Heavy Weather

by Bruce Sterling

  And somebody was putting this vision together, deliberately assembling it. Somebody had broken the screen into compound miniscreens like a bee's eyes: traffic securicams and building securicams and minibank securicams and all the other modern urban securicams that offered no one even the tiniest trace of security. And as the cams were blinked out and smashed and ripped apart and exploded and were blinded and crushed, whoever was at work just kept adding more viewpoints.

  One of them was a sudden glimpse of the Troupe. It was Jerry, he had his back half-turned to the camera, he was leaning, half-doubled, into the gusting wind. He was shouting and waving one arm. It was Troupe camp, and all the paper yurts were smashed and torn and writhing in the wind. Jerry turned to the camera suddenly and he held up a broken-winged ornithopter, and his face was alight with comprehension and terror.

  And then he vanished.

  It didn't look like a machine was doing these viewpoints. It was the sort of montage technique often best left to machine, but Jane had a very strong intuition that someone was doing this work by hand. Human auteurs were putting it together, very deliberately, swiftly, and deftly assembling it with their own busy human fingertips. Doing it, knowing they were going to die at their post.

  And the sorrow and pity of the great disaster struck her then, lancing into her right through that busy thicket of interface. And she felt the hurt explode inside of her. And she thought, with greater clarity than she had ever thought of anything before, that if she ever, somehow, managed to escape from this shelter and from these People of the Abyss, then she would learn to love something else. Something new. To learn tu love something that didn't stink at its spinning core, of disaster and destruction and despair.

  Then the broadcast blinked out.

  "Lost transmission again," said Red. "I bet it took down the main towers out on Britton Road this time-who wants to bet?"

  "That was great," said Rosina, appreciatively. "I can't wait till they compile all this coverage and do the definitive disk."

  Red combed channels. "SESAME's still up."

  "Yeah, the feds keep their weather links down in the old missile silos," said chess player two. "Practically Unnukable."

  "Where are we exactly?" asked Crimson Avenger, looking at the SESAME map. Red pointed. "Well," Avenger said, "I don't see any precipitation over us. I think we're in the clear!"

  Suddenly there was a violent series of explosions just outside the door-explosions actually inside the shelter. Leo winced, then suddenly grinned. "Did you hear that, people! Those were our detonation signals!"

  "Close," said chess player one, and plucked at his lower lip. He had gone quite pale. "Real close."

  "How'd they squeeze that signal through?" said the second chess player.

  "I'd bet autonomously launched drone aircraft," Red theorized. "Probably sweeping the whole locale. Of course, if a drone can safely fly over us, that ought to mean that we can leave here safely."

  "Fuck the theory, I'm checkin' this out," Crimson Avenger declared. He left.

  He was back within a minute, his handsome leather shoes leaving faint smudges of fresh blood on the shelter's thick carpet. "The sun is out!"

  "You're kidding."

  "No way, dood! It's wet, and everything is smashed completely flat, but the sky is blue and the sun is shining and there's not a cloud in the sky, and people, I am out of here." He walked into the kitchen and pulled a shining ceramic valise off the top of the freezer.

  "You won't get far on foot," said chess player one.

  Crimson Avenger glared at him. "How stupid do you think I am, Gramps? I don't have to get far. I know exactly where I'm going, and exactly what I'm doing, and my plans don't include you. Good-bye, doods. Good-bye forever." He opened the door and stalked away, leaving it ajar behind him.

  "He's got a point," Leo said. "It's a good idea for us to split up as quickly as possible."

  "You want to ferry us out in the personnel carrier?"

  "No," Leo said. "It's wiser to stick to Plan A. You leave on foot, and I'll plastique the works here. The cars, the tank, the bikes, the shelter, everything."

  "The bodies," Rosina pointed out.

  "Yeah, okay, I'll put the deceased directly inside the tank before I detonate it."

  "I'll help you, Leo," the second chess player said. "I owe you that much, after all this."

  "Good. Time's pretty short, people, let's get moving."

  Leo and his five remaining friends went into the hall. The woman and the Asian man were lying very dead on the sloping floor, the carpet sopping with their blood. The walls were pockmarked with shrapnel from the eight discarded cuffs that had detonated there. It stank of plastique. Rosina, and the older chess player, and Red the radioman picked their ways daintily past the corpses, with their eyes averted.

  Jane tarried at the back of the hall. She wasn't too upset by the corpses. She had seen worse corpses. She was far more appalled by the living.

  "Wet work," said the second chess player, sadly.

  Leo hesitated. "I think we'd better use latex and medical paper for this job. That's a lot of body fluid."

  "We don't have time for precautions. Leo. Besides, they were two of us; they're clean!"

  "I don't know. I wouldn't put it past Ruby," Leo said, meditatively. "Ruby was quite the personal devotee of retrovtrus.

  Jane began to walk up the hall. She brushed past the two of them. Her boots squelched moistly on the carpet. She was trembling.

  "Jane," Leo called out.

  She broke into a run.

  "Jane!"

  She broke out through the garage door. There was no wind. The sun was shining. The world smelled like fresh-plowed earth. The sky was blue. She ran for her life.

  ALEX WAS SITTING up in a tree eating a loaf of bread. It wasn't a fresh loaf, because the smashed home where he'd raided the bread had been abandoned for at least two days. It had been the home of a man and his wife and the man's mother and the couple's two bucktoothed little kids. With a lot of religious stuff inside it; gold-framed devotional prints and evangelical literature and a thoroughly smashed farm truck with bumper stickers reading ETERNITY-WHEN? and AFtER DEATH-WHAT THEN?

  It looked like it had been kind of a nice little farmhouse once; it had its own cistern, anyway, and a chicken coop, but it was all shattered now, and being Christians, the occupants would probably act real thankful about it. Alex had been astounded to discover that the inhabitants had a big stack of paper comic books, Christian evangelical comics, the real thing, in English no less, with hand drawings and black ink and real metal staples. A shame they were all torn up and rain-soaked and uncollectible.

  Off in the distance, to the north, came an enormous explosion and an uprushing column of filthy smoke. The wind was so calm now, and the damp sweet sky so beautifully blue, that the burning column rose straight up and stood there in the sky and preened itself. It sure looked and sounded like a massive structure hit, but maybe he was being uncharitable. Could have been a detonating natural-tank or maybe a broken propane line. These things did Not every mishap in the world was somebody's fault.

  Alex chewed more bread and had some carrot juice. The Christian family had been very big on organic whole juices. Except for the dad, presumably, who kept his truly awful Okie Double-X beer hidden under the sink.

  Alex's tree was a large and fragrant cedar that had been uprooted and knocked over at an angle. Many of the branches had been twisted off by a passing F-2, showing red heartwood that smelled lovely. He had climbed into the downed tree and was lying on the sun-warmed trunk about four meters up in the air, his back against the underside of one of the thicker limbs. The gray-barked trunk under his paper-clad buttocks was as solid as a bench. His wasn't too far from the site of the crash. He could see dead wreck of Charlie from where he sat.

  Juanita was gone, and to judge by the tracks in the sh mud, she had left with a rescuer in civilian shoes who sonic kind of big military truck. That was good news Alex, because Juanita's
eyes had been crossed and glassy last hours, and he had her figured for a mild con;ion. He felt sure that Juanita, or at least some helpful uper, would show up again in pretty short order, some~, soon. She'd be coming to find him. And even if she 't want to find him in particular, that car had a lot of iand megabytage in it.

  Alex felt rather restful and at peace with himself. He partially deafened, and his face hurt, and his lungs and his eyes hurt, and he could taste blood at the of his tongue. Scrambling through the roadside forest a mindless panic, basically-had left him striped with many nasty scratches and a couple of hefty, aching bruises, plus a thick coating of cedar gum and dirt.

  But he had seen the F-6. It had been pretty much what he'd been led to expect. It was nice not to be disappointed about something in life. He felt he could put up with dying with a better grace now.

  He chewed more bread. It wasn't good bread, but it was better than camp food. There was a gray squirrel running around on the forest floor. It was drinking out of the rain puddle in the roots of the fallen tree. Didn't seem upset in any way. Just another squirrel going about its job.

  Vaguely, under the persistent whine of aural aftershock, Alex heard someone calling out. Calling his name. He sat up, put his foot in the smart rope, lowered himself down from the trunk to the ground, and swiftly coiled the rope around his shoulder.

  He worked his way through the labyrinth of fallen trees back to the site of the wreck.

  But whea he glJ~~j the rescuer, searching vaguely around the wreckage, Alex fled. He reached the fallen cedar again, cast his rope back up, and yanked himself quickly back into the tree.

  "Over here," he called, standing on the trunk and waving. He couldn't call out too loudly. Shouting really hurt him inside.

  Leo Mulcahey walked over, methodically working his way through the maze of fallen limbs. He wore a sturdy felt Stetson and a safari jacket.

  He stopped in a small patch of knee-high undergrowth and looked up at Alex. "Enjoying yourself?" he said.

  Alex touched his ears. "What's that, Leo? Come closer. I'm kind of deaf. Sorry."

  Leo stepped closer to the leaning tree trunk and looked up again. "I might have known I'd find you much at your ease!"

  "You don't have to shout now, that's fine. Where's Juanita?"

  "I was going to ask you that, actually. Not that you care."

  Alex narrowed his eyes. "I know that you took her away, so don't bullshit me. You wouldn't be stupid enough to hurt her, would you, Leo? Not unless you've really got it in for Jerry, as well as me."

  "I have no quarrel with Jerry. Not any longer. That's all in the past now. In fact, I'm going to help Jerry. It's the last act I can commit that will really help my brother." He pulled a ceramic pistol out of his jacket pocket.

  "Oh, that's really good," Alex scoffed. "You dumb spook bastard! I've had two tubercular hemorrhages in the past week, and you're coming out here to shoot me and leave me under this tree? You hopeless gringo moron, I just lived through the F-6, I don't need some pissant assassin like you! I can die perfectly well all by myself. Get lost before I lose my temper."

  Leo, astonished, laughed. "That's very funny! Would you like to be shot up in that tree, where it might be painful, or would you like to come down here, where I can make it very efficient and quick?"

  "Oh," said Alex, daintily, "I prefer being murdered in the most remote, impersonal, and clinical manner possible, thank you."

  "Oh, with you and I, it's personal," Leo assured him. "You kept me from telling my brother good-bye, face-to-face. I dearly wanted to see my brother, because I had certain important personal business with him, and I might well have gotten past his entourage and seen him privately, but you interfered. And then, in the press of business, it became too late." Leo's brow darkened. "That's not sufficient reason to kill you, I suppose; but then, there's the money. Juanita has no money left; if you're dead, she gets yours, and Jerry gets hers. So your resources go to environmental science, instead of being squandered on the drug habits of some decrepit weakling. Killing you is genuinely helpful. It'll make the world a better place."

  "That's wonderful, Leo," Alex said. "I feel so honored to assuage your delicate feelings in this way. I can only agree with your trenchant assessment of my moral and societal worth. May I point one thing out before you execute me? If the shoe were on the other foot, and I were about to execute you, I'd do it without the fucking lecture!"

  Leo frowned.

  "What's the matter, Leo? An old bulishit artist like you can't bear to let your condemned man have the last word for once?"

  Leo raised the pistol. Behind his head, a thin black noose snaked up silently from the forest floor.

  "Better kill me now, Leo! Shoot quick!"

  Leo took careful aim.

  "Too late!"

  The smart rope hissed around his neck and yanked him backward. He flew off his feet, his neck snapping audibly. Then he leaped up from the forest floor like a puppet on a string as the serpentine coils of the smart rope hissed around the butt of a cedar branch. There was a fragrant stink of burned bark as the body was hauled aloft.

  The hanged man swayed there, violently, dangling from the tree. And at length was still.

  IT TOOK ALEX forty-seven hours to get from a smashed forest in Oklahoma to his father's penthouse in Houston. There was a lot of bureaucratic hassle around the federal disaster zone, but the Guard and the cops couldn't stop him from walking, and his luck changed when he got his hands on a motor bicycle. He didn't eat much. He scarcel~ slept. He had a fever. His lungs hurt very badly, and deat was near, death was very near now, not the romantic death this time, not the sweet, drug-addled, transcendent death. Just real death, just death of the cold, old-fashioned variety, death like his mother's death, an absence and a being still, forever. He didn't love death anymore. He didn't even like death anymore. Death was something he was going to have to get over with.

  It wasn't easy to get into his father's part of town. The Houston cops had always been mean, tough cops, the kind of cops that had teeth like Dobermans, and heavy weather had not made them kinder. The Houston cops were kind to people like him, when people-like-him looked like people-like-him; but when people-like-him looked the way that he now, the Houston cops in 2031 were the kind of ho collared diseased vagrants off the street and did secret things to them far out in the bayous.

  But Alex had his ways. He hadn't grown up in Houston r nothing, and he knew what it meant to have people owe him favors. He got to his father's building without so much as a change of clothes.

  And then he had to work his way past his father's own worked his way into the building. He won his own way with the machine in the elevator. The human receptionist at the penthouse floor let him in; he knew the receptionist. And then he found himself waiting in the usual marble anteroom with the giant Aztec mandalas and the orangutan skulls and the Chinese lamps.

  He sat there coughing and shivering on a velvet bench, in his filthy paper suit, with his hands on his knees and his head swimming. He waited patiently. It was always like this with his Papa. There were no alternatives, none. If he waited long enough, some gopher would show up and bring him coffee and sweet English biscuits.

  After maybe ten minutes the bronze double doors opened at the far end of the anteroom, and in came one of the most beautiful women he'd ever seen. She was a nineteen-year-old violet-eyed gamine with a sweet little cap of black hair and a short skirt and patterned hose and high heels.

  She took a few tentative steps across the inlaid marble floor and looked at him and simpered. "Are you him?" she said in Spanish.

  "Sorry," Alex said, "I don't think I am."

  She switched to English, her eyes widening. "Do you want . . . to go shopping?"

  "Not right now, thank you."

  "I could take you shopping. I know many nice places in LIStOfl.

  "Maybe another time," said Alex, and sneezed vioShe looked at him with deep concern, and turned and left, and the doors closed behind her wi
th a tomblike clunk.

  Maybe seven minutes later a gopher showed up with the coffee and the biscuits. It was a new gopher-it was pretty much always a new gopher, gopher being the lowest rung in the Unger organization-but the British cookies were really good, and the coffee, as always, was Costa Rican and fine. He kept the cookies down and had several cautious sips of the coffee, and he physically recovered to the extent that he really began to hurt. He ordered the gopher off for some aspirin, or better yet, codeine. The gopher never returned.

  Then one of the private secretaries arrived. He was one of the older secretaries, Señor Pabst, a family loyalist, a nicely groomed old guy with a Mexican law degree and a well-concealed drinking problem.

  Pabst looked him over with genuine pity. Pabst was from Matamoros. There were a lot of Unger family connections in Matamoros. Alex couldn't say that he and Pabst had had actual dealings, but he and Pabst had something akin to an-understanding.

  "I think you'd better get right to bed, Alejandro."

  "I have to see El Viejo."

  "You're not in any condition to see El Viejo. You're going to do something foolish, something you'll regret. See him tomorrow. It's better."

  "Look, will he see me, or won't he?"