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The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2018 by Ben H. Winters
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ISBN 978-0-316-50541-3
LCCN 2018941036
Contents
Cover
Disclaimer
Title Page
Copyright
Also by Ben H. Winters
Dedication
Part One Attestation:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Commencement:
7.
8.
Main text:
9.
10.
11.
12.
13.
14.
15.
16.
17.
18.
Main text (cont.):
19.
Part Two 20.
21.
22.
Coda (setup for sequel):
23.
Part Three 24.
25.
26.
Chapter
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Ben H. Winters
Underground Airlines
The Last Policeman Trilogy
The Last Policeman
Countdown City
World of Trouble
Bedbugs
Android Karenina
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
For Irwin Hyman
who built the world he wanted to live in
Part One
Future (n.), usually the future: the set of possible events which are neither happening nor have happened but which may happen, including those possible events which will happen, but which are not yet distinguishable from the far greater group which will not. [nota bene: avoid where possible].
—The Everyday Citizen’s Dictionary, 43rd edition, the Golden State Publishing Arm
Attestation:
This is a novel.
All of the words of it are true.
The extraordinary events detailed herein were either experienced firsthand by the author or, when relayed second- or thirdhand, have been double-checked (triple-, where possible), verified, and certified by the relevant departments, and substantiated through the reading of testimony, examination of material evidence, and review of relevant reality. All of the supporting documents and extant evidence are available upon request in the appropriate offices; physical addresses are included as an appendix.
This is a novel. All of these events occurred as described. It’s all on the Record.
Stipulation:
Though the author is a character in the events that follow, he claims no part of the glory it reflects. All glory belongs to the heroic Speculator, Mr. Ratesic, whose perseverance and heroism are on display throughout.
This author is loath to resort to set phrases like “He made the ultimate sacrifice in service to the State,” conscious as he is of the care we all must take not to fumble by cliché into accidental lies. But in this case, there can be no other conclusion. In service to the State, Mr. Ratesic made the ultimate sacrifice.
Willingly, and conscious of mounting dangers to his person, and despite numerous opportunities to save himself, he continued unflinching in his brave pursuit of the wickedness he had discovered, and ultimately was successful in foiling a grave assault upon the State—all at the hazard of his own health and safety.
And so, though the primary purpose of this novel is the same as that of all other novels, to entertain the mind and excite the spirit, in this case there is a deeper truth, one level down: this work is meant to serve as a legacy to Mr. Ratesic, the hero of its pages. It is a testament to him, and I hope it can serve as an inspiration not only to his fellows in Service, but to all our citizenry. Let this novel stand like a statue of Mr. Ratesic, a tribute to as well as a reminder of the lengths that are sometimes necessary to hold up the several bulwarks of the State, and a reminder of what is at stake if they should fall.
1.
Somebody’s telling lies in here, and it’s making it hard to eat.
In a perfect world, a man should be able to sit down at a favorite spot and eat his breakfast without the weight of professional obligation coming down on him, ruining his morning, pulling him right into the thick of it before he can so much as get a good hot sip of coffee.
But the world has never been accused of being perfect, has it, and so here we are and here is what actually happens—here is reality. No sooner has Honey the waitress slid my steaming breakfast plate down in front of me, right next to a piping hot cup of mountain-grown, than I catch a small dissonance in the air—the barest ripple, the softest whisper—but it can’t be ignored. My body won’t let me ignore it. The burble catches in my throat, my eyes prick with tears, and I put down my fork and say “Shit.”
The dissonance is close but not that close. It’s not at the booth directly behind me, where an old man and his old wife are discussing in their old slow voices the quality of their oatmeal: she thinks it’s worse than it used to be, he thinks it’s better, but both are speaking honestly.
They are both talking true, but someone in here is not.
I’m definitely too conscious of it, too aware to just carry on eating my chicken and waffles, which is a real shame, because this is Terry’s we’re talking about, this is fried chicken and waffles, and although there are three chicken-and-waffle chains in the city, Terry’s is in my veteran estimation by far the best, and the Pico-Robertson Terry’s is the best of all the Terry’s locations.
I get up. I push away my plate, lay down today’s copy of Trusted Authority, and heave my weight up out of the banquette and just stand still, very still, in the middle of the restaurant, rummaging for a source. Lot of people talking in here so it’s gonna take me a minute. Terry’s is crowded all the time, but most especially at breakfast time, and it’s breakfast time now, peak of the a.m. rush, every booth and table jammed, maybe forty or forty-five boisterous conversations overlapping, blending in with the tinny tingtang of the silverware, the sizzle of the griddle, a radio playing boisterous piano jazz, even the slow whoosh of the overhead fans, their wide beveled blades slowly pushing the July air around in circles.
I clos
e my eyes, concentrate, try to find the sound among the sounds. Tease through the conversations for the one I’m after: Did you hear what Louis said about Albert… and I am so sick of all this… and You’re kidding me, you are fucking kidding me, you have got to try this. Somewhere in this atmosphere, cluttered with chatter, someone’s dissembling in a steady stream, a steady diffusion of false statements like an open gas line. I step away from my back-corner booth, one step toward the center of the restaurant, steal a sad glance back at my plate. The chicken is good, but it’s really the waffles that have to be tasted to be believed. They are cold now. And soon, so, too, the chicken.
I take another slow step forward, tuning in the various conversations, one by one. A couple of sharply dressed businessmen, both of them leaning so far forward their heads are almost touching—“There is money to be made here, Paul, real money…”—and then Paul in gruff dissent: “The last time you told me that…” Whatever the details of the deal, neither of them is lying about it. There’s a couple young folk seated across from each other, each of them leafing through a copy of Trusted Authority, not talking at all.
At the big center table, there’s a funny, flirty waitress I know whose name is Ava, and she’s delivering an encomium to today’s special—a three-egg omelet, with jalapeños sliced into it along with red and green peppers—and I don’t know if it’s really good or not, but I can tell you that Ava really thinks it is, because from my position—I’m now standing near the dead center of the main dining room—I can hear every word of her testimony about the special and it doesn’t trouble me, it slides past like warm water. Whether the three-egg omelet is tasty or not, Ava believes it to be so.
So—
—there. There.
My eyes open back up, quick and completely.
At a table along the right-side wall, underneath the TV, are three people in a tense conversation, their voices urgent and streaked with emotion. They’re talking over each other, exchanging accusations, interrupting, apologizing, going round and round. One is a woman of late middle age, a pretty face but exhausted, eyes deep set and dark, freckles on her nose, hair thick and curly, some of it gray. She’s sharing the booth with a pair of broad-shouldered young men, both in ball caps, both sharing the woman’s robust good looks and black eyes. Two sons. A mom and her two grown children right in the middle of some kind of emotional set-to, talking fast, talking over each other, talking at once, and—ah, the air is rolling now, the dissonance is a shimmer on the scene—definitely one of them is lying. At least one.
“I’m not trying to blame anybody. If anything, I blame myself—”
“Mom, stop it. Seriously, stop. That is the last—”
“Eddie, give her a second. Give her a second to talk.”
“You’re interrupting me.”
“You’re interrupting her—”
“Hi. Hello. Excuse me.” I step closer. I jam my hands into my pockets. “The Earth is in orbit around the sun.”
There’s a voice I use in situations like this: cool and calm, firm and definitive, authoritative but not aggressive. It gets the result I want: everybody draws down to a hush. Everybody looks at me at once. It's like I’ve pulled a curtain around the four of us, here at this table along the wall.
“Hello,” says the woman. “And the Moon is in orbit around the Earth.”
“Always has it been.”
“Always shall it be.”
She takes a deep breath. Keeps her eyes on mine. The sons glance at each other.
“How are you folks doing this morning?”
“We’re okay. We’re just fine.”
That’s one of the two boys. Now all three of them are looking up at me with the same stunned expression, me looming over them like a dark planet blocking the sun.
“I’m sorry to bother you folks, but I overheard your conversation.”
The restaurant has gone quiet. People are looking at us, nudging each other—Look. The old man and his old wife have set down their spoons and are watching, waiting to see what happens. I take out my Day Book, take out my pen, click it open. The mom blinks, and her lips are pursed and there is emotion in her eyes, a little fear and a little confusion. It’s a strange feeling, sometimes, to be seen the way I know that I am seen—the way the world reacts to my presence. But it’s part of the job and it helps. You want to have control of a situation. You want to have people focused on you. You want to know that they know that it’s serious.
“I hate to bother you folks. But I was eating my own breakfast just over there—” I point back over to my booth, but all the while I am keeping my eyes carefully on the table, on the three participants in this conversation, making my quiet assessment of who the liar or liars are among them. “And I found that I was troubled by the presence of dishonesty in the atmosphere.”
“What?” says the mother.
“No…” begins one of the sons; the other is just looking down. “That’s…”
I wait a moment, one eyebrow cocked. That’s what? But nobody finishes the sentence.
It’s the mom, the lady, who speaks next. “How do you—why would you say that?”
“It’s not an accusation, ma’am,” I tell her. “It’s not a matter of opinion. It is part of what is Objectively So.”
My voice remains composed, reasonable. You gotta keep these things calm for as long as possible. That’s important. In a moment or two, someone is going to confess, or someone is going to do something stupid. There aren’t any other ways this thing goes.
I smile, but I know that even my smile can at times appear less than friendly. I’m over six two and over 260 pounds—how far over 260 varies depending on (for example) how recently I’ve been to Terry’s. I’m in the unofficial uniform of my service, black suit and black tie, black boots, and a battered pinhole with the brim angled slightly down. My hair is thick and red and I wear a big beard, thick and unkempt, not for any visual effect but because I’m too lazy to shave.
“Can I ask your name, please?”
“Kelly.”
“Your full name, ma’am.”
“Kelly Tarjin. Elizabeth. My middle name is Elizabeth.”
“So Kelly Elizabeth Tarjin?”
“Yeah. Right. Do you want to see my identifications?”
“No, Ms. Tarjin. That’s not necessary.”
I don’t need to see her identifications. Even in the general discomfort I’m feeling over here by the liar’s table, her asseveration of her name doesn’t add to the discordance. Maybe she was lying to the others just now, but she’s not lying to me right now. I can tell. When it’s bad, it gets bad. Two days ago I had a guy on a false claim, a guy begging at 4th and Alameda with a hungry and homeless sign, though he was neither, a guy who then clung to his demonstrable untruths even when contrary evidence was presented, stood there proclaiming and reproclaiming his lies, swearing to them until the air was so thick I felt it way down in my throat, like a clot in a drain.
“These are your sons, Ms. Tarjin?”
“Yes. Todd and Eddie. Edward.”
“Hey,” says one of them. Todd. They’re both looking at me, both of them wary, both of them uncertain. I cough once, into my fist.
“And what are you folks discussing this morning?”
The boys glance at each other. Ms. Tarjin taps one hand on the table, next to her plate.
“Well,” she says finally, and then one of the sons interrupts: “It’s personal.”
I smile. “I’m afraid it’s not anymore.”
I want to keep everybody cool for as long as possible. Keep the situation in neutral. I have other voices I use in other situations.
“Yes, sir. Of course.” That’s Mom, that’s Ms. Tarjin, who is afraid. You can tell she’s afraid. I don’t want her to be afraid, I don’t want anyone to be afraid of me, I’m like anyone else, even though it’s not me she’s afraid of, it’s the clothes and the position, it’s the black pinhole with the felt brim, it’s the boots, the outfit metonymic for th
e whole system of which I am a representative. Still, nobody likes to make other people fearful.
But the atmosphere continues in its roil. It’s here. It’s close. I cough again.
“We were talking about some…some uh…” The woman, the mom, she’s choosing her words carefully. That’s what folks do, with me standing here, all the weight of what I am, me looming like a dark planet. It’s okay. I’m patient. “We were just having a conversation about some medication of mine.”
“Medication.”
“Yes, sir.”
“What kind of medication is that?”
“Dreams—that’s all. For dreams.” She has lowered her voice, as if it were possible for us to speak confidentially. As if everybody in the room weren’t listening by now, customers and waiters gawking, fascinated; as if the place wasn’t bristling, too, with captures—captures in the ceiling fans, captures on the kitchen’s large appliances, the pinhole that constantly captures my own personal POV. The whole world under constant surveillance, everything on the Record, reality in progress. “I take Clarify, that’s all.”
“Oh. Well, that’s all right.”
While I write it in my Day Book, Ms. Tarjin swallows, swallows again. “Dream control, you know. Prescribed. To reduce or—how does it go?—to reduce or eliminate the confusing effects of dreams in my waking life. I have the prescription. Do you—” She glances at her purse, and I shake my head, raise a hand—That’s not necessary. I don’t think she’s lying about being prescribed the dream dampener. The boys, meanwhile, are stock-still, frozen by some combination of protective impulse and fear for their own safety. In another moment, no doubt, I’m gonna know which guy has more of which. Like I said: either someone confesses or someone does something dumb. That’s how it always ends.
“And your supply of Clarify,” I venture, “has it perhaps been coming up a little short?”
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