Fritz set his cigarette in the clay ashtray, next to the remains of the joint they had shared after dinner, then reached down and picked up the plane from the rug.
On top of the compost pile, the raccoon chose what it wanted from the latest tossings, moving things around with its clawed hand.
The door opened.
“Happy birthday!” said Billie, stepping through carrying a cake.
Sig nodded, still annoyed to find people who knew more about him than he’d ever told any professional interrogator, still wary of hospitality, and restless to move on before they found him.
Fritz poured three glasses of sherry while Billie lit the one big candle in the middle of the cake.
“We’re not singing,” said Billie. “But you still need to make a wish and blow out the candle.”
Sig took a minute to think about that one. He had stopped celebrating birthdays when he ran. He had almost forgotten when it was. He looked out the window at the diminishing day. You could see the buds on the branches, about to pop. He concentrated on the thought that brought him, and blew.
“So now you’re old enough to vote,” said Fritz a moment later, as they dug in. He had a little bit of frosting in his mustache.
“Too bad there’s only one candidate left to vote for,” said Billie.
“Billie doesn’t like the President,” said Fritz.
“Billie doesn’t like the whole fucking system,” said Billie. “But she also didn’t believe it could get this bad. Talking about Saturn devouring his children.”
Billie looked up from her forkful of frosting at Sig. Her hair was silver all the way through, her eyes an intense green, more so when she got riled up.
“You don’t know that story, do you?” she said.
Sig was thinking about the planet, which he had seen once through a telescope, and was always able to find in the night sky ever since, if it were there to be found.
Fritz pulled an old paperback book off the shelf. The Banquet of the Cannibal Lords and Other Stories, by Max Price. The cover pictured a crazy old giant eating the head and arms off a guy.
“The original king of the gods,” said Fritz. “Who killed his children to keep them from taking over.”
“Not the perfect analogy,” said Billie, “since Thomas Mack is more like the upstart son than the tyrannical grandpa. But the basic idea is there. As your mom learned the hard way, bless her sweet soul. Never underestimate the things power and money will do to protect what they have.”
Billie took another bite of cake, chewing aggressively. She looked up at Sig, watching for his reaction.
“What would she do?” asked Sig.
“Like us, I bet,” said Fritz. “Keep building out better cooperative networks. Beta-testing the new systems that society will grow into once the monster runs out of food. We only have a few islands left in the network after New Orleans. This is a small one we have here, baked into county government, separate from the university and its labs whored out to the corporates. It’s enough to do to build that, on its own pace.”
“Don’t listen to him,” said Billie. “All that old punk wants to do is get high and ride his bike while his joints still work. If Erika were around she would be doing what she was doing when she died. Fighting hard for real change, using nonviolent means. Her cause is still alive, and by helping us here you are continuing her work.”
Sig thought about Betty. “The people who try to do something real about it get squashed. Tricked.”
“That’s true,” said Billie. “The state is good at co-opting revolution. Like they figured out in the eighties. If there’s no work for the people, license them to go steal from our neighbors, and call it liberation.”
“Blame the English,” said Fritz. “They started it.”
“Yeah,” said Billie. “Heseltine and his royal charters. Save your broken industries by letting them do offshore business development at the point of the Sten. South Africa was the killer app. Who could argue with taking those racist jerks out? Remember watching when it started?”
Fritz nodded.
“Live footage from the raid on Robben Island,” said Billie. “Who was that guy? The press secretary?”
Fritz drew on his cigarette. “McLaren,” he said.
“Right,” said Billie. “Fucking Neoimps.”
Sig imagined midgets in kilts.
“Our guys copied them,” said Billie. “Haig and his patriots and emergency powers. You ever wonder what the world would be like if the Iranians hadn’t killed all the hostages?”
Fritz raised his eyebrows. “Or if that guy hadn’t shot the Gipper.”
“Oh, don’t get me started,” said Billie.
“I still want to know who shot Yoko,” said Fritz.
“Her rich widower and all his peace anthems,” said Billie. “Strumming away on VTV as the real revolutionaries engineer a government coup by popular demand. People think that as long as you have elections, you’re free? If only they had been paying attention back then, before it was so far gone.”
“You were paying attention,” said Sig.
“Oh, yeah, I was a real ‘eighties radical,’” she said. “They didn’t call it torture, the things they did when they detained me, but I still have the scars.”
All Sig could see was the look in her face.
Fritz reached over and held her hand.
“Billie’s disobedience was less civil then,” said Fritz.
“This kid knows the score,” said Billie, grabbing Sig’s hand with the one Fritz wasn’t holding. “He just hasn’t figured out the rules of the game yet. And which ones you have to break to win. I’m so glad the network found him. So we could take him in.”
Sig did not really agree, but he liked his hosts. He had another slice of cake.
27
Tania checked in to a corporate hotel near the airport, where no one she knew would see her, ordered some food, and got to work on the files. The room had a view of the freeway, and the mall, which had once been the biggest mall in America but was now largely abandoned. Every time she looked out the window at that big sad ruin, relic of a borrowed prosperity whose bill came due, it reminded her of the last time she saw Sig, on the day he was chasing giants.
The giants were walking through the main atrium of the mall, huge puppets brought out for the big protest. Their heads were papier-mâché, the size of small cars, with cartoon faces of capitalists, warlords, and politicians, their bodies lanky frames of stilts wrapped in fabric. When she took eleven-year-old Sig to look at them she was worried he’d be scared, but instead he was excited. He asked how the puppeteers got up inside the giants, and how they were able to walk without falling down.
There were generals holding missiles and robot airplanes in their hands, ready to launch. There were senators with money sticking out of their pockets and corporate logos sewed onto their suits. President Green was there, in chains, pulled on a leash by a general with a white mustache and five big stars on his uniform.
Tania thought it was pretty stupid white hippie stuff, and had three days’ homework to do in a day and a half. But it was Saturday, Mom pleaded with her to come and help with the turnout, and Tania was curious to see if they really could take over the entire mall. So far they were doing a pretty good job.
The wildest-looking puppets were the corporate raiders. They wore suits with pirate flags on the back and combat boots instead of dress shoes. They each had a gun in one hand and a wad of cash in the other. Sig said they looked cool.
One of them—the leader—wore an aviator’s suit over his business clothes, a little crown on his head, and the corporate logo of Pendleton-Bolan underneath the skull and crossbones on his shoulder and back. His face wasn’t an ugly caricature like the others—it was the face of a movie star.
“Who’s that?” asked Sig.
“That’s Senator Mack,” said Tania. “The rich kid war hero CEO who’s probably going to be the next President.”
“But all thes
e people—”
“Yeah, a lot of people don’t like him, but a lot do. And a lot more hate the old President, who got in big trouble for stuff he did when he wasn’t at work. It’s complicated. Tough times produce weird politics. Hey, what are you—”
He had climbed up on the railing to look down into the atrium. Tania grabbed him by the back of his threadbare T-shirt and almost ripped it.
Peering over the edge, she could see the rainbow multitude of the mob that followed the giants. So many heads in so many colors, bobbing under banners, pickets, and flags with big slogans. It was the usual stuff—U.S. out of Panama, Honor the Treaty, Economic Justice, Ban the MMCs—but the energy was more intense this time. And there were more cameras filming them.
“There’s Mom,” said Sig, and Tania saw her where he pointed, two big blond braids under the Free Lakota Republic banner, mouth open to let out a chant they couldn’t make out in the cacophony. Tania was pretty sure she had heard every one of the chants every different faction had, many times over.
The marchers had entered the mall without a permit, after lunch on a busy day. The crowds of shoppers were gathered around gaping at the protesters, some yelling back and even making physical threats. But the stores were still open, so Tania took Sig to the toy shop once they could no longer see his mom. Astonishingly, the kid had never in his eleven years been to a mall.
He gravitated toward the rack full of little plastic animals. They were lifelike but small enough to fit in your pocket. Black panthers, cheetahs, elephants, gorillas, wolves, foxes, lions, bears, octopuses, whales, walruses, snakes, buffalo, camels, a rhinoceros. He was holding up a platypus in the palm of his hand, smiling and asking how much it was, when Tania heard the piercing electronic horn of a police disruptor blasting through the mall.
“Hang on,” she told the kid, running back out to check.
She couldn’t really see. The parade of protesters had moved farther into the mall. But she heard a megaphone voice and robot tones, orders to clear out. She walked down a few storefronts to where she could get a better view. The cops were trying to corral the protesters. Looked like a standoff for the moment, but that would change.
“Hey!” she heard the clerk yell as she walked back to the entrance of the toy store. “Put that back!”
She caught only a glance as Sig bolted toward the back of the store.
“Sig!” she hollered, following the clerk as he chased the little thief.
They couldn’t find him. The clerk wouldn’t let her follow him into the storeroom. He claimed he even checked the common hallway, but no sign.
“Are you his babysitter or something?” asked the guy, wearing as serious a face as you could over a white shirt, red tie, and animal-patterned apron.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“You guess. Well I guess you better pay a little more attention. That kid just stole a nineteen-dollar Von Streif and if you don’t bring it back it’s coming out of my pay.”
Tania gave the clerk the finger, immediately regretted it, then spent half an hour looking for the feral kid in every nook and cranny she could find. Ten minutes in, as she heard the escalating tension, she started really freaking out. Especially when they started evacuating the mall and she had to evade cops just to keep looking.
When she finally spied him, he was perched on the branch of an artificial pine tree at the edge of the amusement park at the center of the mall, looking over the food court where the police had succeeded in corralling the protesters.
“Sig!” she hollered, just as she felt the hands on her arms from both sides, thick cop hands taking her into custody, cuffing her wrists behind her back. She argued with the cops, but they weren’t listening.
Sig didn’t hear her, either.
They put Tania under guard with the rest of the people they had already detained. She could see the scene, seventy or so remaining protesters backed into a corner, barricaded as best they could behind the tables and chairs of the food court.
More police came.
None of them saw the kid in the fake tree.
These cops looked more like soldiers than police. They had black uniforms instead of blue. They had helmets with bulletproof visors. Some had big plastic shields and truncheons. Others had rifles and shotguns. You could feel the trigger fingers quivering.
Tania yelled when they started to take the cameras away from the TV crews. She tried to unleash her imminent lawyer, but if anyone heard, they weren’t engaging. Then this young guy in a suit came up to the cops, looking very authoritative.
“No, no, you don’t get it,” he said. “We want them to see this. Let the people see what happens when you pull shit like this. When you try to shut down commerce and ridicule your leaders.”
The suit had the lapel pin, the sign of Mack’s new party. The slanting F of “Freedom.”
Erika was in the front of the protesters with four others, conferring, watching the police prepare to move. They let another dozen people surrender themselves to the police. Then they told their remaining people to gather even tighter.
The suit had the cops help the camera crews set up the positions he wanted.
The mall music was still playing in the background. You could just hear it layered beneath all the other noise.
Erika pointed at the tree, and called Sig’s name.
Tania watched the way he climbed down, still blended into the background.
The police turned up their noise horns so you couldn’t hear anything else. Then they moved in, a wall of men with three sides.
One of Erika’s punk boyfriends came over the tabletop barricade and jumped on a cop. Another cop brought a black metal truncheon down hard on the punk, who slumped to the floor.
A hippie girl screamed, and spat at the cops.
Then one of the old guys pulled out a knife.
The volume went up. BRRRRRAAAAAAAACCCCKCKCKKCKKKZZZKK.
Metal on metal, as weapons locked and loaded.
Gas masks on.
Thunk. Thunk thunk. Hollow projectiles arced from hydraulic guns, hit the floor, bounced, clanged, rolled, hissed.
She saw Sig back in there, T-shirt tied around his face like a gas mask.
The police started firing. Rubber bullets. You could already see them on the ground, black rubber balls. The “nonlethal” force gave the cops the excuse to fully express their yearning to unload. You could see it in their faces as they emptied their clips. As they eagerly reloaded.
The protesters cowered and yelped, trying to hide behind each other and the makeshift barricade.
“Run!” screamed Erika.
She looked around for her son, then stood, hands up.
“Stop!” she said.
Two of the men stood behind her. Another went to the felled punk curled up just in front of them.
Then Erika was down, felled like a deer, projectile to the head.
The police moved in closer.
She was not moving. Her friends were there at her side, screaming.
The police looked paused. The suit tried to egg them on.
Tania didn’t see Sig until he was there on the back of a beefy cop, maybe the one that shot his mom. The cop had lost his helmet. Sig had his arms locked around the guy’s neck. The cop tried to jam the kid with the business end of his rifle, but stumbled, and the kid got a grip on the barrel.
The cop dived. Tried to shake the kid off his neck. Three other cops moved in.
When they unpacked the pile-on, one of the cops was dead and one was bleeding from the gut. One cop had his knee on Sig’s back; another had a boot on his face.
You could see the knife there on the floor, and the blood in the kid’s face.
Tania tried to go help him, to save him from what was coming, but when she tried to push through, they shoved her to the floor and made her crawl back to the wall, and all she could do was scream, so loud it should have awakened those giants.
28
“So you want to come down to the basement
with me?” said Fritz. “See what’s on that video you brought back?”
Sig made a face as he considered the invitation.
Fritz laughed. “You don’t understand,” he said. “There’s probably money on there.”
Sig made a different face. Fritz laughed again.
The basement seemed bigger than the rest of the house. It was down a flight of rickety stairs by the back door. It was dark and cold, the rooms lit with old chainpulls.
Mostly the basement was crammed with provisions. Shelves stacked floor to ceiling with bell jars full of vegetables. They looked like body parts in the bad light. Tin cans, bags of grain, and botanicals marked in a script Sig couldn’t read.
There was another room with a big safe in it. Fritz unlocked it and let Sig look inside. Guns, money, ammo.
“Mostly too old to be of much use,” said Fritz, putting his hand on a wooden carbine. “But Billie likes to keep them.”
The door to Fritz’s room was metal. It had three locks and a wooden sign over it painted in old-fashioned letters.
Rathskeller
Inside, the room smelled like glue and burnt silicon. There was a big workbench along the longest side, cluttered with tools and materials: wiring, wood, canvas, electronic motors, a soldering gun, camera stalks, epoxies, paint, knives, a Dremel. A yellowed book open to a page of diagrams rendered in fine black line. And in the middle of the mess, the work in progress. A big model airplane in the shape of a triangle.
“Back in the shop for improvements,” said Fritz. “Vintage design. Very efficient. Trick is keeping it stable.”
The space above and below the bench was packed with plastic cubbies, each labeled with its contents. To the right were deep shelves with other miniature flying machines hiding behind curtains. The other two walls were crammed with electronics. Black and silver boxes with blinking diodes, round screen monitors and television screens, big tuning knobs, and a huge microphone on a stand. Cables and wires in a half-dozen colors were cinched up in bundles and pinned to the ceiling. A couple of the machines were really old looking, with wooden cases and primitive controls.
Tropic of Kansas Page 9
