Tyrannia (8 page)

He flipped forward, hands barely under control.

“Only one right path lies before her. In the pure fire of justice her world would be cleansed. Looking up, she almost saw in a cloudface her father’s face, smiling down on her. She missed him so much and the wind pressed up a gentle breeze on her face as her chief colonel nodded.

“‘Bring down the noise, Charity!’ he exclaimed, his jaw set.

“As she clenched the trigger—”

Roger closed the notebook. “Total shit,” he said, falling asleep, drifting backward to the air force bases of his prime, when he was a prime mover, an advisor, a prophet of policy. No one would ever understand, not even the apprentice. The only ones who understood were long dead, at one time laid to rest in desecrated Arlington graves: the rear admirals who requested signed copies of
Fierce Power
by the boxload for mandatory frigate book clubs, the Secretary of Information and Coercion who sent his daughter to shadow him for a week for a school project, and of course the president, the commander-in-chief,
his
commander-in-chief. Roger imagined that others in the inner circle of Washington, Lincoln, and Reagan must have felt the same thrill—not only to be living at the same time as an architect of history, but to advise great men and great decisions, by sheer accident more than anything else. He was, after all, a writer of stories, an entertainer, and he never let himself forget that. And yet . . . he was there when the world changed. He was there. He was there in the bunker, a mile underneath Minot. El Paso burning, Dallas burning, the District of Columbia cordoned, Chinese peacekeepers amassing on the Canadian border, and the choice resting on heavy shoulders.

“Tell me what to do,” the president asked him in the bunker’s lounge, velvet upholstery muffling any sound, any Klaxons and shouts. The words and the president’s face echoed in the chambers of his sleep. “Tell me what to do, Roger.”

“Your advisors, sir . . .” Roger said, swirling his bourbon and looking down into it.

“I don’t trust them. Don’t trust any of them. You know that, Roger.” The president could get petulant without enough sleep, but who wouldn’t?

“I do know that, sir. I would . . .” Roger set his bourbon down on a stack of his own paperbacks on the coffee table. A poster of Roger on the door stared back at Roger—arms crossed, wearing sunglasses, an ammo belt draped over his shoulders like a scarf, a baseball cap that had embroidered on it: DON’T TREAD ON ME, and underneath that: KILL ZONE. Roger tried to think of what that Roger would do, what Mick Solon would do.

“You have to root out the problem at its source, sir.” The commander-in-chief stared at Roger. “Do you understand what I mean, sir?”

The president thought about this, licking his lips. “Do you mean to bomb Mexico City? Nuclearly?”

Roger shrugged and tried to keep his eyes on the president. When the president didn’t say anything, Roger said, “Have you seen the war games for that, sir? With the bunker busters?” Roger had no idea whether war games for that even existed, or what his real advisors would say.

“No . . . no. But maybe that’s for the better.” The president stood up and Roger followed suit. The president reached out to shake his hand and Roger moved right away to salute, leaving the president’s hand dangling there. But then the president returned the salute.

“Stay here as long as you want,” the president said before leaving, and in two hours the bombers were in the air, reaching their cruising altitude. And Roger did stay in the bunker, for five months, as winter set in, and then—instead of spring—winter set in again throughout the Americas. Then after that, another winter of fog and ash, and the president’s hanging at Mount Vernon. Then the third winter skipped right to autumn, winds of acid and ice, the fall of two to three provisional governments, and then no governments at all, at least in the old sense of the word. Roger took a Humvee from Minot to Minneapolis, and he had to pay for the trip with his collection of Liberty dollar coins. The soldiers never talked with him, joshed with him, as they did before. The zoo was the safest place he could find.

Of course, the world stabilized, after a fashion, and he was able to write again. People were still hungry for his stories. They were the same people as before, for the most part, the same survivors. And their children, who had little in the way of television, grew up with Mick Solon instead. Roger found an agent who understood this—his old agent having disappeared in the Manhattan reorganizations. Enclaves still believed in the rightness of Mick’s causes, that Mexico Moon was necessary and cleansing, only one salvo in the war for civilization.

Roger obliged them.

When he woke from his long sleep, he was put under house arrest. Not in so many words; no one announced this to him. But there was always an armed groundskeeper within eyesight of his house. The apprentice disappeared, and was found a few days later on the outskirts of the old zoo, where she had set up a makeshift bomb making factory and blew herself up by accident. The apprentice’s family demanded that Roger pay for her funeral. He used the request for a fire-starter. There was no body, he wanted to tell them. How can you bury a person without a body? Do you want to bury her jaw? Her femur? Her dental records? The investigation into the destruction of the sloth and the walkway found him neither guilty nor innocent, but rather complicit in a long-standing pattern of harboring and brainwashing terrorists. No charges came, though. On the other hand, they did arrest the fucker who drugged the giant sloth—tampering with megafauna was a serious crime. She was one of the medical assistants, who administered chemo at the free clinic and hated everything Roger stood for. He tried to follow her trial on the daily bulletins, but the painkillers he took for his legs would not let him focus on anything for too long, except for sleep. He tried to call his agent, but couldn’t remember the right access codes, and the screen would always stay blank, no matter what he did. Then in the middle of the night he heard the apprentice calling for him, pausing with her blowtorch and asking: Isn’t this what you would want me to do? And he would have said, No, not exactly—see, action has to be clean like writing is clean, there have to be clear consequences and no loose ends. Self-defense has to be guided by the conscience of liberty. The fight has to be a true one. People just want to forget about their problems. Also, you’re really fucking scaring me.

And she might have paused, after listening to that impromptu lesson, letting it sink in.

But she always went back to her welding.

After a few weeks of this toss-and-turn, he received a package. The sky was clear and inviting when the courier knocked on his door and asked him to sign. The courier was young, barely out of UPS U. It was the first time Roger had gone outside, even a few steps, since the apprentice died.

“What if this is a bomb?” Roger asked.

“I’ve scanned it,” the courier said, waving his black wand. A little too casual for Roger’s taste. “It’s fine.”

Roger pulled the package to him and closed the door. The box was taped over and over again. He set it on the kitchen table and then saw it had a passport from India.

“Shit!” Roger said, swiping at the package and pushing it to the floor. Maybe there was a contact poison. Those stupid wands couldn’t account for everything. He let the package sit there for a few more days, until he summed up the courage to face his own death. Placing the package back on the table, he closed his eyes as he cut it open with scissors and reached inside. It was a manuscript. His manuscript, a copy of it, scribbled upon in red ink. In his haze he had forgotten about it. There was a handwritten letter attached to it.

Dear Sir:

You may be surprised to find this returned to you, as you have not had any dealings with me in the past. However, your agent—who I now fear to be dead—has often utilized my services to doctor your recent synopses and novels, though I am rarely able to make sense of them. It took me great trouble to track you down. I assume you are in hiding.

I have enclosed my transcription and my edits, in order to complete my contract and rid myself of you. I have to say that I found the ideas devoid of meaning, the characters cold, the prose poorly written—like everything else of yours. And yet, in a manner utterly alien to your later projects, there is a vulnerability too. The people that inhabit these pages are shallow but they are not inhuman. You started with something at least honest—in your own fashion—and cast that aside.

You had a letter stuck in the pages of your notebook. Do you remember this letter? You must. It’s a letter of commendation from the last president of the United States, “personally, and with great warmth, thanking you for defending the Constitution and the integrity of the nation during a time of great trial.” The letter goes on to list the names of the bomber pilots who “would vouch for the great effect your writing had on their thoughts as they dropped the collateral payload on the enemies of America and freedom.” These words made me—

Amar felt his wife’s hands on his shoulders in the middle of his composition. He flinched, though he didn’t want to.

“Let it go for now,” she said. “The children are asleep.” She curled closer into him, arms around his neck. He felt that she was naked. A torrent had come into her when he told her everything, about every distant monster he had to face, the innocent blood embedded in every file. The planes taking off, and landing lighter six hours later.

She told him that even monsters needed to be forgiven—not right away, of course. But even Devadatta, the Buddha’s worst enemy, the traitor of his inner circle, was able to be a great enlightened teacher after many successive lives, after many hells and trials. She had told him that calamity was the loom and that all sentient beings were the cords of silk on the loom, interwoven in the warp and the woof, bound tightly together. She struggled to find the spirit of these words, but even this attempt comforted him. It gave him the courage to write the letter to the American—which his wife needed to interrupt. She told him she needed him. He turned around his chair and kissed her neck, then licked each nipple as she pushed herself onto him. She unclasped his pants and slid his cock out, rubbing its head and pressing it against the tangle of her pubic hair. He put his hands on her ass and guided himself into her.

She came first. After he came, she lifted herself off and knelt in front of him. She sucked his softening cock and ran her tongue on the foreskin until it was clean, and then placed her head against his thigh. He stroked her hair and told her he was ready to finish the letter. He wanted to finish strong, vicious, to devastate the author so that he would never be able to write another word again. And then Amar could go on with his life.

After she left, he sat there for a long while. No words came to him. He had no idea what to say next. That girl who thought he lived in Albany—what would she have told him? She would have told Amar (or so he imagined) that he didn’t have the right to say anything, really, even to a war criminal, that he was trying to dredge up memories he didn’t possess of a time he didn’t live through. And that it was better to quit while he was ahead and pretend none of those false memories ever existed.

Really, she would be all right.

The wound on her cheek—he closed his eyes and saw her lean forward—look, Amar, it’s healing.

Plight of the Sycophant

The border between the two worlds is hard to describe but easy to feel under the skin. Even a few miles away, you can sense its effect, in ways that you’ll probably never understand. Much like when a person puts a gun in your mouth (though this has never happened to me). The bullet doesn’t leave the gun—anticipation is its own weapon. And fear. One must never forget fear.

You can have this unsettling feeling on either side of the border, though you will likely prefer one side to the other. One world to the other. The sun will be bright, as it always is in this part of the world—except, perhaps, for September—and the giant angels will be patrolling the mist, as they always do. There will often be rainbows, on account of this bright sun and the mist. They grow boring.

The border is not actually a wall but a waterfall. No one knows where the water comes from; there is never a cloud in the sky. But the water comes. The angels are rather mean and swear a lot. They wear bright, yellow ponchos, with a red script in their language up and down the sleeves. There is only one checkpoint, one place to cross by foot (although it is not advised) or car. The cars have to be coated in a certain type of myrrh, or else the border patrol would not even consider letting you cross. And even then you have to have the right kinds of papers, the right bribes. And—the hardest part—the right attitude. Angels will detain a person trying to cross for months, sometimes years, trying to find out what attitude a border-crosser might have. What desires they have. Their prisons near the gate are little cottages and are actually kind of cute.

Sometimes the angels are satisfied by the answers and sometimes they are not. Some travelers end up leaving their cottages, and some do not.

This is all, of course, from my perspective, from my country. I have never been to the other country. I have not had appropriate business to take me there. And I’m afraid of the angels. They’re not actual angels. That I’ll grant you. They don’t fly, or sing, or help people. But they are certainly tall—seven feet, maybe eight feet in height. They don’t have wings, but their guns do. I’ve seen one of their guns fly, once. I was emptying the grease trap from the store—surely the nastiest job in the history of the world; believe me, there’s a lot of competition—out in the garbage pit closer to the waterfall. One of the angels had to re-strap his boot and the gun flapped furiously to stay aloft, like a hummingbird, and it did. The wings fluttered in a manner that my eye couldn’t catch. I was watching it all with binoculars; the pit wasn’t
that
close to the waterfall, and anyway, I didn’t have a garbage permit, so I had to watch out for patrols. Fees and levies were designed to keep us safe—but if I actually
paid
them, then we’d be operating at a loss. Plus the scavengers around the pit liked the grease, and they were bold night and day—green bears and millipedes large as my arm. I was already risking an arm and a leg.

Anyway, the pawn shop where I work is in sight of the border. It’s the last chance for a traveler to get rid of his or her belongings before going over to the other side—or maybe pick up something that might be useful farther down the road. We also sell fuel. By popular demand. And also hot dogs, frozen goods, pop, batteries, and the like. But we’re not a convenience store. We sell a lot of beer and guns. Not the angel’s guns, but regular guns. They’re not allowed across the border, so people get what they can for them. There’s always something going on in the shop—a lot of tourists come through, just to get a
look
at the waterfall, but you still get bored at the register. A pawn shop is a pawn shop.

No one comes back from the other side. In case you’re wondering.