Harsh Oases (24 page)

Only fitting, since Austin was nowadays an integral if non-contiguous part of Agnostica, an azure island in the crimson sea of Faithland.

Batch Gertslin possessed a somewhat moony face, shadowed by a messy thatch of black hair and generally expressive of an amiable curiosity and frisky intellect. But now he was definitely irked.

“Amy! You’re bringing the ceiling in my office down!”

Batch Gertslin was a freelance ringtone, screen-wallpaper, emoticon and dingbat designer, and worked from home.

Amy pretended not to hear. “What?!”

“Turn that music off!”

Batch’s face was shading into purple—a nice bi-national mix of red and blue, actually—and so Amy dropped her pretense of non-comprehension. A flick of her tongue against her Bluetooth dental implant controller deactivated the iPod. Her earbuds resumed their default task of ambient sound enhancement and noise filtering.

Batch’s face regained a measure of composure and normal coloration. “Thank you. Listen, Amy. Your mother and I don’t ask very much of you. You’re almost an adult, we realize, and deserving of being treated as such. For the most part. But this senseless caterwauling has got to stop. It’s most annoying.”

Amy felt her own face coloring now, heating up with anger. “‘Senseless caterwauling!’ You’re talking about some of the greatest music ever made! The music I love!”

Batch advanced into the room, holding out his hands in a paternally placating gesture. “I know you don’t like any of the music your mother and I enjoy, Amy. That’s only natural between generations. After all, you weren’t raised on classic acts such as Eminem and Linkin Park and Ol’ Dirty Bastard the way your mother and I were. Those old-school performers and their modern heirs are just not for you.”

“Damn straight! You know I hate all that emo-crunk-harsh-metal shit! Classic country-western is my zome!”

“Fine, fine. But why do you have to favor the, ah, more downmarket acts in that genre? Couldn’t you at least try some of those other artists I’ve suggested. Lyle Lovett, k. d. lang, Alison Krauss—”

“Oh,
Dad
! You’re making my neurons go all apoptosis! Those wimps, those feebs, those posers, those
zygotes
! Charlie Daniels would eat them all for breakfast and still be hungry enough to swallow Shania Twain whole.”

Batch assumed a dreamy look. “Shania Twain. What a hottie. Now there was a singer .…”

“Ugh! Dad, I promise not to rattle the plaster anymore. Just leave me alone now. Unless you had something else to say—”

“I do. Your mother wants you downstairs now to help with dinner.”

“Why can’t Hillary do it?”

“Your little brother is busy studying for his Vims Construction finals. And besides, he helped last night.”

“Arrrrgh! Okay, I’m coming!”

Batch left, and Amy waited the maximum amount of time before she knew she would receive a second notice to show up in the kitchen. Only then did she grudgingly tromp downstairs.

Phillipa Gertslin stood by the methane-fueled gas range, stirring a pot of free-range-turkey chili. Phillipa’s parents had been—still were—a famous team of young-adult writers, whose current series—involving a budding teenaged paleontologist trapped by accident of birth into an intolerant Faithland community—was a best-seller all across Agnostica. They had named their daughter in honor of Philip Pullman and his quintessential Agnostica fictions.

This evening Phillipa wore loose white cotton trousers and a plain black short-sleeved cotton top. For the nth time, Amy sized up her mother’s slim figure, wondering if her mother’s decidedly non-voluptuous shape was to be her lot too. Why couldn’t Philippa Gertslin have had an endowment of Dolly Parton magnitude to pass on to her daughter, or at least one of Shelby Lynne proportions? Oh, well, Amy would just have to go in for an outpatient boob job when she came into her majority next year.

“Mom, you look like some kind of robot sushi chef! Don’t you ever feel like glamming it up a little?”

Phillipa regarded Amy’s own embroidered red synthetic shirt, rhinestone-studded denim pants, and hand-stitched cowboy boots with a barely concealed distaste.

“You know I don’t believe in regional fashions, dear, however ironically worn. Clothes are critical signifiers. I don’t want my outfits proclaiming some false allegiance to Faithland, of all places.”

Phillipa Gertslin taught popular culture at Howard Zinn University—what used to be known as UT Austin, before the Agnostica-Faithland split. Her last published book had been titled
The Hermeneutics of Hypocrisy
and concerned itself with the frequent preacher sex scandals that continued to plague Faithland at regular intervals without, inexplicably, managing to undermine in any way the basic beliefs of the heartland.

“Now, please,” Phillipa continued, “if you could just set the table without offering any more fashion critiques …? I’ve got to nuke these duck tortillas.”

Grumbling, Amy took down a stack of four clunky, hand-fired plates from the cupboard. Each plate weighed as much as brick.

“Why can’t we get a set of those faunchy e-paper plates? The ones that let you eyeball content while you eat?”

“Paper? I’d rather eat off the backs of exploited migrant laborers. Who knows what horrid toxins might leach out of that e-paper? It’s only been around for a couple of years. I know the government says it’s safe, but I hope you realize just how far you can trust our elected officials—even our Agnostica politicians need to be kept on a short rein.”

Amy set the weighty plates down on the table with enough force to have shattered a lesser vessel. “And that’s another thing. How come you and Dad are always talking trash about our government? Whatever happened to, like, patriotism in this house? ‘Agnostica Number One! My half of the USA right or wrong!’”

Phillipa dumped a bag of blue-corn chips into a handwoven Guatemalan basket and carried it to the table. She looked at her daughter as if Amy had suddenly sprouted bat wings. “Now you’re just being ridiculous. You know that no one in Agnostica talks or thinks that way. It’s only in Faithland that you’ll hear people shouting those mindless chants. Our mode of government is based on rationalism and skepticism. Its only through constant questioning of the empirical that—”

Amy rattled a tray of silverware to cover the sound of her mother’s voice. “La, la, la, la! Can’t hear the semiotic discourse!”

Phillipa didn’t pursue the argument, but just frowned and shook her head, then went back to her meal preparations.

A short time later, the Gertslin family assembled for their evening meal. From his seat across the table from Amy, her brother, Hillary, sneered and said, “Hey, shitkicker, pass the tortillas.”

Hillary was a smart, wiry tweener who, unlike the others in his family, boasted a natural skin coloration the shade of a dusky plum. Hillary had been adopted by the Gertslins when he was just months old, an African child orphaned during the post-Mugabe chaos in Zimbabwe. He was as much a product of Agnostica as Batch or Phillipa, even down to his given name. Hillary had been named after the politician Hillary Clinton, who, during the year of little Hillary’s birth, 2010, had been elected the first president of Agnostica.

Batch objected now to his son’s language. “Hillary, I warned you about using that form of address.”

“Aw, Dad, it’s a compliment Isn’t that right, Amy? You’re proud of being a country girl, aren’t you? Barefoot and pregnant all the time? Double-wide trailer living?
Coon
-hunting? Am I right?”

Amy shoved her chair backwards and stood up, stiff as a vibrating board. “That did it! I don’t have to sit here and be insulted! None of you understand me at all! This bleeding-heart family sucks! This tight-ass city sucks! This whole preachy, super-sensitive, liberal country sucks!”

Fleeing to hide her tears, Amy ran upstairs to her bedroom.

Several hours of sobbing and listening to Alan Jackson and Lee Ann Womack, a long interval during which no one came to console her, convinced Amy of one thing.

She had to run away to Faithland right now. Defect. She couldn’t stand to wait a year till she was legally an adult

But where would she go in that unknown land?

The answer dawned on her almost immediately.

Nashville. The home and source of the music she loved.

Gretchen Wilson was still alive, Amy knew, though the woman had retired from the music business some years ago. Maybe Amy could track her down in Nashville, become her protégé .…

Amy began packing. She stuffed a few extra clothes into a backpack, along with her favorite plush toy, an alligator bearing a stitched tourist motto from the Everglades, which she had found discarded in a thrift store and named Mr. Taxes. From the closet she grabbed a black cowboy hat The hat was still crisp and unworn, since too many local people made fun of Amy when she appeared in public wearing it But where she was going, it would command respect.

While waiting until the rest of her family had gone to sleep, Amy studied road maps on her pocket ViewMaster. It looked like she could pick up Route 35 North to Oklahoma City, then catch Route 40 West and barrel straight on into Nashville.

That is, if she could get past the border.

Two AM, and everyone in the Gertslin home was asleep save Amy.

Out on the lawn, Amy looked back without regret at the only home she had ever known. Goodbye to its solar cells and rain-collecting system, its weedy lawn planted in a water-conserving mix of native plants, its faded political poster from the recent election: RE-ELECT STERLING FOR MAYOR.

Red River Street was quiet. Amy felt as if the neighborhood was already a ghostly figment of her past.

A few blocks to the west, she knew she could catch one of the hydrogen-fueled mass-transit buses heading north to the city limits, one step closer to the border; the bus-stop was adjacent to the former State House, in a safe neighborhood.

When Austin joined Agnostica in the 2010 division of the USA, renaming itself New Austin, the Texas state capitol had perforce relocated to Houston. Nowadays, the former home of the governor served as the Waldrop Museum and Cultural Center.

Amy had to wait only a few minutes at the bus shelter. It was a little scary to be out alone this late at night, but luckily no one bothered her. The most frightening person she saw was a man with patches of armadillo skin grafted onto his bare arms, and he seemed more concerned with reading a manga on his ViewMaster than in bothering a skinny teenager.

Finally onboard her bus, Amy tried to imagine how she would get past the Customs and Immigration officials at the limits of New Austin.

When the partitioning of the country was first being adjudicated, New Austin had managed to claim an irregular circle of land some sixty miles in diameter around the urban core. This allowed the city to retain many natural attractions and resources, not the least of which was The Salt Lick BBQ Restaurant in Driftwood. Texas could afford to be magnanimous: the chunk was the only tiny bite that Agnostica had managed to take out of the mammoth, imperturbable Faithland corpus of the state.

Route 35 exited New Austin territory at the small burg named Georgetown. There, Amy would have to undergo scrutiny by two sets of inspectors, those of both Agnostica and Faithland. They would ask to see her ID and inquire about her reasons for leaving one country and entering another, demanding her destination and intentions. First, she’d be busted for being an unescorted minor. Even if she could get around that, she had no definite arrangements in Nashville or en route to offer as legitimate support for her trip.

Well, no point in worrying about that now. With the innate optimism of her years, convinced of the rightness of her quest, Amy assumed some option would present itself when she got to the border.

So she sat back, relaxed, and played some George Jones.

At the outskirts of New Austin proper, Amy had to change to the long-range bus for Georgetown, which she did without trouble. Luckily, she had her life savings—five hundred and ten euros—available via her personal chopcard. Amy wasn’t sure what the exchange rate for Agnostica euros versus Faithland dollars was at the moment, but she hoped it was favorable.

She fell asleep for the last twenty miles of the bus ride, her head cradled on Mr. Taxes, awaking only when the driver called out via the onboard PA, “End of the line, folks.”

Only half-awake, Amy stumbled out.

The Customs and Immigration plaza was a vast expanse of parking-slot-demarcated pavement hosting many restaurants, motels and dutyfree shops, as well as some official government buildings. A hundred yards from where her bus had deposited her, near an Au Bon Pain, a single lane of traffic—fairly light at this hour—crawled toward the lone inspection checkpoint that remained open.

Amy went inside the restaurant, hoping to assemble her thoughts. She ordered a pain chocolat and a cafe au lait. Sitting at a table near the door, she nursed her refreshments and tried to come up with a scheme to circumvent the inspectors.

After half an hour of pointless cogitation, nothing had revealed itself to her. So she activated her earbuds and began quietly singing along to a Loretta Lynn tune.

A shadow fell across Amy’s field of vision, and she looked up to see a man standing by her table.