me out," she said.

  "I'll let you out." Still had my pride.

  Something clunked heavily amid the poppyseed droppings on the desktop. Didn't even have to look up to see it. Rolled right under my nose—round, flat, and gold.

  "Talk," I said.

  She glanced back at my cubicle door as if to make sure it was closed good and tight, then sat in one of the pair of chairs on the other side of my desk.

  "I thought you'd have a bigger office than this."

  "Not a materialist," I said, picking up the coin and leaning back.

  "It's Kyfhon."

  Weighed it in my hand. Cool and heavy. Twenty-five grams heavy. Point nine-nine-nine fine if up to the usual Kyfhon standards. Illegal, of course, but who's going to tell those Eastern Sect toughos they can't mint their own coins? Not me, brother. Not me.

  "Get many Kyfho-types as clients in Dydeetown?"

  "Some."

  Said nothing more, just sat there and worked a little crease into the surface of the coin with my thumbnail.

  Finally, she went on, as I knew she would.

  "Occasionally I'll do business with a Kyphon, but mostly I get coin from people who don't want to leave any thumbprints in Dydeetown."

  "Nobody likes to leave a trail to Dydeetown."

  "Yet they do," she said, lifting her chin and meeting me eye to eye. "Every night they come around with fat groins and fat thumbs—"

  "—to find 'the most beautiful women and the handsomest men in all history,' " I said, mimicking the slogan.

  "You are so right, Mr. Dreyer."

  Not a trace of shame in her voice. But why should there have been? She was only a clone. She didn't know any better; it was her customers who should have been ashamed.

  "So what can I do for you?"

  Galled me to be sitting here talking business with her like she was a Realpeople, but this was real gold in my hand, and I needed it real bad.

  "I need to find someone."

  Oh, bloaty. Another missing Dydeetowner.

  "Why come to me?"

&nb
sp; "Kushegi said you were good."

  Bristled at that. How could the clone of a Twenty-First Century holo sex star judge my work? By what—?

  Doused it. Fruitless path. Waste of energy.

  "She didn't get what she wanted," I said.

  "True. Raquel was dead when you found her. But you did find her."

  "And so I'm supposed to find your lover now?"

  She nodded. Timidly.

  Flipped the coin back onto the desk.

  "No thanks."

  "Please?"

  If the plea in her voice was supposed to melt my heart, it failed by a lot of degrees.

  "Whoever it is, let the owner go after him. Or her. Or let the owner hire me. Not you."

  "This is a Realpeople I'm talking about."

  "Oh."

  Picked up the coin again and leaned back in my chair. Still didn't like the sound of this but I had nothing better to do.

  "What's the name?"

  "Kyle." Her voice quavered and her eyes glistened. "Kyle Bodine."

  Thought she was going to cry, but she managed to hold it in, thank the Core.

  "Look. If this guy hurt you or robbed or cheated you, get your owner on it."

  "Nothing like that," she said through a sniff. "We were going to be married."

  Almost went over backwards in my chair with that one.

  "You were going to be what?"

  Guess I must have shouted because she jumped back like I'd pulled a blaster on her.

  "M-married. We were going to be married."

  Couldn't help laughing. People talk about clones being dumb, but you never really appreciate how dumb until you talk to one. They know how to look good, how to smile real nice, how to give maximum pleasure to a human body, but something must happen when they're cultured out. Something must get lost along the way. Because they are dumb.

  Her face reddened. "Why are you laughing?"

  "No Realpeople's going to marry a clone!"

  "Kyle is! He loves me!"

  "He's lying."

  "He isn't!" Her voice jumped a couple of notches as she rose from the chair and leaned over the desk. "I mean something to him! I'm somebody to him—not like the dirt I am to almost everybody else!"

  "Hey…easy there," I said. Didn't want her burning out of here along with her gold coin. "Nobody's calling anybody names here. It's just that Realpeople don't marry clones. Not my fault it's that way—just a fact of life."

  "And just the way you like it, right?"

  "Don't hate clones, but I'm no oozer, either."

  Gold or not, I wasn't going to lie to her. I don't like clones. Truth of the matter is I can't think of many Realpeople I like much either. But especially don't like collections of cells grown from a tissue culture parading around like real human beings.

  "Bet your 'fiance—'" I said the word out of the corner of my mouth—"oozes real good, though. Probably one of those jogs clustering in the tubes shouting 'Free the clones' or 'Ban the Chlor-cow' or 'Adopt an urchin!' or some other impossibility. Probably wants to marry you to use you as a bloaty trophy. Show how dregging sincere he is."

  "I wasn't going to be his trophy—we were moving away."

  "Where to?"

  "The outworlds."

  Leaned back in my chair again—slowly this time—and studied her. This was getting nasty. Like I said, I'm no clone-lover—matter of fact, I wish there were no such things as clones. But that doesn't mean I think they should be mistreated. Realpeople made them, that makes us responsible. And some dregger had been dealing this especially dumb one a dirty hand. Like them or not, I can't condone cruelty to clones.

  "Look," I said slowly, hoping she'd be able to catch onto what I was going to tell her. "Don't know how to tell you this, but there are a few things you should know. Such as, there's no way you can get to the outworlds. Only Realpeople can go. You need a greencard, and clones don't get greencards. You're Unpeople. You're property. You belong to someone—either to a person or a corporation. Clones can't even have credit accounts, so it stands to reason that they can't just wander off to the stars when they please."

  Watched her open her beltpurse as I tried to figure out how I was going to explain the workings of CenDat to her in terms she would understand.

  "You see, when you were born…or hatched, or whatever—"

  "Deincubated," she said, still working at the beltpurse.

  "Whatever. They took a little piece of tissue and recorded your gene structure into the Central Data banks. Your genotype will remain on record there until you die. Just like mine. Just like everybody's."

  She nodded. "I know. And they can't clone another of me until I'm dead—the One Person/One Genotype law."

  "So you know about that." Puzzled me. "Then what made you think you could get off-planet?"

  She looked around like I might be hiding someone behind the

  desk or somewhere else in this shoebox-size cubicle.

  "Is what we say here secret? Really secret?"

  "The word is 'confidential.' And yes, everything's secret. What've you got in your hand there?"

  She pulled something out of her beltpurse and laid it on my desk.

  "This."

  A greencard.

  Speechless for a moment. Clones get redcards. Never get greencards. Never. It was impossible—but there it was on my desk.

  "A fake. Got to be."

  She shook her head. "No. It's real."

  "You've tried it out?"

  "I don't have to. I know it's real."

  Picked it up. Sure looked real. This was getting stickier and stickier by the minute.

  "You could wind up at the South Pole shoveling chlorcow manure for having this, you know."

  She nodded. "I know. But it won't matter when we get Out Where All The Good Folks Go."

  Always hated that expression. Everybody seemed to refer to the outworlds that way. Everybody but me. Didn't like what it implied about us who stayed behind on Earth, although I couldn't deny that it might be true.

  But I stuck to the subject at hand: "You need more than a card, you know. Unless someone's changed your status in CenDat from clone to Realpeople, this is nothing but green plastic. When they stick it and a skin scraping into their little machine at the shuttleport it'll read out that there's no such Realpeople as you and you'll be arrested there and then for exporting stolen property—yourself."

  She gave me a half-vacant smile. "I know. But that will never happen."

  "How can you be so…?"

  She shrugged and smiled. "Kyle fixed it. He took a skin sample and came back a few days later with the card. He loves me."

  Looked at the greencard again. Seemed as real as my own. Couldn't figure it. A man who would go to this extreme for a clone must really…love her.

  Nah.

  But my face remained a picture of professional blandness.

  "How long has this Kyle Bodine been missing?"

  "Five days. We were supposed to meet at L-I Port by the shuttle dock Friday night. I haven't heard from him since Friday morning."

  "Where do you think he is?"

  "I don't know." Her eyes began to glisten again. "I don't know! And I'm worried about him!"

  "Maybe he just changed his mind."

  She shook her head. Violently. "No! Never!"

  "Okay, okay. Don't get excited."

  Got up and walked to the viddow behind my desk. Wished I could have looked out a real window instead of at this transmission from the outer wall, but I could barely keep up the rent on an inner cubicle let alone afford one on the perimeter. Kept turning the gold coin over and over in my right hand while the greencard lay cool and still in my left. Something wrong here. Something crazy.

  "Can I have my card back?"

  Turned and gave it to her. Real important to her, that card.

  A cockroach—a big one—ran across my shoe then. Squashed it with a satisfying crunch when it got back to the floor. Ignatz was going to have to make another sweep of the plac
e.

  "All right. Let's find out what you know about this guy."

  Turned out she didn't know all that much.

  Was what you call a whirlwind romance. Kyle Bodine worked for an import-export firm. Had contracts in the outworlds who’d welcome him and his new wife. Anti-clone laws were big out there, but no one would have to know she was one. She said she'd last seen him in Dydeetown on Friday morning. He had a medium-size compartment in one of the high-rent districts in Manhattan. The door was keyed to her. She'd already been there after many unanswered calls. No Kyle. No sign of foul play.

  That's where I'd start.

  "Okay," I said. "The fee is 200 a day plus expenses."

  "Filamentous with me," she said, nodding.

  Held up the gold coin. "This thing's worth more than a week in advance."

  "If you find him before that—even if it's tonight—it's all yours."

  She really wanted this guy back.

  Told her I had some errands to run and would meet her at Bodine's compartment in a tenth.

  Waited a while after she left, then took the downchute to street level. Wanted to get rid of this gold before tubing over to Manhattan. Not only illegal to possess, but it might get stolen before I could turn it into credit.

  Knew I could do that at the usual place, no questions asked.

  -2-

  Never knew what Elmero's was going to look like week to week. Most businesses strove for a consistent exterior. Elmero strove for the opposite. Never knew when he was going to change the holographic front. Today it was suddenly the Bar-X Saloon in old Tucson, Arizona. Even had a couple of horses drinking from a trough in the bright noonday sun.

  The sun never shone down here at ground level.

  The usual crowd was holding up the bar inside, however. The usual mix of aimless chatter and straying vapors filled the air. And as usual, the datastream was playing in the near corner where I recognized Newsface Seven's features as she doled out the latest tidbits from CenDat. A howl came from the enclosure in the dimmest of the dim corners where someone was playing Procyon Patrol. Whoever he was—never saw him before—he spun out of the enclosure and rolled on the floor, all the while swatting at his left shoulder where the fabric of his jacket was burning. He got the fire out, stood up, shook himself, then re-entered the enclosure. People had been paying extra to play Procyon Patrol at Elmero's since he partially disabled the dampers on the enemy lasers. When those aliens shot back, they really shot back. You could get hurt real bad in that game. That's why altered machines were illegal.