“Okay,” I said, and sat on the floor and had the boy read it to me from the paper. I proceeded to transfer the amount, half of the total the man had wanted. Once the fees were taken out, it was slightly less than what I had promised. But I was positive it would do the trick. I handed the boy the screen and smiled. I gave the thumbs up, and he smiled back. Even when cannibalizing, people had no choice but to pretend to be good to each other. When the moment of horror came, when the violence descended, it would be preceded by deceit and depersonalization. It was easy to see we were near there in the boy’s face.
“Come with me,” said the boy as the woman chatted to him. They were taking us out. Deven grumbled that we were being betrayed. But we went eagerly. We were glad to be above ground again in the night with swirling lights and street noises, the smell of some sweetness in the air like honeysuckle.
Instead of the slaughterhouse, a stretch porter pulled up and parked in front of the stall of some carnival barker hawking fireworks. The boy opened the door while the black-haired woman looked into the distance and nervously smiled. The street denizens seemed not to notice or care as we ducked inside the porter.
The driver was the old man of the bank account, Ercules, I assumed. I tried out my hunch.
“Hola, Ercules.”
He turned in profile and acknowledged us from the front seat.
“There you can have beers and water and other refreshes,” he said, gesturing with the side of his rubbery mouth to the small refrigerated bar built into the partition in front of us.
After a couple of minutes we had abandoned the built-up coastal strip of the ferry port and were driving in darkness, seemingly guided by starlight navigation. When I craned forward to see, there was a positioner map on Ercules’s dash with a satellite view of land features and roads.
“Where are we going?” asked Deven loudly, without moving. He slumped over against Gretchen, pulling on a bottle of La Reina lager.
“The casino del desierto,” responded Ercules. We all looked at each other, calibrating our shared horror.
“Drink, my friend,” said Ercules, directing himself at me suddenly.
“I’ll just have water,” I said.
He handed me a bottle of imported Antarctic melt.
“Me at your service. Complimentos,” he said.
The desert casino was a sprawling complex of low-lying, bunker-like structures with no advertising except a small metal logo with a tasteful green light next to the massive, gated entrance. An armed human and a dog chimera came out of a fortified bunker that rose out of the earth as we approached. The chimera howled. Ercules lowered his driver-side window and spoke a few whispered words that I tried to hear. The porter slowly inched forward and then parked. We were about a hundred yards from the main buildings. There was no sign of human activity. There was nothing except an artificial silence, the kind achieved by terrain irradiation, a sterile bio-zone. The landscape was extremely lunar. We had to pass through a complex of detectors. We did eye scans and instant DNA swabs with an attending bot before the main door. After an interminable wait, it finally slid open.
Loud, buzzing music and laughter assaulted our ears after the silence of the main entrance. A man in a ponytail and a reconstructed face, bad alignment job around the nose and jawline, tore himself away from a conversation to listen to Ercules, look at the three of us and wave us inside enthusiastically.
“Welcome to the Harvey Sonora,” he said.
Rows of virtual gamers leaned and bobbed to the blinking lights of their masks. Tables of roulette wheels and long banqueting arrangements filled the space in front of us. On a raised, distant stage a mariachi band played, accompanied by a sultry, winking, tropical seductress belting out the verses of El Imperfecto. Gorging at the tables were large groups of heavyset, older tourists in their loosely knit vacation regalia, many from Southern Asian or Middle Eastern locations, apparently flown in to experience an authentic New World setting for the night, before continuing on to Machu Pichu and the River Plate. The sterile sense of hormone-fortified, augmented fun in large groups was readily apparent, and the air was thick with synthetic scent, almost sickening, compared to the pure, starlit night from which we’d entered. Many of the gamers lay back in their seats as they played, men and women orgasming en masse as if it was the equivalent of blowing your nose or wiping your lips.
Ercules led us past the tables, down the rows of blinking lights, through the crowd of silly, leisure-seeking humanity. At a table near the stage he sighted someone and picked up the pace, heading for it. A middle-aged, bearded man in a camouflage military outfit -- epaulieres and rows of medals on his chest -- sat in a group of men in baggy, unpressed leisure suits, oiled hair and diamond studded artifexes embedded in their forearms. The women were half naked and had tattoos of intricate, selvatic motifs festooning their backs and shoulders. From time to time they dipped their hands in bowls of moldering fruit and slithering treats and drank from large goblets of wine. Waiters hovered nearby, ready to replenish their food and beverage.
“Wait here,” said Ercules.
I stopped. Deven and Gretchen came to either side of me. We watched as Ercules approached the man in the uniform at the head of the table. Behind him, on stage, the singer was finishing her act, and the crowd seemed not to notice or care as she thanked them and waved at the tables. Some people cheered politely. Announcements of open spots at the gaming tables and VR stalls came over the public address system. An emcee with a pencil-thin moustache came onstage. He looked like he once might have enjoyed some celebrity status and was now happy to have any sort of gig in front of a mic. He announced the name of the next act, and they wasted no time getting out from behind the curtains at the back. Grupo Fogata, an all girl alt-spunk band with hints of Brazilian metal and house jazz. Like the audience, the music seemed calculated and canned, but maybe it was just the filtered, conditioned air affecting my judgement. I thought it might have been laced with demethylated oxygen to sedate the awareness of identity and enhance a sense of mass belonging, a feeding and sharing, a lack of care, caution or self-awareness in which the augmented normally swam.
Ercules stated his case and backed away, cowering, it seemed to me, from the military man's table. I watched as they resumed their previous poses of disengaged decadence. We sulked in an awkward group by the stage as Grupo Fogata did their synchronized dip step, at an accelerated 160 beats per minute.
“What is the name of this song?” asked Gretchen.
“I don’t know. It does sound familiar.”
“It’s times like these I wish I was augmented.”
It was catchy, and quite a few people ventured out between the tables and flexed their dance moves. I wanted nothing more than to sleep. Ercules had the look of a man about to abandon all hope. He was incapable of sustaining eye contact with any of us. Even Deven was fidgeting with the realization we all shared -- we might be stuck in the casino with no exit plan in mind. Finally the man in the uniform tore his focus away from his companions. Our presence demanded action on his part, something he seemed reluctant to undertake, judging by his pained facial expression. He seemed to be consumed by the idea of battle heroics, a throwback to a previous generation of military thinking. Nowadays, with the asymmetrical nature of conflict, most serious military characters wore clothes that truly hid them among the populace instead of making them stand out in an overt way. I expected him to tell us to go away and stop intruding on his fun, like we were extras from a VR set that did not jibe with the script.
But he surprised us. He called Ercules over, waving the fingers of his upturned hand together. Then he had Ercules explain. Meanwhile he smiled, his face red from the exertion of maintaining a positive disposition.
“He will love you to join the table,” said Ercules. The waiters brought in three chairs and placed them around the table, sealing the deal despite Ercules’s incorrigible sense of doubt, and then the military man pointed to where he wanted us to sit.
"T
omen asiento," he said.
Ercules disappeared.
I sat next to the general. He turned to me and smiled that red-faced, strenuous smile. He spoke no English, but passed me a bowl of what looked like fruit, but was some kind of sponge cake. The minute I put a piece in my mouth it fizzed. My thoughts seemed accelerated, and I could make out the language processes of several others at the table, as if they were all talking over each other. It was obvious that the sponge cake was some kind of mind-melding, fermented ergot product, an organic lysergic acid precursor. At first I was panicked, like being thrown into the deep end of a pool and not knowing how to swim, but eventually I kicked myself over to the edge, so to speak, and listened. There was fruit, astronomy, color and assorted childhood games, all jumbled up with no apparent order. Then, slowly, I began to perceive certain words such as hands, electric, guilt, alone, and a line of logic trending in a certain evolutionary direction, as if the general, and that is how I genuinely thought of him at that point, as a man of great rank, was directing traffic in some subtle yet even-handed way.
“You are tourists?” asked the general, smiling at me. I looked around the table quickly. I didn’t want anyone to think I was in on the game. I felt guilty, at the gateway to madness.
“No, actually, not,” I said.
“It would be better for you if you were. He does not like journalists,” he said dourly. The shift in tone, and the knowledge that he had known my provisional answer ahead of time, unnerved me.
“Here, take some food. You are hungry. You and your friends have a long journey ahead of you.”
The food he offered was the bowl of insect life; some of it seemed still alive. They were an engineered cockroach-crayfish hybrid, which crunched between the teeth. The general smiled as he chewed and spit out bits he didn’t want onto the floor. I could not refuse. I looked at Deven as he shook his head in disbelief at my choices, as if I were going over to the devil. But I needed to get on the general’s wavelength if I wanted answers to my questions. My main one was if there was or not a direction to the table’s thoughts.
“How is it you are not augmented?” asked the general, reading my mind again, uncannily.
“Voluntary remission. Grandfathered under the treaty of Sedona with the Democravian Federation,” I said.
“And your friends? Also Democravian officials?”
“No, these are artistic exemptions. Now can I ask you something? What is happening here? Who are you?”
“Marcos Perez Maldetodo.”
We exchanged stares. His eyes turned a dark hazel. It was clear he was rooted, with deeper leverage in the moment. I was straining for advantage. I had no choice but to smile and ask another question.”
“Are you militarily connected to the Azueto administration?”
“No.”
“Repho?”
“I was once a contractor with Hufftalent Hartwell Corporation.”
Hartwell were the security contractors who had run the Repho’s information leak operations for the last decade.
"Infiltration and counter-espionage," I said, taking a stab in the dark.
“Correcto. With franchising possibilities in sub-prime locations. But they have not been in touch. I think they were bought out by Sandelsky. But in any case I maintain the casino. It keeps me busy. While communication difficulties are resolved.”
“Or not.”
“Or as the center cannot hold, so the communication links grow dim and then disappear,” said the General.
“But you have the Augment,” I added.
“So in a sense we are in touch. Yet no, we do not have the Augment as you coneive of it. But the convergence has accelerated the final end times. We want a part of that. We want it. And you want to see David. Why?”
I told him about my father and his books. He seemed less than impressed.
“I am sure you will find it. The Saint’s collection is truly world-class. But in order to do this, I must ask you to do us a favor. The Saint is very secretive. We need more information then he is willing to give us on the open exchanges. He has been difficult to handle, if you would, and I must ask you to wear a multisensor. One or more of you at all times.”
“You want us to spy for you?
“It is very important to know what David plans. There is a bunker mentality, which threatens the stability of the entire world system. You and I and David and everybody. We are all one.”
Actually we were all the many. The many faces of God. It was strange to have such a revelation at such a time, but then again it might have been the bastardized nature of the truth inside the desert casino. I was not one to question it. So I agreed to the general’s request.
I spent the night in the Alamo, a suite with jacuzzi included, along with on-call bot mates and piped in sounds of the gravity field, transcribed by the Sierra Madre Observatory’s Bosun Detector Array, courtesy of Union Colgate Pharmabros. I slowly stirred under the thick sheets. The air conditioner was turned on full blast. I remembered being brought to the rooms, but not much else. I could read the nanoscreen output, so I knew where I was and what amenities were available. My first thought was for Corrag. I thought I sensed her in the vicinity. We were close. The strangeness was increasing, and it was quite possible, if not likely, that she was nearby. I knew she had been in Puerto Vallarta for some festival in the recent past.
I showered under the hot spray. It reminded me of Palm Springs in its Democravian heyday, with the Santa Anna winds billowing the silks on the golf course. I looked at the little bottles of emollients lined up above the sink speakers. Then I dressed in a change of clothes I took out from my backpack and went out on the balcony. Deven and Gretchen were already up, sitting at the small table with plates of papaya and cups of espresso. A bot with clear, latex skin shining in the slant of sunlight served me a plate of the papaya with a slice of lemon on the side and asked me if I wanted coffee. The sun’s rays were still reddening the fat, milk-white horizon. I shook my head.
“What’s happening?” I asked Deven.
“You slept like a log,” he said.
“The transfusion,” I said. “Was I the only one?”
“We refused,” said Gretchen.
I sat down at the remaining spot around the small, circular, molybdenum table and glanced from one to the other. This meant that I was different from them, either significantly changed so as to be forever apart from their understanding, or a hint of a twist in our journey that could yet be rendered useful to our mutual aims. It wasn’t clear to me. Maybe it wasn’t clear to them. They seemed happy to be absorbed in the moment under my inquiring gaze, now enhanced and feeding the intelligence apparatus of General Maldetodo’s private army.
Four days went by with rounds of swimming in the cascading pools of the Grand Canyon gymnasium and therapeutic sessions with the bot sex workers. At night we had drinks on the balcony, shot glasses overflowing with the best of Bauza, aged in oak casks right on the grounds, according to the nano-screen. Deven and I had major differences in opinion. He wanted to confront the general on the use of biocidal soaps in the bathrooms. He wanted reparations for the Yaqui, even though the dancers who performed for the tourists were clearly well fed and no longer running ultra-marathons for a living. Wasn’t that a step forward in human progress? I argued. I was buying time for the general. I knew he was finding an appropriate moment for the insertion, because it behooved us to trust him. How I knew this, I can’t say. It just came to me. In a way, the general’s multisensor worked in two directions, feeding me with insights about his intelligence capabilities and motivations.
One of the swimmers in the pool did the backstroke through the third to last cascade. It was a cloudy morning and windy. Gretchen clutched herself around the ribs. She looked tired and brave. I wanted to say something to her to signify how much she still meant to me. I couldn’t think of the appropriate words. She and Deven had managed to break through and forge a relationship. They were close. It didn’t bother me. I was happy
for both of them. My two dearest friends, and now I had brought them together. She smiled and swung her feet in the water. I sat down beside her. The water was warm, of course, to offset the sudden chill in the morning air.
“Maybe today will be the day,” I said.
“The day for what, Ricky?” She looked at me and held a smile. From a distance a chasm had opened between us. That smile did pain me. There was a loss involved. I would never be the same without her. I was feeling old. I looked at the swimmer going through the cascade and thought how we were all sliding along in the invisible currents and never going back again. I would have liked some companionship, and now, with her smile, she was showing me how distant she was. I swung my feet next to hers and rippled the water.
“For the general.”
“I don’t believe in that any more, Ricky. We’ll just be staying here from now on, in the casino.”
“Well, if we wanted to, maybe.”
“Why maybe? There’s a lot of maybes. You used to be Mr. Certain for us, Ricky. What happened? Just look at this. So comfortable and yet so implausible, right?”
“Look, I know you’re angry.”
“Angry? Why? There’s nothing to be angry about.”
“We used to…”
“No. Don’t use that tone with me, Ricky. Please. It’s just…”
“It’s my fault. Maybe if we could go back to Sealscroft. It would be like last year, just simple again. I’d be doing my writing and you’d be reading, sketching.”
“That’s the problem. We never did anything. Deven says that Cape Town is nice. I want to see what that’s like.”
“Deven? You don’t get it. Life with Deven is impossible. He’s had three wives. He beats them.”
“He’s passionate. He has beliefs. What do you believe in, Ricky? Just yourself.”
“That’s not true. That’s a lie. Belief is what you do when you're not relevant anymore. Life is survival, hanging on until the spring. Until the weather improves, until the fog clears. Hanging on. Together. That's what you believe in.”
The Saints of David (The Jonah Trilogy Book 3) Page 16