The American Zone

by L. Neil Smith

  He lifted his chin. “There is a difference, madam, between mysticism and religion!”

  “Describe it in twenty-three words or less—an’ don’t call me ‘madam’!”

  WE WEREN’T IN that house another ten minutes. Then it was out on the porch and when we got back in Clarissa’s van, it developed that Will was unhappy with Lucy and me.

  “Goddamn it, Win, you’re an ex-cop! An ex-homicide detective! You alienated the subject for no good reason and turned my investigation into a political argument!”

  I’d been feeling guilty about that, although there was sympathy in Clarissa’s eyes, possibly because she’d helped with the arguing. I opened my mouth to speak—without the faintest idea what I was going to say—but Lucy was there before me.

  “It’s been my experience that Winnie’s invstigatory instincts are unerring, Willie! Kindly don’t criticize an act of genius!”

  “What?” Will cringed. He hated being wrong, and he hated it even worse when anybody called him Willie.

  “What?” I asked before I could stop myself.

  “Look,” she explained, “Bennie’s a classic dogwhistle! That makes him vulnerable. Push him hard enough, he’ll crack, let his guard down, tell you what he really thinks! He may need another dose before he opens up, but Winnie has us headed in the right direction!”

  Will nodded slowly. “You could be right.”

  Maybe I was a genius. “What’s a dogwhistle?”

  “You oughta know, both of you, it’s from a movie made in both your worlds. Strange Days. A dogwhistle’s somebody with an ass so tight that when he farts, only dogs can hear him!”

  12: LAY THAT PISTOL DOWN

  Better the “Me” generation than the “Duh” generation.

  —Memoirs of Lucille G. Kropotkin

  The sign over the entrance said:

  MR. MEEP’S AT THE MALL

  An American hears the word “mall” and envisions a huge structure, often multistoried, usually at the edge of town where it was built to avoid sales taxes mere seconds before the city got wise and annexed the land it stood on. He sees dozens, even hundreds of shops—not one of which sells a thing anybody needs to keep from dying—maybe a smattering of fast-food counters, even a genuine sit-down restaurant. I noticed once, in the biggest mall in Fort Collins, the town that’s “coextant,” as they say, with central LaPorte, that there wasn’t any place to buy matches.

  Not so the Jefferson Plaza Shoppes at the corner of Mencken and Spooner, about where Fort Collins’ Rocky Mountain High (no, I’m not kidding about the name) would be if Confederates weren’t so particular about how they use perfectly good real estate. Two of us were getting started on a little late afternoon lunch and I was reminding myself that I should call my clients to give them a no-progress report. The other two, Lucy and Clarissa, were finishing up a little late afternoon shopping.

  I said “the corner of Mencken and Spooner.” What I really meant was under Mencken and Spooner. Like most commerical development in LaPorte in the last century, it was built underneath the intersection. When the speed of city traffic hit seventy-five (don’t think it can’t happen to you—last time I was “back home,” legal traffic in downtown Lubbock was doing sixty), it had suddenly appeared prudent to dig tunnels so pedestrians could get across safely. What would otherwise have been free-mugging zones became shoppers’ paradises, when convenience stores of all kinds—whose owners had paid for the digging in the first place—began to light up the pedestrian tunnels.

  Jefferson Plaza Shoppes was the same idea, squared and cubed. It had been constructed in several stages, under twenty-five or thirty intersections, involving several square miles, and went Chinaward five or six levels. Even so, it was hard to tell that you were underground, thanks to the mirrors, fiberoptics, and’Com screens that gave shoppers (employees probably appreciated it, too) a pretty convincing illusion they were doing their meandering surrounded by a great big, landscaped, brightly sunlit space.

  So far, Will and I had electronically ordered and received coffee for him—station-house black, if you please—and Coke for me. I was a happy man. The sling on my left arm was twice the size of the earlier one and strapped securely to my torso. That had called for a stop at home, where—retaining the Browning High Power on my right hip—I’d stuffed my .41 Magnum into the pocket afforded by the sling. My left hand stuck out far enough that reloading wouldn’t be too much of a problem. It was like putting on warm flannels after going half naked for three days. With my .41 and a couple of speed loaders, the Browning and two spare fifteen-round magazines (now illegal in most versions of the good old U.S.A., thanks to an inexplicable failure on the part of Americans to drag enough judges, politicians, and news broadcasters out and hang them from the nearest lamppost), and the Chris Reeve knife that had saved my life the very day I’d bought it, I felt well-equipped to face the world.

  Will was complaining over his coffee. “If Williams hadn’t been addressing that political convention, he’d still be my best bet! I’d love to have asked him about his thumbprint on that coin, but if I had, he’d know about it.”

  “A policeman’s lot—” I started to quote Gilbert and Sullivan.

  He responded almost reflexively, “I’m not a policeman.”

  “Sure you are, ossifer,” I argued, just to be difficult. “Aside from various private security outfits like Griswold’s and Forsythe’s, and a tough Civil Liberties Association that keeps an eye on them, the closest LaPorte has to local police is the Greater LaPorte Militia, ably captained by none other than yourself. It’s just that, unlike the cops where you and I hail from, the GLPM, long may it wave, has plenty of competition—something on the order of fourteen militia companies, last time I heard, and several gaggles of armed firefighters, that tend to keep each other honest.”

  Will and I are both from Denver, Colorado, U.S.A., but—in a universe that offers infinite alternatives—not precisely the same Denver, Colorado, U.S.A. Fifteen years younger, twenty pounds lighter, and somewhat more intense most of the time, Will isn’t exactly certain how he got to the Confederacy. Apparently he suffered some mortal stress Stateside, in connection with his personal life or his job as a Burglary Division detective, which he still can’t or won’t talk about. He’ll only say he woke up one sunny morning in an alternate world. This alternate world. Scientists who invented the broach—Ooloorie, Deejay, a handful of others like Fred May—and familiar with the relevant physics, are reluctant to believe a man can cross the ineffable gulf between worlds “by sheer force of personality.” Will’s reaction is, “Pardon me for living.” He found the gulf to be plenty effable, and he’s disinclined to look a gift horse in the mouth. The culture he now calls home is as easygoing about marriage customs as it is about drugs, weapons, and immigration. By what he considers a second miracle, he now finds himself married to a pair of beautiful sisters—Mary-Beth and Frances Kendall—both of whom are pregnant at the moment, a circumstance that seems alternately to delight and embarrass him.

  “And despite our brief, uncharacteristic moment of professional friction back at the Williams hacienda,” I went on reminding him that he was still basically a cop, “I’m damned glad you’re here. I have a case of my own—”

  “The Gable—Lombard thing,” he said with the disbelieving tone I expected. He didn’t think it was important, but it was paying my bills, and I’d given my word.

  “That’s right. And, encumbered as I am by this cast on my poor, twice-broken arm …” (All embarrassment to that, and no delight at all.) “ … I’m shorthanded in more ways than one.”

  He raised an eyebrow. “I don’t know, you seem somehow to have enlisted Lucy’s help.”

  I laughed. “You know, when I first met her back in 1987, she was ‘retired,’ recovering, in fact—with Clarissa’s professional help—from a dose of radiation.”

  He looked a question at me. That kind of thing was rare in the Confederacy, which preferred fusion to the vastly messier fission.
>
  “Acquired in the course of atomically nudging an asteroid to a more convenient location,” I explained. “It damn near killed her, but it was a lucky break for me. Over the years, she’s become something of an advocate for newcomers to the Confederacy, like me to start with, and, lately, the less-helpless inhabitants of the Zone like Max Parker-Frost and his wife.”

  “I see,” he nodded.

  “Lucy,” I went on, “practically jumped at the chance to help me, her old friend Olongo Featherstone-Haugh, his pet storekeepers in the Zone, and immigrants in general, all at the same time. It’s absolutely typical of her that she framed it in the context of wanting my help—and offering to pay me for it!”

  Will laughed. “My favorite writer once characterized Texans as having an attitude that says, ‘You paid for the drinks, I’ll pay for the Cadillacs.’”

  “I think he was my favorite writer, too. I’d say that Lucy Kropotkin is Texas personified.”

  “Somebody talkin’ about me?” Clarissa right behind her, Lucy was headed for the table with boxes in her arms and sacks dangling from her fingers. “Don’t you look at me that way, Win Bear! This is the first chance I’ve had to shop on Earth for months!”

  I shook my head. “I wasn’t looking at you any way, Lucy, honest. I was just curious about what you got.”

  They sat down. “Well, Winnie, I guess you wouldn’t care to see hats, slacks, blouses, or dresses—although you’re bound to enjoy some of the flimsier items Clarissa picked up.” Across the table from me, my lovely wife actually blushed. Lucy began punching commands into the tabletop. “Let’s order something rare an’ drippin’ an’ we’ll show you the real goodies!” I followed her example, ordering myself a steak sandwich.

  Lucy shoved most of her bags into an unoccupied corner of the big, over-upholstered, horseshoe-shaped booth we occupied and opened one of the boxes, a pink one, apparently from some boutique called “Polite Society.” She pulled out a fantastic object that bore a resemblance to one of those big, pneumatic “Master Blaster” water pistols kids have back in the States, with the cylinders of clashing, brightly colored plastic. This was smaller, breadbox-sized, probably made of titanium and chrome-plated.

  “The latest!” she exclaimed. “A plasma gun, from a new outfit called Borchert and Graham!”

  “Nifty!” Will agreed, reaching to fondle it. “But only forty watts?”

  Lucy snorted. “It’ll put a hole in a brick wall you could throw a dog through!”

  “I’ll remember that,” he promised, “next time I want to throw a dog through a hole in a brick wall. So you’re finally hanging up your old Gabbett-Fairfax?”

  “Don’t even joke about it, Willie! No, I’m takin’ this plasma piece back with me to the Belt. Gonna use it for my car gun.”

  I laughed. Confederates in the Belt operate little spaceships that they think of as their cars. “And what did you get, dear?” Lucy was wrong, I not only enjoy looking at clothes Clarissa buys, I like to go shopping with her—a grievous violation of the Husband’s Union Rules, I know.

  “This,” she said, opening another box from Polite Society. Inside lay a plain metal cylinder that looked suspiciously like what you’re not supposed to call a pistol silencer. “It’s an extender,” she said, “for my Webley. More coils—it doubles the power and range. We’re out in the country so much these days, I thought it might come in handy.” She drew her pistol and began screwing the device onto the muzzle, effectively doubling the barrel length.

  Suddenly we became aware of a heated discussion at the table closest to our booth. Apparently a middle-aged patron and his wife had summoned the owner/manager, my old friend Mr. Meep, himself.

  A word about Meep: he’s a chimpanzee nearly as old as Lucy, with what seems to be thousands of relatives whom he employs at restaurants of all kinds—Mexican, Chinese, Zulu—all over the Confederacy, the planet, and now, even on the asteroid Ceres. Before we know it, he’ll be putting his restaurants on starships and boiling lobsters or flipping burgers all over the galaxy. Usually, Meep had his wrist voice synthesizer adjusted to mimic a foreign accent appropriate to whatever restaurant he was supervising. This afternoon, however, he was all business and the Queen’s English.

  “May I help you in some way, sir?” he said.

  “This flagrant display of firearms is unthinkable!” wailed the patron. “Intolerable!” The man, obviously a recent immigrant, pointed at the four of us, his wife hmmphing along in all the right places.

  “Especially,” she volunteered, “in the light of all these recent senseless, violent tragedies!”

  “My wife and I are deeply offended, and demand that you—”

  “That I what?” the chimpanzee asked. “Tell them they can’t show off purchases they’ve just made in this mall? Make a fool of myself ordering them to put their guns away? Ask them to leave—depriving myself of income—or even die, trying to take their guns away?”

  “You could at least—”

  “Mister, ma‘am, there isn’t a thing I’d do about it if I could. As for the ‘recent tragedies,’ their right to own and carry doesn’t have anything to do with somebody else’s crimes! Things may be different where you came from, but people here have rights that are inalienable! You might as well complain about their smoking!” He left them with a shrug of dismissal. At our table we politely refrained from falling on the floor and laughing ourselves into tears. The couple got up and moved to a table farther away from bad old us. We finished ordering our food in person from Mr. Meep, himself.

  He wanted to see Lucy’s new plasma gun, too.

  I’D PUT IT off. Sooner or later, however, I knew there was no way to avoid it. I had to go to the bathroom. I excused myself and plodded across the table-filled room toward my destination, dreading having to fool with my fly and other related appurtenances with a cast on my arm. On the other hand, it wasn’t anything I felt like asking for help with, even from Clarissa. A man’s gotta go where a man’s gotta go.

  The door swung. Nobody else was in the room. The Muzak was playing “You Go to My Head.” Confederate public facilities are usually pretty plush—three seashells, and everything that went with them—and there would be no exception at Mr. Meep’s. But I had put it off, and now I had no time or inclination to appreciate the amenities. I found a urinal—they put them in stalls here—performed the necessary preparations feeling grateful that it was my left arm that didn’t work, and waited for nature to take its course. A’Com pad fastened to the wall above the porcelain was carrying a run-down of the lineup for today’s Patriots game. I asked it to focus a little farther away for my middle-aged eyes—about a yard—and it obeyed. Good news: Roger “Killer” Culver, the Patriots batting star was—

  Suddenly, I felt a shadow looming over me from behind. I guess I’d forgotten to latch the stall door. “Turn around slowly,” hissed an appropriately sinister voice, “if you know what’s good for you!”

  Maybe I’m too old to get scared like I used to when I was younger—my adrenaline gland wearing out or something. Maybe it was the car nonaccident I’d survived today. In any case I was more pissed (no pun intended) than frightened. I said, “If I turn around, buckethead, I’ll be peeing on your knees. What the hell do you want?” Ignoring what had now become old business, I let my hand creep toward my sling.

  He hissed, “I want you to mind your own fucking business, Bear,” neatly identifying himself as an immigrant. Confederates use sex-free swear words, like I said. In the not-quite-matte surface of the’Com pad, I saw him raise an arm. “I’m here to give you a warning!”

  Embarrassingly exposed or not, I whirled as I drew my .41, shoving it into his face as I thumbed the hammer back. “Drop that arm slowly, blueback, or I’ll clear your nasal passages right through the back of your neck!”

  To my surprise, it was the little old “lady” who’d taken a shot at me in the Zone, heavily veiled under a wide-brimmed hat, half a head taller than me, holding a fire extinguisher up around the
ceiling. I heard “her” gulp at the sight of my big black revolver with its gaping muzzle. “She” took two steps back and lowered her weapon, setting it gently on the sink.

  “Now take off the hat,” I commanded, “and let’s see who you are!”

  At that exact moment, the jerk who’d complained about Lucy’s new plasma gun pushed the door aside, took one look at the very tall lady I was with, the drawn revolver, and the object sticking out of my pants, and froze. Hell, I wouldn’t have been able to figure out what was going on, either. Before he could overcome his shock and confusion, the “lady” pushed out past him and was gone.

  Talk about a policeman’s lot. I couldn’t very well pursue “her” without lowering the sixgun’s hammer, pushing the .41 back into my sling, rearranging certain private attachments, and zipping up, all with one arm in a cast. On top of everything else, I’d wet the front of my pants. Thank heavens for serapes.

  “Goddamn it,” I complained to the frozen guy as I struggled with my trousers, “a hundred times I’ve told her, Mother, don’t follow me into the men’s room!”

  By the time I got back into the restaurant, of course, the “lady” had vanished.

  “WINNIE,” LUCY WAS telling me, having finished her white wine and calamari, “every political philosophy comes with its own unique set of reasonable-soundin’ excuses for deprivin’ individuals of their life, liberty, and property. That’s what politics is about: acquirin’ enough power t’coercively redistribute wealth from its creators to those who won’t or can’t earn it.”

  “Didn’t we have this conversation nine years ago, Lucy?” I’d told them—with certain editorial omissions—all about my adventure in bathroomland. Will hadn’t believed me, thinking it was some elaborate joke. I reminded him of the hole in my cloak. He reminded himself that he knew me. This wasn’t my kind of joke. (I’m the “bag of poop on your doorstep, light the top, ring the bell, and run” type. Like I said, a simple, no-nonsense sort of guy who finds something that works and sticks with it.)