Star Sailors

by James McNaughton

  The horrible unjustness of the class divisions rang deep. She wanted to shout again, like she had in Chaos.

  ‘I think we should keep ahead of that lot, sir,’ said the driver.

  ‘Yes,’ Jeremiah said, turning back from the rear window. ‘Absolutely.’

  The driver sped up a little, as much as the scattered Outers waiting on the road allowed.

  She asked Jeremiah with her eyes: Are we safe?

  He squeezed her hand and looked ahead, where a knot of chanting protestors waited to be swept up into the main demonstration. More Outers streamed in from a side street and out of a large apartment building. Not too many but enough to slow progress. The taxi was slapped again. And again. In a moment they were surrounded.

  The large bodies pressed all around dimmed the light. Karen had the sensation of being deep underwater, in a frail steel shell being crushed by the towering weight of the ocean. It became hard to breath. The driver maintained a resolute crawl, beep-beeping politely. Thumps on the roof became a barrage that shrank her into her seat. The bonnet was hammered. A man rapped on Karen’s window and tried the door. A total stranger this time. She couldn’t look at him. He tried the driver’s door. He cursed with frustration.

  She closed her eyes. Perhaps it would be just, she thought, if we were pulled out into the street and slapped and shamed. As an offering to the drowned and their families. Part of her wanted that, to be forgiven or condemned by her people. To be over with it all. Absolved.

  The demonstrators yelled at the driver, pulled at his door, pounded on his window. She held her finger on the internal lock. The Outers’ escalating anger changed them. They had become predators and everyone in the taxi was prey. She would be hauled out, pulled this way and that, by the limbs, the hair, the clothes. Stripped. Raped. Even Jeremiah couldn’t save her then. Inhuman symbols of privilege, they would be tossed and battered and abused until the release of death.

  Mandela, she thought. Orphaned.

  It was too much. She opened her bag for another happy pill. But her eyes were teary and her hands shook violently; she felt blindly, rummaged around for the plastic tube. ‘Oh.’

  Jeremiah removed his seatbelt, moved close and wrapped his arms around her. She surrendered to his strength, bowed her head into his neck and wept.

  Thump. Thump. Thump. A heavy object on the roof. An ugly cheer went up. The pills in Karen’s handbag came finally to her fingers. The driver cursed, swerved, sat on the horn and accelerated to a walking pace. Voices rose in outrage and light returned. They had broken free. The pill came to her lips. She held it there, uncertain if it was still necessary.

  ‘About time,’ Jeremiah muttered.

  Armed police in black body armour and helmets appeared, their sponsors’ logos incongruously bright against the black of their uniforms. They gesticulated violently as they shouted at the crowd to let the taxi through, but there was a calmness about them, nevertheless, as if it was a common situation. The road ahead cleared enough. The driver cracked his window and stopped. A policeman bent over to hear above the din.

  ‘Look what they did to my roof!’

  ‘File a damage report! Where are you going?’

  ‘The Beach.’

  ‘Nearly there. You’ll be escorted.’

  Four policemen stayed with the taxi, weapons drawn, walking slowly, one at each wheel. They were booed. Karen felt the crowd’s size. It was much bigger than she could see, vast and powerful in an elemental way. The police were like guardian angels parting a sea. Four pillars of light. How could they ever be repaid?

  The happy pill sat between her lips. She hesitated. On one hand she suspected they fatally exacerbated her state of semi-paralysis since moving to the Mount, but on the other they made the paralysis bearable. They weren’t at the Beach yet. There was still a way to go. The crowd would have to be faced when they got out of the taxi. This, she told herself, as she swallowed, is the last one.

  Jeremiah released her from the protection of his arms and straightened up. He nodded at the policeman walking beside Karen’s door. ‘They do a hell of a job.’ His voice cracked. That meant something. He never showed weakness or fear. The situation really had been horrific. The extra pill was vindicated.

  A minute later, Karen took her heels off, unlocked her door and leapt out into a wall of noise.

  The functionality of Berhampore Beach’s still unfinished concrete concourse had surprised her. This was the luxury the Outers were so jealous of? Glossy elderly walked on knobbled feet through puddles of dubious origin; the aroma of fried food and other alternatives not permitted in the dome hung in the air along with the sharp tang of bleaching products. The clamour of the demonstration rang clearly.

  The ultralight—it no longer felt right. The demonstration had changed things. She knew that the happy pill she took in the taxi would change things again soon, but the ultralight would remain unwearable, whatever happened.

  Jeremiah hugged her. ‘You okay?’

  ‘Yeah, that surprised me a bit. The hate, you know.’

  He kissed her head and checked the screen on his forearm. ‘We’re actually doing alright for time.’ He looked concerned, but she knew he’d found the run from the taxi exhilarating, as if they’d been caught in rain between cafés after a drought. The police line had removed any actual danger and therefore any problem. Having attended to her, he twisted his torso, jogged on the spot and shook out his fingers. That was how he responded to strong emotions; not like they were a root to the world, but water to be shaken off.

  ‘You run on,’ she told him. ‘I’ll grab a soft drink. See you on the other side.’

  According to her screen she had $47 left on her credit account until Jeremiah got paid. There was some wiggle room, though, as debits took a while to register and the ultralight she bought at Chaos might not have been deducted yet. Being declined was a revolting prospect, but she was desperate. There was no other option but to try. She steeled herself as she approached the grossly overpriced swimsuit kiosk. Her hands shook as she picked out a sensible mid-range one-piece. The girl at the counter smiled as Karen punched in the security code on her screen to admit the debit order. They waited. Karen clenched her hand into a fist to hide the shaking and looked at the floor. Outside, the demonstration continued loudly.

  Denied due to insufficient funds.

  Of course. It had been ridiculous to try and Karen regretted her stupidity. As she turned away in embarrassment, the girl asked if she’d like a hire-suit.

  ‘Christ,’ Karen said, lifting her eyes from the floor. ‘No. I never wear secondhand togs or underwear.’

  The girl looked hopeful. ‘We have a super-special on ultralights?’

  Jeremiah stretches his biceps, shakes out some tension. Time really is getting on and he hopes Karen doesn’t take much longer in the changing room. He swaps his towel to the other hand and twitches his pecs.

  The day has been long already. He was woken around two by her cat’s crying, and then, after finally returning to sleep, after worrying about the meeting with Mr Peters for hours, he had stood in cold runny shit in the hallway. Appallingly, it had squeezed right up between his toes in a sensation that returns unbidden to him now, like a phantom itch. He shakes it off. Karen had refused to help. Not only that, but she’d said something strange—while he sat on the toilet and she stood in the bathroom doorway in her sleeping T-shirt—something strange that he’s returned to a couple of times in his mind already this morning: ‘If there was any justice in this world, corporate lawyers would stand in runny cat shit every morning.’ He wonders where that came from.

  And before that enigmatic pronouncement from his wife, when he’d finally got to sleep in the wee hours, he’d dreamed of a large country house in the Golden Gate, only minutes from Masterton. The promotion had come through. The villa was massive, with a large top-floor balcony which featured a telescope, like a picture he’d seen in House & Garden. He’d looked up from a phalanx of fat tomatoes and seen the te
lescope on the top balcony, like a flag triumphantly claiming the sky. It was significant. A sign.

  And then the house, with its full acre garden, was surrounded by an impenetrable forest of commercial corn stretching in all directions as far as the eye could see. It dimmed the sun. It muted sound. It was dark and diseased. He felt uneasy. Drums began to beat and distant tops began to quiver, marking the approach of Venture Group’s CEO. And as the crack of breaking stalks rang out like shots and the slow drums sounded louder and louder and Jeremiah had sunk to his knees to receive Mr Klotch’s blessing, Mandela had walked into their bedroom with his sore tummy.

  Shit, what a morning, he thinks, swapping the towel to his other hand and back again. He’d then had to carry Mandela to Plearn. Just the flu, he tells himself, as he activates the complimentary waterproof and camera-less transfer screen stuck to his forearm, which had been exchanged for his own screen when they entered the dome. It’ll be good to catch the Venture Group news bulletin in the event that Mr Peters wants to discuss it over lunch.

  Saturday, 23 August 2045: Auckland is flooding, the Christchurch drought drags into its third year, and Wellington is experiencing its 177th gale and 38th airport closure for the year. Jeremiah breathes deeply; the still air in the dome is a real treat. Moving the capital’s airport north into the Wairarapa and the wind shelter provided by the Tararua Range has been mooted again. ‘Inevitable,’ Jeremiah mutters.

  Venture Group has built a private airport there for its private suborbital spacecraft. The Very Fast Plane, as it’s called, transports passengers to San Francisco in 90 minutes. For face-to-face meetings, Wellington is closer to California than New York is by conventional jet. Much closer now, given the rigour of US airport security after the Denver dirty nuke bombing. The US government’s subsequent extreme surveillance crackdown and kneejerk termination of civil liberties, combined with growing civil unrest, has created an exodus of Silicon Valley types to New Zealand, bringing mountains of capital. They’re joining the steady stream of elites who have been coming for years due to the never-ending California drought. On top of that, flooding’s dropped the bottom out of New York, and the mid-west is tornado central. Whatever their reason for coming to New Zealand, elites are willing to pay three million US dollars for residency. Australians pay that too, despite the special relationship. Only Pasifika climate change refugees get in for free. Funny that, thinks Jeremiah. The visa revenue is supposed to go into climate change adaptation, but it’s also being channelled into social services. Jeremiah stokes some of the annoyance he hears expressed at work against Prime Minister Siolo’s desire for continued free health and education in New Zealand. You can’t punish your contributors with that kind of visa fee, he hears Mr Gully say about his new foreign colleagues; it’s the withdrawers who should be punished.

  Jeremiah selects audio and his mind wanders during the updates on the Indian, Chinese and Indonesian crises. Vulnerable and volatile countries at the best of times, the effects of climate change on their highly populated rural areas has been catastrophic. Repeated crop failures and constant water shortages, diminished fisheries due to ocean acidification, pollution and over-fishing, along with multiple independence movements, has stirred up massive civil unrest. The Middle East drought and water shortages have only added fuel to the ongoing fire there. Tens of thousands of water refugees continue to leave Sub-Saharan Africa weekly. Three billion people worldwide face clean water scarcity. Refugees and immigrants are rioting. Letting off bombs. For Jeremiah, the scale of the disasters unfolding in Asia and North Africa is hard to fathom. At least some of Europe’s problems are on a scale he can visualise. It helps that the cities look familiar. Heatwaves, fires, water shortages, cholera and typhus outbreaks in First World countries are much more likely to touch him. Out of all the unreality there will come an image that aches, like the image of a lost child in a bomb-shattered street. He selects more European news.

  More outbreaks of malaria, dengue and yellow fever on the back of explosive insect growth. Scandinavia defending its borders against refugees from failing states in Southern Europe. The term ‘failed continent’ was recently coined. Jeremiah knows more about this stuff than most, that declaring states ‘failed’ removes a lot of red tape for transnational business, for better or worse, so he forwards to Local Business.

  The local market continues to respond positively to events overseas. Tourism is at a record high, immigration applications to New Zealand went up 19 per cent in the last quarter (could the residency visa be underpriced?) and house prices went up 17 per cent nationwide, which means their little flat inside the Wall will have gone up substantially more. Jeremiah clenches his fist. ‘Yes.’ Stocks, shares and commodities, he knows. As he refreshes the local newsfeed, he wishes he’d brought a banana with him, one of the straight German ones he likes.

  An armed man was shot in the early hours while trying to scale the Wall in southern Hataitai with a rope. He is yet to be named. ‘Got you,’ Jeremiah says. No one tries to get over the Wall where it protects Mount Victoria any more, but a few criminals still try at its outer reaches, where it gathers in Evans Bay and Hataitai. A 77-year-old man was killed by a car in Roxburgh Street, Wellington (people of a certain age tend to forget that cars are electric). He wonders if the dead man is a corporate law manager from Venture Group, thereby clearing space for a line of promotions.

  The prime minister is in China apologising for a lapsed registration. Don’t bother coming back, Jeremiah thinks. While quality assurance is being described by the Chinese ambassador as particularly important throughout the duration of China’s Mass Relocation Project, Jeremiah refreshes World News.

  Another oil rig in Antarctica with extensive storm damage. Then something new: the Gulf Stream is slowing and may stop, or veer east, to Spain due to fresh water from Greenland’s melting ice stopping thermohaline circulation in the northern Atlantic. A scientist says it’s a good thing if the conveyor belt of warm water from the Gulf of Mexico stops, because it will drop temperatures in Europe and the Atlantic Seaboard by at least a degree, back to 2020 levels at the very minimum. Another scientist says the demise of the Gulf Stream will result in a catastrophic drop in temperature and the end of precipitation and agriculture in Europe. Europe will no longer be viable. The Gulf of Mexico will become a superhot whirlpool from which mega-hurricanes are catapulted all the way through the northern latitudes of the US and beyond, through Canada to the Arctic Circle, with each storm costing millions and taking hundreds or thousands of lives. The presenter concludes that the Gulf Stream does not have any direct influence on New Zealand’s weather. Yes, Jeremiah thinks. Clean and Green. He breathes deeply the oxygen-rich air. The best place on Earth.

  The white bathrobes hanging in the centre of the changing room say nothing. Of course not. But it seems increasingly likely to Karen to be a decision they have come to, a vow of silence. ‘May I?’ One silently assents. She feels his hem; it’s terrycloth, like the towel she’s wrapped in. A luxurious silent order. Perhaps a confession would lighten the load? No—not Malcolm, not now. How about a complaint? It can be transmitted by thought through the robe’s hem.

  I had to give up my career when we moved onto the Mount, she tells the monk silently, and yet my sacrifice hasn’t registered on my husband. He hasn’t even noticed, Father. In fact, no one has noticed. Life goes on as usual for my ex-colleagues outside the Wall, while I’ve lost my voice and my purpose. Father, I’m frightened. And right now… the ultralight.

  The monk communicates through the terrycloth in her fingertips: I am the key to protecting your modesty.

  She nods and closes her eyes. ‘Thank you, Father.’

  It feels like she’s been in the changing room for hours. She opens her eyes.

  There’s an old woman on the bench opposite, twenty metres away, rested against a locker. On the locker screens around her, a yellow flower opens up in time-lapse motion. Karen steps back from the robes and runs her hand through her hair. Didn’t he
ar a thing, she thinks. The cocktail of pills I’ve taken. I need to come down—now.

  She peeps through the hanging robes. The old woman is topless. Staring into space, taking a minute. Her large balloon-like breasts, flickering in light from the muted screens, are obviously recent implants of an inexpensive kind; elsewhere, her skin is loose, mottled and blotchy, particularly where it’s bunched at the throat—she’s let herself go. Karen’s displeased by the woman’s thick and glossy Permahair, which has been cut exactly like her own, though brown in colour rather than black. It suggests they share disrepair as well as taste.

  It’s odd to see one of the super-elderly like this, alone and vulnerable. They’re usually immaculate, in imperious clusters, protected by bodyguards at VIP tables in the Mount’s very best restaurants and cafés. Could this one be falling? Isolated?

  Karen knows she’ll probably end up becoming super-elderly herself, because everyone with money takes Negligible Senescence Treatment, but she’s certain she won’t end up a Crocodile. For one thing, the technology is much better now. The super-elderly are a different species. They began NST with procedures currently considered dangerous or counterproductive, and to make up for deficiencies they’ve become voracious consumers of all kinds of radical new non-certified techniques. The blood of virgins is one rumour. Another is that they’re all driven to sadomasochism out of overfamiliarity with straight sex. Whatever they are, Karen thinks, they’re not the serene repositories of knowledge and wisdom the media describe them as, and as they have themselves portrayed in popular culture. No, the super-elderly are just creepy and selfish, hanging on to their power and position at any cost. Karen turns away in disgust.

  The old woman moans.

  Karen looks. The old woman hasn’t moved. The black eyes in her doughy face don’t blink. A trance. She’s a Croc for sure, 100–120 plus, lost in one of the reveries they’re infamous for, a side effect of NST when some incident from their past poleaxes them. Karen can examine the woman openly.