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

Willing nodded at the old man. “That guy doesn’t look like he’s about to eat me. Now are you coming?”

“I can’t.” Goog looked shredded. “Where you just stepped—it’s the new Wild West. Whatever it’s like, it has to be primitive. And I have a good job—”

“I wouldn’t call it a good job.”

“A lucrative job, then. Perks. Nothing to complain about. And over there—they must lynch people like me.”

“What’s the young man do?” the old man shouted. He was eavesdropping.

“Scabbie,” Willing shouted back.

“Tell him he’s right!” the old man said.

Ceremonially, Willing took out his pocketknife and severed the sagging duct tape looped around his cousin’s wrists. He rooted in a pocket for Goog’s commandeered maXfleX, and fetched a bottle of water from the car. “If you really have to go back,” he said, handing over Goog’s survival kit, “there’s an airport a few miles from here. You could probably walk.”

“It’s hot,” Goog grumbled. The fetching of a second bottle didn’t matter. He’d meant, It’s lonely .

“Tell Savannah, Bing, your parents, and Jayne and Carter I said good-bye. And spread the word that this border scare is treasury.”

“Nobody would believe me,” Goog said glumly. He was probably right.

They knocked each other’s shoulders with rare warmth. Willing restored the two barbed wires to their nails. With a wan wave to Nollie, Goog slouched off toward Wendover, where perhaps another Lethal Injection could dull his disappointment—in his country. In himself.

Meanwhile, Nollie was shooting the breeze with the man on the porch. His old-timer folksiness seemed hyped for effect. He’d got plenty of sun, but up close looked perhaps only a few years older than Lowell, which these days was nothing. The denim overalls were too crisp to be anything but an affectation, and the floppy hat looked crushed on purpose. Given the fields planted behind the house and the cattle beyond, he didn’t spend all day jawing with new immigrants. Sitting sentry at this entry point must have been what he did for fun.

“According to our friend here,” Nollie told Willing, “that big barricade on US 58 is only plywood.”

“The town can’t have tourists dancing back and forth over the border in plain view and their heads don’t blow up,” the codger explained. “Ruins the mythology. Which is a money-spinner. Nobody’s ordering a gi-normous final feast at lunch if they’re planning on supper.”

“If I wanted to find someone over here,” Willing asked, “what’s my best bet? Vegas?”

“Where most folks head. Save yourself some trouble, try the internet.”

“I thought you people didn’t have any internet.”

He chuckled. “Got our own server. Oh, the Outer Forty-Nine block us from the world-wide-whatever. Don’t think you’ll get all of Google books. But there’s plenty local advice on growing alfalfa. Sites for finding loved ones. If they want to be found.”

As Goog had warned, the technology was primitive. Their adoptive homeland provided neither satellite connection to http://usn nor the public radio-wave access that blanketed much of the US—a country whose territory began a few yards from here, but which Willing was already starting to think of as far away. Their good-old-boy guide was kind enough to provide the password for his private Wi-Fi. It was unbearably slow.

“Got it,” Willing announced after an excruciating five minutes. “Jarred Mandible, 2827 Buena Vista Drive, Las Vegas. That was easier than I expected. Though I don’t understand the site I found him on. Something about cheese.”

“It’s after four o’clock,” Nollie noted restlessly, “and Vegas is three hundred miles from here.”

“Before you two hit the road,” the geezer said, with a glint of mischief in his eye, “might try a local parlor game while you’re still by the border.”

Curious, Willing followed the gatekeeper’s instructions, extending his maXfleX over the barbed wire into the land of his old life. The device could immediately contact http://www.mychip.comagain. Once more, the codger hooted. “What’s it say?”

“Zero-zero nuevos,” Willing read. “And zero-zero cents.”

That earned a second thigh-slap. “Another drama I never get tired of! Only part of that fairy tale about the chip that’s dead on. But they don’t suck the life from your head. Put one foot in the Free State, they suck out the money instead.”

“Displays a certain grim consistency,” Nollie said.

“Don’t matter,” the man said. “Nobody use a chip here anyways. Think of it as shrapnel from the Income Tax Wars. But better get used to it, kid: you’re broke.”

“What about bancors?” Nollie asked warily.

“The USN don’t trade, with nobody,” the man said, enjoying himself. He had a sadistic streak. “Part philosophy, part practicality—’cause ain’t nobody will trade with us. So if you can’t make it, mine it, fix it, grow it, or invent it in Nevada, you can’t get it. Which means, ma’am, a bancor is about as useful for the purchase of provisions as a drowned rat.”

“Do Nevadans use money at all?” Willing asked.

“What do you think, we use beads? We’re not savages . Carson City issues continentals. First currency of the original thirteen colonies. But it went to hell pronto in the late 1770s. ’Cause it wasn’t backed by nothin’. We fixed that.”

“Don’t tell me,” Willing said. “You’re on the gold standard.”

“Ain’t you quick! Before we cut loose, the Free State produced the majority of American gold anyways. But supply of continentals is real restricted. Learned our lesson from the thirties. Everybody round here pretty much agree that on the face of it the gold standard’s dumb. Arbitrary , the governor calls it. Not much to do with the stuff but wear it around your neck. Can’t eat it. But for currency, it works. Even if we don’t quite know why. One continental buy you a whiskbroom today? One continental buy you a whiskbroom tomorrow. So it’s not that dumb.”

“Well, thanks for the advice,” Willing said, by way of getting a move on.

“I don’t recall dishing out any advice,” the man objected. “Though I worry you’re not focused on your sichiation . You got no money. Even if you do find refueling stations for that fancy jalopy of yours, how you going to pay? Here’s your advice, and I hand it out free to all the dewy-eyed newcomers who duck through that fence: Nevada ain’t no utopia .”

“Did I say anything to imply I thought it was?” Willing asked.

“You all think so,” the man dismissed. “But your friend there. A lovely lady, I’m sure—”

“Watch who you’re calling lovely ,” Nollie barked.

“But she ain’t exactly fresh off the conveyor belt,” he went on. “You bring in old people, you pay for old people. No Medicare here. No Social Security. No Part D prescription drug plans. No Medicaid-subsidized nursing homes. No so-called safety net . Every citizen in this rough-and-tumble republic gotta walk the high wire with nada underneath but the cold hard ground. Trip up? Somebody who care about you catch you, or you fall on your ass.”

They struck out on the two-lane US 93. The land was flat and dry, with a rumple of low mountains on the horizon. Tufts of scrub pilled the plain like the puff of cumulous clouds overhead, the terrain a perfect reflection of the sky.

“You seemed pretty confident, when you crossed the border,” Nollie said.

“More than your 60 percent confident anyway,” Willing said. “When Goog talked about the condition of the Washington Monument, something fell into place. It’s more economical to monitor photographs online than to clean the buildings in real life. So when I saw the fence, I got it. They don’t have dogs, or sharpshooters, or a huge concrete barrier around the entire perimeter of Nevada. But not because the chip is coded to self-destruct. They’re too cheap .”