The Milkman: A Freeworld Novel (13 page)

Chapter Sixteen

Winter had its upside. Every aspect of the sewer rebuild moved slower. The ice and cold weighed on the electric winches, cranes, forklifts and trucks, even more so on the human operators. Even the foreman who reveled in pushing and pushing and pushing the alternative work force let their shouting and growling trail off as cables snapped, pipes cracked, mud froze in the extruder, constipating the entire operation. Emory would not have picked the dim, frigid tunnels for his breaks. Sitting down on the cold, concave, soiled surfaces provided almost as many challenges as working. Still, you rested where and when offered. Plopping down in salty snow slush was better than shoveling it.

Like most days, Campbell and Emory sat alone, at the farthest most portion of the pipe. Their job involved placing the struts and beams that reinforced the walls and ceiling, preparing the way for the rest of the crew. Today, no one followed. No one seemed to move much at all.

“They must hate you.” Campbell lay curled like a fetus under a tarp. The wrapping’s murky, wet translucence made a plastic womb.

“Why?” Emory asked, laying back on a brace he decided not to install. It fit so nicely in that curve of his neck, between the back of his head and his shoulders. “Because they paired me with you?”

“Yes. We’ve got the most dangerous job on the detail. Most floods and cave-ins happen before you jim jam it.”

“Maybe they think we’re the best,” Emory said. “The best of the worst.”

“You get it on with some low grade’s wife?”

“I killed a man for asking too many questions.”

Campbell chuckled. “No… something bad, though.”

All the prying. The nosiness. Emory understood it. You put a bunch of guys together, all the time, with little else to occupy them besides chiseling dirt and conversations weave and wander. He didn’t like it, though. He didn’t like Campbell’s persistence.
Curiosity
, he wondered. Or more? No. Stupid thought. The company wouldn’t plant someone here to extract information from him. They’d torture him, right? Of course, this felt an awful lot like torture and they got some value out of it. They could have made a deal with Campbell. Time off for information on Emory, the Milkman and the enterprise he created.

Time to change the subject. “How did the Buy-Ups happen?” Emory asked.

“Oh, now you’re interested.”

“No. I’d like to be playing with my baby,” Emory said. “Or drinking coffee in bed with my wife. But you’re what I’ve got.”

Campbell sat up, keeping the tarp tight under his neck. “A confluence of events, my friend. A confluence. I told you how the boundaries between public and private interests broke down. Security was the big one, but services morphed as well. The mail, sanitation and regulation of all sorts got handed over to private firms. The government had less and less to do, but the price tag still grew. At the same time, these companies wanted more and more rights. They paid taxes, so they figured they should get to act like citizens. Big, fat citizens with multiple addresses, crossing international borders. You understand about borders?”

“Yeah,” Emory said. “Like big fences that kept people separated. Rulers had so much land and so many people and that’s how it all got marked off.”

“Except for multinational corporations. They had influence across borders.”

“Which made them bigger than the rulers.”

“Right,” Campbell said. “These rulers became nothing more than middle men. Companies gave the orders, governments carried them out. But it wasn’t a very efficient system. Sometimes the rulers didn’t listen. They started wars when they weren’t supposed to, or ended them too soon. Failed to protect shipping lanes or opened them up. Company control was indirect. More importantly, it was expensive. They realized they had all these presidents, representatives and members of parliament on payroll, paid to act like mouthpieces and they weren’t even all that good at it. What was the point?”

Emory shook his head. “Didn’t people like their governments? I mean, it was them, right? Not the kings and queens, but the other kind. The kind with elections. That was anybody, right?”

Campbell shrugged his shoulders. The tarp warped. New troughs sent new trickles of water down from Campbell’s head. “I think it started out that way. Didn’t seem to work, though.”

“Maintenance,” Emory said, mostly to himself. “Every system needs monitoring and maintenance. Nothing’s perpetual.”

“Change,” Campbell said. “Change is perpetual.”

“Entropy feels that way.”

“Entropy?”

“The decay of order. It’s the enemy of any system— biological, astronomical, political. Everything.”

“What kind of engineer did you say you were?”

“There’s the kind that prevents trouble,” Emory said. “And there’s the kind that deals with it. I graduated from the latter.”

“I could’ve taught there.”

Emory laughed. Just two chuckles. It took too much energy to really open up and guffaw. They both paused and listened to the clanking of other men, down the pipe. Long gaps stretched out between cracks of metal on metal.

“You didn’t answer my question,” Emory said. “I’ve studied large, complex systems and while they tend to wear, they also tend to evolve. The bigger the system, the more entrenched. How did the companies finally take over from established governments?”

“That’s what I spent a long time studying. How did we get from there to here? The thing I didn’t see… the thing most people don’t see, is that there’s no one step. There’s no enormous knife switch the companies threw and ‘click’ everything changes ownership. Like all insubordinations, this one had a means, motive and opportunity. The motive was always clear. All companies want profit, stability and growth. Takeovers have always been great options. The opportunity came as corporate power and government debt intersected. You should see some of the prices I saw on military hardware. You wouldn’t believe me. It took me years to believe them myself. A billion dollars an airplane? I thought maybe money had different values back then, but no. A billion is the annual salary of 28,000 people. That’s the number of people it took to build one plane for the purpose of shooting down some other government’s plane that took 28,000 people a year to build.”

Emory huffed. “The governments sound as screwed up as the companies.”

“Pretty much. At least, when they weren’t playing nice with each other. Anyway, that brings us to the means. And it’s a lot simpler than you think.” Campbell waited.

Emory didn’t guess. He didn’t have a good guess or the energy to try to create one.

“It’s on everyone’s wrist.” Campbell held up his scuffed, white ceramic bracelet, the one the company gave him when they assigned him to the alternative work detail. “Commerce and communication. Once they got together, the world changed.”

“That’s the weapon of revolution? The wrist phone?”

“It’s more than that. It’s your link with society. Your strongest link. Think about it, man. Can you prove who you are without it? Can you buy anything? Talk to anyone out of ear’s reach? Do you know what’s going on in the world? Your body is only a part of your life. A little part, and not even the most important part. You’re a ball of numbers to the company— and to everyone else you’re not actually touching. Whoever controls that link, that bridle, can jerk you around like an old pony. A puppet.”

“A puppet pony,” Emory said.

“Go and live with the off-liners for a while. You’ll see what a marionette looks like once the strings have been cut. Governments used to print money and stamp coins. They used to provide postal services and regulate telegrams, telephones and television. Once they gave that up… it was giving up.”

“I’m not disagreeing with you. I miss my cuff. I miss it more than I could have imagined, but it’s not a chain.”

“You’re glib.” Campbell rolled over, rustling his tarp.

“I’m cold and tired and hungry,” Emory replied.

“What’s to prevent you from getting up and walking away? Huh?” Campbell sat upright, pointing at Emory. “Anybody keeping guard back there? Anybody tell you today you can’t just start running wee wee wee all the way home? There’s no dog or fence or big beefy guy with a halberd? Know what I’m saying? No. Those things would stop the fleshy you, which no one even cares about. The non-corporeal you— that’s what you’re protecting. That’s what they’ve got captive.”

“I can’t—”

“Sure you can,” Campbell cut in. “Get up. Go see your wife and baby.”

“It’s not that—”

“Go. You love them. You miss them. Go. Walk home.”

“You know it can’t be done.”

“Get out!”

“Drop it.”

“Get out. Go!”

“I said drop it!”

“Pathetic shell of a man.”

“Crazy fuck.”

“You asked me how the companies took over,” Campbell said. “Now you know. They took over everything and everyone the same way they took over you. They gave you everything you wanted.”

* * *

Atlanta was chillier than Sylvia expected, but she couldn’t get away with an ermine coat. Which suited her just fine, she decided. She’d let her new boss see her new belly. Pregnancy threw people off a bit. Men more so. She strolled into the management offices of the Vermillion Office Complex in a simple white wool jacket, left to fly open as she advanced.

“Ms. Cho?” the assistant asked as she pushed through the glass doors. Young, male, nondescript.

“You must be Todd,” she said, dropping her coat from her shoulders.

“A… no, it’s Rog—”

“I’m used to calling the shots. Naming the names, you know what I mean, Todd?”

“Rog—”

“Ra, Ra, right you are. I’m a team player, too. You’ll see. So is the coach in?”

“A… yes. He’s waiting for—”

“I don’t wait myself. I make things happen.” Sylvia continued past the desk into the office.

Mortimer Clive sat behind a gray steel desk so dull Sylvia smiled. She would’ve hugged the set designer who provided this piece for a movie about a lifeless bureaucrat. The desk held nothing but two monitors — the kind you picked up and held in your hand — and a streaked and spotted coffee cup. Yet, somehow, it still looked unorganized. Thinning black hair swept back in a wave of gooey product, Clive peered over steepled fingers, as if deep in thought. He had a trim, black moustache and goatee. And a black, short-sleeve turtleneck sweater. It made the whole trip worth it. A short-sleeve turtleneck. The smile that started when she saw the desk broke into a full-faced beam.

“Mr. Clive, it is very nice to meet you.” Sylvia shot her hand across the desk.

He didn’t rise. “Charmed.” But shook her hand.

Sylvia motioned to one of the two chairs facing the desk. Gray, steel, a thin pad of brown plastic on the seats and backs, she figured she better make this quick. Either of these would make her ass numb up in seconds. Clive nodded. She sat.

“Ms. Cho, I know this must be awkward,” Clive said.

“What?” Sylvia returned.

“Being recalled. I was told you were in the middle of another project.”

“It doesn’t have to be awkward for you, Mr. Clive. And please, call me Sylvia. I don’t imagine you were the one to reassign me. Getting me pulled off a major motion picture takes a great deal of juice. I mean no offense, but this is below your pay grade. Mine too. You and I are furniture being moved about the room, Mr. Clive.”

“Mortimer, will be fine.”

“How about Morty?”

“That would be… Let’s wait on that.”

“Like I told your boy out there, I’m not much of a waiter. For instance, who was it? Who told you to call me in?”

Clive’s head recoiled a quarter-inch. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

“Well we’ll have to liberate that. The saying.” She winked. “My new assignment. Let’s talk about it.”

“Right.” Clive placed a splayed hand over one of the two monitors and slid it across the desktop. Sylvia took it up and thumbed it on. “We’re in the design phase now. We’re preparing for spring. The parameters and budget are there.”

“How is that possible?” Sylvia asked.

“They’re in the memory.”

“I thought you said we were in the design phase?”

“Right.”

“And you brought me several hundred miles to participate in the design?”

“Right.”

“Then how could the budget and parameters be set? Whoever chose me to design the grounds for this building just jerked aside another project worth millions, because he or she wanted Sylvia Cho. They worked their magic, played whatever corporate chips they had, to leverage me into this spot. They want to be able to say to everyone at their club that a world famous director decided where to put their peach trees and marigolds. The low grade that did this is a show-off. He or she deals in prestige. Prestige is the coin of the realm. The new black. And there’s nothing quite as prestigious as making people do something they otherwise would not. Like me. Sitting here. So the fucking end product better look fucking good, don’t you think?”

Mortimer Clive sat back and pressed his finger tips back together into a pointy sculpture. He studied her, she thought, like a presentation. A 3D diorama that would tell him how the project would proceed.