METAtropolis:The Wings We Dare Aspire

by Jay Lake

  She armed herself copiously, then locked the Unimog and after brief thought activated the truck’s antipersonnel defenses. Illegal in pretty much every municipality in North America, out here in the haunted woods the combination of high voltage discharge and knee-level planar explosives were a simple safety precaution.

  Unless, of course, it was her running for the truck and too busy either panicking or returning fire to remember to disarm the damned things.

  Life is choice, she thought. Death is just a poor choice.

  With that cheerful thought, Mindy slipped the truck’s remote into her belt pouch, and scrambled down into the canyon along a game trail. She could get back up, but not if she was being attacked. The other side was no better, though a couple of bent, rusted stanchions testified that there had once been a ladder or at least a permanent climbing rope there. After some careful testing, she used them for support on the way up.

  The far side was a mess of Scotch broom and the ubiquitous blackberries, which made for hellish walking. She wasn’t equipped or in the mood to burn them out, so Mindy relied on her heavy-duty smartfiber pants, capaciously pocketed as they were, and her monstrous, steel-toed boots to get her through. So long as the damned canes didn’t rise too far above her waist, she’d be okay.

  After about ten minutes of thrashing about, she found the remains of the trilithon that had once served as Cascadiopolis’ front door, so to speak. There couldn’t be two of these damned things out here, not with three-meter slabs of quarried basalt. Someone had meant to make a statement, back in the day. Somewhere between that day and this one, the stone structure had collapsed to one side like a high school shop project gone bad.

  Cascadiopolis! she thought. Oookay. I’m here. Now what?

  She knew the answer to that. Up the hill, into the burn, to see what could be seen of the vanished city. And whatever the hell it was she was supposed looking for here there.

  * * *

  Forty years after the fact, the blasts that had taken out Cascadiopolis had left its legacy in the form of aspens, thin, fast-growing pines and several square kilometers of ferny growth laced with more damned blackberries. Douglas firs and their almost-as-towering cousins such as the Sitka spruce would someday crowd out this sunny community, but they were yet young, slender and short; still growing slowly and patiently. Slower than might have been true a century earlier, thanks to rainfall shifts. Eventually not growing at all, if what was left of the climate science community was to be believed.

  A few decades of academic purges and fatal lynchings by ‘real Americans’ hadn’t shut up the climatologists, but it had made them as cautious as the evolutionary biologists. Given her experiences being a cop, Mindy knew she shouldn’t be amazed by the degree to which passionate belief trumped observable reality, but still she was. She’d worked enough murders to long since have given up any notion of divine grace in the world, but for some people the fires and droughts and economic collapses were welcome signs of some imminent-but-never-quite-yet-here miracle to be celebrated. Sometimes the dead were easier to deal with than the living.

  For herself, Mindy knew she’d settle, as always, for the miracle of living another day. Or if she was really ambitious, for the miracle of talking to her dad’s mind instead of his broken body, one last time.

  Whatever had hit Cascadiopolis had hit it hard. The old Doug firs were still around as charred nurse logs, or anchoring embankments built up by soil slippage in the first few years when this place had still been bare and smoldering. Their stumps were huge, splinters worn away by four decades of weathering.

  Had the Greenies who built this place lived in the trees? She figured there might be caves or even a lava tube along the basalt ridge that poked out ahead of her.

  Mindy trudged further up the hill, her thoughts a potpourri of musings on ecology, religion and the state of mankind’s putative soul. When she stopped for breath and to look around, someone pressed a gun barrel behind her ear and whispered in a hoarse voice, “Let’s none of us be foolish, shall we?”

  Her riot pistol dropped from her grip into the trillium at her feet. “We think alike,” she said, wondering just how stupid one cop could be.

  * * *

  Private report to William Silas Crown, submitted on the second anniversary of the Cascadiopolis bombing, later released to the archives of the Lundquist College of Business at the University of Oregon:

  Cascadiopolis was most likely wiped out by orbital kinetics, extensions of the so-called “Star Wars” technology suite. Analysis weights this as an 87% probability. Based on forensic measurements at the site and downwind, there is a nearly zero probability that nuclear weapons were deployed, though the reader should take note of the unverified so-called “clean bombs” allegedly developed jointly by the State of Israel and their Republika Caucasus allies during the 2020s. The main alternative option is air-launched conventional explosives, but there is no radar trace or other evidence of this.

  The larger problem with analyzing the destruction of Cascadiopolis, as well as the similar destruction at Three Fingered Jack in the same time frame, is the absolute lack of identifiable actors. The United States Air Force did not deploy any identifiable orbital assets during that period. At the time of the bombing, at least nine state actors and five private actors possessed known orbital kinetic capability, but no deployments have been identified. The only reasonable conclusion is an attack by an unregistered satellite operated by a discreet actor. Best estimates for “ghost hardware” range from five to fifteen percent of the Earth’s artificial satellite cloud, which renders identification by process of elimination nugatory.

  Method has been identified, in other words, to no avail. With orbital assets, opportunity is limited only by the hardware’s surface footprint. Motive is the sole remaining thread to be followed. As there are few state or private actors without colorable motives to attack a Green initiative so important and subversive as Cascadiopolis has proven to be, this would be like trying to follow a single thread through a carpet factory.

  * * *

  Capital is the beast that shouted “profit” at the heart of the world

  “Of course it’s political,” said Crown, exasperation lending him unaccustomed energy. “Everything is political, or economic, or both.”

  “Naturally, sir.” Kornbluth was slipping into what Crown thought of as ‘suck-up mode.’ The expert system did that when it didn’t like the fact pattern in hand. Well, not ‘hand’ exactly …

  His mind was wandering again. Damn the drugs. Why couldn’t he just die with a clear head, like he’d lived?

  Questions, questions.

  Heinlein and Hubbard had been uncharacteristically silent through this conversation, at least so far. Kornbluth spoke up again. “There is a connection through Senator Rodriguez.”

  “Greens, Greens and more Greens.” Crown paused for breath. “It’s a fucking salad around here.”

  “We believe that Patriot, Inc. is acting to subvert the Senator’s authority through a minor scandal involving her son and a Christian terrorist group.”

  “What does that have to do … with the J. Appleseed … Foundation?”

  “J. Appleseed has been merging the Cascadiopolis model of neourbanism with the Stochasticist model that has been prospering in the Rust Belt since the 2020s.”

  “Their town reclamation initiative?”

  “That is what they tell the media, yes. One division of J. Appleseed takes a more, well, mystical approach.”

  “Why don’t I know this?” Crown demanded.

  “Because you’ve remained very hands off with respect to the Foundation.”

  Heinlein finally spoke up. “You know it now, sir.”

  “I’ve been funding mysticism?” He launched into a coughing fit, which took a bit of time to settle back out. “Heddlebrook is more my style.”

  When things were finally quiet again, Kornbluth resumed speaking. “Heddlebrook is a project out of a different path of money and phi
losophy. You have had no involvement there, sir. As for J. Appleseed, they use the words of Bashar as something between scripture and a tactics manual. Bashar himself claims only to speak for Tygre, the martyr of Cascadiopolis.”

  “Asset Tau,” muttered Crown.

  “Precisely.”

  A thought occurred to him. “Did we ever find any way to tie the bombing to Tygre?”

  “Appendix C of the final report addresses that.” Kornbluth paused. “You read that thirty-eight years ago, sir.”

  “I know, I know.” Crown waved away the words, one paper-skinned hand trailing the tubes that not even the most modern medicine had been able to dispense with. “I mean since then.”

  “That entire affair has remained remarkably resistant to our inquiries, regardless of the leverage we have employed.”

  “Nobody knows nothing,” Hubbard added. Heinlein just laughed.

  “Everybody leaks. The government. The military. Corporatists.” He paused for breath. “Hell, I can find out what the Pope had for breakfast if I want to.”

  “She enjoyed shirred eggs with Polish sausage,” Heinlein said.

  “Right.” Crown closed his eyes and gathered his thoughts. Who the hell ate shirred eggs these days? Besides the Pope, obviously. “Patriot, Inc. We were speaking of Patriot, Inc., not Asset Tau.”

  “J. Appleseed is using the soft path technology model as a method of social engineering, bringing the Green experiment back into the mainstream from the bottom up. Patriot, Inc. is attached to J. Appleseed ostensibly to provide political and security consulting in the face of opposition from a loose confederation of revanchists, Millennialists and Real American militias here in the Northwest. All of whom oppose both J. Appleseed’s goals and methods.”

  “Town reclamation. Giving people purpose and hope.”

  Heinlein again: “Some people would rather that you die for their beliefs than that they re-examine those beliefs.”

  The curse of conservatism, thought Crown. People with otherwise sensible ideas who saddled themselves with the Myth of the Golden Age. He was sufficiently self-aware to recognize the irony being of a lifelong Restorationist. “If we could only bring Reagan and Palin … back from the dead … as a joint ticket, they’d be the messiahs of that lot.”

  “As may be,” said Kornbluth, which was the expert system’s way of telling Crown it had no idea what he was talking about. “First order analysis is that Patriot, Inc. is using J. Appleseed as cover to undermine Green politicians. Senator Rodriguez is the current prime target. Second order analysis suggests that Patriot, Inc. and its sympathizers would be quite pleased to see the Green experiment fail, for larger social and political reasons. We do not believe they are currently seeking to destroy the J. Appleseed Foundation, but that would likely be a target of opportunity should circumstances permit.”

  “All right.” Crown thought it over for a while, until he nearly fell asleep. “I want to see Bashar in person, and I want to know who is paying for the Patriot, Inc. contract at J. Appleseed.” Were his expert systems aware that he’d once before met the Green terrorist?

  “I will see if we can contact Bashar through the Foundation,” said Kornbluth. “As for the Patriot, Inc. contract with the J. Appleseed Foundation, you funded it, sir.”

  “Also through the Foundation, you mean?”

  “No, as a direct expense for your political lobbying efforts.”

  Crown sat up, which hurt like crazy. The edges of his vision reddened. “When did I ever authorize that?”

  * * *

  Her captor wasn’t a neo-hippie. Not likely so, anyway. Anywhere near the pot plantations, they just shot first and never bothered to ask questions later. He marched her up the hill toward the ridge exposed by the old burn, gun at her back, but Mindy still hadn’t seen him. Just the odd voice and the slow pace. He might be old, he might be ill, he might be young and healthy and just faking it to lull her.

  “I’m not doing anything up here you care about,” she ventured.

  At first, the only answer was a laugh. Then, a few paces later, “What could you know about what I care about?”

  Still with the old man’s voice.

  “You care about something here badly enough to take an armed woman hostage,” Mindy said, thinking quickly. Being on the cold case squad meant most of her suspects were files, or corpses, or both; she’d not had a lot of practical experience in talking away loaded weapons. “But I didn’t come to take anything away or leave anything here. I just came to look.”

  “Read about it in a book, did you?” The cynicism in his voice would have been heartbreaking, under other circumstances.

  “Actually, no, I’m trying to find a dead man.”

  The crunch of his feet stopped. She made another step, then stopped as well. No point in rushing ahead, he’d just shoot her in the back. If he wanted to.

  “There are dead men in every graveyard between here and British Columbia. Notably easy to find.”

  “Not in my line of work,” Mindy said. She wondered if she should turn and confront her captor. “Some people die without a funeral. Or justice.” The words sounded silly when she said them aloud, but Mindy really meant them, whether this yahoo believed her or not.

  He shifted from cynicism to sarcasm. “What’s a cop doing up here, really?”

  Now she did turn, slowly, with her arms out from her sides. “Hoping to bring a little justice to the dead.”

  Whatever she was expecting, her captor was not it. Dressed in well-worn khaki pants almost a century out of fashion and a homespun, undyed cotton shirt, and sandals, of all things, he was old. Really old. Not just rode-hard-and-put-up-wet old. The weight of years had made paper of dark skin that must have once been like leather. His hair was thick, the color of old ivory. But his eyes told most of the story.

  It was her woman’s instincts, her human instincts, not her cop instincts, that told her this man had carried a wound most of his life. His heart was scarred and she could see the seams in the gleaming brown of his sharp-eyed gaze.

  He was also carrying a carbon-fiber pistol that would pass through a metal detector like a breeze. Mindy would have bet the propellant was something exotic enough to fool sniffers. The bore at the muzzle was a convincing argument in its own right as well. Being shot by that weapon wasn’t going to be an hour on the table and twelve stitches to get over.

  The old man gave her a long, slow look; the kind a mountain lion gives a deer, then holstered his weapon. He pulled her riot pistol from the back of his belt and handed it to her, butt-first.

  Mindy took it carefully, noting from the weight it was still loaded. This man was either a complete idiot, or truly without fear.

  No contest on that choice.

  “Mindanao Fleischer. I work cold cases for Cascadia LEC.”

  “Sworn officer? Or contractor?”

  That was a perceptive question. It meant, ‘can you be bought off?’ Cops had their price, like everyone, but it tended to be quite different for the floaters than it was for the badges. “Sworn. Nine years now. Made detective two years ago.”

  “Started right out of school, huh?” He grinned, and she could see a dangerous charm under the tough exterior, a charm that had probably only sharpened with age. “Bashar.”

  “Just Bashar?” she asked. “Most people have more than one name. There’s a spot on the forms for it, you know.”

  “It will not surprise you that I never was one for forms.”

  After a long moment, memory tickled her. “You’re the Bashar, aren’t you? Security Director for Cascadiopolis. You ran field ops for the daughter cities for years after the bombing here.”

  He grunted. “Wasn’t any good out on the lines, not after what happened here. But I knew more than anybody. Maybe even about Tygre.”

  “He’s my case. Unresolved death of a man who may not have existed.”

  Bashar shifted his weight, as if he were thinking of jumping her after all. Or possibly just had bad joints. “Afte
r forty years, who in Cascadia LEC cares about that?”

  “I’ve been wondering the same damned thing. That’s why I’m investigating. Find an answer or two here, I might find out who’s asking questions.”

  After a long silence, Bashar came to some inner conclusion. “He was real. More real than you or me. And he died here, at a lot of hands.”

  “Why?” Mindy asked, though she knew sometimes that was the most pointless question of all in a murder investigation.

  “Because he was too real.” The old man settled, as if his entire body were sighing. “That’s the one thing people can’t stand. Being shown how little they matter, how little they’ve actually accomplished. How unreal they are.”

  She knew without asking that Bashar was speaking for himself. Her, too, maybe. It was why she’d gone into police work, in way. To be real. Cold cases just kept her away from the creepy stupidity of everyday criminal life.

  Bashar had found reality in a different way. Once, he’d been one of the most dangerous anarcho-terrorists on the West Coast. She’d bet an entire paycheck there were dozens of warrants, pick-up orders and bounties on this man. And still he’d lived to be, what, eighty? Still dangerous, too, but clearly something about meeting Tygre forty years ago had changed this man deeply.

  “I don’t know about real,” she said. “I know about dead people and old crimes. Sometimes. If I’m lucky.”

  “You are lucky. You have a purpose.” He smiled again, that deadly charm leaching across his face once more. “I’ll show you Tygre’s grave if you want. But no disinterment. Don’t even try to take that one to a judge.”

  He didn’t bother to make a threat. She understood that much. “Show me,” Mindy said, her voice soft. “Please.”

  They trudged up the hill together now, paces matching. Like her, Bashar carried a pack. It was small, but knowing his reputation, this man could live for months out of whatever he carried with him. For a moment, she could almost imagine she was walking with her Dad, who had also been a violent, strange man with unexpected depths and a core of loving kindness underneath all the emotional barbed wire. Though she doubted Bashar had ever been accused of loving kindness. Still, something was in there that hadn’t just vented her head with a bullet and gone onward, as she suspected this man would have done without thought before crossing paths with Tygre.