“You know I don’t believe in regional fashions, dear, however ironically worn. Clothes are critical signifiers. I don’t want my outfits proclaiming some false allegiance to Faithland, of all places.”
Phillipa Gertslin taught popular culture at Howard Zinn University—what used to be known as UT Austin, before the Agnostica-Faithland split. Her last published book had been titled The Hermeneutics of Hypocrisy and concerned itself with the frequent preacher sex scandals that continued to plague Faithland at regular intervals without, inexplicably, managing to undermine in any way the basic beliefs of the heartland.
“Now, please,” Phillipa continued, “if you could just set the table without offering any more fashion critiques …? I’ve got to nuke these duck tortillas.”
Grumbling, Amy took down a stack of four clunky, hand-fired plates from the cupboard. Each plate weighed as much as brick.
“Why can’t we get a set of those faunchy e-paper plates? The ones that let you eyeball content while you eat?”
“Paper? I’d rather eat off the backs of exploited migrant laborers. Who knows what horrid toxins might leach out of that e-paper? It’s only been around for a couple of years. I know the government says it’s safe, but I hope you realize just how far you can trust our elected officials—even our Agnostica politicians need to be kept on a short rein.”
Amy set the weighty plates down on the table with enough force to have shattered a lesser vessel. “And that’s another thing. How come you and Dad are always talking trash about our government? Whatever happened to, like, patriotism in this house? ‘Agnostica Number One! My half of the USA right or wrong!’”
Phillipa dumped a bag of blue-corn chips into a handwoven Guatemalan basket and carried it to the table. She looked at her daughter as if Amy had suddenly sprouted bat wings. “Now you’re just being ridiculous. You know that no one in Agnostica talks or thinks that way. It’s only in Faithland that you’ll hear people shouting those mindless chants. Our mode of government is based on rationalism and skepticism. Its only through constant questioning of the empirical that—”
Amy rattled a tray of silverware to cover the sound of her mother’s voice. “La, la, la, la! Can’t hear the semiotic discourse!”
Phillipa didn’t pursue the argument, but just frowned and shook her head, then went back to her meal preparations.
A short time later, the Gertslin family assembled for their evening meal. From his seat across the table from Amy, her brother, Hillary, sneered and said, “Hey, shitkicker, pass the tortillas.”
Hillary was a smart, wiry tweener who, unlike the others in his family, boasted a natural skin coloration the shade of a dusky plum. Hillary had been adopted by the Gertslins when he was just months old, an African child orphaned during the post-Mugabe chaos in Zimbabwe. He was as much a product of Agnostica as Batch or Phillipa, even down to his given name. Hillary had been named after the politician Hillary Clinton, who, during the year of little Hillary’s birth, 2010, had been elected the first president of Agnostica.
Batch objected now to his son’s language. “Hillary, I warned you about using that form of address.”
“Aw, Dad, it’s a compliment Isn’t that right, Amy? You’re proud of being a country girl, aren’t you? Barefoot and pregnant all the time? Double-wide trailer living? Coon-hunting? Am I right?”
Amy shoved her chair backwards and stood up, stiff as a vibrating board. “That did it! I don’t have to sit here and be insulted! None of you understand me at all! This bleeding-heart family sucks! This tight-ass city sucks! This whole preachy, super-sensitive, liberal country sucks!”
Fleeing to hide her tears, Amy ran upstairs to her bedroom.
Several hours of sobbing and listening to Alan Jackson and Lee Ann Womack, a long interval during which no one came to console her, convinced Amy of one thing.
She had to run away to Faithland right now. Defect. She couldn’t stand to wait a year till she was legally an adult
But where would she go in that unknown land?
The answer dawned on her almost immediately.
Nashville. The home and source of the music she loved.
Gretchen Wilson was still alive, Amy knew, though the woman had retired from the music business some years ago. Maybe Amy could track her down in Nashville, become her protégé .…
Amy began packing. She stuffed a few extra clothes into a backpack, along with her favorite plush toy, an alligator bearing a stitched tourist motto from the Everglades, which she had found discarded in a thrift store and named Mr. Taxes. From the closet she grabbed a black cowboy hat The hat was still crisp and unworn, since too many local people made fun of Amy when she appeared in public wearing it But where she was going, it would command respect.
While waiting until the rest of her family had gone to sleep, Amy studied road maps on her pocket ViewMaster. It looked like she could pick up Route 35 North to Oklahoma City, then catch Route 40 West and barrel straight on into Nashville.
That is, if she could get past the border.
Two AM, and everyone in the Gertslin home was asleep save Amy.
Out on the lawn, Amy looked back without regret at the only home she had ever known. Goodbye to its solar cells and rain-collecting system, its weedy lawn planted in a water-conserving mix of native plants, its faded political poster from the recent election: RE-ELECT STERLING FOR MAYOR.
Red River Street was quiet. Amy felt as if the neighborhood was already a ghostly figment of her past.
A few blocks to the west, she knew she could catch one of the hydrogen-fueled mass-transit buses heading north to the city limits, one step closer to the border; the bus-stop was adjacent to the former State House, in a safe neighborhood.
When Austin joined Agnostica in the 2010 division of the USA, renaming itself New Austin, the Texas state capitol had perforce relocated to Houston. Nowadays, the former home of the governor served as the Waldrop Museum and Cultural Center.
Amy had to wait only a few minutes at the bus shelter. It was a little scary to be out alone this late at night, but luckily no one bothered her. The most frightening person she saw was a man with patches of armadillo skin grafted onto his bare arms, and he seemed more concerned with reading a manga on his ViewMaster than in bothering a skinny teenager.
Finally onboard her bus, Amy tried to imagine how she would get past the Customs and Immigration officials at the limits of New Austin.
When the partitioning of the country was first being adjudicated, New Austin had managed to claim an irregular circle of land some sixty miles in diameter around the urban core. This allowed the city to retain many natural attractions and resources, not the least of which was The Salt Lick BBQ Restaurant in Driftwood. Texas could afford to be magnanimous: the chunk was the only tiny bite that Agnostica had managed to take out of the mammoth, imperturbable Faithland corpus of the state.
Route 35 exited New Austin territory at the small burg named Georgetown. There, Amy would have to undergo scrutiny by two sets of inspectors, those of both Agnostica and Faithland. They would ask to see her ID and inquire about her reasons for leaving one country and entering another, demanding her destination and intentions. First, she’d be busted for being an unescorted minor. Even if she could get around that, she had no definite arrangements in Nashville or en route to offer as legitimate support for her trip.
Well, no point in worrying about that now. With the innate optimism of her years, convinced of the rightness of her quest, Amy assumed some option would present itself when she got to the border.
So she sat back, relaxed, and played some George Jones.
At the outskirts of New Austin proper, Amy had to change to the long-range bus for Georgetown, which she did without trouble. Luckily, she had her life savings—five hundred and ten euros—available via her personal chopcard. Amy wasn’t sure what the exchange rate for Agnostica euros versus Faithland dollars was at the moment, but she hoped it was favorable.
She fell asleep for the last twenty miles of the bus
ride, her head cradled on Mr. Taxes, awaking only when the driver called out via the onboard PA, “End of the line, folks.”
Only half-awake, Amy stumbled out.
The Customs and Immigration plaza was a vast expanse of parking-slot-demarcated pavement hosting many restaurants, motels and dutyfree shops, as well as some official government buildings. A hundred yards from where her bus had deposited her, near an Au Bon Pain, a single lane of traffic—fairly light at this hour—crawled toward the lone inspection checkpoint that remained open.
Amy went inside the restaurant, hoping to assemble her thoughts. She ordered a pain chocolat and a cafe au lait. Sitting at a table near the door, she nursed her refreshments and tried to come up with a scheme to circumvent the inspectors.
After half an hour of pointless cogitation, nothing had revealed itself to her. So she activated her earbuds and began quietly singing along to a Loretta Lynn tune.
A shadow fell across Amy’s field of vision, and she looked up to see a man standing by her table.
The fellow was about six feet four, possessed of an enormous red beard matched in impressiveness only by his beer gut. He wore a one- piece outfit that looked like the inner lining of a taikonaut’s suit, with various hookups and jacks.
For a moment, Amy was frightened. But then she noticed that there were tears in the man’s eyes.
The stranger seemed to want to address her, so Amy deactivated her iPod to allow them to talk.
“Honey,” said the man, “I ain’t thought of that song in nigh on fifteen years, since my Mama died. She loved that song, and used to sing it pert near every day. ’Course, she could actually nurse a tune, not strangle it like you. Nonetheless, it done my heart good to hear you attempt it Pertickly here, ’midst all these Chardonnay-swillers.”
Amy chose to ignore the insult to her singing abilities, as well as the blanket categorization of her fellow New Austinites as foreign-wine imbibers—especially since the latter accusation was true. The man seemed friendly enough, and might know some way of getting her across the border.
“Thanks, mister. I’m purely sorry to hear you lost your mama, even iffen it were a hound dog’s age ago.”
Amy was surprised to find herself falling into the speech patterns and diction of the stranger, a mode of speech that resembled the vernacular of the songs she loved. She had never allowed herself to indulge in such an affectation before, for fear of ridicule by her peers. But now that she had cut loose from her old life, nothing seemed more natural than to talk this way.
“I appreciate the sentiment, little lady.” The man extended his hand. “Bib Bogardus is the name, and I hail from Pine Mountain, Georgia. What’s yourn?”
“Amy Gertslin.”
“Pleased to meet you, Amy.” Bib lowered his bulk precariously into a seat at her table. “Now, just call me a nosy nelly if I’m stepping on any toes with my curiosity, but what brings you out to this place all alone at this hour?”
Amy hesitated a minute, then decided to confide everything to this friendly ear.
Bib listened to her story attentively and without condemnation. When she had finished, he said, “Waal, I can’t say I’d be totally happy iffen my own daughter upped and hit the road. She’s just about your own age, you know. Name of Jerilee. But I can unnerstand how a young’un has to find her own destiny. Especially when you’re trapped in such a hellhole as New Austin. Why, did you know that you can’t even buy a Lone Star beer in this whole territory anymore?”
Emboldened by Bib Bogardus’s sympathy, Amy leaned toward him. “Is there any way you could help me scoot past these revenooers, Bib? What do you do anyhow? How come you’re here?”
“I drive a big rig, Amy. Carrying a load of tomacco from Mexico to Oklahoma City.”
“Why, that’s just where I’m going! I figure on hitching a ride from there straight to Nashville. I’m gonna try to get into the music biz.”
Bib scratched his beard ruminatively. “Hmmm, best you concentrate on being a producer or songwriter, with them pipes. But hail, who’m I to say what you can do, once you put your mind to it. They got plenty of tricks to sweeten up anyone’s voice these days. Just look at thet there little Simpson gal. If it weren’t for her mother, Ashlee, pushing her, she’d probably be serving grits at a Waffle House. Or whatever similar place they got in Agnostica. Caviar at the French Embassy, I guess.”
“So you’ll help me?”
Bib got to his feet. “I sure will. C’mon with me, darling.”
Amy, holding her pack by the straps, followed Bib outside to Bib’s rig, an enormous, streamlined, diesel-powered tractor-trailer combo bearing the proud name Dixie Belle on its prow in cherry-red letters. Amy was awed.
“Does this actually run on fossil fuels?”
“You bet, honeychile. I know that’s an illegal substance in Agnostica, but they give us truckers an exemption so long as we’re just passing through. You won’t catch me driving one of those water-farting hydrogen creepers, no sir! Take me twice as long just to break even on my routes.”
Bib opened the passenger-side door and removed a crinkly silver suit identical to the one he wore.
“Here, darling, slip into this.”
“Do I have to get naked?”
Bib laughed. “Well, you would if you were planning to drive 24/7 like yours truly. Then you’d want to be hooked into the Dixie Belle’s waste-recycling system, epidermal scrubber, nutrient feeds and booster drips. But since we’re only gonna use this suit to fool the federales, it just needs access to one of your veins. So roll up your right sleeve.”
Amy did as requested, then snugged into the suit, which seamed invisibly at the rear and automatically shrunk to fit her. Then she and Bib got into the tractor cab.
“Wow! This looks like the inside of the Long March Mars ship!”
“Waal, we ain’t going quite so far as Mars, but I do believe in comfort and technology. Jack yerself in at that port there—”
Once Amy’s suit was plugged into the dash, she felt a deft pinprick on her arm. She worried for an instant that Bib was going to drug her and deliver her to the harem of some Yemeni prince. But when nothing happened to her as the big man started the mighty yet purring engine of the truck, she relaxed.
“Just let me do the talking at Customs, ’kay?” u p r>
Sure.
The Dixie Belle ambled throatily up to the crossing.
On the New Austin side, the border was protected by a variety of biological barricades, many of them with Batchelder Bioengineering pedigrees: hedges of thorny plants, troops of fire ante, pods of mini-shoggoths. On the Georgetown, Faithland, side, the barriers were strictly inanimate: robot lenses and gun muzzles, monomolecular wire, gluball anti-personnel mines. This natural-artificial interface was as clear a political statement of the differences between Agnostica and Faithland as any tract
Two New Austin inspectors came up to the stopped truck. The first, a short, stocky Latina, led a redacted dog, a Rhodesian Ridgeback with a hypertrophied snout. This mutant canine proceeded to sniff all around the tractor and trailer, while the woman inspected the intelligent seals placed on the trailer at its point of origin. The second inspector, an African-Agnostican with a jaunty goatee, came around to Bib’s door.
“Blood sample, please.”
“Sure thing, officer.” Bib extended his hand and pressed his thumb into the sampling pad on the inspector’s ViewMaster. Then the guardian of the gates came around to Amy’s side, and she did the same, stifling her reluctance to reveal her identity.
Surely the game was up now …?
In a few seconds, both inspectors seemed satisfied.
“You and your daughter go safe now, Mr. Bogardus.”
“Will do, compadre!”
Once through the New Austin arch, the Dixie Belle sailed beyond the corresponding Georgetown gate and its comparable procedures just as easily.
Once they were a few miles down Route 35, Amy finally felt it was safe to speak.
“‘Daughter?’ How did you—?”
Bib patted the dashboard affectionately. “The ol’ Dixie Belle has a handful of useful genomic codes on file. She just injected you with a batch of silicrobes that had a tropism for the cells of your thumb. Once they got there, they started scavagening up all your original blood cells and making replacement blood with different DNA in it. For a second or two, your thumb belonged to somebody else. Then they put everything right again and croaked. Otherwise, you woulda had one helluva immune reaction.”
Now that Bib had explained things to her, Amy could sense a faint soreness in her thumb. “Oh. So I can’t pull that trick again?”
“Nuh-huh. Not unless you’re hooked up to the Dixie Belle. ’Fraid you’re on your own otherwise.”
“Well, I guess I’ll just have to hope I don’t have any more run-ins with the federales on my way to Nashville.”
“Not too likely. Faithland’s perty quiet these days on the homeland security front, ever since President O’Reilly unleashed that sweet little global virus.”
Amy remembered learning about this Faithland anti-terrorist measure in school. Forgetting to employ her new accent and diction, she said, “You mean the Glowworm Patch? The one that spreads by touch and retroengineers into humans a luciferase gene that’s activated by certain high-order brain chemistry patterns?”
“That’s the one, honeychile. Mighty hard to commit terrorism when thinking about it make you glow bright blue in public.”
Amy gave vent to a huge yawn at this point.
Bib regarded Amy tenderly. He paid no attention to the road, since the Dixie Belle was on cyber-control. “Maybe you should get some sleep now, honeychile.”
“You wouldn’t mind …?”
“No, I’ll just punch up some Government Mule in my earbuds and do my road-warrior thing.”
“‘Kay. Thanks …”
Before she knew it, Amy was asleep.
When she awoke, daylight reigned outside, and they were approaching a major metropolitan area.
“Is that—?”
“Oklahoma City? Sure enough. Here’s where you and me gotta part ways, I fear. I’m gonna drop you off at the Greyhound terminal. I figger you prolly got enough cash for a ticket to Nashville. Or do you need some bits on your chop?”
Harsh Oases Page 18