Нэнси Кресс - Tomorrow's Kin

“No. But then, the good old US of A isn’t building it, is she?” Judy sipped her coffee. “Jonah Stubbins is.”

Marianne didn’t answer.

Judy said, “Oh, Christ, here comes Ahab. Look, say you were smoking these, all right? I’m in enough trouble as is.” With a single fluid motion she was off the bench, across the room, and out the opposite door.

Stubbins didn’t seem to notice her departure. Nor did he comment on the cigarette butts. He stood in the doorway, gave a small lurch, and then stumbled toward Marianne. Plopping heavily onto the bench, he fumbled for Judy’s glass, knocked it over, and gestured toward the scotch.

He was, Marianne realized, toweringly, monumentally drunk.

“Gimme drink, sweetheart.”

Marianne didn’t want to be alone with Stubbins in this state. She smiled, pushed the scotch toward him—only a few fingers’ worth remained in the bottle—and said good night.

“Stay a minute. Damn Scuds—next time that could be my ship.”

The sudden pain on his face cut through his sloppy drunkenness like detergent through grease. Marianne suddenly realized this could be an opportunity to obtain information from Stubbins. In vino veritas. It had sometimes worked with Kyle, although the information she got from her alcoholic ex-husband never turned out to be anything she wanted to hear.

But before she could frame her first question, Stubbins said, “Sweetheart, you know why I’m so rich?”

“Don’t call me that, please. We are not sweethearts.”

He laughed, a loud bray. “No. But damn, I shoulda married somebody like you, not those bimbos I allus picked.”

“Belinda is hardly a bimbo.”

“No. She’s a shark. Bes’ negoti… negotit… bargainer I ever saw.”

Marianne could believe that. Belinda had bargained herself into reconstructive surgery and probably a big financial settlement. Marianne said, “About the Venture —”

“Too bad I can’t use Belinda on World,” Stubbins said. “Might need good bargainers. Swee—Marianne, know why Earth’s going to hell?”

There were several things she could have answered, but before she said anything, Stubbins was off. He held his glass—Judy’s glass, which he’d filled with the last of the scotch—so loosely that Marianne kept expecting it to fall from his huge hands and smash.

“World going to hell ’cause-a Darwin.”

She hadn’t expected that. “Darwin? Charles or Erasmus?”

“Don’ go cute-intellectual on me. Charles. Survi’al of the fittest. People don’ take responsibility for themselves, expect everybody else to do it for them. Unfit don’ deserve to survive.”

“So you’d murder, or murder by neglect, people born ‘unfit’ who might turn out to be Beethoven.”

“Beethoven—you liberals allus bring up Beethoven. Or Temple Grandin. No, thass not what I mean. Physically unfit is nothin’, tech makes that irrel… unrel… don’ matter. I mean unfit to take the risks and pay the price of movin’ forward. Capitalism, I mean. The pure thing. And bringin’ society along with you.”

“Far too often,” Marianne said, “the capitalist risk-takers have had other people pay the price. A risk to mine ore, but the miners get the cave-ins and black lung. A risk to finance a railroad, but Chinese laborers die laying the tracks through mountains and across deserts. A risk to finance nuclear power, but the officials and scientists don’t live anywhere near the reactors. A risk to—”

“Would you rather be without the ore and railroads and power?”

She was silent.

“You’re an honest woman,” Stubbins said, somehow managing to sound both more articulate but no less drunk. “Naïve but honest. So answer me honest. Would the country be better oof—I mean, better off without steel and railroads and airplanes and power grids? Would you wanna live in a country without ’em?”

“No,” she said reluctantly, “but—”

“No ‘buts.’”

“Jonah, that’s what people like you never see! There are always ‘buts’! Every issue is complex, shades of gray, not black and white.”

“Oh, I see that. I jus’ don’ get lost in gray.”

“But—”

“If human beings gonna survive, it’ll be because somebody took risks. Big risks. Your own speeches said that.”

“Yes, but I meant the risks of building the government spaceship, of going to World—”

“Which I’m doin’.”

“Yes, you are. But Jonah—what else are you doing? After we arrive? What risks are you going to take, and with whose lives?”

For a breathless moment she actually thought he was going to answer her. His face changed, going from the triumph of his supposed victory in their debate to an expression quieter, more somber. But all he said was, “That coulda been my ship blown up by those Scuds.”

She said, “Pure capitalism is one of the most exploitive and inhumane economic systems ever invented.”

He grinned. “Hobbled capitalism gets nothin’ done.”

“Depends on what you want to do.”

“Absolutely right,” he said. “And on somebody with the guts to do it.”

“Ivan the Terrible had guts.”

“But no vision.” Stubbins stared into the middle distance—at a vision only he could see? Or merely at the squinty illusions of someone too drunk to make sense?

Then he added, with one of the lightning changes that so bewildered her, “I give back, Marianne. I do good while makin’ profits. And ‘profit’ ain’t a dirty word.”

“I never said—”

“As good as said.” And then, as if mourning a lover, “Poor bastards. And that coulda been my ship. No way. Never let it happen.”

“Good night, Jonah.”

“ My ship. No way.” He raised bloodshot eyes to hers. “Never.”

Colin’s dreams had gotten worse. Now he had three bad dreams: Daddy being more trapped underground than Brandon’s elephant. Paul killed by Colin’s tree branch. And now large purple monsters blowing up the Venture . If that happened, Colin would never get to ride on it. Jason said they probably wouldn’t get to ride on it anyway, but Colin didn’t believe him.

Daytime was a lot better, especially since Ava came. Jason was their leader because he was the oldest, but the other three could hear the ground and plants and everything. Colin didn’t have to teach Ava how to arrange the noises in rows. She was better at it than he was. She could hear more sounds, too, and she knew what more of them meant. Colin was jealous.

But Ava couldn’t read, not even the few words Luke knew. She was smart, she told the boys, but something was wrong with her brain. Letters and numbers just went “swimming” in front of her eyes and wouldn’t stay still long enough for her to make sense of them.

Colin pictured the alphabet with fins and goggles, swimming all over the page. He could see how that would make reading hard.

Ms. Blake tried. She guided Ava’s hand to draw letters in sand, so that Ava’s muscles would learn the letters even if her brain couldn’t. It didn’t help, and school had finished with Ava throwing sand at everybody and screaming bad words at Ms. Blake.

On a clear, cool day the four children lay on a patch of weedy ground behind a building and a tiny woods. They were pretty near the inside fence, which had barbed wire on it but no electricity like the outside fence, where the guards walked. Colin, Luke, and Ava pressed their ears to the ground while Jason kept watch.

“Hear that sort of thump-thump-whistle-thump?” Ava said.

“Yeah,” Colin said. “That’s the biomass saying that something not-too-big is walking around.”

“Us,” Luke said proudly. A week and a half of comparing what they’d figured out about the plant signals going through the soil, and they all knew more than before. Even Luke, who had much less trouble remembering this than how much was six plus two.