Black Rain

by Matthew B. J. Delaney

  “For what?”

  “For me to help you relax.”

  For me to help you relax. Jack was surprised by how casual she sounded. He wasn’t used to Synthate socials, and her seeming submissiveness made him uncomfortable. They were designed entirely to entertain naturals. He could take her now, fulfill his every dark sexual desire, and she would never complain. Never talk back.

  “I’m sorry. There’s been a mistake,” Jack said. “I’m not going to need your services.”

  Without seeming to hear, Night Comfort slung her bag back over her shoulder and walked slowly toward the guest bedroom. He watched her walk away, her dress tight against the curve of her hips and back. Someone had designed her perfectly. A male fantasy brought to life. She paused at the doorway, then turned back toward him.

  “Please, come this way, sir.”

  When he entered the room, she stared at him as she slowly undid her top. Her breasts were perfect, of course. He thought of Dolce, then thought of all that this girl was programmed to do. The continual degradation. Built only to satisfy.

  “Whoa . . . wait . . .” he said, holding out his hand. “Please.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I can’t do this. I, um, I’m with someone.”

  She frowned slightly, her hands paused around her waist and the strap of her dress still half off her shoulder. The bioprint of the tree slowly morphed to a cloud. “Don’t you find me attractive?”

  “Of course I do.” He was surprised she’d even think that. “I’m just . . . I’m with someone.”

  “Are you serious?” She asked as if she had never heard those words arranged in that particular combination before.

  “I’m sorry. You’re welcome to stay, though. Or sleep here, spend the night. However it works,” Jack said, feeling ridiculous, but also sorry for this girl. She was a living thank-you card.

  “Oh.” She smiled for the first time, a faint half smile. Her bioprint became an empty chair drawn Van Gogh-style. “I have to be here for an hour. Is that okay?”

  “No problem.”

  They sat in the living room together watching the news. DNA Design had released a new antiaging Samp. Rain, acidity five percent, was expected later in the day. New York was to fight Green Bay in Operation Desert Storm. Another terrorist group had attacked a genetic sorting facility in the Bronx and freed over twenty Synthates.

  Jack could almost sympathize with their cause. Hundreds of years ago, another group of armed activists had rebelled against unfair governmental treatment. And the United States had been born.

  But still, he could never support the violent acts committed in the name of Synthate rights.

  “Those attacks get them nowhere,” Jack said as they watched a video of the burning facility.

  “What should we do?” Night Comfort asked sharply. “Nothing?”

  “To sin by silence, when we should protest, makes cowards out of men,” he quoted, remembering something he’d once heard.

  “Who said that?”

  “Don’t remember.” He laughed. “Of course they should speak out. But peaceful protest, that’s the only way.”

  “And why do you say that?”

  “Because terrorist acts make Synthates the enemy. When, every day, naturals turn on the news and Synthates have blown up some new target, the result is they demonize themselves.”

  “The use of violence as an instrument of persuasion is therefore inviting and seems to the discontented to be the only effective protest,” she said. A stylized wave curled across her shoulder and slowly became a sword. “William O. Douglas. Benefits of a self-education.”

  “Naturals will only give Synthates their civil rights when they don’t fear violent uprisings. Look at Martin Luther King, look at Gandhi. Peaceful protest. It’s the only way.”

  “Look at the French Revolution. Look at your own American Revolution. For every instance you give of peaceful protest, there are ten more where armed revolution accomplished the same goals. Martin Luther King was a great man for his time, but his tactics won’t work for Synthates.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Synthate grievances are too great. We aren’t fighting to not sit in the back of the bus. To not have to drink from separate fountains. The violence against naturals during the Civil Rights Movement, even at its worst, was nothing like what we face. Every day hundreds of us are dying. In the Games. In mines. In brothels. We don’t have the luxury of peaceful protest,” she said. “I don’t want to take away from men like Martin Luther King and suffragists like Susan B. Anthony, but their difference from Synthates is enormous. They were naturals. Before anything else, their blackness, femaleness, they were acknowledged as humans. Synthates don’t have that right yet.”

  Jack looked at her in surprise. He had never heard a Synthate talk this openly about their feelings, about their grievances, about anything. Synthates were to be seen and not heard. This conversation would be termination for her if the wrong person heard it. He wondered why she trusted him so much. “Who did you say you worked for again?”

  “Yeah . . .” she said more carefully. “Sometimes I get carried away.”

  “It’s okay. It’s a difficult subject. And I don’t have all the answers. But I just don’t think such extremism is going to accomplish what Synthates want.”

  “Why don’t we see what else is on,” she said, changing the subject by reaching for the eyeScreen remote. She found a program about sport fishing. Two men in a boat off the Florida Keys were pulling in marlin.

  “You seem tense. How about a massage?” Night Comfort said. She reached for his neck.

  Jack pulled away from her. “For a minute there, I was actually sitting next to you. The real you. Now you’re playacting again. But you’re someone else, really. You don’t have to be with me.”

  She looked at him thoughtfully. “It’s a dangerous world I live in. You have no idea.”

  “You’re right. I probably don’t.”

  On screen, a beautiful marlin broke the surface of the waves, flashing marine blue in the sun before it crashed back into the water. Her eyes were fixed out the window. A commercial airship passed by, floating low over Central Park, projecting an image of a new type of shampoo; soon an ad for a more effective toothpaste took its place. Wash your hair. Brush your teeth. Rinse. Repeat. Spit. Ignore. Question nothing.

  He thought of her words. They made sense to him. The Synthate movement had always made sense to him. From his early childhood, taken into a family that wasn’t his, he’d always felt himself to be an outsider. Different, somehow. And that sense of his separateness had fostered a kinship with Synthates. Their anger touched a corresponding place inside him.

  “What’s it feel like to be a Synthate?” Jack asked.

  “It feels like . . . have you ever been to the beach, and picked up one of those shells that make noise when you put it up to your ear?”

  “A conch shell.”

  “Yes. A conch shell. Anyway, it’s like that. You can put this conch shell up to your ear and hear this whole world inside, the sound of the ocean on the beach, waves crashing. But, in truth, the shell is empty. There’s nothing inside. It’s just an illusion.”

  She watched the commercial craft hover slowly across the Manhattan skyline, its robotic eye driving it forward. Her bioprint was a long stretch of desert.

  “Yeah,” she said finally. “That’s about the feeling. Like you’re empty inside.”

  When the hour was up, she excused herself to change. Through the window, Jack watched the stream of traffic along the FDR, the red taillights of solars slowly winding their way through the curving exit ramps. To the west, the Central Park dome shimmered for a moment, like a ripple of water. Strange, Jack thought. But then Night Comfort came out of the bathroom and he turned his attention from the window.

  “So we’re all right here?” she said, pulling her hair back into a ponytail.

  Jack felt the strangeness of the moment. The intensity of emotion
they had felt, now put behind them. “Sure.”

  “Because I have to get going.”

  “Where?”

  “You don’t want to know.”

  “Oh,” he said. “Do I . . . owe you anything?”

  She laughed. “We didn’t do anything.”

  “For your time, you know.”

  She smiled, shaking her head. “Thank you for the thought. But you’re all taken care of. I was instructed to . . . be aggressive with you.”

  “Instructed by who?”

  “I never know. But I was told to do whatever it took to get you to fuck me,” she said. “You’re married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Affairs make great leverage,” she said before bending down and kissing him on the cheek. “But you’ve been a good boy tonight.”

  She turned, pulled her bag up over her shoulder, and walked out of the bedroom.

  CHAPTER 18

  Back in Brooklyn, jazz played inside Jack’s high-rise honeycomb. Swing jazz. Glenn Miller’s “In the Mood,” to be exact. The music came from behind his bedroom door, where Dolce was getting ready.

  Through the outside window, he could see evening was beginning to take over, blackness moving across the sky from the east. The door was half-open, and Jack slid through. Standing in front of the wall mirror, Dolce was focused on a stray eyebrow hair, which she attacked with a pair of tweezers.

  “Everything okay?” She barely looked up.

  “Sure. Why?” Jack was faithful, but being caught alone with a Synthate social was a difficult position to defend. He should never have allowed it to happen and, looking back, it seemed quite strange that it had.

  “Your brother called, looking for you,” Dolce said. “I told him to try your sync.”

  Affairs make great leverage. Jack thought about what Night Comfort had said. She’d been told to seduce him. Jack knew his brother was jealous, but was he ready to believe his brother would try blackmail? To what? Poison Dolce against him? To undermine his authority? To force him from the job he’d been promised? Jack dismissed the thought. His brother wasn’t that far gone. They were family, after all.

  Jack sat double-parked in his 1988 Chevrolet Callaway Sledgehammer Corvette and waited for Dolce to come down. The vehicle was the one real luxury he permitted himself. Over the last twenty years, all new cars had become self-powered, run by fins of colonized algae that edged the roof and trunk using sunlight to produce biofuel. The Sledgehammer was a pure gas-guzzling, ass-kicking machine. One of the last remaining. Sometimes the guilt was worth the reward.

  Jack hated the Games. He’d never been entirely comfortable with the concept, nor could he reconcile himself to the sight of so much bloodshed. Tonight was different, though. Genico’s fortune had been built in part on the backs of Synthates. His father was right. To not have the stomach to attend the Games might signal weakness to the board of directors, and, unfortunately, Jack needed the current board.

  Until he could find more humanitarian replacements.

  The car door opened and Dolce joined him inside. Her face had its usual look of amusement as she surveyed the beautiful black interior of the Sledgehammer.

  “Problem?” Jack asked.

  “I always would have figured you for a biofuel or a solar.” She smiled. “Who even has gas cars anymore? This thing is an antique.”

  He grinned at her. “Buckle your seat belt. We’ll see what this antique can do.”

  Bloomberg Island had been specially constructed in the harbor just off the southern tip of Manhattan. Jack punched the accelerator, weaved around traffic, and didn’t let up for some time, barely slowing as he crossed the long, cabled bridge. They drove under an enormous lit arch proclaiming: “Bloomberg Island: Home of the New York Braves.” Cars were backed up along the bridge, so they parked and walked. Spanning the arch, a massive, neon-lit tomahawk rose and fell in strobic motion. “Go Braves!”

  A large line crowded the executive entrance, where a gorilla-like Synthate with a shaved head stood guard. Jack heard someone call his name. He looked up and saw Phillip wave to him from the open doorway.

  “Waiting in line? Who won the Cold War? This isn’t Communist Russia.” Phillip wore a powder blue Lacoste shirt, white slacks, alligator loafers, and a wristband. He pulled them past the front entrance into a large nightclub crowded with people.

  “You know alligators are an endangered species now,” Jack shouted over the pounding rhythm of the Pointer Sisters.

  “Not at Prada they’re not. For twelve hundred bucks, you can get as many as you want.”

  They followed him down a long central hallway, past strobes and granite walls lined with 2Dees from the Games, then up a private elevator and through soundproof doors. The deafening music died off. They were in the familiar Genico VIP area with its deep leather sofas and battalion of white-suited Synthate waiters parked helpfully behind buffet tables heaped with delicacies. The far wall was windowed and looked out over the playing field.

  Phillip winked and then disappeared in the direction of the nearest bathroom. Jack walked to the windows and looked out. As always, the stands stretching below were a mass of moving bodies galvanized by fierce anticipation.

  The organism, the living creature composed of three hundred thousand people, was separated from the fields by a barrier of impenetrable Plexiglas that rose up as high as the stadium and stretched for three-quarters of a mile, the length of the seating. Through the clear wall, the fields stretched out, an eight-acre expanse of grass and roads cut by rough fences and thick trees. Small stone cottages dotted the landscape, tiny trickles of smoke rising up from their chimneys.

  “Tried the foie gras yet?” a voice said from behind.

  Jack turned to see Harold Lieberman and his massive Synthate Rasputin.

  If Jack lived in ancient Transylvania, he would have put a wreath of garlic and a crucifix around his neck. As far as Jack was concerned, the head of the board was the undead.

  “I look forward to the Games,” Lieberman confessed. “Though I’m hardly alone in that.” He waved his hand at the crowd. “You?”

  “Not as much.” Jack’s tone was guarded.

  “Don’t have the stomach for it?”

  “I think it’d be better if Synthates were never born than put them through this.”

  “Born?”

  “What?”

  “You just said better that Synthates were never born.”

  “Did I? Oops.”

  “Ah.” Lieberman held up a warning finger. “Synthates are an integral part of our economy. Slips of the tongue like that could be bad for business. Pretty soon you’ll be wanting them to vote.” Lieberman laughed. “Where would Genico be then?”

  “Right.” Jack was relieved to see his brother returning. Phillip’s eyes glittered and his gait was jittery as he grabbed Dolce in a surprise embrace. She broke free an instant later. Lieberman stared hard at the three of them.

  “See you later,” Lieberman said. “Enjoy the Games.” Rasputin, as ever, was silent. They moved off into the room.

  Phillip shook his head and then hugged Jack hard.

  “Whoa!” Jack laughed, patting his brother on the back.

  “I always wanted to be you,” Phillip said, then kissed him on the cheek. Pivoting, he too left them as he pounced back into the crowd and headed for the rear doors toward the nightclub.

  “That was strange.” Jack looked at Dolce.

  “He’s always had his moods.”

  Something about his brother’s behavior was different, though. He was used to the energy, the cryptic remarks, the sarcastic cynicism, but the outburst of emotion he’d just seen was unlike Phillip. And it was especially troubling after Night Comfort’s visit. Now a disturbing, hostile energy seemed to emanate from him.

  Jack and Dolce’s conversation was interrupted by the shriek of fighter jets in perfect formation over the stadium. The world around them went black. Time stretched out dramatically in the darkness. Suddenly, bright circ
les of light cut back and forth across the field before they targeted the concrete ramp on the far side.

  “And now, ladies and gentleman . . .” cried the announcer. Steam rose from the illuminated ramp and rolled across the edge of the field. “Please welcome your very own New York Braves!”

  A metal barrier on the far side of the field lifted. The clatter of hooves could be heard, and the crowd reacted, rising from their seats in an outburst of cheering. Up the ramp pranced a tightly reined stallion carrying a war-painted Native American. Mist rolled away from the giant animal in waving billows.

  Up from the stadium’s depths came one hundred Synthate soldiers, their long shadows cast across the rising mist. Wearing Union-blue cotton uniforms and black caps, they were led by their head coach, Samuel Sharp, a thick natural in a Braves hat and headset, his crimson red parka tight over his large form.

  CHAPTER 19

  Arden remembered the third nuclear weapon used on civilians in the history of the planet had been detonated by Pakistan three years earlier just outside Mumbai, India. Four days later, an Indian-made nuclear weapon detonated inside a school bus parked on a crowded street in Islamabad. The combined attacks claimed the immediate lives of approximately seventeen million people and created the largest mass movement of refugees in history.

  Within two weeks, the first wave of Indians arrived in New York City. Not wanting to become further involved in the war between India and Pakistan, the United States declared itself unable to give permanent shelter to any refugees displaced by the attacks. Instead, the refugees were placed into camps inside the highly secure Synthate development on Governors Island. Already populated by thousands of registered Synthates, the island soon became an overcrowded slum. Existing side by side were homeless Hindus, Parsis, Sikhs, and Jains, whose encampments covered every inch of ground and whose neighbors could easily be Synthate terrorists. All of them a few hundred yards from Lady Liberty herself.

  The place was a fine disaster, Arden thought, as the ferry tugged through the harbor and the profile of the island quickly approached. From across the water, he could see throngs of people packing the walkways and ferry landing. Time had reversed on the island until the place resembled the sepia-toned 2Dees of the immigrant tenement neighborhoods of nineteenth-century New York.