TREES DO NOT GROW TO THE SKY
It worried
Nothing else had
disappeared. Towers of bright steel and burnished glass still rose like
polished but uneven teeth along both sides of Wall Street. The sky was still a
cold and brilliant blue. Above the portal of Hintern & Woburg's building,
the white flagpole still thrust the red, white, and green into the September
air. It was just the muffin guy that was gone. Everyone was hurrying to work,
walking through the space where the muffin cart should have been.
But as
The outer doors
closed, trapping
The proving room was
completely dark.
Every house did it
differently. Hintern & Woburg's tradition was to wait for the entrant to
begin. A true believer shouldn't have to be asked. A true believer should
simply know what to say--just as any true believer should recognize the words
of another, whatever form they took.
"Bulls make
money,"
"Why are you
willing?" said the elder.
"My name is
Warren Parker,"
"I am a Son of the Broken Line. This is
where I serve."
There was no word to
acknowledge his faith or to approve his worth. Just the doors sliding open to
let him into the elevator.
"This is Warren
Parker. It's time to work."
Warren's desktop
monitor woke. As the calendar tree unfurled, with deadlines and meetings
dripping from its branches, Warren kept one eye on the omens flashing in the
corner. They were bad. The wrath of the market had been gathering for some
time. If the faithful did their work well there would be no crash. But
correction was what the market wanted, and the market had to be free.
"Morning, Warren."
"Morning,
Eileen."
She opened his door
wider. "How's the work?"
"Don't really
know yet," he said.
Eileen was still
wearing her coat. Her hair was damp, and worry lines traced her forehead.
Warren wanted to ask if she was all right. But he wasn't really that kind of a
friend to her. Eileen would hang out with him at lunch or after work. She could
knock back as much beer as he would and was even smart about sports. He was
grateful to her for not minding his attraction to her. He worked hard at not asking
for more. It was important not to be greedy. Pigs get slaughtered.
"How are the
omens?" Eileen asked, wearily.
"Biotech
slipping, pharmaceuticals plunging, retail and manufacturing racing each other
to the bottom…"
"…and it's been a
whole half-hour since trading started," Eileen groaned. "Don't even
finish. I'm off to drown my sorrows in a vat of data."
She had given him an
opening. Perhaps he could risk it.
"Are these
specific sorrows you're drowning, or…"
Eileen hesitated. Then
she stepped in, closed his door, and dropped into the other chair.
"Warren, have you
done a reinvestment since they changed the rules?"
Warren's body tensed.
But he hurried to answer before she got embarrassed.
"Yes." He
dropped his voice. "I'm sorry to hear…"
"It's all right,
I didn't really know her. It was a cousin of mine in Jersey. Her dad's gone and
her mother is kind of not with it, so my mother volunteered my services."
"Nice."
Eileen sighed.
"I'm the first in my line to move the market. It has its drawbacks."
Warren didn't remind
her that he knew that. Eileen had told him once after a couple drinks that she
was a Child of the Lost Company. She was proud of it, but embarrassed too. It
was as if she thought people could see through her softened and scented skin to
the thick neck and hard muscle of her grandfather, the firefighter who had gone
to his martyrdom almost exactly sixty years ago. She had tried to tell him
about her mother’s grief for a father she had never known, whose face she had
to see everywhere, in history books or in holographic shrines.
Warren had not
reciprocated. He couldn't talk about his mother to the faithful. Anyhow you
weren't supposed to discuss your affiliation in public. Someone might overhear,
and that would help the enemy.
"So furniture and
clothing have to be converted, and the car," Eileen went on. "What
about sentimental-value type stuff, photo albums and whatnot, do they go
too?"
"Yeah, they
do."
"Even if they
have no resale value."
Warren shrugged.
"I know, but that's the rule. Reinvest everything except capital and real
property."
"And of course
there is no capital or real property, or she wouldn't have…well, anyhow."
Like most people,
Eileen stopped short of saying outright that her cousin had been smoked.
"Smoked" was a profane term from the days of the unbelievers. The
doctrinal term was dematerialization, and that was the word Warren tried to
use.
Eileen sighed. "It's
ridiculous. Who's going to buy an album full of pictures of a total stranger's
family?"
"Someone could
buy it and take the pictures out…"
"…and then not
buy a new photo album," Eileen finished. "But who makes photo albums?
Trying to protect photo album manufacturers…it's like trying to protect the
horse-drawn carriage."
"I know,"
Warren said. "The rules are for the lay people, to make it easier for them
to do what the market wants. Better they convert stuff they don't have to
convert than anger the market by not
converting stuff that might compete with new products. People have to
consume."
Eileen still looked
annoyed, but she also looked convinced.
"So I reinvest
the album. What about the pictures?"
Warren thought.
"I don't know. I suppose somehow the paper might get recycled…"
"I've given up on
it making sense, I'm just saying do I put myself or my cousin’s senile mother
in danger if I try to save a few things that couldn't possibly matter?"
The bitterness in
Eileen's voice disturbed Warren. It was hard to see how some things fit
into the market's plan. Warren had better information on reinvestment than
almost anyone else, and from what he could tell the percentage of the national
population that actually dematerialized was very small, even when the bear was
ascendant. If every single one of their possessions found its way to the black
market, and every single one of their possessions was sold secondhand, that
would still not produce a statistically significant effect on consumer demand
for new products.
"It's an act of
faith, more than--" Warren said.
"I know,
Warren…"
"It's an
offering," Warren went on. "It's expiation. It's important."
It was hard to read
the look in Eileen's eyes.
"So if I want the
offering to appease the market," Eileen said, "you think it's best to
throw everything in."
"That's what I
did."
Eileen didn't ask him
whose reinvestment he was talking about. Just as well.
"Can't be too
safe, with these omens," Warren added.
She stood up. She'd
made up her mind. That was something Warren admired about her--her ability to
commit. She was wrong sometimes, but Warren wished he had her powers of
decision.
"Thanks,
Warren," she said. "I mean it. You're a good guy."
Warren felt a faint
warmth suffuse his chest, just enough to let him know he was glad to have her
there in his office, even if her conversation verged on blasphemy.
"Morning, Warren.
Oh, hi, Eileen."
As Derek walked past
Warren's open doorway, Warren caught sight of a paper bag in Derek's hand.
"Hey, where'd you
get the muffin?"
Derek popped his head
into the doorway. He chewed while he talked. Yellow crumbs of cornmeal clung to
his lips.
"From the muffin
guy," Derek said.
"Where was
he?"
"Same place he
always is."
Warren's expression
puzzled Derek for a moment. Then cornmeal crumbs flew off the corners of
Derek's mouth as he let out a laugh.
"Don't worry,
Warren. He was just late setting up. He hasn't been smoked."
Derek disappeared.
From the office next door Warren heard Derek's voice. "This is Derek
Hajibashi. It's time to work."
Eileen and Warren
looked at each other.
Well, why shouldn't he
say it. It wasn't as if nobody knew it was happening. There was no rule against
mentioning it. It was just one of those things that had, by tacit agreement,
been fed to an increasingly hungry silence.
"Well,"
Eileen said. "Thanks for the help, Warren. See you later."
Eileen left. Warren
thought about getting up to follow her, but Derek was back in the doorway.
"Listen, Warren,
while I'm thinking about it…"
Derek stepped in,
pulling a chart out of a file folder in his hand. Warren recognized the scrawl
clogging its margins.
"It's my
handwriting, isn't it?" Warren said.
"Well, you tell
me. What does that actually say?"
Derek pointed to a
splotch that looked like two centipedes after they'd been hit by a mallet.
"It says, 'adjust
for propitiatory reinvestment.' "
"What
propitiatory reinvestment?"
Warren pointed at the bar graph. "You're
estimating the volume of reinvested energy based on the number of atonement
shares purchased…which, by the way, you've done a great job of tracking. Thanks
for busting your ass."
Derek flashed a smile.
"If you hadn't had the idea, neither of us would have had an ass to bust
come October."
Derek wasn't a nervous
guy, but trying to augur the fortunes of the reinvestment industry would
unsettle anyone. To predict the volume of business a given reinvestment company
would do, they had to predict how many people were liable to get smoked in that
company's region of operation. And there was nothing to go on. Once you were
touched, you were gone. No body, no legacy, not even a statistical ghost.
Atonement trading was
a recent development, a grass-roots effort that spread like a forest fire.
Hundreds of sites were dedicated to identifying atonement investments—companies
whose value was plummeting, whose stock nobody would buy except as an act of
sacrifice. The houses didn't encourage it. The market had to be free. But
superstitions bred during bad times, like roaches in hot weather.
"So atonement
trading helps track expiatory reinvestment. But there's also propitiatory
reinvestment, where families reinvest the possessions of someone who's died
naturally."
Derek's eyebrows rose.
"So…like it's preemptive?"
Warren nodded.
"It's mostly people who don't have the capital to buy into the market.
Reinvesting is their way of serving. So if we go by atonement trading alone,
we're lowballing."
"Well, how do we
calculate propitiatory reinvestment?"
"Take the energy
output numbers from the last three quarters, subtract energy generated from
waste disposal contracts and estimated expiatory reinvestment based on
atonement trading, assume the difference represents propitiatory reinvestment,
and project it forward."
Derek stared at him,
quietly awed.
"Guess that's why
they call you guys adepts," Derek finally said.
Though Derek was his
acolyte, Warren was pretty sure he wasn't just sucking up. Derek wasn't someone
who had time for a lot of bullshit. At his interview he'd laid it on the table.
"My father came over after the liberation of Tehran. He's a practicing
Muslim and so am I. If that's a problem, tell me." Warren just said,
"Do you believe?" And Derek said, "Oh, of course." And that
was the end of it.
"We'll see what
they call me once this augury's pronounced," Warren said.
Derek laughed.
"I'm not worried. You'll be right." He tucked the chart back into the
folder and stood up. "Well, I’ll need more coffee."
Derek left. Warren
went back to staring at the screen.
His augury was due at
the end of the month and he had no idea whether he would elect any of these
stocks. The industry was dependent on too many things. Reinvestment would never
become truly profitable until conversion technology improved. As long as the
average load of junk from a reinvested household produced a lot of dirty smoke
and a puddle of synthetic sludge with the energy content of about half a barrel
of real crude, reinvestment companies would always be a gamble. Then there were
the energy brokers. They set the prices for the synthetic crude, so they
determined how profitable reinvestment could be. What was going to happen to
the energy brokers was a question Warren had always been glad he didn't have to
answer. Ben was tackling that one. Well, maybe he'd made some progress.
Miracles did happen.
Warren got up and went
down the hall.
Ben was at his desk,
slurping coffee and tapping compulsively on his touchpad. His screen was
covered with overlapping images of rubble-strewn cityscapes, twisted hunks of
metal, and rusting artillery.
"How goes the
war?" Warren asked.
Warren's friendship
with Ben had always been tinged with envy; Ben was so much faster and more
efficient. But that was before Ben started cultivating his obsession with the
enemy. All day long the news brokers' windows jostled for room on his screen as
Ben watched the forces of freedom hunt the enemy from one lair to another.
Lately Warren had begun to suspect that Ben was actually waiting for the war to
end before he made his prediction.
One end of a stylus
drummed on Ben's desk. "Look at them," Ben said. "It's just
about over. You can smell it."
For as long as Warren
could remember, the enemy had always been just about to fall. The men moving
across Ben's screen certainly looked as if they could not hang on for another
day. But they would.
"One more day," Ben said, irritated
by Warren's silence. "End of the week at most. They're just—"
Ben stopped. One of
the elders had appeared in the doorway. Carroll had gone completely gray,
though he was only forty-three. Over cocktails they called him the Younger
Elder.
"Hi, Warren. Ben,
can I talk to you for a minute?"
"Sure," said
Ben, standing up. "Did you want to ask me something, Warren, or--"
Warren waved him on.
"It's all right, I'll wait."
"All right
then," Ben said, following Carroll out.
In the upper right
corner of Ben’s screen, where the FreedomCam window was open, Warren could see
a white streak bleeding across the sky. A jet stream.
The image would not
tell him in which territory that camera was placed. That would be a security
risk. At any rate it made no difference. Warren knew where that plane was
headed. It was on its way to find the enemy.
He watched the screen
for five, ten, fifteen minutes. Twenty minutes later, Ben still had not come
back.
Maybe he should talk
to Eileen. She was smarter than Ben, and she might have something useful to
tell him about conversion technologies.
He went down the hall.
Her door was closed.
Eileen opened up when
he knocked, but she moved into the doorway as if she were in a hurry. Warren
looked at her face, and blurted out, "Are you all right?"
One corner of Eileen's
mouth twitched as if she were going to cry. Then she was back to normal, except
for the pallor.
"Sorry, Warren, I
can't talk, I'm supposed to meet Carroll in his office."
Warren drew back to
let her hustle past him.
He watched Eileen's
back retreat down the white-carpeted corridor. The elevator doors opened, and
she passed out of sight.
* * * *
Derek handed Warren
his muffin. "Got a message this morning from Kendrick."
So that was why Derek
had shut Warren's door. Kendrick was Antony's acolyte, and he was also the
server through which most of the house gossip was routed.
"Kendrick said he
heard there’d be some winnowing done today."
Warren could feel his
own heartbeat.
"And has there
been?" he said.
"Kendrick wasn't
in his office five minutes ago," Derek answered. "And Antony wasn't
at his desk."
It was a shock, but
not a surprise. Carroll, in addition to selecting the faithful who had been
called to the work, was responsible for winnowing those whose work was no
longer pleasing to the market.
When the bull was ascendant,
being winnowed was not the end of the world. It was easy enough then to find
somewhere else to serve. But if you were winnowed under the sign of the bear,
it could be a long time before you were called to another house. And if you
couldn't make yourself productive, it was a matter of months before you became
immaterial. Or weeks, or days. As the times got worse, the period of grace got
shorter.
The bear was
ascendant. It had been ascendant most of Warren's life. He had been very lucky
to be called and chosen.
Ben went to talk to
Carroll, and never made it back to his desk. Eileen was talking to Carroll now.
He felt an urge to run
up to Carroll's office and…save her? How? If she was chaff, she was chaff. She
would be cast aside. And once she didn’t earn, once she couldn't consume, once
she became unproductive…who could stay the market's invisible hand?
But Derek wasn't
telling him this because he was worried about Eileen. Derek was worried about
Derek.
"Look,"
Warren said. "If they don't winnow me, they won't winnow you--"
"You don't know
that."
"Derek--"
"They don’t trust
me. You had to fight them to hire me--"
"If you believe,
it doesn't matter what your second faith is. The market transcends all
that."
"Warren--"
"Your father
wouldn't have made it past Border Integrity if he was of the enemy. The elders
know that. They're not going to winnow you just because you have no
affiliation."
Derek looked down at
the desk.
"I do have an
affiliation," Derek said.
Warren raised his
eyebrows.
"My mother's
father."
Derek unbuttoned his
cuff and rolled back one sleeve. In the moment before it was covered again,
Warren saw the inscribed symbol: a globe slashed into jagged fragments behind
cracks that spidered across a broken window.
Windows On The World.
So Derek's maternal
grandfather was a martyr too, even if he had served by washing dishes or
waiting tables.
"See? You're
safe," Warren said. "As long as I am."
Knuckles rapped on his
office door.
Warren was afraid that
his legs would not actually carry him to the door. He felt Derek's dread
mounting behind him.
There Carroll was,
with his light gray hair and dark gray suit.
"Hi, Warren. Have
you got a minute?"
Warren desperately
wanted not to say yes. Not to follow Carroll through the doorway into the outer
darkness. Not to let Carroll take him into that room and tell him that all his
service, all his faith and his works, were to be cast into the fire as chaff.
"Sure,"
Warren said.
Derek sat frozen,
watching Warren walk out of his life into the beginning of his death.
Warren didn't blame
him.
What else was there to
do?
* * * *
"Come on
in."
Carroll's office was
on the ninety-third floor. As you rose in power, so rose your risk. The elders
made their faith an example to others, so that there would always be people who
could answer the question of the proving room. Why are you willing?
Why are you willing to
climb the tower? Why are you willing to risk the fall? Why are you willing to
serve in a place that has been marked by the enemy for destruction? Everyone is
willing to kill for money, but why are you willing to die for it?
He had vowed every day
he walked through those doors that he was willing. And he had to be willing
now.
"Well,"
Carroll said, as they sat down. "The market is on the wane again."
"Yes,"
Warren said, mechanically.
"The house can no
longer support three diviners working the energy sector."
"I'm sorry to
hear that," Warren said.
"I know,"
Carroll answered. "We're all sorry."
Carroll paused. Warren
tried not to sweat.
"I'm going to
have to ask you to take over the entire sector. That is, if you're
willing."
Warren barely stopped
himself from gabbling his acceptance.
"What kind of
help would I have?"
"It depends. Do
you think Derek is ready to be made an adept?"
"Definitely."
"Then he would
take over your current duties. He would get his own acolyte, and he would serve
under you. You would occupy Antony's position, but you would also be divining
Ben and Eileen's sections."
Whereas Ben and Eileen
had served under Antony. Once upon a time.
"What about
compensation?" Warren replied.
"Seven hundred
and fifty thousand a year, plus your bonus."
It was nowhere close
to what Antony had been making. But that was why Antony had been winnowed.
Warren was more junior and thus less expensive. He was more productive.
"I'm
willing," Warren said.
Carroll smiled.
"I'm glad, Warren. I've always had faith in you."
Warren swallowed.
"Thank you."
"Custodial will
move you into Antony's office tomorrow," Carroll said. "This
afternoon I need you to go through Ben and Eileen's offices and sort out what
to keep and what to reinvest."
Halfway through a nod,
Warren felt the chill in his veins.
"Reinvest?"
he repeated.
Carroll nodded.
Sweat beaded at what
was left of Warren's hairline.
"Warren?"
Carroll said. "Are you all right?"
"So soon.
I…" Warren shook his head. "I'm sorry. I had hoped the market might
spare them, for a little while."
He looked up at
Carroll, expecting sympathy. But the way Carroll looked back made Warren sick
to his stomach.
"But the market
has to be free," Warren said, so Carroll would know he wasn't murmuring
against it.
"Warren…"
Carroll reassured
himself that his door was shut and clasped his hands on the desk.
"Warren, in order
to take on Antony's post, there are some things you need to understand."
Warren sat, tense and
unhappy.
"The
market…"
Carroll trailed off.
He tried again.
"There's a
council of elders tomorrow morning at ten o'clock," Carroll said.
"They'll explain your new duties, and..."
Carroll stood up.
"Congratulations,
Warren. You're on your way up."
Warren forced himself
to stand and reach across the desk to shake Carroll's hand. Framing Carroll's
head was a square of blue sky, notched at the bottom by the tips of the few
buildings tall enough to thrust themselves above the windowsill. He kept his
eyes on Carroll's face, knowing that the flickering silver shadows in his
peripheral vision were only the flashes of a newborn kind of fear.
* * * *
Warren's heels sounded
unnaturally loud on the stone steps. Was it his imagination, or were not enough
people leaving the building?
"Hello hungry
man!" called a familiar voice. "On your way home to your empty
fridge?"
Warren turned. There
was the muffin guy, with the steam rising from his cart.
He had promised to
have dinner with his father, to celebrate the promotion. But he ought to buy
something.
"Ah, hungry man,
you alone can I trust," said the muffin guy, in that accent Warren could
never place. "I have porksticks, I have meatnuts, I have classic hot dogs,
I have many other things but I know what you want and it is not super-lean
ostrich sausage cooked in cholesterol free fat substitute, is it?"
"No, it
isn't," said Warren. "Little late for you to be out here."
"Extended
business hours," chirped the muffin guy. "Diversification. Muffins in
the morning, sausages at night."
"Give me a
meatnut."
"Surely,"
said the muffin guy. "Something to drink?"
"No thanks."
He handed over the money. "How's business?"
"Not bad,"
said the muffin guy, bouncing on his toes. "I hope with the sausages it
will improve. I do not eat meat myself, but my wife says we must put the market
first, and she is right. A sausage a day keeps the market away, that is my new
motto."
The muffin guy
laughed. But the aroma of fried meat was suddenly overpowered by the smell of
fear. The banter, the smile, the voice itself, it was all fear. The muffin guy was
killing himself to be cheerful because the muffin guy woke and slept worrying
about when the invisible hand would turn him into a wisp of smoke that couldn't
be missed or mourned.
"Thanks,"
Warren said, as he turned away. "May the market reward your work."
"Bless you too,
sir," called the muffin guy.
* * * *
"So Warren,"
his father said, blotting his lips with his napkin. "Carroll asked me to
have a talk with you before you meet with the elders tomorrow."
Warren put down his
steak knife.
"I guess what
Carroll is concerned about…"
Warren swallowed.
"Carroll says
great things about your faith," his father went on. "I'm proud of
that. Ours is a hard faith. Your mother never understood, even before..."
Warren nodded, not
wanting to embarrass either of them by referring to it.
"Your faith is
strong enough. And you need to know."
Warren gulped his
wine. "Know what?"
"About the
invisible hand."
"What about
it?" Warren asked.
"Warren, what do
you think happens to the unproductive?"
"They
disappear," he answered, as if he were being catechized.
"How do they disappear?" his
father continued.
"They become
immaterial," Warren replied. "The invisible hand touches them, and
they…dematerialize."
His father sighed.
"That's absolutely true," his father
said. "But…"
Terror filled the
pause.
"When someone
becomes immaterial…it's up to us to help the market make that literal. It's…we
are the invisible hand, Warren."
"We smoke all those
people?" Warren stammered.
"We outsource the
actual smoking. You'll find out all about it from the elders."
"I…I don't…"
"Warren, it is exactly as you thought it was.
The unproductive become productive. They get reinvested. The market
grows."
"But the
market…doesn't do this just…on its own?"
"That doesn't
make the market less powerful," said Warren's father. "The market is the wellspring of liberty and the
security of freedom. But you know that the market has always needed us to do
its work."
Warren stared at his
father, who seemed to be getting younger and stronger as he kept talking.
"It's the
unbelievers who need signs and wonders. For the faithful, it's enough to know
that we're called."
"But--if the
market isn't doing it," Warren
said, as he tried to push Eileen's face out of his mind, "how do we know
it's what the market wants?"
"How could it not
be?" his father asked.
"Dad!"
Warren cried.
"What would you
suggest we do with these people? You aren't old enough to remember what it was
like. How many people asked you for money on your way here?"
"What?"
Warren answered.
"Exactly,"
his father shouted. "When I was your age the answer would have been
fifteen or twenty. All those people doing no work, doing nothing for the war,
using resources that could be serving the market. If we didn't--"
"Do the police
know we're doing this?" Warren demanded. "Does the government
know?"
His father snorted.
"Don't bother yourself about the government, Warren. Nobody does."
Warren shook his head.
"When you take
over Antony's job…"
His father trailed
off.
"I'm going to be smoking
people?" Warren demanded.
"You'll be
identifying resources that need to be reinvested."
Warren lurched to his
feet, stumbling away from his overturned chair.
"Warren, sit
down. It's always a shock for people who really believe--"
"Oh it is,"
Warren shouted. "So you don't really
believe? I'm the only asshole in this family who really believes in the market?"
"I mean really
believe that reinvestment happens by magic. Of course the lay people believe
that, but a lot of the faithful do figure--"
"Well, I
didn't," Warren snapped.
But Eileen must have.
"I'm sorry,"
his father said. "But it's necessary."
"Why?" Warren shouted.
"Eileen might have gotten another job--Ben's got money in the
market--"
"This is
America," his father said. "It has to be democratic. We have to be as
severe to our own as we are to the laity and the unbelievers."
Warren's blood
congealed.
"What about
Mom?" Warren said.
"I'm not going to
discuss that with you."
"I don't fucking
believe this!"
"Your mother
brought it on herself. If she hadn't defied the--"
"You mean if she
hadn't left you--"
"I said I would not discuss this!"
Warren's anger quailed
in the face of his father's.
"We do the
market's will," his father said, controlling his emotion. "It was
impossible to protect her. She made it impossible."
"It doesn't even help the economy,"
Warren insisted. "I know, I do the industry--"
"Gods demand
sacrifice!"
The terrible years
that had passed between the Eleventh and Warren's birth were gathering in his
father's eyes. His face was a rigid mask barely containing a demon's burning
rage.
"What we need to
defeat the enemy is not money, not machines. We need men who will die for the
work. Our strength is our money and our money lives in the market. As long as I
am alive, as long as you are alive, as long as any son of my murdered father's
line is alive, it is our calling to make the people serve the market. If they
can't do it out of faith they must do it out of fear."
Warren couldn't fight
this power. All he could do was get out of its way.
"I know this is
difficult for you, Warren," his father said.
Warren realized that
his father was waiting for the words. Waiting to hear Warren prove that his
faith was still strong, despite everything.
Warren had no idea
whether his faith was still strong. He also had no idea what would happen if he
failed this test.
"I am a Son of
the Broken Line," Warren said. "I'll always…try to be worthy."
Tears came to his
father's eyes. He moved to embrace Warren.
"I'm proud of
you, Warren," he said. "I'm so proud."
Warren closed his
eyes. He was crying too. And wishing that his father would hold him forever.
And wishing he could break free.
* * * *
The muffin man was
right. Warren's state-of-the-art biosecure refrigerator held only eight bottles
of beer, a dilapidated box of baking soda, and three plastic containers of
leftover takeout. Each container had been sprayed with a bright orange
biohazard sign indicating that the refrigerator's nanosensors had determined
that it was contaminated with dangerous microorganisms.
He had no idea why he
put the baking soda in there. His mother had done it so he did it too.
Warren had tried not
to mourn his mother. It hadn't worked very well.
Warren took a bottle
over to the kitchen table.
"This is
Warren," he said.
A screen shot up
through a slot in the table. "Hello, Warren."
For his home system
Warren had downloaded a synth that replicated Elena Hazami's voice. He had seen
They Took My Hands, But They Couldn't
Take My Daughter a hundred times and he still cried over the ending. He
had always wondered what Eileen would think if she knew he was that fascinated
by a film that awful and an actress that bad.
Eileen was gone. As
gone as his mother.
"Go to photo
album," Warren said.
"Here it is,
Warren," said the computer, with a hint of wistfulness, as if it wished
Warren would ask it to do something harder.
"Get image file
'momdad.' "
The picture filled the
computer screen.
"Is this what you
asked for, Warren?"
"Yes."
"Oh, I'm so
glad," said the computer.
Warren opened the
bottle.
He had reinvested the
print. All he had saved was this electronic image of it, scanned into his
mother's computer as he sat in that empty apartment. Using her computer felt
wrong; transgressive, risky. And yet there was no reason that the market should
care that he went through her files before he reinvested the computer. At
least, no reason he had known of at the time.
Maybe he'd kept it
because the woman in it looked too young to be his mother, with her unlined
face and long hair. Or maybe because it was their wedding day, and his mother
looked happy, with her sleek white dress and gauzy veil and the bunch of red
roses surrounded by lilies of the valley. Red, white, and green. The market's
colors.
The bull had been
ascendant when they married. It hadn't lasted. The bull didn’t ascend again
until Warren was eleven. Even then, his father reminded him daily that things
would change. "Nothing goes up forever, Warren. Trees do not grow to the
sky."
His father's parents
were in the picture, standing behind him. His mother was alone. Her father was
long gone and her mother was an infidel who had spent the day at an anti-war
protest. When his grandmother was smoked fourteen years later, the only
question on Warren's mind was why it had taken so long.
Maybe his father had
held it off for as long as he could. Maybe he had known that the old traitor's
dematerialization would sow evil in her daughter's heart, something that
twisted its dark limbs and branches into every corner of her being until the
mother Warren had loved shriveled to a stretched skin shrouding the rotten
trunk of heresy.
Warren went back to
the refrigerator.
When Warren entered
his mother's apartment, that last time, there was food in her refrigerator.
There was sour milk in a glass on the table.
It was only as he
sorted through his mother's files that he understood what had happened. She had
refused alimony, refused to work, refused his father's attempts to settle
property on her. A week before she was smoked, she set up a trust fund in
Warren's name and transferred her remaining assets into it. Warren remembered
staring at the screen on her outdated home system as the word formed in his
mind. Liquidation.
Suicide.
She had stopped
believing. But she had sacrificed herself to the market anyway, hoping to win
back her faith by doing this one last thing. This one last pointless, selfish,
crazy--
Warren didn't realize
he'd thrown the bottle until he heard it break.
What was the point of
heresy if all it brought was despair? Why couldn't she have left something
behind, something Warren could use?
"I'm finished
with you," he said, his voice shaking.
"Goodbye,
Warren."
The picture went
black. Elena Hazami's digitally synthesized voice dissipated in the scoured and
sporeless air of his maximum security apartment.
Warren opened the
liquor cabinet.
He lined up the
bottles on the table, one next to the other. He would want to be able to find
them easily as the night wore on.
He took out a tumbler
and put some ice in it. Then he sat down and went to work.
* * * *
The sun was blinding.
The weather was
exactly as it had been sixty years ago. All the images agreed on that. Smoke,
fire, death, disappearance, and a merciless bright blue sky.
The hangover magnified
everything cruelly. Even the badge tied around his coat sleeve chafed. Warren
had fumbled with the thing for three blocks, but it was finally on. A strip of
black cloth, with a circle of blue, and against it the sign of the burning
towers.
Warren crossed the
courtyard, walking through the space where the muffin man's cart should have
been and up the steps.
The doors of the
proving room closed. In the darkness, the elder waited for the word.
Warren finally spoke.
"Trees do not
grow to the sky."
There was a pause.
"Ah," said
the elder. "But where does the sky begin?"
The elder was not
supposed to do anything but ask the question.
Warren waited, hoping
that however they killed him it wouldn't be painful.
"Why are you
willing?"
Warren was being
allowed to progress.
Because they trusted
him? Because they wanted to get him inside and smoke him quietly? Because the
elder had had his faith destroyed too, and was trying to let him know that it
would be all right? Because the elder had found a way to fight this, and wanted
Warren to join him?
No way to know.
"My name is
Warren Parker. My father's father died at the work. The towers fall and the
fathers die but as long as sons serve the work survives. I am a Son of the
Broken Line. This is where I serve."
The doors to the
elevator slid open.
The elders were
waiting. The work was waiting. Faith, power, money, the pride of his fathers
and the favor of the market, they were all waiting.
All he had to do was
walk forward.
THE END