The Incrementalists (14 page)

Phil

Jimmy moved into the front seat, twisting a bit so he could come closer to facing me. “You know, I’ve arranged for a rental,” he said.

“Pick it up tomorrow. I want to talk to you.”

“So I gathered. All right, what is—”

“I’m falling in love with her. Falling hard.”

“With her, or—”

“Her. Ren. Not Celeste. Shit. Got it bad. I kissed her today, and then she pulled away from me like I was poison, thinking I wanted to be kissing Celeste. And then after that, she—crap.” Jimmy was silent, looking at me. Then he cleared his throat, and I said, “Jimmy, if I hear
‘mon ami’
escape your mouth, I swear to God I’ll pull over and punch you.”

He chuckled. “All right. I heard she’s lost Celeste’s memories.”

“She’s lost Celeste completely, except it comes back sometimes, and—wait. Heard how? No, don’t tell me. That lying hen.”

He shrugged. “The problem isn’t your Ren. Our Ren. So she’s not integrating smoothly. All right. We’ve handled that before. But what Ramon calls the alpha-lock is worrying me. Where is cause and where is effect?”

“You’re the grazing shaman, you tell me.”

That shut him up for a moment, then he said, “What doesn’t Ren know?”

I drove for a while, running that through my head. Jimmy didn’t know Las Vegas, so I took us onto the 15 and all the way to Sahara and then to Arvile. I trusted Jimmy and I liked him, and I wanted some time to talk to him before dealing with Irina. I finally said, “She doesn’t know about the disconnect.”

“The disconnect?”

“That’s what I call it. She doesn’t understand that we’re not really like the amnemones, at some basic level.”

“We’re just like them at the most basic level.”

“You know what I mean.”

He said, “Are these dips in the road indicative of bad design, or do they serve some engineering purpose?”

“I don’t know. I suspect some of each.”

“And did you bring us this way just so I’d bump my head?”

“No.”

“All right. You haven’t talked about the nemones with her? She never asked what we call everyone else, or how we think of them?”

“I mentioned it in passing, but we didn’t actually talk about it.”

He studied me. “Has it been getting worse for you?”

I considered. “I don’t think so. I had to fight Celeste’s attitude at close range for a few hundred years; that pushed me in the other direction.”

“Sometimes, you get pushed in one direction, it snaps you back in the other.”

“I know—Oskar.”

“Sorry. But—”

“No, you’re right. I’ve been trying to watch for bits of contempt creeping into my attitudes. So far, I think I’m all right.”

“Okay.”

We turned onto Flamingo and I pointed to The Palms. “That’s where Oskar and Ren are.”

He studied it as we passed by. “They’re trying to project naughty,” he said. “Why there?”

“It’s the best place for my sugar spoon.”

“All right.”

I turned onto Decatur and took it back to Sahara. We reached the house and got out. Jimmy looked around. “Nice neighborhood. Blue collar.”

“A lot of Mormons,” I said. “And a lot of Hispanics.”

“And, it seems, a lot of foreclosures. Have you thought about meddling with that?”

“Thought about it; haven’t come up with anything.”

We went in. Irina was on the couch, but stood and rushed into Jimmy’s arms. “Ah, my beautiful man! Come to save me from the hostility of those who fail to appreciate my charms!”

“None could so fail,
ma chère,
” said Jimmy. “I must ravish you at once; I cannot restrain myself.”

I started coffee while they played out their game. By the time I poured a cup, they were sitting. Since Oskar wasn’t here, I was able to take my own chair.

“So,” said Irina. “I think the best solution is to just stub Ren and find a new recruit. What do you think, Jimmy?”

Ren

The knock on the door came on the phone’s second ring. I was still scrambling to answer one as I opened the other. Oskar filled the opening, a linen-draped waiter’s tray balanced at ear level. My phone went to voice mail.

“It’s Liam,” Oskar said. “He’s been delayed an hour. He’ll meet you at six in the café. I brought tea.”

“I need to call my boss back,” I said.

In a single, smooth sweep, Oskar brought the tray from his shoulder to the desk. I called Liam back while watching Oskar pour what I once would have called a Princess Tea: orange pekoe from a silver pot into porcelain cups, milk first, sugar after, and a plate of finger sandwiches and little pink cakes, with Chopin lilting from an iPad on the room service tray. I dialed both of Liam’s numbers, and then my voice mail. He’d been delayed. He would meet me at six in the café.

Oskar pulled out the desk chair for me and placed a delicate cup in my hand. I smelled the tea before I drank it. “So you know my mom’s an anglophile,” I said.

“Phil was very thorough.” Oskar stretched himself on my bed, propped on one elbow, like a formally dressed version of a teen idol beefcake shot: jacket artfully opened, in conservative, tailored trousers and a classic black T, with the rebel’s red necklace cord peeking at his throat.

I sipped my tea. “I don’t think tea is a switch for me.”

“It isn’t. It was one of Celeste’s.”

“Who’s Celeste?”

“Don’t you ever get tired of saying that?” He lifted his cup from its saucer. It looked like a golf ball in a backhoe’s claw.

“I do, actually,” I told him. “But she’s all anyone seems to want to talk about, and I don’t know who she is.”

“How frustrating for you.”

“What do you want, Oskar?”

“I want to talk to Celeste.”

“Get in line. But I meant, why are you here, in my room?”

“Because I think you can help me. Pass the cakes?”

I waddled my rolly desk chair over to him with the tray. He took one, and bit into it, looking at me. It was an overtly sexual bite, and corny as hell, but it ran a shiver through me anyway. He looked like my first celebrity crush, with his hair slicked back the new way he was wearing it.

He dropped his voice to a deep whisper, and I had to scoot forward in my chair just to hear him. “Have you ever really wanted something, Ren?” he asked. “Have you ever worked, and ached, and struggled after the same one thing over long reaches of time? Did you ever suffer without that one thing you desired, only to find it suddenly, tantalizingly near to hand?”

“The Fisher-Price Little People Play Family Castle,” I said. “Saving up allowance was never going to get me there. I almost gave up, until I thought of Santa.”

Oskar assessed my face. Yes, I’d wanted other things more, but he got that I wasn’t just joking. He twisted to sitting in one fluid spring. “I’ve wanted in the Salt for forty years.” His voice was a deep growl in his chest. “And now it’s so close I can taste it.” He smiled briefly, showing strong, sharp teeth, and I thought he would not so much taste as devour with his kind of hungry.

“I know why I wanted the castle,” I said. “It had dragons. Why do you want in the Salt?”

“Because they’re doing it wrong,” he said, not needing to consider the question for even a moment. “You weren’t born yet when Nixon resigned. It was like a victory that ended the war before it was won. All the passion, the need for change, the hope, just left. The kids who were fixing the world went home. They busied themselves with neo-paganism, positive thinking, identity politics, and organic food co-ops. But they could have done it. They almost did. It was our fault. I told Salt subjective idealism—I told Salt they needed our help. They didn’t listen, and I want them to have to. Incrementalists can cause real change. We can make things better. It’s wrong to be able to do that, and to not do it. It’s just … it’s wrong.”

“Maybe it’s getting near Christmas,” I said.

“It’s July.”

“Your birthday?”

I started to roll my chair back to the desk, but Oskar caught it by its padded armrests and shook it. “Celeste would never have let this happen. She despises the nemones, and she would never permit us to so much as inconvenience ourselves to help them.” He pulled my chair right up against the bed. “Celeste’s not gone. Celeste would never just go. She’s hiding.”

With my knees between his, and his shoulders filling my field of vision, I couldn’t think of anything to say. Oskar brought his forehead to mine. “I’m here to coax Celeste out.”

“I’m here on business,” I said.

“You’re here because we brought you.”

“Well, there is that,” I admitted. “Also the poker.”

“You don’t play.”

“The shows?”

“You haven’t seen one.”

“The food?”

“Ren!” He stood up, towering over me. I backpedalled my chair, but he sat down again, watching me through narrowed eyes. “You should want this too,” he said with something like menace in his voice.

“To be in the Salt? Nah, I hate politics.”

“For me to find Celeste.”

“I thought you wanted her out of the way.”

“I do.” His face left no doubt about the depth of that desire. More than dragons.

“Enough to break rules?” I asked.

“We have very few.”

“Did you kill Celeste?”

Nothing moved. In the poison-blue of his beautiful eyes, I saw Desire roll onto her back.

“Stubbing Incrementalists is not against the rules,” he said. “We don’t like to do it, but we have before, and we can again.”

“See?” I said. “More things I haven’t remembered about us.”

“We have to protect against dementia and chemical imbalance to keep inadvertent falsehoods out of the Garden. Man knows of the world what his senses tell him, but our senses are interpreted through our material brains, and a sick brain can bring bad information. Paranoids can record dangers that aren’t real. Brain injuries alter personalities. We are not charioteers to spur forward or rein back the brute beasts we ride upon.” He pulled my chair closer, touched his fingertips to my cheek, and smoothed my hair back from my temple. He leaned in toward it. I spun the chair toward the armrest he’d released and jumped to my feet.

“More tea, Chiron?” I asked from back at the desk.

He stood and carried his cup to me. Maybe he wanted the tea. Maybe I was looking particularly Sabinian. I was as tall as his shoulder.

“So Phil has introduced you to what happens when our temples touch,” Oskar mused. “Has he told you what can happen when Incrementalists make love?”

“No, why would he?”

“He might think you’d appreciate the warning. He wants you, you know.”

“I know he was in love with Celeste,” I said, but I had to bite my lip to keep from smiling.

“Now you remember her?”

“I remember people talking about her.”

“Phil was in love with Celeste for a long, long time.”

“Sounds like it was a rocky relationship,” I said. I poured another cup of tea, forgetting the milk.

“All Celeste’s relationships were,” Oskar said. “But Phil never saw that. He lost his objectivity. It’s possible you have lost yours as well.” He reached across me and took the creamer by its slim handle.

“Phil knows Celeste meddled with him,” I said.

“Celeste was subtle.” Oskar poured a thin stream of milk into his empty cup. “It suited her for Phil to adore her. It kept him timid. Love does that, you know.” He lifted the teapot as he poured, drawing a long curve of the steaming stuff so the smell filled the space between us. “Not at first, of course. At first love makes us wild. Reckless.” The sugar tongs looked like tweezers between his fingers, but he wielded them like a surgeon. “In the first throes of love, we leave homes and jobs, abandon lives and cities.” He stirred the cup, looking into it thoughtfully. “But later, after the flames of love burn down to embers, love tempers us.” He handed the cup to me. “Love domesticates us until we fear the feral passion we remember.” He pressed me tenderly into my chair and leaned on the edge of my desk. “So we corral our love with rules and ethics. We pen love in, clip its wings, and castrate it to keep it safe from itself. Tame, and moderate.”

I looked at him over my teacup. “So what, love no one? Is that the wisdom of your accumulated years? Play the lone wolf?”

He dropped a finger sandwich, whole, into his mouth. “Wolves are family creatures, but they don’t tolerate a challenge. I would not be welcomed in the Salt, even if your personality’s dominance over Celeste’s were strictly to form. As it is, they may dispute your spike, argue it was a broken stub, or that Phil was too involved to choose a suitable recruit. He doubled the genome with you, after all, and you’re not integrating. And people were loyal to Celeste.” He drained his teacup. “Do you know who you need most, Ren?”

“Santa?”

“You need Celeste. You need enough of her to prove she’s still around, just not the dominant personality any longer. You need to demonstrate you got a viable spike. I can help.”

Oskar leaned across me and took the teacup from my hand. He touched a button on the iPad, and Leonard Cohen’s voice lapped over my shoulders. Oskar straightened and held his beautiful, empty hands out to me.

I picked up my teacup, sipped and returned it with unshaking hands. “You know, Santa brought me Barbie’s Dream House that year, and it wasn’t the same at all.”

Oskar enveloped one of my wrists. “But you played with it the day after Christmas, didn’t you?” He pulled me to standing.

“Yes,” I said.

He carried my hand to his shoulder. “I don’t want to see Celeste when I look at you,” he said.

“You want in the Salt.”

“I do.” He took my other hand in his. “And I want you in the Incrementalists.” He rested his fingers on my waist. “And I think you want that too. You must have had something really big in mind to take the spike as quickly as you did.”

I nodded.

“I like big,” he said, and actually blushed when I raised my eyebrows at him. It was adorable.

“I know you’ve been you for a couple of hundred years,” I told him. “And I know you’ve wanted something big for that long, maybe longer. But it wouldn’t have hurt you to want some
one
in all that time as well.”

His blush deepened. “I’ve had lovers.”