Ambient (13 page)

Between 120th and 135th the subway became an el. Youngsters had derailed the train. The Demon Lovers, likely; they'd
divided the area since domesticating the neighborhood Droozies.
Jimmy and I lifted binocs so we could viz more clearly what was
downcoming. Half the cars remained on the trestle, half hung
over the side. The front car lay crumpled in the intersection of
Broadway and 125th. Members of the gang scampered over the
sides of the cars, tossing in mollies, ducking as they blasted.
Others ran through the cars still on the track, greeting those who
hadn't escaped.

"Duppies look like roaches, don't they?" said Jimmy. He turned
on the broadcaster, tuning what might be heard on the train's
intercom. The automatic recording played, saying, "there is another train just behind this one. Step lively."

Army vehicles positioned, rocketing the train. As the fires
climbed up the cars, the bright graffiti blackened; flashes flew up
with each blast like sparks from a fireplace log. Only the need for reliable public transport kept trains running; only in Manhattan, only during the day. The fare was high-a quarter-but I
doubted that anyone paid, not anymore. I never went in the subway; trouble finds you well enough without your looking.

"Overmuch warifying. Boys too blueswee and jang-bang with
vex. We'll take Henry," said Jimmy. "Belt up."

We belted, and we turned onto 120th; Jimmy switched on the
electroshield. We passed Riverside Church and Grant's Tomb,
dark and battered in the afternoon haze. Handy, unoccupied
structures were often used by the Army boys for target practice.

The drive up Riverside was uneventful. Residents of West
Harlem needed fuel too badly to live with the comforting sight of
a forest at riveredge, and where once a squirrel could leap from
limb to limb for blocks without touching ground, stumps replaced
trees and stews replaced squirrels. As a teenager, I remembered
hearing stories of the Naturals, who, it was said, lived in the
park, having turned against civilization as they found it, living
off whatever or whoever might be caught. They were said to wear
cloaks of thorned shrubbery and masks of carved tree bark. All
romance, after all, one of those tales you grow up hearing-such
as how blind alligators swim through the sewers' murk, or that if
you piss on the third rail you'll be electrocuted, or that most of
the homebodies once had money in bushels. Certainly not; only
the ones living before the Ebb.

Driving beneath the Army-green girders of the George Washington Bridge, watching the great flags hanging down from the
arches billow in the breeze, passing the broken stubs of the toll
booth plaza, we reached the Saw Mill Parkway, which was under
Army guard. In lieu of conversation, I turned on the radio, dialing to WINS news. Israeli settlements on the Persian Gulf were
shelled by Iraq. Tass reported that the Czara and the Politburo
met to discuss the growing demand among the Russian people for
vid channels of their own choosing. An unconfirmed report from the White House listed the security adviser missing and unaccounted. The president's Food Commission reported that hunger
in America had been eliminated among those who hadn't starved.
Dryco had done its part in the past to accomplish that goal. Parcels of supplies had been airlifted to starving farm communities
in Indiana at the Old Man's request nine months earlier. That the
supplies consisted of surplus diet pills, laxatives, and pictures of
E was noticed before takeoff. Not even the Old Man's foes claimed
that the huge boxes were deliberately dropped into the midst of
the crowds; they were.

After an hour-it was just past three-we turned off the parkway onto the estate road; the guards saluted as we passed. The
estate stretched from the river several miles in and several miles
up. There were forty-five buildings on the grounds besides the
main house and the chapel. Guards, relatives, friends, tutors,
proxies, lalas, visitors, and hangers-on stayed in the other houses.
I even had a house provided for me on our weekends. Mine had
fourteen rooms; I'd never seen half of them.

"Dress," Mister Dryden said to Avalon. He seemed eager for
fun. She put that wonderful wig back on again; slipped on a pair
of black stilettos and pulled on a heavy white ribbed sweater. It
covered her to the tops of her thighs.

"Wifey ought to like this outfit," she said.

"She won't notice."

"You could set her on fire and she wouldn't notice. But I know
who will. "

"Birthday boy?"

"Uh-huh."

"Father equals son," Mister Dryden said, smiling.

We drove by the airstrip. The Old Man retained four jets, refitted Boeing 837s. Neither the Old Man nor Mister Dryden flew
much anymore; it was too easy to take a plane down. The copters, big black Sikorsky autogiros, were also there. Tucked in one of the hangars was the Old Man's first airplane, a prop job
he and his first partners had bought in Boca Raton, in the days
before he'd even met Susie D; some wit, years past, had scrawled
Rosebud across the nose. The airstrip's radarscopes were in constant operation; if an attack was launched by anyone other than
Russia itself-not likely-exos would take all intruders so well
as most of the neighboring property. A starscope searched the
skies hourly for flying saucers. The Old Man faithfully believed
a Church of E precept that, upon his return, E would come to
earth in some sort of flying saucer, accompanied by a retinue of,
in the Old Man's phrasing, "space critters."

The Old Man loved security. A twelve-foot stone wall surrounded the central estate. The grounds were further protected by
razorwire, searchlights, alarms; by wolves; by machine-gun towers spaced every five hundred feet along the walls. Copters flew
over every five minutes clockround. There was a small-gauge
railroad running underground from the estate to the Dryco building in the event that a hasty escape became necessary-it never
had, and doubtless never would.

"Approaching, Martin," said Jimmy, speaking into the intercom as we ranged. "I and I and three."

"Roger. "

When this had been a public road, Mister Dryden enjoyed
switching the road signs, setting up impromptu demo derbies
among travelers passing near. Some time ago the Old Man requested of the Army that the road be closed to nonestate vehicles.
There weren't many country drivers nowadays, for safety's sake;
near the cities, apart from estates and those areas under Army
patrol, all rural pastures and havens were infested with rogues
and footpads and highwaymen. There were fewer cars, too, that
could safely drive so far as this: most new American cars-made,
like so much, under separate but equal Russian-American production (Gorky-Detroit in the case of automobiles}-were traded to Europe and Japan, to countries no longer producing steel or no
longer having access to the ore fields of Canada, Brazil, and Siberia. Only owners could afford and obtain new cars. Many in
America had automobiles, just the same; there were thousands in
the cities, all in use (there had been an oil glut for years) and
none newer than twenty years old.

We drove through the gate. The driveway was a mile long; you
could see the house halfway up, standing alone on the hill, shining white, illuminated from without at eve. It was built in old
Long Island style, though larger: boxy, multilevel, enameled and
polished, with long pipes of chrome and walls of glassblocks;
with many, many mirrors.

We pulled to the side of the house. From the summit, on the
patio, I looked off down the green lawn, through the fir trees,
across the wide lake, over the meadows, and saw the Hudson
River coursing by the Palisades. Looking in the city's direction,
even from this distance, I could see the black-yellow haze that
settled over New York every afternoon. Before so many furnaces
had been reconverted for the use of coal, the smog hadn't been
so noxious. Now most eves were so black you couldn't walk a
block without resembling a miner by the time you reached the
corner.

Avalon and Jimmy got out of the car, walking to the house,
down the slate path that wound round the swimming pool. I
watched her walk; the longest strands of hair tickled at her rear,
her ankles wobbled in those hooflike shoes. At the head of the
pool, between the columnades, the statue of Prometheus from
Rockefeller Plaza lolled, watching leaves drift across the water's
surface. The Old Man collected bibelots in these quiet years. The
Public Library's old lions protected the gate leading onto the cricket
field, where Jimmy and the estate security enjoyed Sunday afternoons. The Pulitzer fountain, once situated before the Plaza Hotel, served as a birdbath in a court to the south. Atlas shouldered the world near the barbecue pit. The Old Man would have moved
the Brooklyn Bridge to the estate if he had a river to put below
it.

"Nice to home it, eh?" Mister Dryden said, smiling. I nodded, and thought of how much plasticine I'd need.

"The mayor, he tried to suck me into buyin' Central Park last month. Told me his new projections
showed that most of it would stay above ground,"
said the Old Man to a friend during the cocktail
hour. He drank his usual, Jack Daniels-one of
his smaller companies-and bottled spring water. "'Like the
treetops?' I asked."

"Like how much did they look to pocket?" asked his friend
Carlisle, another of the old entrepreneurs. Carlisle, since the Ebb,
had owned much of the American chemical industry, courtesy of
the Old Man's largesse.

"Fifty million," said the Old Man. "I said you take that fifty
and you pound it up your ass one buck at a time with a jackhammer. Shit. "

"Park'd be a hassle," said Carlisle. "Lots of lumber, though."

"It's always pissed him off that he had to sell Van Cortlandt
Park so cheap. Not to mention those other deals I cut. He knows
I got his balls on my keychain. Just wants to raise a good kitty
for himself for when he retires and moves back to Havana. I told
him Manhattan'll make somebody a good aquarium someday but
my money's goin' into the Bronx. Safe, high, and dry. Fuckin'
yankees always fuckin' think they can fuck you over."

"I hear you," said Carlisle, who was from White Plains.

"No way," said the Old Man. "Nobody fucks me over."

The Old Man was bigger than his son, long-boned and wiry;
dressed old-money style-sneakers, jeans, and tees sans comment. He often wore one of those green Chinese caps; on his the
red star was replaced by a smirker. He tied his white hair back in
a severe ponytail. The Old Man was born in North Carolina into
a family not particularly known for anything, or so he claimed.
Over the years he'd changed his name to fit the sitch as it arose,
at last settling on Thatcher Dryden, Senior, not long before the
Ebb. Nobody remembered his original name, he least of all.

"Five o'clock," he said, glancing at his old Timex. "Let's get
rollin'."

Many of the Old Man's companions, and their wives or proxies, turned up that afternoon to help celebrate his grandson's tenth
birthday; they'd all be flown out that night, Mister Dryden let me
know. There was Carlisle; Turnbull, who was in munitions; Wil-
letson, who specialized in robots and maintenants. Also MacIntosh (coal), Samuelson (automobiles), Parker (computers), and
twelve others, former entrepreneurs all, all now running somewhat more stabilized industries than those in which they were
once most active. Most of them, for various reasons, had also
changed their names over the years.