Failed State

by Christopher Brown

  “There’s no such thing as a free lunch,” said Donny. “Or a free Kalashnikov. Definitely don’t tell me what strings are attached to that. Or who’s holding them.”

  “We’ll take care of you,” said Xelina.

  “Last time I represented you, I had to get paid by the court,” said Donny.

  “Not money,” said Xelina. “Personal services.”

  Donny raised his eyebrows.

  “Protection,” said Clint, snapping the banana clip into the rifle, which was now fully assembled.

  “That could work,” said Donny. Life was dangerous in those days, when the cops were as likely to shake you down as the robbers.

  “Great,” said Percy. “Now I need to get my speech ready for tomorrow. Just as soon as the sisters get here for the pickup.”

  And on cue, there was a knock at the door.

  25

  Even from a distance, Donny could see her scarring. Percy had grown up dodging bullets, and had the right instincts when her fight for political change turned into a shooting war. The transformation from radical lawyer to elected official to rebel leader was hardwired into the history of democratic revolution, and made perfect sense, after it happened. It suited her. Even with the blanching on the left side of her face that she earned the hard way.

  It definitely gave her credibility with her people. You could see it as she stepped up onto a little platform made from salvaged wood, the way they encircled her and suddenly quieted as they waited to hear her speak again. Percy’s mother had been a preacher, and it showed. But her dad had been a fighter, and that showed too. She was their prosecutor, now—the enforcer of the new rights they had fought so hard to obtain, and the protector of those who couldn’t stand up for themselves. Some of them because they weren’t even human.

  But Donny couldn’t help but talk to her like his old employee.

  “Percy!” he yelled. “Get me down from here and give me my phone!”

  The crowd turned on him. “Respect for the Defender!” they yelled. Whoever held the tether attached to Donny’s cage shook it.

  “Congresswoman,” said Donny, trying to change his tone despite his panic. “I need to speak with you. Please.”

  Percy held a finger in the air while she listened to the voice at the other end of the phone. “Okay, that sounds bad,” she said. “He’s not available now but I will let him know.”

  She handed his phone to one of the other women.

  “She says you need to call her,” said Percy. “Something about some guys coming by the house to take pictures.”

  Donny imagined that scene. It scared him even more than the one before his eyes.

  “Why are you doing this, Percy?”

  “You may only speak in response to our questions,” said the gray-haired woman holding the phone. Donny realized he recognized her, too, across the distance—Claude Darjine, one of the only members of the revolutionary committee who had been there since the very beginning, when the people first took control of the city in the aftermath of Superstorm Zelda. “And no one wants your help.”

  “Fine,” he said, steadying himself with his hands on the bars and looking out through the open door. “What do you want to know?”

  Donny tried to size Percy up. To see if she was really all-in on the new program. The last time they communicated, it was in a letter: the expulsion order she signed in her official capacity. He couldn’t tell.

  “What are you doing here, Donny Kimoe?”

  “I came to help her,” he said, pointing at Heather, still curled up in her cage.

  “You can’t help her,” said Percy. “You are banished. Barred from ever entering our community. I told you as much. Why have you violated our laws?”

  On the copy of the expulsion order they sent to him, Percy had handwritten a note below her signature. Please understand this is the decision of the entire community, and please respect our need to enforce it.

  “Heather needed my help. And I thought me doing so would help you.”

  He could see the anger coming up before he even finished.

  “What makes you think anyone needs your help, Donny Kimoe? We told you to go away and never come back. And I know Heather didn’t even ask for this, did she?”

  Donny looked at Percy, and then looked over at Heather. Heather was sitting up now, hooded by her blanket, but watching him with lucid eyes.

  “She—”

  Percy cut him off. “You were hired by her trustee!” She was waving a piece of paper—the notice of his appointment, from Lecker’s office. “Not even family. You work for the money, Donny! And the men who control it, or want to. Money they made from raping Mother Earth, nonstop, for more than a century. And who act like it’s all their right. Like there’s nothing wrong with them controlling Heather’s money, or controlling Heather, or paying some lawyer whatever it takes to get him to sell out his friends and the clients who made him.”

  “Percy, that’s not fair,” said Donny. “You know I only take clients I really believe in. I’ve known Heather since she was a kid.”

  He glanced at Heather. She was squinting now.

  “I don’t know this guy,” she said.

  “You’re lucky,” said Percy. “He’s a snake. He betrayed the revolution. Just like he betrayed his partner, his colleagues, and his clients. He says he just wants to help, but he really just wants to take care of himself, while convincing himself what’s good for him is good for everyone else. And the saddest thing is, only now can I really see it clearly.”

  Donny didn’t have anything to say to that. He didn’t want to believe it, but it had the ring of truth.

  “Punish him!” yelled one of the young men in the crowd, and others joined in the chorus.

  His cage dropped abruptly, knocking him on his ass. Then they pulled it back up, higher than it had been.

  Donny tried to straighten out. His spine felt bent. He tried to ignore the mob and focus on Percy. He could see the anger. It was personal. She was right. His mind flashed a list of some of the occasions on which he had let her down while thinking at the time what a great example he was setting.

  “What if I told you I took on Heather’s money as a client so I could free it too?” said Donny.

  “What do you mean?” said Percy.

  “You said it yourself. I’m ‘ethically flexible.’ I know how to see both sides. Why can’t I work both sides?”

  “The only side you really care about is your own,” said Percy.

  “That’s not really true, and you know it,” said Donny. “I came here to get justice for everyone.”

  “Justice for your clients only comes in the form of punishment.”

  “That may be. And that may be what you do to me. But before you do that, you need to give me a chance to make my case.”

  “The people have already heard enough from you,” said Percy.

  “They haven’t heard about the accounts we seized.”

  “What accounts?”

  “The three operating accounts in the name of the City of New Orleans you have at UZB and two other Swiss banks. The ones you use for payments from your international trading partners, and all these refugees who pay the vig to get their boat rides out of here.”

  Percy looked over at her entourage of elders, and crossed a hand across her throat.

  Donny reflexively put his hand over his own throat. It was too late to cover his mouth.

  26

  When they were done humiliating him on camera, the crowd dispersed, they turned the cameras off, and they let Donny and Heather down.

  Except that Heather let herself down. And looked a lot fresher than she had when she was in the cage.

  “What the hell?” said Donny.

  “It was hot up there today, y’all,” she said. “But that was awesome.”

  “You’re in on this?”

  “Trying to do my part to help,” she said.

  “White girls make good bait,” said Percy. “Especially rich ones.”


  “I knew it,” said Donny. “Are the sacrifices real?”

  Percy raised her eyebrows and looked away.

  “Stick around and find out for yourself,” said Heather. A friend was rubbing her shoulders now, and helping her clean up from her performance.

  “I’m going to stick around until you leave with me,” said Donny.

  “That’ll never happen,” said Heather. “And right now, I need to get to my other job. See ya.”

  She and her friend started walking away, just as one of the guards brought Donny his suit coat.

  “Heather!” he yelled, as he dusted the filth off. “Please! I just need a few minutes. I have a message from your dad.”

  “Buzz off,” yelled Heather, not even looking back. “I don’t want your help. Not unless you want to help get them to pay what they owe.”

  “We need to talk!” said Donny. “That’s exactly why I came.”

  She had already disappeared around the corner. Percy walked up as Donny pulled his jacket on. Her colleagues were standing nearby, conferring.

  “Goddamn you people,” said Donny.

  Percy grabbed him by the lapels and shook him, hard. Percy was strong, Donny was not, and it felt like she might pick him up and throw him across the square.

  “You son of a bitch!” she yelled. “How could you do this to us? To me! Do you have any idea what’s at stake?”

  Donny grabbed her hands, but she pulled them loose. Then she shoved him with one hand and smacked him with the other. And kept smacking, with both hands, until he was down on the ground covering his face.

  When the smacking stopped, he peeked out and looked up at Percy standing there over him, red in the face and breathing hard. She had three armed guards behind her.

  “Watch him,” she said. “I need to go find Kendra, and see if she can check on our accounts.”

  “It’s true what I said,” said Donny, half expecting to provoke a gun butt to the head. It wouldn’t be the first time. “But we have to be able to work something out. Is there someplace we can talk? Or someone else I need to talk to? Because I came here to make a deal.”

  “What possible basis could you have to seize our accounts?”

  “Well, I can only take partial credit for that. But the basis is patent infringement.”

  “What patents? That money is our lifeblood. At least until we’re fully self-sufficient.”

  “They say those are the proceeds from stolen property. Seeds.”

  Percy looked at her colleagues.

  “No one can own a seed,” said Claude. “The design of life belongs to nature. Even if you try to reengineer it.”

  “Yeah, I hear you,” said Donny, standing up and feeling his face for cuts and bruises. “But that’s the law. A law most of the world follows. And that even applies here, at least on paper.”

  “You’re representing Tripto Labs too?”

  “Technically just Heather’s trust, but they own a big stake, and so the trustee was able to call in a favor. And the craziest thing is they didn’t even need a court order. I guess the licenses, and your accounts, are all coded into the Chain. And all they needed to do was transmit a few commands. Kind of ironic that the digital money system developed by the underground to finance the revolution turned into the smart contracts regime that lets companies enforce their rights without having to go through lawyers.”

  “Fucking bullshit, is what it is,” said Claude.

  “Can you go talk to Kendra and her team?” said Percy. “I’ll interrogate him in the meantime.”

  “We’ll come with you,” one of the guards said to Percy.

  “That won’t be necessary,” said Percy, looking at the cut on her hand from punching Donny.

  Percy led Donny into the ruins of the courthouse, down a long hallway to a big room in the back, where they sat at a wooden table on which a few file boxes had been stacked. You could see Percy had been working on the files, with three of them open by her notepad. This room had been the library for the judges and the clerks. But the books and even the shelves were all gone now. Probably burned for fuel.

  “Sit down right here,” said Percy, pointing at one of the chairs. It was wobbly. She pulled up another one, and sat across from him, close enough to hit him again. Then she started looking through his briefcase, which the guards had given her.

  “Any chance I can see my phone?” said Donny.

  She looked at him. “Sure,” she said, and pulled it from the briefcase.

  It really was his grandma who called. But no other messages, and no more signal. Only the clock worked now, reminding him how much of his window he had already blown.

  “Don’t suppose you have a phone I could borrow,” said Donny.

  She ignored his question. And you could tell she had seen enough of the work papers he carried.

  “What the hell, Donny?”

  “I don’t even want to be here, Percy. Not under these circumstances. But I have to be. You can’t kidnap people like this and not expect there to be consequences.”

  “We didn’t kidnap anybody, Donny.”

  “You kidnapped me.”

  “We detained you. A lawful arrest under our law, for violating our expulsion order.”

  “Heather?”

  “We arrested her for contempt. But she would have surrendered if her family hadn’t locked her up. And now she is cooperating with us.”

  “What about the others? That guy I saw them wheel away. The people I saw on the news, sent off to die in the swamp. This is crazy, Percy. You’ve become as bad as they were.”

  Percy looked away, at the cracked windows of the big room.

  “You might as well roll out the guillotines,” added Donny.

  “We know you don’t like killing tyrants,” she said, looking back at him.

  “I don’t like killing anyone.”

  “And we don’t like killing anything. But they killed most of the wildlife on this planet, Donny. And we need to restore some balance. It’s not exactly how I would do it if it were my decision. But the people want justice. So does the Earth. We’ve run out of time for screwing around. We need to change the program before it kills what’s left. And until others wake up and start following the same rules, these arrests are the fastest way to get people to pay attention.”

  “It’s hostage-taking, Percy, and you know it.”

  “Something they’ve been doing with their laws for centuries. Putting people in prison for their debts. For refusing to follow their rules. All for a system to enslave their real hostage—the land and the creatures that live on it.”

  Donny considered that calculus. He thought about the dead fish, the vanishing bees, the silence of the mornings once filled with song.

  “I should have known you would actually stoop to helping those criminals,” said Percy. “Probably desperate to make a quick buck. Are you using again? You look like hell.”

  “It’s more complicated than that.”

  “That’s what you always say.”

  “Yeah, well, this time I mean it.”

  “I’m sure. I bet you have a great story of why you had to betray us again so you could save your own ass.”

  Her eyes had him even more nailed than the words she said.

  “You say you want real justice,” he said. “Well, so do I. Remember Slider’s case? The mess you and Miles left me to sort out?”

  She knew.

  “I have it nailed. With just one little catch. Well, two.”

  “Come clean with me, Donny.”

  He looked at her hands. At her strong arms. At those eyes, which could see through bullshit.

  He told her the whole deal. About Slider. About his debts. About Carol. About his pitch to Lou. And Lecker.

  “I really thought I could put together a settlement that would actually help you,” he said.

  “Well, Slider’s dead, Donny. Which you already know. It’s sad, but at least he was fighting for the cause. I know other people here who lost
loved ones in those camps, or were on the list and survived, but I don’t think any of them will want to work with you. Not after what you’ve done. As for putting together a deal, that’s not how we work. We don’t compromise on the principles that matter.”

  “What if I got them to put up a bond, in exchange for you letting Heather go?”

  “You’re assuming she wants to go.”

  “Can I talk to her at least?”

  “I don’t know. Not right now. I don’t even have time to screw around with you. I need to go attend to the problems you’ve already caused.” She paused. “If we let her go, can you release the funds?”

  Donny shifted in his chair.

  “We also need to deal with the seeds,” he said.

  “Do you even understand what you’re talking about? The world is starving, and you walk in here like the fucking waiter bringing the bill to the people in the alley begging for leftovers? I should just give you back to the guards and let them take you to the swamp.”

  “I’d rather see the farm,” said Donny. “They wouldn’t even let them show footage of it on that French documentary. I could tell Lecker covets it, but doesn’t even really know. What’s the secret?”

  “I can’t tell you. Not when you’re working with them.”

  “I saw some of the strawberries.”

  “Pretty amazing, right? That’s just a glimpse of what I’m talking about.”

  “So let me help you. We can shake those monopolists down together. I think I know how we can do it.”

  “They’re your clients!”

  “That doesn’t mean I can’t try to persuade them to make a deal. And like you said, technically Heather’s money is my client. The trust. Not any of the companies they own. So let me in on your case. We can make them pay up. As long as we deliver Heather.”

  “What do you mean, let you in on our case?”

  “Show me what you’ve got. So I can tell them why they need to settle.”

  “I don’t know, Donny.”

  “You know what the alternative is. They come and repossess all y’all and all your New Corn and all your giant strawberries and shut down your whole project. The USA is dead, and the age of self-help is upon us. You may enforce your laws by kidnapping, but these companies have figured the same thing out. And they have a lot more firepower at their disposal.”