Eastern Standard Tribe Read online

cobwebsgathered in their holes. I stick my hand in the first and drag it off the apron.I repeat it.

  Now the chimney is standing on its own, in the middle of a nonsensicalcinderblock-henge. My hands are dripping with muck and grotendousness. I wipethem off on the pea gravel and then dry them on my boxer shorts, then hug thechimney and lean forward. It gives, slowly, slightly, and springs back. I giveit a harder push, really give it my weight, but it won't budge. Belatedly, Irealize that I'm standing on its apron, trying to lift myself along with thechimney.

  I take a step back and lean way forward, try again. It's awkward, but I'm makingprogress, bent like an ell, pushing with my legs and lower back. I feelsomething pop around my sacrum, know that I'll regret this deeply when my backkacks out completely, but it'll be all for naught if I don't keep! on! pushing!

  Then, suddenly, the chimney gives, its apron swinging up and hitting me in theknees so that I topple forward with it, smashing my chin on its hood. For amoment, I lie down atop it, like a stupefied lover, awestruck by my own inanity.The smell of blood rouses me. I tentatively reach my hand to my chin and feelthe ragged edge of a cut there, opened from the tip and along my jawbone almostto my ear. The cut is too fresh to hurt, but it's bleeding freely and I knowit'll sting like a bastard soon enough. I go to my knees and scream, then screamagain as I rend open my chin further.

  My knees and shins are grooved with deep, parallel cuts, gritted with gravel andgrime. Standing hurts so much that I go back to my knees, holler again at thepain in my legs as I grind more gravel into my cuts, and again as I tear my faceopen some more. I end up fetal on my side, sticky with blood and weeping softlywith an exquisite self-pity that is more than the cuts and bruises, more thanthe betrayal, more than the foreknowledge of punishment. I am weeping formyself, and my identity, and my smarts over happiness and the thought that Iwould indeed choose happiness over smarts any day.

  Too damned smart for my own good.

  14.

  "I just don't get it," Fede said.

  Art tried to keep the exasperation out of his voice. "It's simple," he said."It's like a car radio with a fast-forward button. You drive around on theMassPike, and your car automatically peers with nearby vehicles. It grabs thecurrent song on someone else's stereo and streamloads it. You listen to it. Ifyou don't hit the fast-forward button, the car starts grabbing everything it canfrom the peer, all the music on the stereo, and cues it up for continued play.Once that pool is exhausted, it queries your peer for a list of its peers -- thecars that it's getting its music from -- and sees if any of them are in range,and downloads from them. So, it's like you're exploring a taste-network, doingan automated, guided search through traffic for the car whose owner hascollected the music you most want to listen to."

  "But I hate your music -- I don't want to listen to the stuff on your radio."

  "Fine. That's what the fast-forward button is for. It skips to another car andstarts streamloading off of its drive." Fede started to say something, and Artheld up his hand. "And if you exhaust all the available cars, the systemrecycles, but asks its peers for files collected from other sources. You mighthate the songs I downloaded from Al, but the songs I got from Bennie are rightup your alley.

  "The war-drivers backstop the whole system. They've got the biggest collectionson the freeway, and they're the ones most likely to build carefully thought-outplaylists. They've got entire genres -- the whole history of the blues, say,from steel cylinders on -- on their drives. So we encourage them. When you gothrough a paypoint -- a toll booth -- we debit you for the stuff that you didn'tfast-forward, the stuff you listened to and kept. Unless, that is, you've gotmore than, say, 10,000 songs onboard. Then you go free. It's counterintuitive, Iknow, but just look at the numbers."

  "OK, OK. A radio with a fast-forward button. I think I get it."

  "But?"

  "But who's going to want to use this? It's unpredictable. You've got noguarantee you'll get the songs you want to hear."

  Art smiled. "Exactly!"

  Fede gave him a go-on wave.

  "Don't you see? That's the crack-cocaine part! It's the thrill of the chase!Nobody gets excited about beating traffic on a back road that's always empty.But get on the M-5 after a hard day at work and drive it at 100 km/h for twohours without once touching your brakes and it's like God's reached down andparted the Red Seas for you. You get a sense of *accomplishment*! Most of thetime, your car stereo's gonna play the same junk you've always heard, justbackground sound, but sometimes, ah! Sometimes you'll hit a sweet spot and getthe best tunes you've ever heard. If you put a rat in a cage with a lever thatdoesn't give food pellets, he'll push it once or twice and give up. Set thelever to always deliver food pellets and he'll push it when he gets hungry. Setit to *sometimes* deliver food pellets and he'll bang on it until he passesout!"

  "Heh," Fede said. "Good rant."

  "And?"

  "And it's cool." Fede looked off into the middle distance a while. "Radio with afast-forward button. That's great, actually. Amazing. Stupendous!" He snatchedthe axe-head from its box on Art's desk and did a little war dance around theroom, whooping. Art followed the dance from his ergonomic chair, swivelingaround as the interface tchotchkes that branched from its undersides chitteredto keep his various bones and muscles firmly supported.

  His office was more like a three-fifths-scale model of a proper office, inLilliputian London style, so the war dance was less impressive than it mighthave been with more room to express itself. "You like it, then," Art said, onceFede had run out of steam.

  "I do, I do, I do!"

  "Great."

  "Great."

  "So."

  "Yes?"

  "So what do we do with it? Should I write up a formal proposal and send it toJersey? How much detail? Sketches? Code fragments? Want me to mock up theinterface and the network model?"

  Fede cocked an eyebrow at him. "What are you talking about?"

  "Well, we give this to Jersey, they submit the proposal, they walk away with thecontract, right? That's our job, right?"

  "No, Art, that's not our job. Our job is to see to it that V/DT submits a badproposal, not that Jersey submits a good one. This is big. We roll this togetherand it's bigger than MassPike. We can run this across every goddamned toll roadin the world! Jersey's not paying for this -- not yet, anyway -- and someoneshould."

  "You want to sell this to them?"

  "Well, I want to sell this. Who to sell it to is another matter."

  Art waved his hands confusedly. "You're joking, right?"

  Fede crouched down beside Art and looked into his eyes. "No, Art, I am seriousas a funeral here. This is big, and it's not in the scope of work that we signedup for. You and me, we can score big on this, but not by handing it over tothose shitheads in Jersey and begging for a bonus."

  "What are you talking about? Who else would pay for this?"

  "You have to ask? V/DT for starters. Anyone working on a bid for MassPike, orTollPass, or FastPass, or EuroPass."

  "But we can't sell this to just *anyone*, Fede!"

  "Why not?"

  "Jesus. Why not? Because of the Tribes."

  Fede quirked him half a smile. "Sure, the Tribes."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Art, you know that stuff is four-fifths' horseshit, right? It's just a game.When it comes down to your personal welfare, you can't depend on time zones.This is more job than calling, you know."

  Art squirmed and flushed. "Lots of us take this stuff seriously, Fede. It's notjust a mind-game. Doesn't loyalty mean anything to you?"

  Fede laughed nastily. "Loyalty! If you're doing all of this out of loyalty, thenwhy are you drawing a paycheck? Look, I'd rather that this go to Jersey. They'rebasically decent sorts, and I've drawn a lot of pay from them over the years,but they haven't paid for this. They wouldn't give us a free ride, so why shouldwe give them one? All I'm saying is, we can offer this to Jersey, of course, butthey have to bid for it in a competitive marketplace. I don't want to gougethem, j
ust collect a fair market price for our goods."

  "You're saying you don't feel any fundamental loyalty to anything, Fede?"

  "That's what I'm saying."

  "And you're saying that I'm a sucker for putting loyalty ahead of personal gain-- after all, no one else is, right?"

  "Exactly."

  "Then how did this idea become 'ours,' Fede? I came up with it."

  Fede lost his nasty