by Ed Miracle
“Thank you for listening.”
When Machen’s ghost-gray eyes turned away, a full-blown buzz rolled over Everett’s scalp. Nice words, no plan.
“That’s it?” General switched it off. “Man sets the world on its ear, and all he says is you’re free, have a good time, and be sure to behave yourselves? We are definitely in trouble.”
“Been a while since I heard a sermon,” Charlene allowed.
General considered this, then soured. “Trouble is coming, that’s for sure. People are going to go nuts, and we had better get ready. We need to build Fort Apache, Oakland, California.” He aimed a saddle-up look at Everett, who was still absorbing his buzz.
“You think looters will come?” Charlene asked. “The man said we can share. Nobody has to steal.”
“Well, some folks never get the word, you know. It seems to me if you want to keep anything after this, you had better get it inside where you can protect it because people are going to be grabbing everything they can get their hands on. They are going to stock up on what they need and then stop buying. If everyone shares and nobody has to buy, the whole supply chain will collapse. Alonso was right.”
“We have shoes,” Charlene said. “If we build one of those Maker machines, we can have shoes forever.”
“Story of my life.”
“Maybe I should get some groceries, just in case.” She eyed the door.
“Good idea. And more of Daddy’s medicine. Everett, I want you to take the van over to Builder’s Supply. Get enough plywood to protect the downstairs windows. Everett?”
Everett cast off his reverie and shrugged into action. He measured the windows and figured thirteen sheets would cover them.
When General totaled the cost, he scratched his head. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?”
“Buy one and make copies.”
General squinched.
“Why buy more,” Everett said, “if one is all you need?” Which sounded strange, as if someone else had said it. “Save a tree,” he added, even more unlike himself.
“Can we get a full sheet into one chamber?”
Everett checked the dimensions. “Flat against the base, if we set up the bigger cones.”
General nodded and his eyes glazed. “I was just going to run a test,” he said, “to see how it works. You know, play with it. But all of a sudden, we need a bigger Maker. How the hell did that happen?” He shook it off. “Get going, Everett. One sheet of five-eighths exterior ply and a box of bugle-head screws.”
Everett took General’s van and found his way to the lumber store. At the loading dock stood two big Makers. Workers were rolling a garden cart out of one and wrestling a bathtub into the other. By the time Everett wheeled his goods to the checkout, the line was five deep, and his Cambiar was vibrating.
“We need sixteen-penny nails,” General told him, “and a two-by-four, and a four-by-four. Get eight-footers, not studs.”
When Everett returned to Shoes-for-You, General’s full-size cone sections lay exposed in their crate, blocking the driveway. In the storeroom, four shelves were pushed askew, their stock half-spilled, and General’s Powerpod—now sprouting three black appendages—rose from the clutter like a stupendous aluminum weed.
“Had my eye on these for a long time,” General said, when Everett found him at the register. “Now there’s no excuse.” General’s tassel loafers were cast aside for a shiny pair of cowboy boots, black with silver toes. “You want some, Everett? Help yourself. Boots-on-the-house.”
“No thanks. You wear those things, you wind up on a horse wondering what sane people do.”
Charlene came huffing through the door, carrying an overstuffed grocery bag.
“What a mess you’ve made,” she said. Then she saw the boots. “I might have guessed.”
“Did you get what we need?” General asked.
“Everything on my list. But those people made me so nervous, Gen. All the way home I kept thinking, what am I forgetting? Everyone is rushing, stocking up, like you said.”
“It’s fun, Charlene.” General scuffed his slippery new soles on the rough carpet. “You should try it. I copied a few other styles so we won’t run out. But you know, I had this feeling when I pushed the button that I was taking something I hadn’t earned, as if it were stealing.”
“You paid for them,” Everett said. “No matter what you do with the copies, it won’t be stealing. No reason you shouldn’t sell them either. They’re not fakes.”
General shook his head.
“I suppose it’s not stealing, but I wonder—when everyone starts using these machines—what are we losing?”
“Scarcity?” Everett perched on the counter, still surprising himself.
General grunted. “If everyone has this free and easy way to make things,” he said, “that should be a good thing, right? Food and medicine—plenty for everyone. But what are we getting ourselves into?”
Charlene tried to buoy him. “We’ll figure it out, hon.”
General parked himself on the counter beside Everett and dangled his new boots.
“Maybe we should be grateful,” he said. “But in a few days there won’t be a choice, will there? If we don’t use our Makers, other folks will use theirs, and some of them will take advantage. Because nobody can stop them. So, just to keep up, we will have to use our Makers, too, or folks will pass us by. They’ll pass us by and try to take over.”
Everett stared at General’s boots. Happy-feet, they used to call it. Dancing, skipping, jumping.
He went to the storeroom to check his Cambiar. No emails from the FBI or the Federal Aviation Agency, although these were just a matter of time, weren’t they? His immediate future could only bring more runarounds, more pleading with bureaucrats, more shuffling and waiting behind more gates. What if everything changed before he got to the end of all that permission-seeking? What if Makers turned everyone’s plans kerflooey?
Once again he brought up his Montana Skies job offer, his long-sought ticket to a professional cockpit. Before he could change his mind, he took a breath and keyed a reply. “Thank you, but I am unable to accept your offer at this time.” He exhaled, pressed Send, and his saliva turned to brine.
Against all delays and disappointments, his flying career had been the buffer, his light in the distance. He could do drudge work, endure long hours at low pay, wait for months knowing he would fly one day for an airline. But it wasn’t working. One way or another, somebody always put him off or jerked away his dream. He was tired of pleading, tired of playing by rules that only held him back. He hit Send again and mashed it hard. His anger pierced every gauzy future he had imagined for himself. It slammed like a hammer into his sacred inner core, the place of no more crap. He was a pilot, dammit, capable and proven, while those gatekeepers were not. So screw them.
The shelves seemed to tilt and close ranks. The storeroom funk grew warm and thick. He swallowed the panic collecting beneath his tongue and lurched for the door.
Through the vacant showroom he bolted, into a narrow shaft of sunlight, bright and unexpected, that stopped him at the outer door. He had no plan, no place to go, only this wild urge to rid himself of his constant cosmic inertia. To stop waiting, to move forward, to do what he ought to be doing.
Traffic on the avenue swelled and then careened. Drivers and pedestrians were not pondering their futures or thinking about Philip Machen. They were not worried about Marcy or whether the sky would fall. Above all, they were not seeking permission. They were squinting into sunbursts, surfing personal waves of circumstance to destinations none of them could fathom, like the kid who copied sneakers. Later, if at all, they would figure it out and adjust their heads. Ready. Fire. Aim.
NINE
Victorville, California. Tuesday, April 21
Still Day Four
Philip tapped the retaining bolt until it seated, then secured it with a cotter pin. Now with wings attached, the fourth copy of his little red sailplane was nearly re
ady to fly. Above him loomed the much larger wing of an old MD-11 cargo jet and over that, spidery trusses held up the vast roof of Chuck Zarbaugh’s maintenance hangar. Good old Chuck, an irascible skinhead twice Philip’s age, who loved flying and kept his mouth shut about what they were doing.
At the rear of the hangar, a metal door screeched open, then slammed shut. Tanner Newe called across the cavern, “It’s tense out there, like waiting for a hurricane. I didn’t see any Makers around town. ” He strode into view with a pink shoebox tucked under his arm like a holiday ham. “But a bunch of homeless people set up a Maker Maker outside the abandoned Air Force barracks. Do they count as an enclave?”
Philip wiped his hands on his coveralls. Homeless folks have no influence. Where are the middle class enthusiasts, the Maker entrepreneurs? “At least they’re sharing,” he said.
Tanner set his pink box on a tool cart and removed its lid. “Also, Gloria says Hi.”
Chuck’s wife, Gloria, did restorative tattoos for mastectomy patients, which was perfect for what Philip needed. After sixteen years, the burn scar on his left wrist had faded. He wanted it visible again, proud and purple, as it was in the beginning. He laid aside his hammer and rolled up his sleeve.
Tanner snapped on a pair of nitrile gloves, hefted Gloria’s gizmo, and plugged it in. Apparently, a maniac had welded a dentist’s handpiece to an extension cord and two testicular solenoids. After unwrapping the tool’s sterile parts, Tanner swabbed Philip’s wrist with alcohol, then anointed the scar with ink. The handpiece buzzed in electrical menace as he put it to work.
“Ow.” Philip knew the sting would come but his mouth didn’t.
Tanner stopped. “Gloria says burn scars are thicker than normal skin, so we need to go deeper.” Then he resumed, a tad too cheerfully.
Philip flexed his fingers and pretended not to feel anything. He seldom thought about the fire anymore, of the incandescent shard that branded him that night. Of struggling in the snow with a Michigan policewoman, who kept him from charging into the flames. Of his best friend, Tanner, and Tanner’s mom, braving the black ice with flashlights to bring him warm blankets. Still, a bitter image would ignite from memory now and then, and the ensuing heart-stab would remind him of his terrible impotence that night. He had watched his family burn to death, as he begged to join them.
Once again, bright orange flames from sixteen years ago demanded he tend to his vows: to persist among the living, to transmute matter and energy, and to memorialize his murdered family. For him, the past had never really vanished. It persisted as indelible, replayable Kabuki, flickering scenes authenticated by pain and projected onto the rice paper screen in his mind.
“Okay,” Tanner said. He swabbed the blemish and covered it with gauze. “Good to go.”
Philip rolled down his sleeve and buttoned the cuff. He selected the least greasy of two armchairs, the only seats around, and dropped into it.
“Have you heard from Big O?”
Tanner laid Gloria’s needle knocker to rest and shook his head.
“Nope.”
Yesterday, and again this morning, they’d watched Uncle Orin’s video selfie taken Sunday in Hong Kong. He was wheelchairing through the airport terminal, flapping his flannel shirtsleeves and tipping his red ballcap, giving away the remaining Cambiar phones from his satchel. But Monday morning, his flight arrived in Los Angeles without him, and he didn’t respond to calls, texts, or emails.
Philip pulled out his Cambiar, intending to alert Chuck to prepare the MD-11 for another long trip, but a blinking text caught his attention.
Mr. Orin Machen is detained by People’s Armed Police, Mainland. Status unknown. With greatest apologies, Charlotte Lau Tours & Guides, Hong Kong.
He stood, read it again, and “mainland” felled him back into the chair. His gaze turned inward as his lungs filled with storms and wheezes.
“They took him,” he said, “to a place we cannot go.”
TEN
San Leandro, California. Wednesday, April 22
Day Five
The next morning, in a second-floor guest room of the San Leandro Best Western Hotel, FBI Special Agent Leslie David Parker was blending a perfect cappuccino. At a chipped sideboard, he steamed three ounces of milk with his beloved Gaggia machine, producing a creamy froth.
“We do make accommodations, Ms. Lavery,” he said. He ladled foam into a delicate porcelain cup of espresso, added a sprinkle of cinnamon, and served it on a silver-rimmed Lenox saucer. “But there must be limits, you understand.”
Karen Lavery, Philip Machen’s 44-year-old business partner, accepted the coffee. “Your friends were not very accommodating yesterday.”
Parker pulled another espresso for himself while she raised her cup and flipped the saucer to check its pedigree. He smiled to himself and settled on the sofa. Ms. Lavery was such a lovely change from his usual clientele—a classy corporate beauty up to her pearls in trouble. And it was his agreeable task to help her do her duty.
Between them on a tray lay two manila folders, one thick with papers, the other flat and new. Parker sipped espresso, pleased that his cappuccino was brightening Ms. Lavery. He tapped the bigger folder.
“This is Philip Machen. I met him before you did, seven years ago. Did he tell you about his experiments in Nevada, his explosions?”
She contained her mild surprise.
“Something to do with super-density, or so he claimed. Twice, a burst of neutrons triggered alarms on our treaty verification satellites. The inspectors couldn’t find any residual radiation, so they let it go. Why we didn’t shut him down immediately is beyond my unscientific comprehension, but it seems our clever young friend really was up to something, wasn’t he? And it turned out to be a weapon of sorts, after all. So I want you to understand, Ms. Lavery, that you are in quite a bit more trouble than simple counterfeiting. You and Mr. Machen are the subjects of a National Security Inquiry.”
He sipped his demitasse.
“Your file,” he said, waving the thin folder. “For your sake, you and I need to fill this with every exculpatory tidbit you can provide.”
She drained her cup, crossed her smooth white legs, and scowled.
“Release my daughter.”
“Philip wanted you to marry him, did he not?”
“How did . . . ?” Her green eyes sharpened. “That’s none of your business.”
Parker waited for the obvious to strike her. It was Tiffany who had revealed her mother’s secrets, including her love of cappuccino.
“Release her, you creep. She’s just a girl. She doesn’t know anything about Philip that you couldn’t find on the internet. You’ve no right to hold her.”
“I agree,” he said, “that her heart is pure. She corrected many false impressions last night, in her efforts to protect you.” He sat back, draped an arm across the cushions. “By the public data alone, Ms. Lavery, many people would conclude that you and Philip Machen are co-conspirators, if not lovers. Right now your credibility is less than zero. Shall we improve that?”
She shoved her cup and saucer to the table’s edge.
“Parker, if you don’t let me call my attorney right now, I shall have him inform the court of your delays when I do reach him.”
He opened her file, extended to her a paper from the Federal District Court, authorizing her indefinite detention.
“Until released or charged with a crime,” he recited, “a material witness for a national security investigation does not warrant any consultations or communications beyond the place of detention.” He returned the page to her file.
“Ms. Lavery, the U.S. Attorney in San Francisco is most eager to make your acquaintance. Prosecuting you would make her day, maybe her career. But this . . .” he waved the file “. . . keeps you in our care. You must help us. Depending on what you provide, we may be able to dissuade her from charging you with a crime. As we have done for others.”
“I don’t know where Philip is,” she said, “or
what he’s doing, and neither does Tiffany.”
From his pocket, Parker withdrew a phone, keyed it, and handed it to her. Her scowl deepened as the screen displayed a surveillance-camera view of Tiffany Lavery, lounging, bored and alone, in a different guest room of this same hotel.
“All right,” she said, handing it back. “Release her, and I will tell you what you want to know.”
Parker flipped open his notebook, poised his pen. Ms. Lavery crossed her arms and composed herself.
“Philip and I were never lovers. We had dinner once, to get acquainted. That was six years ago, after I agreed to run Powerpods Company for him. We went to a matinee at the Curran, then dined at Fleur-de-Lis, in the City.”
“Where he proposed marriage?”
She nodded.
“I told him what a fine fellow he was, and that I expected our relationship would remain cordial, but seeing as I was ten years older and had no romantic feelings for him, there could never be anything so . . . personal. He took it well. Didn’t press. And we did become friends, through our work and through his teaching Tiffany to fly. But that’s all. He was my business partner and a family friend. Until Sunday.”
“Yet two weeks ago, you thought he might propose.”
“Tiffany invited him to the house and served us a champagne dinner. She hoped Philip would divert me from marrying Terry Quinn, whom she hates. To save me, so to speak.”
Parker scribbled.
“Philip is just one of those lonely men who develops a crush on the most convenient woman. He seemed to expect me to join him, just like that, because it fit so well into his plans. Everything being convenient and self-evident, I should feel honored and swoon in his arms. Men like Philip don’t give up sometimes, but I’m sure Tiffany and I were just flowers along his path. He loved us in his conditional way, then yanked us up by the roots. When he called Monday, he expected us to come away with him.”