The Milkman: A Freeworld Novel (18 page)

“Astonishing,” Samjahnee said.

“Thanks,” Sylvia said. “Glad you see the entertainment value.”

“Everything you do is interesting,” Marshall kicked in. “Even nothing.”

“This is not the good kind of interesting,” Sylvia said. “This is a ‘white spot on your x-ray’ interesting or a ‘file you didn’t download to your core memory’ interesting. Gavin wants the movie. Now.”

“He can wait,” Marshall said.

“He’s angry about the baby.”

“So?”

“So, it’s a breach of contract. Getting rid of the baby was a term of extraneous employment. He don’t owe me shit.”

“But he wants his movie,” Samjahnee added.

“Sure. I guess. It’s not like he’ll stop being mean to me to get it, but sure, everyone wants me to complete the meaningful project, the first really important one in my life. Before…”

Sylvia looked away from the images on the ceiling. Her eyes hurt from squinting her tear ducts shut. Her neck spasmed. It all came up on her suddenly, like an earthquake on the inside, shaking her from the belly out. She wanted to roll over, cover up and scream.

“Before what, dear?” Marshall asked.

“Nothing. Before nothing.”

“Before the child,” Samjahnee said. “You believe the child will interfere with your directorial career.”

“Don’t you?” she spat, returning her face to the projections.

“I don’t know,” he replied.

“Then why did you even call? What gave you the urge to disturb me face-to-face?”

Samjahnee said, “We found the Milkman.”

Chapter Twenty-One

“How are you feeling?”

Emory opened his eyes. The lids left a trail of goo across each, spattering the light, making his surroundings bend and blur. He tried to raise both hands to wring the sleep away. Only the right eye obeyed. The left arm refused.

“Feeling,” Emory said. He rubbed his eyes and looked at his left wrist. A nylon belt tied it to the bamboo rail of a hospital bed. A small-bore plastic tube ran into the same arm, confined by a few wraps of white bandaging.

“You think you’re smart getting yourself in here?”

Emory raised his head. Valient sat on the edge of his bed, turned at the waist, leaning back on a large spotted knockwurst of an arm.

“You think you’re the first to try this?” he continued.

“I’m sick,” Emory said as he realized it. The exact nature of his sickness escaped him. He remembered the fever and the cave closing in on him, like he was being cobbled back into a womb. Something about a bed, flying through clouds, with a head gazing down on him. Inspectors, tinkering with a broken… him, he guessed, now, through the fuzz in his frontal lobe.

“I’m sorry.” An automatic response. He still operated on automatic. The rest of him stood back making notes, checking diagnostics. Energy levels? 10 percent. Processing speed? 50 percent. Mobility? Zeroed out.

“The doc says once you get enough juice in you, we’ll be fine. I don’t use ‘we’ like they do. I really mean you and me. As soon as you get off your ass, you’re going to do your little chore and you and me will be fine.”

“I don’t even know… anything.”

“They think some stool got in your bloodstream. I think you figured a way to fool the thermometer, you being a fancy engineer and all.”

“They do any other tests I might have faked?”

“Don’t know,” Valient said. “Just popped in to make sure you didn’t think you’d fallen off my to-do list.”

Each sentence acted like a windshield wiper, clearing away the bacteria or drugs keeping him from navigating this conversation.

“I’m delirious from the drugs. Who are you?”

“I’m you.” Valient patted Emory’s shin. “I know why you killed that girl. Not exactly why, mind you. I’ve been there is all I’m saying.”

“You’ve been where? And if that’s all you’re saying, why are you still here?”

Valient bared his teeth and leaned forward, leaning on his arm, elbow tucked into Emory’s rib cage. “I extinguished the life of a young woman. A moment I regret. She didn’t listen. I digress. I started on this alternative work assignment 18 years ago in much the position you are now. I worked my way into the position I am in now. You could work your way into a different position.”

“18 years?”

“What gets measured, gets done.” Valient sat up. “You ever heard that?”

“In systems engineering? Never. We’re all ‘hope for the best’, ‘life takes care of itself’ kind of guys. You know?”

“You’re not as respectful as I’d like. I’m going to throw some of it off as the drugs. If I turn off the drugs, do you think I’ll get more respect?” Valient said, more than asked. “Results. That is why I’m the super. They measure my results with two metrics: productivity of the crew and productivity of the men who leave my crew. They judge me on how well behaved my men are once they leave here. That may not seem all that fair. I didn’t always believe so. The metric is important, though. The company wants good employees who understand policy. They want employees who never want to be put back on my detail. Are you following me?”

Emory thought about his next word choice. He would not follow this guy anywhere. He decided on, “I understand.”

“You think Campbell is going to keep to himself if he returns to regular duty? You think he’s going to follow the policies of Ambyr Incorporated and refrain from discussing confidential duties? I’m not inclined to think so.”

“So you want me to kill him—”

“I am hoping for an accident. Killing is against policy.”

“Let me get this right,” Emory said, staring at the ceiling. “You want me to kill Campbell to keep your numbers up?”

* * *

The room had a bed, a wardrobe with clothing in, out and around its open doors, a table, two chairs and a damp warmth McCallum found foreign. He had no idea what heated the space — he guessed the building predated furnaces by a century or two — and the fireplace sat dark. Something kept the frost out of the room and the whole stone building. He’d removed his jacket the moment he entered, downstairs. Up here, in Snyder’s room, it was even warmer.

He sat in a simple wooden chair, elbows on a plank table barely large enough for two place settings. Through the thick, gate-like windows he could see the whole of the parade grounds. He saw his tent easily. The scene didn’t help center him, though. The view, the feel, the scent of the place displaced him.

Snyder entered with two unmatched mugs, steam streaming from their open heads. She set them down and removed her hat. Licorice black hair fell to the side. She slid the big duster coat off. It hit the bare wood floor with a knock, its waxy fabric kept its body shape even as it tumbled to the side. McCallum didn’t watch. He pretended to stare out the window, using Snyder’s pale, ghostly reflection to size up her body, which turned out to be pretty much as he… suspected? Hoped? Dreamed?

He sipped his coffee.

“No way your name’s Snyder,” he said.

“Sure it is,” she said. “A name’s just what we call each other, right?”

“I suppose so. It’s not like it makes a whole lot of difference. It’s all in the cuff.”

“For those that have them.” She sat down, bending a bit towards the window. She clasped her mug with both hands.

“You haven’t had one for a while, huh?”

“What makes you say that?”

“No tan line, no gap in the fine hair of your wrist, and you don’t shake your hand for no reason.” McCallum made a drilling motion with his fist. “A lot of people do it, without noticing. The bracelets tend to settle and people don’t like it. People tend to continue the habit for a while, even if they don’t have a cuff”

“Settling?”

“The sameness,” McCallum said. “The body needs change.”

“That’s a lot of insight for a landscape artist.”

“Art’s a process. The first step is observation.”

Snyder’s upper lip twitched, a miniscule motion, a quick and decisive fight with a smile, McCallum thought.

“So what else have you observed?” she asked.

“You’ve got the best living space in the fort. You’re the leader here, like the mayor I bet, even if it’s de facto. You don’t have too many personal items around, but you didn’t get here yesterday. Your clothes aren’t packed, so you’re not leaving tomorrow. You didn’t come here with much, but that’s not the real reason for the austerity.”

McCallum sipped his coffee.

“What?” Snyder asked.

“What?” McCallum peered back out the window.

“You’re saying I live like a nun.”

“You live on the run,” McCallum said. “Did, anyway. You’re taking a breather here. I don’t blame you. Judging by your accent, if you keep running in the direction you’ve been going it gets even colder. You didn’t grow up in the cold.”

Snyder’s face hardened. McCallum tried to soften his.

“How long have you been here?” he asked.

“You don’t know?”

“I’m sorry. I haven’t stayed up on my conversation skills.”

“Yeah,” she looked into McCallum’s eyes. It gave him a small but serious shock. “That’s common here.”

McCallum glanced at his left wrist. A habit formed from years of checking the cuff’s face for news, messages, time or alerts. He saw nothing but skin.

“I’m not the leader,” Snyder said. “I’m just together. You know? Most of them are touched. Not all. We’ve got drifters, hiders and haters, too.”

“Haters?” McCallum feigned ignorance.

“Ollies who hate the companies so much they give up everything and come here to live like they’re camping for the rest of their lives.”

You’re no ideologue
, McCallum said himself. “You do seem together,” he said aloud.

“Thanks.” She almost smiled again. “You seem together yourself. You’re not jabbering or counting every brick you pass by. You haven’t mentioned devils and you’re not wrapped in aluminum foil. You haven’t spouted off about the companies and how they’re destroying the world.”

“You haven’t either.”

“Why bother. It’s like saying the sky is blue. So Ed,” Snyder leaned forward, raised her mug and blew across the top. “How do you like the fort so far?”

“My best vacation in years.”

“You always vacation without your cuff?”

McCallum looked down at his bare wrist. “That is the vacation, Snyder. Getting away from it all.”

“I should’ve broken out the Riesling instead of the coffee.”

“The day’s young,” McCallum said. “And neither one of us seems to be going anywhere.”

* * *

“Move it up the ladder,” Sylvia said.

“Where are you?” Gavin’s voice entered her ears. “Why no video feed? I’m staring at a three-year-old glamour shot of you that I find rather insulting.”

Sylvia sat on a bale of peat moss outside the loading dock. She found the dirty, wet scent soothing and the peat moss itself firm and comfy. She’d made a kind of recliner out of 14 bales. A 700 pound throne. She wouldn’t have minded Gavin seeing that part, all earthy and regal. She didn’t want Gavin to see her swollen face, crabapple cheeks and flat hair. She couldn’t call up all her powers looking like an old ollie, begging on the street. ‘Empty bottle, sir? Can I return that cup for you?’

“I’m serious,” she said. “You’ve got to bring the juice.”

“You see? Here’s the perfect illustration of my problem. I ask a question, you pretend like it never happened.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Sylvia said. “What matters is how much muscle you can flex. How much, Gavin? How high up do your backers go? High enough to pry me out of Atlanta? Because this is the moment.”

“I had a simple request,” Gavin said. “Clear your schedule.”

“I worked on this project day and night.”

“Clear. Your. Schedule.”

“A baby is not a schedule.”

“You still don’t get it. I made a request. I expected it to be followed.”

“It was unreasonable.”

“Besides the point. I asked you to do something. That should be the end of it.”

“Who the fuck do you think you are?”

“Your boss,” Gavin hissed.

“Exactly,” she hissed back. “My boss. And if you were my boss, you could have me reassigned. So what is it, Gavin? Are you really my boss? Do you really call the shots? Large and in charge? Huh?”

She heard air passing through nostrils, quickly and powerfully. Like Gavin was having her baby, she thought. Only with his mouth closed.

“Fine,” Gavin said. “I’ll reach up the ladder. Because you’re going to give me something.”

“What?”

“I asked for two things. I’ll settle for one. A movie or a baby.”

Chapter Twenty-Two

Sylvia decided, should she ever obtain the means, she may very well live permanently in the first class section of an airship. Spotless, plush, silent. The windows angled up and out. Larger than king-sized mattresses, they inspired an Olympian sensation. Not the running, jumping, sweating kind— the Gods. One could stand, especially — up in the prow of the ship — and soak in the full sensation of skimming across the world. Of looking down. On everyone.

She sat in her lounge chair now, with more room than she’d ever need for her out-stretched legs, and watched the endless field of sparkle and shadow roll out beneath her. The rising and falling strings of lights, the occasional cluster of yellow-orange dazzle marking off a town or factory. Constellations passed below. What an exhilarating thought. Who got to float above the constellations if not the Gods?

The dead
, she answered herself. Then she went to work. She tapped her cuff on the monitor fitted into the back of the chair in front of her and opened her mailbox.

Message to Gavin: Flight on schedule.

Message to Samjahnee: Will arrive at Niagara Falls Seneca Tower at 4:18 AM. Be ready with the truck.

Message to Niagara Falls Hilton: Will arrive at 4:35 AM and want my usual room. How’s availability?

Message to general post: Riding in the belly of a blimp, like a shrimp in a whale, only without all the digestive acids and such.

She poked the file Samjahnee had sent. Lots of b-roll of the country in and around Niagara Falls. The Falls themselves held her interest for a moment. They were huge. The play of the mist rising from the water’s endless collision with the rocks below mesmerized her. She also liked Samjahnee’s shots of the whirlpools. She hadn’t seen those before. The massive crash of water and earth sent the constant torrent gushing, sometimes back in on itself. The water turned and turned, full of power, with no place to go. What a delicious metaphor. Feedback. That’s what the Milkman was all about. She’d expected to use endless video of cows grazing. These whirlpools had much more appeal, Maybe they could—

“Fell and Morse Productions” slithered into her ear. “Content that’s never content.”

Sylvia rapped her cuff. “Yes, Gavin?”

“Hope you’re happy with my arrangements.”

Message from Niagara Falls Hilton: Awaiting your arrival, Ms. Cho. Your standard package is available.

“It’s all about you,” Sylvia said. “If I’m happy, it will eventually trickle down and you’ll be happy.”

“Notify me when you’ve made contact.”

“What else would I do?”

Gavin’s voice feed went dead.

Message from Samjahnee: Why the truck?

Sylvia pushed the dictate button on her cuff and said, “To get me from the tower to the hotel.” Message to Samjahnee. Send.

Message from Samjahnee: For three blocks? Isn’t there a shuttle?

Sylvia ignored the reply. She thought about bouncing more messages back and forth, just to keep Samjahnee from sleep, but the steward entered the cabin, in his cute little sky blue jumper, sporting a dreamy smile. He held a basket of fruit in the crux of his arm.

“Ms. Cho?” He bent and offered.

Bananas. She gasped. She hadn’t seen bananas in years. Back when she did see them, it was just that— seeing. She couldn’t actually afford to eat one.

“Thank you,” she took one as she might a tissue. Forcefully blasé.

“We just got them in tonight,” the steward said. “Apparently there’s not a shortage everywhere.”

“It’s a big world.” Sylvia sniffed the fruit. “About to get bigger. I am eating for two.”

She took another.

The steward winked and moved on.

‘Message from Marshall’ appeared on the monitor. Sylvia tapped the mail open and began peeling her first banana.

Message from Marshall: Enjoying your flight?

She called up a keyboard so she wouldn’t have to talk with her mouth full. She typed: Immensely. This is the only way to travel.

Message from Marshall: You should do a film about dirigibles. How governments outlawed them in deference to the airplane and oil industries. It would be great follow up to Tobacco Road. The flip side. Governments peddled a poison product while withholding one so wonderful.

She smiled. She nodded. That place in her brain reactive to new projects lit up. She wrote: Nifty idea. Lots of potential for the footage. Big airships, chasing clouds. You’re onto something. Think we can dig up any old footage?

Message from Marshall: Uncertain. Never saw anything on pre-Buy-Up airships. I only know they existed at all in the past because the company’s always saying how great it is that we have them now. You know that tale— government bad, company good.

Sylvia sent: I wrote that tale. I’m going to clean up this milk thing first. Then we’ll see if I’m ever allowed to work again.

Message from Marshall: Don’t furrow that brow. Perchance I’ll back your next feature, regardless of how this one flops or flies.

Sylvia typed: Large of you. Thought you were fully extended.

Message from Marshall: I’m blushing.

Sylvia typed: On you that would be called a stroke. Get to a hospital.

Message from Marshall: My last project channeled new funds. I’m flush and full of fun.

Sylvia almost asked about his last project, then stopped herself. Why ask the question if you don’t want the answer.

She typed: Working now.

Message from Marshall: Huff.

She ate her last banana as slowly as she could possible stand. She thought about making a general post about the fruit and how heavenly it tasted and decided against it. She wanted it all to herself. Even the idea of it.

* * *

Emory tried to remember what his little girl looked like. He closed his eyes and called up all the parts of her face. The tiny pink lips, the crystalline blue eyes and shaggy, crazy, refuse-to-behave hair of gold wildness. He had tried … months ago … when he could … anything at all to make her laugh. Her face blossomed and body bounced. She laughed with everything. He thought, anyway. That’s how he remembered it. Ago. In a different time stream, in a different universe. He couldn’t count on his memory now. He didn’t have a good check on his recollections, a baseline to which he could match his mental vision. And he needed it. At this precise moment, he needed to see his little girl. Not his wife or his mother or anyone else. Now. Elizabeth. Not a flawed facsimile from his poor and wasting imagination.

He jammed the cross brace into the wall. Jagged teeth bit into the earth. He hefted the central cylinder, held it with one hand and cranked its wheel with the other. The brace elongated, pressed the other foot into the other side of the tunnel. Campbell readied a post beneath it.

Emory gazed down the tunnel, into the moist blackness. The other team had yet to descend. Waiting, wisely, for the supports to take. The moment had arrived. Campbell crouched beneath him and the 60-pound steel brace with its saw-like foot. The back of his pale head could have been a mushroom. Inhuman. Not his friend. Not a man who wanted to tell people things he knew because man should be fair and honest and not a chump, submitting to the shaft of crap the company crammed into you from age four until death. The edge of the metal plate at the end of the brace would shatter the skull, driving into the brain, taking pieces of the bone along for the ride. Campbell would feel a prick, a flood of warmth, presaging a faint. Then nothing.

Could he look Lizzie in the face? Would the chief supervisor let him live at home, with his family? And if he sat cross-legged on the floor, watching her stumble towards him, could he look her in the face?

“If not you, someone else,” the chief had said.

Or not, Emory wanted to say back. Everyone could make the right choice? Right? Couldn’t the world work that way, with one guy setting the brace and the other guy setting the support, and the next guy bringing in the new section of pipe so that everyone moves ahead? Everyone lives?

Emory’s arms hurt from being aloft for so long. The blood drained and the cells screamed, cut off and starving. He held his breath. The tunnel sent down no human sounds, nothing but dripping. He closed his eyes.

“Campbell,” he said in a harsh whisper.

The man looked up from his crouch, leaning on the steel support beam he’d readied.

“They want me to kill you,” Emory said. His face tingled. He felt himself pass from once place to another, through a field of bioelectric moral relativity nonsense. It charged his cheeks and ears and neck. In all his time on the chain gang, he’d felt innocent. He’d wrap himself in that from time to time. He’d crossed to guilty, now. Conspiratorial.

He felt like the Milkman.

“Are you gonna?” Campbell asked from his knees, staring up with his head cocked back so much he couldn’t comfortably close his mouth.

“No.” Emory finished fitting the brace. “That means the chief will ask somebody else.” He knelt down in the puddle, collected by the curve of the mud. “You’ve got to get out of here.”

“He’ll know you warned me.” Campbell jammed the metal pole under the back.

“He wants you dead. Because you talk too much.”

“He’s not wrong about that now, is he.”

“Just run for it. Lot’s of people live off line.”

“Lots?”

“Some. A few.”

“Ever meet any of them?”

“That’s not the point.”

“The crazy ass guys who talk to themselves all the time. Or the ones that stand around all day shouting Jesus is going set fire to the world. How about the ones that wander around begging for the last bite of your sandwich or sip of your coffee? You want me to be one of those?”

“You wouldn’t be one of those,” Emory said. “And you’d be alive.”

“Would you come with me?” Campbell asked.

Emory paused. All the talk in his head had been about convincing Campbell to leave. He hadn’t thought about going off line himself.

“Abandon my family?” Emory asked.

“You’re not with ‘em now.”

“But… I could be. I hoped…”

“Then you should’ve killed me. You should have stuck that joist so deep in my head I never would have known another thing.”

* * *

McCallum didn’t want to move his arm. He’d let it go all numb and even necrotic before he pulled it out from under Snyder, or whatever she wanted to call herself. Her head on his chest, her leg laid over his, the feel of her back, down the length of his forearm filled him in, gave color to the pencil sketch of his life. Screw the circulatory system. This was bigger than blood flow.

And thirst and the need to visit a bathroom and maybe pop a mint. He’d fight it all. Even the sun, starting to blare in through the multi-pane windows. The leaded glass made the sunlight split and shine with more viciousness than normal. The wine didn’t help. When did he ever drink that much wine? White? What did Snyder call it? Ice wine?

“You’re still here,” she said, with a mushy, sticky mouth.

“You’ve got me pinned.”

“Yeah.” Snyder pushed up on her arm. “That was my plan. Trap you here forever.”

“Your plan is working.” McCallum kissed her just a little. “Maybe better than you thought. I’m not moving a thing.”

“You don’t have to.” She sat up. “Not for me.”

She stretched, pushing her fists in a high ‘v’, with no concern for her nakedness. Not that she should’ve been, he figured. Not now, not ever, really. He shouldn’t be, either. They’d been over it. Each other. At night, after a bottle of wine.

Snyder rolled over and straddled him. “I don’t know what you’re doing here, Eduardo McCallum, but I’m glad you came.”

He snickered. “Likewise.” He rolled her, tangling up the sheets and the quilt. She laughed and pretended to fight him off.

“Coffee,” Snyder giggled. “Let me go and I promise you coffee.”

“Persuasive.”

“I can be.”

McCallum rolled off Snyder and laid back. “So how does it work, here? I don’t imagine there’s room service.”

“The service is not great. I know, because I’m the service.”

“So far, I’ve got no complaints.”

“It’s not my morning for breakfast. Thank you Jesus, it’s not my morning for breakfast. I’d have a lot of upset ollies down there. It would not be pretty.”

“You all take turns?”

“Some of us. Some can, some can’t. There are a few who need to do the same thing everyday. There are a few who cannot be trusted to do anything any day. The rest of us do the rest.”

“And you all lived here through the winter.”

“Winter is difficult.”

“It’s warm enough in this room.”

“Somebody sometime put geothermal pumps in. They work even if we don’t want them to. The summer can be worse than the winter.”

McCallum rolled to his side. Snyder’s profile held him for a moment. The scalene triangle of her nose, erected beside a sumptuous cheekbone hill, near a dark brown pond, feeding bent black reeds, lashing in a breeze. He wanted to live there, paint there, lie in rest in that tiny world next to him. Away and calm and free from desire.