Moon Flower (3 page)

“You mean with the
Tacoma
? In six days?”

“Sure. The wheels are already moving.” Borland unfolded one arm to make a casual gesture in the air that said it was all that simple. “And when you get to Cyrene, Shearer will lead you to Wade,” he completed.

CHAPTER TWO

Fifty years before, it had been purely the stuff of fringe fiction and far-out-fantasy movies. Now every month seemed to bring news from robot probes reaching a new world, or human follow-up arriving at a previously located one to send down exploration teams and establish a surface presence. There were some that didn’t orbit a parent but maintained a fixed position intermediate between mutually gyrating binary stars. Several examples of prolate forms had poles extending beyond their atmospheres. Some had barely cooled from incandescence, while others were wastes of frozen methane and ice. Those that supported life included low-gravity environments in which gigantic life-forms flourished, comparable to the great reptiles and other fauna that had once lived on Earth but could never exist under its present conditions. At the other extreme were a high-density microplanet with a species of intelligent insects that farmed fungi plantations and built adobelike dwelling with tools, and a world surfaced entirely by water, where life had moved up onto floating islands formed from coagulated detritus by photosynthetic microorganisms.

And there were some that had types of life very similar to those found on Earth. A few cases included humanoids in various stages of development. Quite how this could be was still a matter of heated controversy within the scientific community as well as between science and such other departments of learning as philosophy and theology, because according to generally accepted theory accumulations of random change should diverge, not progress toward similar endpoints. So evidently, more was going on than generally accepted theory recognized, which was about as far as any agreement went, and proponents of principles that were contradictory all managed to claim vindication. Whatever the explanation, it seemed that evolution in comparable environments was somehow preprogrammed to unfold along comparable developmental paths.

Along with everyone else, Marc Shearer was assured that social evolution everywhere was likewise destined to shape itself toward a world of Hobbesean nastiness and Darwinian callousness in ways that, sooner or later, the laws of nature made unavoidable. He didn’t accept it. It seemed ironic that laws once held to be self-evident fact underpinning the whole of biology should now be admitted as questionable in that field, while remaining immutable with regard to the field of human affairs to which they had been unceremoniously coopted. He didn’t accept the inevitability of a society in which unchecked avarice set the norms, exploitation and injustice were regarded as natural and equated with realism, what used to be called lying formed the basis of well-rewarded professions, and ruthlessness was admired.

As a talented young physicist who could focus on achieving results when he put his mind to it, he could doubtless have secured himself a good job with one of the corporations if he chose. But the lifestyle and conformities that such a move would have entailed ruled it out as an option. He often wondered what nascent alternative patterns might be emerging among those other worlds out there, that the news bulletins reported and scientific commentators babbled on about enthusiastically for hours. In his mellower moments, he would sometimes share with friends visions from his readings of social philosophers of years gone by, and debate the possibility of an order founded on compassion and cooperation, with the longer good taking precedence over short-term gain, and knowledge being sought for its own sake. For the most part they were skeptical and called him a hopeless idealist. Be that as it may, people like Shearer weren’t going to change.

He caught Rogelio’s eye meaningfully for a moment as he picked up the large bag of unshelled hazelnuts from the counter and carried it over to where the other four were sitting around a plastic-topped table in the center of the kitchen. The kitchen was a shabby affair of cheap cabinets, faded wallpaper, and aging appliances, shared between the five rooms which along with one full and one half bathroom made up the basement and ground-level floors of the tenement house. The street and its surrounding blocks were typical of a working-class residential part of south Oakland.

Larry drew his hands back from the wooden fruit bowl that Marc had told him to position in the center. “Uh-huh! Now we get to see the big mystery,” he boomed to everyone. “Okay, Professor, what’s this all about?” Larry was a stocky two-hundred-sixty-pounder with a tuft of beard and a gung-ho politics, who worked as a security guard for a company in Hayward. He and his wife Nancy also managed the rooms, in return for which they enjoyed their own kitchen area in a two-room unit on the top floor.

On the opposite side of the table, Brad smiled faintly in a way that said they would find out soon enough. He was one of the house residents, an Army Reserve veteran whose disability benefit had failed to materialize despite his suffering a dragging leg and a knee that would only half bend. That had been in the Secessionist Rebellion, when the southern parts of California, Arizona, and New Mexico had broken away from the original Western Federacy under immigrant pressures to join the Greater Mexican Union. The remainder, comprising central and northern California, Nevada, northern Arizona and Utah, parts of New Mexico and Colorado, and territory west of the Rockies up to Alaska, had renamed itself Occidena.

“Nuts,” Ursula said. “Hey, I hope this isn’t your way of telling us this is all we get to eat tonight.” She was a social worker — blond, intense, inclined to be defensive.

“What a thing to say to a friend.” Larry looked around imploringly.

The fourth, called Duke, was black and in his early twenties. He was one of those who hadn’t migrated to Martina, which extended from Louisiana to the Carolinas but excluded the lower end of Florida, now affiliated with Cuba. He also lived in one of the rooms above and had a musical talent that he was having trouble getting recognized. Shearer had been trying to introduce him to the right people at the university. “We’re going to play the nuts game,” Duke told everybody. Rogelio moved around to the far side of the table, watching Shearer, who had taken off his wristwatch.

“Yes, that’s right, Duke,” Shearer said. “And the nuts game is this. I’m going to pour a quantity of nuts into the bowl. When I say ‘Go,’ the idea is for each of you to end up with as many as you can.” They looked at each other as if searching for hints of things to expect.

After a few seconds, Larry said, “That’s it? We just go for broke?” Ursula frowned, glancing up at Shearer suspiciously as if to say,
It can’t be that simple
.

“There’s just one other thing before we start,” Shearer told them. “Every ten seconds, I’ll stop you to check the bowl, and I’ll double whatever the number is of nuts remaining there, by replenishing from the bag. Everybody got that?”

“The aim is just to get as many as we can,” Ursula repeated.

“Exactly right,” Shearer confirmed.

“And whoever ends up with the most wins,” Larry checked. Brad shrugged in his easygoing way and said nothing.

Shearer didn’t answer, but held his watch up in readiness. They waited, tensing almost palpably. Duke bit his lip, thought for a moment, then looked at the other two, seemingly about to say something.

“
Go
.”

Larry dove in with both hands. Ursula, anticipating him, moved the bowl away before plunging in herself, in the process of which they tilted it, causing nuts to spill out onto the table. Brad helped himself to a share obligingly but didn’t seem able to muster the same zeal. Duke hesitated, shaking his head; then, seeing the contents of the bowl diminishing rapidly, he succumbed to the pressure and grabbed into it, at the same time scooping up strays on the tabletop with his other hand. The combined violence of all their hands upended the bowl and turned it over, spilling nuts out onto the floor. Duke consolidated his take, while Larry went down with a whoop to sweep the ones on the floor together into his other hand. Ursula followed him with an indignant shriek and managed to salvage the few that he had missed. Brad was unable to reach the floor due to the stiffness of his leg but found several nuts that had remained underneath the dish. When Shearer called “
Time
!” they had all completed scavenging and were guarding their collections protectively.

“I win!” Larry announced triumphantly. He had both hands cupped around his pile. There was no need to count. Ursula and Brad were next, with about the same amount each — Ursula had been more energetic but Brad had bigger hands.

Shearer leaned over and righted the bowl. “Let’s see now, there doesn’t seem to be anything left in there, so I guess that’s it. Game over.”

“You’ve gotta be fast, guys,” Larry said as Shearer slipped the watch back onto his wrist.

Ursula was looking perplexed. “Well,” she said, shaking her head, “I guess that was supposed to prove something. Don’t ask me what, though.”

Duke seemed to want to say something again, then dismissed it with a sigh. He stared down at the nuts in front of him. His initial moment of hesitation had put him clearly behind the others. “Like I said, you should have gone for it,” Larry told him. He cracked one of the nuts with his teeth and looked up at Shearer while he separated the shell. “Okay, Prof. Look, I won. Do I get a prize? So now tell us. What was it all about?”

“I never said anyone had to win,” Shearer replied. “I just said the objective was for all of you to end up with as many as you could.” He glanced again at Rogelio, who was staring at him fixedly, and winked. “Now, I’m going to keep you all in suspense and not say anything more about it right now. What I want you to do is think about it, and then we’ll talk some more when we next get together. Okay?”

“No, not fair!” Ursula protested. Brad accepted it with a shrug.

Larry flipped the kernel of the nut into the air with a thumb and caught it deftly in his mouth. “Oh, this
is
the mystery man!” he exclaimed. “Hey, these are good. What say I open a few beers to go with the rest of them?”

“I thought you’d never ask,” Ursula said.

“Great idea,” Duke agreed.

“I’m not starting any partying tonight,” Rogelio warned. “I have to meet someone back across the Bay at eight.” He looked over at the clock readout on the microwave. “In fact, I’m gonna have to be leaving pretty soon.”

“Oh, really? That’s too bad,” Ursula said.

Larry got up and heaved himself over to the refrigerator. It was an old, bulky model and served as the rooming house’s message board, with magnets on the door holding an assortment of notes, reminders, clippings, and postcards from various places. Postcards had become something of a rarity compared to the old days. Ordinary people didn’t travel as much as they used to. The restrictions were a deterrent, and most of even those who had jobs were living on the edge. As he got there, he took his phone from the pocket of his shirt and thumbed a preset number. “Hey, Nancy. We’re opening a coupla beers in the kitchen. You wanna come down?”

“What else have you got to eat in there, Larry?” Brad asked, looking interested.

Shearer decided that he could use an early evening too. The lab was scheduled to begin some more tests in the morning. “You catching the BARF?” he asked Rogelio, using the popular version of the acronym for the Bay Area Rapid Transit subway.

“Uh-huh.” Rogelio nodded.

“I’ll walk with you.”

“Sure.”

That was the custom. Walking alone in the streets on the wrong side of the gated community walls and business park security fences could have its risks. Shearer picked up the jacket that he had draped over the back of a chair and pulled it on, zipping it up halfway. “Say, that’s too bad,” Larry said, turning his head from the opened refrigerator.

“I have to be in first thing tomorrow.”

“Take care,” Rogelio told the others as he and Shearer turned for the door.

“You too.”

“See you around.”

“You two take it easy, eh?”

“Don’t get stuck in a time warp tomorrow, Marc.”

Shearer and Rogelio came out into the cool evening air and started walking in the downtown direction, toward the subway terminal. Shearer’s apartment was a block farther along. The streets were shabby and littered, the houses run-down, with fences disintegrating around overgrown yards, paint flaking from tired clapboards, and dingy windows, many barred, showing bare blinds or old, sagging drapes. Shopwindows were shuttered or protected by heavy mesh. A redbrick building, originally a hotel, now converted to low-income rentals, was decaying behind a parking lot covered in trash and stripped automobiles. Fading relics from an age that had died.

Rogelio had a sturdy, deep-chested build, with dark features crowned by a heavy mane of hair, and strode with an air that bespoke confidence and purposefulness. Originally from south of what had been the border, he had kept going when most others halted somewhere in the jumble of shantytowns, strips malls, businesses, and smallholdings that had sprung up in a belt from San Diego to Los Angeles. He worked as a lab technician for a pharmaceuticals company in south San Francisco and still had faith that the system would reward ability, hard work, and diligence. Shearer had predicted what the outcome of the nuts game would be.

“You’d think, Rog, that people would figure out that if they all just waited, and didn’t take anything out for a while, the amount of nuts in the bowl would soon get very big — automatically doubling every ten seconds.... Or maybe if they just took half between them and let the bowl refill every time. Then they could carry on dividing up a pot that paid everyone well. That was all I told them to aim at. But they never do. Most times, it doesn’t make it to the first ten seconds — like just now. I never said anything about competing, or somebody having to win. But people always assume it. It’s ingrained from the culture.”

Even though the game had gone the way Shearer said it would, he had no illusions that Rogelio would be convinced that easily. The objection would be either that it didn’t mirror the real world, or yes, that was the way things were, but human nature wasn’t going to change any time soon, and to imagine otherwise was unrealistic. Sure enough, “Okay, it went like you said. But it’s still just a game. Contrived.” Rogelio swung his head briefly as they walked, hand thrust in the slit pockets of his windbreaker. “You’re not telling me that’s how the free market works.”