by Sean Platt
But how?
That was another pointless question. The recharge packs were dead, and the recharges contained the scrubbers needed to clean the air. Sure, the pack had gained power somehow, but had the recharges suddenly gained extra abilities to clean air? Had he, Nicolai the Amazing, learned how to breathe without oxygen — or with the half air spit out by dead scrubbers?
He stood up, feeling like a walking contradiction.
The goggles seemed to have expired, but he slung them around his neck anyway. Technology, around him, apparently didn’t feel the need to remain dead. He didn’t see the sparks of more fires ahead, and that might mean he’d return to the dark too soon. He had many kilometers to go. Although he had to be on the English side by now. Should he start thinking in miles?
With the fire at his back, with his skin blistered and his clothes singed, and with the air coming through his nose tube strangely adequate, Nicolai walked on into the fathomless black.
“I should have died,” said Nicolai, shaking his head and sipping from his glass of Château Lafite ice wine. George Strauss, a ridiculously talented winemaker (and longtime friend of the Ryans) filled his signature bottles from grapes frozen on the vine before fermentation on a single-acre plot in the renowned Amalthea Vineyard, situated far away from district spires in old Texas Hill country. Strauss claimed that he never missed the districts, and with a rare wine that seemed to bring fresh scent and taste to every sip (lime, wildflowers, raspberry), Nicolai could easily see why.
Nicolai wanted to compliment the wine for his host’s benefit, but his mind was still in the Chunnel, his current feeling of breath somehow more present and obvious than normal. He was on his second glass. Ice wine was too expensive for such an occasion, and Nicolai was only holding it now because during the last interview, he’d made an offhand comment about puckering tannins. He’d just been making conversation, not a request. He supposed the fact that he’d been served the wine this time was a sign of respect, but Nicolai found himself unable to appreciate it. The fragile memories he’d been reliving a moment ago were still too real. He was here today, in the NAU, by providence if anything. It hadn’t been skill or perseverance that had seen him through. It hadn’t even been guts. If it was anything, it was sheer dumb luck.
There was no appropriate response to Nicolai’s statement about his should’ve-been end, so they sat in the moderately appointed living room, two men across a coffee table with their legs crossed at the knee, each with a long-stemmed glass of wine at their sides.
“Anyway,” Nicolai continued, “I didn’t die, and somehow that converter struggled on for the entire rest of the tunnel. I continued to breathe the shit air it was feeding me. I have no idea how I did it, but looking back, it feels like force of will. I’d wandered for too long to give up, or something. I’d changed too much. I’d done too many unthinkable things. It was like I was stubbornly refusing to not reach England. But my goggles stayed dead. I had to go hand-for-hand, groping through the darkness, after I’d left the light of the fire. I went that way through a stalled train, seemingly ripped or blown open at both ends. I saw it in my head as a huge metal sleeve, filled with bodies in seats. I wish I knew what had happened to that train.” He took a sip of wine. “Or maybe I don’t. And maybe my blindness was a blessing.”
The man across from Nicolai had mocha-colored skin, his hair in a large pile that stood almost on end, heaped in dark wiry curls. He had prominent cheekbones, deep-set eyes, and white teeth. He leaned forward, his eyes glancing toward the recorder on the coffee table. The recorder was redundant, meant to double up the documentation being made by the room’s canvas. On the table beside the recorder, charming and clearly the work of a writer’s pride, were two actual paper copies of the man’s book Plugged. On the spine was the title and his name, Sterling Gibson.
“Did you run into the Chunnel Crew on the English side?” he asked.
Nicolai shook his head. “No. Shockingly. I came out clean at the next dawn, same quiet time of day as I went in. I got a kilometer or so away then inspected my skin and found the burns not nearly as bad as I was sure they’d been. They healed without scars, same as the gash I’d felt on my arm — which, again, I was sure had been much worse. I found fresh water and a few cans of food then drank and ate and breathed for most of the day, feeling fortunate to be able to do any of the three.”
“And the airstrip you’d heard about?”
“I found a shipyard first,” said Nicolai. “I figured a bird in the hand was better than two in the bush. They were still sending off passenger ships, not just military. It seemed like a good break, and I’d heard that America was starting to knock aircraft out of the sky. At the time, the notion of them jettisoning a ship was absurd.” He laughed. “I obviously didn’t have proper credentials, so I stowed away. It wasn’t really that difficult. It took a few weeks at sea to make the crossing, given the weather and our shoddy navigation at the time, but it wasn’t like the tales you hear about the first immigrants. Once onboard, I came out and was able to get real food. The ship was modest, but paradise compared to the life I’d been living. They were actually beginning to close immigration as our ship arrived, but they let us through. I was at the back of the line, because I had to wait until the ship had emptied. That’s why I said that I may have been the last.”
“What was the date?”
“September 7, 2034.”
“I’ve seen the close date as September 6 both times,” said Gibson, tapping at a tablet as if searching for information. He paused, then added, “Here: September 6, 2034 for civilian immigration, then the same day in 2036 for special cases as authorized, with documentation. They tried to make it look planned: two years to handle the rest of the loose ends from the East, then the doors close forever on the anniversary.”
Nicolai nodded. “I found that too. It’s the sixth in some places and the seventh in others. We were on the seventh. I have a theory.”
“What’s your theory?”
“I think the intended date was September 6, but they gave it an extra day at the last minute.”
“Why?”
Nicolai touched his index finger to his chest.
“What? You?”
Again, Nicolai nodded. “We hit a storm. Everyone was throwing up. It was a big ship, very seaworthy, but the storm cost us time. We came in around 3 a.m., maybe seven or eight hours late. We found them staffed and waiting as if it were business as usual.”
“You’re saying they held the border open and waited for you?”
“Yes.”
“You specifically…not just the ship as a whole?”
“Yes.”
“But you told me earlier that they didn’t know the ship was coming. How could they? In ’34, with the network outside of the NAU being how it was…”
“Right. ‘Scheduled arrival’ is by our definition, not Philadelphia’s. The ship had RadioFi, and we knew about the deadline. That’s how the ship saw it — as a deadline, meaning that if we didn’t make it, we didn’t get to enter the country. I think that’s half the reason everyone was puking in the storm: They knew we were just going to be turned away because the borders would be closed. But we steamed ahead anyway because we were so close. And found the borders open. Coincidentally.”
“Maybe they were disorganized.”
“Maybe,” said Nicolai. “But I was met by Isaac Ryan. And I’ve already told you about the nanobots.”
Gibson nodded. “Do you think that the nanobots you were carrying saved your life by reactivating your air converter somehow? Like with your Doodad?”
Nicolai sighed. He’d thought of that. Ever since his revealing talks with Micah and Rachel Ryan, he felt as if he’d relived every second of his years hiking the Wild East ten times through. His entire existence had been called into question. The way Micah talked, a godly technological hand had reached down and lifted him up, given him a map and communication, held the NAU’s door open for the mysterious stranger bearing unseen g
ifts. He knew he must have picked up the nanos when accessing his father’s arsenal, but Nicolai’s deeper mind couldn’t help but wonder at even earlier days. Had nanobots followed him to school, recording his fingers as they typed messages on his handheld, feeding him serendipitous information at the perfect times, helping him to cheat at quizzes and find his way?
“It makes sense. But then why did my goggles fail?”
“Maybe they shuttled power from one to the other. Making the air system work at the expense of your vision.”
“Even so, the recharge was dead. So what if the device itself was functional? It couldn’t have been feeding me more than quarter-strength air. And even that seems unlikely, based on what I’ve looked up.”
“Maybe your trip had made you superbly fit. Like training at altitude, where the air is thin.”
“Or maybe it was luck,” Nicolai suggested.
Gibson shrugged.
“Do you have any idea how you’ll use this?”
Gibson shrugged again. “Unauthorized biography of The Beam?”
“You did that in Plugged.”
“Not like this. Not as anthropology. Maybe I can disguise it as a book about nanobot development. ‘Uncredited fathers of technology,’ that kind of thing. Now, you understand that I can’t go right at it. Even assuming I can verify what you’ve told me, which I doubt I can, I won’t just print it flat-out. I can’t say that the hovertech nanos Ryan Enterprises and Xenia Labs brought to market arrived on your back, nor can I just use a source’s word to grant the credit for them to an Italian nobody’s heard of.”
“I don’t want credit.”
“I meant your father.”
But of course, that had been the point. For the hundredth time, Nicolai asked himself why he was here, talking to one of the NAU’s most celebrated and controversial authors. He wasn’t a snitch, or a whistle-blower. He’d learned things about The Beam and the powers playing in the NAU over the past few weeks but hadn’t contacted Gibson to blab. He hadn’t confirmed the author’s suspicions from Plugged, about a secret upper class with access to technology the rest of the population didn’t. He hadn’t mentioned the phrase “Beau Monde.” There was plenty that Nicolai could blow the lid off of, from hierarchy to politics to backroom deals to exploitation and corruption, but in their first meeting and this one, he’d only told Gibson about the pieces of the puzzle that touched his family.
Nicolai had come here because of his father. That was all there really was to it. The world didn’t necessarily need to know the name “Salvatore Costa,” but for most of his life Nicolai had believed his father died for nothing. Now he knew better. The Ryans hadn’t murdered Salvatore for what he had, but they’d built their empire upon his death just the same.
“He doesn’t need credit either,” said Nicolai.
“I thought that’s what you wanted.”
Nicolai shook his head. “At this point, it would complicate things. The dots are there, and once people have a reason to connect them, they will. The house of cards is fragile. I’d get attention and don’t want it. It’s enough to know what my father did.”
“I don’t understand,” said Gibson. “I told you up front that I can’t do a dirt job on the Beam’s true roots. I ask questions. I don’t do exposés. There’s a subtle difference between prompting curiosity and making accusations.”
Nicolai looked at the books on the table between them. Besides Plugged, Gibson wrote a regular, widely read column on The Beam, had authored many scholarly articles along with several books in a similar vein, and generally carved a niche for himself as a thinker worthy of the NAU’s attention. But Nicolai was an artist in his own right and knew that especially in Enterprise, bills were rarely paid directly from what moved an artist’s heart.
“You write fiction, don’t you?” he said, looking up at Gibson.
“What?”
“Novels. Not published, though. Or published under another name because ‘Sterling Gibson’ stands for something else.”
A small smile tickled the corner of Gibson’s mouth.
“Then you know,” Nicolai went on. “You understand that when you’re writing a story, what appears on the page is like the part of an iceberg above the water. Much of the world is in your head, or maybe in notes. You’ll never publish most of it…but you, as the writer, still need to know certain things. You need to understand why characters act as they do and why the world is how it is, even if you never spell those things out for your readers.”
“Sterling Gibson doesn’t write fiction,” he said. But that smile was still there, and Nicolai knew that he’d pinned a secret hobby right on its nose.
“But even Sterling understands the value in knowing what’s behind his stories, even if those things can’t be printed.”
“If I believe you.”
“That’s your choice,” Nicolai said.
Gibson shook his head slowly then leaned back in his chair. After a moment, he bent forward and clicked off the redundant recorder. He swiped a window open on the coffee table, hit a few buttons, and again made himself comfortable. A large red square appeared on the table, reading OFF RECORD.
“Behind the story that’s behind the story,” Gibson said. He pointed to the red square. “And off the record. What’s really going on here? You’re the kind of source I’d normally have to chase, and be refused by nine times out of ten. And even if you did meet me, you’re the kind of source who’d speak in the most vague, least helpful generalizations. Sound bites and slogans. Yet you came to me out of the blue and have told me things that have quite literally made the hair on my arms stand on end.”
Gibson extended an arm to show Nicolai. No hairs appeared to be standing, but Nicolai was willing to grant artistic license.
Nicolai considered. He’d come this far. He’d requested anonymity. There were plenty of things he didn’t want to say and plenty of things that wouldn’t be right to breathe aloud. He had his allegiances, and Micah Ryan owed him (and Kai, for that matter) promises that hadn’t yet been fulfilled. It hurt a little to admit it, but perhaps the biggest reason Nicolai was unwilling to play the Beau Monde card with Gibson was that he still hoped to join it. He wanted to be one of the superior members of society. He didn’t want equity. He merely wanted to be part of the group who held all that inequity because he and his family had earned it, and he intended to collect what was coming.
But he’d gone halfway down one particular rabbit hole, and there were still rabbits to be dragged from it even as others kept sleeping.
“What have you heard about Carter Vale?” said Nicolai.
“Same as the rest of the world,” Gibson answered. “He was a senator before taking the Directorate presidency. Officially, he really only began existing two months ago, when President Quince resigned. Don’t tell me you have insights into the senators. Because that’s the kind of thing that’ll make me have to turn my recorder back on.”
Nicolai shook his head. Nobody knew the identities of the 101 senators, nor anything about them. They were conduits for the population’s collective will, as measured by mean hive mind data culled from the members of the parties they represented and hence were portrayed as having no distracting wills or personalities of their own. The Senate had originally been modeled after an old American system known as the Electoral College, but the senators’ functions were more call-and-response, almost like puppets whose strings were pulled by half of the population at once.
“No, of course not. But I do know, based on things Isaac has said, that the Directorate considers Vale to be a stroke of luck for the party. And I also know, based on what I hear from the Enterprise side, that Enterprise considers him a threat.”
“How?” said Gibson.
“When I visited Rachel Ryan, she asked me what would happen if Enterprise gained Senate majority at Shift. It made me realize that for the first time in decades, it might really happen.”
“I very seriously doubt it.” Gibson shook his head. “How
many people do you know who have what it takes to succeed in Enterprise?”
The question was loaded because Gibson was Enterprise, and he knew that Nicolai was shifting — and had surely gotten the impression that Nicolai had wanted to for a very long time. Few people had “what it took” on a practical level, which was why the ghettos swam with failed artists, upside-down entrepreneurs, and loser idealists who’d gambled on themselves and ended up poorer than destitute without the Directorate safety net. But that wasn’t the question.
“It doesn’t matter how many people will succeed in Enterprise,” Nicolai said. “What matters is how many people think they will succeed. It’s about hope and optimism, not reality. You’ve seen the way things have gone in the last few weeks. I’ve been inside it. I’ve seen panic from the Directorate leaders. You’re right; Directorate is never, ever supposed to lose majority. The idea that more than half of the Union would feel confident enough to try Enterprise for the next six years, foregoing Directorate social services and a secure dole, is ludicrous. But the polls and Beam neurals suggest it might happen.”
Gibson shook his head. “I’ve heard the rumors. But it’s not possible.”
“That’s not what Isaac thinks. It’s not what Micah thinks, either. And if you’d heard the way Rachel — who I suspect knows more than she strictly should — asked me that question, you’d know it’s not what she thinks, either. Enterprise is planning, and Directorate is bracing. Rest assured, if all goes as it has been, Enterprise will win Senate majority. And then we’ll need to answer Rachel’s question.” He cleared his throat. “Rachel’s knowing question.”
“If Enterprise wins, they’ll ratify beem currency,” Gibson answered.
Nicolai nodded. “Among other things. But what will beem do? Think about it. Ratification will turn a geek’s hobby into a legit, tradable currency, based in nullspace.”