Mother of Storms

by John Barnes

  “Jesus.”

  “Unh-hunh. And we’ve got Tropical Depression Donna forming way out west in the Atlantic near the equator. Bet on it, Jesse, if you stay in Mexico you’ll ride out at least five more hurricanes this summer and fall. For that matter we’re betting on three big ones for the Chesapeake.”

  Jesse shakes his head, trying to make the thoughts whirling there settle down. “Is there anywhere safe?”

  “Siberia, I guess, ought to be okay. In the States, Kansas maybe, though there’s going to be a lot of rain in the Rockies so I wouldn’t set up camp anywhere near a river. Utah, as long as you don’t get hit with flash floods, and some of our models are showing that the dry lake beds are going to refill all over the basin and range country—there’s going to be a chain of salt lakes all down there by October.”

  Jesse finds his voice, and he says, “Well, then, shit, Di, tell me… is there anything that can be done? Is anyone trying?”

  Di shrugs. “Of course people are trying.”

  It doesn’t sound encouraging. There’s really no reason to try to go back. Here in Chiapas, he knows his neighbors and he’s worked beside them. And the mountains and rain forest above are not the worst place in the world to live, if it came to that. He has a strange feeling that he might be deciding where his grandchildren will live. There’d be a place for him—he’s healthy and doesn’t mind work, his Spanish has gotten very fluent in his time here, and he’s got a bunch of skills that are likely to be needed, though realization engineering may not be important for a while. “Then I think I’ll stick down here, Di. There’s a place for me and it’s apt to be safer.”

  “It’s, uh, not because of some girl, is it?”

  “You know my evil habits. No, not really, I think her employers will probably call her back onto the job pretty soon. And I’d really say ‘woman’ rather than girl. She’s, uh, probably nearer your age than mine.”

  Di whistles and gives him a wink. “Coo coo ca choo, Mrs. Robinson.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know what it means either, but Dad used to say that whenever he saw a younger guy with an older woman. Some kind of boomtalk, I guess.”

  “He must have given that up before I came along.”

  “Right. Theoretically I should get back to work but all we’re doing right now is documenting that horrible mess in the Gulf, and I don’t mind telling you it’s a relief to talk to anyone about anything else at all. There’s nothing we can do and it just keeps building….” Di sighs. “Anyway, enough of that. You take care. You sound pretty grown-up to me, but you’re still my kid brother. This old grandmother you’re shacked up with—”

  “Hey!”

  “—is she anyone I might know?”

  Jesse decides that if he tells Di, most likely his brother will start calling psychiatric authorities, so he says, “Probably not. Ever meet an actress named Mary Ann Waterhouse?”

  “Never heard of her. Tell her to take good care of my brother, okay?”

  “Deal. You keep an eye on my nephews.”

  They give each other a little wave that turns into a mock salute, and then the call ends. Jesse sits back and thinks; that really sounded a lot like a goodbye, and he doesn’t like that. And yet—well, the satellites are still up there and the weather doesn’t touch them, and plenty of fibrop lines are buried… chances are that even if civilization collapses the net will stay up for a long time.

  Which gives him the vision of himself and Mary Ann hoeing a garden patch in the jungle with a sharp stick, with Mary Ann plugged in so that all over the world, millions of people sitting in their huts, their own gardens neglected, can share the experience of hoeing with a sharp stick.

  “What are you laughing about?” Mary Ann says, coming out of the shower. The sculpture they have made of her body still astonishes him.

  “Oh, I got through to my brother. He’s a funny guy.”

  By the time they stop to get her stuff from her little bungalow, Naomi is beginning to realize just how differently Eric sees the world from the way she does. She’s not at all sure how to feel about it—he’s polite and appears interested in what she says, but since she’s sworn off values-educating people, she suddenly realizes how little she has to talk about. She’s been to a lot of places, but mostly she’s gone straight from the zipline to some pocket of misery, and so she can tell him what squalor is like everywhere, but not anything else—and squalor is alike, wherever you go.

  There’s a short letter from Jesse; she means to reply, then figures she can do it later—Eric is scrambling up and down the stairs with her stuff and she doesn’t want to let him do all the work.

  Driving out of town, Eric talks about the museum at Oaxaca, which holds a lot of the stuff that they dug up from Monte Alban. He seems a little worried about whether it’s been damaged.

  She is ashamed to have to admit that though she’s had weeks of opportunity, and several days off, she’s never seen either the museum or Monte Alban itself. She always had to go to meetings and work on values clarification; besides, she realizes guiltily, she wouldn’t really have seen it anyway because she’d have been too busy (at the museum) experiencing what a beautiful culture it was that had passed away and how much the linear and centric Euroculture had lost—

  They are driving out through Oaxaca; it’s now late in the day, but there’s an intact set of transponders on Federal Highway 190, so the car can drive itself as soon as they’ve got it on the highway up toward Ciudad de Mexico. She notices that one tree blew over by the big fountain in the Paseo Juárez, but that’s the worst she’s seen here; Clem Two made sort of a right turn after Tehuantepec, which was part of why it blew over so quickly there but lashed Chiapas for so much longer.

  “So the museum’s three blocks away, right over there,” she said. “Gee, I wonder if I’ll ever be back to see it.”

  “Stick with me, kid, I love this town,” Eric says, grinning. They take a fast right at Calle Niños Heroes de Chapultepec, and now they’re on their way out of the city, headed up to the junction with 190.

  She liked being called “kid.” If Jesse had done that she’d have screamed at him. Part of her is shocked—what’s it going to be next, “baby”? “Sweet Butt”?

  Another part tells her that it means he likes her and finds her attractive, and to hell with it if it’s not how she’d like him to express it; if it gets to be an issue, she’ll just tell him. He seems to be a nice guy and he probably won’t call her anything she doesn’t want to be called.

  A few minutes later, he throws the switch for full auto, sets the destination for a hotel in Mexico City—leaning over to see where he’s set it for, she’s shocked to realize that she recognizes the place. It’s one of the giant new earthquake-proof palaces that start at more for a night than she’s ever made in a month. “Er,” she says, “um… I guess I’ll need a place to stay and I can’t afford—”

  “No problem,” he says. “I booked a two-bedroom suite. And it’s on me, like the ride. I like you, Naomi. I’m not going to pretend I wouldn’t like to share the bed with you when we get there, but I’d rather be invited than try to pressure my way in.”

  Keep it up, she thinks, and I just might invite you. Wonder what it’s like to have sex with a guy just because I want to? And then not educate him at all, not even try?

  She’s really startled by her train of thought, so she says, “You know, I ought to confess, if I had gone to the museum, I’d have gone knowing what I thought about non-European cultural artifacts, and I’d never have seen it. I haven’t been very, uh, open to experience, I guess—though the funny thing is that I’ve been trying to feel at one with the world all my life.”

  He smiles. “Why not just be at one with the parts you like?”

  She grins at him. “I could say it’s an extremely negative values decision. But I don’t know, why not just be in love with the parts you like about your lover? It wouldn’t seem much like love to me but I guess you could do it.”


  “Well, that’s my philosophy,” he says. “I mean, you do realize that you’re one of the people who has made being in business in the U.S. a pain in the ass for the last few generations, don’t you? You’ve probably done all sorts of things and worked for all sorts of causes I would resent like hell. True?”

  “True.” She feels like adding that she’s sorry, and then feels angry because she has nothing to apologize for, and then feels stupid because he hasn’t asked her to apologize. It doesn’t matter anyway, because he keeps talking.

  “Well, I won’t even ask you not to talk about it. What I will do is concentrate on liking the way that you smile, and that you’re very pretty and have a nice body, and that you’re a good listener. And while we’re at it, you have a very tough, funny sense of humor when you’re talking to a guy, and you make me half crazy with wanting to please you, believe it or not. But I also know as a practical matter that I can’t please you by agreeing with you, because you’ll know that I’m lying, so what you’re likely to like about me is that I’m generous and polite.”

  “You can add that you’re handsome and you’ve got a lot of experiences that I like hearing about,” she says, “as long as that doesn’t give you any ideas.”

  “None that I haven’t had for a while anyway. Let’s move into the back, where there’s a little more room, and I’ll dig out some food from the fridge. Your family are Deepers, so I guess you’re probably a vegetarian—”

  “Uh, I’m afraid so. And—hmm. I know most people call us Deepers, but we call ourselves Values Clarified, or VC.”

  Eric nods very politely. “Well, I’ve got some fresh fruit, a salad or two, and some plain yogurt. All shipped-in American, so I doubt you’ll have any trouble with it if you’ve been eating native for months. I hope you won’t mind that I’ve also got ham sandwiches and I’m planning to eat a couple of them.”

  “One of the values I’m going to try getting less clarified about is the thing about property rights being less important than the right to be educated,” Naomi says, smiling broadly. “It was just occurring to me that it’s your car, it’s your ham sandwich, and I’m a guest here.”

  They have a long, slow supper, talking about things like childhood and what it’s like to play commodities or plan a demonstration, and it gets dark outside the tinted windows. The car’s temperature control works perfectly, and Naomi realizes that she hasn’t felt bumps in the road, either, that the car is driving around the big ones and taking up the rest in its shock system. She’s not sure she’s ever been anywhere quite so comfortable.

  It’s still about three hours to Mexico City; they stop briefly at an automated Pemex for gas, getting out of the car into the chilly mountain night just long enough to use the rest rooms. When Naomi comes back outside, he’s waiting for her in the cold.

  “You should have gotten back in the car,” she says. “Jesus, it’s freezing out tonight.”

  “I’m being gentlemanly,” he says. “One of those things that happens when you let a boy turn into an Eagle Scout.”

  “My folks wouldn’t let my brother join the Scouts. Uniforms are militarist and camping out damages wilderness.”

  “Besides, if you help old ladies across the street, the old ladies go on taking up valuable resources,” he adds, opening the door for her.

  “They’d have used that argument if they’d thought of it. You almost put your arm around me, didn’t you?”

  “Almost.” He closes the door and comes around to the other side, gets in, and says, “Gay Deceiver, voice command on. All passengers are back inside, lock up and continue. Gay Deceiver, voice command off.”

  The car responds in a woman’s voice. “You got it, boss. Nice honkers on the chick,” and then starts rolling down the driveway to the highway.

  It’s so unexpected that Naomi howls with laughter. Eric appears to be trying to hide in the seat. “I’m sorry,” he says, “I forgot to reset from the custom message base and—”

  “Why do you call your car Gay Deceiver?”

  “From my favorite book when I was a kid. Thoroughly useless mindrotting garbage, I assure you—exactly what kids like. There was a car with that name in it, and—oh, well, anyway, I’m sorry, I have this sort-of not-serious girlfriend back in Utah—”

  “Oh,” Naomi says.

  “No—it’s—well, hell, let’s call her. I think I was sort of getting somewhere with you, and I want you to know it’s all right.”

  “And you can call her up at this hour?”

  The car slides around a tight turn, and he says, “We’ve been friends since high school, and she’s been married twice in that time. Anyway, this old girlfriend was a big fan of the same book, and since Gay Deceiver in the book has a tendency to get rude, she gave me that voice module for Christmas.”

  She turns out to be named Zoe Matson. She’s gracious and friendly and immediately tells Eric that “it’s a good thing you left me a key. I’ll get right over to your house and suppress the evidence of what you live like, you filthy pig, and round up any other underage girls I find, give’em a ride into town and a bus ticket, and make it respectable—”

  Naomi likes Eric a little better for having this friend, and it’s clear that it really is all right. They click off from Zoe, and Naomi asks, “Are you still, um, having thoughts about me?”

  “Well, yes,” he says. “I mean, I’m still a gentleman—”

  “I know that, sport,” she says, and—not believing that she’s doing it, laughing at herself at the same moment that she’s enjoying it tremendously—she turns on the overhead light in the car so that he can see, and slides her top down. “So—want to check out the honkers on the chick?”

  She’s amazed and touched.

  When she decided to do that she figured he’d probably pounce on her and maybe be a little rough, but after the scare about Zoe, she realizes she really does want him and it seemed like the last step in her personal liberation to just cut right through the crap. So she was prepared to have him come at her like a caveman, and to enjoy it anyway.

  Instead, he leans forward very slowly, takes her chin in his hand, lifts her mouth to his, and kisses her firmly; his hand strokes her neck, wanders tenderly over her shoulder and the soft flesh by her armpit, and finally brushes up the side of her breast to place just a finger on her erect nipple. Breaking the kiss, he whispers, “Thank you for this.”

  She kisses his cheek and brings both his hands to her breasts. “Make love with me,” she says. “Just make love, we’ll spend hours talking—later.” She feels like she’s on XV, and she adores feeling that way, and she adores everything else that happens, and she adores Eric. She’s not sure she’s ever, in her life before, permitted herself to adore anything.

  The car rolls on north, without a bump or a sound; fortunately the program is smart enough to wake them up in time to get dressed before they pull into the hotel parking garage.

  Naomi would never have guessed they still had it in them, but there’s something about a bed that size and a room that nice… they don’t get out of Mexico City for a whole additional day, and they have to call up Zoe to let her know they’ll be late. Naomi even likes being teased about that.

  Maybe Passionet is hiring, she thinks.

  The results are back, and Berlina Jameson heaves a sigh of relief. The tattletales she let loose in the net have done their job; ten minutes after she told Glinda Gray that the “USSF: Space Pirates?” story would be the lead in the next Sniffings, there were over seventy brief messages to UN ambassadors, congressmen, Europarliament reps, Japanese Diet members… what she has here, she realizes, is the structure of Klieg’s influence. These are the people who will deliver a space launch monopoly to John Klieg and GateTech, probably in return for various services rendered or perhaps for plain old money.

  She puts that in as a special, follow-on edition of Sniffings. It’s late, so she shuts off her connections to other communication services for the night. She has enough footage, now, of
the Gulf, for later when she will cover the disaster that is bound to happen there; the most gratifying thing is the sheer number of people who, one way or another, have decided to just bag it and head to places farther north and higher up.

  It occurs to her that as of yet there are no refugee camps. A lot of people seemed to be leaving for the Rockies, probably figuring you couldn’t get higher than that, so she decides to see how the refugees are doing—it might make another great Sniffings, and she’s on a roll. She points the car toward Wyoming, stretches out to go to sleep, and roars on into the night.

  The day begins badly, with Diem wanting to resign.

  First of all, he finds that Hardshaw has cleared everyone to talk to Berlina Jameson, and that she’s getting all kinds of assistance from White House offices, and he wasn’t told that. And then, as Chief of Staff, Diem should have known about her meeting with Rivera; having been cut out of the loop is intolerable, it’s something she would do just before firing him or to discipline him, and she never hits her top people in such a crude way—

  Her eyes soften a little and she says, “I made the appointment while you were on your way in, Harris. If you’d gone straight to your desk, instead of bursting in here, you’d have seen it. It’s not a slap at you, honestly. And I truly don’t understand why you are upset about Jameson. We wanted her to find Klieg’s web of influence and play up the Hassan connection, and she will.”

  “But the way you’re doing it, it will all be exposed… there’s no leverage. We can’t threaten them with exposure. Hell, a lot of them will be right out of the game.” He sits down, sighs, lets calm come back into his system. “All right. I’m going to be rational. Explain to me how the game works, because this is all new to me. I thought you had set up a brilliant situation for leaning on Klieg and half a dozen governments worldwide. Clearly that was not what you intended at all.”