“Hard to see how.”
“Rail workers in Buffalo went on strike a couple of days ago—they pulled switch lights, greased the tracks, and fought a pitched battle with state militia. A police raid on the home of a ringleader turned up dozens of Glocks and a stash of ammunition. At least one Glock was used in an ambush that killed fifteen soldiers.”
“Onslow’s guns?”
“Probably purchased through the Chicago connection. But the City is being blamed for it.”
“So we’re going to San Francisco to speed up the evacuation?”
“Yeah, but I want you two for something more specific. We need to recover a couple of runners.”
“Is one of them the author of the Blackwell letters?”
“Don’t get ahead of yourself. One of the people I want you to find is the asshole who’s writing these letters, but that damage is done—at this point, I don’t care about stopping him. He can live or die on this side of the Mirror as far as I’m concerned. But he has someone with him. Someone who’s under his influence.” Kemp looked like he was about to lapse into another broody silence. “It’s my daughter,” he said. “I need you to help me find my daughter.”
* * *
The depot where they stopped had been built to supply water and fuel for City trains exclusively, and the City people had driven their spur line far enough into the hinterlands of Wyoming that few curiosity-seekers were likely to follow. The land here was spectacularly empty and, Jesse thought, beautiful. A high rolling plain, some of it sandstone-red, much of it a calico print of green buffalo grass and yellow wildflowers. Astride the horizon was a tumbled mountain range, hazy as a faded daguerreotype, and the air was cold even in the sharp spring sunlight, as if it had dallied over glaciers on its journey from the west.
The City people had put a building here, but it was nothing like the Illinois towers. It was little more than a wide, low bunker, next to a tin-roofed wooden outbuilding and a high steel tower on which was mounted something Elizabeth called a “microwave relay repeater.” There was also a paved road, hundreds of yards long but leading nowhere—it was a landing strip, Elizabeth said, but she didn’t know or wouldn’t say whether any airship had ever used it. Kemp sent Jesse and Elizabeth to a room in the bunker with dossiers to read: mainly information about Kemp’s daughter. But the raucous sound of men dismantling equipment for removal proved impossible to ignore, and at Elizabeth’s suggestion they carried their documents away from the building to a quieter place, a grassy mound in the lee of a sandstone outcrop.
Jesse read and reread the pages for most of an hour before he confessed to Elizabeth that there was much in them he simply didn’t understand.
“Okay,” she said. “Well, it’s not really complicated. Mercy Seraphina Kemp, twenty-eight years old. August Kemp’s daughter by his third wife—”
“Kemp seems to have divorced his spouses fairly freely.”
“Rich guy, multiple marriages, trophy wives, old story. He has five kids, but Mercy was the only one from his most recent marriage. It doesn’t say so in the dossier, but according to what I’ve read in People magazine he always doted on her. Private schools, an attempt at a medical degree before she dropped out of Stanford. Bright, athletic, bookish, and since her teen years, political. Spotted at various left-wing demos. She spent a month in Canada lending her name and celebrity status to some aboriginal protest movement.”
“Aboriginal?”
“Indians. The point is, she’s idealistic and she sides with the folks who don’t shop at Hermès or Net-a-Porter. The rebellious aristocrat who embraces the common people. You understand that trajectory?”
“She’s a reformer. Maybe for the purpose of annoying her father?”
“Maybe. They obviously had some kind of falling-out. But that doesn’t mean she’s not sincere.”
Jesse nodded.
“For our purposes,” Elizabeth said, “the important thing is that her activism put her in contact with a man named Theo Stromberg.”
“A Dutchman?”
“Born in Cleveland, so no.”
“And this Theo is suspected of being the author of the Blackwell letters?”
“There’s an appendix to the dossier—”
“I didn’t get that far.”
“Theo Stromberg is a guy in his late thirties with a long history of political activism. He has a poli-sci degree and taught for a while at a community college in California. Wrote a book called The New Hegemony, started a grassroots lobbying collective around campaign finance and regulatory issues. Arrested for civil disobedience more than once. Pretty ballsy guy, actually, with a following well outside the academic left. Maybe a bit of a martyr complex, but not a complete flake. Are you processing all this?”
“More or less.”
“Theo Stromberg’s history intersected with August Kemp’s a few years back. Theo agitated against licensing Mirror technology to private businesses even before Kemp started selling tickets. And Theo wasn’t content to walk a picket line or write an angry blog post. When Kemp opened his first Mirror resort, Theo tried to smuggle himself through.”
“And failed?”
“He got through the Mirror, but they intercepted him while he was still on City property. He was charged with trespassing and reckless endangerment, for which he received a suspended sentence. And when Kemp opened his second resort, our City, apparently Theo tried again.”
“Wouldn’t security have been even more diligent the second time around?”
“They were, but Theo’s not stupid, and he has backers with money. He came through the Mirror as a paying customer with credible credentials. Along with Mercy Seraphina Kemp.”
“They crossed together?”
“Mercy’s been in sporadic contact with Theo Stromberg since she dropped out of college. The relationship is off-and-on but maybe not purely platonic.”
“How long has Kemp known about this?”
“The dossier doesn’t say. Kemp hasn’t had regular contact with Mercy for almost a decade, so not hearing from her wouldn’t have set off any immediate alarms. And nobody identified Theo Stromberg as a runner until fairly recently. I’m guessing the gun-smuggling investigation turned up evidence pointing at Theo and Mercy, who may have been peripherally involved.”
Jesse nodded. “So it’s a dire revelation for Kemp. His rebellious daughter is a runner, and there’s not much time to bring her home.”
“He obviously thinks Mercy is in San Francisco, and he seems to believe we can find her before it’s too late. But yeah, she’s on the wrong side of a closing door.”
“Do you think she means to stay here?”
“Based on her history, I doubt it. But Theo might want to stay. And she might want to stay with Theo.”
“You think it’s her fondness for Theo Stromberg that’s driving her? Or her need to defy her father?”
Elizabeth was slow to reply. Jesse sensed something deeper in the narrative, some implication not recorded in the papers Kemp had been willing to show them, something even Elizabeth was reluctant to discuss.
“She might have other motives,” Elizabeth allowed. “Not all idealism is fake.”
“Back east,” Jesse said, “a runner once told me I ought to ask Kemp a question. He said I ought to ask him who invented the Mirror.” He waited, but Elizabeth didn’t speak. “Is the answer to that question pertinent to Mercy’s motives?”
“I don’t know. It might be. I’m not really supposed to talk about it.”
“But will you?”
She stood up, brushing dust from her trousers. “Maybe later. And you can tell me what you’re so afraid of in San Francisco.”
* * *
The eastbound train arrived at the siding as the sun was crossing the meridian. Jesse and Elizabeth helped escort passengers to their assigned cars, Jesse moving through the crowd of nervous twenty-first-century tourists as he had been taught to move among them back at the City: quietly, wordlessly. Kemp had already spoken to them about the need to return to Illinois, had promised refunds and compensation, but it wasn’t enough to suppress a current of uneasiness. “Like they just figured out this isn’t a giant theme park,” Elizabeth said.