Sewer, Gas and Electric

by Matt Ruff

  “Nope,” the captain said. Then he looked over his shoulder at Philo. “You want to hold the door for me?”

  A lemur had climbed on Dan Rather’s lap and gone to sleep in his beard. He tried not to wake it as he cinched a remote mini-cam sweatband around Captain Baker’s head. Mindful of the big bandage above the captain’s eye, he said: “This doesn’t hurt, does it?”

  “Only where it touches my scalp,” Captain Baker replied.

  “Aw, you’ll live,” said Dan. “And we’ll get some great footage.”

  Seraphina and Twenty-Nine Words shooed the rest of the lemurs out of the way as Philo latched the gondola door open. Morris broke out the rope ladder—made of real hemp rope, with hand-tooled wooden rungs, definitely a macho contraption—and secured it to a pair of eyebolts in the floor.

  Lexa, studying Maxwell’s face on one of the gun camera monitors, said: “You know, I think I know this guy.” She tilted her head to get a right-side-up view. “Yeah! He’s one of Joan’s tenants, a chronic battle fatigue case. . . . Shit. I should have called Joan from the airport. . .”

  “Chronic battle fatigue?” Captain Baker said. “How serious?”

  In the flight cabin, the head-up display flashed a warning: COLLISION ALERT. The helicopter hovering over Babel had just been shot in the tail and was careening towards Sweet Jane.

  “Attention airship, “the helicopter’s loudspeakers squawked. “This is the F.B.I. We are out of control. Please move.”

  Walter yanked Sweet Jane’s control yoke all the way to the right. In the production studio, Philo lost his footing and stumbled towards the open door. Captain Baker caught Philo’s arm, but then Morris jumped up to help and accidentally body-slammed the captain. All three of them fell out of the gondola.

  The blimp leveled out close enough to the tower to attract rifle fire. Ignoring the danger, Lexa and Seraphina both stepped to the gondola door and looked out, while Walter hectored the shooters over his own loudspeaker system.

  Philo, Captain Baker, and Morris dangled in a clump from the bottom of the rope ladder. Morris was shouting, “Get us down, get us down!” but Captain Baker swept an arm towards the superskyscraper and yelled, “Get us closer!” Philo looked up at Lexa and nodded, casting his vote with the captain.

  “Oh God,” said Lexa. “Dan? Is the mini-cam working?”

  “You’re darn tooting it is!” said Dan. “Walter! Listen up for steering instructions!”

  Twenty-Three

  Half a mile away, Ayn Rand reached inside her cape and pulled out a little round anarchist’s bomb. She pursed her lips and drew heavily on her cigarette holder, stoking the tip of the hologram Marlboro to a ruby brightness, and touched it to the bomb’s fuse. As the fuse sizzled and sparked, she began counting backwards: “Thirty . . . twenty-nine . . . twenty-eight. . .”

  “You’re a son of a bitch, Hoover,” Joan said, by way of an epitaph, “and someone will put a stop to you eventually.”

  “The world will end,” Hoover replied. “Eventually.”

  “. . . twenty-seven . . . twenty-six . . .”

  Not ready to give up, Joan went back up to the gates. Using the Bear Stopper as a crowbar, she tried to spread the bars far enough to toss the Lamp out.

  “Don’t waste your strength,” Hoover said.

  Joan wasted her strength. She bent the shotgun barrel and wrecked the pump-action. The bars didn’t spread.

  “. . . twenty-five . . . twenty-four . . . twenty-three . . .”

  Another try. The Bear Stopper’s pistol grip snapped off, cutting her hands.

  “. . . twenty-three . . .”

  Joan hissed and lifted a bloody palm to her mouth.

  “. . . twenty-three . . .”

  Wait.

  “. . . twenty-three . . .”

  She looked down at her feet. The image in the lamp globe had gone blurry, just as it had in the tunnel after the electric eel’s attack. It refocused briefly, and Ayn said, for the fifth time: “. . . twenty-three . . .”

  “Twenty-two,” Hoover corrected her.

  “Twenty-three,” Ayn Rand said.

  “Twenty-two, goddamnit! Twenty-two!”

  “Twenty-three,” Ayn insisted. This time when the image cleared she was looking directly at Joan. Her expression was strained, as if she were holding back a great weight, and her eyes said: I can’t do this for long. Think of something.

  And as Hoover continued to swear at Ayn, Joan tried to think of something; but before she could, she heard something.

  Music. A classical theme.

  Joan looked out through the gates into the corridor; there was nothing there, but in her mind’s eye she saw an armor-plated shark shrugging off a grenade blast.

  With what was left of the shotgun, Joan started hammering at the bars.

  “Heyyy!” she shouted. “Heeeeyyyyyyy!!!”

  “Shut the hell up!” Hoover said. “Ayn! Twenty-two! That’s an order!”

  “Twenty . . . three,” Ayn said, weakening. “Twenty-three . . .”

  Joan dug frantically in her pocket for Fatima Sigorski’s rape whistle. She blew it for all she was worth.

  Bolero got louder.

  Black Virus

  Stray and not-so-stray bullets continued to ricochet off the gondola and gas bag, despite Walter’s threats about the power of the Cable News Network. Gambling that Jane could weather the abuse, he moved in closer, following Dan’s steer. Fortunately there was little wind, and in less than a minute the rescue party was within grabbing distance of the fallen Marine. But Maxwell refused to cooperate.

  “Reach out,” Captain Baker called to him. “We’ll swing towards you, and you take my hand and don’t let go.”

  But Maxwell shook his head and hugged the virus canister tighter to his chest. “Can’t,” he said.

  “We’re risking our lives for you, you moron!” Morris screamed at him. “Now do what the captain says so we can all get down from here!”

  Maxwell looked at Philo and shook his head again. “Can’t.”

  “Can,” Captain Baker disputed him. “Swing!”

  The F.B.I. helicopter, like a punch-drunk hornet, came around for another near miss. Walter was distracted by the appearance of a second CNN blimp over the Hudson and didn’t see the COLLISION ALERT until it was almost too late. He yanked at the control yoke, putting extra English on the rescue party’s swing; Captain Baker, intending to seize Maxwell’s arm, found himself thrown into a full head-to-tail embrace, with his ears boxed by Maxwell’s ankles and his free arm looped around the backs of Maxwell’s knees. The moving blimp pulled the rope ladder taut; the seam in the catch tarpaulin tore completely, and Maxwell popped free. He and his rescuers swung out into the night, a screaming plumb bob.

  The stricken helicopter passed sideways in front of Sweet Jane, the tips of its rotor blades flicking at the blimp’s nosecone. The fail-safe anti-collision system dipped the airship’s nose automatically; Walter fell forward against the controls, and Jane dropped two hundred feet before he managed to check the dive. By then the rescuers were on their return swing, and the side of the ziggurat, which had been moving away, was suddenly much too close.

  “Pull up, pull up, pull up!” cried Morris, as the building rushed towards them. Dan, watching the mini-cam transmission in the production studio, said: “Wow!”

  They hit on the 204th floor. Fortunately there was no glass in the windows at that level, just plywood, which they broke through easily. There was a confusion of tumbling, of shins and elbows bruised. Then three of them came to rest on the hard floor of an unfinished room; Morris, still tangled in the rope ladder, spent another moment thrashing to get loose before he could be dragged back out.

  Philo brushed splinters from his hair. “Is everyone all right?” he asked.

  “Man,” Morris sighed, as the ladder slipped away without him. “Please let that be the last close call of the day.”

  Captain Baker spat a tooth into his hand and stared at it, unbelieving. T
hen Maxwell groaned, and the captain’s expression became savage. “You son of a bitch!” he shouted. “Why didn’t you take my hand when I told you to?”

  Maxwell lay on his back. “Virus,” he murmured, half conscious.

  “What?” Captain Baker said. But Morris heard the word clearly.

  “Virus?” he said. “What virus?”

  Maxwell held up the canister, miraculously unbroken. “Virus,” he repeated. He lifted his head, once again looking at Philo. “Black virus . . . the Eye told me . . . watch out for . . . have to. . . .” His eyelids fluttered and his head lolled back; the canister began to slip from his hands, but Morris was there to catch it.

  “Black virus?” Captain Baker said. “What the hell was he talking about?”

  “I’m not sure,” Morris said, examining the canister. It was glass, with metal endcaps. Inside the glass was some sort of silver-gray dust; the endcaps were engraved, one with the trefoil symbol for biohazard, the other with a pair of. . . well, if Morris didn’t know any better, he’d have said Mickey Mouse ears. “Hmm . . .”

  Lexa’s voice: “Philo! Are you OK?”

  Philo looked out the window and saw Lexa and Seraphina in the doorway of the hovering gondola. “We’re fine!” he shouted, waving them off. “Shut that door before somebody else falls out! We’ll meet you at Grant’s Tomb!”

  “Could be,” Morris said, intent on the canister. “Could be virus of some kind.”

  “What do we do if it is?” Captain Baker said. “I’m not trained for CBW . . .”

  “Well, the container looks vacuum-sealed,” Morris said. “If it is, arcing an electric current through it should turn the contents to plasma . . . which should cauterize any infectious agents.” He rapped a knuckle against one of the endcaps. “Yeah . . .”

  “I don’t know about this,” Captain Baker said. “Are you sure—”

  “Yeah.” Morris was nodding to himself now. “Yeah, let’s try that.” He looked through a vacant doorway into an adjoining room and saw a rack of power tools. “Go get me one of those heavy-duty extension cords, would you?”

  Jacked In

  Clayton Bryce cowered behind the cement bag pallet, muttering to himself: “You’ve got to go for it. You’ve got to go for it. You’ve got to go for it.”

  He had been muttering this for several minutes now. The Stone Monk had taken out the sentry as planned but had been wounded—perhaps killed—in the process; peeking out from his hiding place, Clayton could see him slumped over the body of the android. When the other Marines had begun their assault, Clayton had gotten up and started for the kangaroo control center, only to be turned back by the explosion of the first mortar shell, which was so loud he felt sure it must be aimed at him. Now he was afraid to go forward, and equally afraid that if he didn’t, the Servants would overwhelm the Marines and come looking for him.

  The skin on the nape of his neck tingled a warning.

  Clayton turned around. A Portable Television stood over him, replaying documentary footage from a military autopsy while its hands aimed a rivet gun at his face. Clayton yelped and threw himself sideways; the gun made a spitting noise, and a hot rivet cut the side of his cheek before puncturing a cement bag.

  Clayton stumbled to his feet. The Ark on his back encumbered him, but it also protected him; a rivet that would have ended up in his spine hit a battery casing instead. He ducked around the corner of the pallet and broke into a run. A rivet hit his shoulder, burning and then numbing it; he ran fast.

  From overhead came the whup-whup-whup of rotor blades. “This is the F.B.I.,” a voice boomed. “We are going to crash. Clear the area.” A black helicopter fell out of the sky, landing on the Portable Television; Clayton leapt up the stairs to the control center, the downdraft from the chopper giving him an extra boost. Inside the bunker, he slammed and locked the door, and turned at once to the supercomputer.

  “Input jack,” Clayton chanted. “Input jack, input jack . . .”

  Outside, and close, something big blew up, probably the helicopter. Every window in the control center shattered, throwing safety glass like wedding rice. Clayton dropped to the floor. When the debris settled and he raised his head again, he saw a console directly in front of him with a round socket marked LINE I/O.

  Quickly, with shaking hands, he unreeled the cable from the side of the Ark.

  Blew dust from the socket.

  Jacked in.

  The Ark hummed softly as it interfaced with the Babel supercomputer. The Eye of Africa awoke and flowed out over the connection Clayton had made.

  And it was really only a coincidence, but twelve seconds after that, an earthquake struck the city.

  One Looked Up

  “Ah, fuck!” Roy Cohn said.

  “What’s wr-wr-wr- . . . Is s-s-something the m-m- . . . I-is there a prpr-prob-. . . Trouble, boss?” Shorty said.

  “Now Toby’s been shot!” Roy said. He concentrated. “One of them’s still up, Domingo I think. She’s got that fucking cannon gun.”

  “Sh-should I—”

  “Get out there and hose the room. Shoot anything that moves.”

  The piles of clutter in Harry Gant’s office began to shift and topple. For once, Shorty didn’t stutter: “Everything’s moving, Boss!”

  “An earthquake?” Roy said, tossing up his hands. “What’s next, Armageddon?”

  Shorty reached for the door, and a big hunk of door panel blew in at him. “Boss!” he squealed, whirling around. A second shot hit him in the back; his finger jerked on the Tommy gun’s trigger, spraying the office window with bullets. Roy had just enough time to look pissed before the building’s sway tipped him over the sill, out, and down.

  Vanna kicked the door open as Shorty collapsed. She braced herself against the doorframe, her vertigo subdued for the moment by pure rage, and shot the little barber once more as he lay twitching on the floor. Then she turned her attention to the twin Harrys, looking for a way to tell the true Gant from the false. It wasn’t hard.

  One Harry remained hunched over the gaming rig, oblivious to the earthquake, the gunshots, and the many sounds of breakage, smiling and playing while chaos swirled around him.

  One looked up. “Vanna!” this second Harry said, flashing a counterfeit smile of relief. “Thank God! I was so scared! I almost—. . . Vanna! Vanna, wait! Don’t!—”

  “Wrong move, imposter,” Vanna said, and fired.

  The Belly of the Beast

  Which left Joan, alone in the cellars of Babel, fighting only to save her own life now, although she didn’t know it.

  She was still hammering at the bars—and Ayn had just resumed her backwards count—when the first tremor struck. Caught off balance, Joan was thrown back down the steps, gasping as she fell.

  “. . . eighteen . . . seventeen . . . sixteen . . .”

  Joan sat up choking, and coughed out Fatima’s whistle. The room shook violently; along the walls, the honeycomb pattern broke apart as the neat stacks of dynamite began collapsing into heaps.

  “. . . fifteen . . . fourteen . . .”

  And still the strains of Ravel’s Bolero could be heard beneath the rumbling of the ’quake, though Meisterbrau was nowhere to be seen.

  “. . . thirteen . . . twel—”

  A jolt went through the steps, a jolt that was not part of the earthquake. Ayn’s Lamp, already overbalancing, tipped over and fell, bouncing once on each stair before landing in Joan’s lap.

  “What?” Joan said.

  “What?” Hoover squawked, even as the hidden speaker shorted out.

  “. . . ten . . . nine . . .”

  Joan scrambled backwards. A fissure was opening in the floor.

  “. . . eight. . .”

  The fissure widened. An entire slab of floor tilted up, like a trapdoor. Black earth welled up from underneath, and curved slats of clay-encrusted wood, wall sections from a very old sewer tunnel.

  “. . . seven . . . six . . . five . . .”

  A gray fin ap
peared; a gray snout; a pair of gray claws. Like the demon Leviathan in a medieval stage play, Meisterbrau rose.

  “. . . four . . .”

  So did Joan. The earth shrugged and bounced, but she bounced with it, her wounds forgotten. She kicked away a bundle of dynamite that had rolled too close. In her hand the Lamp grew hot; the Lamp globe glowed. She looked into it one last time, and saw Ayn nod.

  “. . . three . . . two . . .”

  Meisterbrau opened wide; the music swelled. Joan hurled herself forward as a star blazed to life in her hand. And as the earth continued to shrug, and as the Tower of Babel tottered and swayed, she drove the Lamp, and her own right arm with it, into the belly of the beast.

  &

  23

  Be cheerful while you are alive.

  —Ptah-hotep, 24th century B.C.

  Electric

  The Great East Coast ’Quake of 2023 had its epicenter in New Jersey, but its effects were felt all over New England and as far south as Atlanta. Measuring 7.1 on the Richter scale, it lasted eighty-two seconds from start to finish.

  The first tremors set off warning klaxons at power stations around the region. Emergency breakers tripped, shutting down generator turbines; at the Con-Ed nuclear plant in Scarsdale, engineers rushed to scram the reactor pile. Manhattan went dark. In his office at the Phoenix, Harry Gant slammed the side of the game rig and said: “Hey! Come on!”

  The lights went out in Babel, too, but not before Morris Kazenstein succeeded in electrocuting the nanovirus. And by the time power failed in the control center at the top of the tower, the Eye of Africa had quit the scene. Traveling over a high-speed, encrypted data network to Mount Weather, Virginia, it reinstalled itself in a Defense Department supercomputer that had been hardened against nuclear attack; thus protected against both natural and unnatural disasters, it immediately generated a lethal virus subprogram and dispatched it westward on a mission of vengeance.