The New Order Read online

  “I want to thank you for coming,” I say. It seems an oddly formal statement to make to a crowd of kids who, in other circumstances, would just as soon be killing one another on sight. Still, you have to start somewhere, somehow.

  “I—we, my friends, my tribe, and I—called you here because we have an amazing opportunity. I’m going to tell you about that in a little while, but first I want to tell you about… a dream I have for all of us.”

  I feel the falling sensation that I feel whenever I step out of the fortifications of my detachment and reserve. Out here is where a lot of people live. Myself, I only venture out every once in a long while. The last time was in the public library, when I told Donna for the first time that I was in love with her.

  Why is speaking to a crowd like telling a girl you love her? No time to work that out now. The crowd is alert and skeptical—it’s the word dream that’s done it; a word that’s the tool of politicians, reformers, and performers. They’re wondering if I’m any of these things, or just an idiot.

  “For years now,” I go on, “we have been living in a state of anarchy. Actually, the way we live gives anarchy a bad name. We’ve been living in hell.

  “Part of it is just the cards we were dealt. We lost our families. We lost our country. We lost our technology. Food is running out. Medicine is running out. Even time is running out. We all know this. The Sickness is waiting, not someplace far away, but inside of us.

  “But part of this hell is ourselves. Our actions. Our decisions. Part of this hell is our own doing.

  “We have killed, not to defend ourselves, but to enrich ourselves. To please ourselves. We have betrayed our friends. We have stolen. We have abandoned the sick and abused, the weak.”

  At this, there is catcalling and cries of “Hell, yeah!” from the Uptowners, and from others. But, surprisingly, they are shouted down by the rest of the crowd.

  “Some of these things we did, we did because people want more than what they can get. More food, more life, more love. There never was enough. All of these things were always scarce. That is what it is to be alive and to be human. To have less than we think we need.

  “But we don’t have to be this way. We don’t have to hurt each other, or dominate each other, or steal from each other.”

  “Fag!” comes a catcall from the Uptowners. But that, too, is shouted down.

  “We don’t want to be against one another. Not really. We all want the same thing. We want to be happy in the time we have left, don’t we?”

  Silence. Whether it’s the silence of complete bafflement, or of everyone pondering, I don’t know.

  “There is no place in the world where nobody dies. There is no place where nobody is hungry, or nobody hurts. That place is only in our imagination. But if we only get our heads around it, we can go a little way toward making this real place more like that imaginary place. They call that place Utopia.

  “So what kind of people live in Utopia? People like us. We are all different,” I say. “And we are all the same. They used to say, ‘All men are created equal.’ Myself, I don’t know if I was created. I don’t know if I’m here by design or by accident. My parents taught me some crazy shit. They taught me I was God, only I had forgotten. You believe that?” Laughter from the crowd.

  “Anyway, if you believe that, the good news is, so are you. That’s it, in a nutshell. We’re not just similar. We’re the same. If I help you out, I’m helping myself out. If you help me out, you’re helping yourself out. No matter what you believe, that’s the way it was supposed to work, right? That’s the golden rule. Treat others the way you’d want them to treat you. How do we get there?

  “Well, some people think that the only way that ever happens is if there’s someone bigger and stronger forcing you to do it. After all, that’s the way our folks did it, didn’t they? They’re the ones who kept us in line; they’re the ones who kept us from abusing our brothers and sisters.

  “But Mom and Dad are gone. And I don’t want to replace them. I don’t want to replace Mom and Dad with a king or a queen or a president or a dictator.” I can’t help but look at Evan, then at Solon, as I say this.

  “In ancient Athens,” I say, “they had the Ecclesia. It meant ‘Assembly.’ Like in school, I guess. The Ecclesia was composed of every Athenian citizen. They were the ones who ran the country, according to the laws. Not senators or representatives. People spoke for themselves. Direct democracy. One person, one vote.

  “That’s what I’m here to say. One person, one vote. One tribe, one constitution. All of us. Working together. We could start something here that, if we all die, which we all will, someday… then someone will know… in the last moment, with our last breath, we didn’t act like animals. We acted like people. We acted like human beings.”

  The place is quiet.

  “I want us to make something new here. And I hope you’ll help.”

  I don’t have anything more to say, for the moment. Then, a little at first, more and more, until it is the sound of rain on a tin roof, clapping.

  I realize that I have been expecting the worst. Is it possible that all anyone was waiting for was someone to say it?

  The applause turns into foot stomping, a surprisingly aggressive reaction to a proposal for peace. Solon rises out of the Harlem delegation and heads to the front. He has, incongruously, a football tucked under his arm.

  “Wise words from brother Jefferson,” he says. “Speaking for all of us up in Harlem, I can say that we could all use a little peace. That’s why I’m here. But—before we get all… churchy about democracy, I want us to think about a few things.”

  Solon eyes the crowd. “You ever heard the expression ‘Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding what’s for dinner’?” Laughter. “Now, most of the people I see here are wolves. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t have made it. It has not been a great time for lambs.”

  I think of the Mole people, hiding underground in their gussied-up subway stop, until we led the Uptowners to them.

  “There are wolves and wolves, though. Once you take all the tribes and make one big tribe out of them, yesterday’s wolves are tomorrow’s lambs. Always somebody bigger and meaner than you are, am I right?

  “Maybe you’re thinking, we’d all be citizens, we’d all be the same. We’d all have the same rights. My brothers and sisters are here to tell you it ain’t necessarily so.

  “Brother Jefferson talked about Athens and about the Assembly, and I’m named after the dude who gave Athens its laws, so you know that sounds good to me. But—you all have to know this. You know how many citizens there were in Athens? Round about forty thousand.”

  He shrugs, building up the pause for rhetorical effect.

  “Now. You know how many slaves there were in Athens?” Another pause.

  “One. Hundred. Thousand.” He thumps on the table for effect. “One hundred thousand. Each person who had a vote owned, on average, more than two other human beings who not only didn’t have a vote but didn’t have any rights at all. And let’s talk about the girls. You want to know how many women could vote in the Assembly?”

  Another moment of quiet before it drops. “None. Women didn’t have the vote. Kind of like when things got started here in America, right? No vote for women. People bought and sold.

  “If we’re gonna start afresh,” he says, “then we’ve gotta start on the right foot. We’ve got to know that we are doing this for the lambs as well as the wolves.”

  There’s shouts and wolf howls from the Uptowners, who lean back in their seats, feet up.

  “Hey!” shouts Solon, and—such is his native authority—they quiet to listen. He holds up the football. “See this? Personally signed by Mr. Jerry Rice, wide receiver for the San Francisco 49ers, greatest football player that ever lived. Needless to say, it is worth something, even in this benighted time when fools can boost Bentleys for free. You heard of a talking stick? Native American thing where only the person holding it gets to talk? Well, this is
the talking ball. I’m willing to pass it—even to you.” He looks at Evan, who looks back with reptilian scorn. “But right now, I’m the motherfucker has the football. Understand?”

  At the word football, I notice Hafiz twitch with recognition. He stares at Solon, perturbed. “That’s not the football,” he says to himself.

  “What do you mean?” I ask him.

  “That’s not the football. The football is underground.”

  I really have no idea what he’s saying, and I figure it to be a little glitch of his system, an artifact of his crazy.

  “As I was saying,” Solon continues, “democracy is a fine thing. The law is a fine thing. But none of it matters if it’s wolves and lambs. Know why? Justice. Everybody has a different idea of what that is. Lambs think that justice is everybody eating grass and leaving everybody else to eat grass. Wolves think that justice is eating lambs.

  “So the question is, what is justice? That’s all ‘the law’ is, an answer to that question. So we’re here to make a city-state. All well and good. We’re here to make the laws. All well and good. But let’s not lose sight of what we’re really here for. To answer the question: What is justice?”

  There’s a long silence, and then Evan stands up. He and Solon look at each other.

  “I’m open,” he says.

  Solon looks down at the ball. Hefts it. Throws it in a long, perfect spiral to Evan.

  Evan catches it clean and climbs his way over the chairs in front of him and down a row of contorting tribesmen. He makes his way down the aisle to the front of the room.

  “My name’s Evan,” he says, “and I’m a wolf.”

  A little laughter from the crowd, a little whooping from his tribe.

  “A lot of you know me or know about me. I definitely recognize some of the faces here. For what it’s worth, I come here to represent the Uptown Confederacy. We have a thousand soldiers under arms. We run the Bazaar. We rule the center of the island. We kick ass, and we take names. I came here to talk about the terms under which all of you would surrender. I figured when else would I have a chance to get all of you motherfuckers in the same room? Now that I’m here, I can see that all you want to do is talk about truth and justice and the American way or some shit. Like the way the world works is up for discussion.

  “But it’s not. You want to know what justice is? Justice is the guy with the gun telling the guy without the gun what to do. Anything else is just opinions. And I don’t have time for the opinions of a bunch of sheep. Why should I listen to all this bullshit?” He looks at Solon. “Okay, you got shiny plastic guns. Good for you. You want to change things, use them. We’ll see who ends up getting served for dinner. Until then? We’re out.”

  Evan takes the ball and spikes it. It bounces high, up and back, finally ricocheting off the mural at the back of the room. Having done his microphone drop bit, he heads toward the exit. His delegation gets up and follows. Some of them actually seem to have doubts, but not enough to keep them here.

  “Evan,” I say. He turns.

  “We can’t do this without the Uptowners. You’re too important.”

  “I know,” he says. He turns to go again.

  “If you don’t stay, you’re going to lose everything.”

  He turns and laughs. “Bring it.”

  “You’re gonna want to stay,” I say.

  “Give me one good reason.”

  “I’ve got one,” I say.

  He waits, expressionless.

  “The Cure.”

  A long moment.

  “Bullshit.”

  “He’s for real,” says Solon.

  “That’s the reward for citizenship,” I say. “Life.”

  They’re listening.

  I LEAVE THE LIGHTS OFF and wait for Rab. The little college-issue clock on the wall does its job pedantically, filling up the moments. Pedantic, pedantock. Maybe it’s a sort of Geiger counter measuring my illusions as I shed them. Gone—the future. Gone—love. Gone—peace. Gone—trust.

  In truth, I knew it in my bones, I felt it in the quiet places. But I took what I could anyway. I wanted the love, even if it was poisoned. I could use the attention. I did. And it’s not so easy to subtract emotion from pleasure. So, for all my cold assessment, there’s something else, affection turning into anger.

  In the cold hollow air, it is easy to hear footsteps hissing on the stone stairs and easy to hate myself for recognizing them as Rab’s and not anyone else’s. What a useless talent to have.

  Rab enters in a perfect impression of normality, clearly expecting me to be asleep, to be stupid, to be clueless. When he sees me in the chair, and sees the gun, he is genuinely surprised.

  Rab: “Where did you get that?”

  Me: “I made it.” I kept this from him, my trip to the university FabLabs to commission the gun from one of the boffins in the university 3-D Printing Club. If I was wrong, I thought, it might scare him away, another sign that I hadn’t shaken off old habits of violent thought and violent action.

  Rab: “Why?”

  Me: “Because it’s fucking impossible to buy a gun in this country.”

  Rab: “No, why are you pointing it at me?”

  Me: “Rab—I assume that’s your actual name, right?—sit down with your hands where I can see them and stop fucking with me. Okay?”

  Rab sits. His eyes look away briefly, an involuntary motion as he thinks up something to say.

  Me: “Let me guess. You can explain. You can explain why I saw you snitching on me to Welsh, who you are supposed to distrust, because you’re such a lefty and ninety-niner and free spirit, right? You can explain how you got into my knickers under false premises.” (Nice deployment of local idiom, that.) “You can explain what you’re doing here.”

  He takes a deep breath.

  Rab: “Not really. That is, I can explain what I’m doing. I just can’t explain it in a way that… keeps things the way they were.”

  Me: “You mean with you and me having sex and being boyfriend and girlfriend and whatnot, and me not knowing that you were a total fucking liar?”

  Rab: “Yes. But I want to say that… I meant the sex.”

  Me: “Lucky me.”

  Rab: “And I care for you.”

  Me: “Stop, before I use this.”

  Rab: “And how about how you lied to me? You told me you were the daughter of someone high up in the Restoration. You’re not. You’re a…”

  Me: “A what? Tell me.”

  Rab: “You’re a survivor. I admire that. And part of that surviving was telling lies. When you were with me, were you lying about that, too?”

  Me: “Yes, lying. I just needed you to survive. You were a soft landing.”

  A squall of anger casts a shadow on his face.

  Rab: “Okay. Well, you’ve got questions, I’ve got answers.”

  He says it in a sort of mordantly humorous way, as if we’ve both found ourselves in a difficult position, as opposed to my finding him out. I don’t like his tone.

  Me: “Fine, question one. Who the fuck are you?”

  Rab: “I am who I say I am. ‘Rab’ isn’t a cover or anything. It’s me.”

  Me: “But you’re a spy, not a history student.”

  Rab: “I am a student. I was. I was also caught up in some stuff that would have earned me some serious jail time.”

  Me: “So you flipped. You’re an agent… agent whatever? Are Soph and Michael in on it?”

  Rab: “No.”

  Me: “So you’re gonna get them busted, like some shitty police informant?”

  Rab: “No. They really have nothing to do with this. College idealists, that’s all. If they weren’t protesting government policies, they’d be into music. Same difference. This is about something much bigger.”

  Me: “You work for Welsh?”

  Rab: “I’m under him, yes. He’s my handler. He ‘runs’ me.”

  Me: “Like you’re an app.”

  Rab: “I guess I am, in a way.”

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nbsp; Me: “Can he hear all of this?”

  Rab: “Probably.”

  Me: “Then he’ll hear me when I say that I’m going to put a hole in him if he comes through that door. And Titch.”

  Rab: “Okay.”

  Me: “And I’m seriously thinking of airing you out, too.”

  Rab: “I can understand that.”

  Me: “So why shouldn’t I?”

  Rab: “The same reason I agreed to do this.”

  Me: “Not because you’re into me, obviously.”

  Rab: “Don’t sell yourself short.”

  He smiles. That smile.

  Me: “Don’t go thinking I give a shit about you.”

  Rab: “You’re going to want to help. The way I wanted to help. This is important. Look, it was only a matter of time before I told you. I didn’t like hiding what was going on.”

  Me: “Seemed like you enjoyed it at the time.”

  He looks ashamed. Why do I care?

  Rab: “It’s about what happened at the UN.”

  Me: “The field trip?”

  Rab: “What you saw on the field trip. Your interrogation logs from the Ronald Reagan pointed to the possibility that you might know something about the president’s entourage that day. That would make you the only eyewitness we have access to. We’ve been working out the significance of that. Thanks to you, we think we know.”

  Me: “I had some kind of evidence? Did you ever think of just asking me?”

  Rab: “We did ask. You weren’t telling. Welsh couldn’t get to it, no matter how he tried.”

  Me: “So he thought that if he used some kind of, what, gigolo, I’d be so loved up I’d spill everything?”

  Rab: “Technically they call it a honeypot. And yes. And you did tell me. You opened up.”

  Me: “Because I needed you.”

  Rab: “And I’m grateful for that, Donna. You don’t know how much you’ve come to mean—I don’t care if the others are listening—”

  Me: “Stop it before I put a fucking bullet in your brain.”

  Rab looks at me with his beautiful face that I’m ready to destroy, his pretty lie of a face.