We authored the Constitutional Exception Act, which allowed more expeditious investigation and prosecution of drug offenders... and which worked exceptionally well. Soon the prisons were bulging, murderers and rapists were being released at unprecedented rates to make room, and there was a mutter of discontent from the public. We converted that discontent into the Private Incarceration Initiative. Drug offenders could now be collared with explosive locator beacons and confined to rented housing for the duration of their sentence. If they could make a living at home, or if they had friends or relatives willing to pay their rent and bring them groceries, they often survived. If not, the law was unambiguous.
At first, terminal evictions were media events; public executions had returned to America. They soon became too common to attract special attention, though they continued to provide content for several syndicated cable shows.
Drug use declined dramatically, but still, many addicts defied our efforts. Then the big drug lords, who earlier had applauded our efforts to drive drug prices up, finally became worried. I suppose they'd thought the various enforcement agencies would always be their allies, would always preserve the symbiotic relationship that had been so good for both sides. But now the agencies fought the Good War with a kind of holy madness, with no thought of what their people would do once the war was won. The drug lords fought back, assassinating agents and judges and prosecutors.
Those were wonderful times for Stewart, and for me. Everything was going our way.
We designed the Neighborhood Informant Networks, which used the concept of weekly prizes. Technology came through for us, in the form of inexpensive miniature sniffers-which were eventually installed on every lamppost and telephone pole, and which forced the last users deep underground or out into the deserts of the Big Dry.
We closed the borders. The Air Force napalmed the coca and poppy and marijuana plantations. The DEA sent assassins to liquidate the drug barons.
We won the Good War.
Things weren't perfect; I guess they never are. Too many resources had gone into the war, we'd alienated too many other countries. The Big Dry was in full flower and food was short. The AIDS epidemic was gathering steam again, after the latest mutation.
Worst of all, we had used up all our scapegoats. Or so I thought then.
At some point I slept. When I woke it was dark and the storm was dying. Rob Owen lay on his back, staring at the rusty ceiling, as if he could see something interesting there. He was so still he might have been dead, until he spoke. «John? How am I?»
I thought he was raving again, but it was just his odd sense of humor, because he went on. «Not great, eh? Well, in a hundred years, it won't matter.»
I sat up, coughing dusty phlegm. He turned his head to look at me and there was still pity in his eyes.
«John,» he said, «if you'll bring me some water, I think I have one story left in me.»
He drank a little of the water and looked up at me with an expression that was almost merry. «A story, then,» he said. «Would you believe it? I've got a million stories you haven't heard yet-never will, now. But, last one's got to be a doper story too. Dope got us where we are today, right?» The old man's voice fell into an oddly formal cadence, as though he'd rehearsed his words a thousand times.
«I tried every high there was, when I was young,» he said. «Some drugs were better than others. I was never much on speed-though once when I was down in Mexico I took a handful of black beauties and wrote a fifty-page letter to an old girlfriend.
«I always loved pot, but it wasn't a world-changer, if you know what I mean. And not good for the lungs.» The old man coughed, made a rueful face.
«The poppy I was scared of. There's nothing better when you're sad or empty. Trouble is, it feels so good. Pretty soon you figure out a way to be sad and empty all the time, so I had to steer clear.
«Coke I could never really see the appeal of. You get a good buzz for a few minutes-you feel like King Kong-but afterward you'd know it wasn't true, if you had a lick of sense. And it was so expensive; for the price of a half-hour pump-up you could go on a trip that might change the way you saw your life. Acid, that was the real stuff, for me.
«So that's what I'm going to tell you about, John: a trip Mandy and I took together one night. Yeah, I saw the freezers full of bodies; I watched the evening news. But that was just one side, your side; and there was another side as beautiful as yours was ugly.
«The premier acid that fall was orange barrels, not quite as good as sunshine, but damn good. We split a four-way hit, up in that little Lincoln Street apartment, just the two of us, late in the afternoon. God, it was good, John. The rush had that sledgehammer head you got only with the best stuff. We had a poster on the wall across from the bed, the Cream. They had curly hair and paisley shirts and when the patterns started to wriggle, we knew we were coming on. A rush gauge, right? The patterns were swimming like a million tiny fish and Ginger Baker's eyes had sunk back into his head; he looked like a fleshy skeleton.»
The old man was talking fast and breathless, hurrying. I felt a sudden stab of envy, that he had such a memory to retreat into, a memory intense enough to take him out of his failing body, away from here.
«You've never done acid, John, so I can't really tell you what it's like, but I'll try anyway. The world exists in pulses; visions come to you in waves-surf on the shores of perception. I said to Mandy, 'Jesus, maybe we should have chopped it again; this is heavy.' The room was full of cheap hippie decor, god's eyes and candles, posters and madras prints; now it was becoming alien, a room from the other side of the sky.
«We had a white husky mix named Fruitcake, and the dog seemed weirdly alert, every whisker standing sharp as needles, his eyes glittering with strangeness. Fruitcake must have sensed the unnaturalness of our regard and gotten freaked, but I translated his wariness into some more dangerous mood, so I got up and locked him in the kitchen alcove, poor guy.
«The surf was crashing, John, the surf was pounding. I was never so high, before or since. Our window opened on a fire escape, which overlooked the alleyway behind a strip joint. I watched a drunk tumble out the side door of the bar and crawl through the twilight to a wall he could huddle against, and it seemed an epic journey, a thousand years of struggle, in those soft gray-blue colors of dusk and old brick. I was ready to cry at the beauty of his persistence.
Owen looked at me, a slight smile twitching at his lips. «I know, John, foolishness, madness. But you can't know what it was like.»
«No,» I answered, and bitter regret scraped at me.
«I'm sorry for that,» he said. «Anyway, when I turned away from the window, Mandy had taken off her clothes and was lying on the bed, looking like a naked golden Botticelli angel in heat. She smiled, she cupped one of her little breasts, then ran her hand slowly down her belly. She had beautiful long fingers. Each pulse of vision showed me a different, more perfect loveliness.
«When I went to her I must have looked a bit like Fruitcake, every whisker bristling.
«It seemed to last forever, every touch, every thrust bursting with sensation, so dense with pleasure... I can't tell you. I was so high I didn't know if I was mandy or Rob; I didn't know if I was being penetrated or penetrating. The boundaries of our selves meant nothing.... I don't know how many times we did it, but we were both sore the next day.
«That was the peak and then we knew we'd live through it. There's always a moment when you're sure you're going to die, if the acid is good enough, but that time, that time, we submerged the fear in little deaths.