Thomas was scanning the ground for more hoofprints. “Where can I set up my stand?”
“Wherever you want,” Sam said, “as soon as the sap stops flowing.”
“When’s that?”
“A week. Maybe two.”
“Good, they’ll still be hungry then. I should be able to take a few.” Thomas turned to go as Sam double-checked the vacuum pump. She didn’t want to have to come back down if it wasn’t working. “Sorry about Leighton,” he said. “I’ll make sure he takes responsibility for it. You want me to walk you back up to the house?”
“No, I’ve got to turn this pump on.”
“You should get yourself an exoskeleton, Sam. Then you can power right through all this snow. I can get you a discount.”
“There you go again, talking as if I’m rich. You ever stop being a salesman?”
“In my blood,” Thomas confessed. He plodded through the snowdrifts into the trees toward the top of the farm.
When he returned to hunt she planned to ask him, casually, to shoot down any Levellers who came onto the farm. But she knew not to press him after she had insulted his ancestors.
Once Thomas was out of sight, Sam took a pail down from a hook and began scooping sap out of the collection tank and into two blue storage barrels, each the size of a wine cask. She scooped pail after pail, the sap sloshing about. She was thinking about her father again, how he had bought the land as an attorney, how he brought it into the family. She didn’t like how he had run the farm, when he’d pumped the animals full of antibiotics and scattered DDT over the land, but when he passed, he bequeathed the property to her, and she had improved upon it. Make me proud, he had written in his will, as I know you will. His parting words a gift and an expectation. An expectation that would not be met, now.
She filled up the second barrel of sap and then attached a line to each barrel, her hands resting on her knees from the exertion. She now had to turn on the pump, which she had coded to automatically adjust to shifting sap pressures in the trees throughout the maples, a sort of mechanical mirror of the natural processes of the grove, the rise and fall of the xylem and phloem. She had thought about patenting her system but instead uploaded it to a forum for anyone to use for free. Moving through the pump’s interface, she configured it to send the sap through a different system of pipes up the hill to the evaporator, which would reduce the liquid down to syrup by boiling off the water. She flipped the switch and was pleased to see the pump working properly. Then she bolted a padlock to the door of the hut before starting up the hill.
The wind was buffeting the slope, and already Sam could tell that the trees would frost tonight. This would be good, ensuring another full day of tapping tomorrow. Except it also made the snow stickier as it began to freeze underfoot. She felt ice crystals forming on her eyebrows as she pushed through the foliage. It was growing cold. Very cold. Each step felt like she was breaking through the skein of a half-frozen pond.
Tap, tap, tap. In the growing dark she heard the gentle tap of a yellow-bellied sapsucker digging into a maple tree. She listened for the bird’s squawk but it didn’t cry out. Sam once considered the birds a threat to her grove until she learned that they tended to tap the sickliest trees and frequent one sapwell over the course of a season.
Tap, tap, tap. She heard it again, but strangely it came from another tree farther up the hill. Tap, tap, tap, tap. And another far beyond that.
Something was implanting a blaze into the tree, she realized. Above her she saw a silhouette flitting through the topmost branches in the obscurity. The Levellers could fly through the canopy entirely without lighting. Each Leveller drone had flexible, rotating wings and four hollow legs that dangled down beneath them, which they could beat together like wind chimes. Now one spotted Sam, and beamed a soft blue light down upon her face, gauging her identity. The rest of the Levellers responded to her biometrics by playing music on their chimes. The vibrations started low, an Irish folk song mashed together with an old gospel hymn. Other Levellers rubbed their chimes together like violins. Now it sounded like children humming through the trees, a sonorous, bluesy dirge. As if sourced from the heart of the grove itself.
She knew the song, too. Her father had sung it for her before tucking her in to sleep each night. They say it’s different for everyone, Thomas had said. He had not said it would be beautiful. He had not said the Levellers would sift through her own memories of this land and play them back for her as they stole it.
More and more sap was spilling down the icy hillside, as still other Levellers in the flock lasered the PVC lines.
“You can’t take this from me!” Sam shouted up at them. “This is my home! It’s not fair! It’s not fair to anyone!”
Still she heard the chimes, the woods filling with the immanent music of the Levelled. The blazes suddenly illuminated one by one through the grove, a string of green lights spilling down the hillside like ecological beacons onto her farm. Onto her father’s farm. Onto her daughter’s farm, which she would soon abandon like a vagrant. She sank down in the snow as the cold sap washed over her knees like milk.
NO POINT TALKING
Geoff Ryman
It’s like a poison that takes over these women’s minds. Candy and I were happy back in Lubbock. We went to church—we had a woman minister! It weren’t no hell on earth for anybody.
I needed to go where the work was and we heard about these jobs coming up in wind farms. I thought they was in East California. Got there, found out they’re in the west, Sonoma County. You can pretty near call it the People’s Republic of San Francisco. We drove the pickup all the way from Texas, the kids in the backseat. We sponge-washed in gas stations and ate cheese sandwiches.
They put us in a trailer park. Row on row of the things, looks like they been there since the seventies. Drove through that gate, I wanted to cry. They got us living with Central Valley fruit pickers and they’re all Mexican. All of them headed north when California split.
East Cal misses out LA but then cuts to the coast and runs solid all along the Mexican border. Conservatives closed it and pushed the new Interstate Passports through Congress. Means you got to have proof of citizenship before you can cross state lines. So them Mexicans, if they get into one state, they can’t get into another.
Except West Cal said they’d let them in passports or no passports. I’d say serve them right, except it means Candy and I have to live with them.
You remember white people. We built this damn country. We spoke English, remember English? Hell, we even celebrated Christmas, in the privacy of our own homes, mind. Wouldn’t want to offend anybody.
They tell us we got an Induction. Induction, you know, where they start out nice and let on real slow how bad they’re going to screw you. Candy and I walk to the Residents Office and all I see is truckloads of Mexicans and women holding hands. Everybody’s equal in West California—we all live like white trash.
Four new engineers, one of them a woman in a red tartan shirt and a crew cut. Nice Asian lady comes in, tells we us all work for the Cooperative, praise the Lord.
First thing she says, “Can you give me your name and your preferred gender identifier?”
I say right back, “What do I look like to you, lady? You want to check my balls?”
“No, sir, I do not. I’m happy to call you ‘he.’ Or any other name you’d like.”
Then they ask Candy the same. “‘She’ will do me just fine for me. What are the alternatives?” She smiles sideways at me; I know she thinks it’s all a big joke.
They tell us they got fourteen different genders. So I say, “No, you don’t! Check it out! You only got two different kinds of wedding gear.”
That got me a laugh. She starts explaining all these words they got. Zie, they…I don’t know what all. She starts telling us that her little girl wants to be a boy so they are getting the surgery in early. “It’s best to do it before secondary sex characteristics develop.”
I laugh, caus
e it’s so crazy, but then I say, “Do you mind not talking about this stuff in front of my kids?”
She says, “Of course.” These people? Never fight you back direct.
We’re working for minimum wage just in case you thought socialists paid more—turbine engineers, fruit pickers even Asian Lady all get the same money. Of course my job means I got to truck up and down most of the state from Crescent City to Monterey. Won’t see my kids much.
They assign us work partners. They give me the lady in the checked shirt. I go back to Asian and say, “Could you give me another partner? I just don’t think we’ll get along. I’d be more comfortable if it was a man.”
Well they liked that. “Of course, we understand,” they say, nodding, like I’m a sad person they need to take care of. They give me this guy Jake. He’s in the same red checked shirt as the dyke but he’s got a big bushy beard, so I reckon he’s still got his cojones intact.
I get Candy back into the trailer and I say, “These people are nuts. We got ourselves two new conservatives in the US Senate, but what we’ve actually gone and done is set up a feminist utopia.”
Candy says, “Don’t worry, honey, I got that childcare idea for us. I’ll put up some posters. We’ll save up till you get another job then we move south.” Candy? You know—that woman could have been anything she wanted.
We get a visit from Asian. She looks so pleased with Candy. “It’s fantastic you want to help with childcare.” Fantastic: that’s socialist for we’re going take it over. They’re going to register Candy—make sure she doesn’t have sex with kids—and then they’ll “help” her find “clients”. Money goes guess where and they just pay her, uh-huh, the minimum wage. Candy doesn’t get to set up a business for herself, oh no. We might get independent.
While Asian’s there she starts signing us up for the healthcare, and asks me if I sleep with men. I have had it. I just start yelling. “We can find our own goddamned doctor, we don’t need you to do anything for us!”
She says it’s not voluntary in the state of West California.
That’s socialism for you. Man, I cannot wait to get out.
You live with crazy people, you just keep your head down and do your job. Every day I drive. Climb up those mills, crawl around inside. I get home the next night, nine, ten p.m. All those women won’t leave after childcare, and their kids are still there. All I want to do is drink a beer and talk to my wife.
I hear my little girl Mariah and she’s talking zie, zot, F to M. I get mad and I say “You thinking of becoming a boy then, Mariah?” Candy gets mad. The women shoot me these looks. I don’t care. I’d talk to my beer if I could get one but the Coop don’t stock alcohol.
I stick it all through that summer, into fall. Then they close the camp. All those Mexicans just stop work, go live in San Francisco for Christmas. Me, I got to stay here keep driving out to Santa Rosa or Napa and keep those the turbines turning.
I get back home, Candy comes and asks me. “Do you mind if we go the city, too? They got classes and plays. It’ll be better for the girls’ development.”
I want my little girls to do the best they can. The wind’s blowing, the camp’s empty. I say yeah, okay. They go on a Greyhound bus, waving bye-bye and looking so happy to be gone. It’s raining.
I can’t find anybody to talk to. There’s no guys, you know what I mean? I go to the social center… not a bar you understand, no way, a social center, and see Jake and a bunch of guys so I sit with them, and we talk baseball for a while. Thank God. Then Jake takes hold of this guy’s hand and says they want to go to Pride in Turkey or Russia or somewheres. I can’t stop myself saying, “If you like it so much why don’t you go live there?” I reckon there’s no point so I stand up and go back to the trailer.
At Christmas I go see Candy and the girls. The whole place is covered in trees and tinsel. They got street fairs. Got a joint Muslim, Jewish, Christian, and Winter Solstice Celebration. A huge big parade with Day of the Dead dancers, marching Golems, letters for the Koran all swirling, you know, holograms. Satan Claus—they got him, just no Jesus Christ. Police in bikinis—and those are the men. Never saw so many men in their underpants. Lots more women pushing baby buggies than I’m used to as well. We see this sign “Dog Reading.” Candy asks the bouncer what’s that and he says they know what words both dogs and their owners understand—so they’re having a poetry reading for people and dogs at the same time. The girls loved it. The dogs looked mournful.
I go to the girl’s ballet class show. They only been in two weeks, but there they are dancing like swans, making their Daddy proud. “What’s this costing?” I ask Candy. Nothing. Other people are paying for us. They give my little girls presents, gifts for low-income families. I don’t want to be no low-income family. They gave Mariah and Cathie a tablet and a stream for Frozen.
I say, “I’m terribly sorry, girls, but those presents are going to have to go back.”
Candy says, “Hewett, can you and me have a word?”
When we’re outside she stabs me with her fingernails. “Those girls are keeping their presents,” I start to say something, she talks over me. “They love that movie. We can’t give them anything else, Hewett, we got to let them keep them. It’s Christmas!”
“We don’t need nothing about Christmas from those people. I don’t need them to give my daughters presents.”
“I don’t care what you need. They need a tablet for school.” Candy’s jaw sticks out. “I won’t stand for it.”
I know my wife. She says something like that, she means it.
“Okay, For the girls. But we get out of this state.”
“Fine, fine, it makes no difference, Hewett. Don’t you see that?”
No point talking.
Next day we get into the pickup. The girls look sad to be going. They get into the car hugging their presents. I don’t know how many times they watch Frozen in the backseat, singing those songs till I’m sick of them.
Back in Sonoma, I start calling everybody, anybody who might have a job.
I get Tony from back home. He’s down in East Cal. In high school, we were both on the team. “Hey bud,” he says “I was going to call you. They’re going to be opening up a big wind farm down at Camp Pendleton.”
East Cal practically keeps West Cal going by buying electricity from them. So East Cal’s set up in the same business, beat them at their own game.
I say. “You buying their turbines, too? They make ’em up here.”
He says, “Hell no, we’ll get ’em from Denmark or China anywhere else but. We’re not keeping those faggots in business.”
I laugh. “What about buying American?”
And he says, “Those people aren’t American. We got our state militia. Sooner or later we’ll just have to go in there and clean it up.”
He thinks he can get me a job on the turbines and tells me where to fill in an application online. “Come and work for the good guys.”
Candy’s been listening. “What does he mean state militia? Does he want a war?” She shakes her head. She never liked Tony or Lizzie that much anyways.
Two days later Tony skypes me back. He’s a bit drunk. “They like you, buddy. They ask me about you, I tell ’em you already repair the things. They say you can start now, no interview, but you got to get down here right away.”
I tell Candy. Her face drops like she’s swallowed a boot.
I talk to her about sunshine, show her the harbor at Oceanside, all the houses that opened up once they threw out the Mexicans. Show her the church we’d be going to, show her their Christmas party. She just stares.
I go tell Asian. She tells me, “You’re breaking your contract.”
I tell her that’s too bad but I want this job, I got to have it.
“Well watch out. They don’t have our job security or healthcare.”
I can see her thinking. We taught you how to fix the turbines. Now you’re going to go help…the enemy.
Damn right, lady.
Next morning I got the truck all packed. Somehow I squeeze all the girls’ clothes in one big pink suitcase; found room for a couple of spare batteries. It’s six a.m. but all these women show up and some of them bring their babies for Candy to kiss. They got balloons and cake. Mariah’s teacher shows up with a bunch of vouchers for books and movies. Asian comes out and asks me to reconsider. I’m sitting in the front seat ready to drive and I hear this clatter from the trunk.
Candy’s hauling the big pink suitcase and her own black bag. I shout, “What do you think you’re doing?” She don’t answer. I tear out of the car back to the trailer.
She’s fumbling with the keys. She tells me, “I’m not going, Hewett.”
I say, “What, you crazy?”
“No,” she says. “I don’t want to go. I like it here, I got friends. The girls have got friends. They got their school, Hewett.”
I start trying to pull her back, she jerks away. “I’m not going in that truck again! It’s the same damn job! Only no healthcare.”
Well I don’t take shit from anybody, and I cuss her out and tell her not to expect nothing from me no more. I grab hold of Mariah and shout at her, “Get back in the truck!” And she starts crying and runs to her Mom, and then Asian butts in wants to do some counseling. Candy wraps her arms around the girls. Kids stand there looking back and forth between us like it’s tennis.
I start saying, “Please don’t do this baby, please. I love you, you’re my lady.”
Candy shakes her head. “Not going.”
I shout at all of them, all those women. “You see? You see what you done?” My hands are shaking; I pull out the plug from the side of the pickup. “All right! Stay here, then!” I throw open the door. “Come between a man and his family. God damn you all to hell!” I get so mad I just get in the truck and drive.
I get to Oceanside. There’s this Vietnamese owner. He starts giving me the Induction. Two months trial, no promises, three bucks fifty an hour, no limit on hours but all the beer you can drink.
Welcome to Dystopia Page 11