“What are you doing here? You’re not due back until tomorrow.”
“I found a new consultant,” Holberton said, and nodded at Javier. “Let’s work up some papers for him. And some food too, OK? It’s a long drive.”
The food arrived shortly: a salad for Holberton, and a selection of vN tea sandwiches for Javier. The sandwiches came with different stripes of feedstock tinted and sculpted to look like smoked salmon and whisper-thin wedges of cucumber.
“Printed on site,” Holberton said. “In another lab, a couple of miles from here.”
“They taste like shit.”
Holberton laughed. “I’ll pass that right along.” He dabbed his mouth with a napkin. Then he stood up, and checked something on the surface of his desk. “OK. Now that you’re taken care of, I have to get going. Turns out it’s just an exit interview.”
“FEMA called you for an exit interview?”
Holberton rolled his eyes. “I know, I know. They
hate
my work at the casino. I’m willing to bet they logged me coming in when we went through the checkpoint, and decided to fuck with me since I was close by.”
It was a pathetic story. Javier’s own children told him better lies by the time they were a week old. But he nodded and smiled anyway, and said: “Wow. That sucks.”
“Tell me about it. I’ll be right back. Georgia can take care of you, if there’s anything you need.”
“I’ll be OK. I think I’ll take a nap, actually.”
“God, I’d kill for one of those.” Holberton winced. “Not really, though. Don’t worry.”
“It’s OK. I know what you meant.” He gave his most compassionate smile. “Go on ahead. The sooner you finish up, the sooner you can give me the tour.”
“Right! The tour! I’ll get right on that, as soon as I get back.”
Javier watched him leave. He waited by the window, to see Holberton exit the building and enter his car. It was a distinctive make, so it wouldn’t be any problem to follow. Not from the rooftops, anyway.
Holberton didn’t drive far.
The rooftops of downtown Macondo were mostly empty. Panels, but no gardens. And hardly a botfly in sight. All the surveillance was likely in the suburbs, with all the Amys. This left Javier free to bounce between the glittering towers. Their grey water cladding rang hollow. Their offices stood empty. The peregrines nesting in the abandoned buttresses of each building were the only ones to protest his presence.
Javier followed Holberton to the edge of the downtown, to where a cluster of apartments stood. It reminded him eerily of La Modelo: the same mid-rise concrete blocks. For all he knew it was the same plan, the same design firm responsible. It would make sense. Or maybe all these places just looked the same, even when one was fake and the other was real.
Holberton jogged up to the fourth floor of the apartment building at the northwest corner of the courtyard. Javier jumped there easily, walked to the other side, and looked down.
On the balcony below him was Jack Peterson. Amy’s father.
“… it’s wrong, Chris,” Jack was saying.
“I know it’s wrong, Jack,” Holberton said. “But it’s what we have to do.”
“No, it’s what
you
have to do. I don’t have to do shit.”
Holberton leaned over the balcony. “I know you want to save them all, Jack, but we can’t. We just can’t.”
Javier sat back. They were going to kill all the Amys in Macondo. Or FEMA was, probably. That was why they’d all been rounded up here. So they could be easily disposed of.
“A train derailed in Massachusetts this week, Jack. Ten people died. Then there was the outage in Chile, and the
reactor diagnostic
, or whatever the fuck they called it, in Germany. It’s fire and brimstone out there. FEMA wants to end it, and so does every other emergency management agency on the fucking planet.”
“That was all Portia!” Jack’s voice was unnaturally high. “It wasn’t Amy! Amy’s…”
“She’s gone, Jack.” Holberton paused. Javier wondered if he was about to bring up his arrival in Vegas, tell Jack that he was certain Amy was dead because he had it from the source. But instead, he said: “We don’t know where, or how, but she’s gone, and now we’re stuck with your crazy mother-in-law. And she’s scrambling every ambulance squad between here and Kabul.”
“… blame her.”
Javier heard rustling, and a sharp intake of breath. “
Excuse me?
” Holberton said. “
What
did you just say?”
“I said I don’t fucking blame her! We’re about to launch a full-scale–”
“Shut. Up. Jack.”
“Oh, fuck you, Chris. I’m well aware of operational security. It’s not like I don’t get why I can’t even have a goddamn phone in this place.”
“Only until Wednesday. After that, you can leave any time you want to.”
What was happening Wednesday? Everything in the suburbs seemed fine. Nobody was on edge – not even the humans, who had every right to feel that way. And he hadn’t passed anything that looked suspicious. No smokestacks, at any rate. He listened carefully. The two men were speaking in low tones, now. He flattened himself to the rooftop and leaned over, a little.
Jack stood with his back to the railing. Holberton faced him, with his back to Javier. He was getting a little bald spot at the crown of his head, but he did a good job covering it.
Jack’s eyes lifted, saw Javier, and widened. Two bright red spots rose in his cheeks. Javier lifted a finger to his lips.
“Are you OK?” Holberton asked.
“I think I’ve had a little too much sun,” Jack said, a little too loudly. “I’m going to splash some water on my face.”
“Sure, good idea.”
Jack practically ran for the bathroom. Holberton drifted inside, checking something on his watch. A moment later, the display came on.
The bathroom window opened, and a hand snaked out to wave him in.
It was a tight squeeze, but Javier was able to wedge one foot in, then one leg, then his head and shoulders, then the rest of him. Jack was standing in the shower. It was the only space left in the room. He flicked the fan on. It groaned into wakefulness and sputtered like an ancient propellor gathering speed.
“What are you doing here?” Jack hissed.
“Saving your ass, apparently.” Javier jerked a thumb at the door. “What the fuck is going on, here?”
“I could ask you the same thing. How are you still alive?”
Javier forced his gaze to meet Jack’s. Jack’s eyes were filling with tears, but his knuckles were white. He was torn, probably, between the urge to spill his guts to the one man who might understand his loss, and the urge to beat the shit out of him. They had neither the time nor the space for either. “I can’t explain that, right now. We have to get you out of here.”
Jack took a deep breath. “OK. How?”
Javier winced. “You won’t fit through the window, huh?”
Jack lifted a leg. An ankle bracelet clung to his right ankle. It looked lab-made; the colour hinted at cheap feedstock. FEMA hadn’t purchased it from an approved contractor, or anything like that. Which meant it could be hosting any old kind of tracking they wanted. “Oh, that’s some
bullshit
,” Javier murmured. “I know this place is code-named Stepford, but Jesus Christ.”
Jack snorted. “It’s not Stepford. It’s the Village.”
“The what, now?”
Jack waved a hand. “Never mind.”
Javier ran a finger over the bracelet. “What are you even doing here?”
“They hired me. As a consultant. After…” Jack blinked hard. “You know.”
“I know.”
“I thought I could really help. Use my experiences for good. All that shit.” Jack shrugged. His shoulders sank lower than Javier had ever seen them. “And then they showed me the contingency plans, and…” Jack held up his hand. The knuckles were covered in small cuts in various stages of healing.
“What contingency plans?”
Jack frowned. “You mean you don’t know? Then why are
you
here?”
“I asked you, first!”
A knock sounded at the door. The knob twisted. It was locked. “Are you OK in there, Jack?”
It was Holberton. “I’m, uh…” He looked at Javier. Javier shook his head frantically. “I’m really not, Chris! I think I’m having some heatstroke, maybe. Or maybe just a… a bad burrito, or something!”
“I’ll call you a nurse,” Holberton said. They heard him walk away.
“A
bad burrito?
” Javier whispered. “Could you
be
more racist?”
“Oh, shut up,” Jack said. “Let’s get out of here.”
Javier unhasped the bracelet, then reached out the window and attached it to a stormdrain. With any luck, it would still register Jack as being in the apartment. Next he had to get Jack out, which involved his getting out first, dangling over the side of the roof, and telling Jack to climb out through the window.
“Are you out of your mind? I’ll fall!”
“You won’t fall. If you fall, I really will lose my mind. Literally. So I have a vested interest in you not falling.”
Squeezing his eyes shut, Jack wriggled himself out of the window. It was an oddly quiet process. Out here, there weren’t even dogs to get confused by their display. It was a big contrast to Puerto Limón, and even to the island itself. Jack lost his balance once, but Javier grabbed his hand and held him in place until he could stand up on his own. Then he grabbed both of Jack’s hands, and pulled.
Jack had some seriously sweaty palms.
“Hold my
wrists
, goddamn it,” Javier hissed.
“I can’t do that without moving my hands!”
“So fucking move them!”
“Fuck you!”
Javier growled and yanked. Jack yelped, but he was able to scramble up and over the ledge. He lay panting on the roof, but Javier was already standing up.
“Come on. Let’s go.”
Jack coughed. “How?”
Javier knelt. “Get on.”
“You’re kidding.”
“I wish I were. Get on.”
“Is it… safe?”
“It will be if you hold on. If you don’t, we’ll both die.”
“Oh. Great.” Jack draped himself gingerly over Javier’s back. “This is awkward.” He sniffed. “How come all vN smell like waffles? Why do you–”
Javier took to the air.
They flew.
He ran, then jumped, then ran some more. The library was close to the centre of the prototype city, and he ran ever deeper into it. His feet pounded glittering recycled pavement, and bounced off slippery glass towers. He watched himself reflected, multiplied, in each pane of glass. With Jack on his back, it felt a little like leaping with all the boys he’d lost.
In between the buildings, when his knees rose to his chest and his shirt rode up and the wind went through his hair, he felt more secure. He landed tumbling, ass over teakettle, as one of his more elderly lovers was fond of saying.
Righting himself, he let Jack go. They stood in the crossroads between skyscrapers. They were all dark, save for occasional blips and pings of light fluttering over their surfaces. If he looked closely, he could see the louvers of their glass cladding slowly turning. As they did, they caught the light emanating from strategically-placed LEDs. Anti-bird lighting, probably. Something to keep whatever sparrows still lived in this desert from flying into the towers and dying.
The divinity student he’d fucked before going to Amy for the final time, had explained that one passage about sparrows in the Bible. “His eye is on the sparrow,” the student explained, “but God’s not watching it fly. He’s watching it
fall.
”
Now was probably not the time to share that little story with Jack.
“Thanks,” Jack was saying.
Javier shrugged. “It’s nothing.” A flicker of light caught his eye. “I just…”
The four buildings surrounding them were changing. Their louvers were shifting, and presenting a dark face to him. Something was wrong. When he looked up at the traffic lights, he knew it for sure. Each tiny camera on the intersection was pointed at them. As he watched, botflies zoomed onto the scene. They twinkled above, hovering, waiting, watching.
The building behind them cast their shadow in another direction. Jack stumbled a little in surprise.
“I” the building’s face read.
“HAVE,” read the next.
“LOVE,” read the third.
IN
ME
THE
LIKES
OF
WHICH
YOU
CAN
SCARCELY
IMAGINE
AND
RAGE
THE
LIKES
OF
WHICH
YOU
WOULD
NOT
BELIEVE.
IF
I
CANNOT
SATISFY
THE
ONE,
I
WILL
INDULGE
THE
OTHER.
The words followed each other, faster and faster, becoming a sentence, a chant, a mantra. A car parked nearby suddenly lit up. Its high-beams pointed at him. Its wipers waved hello. Its stereo fired up. It flipped through a selection of sounds, hints of songs and voices, until it settled on one, mid-song, a woman’s voice.
“Shit,” Javier murmured. “Tell me about the contingency plans. Quick. Now.”
“OK. It’s in the food…” Jack stared at the buildings. “Is this some kind of art installation?”
Javier snapped his fingers. “Jack! The food! What about it?”
“FEMA is printing new vN food, starting Tuesday. It’ll be in stores by Wednesday. Same wrappers, different contents. Real public-private partnership.” He swallowed. “It’ll be a small rollout at first. It’ll look like a malfunction.”
Javier tore his eyes from the buildings. “For the Amys?”
Jack shut his eyes. “No, Javier. Not just the Amys.” His eyes opened. “It’s for all of the vN. Everywhere.”