Лайонел Шрайвер - The Mandibles - A Family, 2029-2047

“Tomorrow,” he said. “We have to throw some things together. I doubt we’ll head out of town until afternoon.”

“Oh, well, that’s different,” Fifa said caustically.

“This isn’t out of the blue. We’ve talked about it before. You thought it would be so cruel. The final frontier , we said. Becoming modern-day homesteaders.”

“We’ve mused about it. But you’ve no idea what it’s like there. Accounts on the web all contradict each other, and you never hear from people who actually live in the Free State. If anyone lives there. The whole population could’ve sunk into the desert from another round of A-bomb tests at Yucca Flats and nobody would know about it here.”

“I love not knowing,” Willing said. “Our future in the old United States is too known. Most of what I know I don’t like.”

“You’re not being practical. I’ve seen pics of the border. It’s worse than Mexico’s fence along the Rio Grande. The walls are massively high, and massively thick, and bristling with guns and soldiers. How would you get across, even if you successfully tippy-toe through the minefield leading up to it?”

“I’ll find out when I get there. Any armor has a chink. And there’s supposedly an underground railroad.”

“Willing, most of what’s on the web is fantasy! Have you ever met a real person in this ‘underground railroad’?”

“All right, no.” He added staunchly, “But other people have made it.”

“All you can be sure of is that other people have disappeared. You can disappear without popping up somewhere else. Have you ever heard from Jarred?”

“No, but they stop communications from getting out. I doubt he’d be able to sail a paper airplane in my direction, much less a fleXt.”

“And you’re assuming that the chip’s self-destruct is treasury. Why would it be? You heard Goog. A whole unit at the Scab, he said. And doesn’t it sound like exactly what they’d program your chip to do, if you had the impertinence to throw down your cotton hoe, and the ingratitude to walk away from the greatest nation on earth ? These people are motherfucking T-bills! Seems biggin’ likely to me that instead of allowing you to throw off your chains, they’d rather you be dead.”

“I would rather be dead,” he said, surprising himself, “than stay here. It’s not only the taxes. It’s what I was trying to explain last night. A heaviness. I feel watched. I pay up, as if I have any choice. It’s splug how little is left, but that’s not what gets me down. I feel like a criminal all the time. When I think about it, I’m doing everything I’m supposed to. It’s what my mother told me it was like going through airport security—though I’ve never been on an airplane myself. She said you always felt like you were doing something wrong. Even when you took off your shoes, and removed your ‘laptop,’ and raised your arms in a full-body scanner, like surrendering when you’re under arrest. But I feel that way walking down the street.”

“Of course you do,” Fifa said impatiently. “It’s called terrorism . Which isn’t only the ploy of religious lunatics. It’s a tool of the state. It works by making examples of a handful of people, and then there’s a multiplier effect of scaring everyone else shitless. Terrorism is a money saver. The Scab is a terrorist organization, but so was the IRS—the old initials just didn’t have the resources to stick an emotional cattle prod up your ass on the same scale. Nothing’s changed.”

He took a different tack. “But all the companies are owned by foreigners. Even the old national parks. Elysian Fields is owned by a corporation in Laos. Unless you’re a doctor, or a pharmaceutical researcher, the only jobs available are the drear ones you and I do now. What can we look forward to? And then the likes of my aunt Avery and uncle Lowell—you know, like your parents—all they do is talk about how great everything used to be and how splug it is now. So why not come with me? If only for an adventure. The worst that could happen is we get there, we can’t get in, and we come home.”

“That’s not the worst that can happen. They can throw you in jail for trying to defect. And talk about working for foreigners—all those commercial prisons are also owned by Asians, and they drive you like dogs, not for 23 percent of your pay, but for dick. You’ve no idea what you’re risking.”

Fifa’s defiance had always rung hollow. But they’d seen each other for three years. His impassioned appeal was an obligation, and so was hers.

“The shooting at Elysian,” she said. “It’s left you rattled. That makes sense. Having a brush against… Well. It makes you take stock. I’m glad you’re okay, though Nollie’s right: I think you should have let him finish what he started. He was doing God’s work. But that scene having fucked your head up doesn’t mean you should do anything crazy—”

“Agency,” Willing said. “That’s what I discovered this afternoon. That I could do something. In the United States, doing something generally means either shooting somebody, or going somewhere else. I’m a dropout. I don’t know much American history. Still, I do understand that a long time ago we ran out of new land, and the space program was too expensive. It’s never been the same here since there was nowhere to go. But it’s possible to get somewhere else by going backwards.”

“Brutal,” Fifa said. “First, you’re planning to get shot climbing over the wall into the USN. Now it’s time travel.”

“Yes. I’m not sure, but I think Nevada is time travel.”

When they parted, he pressed a set of keys into her palm. “Take the house.”

“What happens if you wise up and do a U-turn a hundred miles short of Vegas?”

“Then I’ll move back in, you can stay, and we’ll find out whether misery really does love company.” He kissed her. “I’ll miss you.”

“Not as much as you think,” Fifa scoffed, offhand. “I’ve always played second fiddle to your real girlfriend.”

“Like who?”

“That shriv in shades sitting in the sharp car.”

“What’s he doing here?” Nollie said irritably.

In the rare warmth of mid-summer, they’d once more thrown the front door open, with only the screen door latched. After serial declarations of martial law in the latter thirties, American cities had restored the protection of property rights and imposed civic order; New York had a surprisingly low crime rate. For most of the public, the miscreants who posed any serious danger were over-zealous keepers of order—one of whom was standing on their stoop.

Goog could see them through the screen, stacking luggage in the living room. They couldn’t pretend they weren’t home. Refusing to invite an immediate relative inside would seem weird.

“Going somewhere?” their visitor asked, scanning the bags.

“Taking a tour,” Nollie said briskly. “Seeing our nation’s sites. Inspired by the Fourth of July.”

“What sites?” Goog asked skeptically. “Platefaces bought most of them up.”

“They haven’t put coolie hats on Mount Rushmore. Yet.”

“So what’s up?” Willing asked, trying to sound casual, which never worked.

“Heard about that ruckus at Elysian,” Goog said. “Seems some valiant, self-sacrificing employee intervened, or the carnage would have been worse.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Willing said. “I spent the whole time crouched in a closet. Made a run for it as soon as the shooting stopped.” Irksome, playing to Goog’s contemptuous opinion of him, but he’d no reason to care what his cousin thought.

“Funny,” Goog said. “The home’s administration must have been misinformed, then. Because however grateful those poor souls cowering in Elysian might have felt, seems our Good Samaritan was carrying an illicit handgun. So the NYPD put in a request to the Bureau for tracking. I recognized your name.”