Sewer, Gas and Electric

by Matt Ruff

  Denied an interview, the soldiers of the Fourth Estate formed a firing line on the pier to get footage of the submarine’s departure. Those teams with more than one camera also took shots of the German bird of prey, the scattered Nazi memorabilia, and the diorama of the “PLAN TO TERRORIZE BACKSTABBING WHITE AMERICAN INDUSTRIALISTS.” The print journalists tried to corner Lexa, but for a change she refused to help them. “I bust my chops negotiating an exclusive with Dufresne,” she snapped, “and you people come out of the walls at just the right moment to screw it up!” Ellen Leeuwenhoek added her own “no comment,” but did let them pet the bobcats.

  More troops emerged from the rock borer: Harry Gant, the mayor, Whitey Caspian, Bartholomew Frum, and Vanna Domingo. Vanna raced to catch the submarine before it could clear the dock. A fistfight had broken out between Nickelodeon and MTV over choice of camera positions, and she used this distraction as cover as she leaned out and slapped an extra pink polka dot onto the Yabba-Dabba-Doo’s anium hull; the ersatz dot made contact with a magnetic chunk! and stuck fast, blending in almost perfectly with the rest of the paint job. That’ll fix you, Vanna thought. She raised a finger in a vulgar salute; “Ma’am,” the Nickelodeon anchor-woman called out to her, while a Nick sound technician fought to keep MTV’s anchor in a headlock, “could you not make that gesture? We’re live.”

  Lexa Thatcher felt a tap on her shoulder. “Hi there,” Harry Gant said.

  “Hi yourself,” said Lexa. She relaxed the scowl she’d been using to fend off reporters. “And congratulations. Staging a surprise press conference, that was inspired.” She watched a still photographer from the Post snap after shot of the U-boat diorama. “God only knows what sort of spin they’ll put on this story.”

  “Sorry we couldn’t invite The Long Distance Call along to join in the fun,” Gant said. “I mean I know you specialize in this sort of thing, but, well. . .”

  “A certain underachiever from the F.B.I. warned you I might be a security risk.”

  “Something like that. Since you’re here anyway, though, I was hoping I could ask you a question.”

  “An on-the-record question or an off-the-record question?”

  “Off.”

  “Depends.”

  “Well,” Gant said, “you know we still haven’t been able to figure out where Dufresne gets the money to run his operation. Clayton and his Creative Accounting staff have spent months sifting for leads, but so far no luck. The F.B.I., Internal Revenue, everyone’s drawn a blank. And of course I don’t even like finance, so I certainly didn’t have a clue. At least not until this morning.”

  “Something Joan said jogged your thinking?”

  Gant looked at her. “You know I was at Joan’s?”

  “I heard about it.”

  “Well,” Gant continued, “well actually no, it wasn’t anything Joan said. But I was thinking about her on the way to work, reminiscing a little, and that’s when I remembered . . . when Joan left Gant Industries six years ago, I made her accept a pretty substantial severance bonus, plus annual pension payments that weren’t specified by her original employment contract.”

  Lexa nodded. “Volunteer alimony,” she said. “You know in some ways, Harry, you make no sense at all as a capitalist.”

  “I’m a unique individual,” Harry Gant agreed. “But getting to the point of my question, since you and Joan are such good friends, and since you also obviously know Dufresne well enough to find your own way to his hideout . . .

  “You want to know whether Joan’s been funneling her pension to Philo. Whether you’ve been unwittingly supporting your own antagonist.”

  “Well I’m not sure I’d say unwittingly. I did give the money to Joan, after all.”

  “True,” said Lexa. “Do you mind if I ask why?”

  Gant shrugged. “It seemed like a neat idea, that’s all. I mean she certainly deserved it, she’d done great work in public opinion even when she was fighting my projects tooth and nail, and part of me knew I’d miss having her thorn in my side—and not just as an employee. I guess I thought that if I gave her a big enough stake to set up independently as an activist, she’d still come by and make a nuisance of herself once in a while; I was kind of disappointed when all she did with her bonus was buy that welfare hotel. Unless . . .”

  “Unless.” Lexa thought it over. “This is just between us? You’ll leave Clayton and the feds to puzzle it out on their own?”

  Gant traced an X over his heart.

  “All right then,” Lexa said. Checking that no one from the Wall Street Journal was in earshot, she whispered: “Pesos.”

  “Huh?”

  “The gold and silver the conquistadors looted during the invasion of the Americas,” Lexa said. “Almost all of it was melted down into ingots and pesos—billions of dollars’ worth, at current market value. A lot of that loot got sent back to Spain, but what with the state of the art of hurricane prediction being fairly primitive in those days, not all of the shipments made it through. Millions of pesos ended up at the bottom of the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. A fair portion of that sunken treasure has been recovered since, but there are still some major troves lying unretrieved out there, waiting for someone smart enough to know where to look, someone with the family contacts to move a huge quantity of antique coins through the black markets in Cairo and Damascus . . .”

  “Wait,” Gant said. “Wait. Sunken treasure? Pesos? Philo Dufresne is being financed by dead Spaniards?”

  “Shhh, not so loud. Not dead Spaniards, Harry, dead Aztecs. Also dead Maya, Inca, Tlaxcala, Zapotec, Mixtec, Yaqui, Huichol, Tarahumara . . . it’s a pretty long list of sponsors.”

  “Aztecs . . . but what about. . .”

  “The primary investment for a submarine is outrageously steep,” Lexa said, “even if you buy way below wholesale. Not to belittle your generosity, but you didn’t give Joan that much severance pay. Of course,” she added, “some of the secondary expenses of piracy aren’t as astronomical.”

  He got the hint. “What kind of secondary expenses?”

  “Tree fertilizer, for instance. Also bulk purchases of whipped cream, model helicopter parts, kosher salami, and other consumables.”

  “Consumables? Like those bunny things that Eskimo kid was throwing on the South Furrow?” Lexa put a finger to her lips. “Wow . . . wow. Neat.”

  “Yeah,” said Lexa. “Joan always thought you’d say that if you knew.” She gazed past the media at the Yabba-Dabba-Doo, which had cleared the slip and was entering the pressure lock that would release it into the harbor. “So now that I’ve shared the secret with you, Harry, can you give me a lift back topside in your earth mover? I’d like to see whether Philo gets out of here alive.”

  “Oh sure,” Gant said, “sure, no problem. But listen, I wouldn’t worry about it too much. You know I’m really proud of Bart and Fouad and Whitey for coming up with this press conference tactic, and I’m grateful to the mayor for helping us put it together in time, he’s been a saint, but confidentially I have to agree with Vanna that the rest of the plan—the part where the pirates get arrested—is pretty unlikely.”

  “Unlikely? Why?”

  “Well, it’s a pretty stupid plan.”

  “You don’t sound too concerned about it.”

  “I’m not, really, so long as the harbor police are careful and don’t hurt themselves. See, I made a few calls to California this morning, and in return for information about the history of this U-boat den, the head of HBO Pictures has agreed to let Gant Industries handle the merchandising for HBO’s upcoming docudrama on Dufresne. We’ll have T-shirts, action figures, computer games, comic books, all sorts of tie-ins. And I’m also hashing out a separate deal with Nintendo to do a Virtual Reality mock-up of this place, so kids can have an eco-pirate hideout of their very own this Christmas; I’m guessing a sales potential of at least a hundred thousand units if we can get it ready in time.”

  “So in other words,” said Lexa, shaking her head in disbelie
f, “it doesn’t make any difference to you whether Philo escapes or not.”

  “Well it does make a difference, sort of, if he keeps blowing up my stuff. But after this movie deal I’ll be able to afford more insurance. And if he does keep blowing up my stuff, I suppose HBO can do sequels . . .”

  “So you can’t lose.”

  Harry Gant smiled. “That’s the free-market system for you,” he said. “It’s an adaptable beast.”

  Now We Are Amused

  The plan the mayor and the police commissioner had cooked up to arrest Philo Dufresne was indeed a stupid one—almost as stupid as Morris Kazenstein’s plan to rescue the lemurs from the Mitterrand Sierra, although not quite—but to be fair, stupidity was not the deciding factor in the Yabba-Dabba-Doo’s escape from the harbor. It was mainly the Queen of England’s fault.

  Yes, that Queen of England: Elizabeth the Second and Imperishable, By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland and of Her Other Realms and Territories Queen, Head of the Commonwealth, Defender of the Faith. With the monarchy in peril of extinction, Queen Liz had sworn upon the millennium not to relinquish Her throne to any but the most worthy heir, which meant, given the continuing sad state of the royal family, that She might well have to reign forever. Beset by Parliament, tabloids, and time, She had not just lingered on but had thrived, becoming as wily and ferocious in Her extreme old age as any sewer ’gator ever to shun the light of day. In the last decade it had begun to be noted in British government circles that those who offended Her Majesty had a high incidence of death under mysterious circumstances, or other anonymously authored misfortune—no definite link to Buckingham Palace having ever, of course, been proved.

  As the QE2 Mark 2 assumed its blockade position in the Verrazano Narrows, the Queen was on the bridge. Her Majesty had sailed incognito to New York to explain to a certain Westchester playboy that he would not be marrying Her Majesty’s granddaughter (and would most certainly not be impregnating her); following the news of the South Furrow’s sinking and the exposure of the Gant Antarcticorp project, Her Majesty had expanded her itinerary to include an unannounced visit to the White House in Washington, where she intended to deliver a serious tongue-lashing. But here was something else of interest.

  “What are We observing?” the Queen asked. A pink-and-green submarine had surfaced south of Liberty Island and was steaming hell-bent for the Narrows, with a fleet of police launches in close pursuit. Farther back, a black helicopter with “FBI” painted on its underbelly was just clearing the skyscrapers of the Battery.

  “The pirate vessel Yabba-Dabba-Doo, Your Majesty,” replied the captain, suppressing a cough. The Queen’s Mechanical Corgis were filling the bridge with petrol exhaust, but no one dared complain.

  “This is that same pirate who sank the icebreaker?”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “The icebreaker,” said the Queen, “which Our American cousins were going to use to violate the treaty they had made with Us?”

  “Apparently so, Your Majesty.”

  “And they”—she indicated the speedboats and the helicopter—“intend to destroy the submarine?”

  “No, Your Majesty. Not even American police officers are permitted to carry that sort of weaponry. As I understand it, their intention is to transfer a boarding party of narcotics agents onto the sail of the vessel; these agents will then force the hatch, using pneumatic tools originally developed to break down the doors of crack dens.”

  “Crack dens?”

  “Much like the old opium dens in Hong Kong, Your Majesty, but less well carpeted.”

  “And why is the submarine on the surface of the water? We know a great deal about submarines. Why doesn’t it dive, to hide itself?”

  “Most of the harbor is too shallow for a submerged vessel to maneuver safely, Your Majesty, and we ourselves are occupying the main transit channel.”

  “Our ship is preventing them from escaping?”

  “Yes. If they attempt to cross the Narrows outside of the channel, even fully surfaced, they’ll almost certainly run aground.”

  “Move aside, then,” the Queen snapped. “Let them pass.”

  “But—”

  “That will make a suitable recompense,” said the Queen, speaking to Herself now. “That will make Us even.”

  “Your Majesty,” the captain said, “I don’t think—”

  “But We haven’t commanded you to think,” the Queen said, Her eyes growing hard, Her tone hinting at a midnight garroting or a strychninetainted scone. “Do pray tell Us, loyal subject, who is the wealthiest and most powerful woman in all the world?”

  The captain swallowed hard. “You are, Your Majesty.”

  “Repeat that, please.”

  “You are, Your Majesty.”

  “Again.”

  “You are, Your Majesty.”

  The Queen smiled, making the tiniest gesture with Her little finger; the captain spun on his heel and barked the order to his helmsman: “Ahead full flank, ten degrees starboard, now! I want us as far over in the channel as possible.”

  “Yessir!” the helmsman readily agreed. The superliner made way for the submarine; the Yabba-Dabba-Doo, guided by the ever-attentive sonar ear of Asta Wills, took immediate advantage of the opening, zipping into the channel at top speed.

  “Fusilier!” cried the Queen. A powder-wigged redcoat with a musket appeared instantly at Her side. “Distract that,” the Queen commanded, indicating the F.B.I. helicopter. “Target it with your cannon and threaten to destroy it if it does not identify itself. Use long words, speak in compound sentences, and pretend not to hear the reply.”

  “Should I actually open fire, Your Majesty?”

  “No—but give every sign that you intend to do so. Later We will claim that We thought they were Irish. Go now!” The fusilier saluted, clicked his bootheels, and raced down to the cannon deck. “Captain!”

  “Yes, Your Majesty!”

  “The police launches. When the submarine is almost past, you will maneuver as if to ram it, but you will succeed only in scattering the police launches.” The Queen made chopping motions with Her hands. “Later you will apologize to the American authorities for your dreadful seamanship, and We will castigate you publicly.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty!” The captain’s chin bobbed eagerly. “Helmsman! Prepare to round hard to port. Sound collision alarm!”

  “Yessir!”

  “Now We are amused,” said the Queen.

  16

  I am not primarily an advocate of capitalism, but of egoism; and I am not primarily an advocate of egoism, but of reason. If one recognizes the supremacy of reason and applies it consistently, all the rest follows. . . . Reason in epistemology leads to egoism in ethics, which leads to capitalism in politics.

  —Ayn Rand, The Objectivist, September 1971

  Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin have taught us that it is necessary to study conditions conscientiously and to proceed from objective reality and not from subjective wishes . . . we must rely not on subjective imagination, not on momentary enthusiasm, not on lifeless books, but on facts that exist objectively . . . and, guided by the general principles of Marxism-Leninism, draw correct conclusions . . .

  —Mao Tse-Tung, Selected Works

  Were I a nightingale, I would sing like a nightingale; were I a swan, like a swan. But as it is, I am a rational being, therefore I must sing hymns of praise to God.

  —Epictetus the Stoic, Discourses

  The seat of the soul and the control of voluntary movement—in fact, of nervous functions in general—are to be sought in the heart. The brain is an organ of minor importance.

  —Aristotle, De motu animalium

  A ls A

  Joan and Kite were going to go directly from Babel to the New York Public Library—“N.Y.P.L.”—but Joan, acting on a premonition, took a moment to call home first. Motley Nimitz, one of the more stable tenants who helped mind the Sanctuary during the daytim
e, told her what had been going on in the few hours she’d been out.

  Kite hardly needed to ask. “Maxwell?”

  “Maxwell,” Joan confirmed. They caught a cab down to the Bowery.

  Compared to some of the mischief Maxwell had gotten up to in the past, this latest stunt wasn’t so bad. He’d piled all of the furniture in his bedroom in one corner and used green face paint to daub a mural on the wall. The mural showed a Babel-like ziggurat surmounted by a single gigantic eye from which bolts of electricity radiated in all directions. This was THE EYE OF AFRICA, according to the caption beneath the tower; there were some other words in a language Joan didn’t recognize. In the lower righthand corner of the mural, a screaming cartoon mouse was being dragged into a pit of fire by a clenched green fist.

  “Was Maxwell watching a war movie on cable last night?” Joan asked. “One with naked people in it, maybe?”

  “I don’t know,” said Motley. Wanting to be helpful, he added: “I think Hogan’s Heroes is back in syndication.”

  Joan kept toxic chemicals in her office for the removal of graffiti. She sent Motley to get them, which is how they found out that Maxwell had stolen the Cray PC. He’d also left a finger painting on the surface of Joan’s desk, this one of a balance scales, with the Eye of Africa being weighed against the cartoon mouse; the mouse grinned savagely as it wielded a reaper’s scythe, but according to the scales the Eye was heavier.

  “Hogan’s Heroes, eh?” Joan said, and set to work cleaning up. She considered calling the police, but Kite argued against it: “He’ll turn up on his own, Joan—he always does—and it seems to me it’s better to wait than to have him dragged in off the street. Not that I’m an expert, but really, how much trouble can he get into with a home computer?”

  It was late afternoon by the time they finally got to the library. Kite went into the stacks to find a book with the call number 171.303 607 949 6; Joan visited the periodicals annex to check on an obituary.