The Gold Coast

by Kim Stanley Robinson

  “That’d be one way to find out, sure. But it would be dangerous, I mean some of you might just disappear.”

  Jim feels his throat and stomach take a big swallow. Disappear?

  His paranoia quotient soars into the megapynchons, his understanding of his sabotage adventure with Arthur trapdoors out from under him, leaving him hanging like, well, yes, like a man stuck in a tree on the side of a cliff. His ribs begin to complain vociferously. But he definitely doesn’t want to move until Arthur and Raymond leave.

  Relief for his ribs, and frustration for his mounting curiosity, arrive in the form of night beach partyers climbing back up the stairs. Raymond greets them cheerily, and he and Arthur ascend with them. Soon Jim is alone with Torrey Pines Cliff, in his tree. He’d love to take time and think over what he’s just heard, sort it out some, but his ribs protest at the idea and he tries to extricate himself. Arms up, hands on branches to each side, push out. This frees him to fall down the iceplant slope, he lets the branches go when his arms begin to snap out of their sockets, and one branch clips him in the ear as he slides by, heading down here uh-oh, turn into the iceplant and clutch, feet digging, thump, thump, thump! Stopped, thank God. Below him it gets markedly steeper, in fact kind of vertical. All alarms go off in the McPherson body, he convinces one hand to declutch with great difficulty, resets it a foot over toward the stairway. Footwork is trickier, need knobs or clumps of iceplant, the usual spread of the stuff is damned slippery, not that he’s complaining; without it he would be one with the sandstone blocks on the beach, still a couple hundred feet below. Carefully he makes ten or twelve heartstopping handhold transfers, and traverses to the stairway. Leeches onto it, heaves up and over the banister. A group descending the stairs catches him in the final act of rolling over the banister to safety, and they laugh at his evident inebriation. “Fell off, hey? Come on down with us and swim it off.”

  “Is he sober enough to swim?”

  “Sure, a blast of ocean water will do him good.”

  Jim agrees in as calm a voice as he can muster. It’ll be a good way to wash some of the dirt and crushed iceplant off of his hands and face. They descend to the beach, strip, walk to the water. The white, almost phosphorescent rush of broken waves over Jim’s ankles feels good. It’s cold but not anywhere near as bad as he expected. He runs into the water, dives into the chill salt waves. A great rush, cleansing and refreshing. Broken waves tumble him about and he lets them. Maybe Tashi has something in this night surfing idea. Jim does a little desultory bodysurfing in the shore break.

  While he’s at it he tumbles into a young lady from the group; she squeaks, clings to him, her body incredibly warm in the ocean chill. Legs wrapped around his middle, arms around his neck, a quick kiss, whoah! Then a wave knocks them apart and she’s off, he can’t find her.

  He swims around in an unsuccessful search, chills down, walks out of the water and up the beach. Major refreshment. Remarkably warm out. Beautiful naked women emerge from the surf and walk up to him, give him one of their towels, towel-dry before him. Dryads would they be, or Nereids?

  Some quality of the encounter in the dark sea has quickened something in him; it’s not the same as his usual lust, not at all. The others dress, he dresses. Up the stairway, back to the party. No time to sort it out; but some part of him remembers.…

  Up top people are dancing in three rooms. Tashi and Abe are in one, doing the beach boy bounce, dance considered as a helix of pogo hops. “Been swimming?” Abe asks, panting. “Yeah. Plus a small mystical experience.” And a big mysterious conversation. Jim joins in the dance. It’s The Wind’n’Sea Surf Killers, singing their latest hit “Dance Till Your Feet Are Bloody Stumps.” Perfect.

  And so the party progresses as parties do. Jim never manages to identify his oceanic love. Along about three he finds himself very tired, and unenthusiastic at the prospect of any chemical reascendance. No. He sits in a fine leather chair in the front room, where he can see the entryway. Lot of people in and out. Humphrey and Tash come sit with him and they talk about San Diego. Humphrey enjoys it because of all the deals down in Tijuana. “Of course,” Abe cries as he joins them and sits on the floor. “You should see Humphrey in Tijuana! He grinds those shopkeepers like you can’t believe! ‘Two hundred pesos, shit, you must be joking! I’ll give you ten!’” The others laugh as Abe catches Humphrey’s tone of indignation and pleasure exactly. Humphrey nods, grinning. “Sure.”

  “Man, those poor people open up on a Saturday morning and see Humphrey coming in first thing in the day, and it’s like disaster for them, they know they’re going to end up selling half their stock for a couple handfuls of pesos.”

  “Rather see an armed robber come in the door,” Tash adds.

  “Better deal—”

  “Less pain—”

  “Safer—”

  Arthur shows up. They sit and wait for Sandy. Quietly Jim watches Arthur, who seems the same as always. No clues there.

  26

  Sandy, however, has only just now been able to get off with Bob Tompkins for a little conference. They retire to Bob’s bedroom with a friend of Bob’s that Sandy hasn’t met yet, and sit on a gigantic circular bed.

  Eight video cameras:

  Two walls of screens show them sitting cross-legged, from eight angles.

  Life in the kaleidoscope: which image is you?

  Bedspread of green silks. Wallpaper bronze flake. Carpet silver gray.

  Oak dressers, topped by a collection of ornate hookahs:

  Ceramic jars, copper bowls, woven tubes,

  Six speakers play soft zither music.

  A poem is a list of Things To Do.

  Have you done them yet?

  “This is Manfred,” Bob says to Sandy. “Manfred, Sandy.”

  Manfred nods, his eyes bright and very dilated. “Good to meet you.” They shake hands across the green silk.

  “Well, let’s try out some of my latest while we talk about Manfred’s proposition.” Bob puts a big round wooden platter on the middle of the bed, between the three of them. He gets a smallish hookah from the collection, puts it on the platter, sits down, fills one part of the multichambered bowl with a black tarry substance. There are three tubes coming out of the bulbous ceramic base of the pipe, and they each take one and breathe in as Bob waves the flame of a lighter over the bowl. The moment the smoke hits his throat Sandy begins coughing his lungs out. The other two are coughing too, more moderately but only just. On the wall screens it looks like a whole gang of men have just been teargassed in a bordello.

  “Gee,” Sandy chokes out. “Great.”

  The other two wheeze their laughter. “Just wait a couple of minutes,” Bob advises. He and Manfred take another hit, and Sandy tries, but only starts coughing again. Still, the pattern of the bedspread has lifted off the bed and begun to rotate clockwise as it becomes ever more elaborate; and the bronze flake wallpaper is glittering darkly, breaking up the subdued lamplight from the dresser into a trillion meaningful fragments. Strangely beautiful, this chamber. “A great reckoning in a little room,” Sandy mutters. He puts his thumb over the soapstone mouthpiece of his tube while the other two smoke on. Advanced-lane opium smokers, here. Pretty primitive stuff, opium—noisy as hell, kind of a sledgehammer effect to the body. Sandy finds himself thinking he can do better than this in his lab. Still, as a sort of archaeological experiment … Jim should be in on this, didn’t the Chinese who built the California railroads use this stuff? No wonder there are no more railroads.

  When Manfred and Bob are done smoking, they sit back and talk. The talk flows in unexpected channels, they laugh a lot.

  Finally Manfred tells Sandy their proposition. “We’ve got a very illegal drug from Hong Kong, by way of Guam and Hawaii. The amounts are fairly large, and the DEA has got a spike into the source, so it all added up to trying a different channel for getting it in.”

  “What is it?” Sandy asks bluntly.

  “It’s called the Rhinoceros. The tric
ky thing about sexual arousal is that you have to be stimulated and relaxed in the right degrees of both, and in the right synergy. Two systems are involved and both have to be squeezed just right. So we’ve got a couple of compounds, one called Eyebeep and the other a modified endomorphin imitant. They self-assemble in the limbic region.”

  “An aphrodisiac?” Sandy says stupidly.

  “That’s right. A real aphrodisiac. I’ve tried it, and, well…” Manfred giggles. “I don’t want to talk about it. But it works.”

  “Wow.”

  “We’re sailing it over from Hawaii, that’s our new route. Our idea is to make a brief rendezvous with a small boat that will come out from Newport and meet us behind San Clemente Island. Then the small boat will bring it on in. I realize it’s a risk for the last carrier, but if you were willing to do it, I’d be willing to pay you for that risk, in cash and in a part of the cargo.”

  Sandy nods noncommittally. “How much?”

  “Say, twenty thousand dollars and six liters of Rhino.”

  Sandy frowns. Is there really going to be a demand for six liters of some strange new aphrodisiac? Well … sure. Especially if it works. OC’s new favorite, no doubt.

  Still, the plan goes against Sandy’s working principle, which demands a constant low profile and labor-intensive work in small quantities. “And what percentage of the total does that represent?”

  They begin to dicker over amounts. It goes on slowly, genially, as a kind of theoretical discussion of how much such a service would be worth if one were to contemplate it. A lot of joking from Bob, which the other two appreciate. This is the strange heart of drug dealing; Sandy has not only to come to a financial agreement with Manfred, but also to reach a certain very high level of trust with him. They both have to feel this trust. No contract will be signed at the end of their dealing, and no enforcement agency will come to one’s aid if the other breaks their verbal agreement. In this sense drug dealers must be much more honest than businessmen or lawyers, for instance, who have contracts and the law to fall back on. Dealers have only each other, and so it’s crucial to establish that they’re dealing with someone they can trust to stick to their word. This, in a subculture of people that includes a small but significant number of con artists whose very art consists in appearing trustworthy when they are not. One has to learn how to distinguish between the false and the real, by an intuitive judgment of character, by probing at the other in the midst of the joking around: asking a sudden sharp question, making a quick gesture of friendliness, making an outright, even rude, challenge, and so on; then watching the responses to these various maneuvers, looking for any minute signs of bad faith. Judging behavior for what it reveals of the deeper nature inside.

  All this subtle business taking place, of course, under a staggering opium high; but they’re all used to that kind of handicap, it can be factored in easily. Eventually Sandy gets a secure feeling that he is talking to a good guy, who is acting in good faith. Manfred, he can tell, is coming to a similar conclusion, and as they are both pleased the meeting becomes even friendlier—a real friendliness, as opposed to the automatic social imitation of it that they began the meeting with.

  Still, the basic nature of the deal is not something Sandy likes, and he stops short of agreeing to do it. “I don’t know, Manfred,” he says eventually. “I don’t usually go in for this kind of thing, as Bob probably told you. For me, in my situation you know, the risks are too high to justify it.”

  Manfred just grins. “It’s always the high-risk projects that bring in the highest profits, man. Think about it.”

  Then Manfred gets up to go to the bathroom.

  “So what does Raymond think of this?” Sandy asks Bob. “How come he isn’t doing the pickup himself?” For Raymond has done a whole lot of major drug smuggling from offshore in his time, and claims to enjoy it.

  Bob makes a face. “Raymond is really involved in some other things right now. You know, he’s an idealist. He’s always been an idealist. Not that it keeps him from going after the bucks, of course, but still it’s there. I don’t know if you ever heard about this, but a year or so ago some of Ray’s friends in Venezuela were killed by some remotely piloted vehicles that the Venezuelan drug police had bought from our Army. They were good friends, and it really made Ray mad. He couldn’t really declare war on the U.S. Army, but he’s done the next best thing, and declared war on the people who made the robot planes.” He laughs. “At the same time keeping an eye out for profits!” He laughs harder, then looks at Sandy closely. “Don’t tell anyone else about this, okay?” Sandy nods; he and Bob have done a lot of business together over the years, and it’s gone on as long as it has because they both know they form a closed circuit, as far as information goes, including gossip. And Bob appreciates it, because he does love to gossip, even—or especially—about his ally Raymond. “He’s been importing these little missile systems that can be used perfectly for sabotaging military production plants.”

  “Ah, yes,” Sandy says carefully. “I believe I’ve read about the results of all that.”

  “Sure. But Raymond doesn’t just do it for the idea. He’s also finding people who want these things done more than he does!”

  Sandy opens his eyes wide to show how dubious he is about this.

  “I know!” Bob replies. “It’s a tricky area. But so far it’s been working really well. There are customers out there, if you can find them. But it’s murky water, I’ll tell you. Almost as bad as the drug scene. And now he thinks he’s been noticed by another group who are into the same thing.”

  “Uh-oh.”

  “I know. So he’s all wrapped up in that now, trying to find out who exactly is out there, and whether he can come to terms with them.”

  “Sounds dangerous,” Sandy says.

  Bob shrugs. “Everything’s dangerous. But anyway, you can see why Ray isn’t interested in this smuggling deal. His mind is occupied with other things these days.”

  “You bet.”

  Manfred comes back from the bathroom. They try a few more puffs of the harsh black smoke, talk some more. Manfred presses Sandy to commit himself to the aphrodisiac smuggling enterprise, and carefully, ever so diplomatically, Sandy refuses to make the commitment. What he has just heard from Bob isn’t any encouragement. “I’m going to have to think about it, Manfred. It’s really far out of my usual line.”

  Manfred accepts this with grace: “I still hope you’ll go for it, man. Think about it some more and then let me know—we’ve still got a week or so.”

  Sandy looks at his watch, rises. “I’ve got a working day tomorrow, starts in about four hours actually. I should get back home.” Farewells all around and he’s off, into the living room where Tashi, Jim, Humphrey, Abe and Arthur are sitting around talking to people. “Let’s go home.”

  27

  Tracking back north Jim dozes. He’s sitting in the middle seat, leaning against the right window. Arthur is beside him, Abe and Tash behind him in the backseat. Jim finds it difficult to joke around with Arthur; easier to doze. The act of falling asleep often brings hypnagogic visions to him, and the sensation of falling down a black cliff jerks him awake. “Whoah!” Arthur and Raymond, on the cliffside platform. Snatches of a conversation. Warm body in the ocean’s chill. It’s been a strange night.

  Out the window is the single stretch of southern California’s coast left undeveloped: the center of U.S. Marine Camp Joseph H. Pendleton. Dark hills, a narrow coastal plain cut by dry ravines, covered with dark brush. Grass gray in the moonlight. Something about it is so quiet, so empty, so pure.… My God, he thinks. The land. A pang of loss pierces him: this land that they live on, under its caking of concrete and steel and light—it was a beautiful place, once. And now there’s no way back.

  For a moment, as they track up the coast and out of the untouched hills, into the weird cancerous megastructures of the desalination plant and the sewage plant and the nuclear facility, Jim dreams of a cataclysm that could brin
g this overlit America to ruin, and leave behind only the land, the land, the land … and perhaps—perhaps—a few survivors, left to settle the hard new forests of a cold wet new world, in tiny Hannibal Missouris that they would inhabit like foxes, like deer, like real human beings.…

  They track on into the condomundo hills of San Clemente, and the absurdity of his vision, combined with its impossibility, and its cruelty, and its poignant appeal, drive Jim ever deeper into depression. There is no way back; because there is no way back. History is a one-way street. It’s only forward, into catastrophe, or the track-and-mall inferno, or … or nothing. Nothing Jim can imagine, anyway. But no matter what, there is no going back.

  Humphrey gets them up the empty freeway to Sandy’s place, and they all get out to go to their own cars. Humphrey says, “Listen, the odometer shows about a hundred and forty miles, divide it among the six of us and it’ll be really cheap—”

  “Really cheap,” say Tashi and Abe together.

  “Yeah, so let me just figure it out here and we can even up before you guys forget.”

  “Figure it out and bill me,” Sandy says, walking off toward the elevator. Even Sandy seems a little weary. “We will recompense you fully.” Arthur’s off without a word. Tashi and Abe are emptying their pockets and giving Humphrey their change, “Sure that covers wear on the brake pads, Humph?” “Don’t forget oil, Bogie, that big hog of yours just sucks the oil.” “No lie.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Humphrey says seriously, collecting their coins. “I took all that into my calculations.” He drives off without a blink at Tash and Abe’s gibing, perfectly unaware of it. Jim laughs to see it. The guy is so perfectly unselfconscious! And of his chief characteristic!

  As he walks to his car Jim marvels over it. And tracking home he wonders if everyone is, perhaps, unaware of the principle aspect of their personality, which looms too large for them to see. Yeah, it’s probably true. And if so, then what part of his own character doesn’t he see? What aspect of him do Tash and Abe giggle over, behind his back or even right in front of him, because he doesn’t even realize it’s there to be made fun of?