Sewer, Gas and Electric

by Matt Ruff

  “The Union Carbide scientist said it could be anything, maybe a burst sewer, maybe a leaky gas main. The EPA guy thought the hot spot was too big for a broken utility pipe to be causing it—he said it had to be some sort of chemical reaction in the soil itself, and a few core samples should be enough to establish what kind of chemicals—and, if they were toxic, what their likely source was. But then Clayton jumped in saying he didn’t see why samples were necessary, since these chemicals obviously weren’t toxic—the trees were alive, right?—and I said if he really believed that he ought to prove it by eating some dirt.

  “Eventually I noticed Harry wasn’t joining in the discussion, and I looked around to see what he was up to. He was standing off to the side, quiet, just staring at the trees, with this look on his face . . . and I recognized that look. You’d better believe I recognized it; it was the look that said he’d just had another neat idea. And it only took me a moment to figure out what that idea was . . .

  “There we were, on this poisoned street corner in a neighborhood where kids used to play, where they might be playing again soon if Clayton got his way, and all Harry could think of was, ‘Gee, I wonder if we could package this somehow.’”

  Ayn didn’t understand. “Package the property?”

  “No,” Joan said, “the effect. Trees blooming in winter. Like, could you make a kit that people could buy, some sort of heating element they could bury in their yards if they wanted to have a New Year’s Eve lawn party with budding trees. Wouldn’t that be neat.” She sighed, a long exhale. “I wasn’t even angry, not really. I just felt. . . tired. A month or two earlier, I probably would have shrugged and said, Well, that’s Harry for you. But I guess I’d reached my limit. Nine years . . . even college professors get a sabbatical after seven, and most of the neat ideas they have to deal with are safely locked up in books.

  “So we drove around the neighborhood a little more, found some more hot spots, took soil samples—all highly, highly toxic stuff, all industrial waste—and broke into a few of the abandoned houses. There were substances leaking into the basements that even the Union Carbide guy was afraid of. Which you’d think would have settled the matter, but I knew better; and so after we went home I waited, and sure enough, come Monday morning, Clayton was right back to ‘not our fault, not our concern.’ It was as if we’d never even taken the trip. I went to talk to Harry about it and found him in his office with a potted cherry sapling and a box of hand-warmers. He asked me if I could come back in twenty minutes, and I was just, That’s it, I’ve had it. I cleaned out my desk and was out of there before noon. Went home, called Lexa, called the state health department, called CNN.”

  “And the divorce?”

  “That happened a few months later, once I was sure I wasn’t coming back to work—not that there was ever much chance that I would, after I turned whistle-blower. I decided to make a complete break, and Harry understood. He was a little sad, also a little angry, but very decent about it. Very decent about it,” she said, thinking of the surprise severance bonus and pension plan, and wondering, as she had many times before, how Clayton Bryce must have felt cutting those checks. “I took a year off, traveled some, bought the Sanctuary, and then an ad in the Times led me to my job with the Sewer Department. My penance.”

  “Your penance,” Ayn snorted. “You spent nine years ‘wrestling with shades of gray,’ and when you couldn’t bear it any longer, you went out and took the most black and white job you could find, one with no complications and no compromises . . .”

  “Hmm,” Joan said. “Hmm, yeah, well—”

  “. . . because you know, though you seek to deny it, that compromise is wrong, and that attempting to negotiate with people who don’t share your values is a waste of time.”

  “Yeah, well, you see, Ayn, there you go—you start to make a good point, then you blow it by taking it too far. Just because my job at Gant was frustrating doesn’t mean it was a waste of time. I told you, I did good works there. Not as many as I would have liked, but . . .”

  “But you quit!”

  “I was exhausted.”

  “Precisely! And you wouldn’t have been exhausted, if—”

  “What? If everyone at Gant Industries had shared my sense of priorities? Sure, but that wasn’t the reality. What would you have had me do, gun Clayton Bryce down like a sewer rat for refusing to see things my way?” She paused, reflecting. “Not that some of those Gate’s Bend basements wouldn’t be great for disposing of a body . . .”

  “How horrid!” Ayn exclaimed.

  “Well then, so much for the black and white approach,” Joan said. “But refusing to negotiate doesn’t work either. Gant Industries didn’t grind to a halt just because I walked away—on the contrary, the company’s doing as well as ever, and the only change is that my point of view isn’t represented anymore. And Plessy Falls? Still hasn’t been cleaned up. Lexa and I got enough media attention focused on it that people stopped moving back into the town, but beyond that nothing’s been done. The state refused the motion to annul Gant’s ownership of the property, and Vanna Domingo’s still fighting that decision in court. And meanwhile, the toxic drums are still leaking.”

  “But that would have happened in any event. You said that Clayton refused to pay for the cleanup . . .”

  “. . . and by quitting, I made certain that he wouldn’t pay for it. Whereas if I’d hung in there, kept fighting, who knows?”

  “Then you regret leaving the company?”

  “I still feel guilty about it,” Joan said. “Guilty that I wasn’t stronger and more patient. But I’m not sure I regret it, since I really did need the break. But now I’m rested up again, and the last few days I’ve been thinking, maybe I’m ready to go another few rounds. Assuming I survive tonight, of course.” She shrugged.

  Ayn shook her head. “You’re so full of contradictions,” she said, “I wouldn’t know where to begin unraveling your pathology.”

  “Well then, don’t,” Joan said. She tossed her cigarette butt into the cold coffee cup. “Just enjoy me as I am, while you’ve got me. Which probably won’t be much longer.”

  “Now that,” said Ayn, “is true.”

  The train was deserted, its engine stilled. There was no one left on the platform either, not that Joan could see. Time to get moving. She stood up, tucked the Hand Cannon in her waistband—first checking the safety—picked up Ayn’s Lamp, and proceeded cautiously to the end of the bar car. She pressed the button that opened the exit door and stepped out onto the platform.

  Things happened quickly after that.

  Send Him Out

  “Awwwhhhh—”

  “There,” Motley Nimitz said, holding up the tongue staple in a pair of tweezers. It looked more like a bur than a staple: a hollow plastic bead with barbed spines, pumping out a time-released flow of inflammatory toxin. “Syrian invention,” said Motley. “For when they’re torturing a prisoner who’s ready to talk, but they don’t want him to yet. . .” He tossed the staple in the kitchenette sink. “I’ll give you an injection and a medicinal rinse that should help bring the swelling down.”

  “Ank oou,” Clayton Bryce said, eyes misting with gratitude. Since his rescue he’d been very emotional.

  “How is he?” Kite asked. She’d laid her saber on a fold-down ironing board and was running a whetstone along the blade. Her Colt and the Hand Cannon were both within easy reach. The Stone Monk was downstairs, guarding the Sanctuary’s front door.

  “He needs rest,” Motley Nimitz said, rummaging in his medic’s kit bag. “It looks like he hasn’t slept in days. He can’t have eaten much, either, not solid food.”

  “I’m not sure it’s safe for him to rest here,” Kite said. “Once you’ve tended him, we’d better—”

  The phone rang.

  “Pick up,” said Kite, and started to say “Joan?” but a brutal blast of rap music drowned her out. At least it sounded like rap, although the words didn’t rhyme:

  I think all
thieves

  Should have their hands chopped off

  Like in the Hammurabi Code

  (The Hammu—the Hammu—the Hammurabi Code)

  Or pass a law

  Like they have in Texas

  Allowing deadly force in defense of property

  (The Hammu—the Hammu—the Hammurabi Code)

  Now that would be a deterrent!

  Clayton Bryce cringed, recognizing his own voice through the distortion. Then another voice yelled, “All right, all right, turn it down!” and the rap diminished.

  “Hello?” the new voice said.

  “Who is this?” Kite asked.

  “This is the police, ma’am. I have a warrant for Clayton Bryce. I need you to send him out front of the building so I can chop his hands off.” There were cackles and whoops in the background, but the speaker was serious.

  “What kind of policeman chops hands off?”

  “Powell 617, ma’am. NYPD Automated. Ma’am, I should warn you, the penalties for interfering in a prosecution are very severe. If—”

  “Hang up.” Kite grabbed her Colt and ran down the hall to Joan’s room, which overlooked the street. A lynch mob of four dozen Automatic Servants had gathered outside the Sanctuary, dressed as drug-dealer/gangbangers from some twentieth-century Hollywood street drama about life in the inner city. Most of them were armed with Uzis or AK-47 assault rifles, but there was one gold-toothed ’banger at the front of the crowd who carried a machete; he had a baseball cap skewed sideways on his head and a big wall clock hanging around his neck like a medallion. At his feet was a boom box the size of a guillotine basket.

  Officer Powell 617 stood apart from the lynch party, fussing with a cellular phone he’d borrowed from one of the drug dealers. But then Big Clock saw Kite in the window.

  “Yo yo,” he said, gold tooth flashing as he pointed. “Five-oh!”

  Powell got out his police bullhorn. “You up there!” he called. “We have a warrant for Clayton Bryce! Send him out!”

  “Yeah,” said Big Clock, taking a practice swing with the machete. “Send his punk ass out here.”

  “They’ve barricaded both ends of the street,” Kite said, as Motley and Clayton entered the bedroom behind her. “You’d better call the real police.”

  “I can’t,” said Motley. “The phone just went dead.”

  “Get this window open for me, then.”

  Motley raised the sash, and Kite yelled down to the mob: “Mr. Bryce is under the protection of this house! You can’t have him! Now get out of here before there’s real trouble!”

  The gangbangers laughed at her.

  “Lack of cooperation reflects badly on the community,” Powell 617 cautioned. “Besides, we have you outnumbered. Send him out or we’ll take him—and if we have to use force, it’ll go worse for you than for him.”

  Kite held up her revolver and drew the hammer back, occasioning more laughter.

  “Yo, bitch!” Big Clock cried. “Come down here and I’ll fuck you with that!” He let out a whoop and then dropped, shot twice—once in the chest by Kite and once in the head by the Stone Monk, who used the sound of his profanity as an aiming point.

  “This is very disappointing,” Powell 617 said. Behind him, forty-seven Electric Negroes switched their weapons to full auto.

  “Get down!” Kite shouted, knocking Motley Nimitz to the floor.

  Cannonfire ripped up the street. A 135-millimeter shell landed in the midst of the gangbangers, shattering their ranks like a comet striking a tray of champagne glasses. A second shell landed eight seconds later, stirring the wreckage. Only Powell remained standing and intact; he pursed his lips at the impropriety of the tank rolling over the police barricade at the end of the street.

  “You there!” he called to the unseen tank driver. “Get out of the vehicle! I want to see your license and registration!”

  The tank rumbled forward, ignoring him; Powell 617 placed his chubby body directly in its path. The tank won. Powell was driven down and under, his bullhorn crushed by a steel tread. The tank rolled on, up to the front steps of the Sanctuary. Its top hatch opened.

  “Kite!” the tank commander yelled.

  “Maxwell?” Kite raised her head above the windowsill. “Maxwell! Where the hell did you come from?”

  Maxwell spread his arms, as if the sixty-ton M6 Buchanan ought to be answer enough. “Twelfth Street Armory,” he said. Then he looked over his shoulder at the line of vehicles crossing the fallen barricade behind him: an Army communications jeep with satellite uplink, a Brink’s armored car, and four firebird-red ’23 Ferrari Marchesas, each carrying a four-person fire team of Marine infantry.

  “We made a couple other stops, too,” Maxwell said.

  Won’t You Please Let Us Help You?

  As Joan stepped out onto the railway platform, she heard two sounds behind her. The first was the hiss of the club car door sliding shut. The second was the growl of a V-6 engine throttling up.

  The Hound.

  It was above her, having ridden all the way from New Jersey on the roof of the club car, magnetic paws clinging to the skin of the bullet train. Joan whirled to shoot it down, but the front sight of the Hand Cannon caught on her waistband as she yanked it out; the gun jerked free and fell clattering into the space between train and platform.

  “Oops,” Joan said.

  The Hound’s eyes flashed; its steel-trap jaws snapped open. It sprang.

  Joan, not knowing what else to do, swung the Lamp. She connected solidly with the side of the Hound’s head. The Hound twisted in mid-air and landed badly on one leg, breaking it. In a panic of adrenaline Joan brought the Lamp down overhand, mashing the Hound’s jaws into the platform and knocking one hazard-light eye askew. She swung once more, underhand, into the side of the chassis, flipping the Hound over onto its back; the V-6 engine howled in furied anguish.

  And then Joan was running, up the platform and up the stairs to the main terminal, not looking back. “Still with me, Ayn?” she said, mounting the steps three at a time.

  The lamp globe was undamaged, but inside Ayn Rand pressed her hands to her head as if she’d been cudgeled.

  “Never do that again,” Ayn said.

  “No promises,” Joan replied. Not thirty seconds later, as she ran through the passenger waiting area beneath the bowl of stars, an Electric Negro moved to intercept her; she raised the Lamp and hit it full in the face.

  “What the—” Joan said, as the Negro squawked and fell back, bleeding from a broken nose.

  Oops.

  Not a Negro; not Electric. Human. Australian.

  “Oh my God,” Joan said, as much in horror of what she might have done, if she’d still had the gun, as at what she actually had done. “Oh my God, are you all right?”

  The Australian man—who’d only wanted directions to a rest room—recoiled from her. When Joan leaned over him and extended a hand, he put his legs together and lashed out with both feet, cracking three of her ribs. Joan clutched her side and backed off, then dove over a bench to escape as the Australian man took a spray canister of mace from his pocket and tried to blind her.

  Somehow she hung on to the Lamp. Limping, eyes watering, half-doubled over, she headed for the nearest exit. A short broad flight of stairs led up to a set of revolving doors and a sign that promised TAXI STAND.

  “Can I help you?” A Pleasant Tripper, one Private Kwok, fell into step beside her as she started up the stairs.

  “Can I help you?” A second Tripper, Private Molina, flanked her on the other side.

  “No,” Joan said, “no,” and kept moving.

  “Hello again,” Captain Hector Miércoles said, appearing at the top of the steps, backlit by headlights. “Won’t you please let us help you?”

  “No,” Joan gasped. “I—”

  Headlights?

  The taxi demolished a revolving door as it bulled its way into the terminal; shattered safety glass sluiced around Captain Miércoles’s boots and made a brittle
cascade down the steps. The taxi, a yellow Checker, struck the captain in the back of the legs, knocking him forward into Private Kwok; the two of them became part of the cascade.

  The Checker stopped at the head of the steps. A tall Automatic Servant unfolded out of the driver’s side. Unquestionably a Servant, this time: someone—perhaps the rightful owner of the taxi—had put a bullet through its head, leaving a dark crater in its temple.

  Private Molina gaped at the sight, which seemed to irritate the Servant.

  “What are you lookin’ at?” the Electric Taxi Driver asked. It brought its hands up from behind the open door; they were curled around an ugly black shotgun with a pistol grip. Private Molina went for his TASER gun. The Taxi Driver worked the pump on the shotgun and leveled it at the Tripper.

  They fired at the same time. The TASER darts hit the Taxi Driver in the neck. The shotgun pellets, their pattern tight at a range of less than ten feet, struck Private Molina high in the chest. The private’s uniform was bulletproof, but that didn’t save him from feeling as though he’d been punched in the heart. He passed the TASER to Joan like a communion chalice and followed his captain down the stairs.

  Joan felt the TASER’s variable voltage control under her thumb; she pushed it up as high as it would go. Current flowed along fine conducting wires between the gun and the darts, which sparked; the Electric Taxi Driver did a jerky dance like the Mandingo in Hoover’s backyard, and then it too collapsed. Joan dropped the TASER, ran forward, scooped up the shotgun, threw it and Ayn’s Lamp into the front passenger seat of the taxi, climbed into the driver’s seat herself, shut the door, shifted into reverse, and hit the gas. Somewhere in the middle of all this, she also clutched her rosary.

  Backing out of the terminal she T-boned another taxi. It was all right—the other cabbie was a white guy, human and unarmed, and the collision spun her cab around so that it was pointed towards the street. Ignoring the angry honking, she shifted into drive and started to pull away.