“Sure, how could I forget?”
“Well, you forgot our first job, so who knows. Anyway there we were—”
“That’s how we know this place is underwater! Because that place was.”
“Maybe so. I mean, it was. Subsurface real estate was just starting in the Meadowlands, so there were some rents we could afford. So, that was when we started working on front-running that would work for us as well as for Vinson. By then he was off on his own. That was illegal—”
“He was always an asshole.”
“Yes, that too. So we felt like we were just gigging for him doing questionable shit. Presumably if the SEC had ever twigged it, we would have been the ones to take the fall. People at Alban would have disavowed all knowledge of our existence.”
“Of a mission all too possible.”
“Yes, it was easy. But then we found out that everyone else was already doing it, so we were a late entry into an arms race no one could win. There was no difference between front-running and ordinary trading. So we quit Alban before we got hung out to dry. Started gigging around. It got a little ragged then. We needed something different if we wanted an advantage.”
“Did we want an advantage?”
“I don’t know. All our clients did.”
“Not the same.”
“I know.”
“I don’t want to work for them anymore.”
“I know. But that’s led to problems for us, as you know.”
“As in?”
“Well, food. Food and lodging. We need those, and they take money, and you have to work to make money.”
“I’m not saying don’t work. I’m saying, not for them.”
“Agreed, we already tried that.”
“We have to work for ourselves.”
“Well, that’s what they do too. I mean, we’d likely end up just like them.”
“For everybody then. Work for everybody.”
Mutt nods, looking pleased. He’s gotten his friend talking again. Possibly the pills have helped. Possibly the tide has turned, and they are past the deep ebb in his health.
“But how?” Mutt asks, nudging the tide.
But you can’t push the river. “How should I know? That’s what I tried, and look where it got us. I tried to just do it direct. But I’m the idea man and you’re the facilitator. Isn’t that how it usually worked with us? I would have a crazy idea and you would figure out how to implement it.”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Sure you do. So look, I had some fixes. I tried to tap into the system and make the fixes directly. Maybe it was stupid. Okay, it was stupid. It got us here, I’m guessing, and they could always just change the fixes back again anyway. So it was never going to work. I guess I was a little crazy then.”
Mutt sighs.
“I know!” Jeff says. “But tell me how! Tell me how we could do it! Because we’re not the only ones who need these fixes. Everyone needs them.”
Mutt doesn’t know what to say, but on the other hand he has to say something, to keep Jeff going. So he says, “Jeff, these are laws you’re talking about here. They aren’t just fixes, they’re like new laws. So, laws are made by lawmakers. We elect them. But, you know, companies pay for their campaigns, so they say they’re going to work for us, but once in office they work for the companies. It’s been that way a long time. Of the companies, by tools, for the companies.”
“But what about the people?”
“You can either believe that voting lawmakers into office means they work for you, so you keep voting, or you can admit that doesn’t work, and quit voting. Which doesn’t work either.”
“So okay, that’s why I tried to jam the fixes in there as a hack!”
“I know.”
“Tell me how we can do it better!”
“I’m thinking. I guess I’d say, we have to try a onetime takeover of the existing legislative bodies, and pass a bunch of laws that put people back in charge.”
“Onetime takeover? Isn’t that like, revolution? Are you saying we need a revolution?”
“Well, no.”
“No? It sounds to me like yes.”
“But no. I mean—yes and no.”
“Thank you for that! Such clarity!”
“What I mean is, if you use the currently existing legal system to vote in a group of congresspeople who actually pass laws to put people back in charge of lawmaking, and they do it, and there’s a president who signs those laws, and a Supreme Court that allows they are legal, and an army that enforces them, then—I mean, is that a revolution?”
Jeff is silent for a long time. Finally he says, “Yes. It’s a revolution.”
“But it’s legal!”
“All the better, right?”
“Sure, granted.”
“But so then, how do you get that Congress and president elected?”
“Politics, I guess. You tell the better story, and run candidates who will do what you say.”
“They would have to be Democrats, because third parties always lose. They screw the party closest to them, that’s the American way.”
“Okay, even better. Already existing party. Just win.”
“So it’s just politics, you’re telling me.”
“I guess so.”
“Jeez no wonder I tried to hack the system! Because your solution totally sucks!”
“Well at least it’s legal. If it worked, it would work.”
“Thank you for that wisdom. I am wondering now if all the great wisdom is as tautological as that. I fear maybe so. But no. No, Muttnik. You need to think again. This solution of yours is no solution at all. I mean people have been trying it for three hundred years, whatever, and it has only gotten worse and worse.”
“There have been ups and downs. There has been progress.”
“And here we are.”
“Okay, granted. Here we are.”
“So come up with something new.”
“I’m trying!”
Again Jeff is silent. He’s had to exert himself to talk this much, it’s been more than he has in him to give, and now he’s looking exhausted. Weary to the bone. Sick to death of seeing what he is seeing in his vision of the world.
After a while Mutt says, “Jeff? Are you awake?”
After a while Jeff rouses. “Don’t know. I’m really tired.”
“Hungry?”
“Don’t know.”
“I have some crackers here.”
“No.” Long pause; possibly Jeff is weeping here. Weeping or sleeping, or both. Finally he rouses himself, makes an effort. “Tell me a story. I told you to tell me a story.”
“I thought I was.”
“Tell me a story I can believe.”
“That’s harder. But okay … Well, once upon a time, there was a country across the sea, where everyone tried their best to make a community that worked for everyone.”
“Utopia?”
“New York. Everyone was equal there. Men, women, children, and people you couldn’t say what they were. All the various skin tones, and wherever you came from before, it didn’t matter. In this new place you made it all new, and people were just people, meant to be equal, and to treat each other respectfully at all times. It was a good place. Everyone liked living there. And they saw that it was a beautiful place to begin with, incredible really, the harbor, and from east to west it was just one beautiful place after another, with animals and fish and birds in such profusion that sometimes when flocks of birds flew overhead they darkened the day. You couldn’t see the sun or the sky, it was so full of birds. When the fish came back up the rivers to spawn, you could walk across the streams on their backs. That kind of thing. The animals ran in the millions. There was a forest that covered everything. Lakes and rivers to die for. Mountains you couldn’t believe. It was a gift to have such a land given to you.”
“Why didn’t anyone live there before?” Jeff asks from out of his sleep.
“Well, that’s another st
ory. Actually there were people there already, I have to say, but alas they didn’t have immunity to the diseases that the new people brought with them, so most of them died. But the survivors joined this community and taught the newcomers how to take care of the land so that it would stay healthy forever. That’s the story I’m telling you now. It took knowing every rock and plant and animal and fish and bird, that was the way they did it. You had to love the land the way you loved your mother, or in case you didn’t love your mother, the way you loved your child, or yourself. Because it was you anyway. It took knowing all the other parts of your self so well that nothing was misunderstood or exploited, and everything was treated respectfully. Every single element of this land, right down to the bedrock, was a citizen of the community they all made together, and they all had legal standing, and they all made a good living, and they all had everything it took for total well-being for everything. That’s what it was like. Hey, Jeff? Jeff? Well, the end, I guess.”
Because Jeff is now lying there peacefully snoring. The story has put him to sleep. A kind of lullaby, it has turned out to be. A tale for children.
And then, because Jeff is asleep and cannot see it, Mutt puts his face in his hands and cries.
PART FIVE
ESCALATION OF COMMITMENT
As a free state, New York would probably rise to heights of very genuine greatness.
said Mencken
Bedrock in the area is mostly gneiss and schist. Then a widespread overlay of glacial till. Minerals to be found include garnet, beryl, tourmaline, jasper, muscovite, zircon, chrysoberyl, agate, malachite, opal, quartz; also silver; also gold.
a) Stefan and Roberto
Stefan and Roberto were subdued and even apprehensive on the day they joined Vlade and his friend Idelba on her tugboat. They had agreed to take Mr. Hexter, and that turned out to be a lucky thing, as with him along there was a certain amount of caretaking they needed to do. Without him they would have had nothing to do, and the whole point of their expeditions was to do things. But they were out of control of this one. And the stakes felt kind of high. It was hard not to worry.
Idelba picked them up on the Twenty-sixth aquaculture dock next to the Skyline Marina, and as her tug grumbled up to them the boys stared at each other round-eyed: her boat was huge. Out on the ocean they had not perceived that. Not containerclipper huge, but city huge, as long as the whole dock, meaning seventy feet long, and about three stories tall at the bridge, with broad flaring taffrails and a squared-off stern. “Wow,” Mr. Hexter said, peering up at it. “A carousel tug. And named the Sisyphus! That’s very cool.”
Idelba and one of her crew opened a passage in the side of the hull and lifted over a staircase on a hinge. The boys helped Mr. Hexter up it and onto the tug, then up narrow stairs to the bridge. Idelba appeared to have only one crew member aboard, a man who nodded to them from the wheel, which was set in a broad console at the center of a big curve of window. The wheelhouse. The view of the East River was amazing from this high up.
Vlade came up with Idelba after they had cast off, and the tug’s pilot, a skinny black man named Thabo, pushed the throttle forward and they shoved upriver. Ebb tide meant nothing to this brute, it had more than enough power to get upriver at speed. Given how heavy and squat it was, the speed was kind of awesome.
“No chance of hiding this baby,” Vlade remarked when he saw the looks on the boys’ faces. “We’re just going to have to sit there and be obvious.”
“People poke around the Bronx all the time,” Idelba said. “No one will give us a second glance.”
“Do we have a permit?” Mr. Hexter asked.
“To do what?”
“To dredge in the Bronx. Didn’t that use to be off-limits without a permit from the city?”
“Yeah sure. That’s still true. But my permit is good citywide, so if anyone asks, we’ll be fine. And the truth is, no one is going to ask. The river police have enough to do.”
“Both of them,” Vlade added.
Idelba and Thabo laughed at this. The boys’ inclination toward secrecy relaxed, and they began to feel more comfortable. Idelba invited them to go down to the main deck and wander around. Mr. Hexter said it was okay to leave him up on the bridge, so they flew down the stairs and ran around the deck to see the water from all perspectives, particularly the white V of their wake, curling away from the deep white trough behind their broad stern. The power of the motor vibrated their feet, and it was thrilling to feel the wind pour through them, especially after racing forward to lean over the bow and look down at the stiff bow wave skirting up over the brown-blue of the East River.
“This has got to be the most powerful machine we have ever been on,” Roberto said. “Feel that motor! Check out this bow wave! We are killing this river!”
“I sure hope we find something today,” Stefan said.
“We will. The signal was strong, and we were right on top of it. There’s no doubt about it.”
“Well,” Stefan said dubiously, “there is some doubt.”
Roberto refused to accept this, shaking his head like a dog. “We found it! We’re right on top of it!”
“Hope so.”
As they approached their buoy they spotted the snag it made on the surface and pointed it out to the adults up on the bridge. The tug cut back and canted to a new level, which left the bow distinctly closer to the water. After that they hummed on like more ordinary craft.
“There’s no way our buoy will anchor this beast,” Stefan pointed out.
“True,” Roberto said.
When the tug came up to the flaw on the river and they could see their buoy riding down under it, Thabo came down and pushed a fat button on the bow that apparently released an anchor, and it must have been a monster in its own right, because when it hit the bottom the bow lifted up again almost as far as it had when going full speed. The muffled rattle of the anchor chain stopped, and Thabo waved up to Idelba on the bridge.
“What if the anchor gets stuck down there?” Roberto asked Thabo.
Thabo shook his head. “She looking at the bottom with radar. She put it down someplace nice. Seldom a problem there.”
The Sisyphus floated on the ebb and then dipped in place, indicating that the anchor was holding them against the flow. Idelba cut the motor and then they were floating at ease, on anchor over their site.
“Man, I wish I could go down again!” Roberto said.
“No way,” Stefan said. “It wouldn’t do any good.”
“We’ll see what you got down there,” Thabo promised.
Idelba and Vlade and Mr. Hexter came down to the deck, and Vlade helped Idelba and Thabo deploy the dredge tube over the side. Vlade got Roberto and Stefan involved in moving the segments of the tube to the rear and latching them onto the long snake they were making. It was about four feet in diameter, and its nozzle was a giant circular steel maw, with claws like ice ax tips curving in from its circumference like marks on a compass rose. When they had about thirty feet of tubing screwed together, Thabo attached the nozzle end to a cable, then pulled it up to the end of a hoist arm by pushing buttons on the hoist mast. The boys helped crank the hoist around until the arm at the top had pivoted out over the water, taking the nozzle with it. Then Idelba let the nozzle cable down by pushing another set of fat buttons, and the tube and cable disappeared down into the murk, nozzle first.
“Here, come check this out,” Vlade said to the boys.
Idelba and Mr. Hexter were regarding a console that featured three screens. The tube and cable appeared on all three screens as a kind of snake dropping to the bottom, clear in the sonar and radar images, murky in the light of the underwater lights that Idelba had dropped on other cables, running off reels suspended over the side of the boat.
“Is that your diving bell?” Idelba asked, pointing to a conical shape on the bottom.
“I guess so,” Roberto said, struggling to comprehend the image. “I guess we left it behind after Vlade got me out of it.??
?
Idelba shook her head darkly. “Crazy kids,” she said. “I’m amazed you’re still alive.”
Roberto and Stefan grinned uncertainly. Idelba was definitely not amused, and Mr. Hexter was looking at them with alarm. Out there in the wind and sun he looked like he must have years before.
“We’ll move that little death trap out of the way and get the suck on,” Idelba announced.
She and Thabo worked their remote controls, manipulating the equipment in the murk as if they were down there seeing everything, if not perfectly, then at least well enough to bonk around and get done what they wanted. Vlade was helping them on the sonar and radar, obviously very comfortable with all the gear. Roberto and Stefan glanced at each other and saw they both were feeling far out of their league but still in their element. This was how it was done; this was stuff they wanted to learn. Mr. Hexter was leaning over them with his hands on their shoulders, taking in everything and asking questions about what they were seeing down there, and noting things he saw that they weren’t sure were really there, but it was cool. He was obviously into it.
Idelba used one of the nozzle’s hooks to lift the boys’ diving bell off the spot where Roberto had almost dug his own watery grave, as the old man put it. When that was placed well to the side, she returned the nozzle right to the red paint Roberto had put on the asphalt, which in the murky monochrome on the screens looked gray and ghostly, but that was okay, because now the nozzle’s hooks extended into the asphalt around the hole, and Thabo flipped a switch, and the grinding of the nozzle’s drill teeth cutting into the Bronx came out of their end of the tube with a sound they could hear in their guts. Stefan and Roberto looked at each other wide-eyed.
“That’s what we needed,” Stefan said.
“No lie,” Roberto said. “And to think we were going to hit it with a pick.”
“A pick you couldn’t even raise above your head without dinging the bell!”
“I know. It was crazy.”
“That’s what I kept telling you.”
Roberto grimaced and rubbed the screen of the radar as if that would clear the view of the bottom, now obscured by a flow of junk clouding the water.