The Rift

by Walter Jon Williams

  They both froze at the sound of the front door opening, at the sound of heels on the wood flooring.

  “Oh, my God in this world!” Wilona’s voice. “What happened here?”

  “Just a little accident,” Omar called. He was surprised to find that his voice was steady. “I’ll help you clean it up in just a second.”

  Omar stood and opened the gun and dropped the bullets out of the cylinder. He tossed the pistol back on the bed. He unzipped the bag of toiletries, dumped its contents on the bed—shaving cream, bag of disposable razors, and a huge economy-sized bottle of aspirin—and then Omar gathered up all of Knox’s ammunition and zipped it into the toiletries case. Knox watched in silence from the floor. Omar paused in the door, looked down at Knox for a long second, then closed the door behind him as he left the room. He walked through Wilona’s sewing room into the living room and found Wilona cleaning up the spilled Coke with a roll of paper towels. She wore heels, her new frock, and Aunt Clover’s pearls.

  “Don’t do that, darlin’,” Omar said. He tossed the bag of ammunition on the sofa and bent to help her clean up. “You’ll make a mess of your nice clothes.”

  Wilona straightened. “What is going on?” she said. “It looks like you just threw your drink halfway across the room. And you’re all sweaty like you’ve been working.”

  “Mr. Knox had a little fall,” Omar said. “I wanted to make sure he was all right before I cleaned up.”

  “My goodness.” Wilona looked alarmed. “I forgot he was coming. Is he all right?”

  “He’s fine.” Omar swabbed at the floor and noticed idly that termites were digging a tunnel across one of the floor-boards. Time to call the exterminator. “He’s changing clothes right now.” He looked up. “How was your afternoon?”

  “Oh, it was lovely!” He picked up the gloves she had left on the little table by the door. “Ms. LaGrande was so gracious—she met me right on the front portico. The portico is a special design, she told me—it has a special name and everything. Did you ever hear what it’s called?” Omar ripped another towel off the roll. “A front porch?” he asked. Wilona laughed. “It’s called ‘distyle-in-antis.’” She pronounced the unfamiliar words carefully. “That’s with the two round columns between the two square columns. Ms. LaGrande’s great-grandfather modeled it after the Tower of the Winds in Athens, Greece.”

  Omar straightened, looked down at the floor.

  “That’s going to have to be mopped,” Wilona said. “Otherwise it’ll get sticky.”

  “I’ll get the mop,” he said.

  They both turned at the sound of a door opening. Knox appeared at the door to his room. He was wearing a fresh flannel shirt and the same black jeans. He walked uneasily through the sewing room to the living room door.

  “Micah Knox,” Omar said, “this is my wife Wilona.”

  “Pleased to meet you,” Knox said slowly.

  “Mr. Knox, are you all right?” Wilona walked toward him to shake his hand. “I heard you had a fall.” Knox leaned on the door frame and gave an apologetic grin as he took Wilona’s hand. “I’m just fine, ma’am. Sorry about your floor.”

  “I’ll mop that up,” Wilona said. “That’s not a problem. I’m just glad you’re feeling all right.” Knox looked over Wilona’s shoulder at Omar. Omar looked back into Knox’s staring green eyes.

  “I think everything’s fine now,” Knox said. “We had a little accident, but everything’s going to be okay.” On Monday, the market dropped off a precipice and didn’t find bottom. A large Dutch bank failed. The Chinese chose this moment to dump billions of dollars of currency reserves, and in every market from Singapore to London the bears contemplated the chaos and sharpened their claws. At twelve-thirty, Charlie called Dearborne’s office and found he’d left for the country club. He looked at Megan through the glass wall of her office and gave her a nod. She typed in the correction, and millions of dollars of losing positions pulsed into the TPS computers on a silent electronic wave. Not that it mattered. What had been catastrophic positions on Friday were turning into mountains of solid gold on Monday. By three o’clock, when the exchange closed, the S&Ps had dropped sixteen percent, Charlie was in the black, and he was standing on his desk, beating his chest and giving a Tarzan yell. Selling short the S&Ps had made him a profit of $137,500,000, give or take a few hundred thousand. Added to this was the forty million he’d started with, and the ten million he’d made on the Eurodollar puts. This was a 370 per-cent profit in less than a week.

  And on any large gain made for TPS, Charlie’s contract called for him to collect a bonus of seventeen percent. Seventeen percent of $147,500,000…

  “I’m lord of the fucking jungle!” he shouted. “We’re all going to die rich!” His people, the traders and salesmen, looked up from their screens, hesitated a moment, then began to applaud. As cheers began to ring out, Charlie looked up to Megan’s office, and he could see her eyes gazing levelly at him over the top of her monitor. He couldn’t tell whether the eyes were smiling or not. By four o’clock, when the Merc closed in Chicago, Tarzan yells seemed inadequate to the situation. Instead he put on his phone headset and punched Megan’s number.

  “Sod the proles,” he said when she answered. “Let your staff do the reconciliation. Come home with me tonight.”

  “No guilt,” she whispered. The words sent a surge of desire up his spine.

  “I’ll call the caterer,” he said.

  “Welcome to the observation deck of the Gateway Arch of the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial,” said Marcy Douglas. “On exiting, please step to your left and make your way up the stairs. If you are waiting for a tram, please wait for everyone to exit before taking your place.” The latest group of tourists climbed from the south tram to the observation platform. Marcy noticed, among the usual ambling tourists, the parents and children and people with cameras, an elderly lady on the arm of a younger woman, a young Japanese couple in baseball caps, and a cluster of middle-aged people talking to one another in French.

  The usual. Marcy evaded an impulse to look at her watch. She was on duty till ten o’clock and had many hours to go.

  “Please stay on the yellow stairs,” she told the tourists.

  Marcy was twenty-two years old and had worked for the Park Service for two years, since she’d given up on college. She was tall and thin and black, and kept her hair cut short and businesslike under her Smokey Bear hat. She was from rural Florida and loved the out-of-doors, and had hoped to work in one of the big national forests. Failing that perhaps in Jean Lafitte National Park—better known as the French Quarter of New Orleans—but those with seniority were lined up for those jobs, so she found herself working 630 feet above the St. Louis waterfront, shepherding tourists through the largest stainless steel sculpture in the world, the silver catenary curve of the Gateway Arch. The giant wedding ring that St. Louis had built to the scale of God’s finger.

  The elderly woman put her hand on Marcy’s arm. “That was the most unpleasant elevator ride I’ve had in my life,” she said.

  “I’m sorry, ma’am,” Marcy said. “I know they’re crowded.” The huge arch couldn’t use regular elevators: it had special trams, trains of little cars, built to ride up the inside of the curve. Each car seated five, if the five were close friends, weren’t too large, and if none of them smelled bad.

  “And the swaying,” the lady said. “I felt like I was going to get sick to my stomach.” Marcy patted her hand. “You take as long as you need to catch your breath before going down.”

  “Is there another way down?”

  “You can take the stairs, ma’am, but there are over a thousand of them.” Marcy tried to look sympathetic. “I think the tram ride would be better for you.”

  “Come along, Mother.” The old lady’s companion tugged gently at her arm. “The young lady has work to do.”

  Marcy shuffled the line of waiting tourists into the trams and sent them to ground level. She could be in nature, she thought. Sh
e could be in Yosemite.

  Or she could be in the French Quarter, sipping a planter’s punch in the Old Absinthe House.

  “Why are the windows so small?” a little girl asked.

  “A lot of people ask that question,” Marcy said. She didn’t know the answer. Marcy stood with a couple of tourists for a photograph. She didn’t know why so many people wanted to take her picture, but many of them did.

  The French people went from one window to the next in a group, comparing the view with a map they’d brought with them. She heard “Busch Stadium” and “Cathedrale de St. Louis.” A lot of French people came to St. Louis, figuring that since the French had once owned the place, they’d find French culture here. Marcy figured they were usually disappointed. The French men, she noticed, were casually dressed, but the women looked as if they were on a modeling assignment.

  “My goodness!” The old lady clutched at her heart. “Is it swaying up here?” Marcy smiled. She spent a lot of her shift smiling. It adds to your face value, her mother used to tell her.

  “We sway a little bit when the wind picks up, yes,” she said. “But don’t worry—the Gateway Arch is built to withstand a tornado.”

  “Pardon, please,” said one of the Japanese. “How do you get to the Botanikkogoden?” It took two tries before Marcy realized that she was asking for guidance to the Botanical Gardens. She gave directions. Her colleague, Evan, had just brought another load of tourists up on the north tram and was urging people to stay on the yellow stairs.

  One of the tourists was tilting his camera, trying to get a picture of the Casino Queen, the big gambling boat just pulling into its mooring across the river in East St. Louis. Revenues from the Casino Queen, Marcy knew, had rescued East St. Louis from being the poorest city in the United States, a position it had held for decades.

  “How do you pronounce the name of the architect?” an anxious woman asked.

  “I’m not very good at Finnish,” Marcy said, and then did her best to pronounce Eero Saarinen’s name.

  “Why didn’t they get an American architect?” the woman demanded.

  EIGHT

  At 8 o’clock a noise resembling distant thunder was heard, and was soon after followed by a shock which appeared to operate vertically, that is to say, by a heaving of the ground upwards—but was not sufficiently severe to injure either furniture or glasses. This shock was succeeded by a thick haze, and many people were affected by giddiness and nausea. Another shock was experienced about 9 o’clock at night, but so light as not to be generally felt—and at half past 12 the next day (the 17th) another shock was felt, which lasted only a few seconds and was succeeded by a tremor which was occasionally observed throughout the day effecting many with giddiness. At half past 8 o’clock a very thick haze came on, and for a few minutes a sulphurous smell was emitted. At nine o’clock last night, another was felt, which continued four or five seconds, but so slight as to have escaped the observation of many who had not thought of attending particularly to the operations of this phenomenon. At one o’clock this morning (23d) another shock took place of nearly equal severity with the first of the 16th. Buried in sleep, I was not sensible of this, but I have derived such correct information on the fact that I have no reason to doubt it; but I have observed since 11 o’clock this morning frequent tremors of the earth, such as usually precede severe shocks in other parts of the world.

  Evening Ledger, December 23, 1811

  It was the first sunny day in weeks. Jason sped along the top of the levee, listening to his tires grind on the gravel road that capped its top. The ATV’s exhaust rattled off the tangle of trees between the levee and the river. The river was very high now, only ten feet below the top of the levee, and the cottonwood and cypress stood in the gray water, leafy branches trailing in the current. The mass of water, the evident weight of it, all moving so relentlessly under Missouri’s skies… it made him uneasy. What if it got higher? What if it went over the top of the levee and flooded out his house? Somewhere to the north, up in Iowa, there was supposed to be flooding. What if the floodwaters came south?

  But no one else here seemed concerned. “The river gets high twice a year,” Muppet had told him. He figured Muppet should know, and Muppet wasn’t packing survival supplies into a boat, so he supposed it was all right.

  Jason was driving Muppet’s Yamaha ATV, speeding along the top of the levee with the throttle max 3d out. Muppet sat behind, his butt above the rear wheels, bouncing along with his feet splayed out to each side, the heels of his sneakers just above the roadbed.

  The little vehicles—essentially motorcycles with four wheels—were the passion of Muppet’s crowd, and indeed half the kids at school. No drivers’ licenses were required to run the vehicles as long as they stayed off the road. The ripping sound of the ATVs’ engines was heard over the entire district on weekends. On the far side of the levee, on the river’s muddy sandbanks, on islands made accessible by low water, and on trails beaten into the hardwood tangle, the brightly colored vehicles sped along like ants on the trail of honey.

  But now, with the river high, a few rural roads and the crest of the levee were the only places to drive. Jason was determined, though, to make the most of it. At least on the top of the levee he could go fast. It wasn’t as good as skating, Jason thought. Nothing was. But it was better than staring at the walls and waiting for his parents to change their minds and bring him back to California. He wondered how he was going to get his father to buy him an ATV. It was too late for his birthday—his dad had already bought the present, or so he said. And Christmas was far away. Maybe, he thought, if he did really well on his finals…

  The Indian mound loomed up on the right, and below it, the row of five houses with Jason’s in the middle. Jason decelerated, clutched, shifted into a lower gear, then steered off the top of the levee and onto the steep grassy grade. Muppet’s feet flew high as the ATV pitched over the brink and accelerated, engine buzzing like an angry beehive. Jason heard Muppet give a whoop.

  Jason gave the machine more throttle.

  The ATV hit the flat with a bump, bouncing high and throwing Muppet forward into Jason. Jason laughed. He upshifted and felt the wheels spin on gravel, and then the cart took off, throwing Muppet back on the seat and bringing a fierce grin to Jason’s face. The ATV lurched as he corrected his course, and then he accelerated down the lane. His house came up faster than he expected and he overshot the drive-way, coming to a stop on the front lawn.

  “You’re getting the feel of it, all right,” Muppet said.

  “Thanks for letting me drive.” Jason put the vehicle into neutral, then dismounted. “Want to come in?” Muppet shook his head. “No thanks. My mom is having her piano lesson now, and I’ve got to get dinner ready for my baby sister.”

  “Okay.” Backing toward the porch. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

  “See you then.”

  “Thanks!”

  Muppet revved the engine and took off, making a U-turn on the front lawn and heading back to the levee. As the buzzing engine receded, Jason could hear the Huntley dog, Batman, barking like fury from his confined yard.

  Jason took off his helmet—his mother had relented to the extent of giving his armor back, if not his skates—and then he turned and bounced up the porch steps before noticing the large UPS package that sat before the screen door. His nerves gave a little joyous leap. His birthday present from Dad!

  He picked it up, and it had quite a respectable weight. At least it wasn’t clothing. He unlocked the door and took the package upstairs to his study. His birthday wasn’t until Friday, but he saw no reason not to open it now, so he took out his pocket knife and slit open the strapping tape that held the box together. When he’d finally placed the contents of the box on top of his desk, he looked at it in puzzlement.

  Astroscan, it said. Reflector telescope. And there was a book with it, explaining how to find and view astronomical objects.

  The telescope made sense as a gift, Jaso
n supposed, though he couldn’t remember expressing any interest in astronomy to his father, or his father to him. Here in rural Missouri, with only the minimal glow of Cabells Mound on the north horizon, the night starscapes were spectacular. On those nights when the sky wasn’t covered with cloud, anyway. There hadn’t been many clear nights this rainy spring.

  He suspected that his father hadn’t thought of the gift, though. It seemed more like something that Una might pick.

  The thing was, the Astroscan didn’t look like a telescope. Telescopes were supposed to be long tubes, Jason knew, with a piece of glass at one end and someplace to put your eye at the other. This thing looked, if anything, like a giant red plastic cherry.

  There was a round, red hard plastic body, maybe ten inches across. It was round on the bottom, and wouldn’t stand by itself, but there was a stand provided in which it could sit and rotate freely. And then there was a thick stem, six or seven inches long, that stuck out from the body. Removing the plastic cap on the end of this revealed a piece of glass that Jason assumed was a lens. There was another lens, an eye-piece, in a foam-padded box, but it seemed to go in the stem, not on the end away from the front lens.

  It seemed very strange.

  Jason wondered for a while if this was some kind of kiddie scope, if his father had got him something intended for a six-year-old.

  The Huntleys’ dog Batman was still barking, barking as if it were deranged. Jason looked out the window to see if the dog was barking at an intruder, but Batman was sitting in the backyard next to the little Huntley girl’s inflatable wading pool, with its muzzle pointed to the sky, barking into the air. Maybe, Jason thought, it had a bad case of indigestion or something. He returned his attention to the telescope.

  He shoved his computer monitor out of the way, put the scope on his desk, put the eyepiece into the aperture, then pointed the Astroscan out the window and put his eye to it. He could see nothing but a blur. He spun the focusing knob.