The Revival (10 page)

Jefferson sidles up to Donna again, and I find someplace else to look. I scan the solemn avenues of wrecked buildings, the white wilderness of the park, and try to imagine my way, through it all, back into Donna's mind, and maybe from there into her heart. Here I am in, to quote the good old King James Version, “the abomination of desolation.”

But the mountains and hills, or rather, the high-rises and skyscrapers, have not been laid low. They are still standing, only a little marred by the actions of fire and weather and vandalous teens. This is what the Reconstruction Committee wants back—the houses and flats and offices. They want all of it, the whole nation, to extract the oil and iron and anything else they can suck from it. It seems, to me, blasphemous—not that blasphemy has ever been something to frighten me. But how many ghosts must there be here? The whole city is a haunted house.

We head up the less-than-imaginatively-named Central Park West, ears pricked. Since I have no idea what to look for, I take the time to ponder Kath, the preposterously gorgeous blond with two blond little flunkies at her heels. Anytime up to the near present, young Rab would have bent all his energy and skill to the task of securing some private time with such a dish. But now, to my amazement, I find that I have no interest. The conceptual framework is there—I understand how attractive she is, the curves and planes and hollows speak to me in a language I well remember—but the visceral charge is gone.

I crave only Donna. Her black eyes, her high-bridged nose, everything down to her slender little feet. But more, what she contains: Her laughter. Her thoughts. Her mind. Her spirit. It is a terrible thing, to find my talents suitable to any purpose but the essential one. I feel like a skeleton key that works in every door but the one I'm trying to get through.

Enough, my soul. Put aside such thoughts. Concentrate, rather, on not getting killed.

In the middle distance stretches a massive neoclassical pile, which can only be the aforesaid museum. I gather that it contains, like its British cousin, various skeletal dinosaurs and stuffed wildebeests and simulated Neanderthal domestic scenes.

And if our information is correct, a modern-day slave market. Charming.

We slip over the wall of the park for cover while we have a bit of a chin-wag. “Kath,” says Jefferson, “time to tell us everything you know.”

“I don't really know many details. I never went,” she says. “I mean, I had my own problems, right? I didn't
want
to know.”

Donna says, “You mean
you
were doing okay, so you didn't give a shit what happened to anybody else.”

Kath looks as though she's about to contradict her, but then she just says, “Yeah, pretty much.”

She tells us what she
does
know. The name of the tribe controlling the west side of Manhattan, and thus the museum, is the OGs. Despite the seeming reference to rap and blaxploitation films, said OGs are actually white kids. Control of the slave market was a concession that the Uptowners made to maintain peace so that they could concentrate on their closest enemies, the Harlemites, who are, in fact, black, or as they would say here, African American. The Uptowners retained control of the market in petrol and food. Shelter, it would seem, is not an issue, as thousands of houses and flats remain uninhabited. But how will they survive the winter?

I have a question. “So—sorry if I'm being naive, but what, exactly, are these slaves used for? I mean, nobody's growing cotton, right?”

There's a pause. Probably I have put things the wrong way. I never knew the ins and outs of America's tortured and tortuous relationship with slavery, only that most Americans wanted to avoid talking about it. Of course, Britain was every bit as involved, happily dashing about the globe shipping human beings here and there for profit, until the profit margins fell. But—

“It's not about
work
,” says Kath.

“You mean…”

“I mean sex. I mean rape.”

Kath laughs at what must be the shocked expression on my face.

“Oh, come
on
,” she says. “Are you surprised?”

“Surprised?” I think it over. “No. I suppose I'm not. But I'm disgusted.”

Kath makes a noise best rendered as
pfffft!
that presumably indicates her skepticism.

“Like you wouldn't have done the same thing, all you fancy public school pricks.”

Kath, I can see, has also traveled. This makes sense. She has a certain Courchevel après-ski look to her, a private-jet-set vibe.

“Young lady,” I say, “I may not be the most
evolved
of males, but
consent
is the salt to my meat. Without that, we're just animals.”

I am in, if not a white-hot rage, at least an off-white rage, or, shall we say, a handsomely tawny-colored rage. I think, perhaps, if I am let loose on the museum with a gun, I will have a chance to practice up for any less justified murders to follow.

We creep along the wall until we can see, on the steps of the museum, a little convocation of boys with guns. I fetch out my government-issue binoculars for a better look and spy, beneath a decaying gargantuan scorpion model that was mounted above the portico in better days, presumably to attract and repel schoolchildren, the guards, curiously done up in tattered robes. Stranger still, they appear to be sporting long beards beneath faces clearly still youthful and collagen-rich. As though they were going to a fancy dress ball having chosen a rather dubious Islamic State theme, for which they will later be made to apologize.

“We don't have the firepower to force our way in and out,” reiterates Jefferson.

“Good. I don't like to go anyplace I'm not invited, especially if they'll shoot me.”

So the guns are definitely real, then, even if the beards aren't. Not terribly surprising given that there was one firearm for every man, woman, and child in the country before the Sickness hit. I'm not 100 percent sure what led to this peculiar state of affairs. I suppose after all it was the fault of my countrymen, the British, for getting ourselves beaten by a bunch of bloody-minded, overarmed farmers. If your country gets its debut because everybody and their uncle Zebediah has a blunderbuss, you get to rating guns pretty highly.

Same thing goes for human bondage. There are millions of people enslaved in modern, progressive, technologically switched-on India to this day, working off debts or crimes for the grievous and unpardonable sin of being born into the wrong caste. The British, who in theory abolished slavery in the middle of the nineteenth century, basically just renamed it. I ought to know, for my people were bureaucrats and organizers of imperial infrastructure great and small, veritable Uncle Tom–jis, which is how I ended up, like many of my ancestors, at Eton and Cambridge.

Well, Rab, you have worked yourself into a fine moral lather, haven't you? Let that stiffen your spine in the hours to come.

“Come again?” say I. I have not been taking everything in.

Donna looks annoyed. “I
said
, so we need to think of another way in, then.”

“Do we really?” It seems a question worth asking.

“I can't expect you to understand,” says Donna. “It's not your tribe.” Her look, not spiteful, only indifferent, tears at my gut.

“Well,” I say, “how about a little subterfuge? Give the good old Chewbacca maneuver a go? We escort in a fake prisoner?”

“Can't say it's the worst idea,” says Jefferson.

“Yeah, but there's no way we can guarantee that somebody won't recognize you. You're public enemy number one.” Donna smiles at Jefferson. Damnation.

“I'll go,” I find myself saying, and immediately regret it. Really, this is too much. There is no point to impressing Donna with my heroism if I die in the process. I want to be alive to enjoy the fruits of my labor. I am hoping that someone will say something along the lines of
No, this isn't your fight!

But there are no takers. Instead, Kath says, “I'll be Chewbacca.”

“No, Mommy!” whine her two little blond shadows. “Stay with us!”

Donna says, “It's my tribe. I should go.”

“You?” Kath snorts. “No offense, but who do you think people would want to buy more, you or me?”

Kath's point is one of the more perverse I've ever seen expressed, but she's not wrong, I suppose. With her flaxen hair and rosy cheeks, she's a regular harem-member
manquée
. That notwithstanding, she's a loose cannon, and besides, I have other ideas.

“Donna goes,” I say.

The others look at me.
Yes,
I stare back at them,
I can make arbitrary decisions, too
.

“It's
her
tribe. And it's
my
neck. So Donna goes with me.”

Maybe things will get hairy and I'll get the chance to jump in front of a crossbow bolt to save her, a showy but easily reparable wound—taped up by the fair hands of Donna herself, preferably—that will shift the needle of public opinion in my direction.

Donna is not happy about this arrangement, though. It implies a sort of relationship between her and me, a
partner
ship.

But she does not make that objection outwardly, which tells me that she and Jefferson have not had The Talk, the one in which she breaks it to Jefferson that she and I have slept together. I hope it's just that she's saving the news for a good enough argument. More likely, she just can't stand the idea of telling him and spoiling their glorious sodding reunion.

Well, that doesn't stop me from dropping hints, does it?

“And if you ask
me
,” I say, my expression implying that I'm speaking from experience, “Donna is
plenty
desirable.”

Donna looks at me with utter contempt. Never mind. To make an omelette, one must annoy some eggs.

Jefferson has nothing to say to this. I seem to have carried the point with sheer bravado.

So. Over the wall, down the cobbled parkside pavement, across the street to the grand stairs and portico. The bearded boys look down at us with the studied, trigger-fondling disdain of movie gunsels. Donna, loosely zip-tied and led by the elbow, has her eyes down. The guards address themselves to me.

“Sale isn't till Sunday,” says one of them. And I notice that his ZZ Topp look is the result of his having strung hair extensions into his best-but-still-lacking, undergrowth-like efforts at an actual beard.

I resist the urge to laugh. I tell myself, Rab, who are you to question the tonsorial choices of this young gentleman, who is a person like you, and at the same time, a special snowflake unlike any other? Also, I make it my business not to laugh at people carrying Kalashnikovs.

His colleagues are equally bebearded, in extremist rather than hipster fashion. Something, I tell myself, is up. I quickly take in the jingling metal symbols dangling like charms from their necks. Cross, Star of David, crescent. Like a version of those C
OEXIST
bumper stickers that found their way to London before the Sickness. Curious.

At any rate, I realize that Donna is not going to supply a response to the young thug's statement, as she is meant to be a cowed and depressed victim. So I say, “Yeah, I know. I came early to check out the competition. Wanna see what kind of price I can get.”

“You sound funny,” says another little slavemonger, which is rather rich, given that he sounds like the arse end of a clarinet played through the nostril. But now is not the time to be undiplomatic.

“I'm from Jersey,” I say, a response that, I have been told, will cover any sort of irregularity.

And indeed, it works. The creeps would rather pretend to be sophisticated than venture to quiz me on, say, the popular pastimes and landmarks of New Jerseyans, which, judging only from my exposure to
The Sopranos
, largely involve dumping bodies and eating mozzarella.

“How're those Jersey girls?” asks one kid.

“See for yourself,” I say. I take Donna's chin in my hand and tilt her face upward. I can't tell if the micro-glance of hatred she gives me is genuine or playacting. If it's the latter, she's doing it well. But she must understand that I'm just trying to put on a convincing front. Perhaps it's my facility with lying that puts her in mind of past peccadilloes.

The bearded boys take a look at her, up and down, male gazes unfettered by any social constraint.

“How much?” says one. “We'll take her off your hands.”

“Mmmm, I think I'll trust the full price-setting power of the market.”

“How about we rent her for an hour?”

Even I, smooth and supple liar that I am, feel my bile rise and find myself at a pause.

“Thanks,” I say. “But I'd like to keep the merchandise in prime condition, and you fellows look a bit rough.”

They laugh, the closest one holds up his hand for a fist bump, and, to my eternal shame, I comply. I have a brief mental image of his hand, in a graphically rendered version of the imaginary follow-through, exploding in a fine red mist.

“Go on in, chief,” he says.

Donna and I head up the stairs. She turns to me and says, sotto voce, “I'm going to fucking kill all of them.”

I'm a bit taken aback; this is not the Donna who sat next to me on Dr. Maule's couch and elucidated the distinction between back-formation and folk etymology.

“Do you mean kill, in the sense that people used to mean it, as in you really hate them, or do you mean
kill
kill?”

She looks at me and leaves no doubt.

I open the door for her—even if I weren't a gentleman, there's the fact that her hands are zip-tied behind her back. We find ourselves in a big lobby, wall-to-wall marble, real nineteenth-century American inferiority complex–grade expense and bombast. Another creep with his feet up behind what used to be the ticket booth. Discounts for students and senior citizens, etc.