Black Rain

by Matthew B. J. Delaney

  “You know your players.”

  “Only the good ones.” She tilted the mug toward him to show the familiar orange-and-green University of Miami logo. “Cheerleader for three seasons. Go, ’Canes.”

  Jack laughed. “Long way from Florida.”

  “You too. How about I give you a ride? We can catch up on old times.”

  “Wish I could.”

  Ahead of them the light turned green. A solar honked.

  “Married?”

  “Something like that,” Jack said.

  She shook her head. “Too bad for you. You don’t know what you’re missing.”

  More cars honked behind them. “I’m sure I don’t.” He nodded toward the light. “It’s green.”

  “Bye now.”

  The jeep solar accelerated with the flow of traffic. Jack bore his weight down and the bicycle moved forward. He turned off Broadway onto Murray Street, the gleaming Genico tower rotating ahead of him. He was still recognized for his time at Miami. As the years passed, though, he was remembered less and less. Which he was glad about. He’d never loved the spotlight as others did, but he did miss the game days. That was a rush not easily found again in regular life.

  Jack pulled the bike to a stop, hoisted it to his shoulder, and moved up the plaza stairs into a volumetric display ad 3Deeing a beautiful Synthate at the casino in Necropolis. Nearby, four male Synthates in window-washer overalls stepped out from a Synthate boutique, separated, and walked quickly away. They moved easily through the crowd of suits thronging along Financial Plaza.

  The explosion came seconds later.

  The Synthate retail shop stood for a moment in perfect testament to all-you-need retail genetic consumerism, before glass and metal twisted violently outward in a raging torrent of heat. People screamed and collapsed onto the sidewalk as a powerful wave of invisible energy pulsed against Jack and knocked him backward.

  He felt a hand on his arm. The Genico doorman, James Wilson, looked down at him. “Are you hurt, sir?”

  The strangely formal tone seemed at odds with the chaos of the scene. Jack needed a moment to put the man’s words together into something that made sense.

  “I’m fine.” Jack stood up carefully, propping himself with his bicycle. Traffic had screeched to a halt along the plaza and people who’d not been knocked to the ground stood there and surveyed in horror the burning store. The blast had been contained inside, and aside from a few cuts and faces darkened by smoke, Jack could detect no serious injuries along the street.

  Already, sirens could be heard in the distance. Above, the Maglev train passed through the lobby, flames reflected against algae fins.

  “Another Synthate attack?” Wilson asked.

  “You can’t enslave a population and expect them to be happy about it. Sooner or later they’ll get tired of doing our laundry.”

  “And then what?”

  Jack felt the heat from the burning store. Overhead, a Synthate Fugitive Unit helisquall skimmed low over the street, its rotators churning the smoke.

  “I don’t know what happens then,” Jack said. “But this isn’t over.”

  Pushing his bike through the Genico lobby, he entered a waiting elevator. As he was carried upward, news images 3Deed inside the car. The project to rebuild the Brooklyn Bridge had stalled under fears of another Synthate attack. This morning would only make things worse.

  Jack could hear the roar of the eighty-ninth floor through the closed doors as the car moved upward. That was Phillip’s world. Jack’s own was something different entirely.

  The elevator stopped one floor above his brother’s turf and the doors opened.

  After the economic collapse, excess moved toward extinction. The American addiction to easy mao and fast living had depleted the supply of its pleasures, but, as natural resources vanished and the Earth warmed, green markets offered new avenues for profit. Consumers preferred to drink expensive coffee harvested by fair-wage farmers in Costa Rica or purchase flimsy shirts made of recycled materials than contribute to the degradation of the oceans or the extinction of the Mexican gray wolf.

  There was a superficiality to such behavior that Jack recognized and hated. And yet, if making the Mexican gray wolf the new cause célèbre meant the species could be saved, Jack was ready to endure the smug self-righteousness of the eco-correct.

  Unlike the level below, the ninetieth floor housed Genico’s Corporate Social Responsibility Department. Its denizens were ex–Peace Corps types, vegetarians who walked to work, burned biofuel, gave mao to Greenpeace, adopted strays, and wore hemp. Jack did his work here.

  “Hey, handsome,” Cindy Smith, the floor coordinator, said as Jack wheeled his bike out of the elevator. She was small, her body coiled with energy. On her head, she wore a floppy brown fedora. “What happened down there? We heard a big explosion. People are like really freaked.”

  “Looks like another bombing.”

  “Awful. Anyone hurt?”

  “I don’t think so,” Jack said. “Should be coming up on the vidScreens soon.”

  “Your brother’s looking for you.” Cindy rolled her eyes. “He wanted you to see him in the den of sin.”

  “Money is pretty good there. Maybe I should make a move.”

  “If you ever left, I’d keep everything of yours and take it out once a week to remember you.”

  Jack knew how most of his coworkers felt about his brother and the other traders. The reality of the situation, however, was that without them, there was no Genico. And with no Genico, there was no Corporate Social Responsibility Department, and without that department, Cindy and everyone else would be back working office temp jobs, living off their parents and planning backpacking trips to Thailand.

  Jack knew his brother’s floor was driven by greed. But he was a realist. There was a cost to doing good. As he descended the stairs, Jack instinctively reached to cover his ears at the approaching clamor. Even the bombing below affected nothing going on there. Business as usual. Traders screamed into syncs while ticker symbols 3Deed around the room.

  Many years ago, investors bought up shares of General Motors and Coca-Cola. Now it was high blood pressure and diabetes. And at every step there were brokers like Phillip Saxton, standing by with their razor blades, ready to take a little sliver of each and every trade. The brokering of life and death.

  Inside his brother’s office, an attractive young woman floated on a tesla buoyancy chair before the New York Harbor view. Her attention was carefully focused on the man behind the desk.

  “Do you want me to stay?” she asked Phillip.

  “For a minute.”

  Phillip leaned back in his chair, one hand obscured in the pocket of his suit jacket. “How you doing, brother?”

  “Good, fine.”

  Phillip eyed Jack for a long moment, then finally said, “That’s good.”

  “Something wrong?”

  “No, no.” Phillip smiled at the girl. “Take off. I’ll meet up with you later.”

  She was perfect in design, Synthate definitely, and Jack felt sorry for her. Women like her were made for only one purpose. Jack pitied any Synthate who came within his brother’s reach. For Phillip, everything was tradable.

  The girl winked at Jack as she passed. Her bioprint tattoo showed beneath the strap of her top, a farmhouse far in the distance, darkening cloud cover overhead.

  “Who was that?” Jack asked.

  Phillip dropped something heavy and metal into his desk drawer, then poured himself a glass of something amber colored. “That? Oh . . . a distraction. So fucking boring without them.”

  “So how goes things in the world of a high-powered trader?”

  “Well . . . for starters, I lost an Andy Warhol amount of mao today. I won’t frustrate myself with the details.” Phillip sighed, then pushed the tesla chair in a drift across the floor toward Jack. “Have a seat.”

  The chair rose up beneath Jack and he sat. Phillip sat on the edge of his massive cruise liner desk.
“One of our employees was murdered last night.”

  “My God, who?”

  “Martin Reynolds. Know him?”

  “Of course. Nice guy. Worked on the Black Rain project.”

  “Yeah. He was a nice guy.”

  “Do the police have any leads?”

  Phillip laughed strangely. “Probably not. Do the police ever have any leads?”

  “Maybe it was connected with the store explosion this morning? That seems like a clue.”

  “A clue? What are you, one of the Hardy Boys? It’s the Synthates. They need to learn their place. This world is for naturals. Shame, though. Reynolds was a huge art collector. Lot of cash in that art. He had an original Renoir. Donated it to some museum. Total waste.”

  Jack was in no mood to argue. There was a long pause before Phillip finally asked, “How’s business?”

  “We’re looking into—”

  Phillip held up his hand and interrupted. “It was a polite question. And while I’m sure your answer is entirely fascinating, I didn’t bring you in here to talk about sustainable chicken farming or whatever it is you do upstairs.”

  “So what am I here to talk about?”

  “Africa.”

  His brother’s pharmaceutical habits frequently led to cryptic conversations. “Is there more to that, or am I supposed to guess?”

  “Have you ever heard of Ituri?”

  “An African nation that annually tops the charts as one of the biggest human rights violators on the planet. The civil war waged by General Mazomba has claimed thousands of lives and displaced almost a million people, while making the general himself one of Africa’s most feared men. And one of the wealthiest.” Jack shook his head, then added dryly, “No. What’s Ituri?”

  “No reason to look so smug,” Phillip said. “Just a simple question.”

  “Asking me if I knew Ituri would be like asking you what a Zagat guide is. Aside from the nuked-out radiation zones of Pakistan and India, Ituri ranks as one of the world’s most critical humanitarian and ecological hotspots.”

  “Okay, okay, calm down. Don’t get your recycled boxers all in a bunch.”

  “What about it?”

  “I’m planning a trip there,” Phillip said. “My little friend you saw leaving just dropped off my personal invitation from General Mazomba himself. I need you to sign some footballs for me. He’s apparently a big fan.”

  Jack laughed. “You? Why? Last I heard there was no Ritz-Carlton Ituri.”

  “That’s unfair, little bro,” Phillip said. “Sometimes I also give back to the world.”

  “I’m waiting for the punch line.”

  “And General Mazomba happens to be ready to make a rather large investment in Genico.”

  “And the truth shall be revealed,” Jack said. “So you’re willing to invest in the most corrupt regime in Africa? Doesn’t that hurt your conscience at all?”

  “Did you just use the ‘C’ word in front of me?” Phillip asked. “Conscience? Listen, I’m the owner of a lonely heart. And I’m sorry you seem to forget that the point of business is to stay in business. Genico is in the business to make mao, mao, I might add, that’ll continue to pay the salaries of your little granola group upstairs.”

  “Touché. So it’s a bribe, then?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Sure,” Jack said. Befriending General Mazomba might eventually open the country to accept humanitarian aid. That would be worth a few footballs.

  “Good,” Phillip said as he stood up. He rubbed his temples.

  “Headache?”

  “Pounding. I feel like there’s a Culture Club concert inside my skull right now,” he said. “I’m taking Vicodin like crazy. No effect anymore. I think I’m evolving into a new species.”

  Jack looked at his brother with concern. “You going to be all right?”

  Phillip flashed him his best plastic smile. “Excess is our friend, right?”

  “Well, if you ever want to detox, you’re always welcome upstairs,” Jack said. “I’ll see you tonight.”

  CHAPTER 7

  Back in his office, Jack skimmed the USA Today illumipaper. Eddie Marquis, the popular NFL star, 3Deed a touchdown run while the blurb described his positive test for genetic modification. Since the advent of genetic testing, key professional players in all sports had tested positive. Over the years, steroid use had all but been replaced by genetic doping, meaning athletes sought to change their own genetic makeup to make themselves faster and stronger.

  Eddie Marquis was one in a series of sports figures who had been implicated in genetic modification scandals. No natural-born athlete could ever compete with one whose coding had been modified. The result of thousands of hours in the gym and on the track could be instantly produced by simply moving a few codons around. After several seasons of dramatically increased results on playing fields, league officials had grown wise to the practice and started blanket testing programs. Any modification got you banned for life. Too much modification, and they might not even classify you as a natural anymore.

  Someone knocked on the door and Jack looked up. As he did, the pictures and print on the illumipaper faded away to the pale blue sky of the screensaver.

  Cindy appeared in the doorway. She had taken off her hat, and her hair was a wild nest of greasy-looking strands. “Your father’s done with his interview. He wants to see you.”

  Jack studied her hair. “You okay?”

  “Oh.” Cindy suddenly grinned and pointed to her head. “My hair. I’ve given up all cosmetics, detergents, shampoos, and conditioners. I switched to olive oil with a little warm meltwater. Just like the Romans.”

  “Looks . . .”—Jack struggled for the word—“. . . natural.”

  “Thanks!”

  Happy, Cindy disappeared back down the hall. Jack tidied up his desk, then took the elevator to the top floor of the building.

  The Genico penthouse was reserved for the founder of the company, the creator of the Samp exchange and one of the minds instrumental to the creation of Synthates. He was also Jack’s adoptive father.

  Jack’s mother had met George Saxton at a benefit two years after the death of Jack’s biological father. His mother had been a Genico biotech scientist who worked closely with the Synthate development programs. She’d married the elder Saxton when Jack was three years old, and Phillip, then five, was suddenly given a kid brother.

  George Saxton had always been a disciplined, methodical scientist, and he applied those same traits to being a dad. After Jack’s mother passed away from cancer, two years before the Samp was invented, George Saxton, with help from Synthate nannies, raised both children.

  Throughout Jack’s youth, his father was a flickering presence in the household. Appearances here and there. Always seeming on the edge of vanishing entirely.

  The penthouse felt like a museum. The floor was polished hardwood that stretched out like an oil slick. A conference room took up the far corner, a long boardroom table visible through fluxglass. The kitchen was stocked with bottles of meltwater and some actual spring water. A massive 3Dee of Venice filled one section, evening lights shimmering over the canals.

  Near the elevator were long glass cases filled with historical weapons. Swords and axes and knives sparkled under the overhead light. Jack was never sure where his father’s fascination with weaponry had come from.

  Outside through the glass, Manhattan glittered in the fog. A pillow and blanket lay bunched up across the cushions of a sofa while 3Deed Samp numbers floated overhead.

  Jack saw Pancrease had dropped again.

  A great brown-and-white hooded falcon sat on a wooden perch, shifting its weight back and forth nervously as Jack stepped toward his father. George Saxton appeared from the conference room. He was a slim man of immense presence with a face composed of angles; the sharp line of his nose, the jutted edges of his cheekbones, and the square shape of his jaw came together to form an appearance that seemed created by architects. His t
hick, sculpted mustache punctuated his features, while his eyes were the most alive part of him, black, holding the morning light.

  Regal Blue, his father’s bodyguard and helper, followed close behind. One of the earliest designed Synthates, he was hulking and muscular, with a brooding face and a thick, sloping, Neanderthal forehead. His right eye was blind, a useless milky jewel that floated beneath a bushy eyebrow. He’d lost it in the Games. Saxton could have had the eye repaired, of course, but Regal Blue wanted it left alone. A reminder of where he had come from.

  Regal Blue acknowledged Jack with a slight bow. He wore an old-fashioned tuxedo, his left hand sheathed in a thick buckskin falconry glove.

  George Saxton shook Jack’s hand firmly, then led him toward his work desk, a massive wood affair that rose from the floor like the deck of a ship. Always the handshake formality. Jack was never sure if he was saying hello to his dad or greeting the prime minister of Japan. His father’s desk was clear except for a few family images. The first was a 2Dee of Jack’s mother. The second a volumetric display of Jack in his University of Miami football uniform breaking tackles, then skirting the sideline for a touchdown against Boston College. There was nothing of Phillip.

  “Slept here last night?” Jack inspected the sofa with a frown. He didn’t like the old man shutting himself up in the office like this. The lifestyle of a recluse wasn’t healthy.

  “Just a nap.” His father looked tired. He seemed suddenly older, and that scared him. “Long days. How have you been?”

  “Good.”

  “And how’s Dolce?” His father tapped the top of his desk with a knuckle. He was the product of a centuries-old lineage: Since the first Saxton male had set foot in the New World, none of them had ever expressed a human emotion unless it was pried out like a decayed tooth. From the stilted, awkward conversation, Jack knew something was bothering his dad.

  “Everyone is fine,” Jack reiterated, waiting.

  “Good, good . . .” His father’s voice trailed off. Remaining quiet for a minute, he finally brought himself to the point of speaking. “There was a murder last night. A Genico scientist. Dr. Martin Reynolds.”