It took two drinks before their clothes came off.
Sometime later, Penelope slid out of bed and headed for the shower. Lion grabbed the freshly restocked dragon box off the nightstand and carried it out to the terrace. Which is where he is now, looking out at the lights of the city, telling stories about each, the electrician who installed the lamppost, the lost dog down the street, just as Fetu had taught him. Another empathy-expansion exercise; keeping the machinery oiled and ready.
In his left pants pocket, he can feel the weight of the Pong diamond. Such a tiny technology, yet big enough to hold the secrets of the Rilkeans. Like a chastity belt for culture, preventing mimetic fertility. No stories, no empathy; no empathy, no culture. Last tango in cyberspace. Which is also why, he suspects, Sir Richard is so concerned about the failure of language.
Either that, or Lion’s really stoned.
He can’t decide. The only thing clear is that more is probably better than less in this instance. He takes tobacco from his coat pocket, a handful of Ghost Trainwreck from the dragon box, sits down in a chair, rolls 50-50, clicks his lighter and inhales. Bounce light from the hotel room catches his exhale for a Mandelbrot moment, gone as smoke slides off on the breeze.
He thinks of, for no reason he can think of, the woman he gave his copy of Dune to. About their dramatic arc, where they started out and where ended up.
“You look pensive.”
He glances up and sees Penelope standing on the edge of the terrace, wearing a white hotel robe, her hair unbraided, hanging long and still damp from the shower. “What are you thinking about?”
“Empathy.”
“That story you told Richard? About wolves?”
“More like the inverse. I told Richard about wolves, and how empathy evolved. I was thinking about what empathy can do.”
“Which is?” she asks.
“All of this,” says Lion, pointing at the city, the lights, their stories. “All of this started as an idea in someone’s head. But it exists because of wolves.”
She takes a few steps closer to the table, reaching slender fingers out for the joint. The motion tugs her robe up her arm, revealing black ravens soaring over pale flesh.
He passes it over.
“Cities from wolves?” she asks, inhaling.
“It’s strange to think about,” he says, “but wolves forced early humans to expand empathy, to widen their sphere of caring beyond immediate family. A gazillion generations later that’s what made us capable of teaming up to turn something as ephemeral as an idea into something as concrete as a city…” Then he frowns. “Maybe Richard’s right. Maybe faster is better.”
“You’re changing your mind?” asks Penelope.
“From what to what?”
“From telling the Rilkean side of the story.”
Lion flashes on Balthazar explaining that the reprogrammed diamond takes twelve hours to liberate the data. His phone is inside the hotel room. “What time is it?” he asks Penelope.
“A little before midnight, why?”
Lion got to Arctic at noon, counting in his head. Less than an hour to go. “I never said I’d tell the Rilkean side of the story.”
“You said you’d think about it.”
“I’m still thinking,” he says, sliding back from the table, feeling cold stone beneath bare feet as he pads to the edge of the terrace. Down below, the street’s asphalt ribbon and a taxicab parked midblock, candy-apple-red blinkers strobing the darkness.
Penelope crosses over to stand beside him. “All you can do is your inch.”
He raises an eyebrow.
“It’s something Mum used to say. All you can do is your inch. We grab everyone we can carry, put each other onto our backs, and crawl toward the future. Inch by inch—it’s all we can do.”
“But it’s what we do, right?” Turning toward her then. “What we have to do. It’s … required.”
Which is when he hears the music. Far off in the distance and very familiar. Down by the seaside, the boats go a-sailing, can the people hear, what the little fish are saying?
What are the little fish saying?
Then he realizes—it’s his phone, ringing, from inside the bedroom. Decides to give it a pass. The ringing quiets for a moment, then starts again. Someone is trying very hard to get hold of him.
No time left, to pass the time of day.
And not going to quit trying.
Lion walks inside. His phone, charging on the nightstand, and a number he doesn’t recognize.
“Hello?”
“How does culture change?”
“Richard?” Glances at the unfamiliar digits on the screen. “How many numbers do you have?”
“You asked earlier if I knew how culture changed—what did that mean?”
“It doesn’t matter,” he says, crossing to a small table beside the window, flanked by two gray flannel armchairs. Slides one out, sits down. “I was making the same point.”
“Tell me anyway.”
Lion glances to his right, sees Penelope standing with her back to him, the joint’s ember like a comet caught between her fingers.
“Darwin told us that scarcity drives evolution,” he says. “Only two ways to deal with scarcity. Compete, and fight over dwindling resources, or cooperate, and create new resources. Life seems to favor the latter option over the former.”
“Favor? How?”
“Ever read The Major Transitions in Evolution? John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry?”
“Missed that one,” same dry tone as before.
“They were biologists interested in the fact that life evolves toward greater complexity, from cells to humans to cities to societies. Each step, they found, required greater cooperation. But this also explains why each step is so hard.”
“Why?”
“It’s a question of stability. Without it, innovation can’t spread far enough to be used to make more resources. That’s the goal. It’s also why innovation can’t take place at the center of the system: too much resistance to change. Has to happen on the fringe. In evolution, this is niche creation; in business, a skunk works; in culture, subculture. It’s also why I have a job. But my point is that this only happens slowly, over incredibly long stretches of time.”
“Exactly-exactly,” says Richard, “and I’m man enough to admit it.”
“Pardon?”
“You changed my mind, sport. Empathy, it’s too radical a shift to force on society.”
“I’m sorry, Richard, seems to be some kind of glitch in the matrix. Did I hear you say you’re not going through with it?”
“It’s not that simple. You changed my mind. Earlier, actually, when we were on the phone. But Jenka’s a different story. The woman with the sword—he knew something was up.”
Lion feels the temperature drop. “Jenka?”
“The minute you left the office,” Richard sighs, “Jenka set the plan in motion. Bloggers, podcasters, stories are already all over the web.”
He finds he’s tilted his head backward and is now staring straight up at the ceiling. Eggshell-white paint, pale wooden beams evenly spaced.
“Sietch Tabr,” continues Richard. “The first batch came off the line a day ago. Packaged, loaded into trucks. The news broke, and within five hours, someone hijacked one of the trucks.”
Ceiling beams swim a little. Emo-stim overload threatening the visual cortex. Slow inhale. Slow exhale. Then he remembers the gemstone in his pocket. How much time has passed since he asked Penelope for the time? Five minutes? Ten? Decides he needs to be sure.
“What time is it?” he asks Richard.
“Twelve twelve.”
His gaze doesn’t move from the ceiling, but he fingers the AI diamond, feeling the soft crush of the velvet bag, feeling the tiny nub of the diode. Almost proof of life in his pocket.
“Might not matter anymore,” he tells Richard.
“Why?”
Tilting his head back down, he glances out at Penel
ope. “It’s late, let’s talk about this in the morning.”
Apparently billionaires don’t like being told what to do.
“Richard?”
“Sure.”
Before Richard can say another word, Lion hangs up and walks onto the terrace, seeing the city twinkle in the distance, pulling the little velvet bag from his pocket as he goes. Penelope has sat down at the table. He takes a seat beside her, removing the diamond and holding it between his fingers.
“What’s that?”
“The Rilkean side of the story,” he says, setting the stone in her hand, showing her the nano-diode on its backside. “It’s the AI scrubber, the one you’ve been looking for.”
She looks up from the stone and into his eyes and holds the contact. And he feels it then, that rush of we, the god high of serotonin, like blasting off on Molly, like the last time they blasted off on Molly. Sans Molly.
Neat trick.
Takes him a moment to find his way back to his voice. “Remember the Pong sign, made out of diamonds, on the white table, in the white room?”
“Bloody hell. That’s the AI?”
“Was the AI. I unplugged it.”
Her eyes go wide, but Lion slow-shakes his head against it.
“That was Richard on the phone,” he says. “Jenka put the plan into motion. We’re already light-years past Go. The story’s all over the web, and someone stole about a million hits of Sietch Tabr.”
In the distance, rising above the white noise of the city, he hears sirens. Too many sirens.
“But you unplugged the AI?” Penelope says. “People will get to read the Rilkean side of the story?”
He nods.
“Not exactly what Luther had in mind.”
“Enough information will get out there,” he says. “People can read it, make up their own damn minds.”
Penelope stares at the diamond for a long time, then puts it back into his hand, closing his fingers around it, holding his fist in hers. For reasons unknown, the sirens go silent. But that rush of we is back, and who knows, might even stick around for a little while.
“You should keep it,” she says eventually. “It’s your inch.”
LIKE EVERYBODY ON A BUS WITH NO BRAKES
Lion and Penelope spend the next day in the room at the Ludlow. Some kind of problem with gravity. Seems to necessitate they use their body weight to hold down the bed at all times.
In the evening, they walk down the block for Chinese food. One of those improbable New York nights, people cheerful on the streets. One of those impossible New York restaurants, really just a long, narrow counter, two tables wedged against a wall and a flat-screen television in the corner.
Tuned to the news.
Taking a seat at the counter, Lion has that something-not-quite-right feeling. He looks around slowly, then notices a familiar image on the screen. A house in the woods, clapboard modern on a sizable lot.
Double-takes.
Robert Walker’s house.
Staring at the television, he sees a blinking red warning banner pop up on the bottom of the screen. The next image will be graphic and may not be suitable for children. Cut to a close-up of Robert Walker’s head on the wall.
Even now, it pulls him up short.
“The AI scrubber,” he tells Penelope, pointing at the screen, “must have been programmed to erase Walker’s story as well.”
She stares at the image. Wide shot. The full tartan graveyard, Walker’s head dead center.
“So here we go,” she says.
He takes a seat at the counter; Penelope sits beside him. Soups, entrees, and some kind of charged ionosphere between them. They eat quickly. The check arrives before they’re done, tucked beneath two fortune cookies on a red plastic tray.
“Have mine,” he tells Penelope.
“You don’t want to know your fortune?”
Shaking his head, “Ironic, I know, for an em-tracker, but I like the mystery.”
They spend another day at the Ludlow, exploring the mystery. Sometime in the late afternoon, habit machinery takes over and Lion gets out of bed to make coffee. Carrying the lie that is large cup out on the terrace, he rolls a cigarette and texts his agent to see what’s up.
Gets a fast response.
It’s a firm offer for that job in Costa Rica, something about em-tracking the first AI that figured out how to teach a 3-D printer how to print another 3-D printer. Proof of not-quite-life getting jiggy is what that is.
And no rest for the wicked. Lion needs to be on a flight out by Sunday latest, that is, if he’s interested.
Give me a day to think about it, he texts back.
Stubbing out his cigarette, he calls out to ask Penelope if she’s ever been to Costa Rica.
Gets no response.
Pushing mustard velvet curtains out of his way, he steps inside to find her standing in the center of the room, staring at her cell.
“Penelope?” he tries again.
“Shiz,” she says, nodding at her phone, “he’s everywhere.”
Lion crosses over to take a closer look. On her screen, he sees a familiar blue mohawk parading a well-coiffed woman around an airplane, pointing at a spray-painted image on the wall. A Banksy. The bar code cage with bars bent and a leopard stalking toward freedom.
“The scrubber’s off,” he says, “so, I guess, Shiz is out of hiding.”
“Numby fud’s been waiting for this moment.”
“Waiting to do what with this moment?”
“Just dropped a single,” says Penelope, “his first in five years. It’s called ‘Sietch Tabr, Mon Amour.’”
“Subtle.”
“It’s already at number one. Global. This,” she points at the screen, “is some pimp-my-plane YouTube show, must be part of his press tour.”
On the third day, Lion smiles when he sees a familiar number pop up on his phone.
“Lorenzo Boldacci,” he says, “are my methods unsound?”
“I don’t see any method at all, sir,” replies Lorenzo, finishing the quote. And then a strange sound on the line, before Lion realizes, it’s Lorenzo, not talking.
“Everything alright?” he asks.
“There’s some trouble … in Paris.”
“You’re in Paris?”
“No, but reporters are.”
A sinking in his stomach. “What are you talking about?”
“Story broke about a guy named Antoine Bartholomew. He was a … a big game hunter.”
Lion catches the tense shift. “Was?”
“Check your phone, I just sent you a link.”
Lion put Lorenzo on speaker, then clicks his way past his home screen and into messages. Double-clicks the URL. He sees the front page of a news website load, French text, and a photo of a handsome, dark-skinned man looking directly at him, his head mounted to an elegant teak chevron.
“Go wide,” says Lorenzo.
Lion places his fingers on his screen and expands the scope of the shot, seeing that the head has been hung in a well-stocked trophy room, different plaid wallpaper this time, same deer, antelope, gazelle, zebra, bear, in a sad row beside it.
“Is this Bartholomew?” he asks, feeling suddenly sick.
“Cops found him this morning,” says Lorenzo. “What you can’t see in the shot—they also found a couple of lines of silver powder.”
“That took less than three days,” says Lion.
“He left a note.”
“Fucking of course he did. A suicide note?”
“More like an apology, to the animals.”
Lion takes a moment to take this in, forcing his gaze away from the head and out the terrace window. A wisp of cloud creeps across blue sky. It doesn’t distract, or not enough.
He knows this won’t be the last apology. Definitely not the last body. Sietch Tabr is going wide. It’s a high-speed empathy-expansion exercise for the masses. Of course there’ll be casualties. Like everybody on a bus with no brakes.
Lion glances
back at the photo. Which is when he notices something familiar in Bartholomew’s eyes. Regret. Remorse. That hard, sad, backward-facing emotion, the evermore cost of progress.
“Either of you doing anything next week?” he asks, his eyes still locked on the image.
“What?” says Lorenzo.
“Who are you talking to?” asks Penelope.
“Both of you,” Lion replies, looking away from the photo, pulling his wallet out of his pocket, flipping it open. “I still have Arctic’s Amex. Let’s hell out of Dodge and go to Costa Rica.”
“What’s in Costa Rica?” says Lorenzo.
“Toucans.”
“Toucans?” asks Penelope.
“We can bring some Sietch Tabr and find out what it’s like to have a beak as big as an ice axe.”
Lorenzo starts laughing. “Can I invite Charlotte?”
“What kind of question is that, Kemosabe? Absolutely you can invite Charlotte.”
“Live the questions,” says Lorenzo.
“Live the questions,” Penelope agrees.
So Richard was right: The animals are next. Inch by inch, the them become us. One tribe, many umwelten, everyone a story.
“Perhaps you will live along some distant day into the answer,” says Lion, but mostly to himself.
And he feels it then, that ratchet-click deep in the reptilian dark of his brain stem, back where they hide the real secrets. Data bit finds data bit and nearly takes his breath away.
FACT FROM FICTION AND OTHER ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First off, thank you for reading my book. Without you, I might have to get a real job—and we all know how horribly wrong that’s gonna go. Of course, if, for reasons unknown, you skipped the book and are just reading the acknowledgments, well, that’s odd, but whatever, I hope you find what you’re looking for.
Most importantly, this book would not exist without the support of two people. First, my amazing wife, Joy Nicholson, who is my compass, who I’m crazy about, who always, always, always fights for the animals—never could have done this without you.
Also, the mad genius, Michael Wharton. For the past twenty-five years, Michael has been my best friend and frontline editor. A great many of the words I’ve written have sought his guidance and approval before making their way public—including, of course, his tireless and brilliant work on Last Tango. Without you, my brother, doubtful this would have been possible, certain it would have been a lot less fun.
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