by Cody Sisco
Auntie Circe on the hike to the top of Cemetery Hill had said she wanted him to sign some papers. He supposed that was better than killing him for his portion of the family’s estate. On thinking that, he felt blankness surge through him, a kind of thick, pervasive weight like meters of water pressing down on him.
***
He was no longer in the van. Grasses rustled. His feet were ankle deep in muddy water. Across a stretch of the Passage, he saw the Western Embankment, the levees that kept the countryside dry and isolated from the murky New Venice floodwaters, the inundation that had never receded.
The blankness moved with him now. He was transitioning in and out of it, like going from room to room in a large house. He supposed he was lucky to not find himself in actual water, drowning, though he might in fact be able to tread water and even swim while blank. His mind’s self-preservation instinct was likely that strong on autopilot.
Feeling in his pockets, he found a plastic box. He opened it, saw the data egg, closed it. The box, a Faraday cage that would block all transmissions from the egg, needed a home.
***
The Eastmore estate was located to the west of New Venice, across the Passage. Victor walked to the edge of town. Grassy banks surrounded three sides of an inlet that led to one of the minor canals. A tiny wooden dock, big enough for only one or two people to stand on, floated on the still water.
As he approached the dock, he saw that it was actually a raft. Two square meters of wood covered an inflated rubber honeycomb with a central plinth to hold the structure together. A boy around ten years old was standing on a bench around the plinth.
“Can you take me across the Passage?” Victor asked.
“Climb on board,” the boy said.
Victor stepped on gingerly. The raft settled and stabilized in the water, and the boy was soon poling them away from shore.
“You owe me five AUD for this trip. Another five per hour if you want me to wait to ferry you back.” The boy spoke without feeling, laying out the terms of his service.
“It’s a one-way trip.” Victor authorized the transaction on his Handy 1000.
“Where ya from?” the boy asked.
Victor didn’t answer.
The boy stopped poling and used a MeshBit to activate a propeller below the plinth, and they accelerated into the Passage.
It was sunny and cool, with a brisk wind blowing puffy clouds eastward. Shadows of the clouds formed a patchwork of light and dark across the water.
At the far shore, Victor disembarked and ignored the boy, who ignored him back. He climbed a set of stone steps set into the steep grassy slope. He reached the top. Cultivated fields, wild meadows, and stands of trees stretched forward across gently rolling hills. Victor walked for two kilometers due west, then cut south on a small, meandering dirt road that crossed two creeks until he found the road leading to the entrance of the Eastmore estate.
He arrived at a large gate. Fences three meters tall ran left and right, rising along raised ground for a long way before turning and continuing along the other edges of the big family plot.
Victor pressed his thumb into the type-pad next to the gate. The gate swung open, and Victor proceeded through. It closed behind him.
The land was well chosen. Rich brown dirt and vegetation covered the small valley, which rose toward a plateau where the mansion and several other buildings were clustered. Regularly spaced pine trees topped the ridge on the side of the road and cast bands of shadows across Victor’s path. He followed the road for several minutes, watching the mansion grow as he drew closer.
The house served as both a home and a monument to the Eastmore family. He wondered about his ancestors’ history, where they had been before New Venice, why they’d come here. He’d never listened closely to the stories; it had all seemed too distant and disconnected, rootless. Now, a curiosity to understand their history began to grow. Who they were, how they had lived, what they had worked toward during their lives. Had they been as awful as their descendants were?
Voices drew his attention to the front porch. Behind the balustrade, deep in the shadows that sat heavily there at this time of day, two people on the porch reclined on a low wicker couch piled with pillows. Stepping closer across the gravel yard, he saw the porch dwellers had been watching him, likely for some time, so he raised his hand and greeted them with a “good afternoon.”
A weak, trembling voice asked, “Who is it, Charlene?”
Victor took a few steps up the porch. The voice belonged to an ancient woman with thinning white hair and an oval face that may have once been firm and beautiful, but now was wrinkled and furrowed like a knitted sweater. His great-granma Florence.
Her companion, a woman in her fifties or sixties, had thin, curly blond hair framing a round face. Her beady eyes swam behind thick round glasses with a slightly tinted quality that Victor associated with the decade when he was born.
“Flo’s hearing ain’t so good. Can’t see very well either. Come closer so she can get a look at you,” Charlene said.
“I asked you a question,” Florence said. “Rude bitch.”
Victor took some steps forward. “I’m Victor, your great-grandson.”
“Linus’s boy. I remember. Great-grandson. Well, that’s good. Good to have one of everything, I always said.”
Charlene clucked. “You have more than one, Flo. Circe’s boy, Robbie.”
“Circe!” Florence spat from her dry and puckered mouth. “Never know with her. Might be her son, might be some devil she raised from the pit of hell. Forget her! Victor, give me a kiss on the cheek and take a seat.”
Victor leaned over and kissed her, being careful to do it in a way that, if he fell, he wouldn’t crush her. He pulled a nearby chair closer and sat.
“Would you like some iced tea, Victor?” Charlene asked.
He shook his head. “I’m—I’m not entirely here.”
“Neither here nor there, eh?” Florence said. “Me too. Victor, I want you to tell Cynthia and your parents that I will never, ever forgive them for keeping Jeff in California.”
Charlene hushed her, but Florence continued. “He should be here.”
“He’s dead,” Victor said.
“I know that,” she snapped.
Charlene leaned toward Victor. “She’s angry because she didn’t sleep well last night and her hip is paining her.”
Florence turned her head and shifted against the sofa. “When do I ever sleep well? I haven’t slept in years.” She reached for her drink, and Charlene brought it closer and held it under her mouth so Florence could use the straw. “I’ve lived longer than all my children. That’s the world we live in.”
“I have some bad news,” he said, for a moment thinking he should tell her who killed her son.
She raised a hand and pointed at him. “I got all the news I need. Saw you with the lady on the Mesh. It’s all horseshit.”
“She’s swearing again. I think it’s nap time, sweetie,” Charlene suggested.
“You don’t look at peace, Victor,” Florence said.
Victor couldn’t tell if her eyes were teary from emotion, biology, or both. He said, “I don’t think there’s peace to be found anywhere.”
“You’re not the dumbest Eastmore,” Florence said approvingly. She brought her hand to his face. It felt as soft and delicate as a rose petal. “Did you know, the Eastmores have always attracted more than our share of pain? Has anyone ever told you about Zoë Eastmore?”
“I’m sorry?”
“Some other time.”
Charlene said, “You go along, Victor. I’ll take her to bed. We have a routine, and it’s easier without distractions. You go on.”
He climbed down from the porch. “I want to go away,” he said, though the words seemed external to him, like something from a sonobulb somewhere nearby.
Around the side of the house was an abandoned garden, tomato plants and beans withered and dry, grasses overgrown. He dug a hole big enough for
the Faraday box and buried it.
His task completed, he dove headlong into blankness.
***
His butt was damp, his hands muddy. Victor looked around. It was evening. The canal water reflected light posts lining the street above. He was sitting, back to the canal wall, on a ledge just wide enough for him to sit on. Someone called his name. Across the canal, at street level, Wonda leaned over the railing and asked if he was all right.
He started to move his mouth, stopped, realizing his throat was jammed full of so many emotions that if he opened it to speak, he might scream. She vanished from the railing. He felt a sudden anxiousness, checked his pockets, found them empty, and relaxed, wondering why that would be so.
Wonda came over to him.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
Victor stared into her eyes, blue-violet in the evening light, like one of the flowers on the yam bushes in Granma Cynthia’s garden back in Oakland. A calm, soothing chill spread across his chest.
“Are you blank? Can you hear me?”
He tried to shake his head, but it wouldn’t move. His lips felt parched, throat dry. Everything felt numb, and he couldn’t say anything, do anything. The blankness was near. He knew he could call it closer and lose himself to it.
“I’ll take care of you,” she said, and she grabbed his hand, tugged gently. His feet and legs moved of their own accord, lifted him to standing, and followed as Wonda took short, slow steps toward the stairs that led up to street level.
He felt her hand, strongly gripping his own, felt safe, and let himself go blank again.
PART FOUR
24
I allowed myself to disappear. No, that’s a lie. I sought out self-nullification and I got more than I bargained for.
—Victor Eastmore’s Apology
29 May 1991
Amarillo, The Republic of Texas
Elena drove along Amarillo’s dusty streets, keeping an eye out for Corps while a rock ballad blasted from her car’s speakers. She sang along.
“Get out of my way. It’s only temporary. Don’t you want to see me happy? Maybe I’ll come back someday.”
She drove slowly past the town’s central plaza and waved at one of the Puros working the vegetable stand, a volunteer, strictly secular, meaning he wouldn’t be much use in a street fight.
The conflict across the Republic of Texas was as bad as it had ever been. Everybody knew the Corps were winning. They were better armed and their numbers were bolstered by fresh faces from the Organized Western States, courtesy of the King of Las Vegas.
Worse was the fact that the Puros counted on popular support, and people had started to say they just wished the conflict would go away, let them have their way, and it’s an unwinnable fight, so why not give up?
Elena thought all that was nonsense. If they let the Corps have their way… Doom and gloom didn’t begin to describe how bad the situation could get. Stims were appearing in more and more products: soft drinks, edibles, little vapor-filled tubes you stuck in your mouth and then sucked to get a dose of stims direct to your lungs without the hassle of smoking from a pipe. Pretty soon half the town would be hooked with no one the wiser. Sure they could read the ingredients on product labels. It was an open secret. But nobody seemed to care, except the Puros. Regular folk should be vigilant, they should be concerned, but they weren’t.
The lessons of the Communion Crisis—singed so deep into the collective unconscious of the Republic of Texas—when the people rose up against the church’s mind-controlling poisons and won—seemed to be fading. That was natural, Elena supposed, since no one alive had lived through it. It seemed odd, though, that in the few years since she’d lived in Amarillo there had been such an about-face. This was different, people said. The church was controlling us, tricking us. No one was to blame for stims except the people who decided to do them or who couldn’t be bothered to pay attention.
But they’re addictive, she would say.
You beat them, didn’t you?
I had help.
People find help if they want it.
And on and on and back and forth, and no one changed their minds, and the problem got worse and worse.
Elena parked in the driveway of the Baldwin Street house. As she walked to the front door, she pushed back her shoulders and lifted her chin. She had quit stims, and now she would fight to help other people get off them too. No matter how difficult the situation, she had the right idea, and she was following through on it. The Corps couldn’t take away her pride.
She opened the door and stepped into the hallway. Xavi, the Amarillo Puros’ chief, sat in the dining room, talking to a burly man. She recognized him instantly. They were both leaning back in their chairs, which weren’t made of wood—they were plastic or some other material grown from algae. It was weird she was thinking about that, but she supposed it was better than thinking about why the man sitting at the dinner table, looking at her with eyes like sharp little arrowheads, was Tosh.
“Hi there, tough girl,” Tosh said.
Elena pointed at Tosh and then pointed at the front door. “Out!”
He rose smoothly, face grave, cracked his knuckles theatrically, and tossed a bemused expression at Xavi. “See you again soon,” he said.
She watched as Tosh moved slowly around the dining table, pressing her buttons with his faux-calm demeanor. He held the front door open for her. “How about a walk?”
She balled her fists, ready to shout for him to get the shocks out.
He said, “It’s about your fa.”
She breathed out, deflated. Tosh was good at those gut punches. After a moment, she walked past him down the steps and into the front yard, once again outmaneuvered.
Elena removed a couple hairpins, smoothed her hair, and let it fall across her shoulders to hide the orange diamond tattoo she’d just had inked. It throbbed like a bad sunburn. She’d gone in to get a scartoo inked where the MeshTracker had been removed from her calf and, while she waited for the artist to finish a guy who wept and cursed while getting a rose around his nipple inked, she decided that she needed something more to mark her fresh start. The back of the neck was the perfect spot, visible when it didn’t matter, hidden when it needed to be. The diamond represented the four points of purity—humility, resilience, hope, and determination. To the Corps, the same diamond looked like a bull’s-eye.
“Are we not safe walking here?” he asked, waving at the two-story homes lining the street with their fenced-in yards and barred windows.
“Safe as anywhere.” The streets lacked sidewalks, one of a dozen signs they were farther from civilization than it might first appear. The culverts, clogged with dirt and leaves, created fertile berms for grasses and shrubs. Though rain was scarce, when a big storm did roll through, often the yards would flood and take a day or two to dry out. Many homeowners had dug little moats around their properties. It was nothing like the large-scale, precision hydrological engineering of New Venice, but it worked in a bootstrap kind of way, a desperate yet practical homespun innovation.
Tosh didn’t say anything as they walked, so Elena had to try to coax his lies and exaggerations free. “Tell me what you came here to tell me and then leave me alone.”
He smiled broadly and said, “You sound just like Victor.”
His teeth, white and straight and likely artificial, gleamed. Elena wished she knew how to defuse the aggressive pleasure he derived from annoying her.
“You know, a lot has happened since you left New Venice,” Tosh said. “Victor finally got the data egg open again.”
She halted mid-step. “Say what?” If he’d actually found proof that Karine poisoned Jefferson, there was no telling what Victor would do.
“The cat is out of the bag. He’s taking it well. Only goes blank for a week at a time. I don’t mind. He’s so agreeable when his mind’s not there.” Tosh smiled again. There was no mistaking the sexual innuendo in his voice.
“You’re a pig,” she said.
“Guilty.” He sounded delighted with himself.
“Was it Karine?” Elena asked.
Tosh winked at her, then began strolling forward. Elena hustled to catch up.
“Well?” she asked.
“You should ask him yourself. He’s full of secrets. He’s not blabbing much to anyone else, even when he’s blank, but I’ve been persuasive. One of the little gems he’d kept to himself is what’s hidden in that kennel.”
Elena remembered the long journey to Amarillo, how Victor had come up empty in his search of the Lone Star Kennel. He’d stopped there again on their way out of town, though she’d barely noticed—she’d been such a mess, stim withdrawal making her squirm and lash out. What did Victor know about the kennel that he hadn’t told her? Her fa still worked there—was he in danger?
They reached a small park at the end of the street, a patchwork of green shoots and reddish dirt. A hoard of ants scurried on the ground underneath a picnic table, swarming over what looked like a chicken bone.
She wouldn’t give Tosh the satisfaction of begging for information. He’d come here to tell her something. He’d get to it eventually, whether she groveled or not.
Tosh grinned. “Tough girl. I like it,” he said, sitting on the picnic table. “Now if you’ll recall, the mercs that showed up to guard the kennel were working for BioScan. They were Corps. Not anymore. Working for BioScan, yes, but these new mercs are independent. Karine made a mistake that has now been corrected. Unfortunately, the swap limits my access.”
Access, that’s what Tosh wanted. Elena’s father could help. But that was sure to lead to trouble. The question was, what kind? “What does Karine want with the kennel?”
