Strange Trades

by Paul Di Filippo

  Hodder elevated one eyebrow, but refrained from comment. He dug out the proper ampoule and shot me up.

  “Beer?” he said.

  I had forgotten it was afternoon. The thought turned my empty stomach. “No thanks. I’ll take a coffee, though, if you’ve got any.”

  Heating water on a single electric burner, he made a Melita single cup. When I had it in hand, he couldn’t contain his curiosity any longer.

  “All our people are clean, you know.”

  “I know,” I said.

  “And anyway, I thought you and Holly—”

  “Don’t bring that up, okay?”

  “Well, excuse my big nose, but when our beloved leader comes in looking to have his T-cells goosed, one does feel one’s interest being piqued.”

  I told Hodder what had happened.

  He looked down into his beer for something cogent to say. I doubted there were any answers there that weren’t in my coffee cup.

  “You don’t feel that might have been, ah, a tactical error?”

  “Tactical? Who was thinking tactics? I’m trying to treat these people as decently as I can, within the limits of my mission here. I’m not a general, I’m a straw boss. If decency includes having some honest human feelings for one of them and responding to those feelings, then where does that leave me?”

  “Can’t say. Just looks like trouble maybe down the line.”

  “That, I realize.”

  Hodder got to his feet. “Well, if you feel the need to have any more of these little chats with ol’ Doc Hodder—don’t hesitate to go elsewhere.”

  “Thanks heaps.”

  I went back to my trailer.

  Kerry Drucker was waiting there. He looked like a big goofy puppy. His metagraphix tie of yesterday had been replaced with a black and white one that looked like an enormous bar code. He was the last person I needed to see.

  “Can we talk a minute?” he asked.

  “Sure,” I sighed.

  Inside, I spotted a fresh printout lying in the tray of my metamedium node. I picked it up and scanned it while Drucker talked.

  “Those squatters, they’re too much, aren’t they? I’ve never seen anything like them. How can they live like that? Don’t they know they could have a decent life just by asking? That’s what government’s for, it’s what we’re trying to do here, if only they’d get out of the way. Why would a person choose that kind of existence? Are they scared of the government? I don’t see why anyone should be. We’ve only got their best interests at heart.…”

  I don’t know why I told him. It was just something to say in order to shut up his stupid middle-class babble.

  “Well, they won’t be around much longer. This is their pickup order. As soon as I sign it, the Guard will schedule a bus for next week to take them up to Dutchess County.” Fitting action to words, I picked up a pen, signed the order, and ran it through the scanner.

  “There, it’s done.”

  “Good. Now maybe we can get back on schedule. That reminds me…”

  He launched into a discussion of what had originally brought him by.

  When I was alone again, I decided to take a little trip.

  Hypertext always makes me dizzy. I guess you have to grow up with it to really be in sync with the notion of a completely free- form datastructure. All I know is that I feel old-fashioned whenever I dive into it. But sometimes there’s just no avoiding it.

  I started out with the entry for “bricoleur” in the online Brittanica. Jumping from keyword to keyword in the kind of intuitive hunt I’ve found works best for me, I traversed dozens of linked texts, skittered across a handful of disciplines, piecing together a deeper understanding of the role of these scavenger-survivors across history and the human continuum.

  I ended up in Levi-Strauss. Turned out he was the originator of the word. Fascinating guy. A lot of what I read was over my head, but I emerged with the certainty that my flash last night had been on target.

  What was even more fascinating was how many patents had been filed over the past decade by bricoleur-types. I watched the figures graph themselves onto the screen. A myriad of mini-im- provements—nothing revolutionary, true, but lots of stuff crucial to a smoother functioning of society—had first been developed by this growing subclass of people, operating out of intuition, necessity, and the improved access to information offered by the metamedium. Just the contribution of Perkins’s millepore material alone, which could filter all harmful organisms out of drinking water, was incalculable. And Perkins, I discovered, had come out of a group very similar to Sledge’s.

  Sledge and his people were true bricoleurs, a subculture seemingly essential to the smooth functioning of any society.

  And I was sentencing them to cultural extinction.

  And also dooming something vital, perhaps, in the mainstream culture along with them…?

  I had my orders from Mama Cass. There wasn’t any way out. Cultures got flattened everyday all around the world, under the steamroller of consensus reality, for the good of the majority. But mankind went on. Somehow.

  I wanted to visit Sledge and his Bricks again, especially to see Zora. But at the same time, feeling like the hypocrite I knew I was, I wanted to stay away.

  I postponed the decision by cleaning up my office paperwork.

  There was a memo from the folks at Caterpillar, explaining the delay in delivering some heavy equipment. Automation Alley was pressed to the limits of their capacity now. It was hard to remember when they had been the Rust Belt. We could manage without the new machines for a while longer. Not so with the lack of cement. National production of that product was insufficient for all the work being done on the country’s infrastructure. We were ready to start pouring, and I had to have my shipments.

  I got on the phone and called someone. I won’t say who, except to mention that they had been present on every New York construction site since the Dutch had built their wall on Wall Street to keep the Indians out. I wasn’t proud of dealing with them, but on the other hand, I had a schedule to meet.

  He who sups with the Devil must use a long spoon.

  But the Devil’s acid broth melts it a little shorter each time.

  Finally there came a point where the backlog of nodework was cleared away, and I had no more excuses to stay in.

  So I went out.

  The warehouse where they had found the toxic waste was down now. So were the three or four other buildings that had been left in that sector. Five crews—Gold, Topaz, Blue, Emerald, and Black—had converged under my orders, and made short work of the remaining demolition. Now, only the brownstone retrofitted with miscellaneous improvements by the Bricks remained standing, a temporary survivor in the war of cultures.

  At last, I thought, the whole site was nearly cleared. Already in the northern quadrants crews were driving piles and knocking together the forms used to pour the foundations of the residences, businesses, civic centers, theaters, and stores that would soon swiftly blossom like time-lapse flowers. Society, more than nature, abhors a vacuum. I could feel the incipient tension that the clearing of the ghetto acreage had caused. It quivered like water lipping a too-full glass, or, more exactly, like the formless but energy-dense void of the early universe, awaiting whatever precipitated the Big Bang.

  Dust hung over the sweating crew members in the dusk as they clustered in the thick, fading heat around the water coolers, joking, laughing, planning the night’s relaxations. A last truck rumbled off, bearing a heap of crushed bricks and timbers.

  I was surprised to see that a lot of Sledge’s people were mixing with mine. At first I thought that they were just after our water; it was the one thing their home lacked. But then I realized that their sociability was unfeigned. The motley squatters—unwashed, skinny, tough as leather—and my homogenous crewmembers—neat even while sweaty, well-fed, pampered—were getting on famously, like Hong Kong and China.

  Not spotting Holly, I asked for her. Behind the Bricks’ house was the
reply. And that tacit acknowledgement that the brownstone was now someone’s property came from one of my own people.

  I felt something slipping dangerously out of my hands.

  Holly stood next to Sledge, Zora and a couple of others, Goldies and Bricks. A few feet farther off was Runt. Half of his face was laughing. (The dead half, I had learned last night from Zora, was neurological damage, the result of a bad batch of designer PCP analogue.)

  Holly spotted me. “Mike, hello! I owe you a beer. You were right about that hose. I was going to send for a mechanic, but Runt patched it up real good.”

  The repaired compliant trundled toward Sledge’s group. I wondered why it was still powered up.

  Then I wondered who was gloving it.

  It was Runt.

  He brought his arm down. The compliant reached for Zora. She squealed, stepped back, then was wrapped with a pneumatic arm that could crush masonry.

  Holly blanched. I saw as if through a shimmering haze.

  “Runt!” I yelled, although I knew I didn’t want to spook him.

  He paused. Zora hung six feet up in the air, pushing with both hands against the coiled embrace of the compliant. It seemed she didn’t have breath enough to speak.

  I tried to be calm. “Runt, slow now. Set her down slowly and uncurl your fingers.”

  He couldn’t figure out yet why we were so worried. “Sure, man, sure, no prob.”

  He thudded Zora clumsily back to earth, then opened his hand. Zora staggered out.

  I was beside her then, Runt too, finally realizing what he had done. “Are you okay?” I asked.

  Zora gulped and nodded. “Just—just knocked the wind out of me.”

  Runt was half-crying. “Hey, Zora, I didn’t know. I didn’t mean nothing. Honest, you know me, always a dumb joker. Here, look.” He stripped off the glove and tossed it to the ground.

  “It’s not your fault,” I said. I looked at Holly. Her tanned face was still drained of blood. Four parallel finger tracks stood out on her neck. “I’ll talk to you later, Noonan. Right now though I want to speak privately with Sledge—if it’s okay with him.”

  The leader of the Bricks had stood impassively by during the incident, as if realizing that the responsibility lay within my dominion, not his, and willing to let me handle it.

  “Yeah, sure, it’s cool. Let’s walk.”

  We moved off. After a few steps, Cassiopeia was the only witness to our conversation.

  “Your people seem to be taking well to mine,” I said.

  “And your folks’re cottonin’ to mine. But that’s how I expected it to go. You see, my people, they don’t want much. They just can’t stand to live in no institutions. They don’t want no handouts or charity. All they ask is to pick through what society don’t want, and put it to their own use. I think your people respect that, being self-reliant and all.”

  “But aren’t you worried—” I began.

  “Worry! Ain’t got no time for worry. Look, Mike, we should both be very happy. Been plenty of times before, when two tribes met, when things didn’t go so peacefully as they are now.”

  He managed to surprise me with the analogy. “Is that how you really see it, as two tribes running into each other?”

  “Sure. Don’t you? Look, you guys come into the city jungle, clearin’ it away like some Brazilians in the Amazon, and you bound to run into some natives. Chances are, some of your folks maybe even go native on you. After all, you guys may be from a bigger, richer society, but you still just a tribe.” He gave me a gap-toothed smile. “But I know you ain’t gonna be like no exploiters, you gonna treat us with the dignity we deserve, and help us keep our little piece of land.”

  I shifted the topic slightly. “If we’re enacting the meeting of two tribes, what does that make us?”

  “We’re the chiefs, Mike. Two headmen. Got all of the work and none of the fun, all of the grief and none of the kicks.”

  I couldn’t say anything because I knew he was right.

  We started to circle back to the others in silence. Then Sledge spoke.

  “When two tribes meet, then you gonna see that old exogamy in action, I figure.”

  Again he had managed to startle me, the clinical term sounding utterly foreign coming from his lips. I reminded myself not to underestimate this man.

  “Yeah,” Sledge continued, “I bet you enjoyed your ol’ piece of exogamy with Zora last night. She’s one hell of a lady. But that’s cool, that’s cool, exogamy is for bindin’ the tribes together. That’s why I hope you don’t mind me and Holly gettin’ it on. It’s a fair trade, she can really crank that little thing of hers. Girl go down faster ’n Drano.”

  Four tracks on her neck.…

  I swung on him.

  He caught my wrist and there was a knife at my throat.

  “You a big man, Mike. But not that big.”

  The knife disappeared. My wrist was freed.

  “Let’s drop this shit, okay? Won’t do for the others to see us rumblin’.”

  He turned his back on me and walked off.

  And once again he was right, and knew I knew it.

  6.

  Like four slabs of ferrocrete settling on my back, four days passed.

  A lot happened.

  Nothing happened.

  I took delivery on five hundred tailored London plane trees: biofabbed mycorrhizae on the roots to fight disease and help extract nutrients, increase CO2 uptake, and heighten resistance to pollutants. We were going to landscape as we went, leaving arcades of greenery behind us.

  Con Ed sent some people over to help lay the superconducting cable that would carry power throughout the new development. Skeptical at first that my people could manage, the outsiders soon changed their tune. It’s amazing what the average eighteen-year-old can do, given half a chance.

  My cement began to arrive, the new fast-cure mix. It came in a procession of rumbling, revolving trucks, all driven by guys named Guido. I hoped the bodies in the mix—literal or metaphorical—wouldn’t make for weak foundations.

  Atop the Bricks’ squat, a windmill sprouted, its eggbeater blades clattering noisily night and day in the stiff breezes the open site promoted. Freed from dependence on the limiting fuel cells, the Bricks added more lights, and at night the building blazed like a carnival attraction, topped by its busy pinwheel.

  Also on the roof they built a rainwater catchment, of the kind found on many Caribbean islands. To supplement this source of water, the Bricks scavenged a dozen plastic fifty-gallon drums, which they endeavored to keep filled. I looked the other way when Holly sent our water tanker over.

  Each night in bed, after our lovemaking, Zora would whisper to me the new improvements they had made that day, always ending on the same note.

  “You think we’re doing good, Mike? You gonna help us, right?”

  I said things she could interpret as she wanted.

  I have always loved the wild and the strange. Sometimes I think that’s all my altruism, my career of “selfless” helping comes down to: a desire to plunge into alien cultures and environments. I offer the notion not as excuse or indictment, palliation or breast-beating, but simply as an insight, won at some cost.

  The whole affair began to remind me of something that had happened in the city about fifteen years ago. A communal group that called itself the Purple Family had taken over an abandoned waste-strewn lot and remade it into a beautiful garden. Then the original absentee owners had come to reclaim it, uprooting all that had been planted. For a few years thereafter, at random intervals, painted purple footprints had appeared all over the city sidewalks, as if a silent, accusing phantom stalked the streets.

  I couldn’t help speaking to Holly. I managed to keep my voice official, to show neither favoritism nor vindictiveness. Even the upbraiding I gave her for allowing Runt to factor the compliant was strictly professional. She responded at first with hurt incomprehension, then adopted my own cool demeanor. Where we had once had a warm and wordless
bond, it was now like two icicles rubbing together.

  I found compensation in Zora.

  I gathered Holly found hers in Sledge.

  But what would happen to all of us in a few days, I could not say.

  At the end of the fourth day I got a visit from Mama Cass. Only she didn’t really come in person, and it wasn’t really her.

  At that time in their development, metamedium nodes had no holo output or audiovisual input. It was still a medium of mice and keyboards and monitors, uninhabited by autonomous agents. But there did exist rather simple personal programs that would route a simulation of the owner’s face, along with a message, to any node at a preselected time. They were useful as prompts and reminders.

  It was around noon that day when Mama Cass’s face lit up my screen, interrupting my scheduling work. She had given her image an eyepatch of jeweled copper. Aside from that, it was true to life.

  “Mike,” said the simulacrum, “I’m sorry I haven’t been around lately, but things have been crazy. I’ll be in Washington for the week, speaking at the Senate hearings. I saw that you signed the transportation orders on those squatters. Don’t let the date slip any further. Catch you later.”

  Plasma pixels pulsed off.

  The ghost’s ultimatum left me feeling even further boxed in.

  That afternoon, Holly came to my trailer unbidden.

  Wiping her sweaty face with a bandana (One of Sledge’s? The one Zora had worn that night as a bandeau top? Why should I care?) she looked directly at me with a concentrated distance, as if a chasm only a foot wide but miles deep separated us.

  “The Bricks are throwing a nova party tonight. Just decided. They’ve invited me and my crew. Figured I should check with you first. Are we allowed to go?”

  I thought hard. If I ordered my people not to go, they’d probably disobey anyway. As was their prerogative, being adults. I wasn’t running a summer camp here. No bed checks or curfews. Besides, what harm could come? In a few days, the Bricks would be gone, willingly or under the coercion of the National Guard, as others had already been taken. Then my problems would be over.

  “Sure. Why not?”