“What do you mean, few?” said Napoleon Number Three.
“Excuse me?” said Rhinnick, briefly derailed.
“You said ‘few.’ ‘We happy few.’ Zere are five of us at ze table. Five is several. Few means four or less.”
“Four or fewer,” said Zeus, helpfully.
“Fine then,” grumbled Rhinnick. “We several, we happy several, we —”
“And I’m not happy,” said Napoleon Number Five.
“Me neizer,” said Napoleon Number Three.
“We fairly content several?” suggested Zeus.
“I’m a bit anxious,” said Ian, who generally was.
Rhinnick pinched the bridge of his nose. “Right, then,” he said, regrouping. “We several, we fairly content and quite possibly a bit anxious several, we band of — look, you’ve gone and robbed my speech of its essential dramatic whatnot. I mean to say, you can’t inflict a series of grammatical objections on an inspirational pep talk without robbing it of its foundational whatdoyoucallit. Now where was I?”
“Getting expelled,” said Ian, helpfully.
“But I still don’t see how you’ll do that,” whispered Zeus, anxiously. “Mistress Oan never expels anyone. She tolerates everything. She didn’t even expel Walter when he widdled in the corner.”
“Whittled, old man, whittled,” said Rhinnick, “and carving a bit of wood into a humorously vulgar shape is but a minor peccadillo in comparison to the offence I have in store. For what I intend to employ, my hefty companion, is the patented Feynman skill at rhetorical what-do-you-call-it. For one blessed with my well-publicized gift of giving tongue it will be but the work of a moment to tick off our baffled schoolmarm and have myself sent packing for Peericks’s office, whereupon you, my supporting riff-raff, can await the fire alarm and steel yourselves for phase two.”
“But,” said Zeus, raising a thick finger in protest, “I can’t see why you don’t just as—”
“And now,” said Rhinnick, ignoring the interruption, rising from his chair and flicking a speck of dust from the cuff of his robe, “observe.”
He cleared his throat theatrically until all eyes were upon him.
“Mistress Oan,” he said, gesturing broadly in her direction. “Pardon the interruption, but I cannot abide another moment of your fortune-cookie wisdom, your hokum-laden blathering and your ill-conceived attempts to guide the paths of drooling loonies. Your inane lectures and pointless exercises are an affront to dime-store psychology.”
The room fell silent. Jaws gaped and eyes bulged. Everyone in the Sharing Room stared at Rhinnick in fascination. Even the Goons looked mildly interested. Napoleon Number Three winced.
“Ah, Mr. Feynman,” said Oan, in her soupiest tone of voice. “I’m pleased to see that you have finally decided to take part in our session. We are grateful for your full presence and eager for your contribution. Please, unburden yourself and share your views with the group.” She folded her hands and smiled serenely.
“Then allow me to make myself clear to the meanest intellect,” said Rhinnick, “by which, of course, I mean yours. These so-called Laws of Attraction, the healing power of crystals, the notion of lifepaths, self-truths, and magnetic whatdoyoucallthems, taken together, don’t amount to a tinker’s damn, if tinkers are the ones I’m thinking of. Show me an egg who’s fallen in with homeopaths, naturopaths, voodoo metaphysicians, or other snake-oil salespersons, and I’ll show you a man who’s been bamboozled by hucksters. I ask you, fellow inmates, to weigh the evidence,” he added, now strolling around the room and eyeballing assorted members of his audience. “Take these Vision Boards, for example.” He approached the easel at the front of the room. It held a Vision Board festooned with magazine clippings showing gold, jewels, luxury cars, and money. “No doubt these boards were conceived by a conspiracy of bristol-board hawkers and purveyors of magazines. I mean to say, if mere reflection upon prosperity is enough to coax the universe to fling purses of gold in one’s direction, why should the universe insist that you create remedial artwork, sticking magazine clippings to a bit of construction paper, as some sort of a mystical precondition?”
“Mr. Feynman,” Oan interjected, radiating tolerance and tranquility, “my mentor, Dr. Hill, teaches us that Vision Boards and other accoutrements of personal channelling are mere physical aids that help one focus the mind, to tap the native powers deep within each of us and to allow us to reach a state of intentionality, a state in which we can harness the Laws of Attraction and —”
“Well, when you see Doctor Hill you can tell him from me that he’s an ass,” said Rhinnick, waving a hand dismissively. “The same goes for all purveyors of the bilge that falls from your lips. Show me any hawker of meditation beads, instructive pamphlets, or crystals of doubtful provenance and I’ll show you a man who finds in Oan a repeat customer. Easy prey, I mean to say. A babe among wolves, and one not qualified to offer advice and counsel to any rational person. I mean to say, a bird with questionable allegiances to hemp, incense, and exotic herbal remedies; a bird who thinks that an infinite universe gives a tick about her personal aspirations — well, there is a bird who oughtn’t to be doling out advice to the clinically loopy, but one who should, by sharp contradistinction, be standing shoulder to shoulder with said loonies at the dispensary, crying out for the small pink pills that make the voices go away.”
The heads of the assembled mental patients swivelled around in Oan’s direction. She looked as though she’d swallowed a bad oyster. The last minute or so of dialogue didn’t fit with her world view, and so as far as Oan was concerned, it probably hadn’t happened. Yet it seemed to have had an impact on her students. To her left was Vinnie Chapman, confined to hospice for being an incurable humanitarian,34 fretfully chewing his lower lip and looking for all the world like a poster boy for existential crises. To the right was Leonardo, who’d long suffered from the delusion that he was a mental patient confined to Detroit Mercy.35 Leonardo was wringing the hem of his terry-cloth robe and rocking gently back and forth as though the foundations of the world were crumbling around him. Oan could see that Rhinnick’s rant was having a similar effect on several members of the class, and that another round of the tirade would have the Sharing Room howling like the Old World Monkey Pavilion at the Detroit Central Zoo.
She made a disappointed sigh — the sort that sounds like all of the air escaping from a deflating soufflé.
“Mr. Feynman,” she said, drawing on previously untapped reserves of charity, “I — I thank you for sharing your views in the safety of the Sharing Room. I am grateful that you’ve shown our friends that all expression is welcomed and valued in this space, and that all who come in a spirit of sharing can safely —”
Rhinnick made a noise that sounded like water leaving a drain. He had imagined that his bit of silver-tongued oratory would have left Oan spitting nails, chewing broken glass, or howling at any nearby moons that were short-sighted enough to come into her orbit. Any of these reactions would have seen Rhinnick chucked from the Sharing Room instanta. What he hadn’t budgeted for was the broad-minded tolerance one develops through years of tending to the reality-impaired. Think of it as emotional scar tissue, or a callus for the soul.
This called for a change of plans.
“Ah. Ahem. Well. Could I, that is, I mean to say, if . . . if it’s all the same to you, might I be excused to visit Dr. Peericks?” said Rhinnick, meekly.
“Of course you can,” said Oan. “Take the hall pass from Mr. Smith —”
“Brown,” said Ian.
“. . . from Mr. Brown,” said Oan, “and give my best to the doctor.” She smiled brightly.
Rhinnick clicked his heels together, performed a few steps of a buck-and-wing dance and scooted over to Ian for the hall pass. With a final magnanimous bow to the vanquished Oan, a wave to his fellow inmates, and a merry “tra la la,” upon his lips, Rhinnick exited stage lefFt, as
it were, leaving the Sharing Room forever.
The Napoleon who called himself Bonaparte reached into a terry-cloth pocket, stroked Alice’s blade, and pressed a button on his signalling device. Then he asked Ian to pass the crayons.
* * *
31Oan would be the first to explain that over-the-counter, high-alcohol cough syrup doesn’t count. No matter how much you drink. Even if you don’t have a cough.
32Where someone like the City Solicitor might be described as having a corkscrew of a mind, Zeus’s mind was more of a ten-penny nail. It was fairly sharp, straight, and uncomplicated, but generally needed a hand to guide it and a few whacks on the head before it really got down to business.
33Immortality makes some battle cries more meaningful than others.
34In the same sense that a person who eats only vegetables is called a “vegetarian.”
35It was purely coincidental that his delusion was accurate. Even if he’d been an accountant in Des Moines he’d still have believed that he was a mental patient confined to Detroit Mercy.
Chapter 15
On this day in 15,276, a gang of well-organized, well-funded, and ill-intentioned usurpers tried to overthrow the government of Detroit. Because Detroit’s government is (and has always been) a gerontocracy — meaning that power rests in the hands of the oldest citizens, with the very oldest citizen, Abe the First, serving as Supreme Ruler — there was no practical, legal way to achieve a change in power. In a society of immortals, the oldest being stays the oldest, severely limiting any practical form of upward mobility. It is, in essence, the ultimate in “first-come, first-served” political structures. As a result, the well-organized, well-funded, and ill-intentioned usurpers who sought to secure a change in power used the only practical option available to them: they staged a coup d’état.
They’d plotted their plots and schemed their schemes in hidden locations throughout Detroit over the course of seven years. They’d thought of every conceivable contingency. They’d triple-checked their plans. They’d made careful preparations and acquired an arsenal of weapons and other necessary supplies. Then, when their detailed machinations were complete and their arrangements were in place, they’d turned up at City Hall in the dead of night. They’d known (as everyone did) of Abe’s habit of working into the wee small hours, and they planned to find him alone and unprotected.
They stalked silently through City Hall’s labyrinthine corridors until they came to the heavily inscribed, mystical-looking iron doors of Abe’s renowned Rectangular Office. They made complicated gestures at one another in the shadows, readied their weapons, silently picked the digital locks, and burst into the mayor’s chamber.
Abe was working alone. He looked across his tidy desk toward the would-be revolutionaries. His familiar, cheerful smile disappeared like breath from a heated mirror. It was replaced by an expression that betrayed no malice, just acceptance, long-suffering patience, and an utter lack of surprise.
Only the mayor and the City Solicitor have reliable recollections of what happened next, and they don’t seem inclined to spill the beans. It does appear that the prospects of learning more about the night of the coup are improving. After centuries of intensive psychotherapy and medically assisted regeneration, one of the organizers of the Anti-Abe Conspiracy has regained the capacity to make short, semi-coherent sentences between the screams and terrified babbling that fill the rest of his waking hours. So far he has yielded two bits of reliable information about the attack on Abe’s office, namely (1) “He knew we were coming,” and (2) “He had a goat.”
The upshot of all of this is that no one has tried to overthrow Abe’s government in the last two thousand years. No one wants to. After all: Detroit works. It’s a precarious, teetering balance of billions of self-interested players trying to eke out some advantage over each other, but somehow, against all expectation, the latticework of the city still hangs together — supported, it would seem, by the strength of its ruler’s will and an army of civil servants ably headed by the City Solicitor.
The foiling of the would-be coup d’état is now celebrated annually as “Abe Day” — a civic holiday featuring lavish parades, sporting events, and the copious consumption of alcohol and deep-fried snacks. And while the details of the original “Abe Day” are veiled in mystery, the public knows that this day celebrates the stability of the government and the wisdom of the smiling, charming, affable man who holds the reins of power. And each and every Abe Day, when the parades have stopped parading and the revellers have retired, Abe and the City Solicitor share a private toast in City Hall.
But this year Abe was absent. And the government was in peril.
She was here. She was somewhere in Detroit. She was marshalling her forces and — if the prophecy could be trusted — she was preparing to bring the whole world to its knees. And, unlike the man who now shrieked, drooled, and babbled about goats in sanatorium cell 4219C, she had the will to do it. She had the will to challenge Abe, and to win.
Chapter 16
“Screens,” said Isaac. At his command two holographic monitors shimmered into existence above his roll-top desk, one depicting a gravelly rooftop and the other showing a van. He donned a wireless headset, pushed a button on his datalink, and activated the voicelink.
“Connect Mobile 1,” he said, directing the voicelink to connect via satellite to Socrates’ intracranial implant. “Encoding, 437.”
“Is that really necessary?” said a voice in Isaac’s earpiece. The voice belonged to Socrates, who presently waved a hand in front of his eyes to test the feed to Isaac’s monitor. An image of the same black-gloved hand waved across the holographic screen shimmering over the left-hand side of Isaac’s desk.
“POV display confirmed, Mobile 1. Encoding, 437,” said Isaac, firmly.
“All right, all right, confirming code 437.”
Isaac waited for the encryption protocols to engage.
Isaac had never been a man of half measures. He used four separate alarm clocks every morning. He triple-checked each trivial report filed by his subordinates, and faithfully backed up every file to multiple servers. He always wore a belt and suspenders. And despite the fact that even Detroit’s most gifted hackers couldn’t penetrate the voicelink’s native security system, Isaac now spoke to Socrates using a diabolically complex code — one he’d designed to fade seamlessly into the bulk of the background chatter of Detroit’s cellular network.
“OMG Ashley, did you see what Steph was wearing?” said Isaac, security protocol 437 modulating his voice into a perfect simulation of teenaged girl.
“Like, I know, right?” said Socrates, his voice similarly disguised.
“It was so five years ago — like grammar-school retro or something.”
“Totally,” said Socrates.
Excellent, thought Isaac, mentally decoding Socrates’ message. Socrates has received the signal from our asset in the hospice. We can proceed with the extraction.
“Where is she, anyway? She was supposed to be here, like, ages ago or something.”
“Food court,” said Isaac, his eyes darting toward the screen that showed the location of Tonto’s van.
“Pfft. Probably stuffing her ugly face,” said Socrates.
“Harsh!” said Isaac.
Socrates giggled in response. He turned his head and waved a hand in front of his eyes, signalling Isaac to take note of something revealed on Socrates’ POV display. The holographic screen to Isaac’s left showed the silhouettes of three heavily armed assault troops crouching with their backs to Socrates, obscured in the deep shadows tracing the edge of the gravelly roof. Through the shadows, Isaac could make out the letters displayed on the back of each figure’s Kevlar armour: CDPD SWAT — the Central Detroit Police Department’s Special Weapons and Tactical squadron.
“Hey,” said Socrates over the link. “These creep
y pervs are totally checking me out. Three of ’em. I think I’ll go say hi.”
“Cute?” asked Isaac, mildly concerned.
“Hawt,” said Socrates.
“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!”
“LOL,” said Socrates.
“You don’t say LOL, loser, it’s a text thing.”
“Oh my god I hate you right now. K, gotta jet now. Hugs!”
They giggled and signed off.
Socrates slipped out of the shadows and stepped toward the crouching figures.
The assault troops rattled Isaac. It’s not that they posed any kind of threat to Socrates — he’d probably treat them as a minor training exercise and overpower them without weapons, or blindfolded with one hand behind his back, or while standing on one foot and singing Detroit’s civic anthem. What troubled Isaac was their presence. Why were they there? Obviously some level of police presence could be expected — in the wake of Socrates’ earlier intrusion into the hospice, when he’d assaulted a few guards and stolen Ian Brown’s files, it wouldn’t be unusual for the police to keep a sharper eye on the hospice grounds. But heavily armed SWAT troops stationed on rooftops? That was overkill. The theft of Ian’s file had been two weeks ago, and it had been one of twelve such thefts at various institutions. Had elite troops been deployed at every hospice where a patient file was missing? This called for further investigation — but that would have to wait. In the meantime, Isaac’s attention was pulled to his second holographic screen — the one he’d trained on Tonto’s van after his operatives had found it parked in a loading dock three blocks away from the hospice.
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