Keepers

by Brenda Cooper

  The party took the entire top floor of the McBride Building, a newish building with cascades of edible gardens on the walls and purple and yellow flowers growing over the entrances. There were no robots anywhere near the huge outdoor patio where most things seemed to be happening. Just before they reached the doorway, Julianna stopped and took Coryn’s hand briefly. “Adam will escort you.”

  That stung a little, but what had she expected? That Julianna would stay with her? Adam spotted them as soon as they walked in and strode over to greet them. He wore a black tux with an off-white shirt and matching shoes, all of that topped with an off-white fedora. Gold chains enclosed his wrists and hung around his neck, maybe thicker than they needed to be. He looked classier than she had expected. He took her hand and placed it on his arm, her fingers sliding along the silky material of his coat.

  Julianna offered a small, gracious smile that didn’t quite make up for being abandoned, but Coryn knew she should be grateful. She didn’t belong here. She didn’t belong in this dress, on this man’s arm, or in the company of the powerful.

  Julianna headed straight toward a roped-off area near a stage currently occupied by three rather small girls in matching white dresses playing fantastic piano. People watched her come, faces lighting up in greeting. Clearly she was still popular with the current governments of the great cities.

  Jake stepped out from the press of the crowd and took her arm, and Julianna moved effortlessly to a position where they fit like two halves of a puzzle. They shared a brief glance before turning away, looking for just a moment like young lovers long parted.

  Adam steered Coryn toward the outside of the room, which was occupied by well-dressed young people only a few years older than Coryn—exactly whom Julianna had suggested she find. Adam fit well with this crowd. He clearly knew a number of them, at least if smiles and handshakes and whispered conversations about the last year or so were any indication. He introduced her to so many people in the first twenty minutes of the party that the faces all started to blur together.

  Everyone they met was as dressed up as she and Adam, the clothes so dramatic they caught her eye over and over.

  She didn’t quite know what to say, and so she tried to suck in the conversations to think about later. Names were hard to remember, and who worked for who was even more difficult to keep straight. She felt lost, as if she were taking a test but didn’t know the answers and had to intuit them from the slightest clues.

  Many people looked nongendered. There had been a trans boy in her orphanage, but she was still astonished at how easily Adam switched between “she,” “he,” and “they”. She tried to note where he used “they” so she’d get it right. Jin was a tall person with female features and masculine clothes wearing way-too-high heels for their six-foot-two frame. Imke had slightly exaggerated tattooed makeup and many rings and baubles on their fingers and ears and nose and a ruby in their right eyebrow, and a high laugh full of good-natured energy. They leaned over her hand and pressed their fingers into her palm, a gesture somewhere between greeting and caress. Aro simply looked neither male or female, indistinct. Unlike the opulent Imke, they looked like they merely wanted to fit into any moment in as forgettable a manner as possible.

  Waiters in red uniforms wandered the room with champagne and tiny appetizers. She took one of the glasses, expecting to be asked her age. Instead, the waiter handed it over without a second glance. She drank it quickly, a little guilty about it (surely not on her training diet!). It made her feel a little giggly and off-balance. She refused two more that were pressed on her. Adam took from all three platters, drinking the bubbly wine as fast as she drank water. He began to list to the left. She leaned into him to keep him on course between groups of people, hoping his unexpected weight wouldn’t make her stumble.

  They walked across a clear spot in the huge room, and she got a panoramic view of the glittering crowd. It looked even fancier than she had imagined when she was little and stared up at the tops of skyscrapers, trying to imagine living like the rich. Gold and silver and gems sparkled on almost everyone, makeup transformed faces to near-perfection, and low lights flattered even the old.

  Her head spun and her feet hurt. Someone introduced a classical band and they started playing softly, adding a touch more magic to the moment.

  Adam didn’t seem as awe-struck as she felt. “What did you do in New York?” she asked him.

  He smiled down at her and gave a small, off-balance flourish of a bow. It looked like an imitation of a gesture that would look natural from Blessing. “I worked for Julianna.”

  “As?”

  “I was a . . . a person on her staff.”

  He had been about to say something else. Another waiter passed them, and Adam took a fourth drink and drained it so fast he was able to set the glass back on the same platter.

  The waiter grimaced but kept moving gamely though the crowd.

  She sensed that pushing Adam wouldn’t help, although gaining his trust might. “So tell me who to meet next?”

  He looked around, as if selecting a target. “How about Marisela Hu from Ontario?”

  “All right. Why?”

  His words came out slurred. “You’re getting smarter.”

  For asking questions? He was the supposed data scientist. “What does Marisela do?”

  “She manages immigration to and from Ontario. They have some great schools, especially in the bio . . . biological sciences. This will be good to know if Julianna starts the foundation she’s talking about.”

  “I think she will.” Julianna had talked about it quite a lot, and as if it existed. She had even had Coryn file some paperwork for it.

  Another waiter stopped right in front of them, champagne bubbling brightly as if just poured. Coryn deflected Adam’s arm. What was she going to do if he got too drunk to walk? What if Julianna blamed her?

  Hadn’t Blessing said there were people waiting to take her place? She didn’t intend to just give it up.

  Adam muttered something about her being a nursemaid.

  “Where is Marisela?” she prompted him.

  He stood as tall as he could, which let him look over the sea of sweating faces. “There.” He leaned in close to her. “Take out one of your cards.”

  She had forgotten them! She opened the small golden purse and took out a card, tilting it into the light to read it.

  Coryn Williams

  Special Assistant to Julianna Lake

  Cwilliams@jl.sc

  She smiled. “I’m ready.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Lou frowned as she added up Matchiko’s word game points. “Thirty-five. That makes two hundred and seven. To my one hundred and twelve. You win.”

  Matchiko smiled at her from her position propped up among pillows on the bed. “That’s because I’m not fretting as much as you are.”

  Lou shook her head as she picked up the pieces. “Most people make five points on their last move. Not thirty-five. And yes, you are fretting.” Matchiko looked better. She’d started refusing narcotics the day after David set her leg, and a day after that she’d started eating regularly again.

  A soft, familiar knock. Lou tucked the game away and hopped up to open the door. Shuska came through, balancing two bowls of sweet summer corn soup and a tray of bread, surely from the hotel kitchen. “I ate my soup. Couldn’t carry three bowls. It’s good.” She handed Matchiko a bowl and set the rest of the food on the table. “I ran into David. He said maybe tomorrow.”

  Lou picked up her bowl and tasted the soup, then grabbed the peppershaker they’d borrowed from the kitchen on the first day and shook liberally. She waited while Shuska fussed over Matchiko, making sure she had everything in easy reach. They’d managed to build up a way for her to sit almost straight up in spite of the ungainly cast. Shuska had scrounged boards and nails and made a lap-table Matchiko could eat from or use for games or small puzzles. Anything to keep her distracted from the itch and awkwardness of the cast.

&
nbsp; Shuska settled on the only other chair. She started on her story of the day by tossing a hundred and twenty dollars onto the table. About average for her work days. “Two more days and we can afford a horse.”

  Lou finished a spoonful of soup. “That’s dubious.”

  “It only has to be able to walk.”

  “It would be nice if we could feed it.”

  Matchiko interrupted. “If my cast comes off tomorrow maybe I can do something to help.”

  “Yes, you can.” Lou set her already-empty bowl down. “You can rest another day or two and be happy you can scratch your ankle.”

  Matchiko merely smiled.

  Lou stood up. “Maybe I can find work tonight, as well as information.”

  “Try the Third Horseman.” Shuska leaned back in her chair. “I noticed a help-wanted sign in the window this afternoon.”

  Lou sighed and started gathering her things into a bag she could throw over her shoulder. “I hate tending bar. But once more into the dark of night . . .” She spent every evening looking for both work and information. One of them was always with Matchiko, and most of the time the other was working or looking for work.

  Shuska had better luck than the rest of them at getting hired. Muscle was useful for almost every farm or shop, and her native heritage played well in Yakima. She swore she belonged to sea and sky and land, and thus to no tribe, but the Latinos and Mormons who ran much of Yakima didn’t know that, and it was always useful to keep the local tribes happy. The three groups balanced power partly by cooperating. Shuska made money every day, and Lou had found work once. Once.

  The walk from the Hotel Shamiana to town took almost an hour. Mature orchards with gnarled trunks bordered the road. Pickers had started streaming out of the orchards to head home, laughing and talking, one pair of old men singing. Much fruit was still harvested by hand. Lou had heard that this was more to keep the orchard’s owners from being mobbed by angry people who needed work than because it made economic sense. Nevertheless, in Yakima, everything that grew on trees was picked by humans.

  Yakima was one of the few small cities that thrived legally on this side of the mountains. It survived to serve as a waypoint for delivery of fruit from the remaining orchards. Megacities grew most of their food in vertical farms, but apples needed orchards, and orchards didn’t thrive in sterile environments. They did thrive all around Yakima, and food came in from a few nearby farms in Promise as well.

  From time to time short convoys of trucks drove by carrying products, workers, or even farm animals. Almost every engine was silently electric. Both foot and farm traffic grew thicker as she neared the town, an odd mix of old buildings like the Shamiana and new, tall, glassy buildings that housed the hospital, the city workers, and a few of the bigger corporations, which ran much of the economy. Yakima had never seen a significant influx of tech or biotech or any other modern industry, and that showed in the aging infrastructure, the old-fashioned materials, and the way it looked the same every time Lou visited. She liked it far more than she liked Seacouver.

  The Third Horseman did, indeed, have a help-wanted sign on it. It was a smallish building, with about twenty wooden tables and a long bar inside. The bar menu had five high-fat food choices on it and a varying special, and it smelled far more of beer and cider than of food.

  Lou headed straight for the long wooden bar, which was almost empty this early. Still, she had to wait for almost five minutes before the barman got to her. He was a tall Latino man with kind eyes, and wrinkles dripping down his face. She had seen him before, when she’d been in here trolling for information. He’d seemed nice enough and somewhat no-nonsense. In spite of his apparent age, muscles showed in his shoulders and he moved easily, smiling as he came up to her. “What can I get you?”

  “Can I help? I saw your sign.”

  His expression changed from welcoming to assessing. “Know how to tend bar?”

  “For traditional drinks.”

  “Can you stay for the rest of the harvest?”

  “I can stay a little while, but I can’t promise that much. We have to be north before winter.”

  Regret showed in his eyes. “I need someone who can promise that.” He started to turn away.

  “Wait.”

  He stopped, looking a little annoyed, and his face hardened.

  “I’ll tend tonight for tips,” she blurted out. “You can keep trying to fill your spot.”

  He hesitated. A group of three young men came in through the door, and that seemed to decide him. “You can stay tonight. If it works out, you can come back tomorrow. Tips only, cash only. You can have one free drink and a bowl of soup.”

  It wasn’t a very good deal, but it was unlikely she’d find a better one. She smiled. “I’m Lou.”

  “Salvador.”

  He gestured toward the three men, who had selected a table near the door. “There’s pads for taking orders by the till.”

  “Thanks,” she said again, and headed over to get a paper pad and blue pencil and find a thirsty table.

  Three hours later, the bar was so full that she barely had time to think between orders. She overheard bits and pieces of conversations, some in Spanish. The harvest was good. The worst storm had come after the fruit had set and before it was hot enough to blow almost-ripe apples off, so the year had been good, on balance. There were rumors of attacks on the cities, but there were always rumors of that.

  It turned out there was a lot of cash in this economy. Lou pocketed something over thirty dollars before the traffic started slowing down about eleven.

  While she stood behind the bar pouring two home brews from a keg for a pair of older women, Salvador came up. “Nice job. You can come back tomorrow. If the sign’s still on the door you can work again.”

  A dismissal. “Can I sit here and drink my drink?”

  He smiled. “Better than drinking in the streets.”

  She chose a stool in the middle of the bar and close enough to the main floor that she could overhear a few table conversations.

  The most interesting thing she learned was that a pack of wolves had moved into the Cascades on old highway twelve, which was barely maintained. Although the table she was listening to talked about shooting the wolves, they didn’t sound very serious, and one of the men kept suggesting ways they might live with them.

  It was all Lou could do not to join the conversation.

  Not a bad night, on balance. She had earned decent tips, sore feet, and no particularly interesting information.

  David didn’t come out the next day, and Shuska swore at the delay, while Matchiko picked up a book and ignored them all. Lou was happy enough to escape back to the Third Horseman and even happier when she saw the help wanted sign still hung in the window.

  A group of ten motorcycles stood outside the bar. They were tall and light, with knobby tires, big electric engines that hung under comfy seats, and locked metal saddlebags. The current motored version of horses. They could do easy off-road riding and take most road damage. The battery cases were painted with glittering flames or sun-speared mountains or neon cityscapes.

  Where had they come from?

  As soon as she walked in, Salvador handed her a pad and gestured toward the far side of the room, where the bikers lounged across three tables. They held menus and downed water from tall, clear glasses. Five couples, all middle-aged and fit, faces burned dark and wrinkled by the sun, hair tied back in ponytails or braids, or in two cases, simply shaved.

  She smiled and announced herself in her most perky voice. “Good evening! I’m Lou. What can I get for you?”

  They mostly wanted beer, although two slender women who were younger than the others asked for mimosas but settled for ciders when Lou explained, “Yakima grows the best apples in the world, but no citrus. Not even the engineered stuff. Farmers who want a finicky crop choose grapes.”

  They smiled at that.

  “But we make the best ciders in the known world.”

  The
mimosa women and two men switched their orders to cider.

  She delivered the drinks, managing to attract enough small talk to learn they had come down from Montana, cutting through Coeur d’Alene in Idaho and around Spokane Metro on side roads, then running down here via Highway 2 and the 97. “How were the roads?”

  “Tough,” said one of the smaller men, a pale thing with freckles, who looked too small to handle a big motorcycle. “It’s summer. We had to take three detours, but they were okay on the bikes. Might have been hard for cars.”

  And by inference their bikes were far better. “Did you see very many people?”

  A slender blonde held her hand out for one of the ciders. “A few groups of Wilders.”

  Her friend added, “A traveling preacher stayed with us one night. Tried to tell us we were going to hell for driving, even though we’re all solar.”

  Lou had to hold back a laugh. They were undoubtedly illegals, people like her who’d fled the city. Since she didn’t have a regular job or even a work contract, she was illegal as hell. Especially now that the city had kicked her out. Maybe the preacher would tell her to go to hell, too. “Anybody you didn’t like?” she asked, taking her time handing out the last few beers.

  “I didn’t like the preacher,” the biggest man said.

  The youngest looking women said, “There was a town with no place to stop. We used the head in a park, and by the time we left there were twenty people staring at us. They lost a chance to feed us lunch and maybe have us a buy few things.”

  “Scared,” another man added.

  “I thought they were mean,” the first cider-girl said.

  Lou was out of drinks to hand out, but she stood there anyway. “Where was this?”

  One of the men gave her a suspicious look, like she might be a spy or a policeman or, if they hadn’t all been killed, a Listener. But the cider-girl didn’t see his look. “Not far out of Coeur d’Alene,” she said. “Maybe an hour. I wanted to stop in Coeur d’Alene but we didn’t, and that was why we had to stop in that place full of creeps.”