“Of course you do,” Fifa said impatiently. “It’s called terrorism. Which isn’t only the ploy of religious lunatics. It’s a tool of the state. It works by making examples of a handful of people, and then there’s a multiplier effect of scaring everyone else shitless. Terrorism is a money saver. The Scab is a terrorist organization, but so was the IRS—the old initials just didn’t have the resources to stick an emotional cattle prod up your ass on the same scale. Nothing’s changed.”
He took a different tack. “But all the companies are owned by foreigners. Even the old national parks. Elysian Fields is owned by a corporation in Laos. Unless you’re a doctor, or a pharmaceutical researcher, the only jobs available are the drear ones you and I do now. What can we look forward to? And then the likes of my aunt Avery and uncle Lowell—you know, like your parents—all they do is talk about how great everything used to be and how splug it is now. So why not come with me? If only for an adventure. The worst that could happen is we get there, we can’t get in, and we come home.”
“That’s not the worst that can happen. They can throw you in jail for trying to defect. And talk about working for foreigners—all those commercial prisons are also owned by Asians, and they drive you like dogs, not for 23 percent of your pay, but for dick. You’ve no idea what you’re risking.”
Fifa’s defiance had always rung hollow. But they’d seen each other for three years. His impassioned appeal was an obligation, and so was hers.
“The shooting at Elysian,” she said. “It’s left you rattled. That makes sense. Having a brush against… Well. It makes you take stock. I’m glad you’re okay, though Nollie’s right: I think you should have let him finish what he started. He was doing God’s work. But that scene having fucked your head up doesn’t mean you should do anything crazy—”
“Agency,” Willing said. “That’s what I discovered this afternoon. That I could do something. In the United States, doing something generally means either shooting somebody, or going somewhere else. I’m a dropout. I don’t know much American history. Still, I do understand that a long time ago we ran out of new land, and the space program was too expensive. It’s never been the same here since there was nowhere to go. But it’s possible to get somewhere else by going backwards.”
“Brutal,” Fifa said. “First, you’re planning to get shot climbing over the wall into the USN. Now it’s time travel.”
“Yes. I’m not sure, but I think Nevada is time travel.”
When they parted, he pressed a set of keys into her palm. “Take the house.”
“What happens if you wise up and do a U-turn a hundred miles short of Vegas?”
“Then I’ll move back in, you can stay, and we’ll find out whether misery really does love company.” He kissed her. “I’ll miss you.”
“Not as much as you think,” Fifa scoffed, offhand. “I’ve always played second fiddle to your real girlfriend.”
“Like who?”
“That shriv in shades sitting in the sharp car.”
“What’s he doing here?” Nollie said irritably.
In the rare warmth of mid-summer, they’d once more thrown the front door open, with only the screen door latched. After serial declarations of martial law in the latter thirties, American cities had restored the protection of property rights and imposed civic order; New York had a surprisingly low crime rate. For most of the public, the miscreants who posed any serious danger were over-zealous keepers of order—one of whom was standing on their stoop.
Goog could see them through the screen, stacking luggage in the living room. They couldn’t pretend they weren’t home. Refusing to invite an immediate relative inside would seem weird.
“Going somewhere?” their visitor asked, scanning the bags.
“Taking a tour,” Nollie said briskly. “Seeing our nation’s sites. Inspired by the Fourth of July.”
“What sites?” Goog asked skeptically. “Platefaces bought most of them up.”
“They haven’t put coolie hats on Mount Rushmore. Yet.”
“So what’s up?” Willing asked, trying to sound casual, which never worked.
“Heard about that ruckus at Elysian,” Goog said. “Seems some valiant, self-sacrificing employee intervened, or the carnage would have been worse.”
“I wouldn’t know,” Willing said. “I spent the whole time crouched in a closet. Made a run for it as soon as the shooting stopped.” Irksome, playing to Goog’s contemptuous opinion of him, but he’d no reason to care what his cousin thought.
“Funny,” Goog said. “The home’s administration must have been misinformed, then. Because however grateful those poor souls cowering in Elysian might have felt, seems our Good Samaritan was carrying an illicit handgun. So the NYPD put in a request to the Bureau for tracking. I recognized your name.”
“Barking up the wrong coward,” Willing said, milking the false humility a bit.
“I’m doing you a favor, bud. Thought we might keep this all in the family. Turn in the sidearm—and we both know we’re talking about that forty-four you were always waving about Citadel whenever some skinny wayfarer came near your precious potatoes. What with your benevolent intercession and all, I bet I can get the cops to drop it. They just want the gun.”
Nollie’s story about the weapon having been left behind by squatters would never wash with Goog, who was present in Prospect Park when the Shadow notched its seminal two fatalities. Nor would he believe his annoying cousin would have pitched his protection into the East River. Willing was debating the best method of stonewalling when Goog’s eye was drawn by a battered carton on the floor.
“Foul matter,” Goog read from the carton’s side, and something clicked. “Only times I’ve seen you drag along that grubby box, Auntie, are when you’re planning a one-way trip.”
“I’m old,” Nollie said. “Getting dotty. Sentimental. Some writers travel with lucky fountain pens. I need my printouts.”
“This is way too much crap for Mount Rushmore,” Goog said. “And that new Myourea out front. Yours?”
“Getting rash, too,” she said. “You know those dementia sufferers. Irrational. Impulsive. Can’t be trusted with money.”
“Speaking of money: where’d it come from?” Goog never left his work at the office.
“I earned it,” Nollie said with fervor. “I got a good idea, I worked very hard to realize it, I paid taxes on the rewards of my labor—rather high taxes, or so I imagined at the time—and however improbable you may find this now, afterwards I had two cents to rub together.”
The entire scenario was bound to strike any scabbie worth his salt as highly irregular. But for once Goog Stackhouse’s imagination was inflamed by something other than fiscal malfeasance. “You could hop a U-pod for a fraction of the price. Old ladies don’t buy state-of-the-art hydrogen sedans to play tourist for a few days.”
“Last I checked, it was legal to drive across the land of the free without getting a permission slip from your own grandnephew.”
“It’s legal with one exception. If I even suspect an intention to defect to the USN, you two aren’t going anywhere.”
Willing was a master of the impassive. Nollie was less adept. It didn’t help, either, that her fleX was stiffened on the coffee table, its open GPS app already programmed for the route to Reno. Pity she didn’t do updates. In current versions of Google Maps, a search on “Nevada” brought up the name of a street in Greenwich, England. The state itself was missing.