Futureland - Nine Stories of an Imminent World by Walter Mosley Page B

them and started the lesson where it left off. Lessons in science."
    "What lessons?"
    "The force of gravity. The bending of light. The path of the living cell through evolution. Infinity and black holes--"
    "If it's black then that must be the devil," XX Y interrupted.
    "Yes, yes. Black for them is evil or random or unknown. Black robs the mind of sight. It is the collapse of the whole universe."
    "And you don't want to fight against that? You don't get so mad that you wanna get a gun and let loose?"
    "Oh absolutely I do, Brother X. I felt your arguments in there. I wanted to short out those lessons. I wanted to go back to Home and gut that Dominar. All of those black people kneeling in front of computer screens. Confessing their secrets, robbed of their greatest commodities, their minds."
    "Then why leave?"
    "Because. . . because I can't change it." Akwande was thinking of Eye. Her genetically crafted body, her soulless orbs. Her life for his, Kismet's. "And so I'm taking my family to Mars."
    "Says which?"
    "I've been to the master's home. I've been to the master's church. I live on his plantation. I begged him to feed Mali, to give them freedom. They took his money but it didn't buy their freedom. They just joined the International Economic Congress and put mercenaries at their borders."
    "But you ended the famine," XX Y said. "You gave them the strength to make their own way."
    "They will refuse our embassy," Akwande said.
    "You don't know that."
    "NGOs are banned by the IEC from any official capacity. You know that, brother."
    "But even if it's true, even if they turn their backs on us, what the hell do you accomplish by flying off to Mars?"
    "On Mars there will be fewer people. There will be a new world. Maybe we can have something there. Maybe."
    "You just runnin' away."
    "But I'm leaving the guns with you, brother," Akwande said, laying his hand on the revolutionary's shoulder. "And I leave you my blessings, too."
    Angel's Island
    1
    Six naked men walked into the weak circle of light in a corner of the great chamber. They weren't manacled or restrained in any way but their hands hung down at their sides and there was no escape or rebellion in their eyes. Each man had a bulky sack of iridescent blue-green material wrapped around his upper right biceps. The sacks writhed sluggishly, resembling serpents slowly digesting their prey. There was something hard and particular in each sack.
    "This is the new meat," Lieutenant L. Johnson said to the assembly of men. They gave no response. They might have all been deaf as far as Bits knew.
    "Vortex 'Bits' Arnold," the lieutenant continued. "He will be number seven in your cell from now on."
    "No more Logan?" a young black man with highly defined muscles spoke up.
    "Vortex," the lieutenant replied harshly.
    The young convict, who was completely hairless and who had no scars that Bits could see, lowered his eyes.
    "And as long as you can't keep quiet, Jerry, maybe you won't mind taking him to the center for a fitting," the guard said as he punched something into the palm screen attached to his gloved hand.
    "Yes, Lieutenant," the specimen of perfection said meekly.
    L. Johnson was not large or strong, and as far as Bits could see, he wasn't armed either. None of the guards he had seen was armed. Bits didn't understand why six full-grown men were docile beside this paunchy and arrogant sublife of a white man. The only reason Bits didn't jump on him was because he was bound hand and foot and floating in a gravity chair.
    "Get him to ChemSys," Johnson said to Jerry. "The rest of you get up to the plantation. We need the whole upper tier harvested before the typhoon hits." Again Johnson punched information into his palm screen.
    Of the prisoners, four were Negro, one was brown and Asian--a Pacific Islander, Bits thought--and one was white. The oldest of the group, a lanky black man somewhere in his forties, showed distaste when Johnson ordered the harvest. The light of anger shone in