The Rift

by Walter Jon Williams

  Go home, Charlie urged him mentally as he heard the jangle of the phone. Go to the country club. Go anywhere!

  But Dearborne hung on. “You’re going to give me that ulcer yet,” he told Charlie. Charlie figured that if anyone was going to get an ulcer, it would be Charlie, and it would be Dearborne who gave it to him.

  The market fell far enough so that Charlie was able to liquidate his position in treasury bonds, which gave him a great lump of profit that made him itchy. He could add it to the margin account, because he knew big margin calls would be inevitable as soon as the regulators noticed how exposed his positions were growing. He could use the money to further hedge his positions, which would lessen the risk of the big margin calls. Or he could buy more short positions, which, because it would make a lot more money in the long run, is what he really wanted to do.

  But the smart traders don’t take those kind of risks on their own, Charlie thought. Not without covering their asses.

  So he called Dearborne. “I just made you pots of money, guv,” he said.

  “How big are the pots?” Dearborne asked.

  Charlie told him.

  “Nice pots,” Dearborne said, impressed.

  It was a clumsy metaphor, Charlie thought, but he could run with it. “I can get you newer and nicer pots,” he said, “but there’s a risk.”

  “Oh God,” Dearborne whimpered. “My ulcer’s really kicking up.”

  “You don’t have an ulcer yet,” Charlie pointed out, and then explained his point of view.

  “But if we buy all those unhedged positions,” Dearborne said, “what do we use to cover the margin calls?”

  “That’s your department, guv,” Charlie said.

  Dearborne groaned.

  “In the words,” Charlie said, “of that great statesman, Ronald Wilson Reagan, stay the course.”

  “You’re going to kill me,” Dearborne said.

  “Trust me,” Charlie said. “I know what I’m doing.”

  Charlie got his way. But as soon as he started putting the money on the market, the regulators noticed his vulnerability and began calling in margins, and he had to call Dearborne for money. Which led to even more anxiety on Dearborne’s part, and more phone calls.

  “The margin calls are signs of success,” Charlie kept telling him. “It means the market is moving our way.”

  But it wasn’t moving Charlie’s way all the time: it jittered up and down on an almost hourly basis. Charlie took advantage of the upswings to sell as many of his hedges at a profit as he could, then buy more short options. Which led to more margin calls, more aggravation. More phone calls from Dearborne. On Thursday night Charlie drove home after reconciliation, planning on nothing more exciting than eating some Chinese takeout and having a long soak in the spa, only to find an urgent message from Dearborne on his answering machine.

  “Turn on your TV!” Dearborne shouted from the tinny speaker. “The chairman of the Fed is on!” The chairman wasn’t there when Charlie looked, so he switched to CNN and ate orange peel beef from the cardboard container while he waited for the financial report. Right at the top of the report was the chairman of the Federal Reserve, with a strange gnomic smile pasted to his face, announcing that the Fed was cutting interest rates a full point. Announcers were treating it as if the chairman had just turned water into wine.

  Fuck, Charlie thought. Fuck I am so screwed…

  And then, as if on cue, the phone rang. Charlie didn’t answer. He just waited for Dearborne’s voice to come out of the answering machine.

  It didn’t say anything that Charlie hadn’t already imagined.

  The President choked on laughter at the sight of the chairman of the Federal Reserve making his announcement. The unnatural grin, on Sam’s reserved and owlish face, looked more like the product of a jolt of electricity than a result of fiscal confidence.

  “I love it!” he whooped. “Damn, I am some kind of slick son of a bitch!” The First Lady gave him an indulgent look from over her reading glasses. She sat in a lounge chair in their drawing room, a glass of sherry by one hand, briefing books in her lap. Her husband was not the only person doing homework for the economic summit.

  “Sam’s peculiar behavior is not unanticipated, I gather?” she said.

  “Judge Chivington gave him a little phone call. But I didn’t think it would work so soon, or so fast. And I sure as hell didn’t think it would work by a whole interest point.”

  The First Lady looked down at her briefing book and with a marking pen drew a thick pink line along a critical factoid. “You think we can sustain this rally?” she said.

  “Barring some unforseen disaster.” He grinned at the television analyst who was urging fiduciary caution upon his audience. “I won’t have egg on my face at the economic summit, anyway.”

  “Let’s just hope,” the First Lady said, returning her gaze to her briefing book, “there isn’t a market adjustment while we’re in London.”

  “We’ll have to hope,” said the President, “that we’ve put it off.” All day Friday, Charlie felt as if he’d fallen during the running of the bulls at Pamplona. Except that it was the bulls of Wall Street that were stomping him into the pavement, one sledgehammer hoof after another. Every kick to the kidney, every hoof to the spleen, and he was bleeding dollars. Buoyed by the Fed chairman’s apparent optimism, the market was on a big upswing, regaining practically all the ground it had lost over the last week.

  Dearborne didn’t help, not with his panicky phone calls. “It’s false optimism,” Charlie said. “Stay the course.”

  “Over thirty percent of Tennessee Planters’ capital is committed to backing your positions,” Dearborne said. “We are a risk-averse institution. You told me you’d be hedging every single minute.”

  “I have hedged. I just cashed in ten million dollars’ worth of Eurodollar futures. I made you money!”

  “You haven’t hedged enough. That’s what I’m saying.”

  “Stay the course,” Charlie said. “It’s not as bad as you think.” It’s going to be worse, he thought. Even though prices fell at the end of the day, as people started taking their profits, the S&P had gone up five whole percentage points.

  After the markets closed, Charlie helped Megan with the process of reconciliation. Before they were completely finished, Megan sent her other employees home, then took Charlie into her office and closed the door. She looked at her monitor, and Charlie could see the green columns of figures reflected in her eyes.

  “If you liquidate now,” she said, “your S&P futures will have lost sixty-two point five million dollars.” Charlie’s heart gave a lurch. “Sixty-two and a half,” she repeated. “Now you’ve purchased these options for forty million, and your Eurodollar hedges gives you another ten, but what’s going to happen to you first thing Monday morning is a twelve-and-a-half-million-dollar margin call. I’m amazed you haven’t got it already—probably the computers haven’t caught up to the day’s trading.” The strain of maintaining her low, cultured tones turned her voice husky. “If you don’t liquidate, my dear, your losses are unlimited.” Charlie licked his lips. He could feel sweat breaking out on his forehead. “You’ve got to help me hide it,” he said.

  She stared at him. “Hide twelve and a half million? Are you out of your mind?” Charlie spoke out loud as calculations rattled frantically in his skull. “Not that much. Just eight or nine. We can’t hide all of it, they’ll be expecting some loss. So we give them a loss, okay? Just help me make it an acceptable loss—three or four million, something like that. And put the rest of it—where?” His mind spun through a mental list of his clients.

  Megan stared at him. “Charlie, that’s fifteen ways illegal.”

  “What drives markets?” Charlie asked. “FIG. Fear, Ignorance, Greed. The directors at Tennessee Planters are ignorant of the securities marketplace. They really don’t understand what I’m doing. I have to stroke Dearborne every second to get him into line, and I can’t stroke all of the dir
ectors all of the time. Once they see our current position, fear will take control of their minds. They’re going to try to take charge of TPS, and ignorance and fear will have them doing the wrong thing. We don’t dare panic them. If they panic, they could order me to liquidate, and those millions of losing positions will turn into millions of real losses.”

  Charlie could tell from the look on Megan’s face that she understood all too well what might happen.

  “What have we got in the error account,” Charlie said, “a couple hundred thousand dollars? Just put the losses there instead of the real account. Who’s going to check the error account?”

  “The figures in the error account get reported just like everything else,” Megan said. “All Dearborne or anyone else has to do is just call it up on the screen.”

  Good, Charlie thought. She was responding to the problem. She was starting to think of ways to do what he needed.

  “We can’t put it in my account. My profile is too high.” He looked at Megan. “Your account?” Megan’s answer was a flat stare.

  “Right,” Charlie said. “So we put the loss in one of my client accounts. Sanderson—no, he’ll smell something wrong. Caldwell.” He grinned. “Caldwell. Caldwell’s on vacation. He won’t even notice. And he has sufficient collateral to cover any margin calls.”

  “He’s not going to notice millions of losses? This won’t attract his attention?”

  “Issue a correction once we’re in the black. I’ll call Caldwell and tell him it was a computer error.”

  “Charlie,” Megan said, “I dassant do this for you.” The Ozarks was beginning to seep into her voice.

  “These sorts of mistakes happen every day. You know they do.”

  “Not for this much money. And it’s my job to catch just this sort of error.”

  “Just till Monday,” Charlie said. “Dearborne plays golf every Monday at one o’clock.” Megan’s eyes flashed. “How’s Monday going to make a difference?” she demanded.

  “The rally was over, I could tell,” Charlie said. “The momentum was gone. People are going to have the whole weekend to reevaluate their positions. Prices are going to fall on Monday.” He hoped.

  He leaned forward over Megan’s desk, fixed her with his blue eyes. “Just till tee time, that’s all I ask. Then you can issue a correction. Dearborne won’t even look at it, he’ll just see Monday’s totals after the markets close.”

  Megan bit her lip. “This is how Nick Leeson lost Baring’s,” she said.

  “No!” Charlie shouted. Anger seemed to flash his blood to steam. He pounded a fist on the desk. “Nick Leeson lost Baring’s because he was a fucking incompetent traderl” He thumped his own chest. “I am a fucking great traderl I am the lord of the fucking trading jungle!” He realized Megan was leaning back, away from his anger. What he saw in her eyes wasn’t fear, it was distaste. She hated weakness, he reminded himself. Hated fear, hated panic.

  Charlie lowered his voice, tried to catch his breath. He had to make it all logical, all reasonable. He reminded himself that he was asking her to go clean against her training and instincts. Not to mention the law. It was her job to balance the books. It was something she took pride in. Now he was telling her not to balance them, to shove a colossal loss under the rug. He had to keep talking, to keep Megan working on the problem, see it from his point of view.

  “I just need to get over this little bad patch, that’s all,” he said. “Just help me with this.” He felt sweat running down his face. “After this is done, we can relax. Call the caterers, get some duck, some veal. Call a masseuse over to the house, make sure we’re good and relaxed. Open a bottle of Bolly. We can have a quiet weekend together.” He looked at her. “It’s your money, too, sweetheart.” She looked at the screen. Gnawed a nail. Then bent over her keyboard, her lacquered nails rattling on the keys.

  “Caldwell better be on vacation,” she said.

  “You’re brilliant!” Charlie cheered.

  “No, I’m not,” she said. “I’m just crazy.” She looked at him darkly. “But not as crazy as you.”

  SIX

  At the little Prairie, thirty miles lower down, [the steam-boatmen] were bro’t to by the cries of some of the people, who thought the earth was gradually sinking but declined to take refuge on board without their friends, whom they wished to collect. Some distance below the little Prairie the bank of the river had caved in to a considerable extent, and two islands had almost disappeared.

  Natchez, January 2, 1812

  The Reverend Noble Frankland looked into his wife’s sitting room. “Time to go, sweetie pie,” he said. Sheryl looked up from her work. “Just a second, teddy bear,” she said. Sheryl used tweezers to pick up a tiny piece of paper, no larger than the head of a pin, dip it carefully in glue, and then place it carefully in the eye of an angel.

  She was doing her art. Sheryl had been working at this project for longer than the twelve years of her marriage to Frankland.

  Her chosen medium was postage stamps. Sheryl bought them by the thousands, the more colorful the better, and cut them up into tiny pieces each the size of a snowflake. These she glued onto bolts of black-dyed linen in designs representing scenes from the Book of Revelation. The pictures were amazingly intricate, like those miniature paintings drawn with three-hair brushes, but the scale of the work was enormous. The entire work was over fifty feet long, and Frankland had never been permitted to see all of it, though occasionally he’d caught glimpses of it over Sheryl’s shoulder as she worked. Just the bits he’d seen took his breath away. Horsemen and angels, the saved and the damned, the Whore of Babylon and the City of God, all blazing in the brightest of colors, all shown in the most exacting detail. When Sheryl depicted a demon, she showed it to the pockmarks on its skin and the gleam of wickedness in its eyes. You could practically smell the garlic on its breath.

  No commercial artist could ever produce work like this. The labyrinthine detail combined with the huge scale would have defeated any attempt to profit from such a work. Only a person inspired to devote her life to the work could possibly assemble such a thing.

  Frankland stood by and waited for Sheryl to finish. She had always wanted to be a pastor’s wife, and she hadn’t shrank from any of her duties, but when they married she had demanded one promise from him. “I want you to let me have an hour a day to work on my Apocalypse,” she’d said. “And the rest of the time is for you and the Lord.”

  He hadn’t minded. Frankland had projects of his own. They’d spent many hours in pleasant silence, Sheryl working on her art, Frankland working on his plans—perhaps equally detailed—for the End Times, the plans that he kept in fire-proof safes in the guest bedroom closet. Sheryl finished the angel’s eye—it glowed a beautiful aquamarine blue, with a little wink of postage-stamp light in a corner of the pupil—then blew on the glue to dry it and rolled up the linen scroll. “I’m ready, sugar bear,” she said.

  The picket signs were thrown in the back of the pickup truck, and Sheryl climbed into the driver’s seat. Sheryl put the truck in gear and wrestled the wheel around to point it toward Rails Bluff. The pickup was a full-size Ford, and Sheryl had to work hard to make the turn, but Frankland did not want power steering on his vehicles. Or air-conditioning, power brakes, power windows, or power anything.

  It wasn’t that he objected to these conveniences as such. It was just that he figured that during the Tribulation, spare parts for power steering mechanisms and other conveniences might be hard to come by, and he didn’t want his ministry to be immobilized by the failure of something he didn’t actually need. He wiped sweat from his brow with his handkerchief. Maybe, he thought, he should have relaxed his principles in regard to air-conditioning.

  At least the sun was beginning to sink toward the west. The heat would soon begin to fade. The truck jounced out of the driveway and onto the asphalt. Frankland rolled his window all the way down, and inclined his head toward the air that blasted into the cab as the truck picked up speed. He w
aved at Joe Johnson, one of his parishioners, who was pacing along the edge of one of his catfish ponds. Johnson looked up from beneath the brim of his Osgold feed cap and gave a wave. The pickup drove on. Cotton fields broadened on either side of the road.

  “Robitaille,” Sheryl said flatly. She slowed, swinging the big truck toward the shoulder. A large, elderly Lincoln zoomed past, heading in the opposite direction, its driver a dark silhouette behind its darkened windshield. Frankland looked over his shoulder at the Lincoln as it roared away. He could feel distaste tug at his features.

  “Driving like a maniac, as usual,” he said.

  “Driving like a drunk,” said Sheryl.

  The Roman Enemy, Frankland thought, and turned to face the foe.

  The Rails Bluff area had so few Catholics that there was no full-time priest in the community. The little clapboard Catholic church shared its priest with a number of other small churches in the area, and Father Robitaille drove from one to the other on a regular circuit. In Rails Bluff he heard confession and said mass on Monday nights, then roared off in his rattletrap Lincoln to be in another town by Tuesday morning.

  Robitaille did not show the Church of Rome to very good advantage. He was from Louisiana originally, but alcoholism had exiled him to rural Arkansas. And he drove like a crazy man even when sober, so sensible people slowed down and gave him plenty of room when they saw him coming.

  “I don’t know how he’s avoided killing himself,” Sheryl said.

  “The Devil protects his own,” said Frankland.

  A cotton gin shambled up on the right, corrugated metal rusting behind chain link. 750 friendly people welcome you, a road sign said.

  The population estimate was an optimistic overestimate. Both in terms of number, and perhaps even in friendliness.

  The Arkansas Delta, below the bluff, featured some of the richest agricultural soil in the world combined with the nation’s poorest people. The mechanization of the cotton industry had taken the field workers off the land without providing them any other occupation. The owners had money—plenty of it—but everyone else was dirt-poor.