Freeze Frames

by Katharine Kerr

  “Right. I’ll just ring up your hotel, then.”

  Janet crams clothes and her bedtime book into her suitcases, checks the bathroom and finds her various toiletries, crams them into plastic bags and stuffs them into a side pocket of the biggest case. She carries the luggage down herself, reaches the hotel desk to find the clerk talking to Rosemary, writing down her charge numbers to settle the bill. The clerk pauses, her dark eyes narrow with worry, with sympathy.

  “It’s all been taken care of, ma’am.”

  “Thank you. Could you call a cab for me? Or wait, will they take a BritTravel card?”

  “They will, yes. Best of luck to you, ma’am.”

  “Thanks.”

  Janet restrains the urge to add “I’ll need it” like a character in an old video.

  On the maglev, the trip to London takes a bare hour. Through polarized glass Janet sees the countryside shoot by, clear in the far distance, blurred close to the train. Although she’s used to thinking on her feet, having practiced for years in front of hostile judges, today she cannot think, can only worry about her daughter, her assistant, her sometime lover and closest friend, Robert, and all the other friends in their politically active circle, all left behind in San Francisco. I alone have escaped to tell you. She leans her face against the cool glass and trembles, too tormented to weep.

  At Euston she hauls her bags off the train, finds a luggage cart and ladles them in, then trudges down the long platform, leaning on the cart handle for support like some bag lady, drifting through the streets with all she owns before her. As she emerges into the cavernous station hall, she sees two things: the enormous media screen on the far wall, and Jonathan Richards, wearing an old-fashioned tweed jacket flung over an old-fashioned blue shirt, hurrying to meet her. On the screen a man in uniform stands in the Oval Office next to a pale and shaking president. Across the boom and bustle of the hall the general’s words die before they reach her.

  “Hullo,” Jonathan says. “I’d hoped to see you again on a better day than this.”

  “Yeah, really.”

  “Rosemary rang me up and pressed me into service. She’s afraid that sending an official car would attract too much attention.”

  Janet starts to answer, but her mouth seems to have frozen into place. Attract too much attention? From whom? Does the coup have the power to pluck its enemies from the streets of foreign cities?

  “Rather a nasty situation all round,” Jonathan says. “Here, I’ll push that cart. The wheels always stick on these beasts.”

  Nodding, Janet relinquishes the handle. As she follows him through the crowd she is trying to convince herself that she’s simply too unimportant to be a target, but her new book rises in her memory, and its brisk sales—Christian Fascism: The Politics of Righteousness. You saw this coming you’ve seen it for years, why are you so surprised?

  Jonathan has spoken to her.

  “I’m sorry,” Janet says. “I missed that.”

  He smiles, his eyes weary.

  “Quite understandable. I’m just abandoning the cart. We go down the steps here.”

  Books and papers heap the back seat of Jonathan’s small electric Morris. He slings the luggage in on top of them, hands Janet into the front seat, then hurries round behind the wheel. As they pull out, Janet realizes that night’s fallen. Street lamps halo out bright in a rising mist.

  “Where are we going?”

  “Rosemary’s flat.”

  “Ah. Thank you. I mean, really, thanks for coming down like this.”

  “Quite all right.”

  During the drive out to Kew, where Rosemary lives in a huge walled complex of townhouses and gardens, Janet says very little. Her mind searches for its old humor, tries to find some quip or irony, foils, trails away into wonderings about Mandi and Robert. Suddenly she remembers that Robert talked about leaving the city during her vacation, about going up to her mother’s old house in the mountains. If he has, he will be safe; up in Goldust her family knows him, and they will take him in if he needs it. If he left. Will she ever know?

  “Jonathan? Have you heard if the phone lines to the States are down?”

  “It seems to depend on where you want to call. The various media have their own links, of course. The news program that I was listening to on the radio implied that private calls are difficult, and the farther west you want to call to, the worse it is.”

  “I was thinking that might be the case, yeah.”

  “We’ll get some sort of underground news network set up down at the university as soon as we can. Hackers.” He glances her way briefly. “For a respectable sort of person I happen to know a remarkable number of hackers.”

  “They’ll see it as the best game in the world.”

  When they reach the flat, Rosemary’s housekeeper lets them in, takes the luggage from Jonathan and takes it away. They wander into Rosemary’s yellow and white parlor, all slender Eurostil furniture and wall paintings. Rosemary loves florals, and on the display screens glow Renoirs and Monets, each garden blooming for some minutes, then fading to allow the next to appear. Jonathan heads straight for a white wooden cabinet.

  “Drink?” he says.

  “Gin and tonic, please. I bet Rosemary’s on the phone.”

  “She’ll be hoarse before the night’s out, yes.”

  Janet sinks into the corner of the pale leather sofa only to find herself confronted with a picture of her daughter, a snapshot she herself took on the day that Mandi graduated from college. Rosemary has had it enlarged and printed out, then framed in a yellow acrylic oval. In her dark red robes and mortar board Mandi looks overwhelmed, no matter how brightly she smiles for her mother’s camera. She is pale and blue-eyed, like her grandmother, and her long blonde hair streams over her shoulders. All at once Janet’s eyes fill with tears. She shakes them away and looks up to find Jonathan holding out a glass.

  “I’m so sorry,” he says.

  She nods and takes the drink.

  “You must be worried sick about your daughter.”

  “I am, yeah.” She takes a sip before she goes on. “But actually, I was thinking of my mother. I’m really glad she didn’t live to see this.”

  Jonathan sighs and flops into an armchair opposite. He is drinking something golden-brown, Scotch most likely, sips it and seems to be searching for something to say. Wearing a crumpled blue suit, Rosemary steps in to the room. Her red scarf slides from her shoulder and falls without her noticing.

  “Hullo!” She smiles at Janet. “It is so good to see you safe.”

  “Thanks. Really, thank you for all the help. I don’t know what I’d have done without it.”

  “I’m sure you’d have thought of something, but I’m glad I’m placed as I am. Sorry I was on the phone when you arrived. I’ve been being courted. Rather nice, really.”

  “By the party whip, I assume?” Jonathan hands her a drink.

  “Exactly.” Rosemary sinks down into the other corner of the sofa. “Thank you, darling.” She pauses for a long sip. “This is the situation. Emergency session tonight in a few hours. Labour want to threaten an immediate boycott of all American goods and services and to call for immediate restoration of democracy. The Tories, of course, do not. Enough Labour members may bolt to make our votes important. The Labour leaders are willing to be accommodating. I pretended to have doubts about the boycott for the sake of the British middle class.” Rosemary smiles briefly. “And so you’ll get the embankment, Jonathan, to protect the Free University.”

  “Brilliant!”

  “Tremendous!”

  Jonathan and Janet raise their glasses and salute her.

  “Corrupt, actually,” Rosemary says. “But there we are.” She turns Janet’s way. “I’m having some information transmitted to my terminal for you. About applying for asylum. We’d best get that underway tomorrow. They’re setting up a board to handle the applications, you see.”

  “Do you think there’ll be a crush?” Jonathan said. “Most
of the Yanks I’ve met lately will be overjoyed at the developments.”

  Rosemary shrugs.

  “The coup wouldn’t have struck without being sure of having a broad base of support,” Janet says. “They’ve been building it for years. Mostly by playing on the crime issue—you know, the need for order in our embattled streets. And of course, moral values. The so-called family values.”

  “It’s always order, isn’t it?” Jonathan says. “The excuse, I mean, for military governments. We must have order. Keep the people in line.”

  Janet nods agreement.

  “Anyway, we’ll have dinner before I go,” Rosemary says. “Have you remembered to eat today?”

  “No.” Janet allows herself a smile. “Not since breakfast. Kind of a long time ago now.”

  “Thompson will be serving soon, I should think. You know, I have no idea what sort of questions the Board will want answered during the asylum proceedings. Your books and career should be enough to satisfy them you’re in danger. I hope they don’t want an actual threat or your presence on some sort of list. How long do you have left on your tourist visa?”

  “Close to two months.”

  “Splendid! Surely that should be enough, even for a bureaucracy.”

  “Even for a British bureaucracy?” Jonathan puts in, grinning.

  Rosemary groans and holds out her glass for a refill.

  “It’s a good question, though,” Janet says. “I’ll have to have some visible means of support, won’t I?”

  “Oh here.” Jonathan pauses on his way to the liquor cabinet. “Surely that won’t be a factor in the Board’s decision.”

  “It might,” Rosemary breaks in. “The junta are bound to put pressure on our government in turn. They do have all the bombs, you know. I imagine they’ll be able to force a very strict adherence to the rules and regulations for this sort of thing.”

  Jonathan thinks, chewing on his lower Up.

  “Well, here,” he says at last. “The Free University sponsors lecture series. There’s no doubt that you’d be a major attraction, Janet. First, a series of public lectures featuring your book: Christian fascism—its roots and rise. Then a proper course for the student body: American fascism, the historical background. I foresee no difficulty in getting the Committee to approve it.”

  “No doubt they’ll thank you.” Rosemary turns a good bit brighter. “And of course, the book! It’s only just come out here, and my God, what a publicity event!”

  Janet tries to laugh and fails.

  “But what about the money from that?” Rosemary goes on. “Does it go to your agent in America?”

  “No, fortunately. She has a coagent here in London, and David gets all monies received and converts them to pounds before he sends them on. I’ll call him tomorrow. He can just send my agent her cut and let me have the rest. Oh my God. My agent!”

  “Oh now here,” Rosemary says. “You don’t think she’ll be arrested?”

  Janet shrugs helplessly. She has absolutely no idea which of her acquaintances might be endangered by the simple act of knowing her.

  “It sounds to me,” Jonathan says, “that one way or another you’ll do very well for yourself.”

  “Yeah, it does, doesn’t it? If I don’t mind being a professional exile.”

  Although Janet meant the phrase as irony, it cracks out of her mouth like a pistol shot. Rosemary sighs and watches her, worried. Jonathan busies himself with refilling glasses.

  “Well, sorry,” Janet says. “It’s not like I have a lot of choice.”

  “Just so, darling. Do you want to try to ring Mandi? It can’t put her into any worse danger than she’s already in.”

  “Just from having a mother like me? Oh God. But yeah, I do. I’ll just go into the other room.”

  “The green guest room. The one you had before.”

  Janet sits on the edge of a narrow bed in a pool of yellow light and punches code into the handset. Halfway through, at the code for the San Francisco Bay Area, a string of whistles and shrieks interrupt.

  “I’m sorry, but we cannot complete your call as dialed. Please attempt to ring through at a later time.”

  “Damn!”

  Later that night, when Rosemary has gone off to the Houses of Parliament and Jonathan to his home, Janet lies on the bed in her green-and-white guest room and watches the late news. Footage of tanks rolling down American streets, soldiers standing on guard in front of banks, here and there the ruins of a shelled building—and yet it seems clear that the coup has faced little resistance, except out in the American west. The east, the south, and the capital belong, heart and soul, to the coup and the Christian right. Utah as well has declared for the new government, as have the southern counties of California, but up in the mountains, the Rockies, the Sierra Nevada, the rain forests of the Cascades—in the high places even the spokesmen for the junta admit that a campaign of “pacification” lies ahead of them. There are no reports at all from Alaska. All network links seem to be down. Since the Native Americans there have been sabotaging government installations for the past fifteen years, Janet can guess that they’ve found sudden allies among the whites.

  It doesn’t matter, Janet knows. In the end the coup will win, because the areas that resist matter little to the economic life of the country. They can be cut off and starved out until their cities fall to the neo-fascists. Perhaps Alaska will stay free, an instant republic. Down in the continental United States, up in the mountains, a guerrilla war may continue for years, an annoyance but no threat to the new government, fought by a patchwork army of libertarians, survivalists, and honorable men.

  The newscast changes to a parade through Washington, rank after rank of soldiers, Army and Marines marching through the rain. Past the Lincoln Memorial—Janet lays down the remote to wipe tears from her eyes. Yet she cannot stop watching, finds herself staring at the screen, puzzling over some small detail. She finds the close-up function, slides it on, zeroes her little white square over one soldier, clicks—and sees upon his shoulder the new patch added to his dress uniform, a white cross on a blue ground. She punches the screen back to normal so hard that the remote squalls in protest.

  The end of the newscast shows the Senate voting extraordinary powers to the new chief of government security, that is, to the head of the coup, an Air Force general named James Rogers, and, almost as an afterthought, establishing a new office of public security, to be headed by a certain Colonel Nicholas Harrison. One picture catches Janet by surprise—she hadn’t expected Rogers to be black, just somehow hadn’t expected it.

  Janet flicks off the terminal. For a long time she lies on the bed, staring at the blank screen, until at last she fells asleep with the lights on.

  o~O~o

  Morning brings coffee (real coffee served in a big mug by the ever-efficient Thompson), the sound of rain pounding on the windows, and memories. On the nightstand lies a telephone, its little screen a green gleam of temptation. Call my daughter. Don’t dare. Thompson opens one pair of curtains to grey light, smiles, and leaves again.

  Janet gets up, flicks on the news, and dresses, gulping down the coffee in the intervals between zipping up her jeans and pulling a sweater over her head. The American coup has taken over the television as well as the United States. Janet windows the screen into four, finds a silent feed station for one, mutes the sound on two other programs, and lets the BBC announcer drone at low volume while she unpacks her suitcases.

  Except for Seattle the coup now controls every city in the continental United States. The BBC expect Seattle to surrender at any moment, guarded as it is by only two regiments of National Guard and some armed citizens. Since Russia and Japan have both offered their protection to the new Republic of Alaska, it will probably stand. In all three program windows video rolls endlessly, tanks, Congress, dead bodies, fighter planes, refugees streaming north into Canada from Seattle and Detroit. On the silent feed maps flash; Janet takes a moment to click on the western states and freeze the
ir image upon the screen. She zeroes in on San Francisco, clicks to magnify, sees a street map covered in a thin wash of red, too cheerfully raspberry for even metaphorical blood. The junta holds the city, the bridges are secured.

  The search function throws a box on to the screen.

  “Do you wish to see a news feed from the city you have selected?”

  “Yes.”

  The BBC disappears, and an ITV reporter pops into focus, standing in the Civic Center. Behind her rises City Hall, grey and domed in a foggy morning, but the high steps are strewn with corpses. Janet begins to tremble. She sits down on the edge of the bed and clasps her mug in both hands while the reporter, pale and dishevelled, speaks in a low voice of a night of horror, of teenagers firing handguns at tanks, of teenagers shot down by those who were once their countrymen. The camera starts to pan through the pollarded trees of the skimpy plaza. A siren breaks into the feed; the reporter shouts something into her microphone; the feed goes dead.

  Janet raises the remote and clicks the monitor off. She cannot watch any more of those pictures. Yet she must see more, she must know more. She raises the remote again, then hurls it onto the carpet. You’ll feel better if you cry. Why can’t you cry?

  She cannot answer.

  “More coffee?”

  Thompson at the door, holding a tray—a silver pot, a pitcher of milk, a plate of something covered by a napkin.

  “Yes, thanks. Is Mrs. White at home?”

  “No, ma’am. She’s gone to her office.”

  “Ah. I thought so.”

  Thompson sets the tray on the dresser, then stoops and picks up the remote. Janet takes it from him and without thinking, flips the monitor on again. An ITV executive stands before a studio camera, speaking very fast and very high while sweat beads on his high forehead. As far as he can determine, his crew in San Francisco have been arrested, hauled away like common criminals despite every provision of the UNESCO media pact signed just last year in Nairobi. Janet changes the station out from under his indignation. This time a search on the strings “San Francisco” and “northern California” turn up nothing, not on one of the sixty-four channels.