The Milkman: A Freeworld Novel

by Martineck, Michael

  Today, she wanted to look into a couple of lives that required a bit of digging. Another term she liked— digging. Her two jobs were not that different, down at the ground level. Scratch, plant, grow and hope people gain from the results.

  She searched out friends of Patricia Racie, the brittle young woman she’d interviewed in Niagara Falls. Sylvia databased everyone Patricia associated with. She couldn’t get into her private circles and knew that’s where the good stuff hid. She isolated Patricia’s closest, most frequent friends and set them up in a separate list. She summoned up dossiers on each and crossed them against Gavin’s data. No matches. No one ran in the same crowds as Gavin or worked for divisions to which he had some attachment.

  She opened Marshall’s curriculum vitae and cross-checked. Finally, she got a commonality. Marshall sat on the board of directors of an architectural firm, employing one of Patricia’s dearest friends, James Nygyn.

  Message to Marshall: Need access to James Nygyn’s personal accounts. He works for Camphore, Lumberson and Park. You sit on the board, in case you don’t remember.

  Sylvia ordered another cup of chamomile with lemon.

  From Marshall: Good God, it’s Sunday. The day of rest.

  Message to Marshall: No rest for the wicked.

  Muscling into private lives wasn’t her favorite tool. She hated the fact that someone had probably used it on her recently, resulting in her forced decampment to Atlanta. It had given her this idea, though. Fire with fire and all that. If they were going to push her around, she’d push someone else. Maybe, in the process, she’d get to push back.

  The café had a polished feel that left it looking so ten-minutes-ago she couldn’t imagine ever returning. It was the type of faux maple contraption that corporate could, and probably did, construct all around the planet. Dark greens and peach tones. Brass trinkets here and there. It lacked a sense of being Atlantian. No history. No elevation beyond being a café. This entire city seemed to her like one big, freaking hotel.

  Message from Marshall: Here you go. Hope it’s worth it.

  Sylvia took the codes and entered Patricia Racie’s more personal world disguised as her good friend James.

  As expected, Patricia’s messages and posts to her friends were a vapid mixture of daily grief and miniscule joys. She quickly extracted a list of everyone she communicated with, ever. She databased that list and gave it a good look. Friends from school, from work, from her neighborhood and her extended family. Only one name didn’t fit, a man with whom she appeared to have nothing in common: John Raston.

  John Raston did not allow ‘James’ access into his private stuff. Sylvia would need a new sheep’s coding.

  More lists.

  Finding friends of John Raston proved more difficult than she expected. He didn’t have many. He didn’t have much contact with the world at all. None in the past six months. None? That was a story. The kind she liked.

  John’s slow reclusion from society began two years ago, with the death of his husband, Roger Gow. Fascinating. She looked into Roger Gow’s history and realized they hadn’t been together when he passed. He’d been transferred a year earlier. The company didn’t make it a habit of splitting up married couples, but they were non-procreating, so the rules weren’t as stringent.

  Roger Gow’s cache of memories survived him. She opened up his life, which he hadn’t been too concerned with keeping secret. Roger had spent the last year of his life in a beryllium plant. Dangerous work. The company sent him there after he’d been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. If you need people to work in an environment that may cause cancer, why not send workers that already have it? Sylvia could see the company’s logic.

  “That would make a good movie,” she said out loud.

  Not that it would ever get made, she said to herself.

  Roger had hundreds of photos in his core memory. Sylvia wanted to see what this John Raston looked like. She opened the pictures starting with the most recent. And there they were.

  John Raston could have been made of reeds. His glasses were the thickest thing about him. They didn’t obscure the intelligence in his eyes. Roger had the sagging skin of rapid weight loss. She could tell he’d been handsome in the years leading up to the illness. Bone structure never lied. They had been happy together. Arms on shoulders, smiling. Lots of photos of wine glasses and barrels, shot at outdoor tables, with vines behind them.

  She flicked though photos and flicked and flicked and stopped. That wasn’t like any winery she’d ever seen. The long walls and old, old stone buildings. Square parapets and a big body of water on the other side. She’d never seen anything like it on the west coast. In one photo John and Roger held up glasses of deep yellow wine, grinning, with a field of shacks and tents in the background. A tramp camp.

  “Ollies,” Sylvia said. They’d visited an off-the-grid vineyard.

  What a grand place to hide.

  She copied all of the winery photos and sent them to Samjahnee.

  Message to Samjahnee: Find this place. Now.

  * * *

  “They want the baby,” Lillian said in a dead calm that chilled the back of Emory’s neck.

  “What?” he replied. Go away. Get out, he ordered her in his head.

  “Lizzie,” Lillian continued. “The bank told me they’d found a family that will give me eight thousand dollars for her.”

  “Why are you telling me this?” Emory glanced around the common room, chipped and worn, tables, chains and occupants alike.

  “Because I can’t keep the house. The bank said we could discuss options and that’s what they gave me.”

  “You’ve got… we can’t.”

  “We’ll sell,” Lillian said.

  “My parents?”

  “Your parents are tapped out. My parents are tapped out.”

  “Did you call John?”

  Lillian’s face crunched. Emory could see the tendons in her neck strain against her jaw.

  “You think John’s the answer to everything? Is that what you think? He’s the problem, Em. Not the solution. John was no wizard. He had a couple of tricks and he fooled you with them.”

  Emory clenched his hands. They hurt. He opened them and clenched them again. Harder.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll sell the house. I’ll probably have to take the transfer corporate offered. Tel Aviv. Figures, right? An ocean away.”

  “But research, it can be done anywhere.”

  “Anywhere the company wants. Our marriage no longer registers. I’m in heavy debt. They can send me to the Artic.”

  Emory pressed his hands together in front of him. He didn’t know what else to do with them. He didn’t know what else to do with any part of him.

  “I…” he didn’t know what to say, either. He closed his mouth, afraid that if he opened it again he might just howl. A coyote in a trap.

  “John’s gone,” Lillian said. “He disappeared the night our troubles started.”

  “How do you know? Did you try contacting—”

  “Of course I tried. Just to scream at him I tried. The ASS ops can’t even find him.”

  “He might be able to…”

  “To do nothing. He’s gone off line. That’s what that stupid message was. That last one he sent you.”

  “The video bit?”

  “Yeah. The fork in Niagara Falls. Fork Niagara. Get it?”

  “Fork Niagara…” Emory wanted to bring his brain back around. He used to be bright. Really clever. That’s why he could… that’s why he was here, on the chain gang. A place between too smart and not smart enough.

  * * *

  As far as McCallum knew, there were two types of ollies: those in hiding and those the company wanted hid. Both cases tended to fall outside his job description. The company didn’t care about the latter and lost interest in the former. Spending money to get somebody back on the payroll didn’t make a whole lot of business sense most of the time. In his whole career he’d only tracked down one off-liner and t
hat was because the man’s brother thought he might be a decent kidney donor. That story did not have a happy ending. McCallum didn’t think this one would, either.

  He pulled into the convenience store anyway. A dreary concrete box marked off by trees on three sides. Mostly naked. He got out of his car and stared for a spell at a row of pines that were not. Green, holding on to bales of melting snow. They looked like the opposing team. They’d won on the home team’s field and didn’t want to celebrate with too much vigor. He liked the mix of species up here in the Niagara Falls catchment. He didn’t think to bring his sketchpad even though he told anyone who asked that he’d be doing just that. The evergreens had a timid pride about them. We held out against the harsh northern winter. We didn’t shed half our body mass. We gave up nothing. The three of us stood strong, if a bit prickly, because that’s the way to survive. McCallum held up his wrist and took a picture, despite the weak lighting.

  He turned as another car pulled up. Long, lean, yellow. Black windows. Silent, save for the tires popping on the pavement. He didn’t know the make, as it wasn’t an Ambyr car. He knew luxury, though. This was a decent vehicle and he didn’t need a set of ads to convince him. Rosalie got out of the passenger side, jeans and a short leather jacket. She tossed her hair over her shoulder, not because it hung in her way, he knew, but because of the presentation. The effect it had on him. As Ambyr Incorporated had picked McCallum to be an op due to his observational abilities, India Group had made Rosalie an op because she could twist men into tiny, useless knots.

  “If you’re looking to get back together, I’m thinking you picked the wrong place.” She stopped in front of McCallum and put her hands on her hips.

  “Wrong place, wrong time,” McCallum said. “Kind of my thing.”

  “How you been?”

  “Spring is in the air. You look good.”

  “Thanks, Eddie. You too,” Rosalie said. “So I’m the only person you know in the ISS?”

  “The only one I trust,” McCallum said.

  “All right,” Rosalie started towards the front door of the convenience store.

  McCallum glanced back at the yellow car and wondered what kind of driver sat behind the wheel.

  The woman behind the counter eyed them as they entered. Two young boys in the back corner stood in a trance, holding open the door of a 20-foot drink cooler, filled with beer, malt-liquor, wine-soda pop mixes that gave McCallum a headache just looking in their direction. He figured the woman held a stake in the shop, because she bothered to glance back and forth between the kids and the surveillance monitors on her counter. She had more pounds than she needed, less brownish hair and the posture of a laundry sack. In the city, this kind of store wouldn’t warrant a full time clerk. Out here, McCallum guessed things were different.

  “Hi.” Rosalie approached the counter. McCallum followed.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asked.

  “I’m hopin’ so…” Rosalie glanced at her cuff, then up to the woman. “Mrs. Margery Ealing, manager and operating partner of the Large Mouth Mini Mart, division of India Group.”

  Margery took a large, shoulder-pumping huff, crossed her arms and drew a thoroughly fake smile across her mouth. “You the new sheriff? ‘Cuz you’re gonna have to palm a lot of cream horns to catch up to the last one.”

  “No,” Rosalie said. “I’m here on a special.”

  Margery’s smile dropped. She gave McCallum the once over. “This takes two of you? What’s that costing?”

  Rosalie held up her bracelet. “Mind a bump?”

  “I have a choice?”

  “We all have choices.” Rosalie clinked her cuff against the woman’s. “You’re making the right one.”

  Margery tapped her bracelet, then flicked her finger across the top. She looked at the monitor embedded in her counter. McCallum looked back at the two teenagers. They each selected a beverage and closed the frosty door.

  “Have you seen this man?” Rosalie asked.

  “Can’t say as he rings any bells.”

  “You sure? Why don’t you give him a good long look?”

  Margery ran her eyes over the monitor too fast to focus.“Nope,” she told Rosalie.

  “You sell gasoline?” Rosalie asked.

  “You tell me.”

  “I’m thinking this man, John Raston. He buys gasoline and he doesn’t use a cuff.”

  “Well that would be against company policy now, wouldn’t it.”

  McCallum pretended not to pay attention to the boys walking out of the store.

  “I don’t care if you’re trading monkeys for moonshine, I just want to know if you’ve ever seen this man.”

  McCallum followed the boys out of the store. The two kids walked fast, bottles dangling in their hands. Before they rounded the corner of the store, they both looked back.

  “Ahem,” McCallum said. They flinched, the both of them. They each had the inclination to bolt but stifled it. The flinch told McCallum almost everything he needed to know. Almost.

  “Boys,” he said. “If you don’t mind a moment.”

  They looked terrified. He guessed local system security operatives must keep the leashes tight in this neighborhood.

  “I’m looking for an ollie,” McCallum said. “With an off-roader. An old Jeep. Runs on gas.”

  “Yeah, we don’t know what you’re talking about,” the taller one said. String bean kids, McCallum thought. Both in need of a hair cut. They’d picked Bourberry— a combination of fruit juice and whiskey. They were 14 or 15, he figured. Right at that age when they want much more than they can have, that phase of out growing the kiddie stuff and not fully understanding grown-up games. You don’t start drinking at 10 in the morning if you want to finish the day upright.

  “Neither one of you, huh?” McCallum said.

  “We don’t know anything,” the shorter one ventured.

  McCallum took a step forward. The kids didn’t move. “You ever see me around here before?”

  “No,” they both said.

  “You suspect why that is?”

  They shook their heads.

  “I’m a different kind of op,” McCallum said. “I don’t patrol mini marts looking for double baggers or in-store eaters. I don’t care if you’re taking a personal day from school. I’m the kind of op that should something happen, like you get caught with your pants down somewhere, maybe doing something that ain’t exactly policy, you want me owing you a favor.”

  The boys looked at each other. The taller one shook his head, but the other pecked a little, like he was punctuating a sentence that hadn’t been said out loud. The taller one shook his head harder.

  “What does it matter?” the shorter one asked.

  “It’s trouble,” the tall one answered.

  “It’s like an extra life, man. I’m taking it. Cost me nothing. Besides,” he turned to McCallum. “He’s not going to like it anyway.”

  Rosalie approached from behind him. He knew her walk, her rhythm. “Find a couple of new drinking buddies?”

  “I make friends wherever I go,” McCallum said. “Now, boys, where have you seen the gas Jeep?”

  The short one cracked open his bottle of candied bourbon. “You ever hear of Fort Niagara?”

  Chapter Eighteen

  An icy spray of excrement, urine, water, grime, with chunks and blobs Emory couldn’t indentify, plunged through the left tunnel, kicking his legs out from under him. He tumbled into freezing slurry, too startled to even yell anything but a single ‘oh’. He shut his mouth tight after that. And his eyes. He used one hand to catch the tunnel floor and the other to cinch up his suit under his neck. You didn’t want this stuff inside your coveralls. You didn’t want this stuff outside them, either, he thought as he tried to regain his footing.

  Too slippery. The current pushed, where? Down the tunnel? The new section. Air. He needed air. He flapped for the wall. It had to be here. The junction was only six feet across. He rolled, hit the side, felt the water ta
king him and a squeeze on his forearm. Fingers. He swung his other arm over and grabbed the arm holding him.

  Campbell hoisted him out of the torrent of crap. He pressed him to the wall with one arm, holding the edge of the tunnel opening with the other.

  They said nothing. No stupid “are you Ok” which would have meant opening our mouth and awarding a creature stuck on your lip the chance to crawl in. They weren’t OK and they both knew it. They stood at the bottom of life, just above freezing, immune systems fighting on forty fronts, tired, hungry, and now unable to move as their senses shut down. The water drowned their work lamps, flooding them with darkness. They heard nothing but the roar of the sewer. Their noses plugged with snot in an attempt to keep out the millions of microbes scurrying the nostril rims. Their senses of touch quickly gave way to numbness.

  Emory’s bracelet tingled. He looked at the face to see who called. A reflex. Silly. As if he were going to chat on the phone right now. Only the company had his number anyway.

  “Tell them,” Campbell said.

  Emory gave his wrist a quick twist and the foreman’s voice shot into his ear. “…ck’s happening up there? Can you hear me? What the fuck’s happened up there?

  “It’s Leveski. We’re alive.”

  “Not what I asked,” the foreman shouted.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You must’ve seen something. Sewage pouring in? You didn’t see a couple tons of raw sewage you fuckwad?”

  “Yeah,” Emory returned. “From the west tunnel.”

  “Fucking BCCA. The BCCA…” Emory could tell the foreman now shouted at someone else. “They opened up early. Get’em a message.”

  Click.

  * * *

  McCallum had heard of Fort Niagara. He had a vague idea it sat somewhere north of the Niagara Falls catchment, at the end of the Niagara River. He learned about it in grade school, though the details had faded with sine and cosine and how to diagram a sentence. He didn’t want to do a search on the topic, because it could be traced later, if the company had the desire. They’d know he had an interest and no other historical inquires in which to hide it. He decided to research the Niagara Gorge — any landscape artist within 500 miles would — and hope he found a plausible tributary running to the Fort.