Tropic of Kansas

by Christopher Brown

  Tania liked the slogans, but wondered if they had anything behind them. And it was democracy that got them here, by people voting Mack into office, three consecutive times. It was no guarantor of justice, or of real rule of law.

  The crowd didn’t share Tania’s skepticism, murmuring in exclamatory mob voice like the improvised congregation at a tent revival. Which, Tania thought as she looked around, this basically was. The place was packed, standing room only, with people looking for someone to save them.

  There was no sign of Sig.

  “I drove up here from Chicago awhile back,” Rook was saying. “On old highways where the drones don’t always go and you can drive without getting stopped every hour. I saw brown wastelands where there used to be green bounty. I saw the chemical silos where the yields of fouled fields are turned into food for machines. How did we let this happen?”

  “Take it back!” yelled someone in the crowd.

  “Tear down the stacks!” called a woman’s voice.

  “Take it back is right,” said Rook. “We need to reclaim the land. Tear down the pipes that suck the life from the ground. Restore the vibrant ecologies we’ve spoiled. Create new economies based on making, not taking. And to do that we need to be our own rulers.”

  Tania looked around the room again, sizing up the few in the crowd who weren’t joining in the chorus, trying to guess which ones were agents of the current ruler, undercover monitors of dissidence.

  Like her. She didn’t like the feeling. But the image of Mom in chains trumped all other loyalties. At least until she was free.

  “There’s a movement erupting all over the hemisphere,” said Rook. “It’s about rebooting our political operating systems. History didn’t end in 1789, right?!”

  “Hell no!”

  “Abolish political parties!”

  “That’s right,” said Rook. “It’s about more than moving past the bogus choice between regular and decaf oligarchs. It’s about direct democracy—true rule by the people instead of pretending to pick which privileged insiders we want to control our lives.”

  “Write a new constitution!”

  Rook’s compatriots handed out a pamphlet.

  How to Make Your Own Country

  by

  The Crowdrule

  Tania flipped the pages. It was full of diagrams, aphorisms, and pictures. A sociopolitical self-help manual, on a medium designed to evade surveillance. Mom had been sending her similar stuff for years. This was more ambitious. Revolutionary. Tania had seen enough signs of what it was really like when you let the people govern themselves—the worst people, usually the scariest, most aggressive men, thought they were the ones who got to make the rules. Like they always had.

  Then again, she had a point about 1789. Tania never was quite persuaded about what those guys were really like. When she saw the textbook portraits of them in their wigs she saw a bunch of rich white men, slavers, who didn’t want to pay their taxes. And the rules that made sense for that society, a society that had just “found” the limitless bounty of a new continent, had to be past their sell-by date.

  “Take it back is right,” said Rook again. “The world will only get worse until we get off our knees and kick out the klepts. If we tune the connections between our communities, build new networks that let us share, organize, and act, we can do it.”

  “The only One is the Everyone!”

  “Utopia is a seed in a fallow field!”

  “Remember November!”

  “Don’t get me started!” said Rook.

  “They killed our farms!”

  “Rogue corn and man-made drought!”

  “They broke the whole heartland, from here to the Gulf!” said Rook. “Look at New Orleans. A great city turned into a toxic track mark from the martial-economic dope our leaders are hooked on. The people there took the fight to power, and no matter what you may see in the government-controlled media, they haven’t given up yet. If we don’t follow their example, we’ll all end up like the Nicaraguans, living in the ruins while the corporate robots build a new city for our owner-masters to enjoy!”

  Tania wondered if Rook would go back home to the privilege she came from, like Odile. And if she really had the stuff to deliver on what she was selling. You’d have to be a rich white daughter of “owner-masters” to believe direct rule by an unruly majority was an easy answer.

  Tania looked back down at the pamphlet. There was a loose piece of paper inside. A table packed with numbers. Times of day and frequencies. AM, FM, UHF. A schedule. A handwritten code. The only explanatory text, if you could call it that, was an aphorism across the bottom.

  The Network Is the People

  When Tania looked back up, she finally recognized a face—one of the guys distributing the pamphlets. A skinny kid with dirty blond bangs that covered nervous eyes. One of the suspects Tania had seen in the latest file Gerson had sent her. Trace Goolsby Jr., age twenty, aka Tracer, aka G00l. A juvenile felon out of Austin who’d done two years for installing illegal surveillance devices in the federal courthouse and posting footage of sealed prosecutions onto public bulletin boards—all while still in high school. Associate of Mauricio Rojo Rivera, twenty, aka Mojo or Moco. Tracer and Moco were known smugglers, veterans of the fighting in New Orleans who now worked the underground helping outlaws, dissidents, and contraband move up and down the midcontinental corridor and across the southern border. Moco had been spotted in here in Minneapolis, with the people thought to have been harboring Sig.

  On a tip two weeks earlier, regional Motherland got a warrant to bring in Tracer and Moco while they holed up in St. Louis arranging new transportation. The bust nabbed their cargo—no fugitives in the van, just old television equipment and four cases of illegal videos—but both of the smugglers evaded capture.

  Tania watched Tracer work the room. She looked for signs of concealed carry. She watched him brush his scruffy hair from his eyes, and wanted to laugh and cry at how young he really was. How young most of these people were, grabbing onto a candle of naïve hope, not yet cauterized by the realities of how this country really worked.

  Tracer handed out some other piece of paper to selected members of the crowd. A little red business card. Tania was not one of the recipients, but she knew what they were. Invitations to callbacks for interviews.

  She wondered if she could get her own interview. If Sig wasn’t going to come out, she would have to get these people to help her find him.

  Just then a voice yelled from across the room.

  “Hey, Tania!”

  Tania looked.

  “Lisbet?” said Tania.

  “Oh my God!” said Lisbet. She looked older, even a little gray in the dirty blond, but she still had that thing in her nose. Of course it would be Lisbet to call her out in a crowd. Tania briefly considered pretending to try to be someone else. Then that gave her a better idea.

  “Hey!” said Tania. She smiled, worked her way through the milling crowd, and hugged Lisbet. She wore some homemade midwestern scent, like ragweed and vetiver.

  “I heard about your mom,” said Lisbet. “What Gestapo bullshit. Like it’s a crime to give people food and shelter. Is that why you’re here?”

  “That’s the main reason,” said Tania.

  “Right on. How can we help?”

  “I think I have a plan that will work.”

  If Lisbet knew about Mom, she probably knew about Sig.

  “It’s good to see you,” said Tania.

  “I heard you were in Washington,” said Lisbet. Her friendly expression changed when she said the word.

  Just then, a dude with a shaved head, plastic glasses, and a black T-shirt interrupted them. He whispered in Lisbet’s ear, staring at Tania suspiciously over his cupped hand.

  “Okay,” said Lisbet, a more serious look on her face now. “Shit.”

  “What?” said Tania.

  “Raid,” said Lisbet.

  Tania imagined getting caught here by Motherland. Her trav
el orders from work were to be in Duluth. Secret Service would disclaim her. Instead of getting Mom out she’d be locked up with her.

  “You better come with me,” said Lisbet.

  “I gotta run,” said Tania.

  Just as she turned, and heard the sound of the choppers, she saw the look on Lisbet’s face change.

  “I knew it!” screamed Lisbet. “You fucking narc!”

  Lisbet grabbed Tania’s arm, fingers digging in. Tania smacked back her hand, shoved her back, and ran for the door.

  “Grab her!” Lisbet shouted

  Tania ran for the door. As she forced her way out through the panicked crowd, she looked back over her shoulder and saw the rage in Lisbet’s face, channeled into a sharp-nailed finger of indictment pointed right at her.

  Outside the police trucks were rolling up, blasting sonics.

  Tania followed three dudes as they ran the other way, into the dark streets, and looked for a way to disappear.

  32

  Sig snuck out from the barn again that night and slept in the woods by the freeway. The barn was the place where Sig and the others were supposed to stay so the people who were looking for them wouldn’t find them. There were other guys about Sig’s age there, and the setup seemed safe. Sig just felt safer outside, even if it exposed him to the eyes you can’t see.

  The woods were between the interstate and a cemetery. The cemetery was good cover for passage. Lots of trees, no surveillance, and no people, at least at night. The new section by the highway was huge, filled with the fresh white headstones of fighters fallen in foreign wars. Some from wars closer to home. There was a big monument to the martyrs down in one of the low spots of the field, made of black stone. On a clear night with a new moon it looked like it was filled with stars.

  Sig’s spot was past that, back through the weird old tombs of people from centuries before. One was a woman with outstretched wings, taking off. Her long hair reminded Sig of when his mom would let her braids out.

  Sig liked to climb the old oak trees. The crooks of the branches were so big you could sleep in them. To the west you could see the corporate parks they built after all the farms died. There was the Quaker Biofuels research facility, the DataFeed monitoring center, and the Greyrock Aerospace Special Projects Division, where they came up with new designs for unmanned craft. Fritz said his grandfather had worked there, after they captured him at the end of the war. Fritz said the building was big enough that they could fly planes inside it. Sig wished he could see that.

  It still wouldn’t be as big as the open sky beyond the big boxes, the endless acres of sick fields trying to dry their way back to wild, or kept on chemical life support to grow more fuel for the machine.

  Sig could feel the spring weather having second thoughts, especially when he got up in the tree, and wondered whether they might wake up to a blanket of white. The seasons got harder to predict every year. He put on his gift from Billie and Fritz, a black hoodie of thick material that Billie said came from old plastic bottles. It felt good. It would give him a way to remember when he moved on.

  The snow didn’t come in the morning. It felt warmer. He walked down to the river at sunup and went duck hunting before breakfast. He’d found a lagoon where they pumped warm water out of the plant and the ducks liked to hang out and get cozy. The way Sig hunted them was to strip down, get in the river, and sneak up on the ducks from underneath, where he could grab their feet and pull them under. He got two nice ones. He was hoping the gift of fresh game would make Billie less mad when he told her it was his last day.

  33

  Gerson gave Tania credit for the raid on Ganymede, even though that was not what Tania had in mind.

  When Gerson called to say so, Tania bitched her out.

  Running into Lisbet, there at the meeting, was a huge break. Lisbet could have helped Tania find Sig. She was plugged into the underground, the people who had been harboring Sig. Instead Tania had been outed before she even got to ask the first question.

  At least now Tania knew for sure that Gerson and her people were tracking her.

  She wished she could explain it to Lisbet. If they had enough time and space to share, she could get her to understand.

  Instead of talking to her old friend, Tania would have to play the interrogator she never wanted to be. Gerson had it all set up. Almost as if she took pleasure in getting Tania to do things she did not want to do.

  It turned out the raid was not a well-planned operation. Three Motherland field agents and local police took it on short notice and deployed as the meeting was already dispersing. They got Tracer, two other members of Rook’s cell, and four of the recruits. Tania was kind of sorry Rook got away, mainly because she seemed like such a high-level source, and also because her privileged demeanor just bugged her. Tania was happy that Lisbet was not on the list, even though that meant Lisbet might now be on the hunt for Tania.

  So much for the plan to get some of Cousin Mell’s pie.

  Instead, Tania found herself back at the Box.

  Mom was already gone, transferred to Boschwitz House.

  The guard, who told her that, congratulated her on her connections, for being able to secure such cush treatment. And told her this guy’s not so lucky.

  When she sat down with Tracer, Tania could see what the guard meant, in the prisoner’s face.

  “I’m sorry you’re here,” said Tania. She meant it. She’d read the file. The things that first got this kid into trouble were almost admirable. He got on the wrong track early, and once he had a record there wasn’t really any other path.

  Tracer just looked at her with a skeptical face.

  “I mean it. It’s my fault. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” he said. He had a stoner voice, like a southern surfer.

  “No,” said Tania. “And if you help me out, they said I can get you the same deal as the recruits you seduced.”

  “What’s that?” asked Tracer. He had a fresh bruise on his cheek. Tania wondered what other bruises might be hidden under the yellow jumpsuit.

  “Avoid prosecution if you volunteer for eighteen months of military service, or agree to six weeks of reconditioning therapy.”

  “I’ll take my chance on prosecution. You can’t put us in jail for talking to people.”

  “You watch too many old TV shows,” said Tania. “They can put you in jail for whatever they want, just about. I don’t like it, either. I want change, too, just by different means. That’s why I want to help you get the best outcome.”

  “The least shitty outcome. What bullshit.”

  “What if I told you they have a whole file on you. And Moco.”

  His expression changed.

  “Enough for seven counts of felony violations of the Secure Travel Act.”

  He got whiter.

  “And what if I said all I want is for you to help me find some people who will never know I talked to you,” said Tania.

  He stared at her through his bangs.

  “Where is Moco?”

  He kept staring.

  “He’s here in Minneapolis, too, right?” said Tania.

  “I want a lawyer.”

  “Not with your charges,” said Tania. “Emergency powers. How do you think you got to this building?”

  “The permanent emergency,” said Tracer.

  “I don’t like them, either, but those are the rules. You’re lucky they let me talk to you. I might be able to help with this predicament you find yourself in.”

  Tracer pushed back his bangs. Looked at the picture of the President on the wall. Sighed.

  “How about this guy?” said Tania, showing Tracer the mug shot of Sig. “Where would I find him if I wanted to ask him a few questions?”

  “Never seen him,” said Tracer. “Looks like an asshole though.”

  “He can be,” said Tania. “Why don’t you tell me the truth? I know he was here.”

  Tracer shrugged. Tania watched h
im look away again.

  “Where do the underground broadcasts come from?” said Tania.

  “From TV.”

  “Where’s the station? They know you guys work the sneakernet. Move packages that the gangs bring across the Canadian border. Like that load of tapes you took to St. Louis.”

  “We didn’t take any tapes to St. Louis.”

  “Then where did you take them?”

  “Shit.”

  “St. Louis is where they caught you.”

  “That was you?”

  “Colleagues. I just got on the case.”

  “Fuck!”

  “It’s okay,” said Tania. “Work with me. I know you don’t want to go back.”

  “What are you gonna do to help me?”

  “Get you into reprogramming. It’s that or Detroit, if you’re lucky. It’s a good deal.”

  “Fucking sucks.”

  Tania waited.

  “Where will it be?” asked Tracer.

  “There’s a sanctioned clinic in San Antonio, attached to the Army hospital. Close to home.”

  He snorted a chuckle.

  “Or wherever you want,” she said. “Here’s the list.” She turned the tablet to him so he could read it. “Page two of the form, right after the signature. You know it has to be consensual.”

  He looked, fiddled, and squirmed.

  “It’s not supposed to hurt,” said Tania, trying to convince herself as well. “I hear it’s like rehab.”

  “Rehab sucks,” said Tracer. “Rehab with brain machines is worse.”

  “Just fMRI,” said Tania. “Dreaming.” It almost sounded pleasant, the way she said it.

  “Dream hacking.”

  “It’s the best I can do. Sign it or we’re done and you can fend for yourself.”

  He made his mark with an angry thumbnail.

  Tania reclaimed the tablet.

  “So where’s the station?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” said Tracer. “I wasn’t on that run.”