Tales of Downfall and Rebirth (50 page)

And less than twenty-four hours later, a dispatch boat arrived from Venice after a miraculously swift journey, and informed Foscari that more troops and ships were on their way.

And so, one night after sunset, Foscari played host once more to the Afentiko. There was no wind and
Barbarigo
swung aimlessly at its buoy. The night was still, with the warmth of spring hovering around them; and the sea was quiet, just a distant flowing hiss as waves loped along the mole.

“I'm not going to wait for reinforcements,” Foscari said. “I'm going to take the ships and troops I've got and—with your permission—your ships and some of your militia as well. I'm going to Cyprus, and I'm going to show Spiridon what naval superiority means.”

A smile formed beneath the Afentiko's bushy mustache. The bruise around his broken nose had poured down his face, turning him into a near abstract composition in blue and yellow.

“What do you mean to do?” he asked.

“I'll take a city, if I can. Kouklia, Limassol, Famagusta . . . Not because I want a city particularly, but because it can be a base for the fleet to raid anywhere we like on the island. I'll destroy those three remaining galleys, and I'll burn or take every ship I can. And it's more than possible that I can come to an understanding with one of Spiridon's commanders—money will be involved, most likely—and then”—he smiled—“that will be the end of Spiridon.”

“You seem confident.”

“We've seen a lot of these little warlords in the Balkans. None of them have founded a dynasty, and precious few die in their beds. Despotism is simply . . . not sound. At best, it's a stopgap. And despots who rule through terror . . . well, all it takes is one person not to be terrorized, and to be in the right place.”

“And Spiridon's . . . supernatural assistants?”

Foscari considered the two he'd met and suppressed a shudder. He tried to sound confident as he replied, “We've killed three of them. It wasn't easy, but it will get easier.”

“I hope you are right.”

“May I have the loan of your ships and men, then?”

The Afentiko made an expansive gesture. “Of course, my friend.”

“Let's drink on it.” He reached for the bottle on the table, then feigned hesitation. “I promised you a drink from a special bottle,” he said, “on the day the Cypriots arrived.”

The Afentiko inclined his shaggy head. “I remember. You said it wasn't time for drinking.”

“I've changed my mind.”

He had the bottle brought from his private spirit locker, along with another pair of Murano glasses. Regret sang softly through his veins as he poured, as he employed the poison ring with its castor-bean cargo.

“To the alliance,” he said, and raised his glass.

The alliance was solid now, with the memory of Spiridon's bloody invasion firm on every mind. Better that the Afentiko fall ill when Foscari was leading the allied fleet to strike the enemy, and thus free from any suspicion. Then Serafina would take charge—or would be put in charge by Venetian reinforcements—and Rhodes set on its way to becoming another obedient island in a Venetian sea.

“To our friendship,” said the Afentiko, and Foscari felt a sharp spear-point of remorse enter his heart.

Necessity,
Foscari reminded himself.

Karl Marx might have thought that certain political developments were inevitable, but in Foscari's experience the inevitable usually required a little help.

He clinked glasses with his friend, and then drank deep of the waters of Fate.

by
John Barnes

I write a lot of things besides novels, and I've also written a lot of novels—thirty-one commercially published, two self-pub, so far. Latest is
The Last President
, top sellers ever were
Mother of Storms
and
A Million Open Doors
, nearest to my heart are
Tales of the Madman Underground
and
One for the Morning Glory
. I was a bit surprised to calculate, a couple of years ago, that I had written about five million (lowest estimate) paid-for words across the last three decades or so. So I have taken to calling myself a widely published obscure writer.

This story had its origins in the experience of teaching for one term in a high school program oriented toward the “difficult” (i.e., behavioral-issue) gifted and talented. I found some of my students to be fascinating, not so much for how different they were as for how well they were able to adapt to their own differences and create a life that worked for them. And that led me to contemplating how many of the commonly accommodated, treated, and sometimes medicated behavior problems would be actual advantages, or at least not disadvantages, in a different world. Furthermore, many things we consider “pathological” would probably be common enough to be “the new normal.” At other times in my life that might have led me to thinking about Foucault and epistemes, or the Turing Test for neurotypicality, or whether generational psychodemographics drive long-wave economic cycles. But as it happened, in autumn of 2013, it led me to think about three very odd kids facing a very big problem, and . . . here you are. Hope you like it.

The survival of the least unfit will ultimately give the world to the fittest. When music rises in a city street, every man who hears it with his soul forgets the uncouth noises.

—
REV
.
JOSEPH
CO
OK
,
SCEPTICISM
AND
RA
TIONALISM
:
ELECTIVE
A
FFINITIES
AND
HEREDI
TARY
DESCENT
(1881)

 

M
ONDAY
, 8 J
UNE
2015,
ABOUT
10
A.M.
R
AFTER
XOX R
ANCH
,
WESTERN
N
EBRASKA

G
lory Cardenas, who is fifteen and excitable, barrels into the little room where I like to sit over tea while I do the books for the Rafter XOX, yelling “Miz Claire!”

“Right here, Glory.” I'm already standing up and reaching for the belt that holds my hatchet and knives. “What—”

“It's Mister Matt! Raiders outside the gate, they got him tied up—”

“Tell James to keep talking and stalling, and I'm on my way.” Good thing it's James; he's steady like frozen stone, for-defs the guy I'd have picked to have on duty for something like this.

When I go out into the compound, it's dead quiet and motionless everywhere within the palisade. I look around. “A lot of people who should be working are staring at me, and that's not gonna help. Now go on my ‘go.' Set up to defend the palisade. All snipers to the loopholes around the front gate. Squad Four, arm up for a dash, set up to sortie behind the front gate. Medical right behind them. Squad Three, guard the medical. Troop A, mount up for pursuit behind the rest. All other forces to ready positions. Wake the day sleepers with my apologies. Hold your hand up if you know where you're going and what you're doing.”

They've been drilled. Hands snap up, no hesitation.

Glory is back at my side, whispering in my ear, “James says tell you it's bad and come quick.”

I nod, then look back at my people. “Chaplain, join me on the bridge, prepped for EF. Everyone in place pronto, on my ‘go.' Hands up if you understand.”

Hands are up again. Chaplain Marjorie looks sick. She was one of Mattie's first recruits when we started Rafter XOX; she doesn't want to give him an emergency funeral.

“Go.”

They swarm to it.

“Come with me to the bridge, Glory. I need a messenger right with me. Stay in close so you can hear anything I mutter.” I walk to the gate as quickly as I can maintain a pretense of calm, Glory trotting beside me. I hear a few clanks and thuds from dropped buckets or spears, and some of the fool chickens start clucking. The dogs are good; we don't keep them if they can't shut up. A guy with good ears outside the gate would learn that lots of stuff is moving around, but he'd expect that, and that's all he'd learn.

The gate bridge is another of Mattie's ideas: a plank bridge on steel trusses that runs above the sliding main gates, with ports in its deck so enemies can't hide under it.

Old car hoods spaced a couple of feet apart are mounted on the waist-high front wall, so our people on the bridge are always one step from cover.

James is standing at the center gap with his crossbow cradled ready in his arm, and the two gate guards are standing to his sides. About twenty feet below us, maybe forty yards away, maybe fifteen grubby-looking assholes are decked out in scraps of the old world; I think the earmuff hat with all the CDs glued shiny side out is kind of striking. The skull on a stick is probably supposed to look scary, but in a country still littered with unburied bodies, really it's more pathetic.

Among the assholes, a half-starved-looking elderly donkey stands patiently, facing away from us. He's harnessed to a travois with a bicycle wheel at the point.

Mattie looks up at us from the travois. He's tied with hands and feet under the frame, splashed with blood and dirt, and gagged tightly enough to pull his cheeks back.

I bet that hurts. At least I can see he's breathing.

“Chaplain's on the way,” I mutter, looking down.

Without expression, James says, “They're staying on message.”

A raider stands on each side of Mattie, one with a machete, the other with a hatchet.

The leader, standing back by the donkey's head, seems to recognize me. Not that it's all that hard to identify the only six-foot, two hundred ten–pound Asian woman on this range. “We got something of yours you gonna want back.”

“Let's skip the villain-talk. There's no movies anymore. We don't bargain for hostages here. James, if they move to harm Mister Matt in any way, or to take him away from the gate, shoot Mister Matt.”

James raises his crossbow and sights it; Mattie looks back, quietly, nodding his agreement. It's how we've always handled these, and it was his idea in the first place.

Their leader looks contemptuously up at me. “You won't do any—”

I let him gabble and speak to the guard next to James: one of my best shots, another stroke of luck. “Diego, can you kill me that donkey, for sure, on one bolt?”

“Hard shot, ma'am.”

“But can you?”

“Think so.”

“Do it.”

On the “t” of
it,
the bolt lashes out of his crossbow and plants between the donkey's ears, just back of his poll, up to its steel fins. “Perfect shot,” I say.

The donkey falls sideways. The wheeled travois twists and cracks; the bicycle wheel bends under it. Mattie hangs down half off the travois, held by his tied hands and feet behind the frame. That
really
looks like it hurts.

The leader jumps back. “Fuckin' mother fucker—”

“Now you can't take him away,” I say. “You can kill him but if you do you're all dead. Or if you force us, we'll kill him ourselves, and
then
you're all dead. Since Mister Matt rode out this morning with five guards, we already have five good reasons for revenge. So you're probably already dead, but if you throw down your weapons and put your hands up—”

“You won't kill your husband,” the leader says. “I can't believe that you don't feel—”

“I'm not responsible for what you can't believe.”

*   *   *

T
UESDAY
, M
ARCH
17, 1998, 7:15
P.M.
W
ESTMINSTER
, C
OLORADO

For one second I thought that stupid shrink-o-doctor had been right and I was having the first bad migraine of the rest of my life. More light than I had ever seen pierced through my eye sockets, and my head hurt like it was being squeezed to pieces. But when I opened my eyes, half thinking I'd see swirling colors and tumble from my chair like Mom did whenever it was convenient, instead it was just real dark. The living-room computer in front of me had gone black-dead and so had the lamp. I couldn't even see either of them, within arm's reach. All the curtains and blinds were closed, and it was dark outside.

In the kitchen, the little lights on all the gadgets were out, too. Dad had been making a pot of coffee like he always did when he was going to work till dawn. The splut-splut-bloosh of the coffeemaker faded into two dwindling little splorches and a brief trickle.

Dad said, “Aw, fuck, power failure.” He felt around in a drawer for the kitchen flashlight. It didn't work either.

Mom yelled from the bedroom that her laptop was dead, “. . . and it had a full charge too, I had it plugged in all day.”

Dad ran down the hall into his office and yelled, “Aw fuck,” again 'cause his UPS was out.

Stepping carefully—you never knew what would be underfoot—I went to the hall closet where Mom kept her spiritual healing candles, grabbed the first box on top of the pile, found the matches in the kitchen drawer, lit a candle, and stuck it to the table. It couldn't be any worse for the finish than the crusted-on Coco Puffs blobs from last month.

I'd grabbed a box of pale blue ones, scented with a mix of lavender, vanilla, and “natural floral” to bring peace and tranquility, a good idea given Dad's yelling and kicking things in his office, and the whining and raging from Mom in the bedroom.

I lit four more candles, clustering them together on the table.

My folks were irresponsible and flaky but we went camping a lot; it seemed real unlikely that the flashlight batteries would've been dead.
And
the laptop that Mom always left plugged in?
And
the UPS?

Weird.

By candlelight, my digital watch was silvery-blank.

I stepped out on our porch; the chinook that had been blowing all day was still on, wet, warm, and gusty. It would turn to a blizzard, but not right away. That was at least one thing I'd learned from all that stupid X-C skiing we all had to go do every fucking weekend all stupid fucking winter, and pretend was fun, because they were trying to run the fat off their roly-poly giant of a daughter.

Behind me in the house, Dad and Mom were yelling at each other about using good expensive candles and ruining the kitchen table and who broke the electricity. Dad picked up one of the candles with
Not the
good
potholder!
and went down to look at the circuit breaker box, Mom trailing after, yelling because he wasn't holding the candle where she could see where she was walking.

The street was its same old identical-beige-boxes Denver burb, but way darker: no electric lights, no moon, way past sunset, and about half the sky was socked in with low dense clouds. Pale red-yellow light flickered in a handful of windows—I guess they'd found the candles too. Black rectangles of doors opened up and down the street.

Normally at night in the Front Range, the city below lights up any clouds in the sky brighter than the moon, and the reflected light is plenty to see by. Tonight, the irregular, lumpy black clouds overhead reflected nothing.

My friend Mattie could probably have figured out how far away that meant the lights must be out—he was already taking trig in ninth grade—but the short answer had to be a buttload of a long way away.

The thought of Mattie completed the brain-circuit:
Shit, it's started.

Mr. Burke next door came out carrying a lighted candle, unlocked his BMW, and popped the hood.

I went over there. “Nothing with electricity is working. Battery or plug.”

“Looks that way,” he agreed. He scraped a big screwdriver across the battery terminals. “Not even a spark, and I drove two hundred miles yesterday. There should be a full charge. I wonder if this is going on everywhere.”

“I think at least everywhere on the Northern Front Range,” I said. “Look how dark the clouds are.”

He looked up and realized that I meant they weren't reflecting any ground light. “Hey, if I get in, and you give it a good push, we can try to roll-start the car and see if the alternator can still make current.”

“Worth a try.”

We checked everything over several times, since the driveway slope was gentle and this was going to be our one try.

“Okay, push, Claire!” he said, through the open window. I leaned into his front bumper, getting the car rolling down the driveway in neutral.

Whump-bump-bump.
It stopped.

Burke got out. “I didn't hear anything that sounded like a cylinder firing, did you?”

“No.”

“So no city current, no battery, and the alternator doesn't work,” Burke said. “Well, shitburgers.”

“Hey, I know a disaster prepper who's got a shelter—I'm going over to his place. You want to come along?”

He sighed. “Karen's flight from Miami is supposed to be coming in at ten thirty. I better stay here. Good luck, Claire.”

“Thanks.”

I hurried into the house, trying to get away before Burke realized that Mrs. Burke's flight would have been in the air when everything stopped working.

Mom and Dad were screaming at each other down in the basement, their usual flapping around uselessly, like they did about who forgot to pay the cable bill or register the car, or whose fault it was that I had shitty grades and had gone up another pants size. Mom was ranting that Dad was being patronizing, interrupted by his yipping about her being childish.

Food, shoes, pack, go.

I poured the remaining half box of Cinnamon Toast Crunch into a big mixing bowl, added the last milk from the fridge, and started gulping.

I was almost done when Mom came running up the stairs, crying, with Dad following and desperately apologizing. Then they saw me.

“Claire,” Mom said, in that bitchy tone of exasperation she put on to impress her friends with how tough she had it, “we are going out for Mexican just as soon as this crap with the electricity gets straightened out, and that cereal is supposed to be half a cup a day because it is loaded with carbs—”