The Last Mayor Box Set

by Michael John Grist

  * * *

  Up Hermosa Beach they went, dancing at times in and out of the tide. The moon came out from behind the clouds and lit the long stretch of beach in many shades of pale gray.

  "It's like a dream," Anna whispered. "I remember nights like this with my father, riding across the country."

  Ravi sipped the bottle. "I used to lie on the roof of our house and look up at the moon," Ravi said. He was wavering side to side. "I dreamed of other people."

  "You were alone for a long time."

  He shrugged. "It wasn't so bad. I taught myself to drive. I got the TV to work. I figured out DVDs."

  Anna laughed. "I know you ate a lot of candy. You were so fat when they found you!"

  He laughed too. "Yeah." He hiccupped. "Yeah I did, raided all the shops in town. Peanut butter cups were one of my favorites. Those chocolate eggs with toys inside; collecting them really kept me going. You don't see them these days."

  "No, you don't."

  She drank. They ambled on arm in arm.

  "I don't think I'll die when you're gone," Ravi said after a time, as they crossed a line of rotten wooden stumps demarking Hermosa from Manhattan Beach. "I'll help out with the cairns, try and find new people, the same kind of thing I've always done. And I'll wait for you."

  "I don't know if I'm even coming back."

  "Then maybe I'll come after you. You don't own the ocean, or the idea of crossing it. I'll learn yachts better and I'll stop being afraid of water and I'll ride across."

  She laughed. "You can't even swim. And it's three thousand miles. It's taken me years to get ready. In any event, I'm not worth all that effort."

  He hiccupped. "You're beautiful, you know that?"

  "So are you," she said.

  He kissed her again. It was better this time. She held her arm around him and they walked on.

  * * *

  At the harbor they jumped laughing along the bows of yachts bobbing low in the water. Each leap carried them sailing over a narrow slice of sea trapped between two hulls. The risk of falling into those gap made it terrifying and exciting. It reminded her of days running through the sandy ruins with him, breaking things to capture just a small glimpse of that excitement.

  Even then she'd known. She'd been waiting for this moment, and she'd delayed for as long as was possible.

  They dropped laughing onto the deck of a luxury schooner berthed next to her catamaran, in basin C of the Marina Del Rey. In the darkness the hull bobbed like a lullaby under their weight.

  "I'll stow away here somewhere," Ravi mumbled, looking around. "In one of the water drums. Under the hull."

  "Then we'll run out of water halfway across the world," Anna slurred. "I don't have supplies for two."

  "We'll go on rations. It'll be fun."

  "It'll be fun," she said, and kissed him, losing herself in his embrace. It was good, and unexpected. This was Ravi who she'd practiced kissing on when Amo banned them from vandalism, Ravi who'd used all the dumb lines he learned from pick-up books to get her to kiss him again, Ravi who'd skipped after her along the beach and cleaned up her mess when the yacht got damaged, Ravi who'd followed wherever she went.

  But this was a different Ravi too, not a boy anymore. His shoulders were as hard as the deck, honed by months of digging and clearing in the croplands of Chino Hills State Park, and she ran her hands over them. His lips were soft and the buzz of new growth stubble on his chin tickled her. She ran her hands down his back then gripped hold of his T-shirt and pulled it up over his head.

  They kissed greedily. She ran her fingers over his broad flat chest. He hadn't eaten candy in years and it showed. He fumbled with her shirt and she helped him pull it off. He dropped his head and kissed her chest. She held him close and led him down into the dark cabin.

  * * *

  Afterward she lay beside him as he slept, feeling the buzz of two different sensations tingling in her fuzzy body. One was the very pleasant feeling of being with Ravi, and the other was the inescapable need to leave. It bit at her like a constant anxiety, shading everything with deeper tinges of failure.

  She'd delayed for so long, beyond the time when any excuses remained. It was true she liked Ravi, and could imagine being with him, but not as she was now. If she stayed the failure would drive her insane. Plus it would be no kind of life, always knowing their children would have only one or two choices of partner, and their grandchildren even fewer after that. They might yet live to see their great-grandchildren suffer disfiguring mutations from inbreeding.

  She toyed with the idea taking him with her. She could just cast off now with him aboard, but would he be happy with her out there, alone on the water? The world was empty and dead, and at the end of the voyage would be the wandering corpse of her father. What was she even going to do when she found him?

  It wasn't right for Ravi. He needed the shelter of Amo's fantasy more than she did, and she couldn't bear to watch that hope be lost.

  She had to go alone.

  Through a porthole she watched the beach beyond the marina's wall, where the ocean lapped with the sparkle of moonlit surf. It was beautiful and sad. She traced lines down Ravi's chest. She knew he loved her. Perhaps she could love him too, if only that were enough. She tugged lightly on one of the dark curls hanging over his eyes. He shifted and mumbled in his sleep.

  She hoped he would be happy. She knew she couldn't be until she knew what the T4 was, and why it was in them all.

  She fumbled for her shorts, strewn on the floor, and rifled through the pockets. Her father's phone was still in there, wrapped in its plastic bag. It didn't hold a charge well but that was OK, there was a charger in the catamaran. She brought the phone to life and scrolled through the icons to the one for the Hatter's chip.

  She clicked it, and the familiar gray field emerged with her blue arrow in the middle. The yellow dot for her father had blinked out over time. Probably the battery for the chip in his belly was worn out, or the satellites carrying his signal had gone down, but she knew he was out there still, driven by the T4 in his core. Whatever he was, whatever he'd become, he was there, and she had a promise to keep.

  She set the phone down and laid her head beside Ravi's for a little longer, looking out at the steady lapping gray of the water. Always it came, endlessly. It didn't matter if she was dead or alive, if she was here to see it or not, it would still lap on.

  After a time a sallow, emaciated figure staggered down the beach. It entered the water and disappeared in mere moments. Anna's heart quickened. A floater like a shooting star. It had a kind of fleeting beauty.

  There were so few of them now, but occasionally the odd one still emerged, freed from whatever had trapped them for so long; perhaps an earthquake breaking down a wall, or a door finally rotting through.

  She kissed Ravi on the cheek a final time, then gathered her clothes and left him alone on the yacht.

  20. NOT A FANTASY

  Amo came just before the dawn.

  He stood on the basin wall, watching while she checked her supplies and tested her ropes. He looked just as strangely powerful as he had ten years ago at the entrance to the Chinese theater, as he had three years ago across a swimming pool in the ruins of a crappy condominium block, despite being only slightly taller than her.

  He was wearing his trademark uniform; khaki cargo shorts and a plain white polo shirt. His hair was short and swept back, his dark eyes watching her like haunting ghosts.

  "You have it all, then," he said.

  "Yes," she said sullenly.

  "And Ravi's here?"

  She nodded at the nearby yacht. "Sleeping in there. I didn't have the heart to wake him."

  Amo stood silently. She wasn't going to be the one to break the silence. If he wanted to leave it like that, then she was OK with that too. He was the one who'd gone silent on her. Let him stew.

  She tested the sail winders again, inserting the metal crank into the narrow slot and turning it to ratchet the lines in and out. Ever
ything was smooth.

  "He'll be hurt for a time," Amo said when the ratcheting was done, "but he'll recover."

  "Good."

  "What about you?"

  She frowned. "What about me?"

  "Will you recover? You've just lost your birth father, or you think you have."

  "I lost him ten years ago."

  Amo smiled and shook his head. "I don't think so, Anna. You lost him yesterday when you were looking into the microscope. You saw the bug in there and you think that's him."

  "It is him. It's a virus, Amo, not a bug."

  He laughed. "I know it's a virus. It took him over; I know that too, it took them all over. But that same virus also saved me more than once. It saved you too. Don't be so quick to say there's nothing human left in there."

  She snorted. "What do you know about cellular biology, Amo? I never saw you in the lab once."

  "I don't need cellular biology to know what I saw, Anna. The ocean forgave me, despite all the terrible things I'd done. The ocean saved me when Don was trying to kill me. That means something to me. It should mean something to you."

  "It means autonomic survival reactions," she said, cold and disinterested. "A T4 has nothing like empathy, it's entirely self-serving. It saved you because it thought it was saving itself."

  Amo shrugged. "It's no surprise we don't agree. You may be right, I don't know. But you're wrong about this place being a fantasy, and you're going to see that you're wrong."

  She frowned, holding one hand up to block a ray of rising sun. He must have talked to Robert. "What are you talking about?"

  "You're going to see the world, Anna. It's been ten years since we talked to anyone out there. Do you know how many people lived in China before the apocalypse? One point four billion. Imagine how many survivors they might have. You're going to make first contact."

  She frowned. "If they're alive."

  "I'm sure they are. They'll be rebuilding and gathering just like us, and you can tell them about this place. Maybe they'll come to us, maybe we'll go to them, but we'll unite. We may all need to learn Chinese."

  He smiled.

  Was that a joke? "There's no one out there," Anna said dully, more to argue with him than anything else. "If there were they'd have come to us already."

  He laughed again. "Like we've gone to them? It's taken us this long just to get solid, in a country that already had vast infrastructure, where we all speak the same language. Can you imagine trying to unite China? Leaving cairns across it would keep you busy for a lifetime."

  His chirpiness was annoying her.

  "What do you want, Amo?"

  "I want to tell you New LA is not a fantasy. It's a dream, and I never dreamed for only this. You'll be the first to cross the ocean, but you won't be the last. More people will go, Anna, and they'll start to come back too. The dream will grow until there's enough of us to be sustainable, and you'll be the one to start it off."

  She stared at him hard. This was not the Amo who'd barely spoken to her in years.

  "Why are you saying this now? I thought you'd given up on me."

  He smiled and shook his head. "Give up on my little sister? How could I?"

  A rush of emotion rose up and her eyes went blurry. "You did. You didn't talk to me. You shouted and then we never spoke."

  He shrugged. "Because what would I say? I knew then that you had to leave. You had to keep your promise. I wanted to take you there myself, but people kept coming in and there was Julio to watch, then Lara was pregnant and I couldn't leave our children. I couldn't go and I couldn't tell you to go. You had to want it for yourself."

  She laughed through her tears. It was ridiculous. "I'm only going because of the T4. You couldn't know we'd find that."

  "The T4 doesn't matter. It's a spark only. The rocket-fuel's inside you, put there ten years ago when your father walked into that water. Now the fuel's ignited and nothing's going to stop it. I don't know what you're going to find out there, but I don't think it will be terrible. I believe it will be good, and it'll change everything."

  She snorted. "It'll be millions of the dead. Billions."

  "And your father amongst them. I know. Here."

  He pulled a bulky black chunk of plastic, it looked like a walkie-talkie, from his sagging cargo pocket and tossed it aboard. She caught it smoothly. It was heavy and hard, with buttons and a dial marked with fine white gradations.

  "It's a military satellite phone," he said. "Low Earth Orbit, it should work from wherever you are in the world, piggybacking where it can on whatever satellites are still up there. The constellation cover is pretty light now, so it's unlikely we'll be able to talk live after you go over the horizon, but you can send messages and maybe even receive them. You can let us know what you find. Signal on any channel and we'll pick you up in the radio room. It takes double-A batteries, here's a pack and a charger."

  He pulled a plastic wallet from his other cargo pocket, filled with small bits of equipment, and tossed that to her too. She barely caught it. There were about fifteen loose batteries and two chargers.

  "I checked they'd fit with the catamaran's power-gen system. You're good."

  She looked at these items in her hands. They were a bridge to nothing. "I have no plans to come back," she said.

  He shrugged. "So explore for us, Anna. Go to the edge and tell us what it's like out there, like you did before. Find your father and all our lost fathers and tell us what they've become."

  The tears spilled down her cheeks. She felt angry and sad at once.

  "Why didn't you say any of this before?" she called. "Why didn't you talk to me about this or encourage me?"

  He smiled. "You mean be nice, like a father would? When Cerulean tried that you cut him off."

  "It would've been different if it was you."

  "Maybe. But maybe I was angry too, at myself, at you. Who knows? I never said I was perfect. This is what you need now, and it's what New LA needs too. Hope, Anna. It's the most precious thing we have. You'll find it out there and bring it home, because we need it more than anything else."

  She rubbed her eyes. She put the satellite phone and battery pack down on the deck.

  "Forget all that hope stuff. You played me for years. It's hardly better than Ravi with his pick-up lines."

  Amo grinned boyishly, splitting the severity of his dark gaze like a well-chopped cord of wood. "I knew a great pick-up artist once. His name was Hank. He's out there somewhere too, with your father. Go find him for me, will you? Say hello."

  Anna laughed, despite herself. She'd met Hank of course, after Amo opened up his Deepcraft world in the Yangtze fulfillment center for everyone to play. She rubbed her eyes. It made her think, that while Amo had never come to speak to her, she'd never gone to him either. She'd never apologized.

  "You're crazy, Amo. You really are."

  "Maybe. But you're about to cross the Pacific and hunt down a single man in an ocean of billions, alone. I'd say that's crazier than anything I ever did."

  Anna sighed. She took a deep breath and composed herself. She scanned the marina. "No Lara."

  "No Lara or Cerulean. I asked them to stay behind. They understand, but they can't watch you go, you know? They'd try to stop you, and we can't spare them to go with you. We look strong but we're still precarious here. That's one more thing I've tried to keep hidden. One stiff wind could blow us all apart. We need them to keep this place together, and Lara and Cerulean are two of the poles keeping the tent standing. You're the only one we can afford, our seed on the wind."

  Another time that might have made her angry. In one way, he was saying she was expendable. But then, she'd done everything she could to stay on the outskirts of the sad little community they'd scraped together. It wasn't his fault that he'd noticed. It left no room for anger.

  She looked to the yacht where she'd left Ravi. He was probably still sleeping. "Look after him, please."

  Amo nodded. "I always have."

  More tears came. S
he wanted to hide her face but resisted the urge. Amo already knew. He already knew so much, had looked after them all since the moment he drew his first 'f' on the Empire State Building, and he hadn't stopped looking after them yet.

  "I'll see you again, Anna," he said. "Stay in touch."

  She looked down at the satellite phone.

  "When you have a minute, check the rear cabins," Amo added. "I've left something in there for you."

  He walked away.

  She wiped her cheeks and started moving. She peered in the rear cabins but there was only stacked water. In five minutes she cast off from the dock and fired up the twin motors. The catamaran chugged gently out of the docking basin then out of the marina. She turned her face to the west.

  ODYSSEY

  21. RAGNAROK IV

  The spinnaker sail unfurled like a hot-air balloon off the bow, catching the wind and tugging the catamaran jerkily forward. The rainbow-printed fabric rippled unevenly as the wind spilled and billowed, then settled in a swollen half-globe projecting out in front, a hundred and fifteen meters square of thrust pulling the yacht forward like a massive bulbous kite.

  "Like a giant boob," Anna muttered to herself, jibing the lines to pull it taut to the mast. It was very round and globular, missing only the nipple. "A giant gay boob." She started to laugh. "Suck on that."

  She was exhausted, giddy, and knew it. She hadn't slept properly since two nights earlier, and even that hadn't been a good sleep, with the electron microscope so close to coming online. She'd been in the lab alongside Jake and Sulman until late, theorizing and tinkering and preparing to shift out vital components.

  Now she was here.

  She slumped at the edge of the fixed foamcore bridge between the twin catamaran hulls. Each of them were hollow and large enough to contain two cabins, one at the front and one at the back making four in all, plus storage space and a toilet with shower. Now they were fitted out with all her gear: food, water, weapons, fuel for the little engines and spares of every part on board.

  Inside the foamcore bridge below her was a large lounge, fitted with a captain's navigation desk at the narrow front window. Behind that was a sofa with a central table, a kitchen unit and a map wall, all decked out in luxurious teak. In the old world it would have cost millions of dollars. Now it was just another mushroom to be plucked, one of millions sprung up during the long night.