Return to Pleasure Island by Cory Doctorow (best contemporary novels txt) 📕

to get offstage. I'm having a bad day."

Technically, this was allowed. Management didn't want anyone onstage who wasn't 100 percent. But it was something that none of the brothers, not even Joe, had ever done. The Lead was surprised, but he sent over a soft one to relieve George.

#

Orville and Bill were sitting out front of the cabin, watching Tom, when George got back. He wrung his hands as he approached them, not sure of what to say, and whether he should talk in front of Orville at all. He held his left thumb in his right hand, and it comforted him, a little.

Bill and Orville were so engrossed in Tom's antics that they didn't even notice George until he cleared his throat. Orville raised his eyebrows and looked significantly at Bill.

"I just saw Joe," George said. "On the midway. His ears are pointed, and he's walking all hunched over. I give him a few days at the most before he's all the way gone." George held his breath, waiting for Bill's reaction.

"Too bad," Bill said. "It was inevitable, I suppose. A child of the tongue! What was father thinking?"

Orville smiled and puffed at his pipe. "Don't you worry about it, George. Joe's going to be much, much happier. Focussed. If you'd like, I can bring him out here to live. Little Tom could have pony rides."

Bill said, "I don't think that's such a good idea. Joe's too wild to play with a child."

Orville put a hand on his shoulder. "You'd be amazed at how docile he'll become."

Bill scooped up Tom, who was up to his waist now, and who liked to grab onto
Bill's nose. "We'll see, then." He retreated into the cabin with his son.

Orville turned to George and said, "You've probably heard that we're taking down the midway tomorrow. The others are all being reassigned until the rehab is done, but I thought I'd see if I could get you a couple months off. You could stay here and play with Tom — it's not every day you get to be a new uncle."

Orville had always taken obvious pleasure in the transformation of boys into donkeys. It was the whole why of Pleasure Island, after all. Orville seemed especially pleased tonight, and George thought that he was as surprised about Bill as George was.

George, not knowing what to say to any of it, said nothing.

#

It didn't take long for George to start missing the midway. Stuck at the cabin with Bill and Tom, he sat against an outside wall and tried not to get in the way. He prepared meals in silence, taking a long time in the woods, gathering up choice morsels. Bill and Tom ate on the floor, away from the table. Bill chewed the tougher morsels first, and then put them in Tom's mouth with his crippled left hand. Most of the time, neither of them took any notice of George.

One day, he prepared a whole day's worth of meals and left them on the table, then walked to the utilidor at the other side of the woods. He boarded a tram and rode to the old midway entrance.

The midway was fenced in with tall plywood sheets, and construction crews bustled over the naked skeletons of the new HorrorZone. Heavy machinery groaned and crashed. Nothing but the distant silhouettes of Actionland's skyline were familiar. George tried to imagine working here for years to come. An overwhelming tiredness weighed him down.

He took the tram back to the cabin and stripped off his clothes. They were browner than ever. His arms felt weak and tired. He suddenly knew that he would never have a son of his own.

Bill and Tom were playing out front of the cabin. He sat in his usual spot against the wall and watched them. "Bill," he said, softly.

"Yes?" Bill said.

"When will I have a son of my own?" Bill always knew the answers.

Bill gathered Tom up to his chest unconsciously while he thought. "I suppose that once Tom is grown, you could take some time off and have a son of your own."

To his own surprise, George said, "I want to have a son now."

Bill said, "That's out of the question, George. We're too busy with Tom." On hearing Bill's annoyed tone, Tom leaned into him.

George said, "I'm not busy. I am old, though. If I don't have a son soon, I won't be able to care for it until it's old enough to care for me."

Bill said, "You're thinking like Father. We're living with the soft ones now.
Orville will make sure that you and your son will be fine until he's grown."

George never won arguments with Bill. He went inside the cabin and set out dinner.

#

Orville visited the brothers the next morning. He chucked Tom under the chin and shook hands with Bill. Then he took George out into the woods for a walk.

"Your brother tells me you want a son of your own," he said.

George nodded, and stooped to put a small, mossy log in his basket.

"Bill doesn't want you to, huh?"

George didn't feel very comfortable discussing the family with Orville. That was
Bill's job. After some thought, he said, "Not right now."

Orville said, "I can see that that makes you unhappy. No one should be unhappy here. I'll see what I can do. Come down to Ops tomorrow morning, we'll talk more."

When George got back to the cabin, Bill was lying on his back on the floor, laughing while Tom climbed all over him. Tom still babbled, but they were real words now, though nonsensical. With his constant talking, he reminded George of Joe, and that made him even sadder.

#

George had never been to Ops before, but he knew where it was, in a collection of low-slung prefab buildings hidden behind the topiary sculptures near MagicLand. He clutched his right thumb nervously as he stood and waited in the reception area for Orville to come and get him. The secretary had taken his name and buzzed Orville, and now kept sneaking him horrified looks. George's family were the only of their kind to leave their homeland and join the soft ones, and here at Ops, there were any number of low-ranking babus who'd never heard tell of them.

Orville was all smiles and effusion as he breezed through the glass security-door and pounded George on the back. "George! I'm so glad you came down!"

He took George by the arm and led him away, stopping to wink at the secretary, who looked at him with a mixture of disgust and admiration.

Orville's office was buried in a twisting maze of door-lined, fluorescent-lit corridors, where busy soft ones talked on telephones and clattered on keyboards. He led George through his door, into an office as big as George's cabin.

Orville paced and talked. "Did I say I was glad you came? I'm glad you came. Now, let's talk about Bill. Bill's happy. He's got what he wants. A son. He doesn't have to take care of Joe. It's good for him."

He paused and looked at George. George nodded.

"OK. There's a problem, though. You want a son, too, only Bill won't allow it."

It didn't need any comment, so George kept quiet.

"My thinking is, Bill's so busy with Tom, he wouldn't really notice if you were there or not. You're an adult, you can take care of yourself. Do you see where I'm going with this?"

George assumed it was a rhetorical question.

"Right. What I'm thinking is, there's no reason that both of you shouldn't have your own son. This is Pleasure Island, after all. No one should be sad on Pleasure Island. You've worked hard and well for us for a long time here. We can take care of you."

George felt an uncomfortable sensation in his stomach, a knot of guilt like rising vomit.

"I thought about having another cabin built in the woods, but that's no good. I think that you and Bill need your own space. So let me bounce my current thought off you: we'll put you up in the new Monster's Arms, that's the hotel we're building for HorrorZone. It's way ahead of schedule, almost finished now. There's a penthouse suite that you can take for as long as you like. It's only temporary, just until you and Bill have had some time to raise up your sons. Then, we'll get the whole family together back at the cabin."

The guilt rose higher, choking George.

"Don't worry about eating, either. I've briefed the house chef on your tastes, and he'll send up three squares every day; everything a growing boy needs." He flashed a grin.

"And forget about Bill. I'll smooth things over with him. He'll see that it's for the best."

Finally, George had something to say. "What about Joe?"

Orville had been almost dancing as he spoke, enchanted with his own words. He pulled up short when George spoke. "What about him?"

"I want to live with him again," George said.

"He's gone, you know that." Orville pointed his fingers alongside his ears.
"Hee-haw, hee-haw. The monthly ferry will take him to the mainland tomorrow."

"I don't care about that," George said. "I want him there."

Orville said, "I don't think that's such a good idea, George. You're going away to concentrate on you — Joe's a handful, even now. I don't want you distracted."

George said, "I want Joe."

Orville stared at him. George set his face into a blank mask. Finally, Orville said, "If that's what you want, that's what you'll get."

#

George didn't have anything to fetch from the cabin, and Orville thought it would be best if he spoke to Bill alone, so he sent George to the stables to get Joe.

The donkey stables were beyond Ops, at the very edge of the island, opposite the docks where the ferries brought new boys in. A different kind of boat docked there, large utility freighters that brought in everything the Island needed and took away braying, kicking herds of jackasses.

The donkeys shifted nervously in their stalls. George smelled horse-apples and hay, and heard fidgeting hooves and quiet, braying sobs. He wasn't clear on what happened to donkeys when they went back to the mainland, but he had an idea that it wasn't very pleasant. On the Island, donkeys were prizes, a sign that a boy's every wish had been gratified. What happened afterwards wasn't something that they were encouraged to think about.

He walked down the clean, wooden aisles, peering into the stalls, looking for Joe. Finally, in a dark stall in the very darkest corner of the stables, he found him. A large, pot-bellied jackass, who leapt up and brayed loudly at him when he clucked his tongue at it.

"Joe?" he asked softly.

The donkey brayed again and kicked at the stall's door. It was already splintered from many such kicks. George opened the catch and was nearly trampled beneath Joe's hooves as he ran out and away, braying loudly. George chased his brother. He didn't start very fast, but once he got going, inertia made him unstoppable.

He cornered Joe at the door that led out to the Island. The donkey was kicking at it, trying for escape. George locked his strong right arm around Joe's neck. "Stop it, Joe," he said. "I'm taking you out with me, but you have to stop it."

Joe's eyes rolled madly, and he struggled against George, kicking and biting. George waited in silence until the donkey tired, then used a bridle hanging on the wall to lead Joe out of the stables.

When Joe saw Orville waiting for them, he went wild again. George caught him by the hind leg and dragged him to the ground, while Orville danced back with a strange grace.

Orville grinned and said, "I guess he doesn't like me very much." He came forward and darted an affectionate pat on Joe's haunch.

Joe brayed loudly and George kept his own counsel. Orville led them down a utilidor and into an electric tram with an open car. George led Joe in and held onto his neck while Orville sped down the utilidor. He drove up a service ramp and out into HorrorZone, then to the doors of the newly completed Monster's Arms.

#

George and Joe lived in the Monster's Arms. Every morning, Orville paid them a visit and snuck looks at