Star Sailors

by James McNaughton

  He explodes out of the car, slams the door shut and struggles furiously with Mandela’s new tent—which has assembled itself in less than a second, but they are unable to put it down in a way that stays down—to plug in the charger. There’s hardly any room to move. His bikes have been forced into braces on the wall, his kayak into a sling above his head by the junk waiting to be cleared out. Some of it still looks good: the superseded home-viewing screen, the holoviewer that failed ten days out of warranty. Most of it doesn’t. The old paint tins, the electric weedeater overwhelmed by the demands of their two square-metre patch of grass, five charger-less or damaged altitude-limited drones, bent bats, unstrung rackets, cracked paddles, numerous stacked boxes of clothes and shoes that Karen can’t bear to throw out or give away, an unused hammock still in its box, a broken swingball set, two broken chairs from their set of four, a broken kite. The house is full of stuff on the verge of becoming junk as well: the high-end can-opener, new toaster and kettle are all intermittently malfunctioning, his office chair won’t adjust, most of Mandela’s toys don’t work—they last three days on average, though the boy doesn’t seem to care. Junk, Jeremiah thinks. We buy junk. One thing I’ll do if Karen leaves is auction the contents. Take the car, bikes and kayak out and sell the contents as a single lot, clothes and all, like they do on Garage Wars.

  His eyes fall on the scooter he bought Mandela for his fourth birthday. Look, Dad! For holding the thing up and resting a foot on the running board? Praise is not something Jeremiah has given lightly. Look, Daddy, look. Awesome, eh? For going two metres in a straight line?

  Something is ticking.

  ‘Awesome,’ Jeremiah says. His voice comes out thickly, oddly in the crammed concrete and steel space. ‘Sorry, son. I wasn’t looking. It’s all new to you, eh.’

  The lights in the flat are on and Karen’s song, ‘Treat Me’, plays. The cat rushes to his ankles despite the high probability of being kicked. He picks the fragile thing up in one hand. Hanging stiffly, it begins to purr. While wondering what to do with it, he sees one of Mandela’s ‘projects’ on the living room floor. Among the rubble of the strangely neglected top-of-the-range King Arthur castle set lies a pirate sword made of loosely rolled paper, held together with a roll of sticky tape. Mandela was very proud of it. Overly proud, Jeremiah remembers himself thinking. He shakes his head at himself. And there’s a pot under the coffee table in which Mandela cooked a ‘barbecue’. ‘Dad? Daddy? Daddy? What would you like for tea?’ The napkin roll and three little King Arthur candelabras inside it would become any dish Jeremiah desired, improved by tomato sauce dispensed from an invisible bottle with a twist of the boy’s pudgy wrist. Such commitment to the imaginary meal. Such humble things he works on with all his heart. It’s these simple, self-made constructions that are magically transformed in Manny’s eyes, not the plastic knights and castle of the King Arthur set. Jeremiah sees that the magic is in his son. Manny doesn’t need to try harder, he realises, to make things better, more realistic. They’re already perfect.

  Fear seizes him. He’s too late. Karen will leave and take his boy away. ‘Please,’ he says. ‘Let me have my job so I can love him properly.’

  10

  It’s past midnight when Jeremiah shuts down the screen in his home office and climbs into bed. It’s unlikely that Karen will be awake after a day in the sun and then a couple of drinks on the Cliff, but he tries his luck. She stirs at his touch. She sits up.

  ‘Have you seen the Beach bomber’s video?’

  ‘Uh,’ he groans. ‘No.’

  ‘You should.’ She slips her screen off her nightstand.

  ‘Really? Now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  He rolls onto his back. ‘Let me guess. He mentions the one per cent.’

  ‘Of course. Here, sit up, come on.’

  ‘Ah. Murderers like that shouldn’t be allowed a platform for their raving. How’d you get it?’

  ‘It turned up in my inbox.’

  He won’t sit up. The killer doesn’t deserve the effort. Nothing could justify the horrors he experienced in the dome that day.

  In his recurring nightmare, dozens of screens begin ringing in the dark. The system is up again. His own personal ringtone joins the plaintive chorus. It’s Karen calling, but he can’t answer. Can’t move.

  Karen palms the screen and snuggles up to his shoulder.

  The suicide bomber, captured by his screen camera, was a young man with nascent dreadlocks and a feathery moustache. Neither frothing at the mouth, stupid-looking, nor fatally nondescript, as Jeremiah anticipated he would be, the bomber looks mainly exhausted. The light is dim, as if in sympathy with the greyness of his skin; the wall behind him is anonymous.

  ‘I was going to learn this off by heart and give, like, a speech, but I’ve run out of time,’ says the suicide bomber softly. ‘I need to see some people now who are very important to me. So, yeah, I’ll just read this out instead. This is what I wrote.’ His eyes drop. He takes a breath.

  Jeremiah says, ‘Lucky Mandela wasn’t with us when he killed all those people. On the subject of “important people”, I mean. Little prick.’

  In the same soft voice the suicide bomber reads out his speech. ‘The time for appealing to the one per cent through their corrupt institutions is over. Time has run out. More pointless requests to end emissions is a death sentence for our planet. More pointless requests from us to share resources fairly is a life sentence of sickness and poverty for the next generation of Outers. We’ve been talking for decades and it’s got us nowhere. While we’ve been talking about the environmental and social consequences of climate change, the one per cent have been seeing business opportunities in adaptation. While we’ve been talking about the ruinous effects of inequality on society and the economy, the one per cent have continued with business as usual, made more and more money, shored up their holy free market and made themselves immortal. The truth is that the one per cent won’t share their resources, so we must take them. The one per cent won’t change their relationship to the environment in any meaningful way, so we must take them out of the environment. The one per cent will never listen. They don’t want anyone to listen. They bury your dissenting voice under a constant deluge of trivia, misinformation, reality shows, current events, sports and games—all to blind you to the reality of your exploited existence.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Jeremiah says. ‘Entertainment as a conspiracy theory.’

  ‘Their corporate-run, ritual puppet-democracy,’ continues the bomber, ‘offers no possibility of change. Democracy is the opiate of the people. And their legal channels lead nowhere but into lawyers’ pockets.

  ‘The world is going to hell under their watch and yet the immortal one per cent say that their hands are clean—that the free market decides. They say that a free market equals freedom. Freedom digs up the fossil fuels and burns them; freedom melts the icecaps, acidifies the oceans and pushes temperatures up beyond anything seen on Earth for millions of years. Freedom causes mass extinctions; freedom kills the crops and brings famine. Freedom stops the rain and brings drought. Freedom drowns low-lying communities and traffics the refugees. Freedom reduces the workers’ wages and strips them of their rights. Freedom places the people under constant surveillance. Freedom buys out the media and makes it a mouthpiece for propaganda. Freedom buys out democracy and makes it the puppet of big business.’

  Karen pauses the video. ‘I don’t agree with his methods, obviously, but I think he has a point about the way the profit-driven agenda has directed things over the last few decades. Don’t you?’

  Jeremiah shakes his head. ‘Why did he bomb the bloody Berhampore Beach?’

  ‘Well, because it’s a symbol of inequality, I guess.’

  ‘Because it was an easy target. People like this are destructive rather than constructive. They can blow things up but they can’t build. They don’t understand the real world. They want it turned into lifestyle blocks. But with nine billion people and rising, and t
he energy required to sustain them, the harsh reality is that not everyone can have a pony and a water feature.’

  Her voice is cold. ‘Who’s talking about ponies and water features? It’s about sharing resources fairly. It’s about—’

  ‘Resources are limited. You get what you can. To the best of your ability.’

  ‘It’s all about money. About greed. What about a different relationship?’

  ‘Such as?’

  A pause. ‘Like the way Indigenous societies used to live? In harmony with the environment.’

  ‘Subsistence living?’

  ‘Yeah. Living sustainably. Why’s subsistence such a dirty word?’

  ‘For the same reason poverty is.’

  She frowns.

  He front-foots. ‘Alright, okay, so what’s this killer’s vision?’

  She puffs air grumpily and pushes play.

  ‘All the real freedoms we should hold dear to us are being sacrificed in return for money to that psychopathic neoliberal monster known as the free market, the one per cent’s proof, their doctrine, their first and last word, their Holy Father who sanctions exploitation and destruction.’

  He raises his hand and she pauses the video. ‘We don’t even have this so-called free market in New Zealand, Karen. We have free education and health, social services, a robust democracy. Maybe too robust: look at Mrs Siolo. And communism doesn’t work. History has proven that. The market is efficient, encourages growth, rewards innovation and results in competition that benefits the consumer.’

  ‘Communism’s not the only other option, Jeremiah, and you know it. It seems to me that history is proving the current system doesn’t work either. It’s immoral to put money before everything, including the environment. The whole system’s in danger of collapsing.’

  ‘The thing is, Karen, that without big reserves of capital, nothing gets made. But I’ve got an open mind. What’s his solution? Free lunches? The killer didn’t like democracy, obviously.’

  She pushes play.

  ‘The love of money is the root of all their evil. Money is their yardstick, their judge of value, their measure of failure and success …’

  ‘Please.’

  She doesn’t pause. ‘… their measure of intrinsic worth. Money, money, money, at the expense of everything. So shortsighted and obsessed are they with immediate financial gratification that they are prepared to sacrifice the world. It is time to remove the one per cent and begin the healing process.’

  ‘Yes,’ Jeremiah says, ‘blow up recreation areas.’

  ‘The time for talk is over. The one per cent are a cancer that will destroy our civilisation; a parasite that will kill its host, the world. They must be removed. We must dig them out to save everything that is sacred, while we still can.

  ‘I’m done with talking. I go to my death with an easy conscience. Only a few guilty must die so that the innocent multitude may live together justly and in dignity in a sustainable and respectful way. Our planet must be treasured and allowed to become beautiful again.’

  The video stops.

  ‘The “innocent multitude”,’ Jeremiah says. ‘He obviously knows nothing about his neighbours either.’

  ‘By “innocent multitude” he means victims of society.’

  ‘“Victims of society”? What’s happened to you? We’re not victims are we? We’ve got money. Anyone who’s prepared to work—’

  ‘Not everyone has a lawyer brain, or long legs and a big bust. Goodnight.’

  11

  ‘Daddy, how much longer for the bus?’

  Jeremiah grits his teeth. Mandela asked him ‘How long?’ questions when they were getting ready to leave the flat, waiting for the ferry at the Oriental Bay dock, and again when heading for Day’s Bay on the ferry. ‘About half an hour,’ he replies evenly.

  ‘How long’s half an hour?’

  ‘How many times—’ He catches himself. ‘About as long as it took on the ferry to get here. The same amount of time we were on the ferry.’

  ‘Oh.’ Mandela casts a brief look out the café window. The harbour’s not rough enough to be interesting, and just too choppy to make a return by ferry comfortable.

  The bus leaves 20 minutes after the ferry. Jeremiah weighs the risk of crossing back to Oriental Bay against the time lost by bus and decides in favour of lost time. He doesn’t want Mandela getting seasick or thrown about. Although Jeremiah’s job feels secure, for now, probation leaves him vulnerable to dismissal. Should the worst-case future came to fruition, it wouldn’t be wise to provide an example of inept parenting for Karen’s lawyers. But primarily, of course, on a more immediate and practical level, being knocked about on a public boat wouldn’t be fun for Mandela and, at the end of the day, this is meant to be quality time.

  ‘Dad, your clothes are funny.’ Mandela’s high-pitched voice carries with odd clarity over the hubbub of the crowded café.

  Jeremiah flinches. He’s dressed down for the ferry trip to disguise he’s an Inner (even his lawnmowing and car- and kayak-cleaning ensembles were too good for this excursion; in the end, he’d had to purchase cheap clothes online and put them through the wash a couple of times). Three big, unsmiling men sit at the next table, tradesmen by the look of it. Wealthy enough to afford ferry trips and to sit in secure areas, but still Outers nonetheless, who might enjoy hassling him if they knew his status. He checks his watch, the old one he put on for the trip, and smiles tightly. ‘Finish your colouring, Manny.’

  ‘I have, Daddy.’ He points at Jeremiah’s e-reader. ‘What’s that?’

  It’s a playing card on the cover of the New Yorker: the king of hearts with the head of an Arab Jeremiah doesn’t recognise. He’s downloaded an issue because Mr Gully mentioned the magazine in passing. ‘A funny playing card,’ he tells Mandela. ‘You know, like you use in snap.’ Not bridge, but plebeian snap.

  ‘Oh.’

  Jeremiah begins to scroll through the issue, wondering what Mr Gully meant by his dismissive comment, ‘The kind of thing you’d find in the New Yorker.’

  ‘Daddy, Daddy, wait. There’s a cartoon.’

  ‘Ah, right.’

  The sketchy drawing is of a board meeting. The suits around the long table are sweaty and red-faced.

  ‘They’re hot, Daddy. What does it say?’

  Jeremiah reads the caption aloud: ‘“The air con’s bust again. We might have to re-think our strategy on ignoring global warming.”’

  ‘What does he mean, Daddy?’

  ‘It’s just a funny …’ He stops, sensing he’s being listened to, that he is suspected an Inner by the great unwashed encircling them. Kidnappings, assaults and muggings happen just about everywhere these days, even in daylight, and he’s alone here with a young boy, in a suburban area outside the Wall. The big, unsmiling tradesmen have the look of desperate men. Men who charge little for their labour in these times of high under- and unemployment and are never paid on time by their fellow Outers. If they’re not desperate, Jeremiah thinks, then they should be; they could wake up any minute to the fact that they will never really get ahead, and act. ‘It’s like they don’t care that the world’s getting hotter and sicker,’ he tells Mandela, channelling the complaints of the poorly educated and poverty-stricken Outers he grew up with, ‘until their air con fails and they start to sweat.’

  ‘Ha. Find another one, Daddy.’

  Sensing the big men’s attention on him, he flips through to the next cartoon: a kid holding a large and intricate toy spaceship looks up to his mother in the kitchen. The father is in the lounge, slumped in an armchair, his tie undone after a day at the office. He reads the caption: ‘“Daddy says I had to turn the sound off because it makes greenhouse gases.”’

  Mandela laughs. ‘Toys don’t make gas, Daddy!’

  ‘That’s right, Manny.’

  Mandela’s voice rises another pitch. It sounds as clear as a bell over the bass rumble of the tradesman and other labourers packed around them. ‘Why did his daddy tell a l
ie?’

  The sudden silence Jeremiah speaks into is surely not imagined. ‘Oh, the toy looks very loud and noisy, so his daddy said that to make him turn the sound off because he was tired after work. It was just a funny little lie.’

  ‘Huh?’

  The horrible possibility of the tradesmen being climate change deniers occurs to him. Outers are prone to cite historic natural climate cycles (and fail to mention the plunge in temperature caused by the meteorite that ended the dinosaurs), believing that anthropomorphic climate change is a playground for liberal elites and/or an excuse to impose more restrictions and taxes.

  ‘Um …’

  What he’d like is a gun—then he could tell Mandela his belief about climate change in front of these Outers, which is that it’s screamingly obvious humans are responsible (although he could never say that in a work context because many Venture Group employees are deniers as well). It’s only a week until his six-week stand-down period is over and he can apply for a gun permit again. The Magnus people have backed off regarding an endorsement, and he’s not sure if the offer of a complimentary weapon still stands, but channels remain open. Things at work have not really changed; his security level remains the same, for example, which is unusual. He suspects that his job was never really in danger, that his probation is in name only, a wake-up call to remind him that no one can afford to lose focus, even for a second. On good days, it seems that all that is required of him is that he keeps his nose clean for the remainder of his probation. However, he knows it would be a mistake to relax into that attitude, which runs counter to the whole point of his being put on probation. What remains undeniable and very hard to bear is that his upward momentum has ended. He’s missed the boat. Peaked. Yet he’s nowhere near high enough. To peak now is failure, a failure that will become heavier and heavier as the years pass.