The Not Yet Page 11

  “I plan to use this hypothesis—that they are not sick, they are growing. They are continuing to expand. I want them to experience, without impediment, the radical nature of this new stage, of their inestimably rich, epochal lives. We need to guide them, chart the territory, and not ignore it. Help them, from an enhanced perspective. The over-self has been part of our theoretical framework for some time in Post-Reveal Psychology. Indeed, it is part of the foundation, though often un-discussed, of my original theories of Re-description. Here we can see that a region beyond is actually being traversed by our Protos, if you will allow the metaphor. I see more of an opportunity than a malady. A new frontier—”

  I thought that line brought it back. To facts. To the correct view. Everyone would see she was still in the mainstream.

  But, when she was done, they stared at her. No applause. Then, in a few moments, the protest was unified, the growl of a mass. She was shouted out of the pavilion.

  *

  The screens came out with their version the next day: “H.R. Doctor Lydia Greenmore, Winner of the Albers Prize, discoverer of Re-description, Posits New Unproven Theory, and Claims Obscure Common Cause for Clustered Anomalies among Protos.” “Lydia Greenmore Cooks Up a Syndrome.”

  Her research was noted by all who were interviewed in the article to be “questionable,” based on “unreliable sources.” There were references to widespread reports of her history of association with “fringe experiments”—at this she went into a rage about her rivals who spread “these lies, this libel.” The cartoons came next—cruel, offensive:

  Greenmore was depicted in the clothing of an H.R., but with a wheel you could see behind her legs—the image used by the FREE WHEEL movement, with infants and old people and copulating couples at different points. “We are trying to understand the Protos,” she was quoted as saying. A little man, a Yeared, ugly, meant to be a caricature, stood behind the wheel like a gnome, and he was saying, “We know what’s wrong, tell them Greenmore—”

  The people who came to her defense were the last straw—the philosophers on the radical side of things, some from a university near the Canadian Border, who had been discredited years before.

  These were all “crackpots,” Greenmore told me. “Nobody listens to them. Or funds them,” she said. Their endorsement was “the kiss of death.”

  I was by her side through this entire trial. We attempted for several months—every major and minor grant, every foundation, even the remnants of the ones Lazarus used to write off to. Some from the Free Wheel movement came forward, but, she told me, that if she accepted funds from them (and they were poor enclavers, hardly money at all) she would never be able to get even a dollar from any reputable group. They accepted the Cycle!

  In the end, after months of attempts, she made a request of me. She was giving up, taking a sabbatical. A hiatus. Would I follow her out to the Wood Palace—her Estate in the DE-AX, and be her personal research assistant? It was quite unorthodox, in a sense. I was young, and a Not-Yet. She insisted it wasn’t a holder contract. I’d be working, not entertaining her. “You are smart. You’ve been terribly helpful. I’m going to be looking into the life of the ancients. Philosophies Pre-Reveal. Particularly the esoteric typographies. The maps. See what they say.”

  “Well I wouldn’t know anything about any of that—”

  “I have been curious. About certain theories of—”

  “Of what?” I asked.

  “Older psychologies, and cosmologies—and the correspondence between the two,” she said. “Come. We’ll study together. You are so bright.” Her golden eyes flashed. “Do you know what your I.Q. is? Completely out of the expected range. Most need implants to do as well. Without hiring an Heir, I won’t get anyone more able.”

  Why didn’t she hire an Heir? Perhaps I should have asked. The answer would have been helpful, in the end.

  *

  For several days in early November, we cleaned out her office. It was emotional. Her old colleagues, Dr. Chotchko chief among them, came up to say good-bye. As soon as each one got ready to leave, Greenmore would remind them they would all prosper in her absence, have more of a lump of the brosia, now.

  Finally, one Thursday, in the early morning, we set out in a transport, which she drove herself. I sat in the back with several boxes of her files.

  Her land was about fifteen miles past Re-New Orleans along the Westernmost edge of the Sea of Pontchartrain.

  On the way out, we passed ruins of old towns from the fugue era—she pointed out towers where petroleum had been refined once. I’d never seen that. Then we drove through stands of oaks and even some fields of cane—enormous grass, was what it looked like. Gaists and some Port Gramercy cooperative farmers grew it, but the bulk of the crop was for the bute refineries in Brazil. Past this ocean of tall grass, a narrowing wand of land, in blue water, which she said was part of her estate.

  Soon we were going along the middle of an isthmus, fortified on each side with piles of limestone rocks, in the midst of low reeds dotted here and there with standing pools, and then the land widened once again, and there were neat patches of green on either side. Crops I didn’t recognize. Then, rather suddenly, a white house rose up out of marsh. Handsome and wide shouldered with white columns, a copy of the ancient French Colonial style, square, on stilts, and one story.

  The plank road became a bridge, the house’s only tether to land.

  When we pulled up, two servants came out, who introduced themselves to me, shaking my hand heartily. Klamath and Mimi. Like Vee and Marilee back at Audubon Foundling House, they had citizenship in the Chef Menteur Enclave.

  “Give him a tour, I need some rest,” Dr. Greenmore said when we’d put down our bags. “Feed him.” She was mistress of this house, she was queen.

  The place had one huge main living area, Dr. Greenmore’s suite. All the other rooms were narrow enclosed galleries with glass windows on two sides which could be shuttered for privacy. When the wooden jalousies were open it was a completely transparent house. Everyone could see everyone else in it. All had views of the water.

  In her main room, besides her bed and the armoires and closets, and the small brosia-only kitchen, was a sizeable, swimmable, pool. Next to her room on the opposite end was a long room like a hall of glass, with a little pallet on the floor. “You will sleep here, I assume,” Klamath told me.

  A little later, he took me on a walk

  She had given him permission to cultivate the land, he said. He showed me his plots of herbs—some I’d seen when we were driving in. Every basil plant was as high as my chest. Other fields had healthy cilantro, others lemon grass, also parsley. While we were trekking through the fields, he told me that his son, Serio, who fished the Sea of Pontchartrain, came to the Wood Palace frequently and gathered this herb harvest to sell at Chef Menteurian restaurants and shops.

  I had never seen a father speak of a son born to him. Vee, I knew, had a daughter or two, named after spices—I’d never met them. He had no son. Klamath was a lot like Vee, but shorter and stouter—a barrel-chested man, with long salt and pepper hair, and large, almond eyes, brown skin.

  When we came back into the house, Mimi’s expression betrayed some tension, frustration. “It just passed,” she said. “They are going to go through with it.”

  Klamath clapped. He turned to me. “The Exodus application!”

  “I don’t know why you are so happy about it,” his wife said.

  Chef Menteurians’ territory was under siege by rising waters. This had been true as long as I’d known anything about the place. I’d seen pictures from Vee, heard Camille describe it. There were no trees at all in the main village at that point, just the blue-white oaks—dead ones, killed by salt, “pickled.” I gathered they had taken the radical step of proposing an application for an Exodus Agreement—which meant asking permission to purchase new, in this case, higher, ground, to eventually move their whole community. The U.A. Council, which oversaw such events in the t
erritories, took a long time to consider these proposals. Apparently after years of inaction, they had said yes.

  Mimi said the Exodus itself would never happen; the window of opportunity was so short. More money still had to be raised. They would have a narrow time frame to get all the financing together, purchase the new plot, have it ready for development, and then, resettle. If they failed, they lost the option to move. The agreement expired. Other threatened enclaves had got the U.A. approvals but were not able to buy enough land. The expenditures had depleted the enclaves’ treasuries. They were worse off than before, and they were still where they were to start.

  “Oh be quiet, sit still,” Klamath told his wife. If we all just work, and pay our part—one day at a time—those other enclaves didn’t have what we have, the population—”

  He started pulling off the collard leaves for dinner. He liked looking on the bright side, and he liked to be doing something. I could tell he appreciated the facts, not the feelings.

  “You fear it too, don’t say otherwise,” she said, shaking her pretty, shapely head. Her hair was in small rows of curls, very close cut.

  Klamath didn’t answer.

  “He does, he does fear it—look at him,” she said, trying to bring me into it. “Exodus Agreements are very tricky. Everything is on the table.” She turned to her husband. “Tell him of the risks.”

  Klamath shrugged. “There are those who live after us.”

  “Well we bet everything we have for the hope of something better? That may never come?” she asked. “Heirs would never do that. Would they?”

  The question was directed at me. I shook my head no.

  “Our future is of another kind.” Klamath tried to sound reassuring.

  Vee used to say similar things. He didn’t want to live on and on, and on, he’d be bored, he said. He wanted each moment to have a certain savor. A beat. A tone.

  I felt at home in this kitchen, listening to Chef Menteur politics. It all seemed familiar—enclavers talking about their limited lives. Me, at the table, waiting to be called out for a new role, and waiting, and waiting.

  *

  “Fancy seeing you here, scene of so many crimes.” It was Ariel, on St. Charles Avenue, months later. He’d accosted me outside the floodgates at the entrance to Audubon Island. Walked up on me out of nowhere.

  “What crimes?”

  “What they did to us when we were young—those Sims, those sickening operas—lending us to people—enslaving us—”

  “I never saw them like that,” I said.

  “You were always the hero, Malcolm, weren’t you—to Lazarus you still are—”

  “What do you want from me now?” I was arming myself, preparing for my “brother’s” belligerence. Lazarus had written me again to avoid contact with Ariel, somehow he’d heard about our adventure at the Towers. He’d specifically said, “Malcolm, I have asked very little of you. You have always been obedient. But for your own good, do as I said before, and cut him off.” I was still furious with him over the incident with Camille. Almost a year had passed. I blamed him; I overlooked the fact that it was my choice she got involved.

  “Well, going to see our benefactor? The young hero returns? He’s not there. In Memphis for his shoring up. New prodermis, new cheeks, both places. His Re-job. Considering going in soon again for a total Re-description, you hear about that?”

  “You,” I started, and then I held back. What would be the point? I didn’t feel like a hero right then—more like a failure. I did not have the same faith in Greenmore now, or in any of her research, and for that I felt both disappointed and guilty. I had been out at the Wood Palace for a season as her “assistant.” But essentially, I had nothing to do, except occasionally help Klamath and his son Serio in their fields, bundling basil, chopping cilantro, tending watercress. I was just a place-holder.

  But now that I was put to work, it was worse.

  I’d come to the New Orleans Islands on an errand I considered completely dubious. I was to go to a sale at the library at a former university and buy up the books on the following subjects: “Egyptian religion,” “Greek religion and mystery cults,” “Christian mystics,” “Kabala,” “Buddhism,” “Reincarnation.” There was a sale because the books were not technically approved—considered “garbage from before the Reveal”—and the library couldn’t keep them dry anymore. Because of their useless subjects, the books were offered by the pound, not by the title. If she had asked me to acquire pre-Reveal pornography for her I might have felt slightly better about it—it was used sometimes by the Varietology community, I knew, and it wasn’t in any way questionable, the way these books were. She wanted to pursue the gross superstitions of past Nat ages. That was what she’d meant by “esoteric topographies.” A horrible idea.

  All morning I had been sorting through the moldy spines. I had managed to get eighty-two volumes, for a few crowns. At this moment Klamath and his son were lugging the boxes back to Klamath’s boat.

  I’d decided to take a break, wander my old haunts, and get some fresh air. I knew Lazarus wasn’t home, and Vee and Marilee were back at Chef Menteur Enclave, apparently, because of a family illness. So I wasn’t going by the Foundling House.

  I never traveled for recreation—every dime I made went into my Trust, so I was sorry to have come at such a time, when nobody was around.

  I was just going to take a look at the park where we used to perform. It was all a huge lake now. Closed to the public. The Sim business long forgotten.

  So, obviously, the islands were still sinking. For a while things had been stable, when I was a boy, but now there was standing water everywhere, even though it hadn’t rained in a week, and St. Charles Avenue was a pair of little healthy brooks divided by the median. In the far distance, I could see the Museum City Floodwall.

  My good shoes were soaking wet—new ones Greenmore had bought me, very fancy, genenfabric woven top, made from a mold of my entire foot.

  And now, worst of all, Ariel, in clothes that were even dirtier this time than when I had last seen him. His hair, even shaggier. His beard, even stringier. Why didn’t he care for himself?

  I knew I shouldn’t let him catch me up. I was angry, and anger always catches you up. But then, I had to tell him: “Camille lost a lot. She couldn’t complete her dowry. She had to leave. That was all she wanted and if she married, she must have married with a deficit.” I didn’t know the facts, just that Camille had left within a day of that night with O.

  “Why did she take all the blame? Why didn’t Greenmore listen to you? Have you ever asked her? Why was Greenmore so partial? She hired you for another job?” Ariel turned his palm to the air, for an answer.

  I had no idea except what she said, that I was bright. And I didn’t say that. She had spent on my Galcyon, my high-speed education, my detoxification. I was an investment, maybe. But I knew Heirs were profligate, I knew they could afford to overlook the tiny sums they spent on us, and hire others. There were plenty of desperate, better behaved and willing workers around. She’d been loyal, that was unusual. Ariel was right to ask, but I wouldn’t grant him that.

  “Port Gramercy doesn’t let its betrothed girls out and about for very long. She got to marry? Exercise her Procreation Agreement? Follow all the Fertility Laws? She came out okay?” he asked. “Right?”

  “I don’t know” I said. The thought of her made me feel weak.

  Greenmore had sent me on those junkets right after I got out of solitary. Nobody had information when I got back at the Towers. I assumed she went back to Port Gramercy.

  “It hasn’t been easy for me since that night,” Ariel continued. He meshed his fingers together, held them at the mid-point of his chest, stood directly in my path. I couldn’t pass. “Aren’t you going to ask me how it turned out?”

  I asked.

  Ariel described the troubles he’d had setting up his Independent Trust. He started with the point when the Trust had passed from Lazarus to O’s stewardship. The
n he said, the signature on the documents had half-worked. “They still don’t want me to control my own Trust. They have it rigged every which way. They don’t want any new Heirs. You are fooling yourself if you think it will work for you.”

  I was well aware of Ariel’s paranoid constructions. I was not going to comment, but then I blurted out, “If they didn’t want anyone else paying in and becoming an Heir, why do they have the status Not-Yet, why do they have the Boundarytime ceremony, why do they have initiations, and centers like Memphis that still do the Treating? You don’t have an answer do you?” There were egrets up in the trees that were out in the middle of the lake. At that strange moment, two took off in one glorious motion.

  “Oh don’t use that superior look with me, Malcolm,” he said. “I know it’s a defense.”

  He knew how to get under my skin. “Well now? Every last drop of what Lazarus was holding for you? All those fights, that night, and you have your Trust, in your own hands?” I mocked him. “What was the point?”

  “No, I’m going to have to go after Lazarus again,” he said.

  “What?”

  “The money has been in limbo since O signed that paper. There’s a U.A. WELLFI Bank officer in charge. He’s taking fees to manage, but he’s not doing anything. Come to find out that before I can get complete control of the money, I have to show where I came from. What enclave. Or prove that I come from none. Hard to prove a negative. The courts won’t take at face value that we are charter-less, you and me, any of the foundlings. The burden of proof is on us. They say they need to see any records, any materials, about the day we were found, how we were found. What we were wearing—clothes, notes, features of the vessel we were found in—anything. DNA samples, of course—they said mine were anomalous. I can’t have my money until I can prove who I am. People from enclaves aren’t allowed to have holdings in WELLFI. ”

  “Even if they were tossed out?”

  “We weren’t tossed out.”

  “I know you think that. Just tell me what I don’t know.”

  “If you are in an enclave, not just raised in one, if part of a group only by DNA, it doesn’t matter, you are under that Charter, that Treaty. New rules. You can’t get in, be an Heir—”