by Ed Miracle
“Good.” The president looked to his right. “Nick, do you agree no one is paying attention to Machen? His credibility is nil?”
All eyes turned to him.
“So far, yes, sir.”
The president scanned their faces.
“Well, I think the public is with us on this. For once the stakes are personal and visible. I want you to draft the order, Nick, to ban Makers only. Have your people send it over this afternoon.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Lon, assemble a legal team to review Nick’s stuff, then get me a meeting with the House Speaker and the Senate Majority Leader, pronto.”
“Yes, sir,” Kissler said.
The president shifted in his chair.
“If we can push a bill through Congress in a week or so, there won’t be time for hairsplitting over Pods versus Makers. There won’t be any public resistance because there won’t be any violence to ignite it. We will ban Makers but encourage voluntary compliance. Enforcement comes only to scofflaws who refuse to cooperate. Do you have that, Nick? We begin with citations then move to confiscation, at our discretion. We get the media to say this is prudent. Same for Powerpods when Congress gives them the boot. That’s how we fix this thing. Now make it happen.”
The president stood, and Kissler followed him out.
Geraldine was too smart to gloat, but her glance told Nick he should be grateful for the compromise, for getting half-a-loaf. She was only doing her job, as he was doing his. Which was total crap. Jack Washburn’s ill-advised incrementalism was going to cost a lot more than the next election. And it’s my election, damn it.
THIRTEEN
Oakland, California. Still Thursday, April 23
Day Six
That evening, sunset yellows filtered over West Oakland, casting shadows down the streets. Pedestrians strolled past shuttered buildings and bolted storefronts. Groups convened on wooden stoops of old houses or mixed with idlers at the corners. Elsewhere the traffic was commuters, but here it was slack-faced young men and their male companions, cruising without a destination, their speakers thudding like fists. Some drank openly from brown bottles.
Everett Aboud guided the Shoes-for-You van among them, still wondering about Montana Skies and if he had made a giant mistake. General Johnson rode stony-faced at his side. Last night there had been wilding and gunfire in this neighborhood. A liquor store was looted. General decided Marcy should move into the shoe store for a while until things settled down.
At the next corner, under a limp sales banner, a clutch of onlookers cheered two drunks smashing windshields in a used car lot. General directed Everett to turn, and they continued to a three-story building the color of railroad grit, where he parked.
“Keep the motor running.”
Across the street, a score of people queued on a barren knoll, looking like the returns line at a department store. Each bore a box or a sack, which they took pains to conceal, lest anyone trouble them. In the shadows of their building stood a full-size Maker.
The supplicants waited turns to use the machine then rushed away afterward, guarding their fresh copies. A skinny woman in shower shoes shined a flashlight into their bundles, occasionally accepting an item from those who had finished, and passing this tribute to a girl who took it inside. A boy straddled a fire hose roped to a cone strut where he cycled a valve to refill the upper cone after each copy.
The van door rumbled open. General stuffed a blue duffel and a green suitcase under the middle seat. Then Marcy climbed in behind Everett, and they traded glances.
“Say, Home Boy.”
“Sister Newshound. You been getting into trouble?”
“No, but I came close this morning, up in Berkeley.”
General got in and shut the door.
“Take us home, Everett.”
Everett chose a parallel street to avoid the windshield smashers.
“So what happened in Berkeley?” Her face eluded him in the mirror.
“I got some clips and sold them,” she said. “Enough to pay for a new camera. But I should have taken someone with me. Seems everybody who wasn’t in the frame wanted to help. Spent half my time shooing away helpers.”
Everett could imagine.
“Anyway,” she said, “somebody set up one of those big Makers in the park, at the edge of the university. And they hung a sign, People’s Maker. By nine o’clock it was a party, with drums and flutes and folks copying stuff. One guy had a bugle and was giving away copies, so things were getting loud. Of course, the cops came. To keep people from making dope or guns. But the crowd was already lit, so it was this honking, thumping street celebration, with incense and ganja and drinks from paper bags, until a blue convertible pulled up to the stoplight.
“Some dude calls out a name, and five guys jump this motorist, yank him out of his Caddie, and commence pounding him. He whips out a pistol, which goes off in the scuffle. Scares the fun right out of everybody. But instead of running away, the crowd piles on. They got the gun away from him, so nobody got shot. By this time, the cops have their guns drawn, and they’re shouting for everybody to get down and don’t move. Then they drag this driver out from under the dog pile and arrest him.”
Everett squirmed against his seatbelt, trying see her face.
“Turns out Mr. Motorist sells dope, and the crowd wanted retribution for him getting rich off poor junkies, selling poison and such. The cops let me interview him before they hauled him away.
“Picture this guy. He’s Samoan or something—enormous man. And he’s bawling like a baby, saying he can’t make his game no more on account of his cash is trash. And he can’t take no checks or cards on account of they’re traceable. His clients are making their own junk, so they don’t buy no more from him. Says he owes five thousand dollars to his supplier, and he can’t pay, all his funds being tied up in drugs or worthless cash. He was happy to be arrested, so his supplier can’t kill him.”
Everett guided the van onto Broadway and headed east.
“Anyway,”Marcy said, “I recorded this sidewalk sociology and sold it to WebNews.”
“Good way to get shot,” General said.
“I have to go where things are happening, Uncle General. There’s no news if I play it safe, sitting on my rotunda.”
General shook his head.
Everett recalled her rotunda. He longed to know what her scent might be, should they ever get that close. She was tracking Maker events and Maker people, following the Big Story. If he ever found a steady job in a cockpit, he would be flying over a changed world, one he needed to understand. Which was why, more than ever, he needed Marcy. If she knew Ms. Lavery, she must be close to figuring it out.
“Call me,” he said, leaning on the sincerity. “Next time.”
In the rear-view mirror, her face was all shadows, though her silence seemed to hover one notch short of “no.” A positive sign.
When they arrived at Shoes-for-You, Marcy disappeared upstairs with her luggage while General chained the driveway and Everett mounted plywood covers over the first-floor windows. When he finished and had locked the security screen over the door, there was no reason to hang around. So he said good night and departed on his motorcycle.
Just before the freeway, the streetlights flickered out. To his left, the Grand Lake Theater marquee hissed into darkness. He turned around, in case the Johnson’s needed help.
Farther up the avenue, islands of illumination appeared in the hills. People with Powerpods, including Shoes-for-You, still had electricity. So he returned to the freeway and merged into the flow, feeling better about things.
He hadn’t expected to see Marcy again, though the hope had plagued him since he burned his bridges with Montana Skies. Helping her might not get him into her bed, but he needed to know about Makers. And about her. Marcy would be his new project, his interim career. And tomorrow he would see her again, a prospect he savored all the way home.
When he got there, Bobby had arrayed his empt
ies in a circle on the coffee table. Bright figures moved silently on the wall screen, their luminous mouths miming a commercial.
“What time is it?” Bobby groused.
Everett stopped in the laundry room to strip off his leathers, wet from tule fog.
“Sorry,” he said. “I stayed to board up the windows, in case there’s trouble.”
“Every night, you’re late.”
Everett drew a comb through his matted hair and joined Bobby.
“What are you doing, Dad?” An accusation.
Bobby hoisted a bottle, admired it.
“Celebrating.”
Everett diverted to his bedroom.
“You got snail-mail,” Bobby said.
Everett returned for the envelope, already open, from the Federal Aviation Administration. Notice of Suspension was all he needed to read.
“I thought you got your stolen ID straightened out with them.”
Everett tried to look annoyed about the rifled envelope. He took a deep breath before confessing his most recent detention. Regarding Montana Skies, he said nothing.
“Well, if that doesn’t beat all.” Bobby lowered his bottle to the table with deliberate precision, then chuckled low and mean. He shook his head and slapped his knees.
“I can’t get a job, and you can’t stay out of trouble for more than three weeks.” He threw back his head and laughed as if it were a great joke. He laughed so hard the tears came.
“I put everything I had into your career.” He coughed and swallowed. “Everything. And this is how you handle yourself? What is your problem, Son? What do you think you’re doing?”
“Helping.”
“You can’t leave it alone, can you?” Bobby coughed again, reached for his cigarettes. “Always sticking your pecker into some knothole, just to see what’s in there.”
“I was helping a friend. You’d like her.”
Bobby snorted. “You’ve got the hots—that’s what I see. Always hot for more trouble than you can handle. What were you thinking? She’s black, for crying out loud.”
“She’s your best friend’s niece, your only best friend.” Everett couldn’t believe his father had said that, drunk or not.
Bobby stood up, swayed. “You just have to find the most trouble there is and jump right in there, don’t you, Son? Can’t resist anything that jiggles. When are you going to wise up?”
“Wise like you? Not in my lifetime.”
“Going to be a short trip, the way you’re headed.”
“Go to bed, Dad.”
“Don’t you want to know what I’m celebrating?” Bobby lit a cigarette. “The bank put our cash in escrow, see, until they prove it’s not counterfeit. Nobody knows when that will be, so yesterday they bounced our rent payment. I called the agency to explain, but they don’t care. They got lots of tenants with the same excuse.” He reached for another beer.
Everett tossed his envelope on the table.
“So copy your guns, Dad. Sell them at the club. Copy your dirt bike and my road bike. Sell them too. Sell everything. The agency knows we’re good for the rent. We never miss.”
Bobby shook his head.
“Owner wants us out. Before the real estate market chokes and pukes like the stock market. She’s booting us whether we pay or not. By the time we appeal, the house will be sold out from under us.”
He blew a jet of smoke through his nose. A challenge.
“Out there in the yard,” he said, “we have this damn fine machine to make us anything we want, make us rich by copying stuff, but in ten days we are on our asses, evicted for nonpayment. Far as I’m concerned, she can keep her security deposit. I’m not putting any more work into this dump.” He took a pull from his bottle.
“In Ireland, they celebrate times like these. They call it a wake.”
FOURTEEN
Livermore, California. Friday, April 24
Day Seven
In the morning, fog from the bay penetrated Livermore Valley, chilling Everett’s commute and stitching ice into his disposition. He arrived at Shoes-for-You chilled and achy. His neck burned from the tension of splitting lanes for an hour. He parked at Maurice’s Bar and strode alone across the vacant avenue, wondering if the whole world was up there on the freeway, creeping through the mist.
General’s security curtain was up, the plywood covers were put away, and the display windows glowed with warmth. He was late.
Up the avenue, a bag lady shepherded her rusty shopping cart to the burger joint and tried to trade a fifth of whiskey for a burrito. Somebody had egged a brown Nissan parked in front of Maurice’s, and Everett figured the car’s owner was lucky. The news said rowdies had set fires last night to illuminate their street parties before they looted an electronics store on West Grand Avenue.
General looked up from his screen as Everett plodded through the door.
“Crude oil just fell to five bucks a barrel, and Wall Street is shut down. President Washburn declared a ten-day bank and market holiday. They say he’s going to outlaw Makers.”
Everett waved and proceeded to the storeroom. Who cared about Wall Street or oil prices? Or whether he would fly again. Earning the rent had been his proof to Bobby of his worth. He was the responsible one, the provider. But now their rent could not be paid even if he earned it, and come payday, what would his check buy? He was only trying to carve out one little place in this corner of the world, but he was failing: failing Bobby, failing himself, failing their future.
Always the world touched him, never could he touch it back. And when it punched him, hard and out of nowhere, he simply had to endure it. Every time.
He emerged from the storeroom to find the bag lady, unsteady on the wet sidewalk, peering at him. She of indeterminate age and dubious hygiene wore a fur coat. She leered and waved a fifth of Jack Daniels. In trade for what? Shoes?
Yesterday, Charlene encouraged her with a tuna sandwich. But not today. Enough was enough. Everett rushed outside to confront the bitch.
“Get the hell out of here. Stop coming by. We don’t want you hanging around anymore. Understand? Go take a bath. Sober up. Beat it.”
She gyrated her bony hips and leered.
“You wanna see my refrigerator? It’s full.”
Everett picked up a stone. “Get moving.”
Bourbon Lady propelled her treasures clinking and rattling past him. After a short distance she paused to spit.
“You just got to be free,” she said.
He threw the stone at her feet. “Don’t come back. You hear me?”
“What are you doing?” General appeared at his side, matched his hands-on-hips pose and glared, not at the wraith but at him.
“You smell that?” Everett said. “That’s urine and vomit, with a dash of Pine-Sol. The woman reeks. She keeps hanging around, driving off business.”
“What business would that be, do you suppose?” General waved in each direction, up and down the empty sidewalk. A lone car hissed by as Charlene joined them.
“What’s wrong?” she said.
“Nothing.” Everett swept around her and into the store. They followed him to a fitting bench, where he flung himself onto his stomach. They hovered nearby until he rolled over and sat up.
“I got a flying job, up in Montana, but I turned it down. Now Bobby and I are getting evicted.” He told them about the rent and the deadline to vacate. “He was drunk when I got home last night, then he got a whole lot drunker when I told him about Monday and the FBI. I didn’t mention Montana. He would have punched me. Says if I can’t stay clear of trouble, I’m too dumb to be a pilot, too stupid to be his son. Said he’s going to stay drunk and shoot it out with anyone who tries to put him out of his house. His house, not ours. There’s no us anymore.”
General retrieved his Cambiar and keyed it.
“Don’t bother,” Everett said. “He won’t answer.”
“Bakery up the street is open,” Charlene said. “How about a Danish, Everett?”
&n
bsp; General put away his phone. “Maybe I should go over there and see him.”
“Go where, Uncle?” Marcy bounded down the stairs in a quick rhythm.
“Tracy. To see Everett’s daddy.”
Marcy detected Everett’s funk and kept her distance. Meanwhile, a customer came in, giving him an excuse to slip away. He could feel their eyes on his back, but tending to business was why they were paying him, wasn’t it? He rushed up one aisle, forgot why he’d gone that way, and blundered into the customer, Alonso the jeweler. Everett apologized, continued to the counter where he pretended to arrange an important display of socks.
Charlene introduced Alonso to Marcy, and the suave paisano seemed to purr. He begged a favor. Would General help him copy a Powerpod? For his sister, up in Kensington? “She doesn’t have one,” he said.
“Of course, of course. Be happy to.”
General and Alonso conspired in pleasant tones until General called, “Everett.”
Who shook himself and returned. The women had departed.
“I need you to build a ramp to copy a Powerpod.” General smiled benignly. “Can you do that?”
Yeah, I can do that. He sketched a frame and listed the materials he would need. Then, while he copied lumber in the storeroom, General took the van with Alonso to fetch the jeweler’s Powerpod from his store.
Everett was measuring for a saw cut when Marcy reappeared, sleek and sexy in tight slacks and a black pull-over. She set a steaming mug and a cinnamon roll before him. Despite his hunger for her and her offering, he drew a pencil along his carpenter’s square, unable to meet her eyes. She twisted off a flirty glance before sashaying away, just like Monday. Damn. He needed to talk to her, but first, he needed to tamp down his feelings and get his head straight.
Once they copied Alonso’s Pod, Everett and General towed the copy north through Berkeley, into the Kensington hills, searching for a beige stucco house with a green roof and a fig tree in the yard. An offshore breeze was clearing the fog, spreading wispy sunlight in its wake.