Return to Pleasure Island by Cory Doctorow (ebook reader wifi .TXT) 📕

to do," Joe said. "I was out with an Imagineer!"

George stared hard at him. "What did the Imagineer want? Is there trouble?"

Joe gave a deprecating laugh. "Why do you always think there's trouble? The guy
wanted to chat with me -- he likes me, wants to get to know me. His name is
Woodrow, he's in charge of a whole operations division, and he was interested in
what I thought of some of his plans." He stopped and waited for George to be
impressed.

George knew what the pause was for. "That's very good. You must be doing a good
job for your Lead to mention you to him."

"That little prick? He hates my guts. Woodrow's building a special operations
unit out of lateral thinkers -- he wants new blood, creativity. He says I have a
unique perspective."

"Did you talk to Orville?" Orville was the soft one who'd brought them from
their father's shack to the Island, and he was their mentor and advocate inside
its Byzantine politics. Bill had confided to George that he suspected Orville
was of a different species from the soft ones -- he certainly seemed to know
more about George's kind than a soft one had any business knowing.

Joe tore a hunk from the carcass on the rickety kitchen table and stuffed it
into his mouth. Around it, he mumbled something that might have been yes and
might have been no. It was Joe's favorite stratagem, and it was responsible for
the round belly that bulged out beneath his skinny chest.

Joe tore away more than half of the meat and made for the door. "Woodrow wants
to meet with me again this morning. Don't wait up for me tonight!" He left the
cottage and set off toward the tram-stop.

Bill rolled over on his bedding and said, "I don't like this at all."

George kept quiet. Bill's voice surprised him, but it shouldn't have. Bill was
clever enough to lie still and feign sleep so that he could overhear Joe's
conversations, where George would have just sat up and started talking.

"Orville should know about this, but I can't tell if it would make him angry. If
it made him angry and he punished Joe, it would be our fault for telling him."

"Then we won't tell him," George said.

Bill held up his hand. "But if we don't tell him and he finds out on his own, he
may be angry with us."

"Then we should tell him," George said.

"But Joe and this Woodrow may not get along after all, and if that happens, the
whole thing will end on its own."

"Then we won't tell him," George said.

"But if they do get along, then they may do something that would make Orville
angry," Bill looked expectantly at George.

"Then we should tell him?" George said, uncertainly.

"I don't know," Bill said. "I haven't decided."

George knew that this mean that Bill would have to think on it, and so he left
him. He had to catch the tram to make it to his shift, anyway.

#

The soft one with the six-to-noon shift left as soon as George arrived, without
a word. George was used to soft ones not having anything to say to him, and
preferred it that way. He was better off than Bill -- soft ones always wanted to
talk to Bill, and he hated it, since they never had anything to say that Bill
wanted to know. The weather needed no discussion, Bill said. And as for the
complaints about the shift's Lead, well, one soft one was just about the same as
any other, and Orville had told them that at the end of the day, they worked for
him, not for any Lead.

Joe liked talking to the soft ones. Joe liked to talk, period. He told the soft
ones lies about their childhood in the shack with their father, and told them
about how his brothers tormented, and even talked about the weather. When he got
back home, he told his brothers all over again, everything he'd told the soft
ones.

George had memorised the SOP manual when they came to the Island, five years
before. It clearly said that the floor of the booth would be disinfected every
three hours, and the surfaces polished clean, and the pots and machines
refilled. The soft one with the six-to-noon shift never did any of these things,
which could get him disciplined by their Lead, but George didn't complain. He
just wiped and disinfected and re-stocked when he arrived, even though he had to
be extra careful with the water, so that he didn't wash any of himself away.

Boys ran up and down the midway, baking in the mid-day sun. They reminded George
of the boys he'd gone to school with, after the social worker had come to his
father's shack. They'd teased him to begin with, but he'd just stood with his
hands at his sides until they stopped. Every time he started a new grade, or a
new kid came to the school, it was the same: they'd tease him, or hit him, or
throw things at him, and he'd stand strong and silent until they stopped, even
if it took months. His teachers quickly learned that calling on him in class
meant standing in awkward silence, while he sat stoic and waited for them to
call on someone else. The social worker could make him go to school with the
soft ones, but she couldn't make him act like one.

George watched the boys carefully, as carefully as he had when he stood silently
in the schoolyard, not seeming to watch anything. He was better at spotting a
donkey than any of the soft ones. When a boy was ready to turn, George could
almost see the shape of the donkey superimposed on the boy, and he radioed a
keeper to pick up the donkey come morning. He got a bonus for each one he
spotted, and according to Bill, it had accumulated to a sizable nest-egg.

George looked at the inventory and decided that the fudge was getting a little
long in the tooth. He'd start pushing fudge-nut dips, and by the end of his
shift, the tub would be empty and he'd be able to give it a thorough cleaning
and a refill from fresh stock. "Hey guys!" he called to three boys. "Is anybody
_hungry_?" He dipped a floss and held it up, so that it oozed fudge down his
wrist. The boys shyly approached his booth. George knew from their manner that
they were new to the Island: probably just picked up from a video-arcade or
lasertag tent on the mainland that afternoon. They didn't know what to make of
their surroundings, that was clear.

"Step right up," he said, "I don't bite!" He smiled a smile he'd practiced in
the mirror, one that shaped his soft, flexible features into a good-natured
expression of idiotic fun. Cautiously, the boys came forward. They were the
target age, eleven-to-fourteen, and they'd already accumulated some merch,
baseball hats and fanny packs made from neoprene in tropical-fish colours,
emblazoned with the Island's logomarks and character trademarks. They had the
beginnings of dark circles under their eyes, and they dragged a little with low
blood-sugar. George dipped two more and distributed them around. The eldest, a
towheaded kid near the upper age range, said, "Mister, we haven't got any money
-- what do these cost?"

George laughed like a freight train. "It's all free, sonny, free as air!
Courtesy of the Management, as a reward for very _special_ customers like you."
This was scripted, but the trick was to sell the line like it was fresh.

The boys took the cones from him timidly, but ate ravenously. George gave them
some logoed serviettes to wipe up with and ground the fudge into his wrists and
forearms with one of his own. He looked at his watch and consulted the laminated
timetable taped to the counter. 1300h, which meant that the bulk of the Guests
would be migrating towards Actionland and the dinosaur rides, and it was time to
push the slightly down-at-the-heels FreakZone, to balance the crowds. "You boys
like rollercoasters?" he said.

The youngest -- they were similar enough in appearance and distant enough in
ages to be brothers -- spoke up. "Yeah!" The middle elbowed him, and the
youngest flipped the middle the bird.

"Well, if you follow the midway around this curve to the right, and go through
the big clown-mouth, you'll be in the FreakZone. We've got a fifteen-storey
coaster called _The Obliterator_ that loops fifty times in five minutes --
running over _ninety-five miles per hour_! If you hurry, you can beat the line!"
He looked the youngest in the eye at the start of the speech, then switched to
the middle when he talked about the line.

The youngest started vibrating with excitement, and the middle looked pensive,
and then to the eldest said, "Sounds good, huh, Tom?"

The eldest said, "We haven't even found out where we're sleeping yet -- maybe we
can do the ride afterwards."

George winked at the youngest, then said, "Don't worry about it, kids. I'll get
that sorted out for you right now." He picked up the white house phone and asked
the operator to connect him with Guest Services. "Hi there! This is George on
the midway! I need reservations for three young men for tonight -- a suite, I
think, with in-room Nintendo and a big-screen TV. They look like they'd enjoy
the Sportaseum. OK, I'll hold," he covered the mouthpiece and said to the boys,
"You'll love the Sportaseum -- the chairs are shaped like giant catcher's mitts,
and the beds are giant Air Jordans, and the suite comes with a regulation
half-court. What name should I put the reservation under?"

The eldest said, "Tom Mitchell."

George made the reservation. "You're all set," he said. "The monorails run right
into the hotel lobby, every ten minutes. Anyone with a name tag can show you to
the nearest stop. Here's a tip -- try the football panzerotto: it's a fried
pizza turnover as big as a football, with beef-jerky laces. It's _my_ favorite!"

"I want a football!" the youngest said.

"We'll have it for dinner," the eldest said, looking off at the skyline of
coaster-skeletons in the distance. "Let's go on some rides first."

George beamed his idiot's grin at them as they left, then his face went slack
and he went back to wiping down the surfaces. A moment later, a hand reached
across the counter and plucked the cloth from his grip. He looked up, startled,
into Joe's grinning face. Unlike his brothers', Joe's face was all sharp angles
and small teeth. Nobody knew what a child of a tongue was supposed to look like,
but George had always suspected that Joe wasn't right, even for a third son.

"Big guy!" Joe shouted. "Workin' hard?"

George said, "Yes." He stood, patiently, waiting for Joe to give him the cloth
back.

Joe held it over his head like a standard, dancing back out of reach, even
though George hadn't made a grab for it. George waited. Joe walked back to his
counter and gave it back.

"We're dozing the FreakZone," Joe said, in a conspiratorial whisper. He put a
spin on _We're_, making sure that George knew he was including himself with the
Island's management.

"Really," George said, neutrally.

"Yeah! We're gonna flatten that sucker, start fresh, and build us a new theme
land. I'm a Strategic Project Consultant! By the time it's over, I'll be an