Can You Tell Me Where He's Gone?

By Paul Colby

Nineteen years after a failed assassination attempt put him in a coma, Rafe Bergeron wakes to find himself in a dystopian America, where inked-on transponders connect everyone to the communication grid. Drawing on his status as a legendary political hero, he runs for President, battling his cynical populist opponent, a loose network of racist militias, and the mysterious cyberterrorists known as the Jeepers. With the future of American democracy on the line, it promises to be an election campaign for the ages.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Apr 19, 2024
• ISBN: 9781304471550

Book preview

Can You Tell Me Where He’s Gone?

Copyright 2024 by Paul Colby

All rights reserved.

978-1-304-47155-0

Cover image: teddyandmia (iStock)

Book I: Stirrings

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During the long hours of her shift, when there was nothing for her to do and she couldn’t find anything amusing on Incfōn®, Molly would make up stories about her patient.

She spent ten hours a day in the same cramped, windowless room, from the late afternoon to the dead of night, looking after the same comatose man. Her duties included moving him every two hours to prevent bedsores; emptying his urine bag four times during the shift; cleaning and then reinserting the bladder catheter at least once during the shift; flushing the bowel catheter three times; disinfecting the nozzle of his respirator when she could remember to do it; watching for signs of strained breathing so she would know when to suction his lungs with the endotracheal tube. Once every shift either an RN or a doctor would stop by to ask routine questions about the condition of the patient, but the condition of the patient never changed, hadn’t changed in nearly twenty years, certainly hadn’t changed during the three years Molly had been on the job. So after a matter of minutes, she would be left alone to her sporadic tasks and the long periods of watching in between.

She was expected to continually monitor the temperature, blood pressure, pulse, and brain wave readouts on a flatscreen monitor that sat on a retractable platform affixed to the wall. Occasionally she would be called to another room to help bathe someone else’s patient or take blood samples, but the time passed slowly when all she could do was monitor her patient’s vitals. She often studied his face, only partly obscured by the straps which secured the ventilator tube to his mouth. The nurse’s aide who worked the shift just before hers, who helped administer the patient’s daily physical therapy, also had the duty of shaving him, so Molly would see him at his best, such as it was. He never looked grossly ill; the nasogastric tube, which ran from a mechanized feeding apparatus, into his left nostril, down through his digestive tract, kept him supplied with glucose and megavitamins, which, like the physical therapy, were intended to offset the deterioration of his muscle tissue. His pale skin hugged his bones tightly; his arms and knees were bent stiffly and awkwardly, like the limbs of a corpse in a cramped coffin. But his face appeared calm, as if he were sleeping peacefully, and when she used her imagination to fill out his long profile and plunging jawline, she could see that he had the look of a movie star.

Sometimes she imagined that’s what he was. No one had even told her his name; the screens showing the vitals identified him as Client 02447. But she could tell he had considerable resources behind him, or whoever was providing for him did. A less wealthy, less privileged man in his condition would have been subject to the medical lottery. Even if he had been selected for extraordinary measures, his funding would have ended in two years, and he would have been shunted off to a private hospice, to die quietly. He must be someone special, she thought.

Often she pictured him opening his eyes suddenly, in the middle of her shift. He would attempt to speak and she would feed him water through a syringe. Gradually he would be able to make use of his tongue and lips, and he would lisp, Where? How? Don’t fuss now, she would say. You’re all right. You’re getting the best care in the world. Who … who are you? he would slowly ask. I’m your nurse, she would say, although that wasn’t actually true.

Molly had been forced to abandon nursing school when the Supreme Court ruled that minority scholarships were a form of anti-white discrimination. She had returned to her job as an aide in D.C. Central Hospital, though her one year of schooling allowed her to take on jobs with more responsibility than before. As dull as this work was, it was a step up from mopping up vomit and pushing wheelchairs.

In her fantasy the patient would learn how attentively and intimately she had cared for him over the past three years, and he would fall in love with her. She would become his exclusive physical therapist, and after a year of rehabilitation, when he was ready to leave the hospital, he would take her to Trieste or to Katmandu, where they would be able to get married, since the Quarantine Laws, which prevented interracial marriage in the U.S., wouldn’t apply in other countries. Under her care, he would regain his pink complexion and steely physique. He would begin making movies again, and he would beg her to co-star in his films. She pictured herself sunning in a topless bikini on a Monte Carlo beach or turning to face the cameras, decked out in a sequined gown with a feather-laced hem, specially chosen for the latest premiere. After all, she was only thirty-one; she wouldn’t age out of movies for at least another four years. She could see it all clearly. After finishing her movie career, she would sponsor medical aid organizations in Africa and Southeast Asia, and eventually she would learn enough about epidemiology to begin doing her own research and eventually find a cure for the Niger C-virus.

Today a new idea came to her. Suppose he came to, she wet his lips, and when he asked her who she was she would say, Why, don’t you know me? I’m your mother.

Molly laughed. Immediately she put her hand over her mouth and glanced at the door, hoping no one had overheard her. She listened intently to the sneakered feet passing rapidly in the hall. She listened to the tinny sound of the intercom. For the thousandth time she was struck by the contrast between the urgent, frenetic, noisy activity just beyond the door and the stillness and quiet and general deadness of the room where she was stationed. She liked the peacefulness of the tiny care unit but hated the long stretches of dullness.

Sighing, she got up to pace the tight confines of the room. After completing one circuit of the room, she reseated herself in front of the monitor and studied the data coming in from the transponder tattooed on the patient’s right temple. All of the flashing numbers were within the green range. Everything was depressingly normal. She would need to wait at least another twenty-five minutes before changing the patient’s urine bag, so she settled back into her chair, and adjusted her Incfōn® wrist dial.

She hadn’t paid her bill in over two months, so all she could get were the free stations sponsored by the government. Using the keys on her wrist pad, she tuned in to the Update Network and heard the news reader speaking within the walls of her skull.

… are urged to be vigilant for signs of Jeeper activity in their precincts. Watch for unfamiliar individuals with urban features, especially those with concealed wrists or nonconforming transponder signatures. All women seen walking alone should be …

Molly had often heard concealed wrists mentioned in government bulletins; this is why she had made a point of discarding her long-sleeved blouses and rolling up the sleeves of her coats in the winter. The tattoo above her right brow nearly blended in with her skin, so no one could see how normal it looked; combine that with her distinctly urban looks, and she had to be especially careful when she visited her telepath in Alexandria.

She punched a seven-digit code on her wristband to tune into Rumor Central, another free transmission. The real news was too depressing to listen to most of the time, even the government’s filtered version. There was a momentary delay as the signal penetrated the hospital’s security buffer, and then again she could hear an announcer speaking between her ears. This was a high-pitched male voice, full of ribald, sarcastic undertones:

… suing for child support in the amount of $1.3 million dollars. The President’s personal attorney did not respond to a request for comment, but an unnamed source inside the White House legal office insists that all claims of extramarital relations on the part of the President are false and defamatory. According to this source, ‘The President’s twenty-eight so-called mistresses could start a College Fund with all the money they’re paying these sleazy lawyers.’

Molly used to be able to recite the names of all the women who accused President Dodge of fathering their children; as the list grew it became a kind of memory game, which helped her kill ten or fifteen minutes. In the first two years, everyone talked about the President—at the nurses’ station down the hall; in the elevators; at the maté shop around the corner; in the voucher market; at home with her sister and her two cousins. But by now the talk was just a waste of time. President Dodge’s hatchet-like, narrow-eyed image had become something everyone lived inside, like time and humidity. It seemed pointless to mention him, just as no one would talk about the weather if it never changed.

Molly glanced again at the readouts on the monitor. The blood pressure figure had dropped to 88/60, in the yellow range. If the low figure persisted for more than fifteen minutes she would have to call the RN, but the figures were always fluctuating. The other numbers had barely changed since the last time she had looked.

In another ten minutes she would need to move the patient. In the meantime, she decided to key in a telecast. The monitor in the room had been disabled for broadcast signals, but recently she had discovered she could make the images appear in her mind. After she had keyed in the code and waited through the buffer, she could see a man and a woman sitting across a table in a maté shop.

MAN: The coroner ran twelve different virus protocols and the pathogen didn’t turn up on any of them. Did your husband have any dealings with anyone from Africa or from South Asia? I don’t mean to speak ill of the dead, but …

WOMAN (after sipping her maté): My husband was an importer. He was careful to submit all of the foreign contact forms.

MAN (looking into his cup, swirling the maté as he speaks): I don’t mean business dealings …

WOMAN (straightening up abruptly): I don’t think I care for your—

MAN: This is no time to be delicate. We have to identify this pathogen and trace the path of contagion, or we could be looking at …

In Molly’s head, the image of the man wobbled, like a reflection on the trembling surface of a pool. She thought at first that her recent memory of the plainclothes security officer at the Connecticut Avenue checkpoint was interfering, but in the next instant the transmission blipped off, then the room was plunged into darkness. The outage lasted no more than two seconds. As soon as she could see what she was doing, she switched off her transponder and stood up. She approached the patient and leaned over to listen for the purring of the ventilator. She glanced at the console of the food drip to see that the lights were all shining green.

Suddenly he began to shift his arms and legs, bending and relaxing his knees slightly, flicking his wrists under the bedclothes. Molly had seen him make these kinds of spasmodic movements before, but they happened so rarely that they always took her breath away.

In a moment, the patient was still again. She stepped back and studied the face of her patient, awash in the oblivion of what seemed to be untroubled sleep.

Just then she heard a call signal coming from the monitor. A man in an olive-green uniform, a member of the Urban Patrol, appeared on the screen, angling his eyes as he searched the room for her.

Everything O.K. in here?

The power went out for—

Total outage. Lasted 1.8 seconds. Before that some of the data transmission frequencies were scrambled. Looked like sabotage, but everything seems to be back to normal. You want us to run a test of your circuits?

Molly shook her head.

From the way the monitor was angled, the man was able to get a glimpse of the patient. Dead to the world, isn’t he? How long’s it been? Seventeen, eighteen years?

Nineteen. Almost twenty.

You know who he is?

No. Just someone famous or rich.

Don’t you want to know?

She shook her head again, this time slowly, thoughtfully, as if she had made up her mind on this point long ago.

Don’t blame you, the man said. Could be Jesus Christ and it wouldn’t matter. Dead to the world no matter what. The man smiled vaguely, gave her a quick appraising glance, then ended the call.

Molly sat down again, entered the transmission code on her wristband, and tuned back into the broadcast. In her head she could see the man from the previous scene walking down a busy city street, speaking aloud, in conversation with someone on his Incfōn® channel.

MAN: I couldn’t get a straight answer from the widow, but I think I know where we’ll find our carrier. It’s a Bengali neighborhood. I suggest we round up some subjects for testing. Once we …

She decided to wait another five minutes before turning her patient, enough time to finish to finish this episode. As she settled back into the story, following the man down the street, she heard what sounded like movement from the bed. But when she looked up his limbs were still.

She stood and approached the bed, her eyes trained on the patient’s chest, just below his neck. He was taking deeper breaths now, not a good sign, but not necessarily a sign of danger. Before she could decide whether to intervene, though, she watched in disbelief as his eyes opened.

In all these years, she always pictured him with blue eyes, but now she could see that his irises were as brown as mud puddles.

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They arrived in groups of three, or five, or eight at the rail terminal in Galesburg, State of Lincoln. Most of them were farmworkers; a few were independent contractors: plumbers, mechanics, telesignal technicians. Nearly all were men, but a few women arrived as well, most of them wearing the same clothes as the men, canvas slacks and either plaid shirts with rolled cuffs, or T-shirts with bright, abstract designs.

As he waited for the local party chief to arrive, Armen kept up a count of the assembling troops, spilling onto the platforms amid the constant squealing friction of pneumatic brakes and the hammering thud of compartment doors shutting and opening. Clothes aside, he could easily distinguish the ordinary travelers with their baggage from those without baggage, the rally participants. So far he had counted sixty-eight. Based on the list he had gotten from the national coordinators, he was expecting as many as a hundred and ten. Their original goal was to recruit two hundred, but that was always a little bit of a reach. Anything over a hundred was considered a good number, enough to make a scene, and any number in the high nineties would do as well. He had been picturing sixteen rows of six, or twelve rows of eight, an impressive phalanx marching down the middle of the street, stopping traffic, attracting a gallery of spectators, causing enough of a commotion to make a stirring telefilm. He wanted the lunch crowd in Des Moines, and Rock Island, and Loveland, and Cincinnati to sit up and take notice as the sight of these dignified, determined marchers crossed their inkscreens, demanding to have their voting rights restored.

Suddenly he heard a thin, flat voice between his ears.

I’m at the lunch counter. Red hair, denim shirt. I’m with one of the organizers.

Armen turned and walked through the sliding doors into the station, past the ticket counter, to the diner at the east end of the station.

The party chief was sitting at the bright Formica counter next to an older man in cargo slacks and a lime-green polo shirt. The chief stubbed his cigarillo on a saucer and extended his hand.

Bull Lafferty. Good to meet you. His hair was assuredly red, but it was receding at the edges and tipped with gray. He had a sharp profile, a delicate-looking nose, and small eyes, underscored with heavy lines.

Armen Kaladjian. Likewise.

My friend here is … what was it again?

Tsipras, the man in the polo shirt said, not looking up from his plate of eggs. Connie Tsipras.

That’s right. I remembered your last name but not your first. Connie owns his own seed warehouse. He’s got almost twenty employees and most of them are joining the rally.

Greek?

I’m an American, Tsipras said stiffly. He looked to be about fifty-five. Not much hair and all of it white. He had prominent cheekbones, a broad nose, a thick, muscular neck. 

Of course, Armen said, with a measured stiffness of his own. To make himself a little less conspicuous, he mounted the stool next to Tsipras. You know what I mean. Your family … I’m just surprised that you’re part of this. I didn’t think Greece was in the Exclusion Zone.

There is no Exclusion Zone, Lafferty said, glibly. That’s just your imagination, isn’t it?

It’s real enough, Armen said. He didn’t see what was funny about it. He refused to adopt the flip attitude that was so pervasive on the premium channels these days. I guess it’s because Africa’s just a day’s boat ride away from Crete.

More likely it’s Turkey, right next door. There’ve been almost a thousand reported cases of HL29 there.

What bullshit. It’s not even a fatal. And Connie’s family has probably been in America for … what, Connie?

Tsipras pushed his plate aside. Thirty-nine years. He spoke with a distinctly midwestern accent.

It’s genetic susceptibility, Lafferty pointed out. That’s what they say. By the way, isn’t Armenia also right next to Turkey?

I’m fourth generation. The Quarantine Protocol only goes as far as the second.

So far, Lafferty said.

True. That’s the whole point of the rally, isn’t it? We’ve gotta start pushing things in the other direction.

Tsipras swiveled around in his chair now and gave Armen a tight look, his brows deeply furrowed, rippling his transponder tattoo above his right eye. I don’t like this thing being called a rally. We’re not protesters. We’ve got jobs.

I was just borrowing Bull’s word for it.

But we’re just here to register, Tsipras insisted. We’re going down to the Elections Bureau to get our rights back. That’s what I was told. I didn’t know it was going to be some kind of spectacle.

Maybe it won’t be, Armen said. Since the special election two months ago, the make-up of the County Elections Board has changed. The President’s party just has a 4-3 majority now and one of them is supposedly a Dissenter. The Board may interpret the Quarantine Laws differently now. It’s a possibility.

Armen didn’t believe it, but there was no harm in saying it. In his guts he knew that the concept of a Dodge Dissenter was as much of a myth as Big Foot. There had been a few at first, but they had all been purged in the past three years.

It’s kind of interesting that Greece would be targeted now, Armen said, reverting to the previous topic. When you consider …

Come on, Lafferty said, you know how it works. That’s the real reason Connie’s citizenship was placed under review. The President wants to show he’s not Greek anymore. Why do you think he changed his name in the first place?

A voice broke in through Armen’s transponder.

Ready to go?

It was his contact with the National Committee.

Just waiting for everyone to show up, Armen said, gazing at the dust-streaked window directly across from him, through which he could see the marchers assembling on the blacktop.

The crew from Aerobeam is in place. You need to get your men moving before they decide that nothing’s going to happen.

Will do. Turning to his two companions he said, Come on, it’s go time. The last train has probably pulled in. Anyway, we’ve got a show to put on. 

He caught a sour look from Tsipras. Shrugging, he said, It’s just an expression. Don’t make too much of it. You’re here to get your rights back, I know.

Once they were outside the station, Armen made a quick count of the assembled men and women, in bunches of five.

I counted eighty-eight, give or take two or three, he told Lafferty.

Looks like ninety-one to me.

I like your number better than mine. I think we’re in business. Turning to Tsipras he said, Let them know we’re heading off to the right, up Flagler Street.

I don’t have a megaphone, he said, frowning.

Just tell your friends and start walking. Everyone else will fall in. Armen let the idea of a phalanx go. And he was glad he gave up the idea of holographic streamers early on. Tsipras was right: the group should look like what it was, a peaceable assembly of people asking to do their duty as citizens, nothing more.

Tsipras and his employees began forging ahead, crossing the street that ran along the entrance to the station, then moving ahead up the sidewalk, three abreast. The others began pouring out cups of guayusa and stamping out joints, then followed. Armen was pleased to see that all ages were represented. There were some graying grandfathers and some women who appeared matronly in spite of their rough clothing. There were dozens of young men in those lurid shirts, covered with day-glo images of mushroom clouds and mangled corpses; fortunately, the more grotesque-looking shirts were dispersed through the crowd, so they didn’t stand out too much. There were a couple of young women with bleached braids. There were some middle-aged men in slacks and crisp-looking shirts, probably business owners like Tsipras. Some of the marchers were brawny, some were lean, some grim-looking, some sunny-looking; they were walking briskly, or slowly; they were talking with great animation with one or two companions, or they were sullen and silent. By and large, they were the sort of group you might pass on the street without a second thought. A knot of people waiting on a street corner for a tram. What mainly set them apart now was the fact they were walking in one direction, walking with a clear purpose. Otherwise, they just had the look of citizens, like the people who would be tuning in shortly to The Mid-Day View on Aerobeam.

Armen began spotting the telecasters, holding up their prisms, some of them on the other side of the street, some standing in the street behind the procession.

The day was clear and slightly windy. The air was filled with a film of dust and finely ground chaff, blowing in from the fields about five miles to the south, carrying a loamy, fecal smell.

The group passed a sorghanol station and attracted the quizzical stares of a couple of patrons at the pumps. Under the awning of the hotel across the street, a knot of men in silk shirts and slacks stopped their conversation to stare at the marchers. A lone jogger slowed down and stepped into the street, glancing to her side as she ran on in the other direction.

After about half a mile, the group turned left onto Grainger Street, keeping to the right side of the street, filling the sidewalk from edge to edge. They marched past a long row of specialty shops, selling carpet, scented soaps and candles, Italian ice cream, ten-speed bikes, ceramics, blown glass. This was the refurbished part of town, designed to attract visitors from the walled communities that were spread throughout the county, the sort of people who, in Armen’s estimation, needed to see and understand what was happening to their fellow citizens. It wasn’t far out of the marchers’ way. From here, the Elections Bureau was two blocks down, three blocks over, and one more block down. Armen looked hopefully for some spectators going in and out of the shops, but the shops seemed to be doing little business so far. It was a weekday, after all, but then the Elections Bureau would have been closed on a Saturday.

As the procession approached the turn onto Concord Avenue, Lafferty’s voice broke in.

See them? Ahead, on the left side.

Lafferty was walking at the front of the procession and had a clearer view of the surroundings. As Armen looked ahead toward the intersection, he saw a small group of counterprotesters, walking parallel to the marchers, on the left-hand sidewalk. They were all men, all dressed in white shirts buttoned to the throat; they all wore white gloves, pressed slacks, and combat boots, and they were all holding broom handles horizontally across their chests. Armen felt his chest muscles tighten; his throat felt dry, and there was a sour taste on the back of his tongue.

The salesmen at a car dealership walked up to the edge of their lot, leaning on the backs of pick-ups and vintage gas-powered cars, gazed for a moment, then began applauding when the whiteshirts marched by.

For the little ones! one of the salesmen called out. This would have seemed bizarrely out of place if Armen hadn’t already noticed what some of the counterprotesters wore on the pockets of their shirts: a pair of gold, baby-sized footprints.

After he saw the salesmen applauding the men in combat boots, he began to see other spectators appearing, filtering out of the offices and stores along the street, clerks, managers, the shoppers who had been invisible before, some of them joining the chant:

For the little ones! For the little ones!

The marchers appeared largely indifferent to the looks of the spectators, to the prisms, to the counterprotesters with their sticks. Many of them were lost in telesignal trances, listening to greetings from friends, swinging to music no one else could hear. It was possible that the march had already gotten coverage on the feeds, and they were viewing the broadcast images in their heads, watching their own progress down the street.

Although Armen had originally imagined that the procession would move like a parade in the middle of the street, stopping traffic, he realized now that by going two and three abreast on the sidewalk, spreading out a little as the slower marchers fell a little behind, they were forming a line of just over two hundred yards, creating the kind of impression a very long freight train makes, passing endlessly over a crossing. Lafferty, taking a position near the middle of the march, was no doubt keeping in touch with Tsipras through his transponder. The plan was to force other pedestrians to cross the street, where they broke up the smaller line of whiteshirts. Eventually, the marchers attracted the attention of some patrol cars, which slowed enough to create a small traffic jam, adding something to the visual effect.

But the police were only slowing down to watch for the time being. The confrontation was still ahead.

I’m seeing locals right now, Armen said to Lafferty. Just looking on. Do you think we can expect the State Patrol when we get to the Bureau?

For sure.

Is there going to be trouble?

If we’re lucky. Isn’t trouble the whole point?

Did you let Connie know this is what we’d be in for?

Connie and his group know they’re taking a risk. It’s on them. I think jail is the worst thing they can expect.

What about us?

Come on, Kaladjian. I thought you wanted to shake things up. You don’t have to die to make a statement.

As they came to another intersection, the marchers were gathering confidence and a more visible air of solidarity. They ignored the signal light and crossed the street with measured steps as the whiteshirts and the patrol cars shadowed them. They made steady progress across two more intersections. The telecasters panned across the whole scene, taking in all the elements that pointed toward a collision. It was becoming a tight narrative, and Armen felt increasingly sure that the audience was growing, from city to city, in homes and workplaces, anywhere a viewscreen could be found, anywhere there was enough quiet and calm to allow pictures to take shape in the mind. For all of Armen’s doubts about the wonders of Incfōn®, here was a way to make it useful, to add something meaningful to the sum of human awareness.

They were headed toward the final street corner before reaching the Elections Bureau on North Main Street. The number of whiteshirts seemed to be gradually increasing. Meanwhile, the patrol cars came to a stop and the locals began to emerge from their vehicles, patting their loaded holsters.

Rounding the corner, they saw the State Patrol cars parked in front of the Bureau office, and a line of officers in brown uniforms standing along the front of the building.

No riot gear, I see. They must think they’ve got this under control. All they have to do is wave a gun. I don’t know about that, though. I wish you could see the look on Connie’s face.

I’m coming forward now. I’ve practiced a little law in my time, and I’ve got a pair of inkshades with me. I can pull up a copy of the Quarantine Acts if these guys are willing to listen to reason. We’ll see if that election made a difference after all.

Keep the shades in your pocket, Kaladjian. You’ve got to leave this up to them. Connie’s got the balls for it, believe me.

Shrugging, Armen stepped out into the street. He walked briskly forward, nodding brusquely to Lafferty as he passed by, but he stopped short before reaching the head of the line. From a closer perspective, he studied the blank, tight looks on the faces of the State Patrol officers. One of them spoke through transponder signal, and the whole line stiffened up, but they maintained their collective dead-eyed stare as the marchers approached.

He pulled the shades out of his pocket and slipped them on, and with the other hand keyed in the text code. He was going to follow Lafferty’s instructions about letting the marchers take charge, but he thought it was wise to have the legal language handy.

When he looked ahead again, he saw that there was a new development. A man in a lavender pin-striped suit, with a pair of diamonds twinkling on his lapel, emerged from the tinted glass door of the building. He spoke briefly to the State Patrol officer standing next to the front steps. The officer opened the back door of a black van, came away with a bullhorn, and brought it to the man in the lavender suit.

I think we’re being insulted. That’s just the Deputy Chairman.

Maybe they’re afraid, thought it was too risky for the County Chief to come out himself.

Either way, we’re about to get the brush off. Listen.

The man in the suit lifted the bullhorn, cleared his throat, and addressed the marchers: Good news, fellow citizens! The County Chairman has chosen to ignore this uncalled-for disturbance of the peace. He understands that you believe you’ve been mistreated, and will allow you to return to your homes. You will not face any consequences for your actions, and your protest will be duly noted!

While the Deputy was speaking through the bullhorn, Tsipras stepped forward and placed himself squarely in front of the man. Armen was close enough now to hear what he said, noting both the leathery timbre and the tremolo in his voice, but also the blunt strength of his words.

I’ve voted in this county for thirty years! I was born here, and I’ve built a business here! As he spoke, he extended his right arm and brought it down forcefully again and again, as if he were splitting rocks with the side of his hand. I’ve never broken the law, and I don’t need any mercy from you!

Several of Tsipras’s employees stepped forward to join him, and at their simultaneous action the State Patrol officers reached for their pistols. The Deputy took a half step backward.

He lifted his bullhorn again and addressed the crowd over Tsipras’s head. There’s a time and a place for debate, but for now we must apply the law as it’s written.

At this, Armen took two more steps forward, and used his wristband to bring the text of the Second Quarantine Act into focus.

The Deputy raised his amplified voice: We can’t allow mob action to dictate our decisions! This is a matter for deliberation!

You don’t have to decide anything, Tsipras said, his voice sounding a little spent already. Just follow the Constitution.

We are a people of peace and equity! the Deputy said, aiming the bullhorn over Tsipras’s head. Everyone will be heard at the proper time! We are still in the process of … in the process of … of enlarging our sinuses! The man’s eyes widened as he said this, as if his ears were stunned at what was coming out of his mouth. I meant to say, we’re engorging our penises …

For a moment, cold silence prevailed, broken by a few sporadic titters.

If I can have your attention for just one moment! the Deputy cried out, his voice doubled back by the walls of the hardware store and the shuttered, empty library. We’ve been given a prostate! I mean we’ve been given a mandate by our jelly bellies … I mean, by our pumpkinheads! We have a duty to swallow pumpkins seeds until we drown! …

Little ripples of laughter were beginning to swell through the crowd, and even a couple of the State Patrol officers were forced to put their hands over their mouths, even as they looked from left to right, waiting for a signal to move.

Ladies and gentlemen! If I can have your detention! If I can have your pudenda! Your enema! Your ectoplasm!

The Deputy’s head was beginning to wobble. He was finding it harder and harder to keep the mouthpiece of the bullhorn next to his lips as he continued shouting: "I’ve bathed you all in pus, bathed you in puddles of turds! You are welcome and can now sing the third stanza of ‘God Damn America’ … I meant to say, ‘Gaw Caccaccacca! Cacca … cacca … rawskk … kk …!

The Deputy’s eyes rolled up under his lids, and he flung his arms wildly. The bullhorn was hurled through the air. Two patrolmen took hold of him, while a third snagged the bullhorn.

The officers were forced to drag him back through the door as a stream of his urine threaded across the pavement.

The remaining members of the guard drew their pistols, pointing them at a forty-five degree angle in the direction of the marchers. The local police began charging toward the telecasters, tackling them, placing them in choke holds, wrestling their prisms away from them, pushing them down to their hands and knees.

Lafferty patched in:

I think we got what we wanted. I didn’t know the Jeepers were going to show up, but I’ll take it … I’m going to order a dignified retreat. They won’t arrest anyone but the media, I’m betting.

Tsipras and his employees stood their ground for a moment, while the rest of the marchers watched the assault on the journalists. Regardless of whatever instructions Lafferty had given the organizers, the marchers began moving back down the street as if on a single impulse. Silent and pale, they spread across the street, moving around cars when they encountered them, heedless of anything except the need to leave. They all gradually started picking up the pace as they moved along.

Although the retreat was disorganized, the march had actually turned into the sort of protest parade that Armen had envisioned all along. If only this could be seen all over the country, he mused. Look at the singleness of purpose, look at the determination …

Before he realized what was happening, the counterprotesters had begun to attack. Hemming in the marchers on three sides, the whiteshirts rushed forward with raised sticks.

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Three whole days had gone by, and Tris still wasn’t used to the mixture of sorghonal fumes and reefer smoke that drifted through the city in an invisible cloud. Nor did she like stepping over the squashed paper cups, pigeon shit, and still-smoking butts that constantly littered the sidewalks, no matter how many times the sanitation crew came through. Nor was she getting more accustomed to the closed-in feeling that clotted her senses as she made her way down the street. She was oppressed by the shade the skyscrapers cast, even at noon. There were too many people brushing by; not only was the closeness of their bodies hard to bear, but their voices assaulted her on every side.

It’s one of the early automatics, fully refurbed … I’ll let it go for 4500 Q’s. That’s rock bottom. You won’t get a better deal unless you …

I can’t commit yet. I have to see how the reorganization shakes out. Kinsey’s been making noise about putting me in charge of … Well, it’s not like it hasn’t crossed my mind, right?

I told you, I told you. It’s not dangerous unless you mix it with diethanol. No one would be that stupid. The recipe is one part palm oil …

When she wasn’t hearing other pedestrians’ conversations, she was seeing the reverse images of newsfeeds and telefilms and sermonettes playing on the lenses of their inkshades. She saw columns of numbers scrolling past their eyes, giving them data for instant stock trades as they made their way from one intersection to the next. Often their shades placed them in the middle of meetings, where subsidiaries of large holding companies were in the process of changing hands, with finance agents pocketing five percent of the value.

Everyone in this city was angling for something. In a sense, it’s what they all had in common with her, but still there was all the difference in the world. When she made her mark, all those other aims and calculations would be rendered moot. Things would change. For better? For worse? Not her concern. As long as things changed.

Tris pinched herself, hard enough to hurt, as she crossed the street, making herself reenter the moment she was living through now. Along with the other pedestrians, she traced a path through the automated cars, three lines of them in each direction. The cars were engineered to avoid each other and people on foot and any other obstruction, but she kept her guard up each time made she made her way over the asphalt. Once she was safely on the other side of the street, she was able to catch her breath. This was another thing she was having trouble getting used to. There were few automated cars in Frampton, West Michigan, and the intersections still had traffic lights.

She drew close to a storefront, stepping out of the stream of foot traffic for a moment, just long enough to replay the directions to the Suave-Encounter Building in her head, and as she listened she gazed, grimacing, at the tops of the buildings across the street. After her first two nights in her flat on the forty-third floor of the Blizzard Tower, she was just beginning to conquer her fear of heights.

More and more she was becoming aware of how Frampton had shaped her against her will. The sight of so many black people in sharp-looking clothes was almost a shock to her. Occasionally she would glimpse some of the South Bronx residents pulsing to the beat of patched-in music, their arms and necks covered with bright tracings that flashed with the beat. But they were far outnumbered by the professionals, the black stock brokers, and lawyers, and city officers, hurrying away to their appointments and their working lunches. They reminded her of Mr. Burress, the loan officer at the bank, and Dr. Rockaway, her gynecologist. But here, so many more of them had important jobs. The Asians were in some ways an even stranger sight. When she was a child, Chinese men or women would sometimes make repair calls at the neighborhood routing station. A couple of her teachers had been Chinese. But unlike the black people, they were never seen shopping at the grocery store or the outfitting store, or sitting in the pews at Father Beck’s Community Temple. She used to imagine that, no matter what jobs they held in Frampton, they would get back in their little black cars at the end of the day and go back to their little Chinavilles, places that were probably far, far away.

Scarce as they had always been, they had practically disappeared from Frampton in the last few years. Not long ago she heard her mother saying, You know they eat cat vomit. You know that, don’t you?

That’s not true, Mom, she had said wearily.

It is true, her mother said. They feed the cats a mixture of pickled walnuts, fish eggs, and brown mustard, with a pinch of paregoric, and when they puke the stuff is collected and stored underground for a year. Then bottled. It’s a Chinese delicacy.

You’ve got to stop listening to the free channels, Mom.

But I trust Laura Figgis. She’s got a very clear perspective.

She’s a bigot, Mom.

Listen to you. Everyone who uses common sense is called a bigot these days.

Not everyone in Frampton listened to Laura Figgis and believed what she said, but no one really missed the Asians. They weren’t run out of town. Not exactly. But most people in Frampton believed that it was good for everyone to have a common background so they could understand each other. A common history meant fewer conflicts, so they said. 

Here in the small state of New Amsterdam, though, no one seemed to care about that. Tris began thinking that she might even see David somewhere nearby, though she knew she probably wouldn’t.