by Ed Miracle
“Okay,” he said, “I’ll wait until I see smoke.”
“Text only,” she said, waving her Cambiar, and she strode off with the jug. It was good, tactical thinking, very stealthy. In case the folks who lived there didn’t notice a screaming helicopter chase a bright-red sailplane into their yard. But Marcy was right; she could charm anyone.
He watched her go, then checked the area. Twenty miles to the west, Mt. Diablo gathered her skirts into purple shadows. The mountain’s dark gravity seemed to draw the sun down and make it squat. In the opposite direction, across the road, stirred a crop he didn’t recognize, dry and rangy, waist-high. The rest was orchards, dry grass, and worn-out fences. Cotton. He looked back at the droopy stalks, their brains blown out, fluffy and white.
By then Marcy had disappeared around the house. Pardon me, ma’am, could we copy a little jet fuel? He scrutinized the corners and the windows, alert for movement. He held his Cambiar at arm’s length, as a talisman, willing it to keep her safe. During his fourth check, Smoke scrolled mischievously across its screen, followed by Nobody home.
He trotted to the fence, wobbled over, and quickly joined Marcy in a shed appended to a three-car garage. She was lifting red canisters from a small Maker, two new jugs at her feet.
“We need bigger bottles,” she said.
Everett checked the garage, which was locked and had an alarm box tucked under its gable. He scouted the yard and returned with a wheelbarrow, crusted in concrete residue. Twelve bottles equaled a hundred pounds, more or less, and that was all they could wrangle in a single load. With each trip they recycled the empties into the Maker’s top cone, expecting its owners to show up and assail them for cutting the rabbit fence, but no one came. As twilight seeped into a listless night, they finished refueling and drank cool water from a spigot.
Marcy wiped her mouth on her sleeve. She gazed west toward the loom from unseen cities that silhouetted the mountain. Everett looked the other way, at cotton dots drifting on a sea of darkness.
Bobby was right about one thing. Neither of them could stand aside and watch things go to hell without getting involved. But since Coalinga, all of the decent possibilities had come to depend on Makers. No matter what you called yourself, or which side prevailed, everyone’s future now depended on keeping a personal Maker. The middle path, if there ever was one, had vanished in a mushroom cloud. So he wasn’t making any big, hefty decisions here, just taking one step at a time.
“You sure we can land on that parking lot tomorrow?”
He gathered her into his arms. “Define land.”
FORTY-SIX
Summit of Mt. Diablo. Wednesday, June 10
Still Day Fifty-three
Near midnight, Philip lay on a horse blanket folded between two display cases in the tiny museum of the Mt. Diablo State Park Visitor Center. Which was dark and closed for repairs but had been forced open earlier today by fugitives.
How do you get from an airborne MD-11 to a mountaintop in three minutes? Have Chuck make a pass, low and slow. Then follow Tanner through that screeching cesarean hole he burned in Gloria’s belly. Plummet three seconds before pulling the ripcord and steer a whooshing slab of nylon toward the one and only clearing on the summit. But instead of that nice, vacant parking lot, you careen into a gnarly manzanita bush, where a branch spears your kneecap and lodges deep in the ligature of your right knee. Oh-My-Goodness-Gracious-Sakes-Alive-and-Double-That.
Morphine does that—converts agonies into grade-school expletives, though not entirely and not quickly enough. Just thinking about his landing triggered another spasm.
First came the impact, then the agony. Tanner stomped through the manzanita, helped him cut his lines and free his leg. More agony. Once they grunted their way out of the thicket, Philip lay on the ground, gasping. He phoned Marcy Johnson to get some independent videos of Chuck when he landed at San Jose Mineta. So there’d be proof against Tory lies.
The contractor who excavated the visitor center’s open utility trench was nowhere to be seen, but he’d left behind a full-size Maker and a backhoe. Tanner hot-wired the tractor and used its bucket to pop the door. Philip hobbled into the snug, pile-of-rocks building, where he and Tanner splinted his stinking-rotten knee. Then he called Art Buddha to alert any Freemakers near the mountain and beg them for help. If he could just lie perfectly still, the pain might release its pit bull clench.
An hour later, Tiffany Lavery and Marie Cardoza showed up in a pickup truck loaded with gear, including one of Philip’s Furies, and—thank you, Ms. Cardoza—veterinary morphine. Tiffany’s smile and energy gave the drug an extra kick that made him fall in love with Karen’s daughter all over again. Likewise with Marie, who was kind and lovely. But the women couldn’t haul him down the mountain because, according to Marie’s husband, the National Guard had sealed the roads behind them. Jesse wanted to bring horses up the back way, over a steep and rugged trail. “Maybe in the morning,” Philip said.
Then Art Buddha called back to say every charter helicopter not already engaged was grounded by the Feds. “Forget that,” Philip said, “and forget the rally we talked about. There’s no time, even if we muster a thousand Freemakers.”
“I’ll get you a lawyer,” Art said, and hung up.
After that, Philip held down as much floor as he could and sampled another shot of Marie’s Vet Juice. Tanner helped the women copy the Fury they’d brought, and together they began launching its duplicates. With his one good hand, Philip could barely drive the laptop to assign their flight patterns.
So now, after dark, Tanner commenced snorkeling on a thin mattress in the gift shop, while the women took their sleeping bags up to the meridian rotunda, the watchtower that supported an old aircraft beacon, to escape Tanner’s rhonchus recital. Outside, the wind rattled doors and windows while inside an invisible anvil pinned Philip’s outstretched leg. The only thing higher than the morphine merry-go-round chiming in his head was a full moon gliding silently through the clouds.
That’s when a lizard dashed from the gloom. Skitter, skitter.
“I met your cousin,” Philip said, “the cranky one in Nevada.”
Lizard stopped and stared, grim as a one-eyed judge, while Philip unpacked a few regrets.
“I wish we could have held that rally,” he confessed. “Pushed back on Coalinga.”
Lizard yawned without sympathy.
Pretty much what a tin messiah deserved for skirting his own moral code. The truth at any price, etcetera, etcetera. Sucker deceived everyone. Betrayed the woman he wanted. Used that little girl, Mariela, to embellish a happenstance into fake heroism. Pretended to be the spooky dude some folks wanted him to be. Even indulged a bit of magical thinking, hoping things would work out just because they should. Secular sins to match the shortcomings of any religionist.
He wanted people to think he was doing this for them, for humanity. Wanted to believe it himself. But people do noble things for selfish reasons, Old Shoe, to ward off their private nightmares. ‘Cause they can’t live with themselves if they don’t do that one true thing that proclaims who they are.
All he wanted was to be the guy he was before the fire, who never pissed off that capital-B believer and never cost his family their lives. By now, Ordinary Philip would have published his equations and married a good woman, had three kids and mowed the lawn. He’d be complete, not half-finished, wedged between the fossils and the feathers on Mt. Diablo, hoping no one would discover his midnight name. Talks-to-Geckos.
A touch more morphine and he wouldn’t be himself anymore. He’d be . . . Self 2.0. Though not so afraid as the Tories were. They did get it, didn’t they. They could see what was coming as well as anyone, but if they accepted the new ways, they wouldn’t be themselves anymore. If in the morning they couldn’t find the pilgrim they used to be, they’d go insane.
No wonder Art Buddha squandered so many pages on stories instead of extolling the facts. Nobody cared for facts, not even juicy ones. They cared about their feelings. Of
joy or fear or belonging. Art’s manifesto made radical sharing feel warm and good, personal and empowering. Sharing is love or words to that effect. Too utopian for cynics, but catnip to seekers and strivers. So the conclusion must be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer.
It’s the feelings, Stupid. Freemaker feelings. Real. Hope. Now.
The anvil on Philip’s knee shifted, shooting him back to deepest, darkest Michigan, years ago. He couldn’t save anyone that night, but Makers might channel his family’s secular kindness and decency into Art’s radical sharing. No fictions, just feelings and choices about better ways to live.
Maybe some Freemakers were already winning, and nobody could see it. Building enclaves under Tory noses. If Maker goodwill grew stronger than middle-class fears, the advent could succeed without him. His mission would complete itself. He could take his longings down from their shelf and open a box of Karen Lavery. Accept the risk of loving her. Instead of this pointless, enervating pain. It hurt so much to look at his leg, at his hand, and to consider his faults.
So push another dose, Old Shoe.
He implored the one-eyed judge on the wall, why should consciousness fade to dark, instead of to light? Where does it go, the light? Chatter, chatter, monkey mind—until the monkeys drank tequila and finally shut up.
Thank you, Morphine.
FORTY-SEVEN
San Joaquin County, California. Thursday, June 11
Day Fifty-four
The sun rose listless and squinty. Everett rolled from beneath GG’s wing and washed the crusts from his eyelids at a hose bib. He stroked Marcy’s cheek to wake her, then gathered the cushions they slept on. They stretched, peed behind a bush, drank some water, and slipped into the cockpit. Warm already, the day would soon be a scorcher.
As they jetted west to Mt. Diablo, its grassy slopes and ridges resembled a lion skin pulled taut over the rocks. Impenetrable aprons of scrub oak, greasewood, and manzanita choked the summit, blocking all but a few twisty footpaths. Three miles out, five Furies intercepted Glamorous Glennis, cavorting like porpoises, escorting her; one in front, two on each side. Dozens more orbited the mountain.
“We’ll cross over and land from the southwest,” Everett said, and the summit was quickly upon them.
They shot past a tower studded with antennas and an empty parking lot of mottled asphalt. The pavement angled from the southwest with a narrow road leading to a sandstone building in the east. As he banked and swung about, Everett fixed his goal for the landing. Do not hit the stone tower. Squinting into the glaring sun, he aligned on a diagonal. He idled the engine, set full flaps, and lowered his landing gear. GG lurched through invisible currents, forcing him to crab sideways toward the parking lot. Up front, Marcy wedged her elbows and hunched behind her camera, bracing herself. He didn’t tell her he had never done this before. Basically a carrier landing without arresting cables.
More in reaction than in control, he selected a threshold, dropped toward it, and deployed his thrust reversers. He rammed full throttle just before the wheels struck. GG hit hard and caromed, turbojet screaming. Everett stood on the brakes, fought to influence their bone-jarring progression toward a wall of purple-bark manzanita. The deceleration shoved them against their harnesses. Shuddering, stuttering, GG pitched to a halt—one car length from disaster.
To confirm their breath-defying survival, Everett killed the engine and said, “Okay.” But he sat transfixed, not okay, mentally reeling. Marcy shucked her headset, fingered the canopy latch, and vomited over the side. To her credit, she had not made a sound.
At their left stood a full-sized Maker, where two women in blue jeans and white, long-sleeved shirts had stopped their work to stare at the intruders. The older one peered from beneath a straw hat, frayed and tied with blue ribbon. The younger one’s blonde ponytail sprouted like a handle from a red baseball cap.
Everett blinked. Marie Cardoza? Tiffany Lavery?
A Fury’s sharp passage broke his trance, and the women resumed unloading another one from their Maker. A jig mounted within its side cone tipped a newly copied drone down to their hands. Everett watched them lower it, then got out to help Marcy, who was still recovering.
A gas-driven quad motorcycle sputtered over to them, towing a cartload of plastic jugs. Its driver was Philip Machen’s bodyguard, Tanner Newe. His wild black hair and unshaven jaw contrasted sharply with his white NASA coveralls. He stopped at a wingtip and shouted, “Turn it around.” Then he dismounted to help.
Everett took the opposite wing as they reversed Glamorous, pointing her downhill, back toward the cracked asphalt. If her landing gear had not entirely collapsed, a return trip over that stuff might finish the job.
“Do you need fuel?” The muscleman indicated his cart.
Still clutching GG’s wing, Everett shook his head.
“Well, get ready to leave. I don’t know how long we can hold them off.”
Everett glanced south, anticipating helicopters, drones, or troops, though none appeared. Between the men, Marcy staggered from GG and hefted her camera, bazooka-style.
“Where is he?” she said.
Tanner glowered, pointed up the path behind them. His coveralls were torn and dirt-smudged.
“If they hit us,” he said, “jump in a trench.”
Where, exactly, he didn’t say, but a dirt pile was mounded behind the Maker. Then, at the parking lot’s northwest corner, a Fury whistled low and plunged into a mesh backstop. Upon arresting, it slid tail-first to the ground, a ridiculous transition. Tanner drove to it, corrected its drunken seagull posture, and commenced refueling it.
Everett wanted to see it take off again, or watch the women launch the new one, but Marcy was hiking toward the rock tower. She stopped at an oleander and motioned for him to follow. He scanned the lot once more and estimated their chances of safely taking off again. Less than satisfied, he rushed to join her. She gave him the Sony, and he checked the sky.
“Density altitude goes up when it gets hot,” he said.
Which meant nothing to her. “Let’s go,” she said.
They found Philip Machen, gaunt and supine, on the steps leading up the south wall of the stone building to the tower. His right pant leg was cut away, and cotton swathes bound his thigh, calf, and ankle to a narrow plank of tongue-and-groove flooring. Blood-caked bandages girded his knee, which looked as if he’d stepped through a volleyball and pulled it up his leg. How could they get him into GG?”
“As you can see,” he said, “I’m not much of a parachutist.” Through parched lips, he added, “Soon as possible . . . we’ll get you back in the air. You need to know . . . what’s happening.”
With one hand, he dragged a laptop computer down the rough steps and pried it open. On its screen, tiny green dots swarmed a contour map of the mountain. Magenta dots flowed along two sinuous yellow roads.
“The military is probing. We are defending. When they come . . . you need to circle with the Furies. Be our witnesses.”
Everett framed him in the viewfinder and adjusted his stance, which released a dirt clod into a cavity he hadn’t noticed. The trench cut downhill, away from the steps, and ended at a yellow tractor tipped precariously. Its backhoe clung arm-like to the open slot.
“Not safe here,” Machen said. “Everything’s targeted.”
Behind them, a Fury launched with a distinctive whooping shriek. Everett kept his focus on the fugitive.
“When they come . . . you must be—” Machen pointed upward. “Furies will shield you.” He keyed his computer and angled it to show a slowly rotating view of the steps on which he lay. Everett extended his arm and saw it move on the screen. He looked up.
“Do you think the Army will attack?” Marcy thrust her microphone forward.
Behind her, Tanner rumbled up on his quad and shut it off.
“They don’t realize . . .” Machen flinched. “. . . they are contingent. No longer in charge.”
He looked at his bandaged hand, then a
t his wrist, the one with the scar, as if he hadn’t seen them for a while. He leaned toward Tanner. “Clear the summit,” he said.
Tanner checked across his shoulder. “I sent the women down already.”
Marcy squatted beside Philip.
“What will you do now, Mr. Machen? What if we can’t get you out of here?”
He wormed his good hand into a pocket and withdrew a medical syrette. He broke the seal with his teeth and stabbed the needle into his thigh. “Morphine,” he said as he squeezed the tube and plucked it away.
“We infected the world, Marcy, with an idea that will not die.”
“Your machines?”
He shook his head. “Real freedom. Real progress. Don’t wait. Do it yourself.”
His eyes glazed and the computer skidded from his hands, down the steps, where it bleated until Tanner scooped it up. Everett focused on its screen and recognized a tactical threat display. A throbbing yellow circle drifted toward the center. Tanner clicked the circle to bring up data, which he showed to Machen. The bleating continued.
“Big and high,” Tanner said. “Out of range, but not for long.”
“Reconnaissance?”
Tanner shook his head. “Transport or bomber.”
Machen snared Marcy’s sleeve, pulled her to him. Everett knelt to frame them.
“This woman . . . great integrity. Helps everyone . . . see what’s happening.” He kissed her hand and thrust it back to her. “Now go.”
The computer bleated faster as the yellow circle turned crimson.
“Incoming.” Tanner cursed and yelled into his Cambiar. “Incoming. Everyone find a hole.”
He tapped a computer icon and looked to the sky. “Go get ‘em, Furies.”
Then he thrust the computer into Philip’s hands and struggled to lift him. He staggered upright, glared at the others, and shouted, “Get in the hole.”
Marcy dog-crawled to the trench and rolled in. Tanner approached its crumbling edge, sank to his knees, and dumped Philip like a bundle of sticks. Machen’s howl seemed to raise the dust into which he fell. Then Tanner yanked Everett—still recording—into the trench behind Marcy. Finally, he spidered himself over his boss and covered him with his body.