America Pacifica

by Anna North

  “Then we started hearing about the hurricanes in the Gulf, and people getting shot down at the Mexican border, and we started getting all these refugees from the north, from British Columbia where the ice was knocking out whole towns. We had seventy people living in Arete finally, in a house built for twenty. There were ten, fifteen people in every bedroom—even the two big communal sleeping rooms that the hard-core hippies liked were packed to the gills with people. And then the road closed, and we were all alone out there. The electricity went out, the gas went out, we were heating the house with wood and lighting it with candles. We had to feed all those people on just our five chickens and the vegetable greenhouse, and the cans in the pantry. That winter six kids got scurvy, and we had a full-on food riot—ten guys beat up the kitchen manager over two cans of corn.

  “That’s when Tyson showed up. He came from downtown, he said, and everyone there was talking about this volcanic island. It was uninhabited, and it was small, but you could build it out with landfill. Best of all, it was really, really warm. We could live there the way we used to—grilling hamburgers for lunch, going for a Sunday drive with the windows down. He even knew about this procedure for making fuel out of ocean bacteria—he wasn’t calling it solvent yet—and we could have electricity again. America Pacifica, he called it, and a lot of people were skeptical, but I knew right away that this was something big.

  “Tyson started showing us how it would all work, how we’d travel to the port and fit out the ship, how more people could follow after. He had contacts as far east as Denver, as far south as L.A. Our world had shrunk to the size of our crowded, dirty house, but he made it big again. But then Daniel started to pull back. He thought Tyson was moving too fast, he thought we needed more information. More than that, he thought the whole premise was wrong. He thought we could never go back to the way things were before. He said that living the way we used to—trying to shape the world rather than letting it shape us—he thought that was what got us into the Ice Age in the first place. He thought we needed to learn to live with the ice and snow, adapt to it. And he thought we could learn to do it; we just needed a little time.

  “I guess I should mention how much I was in love with him. I don’t know if you’ll know what I’m talking about, but sometimes you feel like no matter how close you get to someone it will never be enough. We’d been married three years and I was still hungry like that, every single day.

  “Anyway. Daniel started telling people the whole plan was flawed. He was saying we’d end up just as bad as we were now, if not worse. He said it looked like an easy way out, but really it wasn’t at all. People had always listened to Daniel; he was very inspiring. It started going around that there was going to be a vote—if Daniel won we’d stay, if Tyson did we’d go. Daniel wasn’t sleeping anymore—he spent every night making maps and plans. He had this theory that some places along the coast would be warmer than others, because of ocean currents or something. And he thought we could grow food more efficiently if we were willing to use our own shit for fertilizer. It was all he could talk about—all the changes we’d have to make, the new ways of doing things.

  “That’s when Tyson came to me. He had a different way about him from Daniel. He wasn’t handsome; he had this way of walking like he had some kind of injury he hadn’t quite recovered from—his arms all hanging funny from his shoulders. And when he talked to you he didn’t seem convincing. He had this weak voice, like there wasn’t enough air behind it. He said what Daniel was doing was going to be disastrous for all of us. He said almost certainly we would die—I already knew the temperature projections, but he told me anyway. He told me to imagine it, the food getting scarcer, the fights getting worse, people killing each other over the last leaf of cabbage. He told me that in situations like this, people often turn to cannibalism. And even if we didn’t die, even if we could make a life for ourselves in the snow and ice, did I really want that kind of life? Did I want to stay inside forever and raise kids who never got to see the sun? I asked him why he would come to me, of all people, and he said I was the only one who could stop Daniel.

  “At first I was angry. I almost hit Tyson. I was so offended that he’d try to turn me against my husband. But that night I didn’t tell Daniel what he said. I lay in our sleeping bag while Daniel wrote, and Tyson’s words just stuck like burrs in my brain. I lay there listening to the young people drinking and shouting, and the mothers singing to their children, and the children crying or talking in their sleep, and Daniel writing and writing, and I thought about what would happen if Daniel got his way. Tyson was right—most likely we would die. But death—death I couldn’t really imagine. What I could imagine was what would happen if we lived, how we’d start making accommodation after accommodation. We’d start thinking rickety bent-up legs were normal, we’d paint trees on the walls and pretend we were outside. We’d forget what apples looked like, how beef tasted. And I didn’t want that. I wanted my old life back, when I was a child and the days were warm, and I didn’t have to scrabble for every little thing. There was something else too. I didn’t want Daniel to become a leader. Ever since we met, we’d been so close; weeks went by sometimes when the only people we talked to were each other. I wanted him to be great, I’d always seen greatness in him, but then when all the people were listening to him, hanging on his words, I got jealous. I wanted to be his only audience—I didn’t want anyone else taking part of what used to be mine. So the next day I went to Tyson and I said, ‘What do I need to do?’

  “He knew just how to talk to me—no glee in his voice, no gloating. He put his hands on my shoulders and said, ‘You won’t regret this.’ And then he told me what to say.

  “The next three days I got myself on vitamin duty. I went around to all the little circles—there were couples bedded down in the bathtubs by this point, babies in the old washing machine—I went around handing out the last of our multis, one pill for grown-ups, half for the kids. I told everyone, ‘This is it, enjoy it. Pills like this, they’re going for a hundred dollars a pop now, and it’s only going up.’ Then I’d remind them about the vote. Daniel was planning for it day and night, I’d say, and then I’d tell them how methodical he was, how thorough. I’d say—and this part was a lie—that Daniel had made population calculations, that before his plan had a chance to work, one in three of us would probably starve. And I saw the mothers look at their children, the husbands look at their wives, the young people look down at their own shivery bodies, all of them thinking, One in three. Then I’d toss off something about Tyson, how his plan was too reckless and untested, and how no matter what, Daniel’s was better. By the end of the third day I saw how they all looked at Daniel differently—skeptical, peering. When he talked to our friends they started to look embarrassed, turn away. Daniel just worked harder, and I heard him whispering to himself at night, trying to find a way to get people back on board. During that time I felt incredibly tender toward him. I gave him my blankets and slept in just my parka; before the meeting I made him breakfast with the last of our ham. I told myself it would be easier for him when Tyson was in charge—he wouldn’t have to worry so much; he could sleep curled around me like he used to.

  “We had the meeting in the morning. I’d lost track of the time of day because it snowed so much, the light was always the same, but that day I knew it was early because we got a little sun, just for ten minutes or so, a little red dawn across the snow. I remember thinking, I’ll never see sunrise on icicles again, I’ll never see pine trees sparkling with ice. We hadn’t voted yet, but I already knew we were leaving.

  “At the meeting Tyson just stood up for a minute, but Daniel talked and talked. After we voted he wanted to have a revote—he said people hadn’t been listening. Tyson let him do it, but everyone voted the same. Then Daniel got up and walked out of the house.

  “It was way below zero that day, and we didn’t find him for a long time. He was huddled up against the menu at a broken-down fast-food place almost a mile aw
ay. His tears were frozen to his cheeks. We took him back and I stripped him down and crawled naked into our sleeping bag with him. While I was holding him and feeling him shiver back to life, I realized that I was as close to him as I wanted to be, and then I knew I didn’t love him anymore.

  “After that we started getting ready for the move, getting together provisions for the boat, stocking up on trash so we could start the landfilling. Daniel didn’t help with any of that. He started spending a lot of time with the orphan kids. We had a bunch of them, six or seven, kids whose parents couldn’t be bothered with them anymore and just dumped them on us. Schooling wasn’t too organized at that point, but he got them all together, from little Simone all the way up to Cricket, who was sixteen—”

  “Cricket Thomson?” Darcy finally interrupted.

  “That’s right. All those names on your list were protégés of his. Your mom too.”

  Yuka’s story changed shape in Darcy’s mind. Where before it had been populated by dim-faced strangers, now her mother’s face shone out of the crowded co-op rooms, the assembled masses lifting their hands to vote. Her face looked just like it had the day she disappeared, except smaller, and more hopeful, and bright as the clean ocean at the horizon. Her mother had never said anything to her about Daniel—all this was news to her.

  “Do you know why that would get them in trouble?”

  “No idea,” Yuka said. “Daniel and I weren’t talking much by that point. For all I know he was just teaching them their ABCs.”

  Darcy’s brain sputtered. What good was it to know about Yuka’s life, about Daniel? The story about Tyson was strange—it disturbed her a little that the Founder had built the whole island on a lie. But that had been so long ago, before Darcy was born, and it didn’t seem to have much to do with her.

  “Of course,” Yuka said, “it might help if I knew what you were looking for.”

  To tell her anything felt like giving something up, but Yuka’s face still wore its lonely look. If anything it seemed that telling the story had made her sadder, as though it hadn’t relieved her as much as she had hoped it would. Darcy relented.

  “After my mom disappeared,” she said, “someone gave me a list of names. All those people were on the list. He says they’re missing too.”

  Yuka pursed her lips like she was sucking something sweet.

  “Now,” she said, “that’s interesting.”

  “Interesting why?”

  “Well,” she said, “somebody wants those kids gone. Or at least quiet. Now that somebody could be a lot of people—could be one of the gangs, could be some kind of serial killer, could be the guards. But if I had to guess, I’d say it’s Tyson, or somebody close to Tyson.”

  The idea that Tyson would even know about her mother, let alone wish her ill, was bizarre to Darcy.

  “Why do you say that?” she asked.

  Yuka smiled her half smile. “Call it a hunch,” she said.

  “So how do I find them?”

  Yuka spread out her good hand in the air in what Darcy realized was her version of a shrug.

  “That’s your problem. But I’ll tell you one thing that’s funny. Esther Rosen had a twin, Ruth. She wasn’t on your list. Now maybe your source just didn’t get her name. But if she’s not missing, you should talk to her. I bet she knows more than anybody.”

  “How do I find her?”

  Yuka shrugged again.

  “How should I know? I’m stuck here, remember.”

  Her voice was wry, but Darcy heard real sorrow in it.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, “I interrupted you. You can go on if you want to—I have a little time.”

  Yuka looked bleakly at the wall.

  “It’s all right, I know you have things to do. Everybody does. I know you just listened to me so you could get your information.”

  “No, I—”

  “Don’t pretend,” Yuka said. “But do this for me. If you find out anything, I want you to tell me what you know.”

  “All right,” Darcy said, but as she was agreeing she saw a new expression flash across Yuka’s face. Yuka corrected quickly, and looked bereaved and put-upon again, but that new expression was so prying and calculating and sly that Darcy wondered if she had ever really been lonely at all.

  4

  It had been five days since she wrote the note, and still Darcy had heard nothing from Ansel. Every morning before she went to work, she checked its positioning—“COME MEET ME,” written in real pen this time, in large letters all around the head of the topless woman, the whole thing affixed to the baseboard by her door with a wad of hardening cheese food. But every night she returned to find it untouched and Ansel nowhere in sight. Armin didn’t look Darcy in the eye when she came in now; Yuka was bored and laconic; the twins chattered happily in their gibberish language. Trish never asked about her mother—they made pancakes and burgers and imitation-crab salad and joked and complained as they always had. There was a big cave-in near Sixth Street, and Trish heard they were going to have to condemn everything east of Salinas Avenue. Win heard there was going to be a tax hike to pay for more retrofitting, and they all wondered for the fiftieth time how come all the rich people got to live inland.

  “They’ll be safe if the Hawaiians come back, too,” Trish complained. “It’s the people on the coast who are going to get torpedoed or whatever.”

  “What about the safe houses?” Darcy asked—a sign reading SEA-ATTACK SAFE HOUSE had popped up on a community center near World Experiences, and Darcy passed it on her way to work.

  “Yeah right,” said Trish. “I heard there’s only, like, four of those. If they come back, we’re toast.”

  “But how much you wanna bet we start paying higher Seaguard taxes too?” Win asked.

  Darcy didn’t answer. Discussion of the attack couldn’t hold her attention. She was living as though it were possible to be normal, but every morning she still felt for her mother beside her, and then pummeled the empty bed as though it might yield her up.

  On the sixth day Jorge came for the rent. She had just walked into the apartment, bus sweat clinging to the small of her back. He stood in the hallway, eyeing the room like he was measuring it.

  “I’ll have it by Tuesday,” Darcy said, “I promise. It’s just been hard, with my mom and everything.”

  “Maybe you should get a roommate,” Jorge said. “I have a friend who’s looking for a place.”

  Darcy stared at him until he looked away.

  “She’s coming back,” she said.

  “Of course. But even if she does, it might be easier for you. You could split the rent three ways then.”

  He looked at her again, this time with sly eyes.

  “My friend’s a nice guy,” he said. “I think you two would get along.”

  “Tuesday,” she said. “I promise.”

  His voice went a shade darker.

  “No later,” he said.

  She waited for him to leave, and then she reached into her coin cup—bus fare, if she didn’t shower tomorrow. There was no way she was going to make rent without her mother’s salary. She would have to live with Jorge’s friend. And if she didn’t want that, she’d have to move, but where could she afford to live on just her paycheck, minus refinery tax, minus the special Seaguard tax, minus the electric bill and bus fare and showers and a month’s worth of cheese food and seaweed crackers and jellyfish powder, all of that not even counting anything that could possibly bring her any respite or pleasure? She was going to find Sarah before she had to worry about that.

  She smelled her hair. It smelled like jellyfish and crab flavoring and smog. She pulled it back, folded it into a quick braid. She wondered what Marina’s hair had smelled like. Were there any bad smells in a world of snow? She found a ripped T-shirt under the bed and wrapped it around her head in what she hoped looked like a scarf. Then she went out to wait for the bus.

  The number 17 was unreliable. It had a strange route, scything through Little Los Angele
s on its way from Manhattanville to the Strip. Usually Manhattanville types were rich enough for taxis, or even had their own cars, so the number 17 was often packed with fourteen-year-olds skipping school to talk their way into the casinos, or University kids with dreadlocks slumming it for the day, or escorts coming back worn-looking from all-night gigs with Pacifica Bank execs. Unlike on the number 32, where fights were relatively predictable, there was no telling what would happen among the heterogeneous assortment who packed themselves together on the number 17. It could be a half hour late because some college student who fancied himself an anarchist refused to either pay or leave, or it could be early because a bunch of rich, stupid teenagers were trying to treat it like a cab, paying the driver to skip stops and take shortcuts down alleyways so they could lose the rest of their allowances at a craps table. Tonight Darcy waited with a pair of joyless, baggy-faced gambling addicts and a woman in a purple corset heading to her night job. As the busless minutes ticked by, they tapped their feet in a spastic rhythm, and the gamblers began to scratch and look about themselves fearfully, like solvent-heads. Darcy thought about walking—it was only a half hour or so, but you had to cross the canal at Barstow Road, whose banks this time of night swarmed with junkies and crazies and people who would drag you down from the bridge and never let you back up again. The gamblers coughed and scraped at the skin of their upper arms. The woman adjusted the dimpled flesh that squeezed up out of the top of her corset.

  When the bus finally came, a nun from Our Lady of the Talking Birds was walking up and down the aisle, collecting donations. The parrot on her shoulder fixed Darcy with its lizard eye and said, “Blessed are they who speak for the voiceless.”

  “I don’t have any money,” she said to the nun, whose face remained absolutely still as though she were deaf and mute. Darcy didn’t like the Talking Birds nuns, their creepy parrots, their vow of silence—she wished they would just do their own begging instead of making the birds do it.