The American Zone (17 page)
“The mess?” Will asked, rhetorically. We all accepted his offer of a seat, as he took his place behind his desk.
“I’m afraid so.” Fahel looked genuinely distressed. “You see, I’ve been displaced from my offices by the Old Endicott Building disaster. I have no prospect of returning, as the building has been written off and will likely be demolished altogether. This is my home, and I’m having difficulty getting my business reorganized
here.” A door opened at the back left of the office and eight clean and tidy children, ranging from about eight to about twelve, trooped out in two columns, side by side. They were dressed in nearly identical gray pullovers, gray slacks for the boys, gray skirts for the girls. As the rest kept their eyes straight ahead, the oldest acknowledged Fahel with a respectful nod as they all marched softly through the room to the arch we’d entered and vanished through a door into the foyer.
here.” A door opened at the back left of the office and eight clean and tidy children, ranging from about eight to about twelve, trooped out in two columns, side by side. They were dressed in nearly identical gray pullovers, gray slacks for the boys, gray skirts for the girls. As the rest kept their eyes straight ahead, the oldest acknowledged Fahel with a respectful nod as they all marched softly through the room to the arch we’d entered and vanished through a door into the foyer.
“You see what I mean?” Fahel squirmed in his swivel chair. “How can I operate my business with the children rampaging through it all the time like a battalion of wild Hessians?”
“Your business?” Will sounded just like Jack Webb. He tended to react that way to weirdness.
Fahel opened his mouth, but just then, from a door at the other side of the office, there emerged a small, thin woman in a gray dress, about the same age as Fahel. She timidly approached and waited for him to notice her. When he did, she whispered something in his ear.
He rolled his eyes. “Another distaction! Very well, tell him I said yes, but only three thousand terabytes.”
She nodded wordlessly and left like a little gray mouse by the way she’d come. “Your wife?” I asked.
“Please forgive me.” He shook his head and added, “
Children!
” He sort of shook himself where he sat and went on. “You asked about my business. I’m self-employed as a time-motion analyst, mostly for corporations, although—”
Children!
” He sort of shook himself where he sat and went on. “You asked about my business. I’m self-employed as a time-motion analyst, mostly for corporations, although—”
“An efficiency expert,” I said.
Fahel blinked. “If you must call it that, sir. My highest ambition is simply to apply what I’ve studied and practiced for more than twenty-five years to society as a whole.”
“Whether society as a whole is interested in participatin’ or not,” said Lucy. She didn’t make it a question.
He shrugged. “As you wish, madam. I am a scientist; you cannot offend me when it comes to conclusions I’ve reached by scientific means. In perfect candor, as a time-motion analyst and observer of all human behavior, I’m vehemently opposed to any and all manifestations of the uncontrolled expression of individual liberty or of the unsupervised exercise of economic freedom.”
Lucy turned and gave me that look that says, “I told you so.” Being the honest type, I signaled back with my eyebrows that indeed, she had told me so.
Fahel noticed none of this. “But I assure you all that if society were run with proper efficiency, no one would ever notice that they weren’t free. They’d be guided by their leader to do only those things that are best for them, and would therefore make them happiest.”
“But the trains
already
run on time.” I couldn’t help myself. I could think of lots of things that made me happy that weren’t good for me at all.
already
run on time.” I couldn’t help myself. I could think of lots of things that made me happy that weren’t good for me at all.
“Lieutenant Bear, like you, I agree that liberty is precious. And like Lenin, I believe it is so precious that it must be
rationed!
”
rationed!
”
Was that a sudden fit of temper I’d seen behind those mild eyes? A streak of violence? Frankly, I’d regarded the fact that he had offices in the Old Endicott Building as suspicious, rather than otherwise. Now it seemed significant, but I didn’t have a way to tell Will and Lucy.
I shook my head. “So in your worst of all possible worlds, Mr. Fahel, other people are evil
and
stupid and must be controlled.”
and
stupid and must be controlled.”
“If they aren’t liquidated altogether,” Lucy finished for me. I could still hear her saying what she’d told me in the car: “Watch him, Winnie. He may sling a lotta maternalistic, protective lingo around if it serves his purpose, but he’ll be better at punitive paternalism.”
“Which is why,” I observed, only half aware that I was saying it out loud, “however incorrectly, you’re frequently associated with authoritarians like Bennett Williams.”
“You dare to associate
me
with Bennett Williams?” His eyes flashed. Now
there
was the temper I’d been looking for. Although I admit, after that particular remark, that I’d have thrown us all out on our bad-mannered keisters.
me
with Bennett Williams?” His eyes flashed. Now
there
was the temper I’d been looking for. Although I admit, after that particular remark, that I’d have thrown us all out on our bad-mannered keisters.
Good detective work, however, is seldom a matter of good manners. I’d gotten what I wanted, a little peek inside the man. Will stepped in. “Mr. Fahel, calm yourself. What Win said was, ‘
incorrectly
associated.’ Nobody’s implying you’re like Williams, or anybody else.”
incorrectly
associated.’ Nobody’s implying you’re like Williams, or anybody else.”
Fahel blinked a few times and cleared his throat in an effort to regain control. “I’m happy to hear you say that, Captain Sanders. ‘Incorrectly’ is correct. For, unlike Williams or his brother—those overinflated, mealy gummed nibblers about the edges of the status quo—I am nothing more, myself, than a lowly and humble servant of Incomprehensible and Irresistible Forces of History, which sometimes choose, for reasons even I cannot fathom, to speak through me.”
I guess that was a little more peek than I wanted. “Do they ever choose to
act
through you, Mr. Fahel?” I asked. (Mealy gummed nibblers; I had to remember that one.) “Never mind, tell me instead, if your forces
were
comprehensible and resistible, could you describe them?” He peered at me suspiciously, trying to decide if the question had been serious. If you can’t blind’em with your brilliance, Lucy always says, then bamboozle’em with your bullshit.
act
through you, Mr. Fahel?” I asked. (Mealy gummed nibblers; I had to remember that one.) “Never mind, tell me instead, if your forces
were
comprehensible and resistible, could you describe them?” He peered at me suspiciously, trying to decide if the question had been serious. If you can’t blind’em with your brilliance, Lucy always says, then bamboozle’em with your bullshit.
He opted for serious. “You could say they’re an amalgam of God, society, and family, for which I speak—all those entities with an undeniable claim upon the life and efforts of mere individuals.
Inevitably, of course, the best institution to tend upon the interests of those entities would be a large, and unanswerably powerful State.”
Inevitably, of course, the best institution to tend upon the interests of those entities would be a large, and unanswerably powerful State.”
“Unanswerably powerful,” I repeated. “With you at its head.”
“Who else?” He raised his arms and turned to indicate the tools of his profession. “I am, as you put it, the only ‘efficiency expert’ in the North American Confederacy. Only I have the means at my disposal to determine what’s best for everyone.”
The door in the foyer that the children had gone through opened suddenly. Holding the knob, sticking her head through, an extremely large woman with a bun in her steel gray hair and a nose you could open cans with hollered, “Jerse!”
Fahel gulped and looked at us like a trapped animal, as if he wanted to be rescued and didn’t know how to ask. Appeared to me like there was more than one unanswerable power around here. “Yes, Mother?”
“You remember what I told you this morning?”
He gulped again. “Yes, Mother.”
“Don’t you forget it!” She pulled her head in and closed the door.
There was a long silence. Then Will replied, “We really appeciate your straightforwardness, Mr. Fahel. I suppose you realize that by the standards of the culture you live in, you’re a villain. Most villains aren’t quite this forthcoming.”
Trying to recover, Fahel smiled tolerantly. “Captain Sanders, you want to know who blew up the Old Endicott Building …”
“And wrecked the tube-train at Gonzales,” Lucy told him.
“And put the bomb aboard the—” I stopped. I wasn’t supposed to tell anyone about that.
“The
City of Calgary
?” Fahel asked. “Don’t feel bad, Lieutenant. Why do you expect a trained animal like Olongo Featherstone-Haugh to keep a secret, let alone run even the
shabby little enterprise that passes for government here.”
City of Calgary
?” Fahel asked. “Don’t feel bad, Lieutenant. Why do you expect a trained animal like Olongo Featherstone-Haugh to keep a secret, let alone run even the
shabby little enterprise that passes for government here.”
“On top of everything else, you’re a racist?” Lucy asked.
“A speciesist, Mrs. Kropotkin, technically speaking, and, as Captain Sanders has had the goodness to state plainly, a villain—at least from your point of view.
“But not the villain you’re looking for.” He stood, straightening his poncho. “I’ll gladly swear to that in any terms you choose, submit to bodily response tests, or undergo hypnosis or truth drugs if it’s under bonded supervision.”
“Swear to what, specifically?” I asked him.
“That I had absolutely nothing to do with any of those events, whatever.”
Beware of geeks bearing GIFs.
—Memoirs of Lucille G. Kropotkin
The headline on the news vending machine standing just outside the Hanging Judge read:
SHOW THEM THE DOOR
Reluctantly, I inserted a small copper coin—vastly more than it was worth, as it turned out—and retrieved the dead-tree printout that had been custom-made for me. The paper’s lead editorial was demanding, right out in the open, that every last otherworld immigrant who had ever escaped to the North American Confederacy (including yours truly, I assumed, although they didn’t have the decency to mention me by name or give my business’Com number) be rounded up and shoved back through the probability broach to wherever it was he or she had come from or wherever the machinery happened to be tuned for.
It didn’t matter which.
The most disturbing fact was that it was NewHaps making such a demand, Greater LaPorte’s newest, third largest, and fastest-rising events and comments service. They were locked, just presently, in a postively Darwinian struggle to make themselves Greater LaPorte’s second largest events and comments service, and eventually Greater LaPorte’s first. And another fact, that nobody had the power to do what NewHaps demanded, was comforting only as long as you didn’t think about the effort being expended to create a government that
would
specifically
have power like that. The only answer, Will and I believed (and Lucy and Clarissa agreed), was to ferret out who was really doing all this dirty work—and do them dirty. At this particular point in North American Confederate history, Dr. Howard Slaughterbush, Mr. Bennett Williams, and What-ever-you-call-it Jerse Fahel, were the principal—indeed, almost the
only
—native advocates of something other than the absolute individual liberty that characterized this civilization. Thus, we reasoned, they were the only ones who might wish to restrict that liberty in order to create what they would regard as a real government.
would
specifically
have power like that. The only answer, Will and I believed (and Lucy and Clarissa agreed), was to ferret out who was really doing all this dirty work—and do them dirty. At this particular point in North American Confederate history, Dr. Howard Slaughterbush, Mr. Bennett Williams, and What-ever-you-call-it Jerse Fahel, were the principal—indeed, almost the
only
—native advocates of something other than the absolute individual liberty that characterized this civilization. Thus, we reasoned, they were the only ones who might wish to restrict that liberty in order to create what they would regard as a real government.
And yet we’d gone as far with each of them as we could at the moment. Will’s militia people, with the help of about forty insurance companies, were still collecting physical evidence at the tube-train wreck, the Old Endicott Building, and, presumably, aboard the
City of Calgary
. So here we were, back—Will for his own reasons, me for mine—poking around among the various and assorted inhabitants and denizens of the American Zone.
City of Calgary
. So here we were, back—Will for his own reasons, me for mine—poking around among the various and assorted inhabitants and denizens of the American Zone.
Resisting a powerful urge to kick over the news vending machine and stuff the printout up its scuzzy port, I pushed through the double doors of the bar and grill I was part owner of, closely followed by Lucy and Will. Inside, in the same booth I’d helped occupy earlier in the investigation, my darling Clarissa rose and waved. Finished with her client for the day, she’d called me, saying she wanted to rejoin the manhunt. I squeezed in next to Clarissa, probably a little bit closer than geometry strictly required. She took my hand and squeezed back. “So how’d it go with the patient?” I asked.
She shook her head. “You know, dear, I’ve always wondered about that word, patient. Mrs. Higgenbotham isn’t patient at all. She’s almost beside herself, extremely eager to get on with life. But to answer your question, it’s going wonderfully fine with my
client
, she’s responding beautifully to the therapy.”
client
, she’s responding beautifully to the therapy.”
Lucy asked, “What therapy, honey? Or does that violate client confidentiality?” She extracted a tiny silver pipe from somewhere on her person, stuffed its little bowl full of tobacco or something, and lit it with her plasma pistol, adjusted to an extremely low setting.
Her physician didn’t even flinch. I love the Confederacy. “No, it doesn’t, not at all, since you don’t know who she is. It’s sort of a new idea, Lucy—”
“Which Clarissa thought up, herself,” I said, pulling out a nice Belizian Jolly Roger of my own and borrowing Lucy’s pistol to light it. Me, I wasn’t willing to bet Lucy didn’t know Mrs. Higgenbotham. “Somebody notify the Nobel committee.”
Clarissa actually blushed. “It’s true, it was my idea. I wrote a paper on it last year, talked it over with a few of my colleagues who read it, and now, with Mrs. Higgenbotham’s cooperation, we’re giving it a field trial.”
Don’t tell the FDA, they’d soil themselves. Lucy said nothing, but waggled her eyebrows articulately. She’d likely had the same thought. By now, Will had heard enough to intrigue him, too. He’d taken care of ordering our drinks and sandwiches from the Wizard and his wife. The trouble with eating crawdads is that only three hours later, you’re hungry all over again.
“Well, you may not know it,” my spouse explained, “but of all the women who are basically given up on by fertility specialists, over eighty percent will get pregnant anyway, if they just gain as little as five pounds.”
Lucy slapped the table. “So you’re fattenin’ her up, then?”
“No, Lucy,” Clarissa shook her head. “She’s a young, attractive, newly married young woman with a serious heart condition that I’m trying to clear up—and an unfortunate life-threatening metabolic reaction to most of the birth-control drugs we know
about. She’s certainly no invalid, and she wants a normal relationship with her husband—although he gallantly swears that he’s willing to abstain if it’s to save her life.”
about. She’s certainly no invalid, and she wants a normal relationship with her husband—although he gallantly swears that he’s willing to abstain if it’s to save her life.”
“Good for him.” That was Lan speaking. Her husband Max the Wizard was standing beside her. Clarissa was beginning to attract something of an audience—
Tales from the Medical Crypt.
“What the hell is wrong with him?”
Tales from the Medical Crypt.
“What the hell is wrong with him?”
“Oh, he’s all right.” Clarissa grinned. “Although I wondered the same thing, myself. What I’ve done is isolate the endocrine activity that, in an excessively thin woman, ‘decides’ that she’s experiencing a period of famine in which it would be dangerous to have a baby, and doesn’t let her conceive.”
“I see,” Will told her. He had a growing personal interest in subjects like this I’m willing to bet he’d never even dreamed about having before. “And so you give her that—the hormone, would it be?—instead of birth control?”
Clarissa shook her head again. “No, that’s still untested and potentially dangerous. What I do, instead, through a process of very deep hypnosis and other therapies of that kind is try to convince the body to send out those famine signals by itself, even though my client happens to be in the ninety-eighth percentile of the weight range for her age and height.”
“And it works?” Will looked doubtful.
She nodded happily. “It’s worked for six months, so far.”
“And?” That was from somebody I didn’t recognize, a grizzled old orangutan standing on a chair behind Lan and the Wizard. I learned later he was a fry cook and Mike Morrison fan who had adopted the name Hop Sing from one of Morrison’s movies. Lan and Max had hired him with the idea of advertising: “Our Food Untouched by Human Hands.” I could have told them Mr. Meep had thought of that almost a decade ago.
“I need another two months,” Clarissa told him. “Then it won’t matter—her heart will be repaired and she can have a dozen babies, if that’s what she wants.”
“Nifty!” That was me—and I’d already heard the story at least twice. I couldn’t count the number of times Clarissa’s ministrations had kept my tired old body alive—and I’m only talking about professionally. I like the approach they take to medicine in the Confederacy.
“Okay, then,” Will said, “back to the detective business. I’d say Howard Slaughterbush is the closest thing this civilization offers to a left-wing ambulance-chaser, wouldn’t you? We’ve discovered that he administers several socialist front groups out of the closest thing this civilization offers to low-rent storefronts, down here in the Zone. He barely scrapes out a living at it, according to him. Other sources say otherwise, with oak leaf clusters.”
“He an’ a low-rent, ambulance-chasin’ son-in-law of his own three quarters of the spaceport parkin’ structures in the North American Confederacy,” Lucy volunteered, making little keyboard wiggles with her fingertips on the tabletop. “No doubt they feel socialist guilt all the way to the bank.”
“In any case,” Will continued, “he’s still an active suspect, as far as I’m concerned.”
I nodded. “While on the other side, what Bennett Williams wants, basically, is to displace his big brother as leader of the Franklinite Faction. I’ve done some cyberchecking, too—on the’Com in Lucy’s car. Their publication
The Postman
is heavily subsidized by Williams family wealth, doled out by brother Buckley. Until recently, it was neither widely read nor considered a very good place to advertise. Apparently, the current ‘emergency’—and the Franklinites’ public reaction to it—is changing all that.”
The Postman
is heavily subsidized by Williams family wealth, doled out by brother Buckley. Until recently, it was neither widely read nor considered a very good place to advertise. Apparently, the current ‘emergency’—and the Franklinites’ public reaction to it—is changing all that.”
“Fahel—” Will started.
“If it weren’t for the fact,” I interrupted, “that we found Williams’s thumbprint on that coin, Fahel would be my choice as Suspect of the Month. He’s certainly the creepiest of the three. You suppose he found a way to get Williams to—”
“I wish he did,” said Lucy, “but I checked with Bennie while you two were sayin’ your good-byes t’Fahel. We’re gettin’ t’be real’Com pals. He swears he’s never even seen Fahel in person or talked t’him on the ‘Com or anything. If he has some reason t’lie about that, I can’t figure it out.”
“Cain’t figger it out,” is what she’d really said. Neither could 1. I still had my list of people to interview in the Zone on behalf of my clients. Maybe we’d stumble across something that way—as soon as I had one of Yolanda’s famous barbecue sandwiches. And that wouldn’t happen until I did something else. I levered myself up from the table, excused myself, and headed for the little detective’s room, located at the end of a short hall, opposite the little sidekick’s room. I had my right hand on the door, ready to push it, when I heard a voice. “Lieutenant Win Bear?”
The hand slipped, all by itself, into the sling on my left arm, and wrapped around the rubber grip of my big revolver. I turned to see a tall, thin guy with a narrow face, wire-rimmed glasses, and curly reddish blond hair. “Yeah, who are you and what can I do for you?” I was a little impatient. I’ve always had a smallish bladder and it was at 105 percent capacity at the moment.
“My name is Lockhart,” he said, in a pleasant voice. “I’m an immigrant like you and damned happy to be here, even though it’s going to take me years to catch up on my programming skills. But that’s not important right now. A heavyset gray-haired man out on the sidewalk a few minutes ago paid me a silver ounce to give you a message—and make sure nobody else was around
when I did it. To tell the truth, I’ve been waiting twenty minutes for you to go to the bathroom.”
when I did it. To tell the truth, I’ve been waiting twenty minutes for you to go to the bathroom.”
“Okay, thanks,” I told him, feeling funny sensations dancing up and down my spine. “What’s the message?”
“He said you and Captain Sanders should meet him at nine o’clock tonight exactly where you saw him earlier today—and he asked me to give you this.”
He held out his hand. It was a small piece of fluorescent orange denim.
As THE CLOSEST thing this place had to cops, Will and I had begun occasionally to feel more like Lucy’s sidekicks than the other way around. When I got back from the bathroom, she was catching Clarissa up on the day’s adventures, spending more time on the disastrous Patriots-Aztecs game than the investigation we were supposed to be conducting. That may actually have been appropriate, given how little we’d accomplished so far. She was also laying out plans she’d cooked up when I wasn’t looking, to get to the bottom of this unprecedented crime wave.
“ … an’ then we’ll go through all their trash cans an’ see what we can find out about’em that way!”
It wasn’t a bad plan, actually. Government and private agencies thought pretty well of it where I was born, and we would get to it if we had to. It was just horribly messy, especially for a guy with a cast on his arm. In the North American Confederacy, it was probably actionable, too. Just because there aren’t any laws doesn’t mean you can’t get your ass sued off for violating somebody’s privacy. I let her finish—by now the spectators had departed and it was just the four of us again—before I told them about the brief, enigmatic message I’d just received.
“I know Lockhart.” Will nodded, idly examining the small
swatch of outrageously colored denim. “He’s a friend of Max’s and good man—does some programming for the GLPM. Pretty fair shot, too.”
swatch of outrageously colored denim. “He’s a friend of Max’s and good man—does some programming for the GLPM. Pretty fair shot, too.”
“‘Deep Throat,’” Lucy said suddenly, snapping her fingers. “That’s what we should call the gray-haired guy who sent the message. Wasn’t that the name of the man down in the parking garage who gave Woody an’ Buzz all the dirt on Jimmy Carter?”
“Nixon,” Will told her, laughing. He picked up a french fry and waved it to underline his point befoe plunging it into the ketchup on his plate. “It was Woodward and Bernstein, Lucy, getting the dirt on Nixon.”
“There wasn’t any dirt on Carter,” I added without looking up. “He was just the most impossibly stupid presidents we ever had.”
“Better living through democracy.” Clarissa was intent on her lunch—a specialty of the house Lan called “barbecue soup”—and didn’t look up. These extraordinary therapy sessions were hard on her and left her hungry and tired.
Looking up from my sandwich this time, I spoke again. “Anyway, ‘Deep Throat’ has been done. Twice if you count the X-Files. Three times if you count the original porno movie—and you definitely should. On the other hand, from now on, I believe I’ll refer to our unknown correspondent as ‘High Colonic.’”
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