Star Sailors

by James McNaughton

  He thinks of Polish cavalry charging panzers.

  ‘Nothing surprises them anymore,’ she continues, ‘not even the prospect of the end of civilisation. Believe me, after decades of power and control, and the promise of many more to come now that they’re effectively immortal, they don’t mind a little surprise. Also, the women all wear TS Stanaway. Actually, you were right about one thing.’

  ‘One thing?’

  ‘The Magnus endorsement helped. We’re hot, Mr Magnus. That’s why the entire guest list was approved.’

  ‘It was? You negotiated with security?’

  ‘No, I said there would be no negotiation on any name. It was the whole guest list or nothing.’

  ‘Hmph.’

  She sits side-saddle on his knees again and cups her hand around the back of his neck. ‘It’ll be alright, Jeremiah. We’re here now. With our hot new maid. Your Gators know exactly who’s coming, even if they won’t be able to make out who they are. If they don’t like the guest list or the masks they can stay away.’

  ‘Or go upstairs. I’d like the roof to be the base of operations for the Venture Group guests, and the kitchen and living room to be the base for Malcolm and the fashionistas.’

  She purses her lips. ‘Apartheid.’

  ‘More like Jim Crow.’

  ‘The elites on top again, and separate.’

  ‘After being savaged by the Chef they’ll need the space.’

  ‘Okay, the Goldens can start with the roof so they can feel all reassured that things are basically as they should be, but the masks will provide the possibility for upward mobility and infiltration.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘For mixing. Let’s mix it up, get people out of their conventional roles. All the class expectations will go out the window. It’ll be liberating.’

  ‘Where is this coming from, Karen?’

  She bristles. ‘Does it matter?’ She gets up and walks to the window, as if the dying garden and low lid of cloud have become objects of interest.

  The Chef, he thinks.

  ‘The super-elderly will love the anonymity,’ Karen tells the window. ‘They’ll be able to be their true selves. The selves they feel they can only be behind closed doors.’

  Which means S&M, if the persistent rumours are true. ‘Do we really want that?’

  ‘Don’t worry, it won’t get too weird. With the super-elderly, there’s no such thing as too weird.’

  It’s 6 pm and Simon has showered with Solangia. He lies on the couch with her and a glass of wine while Bill whips up some spaghetti. From the kitchen Bill sees his son subsiding. The hot shower, wine and Solangia’s blissful silence are already tipping him towards sleep. He’ll be well and truly under by the time the courier comes at 10.

  ‘I got a text from Cheryl before.’

  Bill clenches his jaw, stops his happy chopping. ‘And?’

  ‘She misses Sol.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Dreadfully.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Well, she thinks it was a mistake for me to take Sol. She’s realised how much she loves her. You know, how absence makes the heart grow fonder.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Hmmm.’

  Bill resumes chopping, more vigorously than before. The bitch wants Simon back to wait on her and serve her every need. She doesn’t miss the baby one bit. It’s more crucial than ever, he realises, that Solangia be returned to her mother tonight. Bill takes the bottle of wine into the lounge and tops up his son’s glass.

  ‘I feel half-pied already.’

  ‘I know what you mean. I’ve become a cheap drunk up here.’

  Simon grins. ‘How’s Trix?’

  ‘Well, she has to stay in Wellington for work,’ Bill replies, returning to the kitchen. ‘Being the boss and everything,’ he says over his shoulder, merrily. ‘I’m hoping,’ he calls from the kitchen, ‘that she’ll come up for long weekends and holidays, when I get the place set up.’

  ‘She been up for a look yet?’

  ‘No, she’s had a couple of big shows and a crisis with a wool supplier. The problem is that she employs 26 people and delegates nothing.’

  ‘Right.’ Simon’s eyes light up at the sight of the plates of spaghetti Bill bears into the lounge and places on the coffee table. ‘Wow, that was quick.’

  ‘Yeah, spaghetti alla puttanesca. According to legend it was a great favourite with Italian prostitutes who needed a quick and easy meal between clients. I eat it a lot.’

  Simon heaves himself into a sitting position and lays Solangia on her blanket. ‘Interesting.’

  ‘Good, eh?’

  ‘Yup.’

  They are eating in, what seems to Bill, a slightly strained silence, and it occurs to him that his lies about Trix must have been pretty obvious. Better not to talk about women, he decides, Cheryl or Trix. Blank slate. Start again.

  Simon clears his plate in record time.

  ‘There’s more in the pan.’

  ‘Might get some later. Hey, I got some interesting news today.’

  Bill’s ‘Yeah?’ comes out defensively. He wonders when Simon had time for all this communication.

  ‘Yeah. It’s not official yet, but the Indonesian Throughflow current has stopped. Like the Gulf Stream was diverted to Spain by cold water from the Arctic, you know, the lid of cold water from Antarctica has stopped convections. So the warm tropical water north of Indonesia can’t flow away to the south. Disastrous for rain in Australia. Someone’s predicted they’ll have to abandon most of Western and South Australia.’

  Without thinking, Bill recites a sentence from The Prophecy of Sam Starsailor. ‘“Technology has the power to stop the oceans.”’

  ‘Sam said it.’

  Bill hides his embarrassment by filling their glasses. ‘When did this Indonesian current stop?’

  ‘The Indonesian Throughflow. Yeah, first reports came in yesterday. It flows west between Australia and Indonesia, taking warm water south down the coast of Western Australia, and yeah, they reckon it’s as important to Australia as the Gulf Stream was to Europe and the Atlantic seaboard in terms of producing precipitation.’

  ‘Oh dear.’

  ‘This property has probably just doubled in value.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Cheers.’

  ‘You’re not having any more?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  ‘Hey, you did good work today for a first-timer. It’ll get easier.’

  Simon’s reply is to struggle down to his knees and examine Solangia’s face. ‘The bites have gone down a bit, I guess.’

  ‘I’d better stop drinking, too. I’ll go and get that cream and a finer net. She’ll be better off up off the ground in a pram, too.’

  ‘Well…’

  Bill stands and takes the plates out to the kitchen. He doesn’t want to hear another word about Cheryl and her new-found love for her baby after one day’s absence. It’s time for Simon to have another drink or three and pass out.

  ‘Hey, Bill. Sam’s new message just came in.’

  Shit.

  ‘Check it out.’

  Bill returns to the lounge with another bottle and fills his glass. Simon eyebrows go up.

  ‘I can go to the shop for Sol’s stuff later, Simon. It’s open late.’

  ‘The baby shop?’

  ‘Yeah, everything in the mall is 24/7.’

  ‘Okay, so Sam says—are you ready?’

  Bill takes a big mouthful. ‘Yep.’

  ‘‘‘Don’t allow yourself to be separated from your brothers and sisters by the digital divide.’’’

  Bill finishes his glass.

  ‘So Sam’s telling us we need more information, technology and communication services, Bill. We need to connect our way out of this growing shitstorm.’

  ‘Jesus.’

  ‘What’s going on?’

  Bill expels air and pours himself another. Rather than feeling rage, disgust or shame, he feels as if a balloon is
inflating in his skull. It’s a pleasant surprise. ‘Sounds to me like an ad for a Genius screen.’

  Simon stands with an effort and swings heavily into the kitchen. Bill plies the pleasant expanding sensation in his head with more wine. He hears the toilet flush. Simon stands in the arch between kitchen and lounge, filling it with his bulk. He looks down. ‘You sold out, Bill. I don’t get it. For what? This? A little failing vineyard?’

  ‘I retired. And it’s not failing.’

  ‘Well, I wish you’d retired 50 years ago instead. All your fine moral scruples and righteous anger cost us a lot growing up.’

  ‘I was right to be angry then, about Sam Starsailor. Sam II is out of my hands.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘Wait. I was a teenage reporter for a little community newspaper in 1986 and I could go to the public hospital to see Sam whenever I wanted. Now, Venture Group owns the whole fucking town, all the bars and hotels and shops—and the hospital. The doctors and nurses are on their payroll; they’re reading scripts for the camera. They’re making hundreds of millions.’

  ‘Why don’t you come out and say this?’

  ‘Because it’s business. It was profitable to secure the siteand all the local revenue streams. My objection to that model isn’t relevant anymore. But I sometimes worry that Sam II’s like the Loch Ness Monster to these bastards. I mean, they want to make a new Loch Ness Monster: the disappearing and reappearing alien. Will he come a third time?’ Bill points at the coffee table. ‘Look, he may have written this document. Is this an actual photo?’ He throws his hands in the air. ‘Get the Australian rain tourists to stay a whole week in Hokitika. Take a helicopter tour and look for the entrance to the wormhole in time. “It’s gotta be out there somewhere, cobber.”’

  ‘So say this! Why don’t—’

  ‘But Sam II isn’t a fake. He’s genuine. Just effectively dead. These new messages, though—the digital divide—no one will believe it.’

  ‘So you don’t have to do anything?’

  ‘No… I…’

  ‘They’ll take the vineyard away if you do.’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Yes, they would.’

  ‘They could try.’

  ‘I see. Wow. Journalistic integrity. We heard a lot about that growing up. A lot.’ Simon shakes his head. ‘You know, despite everything, I always admired your principles as a journalist. I’m wondering what’s left to admire now. You know, it was under your watch that climate change went from being a fact to a debatable phenomenon to an unstoppable juggernaut. The fossil fuel industry didn’t miss a beat. “We don’t have to do anything” simply switched to “We can’t really do anything but adapt”.’

  Simon fills the doorway, full of a strength and conviction Bill hasn’t seen before. And for a second believes that his son genuinely loves rather than fears Cheryl.

  Solangia coughs and cries, and Simon lowers himself stiffly to one knee and then two to pick her up off the blanket. It feels to Bill that a spell has broken and the power balance is restored. He just needs to get out now for a bit and clear his head, and everything will return to normal. ‘I’ll, ah, get that stuff for Sol.’

  ‘Nah, don’t worry, Bill. We’re not staying.’

  ‘You’re not? Why? What about your car?’

  ‘I’ll get it fixed tomorrow.’

  ‘Cheryl?’

  ‘Partly. That, and I don’t want your money.’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling. Don’t worry, we can still have fun.’

  ‘It’s not about fun so much for me.’

  ‘Oh, I know.’

  Rain ropes down, monsoon-like in its suffocating intensity. It wasn’t forecast to rain this summer in the Wairarapa, but rain has hammered down for six hours now and is not expected to stop for several more. From Jeremiah and Karen’s vantage point in the roof conservatory, the recently bulldozed garden (having officially ‘succumbed in entirety’, according to Dr Westphall) has become a quagmire. Mud sploshes and plays under the onslaught. The series of ponds made by the digger that uprooted the dead roses are likely to join up and become a lake. A large sodden rat waddles along a ridge of muddy earth. The violence of the rain beating down on it obliges a begrudging increase in pace. It disappears.

  Rats seeking higher ground, Jeremiah thinks, on the night of our party, and probably bubonic—great. The fat, casual rat reappears, waddling back the way it came.

  It’s over. His long-held housewarming dream, the much-polished fantasy in which he wields his telescope on the roof in the centre of a crowd of Goldens. It will not happen. Will not be made real. Jeremiah feels robbed. It’s been more than a fantasy to make real—it’s been his destiny. And now the party will be a nightmare. With the deluge there will be no rooftop display of celestial prowess to the elites, and not even the comfort of upstairs–downstairs class separation, but a masked indoor scrum surrounded by drowning flea-ridden rats in which everyone will have a licence to fight dirty, granted by their anonymity.

  There is not even the hope of flooding stopping the party. The Golden Gate has been engineered for downpours like this and the Rimutaka Tunnel is clear again.

  The telescope. Not using it at the party is like Arthur not pulling the sword from the stone! The loss is profound. The rest of the dream, the layers Jeremiah has built up since, such as ending up in the rooftop spa pool alone with Tiroli, weren’t part of the original vision. They were more like icing on a cake. The telescope was the indubitable centrepiece.

  The awful reality is that he will subject his Golden guests to a barely legal satirical performance and a crowd of fabulously scathing Outers made bolder by their masks. There’s no getting around that. Whatever happens at the housewarming will surely be dreadful: an exodus of outraged Goldens, arrests, fist fights, shootings, a bomb, and devastating professional consequences for himself, ranging from exile to prison.

  The roof had been Jeremiah’s last refuge; the rest of the party slipped from his control long ago. Karen’s event organiser and the Chef have transformed the largest rooms in the house into seven individually coloured chambers. Hundreds of metres of coloured carpet and velvet drapes have been installed, along with stained-glass lamps and bespoke coloured furniture. It’s all very pretty and artistic—and mind-bogglingly expensive. TS Stanaway is footing the bill as a tax-deductible entertainment expense. Money spectacularly wasted, in his opinion. It’s like flooring a boxing ring in gold.

  Another disorientated rat waddles around in the fountaining mud. So deflated Jeremiah feels at the prospect of the upcoming class hostilities and his role as the meat in that sandwich, that Bill’s exit strategy in New Hokitika comes to mind and Jeremiah wonders if he should throw himself off or under something.

  Karen rubs his shoulder. ‘Sparks, darling, sparks.’

  He continues to stare at the splurting mud. ‘I don’t want sparks. I want a quiet open-air environment for networking with elderly senior colleagues.’

  ‘You want another promotion. I suggest you get Klotch in the pool naked with a few models and a bottle of champagne.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ he replies, eyeing the running window, ‘alcohol might save us.’

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first time, Jeremiah.’

  He turns to her. ‘Karen, things got weird between us at the end there, on the Mount. I was pushing hard to get ahead and there was collateral damage, but I feel we’re getting back on track. I can relax a little. I don’t have so much to prove now that I’ve arrived. And you’ve found your niche. It’s better.’

  She takes a big breath. ‘It’s better, but…’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I wonder… No, this is a good time.’

  ‘For?’

  ‘“Wish for your neighbour the opportunity to have the things you have.”’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You said you were happy the other day, Jeremiah. I nearly am. I need to know that Sam’s messages are genuine.’

  He turns back to the window. ‘What? What’s that go
t to do with us?’

  ‘Jeremiah, we have all this stuff. I need to know we got it honestly, not through some horribly cynical lie.’

  ‘What lie?’

  ‘You know, with Sam. Putting corporate slogans in his mouth.’

  ‘Karen,’ he says significantly, indicating by his tone of voice and brief serious eye contact this this is his final statement on the matter, ‘I’m a lawyer.’ He turns away.

  She touches his shoulder. ‘Wait. I’m not talking about reinterpretations of laws or legal loopholes, I’m talking about faking Sam’s messages.’

  ‘Why?’

  Her eyes narrow. ‘Because you were involved in creating the first one.’

  ‘Who told you that?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. Just tell me they’re not fake.’

  ‘They’re not fake.’

  ‘No! You have to mean it.’

  He turns back to the window. ‘Karen, those communications…’

  ‘Look at me.’

  He sighs and flexes his pecs as he turns to her. ‘Reading those responses, those tiny chemical and electrical changes in Sam’s brain, requires very sensitive equipment and a mix of art and science.’

  ‘Not a mix of bullshit and jellybeans?’

  ‘No, what makes you say that?’ he asks, wounded squirrel, knowing exactly who makes her say that: the fashion rabble and their dancing chef.

  ‘The messages are so materialistic. As if we can spend our way out of a global catastrophe through entertainment systems.’

  Jeremiah opens his palms like a Muslim, a gesture he’s acquired from Mr Klotch. ‘Materialism’s bad?’ He spreads his arms as if to receive their house and land in an embrace. ‘Look at this house…’

  ‘But not everyone can live like this.’

  ‘Your point is?’ She’s getting red in the cheeks.

  ‘People see Sam as a leader, you know that. A star to guide us in a new, sustainable and equitable direction. Look where shareholder capitalism has led us. To the brink—’

  People? Jeremiah thinks. Sustainable, equitable, new direction? Such terms don’t stand up to close scrutiny. ‘Shareholder capitalism?’

  ‘Yes, short-term shareholder capitalism. It’s brought our planet to the brink of environmental, economic and socio-political meltdown. We’re on the brink of transition to a new world system.’