Coming of Age: Volume 1: Eternal Life (25 page)
Read Coming of Age: Volume 1: Eternal Life Online
Authors: Thomas T. Thomas
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Science Fiction & Fantasy, #science fiction, #High Tech, #Hard Science Fiction
“That’s a queen-size bed,” Antigone said, running her hand over the polished walnut footboard. She was unbuttoning her jacket and slipping off her shoes. “Plenty big for two people.”
“Well, if you don’t mind. I mean, if you really want to—”
“Please don’t make me beg, John.”
* * *
John Praxis was shy, which Antigone Wells had suspected all along. She had to take matters into her own hands, unbuckling his belt and unbuttoning his shirt. To do so, she stood close to him with her face upturned, looking directly into his eyes. When she got to the fourth button, he bent and kissed her full on the lips.
She put her arms around his neck and held on. They were gentle kisses, almost chaste, with no presumption. His day’s growth of beard tickled, and she smiled.
“I’m afraid I’m out of practice,” he said.
“We both are. Unbutton me, please.”
His fingers shook as he worked the little pearl buttons of her silk blouse, keeping straight down the middle. He was plucking at the material, clearly trying not to brush up against her breasts with his fingertips or knuckles.
“It doesn’t mean anything unless you touch me,” she whispered.
He stopped, looked at her in surprise, and gently cupped her breast with his palm. He slowly rubbed the silk against the lace and glazed satin of her bra.
She felt her flesh tighten in response. She closed her eyes. After a moment, she finished the unbuttoning herself, slipped out of her blouse, pulling the silk out of his hands. She turned slightly away, self-conscious about the reddened scars low on her back over her new kidneys. “Unhook me, please.”
Neither of them had any words after that. He finished undressing her, kissing her in new and exciting places. She ran her hands over his upper arms and then his shoulders as he worked his way down her body. When he moved away to undress himself, she turned down the bed and climbed onto the crisp, white sheets. She arranged the pillows behind her shoulders and the small of her back and then arranged herself among them.
He climbed onto the bed and knelt between her legs. His member was stiff and questing. He started to sink down into her, then froze.
“What?” she asked, alarmed.
“I don’t have a condom!”
She laughed aloud.
“I mean, seriously,” he insisted.
“What could it possibly matter?”
He nodded, but he still hung over her. She chafed his back and sides, as if to warm him up, and then pulled him down. He moved slowly into her. She adjusted her hips and moved with him.
“I’m not hurting you, am I?” he asked.
“I’m a lot tougher than I look,” she said.
After a time without counting, he climaxed. She followed immediately.
He lay with her for a moment, cheek against cheek, then withdrew and rolled onto his back. She sighed and put an arm across him, dropping the back of her hand onto his chest. After a pause, she slowly rubbed her knuckles in the wiry hairs there.
“Thank you,” he whispered.
She flopped her hand over and ran her fingers and palm down his stomach, across his damp groin, to the top of his thigh. There she rubbed gently. “Don’t make me beg.”
After midnight, when they were finished and both of them were almost unconscious, Antigone Wells raised herself on one elbow and looked around the darkened room.
“This house needs growing things,” she said. “Orchids, I think.”
* * *
The rebirth of Praxis Engineering & Construction Company took place, not in a glass-and-steel tower overlooking San Francisco Bay, but on the third floor of a four-story building on Sansome Street in North Beach. The elevator up from the lobby was a brass-bound cage run by hydraulics with electro-mechanical switching, technology that had been developed in the age before electronics, and spent more time in breakdown mode than in operation. At least the stairs were cast-iron and nonmechanical. Everyone involved with the startup was healthy enough to climb them two or three times a day—more if they happened to go out for lunch. The lease was just for six months, by which time John Praxis figured they were either in business and could move uptown, or out of business and would no longer need the space.
According to the articles of incorporation, which Antigone Wells had drawn up as the new chief counsel, Praxis was chairman and chief executive, Callie was president and chief operating officer, and Rafaella was their biggest shareholder, because her college fund had supplied the first infusion of working capital.
So far, they had five desks, a single divisible landline, their personal smartphones, a webwall for virtual meetings, and three console computers with the firepower to run 3D architectural CAD, a project management-purchasing-logistics package, and basic accounting. It was a start.
Praxis clicked off on his thirteenth call of the morning. He announced to the room at large: “Axel Brod’s with us. He can start Monday.”
“Can he make coffee?” Callie asked. “Because yours is terrible.”
“We need one of those machines—the ones with the little caps.”
“We need a lot of machines, Dad. Coffee’s the least of them.”
“So, how many people does that make?” Antigone asked.
“Counting us?” Callie said. “Six. With five engineers.”
“Then we’d better hire a marketing department.”
“Nah! Everybody sells until a job comes in.”
“And when is that?” Antigone asked.
Callie looked across at her father.
Praxis stared back, shrugged.
“I thought you
said,
” Antigone began, turning her attention back to him, “there was all this vast opportunity. Well, I can see the
need.
Two bridges out there hanging by a thread. Electricity that goes on standby two days a week. Tap water full of brown rust. And potholes that could hide a hippopotamus. The people in charge of this city should be beating our door down to fix these things. What’s the holdup?”
“Money,” Praxis said. “California’s broke. The U.S. is broke. And the Federated Republic hasn’t geared up to bail us out yet.”
“You said money was like air—there when you need it.”
“That was just to get our business started,” he said. “Now we’ve got some run time, thanks to Rafaella’s certificates of deposit. But state money’s different. Everything has to go through a process—committees, public comment, appropriations, bond underwriting, environmental impacts. You’re a lawyer. I thought you understood this.”
“It’s just that—” Antigone shook her head. “From the perspective of far-off Oklahoma, I would have thought people out here on the coasts might be further along.”
Callie shifted in her chair. It squeaked. “Why don’t I …?” she began.
“Yes?” Both Praxis and Antigone now turned toward her eagerly.
“Random thought,” she said. “Not worth thinking, really.”
* * *
Late in the evening, Callie told her father she needed to go out for a walk and asked him to keep an eye on Rafaella until bedtime.
John was sitting on the sofa with Antigone Wells. They sat shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, with their stocking-clad feet nested together on the single ottoman, playing slow-motion footsie. They were studying something on Antigone’s tablet, something colorful but with static imagery, judging from the reflections Callie could see on their faces. Maybe it was some kind of catalog. Maybe they were picking out linens and place settings—as if the things John already had in the house weren’t up to Antigone’s standards.
Her father looked up and frowned. “But it’s dark out,” he said.
“Don’t worry,” Callie replied. “I’m not going far.”
His frown deepened. “That’s not the point. This isn’t the city you grew up in, sweetheart. Even around here, after dark is—”
“I’m not a child, Dad. I have protection.”
“What do you think constitutes pro—?”
She opened her purse and showed him, in its shadowed interior, the butt end of a Glock 17. It fired nine-millimeter rounds, and she had a spare magazine in a side pocket. “Satisfied?”
His jaw dropped. “Where the hell did you get that?”
“Italy. I brought it home in my luggage.”
Antigone looked up and caught sight of the gun as it disappeared. “Do you know how many laws that breaks in California?”
“Only if I get caught.”
“Only if you use it,” Wells said.
“Then I’ll stick to well lit places, I promise.”
John and Antigone turned to stare at each other with raised eyebrows.
“Make sure you have your cell phone with you,” John said.
“Of course,” Callie replied. “I always do, don’t I?”
Indeed, she wasn’t going far, just the two long blocks north to Geary Boulevard, and the streetlights were working and lit her path all the way. Half a block down on Geary, she found a Starbucks that was still open. She ordered a double cappuccino and settled with it at a vacant table buffered by empty chairs on either side. And indeed, she was carrying her phone—which was the whole point of the excursion. Now she took it out and dialed an international number.
“
Pronto,
” said a young voice she recognized after a second.
“Carlo? It’s Callie di Rienzi. I need to speak to Uncle Matteo.”
“Who again?” he asked in English.
“Your first cousin. Callie? Calling from America?”
“Eh … Matteo is not at home.”
“It’s seven in the morning there. Where else would he be?”
“Then he’s sleeping.”
“Wake him, please. This is important.”
After a long pause that stretched to a minute or more, a familiar voice came on. “What is it, Contessa?”
“How are you fixed for investments, Matteo?”
“Eh, ‘fixed’? Is, ah … what are you saying?”
“Do you have spare cash to loan at a good return?”
“If this is about the money you think we owe you, I tell you it is not available.”
“I’m not asking for that—not yet anyway. This is about investment opportunity.” She went on to explain the situation in California and the rest of the old United States. Work needed to be done. Talent and material were available to do it. But the government had no money. The situation called for bridging loans, pump priming, greasing the wheels. Investments that would be paid back tenfold—twentyfold, or likely more.
He listened without comment. When she stopped, she could hear his breathing. Finally, “California is a long way off. Its affairs do not concern me.”
“Oh? So you’ve got more going on in Europe, do you?” Callie could read the business newsfeeds. The continent under the failing European Union had not prospered while the two halves of America battered each other. Europe was succumbing to the Japanese devaluation sickness.
“My associates and I,” he said with dignity, “we are getting by.”
“Is that all you aspire to? ‘Getting by’? Your grandfather, and his father, grew rich by rebuilding
Repubblica italiana
after the Second World War. This is your chance to duplicate that achievement.”
“And how would I know where to invest, what are the good prospects?”
“Because I will point them out to you. I know this business, Matteo.”
“You would do this out of your good heart? For family loyalty?”
“I would do this for a finder’s fee, of course. Fifteen percent.”
“Seven,” he replied crisply.
“Ten.”
“Of the profits.”
“Of the project.”
“Then eight,” he said.
“Make it nine and it’s a deal.”
“Now don’t be greedy, Contessa.”
“And don’t you be short-sighted, Uncle.”
He sighed. “Do we need a piece of paper between us? Lawyers?”
“I have a good one. But we can do this on trust. For the family.”
“I will send out someone to mind my affairs, learn the ground.”
“That’s not necessary, Matteo. I can—”
“I insist. It will be discreet.”
Callie realized that her share in arranging any deals would diminish in proportion as this intermediary person gained knowledge and confidence. But the finder’s fee was not her immediate objective, and she only pressed Matteo about it to ensure his sincerity. Her real goal was to get projects off the ground and paying into Praxis Engineering’s backlog. “Very well then,” she said.
He mewed to signify his acceptance. “
Ciao,
Contessa.”
“
Grazie,
Uncle.” And she clicked off.
4. Family Ties
Within three days of completion of the peace process and signing of the Treaty of Louisville, which ended the war, Brandon Praxis was standing on State Street in Trenton, New Jersey, having just stepped out of the Clarkson Fisher Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse—soon to be renamed for a senator from Missouri—where he and his senior officers from 2nd Battalion, 3rd Combined Arms Division, had renounced their commissions and signed oaths of allegiance to the Federated Republic. He was wearing civilian clothes for the first time in nine years, still rubbing at sore spots on his face, neck, and belly where his biobeads had been surgically removed, and absent-mindedly trying to consult with a chipset on his wrist that would only give him the time, weather, and basic newsfeed.
“What do we do now—uh, boss?” Frieda Hammond asked, stumbling over his new rank.
A decommissioned officer with good service behind him routinely got a bump in rank, if not in pay, as he was removed from command. Under normal circumstances, with forty-one sorties and three Purple Hearts to his credit, Brandon would have mustered out as a full colonel. But according to the new peace treaty, former officers in the U.S. Department of Defense were to be brevetted two ranks lower, once for no longer serving in wartime conditions, and once more for having lost the war. He could assume the courtesy title of captain—if he wanted it.
“I don’t know, Frieda,” he said with a smile. For the first time in six years he was using her given name, rather than call her by her new rank of lieutenant. Relationships were changing all around him. “The only career I’ve ever known has been the war.”
“What did you study in college?”
“Civil engineering. At Stanford. But the country went south before I could take my bachelor’s degree. So I know how to fire a rifle, organize a regiment, coordinate a ground strike, and lead men and women into battle. It’ll probably be a while before anyone needs those skills again. … You?”
“Sociology. Actually, I have my masters.”
“What does that qualify you for?”
“Human resources someplace—like my specialty in the army.”
“Well, congratulations, ma’am.”
“It’s just not going to mean as much, doing it for a corporation.”
Behind them, Stephen Swarovski came skipping down the steps. “Free at last! Free at last!” he chanted. “Thank God almighty I’m—oh! Hello, Colonel! Major.”
“You look happy, Steve,” Brandon said. “Where are you off to?”
“My family, of course.” Swarovski had a wife and two girls in Newport Beach, Virginia. “I’ll spend a week or two weeding the garden and painting the kids’ rooms. Then I take up my old job.” He had been an architect with the nation’s—the old U.S.A.’s—largest builder of new, made-to-order homes. There he had done most of his work inside a shared-universe computer program called Second Life
®
. There his clients could adopt temporary avatars and walk around a virtual mockup of their dream house, look out the windows, check out the closet space, and arrange the furniture—all before the sheetrock was even ordered. He had once promised to build Praxis a home as soon as they won the war. Now, with so many service people demobilizing, demand for new housing was going to be huge.
“Well, good luck with that,” Brandon said.
“Thanks, sir. It’s good to be a civilian again.”
* * *
Richard Praxis was growing desperate. His position at Tallyman Systems depended on his finding a project or a program that would prove the value of a modified and somewhat truncated Stochastic Design & Development
®
package. He had canvassed his government contacts inside the Federated Republic, and each of them had pulled at their lips and made long faces—much as Philip Sawyer had predicted.
“We don’t actually operate that way, you know,” one Iowa state commissioner had told Richard. “When we need a water or a sewer system, it’s because someone is putting up a housing development and has already filed the permits. The utilities do their substation planning the same way. If we put a bridge over a river, it’s because people have written letters complaining about how far out of their way they have to drive to get where they’re going. And we know we need to widen a freeway, route a bus line, or put in a light rail feeder because we can see where traffic is already bogging down.
“Your piece of software there might be clairvoyant,” the man went on. “It might actually have the second sight, like my great aunt Sybil. But if it’s wrong—well, then we’ve got hell to pay, don’t we? And otherwise, we’re spending how many millions just to find out what people are already telling us?
“No, my uncle Walter ran Parks and Recreation in Des Moines for years. He used to say if you want to know where to pave a walkway, just look for where people’s feet have burned holes in the grass.”
And that story more or less condensed every other interview he had in the Federated Republic. The lack of vision among public officials was just astounding.
Of course, the need was greatest in the old U.S., as he had told Sawyer in the first place. Stochastic Design was the perfect fit for burned out cities that needed to recalibrate their infrastructure—power, water, sewage, transit—all at once for a newly reduced population level. But where the trouble in the Heartland of the Republic was lack of imagination, what the once technically advanced East and West Coasts lacked was funding.
“Gosh, could I use that!” the mayor of Portland had said. His city once had eight major bridges over the Willamette River—three of them now falling to age, four already down because of war damage. “We could rationalize our entire traffic system and rebuild the downtown on a scientific basis.
“And you know,” the man added with a nervous grin, “if I had two nickels to rub together, you’d get one of them. But until this reunification thing gets some dollars behind it, we’re just patching and piecing, trying to find the greatest need. I’ll be lucky to get the Steel Bridge rebuilt next year. I can’t even think about doing them all at once.”
Richard’s eye, which his father had trained long ago to see the big picture where construction was concerned, could see no movement yet, and maybe not for another year or two—which was too late for his purposes. The one city that seemed to be digging out and rebuilding on its own was his old home town, San Francisco. Those projects, his sources told him, were being funded largely with foreign money. And when he followed the money trail to its logical conclusion, he was both shocked and surprised. In every case, the projects with such funding were those being built or managed by Praxis Engineering & Construction.
Somehow, the old firm had survived the crash and the war! But then, survival was simply not possible, as he knew too well from having personally presided over the cratering of the old PE&C’s finances. So a new firm bearing the family name had risen from the dead.
Maybe Stochastic Design & Development
®
was just the thing to help coordinate all the business this new firm was handling. But, to his ultimate frustration, Richard knew he was the wrong person to sell it to them. The family history was just too strong—and not in a good way.
* * *
Callista di Rienzi and her father arrived at the jobsite on Franklin Street at seven-thirty in the morning, forty minutes after the call from the project manager had awakened them at the house out in the Avenues. The site’s chain link fence was intact, and the gate was open. The broad white sign off to the left announced the rebuilding of the War Memorial Opera House—to replace the Beaux-Arts structure built of granite, steel, and terra-cotta in the 1930s that had collapsed in the one aerial bombing the city had endured during the war. The sign said it was a project by Praxis Engineering & Construction, listing the architect and various subcontractors, under authority of the City of San Francisco, with exclusive funding by Torino Investment Partners, SpA. It also announced a completion date two years into the future.
“More like three now,” her father said as they walked onto the site. They were both wearing their office shoes, but that didn’t matter now. Another sign informed them that hard hats were required beyond that point. Also irrelevant, considering the state of the work.
Two men were standing on the muddy ground inside the gate: Will Chapple, the project manager, and Sonny Deeths, construction superintendent.
“I sent the crew home for the day,” Chapple said. “Nothing for them to do.”
“Are we still paying—?” Callie started, but her father laid a hand on her arm.
“You’ve got a chain on the gate and a padlock on the chain,” he said, pointing behind them. “Were they broken or cut?”
“No, sir,” Chapple said. “All locked up.”
The elder Praxis turned to look out over the site, and Callie turned with him. It was a hole, a big one. The ochre mud of the surrounding ground quickly gave way to layers of darker, compacted alluvial soil, then bedrock. Because the opera house was a new project and not simply renovation or reconstruction of the damaged building, they had been obliged to dig below and remove the old foundation. The only thing left was a hole, two hundred and forty feet wide by three hundred feet long, with more mud and water at the bottom.
“What equipment did we have on site?” Praxis asked.
“You noticed, huh?” Chapple said. “Three Caterpillar D9s, subassemblies for the concrete batch plant, and rigging for a tower crane.”
“And they are now …?”
“Gone, sir.”
“Somebody had to load all that out with flatbeds.”
“Yes, sir.”
Callie looked around. “Where’s the office trailer?”
“Gone, too,” Deeths said. “Anything with wheels.”
“Did you have anything else on site?” Praxis asked.
“Well, three loads of that special rose-colored marble.”
“That’s not on the Gantt chart for months!” Callie said.
“Didn’t you have anywhere else to put it?” Praxis offered.
“Well, um, we figured it was heavy, so why move it twice?”
“Of course. All the eggs in one basket. Makes perfect sense.”
“We’ve also lost two generators, floodlights, and a mile of cabling,” Deeths said. “The thieves probably took them for the copper.”
“But you weren’t working night shifts,” Callie observed.
“Well, the schedule called for that to start next month.”
“So someone knew just when to hit us,” Praxis said.
“That’s about the size of it,” Chapple agreed.
“It’s all insured, isn’t it?” Deeths said.
“Of course,” John replied. “We’ll get the equipment replaced, but that’s not the point. Our premiums will go through the roof—not to mention rental rates and liability on anything we lease from now on.”
“And whoever did this will be watching for another chance,” Callie said.
Her father was looking at the ground, thinking. He suddenly pointed about forty feet away. “What’s that?”
Callie saw a glint of something gold. As she walked toward it, the glint resolved into a bright oval. It was a shield engraved with “Nocturna Security” and a badge number. She took it back to the men.
“Torn off in a fight?” Chapple suggested.
She turned the badge over. The pin was intact with no torn cloth under it.
“It was left as a message,” Praxis told them.
“You just can’t trust anybody these days.”
* * *
Mariene Kunstler pressed the elevator button a second time, then a third, thinking the signal must not have gone through, although the white plastic disk with its upward-pointing arrow was still glowing. Nothing happened—no rattle of doors on the floors above, no hum of motors in the shaft. She shook her head and walked across the marble floor of the lobby to the flight of stairs decorated with metal vines in badly flaking gold leaf.
This was what Matteo di Rienzi was investing in? This was the powerhouse construction firm that was going to rebuild California? And they couldn’t even maintain an elevator?
“Don’t be fooled by the people you will meet,” he had told her over the phone before she flew out of Zurich. “The family was great once, and they survived the war.” He paused. “The Contessa survived my nephew Cesco. That should tell you something.”
Arriving at the third floor, Mariene found a long corridor stretching away, paved with tiny white hexagonal tiles, paneled in darkly varnished wood, and offering three widely spaced doors, each with a pebbled glass window and brass knob. But only one of them had a brass name plate beside it, “Praxis Engineering & Construction LLC,” and lettering on the glass said, “Enter Here.”
She didn’t bother knocking—that wasn’t her style. She turned the knob and walked in. The wider hallway beyond the door was carpeted with blocks of indoor-outdoor fiber in a color the old Bundeswehr had called
Feldgrau.
The reception desk positioned sideways in the entry was unattended, with not even a telecomm bot.
“
Hallo?
” she called.
A dark-haired woman—tall, good figure, well-tailored business suit—put her head out from one of the doorways leading off to the side. She had a headphone boom slung from her ear. She tucked it down, away from her mouth. “Are you from Hotto-Potto?” she asked.
“Excuse me?” Mariene was confused.
“The sukiyaki place on the corner?”
Ah, now she understood. It was a reaction Mariene Kunstler had met many times, especially when she wore her loose-fitting travel clothes. In the land of American giants, she stood just five feet tall, had a silhouette easily mistaken for a boy’s, and wore her white-blonde hair cropped short all around. Her features were small and her face pale—except for black-black eyes and a slight fold to her eyelids that her father had attributed to a great-grandmother who might have been Chinese. In certain lights—and until she put on her stiletto heels, miniskirt, and a scarf or makeup to conceal the Black Widow tattooed on the side of her neck—she would pass for the punked-out delivery boy from an Asian fast-food restaurant. It was a useful trick, sometimes.
“No,” she replied. “Are you the one they call the Contessa?”
The woman blinked, then nodded. “I am Callista di Rienzi.”
“We need to talk. Your uncle Matteo sent me.”
