John Barnes - Directive 51

“Yeah,” Mensche said, “but I can’t help worrying. Anyway, so how’d this guy end up with a name like ‘Quattro,’ and how’d your dad decide he was the man for you?”

She shrugged. “Our parents knew each other, very well, actually. When I was a lonely teenage girl, and he was a miserably lonely geek of an engineering student, we corresponded all the time, inventing codes to keep the old man baffled. It was years before I realized how much I’d encouraged the old bastard, since he thought Quattro and me must be hiding our love affair. Quattro was my lifeline; I needed someone to agree with me when I said that all the kids in my high school were stupid and worthless and superficial, especially because I was pretty and popular and a brat and a half, so I didn’t have the loser support network that so many alienated kids do. Dad’s plan for me to fall in love with the dashing older man and unite two Castles and two Castle-movement families, however, foundered on the fact that I’d sooner have married one of my pet llamas at the time.

“Quattro’s not attractive? Nice guy but no spark?”

“Nowadays he’s a damn handsome Howard Hughes type, he’s only seven years older than I am, and I occasionally think about seeing whether any sparks might happen. But back then, give me a break, he was old , not to mention a weird geek, despite being my best friend ever—which wasn’t hard back in those days, all you had to do was like having me for a friend. Hardly anyone else did.

“Anyway, so about his name. Quattro’s parents were chronic jokers. They noticed that a lot of dumbasses didn’t know that Mercedes was a girl’s name and that the car was named after a major investor’s daughter. That particular ignorance led, later on, to people naming their kids P-o-r-s-c-h-e instead of P-o-r-t-i-a, and even lamer baby names like Lexus and Avante, because the same dumbasses thought it was all classy and shit to name their daughter after an expensive car.

“So apparently the Larsens, being even more eccentric than my father, and maybe slightly richer, decided to sarcastically name their children after cars, figuring that all the friends they wanted to keep would get the irony. Hence Quattro. He says it was a compromise between Prius and Thunderbird.

“Anyway, Quattro was raised as one of those heroin-in-vending-machines libertarians, and they gave him his own Castle for his twenty-first birthday. I guess a Ferrari would have been too humdrum. So now he has a fortress outside Jenner that’s damned near as elaborate as Dad’s. You’ll like him, he’s pretty much post-political, good heart, nice guy… hunh. I might have to check the spark thing.”

“I really appreciate your taking me along—I know you didn’t have much choice, but I guess I’m glad it’s me. I don’t think the Federal government will last much longer.”

“Dad would agree with you.”

“Yeah, but he’s working on it, I’m just assessing. Anyway, if they dismiss me… well. Just a few hundred miles to walk to Coffee Creek and see what happened to Deb, or if I can’t find out there, maybe I can walk over to Reno and see if my ex knows anything. Something to do, you know?”

As they sailed on, clouds gathered to the north, and the sea rose a little every hour. Late that afternoon, the sea breeze started to blow inland. She headed the boat in toward the coast. “How exactly will you find where we’re going?” Mensche asked. “Without GPS I mean? I’m assuming that weird telescope and the windup clock have something to do with it.”

“I don’t really need to know longitude, because we’ve been sticking close to the coast. Latitude is a piece of cake with an accurate clock—like the chronometer from Dad’s collection, here—and this little gadget that you call the weird telescope is used to measure the angle between the sun and the horizon, or where the horizon would be if the water would hold still—that’s what the level on the side here is for. So I’m sailing along a line about five seconds of latitude south of the mouth of the Russian River. That should bring me in someplace along the state beach; once I spot land, I just sail north till I see the mouth of the Russian, and in we go—Quattro’s Castle is just west of Jenner, on the river, so it’ll be the first Castle on our left.”

“It’s weird how fast people got used to ‘Castles’ in America.”

“The Castle movement didn’t start till some of the fringier rich people freaked out that Obama was president, so yeah, it’s less than twenty years. Though really the house I grew up in, before Dad built the big one above the Harbor, was a Castle in all but name. Some rich guys have always built fortified big houses in isolated spots; Dad’s is only noticeable because he decided to build it so close to a big city.”

The weather held, and they enjoyed the last of the sandwiches and apples before they saw the coast, savoring the warmth of the sun and the crispness of the air. The late-fall-afternoon sun was still painting the coast in rich golds and deep blues as they turned north; it was not quite sunset on the river when Mensche said, “So, I guess this is where I say, ‘Castle, ho!’?”

“Not advisable to call me a ho, but otherwise, yeah.”

The man who met them at the pier looked like he was trying to dress as something between the Crocodile Hunter and the Veteran Surfer: khaki safari shirt, baggy knee-length shorts with too many pockets, old-style leather boots. He wore an immense hogleg of a revolver on one hip and a huge belt knife on the other. The effect was somewhat spoiled by his camo strap cap held together with a piece of shoelace where the plastic strap had been, and by a straggly brown-and-gray ponytail that would have been more in keeping with an old-school software developer or a trustafarian venture capitalist.

“Right when I thought you’d be,” Quattro said, smiling. “How was the trip, Bambi?”

“Not too different from the usual except for having to dust off a tiny bit of my celestial navigation skills. This is Special Agent Larry Mensche; and this is Quattro Larsen. And this is our prisoner, Ysabel Roth.”

“Kind of a harsh introduction, isn’t it? Young lady, can we parole you while you’re on the grounds here? Will you give your word and keep it that you won’t run away?”

Ysabel gasped, “Promise me that the world will stop bucking and rolling, and I’ll do whatever you say.”

As they walked up the pathway to the big house, Bambi noted dugouts, trenches, and walls to cover troops moving out from the house; two garden sheds that would make good blockhouses; and a wide-walled patio with a loopholed wall that would allow small artillery to cover the mouth of the Russian River. “You’re a lot less public about your Castle than Dad is about his.”

“Remember the silly commercials when we were kids? He’s a PC, I’m a Mac. His fortress looks like a fortress and it’s all built around its fortress-ness. My fortress just works.”

Larry stopped dead and whistled. “Is that your airfield?”

“Yeah. Cool, hey?”

“I loved classic planes when I was a kid. Pre-jets, I mean. So, yeah, I built models of several of those. But aren’t they falling apart just like everything else?”

“Parts of them are, and avgas is going to be a problem. But the really old birds are less electrical and less plastic than present-day airplanes, and their engines were built for unreliable cruddy fuel. I’ve had that DC-3’s engines up and running on biodiesel, even long before Daybreak, because I thought regular fuel sources might be cut off. And the only thing electrical in that engine is the ignition, and I think I’ll be able to replace the plastic and rubber with wood, glass, and metal. Back before there was vulcanized rubber, when they needed airtightness, they used different kinds of shellacs and oils on silk and linen, and there was the stuff called goldbeater’s fabric that was basically treated gut. And as of last night, when Arcadia made it back here safely, I’ve got a couple materials scientists from Cal Poly, who are very glad to have their families safely out of the chaos, working on what we can make tires out of. I really want it for the planes, but I’m not opposed to the idea that being the re-creator of the pneumatic tire might make me richer than God.”