The Victor's Heritage (The Jonah Trilogy Book 2)

by Anthony Caplan

  "A nobody. Don't pay him any attention."

  "What do you call when the whale jumps the chump and you're in the way of the paywall?" he asked.

  "What?" said Corrag. She had no idea what he'd just asked her. The whale was slang for the Repho and its increasingly autocratic policing, she figured. But all the other references were beyond her understanding. His breath stunk of the sweet smoke, and she wanted to get away, but he was blocking her access to the rope ladder leading to the wheelhouse, where a group of people were hanging out, men and women drinking from long-stemmed glasses, surrounding the man with a beard whose laughter rang out in the night with a large-bellied self-assurance.

  She turned around. Beithune was nowhere to be seen. She wondered if she'd imagined his voice whispering to her.

  "Not cool," said the young man, barely more than a boy, in the flannel shirt, as he moved away to the bellowing snickers of his companions.

  Corrag climbed the rope ladder to the wheelhouse and walked out to the edge of the deck, skirting the crowd. The lights of the city glowed out beyond the harbor. It was a pulsating organism with a life of its own. If only it wasn't so hard to find out the secret of its vitality, she thought. She and Beithune had imagined they could tap into its core, but there was something resistant and slippery about it, an oiliness that prevented headlong inquiry. A woman with black hair pulled back in a bun on the side of her head asked her something.

  "I don't know," she heard herself answering, as if from a distance.

  The woman's mouth moved, but no sound seemed to be coming out. Instead she heard a tinkling sound like glass breaking. Corrag shook her head and moved away, but the woman followed a few steps behind. She held out her glass.

  “Here. Have a sip. You look like you’re going to faint.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “No, don’t be sorry. Go ahead.”

  The babble of voices onboard came and went, like waves breaking inside her mind. The drink the woman gave her was good.

  “What is it?”

  “Just sarsaparilla and moonshine. Home brew. It’ll clear your head, though. My name is Monica."

  “Corrag.”

  “Corrag. Who’d you come with?”

  “Beithune. My cousin.”

  “I haven’t met him.”

  Monica’s hand shook a little when she took back the empty glass. Corrag estimated she was about thirty, with a thin, nervous face lined from mental effort. Corrag was grateful for her kindness.

  “I don’t know what happened. My hearing is doing strange things. I think I need an intervention.”

  “You need some rest and some food, child. What have you eaten today?”

  “Not much. Some dried apple.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Democravia.”

  “I thought so. We don’t talk about interventions. Unless you’re a one percenter.”

  Monica’s voice was soft with sadness to it and a mountain lilt that gave her an air of old wisdom.

  “What do people do? The ones who aren’t top percenters.”

  “Survive. In my family there were ten of us. Only three alive today. Of course two of my brothers were drafted for the Repho overseas and died.”

  “Democravia takes care of her children. And our forces are largely volunteer.”

  “Yes. You’re lucky.”

  Corrag wondered if she was lucky. Did she owe Democravia or was she free? The answer was as unclear as the water of the harbor. There was pride still in her heart for the land of her childhood, but her anger at its recent treatment of her parents was weighing heavily in the balance. Also, she felt herself picking up a new sort of distrust of authority from the air of New York, whose residents imbibed a piratical code of self-preservation that owed no allegiance to any order higher than the rule of appetite.

  Monica was telling her more about her life. Her husband was the bearded man in the center of the crowd of people at the wheelhouse. Mike Shannon was a Nenkaja survivor, a former prisoner, and now, in the last few years, a community organizer. Monica saw herself as operating behind the scenes to complement her husband's work.

  "Women can do things men can't. We can work in our own way to make a stand in this system. Yes, we are second-class citizens in many ways. But that can work in our favor. We're not tracked as heavily." Corrag was silent, absorbing her words. The fact that women did not enjoy equal rights in the Repho, given the influence of fundamentalists, was not news, but it still upset her.

  "Mike has many enemies, and the Gheko administration would love to see him locked up again," Monica said.

  '"So you and Mike are activists? Disaligners?" asked Corrag.

  "We're working for deep changes. What do you and Beithune see as your ambition?"

  "Ambition?"

  "Yes, everyone has an ambition. Are you earning for an augment?

  "No. I don't want one."

  "Good for you. Hold out as long as you can. There are few free men and women in the Repho. But some kids like you, fighting for a way to get free of the whale."

  "What's the whale?"

  "The whale is the system of things. Many people in the belly of the whale are dreaming, sucked up by their augments. The free men and women are awake. You need to stay awake."

  "Maybe that's my ambition."

  "That's great. Will you promise to stay in touch with me?"

  "Of course."

  Monica brought her a glass. Corrag enjoyed holding the long stem with different combinations of fingers, switching from hand to hand sophisticatedly. The act of drinking and keeping her eyes fixed on some spot in the room where the action was afoot was also a new sort of excitement. She wandered through the party boat. Some people shot her looks that told her it was okay to be alone without being lonely. These were the people who had abandoned the collective dream of the Republic.

  She found Beithune at last in the hold in some sort of conspiratorial grouping. The boys in the flannel shirts were there, but they seemed engaged in an exchange of important information and otherwise harmless.

  Beithune saw her. She was staggering, a little bit drunk from the moonshine.

  "We can go now," said Beithune. But had he really said it or had she just heard him think it? Maybe it was a trick he was pulling on her, some sort of ventriloquist's practical joke. She sometimes thought he would be better off finishing up at college and staying with the family business. She thought she should tell him, but in a while, not right away. She really loved Beithune. He was the brother she'd never had. Beithune grabbed her by the shoulder.

  "Why are you crying?" he asked.

  "I didn't know I was," said Corrag.

  "Hold it, bro." It was the curly haired boy speaking, the one with the foxy eyes.

  "You didn't answer my question," he said.

  "What was it again? Oh, yes, the whale. What would I do with the whale? I think I would cut it up into little pieces and melt the blubber down to make oil."

  "Not a bad suggestion. Here's my follow-up question."

  "I don't do follow-ups with people I don't know," said Corrag.

  "Well, that's a shame."

  Beithune got them out of the hold somehow. He really was good. She didn't recall later how they'd climbed the ladder to get away from the flannel shirts. To save coin they walked instead of catching a water taxi. The canals were splashing over the sidewalks at high tide, smelling of dead Repho children and their spoiled dreams. The streetlights were still on; they never went off, powered by the smoldering Long Island nuclear turbines. The bridges groaned under the weight of the infinite tide of oceans and peoples. Black men with scarred faces and eyes that wouldn't look and Chinese bands of thieves sold khat and oomo and got away from the police in little boats under the bridges with outboard, old school motors that revved away in the darkness. Lovers stole last kisses from each other at the corners outside the chrome-barred storefronts with the nanowalls still blaring yesterday's headlines.

  Later in the apart
ment with the light fixture lodged in the crack of the wall, giving the kitchen the air of a medieval cloister, Beithune made tea while Corrag slumped in the scuffed recliner beside the door. They could hear sirens and explosions of gunfights on the Atlantic Avenue canal. There were turf wars going on in the city between criminal gangs vying for territory. The police occasionally chose sides, but usually maintained a neutral stance, partly because they were outgunned and outclassed, but also because the city’s rulers benefitted from much of the criminal activity. Beithune handed Corrag a mug of steaming tea.

  “Here you go,” he mumbled.

  “Thanks.”

  “That Lars. He’s a dubious character. Sorry you had to deal with him.”

  “Not a problem. Just a typical scene. Not as cool as he would like to think.”

  “He’s had seven barrier challenges.”

  "I don’t care, Beithune.”

  “I know, but he’s good. He’s going to get us in.”

  “Us? In? What are you talking about?”

  “It's a Corona Heights posse. He wants me. And you.”

  “And me. Right.”

  “I’m serious. He specifically invited you. You need to be a part of this.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? You need to ask why? This is the opportunity we've both been waiting for, Corrrag. And you especially should be flattered. Not many Repho girls get invited to join a posse.”

  “He’s a creep. He makes me sick.”

  “Oh, get over it. He’s plugged into things.”

  “And that’s a good thing?”

  “Yeah. Most definitely is. How can you get anywhere if you’re not plugged in.”

  “He doesn’t seem very awake to me, Beithune.”

  “He’s awake. Don't worry about that. Did I mention seven barrier challenges?”

  “You did.”

  Corrag woke late. The alarm on her emosponder had been buzzing for several minutes. She worked the early morning cleaning duty and needed to be up by 5:30 in the morning to get to work on time. The apartment was dark and the canal outside was just beginning to come alive with the sound of the garbage barges making their way slowly along, picking up the stinking refuse of the night's excesses. She dressed in a denim skirt and a charcoal black pea coat and half stumbled outside with her satchel hung on her back. She looked like a young woman entrenched in the business of earning her way in the world, but she felt evanescent, weightless and lonely, avoiding eye contact with everyone on the canal porter for the three eastbound stops. The sky was grey, and seagulls scudded across it looking for leftovers on the sidewalks and on rooftops. They were survivors like her. The affinity did not make her feel better about herself, but she did look kindly on the seagulls. They had no choice but to live off what they could find. Corrag had once had options, but for the first time felt the limits of her immediate future startling in their granularity. Still, it was just a matter of adjusting her sights, she thought. To focus on the future was an act of faith, and faith was a good thing, perhaps the only thing that was necessary to live.

  At The Meadowbrook, after she was done with the locker rooms and had set the bots up on some mopping on the second and third floors, she took a break in the employee coffee room. She enjoyed mastering the mindless routine of the cleaning, and then the rest of the day was about staying on her feet and responding to the needs of the two women who really ran the place, Lana and Greta. Chuckie the owner usually came in two or three times a week maximum just to make sure things were ticking over satisfactorily and swim a few laps in the pool. He was an interesting man who'd grown up in Democravia like her and gotten east through sports. After a collegiate football exchange one fall he'd missed the tubid back with his University of Phoenix teammates and worked his way up through the health club circuits with his good looks and sun-baked manners.

  Lana caught her eye and called her over to the entrance where a table was piled high with boxed food and sweaters left behind and never claimed. The boxed food was the legacy of a charity drive begun at Christmas. Chuckie had told the front desk girls to go ahead and take the food home, but nobody had dared. The Meadowbrook clientele was composed predominantly of rich matrons, the daughters of tech barons that had settled in the enclave and never left home, stranded in their natural upward mobility as colleges across the United States, unable to prevent attacks against students and research facilities by the ecowarriors of the secession movement, closed their doors after the first few campus nuclear waste fire bombings. It was only recently, in the last decade, that Repho educational establishments had reopened for business under scaled back conditions.

  "Take some, Corrag. Look at these peaches. Delicious," said Lana, holding up a container to the gamma ray scanner on the front desk to check for nuclear materials. Even years later, businesses in the Repho scanned clients and their possessions for contamination.

  Corrag thought about it. She didn't like being labeled as someone in need of charity, but then again it had been a long time since she and Beithune had enjoyed anything as nice as a treat of canned peaches. She tucked the container into her bag and smiled at Lana. There were very few clients in that day. A couple of women, local teachers, were lined up outside the office of Greta, the Swedish masseuse, holding their discount cards from their health exchanges in their hands and engaged in a breezy conversation about nothing much. Corrag listened as she wiped the glass of the front doors with anti bacterial swabs.

  "Did you say Jamie's transfer was postponed?" said one woman

  "It was. Her husband, you know Bob? His augment was delayed. Heavy drinking involved."

  "I didn't think that mattered anymore with Gheko."

  "Well, she says there's politics when it comes to the Androids. Sandelsky not so much. But Bob? He wasn't on the swim team and ever since then, well, it's been frankly like shit for him. Jamie's thinking of jumping ship."

  "It doesn't pay to jump ship. I always told her that. Stick to Apple Nuova. It's an Android But they're in the whale."

  "Yes, but who knew Bob was a heavy drinker."

  "Well he likes an occasional Poo Poo at the Jin Jin."

  "Well. Who doesn't?"

  "Yes. My sentiments exactly."

  "Did you hear? They say Gheko has chosen an ally. Speaking of ships."

  "He has? What's he intend to do next? Annex Democravia?"

  "That's no joke. It's Chagnon."

  The insider talk about Repho politics gave Corrag a jolt. The Repho augment was held out as a hope against death itself, with recent official pronouncements about cryonic upgrades available to the most select customers. These would allow upload into top line bots built for achieving some kind of unspecified state akin to immortality. The lure of that most exclusive of neighborhoods was a boon to the companies at the forefront of the technology, Sandelsky among them. There had been rumors in several of the more lurid social media outlets that Samael Chagnon himself had already had himself done and that his doppelganger was among them, walking the streets and riding the canal porters unannounced.

  The panel slid open silently to Greta's office, lined with foam pads. One could hear Tibetan monks chanting over the plaintive sounds of the Northern right whale on its annual migration through the Gulf of Maine.

  "I'll see you later, honey. Make an appointment with the desk."

  Greta's voice was languid and neutral as she let her customer out into the foyer. The woman's face was puffy as if she'd been crying. Her hair was hidden under a scarf, an old Gotzeitgeist paisley print scarf that Corrag recognized. Alana had once worn a similar one. The crying woman's face and the memory of her mother startled Corrag into a moment of motionless reverie, and as the woman slipped out into the rush of midday city traffic, she could hear Greta calling her in less than mellifluous tones.

  "What is the time that you can waste like this in such deep pensive thoughts?"

  "I'm sorry," Corrag apologized. "It's just, I was thinking of somebody."

  "We all have these memo
ries. What is that now? Memories are like flowers. They are worthless and stink after you've had them. So stop thinking so much."

  "How can I stop thinking?"

  Greta looked at her with a hard, hostile stare. Corrag wondered how she could be any success as a healer. She was a woman who had seen the worst of the European fighting with the United People's Army of National Sovereignty, UPANS, which eventually morphed into the Carlist Reserve Administration, CRA, against the Eurasian monolith that was the Sino-Rus Alliance. The CRA still governed most of Northern Europe including the Iberian Peninsula and parts of the former Yugoslavia and all the way east to Moldova.

  But now she, Greta, had lost most of her former idealism. She had undergone augmentation the previous summer, according to Lana. And the initial flush of health had given way to a wary and edgy sentimentality, like a plant that fleshed out its fruit in a rush of summer growth. Greta smoked and drank in secret and sometimes on the job. Lana had suggested that Chuckie knew about her obviously dubious lifestyle, but looked the other way in exchange for sexual favors.

  "Find yourself a man. He'll take care of that problem."

  "I have no idea what problem you're referring to," said Corrag. Greta gave another hard look and closed the door back on the rest of the world.

  Corrag's days usually went by in a rush. After cleaning the pool and distributing the clean towels to their places of disbursement outside the stations, she busied herself swabbing surfaces with antibacterials and then took a shift at the desk as the after school mothers came by for the exercise club. They danced an aerobic routine in the second floor gym under the tutelage of two Brazilian capoeira artists, a transgendered couple who were indistinguishable from each other. Corrag wanted to catch them before they left. She wanted to ask them about the fighting in the Basin against the tribes. She wanted to know how the locals perceived it, not how it was presented to the people of Democravia. In the Repho, nobody even knew there was a war between the Democravian Federation and its southern allies against the rainforest tribes. There was such ignorance of their fellow North Americans' external affairs. On the other hand, Corrag admitted to herself that she had had no idea until recently of the Repho's continued involvement in unsavory Middle Eastern adventures and lingering European covert operations, such as the coup against the democratically elected government of Scotland, or the decade long war with the Sino-Rus Alliance that was just now ending. She learned the hidden history of the Repho through Beithune and his friends from the Butterfly Club.