Mother of Storms (50 page)

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Authors: John Barnes

BOOK: Mother of Storms
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Glinda Gray brushes her graying-blonde hair back from her face, and Jameson notes with envy just how polished the woman seems, as if Gray had been playing the role of herself for many years. “Well, we think
Sniffings
is likely to be interested for two reasons, and you can quote me on either of them. First of all,
Scuttlebytes
has, let’s say, a very adolescent attitude about business and capitalism—they like to tweak business just because there’s a certain amount of money and prestige in the private sector and because business people tend to be kind of conservative. And more importantly, we have a pretty good idea about why the Feds and the UN are doing this. It’s because most of the governments of the Earth failed to foresee that there might be a need for space launch that could stand up to severe weather conditions; our own country is a perfect example; first we built at Canaveral on a coast that gets hurricanes, then we moved to Kingman Reef, where there’s even less dry land and even more storm vulnerability. But the other nations haven’t done much better.
“So naturally when the catastrophe anyone should have seen was possible comes along, what happens? There’re two possibilities—they can either launch using the facilities that private enterprise built on speculation against just such a day, or they can do what they’re doing—appropriate private property without compensation, infringe on other nations’ facilities, do everything that if we did it would rightly be called theft, piracy, or barratry, all of that just to avoid letting private enterprise solve the problem. There’s an anti-business bias in government that runs deep and strong, Ms. Jameson, and that’s what you’re seeing here. Frankly we’re tired of it; all we want is a chance to compete fairly, and what we’re seeing here is a situation where we have to play by the rules and they don’t.”
It’s a great bunch of quotes, Berlina consoles herself, and the fact that something smells funny about all this can always be looked into later. It’s almost enough to make her wish she had invested in a head jack so that she could go two-way with some databases, but you have to know what questions to ask to do that and it’s awesomely expensive.
She gets a couple more minutes with Glinda Gray, but no better material. They have the usual polite off-record exchanges at the end; the most interesting thing she gets out of that is that John Klieg himself is a fan of
Sniffings,
which Gray mentions with an odd air of embarrassment, as if it were unusual for her to know that about her boss.
Well, well, then perhaps the rumors that she’s been serving under her
boss with distinction are true … but private biz
really
is a different game. Whereas a senator boffing his legislative assistant is dynamite, people in private business can and do screw pretty much whomever they like, and absolutely nobody in that community seems to think much about it. Berlina is not sure she can get the hang of such a different world.
Well, one rule that has worked for her is: When you don’t understand what you’ve got, get more. Who can she talk to? She’s had a few short conversations with Harris Diem over the past few weeks, but that is probably not enough for her to just call him up.
Di Callare does not strike her as the hardheaded business type either, but at least he’ll have something to say and he’s easy to talk to.
He all but explodes; it takes her a while to sort out the basic issues—that Klieg is just taking advantage of the situation. “Look at the permit and build dates, look when he started moving to Siberia, what he did was take a gamble that this would happen and then get the right piece of dirt from people who had to give him a cheap deal … .”
She makes the note herself.
What was Klieg’s timing? Did he have any way to know or suspect something like Clem was about to happen?
It’s one thing to be a farsighted road-builder, she thinks, and another to sprint up the road ahead of a crowd of refugees and open a tollbooth … and certainly, too, Klieg’s connections to the all-but-outlawed Siberian regime also bear some checking into.
She thanks Di for his trouble and time, makes sure he feels they’re still friends, and clicks off. Di has said nothing she wants to quote, but at least via him she has some idea what Diem might say, or Hardshaw if she gets that lucky.
She has an ominous feeling that all she has here is something the Klieg organization wants to plant in the media, and she doesn’t know why. Of course until she releases it she doesn’t know what they’ll do with it-And that thought gives her the answer. She makes her preparations and then leaves a short note for Glinda Gray, informing her that the next
Sniffings
will feature the story as its lead. Then she records a much longer voice-and-video message for Harris Diem.
She knows she did the right thing when he calls her back that night.
 
 
Jesse and Mary Ann managed to get on the same crew for the dig-out; it’s not like Tehuantepec here in Tapachula, they were far enough away so that it was no more than an unusually bad hurricane, and even with the Army not showing up, most of Puerto Madero managed to evacuate itself before the storm surges hit. That little town and beach are gone, and the inhabitants have been added to the homeless in Tapachula, but they’re alive, and besides
Tapachula has plenty of buildings standing. Even some of the shacks that ringed the town managed to hold somehow, and enough public buildings to provide everyone a place to sleep—which may be better than it was before Clementine ripped over them.
Not that there isn’t plenty to do, but deaths here run to dozens, not to hundreds, and when a rubble pile has to be looked into, there are plenty of hands available. Mary Ann is standing in the right place to see two small, dirty, frightened boys freed from house wreckage, and then to hear the shriek of joy from their mother.
Sourly, she finds herself thinking that if she were working, she would have had to crank her feelings up to fever pitch—just so the experiencers could understand that it was good to have seen that.
It’s a long day, and it’s a bit longer because, since the landlord isn’t around to object, Mary Ann has turned her rented house into an emergency shelter, so that besides the indispensable Herreras, they have about twenty refugees scattered around the place. That means a certain amount of work in getting everyone bedded down, but at least Señora Herrera was able to screen the incoming guests, and she seems to have been willing to take only those who want to work for their bed and supper. If anything the place is cleaner and more orderly than before.
It leaves Jesse and Mary Ann with only the master bedroom and its bath to call their own, but that doesn’t much matter; it’s kind of cozy, like having the largest and best room in a dormitory.
That evening Jesse is messing around with the terminal; links to the outside world, and via that to the rest of Mexico, seem to be in good shape, though everything is going via satellite between north and south Mexico—Clementine tore a swath that ripped out all but the few buried fibrop cables, and for practical purposes Mexico is now two nations divided by the wild chaos of the Isthmus of Tehuantepec.
He has kind of ambiguous feelings about it, but he decides that seeing if he can contact Naomi is the least he can do. He writes a quick “hope you’re okay” letter to Naomi and puts it in a tracer packet aimed at her net i.d.—a little program that will hang around in the nets looking for her until she logs on again.
While he’s at it, he puts out a “mention search” tracer as well; this is a program that will capture everything that mentions Naomi. He tells it to just hang out on the servers and processors in the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas. That way, if—he flinches a bit at the thought—well, if she’s in the hospital, or in a busload of refugees, or something like that, his tracer will find out and let him know.
They’ve got limited phone service available for contacting relatives, and he hasn’t used any of his authorized calls yet. Probably he ought to call Dad,
but phoning Di is about as good—Di will pass word on to Dad—and Di is a lot easier to talk to.
To his surprise, Di is on the screen almost at once. “Kid! I’ve been trying to get something out of Mexico for two days about you! What’s up? Are you okay? Do you need money or clearance to get anywhere or anything?”
“I’m fine, Di, really. I’ve got a rich girlfriend, and she’s got a house that’s built like a fort. We rode it out here and there was no big trouble at all. They just got phone service up a couple of hours ago. My old place was smashed up pretty badly but I was fine, and most of my stuff was over here anyway. I was just calling to let you know I’m okay.”
“God, I’m glad to hear that!”
Jesse looks closer at the screen, and says, “You look really tired, Di. Aren’t they giving you any breaks?”
“They are but I’m not taking them. Have you had time to check the news?”
“Just enough to know Salina Cruz is gone and most of the coast resorts got clobbered by storm surge. And of course the country’s practically cut in half at the
Istmo.”
“That’s pretty much the story,” Di agrees. “It’s not yet public, but the Mexican government has made a decision that I wish our President would. They’ve declared the situation as good as permanent—with so many Clems forming out there, and with our forecasts saying every summer will be like this for at least six years, they’re going to try to organize mass migrations to safer areas, and take advantage of the big rainfalls to grow grain in the desert to feed everyone. So if you can get out of there soon, you should—otherwise your way out is likely to involve spending a month or so in a refugee column going farther up into the hills.”
“The Chiapas rain forest might not even notice the hurricanes, if it doesn’t get hit directly,” Jesse responds. It’s funny—last month he’d have been hysterical about not getting back to the Az on schedule, but now he can look at it calmly enough. “It rains a lot here. But—a lot of Clems—”
“A lot. Clem’s had two babies and is still headed west in the Pacific, with one of them trailing behind and the other running parallel and to the north; Clem Two, or ‘Clementine,’ as Berlina dubbed it, is kicking up such a fuss in the Gulf that we aren’t even sure how many storm eyes there really are there—it’s got about four outflow jets popping around and they’re all starting eyes everywhere. We’ve started a new designation system; Clem itself is Clem 100, Clem Two is Clem 200, and the two independent daughters in the Pacific are 300 and 400; mostly they’ll be named after their direct ancestors. Our guess is that there’re going to be at least a Clem 210, Clem 220, and Clem 230 coming out of the Gulf.”
“Jesus.”
“Unh-hunh. And we’ve got Tropical Depression Donna forming way out west in the Atlantic near the equator. Bet on it, Jesse, if you stay in Mexico you’ll ride out at least five more hurricanes this summer and fall. For that matter we’re betting on three big ones for the Chesapeake.”
Jesse shakes his head, trying to make the thoughts whirling there settle down. “Is there anywhere safe?”
“Siberia, I guess, ought to be okay. In the States, Kansas maybe, though there’s going to be a lot of rain in the Rockies so I wouldn’t set up camp anywhere near a river. Utah, as long as you don’t get hit with flash floods, and some of our models are showing that the dry lake beds are going to refill all over the basin and range country—there’s going to be a chain of salt lakes all down there by October.”
Jesse finds his voice, and he says, “Well, then, shit, Di, tell me … is there anything that can be done? Is anyone trying?”
Di shrugs. “Of course people are trying.”
It doesn’t sound encouraging. There’s really no reason to try to go back. Here in Chiapas, he knows his neighbors and he’s worked beside them. And the mountains and rain forest above are not the worst place in the world to live, if it came to that. He has a strange feeling that he might be deciding where his
grandchildren
will live. There’d be a place for him—he’s healthy and doesn’t mind work, his Spanish has gotten very fluent in his time here, and he’s got a bunch of skills that are likely to be needed, though realization engineering may not be important for a while. “Then I think I’ll stick down here, Di. There’s a place for me and it’s apt to be safer.”
“It’s, uh, not because of some girl, is it?”
“You know my evil habits. No, not really, I think her employers will probably call her back onto the job pretty soon. And I’d really say ‘woman’ rather than girl. She’s, uh, probably nearer your age than mine.”
Di whistles and gives him a wink. “Coo coo ca choo, Mrs. Robinson.”
“What?”
“I don’t know what it means either, but Dad used to say that whenever he saw a younger guy with an older woman. Some kind of boomtalk, I guess.”
“He must have given that up before I came along.”
“Right. Theoretically I should get back to work but all we’re doing right now is documenting that horrible mess in the Gulf, and I don’t mind telling you it’s a relief to talk to anyone about anything else at all. There’s nothing we can do and it just keeps building … .” Di sighs. “Anyway, enough of that. You take care. You sound pretty grown-up to me, but you’re still my kid brother. This old grandmother you’re shacked up with—”
“Hey!”
“—is she anyone I might know?”
Jesse decides that if he tells Di, most likely his brother will start calling psychiatric authorities, so he says, “Probably not. Ever meet an actress named Mary Ann Waterhouse?”

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