The Deluge, page 58
“This is…” She searched for a word. “Ambitious.”
“They’re about to escalate,” said Shane. “So will we.”
THE LIST Archie consciously made sure not to swallow her spit in front of them. She didn’t want to hand it back too fast and forced herself to hold on to it a beat longer even though she felt like it might actually burn her hand. This shit was pure brick titties, as they said just down the LIE.
“How long would this take to put together?”
“Hard to say. Eighteen months at least. Maybe more. It has to be simultaneous and exact.”
She handed the scrap back to Quinn, who pocketed it. “Let’s say I’m interested. What do you need from me?”
Shane leaned forward and held Bhattacharyya’s gaze. “Back us. Me and Quinn and the others who want to take this new direction. Back us, and the rest will have to go along.”
She shook her head. “Kai will not like this.”
“He won’t have a choice. We have to make it clear that decisions run through the three of us now. We are the vote, and they can take it or leave it.” Shane held her hands up, gesturing to nowhere and everywhere. “You’ve built a nice life for yourself. My question is, did you just want the sack of money this whole time? Or do you want to make sure they remember us?”
She held Archie Bhattacharyya’s eyes.
* * *
In the fall of 2024, Shane drove her ten-month-old daughter to a taqueria off the highway but far from home. It was after business hours, and the parking lot was empty, the windows dark. She’d thought it all through, bundled the baby girl whose name she would not allow herself to think, and it wasn’t even that cold anyway. The car ride put her to sleep, she was swaddled in a blanket, she had a hat—it would all be okay. Molly, the owner and part-time manager, she might not raise the baby, but she’d do the right thing by her. Get her to the right people. Shane could tell the woman was kind. Then her daughter might know adoption instead of foster care, that dim flashlight beam in an otherwise hard, starless night.
Speaking of hard, starless nights, she set the baby in her car seat on the concrete step at the back of the taqueria. In case the cameras were working now, Shane wore a hoodie and bandana. She didn’t like how trashy it was back there, how she could smell the dumpster, so she taped a note to the entrance for whoever came in first the next morning (There’s a baby girl in the back. Help her.). Then she walked to her car and drove away. She’d spent the first nine months terrified she’d mess up, not for her baby’s sake but because she knew what the system could do to a poor mother. A poor mother leaves her baby in the car while she runs into a pharmacy and that’s a mug shot. A poor mother finds her baby not breathing and that’s a different ballgame. But now she was free. She’d disappeared so many times in her life, what was one more, honestly. She’d had enough of this sad corner of this sad state in this sad country. She’d made a mistake, and now she would do her best to move on, dig up one of her escape plans and vanish across this lonesome planet.
She made it thirty-seven miles. She remembered the mile marker. She began to tremble, and then she began to weep, and then she spun the car around at the next exit and drove ninety mph back to that little restaurant in the desert.
Let me tell you about fear, she would have told her father. After their meeting, Shane would part ways with Archie Bhattacharyya and Quinn Worthington. She would switch vehicles and drift down a highway that appeared to her as a black rush of water. She’d return to Kansas where her daughter waited in the care of a boss she used to fuck. She would tell them fairy tales about where she’d been, and they would both believe her because everyone believed her. No one thought she was capable of what she was capable, and she understood that now more than ever before. It would take her months to understand what she had seen: the hollowness within her, within them all. A realization of how little there actually is inside the self. How if you shout into that empty space your voice only returns to you. She’d glimpsed this first when she set Lali down in a car seat on a filthy concrete step by a dumpster and drove away. But now she’d written herself a permanent and irrevocable dream, and the memory of Allen and Emmy and their son—she’d never be able to dig it up, tear it out by the roots, burn it, or poison it. Perry especially. He would always be there, lying on his back in the field, under the stars, in the night.
LEVIATHAN
2033
He met Ash Hasan in the dining car of a 1930s train whizzing through the passes of snowcapped mountains, little Euro-gingerbread towns in the distance. No avatars, just two rumpled colleagues shooting the shit, ostensibly about the “sea level listening tour” Hasan was on with his latest congresswoman of choice. Ash, resolute in his devotion to data, insisted that Tony’s time would be better spent joining the government rather than attending the concert less than nine months away.
“Seth is forging ahead on the executive committee of the climate concert,” said Hasan, studying the glistening arugula salad in front of him. CGI food in a world gone hungry. “But seeing as how—”
“Just a bunch of old rock and pop fogies jamming in the capital,” said Tony. “No need for anyone to get excited.”
“—But seeing as how Seth and I are soon to become parents, I’m concerned. You understand why.”
“Not really. We’re going to prop the corpses of Eddie Vedder and Tom Morello up there, and some folks will say a few words to rally support for democratic solutions to global warming. What’s to worry about?”
Ash gazed at him, chewing his jaw so that his temple twitched. He looked out the dining car window toward the rays of a sunset spiking over pristine snowpacks. The tinkling of silverware on china and the low whispers of the conversation drifted over the rumble of the train. A man across from them rustled his paper as he flipped a page. The headline read MARS MISSION LIFTS OFF; JOURNEY TO TAKE 9 MONTHS TO RED PLANET. The joke going around was, Take us with you!
“Fatherhood will rearrange our priorities,” said Hasan. “Now Seth plans to actually attend the climate concert. He’s not being rational about the exigencies involved.”
“That’s a bloodless way to put it.” When Gail had gotten pregnant with Holly, their main concern had been the cost of raising a kid on grad student stipends. Hasan was loaded from building models for his brother-in-law’s hedge fund, so he and Seth would be A-OK. “Anyway, you’re going to be fathers!” said Tony, fake-lifting the glass of wine from the cream tablecloth. The vessel did not go with his hand, of course. “Congratulations! Welcome to the inescapable hell and joy that is parenthood.”
“It’s difficult to parse fact from rumor in Washington, but I’m urging you to take this new administration into consideration. It’s given me great pause.”
“You and everyone else who still reads a newspaper.” He nodded to the man across from them. Impossible to tell if he was an AI or just a guy looking for a quiet place to read in a coffee shop somewhere in Buffalo or Dubai. “They caught that kid with the Weathermen, and he’s sans lawyer from what I’m hearing.”
“This is even more disconcerting than the new enemy combatant statutes.”
“Don’t blame me. I voted for that snake Randall. Love put a capital D by his name and fooled a third of this stupid fucking country. Everyone wants to suck their thumb and jack off in a VR set, this is what you get.”
“There’s a rumor going around, Tony, about a list.”
He shut his mouth and looked at Hasan.
“What kind of list?”
Hasan took a moment to respond. His left hand was quacking, and he stared in consternation at his plate. The salad had ruby-red tomatoes, which glowed against the china.
“Political opponents of the president.” He hesitated. “With a special interest in those who happen to have Islamic backgrounds.”
“You’re Muslim? Since when?”
“Not practicing, no. But in people’s minds religious identifications follow you regardless of faithfulness to the liturgy. This list is being compiled, in secret, by the DOJ and Attorney General Greenstreet, but I have contacts within the FBI who are very seriously considering taking this information to the media.”
Tony sighed through his teeth. “Fuck,” he said.
“Indeed.”
“Well,” he tried to wrap his mind around this. Love gave him a sense of dread he’d not felt even in the Trump years. Anybody could see that plainly in the way Love had sliced apart the electorate to clear a path to the presidency. He’d sat the Democratic base in the corner while he fed Jen Braden money under the table through a PAC to siphon votes from Mary Randall (or so it was rumored). She ended up losing thirty-nine states, as the Republican base deserted her for a write-in campaign for the wingnut. Now the Senate Democrats were behaving not unlike their Republican colleagues had in their pathetic deference to Trump: playacting concern without doing much of anything to stop a clear and present danger. Dance with the one who brought you, and all. “Look, Ash, if you need anything from me, obviously, I’d do whatever…” He trailed off. “I’m not even sure what I’m offering. Help of any kind, I guess.”
“I appreciate it, Tony. You’re an honorable man.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“A bit rough on every edge, corner, and surface, as they say, but honorable nevertheless.”
Tony snorted a laugh. “That a joke?”
“An attempt.”
After their palaver, Tony removed his VR goggles, and he was back in a dank motel room. The headsets were getting small, and this new one he’d just bought reminded him of the Geordi La Forge glasses from The Next Generation. It was uncanny how for a tingling twenty seconds or so, his motel room felt less real than the train crossing the Pyrenees.
* * *
Tony hated Florida so much. His cross to bear that he’d spent so much of his life visiting this place driven to lunacy by a swamp-fever addiction to its own bullshit. Every interaction in the Sunshine State was tinged with a mad-eyed fervor, every self-satisfied resident convincing themselves that this was the good life. He’d been there for a week to see Catherine at her municipality-sized rehab facility, but on the drive through West Palm Beach, where the steel-and-glass condo towers seemed to grow right out of the asphalt, he realized he couldn’t wait to catch his flight back to New England that night.
He told Hasan and all other inquirers that Cat was doing well, though it was hard not to be doing well in her current digs. Rehab for the moneyed included yoga, meditation, daily Shiatsu massages, gourmet organic cuisine, a pool, a sauna, tennis courts, a thousand-square-foot gym and spa, acupuncture, neurofeedback, VR immersion training, equine therapy, and an ocean view, all for a small monthly fee of $64,573 footed entirely by her uncle. Despite the ostentation, the staff was well credentialed, and the other inpatients were serious cases: crumbling, hollowed-out, desperate to survive. The question was what she would do with herself when she got out.
“Uncle Corey says I can come work for him,” she said. They walked the grounds, admiring the manicured hedgerows that separated the facility from the neighborhood of multimillion-dollar homes. The day was blessedly cool. A crisp saltwater breeze drifted west from the ocean, and the sun hid behind a gray bank of clouds, spilling a bit of rouge across the sky as it set. “I can tell from that look that you’re not in love with the idea.” She didn’t say it with hostility. More like disappointment. She had a plan, she’d put initiative and thought into it, and when she told him, he was unable to hide his skepticism.
“It’s not that. I want you to do something productive, of course.” He was muttering and forced himself to raise his voice. “But I wonder if this is the best place for you right now. When you could come north and be near family.”
“I’m near family here.”
“I mean me and Holly.”
“Uncle Corey has been amazing, Dad. You need to give him credit.”
“I do, Cat.”
And yet he would never be over his deeply ingrained doubt of the man. As soon as Tony got off the plane, Corey had picked him up in a slick Mercedes convertible and launched into his plans for the company. The Florida real estate market was going through a “reorganization.” A coming wave of amphibious housing and sea-level-resistant architecture was the new gold rush—buildings that could elevate themselves, “real sci-fi shit,” as he put it. Cat had only lasted four months with Tony in New Haven before she moved to Florida and picked up all her old habits. She’d dropped out of yet another college, and things were going badly enough that Corey had offered to put up the money to get her clean once and for all.
“What I worry about,” he told Cat, “is that this place has all the same issues as Los Angeles. The lifestyle, the temptations, the problem people.”
“I’m finding my way back, Dad. Plus, I hate the cold. I don’t know how you live with seven months of dark and snow.” She did look so much better. She’d gained healthy weight. She’d grown out her hair, and the red tinge was starker in the sunlight. Her flip-flops clapped against her heels as she walked. She wore jean shorts and a sweatshirt with an image of Lizzo. He remembered when she would put on “Heaven Help Me” while singing and dancing through the entire house. Cat had a brightness in her voice that he hadn’t heard in a long time, and it reminded him of that young girl belting out her favorite song. “Uncle Corey said he could start me off in the office as a paid intern, and as long as I work, I’ll move up quickly. Then I can also take classes part-time and finish my degree. It would be perfect.”
They stopped at the edge of the facility’s property. The sun split a cloud and sent a beam of yellow-orange light skimming across the ocean. Suddenly, Tony couldn’t stand it, and he took his daughter by the arm and pulled her close, swallowing her small body in his arms. He tucked his chin onto her head against her wild crimson hair. He could recall the scent of her skull when she’d been a baby. Like he’d smelled it the day before.
“Are you crying?” she asked a bit unkindly.
“Yes. Sorry.” He pulled away and wiped his eyes.
“Dad, I promise. I’m so much better.”
“I know,” he said, though the words were more of a gasp. “I know. You seem so much better.”
And they stood in silence, listening to the waves lap the beach. Watching that strange ball of solar fire descend through the heavens.
* * *
When he got back home, the Northeast was sweltering through a heat wave. New Haven had a high of 105. The air had a dusty sheen reminiscent of driving through Los Angeles as it burned. They weren’t quite there yet, but the yellowed grass and thirsty trees brought anxious memories. One of the women who rescued them, Yolanda Quebrada, had been killed that summer fighting a brushfire in the Central Valley as California endured another vicious, if less apocalyptic, series of fires. Tony had donated a huge chunk of money to Quebrada’s family and sent flowers to the funeral, though this felt wildly insufficient in the face of what she’d done for him. He was thinking of Quebrada, whom he’d known only for one panicked ride in a fire rig, as the driverless dropped him off at his house. Searching for his keys, stowed somewhere in his overnight bag, he almost walked right by the destruction of his car.
He’d left it in the driveway as he always did. (The garage had too much work overflow; boxes of data from Monte Carlo simulations that he couldn’t bring himself to part with.) He pocketed his keys. Someone had shattered all the windows, and gummy bits of glass coated the driveway, glinting green crystals. The hood was pocked with dents from some heavy tool, a hammer most likely.
“What the fuck,” Tony hissed, touching the wing mirror, which now dangled from the side. When he leaned his head through the window to examine the interior, he saw that the seating had been slashed, yellow-white foam spilling out. On the other side of the car, the vandal had keyed TRAITOR into the driver’s door. He looked up and down his street. He swallowed. His mouth was cottony with thirst.
Maybe some student was trying to prove a point during their Scroll and Key initiation. There were now young Brownshirts of every stripe and political persuasion. They might have thought him a traitor for any number of his opinions on climate change, identity politics, nuclear energy—take your pick. Then there were his neighbors two doors down who still, almost nine months after the election, had their yard sign up: BELIEVE IN BRADEN 2032. His fear melted to anger in the blast-furnace heat of the day.
At least it didn’t look like they’d messed with the house. Not even a window broken, probably because the perp feared an alarm. Tyrion greeted him at the door, purring happily at his companion’s return. Tony considered calling the police, but he hadn’t eaten, and he still had to pick the dog up from the kennel. By the time he’d tossed a frozen pizza in the oven and finished this standard widower’s meal, it was nearly nine thirty and he was exhausted. He was supposed to go into the city the next day to see Holly and Dean, and the thought of dealing with the authorities for a vandal who would never be caught tired him further. He decided to leave the dog in the kennel for another day and deal with the cops after he got back from the city.
He fell into sleep so cavernous it felt less like rest than an excision of memory.
* * *
The next morning, he overslept and found himself slamming coffee and toast while the news vexed him: Food prices had risen for the ninth straight month, the effects of the Great Eastern Flood continuing in the grain markets. Love was combating the climate crisis by creating the White House Office of Climate Security, to be headed by obvious fascist-apparatchik-in-waiting Admiral Michael Dahms. “Sustainability is lethality,” Dahms said in his first presser. Desperate Democrats tried to explain away Love’s behavior by pointing to his reparations commission or all the women he’d appointed to his cabinet, including Sarah Caperno, the first female secretary of defense.
“You’re lucky your species doesn’t have to care about this shit,” he told Tyrion, who appeared to agree.
