Sewer, Gas and Electric

by Matt Ruff

  “So now what I’m thinking is, the Nigeria landfill wasn’t your idea at all, it was your partner’s. And I’m also thinking—this is the funny part—that maybe he hadn’t gotten around to telling you about it before he died. Wouldn’t that be a joke? Lexa finds out about the landfill before you do, and when she contacts you for a statement you’re so surprised that you don’t bother telling her that Christian Gomez kept the project a secret, that this is the first you’ve heard of it. Then you hear that I’m going to come down and stage a riot on your doorstep, and you still don’t say anything, despite the fact that you’re probably not interested enough in Gomez’s plan to carry it through.”

  “Supposing,” Gant said, “that things did sort of happen that way. I’m not saying that they did, but just suppose. Would it be a big deal to you?”

  “Oh no,” said Joan. “Not at all, Harry. I think it’s great that I got half a million people up in arms to stop a land rape that wasn’t even going to happen in the first place. Wasted effort is my specialty.”

  “Well, but was the effort wasted?”

  “You tell me, Harry. Were you going to open the damn landfill or weren’t you?”

  “Honestly speaking, no. But listen, Joan—”

  “Then why didn’t you just tell Lexa before she broke the story? When she called you, you—”

  “Now come on, Joan, that’s not fair. I’m not the one who rifled Christian’s briefcase before he was even pronounced dead. It’s not my responsibility to stop you from jumping to conclusions based on stolen information that I don’t have access to myself.”

  “All right, true, but Harry—”

  “What happened was, I was away at the Atlanta morgue when Lexa first called. By the time I got back to her—I had other things on my mind, so it took a while—by that time she’d already called you and set the buildup for the protest march in motion. So there I was on the phone with her, and she was telling me, first, that Christian had been contemplating a major business move without my knowledge, and second, that Joan Fine was planning to picket. Which is a lot to absorb all at once.”

  “All right,” Joan repeated, somewhat defensively, “I can understand why you didn’t say anything at first. But you had a month, more than a month, to set the record straight before the protest.”

  “Joan, who would have believed me? Self-interested corporate leader claims he knows nothing about his own company’s plan to open a gigantic landfill in Nigeria: ‘Africorp Division? Billions of dollars in potential profit? Never heard of it . . .’ Hell, even I wouldn’t buy that. And if I were an environmentalist instead of an industrialist, I’m sure I’d go all out to nail the bastard despite his denials. So I had to come up with a crisis-management strategy for a situation in which the plain truth was useless, and that’s when I got my idea . . .”

  “Oh God. Here we go, another neat idea.”

  “Just hear me out, Joan. I came all this way with you without complaining, so just have another cigarette and shut up long enough to let me finish, OK? Now Christian and I had already been discussing reorganizing the corporation; we hadn’t agreed at all on how to go about it, but with the success of the Automatic Servant, with our operations expanding month by month to meet increasing demand, we both recognized the need for a new management structure to facilitate Gant Industries’ growth. Christian’s death left the entire reorganization up to me.

  “Now I’ll be the first to admit that I’m unusual as corporation presidents go. I don’t care much about profit; money’s only really important to me in terms of the new projects it lets me invest in. One reason I never wanted stockholders is that they do care about profit, generally, and having to answer to their concerns would distract me from my own goals . . .”

  “Building really tall buildings, for instance,” Joan said.

  “Right. But at the same time I realize that there are practical considerations. You can’t just leave the money issue to your finance department with no guidance and expect them to do a great job; if you’re going to delegate, you have to delegate responsibly. Christian was always the one who kept his eye on the balance sheet, who nagged me about stuff like cash flow when I wasn’t paying enough attention, which was most of the time. With him gone I knew I was going to have to find a good accountant, a creative accountant, to head up finance and be my new money-conscience.

  “Well, just as I was about to start the reorganizing, I found out from Lexa Thatcher that you all were coming down from New England to stage a protest against Christian’s landfill. And whatever else went through my mind at that moment, I have to admit it made me feel good to know that somebody cared that much about Africa. About nature. Because I like this”—he gestured at the Wilderness surrounding them—“I’m glad it’s being preserved, but for myself, left to my own devices, I’d never have the patience or the will to take care of it. The environment’s like money—I know it matters but I just can’t stay excited about it.”

  “So you’ve decided to delegate,” Joan concluded. “To me.”

  “To you,” Harry agreed. “That’s why I staged my surrender the way I did, to focus attention on you and your cause, to give you that mandate in the eyes of the media. Now you not only have the drive and determination that I want working for Gant, you have public credibility as well. I thought that might be useful to you.”

  Joan shook her head in disbelief. “I’ll grant you one thing, Harry,” she said. “You aren’t totally stupid. You’re right, staging your surrender for CNN did give me credibility. The question is, why should I squander that credibility by becoming your PR flack? I can nag you about Gant environmental policy just as effectively off your payroll as on.”

  “Resources, though,” Gant said. “Don’t forget those. You’ll never have the same resource base working as an independent as you would working for me. And there’s another factor you shouldn’t forget: the Automatic Servant itself. I own the patent.”

  “So?”

  “Well think about it, Joan. All those companies pouring into the Free-Trade Zone right now—who do you think they’re turning to to provide the work force for their new petroleum, coal, and gas fields?” Gant tapped his chest. “Me. I’ve got the cheapest source of industrial labor on the planet right now, which translates into a lot of leverage. You could use that leverage to influence how the African continent is treated while its assets are being developed.”

  “Extortion,” Joan marveled. “You’re talking about extorting other corporations.”

  “I’m talking about capitalism in action. Supply and demand: we supply the Servants, we get to make demands. Granted that some of the demands may be a bit unorthodox, but it’s still just business. And it’ll be a lot more effective than any direct-action campaign you could put together with Greenpeace or the Nader groups.” Once more he waved his hand at the forested valley and the lake spread out below them. “Working for Gant Industries, you could see to it that Wilderness Zones like this are set up all over Africa; you could safeguard a hundred times the acreage that was at stake in the Nigeria Landfill Project. And that’s just one possibility.”

  “You’re the devil, Harry,” Joan said. “You know that, don’t you? What makes you think you have the right to make bargains about Africa’s future?”

  “Well it seems to me I could ask you the same question, Joan; from the look of things, your last ancestor left Africa about the same time mine did. But honestly, I don’t see that rights have anything to do with it. I’ve got power, is all, and I’m willing to share it with you, pretty much for free.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m not evil, that’s why. I may be the devil, but I’m not evil. I don’t want to hurt the environment, but I also don’t want to be in a position where I have to think about it too much, because I know in the long run I won’t think about it.”

  “But you will think about it, Harry; if I take this job, you will. That wasn’t just bullshit, what you said to the cameras about me making you regret eve
r having hired me. You have no idea yet what a pain in the ass I can be in a position of authority.”

  “Oh,” said Gant, “I think I have some idea. That’s what’s going to make us a good team, despite our differences: we’re a match for each other’s stubbornness. Are you going to take the job?”

  Joan shrugged. “I don’t know yet,” she said, though of course she did know, and so did Harry. “Tomorrow morning we’ll go down to the lake, I’ll show you how to fish barehanded, or at least how to fall in the water. We’ll take some other hikes, too. When we get back to civilization, that’s when I’ll give you my answer.”

  “Good,” Gant said, and smiled. “This is going to be a neat partnership, Joan, you’ll see.”

  “Doubtful,” Joan replied. “Extremely doubtful. It’d be a first, a deal with the devil turning out neat. Something tells me I’m going to end up owing a lot of penance before this is over.”

  2023: A Gingerbread House

  Atlantic City’s sole monument to Donald Trump was a row of memorial slot machines in the Lightning Transit rail terminal. Seven in all, they stood against a wall bracketed by two doors marked MEN and WOMEN; above them, framed, was a series of newspaper headlines pinpointing key moments in Trump’s ultimate downfall, including the bulldozing of the Taj Mahal casino complex and Trump’s own death in a Cape Canaveral launch-pad fire, which had ended forever his dream of being the first Martian billionaire (T-MINUS TRUMP! the New York Post obituated, over a full-color photo of the exploding shuttlecraft).

  “Quite a commemoration,” observed Kite. “I take it no one in town cried much at the funeral.”

  “I don’t think they gave him a funeral,” said Joan. “Just don’t put any money in those slots. They’re designed to only give back one percent of what they take in, and the top jackpot never comes up. It’s the worst gamble in the city.”

  “Is that part of the memorial?”

  “Yes.”

  They left the terminal and went out onto the boardwalk to have a smoke. On the beach, a Public Works crew in safety suits gathered up a macramé of blood bags and surgical tubing left behind by the receding tide. “Ah, the seashore,” said Kite, flicking ashes in the sand. “Where did you say this John Hoover’s house is?”

  Joan was consulting a map on the center page of a visitor’s guide. “Outside the city proper, looks like. Let’s get a cab.”

  They hailed an Electric Jitney. The driver looked up the destination on a map of his own and quoted an outrageous fare, which Joan agreed to pay; the breeze off the ocean was beginning to smell familiar, and she did not want to be reminded of Manhattan’s effluvia just now.

  The drive to Hoover’s took ten minutes. At the entrance to a tract-housing subdivision west of downtown someone had spray-painted a message on a leaning billboard: THE MEEK SHALL INHERIT THE EARTH. THEY ARE TOO WEAK TO REFUSE. The neighborhood beyond this sign had the evacuated feel of a Love Canal or a Plessy Falls; there were very few cars parked on the street and no pedestrians at all. Nothing living, actually; Kite became alarmed as she realized that all the lawns were dead, not just brown but dead, and all the trees bare and gray, with no drifts or piles of windblown autumn leaves anywhere to be seen.

  “Are you sure this is the right place?” she asked.

  “This is it,” replied Joan. “I’ve been watching the street signs.”

  “Hmm.”

  John Hoover’s house was . . . different. “Easy to spot,” remarked the Jitney driver, as he took Joan’s money. He didn’t ask if they wanted him to wait; no sooner had they alighted than the cab pulled away with a squeal of tires, choosing the quickest route out of the neighborhood.

  “Hansel and Gretel,” said Joan.

  “A gingerbread house,” Kite agreed. She stepped up to the front gate and grasped an upright of the white picket fence that surrounded Hoover’s property, expecting the coarse grain of whitewashed wood; both fence and gate were actually molded plastic. “Do you hear any birds singing, Joan? Any gulls?”

  “No. Not since we left the beach. You think he decorated this place himself?”

  “It might explain why the neighbors left.”

  John Hoover’s lawn was green, but of a shade and texture unknown in nature. A multicolored gravel walk led from the gate to a house that did indeed look as if it were made of frosted gingerbread. Mocha weatherproof siding had been iced with lilac window trim and shutters, darker lavender door frame and stoop, and a pink sugar-glaze roof. The front door was a glossy chocolate rectangle, the bright chimney a cherry; and just inside the picket fence, a red-and-white candy cane post supported a vanilla cream mailbox, on which the name JOHN E. HOOVER was spelled out in a cursive script that might have been squeezed from a tube. The only thing missing was a set of gingerbread children for the lawn, but who knew, maybe they’d already been eaten.

  “Well,” said Kite, pushing open the gate, “let’s ring the bell.” Joan followed her in; she bent to examine the grass and discovered that it was Astro-Turf, which made sense. “Hey Kite—” she began, then broke off, because a Hound had appeared around the corner of the house.

  The Hound was Mechanical, not Electric. A V-6 gasoline engine growled in its cast-iron chassis, and a plume of exhaust jetted from beneath the steel brush that served it for a tail. The Hound’s hazard-light eyes flashed amber as it padded towards them, but what riveted Joan’s attention was the chrome bear trap mounted where the teeth would go on a regular watchdog. “Hey Kite,” she repeated, and Kite, finger poised over the doorbell, said: “I see it.”

  The Hound came to an abrupt halt and eased back on its haunches, idling. From behind the house, a man’s voice called out: “Hello, Miss Fine! Come on around, and bring your friend. Don’t worry about Old Tolson, he won’t bite until I tell him to!”

  Old Tolson thumped his tail on the ‘Turf; his “mouth” opened and shut with a snap. Not reassured, Kite gripped the butt of the revolver beneath her coat as she and Joan skirted past the beast.

  John Hoover’s backyard was also different. Here the synthetic lawn was interrupted by what might have been a carp pond; but the pond was encircled by fake palm trees, and an Electric Hippopotamus stood motionless at the water’s edge. Hoover, a round-faced balding man in a dapper gray smock, had opened a panel in the Hippo’s side and was tinkering with its innards. He turned and waved hello as the women approached but did not stop what he was doing.

  “It’s on the table, Miss Fine,” Hoover said.

  “What?”

  “What you’ve come here for.” Hoover gestured with a tool that seemed to be some hybrid form of wrench. “It’s on the table.”

  A picnic table had been set up beneath one of the fake palms. On it Joan could see a box and a hurricane lantern. “I don’t understand,” she said. “Harry—that is, Mr. Gant—told me that you’d be willing to talk to us about the behavioral inhibitors on the Automatic Servant.”

  Hoover leaned forward into the Hippo, almost to the point of falling inside; for a minute only his chunky buttocks and legs were visible. He grunted; there was a clank of metal against metal and a sound like a rusty hinge being forced. The Hippo’s ears flattened back against its skull.

  “You’re investigating the death of that Wall Street guy, right?” Hoover asked, when his head and torso had reappeared. He mopped his brow theatrically with a rag, though his exertions did not appear to have raised a drop of sweat. “Amberson Teaneck?”

  “That’s right,” Joan said.

  “And you want to know if it was an android that killed him?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if so, who rewired the android to allow it to do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And if so, why?”

  “That’s right.”

  “It’s a secret.” Hoover pressed a finger to his lips and smiled. “I love secrets, Miss Fine, all kinds of secrets; in my house I have filing cabinets chock-full of secrets.” He gestured again with the wrench-tool. “Everything you need to unrav
el this particular secret is right over there.”

  Kite had lifted the box from the table; once again what appeared to be made of wood turned out to be plastic, a breadloaf-sized mahogany polymer brick, its lid inlaid with a complex mosaic of interlocking slides and tabs. “A puzzle box,” Kite said. “My old friend Lao had one of these to store his valuables. Not that he ever had valuables.”

  “That’s right, a puzzle box,” said John Hoover. “Get that open and you’ll be well on your way to solving the mystery.”

  Joan studied him. “Do you know who killed Teaneck?”

  Hoover wagged a finger at her. “That would be telling,” he said. “But you have to figure it out yourself, Miss Fine. I’m giving you too many clues as it is.”

  “Look at this, Joan.” Kite handed her the hurricane lantern, which was Electric and had a woman inside of it. A tiny hologram woman, an Electric Lamp genie whom Joan, oddly enough, recognized. Fiercely intelligent, probing dark eyes; pageboy haircut framing East European features; shapely legs accentuated by heels and a black gown that left one shoulder bare; swirling black cape; long, black cigarette holder, poised for inhaling; golden dollar-sign pendant pinned above the heart. . .

  “Ayn Rand,” Joan said, and the genie came to life. Fairy lips pursed around the cigarette holder’s stem, then blew out a perfect smoke ring that dissipated as it reached the periphery of the lamp globe.

  “How do you do, Miss Fine,” the genie said. “I have heard of you.” Rand’s Russian immigrant voice was gruff and thickly accented: I haf heard of you. She added, more than a little reproachfully: “Miss Joan Fine, formerly Joan Gant, wife and partner to one of the most brilliant creative minds in America. Currently reduced to the level of a whim-worshipping, muscle-mystic altruist.”

  Joan wasn’t sure what to say to this. Hoover’s imminent departure spared her composing a response. The technician had closed the panel in the Hippo’s side and was wiping his hands on his smock.

  “Wait,” Joan said. “Where are you going?”