Strange Trades (25 page)

I was surprised to see that a lot of Sledge’s people were mixing with mine. At first I thought that they were just after our water; it was the one thing their home lacked. But then I realized that their sociability was unfeigned. The motley squatters—unwashed, skinny, tough as leather—and my homogenous crewmembers—neat even while sweaty, well-fed, pampered—were getting on famously, like Hong Kong and China.

Not spotting Holly, I asked for her. Behind the Bricks’ house was the reply. And that tacit acknowledgement that the brownstone was now someone’s property came from one of my own people.

I felt something slipping dangerously out of my hands.

Holly stood next to Sledge, Zora and a couple of others, Goldies and Bricks. A few feet farther off was Runt. Half of his face was laughing. (The dead half, I had learned last night from Zora, was neurological damage, the result of a bad batch of designer PCP analogue.)

Holly spotted me. “Mike, hello! I owe you a beer. You were right about that hose. I was going to send for a mechanic, but Runt patched it up real good.”

The repaired compliant trundled toward Sledge’s group. I wondered why it was still powered up.

Then I wondered who was gloving it.

It was Runt.

He brought his arm down. The compliant reached for Zora. She squealed, stepped back, then was wrapped with a pneumatic arm that could crush masonry.

Holly blanched. I saw as if through a shimmering haze.

“Runt!” I yelled, although I knew I didn’t want to spook him.

He paused. Zora hung six feet up in the air, pushing with both hands against the coiled embrace of the compliant. It seemed she didn’t have breath enough to speak.

I tried to be calm. “Runt, slow now. Set her down slowly and uncurl your fingers.”

He couldn’t figure out yet why we were so worried. “Sure, man, sure, no prob.”

He thudded Zora clumsily back to earth, then opened his hand. Zora staggered out.

I was beside her then, Runt too, finally realizing what he had done. “Are you okay?” I asked.

Zora gulped and nodded. “Just—just knocked the wind out of me.”

Runt was half-crying. “Hey, Zora, I didn’t know. I didn’t mean nothing. Honest, you know me, always a dumb joker. Here, look.” He stripped off the glove and tossed it to the ground.

“It’s not your fault,” I said. I looked at Holly. Her tanned face was still drained of blood. Four parallel finger tracks stood out on her neck. “I’ll talk to you later, Noonan. Right now though I want to speak privately with Sledge—if it’s okay with him.”

The leader of the Bricks had stood impassively by during the incident, as if realizing that the responsibility lay within my dominion, not his, and willing to let me handle it.

“Yeah, sure, it’s cool. Let’s walk.”

We moved off. After a few steps, Cassiopeia was the only witness to our conversation.

“Your people seem to be taking well to mine,” I said.

“And your folks’re cottonin’ to mine. But that’s how I expected it to go. You see, my people, they don’t want much. They just can’t stand to live in no institutions. They don’t want no handouts or charity. All they ask is to pick through what society don’t want, and put it to their own use. I think your people respect that, being self-reliant and all.”

“But aren’t you worried—” I began.

“Worry! Ain’t got no time for worry. Look, Mike, we should both be very happy. Been plenty of times before, when two tribes met, when things didn’t go so peacefully as they are now.”

He managed to surprise me with the analogy. “Is that how you really see it, as two tribes running into each other?”

“Sure. Don’t you? Look, you guys come into the city jungle, clearin’ it away like some Brazilians in the Amazon, and you bound to run into some natives. Chances are, some of your folks maybe even go native on you. After all, you guys may be from a bigger, richer society, but you still just a tribe.” He gave me a gap-toothed smile. “But I know you ain’t gonna be like no exploiters, you gonna treat us with the dignity we deserve, and help us keep our little piece of land.”

I shifted the topic slightly. “If we’re enacting the meeting of two tribes, what does that make us?”

“We’re the chiefs, Mike. Two headmen. Got all of the work and none of the fun, all of the grief and none of the kicks.”

I couldn’t say anything because I knew he was right.

We started to circle back to the others in silence. Then Sledge spoke.

“When two tribes meet, then you gonna see that old exogamy in action, I figure.”

Again he had managed to startle me, the clinical term sounding utterly foreign coming from his lips. I reminded myself not to underestimate this man.

“Yeah,” Sledge continued, “I bet you enjoyed your ol’ piece of exogamy with Zora last night. She’s one hell of a lady. But that’s cool, that’s cool, exogamy is for bindin’ the tribes together. That’s why I hope you don’t mind me and Holly gettin’ it on. It’s a fair trade, she can really crank that little thing of hers. Girl go down faster ’n Drano.”

Four tracks on her neck.…

I swung on him.

He caught my wrist and there was a knife at my throat.

“You a big man, Mike. But not that big.”

The knife disappeared. My wrist was freed.

“Let’s drop this shit, okay? Won’t do for the others to see us rumblin’.”

He turned his back on me and walked off.

And once again he was right, and knew I knew it.

6.

Like four slabs of ferrocrete settling on my back, four days passed.

A lot happened.

Nothing happened.

I took delivery on five hundred tailored London plane trees: biofabbed mycorrhizae on the roots to fight disease and help extract nutrients, increase CO
₂
uptake, and heighten resistance to pollutants. We were going to landscape as we went, leaving arcades of greenery behind us.

Con Ed sent some people over to help lay the superconducting cable that would carry power throughout the new development. Skeptical at first that my people could manage, the outsiders soon changed their tune. It’s amazing what the average eighteen-year-old can do, given half a chance.

My cement began to arrive, the new fast-cure mix. It came in a procession of rumbling, revolving trucks, all driven by guys named Guido. I hoped the bodies in the mix—literal or metaphorical—wouldn’t make for weak foundations.

Atop the Bricks’ squat, a windmill sprouted, its eggbeater blades clattering noisily night and day in the stiff breezes the open site promoted. Freed from dependence on the limiting fuel cells, the Bricks added more lights, and at night the building blazed like a carnival attraction, topped by its busy pinwheel.

Also on the roof they built a rainwater catchment, of the kind found on many Caribbean islands. To supplement this source of water, the Bricks scavenged a dozen plastic fifty-gallon drums, which they endeavored to keep filled. I looked the other way when Holly sent our water tanker over.

Each night in bed, after our lovemaking, Zora would whisper to me the new improvements they had made that day, always ending on the same note.

“You think we’re doing good, Mike? You gonna help us, right?”

I said things she could interpret as she wanted.

I have always loved the wild and the strange. Sometimes I think that’s all my altruism, my career of “selfless” helping comes down to: a desire to plunge into alien cultures and environments. I offer the notion not as excuse or indictment, palliation or breast-beating, but simply as an insight, won at some cost.

The whole affair began to remind me of something that had happened in the city about fifteen years ago. A communal group that called itself the Purple Family had taken over an abandoned waste-strewn lot and remade it into a beautiful garden. Then the original absentee owners had come to reclaim it, uprooting all that had been planted. For a few years thereafter, at random intervals, painted purple footprints had appeared all over the city sidewalks, as if a silent, accusing phantom stalked the streets.

I couldn’t help speaking to Holly. I managed to keep my voice official, to show neither favoritism nor vindictiveness. Even the upbraiding I gave her for allowing Runt to factor the compliant was strictly professional. She responded at first with hurt incomprehension, then adopted my own cool demeanor. Where we had once had a warm and wordless bond, it was now like two icicles rubbing together.

I found compensation in Zora.

I gathered Holly found hers in Sledge.

But what would happen to all of us in a few days, I could not say.

At the end of the fourth day I got a visit from Mama Cass. Only she didn’t really come in person, and it wasn’t really her.

At that time in their development, metamedium nodes had no holo output or audiovisual input. It was still a medium of mice and keyboards and monitors, uninhabited by autonomous agents. But there did exist rather simple personal programs that would route a simulation of the owner’s face, along with a message, to any node at a preselected time. They were useful as prompts and reminders.

It was around noon that day when Mama Cass’s face lit up my screen, interrupting my scheduling work. She had given her image an eyepatch of jeweled copper. Aside from that, it was true to life.

“Mike,” said the simulacrum, “I’m sorry I haven’t been around lately, but things have been crazy. I’ll be in Washington for the week, speaking at the Senate hearings. I saw that you signed the transportation orders on those squatters. Don’t let the date slip any further. Catch you later.”

Plasma pixels pulsed off.

The ghost’s ultimatum left me feeling even further boxed in.

That afternoon, Holly came to my trailer unbidden.

Wiping her sweaty face with a bandana (One of Sledge’s? The one Zora had worn that night as a bandeau top? Why should I care?) she looked directly at me with a concentrated distance, as if a chasm only a foot wide but miles deep separated us.

“The Bricks are throwing a nova party tonight. Just decided. They’ve invited me and my crew. Figured I should check with you first. Are we allowed to go?”

I thought hard. If I ordered my people not to go, they’d probably disobey anyway. As was their prerogative, being adults. I wasn’t running a summer camp here. No bed checks or curfews. Besides, what harm could come? In a few days, the Bricks would be gone, willingly or under the coercion of the National Guard, as others had already been taken. Then my problems would be over.

“Sure. Why not?”

“That’s what I thought you’d say. Just wanted to check.”

Holly turned to go, paused, looked back.

“You’ll be there?”

“Wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

“Thought you’d say that too.”

As an excuse for a party, the nova was always reason enough.

Born of violence, the star was something new and shining and perfect. Temporary, certainly, but all life, all human accomplishments are temporary. Who’s to say whether it’s better to drudge along from day to day, hoarding one’s energy, or blow it all off in one spectacular display?

I had almost not come to the party tonight. For a long time I had sat in my trailer, shirtless and in shorts, not thinking, precisely, but just waiting in suspension for something to move me one way or another. At last an inner balance tipped, disturbed by some wind that blew from the soul, and I got up and dressed.

At the last minute, I buckled my utility belt around my waist. The shearing fork I had hung there several days ago, when I had helped Leotis and Shayla, slapped against my hip. I guess I wanted some badge of my status as comfort. Or were my motivations even then something darker.…?

Leaving the ATV parked, I walked across the empty land between my trailer and the party, wanting to be alone for a little while longer.

Someone in the Gold Crew had brought a boombox that pumped out crank-up hits on DAT, drum-heavy rhythms. There was a makeshift table consisting of planks on two plastic saw- horses, covered with some scavenged curtains as tablecloth. Various cardboard take-out cartons and trays held Chinese food, pizza, fried chicken. Somewhere the Bricks had dug up some styrofoam plates in their original packaging. I hadn’t seen styrofoam in years, since the Montreal Protocols got into full gear. To drink there was beer, wine, punch.

I grabbed a bottle of beer and circulated among the dancers and talkers for a while, nodding a hello here and there, but not joining in any conversation.

He stood back in the shadows, watching.

“Mike.”

“Sledge.”

“Good to see you here, man. Hope it’s just the first time outa many.”

“Maybe. You plan on standing alone here all night?”

He laughed. “You got my number, buddy. I get too far above it sometimes. Comes with the job. But I don’t have to tell you that. No, I’m gonna party down right now. You too, you hear.”

“I hear.”

We stepped out and walked together, toward a crowd of laughing people.