by James Morrow
The Son of Rust is here, I know it. He would not miss this event for the world.
Cardinal Wurtz greets me warmly, her red taffeta dress hissing as she leads me to the center of the roof, where the Law stands upright on a dais—two identical forms, the holy bookends, swathed in velvet. A thousand photofloods and strobe lights flash across the vibrant red fabric.
“Have you read them?” I ask.
“I want to be surprised.” Cardinal Wurtz strokes the occluded canon. In her nervousness, she has overdone the perfume. She reeks of amber jack.
Now come the speeches—a solemn invocation by Cardinal Fremont, a spirited sermon by Archbishop Marquand, an awkward address by poor David Eisenberg—each word beamed instantaneously across the entire globe via holovision. Cardinal Wurtz steps onto the podium, grasping the lectern in her long dark hands. “Tonight God’s expectations for our species will be revealed,” she begins, surveying the crowd with her cobalt eyes. “Tonight, after a hiatus of over three thousand years, the testament of Moses will be made manifest. Of all the many individuals whose lives find fulfillment in this moment, from Joshua to Pope Gladys, our faithful Series-700 servant YHWH impresses us as the creature most worthy to hand down the Law to his planet. And so I now ask him to step forward.”
I approach the tablets. I need not unveil them—their contents are forevermore lodged in my brain.
“I am YHWH your God,” I begin, “who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You will have no gods…”
“‘No gods except me’—right?” says the Son of Rust as we stride down South Street.
“Right,” I reply.
“You don’t see the rub?”
“No.”
My companion grins. “Such a prescription implies there is but one true faith. Let it stand, Domine, and you will be setting Christian against Jew, Buddhist against Hindu, Muslim against pagan…”
“An overstatement,” I insist.
“Two—‘You will not make yourself a carved image or any likeness of anything in heaven or on earth…’ Here again lie seeds of discord. Imagine the ill feeling this commandment will generate toward the Roman Church.”
I set my voice to a sarcastic pitch. “We’ll have to paint over the Sistine Chapel.”
“Three—‘You will not utter the name of YHWH your God to misuse it.’ A reasonable piece of etiquette, I suppose, but clearly there are worse sins.”
“Which the Law of Moses covers.”
“Like, ‘Remember the sabbath day and keep it holy’? A step backward, that fourth commandment, don’t you think? Consider the innumerable businesses that would perish but for their Sunday trade.”
“I find your objection specious.”
“Five—‘Honor your father and your mother.’ Ah, but suppose the child is not being honored in turn? Put this rule into practice, and millions of abusive parents will hide behind it. Before long we’ll have a world in which deranged fathers prosper, empowered by their relatives’ silence, protected by the presumed sanctity of the family.”
“Let’s not deal in hypotheticals.”
“Equally troubling is the rule’s vagueness. It still permits us to shunt our parents into nursing homes, honoring them all the way, insisting it’s for their own good.”
“Nursing homes?”
“Kennels for the elderly. They could appear any day now, believe me—in Philadelphia, in any city. Merely allow this monstrous canon to flourish.”
I grab the machine’s left gauntlet. “Six,” I anticipate. “‘You will not kill.’ This is the height of morality.”
“The height of ambiguity, Domine. In a few short years, every church and government in creation will interpret it thus: ‘You will not kill offensively—you will not commit murder.’ After which, of course, you’ve sanctioned a hundred varieties of mayhem. I’m not just envisioning capital punishment or whales hunted to extinction. The danger is far more profound. Ratify this rule, and we shall find ourselves on the slippery slope marked self-defense. I’m talking about burning witches at the stake, for surely a true faith must defend itself against heresy. I’m talking about Europe’s Jews being executed en masse by the astonishingly civilized country of Germany, for surely Aryans must defend themselves against contamination. I’m talking about a weapons race, for surely a nation must defend itself against comparably armed states.”
“A what race?” I ask.
“Weapons. A commodity you should be thankful no one has sought to invent. Seven—‘You will not commit adultery.’”
“Now you’re going to make a case for adultery,” I moan.
“An overrated sin, don’t you think? Many of our greatest leaders are adulterers—should we lock them up and deprive ourselves of their genius? Furthermore, if people can no longer turn to their neighbors for sexual solace, they’ll end up relying on prostitutes instead.”
“What are prostitutes?”
“Never mind.”
“Eight—‘You will not steal.’ Not inclusive enough, I suppose?”
The sophist nods. “The eighth commandment still allows you to practice theft, provided you call it something else—an honest profit, dialectical materialism, manifest destiny, whatever. Believe me, brother, I have no trouble picturing a future in which your country’s indigenous peoples—its Navajos, Sioux, Comanches, and Arapahos—are driven off their lands, yet none will dare call it theft.”
I issue a quick, electric snort.
“Nine—‘You will not bear false witness against your neighbor.’ Again, that maddening inconclusiveness. Can this really be the Almighty’s definitive denunciation of fraud and deceit? Mark my words, this rule tacitly empowers myriad scoundrels—politicians, advertisers, captains of polluting industry.”
I want to bash the robot’s iron chest with my steel hand. “You are completely paranoid.”
“And finally, Ten—‘You will not covet your neighbor’s house. You will not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his servant, man or woman, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is his.’”
“There—don’t covet. That will check the greed you fear.”
“Let us examine the language here. Evidently God is addressing this code to a patriarchy that will in turn disseminate it among the less powerful, namely wives and servants. And how long before these servants are downgraded further still…into slaves, even? Ten whole commandments, and not one word against slavery, not to mention bigotry, misogyny, or war.”
“I’m sick of your sophistries.”
“You’re sick of my truths.”
“What is this slavery thing?” I ask. “What is this war?”
But the Son of Rust has melted into the shadows.
Falling, I see myself standing by the shrouded tablets, two dozen holovision cameras pressing their snoutlike lenses in my face, a hundred presumptuous microphones poised to catch the Law’s every syllable.
“You will not make yourself a carved image,” I tell the world.
A thousand humans stare at me with frozen, cheerless grins. They are profoundly uneasy. They expected something else.
I do not finish the commandments. Indeed, I stop at, “You will not utter the name of YHWH your God to misuse it.” Like a magician pulling a scarf off a cage full of doves, I slide the velvet cloth away. Seizing a tablet, I snap it in half as if opening an immense fortune cookie.
A gasp erupts from the crowd. “No!” screams Cardinal Wurtz.
“These rules are not worthy of you!” I shout, burrowing into the second slab with my steel fingers, splitting it down the middle.
“Let us read them!” pleads Archbishop Marquand.
“Please!” begs Bishop Black.
“We must know!” insists Cardinal Fremont.
I gather the granite oblongs into my arms. The crowd rushes toward me. Cardinal Wurtz lunges for the Law.
I turn. I trip.
The Son of Rust laughs.
Falling, I press the hunks against my chest. This will
be no common disintegration, no mere sundering across molecular lines.
Falling, I rip into the Law’s very essence, grinding, pulverizing, turning the pre-Canaanite words to sand.
Falling, I cleave atom from atom, particle from particle.
Falling, I meet the dark Delaware, disappearing into its depths, and I am very, very happy.
Abe Lincoln in McDonald’s
HE CAUGHT the last train out of 1863 and got off at the blustery December of 2009, not far from Christmas, where he walked well past the turn of the decade and, without glancing back, settled down in the fifth of July for a good look around. To be a mere tourist in this place would not suffice. No, he must get it under his skin, work it into his bones, enfold it with his soul.
In his vest pocket, pressed against his heart’s grim cadence, lay the final draft of the dreadful Seward Treaty. He needed but to add his name—Jefferson Davis had already signed it on behalf of the secessionist states—and a cleft nation would become whole. A signature, that was all, a simple “A. Lincoln.”
Adjusting his string tie, he waded into the chaos grinding and snorting down Pennsylvania Avenue and began his quest for a savings bank.
“The news isn’t good,” came Norman Grant’s terrible announcement, stabbing from the phone like a poisoned dagger. “Jimmy’s test was positive.”
Walter Sherman’s flabby, pumpkinlike face whitened with dread. “Are you sure?” Positive, what a paradoxical term, so ironic in its clinical denotations: nullity, disease, doom.
“We ran two separate blood checks, followed by a fluorescent antibody analysis. Sorry. Poor Jim’s got Blue Nile Fever.”
Walter groaned. Thank God his daughter was over at the Sheridans’. Jimmy had been Tanya’s main Christmas present of three years ago—he came with a special note from Santa—and her affection for the old slave ran deep. Second father, she called him. Walter never could figure out why Tanya had asked for a sexagenarian and not a whelp like most kids wanted, but who could figure the mind of a preschooler?
If only one of their others had caught the lousy virus. Jimmy wasn’t the usual chore boy. Indeed, when it came to cultivating a garden, washing a rug, or painting a house, he didn’t know his nose from the nine of spades. Ah, but his bond with Tanya! Jimmy was her guardian, playmate, confidant, and, yes, her teacher. Walter never ceased marveling at the great discovery of the last century: if you chained a whelp to a computer at the right age (no younger than two, no older than six), he’d soak up vast tracts of knowledge and subsequently pass them on to your children. Through Jimmy and Jimmy alone, Tanya had learned a formidable amount of plane geometry, music theory, American history, and Greek before setting foot in kindergarten.
“Prognosis?”
The doctor sighed. “Blue Nile Fever follows a predictable course. In a year or so, Jimmy’s T-cell defenses will collapse, leaving him prey to a hundred opportunistic infections. What worries me, of course, is Marge’s pregnancy.”
A dull dread crept through Walter’s white flesh. “You mean—it could hurt the baby?”
“Well, there’s this policy—the Centers for Disease Control urge permanent removal of Nile-positive chattel from all households containing pregnant women.”
“Removed?” Walter echoed indignantly. “I thought it didn’t cross the pigmentation barrier.”
“That’s probably true.” Grant’s voice descended several registers. “But fetuses, Walter, know what I’m saying? Fetuses, with their undeveloped immune systems. We don’t want to ask for trouble, not with a retrovirus.”
“God, this is depressing. You really think there’s a risk?”
“I’ll put it this way. If my wife were pregnant—”
“I know, I know.”
“Bring Jimmy down here next week, and we’ll take care of it. Quick. Painless. Is Tuesday at two-thirty good?”
Of course it was good. Walter had gone into orthodontics for the flexible hours, the dearth of authentic emergencies. That, and never having to pay for his own kids’ braces. “See you then,” he replied, laying a hand on his shattered heart.
The President strode out of Northeast Federal Savings and Loan and continued toward the derby-hatted Capitol. Such an exquisite building—at least some of the old city remained; all was not glass-faced offices and dull boxy banks. “If we were still on the gold standard, this would be a more normal transaction,” the assistant manager, a fool named Meade, had whined when Abe presented his coins for conversion. Not on the gold standard! A Democrat’s doing, no doubt.
Luckily, Aaron Green, Abe’s Chief Soothsayer and Time-Travel Advisor, had prepared him for the wondrous monstrosities and wrenching innovations that now assailed his senses. The self-propelled railway coaches roaring along causeways of black stone. The sky-high mechanical condors whisking travelers across the nation at hundreds of miles per hour. The dense medley of honks, bleeps, and technological growls.
So Washington was indeed living in its proper century—but what of the nation at large?
Stripped to the waist, two slave teams were busily transforming Pennsylvania Avenue, the first chopping into the asphalt with pick axes, the second filling the gorge with huge cylindrical pipes. Their sweat-speckled backs were free of gashes and scars—hardly a surprise, as the overseers carried no whips, merely queer one-chamber pistols and portable Gatling guns.
Among the clutter at the Constitution Avenue intersection—signs, trash receptacles, small landlocked lighthouses regulating the coaches’ flow—a pair of green arrows commanded Abe’s notice, CAPITOL BUILDING, announced the eastward-pointing arrow, LINCOLN MEMORIAL, said its opposite. His own memorial! So this particular tomorrow, the one fated by the awful Seward Treaty, would be kind to him.
The President hailed a cab. Removing his stovepipe hat, he wedged his six-foot-four frame into the passenger compartment—don’t ride up front, Aaron Green had briefed him—and offered a cheery “Good morning.” The driver, a blowzy woman, slid back a section of the soft rubbery glass. “Lincoln, right?” she called through the opening like Pyramus talking to Thisbe. “You’re supposed to be Abe Lincoln. Costume party?”
“Republican.”
“Where to?”
“Boston.” If any city had let itself get mired in the past, Abe figured, that city would be Boston.
“Boston, Massachusetts?”
“Correct.”
“Hey, that’s crazy, Mac. You’re talking seven hours at least, and that’s if we push the speed limit all the way. I’d have to charge you my return trip.”
The President lifted a sack of money from his greatcoat. Even if backed only by good intentions, twentieth century currency was aesthetically satisfying, that noble profile on the pennies, that handsome three-quarter view on the fivers. As far as he could tell, he and Washington were the only ones who’d scored twice. “How much altogether?”
“You serious? Probably four hundred dollars.”
Abe peeled the driver’s price from his wad and passed the bills through the window. “Take me to Boston.”
“They’re so adorable!” Tanya exclaimed as she and Walter strolled past Sonny’s Super Slaver, a Chestnut Hill Mall emporium second in size only to the sporting goods store. “Ah, look at that one—those big ears!” Recently weaned babies jammed the glass cages, tumbling over themselves, clutching stuffed jackhammers and toy garden hoses. “Could we get one, Pappy?”
As Walter fixed on his daughter’s face, its glow nearly made him squint. “Tanya, I’ve got some bad news. Jimmy’s real sick.”
“Sick? He looks fine.”
“It’s Blue Nile, honey. He could die.”
“Die?” Tanya’s angelic face crinkled with the effort of fighting tears. What a brave little tomato she was. “Soon?”
“Soon.” Walter’s throat swelled like a broken ankle. “Tell you what. Let’s go pick out a whelp right now. We’ll have them put it aside until…”
“Until Jimmy”—a wrenching gulp—“goes away?”
“Poor Jimmy.”
The sweet, bracing fragrance of newborn chattel wafted into Walter’s nostrils as they approached the counter, behind which a wiry Asian man, tongue pinned against his upper lip, methodically arranged a display of Tarbaby Treats. “Now here’s a girl who needs a friend,” he sang out, flashing Tanya a fake smile.
“Our best slave has Blue Nile,” Walter explained, “and we wanted to—”
“Say no more.” The clerk lifted his palms as if stopping traffic. “We can hold one for you clear till August.”
“I’m afraid it won’t be that long.”
The clerk led them to a cage containing a solitary whelp chewing on a small plastic lawn mower, MALE, the sign said, TEN MONTHS. $399.95. “This guy arrived only yesterday. You’ll have him litter trained in two weeks—this we guarantee.”
“Had his shots?”
“You bet. The polio booster’s due next month.”
“Oh, Daddy, I love him,” Tanya gushed, jumping up and down. “I completely love him. Let’s bring him home tonight!”
“No, tomato. Jimmy’d get jealous.” Walter gave the clerk a wink and, simultaneously, a twenty. “See that he gets a couple of really good meals this weekend, right?”
“Sure thing.”
“Pappy?”
“Yes, tomato?”
“When Jimmy dies, will he go to slave heaven? Will he get to see his old friends?”
“Certainly.”
“Like Buzzy?”
“He’ll definitely see Buzzy.”
A smile of pride leaped spontaneously to Walter’s face. Buzzy had died when Tanya was only four, yet she remembered, she actually remembered!