Mad Boys (24 page)

“Have you seen my mother? What does she look like?” I shouted over the roar of tires digging up dirt.

“I don’t know her. I’m supposed to take you the Children of the Cacti. I was told that’s where she is.”

We reached the end of the drive, and the van squealed rubber as we hit the blacktop. Siena braked, shifted into first, and gunned the engine. I felt myself pressed back in the seat by the G-forces. I looked at Siena’s face, like a beardless boy’s, like Langdon’s, so plain in comparison to her silvery uniform; I looked at her hands gripping the steering wheel. Long steely fingers, dirty, stubby chewed nails. Between the hands, through the steering wheel, the speedometer needle climbed to 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100, 110 miles per hour. And holding steady. The shuttle to the mother ship had escaped Earth’s gravity. In the harmonizing hums of engine and tires, it was quieter now.

“Where we headed?” I asked.

“Xi,” said Siena.

“The Xi of my mind?”

“The what?”

“The home of the Alien. Is my mother his captive?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about. Xi is a shopping mall and entertainment complex.”

Siena had been to Xi only once, when she’d been called in to go after me. Xi was being built on the California-Mexico border, a massive structure that included Spree, the largest shopping mall in the world; Luck, a gambling casino operated by the Native-American tribe which had leased its reservation to Xi developers; Phi, a holographic entertainment center; Third World Theater, which provided live-action warfare on video; and the Exposition of the Uncanny, whose purpose was unknown to Siena. Xi was owned by an investment group headed by VRN (Virtual Reality Network). Although Xi was not yet fully operational, parts of the complex—Spree and Luck—had been opened to the public on a limited basis. Even without publicity or advertising, business was already brisk.

Siena gave me a cigarette, and we lit up. I stared at her uniform. Colored lights danced in the pores of the fabric.

“It shines, I like it,” I said.

“I hate it,” Siena said. “I’ll take my field uniform any day. But the VRN Director made me put it on when he gave me my assignment.”

“The Director? Did he have a red beard and a hump on his back?”

“Yes, how did you know?”

I mulled things over for a second before I answered her question. Maybe Aristotle had been right about the powers of concentration. I’d thought so hard that my demons had come to life. Langdon had taken over Siena; the Director had spontaneously materialized. Or maybe Nurse Wilder had been right. The demons had been there all along; they had just latched onto me because I was the Devil’s child. Either way the Director had come into being, and he was going to tell me what to do next.

“Royal told me about the Director when he sent me to the Clements place. He’s another one of my demons.”

“You’re so strange,” she said.

“It’s because I was on the Alien’s ship for so long. Can I touch your suit?” I asked.

“No!” Siena snapped. Apparently she thought over her answer, because a few seconds later she said, “Why?”

“Never mind—I’m sorry,” I said.

She glanced over at me long and hard, trying to determine my sincerity. Finally, she said, “Go ahead, touch it.”

I looked for a fold, for a wrinkle, for a pucker, someplace where the fabric didn’t come in direct contact with skin. I was afraid her flesh would react to my touch like gunpowder to a match. Boom! The two of us blown to smithereens. The uniform clung close to her all over. No wrinkles. No puckers. Smooth. Shimmering. I put the flat of my hand about an inch from her shoulder, and stopped at an invisible shield—solid, warm, slightly electrified. My hand started to vibrate, and I withdrew it. She cocked her head in curiosity and watched me shake.

After I’d calmed down, I asked Siena if she thought we’d see Royal in Xi.

“I doubt it. Nobody knows where he is. The Director’s in charge.”

“Do you miss Royal?” I asked.

“No.”

“Well, I do,” I said.

We drove on. A sheriff’s car jumped us near the New Mexico-Arizona state line. He couldn’t call ahead, because the van was equipped with a device that scrambled police radio signals. Siena pushed the van to a 160 miles per hour. The landscape flew by. The metal around us shook. In ten minutes we’d left the sheriff’s car far behind.

As the sun started to go down, Siena pulled off the highway and parked. We got out, stretched, then sat cross-legged on the ground and watched the sun set as we ate C-rations, cold out of the can. VRN had bought the food from US Army surplus left over from the Korean War and donated it to the Souvien rebels. I had tuna and noodles, and Siena had ham and rice. After we ate, we each took a turn behind a rock to go to the bathroom.

The stars were out when Siena said it was time to turn in for the night. She slid open the side door to the van, and I got in. She followed, closing the door behind her and switching on the overhead light. The living space included a small closet, sink, propane stove, bookshelf, TV, and mattress with two black pillows and black sheets. The interior, top to bottom, was carpeted in black. Siena switched on the TV and fiddled with the channel selector trying to find a station.

“This your van?” I asked. It wasn’t a sincere question. I could tell it wasn’t hers.

“It’s VRN’s. The Director loaned it to me for the mission.”

“It’s the transfer shuttle.” I could feel Xiphi speaking through me.

Siena switched off the TV. “Nothing on—we’re too far out. What do you mean . . . shuttle?”

“The mother ship is too big to land on earth. That’s why you need a shuttle,” Xiphi said.

Xiphi wondered whether Siena would take her uniform off and burst into flames. But she made no move to strip, and Xiphi lost interest and withdrew within the darkness. Siena and I both looked at the mattress.

“Which side do you want?” I asked.

“The driver’s side,” Siena said.

“Okay, I’ll take the passenger side,” I said.

Siena switched off the light and we lay down, a one-foot gap between us. It was pitch black in the van, but I could just make out a few dim stars through the tinted window. I was comfortable. Everything smelled familiar. But I couldn’t smell Siena.

“Can I touch your uniform now? I won’t be scared this time,” I said.

“If you try anything, I’ll have to mace you.”

“I won’t try anything,” I said. “I don’t have the feeling.”

“What feeling?”

“You know, the
feeling
. We talked about it back in New York.”

“Oh, that. I’d forgotten.”

“Not me. I remember everything you said that day. You said you had the feeling but not with a man.”

“I gave it up.”

“You had the feeling and you gave it up—that’s admirable.”

“It’s not so hard when you have a cause.”

“A what?”

“A cause. I gave up the feeling because I adopted a cause. When you have a cause, the feeling gets in the way.”

“If I can’t have the feeling, maybe I should go for a cause,” I said.

Siena told me about her cause. Most of the people in her country were poor, but a few were very rich. The government kept the rich rich and the poor poor. Government soldiers had killed her family, and for a while she herself wanted to die. She had started to feel better when Royal had introduced her to the cause, which was simple enough. Kill the bad people, take over the government, and establish freedom and justice for all.

The conversation ended and we settled in for the night. I tossed and turned, keeping Siena awake. She figured out the problem. “Get it over with,” she said.

I reached out in the dark toward her voice and I touched her face. It was warm and smooth; I wanted to cry out with hope or joy, one of those emotions I didn’t have much experience with, but I held back. Below, at the throat, I touched her silvery suit. It felt like the back of a lizard, and I jerked my hand away.

Early the next afternoon, we arrived in Xi—city-sized, under one roof, in the middle of the desert, smack dab on the border with Mexico. Patrons parked a mile or so away and were taken in on trolley cars. But Siena showed her pass from the Director, and the guard at the gate let us go through to a private parking garage near the main entry. From the outside, Xi was impressive in its size but otherwise nondescript as a warehouse, just a windowless building that seemed to go on forever. An aqueduct from the Colorado River snaked through a mountain pass into Xi. I’d seen something like this image before, the supply umbilical from the mother ship to the transfer shuttle.

Inside was a different story. I’d never imagined anything like this. Glass domes let in plenty of natural light; bright color schemes brought out a feeling in me that it was peak foliage time in New England.

The sign over the front entry said.

Siena and I could have strolled with the shoppers along cobblestoned streets, but instead we chose to ride one of the many moving sidewalks. We started in Xi-Queens, based on Queens, New York. We passed a restaurant, a bar, a men’s hat shop, a bowling alley, and a roller-skating rink. Overhead, projected on a low ceiling, was an image of the undersides of an elevated train track. When the illusion-train went through, a roar filled my ears and the whole area jiggled.

From Xi-Queens, we moved through Xi-Soho (art galleries, mainly), Xi-Bourbon Street of New Orleans, and Xi-River Walk of San Antonio. The places all looked like the real thing, except newer and cleaner. In addition were little touches found only on Xi. For example, although homeless people were banned in the mall, robot dummies made up to resemble the homeless begged on street corners. Mall patrons were encouraged to take out their aggressions on the homeless. Kick them, punch them, spit on them. The robots “bled” and cried out in pain. For people averse to abusing the homeless, the mall developers provided robots of other types that people hated—police officers, school superintendents, politicians, business moguls, bossy women, and biker bullies. Siena kicked a robot Souvien government official in the privates. I didn’t hit any robots. I just wanted to see my mother, and I told Siena as much.

“I’ll bring you to her as soon as I can,” she said. “We have to go all the way through Spree to get to Luck. We’re going to meet a tribal official. He’ll have orders for us.”

At that moment, the moving sidewalk turned, and we found ourselves approaching Central Square, based on the town common in Keene, New Hampshire. On the square were trees, park benches, a cannon, the statue of a Civil War soldier with a baby face that looked like my own, and a bandstand where robot lookalikes of living First Ladies of American Presidents sang “God Bless America.”

As for shopping, Spree had something for everybody. Black market, gray market, white goods. Not just products from all over the world, not just restaurants and hotels with floor shows, video arcades, and movie theaters, but centers for psychiatric counseling, chiropracty, astrology, and geomancy, and chapels representing scores of religious faiths. Giant television monitors throughout the mall displayed bargain prices and attractions such as Round-the-Clock Divorce Court, Round-the-Clock Athletic Recruitment, and Round-the-Clock Manic Wrestling.

“Let’s get something to eat,” Siena said.

We stepped off the moving sidewalk and strolled down the Streets of God—Trinity Square, Mecca Circle, Baptist Cul de Sac, Methodist Way, Cult Corner, and Go Forth Drive. Eventually, we found our way to Christian Chapel McIntosh. The main difference between this restaurant and the standard Mrs. McIntosh’s was the pulpit, located on a “desk top” above the drop-down menus. Beside food menus were worship menus for patrons. I clicked “prayers.”

We didn’t opt for a prayer, even though it came with the meal. Siena had given up religion after she’d adopted her cause. As for myself, I could have used a prayer, but I didn’t think I was worthy.

After lunch, we hopped back on the moving sidewalk, which brought us to a section where the roof rose hundreds of feet from the floor, housing a hill complete with real trees, bushes, and meadows. The air felt pleasantly damp. No wonder. Water, in from the diverted Colorado River, disappeared in a swirl at the base of the hill.