Coming of Age: Volume 1: Eternal Life

by Thomas T. Thomas

  Still, the government in his half of the country yearned to redistribute such wealth. It had long ago found a way to tax literally everything that moved, throve, and made a profit. But the federal government had no history, no legislative provision, allowing it to simply expropriate private property without a public reason and suitable compensation under eminent domain. Bank accounts, assets held in trust, and private capital were still protected by the “takings clause” of the Fifth Amendment. So, much as the government needed Praxis’s money and that of other wealthy men to survive, it could not just appropriate it. Besides, that looked bad. It left a sour taste in the mouths of citizens who still placed sentimental value on notions of “freedom” and “independence.”

  But the U.S. could offer Praxis and others like him the deal of a lifetime. In the fourth year of the war, under the pretext of a public emergency, the federal government held a sale of national assets. Monuments, national parks, reclamation areas, disused military reservations, and other public property held in trust for the people were all put on the block. The deal was that men like Praxis would donate their unattached wealth to support these public treasures, thereby freeing the government to win the war. In return, the man who accepted the deal was granted a one-time, nontransferable right to acquire the asset at the end of a specified time—usually thirty-five years—unless the government had repaid its obligation in full before then. In the meantime, the asset would continue as public property, and the grantee agreed to support it as a public service.

  The deal that was offered to John Praxis involved the Stanislaus National Forest. It comprised almost 900,000 acres centered on the Stanislaus River in the Sierra Nevada, just north of Yosemite National Park. Out of curiosity, Praxis had asked about acquiring Yosemite itself, but it had already gone to a branch of the Buffett family. Still, the Stanislaus was a prize worth far more than the amount Praxis would pay for it. The value of the timber rights was a prime consideration, even after a third of the acreage had been burned over and virtually destroyed in the Rim Fire a decade earlier. That land would not be worthwhile as forest for another generation or more. But the mining prospects—for gold had once been found there, and much was still believed to be locked in the granite bedrock—would compensate him richly, not to mention the land’s worth when developed for housing and resorts. All of this value was prospective, of course, as he could not touch it for another thirty years yet.

  It was a cunning wager to dangle before a man who had just turned seventy. He would, in all probability—given the advances of modern medicine and the care he was taking with his body since the heart replacement—live to somewhat beyond one hundred and five. And then title to the land would be his, unless the government chose to pay him off and reclaim it first. He could hope to live long enough after that to secure possession and develop its riches for his family and heirs.

  It was an attractive deal, despite the numerous downsides. First, and most obviously, he might succumb to accident or illness in the intervening years. Second, because his pre-contract income and assets had by now indexed him out of the Social Security system, he would remain ineligible for the term of the Stanislaus National Forest contract. Third, and finally, the bulk of his remaining assets was pledged to the annual expenses of maintaining the land, which included advancing the reforestation effort, repairing fire roads and trails, clearing brush season by season, dredging silt-clogged lakes, and paying the salaries and administrative costs of on-site foresters, park rangers, and firefighters.

  The remainder left him just enough to live on, if he watched his pennies, same as everyone else. But because he liked to keep busy, he had taken the job at PlumbKit as a “supernumerary worker.”

  “Sure, Bernie,” Praxis said with a shrug. “The government’s taking good care of me.”

  * * *

  On Monday and Thursday nights, Antigone Wells drove to the First Presbyterian Church in the central part of Oklahoma City. It offered a big fellowship hall in the basement, and at six o’clock the brown and black belts went in to move chairs and tables up against the wall and mop the grime of foot traffic off the linoleum floor. They also brought out and hung an oil painting that one of the students had made of the Megami, the Goddess of Isshinryu: a beautiful Asian woman in a black leotard rising from the sea, her right hand raised in a fist to strike and her left held low to offer peace and protection; a dragon flew in the sky above her head and another swam in the sea around her waist. It was all based on a dream that had come to Master Tatsuo Shimabuku, the style’s founder. The Presbyterian church fathers agreed to regard this painting as a cultural icon, and the Oklahoma Okinawan Martial Arts Association agreed to call her the “spirit of karate.”

  Once the chores were done, Wells changed in the ladies room. She still wore what had become her trademark pink leotard under the white gi. But now, in addition to the uniform, she carried to and from class a collapsible bo staff made of black fiberglass, which screwed together in the middle like a pool cue, and a pair of stainless steel short swords called sai, whose handles were wrapped in purple cord. After almost ten years of training she had learned all the forms associated with the style, including the weapons katas, and had achieved the rank of third degree black belt through testing with Sensei Peter Greenwood up in Kansas City.

  At seven o’clock sharp, Wells stepped barefoot onto the dojo floor, performed the traditional bow to honor the teaching space, looked around to make sure she was still the ranking belt for the evening, and shouted “Hajime!” to call the students to order.

  The ninety-minute class took the usual form: half an hour of basic exercises as a group, half an hour of individual technique with the students lined up facing each other, and half an hour devoted to various forms of advanced instruction.

  During the basics, led by a budding green belt, Wells walked around and corrected the students one by one: angle of a foot here, alignment of an elbow there. During the technique session, she usually worked with one student each night trading punches and blocks, holds and breaks. And during the advanced session she divided her time between teaching a kata to one or more students and a small group doing kumite, or sparring.

  This evening she was sparring with a white belt, a young man named Brian, a college student not yet twenty who stood a head and a half taller than Wells. He was all elbows and knees, with puppy-dog hands and feet. He was nervous, and it obviously bothered him to trade blows with a woman—especially one old enough to be his grandmother. Also, he couldn’t keep his eyes where they belonged, which was over her shoulder, gazing passively past her body, using only his peripheral vision to detect and track her slightest movement. Mammals had developed that kind of seeing-but-not-looking to protect themselves out in the open. But this boy’s eyes kept moving to the fold of her gi jacket, seeking a glimpse of the pink nylon across her chest.

  The distraction made him slow and stupid. It was time to teach him a lesson. And a number of other students were standing in a polite circle, watching. All to the good.

  She and Brian took their ready stances. She was in a sideways seisan with her right fist on guard at shoulder level, left fist held low in front of her groin. He was in a seiunchin, the straddle stance, with his hands hanging loosely somewhere near his chest. Again, he was looking down at her cleavage.

  In one fluid motion, she opened her right fist, curled her fingers back, plucked at the lapel of her gi, and pulled it open, exposing a firm breast held taut by the nylon. His eyes went wide. At the same time she made a small step-slide, lifted her forward foot, cocked her hips, and kicked him lightly in the ribs. His mouth was still hanging open as she completed the move.

  “Eyes above my clavicles, Brian,” Wells said.

  “Your what, ma’am?” he asked blankly.

  For answer, she hop-stepped and planted the toes of her rear foot in his unprotected solar plexus, hitting him just hard enough to trigger a muscle spasm in his diaphragm. He gasped and sank to his knees.

  The
women in the circle shrieked with laughter.

  “Ladies, help him to the sidelines, please.” Wells straightened her jacket, then called out, “Next!”

  After class, as she was changing into her street clothes back in the bathroom, Wells paused to use the toilet. When she stood up, she was horrified to see a dark red stain filling the bowl. She had only seen it once before, after she had been kicked in the kidneys during a sparring session some years ago. She had spent two days in the hospital then. But no one else had been quick enough to tag her kidneys—or get anywhere near them—in a long time.

  She whispered her finding to her wrist agent. It consulted the bioproctor implanted in the wall of her abdomen, which reported a rise in C-reactive proteins, indicating an inflammation somewhere in her body. However, it reported negative for the kind of protein loss attributed to kidney disease.

  “Shall I make an appointment with your doctor?” Wells’s agent whispered into her ear.

  “I guess you’d better,” she said and finished dressing.

  * * *

  Three days after Francesco di Rienzi was killed in an automobile accident, the newspapers still hadn’t reported it. That was odd, because he was reputedly a member of the Italian minor nobility and styled himself a conte, or count. And after four days the Polizia di Stato had yet to release either his body for burial or his mangled Ferrari for the insurance claims and ultimate disposal.

  “The investigation is continuing,” was all anyone would tell Callista di Rienzi when she called the police headquarters in Torino to inquire about her husband.

  So the dry-eyed widow decided she had to appear at the station in person. She dressed appropriately in black, although perhaps with more style than the occasion required. Her suit was tailored in black satin with a fitted jacket and short, tight skirt. She also wore sheer black stockings and black leather pumps with three-inch stiletto heels. After nine years in the country, Callista di Rienzi knew how to be taken seriously by Italian men.

  “Cesco was an excellent driver,” she told the uniformed sergeant at the desk. “I can’t believe he would be killed in an incidente stradale, a mere accident.”

  “That may well be,” the man said. “Still …”

  “Do you suspect something more? Perhaps foul play?”

  “Scusi, signora?” he asked with a confused squint.

  Callie was standing in an open hallway busy with people both uniformed and civilian. She could not know what ears might be listening. She raised her hands just above the edge of the rail that fronted his bench, left hand cradling an imaginary gun barrel, right hand around an imaginary stock, with forefinger pulling an imaginary trigger. “Eh-eh-eh?” she said softly at the back of her throat.

  The sergeant’s eyes widened. His lips compressed. And he shrugged.

  That told her as much as she needed to know.

  * * *

  The first email waiting in John Praxis’s queue that evening was from the Janet Bormann, Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. It carried the notation “Personal and Confidential.” It had the subject line “Happy Birthday, John Praxis.”

  When he opened the file, it blossomed into a computer-generated animation of friendly adult faces, appropriately weighted for gender and ethnicity but not for age. All of them were elderly. Although uniformly fit, lively, and smiling, all bore the marks of age in graying hair, double chins, and wrinkled skin. Behind them floated balloons and colored streamers. They were gathered around a cake decorated with a candles—not a bunch of separately burning sticks, as on most birthday cakes, but big, molded wax numerals with candy-red edging that spelled out “75.” The flames had a weird sparkle, almost like the burning of Roman candles—or lit fuses.

  After flickering just long enough for Praxis to take in the happy message, the animation dissolved into a formal document, using a calligraphic typeface, like a diploma or an official declaration. In so many words the document invited him to prepare for his upcoming “Environmental Sacrifice,” reminded him of the benefits that would be made available to his children and grandchildren (if any), and directed him to a website with a helpful planning book and the addresses of convenient, local, and painless service providers. It was not an order. More like a suggestion.

  In the creeping, soft-spell socialism that had settled over his half of the country, the government wanted no whiff of coercion. Unlike the books and movies that had informed his childhood notions of tyranny, from Koestler’s Darkness at Noon and Orwell’s 1984 to Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 and Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange, the voice of authority came not with jackboots, peaked caps, and truncheons. Instead it presented its demands with smiles, party balloons, and gentle reminders. The architects of his society had studied and learned from Huxley’s story of planetwide control through community, identity, stability (“I’m really awfully glad I’m a Beta …”) in Brave New World.

  Praxis had the right to refuse his Sacrifice, of course. But then, unfortunately, there would be penalties. For one thing, his medical status would automatically change to PTO—Pain Treatment Only—which meant that the cure for whatever ailed him would be a morphine drip. He would also forfeit those promised favors for his children and grandchildren. And he would embarrass himself with his friends and neighbors: he would show the world he did not know how to behave, how to be a good little Romper Room “Do Bee.”

  Eleven years ago the doctors had given him a new heart and the promise of a long and fruitful life. Now the health service that controlled many of those same doctors was inviting him to commit “ethical suicide”—the other, less grand word for it—so as not to become a burden on society.

  “Ain’t life precious?” he muttered and dragged the email notice into his trash folder.

  * * *

  Four days after Francesco di Rienzi was killed, his widow decided to do the unexpected and visit his uncle Matteo at the villa east of the river. She wore black, although not in any fashion to influence a man, because Matteo was family—however distantly and by reputation only. She took along her eight-year-old daughter Rafaella, because the girl liked to chase the cats in Matteo’s garden. She was still dry-eyed.

  The guard at the gate passed her through with a wave. Matteo himself was waiting for her on the front steps, with his son Carlo by his side. As she parked her Alfa Romeo and opened the door to release Rafaella into the garden, the old man came down to open Callie’s own door for her and hand her out onto the gravel driveway.

  “Contessa!” he said with a face full of sadness, holding onto her hand as if to support her in her sorrow. “Mio cordoglio! My condolences.”

  “Cut the crap,” she said in a low voice. “Just this once, please.”

  “Of course, Callista.” The man’s face did not change. “Come inside.”

  As they crossed the entry hall’s mosaic floor—the god Neptune in green and blue, complete with trident, scales, and fishtail, in keeping with the originally maritime nature of his business—and passed into the sitting room, he offered her coffee, tea, or “something stronger.”

  She waved him off. “This is not exactly a social call.”

  “I understand. You are upset. That is natural.”

  She remained standing while the two men arranged themselves on the embroidered satin settee facing her. “All this time I’ve kept my peace,” she began, using the speech she had been rehearsing in her mind for four days now. “I’ve been a good wife to Cesco. I tried to be an Italian wife. I never asked what his business was. I turned a blind eye—”

  “And this has been noted,” Matteo said quietly.

  “—to his gambling, and his drinking, and even to his whoring—”

  Carlo, who was straitlaced, flinched. The old man bore up better.

  “—and when he asked me for money, I gave it to him. The more he asked, the more I gave, because I loved him and he was the father of my child.”

  “You also knew the marriage laws here,” Carlo said. “What each brings
to the marriage belongs to the marriage.”

  “We had a prenuptial agreement. You know what that is?”

  “Yes, of course,” Matteo said.

  “I never called him on it. And when he made ‘investments’ with you, I never questioned him. I gave him my support, as a wife, even if I did not agree.”

  “As was proper,” Carlo said.

  “Now Cesco is gone. I do not ask under what circumstances. I do not seek to place blame …”

  The old man pursed his lips and nodded at this.

  “But I must think of my future and that of my daughter. I plan to take Rafaella back to the States. So I need to redeem whatever shares Cesco had in your business.”

  Matteo looked pained. “This is not a convenient time, Contessa.”

  “I understand. I am prepared to be patient. Work out a repayment—”

  “You do not understand,” Carlo said. “There will never be a good time.”

  “I still have the prenup he signed. It is binding on his family as well.”

  “Ah, but you see,” Matteo said, “ ‘family’ is a term with many meanings.”

  “This is a legal document,” she said quietly.

  “And you would enforce it—how?” Carlo asked with a grin. “In an Italian court? As a woman? And a foreigner? Against us?”