The Boost

by Stephen Baker

  Still, Vallinger thinks it’s her. She was aware, of course, that Ralf was preparing to hack the update, that he was nabbed, and that Bao-Zhi liberated him from a clinic in Alexandria. So it would be reasonable to consider her as a source on Ralf. And Simon lives in El Paso. In most families, when two brothers get together after years apart, the mother might be expected to be in the know. It isn’t normal for such news to come from a messenger who has unwound a piece of paper from a pigeon’s leg. How was John Vallinger to know that her family, if you could call it that, was different from most, that the Kellogg-Alvares, as Ralf liked to say, “took the fun out of dysfunctional”?

  She wonders what Francisco would think if he could see what the family has come to. He was angry when he left Washington for Paraguay, all those years ago, sure of himself and certain that the boost would lead to tyranny. He was contemptuous of her, and her junior role in the negotiations. One night, after he’d been drinking, he called her a “lackey,” and Stella, already pregnant with Ralf, hurled a half full bottle of Bohemia beer at his face. It was a week or two later that he left, never to be seen again. Stella considers her work in the DM a silent tribute to Francisco, an admission on her part that he was right.

  She hears steps in the living room and imagines that Vallinger, weary of waiting, has gotten to his feet to check out the artwork on the walls.

  He seemed so smug in saying that her colleagues were out to destroy the world, as if he had an inside line on the DM. What he doesn’t understand is that insiders themselves, even ten-year veterans like Stella, are kept largely in the dark. The DM is organized in a cell structure. Each person communicates only with a small team and has no knowledge outside of that circle. Stella knows that it extends throughout the country and into Europe and China.

  It was a Chinese affiliate that lined up Stella with Bao-Zhi. A stern rapping on the door announced his arrival. He stood at the entrance, mute and grim-faced, his eyes fastened onto Stella’s. Even through his spring coat, she could see the sharp definition of his shoulders and upper arms. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, which he flattened and handed to her. “Please house this man indefinitely,” it said. “He’s wild and speaks no English. Follows different chain of command. Thanks.”

  Since then she has not exchanged a single word with the man, and wouldn’t know how to begin. He’s a mystery. She’s heard from Suzy that Bao-Zhi’s mission to free Ralf was violent. Suzy, though, has a fertile imagination. This leads Stella to wonder if Vallinger might possibly be speaking the truth. Could the DM be teeming with violent Luddite revolutionaries and Mexican drug lords? The vision seems paranoid to her. But she has no way of knowing.

  She pours coffee into her least favorite cup, a lime green mug with a picture of a cow. She’s tempted to pour one for herself until the odor of the coffee reaches her nostrils. It smells like wet cardboard. She carries the mug down the long hall and almost drops it when she steps into the living room.

  Bound on the floor like a trussed hog lies John Vallinger. His hands are tied behind him. His feet are stretched back and lassoed to his belt, and his mouth is bound with four or five layers of brown duct tape. Above him, with shoulders squared and a face expressing clear-eyed defiance, stands Bao-Zhi. He’s wearing a blue Montclair High Lacrosse sweatshirt that he must have pilfered from Ralf’s bureau.

  Upon seeing Stella, Vallinger writhes and groans. Boa-Zhi silences him by pushing his foot on the small of the lobbyist’s back.

  Stella stands speechless. Then she says, “You have to let him go, Bao-Zhi.”

  Bao-Zhi responds with a flurry of loud Chinese. He shouts like a warrior, Stella thinks. “Let him go,” she repeats, for lack of anything else to say. She hears more Chinese.

  “Suzy!” Stella shouts upstairs. “Get down here!” She doesn’t know what Suzy can accomplish, but she needs someone to talk to, and the only other English speaker on site is indisposed.

  Suzy hurries down from her room and gasps, halfway down the stairs, when she sees the scene. She’s wearing her red running outfit, but without the hat. Her skull, recently shaven, gleams.

  “I’m trying to tell him to let him go,” Stella says. “But he just answers in Chinese.”

  “That’s … John Vallinger,” Suzy says, pointing at the prisoner.

  “I’m telling him to let him go,” Stella repeats.

  But Suzy is paying no attention. She walks down the rest of the steps and slowly approaches Vallinger. She keeps her distance, the way she might from a thrashing swordfish. She leans down to get a good look. Then she reaches up with a hand and gently pats Bao-Zhi on the shoulder. Turning her head around, she asks, “Where did he catch him?”

  It occurs to Stella that Vallinger might be right. Maybe she is surrounded by fanatics and violent revolutionaries.

  “Where did he catch him?” Suzy repeats.

  “He came here and knocked on the door, and I was just making him coffee,” Stella says, waving the green mug. She’s agitated, and some of the swill splashes onto the carpeted floor. “He followed the electronic trail of a certain jogger, who went out into Brookdale Park every morning and then came back to this house. It wasn’t really that hard.”

  “Oh,” Suzy says.

  “So I need Bao-Zhi to understand that he has to untie this man,” Stella continues. “But I can’t understand a word he says.”

  “Translate in your boost,” Suzy says. “That’s how I talk to him. You don’t need the network for that.” She points her lovely face toward the warrior and says, “Bao-Zhi?”

  He points at Vallinger and unleashes a torrent of Chinese. Suzy, Stella, and, no doubt, his captive, all translate it in unison. “He is the number-one enemy, the most wanted man, the foe of the people. I rejoice that he is captured and will be proud to conduct him to be tried for his crimes.” Bao-Zhi taps his chest three times and gives the supine Vallinger a soft kick with his right foot.

  Vallinger looks up toward Stella and arches his eyebrows, as if to say, “I told you so.”

  While the three capped English speakers in the house can translate the Chinese, the wild Bao-Zhi makes no sense of Stella’s commands to untie the prisoner. Finally, Suzy locates a charcoal pencil and a drawing pad—relics from an art course Stella took long ago at the Bronx Botanical Garden. She calls up the written Chinese in her boost, and laboriously copies the phrase for “Release him.”

  She shows the pad to Bao-Zhi. He shakes his head defiantly and shouts again that Vallinger is the “number-one enemy.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Stella says, grabbing the pad. She turns to a fresh page and takes ten full minutes to write a sentence. While she works on it, Suzy reaches for the cup of coffee and takes a sip. She grimaces and then offers the cup to Bao-Zhi. He takes a sniff and shakes his head sternly.

  Stella finally finishes her work and shows it to Bao-Zhi:

  He places his hand on his forehead for a second, reflecting, and then nods respectfully to Stella and begins to untie his foe.

  Suzy whispers, “What did you write?”

  “You are a guest in this house,” Stella answers.

  After Bao-Zhi finishes unbinding John Vallinger, he stands up and makes the slightest bow in the direction of Stella, and then walks slowly up the stairs toward his chamber. Vallinger climbs to his feet only to make the transition from the floor to the blue sofa, where he lands with a groan. He covers himself with his crumpled trench coat. His forehead is red from the binding, and streaks of gray stick’em adhere to his skin. His white hair, drenched with sweat, is plastered sideways. He leans back, his eyes closed and, from the motion under the cape, appears to be rubbing his raw wrists.

  A thumping noise comes from the third floor and Stella groans. She imagines Bao-Zhi carrying out days or weeks of ritual lamentations. But the noise grows as it descends the stairway. She looks up to see Bao-Zhi coming down. He carries his duffle bag over one shoulder. His big leather drum dangles from his other hand, bumping t
he banister with every step. He makes his way past the recumbent Vallinger to the front door. With a half turn, he bows again in the direction of Suzy, then turns and inclines his head toward Stella. He then maneuvers his way out door, down the walk, and onto Christopher Street, where he heads in the direction of Watchung Plaza.

  “I feel sorry for him,” Suzy says.

  That brings a sigh from Stella and a burst of laughter from the blue sofa. “I mean being so foreign and wild and all,” Suzy says. No one responds, and Suzy disappears down the hall toward the kitchen.

  That leaves Vallinger and Stella alone. “So,” Stella says, “you were saying something about working together?”

  Vallinger sits up and rubs his eyes with the tips of his fingers. He looks ten years older than he did when he first walked in the door. He asks for a glass of water. Stella hands him the green mug of coffee, now cold. He takes a sip, considers it, and then takes another. “You could start,” he says, speaking in a strangled voice, “by refraining from feeding news to that Juárez paper.” He gestures toward The Tribune, which is lying next to the coffee table.

  “Juárez paper?” Stella says. “Ciudad Juárez?”

  “Let’s don’t act dumb, please.”

  She mutters under her breath. With Ralf in El Paso, and Simon, too, she can now see why Vallinger links her to the news stories. “What difference does it make?” she says. “Nobody reads it.”

  “People do,” he says.

  “What do I gain by shutting up?”

  “Peace.” He takes another sip of the cold coffee and stifles his grimace.

  “This after you take my son to a clinic and rip out his boost?”

  “That was a rogue operation,” Vallinger says. “It was never supposed to happen that way.” She waits, expecting him to say he’s sorry, but he changes tack. “I think you got even by sending that Chinaman over there. He killed three people, and a fourth is still in critical condition.”

  He could be lying, Stella thinks. She presses on with the meager leverage she has. If she holds back from talking to The Tribune, she asks, can Vallinger have the surveillance gate closed on the chip?

  He shakes his head, as if he were on her side. “The Chinese finally have that, after thirty years of trying. They’re not going to give it up.”

  “So I don’t talk to The Tribune, and what I get in return is peace,” she says, “meaning that you refrain from bombing my house or blowing up my car? Is that what I get?”

  “Listen,” he says, rising to his feet, “the update is an issue of national security.” He tosses his coat over one shoulder, and he starts to pace. “If you get in its way,” he says, “if you organize resistance to it, or manufacture outrage, we are going to rain down on your operation with a force that you’d be hard-pressed to imagine. The focus of this attack, the epicenter, will be that thriving family news business of yours in Juárez.”

  Stella nods dumbly and stays seated on the rocker, lost in her thoughts, as a rejuvenated John Vallinger grabs his briefcase and strides out the front door, shutting it with a bang.

  Twenty-five

  3/9/72 12:33 p.m. Juárez Standard Time

  A cold front has swept into the Rio Grande Valley, ringing the puddles of Ciudad Juárez with frost and whipping the city with icy north winds. In the paved downtown, the sidewalk vendors have taken the day off, and except for a few idle traffic cops, the streets look deserted. In retrospect, Ralf thinks, wrapping himself in a borrowed sheepskin overcoat, it’s not a great day for a stroll. But Francisco insisted. Dressed in a thick blue overcoat with a black beret perched at a tilt on his head, he’s leading the way past the last anti-drone barricade and down Avenida 16 de Septiembre. Ellen walks at his side. She’s wearing a red ski jacket over a long blue dress that she borrowed from the chambermaid at Francisco’s house. This allowed her finally to shed her brick-patterned leggings. Ralf watches Francisco gesture with both hands as he talks, probably describing the benefits of wild-grown vegetables or gas-fueled engines. Ralf has been with his father only one day, and he’s already growing tired of hearing him.

  “Talks a lot,” Simon says, as though reading Ralf’s mind. He’s walking next to his brother, gripping the lapels of a thin cotton sport coat to his chest. His pudgy fingers look blue. “Whichever restaurant he takes us to, I hope it has a fireplace,” he says.

  Ralf takes in the ragged downtown of Juárez for the first time. Across an empty square he sees a big church, perhaps a cathedral, made of cinder blocks. Northward, to his left, is El Paso’s downtown, its glass towers less than a mile away. The brown Franklins loom behind them, their peaks dusted with snow.

  Lining the avenue in Juárez are tiny stores, each one no bigger than a walk-in closet. Ralf stops at the window of an electronics store. Its shelves are piled with relics that no one with a functioning boost would ever need. He looks at colorful cell phones and laptop computers dating from the 2030s. They have a shiny panel under the keyboard. People move their fingers there, he knows, to tell the machine what to do. How primitive it is, he thinks, to communicate information with fingers. It’s not that far removed from the dots and dashes of Morse code, or even smoke signals. One shelf of the store displays wristwatches, all of them synchronized to the same time: 1:19 p.m. His grandparents strapped these machines on their wrists.

  “Hurry up,” Simon calls to him. Ralf trots to catch up. He’s feeling a bit better today. Right after breakfast, Francisco informed him of an appointment the next morning with a prominent doctor in town—a neurologist—to see about putting the boost back into his head. So by this time tomorrow, Ralf is thinking, he might be his old self. He plans to get to work immediately on hacking the update software and shutting the gaping surveillance Gate 318 Blue. Slotting his fixes into the approved and meticulously vetted update won’t be easy, especially without a network connection. But tomorrow, if all goes well, he can start working on it.

  Francisco leads them down a few steps into a short passageway, and from there to a tiny elevator. The four of them squeeze in. When the doors open, they step into blinding sunlight. It’s a circular restaurant covered by a windowed dome. “It revolves,” Francisco tells them as a black-suited waiter leads them to a table.

  “Drug lords built this place in the ’20s,” Simon whispers to Ralf. “It hasn’t revolved for years, maybe decades. No spare parts.”

  Francisco, meanwhile, leads Ellen by the elbow and is pointing out the towers of El Paso, the winding path of the Rio Grande—“or, as we call it here, El Rio Bravo del Norte”—and, to the south, the Juárez Mountains. He shows her the mountain bearing words in Spanish: “La Biblia es la Verdad. Leela.”

  “Do you understand that?” he asks.

  Ellen feeds it to her boost and nods. “The Bible is the Truth. Read it,” she says.

  “Very good,” he says, bringing the others into the conversation. “She’s learning Spanish!”

  “Papá,” Simon says. “It’s not so hard if you have a boost.”

  “Oh,” Francisco says, looking embarrassed. “Forgot.”

  They sit down to a feast featuring chicken al pipián, a spicy sauce with a pumpkin seed base, steaming pork tamales wrapped in corn husks, and a salad made of cactus, or nopal, which Ralf finds a bit gooey. He looks across the table and sees that Ellen hasn’t even touched hers.

  While the others continue to wash down the food with glasses of bitter Juarense beer, Ellen sticks to mineral water. Ralf imagines that she’s turning it into a pink champagne experience with her boost. He wonders if she’s matching it with a euphoria app. She alone seems to find Francisco’s stories amusing.

  It’s not until the waiter places the dessert—a big bowl of golden flan—onto the table that Francisco brings up the purpose of this outing. “You’re my family—or close to it,” he says, smiling at Ellen. Turning to Ralf, he says, “I left your mother all those years ago. I’m not proud of that. Now I’m a newspaper publisher in this very strange place. You deserve to know what hap
pened in the years between.”

  That said, he spoons heaping portions of flan onto four plates, distributes them, and instructs the waiter to bring a big pot of coffee. Then he tells his story.

  “Things weren’t going so well with your mother back then,” he says. “Or if you asked her, I’m sure she’d say things weren’t going well with me. Or maybe that I was a jerk, or worse. In any case, we fought all the time. Some of it was personal. I wasn’t … entirely faithful to her, and she knew it.

  “But some of our problems had to do with what was happening in Washington at the time. The long and short of it is that the empire was crashing. The Chinese had the new chips and the software to run them, and the feeling in Washington was like, checkmate.” He looks around the table to make sure that the three understand the chess analogy. They nod.

  “The Chinese understood quicker than you—the United States—that the coming war would be cognitive. Now the U.S. had some of the best technology companies in the world. Apple, Google, Microsoft, IBM, which they used to call ‘Big Blue.’ They made a lot of stuff for businesses and consumers. Of course the Chinese were active in these fields, too. But they were spending more of their research money on the technology that would help them win the cognitive war. They developed spy software and defended themselves with the best cryptography. And they worked on the boost.”

  “Papá,” Simon interrupts. “We know this stuff.”

  “Okay, okay,” Francisco says. “Anyway, the Chinese start implanting their chips widely in the early ’40s, and then right away, the Americans throw up their hands and think they’ve lost. They start moaning and groaning. ‘Oh, we’re wild. Our president’s wild, we’re so stupid and they’re so smart.’ I’ll tell you, at that point, the Chinese didn’t need to have chips in their heads to win the war. The perception that they were superior was enough. The Americans rolled over, gave them Hawaii, sacrificed the dollar, and surrendered.”