Sewer, Gas and Electric

by Matt Ruff

  “Here we go again.” Kite bristled, angry at being disbelieved, even by a hologram, after having shared such a memory. “Yes, I’m a hundred and eighty-one years old. What of it?”

  “No human being could live that long.”

  “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  “It’s a logical absurdity.”

  “I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  “You—”

  The phone rang.

  “Pick up,” Kite said, not sorry for the interruption. A speaker clicked on, Lexa Thatcher’s voice coming through fuzzed by static: “Joan?”

  “You’ve reached Girl Friday,” Kite replied. “Your connection is terrible, dear.”

  “Kite! Hi! I know. . . this call is coming to you via a fairly creative route.”

  “Trying to avoid a police trace, are we?”

  “Let’s just say I don’t want to spoil a good vacation spot by letting too many people know where it is. Is Joan around?”

  “Still sleeping, or at least still in bed . . . no, wait, I hear movement down the hall. She should be out presently.”

  “Do you know how her research is coming along?”

  “I’m helping her. Expect top dollar for it, too, if we incriminate anyone interesting. We have a lead, but we’re not sure what it is yet. . .”

  “Morning,” Joan said, shuffling into the kitchenette in her bathrobe. “Anyone got a smoke?”

  “Joan?”

  Joan stared at the phone speaker. “Lexa?”

  “Who is he, Joan?”

  “Who’s who, Lex?”

  “You have the tone in your voice. The one that says, ‘I can’t believe who I just woke up next to, and I’m not sure I can square it with my politics before breakfast, but I’m not actually sorry.’ Who is he? Some Republican you met on the case?”

  “Feeling extra psychic this morning, Lexa?”

  “You’re evading, Joan. He must be either really rich or really conservative. Or both.”

  “Well . . .”

  From down the hall, Harry Gant shouted: “Joan, do you know what I did with my shoes? . . . Oops! Never mind! Found them!”

  Lexa’s laughter crackled through the ether. “Of course,” she said. “You know I was wondering if that would happen.”

  “He showed up around eleven-thirty last night with roses and champagne,” Joan said, “and you’re not obligated to believe this, but we didn’t do anything but lie in bed and talk.”

  “Were we tempted?”

  “We were sorely tempted, at one point. It’s been a while. But we’d only had half a glass of champagne, so we thought we’d better think it over a little longer.” Joan accepted the cigarette Kite offered her. “He’s plotting something, I think; he was bubbling over with that enthusiasm he gets when he has a neat idea in the works. I couldn’t get more than vague hints, but I’d say you better warn the Earth Fund to watch their toes the next couple days.”

  “That’s interesting,” Lexa said. “Last night I got a very un-vague hint on the same subject, from a different source. Did Harry happen to mention Vanna Domingo in connection with this neat idea?”

  “No, but—”

  She stopped as Harry entered, already shaved and dressed for work. “Morning,” he said, waving away Joan’s smoke. “Hello, Ms. Edmonds.”

  Kite nodded, surprised that he’d remembered her name. “Mr. Gant.”

  “Harry Dennis Gant!” Ayn Rand exclaimed. “How wonderful to meet you!”

  Gant regarded the Electric Lamp with raised eyebrows. “What’s this?”

  “Electric House Guest,” Joan said. “Harry Gant, meet philosopher-novelist Ayn Rand.”

  “Nifty!” Gant stooped and tapped the lamp globe with one finger, like a man trying to get the attention of a goldfish. “Hello in there!”

  “Hello out there,” Ayn replied, blushing deeply. “Allow me to say that I am very impressed with your achievements, Mr. Gant. You have a remarkable mind.”

  “Well thank you. I’ve seen all your books. And in fact, there’s a statue of a shrugging Atlas in my new superskyscraper.”

  “Is there really?”

  “My chief architect on the New Babel project, Lonny Matsushida, is one of your biggest fans. The Fountainhead inspired her to get started in the business. She insists on paying homage to you in some way in every building she designs.”

  “You must introduce me to her! I—”

  “Hey, puzzle box!” Straightening up, Gant had spied the plastic brick in the Stone Monk’s hands. “We make those, you know.”

  “You do?” said Joan. “Since when?”

  “Same folks who helped put together that holographic teaching tool you saw in my office yesterday manufacture a whole line of games and novelties. I bought them out.” Stepping over to the table, he told the Stone Monk: “You’ve almost got it. Here, try this. . . .” He reached down and moved a single slide; something in the box clicked, and the lid came loose. “Easy when you know how.”

  “I’ll be damned,” said Kite.

  “I’ve got to go, Joan,” Gant said. He kissed his ex-wife on the cheek, careful to avoid the burning tip of the cigarette. “Call me tonight, OK?”

  “What are you doing today that’s got you in such a rush, Harry?”

  “Typical scheming oppressive capitalist stuff.” He winked. “You’ll hear about it on CNN, don’t worry.”

  “Will I?”

  “You bet. So long, Ms. Edmonds, Ms. Rand. Joan.”

  He left. “So?” said Lexa.

  “He’s a genius,” Ayn Rand pronounced. “If somewhat abrupt.”

  “It looks as though we have several leads,” added Kite, lifting the lid of the puzzle box.

  “Let’s hear them.”

  Kite removed the box’s contents one item at a time, describing each in turn: “To start with, we have a blue linen napkin, embroidered with the number 33. . . . A videocassette, stamped ‘Betamax format,’ also with the number 33. . . . One green rubber balloon, commemorating the tenth anniversary of the opening of Euro Disney in Paris, France. . . . And finally . . . hmm. That’s interesting. I haven’t seen one of these in a quite a while.” She held up a plastic cartridge of a kind Joan didn’t recognize. Like the napkin and the videocassette, it was labeled with the number 33. A second label advised: SOUNDTRACK.

  “What is it?” Lexa asked.

  “An eight-track tape,” Kite said, “unless I’m mistaken. An old recording medium, for automobile stereos. This could be a problem, you know. They stopped making these almost half a century ago. I doubt even an antique store would still carry the requisite player. We may have to go to a technology museum.”

  “I know somebody who could probably whip up a player for you.”

  “No need,” said Joan. “I know somebody who already owns an eight-track tape player. And a VCR that can handle Betamax.”

  “Who?”

  “Jerry Gant.”

  “Harry’s father? The schoolteacher?”

  “Harry’s father,” Joan agreed. She crushed out her cigarette. “The history teacher.”

  “Hmm,” said Kite. “The plot thickens.”

  13

  Soon the FBI will have a Thousand Most Wanted List. Our heroes will be hunted like beasts in the jungle.

  —Abbie Hoffman, Steal This Book

  39° 17’ N, 72° 00’ W

  “It’s a gravesite,” Philo said.

  “Potentially,” Lexa agreed. “I checked a marine atlas: these coordinates are for a patch of ocean over the Hudson Canyon. The water’s over a mile deep. It’s also a red zone for mutant sea-life sightings, which means the area is closed to commercial traffic. So if you have to abandon ship, there won’t be anyone coming by to pick you up.”

  “No, but what I mean is, it’s literally a gravesite.”

  They were alone in the Robbins Reef Lighthouse. Lexa had finished her call to Joan some ten minutes before, and now she and Philo sat cross-legged on the futon, facing each other, cloake
d in blankets and nothing else, with nothing between them but a photograph that had been hand-delivered the night before. Lexa had driven into New Bedford-Stuyvesant to pick up some things, and when she’d returned to the car she’d found the photo tucked under Betsy’s windshield wiper.

  “Not the feds this time,” Betsy Ross had said. “Guy in a Mets blazer. Took me a while to I.D., but he’s an e-mail clerk at Gant Public Opinion, gopher for Vanna Domingo.”

  The photograph was a group portrait of six skinny, long-tailed primates. Lemurs were a popular subject in extinct-animal picture catalogs, but these lemurs had been posed around a propped-up copy of the current Long Distance Call, the headline and date crisply in focus. A brief message had been laserscripted across the back of the photo:

  RING-TAILED LEMURS (LEMUR CATTA)

  CAN’T SWIM & REQUIRE ASSISTANCE

  THURSDAY PM AT 39° 17’ N 72° 00’ W

  TELL YOUR FRIENDS

  “As challenges go,” said Philo, “it’s not very subtle. Thirty-nine seventeen north by seventy-two west—that’s where Paul Watson went down with the Sea Shepherd.”

  “Watson?” Lexa took a moment to place the name. “Oh . . .”

  “My predecessor in eco-piracy. You remember: the Greenpeace dropout who played chicken with the Soviet Navy.”

  “The one who was beaten up and nearly drowned by Canadian seal hunters,” said Lexa. “The one whose boat was almost shelled by a Portuguese destroyer.”

  “Right,” said Philo. “That guy. His last mission was an attempt to stop a toxics dumping scam run by the Mafia. The Gambino family had a container ship called Black Maria that would haul contraband waste out to the edge of the continental shelf. 39° 17’ N, 72° 00’ W is where Watson and Sea Shepherd tried to capture the Maria. Neither ship was ever seen again; the crew of the U.S. Navy’s John Hancock heard explosions and saw smoke on the horizon, but by the time their search helicopters got to the scene there was nothing left but debris. Best guess as to what happened is that the Maria was a lot better armed than Watson expected, and he kamikazied when he realized he couldn’t escape.”

  “Lovely,” said Lexa. “Wonderful.”

  “We can conclude from this,” said Philo, “that Vanna Domingo is not inviting me to a party.”

  “She’s inviting you to commit ritual suicide,” Lexa said. “With the lemurs as bait.”

  Philo nodded. “The question is, what’s she going to have waiting for me out there? A tin can full of Sicilians?”

  “It’ll be military. If she can swing enough money to do it, she won’t screw around with half measures. Surplus sub-killer, something economical but deadly. A rental, maybe. As for the crew, you’ve pissed off enough exnavy personnel that she’s probably got a glut of volunteers.”

  “Mercenaries. I can’t believe Harry Gant would allow that.”

  “He wouldn’t have to. The comptroller of public opinion has plenty of autonomy. Joan used to pull all sorts of things without Harry knowing.”

  “But what Gant just said on the phone . . .”

  “It isn’t necessarily the same scheme. Harry may be running an independent operation against you. Or maybe Vanna’s added a few wrinkles that he doesn’t know about.”

  “And Vanna Domingo is really that ruthless in her dedication to the corporation?”

  “This is more like self-defense, I think. Something to do with the Pandemic. I don’t know the whole story, but she was homeless for years, and—”

  “So was I,” said Philo. “But I don’t kill people. I hold them up to ridicule, I break their toys, but I don’t kill them. Not even in self-defense.”

  Lexa took his hand. “I know that,” she said. “And Vanna knows it too, Philo. If she knows enough to send a message to you through me, she also knows you won’t resort to deadly force, even against a military vessel. And she knows you won’t be able to resist trying to save those lemurs. It’s a perfect trap.”

  “Only if I take the bait.”

  “But you will, won’t you?”

  Philo waved a hand at the photograph of the lemurs. “They’re African,” he said. “If they die, no one will notice. People will just keep right on going to the Museum of Natural History and cooing about how tame the Electric Lemurs there are. How can I not try to save them?”

  “They might not even be real,” Lexa pointed out. “Two minutes on a computer imager and you could have a photo of six lemurs sitting on a unicorn. Or they might be Electric, just like the ones in the museum. Even if lemurs aren’t extinct, they’d be incredibly expensive to come by, and I doubt Vanna would spend the money if she thought she could just fool you . . .”

  “But they might be real,” Philo countered. “They really might be the last ones. That’s the catch, there’s no way to be certain, other than by taking the ship.”

  “And if you do take the ship, and if the lemurs are real, and if they are the last ones, then what? Six animals isn’t a viable breeding population, Philo. You know that. Noah’s Ark was a fluke.”

  “And what am I? I have to try, Lexa, if there’s any chance at all. Any chance.”

  Impasse. The thing about having a black man for a lover in the post-Pandemic U.S. was that you couldn’t demand that he give up piracy and get a normal life; the thing about having a thinking, feeling woman for a lover in any country or era was that you couldn’t demand that she not worry while you went off to tackle Goliath with an unloaded slingshot. Hence both Lexa and Philo were temporarily at a loss for words. To fill the silence, Philo placed a hand on each of Lexa’s shoulders and began kneading the muscles above her collarbone. After a moment of this she lowered her head, threw off her blanket, and scooted around to let him work on her entire back.

  “What the hell,” Lexa finally said, “if I wanted security I’d have married Ellen Leeuwenhoek and had the kid by parthenogenesis.”

  Philo laughed. “Why didn’t you?” he asked. “Why’d you pick me as your number one?”

  “You mean besides being completely overcome by the sight of your buns?” She leaned back against his chest. “Besides love?” Lexa drew his arms around her and clasped her palms over his biceps. “I can still remember how it felt, turning the editorship of the Call over to Ellen that year, heading west to the Rockies to look for Pandemic survivors . . . searching for ‘The People with Green Eyes’—that was supposed to be my version of Great-great-grandmother’s walk to Flatbush. So I drove as far as Pueblo and set off southwest from there on foot, and after a month’s fruitless poking around I came down into the desert on the far side of the mountains, and purely by chance stumbled on you and Seraphina and Morris in that ghost town . . .”

  “Scared the hell out of us, too,” Philo said. “I never heard Morris scream so loud as when you came through the front door of that saloon.”

  “Well, but imagine how I saw it. I’d set off on my search expecting to find either an armed encampment or a demoralized band of refugees. Instead I walk in on this big burly guy with a seven-year-old daughter on his lap and a jumpy Jewish radical at his elbow, calmly plotting to throw a pie in the face of corporate America . . . and you did have those buns . . . so really, how could I have passed you up?”

  “Mmm,” Philo pressed his face into her hair. “That’s very true.”

  “So tell me,” said Lexa, “quickly, before the back rub wears off, how you think you can take on an armed frigate or a destroyer without getting your ass blown out of the water.”

  “Well,” said Philo, raising his head, “for one thing, I’m not a closet martyr like Paul Watson was. Getting killed or beaten up for a good cause doesn’t excite me, and I don’t like detention, either. The same goes double for Morris. Now we always figured this sort of situation might come up someday, and as far back as the ghost town we were throwing around ideas on how we would deal with it. One day in the desert, Morris had an inspiration . . .”

  Lexa closed her eyes. “I’m not sure I want to hear this,” she said. “Tell me.”

&nbs
p; He told her. The plan was so unbelievably idiotic that at first Lexa thought she’d misheard. Philo repeated it; she hadn’t.

  “This can’t be serious,” said Lexa.

  “It is. In fact I’d better call Morris, get him started putting it together . . .”

  “Where did he even get an idea like that?”

  “The Book of Exodus, I think.”

  “And you really think this might work?”

  “Against an unsupported surface ship, yes. If they’ve got a submarine backing them up we could get clobbered, but barring the use of deadly force, this is our best shot. But wait, you haven’t heard your part yet.”

  “My part? I’m a part of this crazy scheme too?”

  “Sure,” said Philo. “That is,” he added, “if the folks at Turner Broadcasting still owe you that favor . . .”

  Mr. Ray’s Rifle

  The name of the ship was Mitterrand Sierra. It was a French sub-killer of the Robespierre-class, a baby frigate design commissioned in the 2010s to counter possible North African hostility in the Mediterranean. In fact the North Africans, still cowed by their defeat in the ’07 War, had no intention of launching any submarine strikes on the Riviera; only a handful of Robespierres were actually produced, and most of those were eventually sold to the same Libyan and Algerian navies they had been intended to defend against. How Vanna Domingo happened to arrange use of one is a secret d’état.

  The Mitterrand Sierra was moored at a private pier not far from Atlantic City; the slip had been roofed over with an arc of corrugated aluminum, giving it the appearance of a flooded airplane hangar. Gulls flew in and out, perching on the support struts. A blue van brought the human contingent of the crew to the dock at quarter to nine: Captain Chance Baker, Troubadour Penzias, an engineer named Chatterjee, a pair of navigator-pilots named Najime and Tagore, and two munitions wranglers named Sayles and Sutter. All other positions on the ship—noncombat maintenance jobs—would be filled by Automatic Servants. White Negroes, as it were: light-skinned fisherman’s helper models, each bearing the ruddy Caucasian visage of a nineteenth-century Nantucket sea dog.