emergency routines failed at once. It had broken down seriously yesterday. He
had had to leave town with the baby. He had been trying to contact Izzy ever
since, but they kept missing each other, with almost mythological symmetry.
Every time he ran his messages, his wife jabbered at him in gradations of
bewildered panic. Every time he called her, her number was busy.
Now she was at work, where they didn’t allow personal phones on the floor,
and he was twenty-four hours out in the boondocks with a two-year-old in tow.
She couldn’t be too badly worried, though: he was keeping her well-informed.
He stood and watched the advancing wall, brooding sourly on the amount
of work he put into their relationship. He had practically invented everything, all the little rituals of bonding. He wondered did Izzy feel that she was doing
GWYNETH JONES
the same: building their life together, brick by sodding brick. Maybe she did.
It’s called marriage. It works, more or less.
The tow truck careened to a halt, followed by three motorbikes. Three men
got out of the cab. The bikers remained mounted. Johnny still had the phone
in his hand. He took a step, casually, and let it drop onto the driver’s seat.
“What’s the problem, kid?”
The speaker was tall and basically skinny, but with bull shoulders and heavy
arms from some kind of specific training, or maybe manual labor. He was
inappropriately dressed: a suit jacket over bib overalls, no shirt. The rest were the same—not exactly ragged, but it was clear they’d left certain standards
far behind. They were all of them technically white, a couple dusky; a shade
further off the WASP ideal than himself. Every one of them was armed.
Johnny immediately realized that these people would find an aesthetic
impulse hard to understand. It would be as well not to brand himself a city
slicker, to whom rainfall is a spectacle.
“Some kind of breakdown?”
“I guess so,” said Johnny. “Engine died, no reason why. I was about to look
under the hood.”
“Whaddya use for fuel?” A biker, nursing his mighty steed between his
knees, seemed amiably curious.
“Uh—just about anything.”
“Well, all we got is just about plain gas.” The bikers laughed, contemptuous
of city-slicker modernity.
Ouch. That was a warning. Don’t pretend to be too like them. They’ll
always smell you out.
“Let’s take a look.”
The man in the suit jacket bent over Johnny’’s engine. He took his time,
considering there was absolutely nothing wrong. Johnny’s assistance didn’t
seem to be required, which was good because he didn’t feel like turning his
back, and particularly not like bending over in a peculiarly vulnerable
invitation . . . The other two men from the truck came close. They looked
into the back of the car and saw Bella—whose existence had, for the past few
minutes, vanished from Johnny’s consciousness. Something, some lax, living
system inside him—blood or lymph or nerves—went bone tight from the
crown of his head to his heels.
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“That your kid?”
“Yes, she’s my kid.”
“Can you prove you’re the father?”
This bloodcurdling question did not require an answer. As Johnny mumbled
“Why yes, certainly. . .” the speaker, a squat youth in baggy cutoffs worn over a stained but gaudy one-piece that surely belonged in another tribal culture
altogether, turned away. The guy in the suit jacket slammed the hood down
saying, “Yep. That certainly is a catastrophic breakdown.”
At the same moment Johnny understood that the truck, which he’d taken
to be a mere accidental prop, was here on purpose. A chill and horror of
excitement ran through him. He was afraid he was shivering visibly—but in
fact he’d have had some excuse because just then the rain arrived. It fell over the whole scene like a roll of silk tossed down, as purple as it had looked on
the horizon: scented and cold and shocking.
“What’s your name, boy?”
“Johnny.”
“What d’you do?”
“Uh—I’m an engineer.”
“Looking for work? We could find you some. You need a wife to go with
that kid. We got women too.”
This banter didn’t mean anything. Johnny had discovered that everywhere you
go in the boondocks, people will invite you to stay. It seemed a point of etiquette to regard any chance comer as a potential addition to the community. It wasn’t
something to worry about, no more than the equal number of brief acquaintances
who invited you to take them home, see their kids through college, advance the
capital for them to set up in business. Banter covered the positioning of the
truck, the chaining up of Johnny’s car, all under the hammering of the purple
rain. Johnny, expressing decent but not effusive gratitude, got into the back with Bella, who woke as the car was being winched onto the flatbed. She didn’t speak or wail but stared all around her mightily. He could tell she’d been dreaming.
“It’s okay, Bel. The car broke down. These people are giving us a ride into town.”
“Daddy, why are you wet?”
“It’s raining.”
Bella stared with eyes like saucers, and dawning appreciation of this new
means of transport, this audience, this adventure. The bikers peered in at
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GWYNETH JONES
her. “Who’s that?” she demanded. “What’s his name?” It was the stocky
young one. She could never be brought to believe that there were people in
the world whose names her parents did not know. “Archibald,” said Johnny
at random. He spent the rest of the trip naming the other men in the same
mode, and explaining over and over that the car was suddenly sick and
needed a car-doctor: over and over again, while he made desperate mental
tape of their route and reviewed worst-case scenarios, and still found a little space in which to want to kill Izzy, just beat her to shit. He knew she wasn’t
to blame but she was the other half of his mind, and the fight-or-flight rush
had to have some outlet.
The drive ended at a wired compound, shrouded by tall dark hedges. Inside,
there was a wide yard and flat-topped buildings that looked somehow like a
school. The rain made the wall of leaves glow blue-black, and glistened on
piles of automotive rubbish. Dogs rushed to the gates as the bikers dragged
them open, snarling and yelping away from kicks. Bella was scared. Johnny
got down with the toddler fastened on his chest like a baby monkey, his pack
on his back and jacket bulging. He surrendered his keys with a good grace.
“Papers?”
Out here, you had to carry physical documentation. It was a bitch because
most of them couldn’t read, and just got mad at you while they were trying to
decipher your life’s history. He handed over his folder, hoping the boss, at
least, was literate.
He wished he had the nerve to leave some of his stuff in the car. It would
have looked better, he knew. He staggered under his untrusting assumptions,
and they led him off to a hall with a scuffed floor of light timber and rows of plastic chairs. The room smelt of kids. He decided that t
his was the school,
in so far as such things still existed. A school, and a junkyard: original
combination for some gifted entrepreneur.
“We’ll take a look, Johnny, just you wait here.”
One of the bikers—Samuel—watched them through the fireproof glass of
the hall doors. Bella was unusually silent—most unusually, because he knew
she was riveted with excitement. He looked around, and found that she was
sitting, legs jutting over the edge of the scummy plastic seat, with one hand
ruminatively delving under her skirt. Her expression was of dignified,
speculative pleasure.
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BLUE CLAY BLUES
Johnny managed to smother hysterical giggles. “Get your hand out of your
pants, Bel. People don’t like to see that. It doesn’t look good.”
This condemnation—always in a tone of mild and absolute certainty—was
the worst her daddy ever issued. Bella understood that concern for the
comfort of others and respect for their beliefs was to be her ultimate morality.
She removed her hand with a sigh.
“My nobble went fat. It went by itself.”
“Yeah, I know. It’s the adrenaline rush. Ignore it, kid.”
Samuel—stringy and pale, with ropy muscled arms and a ponytail—came
to fetch them. They were led into a cavern of a mechanic’s workshop. The
foreign and menacing smell of heavy oil filled the air. Johnny’s car stood
openmouthed on black greasy concrete, surrounded by a slew of tools and
power leads. It looked as if the poor beast had been through a rough grilling.
Johnny hoped it had managed to hold out.
The mechanic inspected them. Johnny had rarely met a black man outside
the city. Tribal divisions were so stern it would have been pointless to send a white boy off the white squares, under no matter what inalienable flag of
truce. But this man’s color was only the least of the signals he sent out.
Johnny gathered that he was looking at the local God, the big chief.
God was very dark, perhaps fortyish (but Johnny was always making
mistakes about age out here), with sleepy narrow eyes and a whisper of
moustache above his humorous mouth. Johnny liked him on sight; and was
no less very scared indeed. He slid Bel to the ground but kept a tight grip.
The wrist, not the hand. One learns these tricks of technique.
The mechanic wiped his hands on a dirty rag.
“You ain’t armed, boy.”
A man without a gun on his hip was so peculiar he was downright
threatening. Johnny didn’t mean to threaten anybody.
“I’m a journalist.”
“Ah-ha. Thought you said you were an engineer.”
God speaks grammatical English, when he chooses.
“Engineer—journalist. I’m an eejay.”
God’s courtiers displayed a hearteningly normal reaction. Samuel giggled,
nudged Ernesto in the ribs; Gustave hooted.
“Hey, eejay. You wanna mend my TV?” Archibald grinned.
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GWYNETH JONES
Florimond in the suit jacket cuffed him and shrugged at the visitor,
assuming an air of grave man-to-man sophistication.
“Okay. So what story are you hunting, newshound?” Unlike the others,
God was not impressed by the eejay tag.
But Johnny was still recovering from Bella’s masterstroke: from finding
himself sitting in a gangster’s waiting room with a two-year-old who was
calmly taking the opportunity to get in touch with her emotions . . . Smothered hilarity maybe gave him an aura so inappropriate as to shift the balance. As
the man spoke, the casual promise of death that hung around him became
less palpable. Johnny’s territorial blunder might be excused.
The courtiers grew quiet. Bella squirmed and tugged, displaying her usual
pathological failure to read adult atmosphere—which at this moment made
Johnny long to break her arm.
“It’s kind of private.”
“Let the kid go, boy. She won’t hurt anything.”
Bella bounced free. “I won’t hurt anything,” she parroted smugly.
She was gone, beyond arm’s reach. Gustave was lifting her up to peer
inside the poor tortured car. Johnny felt sweat breaking out delicately all
over his body.
“Look. This is not necessarily the truth, but . . . I’m after the source of a
kind of legend. You had a nuclear accident hereabouts, two years ago?”
The reading in God’s eyes flickered upward again. Johnny had better not
dwell on this subject—nuclear poison, two-headed babies, that kind of
insulting stuff.
“We had an incident.”
“Okay, I’m looking for . . . this will sound crazy, unless you know something
already, but I’m looking for a diamond mine.”
“Diamonds.”
“It’s like this. When you get a melt—er, an incident of that kind, a massive
amount of heat and pressure is generated. The safer the plant, the less of it
gets dissipated outward. It has to go somewhere, it goes down. You’ve got
coal-bearing strata around here, not all of it even mapped. Under pressure,
that old fossil fuel can be transformed into another kind of pure carbon.
What I’m looking for is a deposit of blue clay, a blue clay that’s new to this
area. From the blue clay, you get the diamonds.”
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BLUE CLAY BLUES
Johnny needed all his professional skill to measure God’s reaction. He
couldn’t use it. His attention was painfully focused on Bel: her position in the stinking cavern, who was touching her, was she being led near a door. It
didn’t matter. God was stonefaced, neither twitchy nor incredulous.
“I don’’t know if this is exactly a newslead,” Johnny went on, straightfaced.
“It’s my own long shot. I haven’t decided yet if my employer would have an
interest.”
God laughed softly, and shook his head in reproof (we superbeings must
stick together).
“If you dig up a diamond mine on your boss’’s time, I guess those are her
diamonds, boy. Take a closer look at that employment contract of yours,
you’ll find I’m right. Which leaves you with nothing to sell, and here you are
in the market. That could be an embarrassing position.”
Johnny would have to agree. God didn’t ask his opinion. He tucked away
his rag and thrust out a hand, which Johnny shook obediently.
“I’m the schoolmaster around here. Schoolmaster and mechanic. I’ve seen
boys like you. I’ve liked boys like you: smart and sweet, and a trifle off the
rails. Don’t you go too far, Johnny. Stick to what’s right.”
Potato-headed young Gustave, with the scoured red complexion, came
over and delivered Bella into her Daddy’s arms.
“You’re a mite loaded down, kid. If you need anything else from the car, you
better point.”
He shook his head. God was being sarcastic: the city slicker’s distrust had
been noted. God nodded, and considered Bella.
“She’s a pretty little girl. You’re young to be her daddy.”
Johnny was young to be anybody’s daddy, as anyone would know if they
knew the way things worked indoors. Not only a city slicker, but a rich fucking gilded youth. Oh, shit.
“Can you prove she’s your child?”
The hotel had rooms ove
r a bar that was also a diner. Johnny walked into the
desolate lobby with his escort. Gustave leaned over and took one of the keys,
an archaic looped shank with wards of metal and a tag, number 5, dangling.
The woman behind the desk glanced up.
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GWYNETH JONES
“Hi, Donny.” She studied the new guest. “This the eejay?”
He’d been in town two hours, plenty of time for the grapevine. He was
surprised the desk clerk wasn’t more excited. She looked at him solemnly, a
little too long—and still without gushing, exclaiming, or using his name.
Johnny felt a prickling in his belly. Maybe she was just a serious-minded girl.
There were other guests, but Johnny was the only stranger. While the rain
sheared down outside everybody gathered: the men and youths around
Johnny, the women and children several tables away, beyond the single-
screen TV that kept babbling away on a cable channel Johnny had never
seen before.
There were, discernibly, at least two rival camps. But nothing bad happened.
No guns were pulled.
These people got married. They had family life, of a kind. But they’d
forgotten anything they ever knew about sexual equality. Not one of the
gaunt and battered-looking females would dare to come up to the men’s
group, sit directly in front of the screen: get between a man and anything
remotely like the goodies. None of them, of course, could talk to Johnny. It
was one of those things you must not mention. The men’d be outraged and
disgusted if you hinted there was anything weird about this arrangement.
The women too, probably.
The guys were prodding for details of life “inside the dome.” Their technique
was to make a casual remark, about the electro-paralytic force-field or the
death-rays wielded by the android guards—and watch the effect it had on
Johnny. He was kept busy protecting their egos. He knew better than to
contradict them directly over anything. It would be a dangerous kindness.
He felt like the Wizard of Oz.
Bella got bored and went to stare at the local kids. The women petted her,
admiring her plump arms and legs: her strapping size compared to their own
toddlers. Johnny discussed diamond mining with bared teeth and needles of
controlled panic rammed under his fingernails. The women were far more
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