by Moira Crone
This was my moment. I pried open Serpent’s knife. He’d kept it well, hardly any rust. I found the wire he used to rig Serio’s boat. It wasn’t hard, I got it in. The car turned over, I rolled out. I was a good thousand feet away before any one of them even heard the engine. I watched in the rearview as they scrambled to one of their pitiful vehicles. I almost wanted to stay, to help them. What a sinner I was, I knew.
I floored it, found the I-Road—for miles it was unblocked and entirely empty.
*
As I drove, heading south and west, using the compass on Geppetto’s dial, I gained confidence that I would find my way out of the Far East De-Ax, and back home.
But I wasn’t calmer, I was more troubled: the whining faces of those Heirs and Altereds looking upon Ginger’s body, and Geppetto’s sneer, and the gargoyles going for Serp—
I drove through uninhabited, overgrown lands, punctuated now and then by cratered-out villages, mountains of brick rubble, and flocks of deer in some of the empty towns. Packs of dogs came at my transport on the road, sometimes as many as fifteen strong, willing to kill themselves for the delight of nipping at my tires.
I took a white gravel road detour from Charlie’s map to get around the Ocean Springs Toll Booth, and headed into the lowering sun as the day aged.
I had to return to my original plan. Go to Lazarus, get my Trust straight, go to Memphis, my ceremony, and go back to Lydia. Lydia.
I left Gepetto’s vehicle not far from where I’d found it parked along the Elysiana Canal, and I took the gas can that was still in the back seat, and went to the small shack Serpent had taken me to, days before. There, I chatted with the Jeddy fellow, who wore a peaked hat and many necklaces this day, and still the filthy red jumpsuit. I reminded him how Serpent had sung to him, and that Serpenthead and I were very good friends—saying these things, I missed Serpent, mightily, and wondered if he’d made it. I told Jeddy all he asked about the Ginger. Finally, he sold me the untaxed, illegal, compos fuel, which I paid for with the last of the money Camille gave me.
And at that moment, on the edge of the Basin, beside the Elysiana Canal, I made the resolution I would not ever see Camille again, or have anything of hers again, and though this thought gouged a great hole in my chest, so that I didn’t believe I could ever breathe, I managed to march across the Quarter and find Serio’s boat tied to the bollard. Exactly where we’d left it.
And, as I headed home, all that had happened in the Far East seemed to fade—that horrible Sim, that wild band. As if everything that had happened since I’d come to the Sunken Quarter almost a week before, had been a dream, and now I had awakened.
III
5:30 PM October 17, 2121
Tchoupitoulas Trench near Audubon Island
New Orleans Islands, Northeast Gulf De-Accessioned Territory,
U.A. Protectorate
It was close to sunset. The canal stank, and dogs barking from their roofs seemed to have organized a chorus: when one led off with a howling tune, the others yelped in response. The noise of generators blended with talk and laughter. Some of the squatters were sitting outside on the decks and terraces. The dwellings in general seemed ramshackle and temporary. Anyone living here must re-evaluate his circumstances every season, I thought, and discuss with his neighbors other possibilities—houseboats, dry land up north outside of enclave territory. I saw some of the women smoking in the dark, I smelled meat grilling. One of them called out to me, “Hey, cut that off,” meaning my motor, “Can’t you see we’re living here?” Then, “What you want boy? What you looking at?”
It was almost as if nothing had happened in the last one hundred and twenty five years—I was aware of history, now, I hadn’t been when I was a boy—I knew what things looked like long ago, in the dark times, the Pre-Reveal. A few children waved at me, delighted by Serio’s boat, assuming I found it exciting to be steering a weather-worn vessel through the canals and swamps and flooded houses that a great city had come to. They thought this was an adventure—I knew the feeling. But I was tired of adventure.
There was something glistening and sweet, though, about this place and how these citizens clung to it. I had not seen it when I was a boy, either. I had not even seen it a few days before when I had come this way with Serpenthead. But now I felt what life was like before, when all were on the same watery, unsteady footing, when everyone knew that things could change in an instant, that all was vulnerable, not some completely vulnerable and some not vulnerable at all. When the moment could impinge upon people, bring them along, when that was common—it had been more like that here in this part, in the DE-AX, than anywhere else, the U.A., or anywhere, Lazarus had told me once. Which is why they let him alone here to start his little home. They did not molest him for his antique beliefs, for taking in toss-out children, a salvage operation, as the U.A. world saw it. This was a place on the edges, as they saw it, where what was past could be discarded, forgotten, ignored, occasionally visited for the thrill of the exotic. A place with the fortune, or curse, of not-mattering.
I passed the last occupied house. The only sight then, besides the water and the trees, were the peaks of old roofs of houses nobody could live in anymore. Then I saw, across the way, ruins of the bridges and the smokestacks of old industries Serpenthead had shown me, metal scaffoldings and towers that were part of the old ports. When they were out of sight, I felt more alone than I ever had, for some reason.
At a point on the Tchoupitoulas Trench, I came in upon a cinderblock floodwall with great brown-orange rusted iron gates, where I thought the Foundling House should be. At first I didn’t realize what it was, and looked around for the old brick circumference, the original wall of the cloistered nunnery, that Lydia had spoken of. Then I realized the old barrier was inside a new one, for I could make out the high tower of the chapel poking out above the enclosure. When I steered in near enough to look over, I saw the new retainer was necessary—the height of the water in the Trench was easily seven feet above the level of the earth in the play yard. There was the old sign, in case I had any doubts:
Audubon Foundling House.
Lazarus de Gold, Founder.
I called over the top of the white blocks, “Marilee? Marilee?”
No one came.
I tied the boat onto one of the rusty loops of rebar that formed a crude ladder sticking out of the mortar between the concrete blocks. I climbed up on these, crawled over. There were wide ponds on the grounds inside, and innumerable puddles. Along the paths, bright blade-shaped leaves of pink caladiums were still vigorous despite the standing water.
As soon as I was in the old yard, I remembered being a boy. No—I was a boy. The things around me were solid, and in possession of their own spirit, their own mystery—the veined pink leaves, the tall complicated oaks with their hollows, and low branches, the big magnolia trees with their crotches, for climbing and snoozing and hiding in. Even the inanimate things had life—one swing was more ambitious than another, it could take you up so high you could see over the old wall, another kept you down—
I saw one antique swing set in a corner: it had been meticulously disassembled.
Then I recalled the day I went to work as a child, the day Lazarus told me my life wasn’t real, for years my it was going to be shadows—my real life, would be later.
I should have felt elation, to be returning. I felt some dread.
What was he going to tell me now?
IV
6:00 PM October17, 2121
Audubon Foundling House, Audubon Island
New Orleans Islands, Northeast Gulf De-Accessioned Territory,
U.A. Protectorate
“Hello, anyone here? Marilee?” I called again.
At the sight of a certain tree I used to climb, actually, a bush—a crape myrtle—I flashed on Ariel sitting up in it, and I imagined I saw Vee as he was in the old days, standing at the back door, with the bread he used to bake, or a plate of his cellophane noodles. I entered the empty hall—
tile floors and high, arched doorways—and more memories came back. Above my head, the murals I’d forgotten, of the “Sights of Audubon Island and the Museum City,” that Lazarus had us paint one summer when he thought we could develop ourselves, and become “creative.” It was one of a million schemes meant to save us. Fondly I recalled a few others. We would become a twenty-seven piece band, we would learn to sew costumes for the shops in the Sunken Quarter, we would become upholsterers and drapers and carpenters for the Heir homes inside the Museum City, which were always being redecorated, redesigned.
“Can it be Malcolm?” Marilee appeared in the woody darkness of the interior hall. It was at the sound of her voice that I finally felt I was not in some dream, but was home.
“It’s you!” she said. As I came closer, she added, “What are those stitches in your ear? So thin! Hungry? Something to eat?”
I said I’d run into trouble in Port Gramercy. I would describe my exploits in the morning. I needed to eat something, but what? With Mo Lion I’d only managed broth. It was hard to think of food, at this point.
“Is Vee—?”
“Not here.” Marilee shook her head.
“Still with Ginger?” I counted back how many days since the Miramar Arena.
“Well then you know about that, very sad, very sad,” she said, her face buckling. She looked away. “Come into the kitchen.” She looked down then, to mind her steps in the dark hall. She was past middle age now—this shocked me. There was a time when I would have thought the sight of her ugly—women Yeareds were said to be the ugliest. But I didn’t find her so now, the opposite.
“I met Tamara,” I said. “Saw Ginger, Naroh—”
“How were you there? You were there?” She came alive.
“I ran into some fellows in the Quarter, who were going to work—I didn’t know the Sim, the—”
“How was she at the end? Ginger?”
“Strong,” I realized it as I said it.
“He told me the crowd was very ugly. He told me they came on the stage, wanted an encore—”
“We beat them back,” I said. “Why didn’t you go?”
“Lazarus would have been alone. He’s not well. Have you not heard? So I decided to stay. And the way, the stage—neither of us wanted it. Naroh her husband, and the younger ones on the Council, and Ginger herself, she wanted it.” She was leading me back to the kitchen, through the old dining hall. The absence of the sounds of children, the emptiness, had begun to sadden me.
The shades were drawn, and the tables had been stacked in the corners, ends up. “He’s fired all the rest of the staff. I didn’t think I could—abandon him right now—”
“Exactly why did they—”
“Sell the tickets? Do the Sim Verite?” The kettle was already on the stove, over a tiny purple flame. She liked to keep it on low, I remembered, fondly, but not let it go out. She got up and went to it, and began to prepare two cups of tea. With her back turned, she said, “I think she wanted to be a sacrifice. She was going to so-long—that was already known. So why not give something back? Give to the community? This is what she said to me.” She shook her head, coming toward me again. She was smaller than I remembered. Her hair was still black and in several thick braids, but there were a few unruly white hairs near her temples. There was a long window in the kitchen. The sun was low now, and it streamed in between us through the long window. She sat down, propped her cheek on one hand. “We never wanted her to be on display. Vee’s first wife died of the same thing—that was how he came to marry me. It was so tragic, that we should go through this again—and then have Ginger’s illness a cause, an entertainment—”
“Tamara, and Naroh, and I—we got her away from the crowd, eventually. She was just with the family. At the end, we got the Heirs off the stage.” I saw the pain in her face. “We don’t have to talk about it.”
“No, it’s all right. You handled Heirs?” she asked, snorting a bit, to take it all in, then waving her fingers over her cup. “Well, I understand it was an extreme situation, everyone says so. Stories have gotten out. WELLFI Securitas is going to ‘crack down, on Verite,’ the whole practice. But of course, if it goes on in the DE-AX, it will only be talk. The Heirs get their earthly delights. This place just exists for their variety.” Her breathing changed. I realized she might cry. She managed to ask, “Anything else?”
“Tea is fine,” I said. “Just sugar. A little sugar—I had to touch them. The Heirs.”
She shook her head. “It is over now. What were we supposed to do? Our enclave, people can leave, it’s not closed like the Free Wheel Charters. Those with wealth went years ago. Joined the Heirs, when they could do that, or sneaked into Brazil or Mexico to work in the bute refineries, or in construction. So we have little, so little, we have to sell whatever we have that is useful to them, you boys had to do the same—it is the way the world is now.”
“What did you think we sold?”
Her eyes were tiger’s eyes, golden brown. She shrank them. “I thought it was terrible. I remember that day Jeremy marched you off over the ring levee, to the Sim tents. Those transparent clothes they made you wear. I had cleaned you up, washed your head, combed out your nits. I was hopeful for you, but sorry. I thought you were lucky, but I when I hugged you goodbye, you were trembling. Ariel was more sensitive, he couldn’t even bear it—you were tougher, or you were the better actor. ”
“Lazarus said—”
“I was sorry that you would have to turn your childhood into—you had to act being the child. You couldn’t be the child. At least Ginger knew what she was about. We thought there was no other way. Then, at the last minute, Lazarus had an idea. He heard about it.” She tilted her head to one side, as if she had decided something, stopped for a moment, took a sip of the tea, which was dark green.
“Can I see him? There’s a problem.” It was not the custom for anyone to barge in on Lazarus. Marilee would have to announce me, and Lazarus would have to give his permission for me to come in. I felt the old formalities of the house still pertained, even though there were only three people in it.
She breathed quickly. “You should rest first,” she said. She sipped more tea. “He is sleeping.”
There was something in how she said it, a low melody in her voice, which betrayed exhaustion and an appeal to our old relationship—times she would comfort me, give me soup when I was sick. She was pleading in a way. But I had to ignore it. “I have to see him now.” She was confused by how my tone had changed.
She turned her cup from the front to the side to the back, pretending to admire the design. It was a scratched-in bamboo stalk and leaf. She had seen it a million times, so had I. She was avoiding me. “Not right now,” she said.
“What is it?” I asked.
She paused for a long breath, began, “Last spring, when he decided he couldn’t keep the house going, he signed up for a Re-description—you know this? They did quite a job. He’s been back a month and a half, and he hasn’t evened out yet. We are worried about him.”
“What is his new—?”
“I don’t know—rugged sportsman, lots of adventures, a safari type, man’s man. He has an inch wide mustache.” She almost smiled, mimicking the pinch of the thing under her nose, with two fingers.
“Lazarus?”
“They did the tests, and decided that was a good translation for him.” She shrugged. “But it is not taking well. Sometimes, the old personality is too rigid, it doesn’t give way, no matter the number of memories and probes they use to program. He’s having troubles, not sleeping, and then he takes pills, and once he took too many. He is supposed to shed his old biography. He says he doesn’t want to! Or he can’t! In fact, quite the opposite. He’s obsessed with it. Maybe he’s afraid he will forget. That’s why I couldn’t be with Ginger. I had to stay with him. He’s very erratic. Ariel thought so too, when he was here.”
“Ariel was here? What did the WELLFI judge say? Did he tie up my money? My Trust?”
> She pulled her shoulders out of the position of the conversation, at that point. She wasn’t huddled with me anymore. I thought it had to do with Ariel’s perfidy. She had helped him—she often took his side—“Ariel?” she asked. “He was here.” She nodded, and all the wild white hairs at her temples caught the low light.
Marilee was hiding something. I pressed. “Yes, Ariel. What did he do with my accounts? Do you know anything about this? Did the courts freeze them? Just let me see Lazarus. Just let me—”
“Wait, Malcolm,” she said. “Just wait. You can have the old attic room—or can you even stand up in there now? You have gotten so tall. Why don’t you sleep?” She looked outside. It was a rose and gold sky, flaming out before dark. “Go see him in the morning.”
“Please, what is it? Did Lazarus fight with him? What about my Trust?” My voice was my voice when I was a boy, when I wasn’t ready to go to sleep. “Has it been decided? I am not eligible? Is that the story?” I was willing to take the truth, to learn that it had been settled.
She put her hand down and held her lips tight. “I don’t know of these things,” she said.
“Yes you do.”
“What is it?” she asked, slightly defiant.
“There is some kind of lien on my Trust. Is it because they say I came from an enclave? I’m not qualified? In Ariel’s suit to run his own Trust, they had to look up our origins, he told me—”
Her eyes closed. She did not say anything else. She wasn’t going to answer. Her nose moved downward, too—it was part of the sealing up of her face, which I remembered she’d do when we were boys and we’d tease her or make her mad. She looked younger, when she opened her eyes again. “Talk to Lazarus,” she said. “I am not the one. But I can tell you I didn’t have anything to do with your Trust. And Ariel was in and out, he came here for a few hours, then he went to Florida, to find records they have there—or something—”
