‘I’m afraid that’s how a lot of people see the folk from the Storm Coast and the Dust Country, especially people who vote for your party.’
‘I know. But I’m not talking about an election here, remember. Not at the moment. I’m talking about building up support for a program. And I’m not talking about a welfare project either. I hate handouts. I hate making people into victims. This is about reconfiguring America, you know? Making America stronger in the face of a threat. If we don’t do something, the whole country’s going to break up.’
‘Reconfigure. I like that. It’s a strong, businesslike word. So that’s the story you were thinking of, is it? Reconfiguring America to keep it together?’
‘Never mind the story, Holly,’ Slaymaker growled. ‘That’s how I really see it.’
She laughed. ‘Yes, I know. But you’ve got to understand that my job isn’t about how things actually are, or even about how they ought to be, it’s simply about how they would best be presented. I’m a storyteller, basically. I assume that’s what I’m here for.’
He smiled. ‘Whatever your clients want to say, you make it into a pretty story? Regardless of your own opinion?’
Holly could see that he wouldn’t have minded a little digression in which he could tease her a bit about the ethical vacuity of her job but she decided to stick to the matter in hand.
‘That’s right,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘And it seems to me that to maximize your support across the country we’re going to need to present your message so that it will work in two quite different ways. Firstly, in that patriotic way you’ve just demonstrated, in order to try to win over as many as possible of your usual Freedom Party-type supporters, but secondly in a way that’s going to appeal to a reasonably large tranche of Unity Party and minor party voters who wouldn’t normally see you as someone they relate to. And at the same time as walking that tightrope, we’re going to have to deliver your message in a way that works for northerners and southerners. That’s a lot of different constituencies, and a lot of nuances to work on and refine and marry up with one another to make sure they don’t clash or cancel each other out.’
She dropped her cristal back into her jacket pocket. ‘People talk about using the whisperstream to deliver customized messages to each different affinity group, but actually that’s something you’ve got to be very careful about, because affinity groups aren’t airtight. One way or another, people get to hear what you’re saying to other folk as well as what you’re saying to them, and then you end up looking two-faced. One workaround for that, of course, is to make use of feeders. It’s very expensive but it can—’
She stopped because the meal had arrived, exquisitely presented on white pentagonal plates. While they ate, Holly talked a bit more about the value bases and psychological drivers of the various groups he’d need to try to get on his side.
‘So,’ he said, ‘to sum up. The people who like me don’t agree with me on this, and the people who are most likely to agree with me are the folks who don’t like me. Yup. That’s my problem in a nutshell. And of course that’s why I’m hiring you.’
Holly suddenly realized that she’d spent rather a lot of time telling the senator things that must already have been obvious to him. This was a man of the world, after all. Before she was even born, he had commanded a battalion in the Copper Wars and built the Slaymaker Corporation up from a single truck to a continent-wide business. She felt a fool. She was on the point of making herself look more foolish by apologizing, but managed just in time to snatch back her customary professional cool.
‘Sure,’ was all she said. ‘If it was easy, you wouldn’t need our help. I’m not saying it can’t be done. I’m just setting out the challenges we’d have to overcome. By the way, one of the things we need to look at is areas of vulnerability.’
‘For instance?’
‘Areas that may lay us open to charges of inconsistency or hypocrisy.’
Slaymaker speared a piece of steak, put it into his mouth.
‘I reckon I’ve always been pretty straight.’
‘Well, up to now you’ve been a strong opponent of big government.’
‘Still am. If you want to build up this country, get government off people’s backs and let them get on with it. But there are exceptions. When the nation’s in danger, like in a war, or...’
‘Like in a war. Okay. Good. It’s a war-type scenario. Because there’s a threat to the country itself. We could do with a more tangible enemy, though, than just the changing weather. Who are our opponents? Who are we fighting against? The current government, obviously, but it’s not like the government is opposed to helping the barreduras. In fact, they’re spending an awful lot of money on helping them. Too much, according to your own party in Congress.’
‘There’s no vision there,’ said Slaymaker, ‘that’s the problem. We should be looking at this weather problem as an opportunity. Like, you know, “Go west, young man!” But old Jenny Williams there looks at it more like, “Oh, those poor poor folks down south!” I do not want to treat those folks like victims, Holly. More than that, I don’t want them to feel like victims. And I do not want them to feel that they have to act like victims in order to get what they need. Nothing worse than going through life like that. And nothing worse for the country. I want them to think of themselves as pioneers.’
Go west! Pioneers. Holly made a note. There was something to work with here, though the language was way too old-fashioned.
Slaymaker lay down his fork. ‘You’re right about my own party. Worst thing is that we’ve got this group of assholes in the Freedom Party these days – Governor Hendricks in Alaska, for instance – who are raising this question of interstate frontiers. I mean, I’m all in favor of states’ rights, but once you put up border posts between states, you’ve basically given up on the USA.’ He laid his napkin next to his fork. ‘This campaign is all about keeping America together, Holly. Like Lincoln did.’
Note those last sentences, Holly silently told her cristal. It was positive stuff, but it didn’t yet differentiate Slaymaker’s position sharply enough from that of the president, Jenny Williams, who was also strongly opposed to interstate frontiers. And as to Lincoln, well, without conducting a poll you could never be sure, but she was willing to bet that three out of four Americans wouldn’t be able to say who he was.
‘Another possible area of vulnerability,’ she said, ‘is the issue of what caused the weather problems in the first place. Pretty much every scientist on the planet agrees that floods and droughts and so on are the result of human activity, but of course you’ve got a track record of denying this, particularly back in your days at the Haulers Federation. The president, on the other hand, can honestly claim to have been campaigning about it since her college days. She might well argue that all this sudden concern about hurricanes and droughts is a bit rich coming from you.’
Slaymaker laughed. ‘You’re damn right. That’s exactly what the president will argue.’ He took a drink of water, laid down his glass and looked straight at her. ‘What do you think about this weather business yourself, Holly? What do you personally think? Do you think it was caused by people?’
Holly had read about the controversy Slaymaker had stirred up during his last-ditch campaign against the shift from hybrids to all-electric trucks. But the whole issue seemed pretty straightforward to her. ‘Yes, I’m sure it was caused by people,’ she told him, then laughed. ‘Maybe not the answer you wanted, Senator, but I think we’d have been better off if we’d stopped burning that stuff about thirty years earlier than we actually did.’
Slaymaker smiled. ‘What I wanted, Holly, was for you to tell me what you thought. But my feeling is this. We don’t make thunder. We don’t make the tides. We don’t make the day and the night. The Lord does. And if He wants the Earth a little warmer and the weather a little livelier, well then, we’ve just got to deal with that fact. I guess that seems pretty old-fashioned to you.’
It certainly
did – it seemed positively medieval, in fact – but all the same there was something about Slaymaker’s position that struck Holly as rather attractive in a way she wouldn’t have anticipated. It was so different to the perpetually agonized attitude she’d grown up surrounded by, the attitude of her parents and their friends, with their constant fretting about suffering in faraway places and threats in the future, their disapproval of just about anything that seemed to her like fun. It was so different too from all her friends who clucked their tongues at America’s selfish isolationism in a world whose problems it had played such a large part in causing. She liked how the senator had found a place to park all of that and get on with what life threw at him here and now. It connected with the impulse that had brought her to America in the first place. This was a country where people did things, that was how she’d seen it. They did things for better or for worse, and, if it didn’t work out, they tried something else.
‘Not that I’m some kind of religious nut or anything,’ Slaymaker added. ‘But the way I see it, we may as well leave it to God to look after the things that are just too big for little creatures like us.’
The waiter came for their plates, a young Latino man. Behind him, as he stood at the table, the lake, the mountains, the vault of the sky, with streaks of grayish cloud moving east in a brisk, high-altitude wind.
‘Now that was a steak,’ the senator told the waiter. ‘I could have done without the fancy bits and pieces, but that was a steak.’
‘Thank you, Senator, I’ll pass that on to the chef. Senator, I...’ The waiter hesitated. ‘I hope you don’t mind me telling you, sir, that me and my family are big fans of what you’re doing for the people from the droughts and fires in California.’
Slaymaker beamed at him, and reached out and took his hand.
‘Why, thank you! Thank you very much. What’s your name, my friend?’
‘It’s Luis, sir, Luis Vargas. We’ve always voted for the Latino Party in our family till now, but, like my pa says, the Partido’s gotten completely obsessed lately with the problems below the border. He says you’re the only one who’s really taken hold of the problems we have right here in the US, all of us, Anglos and Latinos alike.’ The waiter blushed. ‘I’m sorry, sir. I shouldn’t interrupt your meal.’
The senator was still firmly grasping the waiter’s hand, and fixing him with that extraordinarily focused gaze. So much so, in fact, that for a moment, absurdly, Holly felt excluded and a little jealous.
‘Not at all, Luis, not at all. As it so happens, myself and Ms Peacock here – don’t you just love her British accent? – we were just discussing how we’re going to win the support of people who don’t normally vote for my party, and I think she’ll find what you’ve just said most helpful.’
Finally, he released the waiter’s hand.
‘But now if you could bring me a couple of scoops of chocolate ice cream and a cup of strong coffee, that would be just great,’ he said. ‘And whatever Miss Peacock wants, of course. After all, it’s her that’s paying for this meal!’
‘Just a coffee for me,’ Holly said. She’d pulled up a map of North America on her cristal and was looking at the cities that Slaymaker had earlier identified as the growth points of his new America – Seattle, Juneau, Anchorage – stretched out in a long chain along the continent’s north-western edge. And she was noticing the slightly untidy fact that, in between Seattle and the other two cities, were several hundred miles of coastline that belonged to another country. This wasn’t news to her, of course, but it occurred to her that she had no idea how it had come about. She’d have to ask Rick sometime.
‘Well,’ she said as Luis Vargas headed back to the kitchen, ‘there’s a lot here to work on in terms of pulling together a message that will clearly distinguish you both from the government and from the interstate frontiers people in your own party. I’ll push some ideas out into the Pollcloud and see what comes back. If you like, we could also commission some more in-depth surveys. It’s really a matter of how much you want from us. There’s also a question of how much you want to involve us in actually delivering your message. We’re pretty experienced at running feeder campaigns, for instance, and, like I said before, they can be very useful in a case like this where you’re targeting several very different audiences.’
‘Those damn AIs. Can’t stand the things: feeders, jeenees, the whole damn lot of them. Should have been strangled at birth.’
‘Well, the fact is that, expensive as they are, they are very effective, and they end up way cheaper than the human alternatives if you measure by results.’
‘Yeah, I know, I know.’ Slaymaker smiled. ‘I’ll tell you what, when you get back to your office, write down what you want to do and how much it would cost, and send it to me. I’m pretty certain I’m going to go along with whatever you suggest.’
Luis came back with the ice cream and coffee.
‘I like you, Holly,’ Slaymaker went on, picking up his spoon but pausing to twinkle across at her. ‘I like you a lot. And I can see you’re very smart. If you’re willing, I’d very much like to carry on working with you on this job, even when Janet’s back in action, and I want you to know that I’d be very pleased if you’d come and work for me full time, when you and Janet are ready.’ He pointed his spoon at her. ‘Think it over. Don’t decide now. But I could really do with someone like you right at the heart of the project, to help me think these things through.’
He took a mouthful of ice cream, watching her as he savored and swallowed it.
‘Oh and don’t be afraid to talk to people. I know it’s quicker doing polls, I know it’s cheaper, but there’s no substitute for actually talking with folk. Budget some time for it. I’ll pay.’
•
Holly’s car drove her home on the expressway. All around her was a forest of dead and dying trees, rotting from the inside out and the outside in at the same time, weakened by weather conditions that they had not evolved for, attacked by the insects and fungi that had come north with the warmer and wetter air. But this was just the world, as far as she was concerned. What was new was that she was twenty-eight years old, and she’d just been offered a top job by one of America’s most well-known and popular politicians.
‘Hey, jeenee,’ she said, ‘give me a sample of what people are saying right now about Slaymaker. No affinity filters, just a random sample.’
At once a chain of disembodied voices began to speak to her, while the lichen-choked trees passed by.
‘Word is that Slaymaker’s going for the presidency next time round.’
‘No way will he win, though. No way. That guy’s a traitor to the north.’
‘Yeah, exactly. Fuck the storm people. Fuck them. If they’re dumb enough to still live in those places, how is that our problem?’
‘Ha ha. Very true. Beggar came up to me the other day with the usual fucking sob story about his farm in Nevada, and all the dirt drying up and blowing away. I fucking laughed in his face.’
Holly held out for about thirty seconds, then told the jeenee to flip to another thread.
‘Slaymaker? I love that guy,’ someone else was saying. ‘Gray Jenny talks the talk, but he comes right down to the Storm Coast and tries to figure out what would help.’
‘President Slaymaker, do you reckon?’
‘I’d vote for him, no problem, and I’ve never voted Freedom Party. Who else is really thinking about people like—’
Holly flipped again.
‘He’s an amateur, really. He’s got this sentimental idea about keeping the country together, but he’s basically just a trucker who struck it lucky.’
‘Si, si. And he seems nice, but he’d turn nasty soon enough when things turned out not to be as easy to fix as he thought.’
The car’s battery was running low and it shifted itself over into the dodgem lane to top itself up. A shower of blue and white sparks burst harmlessly round her like a little firework display as her slightly worn connectors settled
into place against the overhead lines.
Pale wisps of cirrus were moving across the upper sky. There wasn’t much wind at ground level, but up there the air was moving fast.
CHAPTER 6
Rosine Dubois
I don’t know how many times me and Herb had to get out and drag branches and stuff out of our way, or how many times we went down a road and found it blocked with debris or flooded up and had to go back and find another way. All around us the wind was tossing around leaves and bits of paper, sometimes whistling softly, sometimes making things rattle. It was like some huge animal that was resting up after eating its fill. And we were its prey, tiptoeing past it while it slept.
We took all night just getting out as far as the interstate. And then we sat on that road all the next day, sometimes not moving an inch for two hours at a time. It was awful. It was a real hot sticky day, and we were surrounded by scared people and screaming kids in cars with their trunks bulging open and tied up with string. Some of the people were hungry and thirsty too, and a few had lost members of their families. There was one woman, maybe ten cars back, who kept up a constant sobbing and wailing and howling, on and on. And for five hours or so we were next to the wrecks of four cars that Simon had flung off the highway when he came ashore. Someone had cut open one of them and got the people out, but it didn’t look like anyone had done anything with the others, which were so badly crushed that there couldn’t possibly have been anyone left alive inside them.
The police were there, and the National Guard too, going up and down the line just above us in military drigs, and sometimes coming down beside the highway. We thought at first they were there to help, but if we asked them questions like ‘How long is this line?’ or ‘What’s being done to help us folks who’ve lost their homes?’ – natural enough questions, you’d have thought, for folk in our position to ask of a public official – they’d act like it was too much trouble to answer, like it was kind of rude and disrespectful of us even to ask. They asked us plenty of questions, though. Where were we going? What ID did we have? How come we were leaving the city? Did we own this truck and what had we got in back? It was like we were criminals. It was like having your house mashed up by a car was some kind of criminal offense.
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