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“This is new,” Bing said respectfully. “And very exciting. You’re planning a family soon?” He might have been talking to his schoolteacher, not his own brother.

“Sooner the better,” Goog said. “Somebody’s gotta do it. You’re hardly up and at ’em with the ladies. And our sister’s a hole.”

“You know I don’t like that word,” Savannah said.

“I don’t like being called a scabbie, either,” Goog said. “I’ve manned up about it. You can’t honestly expect me to call you a stimulation consultant with a straight face.”

“I have a degree,” she insisted quietly.

“A community college degree in a subject that comes naturally to any slit who can lie on her back. Listen, I know it’s asking a lot, but could I have a real glass?” The rest were passing the cognac. Bing lunged to the kitchen. “Like I was saying. Seems I’ll have to carry the procreative can. And I’ll spring for more than one, too. Because having kids is patriotic.”

“Seriously,” Nollie said. “You’ll have children to improve the country’s age structure.”

“Why’s that so far-fetched?” Goog said. “This generation’s been biggin’ lazy in the reproduction department. The birthrate plummeted in the thirties, fine, but it should have recovered by now. Building into a real problem down the line.”

“Yeah, we’re lazy,” Fifa said. “After fifteen hours of slog on splug jobs, netting the bus fare home for our trouble, we should be fucking all night, just to breed the next generation of little taxpayers.” She was slooped. But even sober, Fifa’s reaction to her own fearfulness was defiance. Willing would need to watch her.

“So what’s up with your parents?” Willing interceded.

“Dad’s two years from sixty-eight,” Goog said. “Then he’ll be sitting pretty.”

People used to dread being put out to pasture. Desperate to qualify for entitlements, these days everyone couldn’t wait to be old.

“Also,” Goog added, “some of those investments he made during the Renunciation, and held on to over my mom’s dead body? They’ve biggin’ appreciated.”

“That’s really great for the country, then,” Willing said.

“Why’s it not great for my dad?” Goog asked sharply.

“Eighty-five percent capital gains.” Willing beamed.

“Yeah, well. Everybody gotta do their fair share, right?”

“Absolutely,” Willing agreed. “Their fair share.

Goog scrutinized his cousin for signs of irony. Willing’s expression was impenetrably pleasant.

Goog leaned back in the recliner again. “I think Dad’s enjoying being back in the department at Georgetown. Even if it’s an honorary position, and he only lectures one night a week. Trouble is, his area of expertise—debt, inflation, and monetary policy—has been kind of wiped out. Fucking NIMF controls all that now, why they deep-sixed the Federal Reserve. Fucking country doesn’t have a monetary policy anymore—”

“Or debt,” Willing added. “Or inflation.”

“Point is, it’s not his fault—”

“Not his fault having been wrong.” Willing should really keep his mouth shut.

“Not his fault having been overtaken by events,” Goog said.

“If the US had participated in the bancor from the beginning, instead of negotiating from a position of desperation in ’34, we might have avoided the depression.”

Depression is just a word.”

“I bet for the people who starved to death it didn’t feel like just a word.”

“So Dad likes being back to teaching again?” Savannah said, peacekeeping.

“Yeah,” Goog said, calming down. “I guess you could call the appointment a sinecure. Still, it means something to the guy. This is off the record, but I like to think I had something to do with it. I notified the university that because of certain irregularities in all that foreign financing—joint is all backed by Beijing, why the student body is lousy with platefaces—their tax-exempt status was in peril. Administration fell all over themselves to be of service.”

“You never told me that,” Savannah said.

“I’m telling you that now. But you repeat it, you’ll be audited up the asshole.” Goog’s delivery was jocular. No one else seemed to find the advisory funny.

“And your mother?” Willing had maXfleXted Avery last week. He was plenty up to date on her life. Savannah was right: stick to safe subjects.

Goog rolled his eyes. “Truth is, we don’t talk much.”

“She didn’t want you to join the Scab,” Savannah said.

“No, she didn’t want me to join the BSCA. Which makes her a biggin’ yunk. Best idea I ever had. So much for advice at your mother’s knee. Anyway, you know she got that do-gooding bug. Only got worse after your mother died, Wilbur. Like she had to carry on the same splug tradition. So she’s started some ‘youth food bank’ in the District. Biggin’ wrongheaded.”

“Why?” Savannah asked.

“Demotivates,” Goog said officiously. “Why does she think we eliminated welfare except for the disabled? Half of them are shirkers, too. Sprained their pinkies.”

“The medical exams for disability are pretty grueling,” Nollie said.

Goog waved her off and took a slug from his glass. “I don’t know what we’re going to do about the strikers. Numbers go up every year. Filthy slumbers, too. Makes my blood boil. I’m not saying it should be against the law—”

“You’re just saying it should be against the law,” Savannah said.

“Maybe the Scab should start importing black people from Africa in big long boats,” Fifa said. “There’s enough of them—two and a half billion! No one in Lagos would miss them.”

“You got one serious attitude problem, honey,” Goog said.

“A bad attitude should be against the law, too, I guess,” Fifa said.

“I’m sick of this.” Goog leaned down into Fifa’s face. “America is not a police state. This is a free country, and you can say whatever you fucking well want. I’ve had it up to the gills with people like you, always mouthing off about ‘oppression’ and ‘subjugation’ and ‘tyranny.’ So you’re expected to do your part, to help keep this economy’s show on the road, and what’s wrong with that? Nothing wrong with people over sixty-eight getting medical care, either, or drawing a modest stipend from a retirement system they’ve paid into their whole lives—”

“They didn’t pay enough in,” Fifa said, “to cover sitting around and falling apart for longer than they worked—

“So just because you have to contribute to the same system,” Goog plowed on, “doesn’t mean you live under the heel of goose-stepping Nazis, got it?”

“Could have fooled me,” Fifa said smoothly. “Didn’t you threaten Savannah with ‘auditing her up the asshole’? So go ahead. Audit my butt off. You won’t find anything kicking around my chip but digital dust bunnies.”

“I could have you re-chipped. On the premise that yours has been hacked—”

“I thought it was unhackable.”

“It can be hacked in the old sense of the word—hacked out. It’s not enjoyable.”

“Ooh, ooh, go ahead,” Fifa said, offering Goog the serrated knife for sawing their stale French bread.

“You’re slooped,” Goog said disdainfully.

“Gloriously,” Fifa said, taking another slug of Goog’s cognac straight from the bottle—hygienically, dead uncruel. “Wanna hear some real freedom of speech? I think strikers are heroes. If I had any guts, I’d stop fetching some Bay Ridge bitch her stinky slippers, layering other stiffs’ miserable sandwiches, and anchoring guardrails for the walking dead. I’d put my feet up, too. Anything but drudge like a dray horse for scabbies like you.”