Kim Robinson - New York 2140

“We went to Miami. There are firms down there that have been doing this kind of stuff for years. Also we paid them double their usual rates.”

“Good for you. Hey—I can provide you with occupants.”

“Such a challenge! First get me more anchor cords and sleeves.”

These were what would connect the block rafts to bedrock. Bedrock in Franklin’s neighborhood turned out to be 160 feet below the canal bottom; this was bad, but not impossibly so. Another cost. The moving parts, or stretchy parts, that would extend between the deep bollards and the floating platforms were the crux of the problem, according to Franklin’s head contractor. Some of the new stretchtech came from biomimicry, tricks learned from kelp beds or limpets or human fascia, and it was wonderfully effective, but relatively new and rare, and therefore expensive.

And they had to accommodate the conventional buildings still surrounding their neighborhood. “Eventually the whole of lower Manhattan will move together like eelgrass. In the meantime, we’ll need clearances and leeways and bumpers.”

“What about the demolition?”

“It’s going well. Vlade’s friend Idelba is part of that team; she’s dredging the bottom to get things clear before they caisson it and drill to bedrock. She’s doing us a favor, because every dredge in this harbor is going full tilt right now, and she wants to get back to Coney Island. But this is a pretty small job by her standards, and she’s willing to fit it in.”

“Good to hear.”

“Have you eaten yet?”

“No, I mean I slurped up some of the dregs, but not really. Oh God, it’s ten already.”

“Let’s go out and grab a bite.”

“Okay.”

While gobbling down a quick meal in the deli occupying the prow of the Flatiron, Charlotte asked Franklin what he thought of the situation in finance.

Franklin waggled a hand as he swallowed and then said, “It’s all happening. They’re freaking out. All of them are leveraged out over the abyss, and their pole vaults are cracking. They’re still trying to stave it off, so it’s a bit slow-motion compared to some bubble pops, but the full-on crash is starting.”

“When though?”

“It depends on how long they try to pretend things are okay. The people most exposed are still running around looking for ways out, so they want things to look okay for as long as possible.”

“So maybe it’s time for me to go to my Fed Ex again?”

“If you think he needs encouraging.”

“I think he probably does.”

“Then you definitely should.”

At that point they were interrupted by a roving troupe of players who were performing a bluegrass version of The Pirates of Penzance, played on banjo and fiddle and concertina and kazoo, and sung so beautifully, and loudly, with the back of the banjo right there in their faces, that they could only sit back and enjoy.

Falling asleep that night, Charlotte thought over their conversation, and in the morning she sent Larry a message.

Coffee? Dinner?

You’re kidding, right?

No. You’ve got to eat, and so do I.

I’m in D.C.

I bet you are. End of world yet?

Close.

Coming up here soon therefore?

True.

And must eat, even as world ends.

True.

Dinner? Breakfast?

Dinner. Tuesday.

So she was getting ready to go to dinner with Larry on Tuesday, cutting short any number of other critical items on her to-do list, when Gen Octaviasdottir pinged her.

“You know the people who had Mutt and Jeff kidnapped?” Gen said from Charlotte’s wrist. “The security firm we think was involved with that? It looked like they worked for Henry Vinson, like I told you. And that made sense, given everything we knew. We’ve had all those people under surveillance. But on the night of the tower riot, I got talking to a man who worked for that firm, and he told me some stuff, and I’ve had my assistant checking out what he told me. And it looks to be true. Pinscher Pinkerton worked for Vinson, but Rapid Noncompliance Abatement came into the picture later. And RNA’s head guy, Escher, has been working for Larry Jackman.”

“Whoa.” Charlotte tried to comprehend. “What does that mean?” Then it hit her. “Fuck! You mean Larry’s been the asshole behind all this?” A sudden fury at him made the world go red, yet another physiological reaction common to all. She saw red!

“Well, but it’s more complicated than that,” Gen told her as her vision came back. “Come on down to the common room and I’ll explain it to you in person.”

“Okay sure. I’ve got to leave soon, but it’s to go see Larry Jackman. So I need to hear this!”

“You most definitely do.”

There was a little restaurant in Soho where they used to go in the old days. Charlotte thought it was a little strange Larry had suggested it, but she liked the food and didn’t want to be muddying the waters with any countersuggestions, given how busy he must be. The waters were going to get muddy enough as it was.

It was a tiny place, a kind of interspace between two buildings that had been captured as another set of rooms, maybe in the nineteenth century. Behind the long bar was a model of the Manhattan skyline made of liquor bottles. A waitress seated them in the upstairs room, overlooking a courtyard like an air shaft, brick-walled, with a single tree surviving improbably down below them. Being protected from the hurricane winds, it still had its summer leaves. Looking down on the leaves was like looking at some kind of brilliant Chinese artwork.

“So how’s it going?” Charlotte asked when their drinks had come.

Larry lifted his glass of white wine, clinked it against hers.

“Your householders’ defaults are causing a panic,” Larry said, looking at his glass. “You won’t be surprised to hear.”

“No.”

“Did you ask your friend Amelia Black to start it?”

“I don’t know her that well.”

“She seems like a complete idiot,” he complained.

“No, not at all. She’s pretty sharp.”

“You’re kidding.”

“She has a cloud persona, that’s all. Maybe you could put it that way. Do you know the story about Marilyn Monroe?”

“No.”

“One time she was walking down Park Avenue with Susan Strasberg and no one was paying attention to them, and Marilyn said, ‘Do you want to see her?’ And then she changed her posture and the way she was looking around, and all of a sudden they were mobbed. Amelia is maybe a little like that.”

“I don’t see how that would work.”

“Maybe we should stick to numbers.”

He accepted the rebuke with a little hunching of the shoulders. Such joy, dinner with the ex, his posture said. Charlotte reminded herself to curb her tongue. Very difficult. Possibly a certain merry sadism was obtruding into her from below at the fact of her meeting her famous Fed Ex in these particular circumstances, but there was a higher purpose that she had to remember.

“I only mean,” she said, “that Amelia’s carefully disguised and possibly unconscious brilliance is not the point here. The point is the banks freaking. They were all leveraged to at least fifty times what they have in hand, right?”

He nodded. “That’s legal.”

“So it’s like they’re skybridges extending out into space without touching anything at their far ends. And now a hurricane like our Fyodor is hitting, and all these skybridges are waving around, about to detach and fly away.”

“An ornate image,” Larry noted.