A Better World (25 page)

Their reception in Tesla was certainly a different experience than the last time he’d arrived, three months ago. That time he and Shannon had snuck in with false papers, worried every moment they’d be caught.

This time there was a motorcade waiting, guarded by a security team. Instead of the heavy limousines favored everywhere else in the world, the motorcade was made up of tear-dropped electric vehicles and sleek ATVs. Gasoline was one of the many things the Holdfast had to import, and it was correspondingly expensive.

As for the security team, they were young even by military standards, ranging from sixteen to maybe twenty-two. Their lightweight desert fatigues were made of active camouflage, the fabric patterns shifting and morphing as they moved. Despite their youth, he could tell they were good; they moved as a single unit, covering every angle without needing to speak to one another. He didn’t recognize the assault rifles they carried, some sort of NCH newtech with rounded curves and plastic stocks.
When did you start manufacturing weapons, Erik?

“Ambassador Cooper.” The woman who met them had the willowy beauty of a runway model but not so much as a whiff of sexuality. “I’m Patricia Ariel, Mr. Epstein’s communications director. On behalf of Epstein Industries, welcome to the New Canaan Holdfast.”

Ambassador. That’ll take some getting used to.
“Thank you,” he said. “This is Natalie, and our children, Todd and Kate.”

“Welcome. If you’ll follow me, I’ll see you to your residence in the city.”

Cooper said, “Epstein couldn’t make it?”

“He thought you’d want to get settled first. Shall we?”

Hmm.
Cooper hadn’t expected the real Erik Epstein—he probably never left his cave—but his brother Jakob should have been here. It was a snub, and a bad sign.

The car wasn’t as heavy as President Clay’s ride, but it was comfortable, with leather seats and broad windows. A privacy shield separated them from the driver. The motorcade started rolling immediately, engines humming softly.

“Mr. Ambassador, this isn’t your first visit to the Holdfast, correct?”

Cooper shook his head. “But my family hasn’t been here before.”

“Well, as you know, we’re corporate-held land, custom designed from the ground up . . .” Ariel continued talking, and he patterned her while his family enjoyed the tour. She was smooth and polished, but every so often a rounded consonant crept in, and he figured her to be from the Boston area. Probably a tier two, he suspected memetic based on her speech patterns, and definitely not academy-raised. He imagined her parents were loving and still married, proud of their daughter but not residents of the NCH. Sunday phone calls and e-mails about seeing her on the news, polite inquiries into her social life met with polite deflections.

Once he had figured her out, he turned his attention to the view. The airport was small, two runways for jets and a handful of glider paths. Todd oohed as one took off, a hydraulic winch a mile away yanking the carbon-fiber plane into the sky. Cooper remembered riding in one with Shannon, felt his stomach lurch. He didn’t mind heights, but airplanes without engines were another matter.

Outside the boundaries of the airport, they passed a huge solar array, tens of thousands of black panels stretching into the distance, all of them perfectly aligned and bathed in sunlight. Traffic was light, and though the motorcade moved without sirens, they rarely slowed down. One of the benefits of building
a world from scratch, traffic patterns could be anticipated, roads built wide enough to avoid congestion. He wondered if Ariel ever thought of Boston, the antithesis of everything here: an old city by American standards, confusing and crowded, horse paths turned into streets, winding mazes instead of neat grids.

“What’s that?” Todd pointed at a complex of domed structures on a ridgeline, the silver sides open to the wind.

“Moisture condensers,” Ariel said. “We harvest water from the wind. This is the desert, after all, so water is always a concern. You may find showers a little strange . . .”

He tuned back out, his mind returning to the Oval Office. Last night had been close. Cleveland on fire, and the president comatose while his secretary of defense practically staged a coup. If Clay hadn’t snapped out of it, this morning abnorms all over the country would be getting shipped to internment camps as troops descended on the Holdfast.

Cooper’s last-second save had bought a little time, but only a little. Now he somehow had to convince Erik Epstein to abandon his deliberately neutral posture and throw his support fully behind the US government—a government that was at that moment drawing up plans for an attack.

Maybe that’s your angle. Carrot and stick in one.

He tapped at his teeth with his thumb, watched Tesla unfold around them. Low-rise buildings of stone and solar glass, fronted by broad sidewalks and charging stations for electric vehicles. Signs for restaurants and bars, holographic arcades and coffeehouses advertising brands of marijuana. The people on the street favored rugged, practical clothing, jeans and boots and cowboy hats. There was a genial air, people smiling at one another as they passed, stopping in small groups to talk.

He imagined US Army Seraphim drones circling above, raining down finger missiles. Vehicles exploding, walls cracking and collapsing. Or worse, bomber-dropped incendiaries; in the dry
climate, the heat would reach levels hot enough to shatter stone and boil solar glass.

“Everyone is so young,” Natalie said.

“Youth is strength,” Ariel said without hesitation. Definitely memetic. Professional communications had always been about the attempt to generate memes, to make a message viral; abnorms just took that to a higher level. Back when he’d been a DAR agent, Cooper had read a brief arguing memetics was the most dangerous gift. As politicians had long known, people preferred short, catchy answers to complex ones, even if the short answers were oversimplified to the point of ridiculousness. Phrases like “old-world thinking” could be as devastating as a bomb, and much farther ranging.

After all, remember how many times you saw “I am John Smith” scrawled on a wall.

And now he’s a hero, and that’s the title of his bestselling book.

“Youth is being young,” Cooper said. “Strength is something else.”

Ariel smiled politely, continued the tour. “The average age in the Holdfast is 26.41, although that’s misleading; the number of parents and grandparents who move here with gifted children skew the math. The median is closer to sixteen.”

“A city of children,” Natalie said.

“Not a city, a new community, united in a common purpose. When people are invested in what they’re doing, biological age is less important than energy and focus. Look at Israel’s growth after the Second World War. A generation of passionate Jewish youth transformed a desert into a global power.” The motorcade purred to a halt outside a gracious brick building on a neighborhood street. “And here we are.”

Cooper had been expecting traditional diplomatic quarters—a luxury hotel, one floor cordoned off for them, agents posted everywhere. Instead, Ariel led them into a lovely three-story apartment, tastefully decorated in Western style, tile floors and
sheer drapes. The back half of the house looked out onto a public square surrounding a tall tree with thick rubbery leaves, no doubt a genetic variant that required minimal water. Despite the cold, men and women chatted on benches, read d-pads in the sun. A group of boys kicked a soccer ball. Todd pressed against the window, his breath fogging the glass.

“Your security detail is quartered on the first floor; if you need anything, just pick up the phone.”

Todd said, “Can I go play?”

Cooper hesitated. He wanted his children to experience this world—that was one of the reasons he’d agreed to bring them—but this was more exposed than he’d imagined. As if reading his thoughts, Ariel said, “The security team can accompany him if you’d like, but it’s not necessary.”

“Why’s that?”

Ariel smiled. “You’re in New Canaan. Approximately fifteen percent of our police force are readers; they move through the cities looking for dangerous personality discrepancies. Pedophiles are screened out, as are those with violent tendencies.”

“You have tier-one readers wandering the streets?”

“Of course not. There are tier-one readers in the Holdfast, but mostly they choose to live in special facilities where their needs can be met by automation so they never need to see another human being. They’d go mad wandering the streets. The readers in the police are generally threes. They can sense imbalance, sociopathy, psychopathy, but they’re still able to function in human society. The system has been exceptionally effective—there hasn’t been a child hurt by an adult anywhere in the Holdfast in years.”

“What about terrorists?”

“Not a threat. These being diplomatic quarters, that protocol is expanded to include political insurgents. Your children are safer here than they are in your front yard in Washington.”

New-world thinking. Gotta love it.
He caught Natalie looking at him, shrugged. She said, “Sure. Be home by dinner.”

Todd whooped and streaked for the door.

“If it’s okay with your mom and dad,” Ariel said to Kate, “there’s a sandbox and swings, other kids your age.”

His daughter wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t really like playing with other kids.”

“That’s because you’re gifted.” Ariel smiled. “I know how you feel. I used to feel the same way. Normal kids can be so mean. Trust me, it’s better here.”

Kate looked up at Cooper, a question in her eyes. A hope, he realized, and remembered his own childhood. He’d been a military brat, and so always an outcast, but that had been made far worse because he was gifted. It seemed like he’d had to fight for his place every day of his life.

Imagining his beautiful baby girl feeling that way broke his heart.

He squatted down in front of her. “Mom will go with you, sweetheart. You don’t have to play with the other kids unless you want to.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s up to you.”

Kate bit her lip. Then she nodded. “Okay.” Natalie held out one hand, and Kate took it.

“Now, Ambassador Cooper, we have a dinner planned this evening. The car will be back to pick you up at seven, if that’s all right.”

“It’s not.” He stood and turned to the communications director. “I want to talk to Epstein.”

“Mr. Epstein is engaged—”

“Now.”

Ariel was considerably cooler on the ride away from their apartment. After she had realized that he wasn’t kidding, there had been a hushed phone call, a lot of
yes, sirs
and sideways glances. Like any official, she didn’t like having her legs kicked out.

Cooper didn’t care. If Epstein was hoping he’d play the polite diplomat, the man had lost his touch.

Though Epstein Industries was officially headquartered in Manhattan, the real power center was here, in a complex of silver cubes that shimmered with reflected sky. The tallest was a six-story building topped with a bristling array of equipment. Satellite dishes and climatic trackers and scientific gear, he knew, but also laser defense shields and antiaircraft batteries and surface-to-air missiles. Gear that should never have been okayed for a private corporation. However, $300 billion bent a lot of rules. The gerrymandered whole of the NCH proved that, the nested sieves of legal loopholes that turned the Holdfast into something like a private nation-state.

Flanked by four security guards, he and Ariel walked to the building. Cooper imagined an Avenger missile streaking toward it. Extremely low-altitude trajectory, remote guided, stealth build, integrated ECM, hypersonic. When it came to stopping an Avenger, the countermeasures on the roof would be as effective as a kid’s slingshot. Cooper imagined the building vaporizing, a shock wave rolling out, pushing glass and stone in a lethal globe.

The atrium was broad and sunlit and backdropped by the skyline of Cleveland, columns of smoke rising from the city center, a news ticker five feet high scrolling. A massive tri-d screen with spectacular resolution. Apparently President Clay had formally declared martial law in the city; regular army tanks were rolling down Ontario Street.

Ariel led him to an elevator, the doors whisking open at their approach. She started to board, and he said, “No.”

“I’m sorry?”

“I’m going alone.”

“I’m sorry, sir, but Mr. Epstein asked that I join this meeting.”

“I’ll explain why you’re not there.”

She hesitated, then said, “Regardless, the security team—”

“Can wait down here.” He adopted a bland smile. “This is still American soil, Ms. Ariel, and I’m here at the personal request of the president. Believe me when I say now is not the time to start a turf war.”

The word “war” seemed to hang in the air. After a moment, Ariel said, “As you wish.”

Cooper smiled, then boarded the elevator. There were no buttons, but he wasn’t surprised that it slid immediately into motion.

He shouldn’t have been surprised by who was waiting on the other side, either, but he was. A ten-year-old girl with electric purple hair and clenched shoulders, eyes that wouldn’t meet his own. “Hi,” she said. Then, “Oh God. Really? They’re going to attack?”