Apocalypse blues x-1

by Walter Greatshell

  "I remember you. Chairman Sandoval."

  Actually I was trying hard to imagine what it could mean that he was here. All I really remembered of him was a gruff voice in the goat locker and that long-ago leap to the sub. The last time I had seen him was when he snubbed me going ashore. But I also dimly recalled that first night out on the deck, when he was surrounded by angry men-Fred Cowper chief among them-who seemed to think he was the reason we were locked out of the boat. He had betrayed them for SPAM. He was SPAM. I remember I had felt great empathy for Sandoval, not just because he was injured and helpless but because at the time I was being harassed by a hostile mob myself.

  "I hope the ride wasn't too unpleasant," he said. "It's what passes for limousine service around here. Are you cold?"

  "No."

  "Really? I'm glad. You look spectacular." When I didn't reply, he said, "Lulu, nothing's going to happen. You don't have to be afraid of me. I know it's been… incredibly difficult, but that's all over. You're safe now."

  "I've heard that before." I refused to meet his eyes.

  "I'm just making clear my intentions. I'm not your lord; you are not my chattel. You are part of my household, yes, but that's only so you can be spared the unpleasantness that some other men might have visited upon you. The world is poor enough without that. Wherever you go here, you are under my protection, which merely means you will be left alone. I'll certainly never lay a hand on you without your consent. All I ask is that you honor me with your company on such occasions as I may request it, purely as a friend."

  I must have been radiating cynicism and contempt. Smiling a little, he said, "Your doubts prove your character. I hope you'll give me a chance to prove mine."

  "Do I have a choice?"

  "Lulu, you've seen the other side. You've tested the waters. It's because you made a choice that you are here today, and I very much want you to succeed. To stay." He reached for my hand.

  I recoiled as if from a striking cobra, more violently than I intended.

  He backed off. "I know you're still in shock, but you have to understand that I do this out of caring, not because I want to torture you."

  "No, just my friends!"

  "That was not my doing. The domes have their own hierarchy-we have a strict hands-off policy out here to keep the peace. Otherwise… too many cooks, you know?"

  "You all suck."

  "Maybe so, but I'm your ticket out of there." He lit a slim black cigarette and offered me one. I declined. Savoring the smoke, he said, "Would your friends want you to throw away your chance at life? Weren't they willing to give up their lives to save yours? I'm sure you want to respect their wish."

  "Their final wish. Just shut up-we both know what this is about."

  "You're wrong. You want to know what it's about? Talk. A little innocent talk."

  "Bullshit. Talk is cheap."

  "That's where you're wrong. Talk is really all that matters, talk about real things. Believe me, I know. When you spend as much time in the realms of business and politics as I have, you learn the meaning of the term 'seats of power'-it's because they're full of the biggest asses on Earth! I'll tell you a secret: the Moguls? They're idiots."

  "Yeah, and you're one of them."

  "No I'm not. No I'm not. I didn't start out this way. I grew up in group homes and foster care, and never even knew who my father was until I received notice from a legal firm in Zurich that he had died."

  "Oh, boo-hoo."

  "I learned only then that he had been a silent partner in the global economy-one of these puppet masters of capitalism you see all around us. I also learned I was a secret billionaire, with fortunes buried like dog bones in tax havens around the world, safe from prying eyes. But he had left me more than money-he left me a manifesto, a battle plan. The means of waging war against an enemy he himself had created."

  "What enemy?" I sneered.

  "All my father's interests: his corporations, his politicians, his offshore banks, his media holdings. Thousands of seemingly independent entities all owned by third parties under his invisible web of control. Except he felt he had lost control; everything had become corrupt and evil, an unstable kleptocracy that was dragging down mankind rather than bettering it. Then he found out he had HIV, and he experienced some kind of epiphany. Before he died, he wanted to overhaul everything, come clean, but he knew he was too compromised-the lawyers would bury him before he could scratch the surface. He needed someone spotless.

  "Then he remembered some poor girl he had knocked up and abandoned back in his fraternity days. My dear mother. She was dead, but I wasn't, and in me he saw the opportunity to reduce the amount of bullshit in the world, to forge a nobler purpose for mankind than 'shop till you drop.' This was my inheritance, this mission."

  In spite of myself, I asked, "What did you do?"

  "Nothing. Not a thing. I had been through hell because of that asshole, had seen my mother die in poverty and been bounced all over kingdom come-I didn't care about his stupid crusade. I had my own life. I wanted to be a jazz musician. Life as a plutocrat didn't interest me, and I didn't realize how right my instincts were until I met some of those people. They're peasants, Lulu. Greedy, witless provincials to whom global power is an extension of their golf game. Amoral louts who dismiss art, nature, the whole universe, as socialist propaganda. Anything they can't win at is for suckers. They have no imagination, no humor beyond dirty limericks. They're boring. But I'll say this for them: They're survivors. There's nothing they won't do to ensure their survival."

  "So I've seen."

  "I guess you have. To them you're nothing but a status symbol. I'm risking a lot taking you under my wing-it stirs up trouble for me to have something none of them has, especially since I'm a Johnny-come-lately to begin with. My people here thought I was dead, and were about to start trading my assets for new alliances, when I showed up on that submarine. Now they all hate me. So you see, talk may be cheap, but you were expensive."

  "I never asked to be bought."

  "I know that. Come sit down. I won't touch you."

  "I'm fine here. What happens now?"

  "Nothing at all. I'm at your service. Anything you'd like, just ask. We have a tremendous library on disc, as well as music, movies, games, you name it. There's also a hot shower or a sauna if that would help you relax. Or a drink."

  "No thanks."

  "You're also free to return to your quarters in the bubble at any time. You're not a prisoner here."

  "Quarters?" I had assumed I would be living in the plane with him.

  "Yes, the private area you've just come from, that's yours. Of course, if you're not satisfied with that, other arrangements might be-"

  "No, that's fine. I would like to head back, if it's okay with you."

  If he was angry or disappointed, he didn't show it. "Absolutely. We'll talk again tomorrow. I have a little proposal I'd like to discuss with you. Purely business." Stubbing out his cigarette, he said, "We'll have lunch."

  Over the following week, I found Sandoval to be as good as his word, though I didn't let my guard down for a second. His business proposal was exactly that: a request for my services as a copy editor. Somehow he had gotten hold of my UNIX files from the boat and was very impressed with my sense of "melodrama." He wanted me to vet some kind of speech he had to deliver, touting the accomplishments of the Mogul Research Division. Out of relief that the proposal didn't involve fellatio, I said, "Sure."

  Most of my time was my own, to be spent exploring the vast indoor facility of the domes or channel-surfing the even vaster quantity of recorded entertainment. At first I laughed to see a TV in my quarters, thinking of it as a silly relic, until I turned it on and discovered the interactive bonanza available. My mother and I had never had cable, except in motels. The Valhalla database was comprehensive to the point of absurdity-there seemed to be no book, magazine, movie, TV or radio program, video game, music, or hard-to-define other that was not included in the listing. Apparently it was
what the elite did with their time there.

  I wondered how they watched without becoming utterly depressed-there was something disturbing about all those images from the fallen world. Was this what we had to show for our civilization, this catalogue of trivia? Flintstones Chew ables and Apollo? It was. Like it or not, we were the new Essenes, and this mishmash of hype and nonsense and vanish ingly rare beauty was our Dead Sea Scrolls.

  I found myself dwelling on news coverage taped during the last days, everything I and my mother had missed, from special bulletins intruding on painful-to-watch sitcom jollity to the final technical glitches, gaps in the broadcast, and dead air that presaged the end. I saw a crudely edited compilation of police dashboard cams showing officers arriving at the scene and being ambushed by Xombies. I saw aerial footage of city streets overrun with Xombies, and Xombies storming the White House. I saw the president, unshaven, as he wearily addressed the nation:

  "In all the hysteria we must not forget that these unfortunates are victims as well, that they deserve compassion, not hate or fear; treatment, not destruction. They are not she-devils, but afflicted human beings who, through no fault of their own, are caught up in this emergency along with the rest of us. Terms like 'Xombie,' 'Fury,' and 'Exian' only lead to misunderstanding and needless violence. I think we can all agree that the last thing this nation needs now is more violence. Let us show that we can rise above our fear and approach this desperate situation as a public-health issue, not as a witch hunt. We are not a nation of executioners, but a nation of mourners. We are a nation that will do the right thing. Good-bye, and God bless America." Then he shot himself in the head. Men jumped to tend him, and the camera remained on just long enough to capture their wild flurry of panic and gunfire as he revived.

  In this way, I witnessed it all for the first time, and really understood how strange I had become, because the simple, puerile old world seemed infinitely stranger to me than the dark one it had spawned.

  Every day, Sandoval and I had a sumptuous lunch in the plane, and he would tell funny anecdotes about his early, fumbling encounters with great wealth, suggesting that he knew what I was going through. I was not much in the way of company, but he didn't seem to mind. He also told me about how he had founded the Mogul Cooperative.

  "Originally, it was meant to be a joke!" he said. "There was this crazy explosion of wealth during the Reagan years, and it just became obscene to me. Financial firms blatantly touting sleazy tax shelters and 'wealth preservation' at the same time I was exploring ways to redistribute my own dirty money. What was it all for? I wanted to do something to mock all that avarice, so I took it to its logical extreme: You can take it with you! Let me tell you how!

  "Since one of my holdings was a reputable biochemical company, it was easy to make a classy prospectus, but all I really wanted to do was make a point. My mistake was letting that professor, Uri Miska, chair the foundation. He wasn't in on the prank and stole the show from day one. What a maniac! At first I thought he was the best snake-oil salesman of all time, and couldn't believe the interest he was drumming up-elderly fat cats were apparently all too happy to throw money at us rather than at their greedy heirs-but then the whole thing began taking on a life of its own. It was paying for itself and getting bigger year after year; I couldn't pull the plug. Eventually, I just left it to Miska, not knowing if I had scored the biggest coup of all time or… done something else. Of course, now we know the answer to that, twenty years too late."

  "So this whole thing is your doing." I said this with all the animation of a dead fish.

  "Indirectly, I suppose. I started the ball rolling. But what did I know? The one who really made it happen was Dr. Miska."

  "What happened to him?"

  "He disappeared. When the Maenad contagion started spreading, he trashed the Providence lab and took off with his experimental 'Tonic.' We recovered what we could, some data and a small sample, and transferred it by helicopter to the submarine for safekeeping. This was all in the heat of the Agent X outbreak-you can imagine the difficulties. We lost hundreds of men on the ground. All of them, actually. Only the helicopter pilot and I made it back to the plant." He said this as if it unnerved him to think about it.

  "Lucky you just happened to have a submarine lying around."

  "Hey, what can I tell you? Submarines were my hobby ever since I was a kid. With some guys it's model trains. I just happened to be in a position to own my own submarine factory. If I'd known it would be such a headache, I would've unloaded it long ago."

  "Poor little rich boy."

  "No, but until you're faced with the kinds of choices I've had to make, you can't judge."

  "You mean like choosing SPAM over people?"

  That struck a nerve. "SPAM had nothing to do with it," he said. "I had to be sure that the Tonic would reach its destination. We couldn't predict what would happen with a lot of refugees on board-it was too much like letting the inmates run the asylum."

  "But you promised them!"

  "It was the only way to keep them on the job. That sub had to be seaworthy and ready to go. There was no other choice. Of course, it was all moot after you and Cowper showed up."

  "We were only trying to survive."

  "I know. I don't blame you for almost getting me killed. That was your only choice. At that moment, you had the leverage and would have been stupid not to use it. Plus, stealing the Tonic ensured that we didn't dare throw you overboard. The most we could do was lock Cowper up and try to get him to talk."

  "But… you were in there with him. You were arrested, too."

  "No I wasn't." His lips formed into a sly, rueful smile.

  He had been pretending to be a prisoner. That whole time. "You lying creep," I said.

  "It was all I could think of to get Cowper's confidence. It was rough, too. I was stuck in there with a ruptured kneecap, and Fred Cowper is not the most gentle nursemaid a person could ask for. I should have known he was too smart to open up-did you know he was my first choice to command the boat? I was very disappointed when he turned me down. I never liked that Coombs. He tolerates too much hanky-panky."

  "You mean like giving me the run of the ship."

  "No, that was actually deliberate. We thought Cowper might confide something to you through the door. You were slower on the uptake than we expected, though-it took you a week to find him."

  "Thanks."

  "De nada. More tea?"

  Each day, when I returned to my tent, it was a little more furnished, more deluxe, though the one amenity I really wanted was a bathroom-I didn't like using a chamber pot, no matter how unobtrusively it was whisked away, and I would have liked to wash more often. I suspected that Sandoval was allowing me only so much comfort, so that visiting him would remain a welcome indulgence.

  One thing that surprised me was how free I was to roam around. Valhalla was wide open to me, and I could even leave the bubble altogether via my private balcony if I could stand the cold, though I wouldn't get much farther than that. There was no Inuit taxi service except by Mogul appointment.

  My tent was at the northwest side of the main bubble, close to the wall, in a thinly peopled region of giant helium tanks, compressors, and webs of anchor cable. The lines creaked eerily from the force of the wind outside-I gathered that the dome would blow away without these robust moorings, which moaned like the tortured rigging of a great sailing ship. I could see why most people chose to live more toward the center, in the faux-cheery surroundings of the Global Village. But at least I could come and go as I pleased.

  What I quickly discovered, however, was that there was nowhere I cared to go. My first act after leaving Sandoval was to try to find someone, anyone, from the sub. This did not require much of a search-I remembered what the boys had told me about being able to locate a person by their implant, and immediately found this monitoring system-the Valhalla Directory, or VD-on Channel 8 of my interactive television. All I had to do was type in a name, and the selected implantee would a
ppear as a numbered dot on a map of the complex.

  I could find myself, I could find Dr. Langhorne or Dr. Stevens or Rudy or Colonel Lowenthal or even Miss Riggs, but the people I really wanted to find were not there: all the surviving boys and men from the boat. They were either being detained outside the bubble or they were gone altogether. I prayed it was the former, but either way they were out of reach. I was alone.

  What made the situation worse was my isolation within the complex. Except for the doctors, no one would speak to me, no one would come anywhere near me, and when I ventured out of my area, I felt like Typhoid Mary-word got around that I was coming, and people disappeared into their holes like timid rabbits. I could sometimes see stragglers clearing out as I approached, and it made me mad. Obviously, they were following my movements, using the Directory to shun me, but why? I remembered what Dr. Langhorne had told me about sexual competition here, and wondered if that was it-did they hate me because they thought I was an interloper poaching on their territory? Were they scared of me because they thought I could bring Sandoval's might to bear? If that was so, it was worth thinking about. How much power did I wield? What could I get away with?

  The more I considered, the more I began to feel a peculiar thrill of a kind I had never experienced before. Look at it objectively, I thought: If Sandoval was king, and he adopted me, that made me a princess. Even in less fanciful terms, he was certainly one of the most powerful men on Earth-and had been even before Agent X-whereas what had I been? A nothing, a nobody… yet it was me he wanted by his side. Furthermore, even at fiftyish, he wasn't exactly a broken-down old coot. Again, looking objectively, he was handsome, charming, even boyish in a way-all the qualities prized by romance novelists. In my young girlhood, I had been a secret reader of such tripe, and it must have been lying dormant, my Harlequin gene, waiting for the right moment to bust out. The fact that he didn't make me physically ill made anything possible.