Kalifornia by Marc Laidlaw Read Free Book Online

he’d
wasted on Halfjest’s filibuster. He and Dyad should have been downstairs, in a
dark office beneath the waves, making up for lost time.
    “Can’t you put him off a while?”
    Cornelius looked uncomfortable. “I’m already bringing him enough
bad news. I would greatly appreciate your support.”
    Sandy sighed.
    “That’s tan,” Dyad said. “I’ll find you later.”
    He nodded. “I’ll look for you.” Turning to Cornelius he said, “You
owe me one.”
    Dyad ducked away without so much as a kiss. Perhaps she thought it
would make their parting simpler, but it only added to his frustration.
    This floor at sea level, and a few more in the bright waters just
below, belonged to the CEO, board chairman, and seascraper owner—in short, to
Alfredo Figueroa. Executive windows looked out upon green glimmering vistas of
fish and dangling seaweed, while lesser employees spent their days staring out
at a cold perpetual darkness, where not so much as a flashlight fish relieved
their unrewarding vigil. At the bottom of the building, mail-room and cafeteria
staff labored under extremes of pressure. A course of psychic decompression
was a necessary part of employee orientation.
    The hall to Alfredo’s office was lined with ferns and potted
palms, with here and there a humanimal—mainly seals, teegee bodyguards and
butlers—standing motionless among the plants.
    Cornelius opened the door. “After you, Santiago.”
    Sandy hesitated, sniffing. He had tracked the lusty
pherofume to its source. It belonged to someone in his family. And he thought
he knew who.
    Inside, as on a vast flatscreen, the hated moon shone over the
restless sea. Foam slapped the full-wall window and fell away, seeming to drip
from the baleful, bone-colored ball. Anger and grief rose up in him as always
at the sight of the satellite.
    A semicircular desk was pulled up nearly to the glass so that the
old man seated there seemed trapped between sea and sky and seascraper. Alfredo
Figueroa’s face seemed to glow with an inner light, like a carved pumpkin,
every wrinkle etched deep by a knife of fine Swiss steel. But this pumpkin
was rotten, pouchy and soft on the outside if not within. The gold eyes
flickered like candle flames, still youthful, though the hair was so sparse
that at first Alfredo looked completely bald. When his head moved, a few
strands glinted against the pate like fine cactus needles.
    “Shut the door, Santiago. Have a seat.”
    Sandy looked for a perch. His younger brother
Ferdinand, engulfed in a huge orange Jell-O-chair, waggled a finger at him.
Miranda, nine years old now, lay stretched out across a loveseat. He couldn’t
help staring at her. Somehow, surgically, she had acquired a hypervoluptuous
body in the last year. Her breasts were enormous, her waist wasp-thin, her hips
wide. Facial augmentation had given her a sultry, sexy expression: thick lips
perpetually gleaming, eyes like coals in a barbecue. The smell that wafted from
her, a distillation of pure sex, was totally terrifying in this context. The
room reeked of incest. Not to mention pedophilia.
    Mir gave Sandy a satiated smile and stretched luxuriously, then
pulled her legs up to make room for him. Patting the cushion, she said, “Come
sit here, bro-bro.”
    Sandy choked on the pherofumes and backed away sweating,
his chain mail clinking. “I’m all right.”
    “What’s the matter, Sandy?” said Ferdinand sarcastically. “Don’t
you love your sister?”
    “Ferdinand,” said their father warningly.
    “Never mind then,” Ferdi said. “I’ll sit with you, Miranda. Sandy can have my chair.”
    “All right, I’ll accept that. Even though you’re not much of a man
yet, Ferdi.”
    “How do you know I haven’t
been to the body shop?” He dropped down in the loveseat and they began to
explore each other with their hands. Ferdi nibbled Mir’s throat till she began
to purr.
    “God,” Sandy muttered. “You two are worse than ever.”
    Miranda gave him an