Whatever Lola Wants (36 page)

John Cochan had ignored it all, praise and chiding, jibes and commendations. They didn't know, literally, the half of it, the grand secret of Underland. His credit rating triple-A, he had turned his liaisons with mid-size banks into massive loans and impressive lines of credit. Intraterra shipped in heavy machinery, tons of cement and Québois Fina presswood, and closed deals, often locally, on materials from engineered beams to nails and bolts. In Richmond residual furore died away.

A guard peered into the Rolls, saluted, raised the boom, and waved Mr. Cochan through. The guards and fences were important. Nothing clandestine about Terramac's Summerclime, yet best to avoid pseudo-environmentalist vandals. They could set Intraterra's schedule back by days.

The new cavern beyond the wall: the place to consecrate Benjie's shrine?

Yak, if he were there, would know Johnnie didn't want to speak with any Carney. Yak knew lots about how Johnnie thought and felt; spooky to Johnnie sometimes how much. True, Yak understood people, because he had fathomed the dimensions of nature. His intimacy with shapes and passageways had begun at birth, his entrance so smooth he might himself have designed the canal of his arrival as he swam from womb to air in twelve minutes. His liaison with corridors in stoneways and airways was nurtured on sand castles, rock collecting, termite-hills, spelunking, the balanced flight of pelicans, his own hang-gliding off the cliffs at Malibu. His knowledge of seam and striation was refined by a Cal Tech doctorate in chemical engineering and by a post-doc in geological physics at the Sorbonne. He had spent four years at Taisei Corp in Japan formulating the early plans for Alice City, an underground development. Japan, with a population half as large as the
US
living on land the size of New England and New York, needed space to expand. So Tasei had developed designs to cut huge rabbit holes into the earth. No, wrong, Yak had argued. Use the earth's own bones and belly. Follow its lines. But Taisei wouldn't listen. Nine years ago John Cochan hired Yak away from Taisei and put him in charge of Planning for Terramac, the biggest project of both their lives.

Johnnie glided the Rolls past spruce, maple, and birch, all midsummer green as the road curved upward. And now the ridge, the crest. There, spread out before him, his world of majesty and hope: Terramac.

In Johnnie's mind as in the blueprints, the whole was divided into sixteen Segments, four rows of four. The approach road entered at Segment 15. Beyond the Trailer of Planning and the Trailer of Architecture, to the right of the trailer village, the sweet ceaseless interaction of engineers, masons, carpenters, electricians, plumbers, road-layers, bulldozers, excavators, derricks, backhoes, cement trucks, steamrollers, sheet rock, pipe, and cable. A city block of two-by-fours and six-by-sixes and six-by-eights. Powdery cement by the container-load, racks of steel webbing, precast slabs of siding. For roofing and flooring, ten-foot-high stacks of four-by-eight sheets of Québois Fina, the revolutionary presswood imported hundred-thousandfold from Canada at the advantageous rate set by Aristide Boce. And heaps, pyramids, clutters unrecognizable even to John Cochan.

To the far right, on Segments 4 and 8, several dozen buildings three and four stories high were reaching completion. Along right-angled avenues of crushed rock, foundations for more. Construction machinery rumbled, trucks delivered, men in hard hats and overalls dug trenches and holes, laid pipe, erected wall, earned their wage. At Segment 6, directly above which a helicopter now hovered, and Segment 14 stood windowless block-houses four stories high, their segmented entry gates opening to full or half height. Inside ran the elevators, by November to be replaced by the world's first communicator bubble. The entry to Underland.

Johnnie Cochan's spirits soared. To the eye of an imaginative beholder, an eye capable of espying domes agleam high above cleansed earth, able to scan homes and shops and parks that would return grace and meaning to humankind's most daily activities, even to such a beholder Johnnie would not divulge his dream for what couldn't be seen: the subterral lands, deep beneath. Except, possibly, under land he didn't own. Under Magnussen land. Yak's discovery, this new chamber.

Cochan stopped the Rolls beside the Trailer of Planning. No, no meeting, not now. Certainly not with this Carney. He needed to learn how far, how wide— He had to have that land. The trailer door opened, and Yak waved. John squeezed his eyes shut. His mind intoned: Benjie and Terramac lie in the earth, the earth is a wall, the wall separates, step through the wall.

Yakahama Stevenson marched across the trailer's porch and down to the Rolls.

Johnnie got out. The air felt heavy.

“Howdy, Handyman. What's new?”

One of Yak's traits that Johnnie shared: the chance for something new in the world. Change, the stuff of their lives. The result of change was creation. “Sorry, nothing. And here?”

“A shipment of Québois went down this morning. We're half a day ahead of schedule.”

Johnnie nodded. “Good.” One and a quarter would be better. Though they were, for the year, two weeks up. Schedules got advance-dated every month. “What about the big cavern?”

“Tonight.”

He would have preferred now. “Okay. Tonight.” He shook his head. “I'm going back.”

“Steed said you had a meeting with a Mr. Carney.”

“Never cleared it with me. I have to be in Richmond. You handle the meeting with Mr. Carney.” He started to walk away.

Yak grinned. “Not my kind of thing, Handyman. Steed can do it.”

Johnnie shook his head, but in agreement. “I'll be back around ten.”

•

All is well again. Lola sits and listens, asks a few questions, and is satisfied. She smiles, she takes my hand, at times gives my fingers a little kiss, and I'm content.

•

4.

Carney found a small brook,
tried to fish it, no luck. Too many mosquitoes and he'd been spoiled last night by the Magnussen's private stream. He drove back to Richmond for lunch, and headed off on his mission. A couple of miles down he found the sign he remembered, shiny steel letters set on varnished wood:

TERRAMAC CITY

An Intraterra Venture

He turned onto a two-lane highway, neatly groomed, each looming ridge and gentle curve constructed as to prove beyond doubt and forever that country roads need fine curves and ridges. The Jag set a sixty-mile-an-hour pace, as steady as if the road itself had ordered up this speed.

Ahead, a guardhouse. A red lift-pike crossed the macadam. Carney stopped. Beyond, raised spikes angled toward oncoming tires.

A guard, cell phone holstered on his hip, came out of the shelter. Clipboard to chest, tight-lipped: “What's your business?”

“Coming to see John Cochan and Aristide Boce. Name's Carney.”

“Have an appointment?”

“Yep.”

“I gotta call.” He scowled. “You got identification?”

Carney showed him a driver's license.

The guard returned to the hut, drew his phone, spoke, nodded, made a notation on his clipboard. The pike, a five-inch iron pipe, rose till it pointed to a fluffy cloud. The spikes withdrew. The Jag drove on down the smooth road. Ahead, a car that grew larger roared past. Looked like a Rolls-Royce. No doubt many Terramacians would own such cars.

One minute more, a crest, and Terramac lay below. Carney stopped, got out, stared.

Last time snow had hidden all this. Down there lay over a thousand acres of near to flat empty soil, sand, stone. Not so much as a shrub or weed to be seen. Straight streets, at least their curb sites, cut rectangles into the landscape. Scattered about in this strange checkerboard rose the skeletons of maybe forty cement buildings, two, three, and four stories tall. A culvert carved a curved diagonal across the patterned space. Nearby, immense spreads of building materials waited. Carney saw a small army of men in hard hats, forklifts rolling, backhoes piling, dump trucks emptying. The air was heavy with the roar of machinery. Good thing Theresa wasn't here.

He drove toward two trailers separate from the others. From the one on the right a man emerged, stout, round face, smiling, a blue blazer, white shirt, flannels, a cravat. He strode toward the car. Boce again. The only shade lay at the edges of piles of cement blocks, siding, steel beams, lumber. “Mr. Carney! So good to see you again!”

They shook hands. Carney said, “Looks different now.”

Boce beamed. “We're moving forward. Ahead of schedule.” He scowled, and scolded Mr. Carney, “But why didn't you let us know a few days earlier you were coming back? Mr. Cochan was here but couldn't stay, hmm? When I reached him he had a previous appointment.”

Damn. He needed to confront Cochan. “A shame. For both of us.”

“True.” Boce beamed. “And how can we help you today?”

“I'm coming close to deciding to buy.”

Increased sunlight from Boce's face. “We'd be pleased, you living in our midst.”

“Two places, actually. One for my home and work, the other for my aunt.”

Boce's smile dimmed. “You know, Terramac isn't a retirement community.”

Carney's smile grew. “Bobbie's just a few years older than me.”

“Ah,” said Boce, and invited Mr. Carney to enter the trailer. An air-conditioned living space: two graceful rocking chairs, an elegant oak desk, polished sideboard, dining table set for four. From outside the trailer had seemed longer. At the near end gleamed a little tile and steel kitchen imported from
House & Garden
. Carney appreciated the windows high on three walls; when sitting, he couldn't see the outside devastation. Along the fourth wall, for half its width, descended white plexiglass charts scribbled with marker numbers in black, green, red, and blue.

“You've read our literature now, yes? So you're familiar with the Terramac vision.”

“I showed your pamphlet to Bobbie. She wondered about your certain income minimum.”

“Oh yes.”

“No one in Terramac should embarrass us”—the communality rasped in Carney's throat—“financially, is that it?”

“That's correct. And conversely none should flaunt their wealth. We set income maximum as well, though more flexibly. We expect an annual income, for say a family of two, of between five seventy-five and one-point-nine.”

Carney smiled. “A solid upper middle-class utopia.”

Boce smiled right back. “At Terramac we believe the well-controlled life of the upper middle-class is as utopic as it gets.”

“And if one's income is lower?”

“One couldn't afford to live here.”

“And more?”

“Complicated.” Boce suddenly seemed shy. “A member signs an agreement, hmm? Should his means increase, either he'll move, most likely he'll want to, to somewhere more exclusive. Or he'll make ongoing donations to the Terramac Senior Trust. It does happen: in their post-retirement years one or another of our residents might find his income dropping. Of course they will have planned with care to keep this from occurring, but if for reasons beyond their control— We wouldn't ask our seniors to leave after living here for decades.”

“That would interest Bobbie.” A kind of well-heeled socialism? “Yeah, sure.”

Boce wondered about this Bobbie; some little plaything of Carney's? “Part of John Cochan's philanthropy, hmm? Economic cares shouldn't disturb life amidst rural beauty.”

The words not spoken here, Carney understood, were race and violence. As if, by virtue of the silence surrounding them, these were forever banished from the world. No gangs, muggings, drugs. No robbery because everybody had it all already. Though there might be some people that this wouldn't stop. To ask aloud about security here would sound like a fart between movements of a cello sonata. The most Carney could say was, “It still looks pretty raw out there.”

Boce scowled at this ignorance. “Landscaping, of course, comes last. Clean little parks, splendid ponds full of healthy ducks and robust fish. You'll have noticed the stream, hmm?”

“You really will have fishing here?”

The ruddy Boce face lightened. “When Terramac City is complete, pike, pickerel, bass, and perch will be available in the lake, trout in the stream. Nothing finer on any Irish preserve.”

“All controlled? No real brooks and lakes?”

“Mr. Carney. All our waters are real. And ever-recycled. No external contaminants. Far more real than what you intimate by real. Not a jot of mercury, or heavy metals, or
PCB
s. Appealing, hmm? Our fish are bred in pure spring water, our trout hatched in perfect pH balance, they'll have eaten only freshwater shrimp. Surely you prefer the pink flesh of trout fed on shrimp, hmm? Our shrimp-feed is blended for us from essential grains and proteins. Our pike and pickerel reach maturity eating crayfish, frogs, and minnows, which of course have been fed our own minnow- and frog-feed blend. Like in hatcheries, or fishbowls.”

“Astounding.” Nature as sterile zoo.

“We have here a model, hmm?” The plexiglass wall slid up and back, revealing a maquette of Terramac City, buildings agleam in silver and glass, the surrounding space fully landscaped. The snaking culvert, transformed into the stream, complete with pebble boulders between paint-green banks, bisected Summerclime diagonally. Replacing the trailer park, a large empty space. “In a moment we'll examine a specific unit. First, please glance here, the overview. Here is the first block of homes. Going at cost.” He pointed.

“Tough time unloading them?”

Boce's beaming smile. “Terramac's philosophy is to work with those who believe in us. We've rejected a number of potential buyers we have learned would be speculating, hmm? Prices vary according to size. But even at full cost, a square yard of home here is less expensive than its equivalent in, say, Manhattan. Prices go up once we've completed the first stage. Only then does Intraterra realize its profit, here on dwellings in blocks two through six, here, here, and here. Now, if you buy before your unit is complete, during your first five years Terramac covers all maintenance fees. In the next five we phase in the expense at the rate of twenty percent per year.”