Balaban grinds the half-finished cigar out slowly. He leans back in his plush leather chair and looks straight at her. “Our more pessimistic estimates say forty five,” he says. “But it does seem as though we agree with Bostov on at least one point.”
“The Hubs are really failing? I’d always worried about it but…”
“Environmental degradation is America’s worst-kept secret,” says P Shaun Balaban. “The only ones who do not know about it are the ones who do not care to know – the three hundred million people living in the Hubs.”
“But can’t the slide be stopped? We’ve done away with gasoline and air travel. We’ve reduced and reused and recycled. We’ve made everything simple and straightforward.”
He shakes his head. “Young lady, how old do you think I am?”
She can’t resist. “Which bit of you?”
“I’m ninety seven,” he says, ignoring her remark. “I’ve lived longer than most so I can tell you this. Sixty years ago when the first Hubs went up, America was already finished. It was strip-mined and land-filled with pesticides and leaking batteries. All the fresh, flowing water was already stagnating behind dams and rotten with nitrate-heavy agricultural runoff. The Hubs were never a fresh start for a renamed nation. They were always intended to be shanty towns for relocated refugees.”
She’s known it but never wanted to think about it. Why else had she joined Federal Environmental? Why hadn’t she been surprised by meat field Kurtis and his corpse-recycling story or a cowboy defending his ranch with Cold War battletanks? Why had she plowed her money into filtering the water that government maintained was already good enough to drink?
“So if you know this,” she asks, “why aren’t you leaving too?”
“Because despite what you might think, Officer, the purpose of Meat4 Power is not just to sell livedrives,” says Balaban. “We are permitted to rule the Hubs… most of the time… because we buy time and time means hope for this nation. After the petroleum age, the first generation of livedrives gave this country thirty more years. B-spining gave us thirty more and we think Reboot might give us one more decade. By that time, who knows? Maybe the rest of the world will step in to stop us starving. Or maybe we will develop a permanent solution.” He smiles coldly. “Perhaps we may even resort to farming fish.”
“Yeah, about that,” she says, reaching into her jacket and sliding an envelope onto his desk. It’s rich cream paper with the Presidential seal embossed in the corner. Balaban picks it up and turns it over and over in his hands. He looks to her without attempting to open it.
“Executive order,” she tells him. “The bombing’s over. President Vandernecker feels you’ve seen who really wields power in the North American Union. That’s your permission to go ahead and sell Reboot under strict control.”
“I suspect there is a ‘but’ coming.”
“But half the profits go into a new government initiative to fund a fresh round of cleanups.” She reaches into her jacket and tosses another envelope, just plain white paper this time. “That’s to tell you the first billion dollars of Reboot profit has already been allocated. You’re getting into fish faster that you thought, Mr Balaban. This time next year, you’ll be breeding enough for all of Toronto.”
He touches the envelope and sighs. “What kind of fish?”
“My kind of fish,” she tells him. “Until you tried to kill me, I’d been hoping I’d make a few bucks selling livedrive water filtration systems to my District. With your cash, the government’s decided to give them away. Everyone gets one. Every person in every Hub across the whole NAU.”
Thursday 15 May
01:23 pm
JUDE HEMBLEN SITS on the tank edge and lets the trout nibble on his fingers. It’s such a glorious day, spring blooming into summer, that he’s gone against years of habit and removed his bullet-stopping jacket that looks like regular faded denim. Without armor, with his new beard covering the scars and the bruises faded to yellow and his hair growing longer, Hemblen looks less of a military man these days. “These your famous fish, then?” he asks Kirsty.
“Patents jointly held by me and Tim,” she nods. “These will be the granddaddies of untold billions soon enough. What do you think of them?” Kirsty’s wearing a pair of Tim’s overalls that are paint-splattered from her efforts to redecorate her shattered apartment.
“Now the government’s going to give them away,” says Hemblen, “how does that work out for you?”
“Short term, I get a kick knowing I’m doing my bit to keep the Hubs going,” she says. “Long term, we get a few cents on every unit shipped, which should add up fine when you look at the numbers.”
“People talk,” says Hemblen. “They say you and Tim are together now.”
She sits down next to him and can’t resist trailing a hand through the water too. “We didn’t think too hard about it,” she says. “He’s stood by me since forever. When I saw him waiting for me outside the FBI building, I couldn’t understand why we’d never done it before.” She smiles. “It’s not like all that much has changed. He practically lived in my apartment anyway.”
They watch the world go by for a few minutes. “You think we did good?” she asks, eventually. “Do you think we won?”
Hemblen thinks back on everyone he saw go down in a tangle of limbs and shakes his head. “I don’t think we did anything much. Sure we stirred up the water but once the mud settles and the water clears, what’s the bet everyone will still be in the same old pond?”
“You know what’s been bugging me?” she says. “I’m starting to wonder if M4 were even the bad guys. I mean, I know they came after me and all but to see the price they’re paying to stay while Bostov are getting away clean just doesn’t sit right.”
“They won’t get away clean,” says Hemblen. “Now that the Coast Guard are onto them, they’ll be picking them off every ship they search and bringing them back in.”
“But a year from now, that guy Priest will be sitting outside a café in Paris sipping one of those little cups of coffee you see in old movies and the Hubs will be nothing but a memory. I can’t shake the thought that you and me helped him betray everyone.”
Hemblen nods to concede the point. “If they played us then they played everyone, Kirsty. M4 were wrong-footed every step of the way and Bostov never even showed on Washington’s radar.”
“And it never stops,” she says. “Did you hear that Carmine Carmonte put a forty-five in his mouth?”
“I did,” says Hemblen. “Guess Carmine did care after all.”
“And only two of his UPF crew made it out of that storage unit,” says Kirsty sadly. “I went to see them in hospital the other day.”
“Not that guy the bear was ripping up?”
“Oh yes,” she says. “Cusack’s a survivor type, a regular hero. New lung, spleen, liver… seven feet of intestine... he was lying under miles of plastic pipes and still smiling at me. Word is he’s taking over Carmine Cares when he’s back on his feet.”
“Well at least everyone’s moving up. Your guy with the religious title…”
“The Reverend…”
“Yeah, he cut a deal with Monty. In return for rolling with him to retake his old territory, he’s paying Crash The Pad in BurbBuggies.”
She rolls her eyes. “You do know you’ll be getting re-treads?”
“Hell, everyone knows that,” he smiles. “Part of me wants to do it just to see some smart ass Gs piss their pants when we walk into spraygun fire and punch their teeth out.” The light goes out of his eyes. “But then part of me worries that I’m going to enjoy it too much. I’ve gotten so mean, Kirsty, that after we get the Reverend up and running, I’m out for good.”
“Of mercwar?”
“Mercwar, the Hubs, the whole North American Union. I can’t see a future for myself in a place that doesn’t have a future. So I figure I’ll head west, learn Spanish and see how far I get. According to the anthem, the old USA used to stretch from seas to shini
ng sea.” He shrugs. “Call it dumb but I’ve always wanted to see the sun set in the ocean, you know?”
She’s heard the dream before. “I do know, actually. Before you leave, give me a call. Maybe I can hook you up with a travel buddy who’s heading the same way.”
“I’d like that,” he says.
One more siren blows at the factory down the block and the shifts change over. She watches as the Tramtrax draws up to where old hardware is re-tooled into new product. She looks beyond to the mallsprawl, where people live and work together for the greater good, pulling in the same direction to get through one more day. She feels for them because she’s part of the same machine.
“You love it here, don’t you?” says Hemblen. “You’d do anything for this place.”
“Feels as though I have already.”
“But if you could chose anywhere to live…”
“I’d chose here,” she nods. “What can I say? I’m a Hub girl. And you?”
He looks down on the rows of tired workers, slaving round the clock to butcher up animals worked to death so they can be fed to a new generation. He gazes at the mallsprawl, a federally-designed prison built by minimum-bid tenders to house a country that’s going nowhere but down.
“To tell you the truth, I wouldn’t care if I never walked down another paved street again,” he admits. “I spent one night in my apartment before I packed to move on. I knew I wanted out, always have…”
A warm breeze brings the smells of the Hub – mulchy foodfuel and frying steaks, rooftop composters and overflowing waste tanks.
“You never answered my question,” says Kirsty. “I asked what you thought of my trout and you didn’t answer.”
“Truthfully...?” says Hemblen, “they look like regular fish to me. Ones that don’t know what they are or why they’re here. Ones that couldn’t care less about the world so long as they get to swim round and round in circles.”
“Well hey…” says Kirsty, “…aren’t they the lucky ones?”
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