He walked across the room to her, hard-soled shoes surprisingly light and silent on the tile floor, and grasped her chin between his thumb and the crook of his forefinger just hard enough to contort her neck uncomfortably. “This is not a choice. This is not about what you want. If I say you put on your hiking boots and start marching your way down to the Wall this very night, you do it. Do you even realize how lucky you are?”
Their eyes locked for an agonizingly slow moment, his thumbnail just creasing the skin on her chin, the vein running up along the edge of his nose pulsing visibly. He’d had three cosmetic procedures in the last eight years, most recently a face-lift and eye rejuvenation, and though the work was eerily good—he looked, in all the superficial ways, much as he had in his early forties, when he first became boss—there was a shadow of the older man under the surgeon’s fine work. Did David see the same shadow when he looked at her? She had resisted all but the standard procedures (a person of her means would no sooner opt against an eye rejuv than she would neglect to wear sunscreen or take her metabolizers), and she had insisted on not coloring her graying hair, which may have been nothing more than piddling contrariness—a way to undercut David, to thwart his will, without seeming as if that were her object. But still, there were times when she looked in the mirror and didn’t know herself, when it seemed that past and present had converged in her features, her haunted, fifty-four-year-old eyeballs framed by tight, plump new skin cells.
David let go of her chin, finally. His mouth pulled up a little in the corner. “So. Do we have an understanding?”
—
They did. Marta wasn’t a hiker, maybe, or a twenty-five-year-old woman who could sleep eight hours without waking to relieve her bladder, but she knew a lost cause when she encountered one. She would go on the adventure tour.
She had never craved the great outdoors, never registered the nostalgia others felt for bygone days of national parks and waterfalls and hiking trails. She had spent her life in the cultivated, curated inner-zone landscapes of manicured and carefully monitored trees, flowers, and grasses, all genetically engineered to resist tick infestations, and when she wanted a break from the cement, she spent a weekend at the beach, or she took a walk in one of the several excellent city arboretums. The times she had gone to 3D-LUX theaters with Sal and Enzo so that they could watch films such as The Late, Great Polar Bears (the boys had left sobbing—why, she wondered, was this targeted at children?) or Mountain Majesties: A Tour of Appalachia, she had felt not wonder or longing but oppression and vertigo. So many trees, so much variation in the landscape, whole chunks of sky blotted out by jagged precipices—she didn’t know how people had ever been able to stand it. Even those startling, high-up views, with the landscape rolling away kilometers into the distance: it was too much. Perhaps she lacked imagination. Perhaps, for all her brooding over being a prisoner in her own home, she was too meekly content to be a prisoner of her safe province. So no, camping was not something she had ever in her life felt even the slightest interest in doing.
But on this morning of their journey across the Salt Line, she was strangely stirred—with excitement as well as fear. For the first time in her married life, she was not just out of David’s sight but out from under his veil of influence. This, she thought, sliding into her microsuit and drawing the zipper up to her neck, was as close to freedom as she was ever going to get. She should make the best of it.
It was 5:30. She had time to stop by the Canteen for breakfast—Andy had insisted that they all make sure to eat something before leaving—but her stomach was still roiling and sensitive, and she didn’t want to have to use the bus’s chemical toilet on the three-hour drive to the first checkpoint. She poured a glass of water from the bathroom tap and contemplated the bottle of OLE-brand vitamin capsules she’d been issued and encouraged—even pressured, oddly—to take. They didn’t sit well on her weak stomach, and she usually just threw them right up when her stomach was empty, as it was this morning. She supposed she’d successfully kept only a few down over the course of the three-week training, and she didn’t see the point of stoking her nausea for no good reason. So she left the bottle on the bathroom counter.
From the size of the group already gathered in the gymnasium, and the expressions of queasy resignation on many of the faces, Marta guessed that she wasn’t the only one to bypass the breakfast line. They were an absurd-looking assortment of adventurers, the cream-colored microsuits slim-fitting enough to intimately trace the shape of every body, hoods drawn up over chins and down to just above the eyebrows so that faces became small and saucerlike.
She looked around for her assigned “buddy,” Wes Feingold. It was a ridiculous pairing, necessitated, perhaps, by the dearth of single travelers, though Marta hadn’t ruled out David’s influence here. She was traveling under a fake surname, Severs—for her protection, David had assured her—and presumably anonymous to at least the ground-level OLE crew, but he had his ways, just as he’d managed his trick with the Canteen bar codes. Wes was probably disappointed to be burdened with the company of a woman his own mother’s age, but Marta couldn’t help feeling pleased at the thought of partnering with a strong, able young man, like her sons; a young man who didn’t have the option for the next three weeks of taking off to live on the other end of the zone and never calling to let her know how he was doing. He seemed serious and polite, and he had accomplished in his young life more than the most exceptional men and women of Marta’s own age, much less his contemporaries. While Sal and Enzo were skipping class for the gaming parlors and buying rounds at the Sand Dollar, Wes was running one of the most important companies in the world.
Thinking of Pocketz, she felt the familiar itch to scan her feeds—even in the midst of her nervousness, she felt that itch. Here, too, she wasn’t alone; others were checking their tablets one last time before they were confiscated, tapping out messages with their thumbs, a few of them engaged in energetic mimed discussions with people on their screens, the little bud communicators (which Marta’s sons used often and easily but she couldn’t get the hang of) just visible in the cup of their ears. Marta scrolled past Realstar, Friendz, Mi Familia (which was useless to her now that the boys were over eighteen and had the opt-out option), Soapville, and Almaknack, her right-hand thumb making practiced horizontal sweeps across the screen, until she got to Pocketz. The sight of the familiar interface, with its pleasant, tranquil graphics and the little swirling gold coins at the top of the page indicating new activity since her last log-on, affected her a bit like the Salt did, so that a pleasurable calm suddenly flooded her body. Tapping the coins, she was treated to the following list:
Salvador Perrone spent 47 credits at the Cock and Bull.
Explore Share Dispute Twelve hours ago, near London, UK
Salvador Perrone earned 2 punches toward free pint! at the Cock and Bull.
Explore Share Dispute Twelve hours ago, near London, UK
Lorenzo Perrone spent 30 credits at Cinema 12.
Explore Share Dispute Sixteen hours ago, near London, UK
She tapped Explore under Enzo’s Cinema 12 debit.
Lorenzo Perrone purchased two adult tickets to see Rubber Meets the Road III.
The movie trailer started to play, an opening shot zooming in on the image of a heart-shaped, bikini-clad female bottom, framed by the open driver’s-side window of a bright red CO2 roadster. Sighing, Marta navigated away from the screen.
Finally, having saved it for last, she exited Pocketz and scrolled to her messages feed, heart pounding, hoping that sometime in their evening of movie watching and beer drinking the twins had thought of her, remembered what she was embarking upon this morning, and sent her something—anything—to let her know they cared. And . . . there was a flag up! A message!
It came from Enzo’s account, and there was a video. She hit Play, walking a bit away from the group for privacy.
Her sons’ grinning faces w
ere side by side—above and behind them Marta could make out the gilt letters “nd Bull.” “Hey, Mom!” they said in singsong sync, obviously drunk, but there they were, so handsome, Sal with his hair combed tightly into a ponytail (how long he had spent in front of the mirror as a high schooler, doing his best to smooth out every bump), Enzo, a bit shorter and stouter, hair parted rigidly and combed in a swoop to the side the way his father wore it. “We’re so proud of you,” Sal said, “going out and being a total badass in the woods.”
“Yes,” Enzo said, “so badass.”
“And we love you, and we can’t wait to see you again.”
“Can’t wait to see you, Mom,” Enzo said.
“We’re having the time of our life here.”
“We thought of you at St. Paul’s Cathedral, and we did the whispering dome and went to the cupola like you told us to—”
“—probably Tower of London next week—”
“—the new Buckingham Palace wing.”
Someone called out rudely to them, and there was laughter. Enzo yelled over his shoulder, cheerfully enough, “Fuck you!”
“So anyway,” Sal said, “have fun.”
“Have fun,” said Enzo.
“Love you,” they repeated, blowing her kisses and waving, and then the message ended. Tears were rolling down her face.
“Oh,” someone said from behind her, and she felt a hand, warm even through the glove, on her arm. “Oh, hey there, buddy. It’s OK.”
She quickly wiped her eyes, embarrassed. It was Wes Feingold.
“Sorry,” Marta said. “This is harder than I realized it would be.”
“No reason to be sorry,” Wes said. He was a small man, no taller than Marta, with frizzy dark blond hair (pre-shave), chubby child’s cheeks, and eyes that seemed to be blue, though he had such a squinty smile that she had never gotten a very good look at them. “Those were your sons?”
She nodded. “I—I didn’t know for sure that they’d call. I couldn’t get them to pick up yesterday.”
“Yeah, it reminds me. I ought to call my own mom.”
“For goodness’ sake,” Marta said, “don’t leave her wondering. The only thing worse to me than the thought of making this trip is the thought of my boys doing it, and me not knowing the whole time how they are. Call her.”
“Well,” Wes said, still smiling in his affable, squinty way, “my mom’s not like other moms. But you’re right, got to make the gesture.”
“She probably worries more than you know.”
“Sure,” he said, squinting and nodding. “She must.”
An Outer Limits staff member—Tia, one of Andy’s assistants—entered the gymnasium and clapped her hands briskly. “OK, folks. We’re going to open the screening area, so go ahead and queue up when you’re ready behind the red line”—she pointed—“on the south end of the gym. Please remember that we’ll be collecting tablets and drawing up itemized manifests for everything in your packs, so if there’s something you want back in your room safe, now’s the time.”
Marta dropped her chin against the rising flush in her cheeks. There it was again, the racing heart, and she wondered if she should run back to the room and stow the doctored Smokeless and NicoClean cartridge. If she failed to make it through security today, what would David do with her?
“Well, this is it,” said Wes. “Ready, partner?”
“As I’m going to be,” she said.
They joined the other travelers forming a line, and Marta chewed on the inside of her bottom lip until she tasted blood. “One of the things I’m actually most excited about,” Wes was saying from what seemed like a great distance, “are the parts of the trip when we’re on the road or passing through the old cities. I actually considered the Ghost Towns of the Old Republic excursion, but I decided that this one offered a fuller experience, and the Rate It scores were higher. Plus, that quarantined chalet at the midpoint sounded good.”
“It sure does,” Marta said. Her grip on the pack strap was so tight that her fingers were going numb. What was the stupider risk—taking the Quicksilver or leaving it behind?
“One of my ancestors on my mother’s side was actually a professor of sociology at a private college in Asheville, right as the outbreak started getting really bad. I found an address for him in the old web archives, and I’d love to go and get a look at it.”
She was next in line now. She couldn’t summon the courage to even stammer a reply.
“So wait,” Wes said. “You sounded before like you didn’t much want to do this. Why’s that? Why are you forcing yourself?”
“Please place your tablet and pack on the conveyor belt and walk through the scanner,” an Outer Limits staffer—a campus employee, not a guide—told Marta.
She laid down the requested items and tried to smile pleasantly, though her face felt out of her control, as if it were contorting into some ugly grimace, and she again thought about her shadow face, and she wondered which one the employee was now seeing. After she stepped through the scanner, another staffer waved her over.
“Hey, there,” he said. He was waiting on the other end of the conveyor belt. “Having a good morning?”
“Pretty good,” Marta said. A third employee was scrutinizing a screen, where Marta supposed a digital scan of her pack was displayed. The employee, a middle-aged black woman, pinched her fingers together in front of the screen, then twisted them left and right, frowning. Marta felt a twisting up inside her. Then the woman’s fingers spread apart, as if she were making a hand sign for an explosion, and her features sagged with disinterest. The conveyor belt started to move again.
“OK,” the employee on this end of the line said as Marta’s pack and tablet stopped in front of him. He moved them aside to a table and lifted his gloved hands ceremonially, like a magician getting ready to introduce a trick. “The tablet, as you know, I have to take now, but it will be reissued to you the second you set foot in Quarantine 1 three weeks from today.”
“I understand,” Marta said.
“You don’t have a camera to declare?”
“No, nothing like that.” It hadn’t occurred to Marta to take pictures of this journey, to memorialize it. Why would she? For whom?
He started pulling everything out of her pack and laying it side by side. He turned the pack inside out, gave it a quick shake, and started speaking into a microphone. “Manifest for Traveler Marta Severs,” he said. “Ladies’ microfiber briefs, three pairs,” he said. “Ladies’ microfiber undershirt, three. Tube socks, three pairs.” He started running a scanner over Canteen items, setting off a little green light with the bug spray and the antibiotic ointment before grabbing the NicoClean canister that was actually the fifteen-gram vial of Salt. He passed the wand over it.
The light turned green.
“One canister of NicoClean,” he recited, and she had to put a bracing hand against the edge of the table as every clenched muscle in her body suddenly loosened.
The Smokeless bar code also scanned without incident, and in another few moments, she had signed her name to the generated manifest, and the filled pack was back in her hands. She stared at it wonderingly. She had done it. She had gotten away with it.
The air outside was crisp, the morning sun bright and true in a way that promised a gorgeous day, and the air smelled of damp, fresh grass and a faraway note of burning wood. For the first time in years, she was completely sober, and it seemed to her that even the depression of withdrawing from the Salt had finally receded—she felt light in her limbs, strong, and clearheaded.
Then Wes approached her, and they stood side by side contemplating the large touring coach that would convey them past the Salt Line, the silence surprisingly companionable.
“I gave you the wrong impression before,” Marta said. “When I acted like I didn’t want to be here doing this.”
“Yo
u did?”
“Yeah,” Marta said. “It was just the nerves talking.”
“Well, I’m glad to hear it.” Wes lifted the crook of his left arm in an old-fashioned, gentlemanly way. “Shall we board?”
“Yes,” said Marta. “Let’s.”
Three
The beginning of the idea for Pocketz had come to Wes Feingold when he was only fourteen years old, and his parents were the inspiration.
They were having their best friends, the Duncans, over to the house for dinner in a couple of days, and his mother was frantic, scanning so many different feeds that she had to transfer some from her tablet to the wall monitor in the kitchen.
“Lynn served grouper the last time we were over there, and this site is saying that it was selling that week for sixty credits a kilo. And the wine—do you remember the vintage, Dan?”
“It was a Malbec,” Wes’s father said.
“And it had a red and black label, I remember that much.” Now his mother was using her thumb to deal out feed pages like playing cards, so that the kitchen monitor was cluttered two and three deep. “Crap. I think I found it.”
“Let me see,” Wes’s father said.
She put this most recent page on top of the pile and expanded it using her thumb and forefinger. “Cara de Roca. One hundred fifty credits. Damn. Damn it.”
Wes, who had been sitting at the counter working on his Advanced Calculus homework—he had already placed well beyond high school level in Calculus, Physics, and Chemistry, and so was taking distance courses for those subjects—looked up. This was a version of a conversation his parents had had hundreds of times in his life, but only today, for some reason, did it capture his interest. He studied the scatter of feed pages on the wall and then the stricken expressions on his parents’ faces. There were hardly ever times when Wes failed to understand some intellectual principle (though fine art and literature tended, with only rare but powerful exceptions, to leave him cold), but this mystification at people’s emotions, the fervency and utter lack of motivating logic behind so many of them, was familiar.
The Salt Line Page 5