Black Rain

by Matthew B. J. Delaney

  “Valentino had a wife, so that means I must also have a wife. So they marry me to a woman I have no feelings for. I do have feelings, desires, but not toward my wife. How do I explain that to the governors? I am the same genetically as Valentino, so he must have had these feelings and desires, the ones that I have, but in public life he was married. So I too must be married and carry on this pretense.”

  “I’m sorry,” Jack said again.

  “Yes, well, the show must go on. And you . . . you, my beautiful boy, this is your first time in this fabulous staged production. You’re the main character. The controversial male lead. You were born to play this part.”

  “No . . . no . . . this is a mistake.”

  “Twenty thousand one hundred twelve trees. Not one more, not one less. These people do not make mistakes. You are here for a reason, whether you know it or not.”

  “But I didn’t kill those people.”

  “I believe you.”

  “So why am I here?”

  “They want you here.” Valentino smiled. “This city is a glimmering illusion, built around wealth and power. It’s a deception that hides a very dark and lonely place, my friend. Perhaps the darkest and loneliest city in the world.”

  “And you’ve been here your entire life?”

  “I was made to live here. That is my role in this production. You need to find out yours.”

  “How?”

  “You were arrested as a Synthate and charged with murders. You’re biotech property so were never tried. Just assumed guilty. This has been going on for years. We make the easiest targets because we have no rights. But the question is, what do you want to do?”

  “I want to prove my innocence. I want revenge on the people that did this to me. There was a woman I loved. They took her.”

  “Did you know Martin Reynolds?”

  Jack thought of the murdered scientist. “Very little. I knew he worked at Genico.”

  “He was a good man. He was there at my birth.” Valentino rolled up his sleeve, exposing his forearm. On his skin was a bioprint of a single staff of sheet music. “I’m a Synthate mimic. I was allowed to have a bioprint in a less conspicuous area.”

  “What’s the music for?”

  “To always remember the creative spirit. It’s ‘Ode to Joy,’” Valentino said. “And that’s why he gave me that.” Valentino motioned to the reproduction of the Dance at Bougival painting that hung from the wall. “Do you know that painting?”

  “I’ve seen it before.”

  “How far are you willing to take this?”

  “I’ve got nothing to lose. I’ll take it all the way.”

  “You’re still alive, aren’t you? That’s something. They will not hesitate to take that away from you. Safe as long as you don’t question. That’s the rule of the zones. When you don’t follow the rules . . .”

  “I’m ready.”

  Valentino walked to a large art deco cabinet covered in mosaics beneath the Persian helmet. He opened one of the drawers, took out a leather-bound portfolio, and put it on top of the cabinet. Then he turned back to his guest. Jack took a step forward and Valentino hugged him tightly, resting his head on Jack’s shoulder. “I love you, Jack. I love you inside and out and would never do anything to hurt you.”

  “You just met me.”

  “I know you more than you could imagine. My time here is almost gone. I’m scared and I’m pathetic. But you have given me hope.”

  Then Valentino kissed Jack on the cheek. “Everything you need is in that portfolio. Arden will know what to do with it.”

  “Why are you helping me?”

  “Your father was a great man. Not the man who raised you. But your real father.”

  Jack blinked. No one had ever spoken of his real father before. “You knew my father?”

  “We’ve all heard the stories. If you want to know about your father, there’s someone you should see.”

  “Where?”

  “There’s a village deep in the park. My butler knows the way.” Valentino sat on the edge of the sofa and pressed his fingers against the bridge of his nose. “Tomorrow the Games begin again. Good luck in battle.”

  CHAPTER 34

  During the housing crisis, Central Park had filled with the homeless and addicts. As a result, few had complained when large portions of the park had been purchased anonymously by a private corporation. After the dirty bomb left the entire southern section contaminated, a clear containment dome was constructed and the area was left abandoned. A single red metal door was cut into the wall, and from his pocket, the butler produced a large key.

  He turned the key in the lock and the sound of a deadbolt clanked loudly. The butler pushed open the door to reveal a concrete corridor beyond. Masks hung from the wall. The butler indicated one. “You might be more comfortable with one, sir.”

  Jack strapped the mask over his face. Inside, the air stunk of plastic. “Shouldn’t I be wearing a suit or something?”

  “Stay briefly and you’ll be safe. The Ramble is through here. They’re expecting you.”

  “Are you coming with me?”

  The butler shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m not invited.”

  Jack stepped through the doorway and the butler shut the door behind him. The key turned and the deadbolt sounded again, locking Jack inside. The corridor was lit by a series of overhead bulbs that extended the entire twenty feet of its length. At the far end was the edge of the dome. The surface was clear and strong with a door cut in the middle. Jack wondered how much radiation could actually penetrate the dome. He could be exposed right now and not even know it.

  The dome’s door slid open and Jack paused. The mask he wore seemed like a Cold War relic and he wasn’t sure how much protection it would actually offer. The butler had told him to stay only briefly, but he didn’t mention how long “briefly” actually was. Jack inhaled a last final breath of clean air and stepped through the open doorway.

  Beyond was a strange sight.

  The lights of a small village lay along the banks of a pond ringed by trees. The village was composed of two dozen small whitewashed cottages illuminated by waxen lanterns, lit brightly in the darkness. Above the line of the forest towered the dome, and through the clear surface was the Manhattan skyline.

  But the surface wasn’t completely clear. Instead an image was projected onto the dome itself, a 3Dee of an abandoned park thick with wild growth.

  A gravel path wound between oak trees and snaked around the edge of the pond toward the village. Night Comfort stood at the edge of the path in a white cotton dress. She wore no mask. She smiled at him. “Welcome to the Ramble.”

  CHAPTER 35

  The bathroom stalls were the size of phone booths, with no locking doors and white frosted windows the color of the exotic substance that fellow broker Mike Gorfinkle had neatly tucked away inside small paper envelopes hidden in the change pocket of his jeans. Phillip was inside the phone booth with him, one of his Ferragamo loafers propped up on the side of the clear glass toilet rim.

  The blackish skin of the Ferragamo was very lightly dusted with white powder. Seeing this, Phillip carefully undid his shoe, held it up to his nose, and vacuumed his nostril across the smooth alligator surface. The door to the bathroom opened, revealing the dark, anonymous throb of the nightclub, before a girl with a small dog tucked inside her shirt appeared. She stared at Phillip and Gorfinkle with a shocked, vaguely disgusted look before Phillip pushed her back out into the belly of the club and pulled the telephone booth door shut. Through the thin frosted glass, A Flock of Seagulls blared, circa 1982, “I Ran (So Far Away).”

  They were somewhere deep in the beating heart of Club USA. It was three a.m. Work was four hours away. Mama Blanca, your mind, only faster. The door to the phone booth opened again. This time a man appeared on roller skates in an all-white suit that glittered in strobe, seemingly in time to the Tommy Tutone song that started across the floor. He eyed Phillip, then Gorfinkle, then the smal
l packet of Mama Blanca, and took a step forward. “I’ll suck your dick for a bump.”

  Phillip pushed him back with a quick, “Do you mind?” before slamming the door shut and focusing again at the task at hand.

  The task, somehow obscured by the pounding music and the phone booth and the strobe lights, was to put as much Mama into his nose as humanly possible.

  “We are the backbone of society,” Phillip said as he focused carefully on unwrapping the small white paper. “The backbone. I mean, look at us, what we do . . . am I wrong in wanting to drive a Ferrari? Is that a wrong thing? I mean we save people’s lives. Shouldn’t I at least have a Ferrari, or a honeycomb in Tribeca? Fuck a honeycomb, an actual apartment. I mean, am I off base here?”

  Gorfinkle shook his head.

  “People buy what we sell them, and it saves their lives and makes everyone mao, and there’s no downside, and I don’t understand how shit like this can even be printed.” Phillip pulled a folded Wall Street Journal from his back pocket and waved it too quickly in front of Gorfinkle’s face. Heartless Samp Industry of Wealth. “I just want a Ferrari.”

  “We all want a Ferrari.”

  “I’m Ivy League educated, I’m handsome, in great shape . . . I mean, since when are we supposed to be punished for being successful? What, I should be poor and degenerate and work like a fucking Synthate so liberals don’t force their guilt on me?”

  The Mama Blanca took effect suddenly and Phillip reeled back. He closed his eyes for a moment and reopened them, energized. Without further word, he kicked open the telephone booth bathroom door and emerged roughly into the crowd, pushing people aside as he headed for the throbbing dance floor.

  Gorfinkle followed behind, almost overpowered by Exposé’s “Let Me Be the One” that boomed out of the speakers hoisted around them. Phillip hit the dance floor like a force, his body thrusting in hyperactive action. Above him, four too-perfect Synthate Socials danced together on mirrored pedestals. The dance floor was crowded, but Phillip pushed toward them. Taking off his tie, he twirled it over his head before he snatched a wad of mao from his pocket and threw it up to the women. Gorfinkle reached out to pull him away from the crowd, but abruptly Phillip’s face went red, then white, and he collapsed backward, striking his head against the mirror side of the pedestal. There was the loud clunk of bone, and Phillip deflated as he stared wildly around at the crowd, a trickle of blood forming at the base of his nose.

  And Jack was there. But Phillip knew he couldn’t be there. He smiled slyly, another one of Mama’s tricks. He focused on Jack, recognition bubbling up from somewhere deep inside. The trader reached up and grabbed the lapel of his brother’s suit jacket. Phillip’s mouth opened as he tried to speak, tried to impart some final wisdom before Mama Blanca closed the curtain.

  Phillip pulled Jack down toward him. “I . . . just . . . wanted . . . a . . . Ferrari.”

  Then Jack morphed back to Gorfinkle, and Phillip’s eyes glazed and he turned to face the lights and the dancing girls. He opened his mouth to speak again before his words dissolved into the mumbling mantra. “A Ferrari, Ferrari, Ferrari . . .” as hundred-yuan notes fell around them like ticker tape.

  CHAPTER 36

  The afternoon was warm when Jack finally awoke in the village in the Ramble.

  He lay on his back and looked up at the crisscross pattern of dried wood that layered the ceiling. His head felt mercury filled, but slowly the night came back to him. He was inside one of the small cottages. Warm sun streamed through windows on the far wall and the open door, casting bright rectangles of light on the floor in front of him. Behind him was a small cot, to his right a wooden desk topped by a vase filled with wildflowers.

  His wounds from the battle had healed to dull black blotches that covered his body like smudges of charcoal. He pushed himself upright, stood, and walked to the open doorway. The cottage was on the rise of a hill overlooking a pond, the tops of Upper West Side apartment buildings visible in the distance through the 3Dee projected onto the dome.

  Night Comfort was sweeping the front walkway. She stopped when she saw Jack and nodded up at the dome. “There are four eyeScreen projectors that 3Dee the abandoned images against the inside of the dome. From the outside, looks just like an empty park.”

  “But the dirty bomb attack? The radiation?”

  “There was never any attack. There was never any radiation. It was all your human father’s idea.”

  “My father?”

  “He wanted to create a haven for Synthates. Someplace outside the zones where the crushers couldn’t go.” Night Comfort paused, correcting herself. “Where the crushers wouldn’t go. He invented the dirty bomb scare to keep away the naturals.”

  “But there was radiation,” Jack said, remembering images of Geiger counter needles swinging wildly and entire blocks being evacuated.

  “A little. Carefully controlled at harmless levels. The scientists were all Genico employees. They advised a quarantine and it was Genico who built the dome. Outside, the world thinks there will be toxic radiation levels for the next three hundred years. But inside, we’re quite safe.”

  “And the projectors 3Dee the park slowly going wild.”

  “If we’re to live here, we need people to believe this is all abandoned. We 3Dee images and hide beneath the canopy. We have no other technology here so our power levels never register on the grid.”

  “What about the trackers? I thought Synthates all had one.”

  “The projectors reflect the signal, put the tracker position just outside the dome in the Synthate Midtown Zone. Won’t work if the crushers are really looking for you, but it’s a good temporary measure.”

  “My father did all this?”

  “Your father always believed Synthates needed a home.”

  A fieldstone path led down the slope toward the water, running between cypress trees and fragrant herb gardens. More cottages dotted the hill, each of them made from a cream-colored adobe tiled with faded red clay and outfitted with bleached-blue windowsills.

  Synthates of varying ages and classes worked in gardens that lined the edges of the algae-colored pond. They wore simple clothes. Jack saw no syncs or eyeScreens.

  “If you really want answers, I can take you to see someone.”

  “Who?”

  “His name is Alphacon,” Night Comfort said. “He’s one of the oldest living Synthates. He can tell you much about everything.”

  The sun was beginning to set, the air still warm, the woods buzzing with insects as Jack and Night Comfort made their way along the gravel path. Alphacon lived north of the pond in what had once been the Central Park Zoo. Most of what remained of the original structure was still present, faded and crumbling now after years without upkeep. A wide brick entrance was topped by a clock and surrounded by fantastic animal sculptures. A glass display case covered with lichen advertised the menu at a snack bar now closed for years.

  They walked through the main gates, passing empty ticket booths and lion cages and concession stands. She led Jack down a glass arcade. Much of the glass had been broken, leaving bare metal frames that looked up to the sky. On either side of them was murky water, areas that had once been home to various wild creatures now left vacant and molded with leaves.

  At the end of the arcade was an octagonal building of brick and glass. A small pillar of smoke rose from a chimney in the center. Illuminated paper lanterns fluttered in the breeze. Outside stood a man.

  He was not old, exactly, but not young, either, his age almost indiscernible. Somewhere perhaps in his late fifties, but with the strength of a much younger man. His skin was tan and shining, his hair white, his body still muscled from a youth of heavy activity. He wore a charcoal-colored suit with a white panama hat. He took Night Comfort’s shoulders and kissed her on the cheek.

  “My girl, it is good to see you.” Alphacon smiled.

  Night Comfort returned a genuine smile. “I want you to meet someone.”

  “Of course.”
Alphacon took Jack’s hand warmly. “I know who you are.”

  Night Comfort left them and sat on a shaded bench beneath a stand of oak trees. Behind her, long fields of hay grass had reclaimed the tiger habitat, giving off the sound of cicadas.

  Alphacon studied Jack. “To find you here, after all this time.”

  Around the outside of the building were old carousel animals: A brightly painted tiger snarling. A horse rearing its wooden body, white and blue. A zebra twisting its head and looking skyward. Alphacon sat in a green-and-red wooden chariot, two cherubs painted on either side, the chariot’s front fashioned into a dragon head. Jack leaned against a white swan.

  Alphacon’s knuckles were covered in the deep scars of a Guard class. Of someone who had fought in the Games. His bioprint was an open field in summer. “Alphacon, my name. Do you know what it means?”

  “No.”

  “Alpha is the first letter in the Greek alphabet. My name was given to me because I was in the first Synthate harvest.”

  Alphacon removed from his pocket a 2Dee image of twenty or so Synthates grouped in two rows on a stone stairwell.

  “That is me, years ago.” Alphacon pointed at a much-younger face. “That was the group I trained with. All of those men are now dead. Killed in the Games. Your father was one of them.”

  Alphacon touched a face in the back row. The Synthate in the 2Dee was tall, handsome almost to excess, to the point of appearing cruel, and yet he was the only one in the photo who smiled. That smile made him kind, his eyes not yet darkened by what the Games were sure to show him.

  Slowly Jack began to see himself in that face. The curve of the chin, the shape of the eyes all somehow familiar to him. The small points that combined together to form a whole, to give a sense of a person, he shared with this stranger in the 2Dee.

  Jack’s throat went dry. “My father?”