Нил Стивенсон - Termination Shock

Now, though, Rufus came up with a wild surmise, which was that they were all the same person. It was all possible if you were willing to accept the hypothesis that Big Fish’s invalid status was just a cover story. In other words, maybe the algorithm had actually nailed it: seen something no human could have.

Philippa Long had responded to his earlier message with an emoji. On an impulse, Rufus direct-messaged her the video from the bhangra party and asked her whether the man in the background might be Big Fish.

Ten minutes later he was on a video call with her. He was just a grainy cloud of pixels in the darkness of the marble mine, so he carried his laptop outside as they worked their way through the inevitable opening rounds of troubleshooting the video and audio.

Based on her name, which sounded fancy to Rufus, and on her profession as globe-trotting indie filmmaker, and also on a profile photo associated with her social media presence, which showed evidence of intervention by hair and makeup professionals, he had been expecting someone more glamorous and intimidating. But she was very girl-next-door, like she’d just stepped away from milking a goat. Almost unsettlingly open and approachable, but with a cool confidence about her that kept things at arm’s length.

It was still pretty warm in the box canyon before the mine’s entrance, mostly because of stored solar heat now being dumped into the void by the stone walls. But the air itself had cooled down quite a bit and would keep doing so until he’d be obliged to put on a jacket. Thanks to Pina2bo there was still enough light in the western sky to cast warm gentle illumination over everything. Rufus set his laptop on one of two plastic tables they’d set up in the little compound of trailers and equipment. Behind him, Pippa—which was the name Philippa Long went by—would be able to see a couple of trailers, a campfire straddled by an iron tripod, random sun-bleached lawn furniture, Bildad wandering around in a futile search for grass, and the odd falconer. No eagles were in evidence just now, but the point was that Pippa was seeing a whole different picture than just Rufus sitting alone in a dark abandoned mine. A somewhat misleading picture to be fair, since Rufus, in truth, was a dark abandoned mine kind of guy, but anyway a picture that might lead Pippa toward a cautiously favorable opinion of Rufus. As opposed to just terminating the call and blocking him. He cracked open a beer.

“I read classics at uni,” Pippa said, “and got interested in the performative aspect of war. I’m talking specifically about the Iliad .”

Rufus couldn’t make heads or tails of “I read classics at uni” but he could guess the meaning of “performative.” The Iliad he had listened to during his perambulations around Texas. “Like Achilles dragging Hector around the walls of Troy?” he guessed. “Putting on a li’l show. For the psy-ops impact. But zero tactical value.”

“Exactly. I won’t bore you with all the other examples that could be cited, down through the ages.”

“I got you,” Rufus assured her. “Comanches did that shit all the time. White men couldn’t understand it.”

“You’re a Comanche?”

“Sort of.” Because Pippa seemed so interested in this, Rufus did something he did only rarely: pulled out his wallet, extracted his Comanche Nation ID card, and held it up to the camera.

“I’ve been studying their . . . practices,” Pippa said.

He knew what she meant. “Pretty gruesome stuff.”

“Undeniably. But the latest research says that they were masters of performative war. They knew how their actions played in the newspapers. All that gruesomeness was designed to make them famous. To scare the shit out of people.”

“It worked,” Rufus said.

“Absolutely. It had a tactical effect. Kept Comancheria free of white settlers for decades. But it all came at the end of an era.”

Rufus nodded. “The era of Indians living free,” he said.

“Well, that too, of course. But I was actually referring to a worldwide transition. Beyond a certain point—which happened at different times in different parts of the world—hard tactical outcomes were all that mattered.”

“Performative war didn’t work anymore,” Rufus translated. He was thinking of the heaps of dead bison on the plains, the Indians starved into submission.

Pippa nodded. “Like, it would not have made tactical sense to chain Paulus behind a T-34 and drag him around Stalingrad. It wouldn’t have moved the line of battle one inch. It would have been seen as savagery.”

“Savagery. Important word in these parts.”

“That’s one way people were defined as savages: by their willingness to let that kind of performative display affect the outcome of battle for real .”

Rufus nodded. He was thinking of the Little Robe Creek fight in which the Comanches had been routed by a small force of Texas Rangers after their chief, Iron Jacket, had been brought down by a sniper. The Comanches had then tried to talk the Rangers into settling the battle by single combat between champions, as in the days of chivalry. Hadn’t worked.

“Now, that all changes with Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which were basically performances. Deadly for real, obviously—but the point was the spectacle of it, and its psychological impact.”

“After that we’re all savages.”

“Yeah, and it leads to things like 9/11. Which again is horrible—but with a lower body count.”

“Until we invaded Afghanistan and Iraq!” Rufus pointed out.

“Using Shock and Awe,” Pippa countered. “Anyway, we could talk about it all night, but that’s how I got interested in what was going on at the Line of Actual Control and met Laks.”

“Locks?”

“Big Fish. His friends and family call him Laks.”

“Is that him in the video I sent you? Dancing at the party?”

“Absolutely.”

Rufus had been expecting a more guarded response, so Pippa’s certainty knocked him off balance.

“So he’s recovered.”

“Yeah, and people who knew him were aware of it. The story of him being incapacitated was put out on the media by someone. I’ve no idea why.”

“Someone who wanted folks to believe that Big Fish was still out of commission,” Rufus said. “Still a non-combatant.”

“Well,” Pippa said, guardedly, “he’s definitely a non-combatant. He’s partying in Canada. No longer beating up kung fu masters in the Himalayas.”

“I think he’s in the States now,” Rufus said.

“Same difference. Still a non-combatant.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Rufus said, wondering if he’d get in trouble if he sent Pippa the video from the T.R. Mick’s. “Try googling Squeegee Ninja,” he suggested. “All the videos might have been taken down, though.”

But it very soon became obvious from Pippa’s gestures and the movements of her eyes that she had found something. “Holy fuck,” she said. It was all she needed to say. “Let me Google Map this place, my American geography is rubbish.” She did so. “Where do you suppose he’s headed?”

“If you draw a line from the Canadian bhangra bash through that T.R. Mick’s, it points to me,” Rufus said.

“You’re in Texas.”

“How’d you guess?” Rufus answered, half serious.

“The beer. And you mentioned savagery.”

Rufus looked at his beer. Shiner Bock.

“West Texas, to judge from your imaginary line on the map.” A thought occurred to her. “Say, are you anywhere near that huge—”

The rest of her question was drowned out by a sonic boom. Rufus just nodded.

Pippa sat back in her chair and pondered for a spell. Rufus let her do it. The beer was enjoyable. The temperature in the canyon was now perfect. He was in no particular hurry. He checked his phone, which had buzzed a couple of minutes ago.