Hummingbird Salamander(20)
Just as I had traveled out to their storage palace, which appeared to be the farthest and least extent of their empire. The most visible vestige of an effort to branch out. A receding tide in time—gashing the earth and extracting things from it was the expertise.
The storage palace must have been one of the companies Silvina was tasked with managing because who cared what happened to it. As far as I could tell, it operated at just twenty-five percent capacity currently, so must serve as a tax shelter. Or, just gotten lost in a spreadsheet somewhere. The Vilcapampa business empire was so vast.
Wondered which others had been on the list for Silvina to manage. What that list added up to.
But, mostly, I wondered what the ghosts looked like in Silvina’s family. What were the words and phrases carried forward. What version of “drive a clutch” or “shoulder turning”? How far apart had we been growing up? Her accustomed to the newly aristocratic wealth, no matter how she would reject the trappings. Me in the lower middle class and living on a farm to boot. What would friendship have looked like? Couldn’t imagine it.
And how did Langer fit into that? Just as an enemy or was it more complicated than that? At first, I thought Langer wasn’t too far off from Matias. In the sense that Alex knew just which of our clients would hit it off over dinner. Even if they seemed to come from different worlds. Something always bound them, and that binding didn’t bear too much scrutiny. If you wanted to pretend you lived a moral, ethical life.
Langer’s sketchy background, pieced together, didn’t help much. Grew up in New Hampshire out in the woods. His father had collected guns and Nazi memorabilia. Even had a cannon—it was there in the estate sale after the father died. Langer moving from business administration in college (flunked out) to a stint in the army (also brief). Peace Corps for a two-year tour, then ex–Peace Corps, too—Sumatra. Divorce while in Guatemala, no kids. Moved on to Ecuador, Chile. “Go overseas no matter what” seemed to be his mantra. Special ops? Then just regular ops—stumbling into import-export that happened to include wildlife trafficking? While also belonging to left-wing anarchist groups. An on-the-nose rejection of his conservative father.
It would be a long time before Langer came into focus, like some deep-sea creature glimpsed briefly through the murk.
I thought of Allie’s warning, thought of my search on Larry’s computer, then put it all aside with a rum and Coke.
On the way to New York, in blanketed dark comfort.
The last time I flew anywhere.
[27]
The conference had a small, tight feel. Insular. Familiar logistics. The jokes familiar, the words “disruptor” and “drone” meaningless—the first from repetition, the second through transformation, camouflage. The new, shiny thing, the way biotech advances could dovetail with new ways to view security. That kind of hum and babble that spreads like a wave, but isn’t reflected in programming locked in months before.
The hauntings we could rationalize, become full-throated here, conjured up by panel titles on subjects that might be obsolete or irrelevant soon. “Smart Phone Virus Displacement in Reporting Tools.” “Home Security Exfiltration Tactics in Totalitarian Regime Change.” “Future Opportunity in Zoonotic Viruses Sector.” “Wireless Trail Cam Lamprey? Remote Access.” Nation-state infiltration, third-party nihilists, ransomware, Defcon.
This treadmill that kept changing under our feet. Growing fangs and spikes. Even as it paid the bills. Turmoil in national politics, failed nation-states overseas, conspiracy theories that infiltrated facts, and the undercurrent, never expressed directly, about the delicious unpredictability of that. The fact that the repressive tendencies of our leaders helped our profession. Cynically, the subtext spilled out. The seemingly somber debate. The truth we never uttered: that the Republic could become a husk and our borders a quagmire of death and discomfort … but this only strengthened our job security.
Year thirty in the same once-glamorous hotel in the once-glamorous country now stagnant. The lobby out-of-date and cheerless, modernized with its “unique boutique scent.” Rooms subdivided smaller and smaller until if you lost the room lottery, and you were me, your feet felt the texture of the wall opposite when you lay in bed. Shovel Pig consigned to a mantel too narrow. Both of you teetering. But they had superfast wireless.
Little in New York felt glamorous anymore. An eruption of the real had overtaken the unreal that week. Everyone felt the depression of that. Wildfires had consumed states in the heartland. Cyclones another. Earthquakes from fracking were omnipresent. Oil spills from pipelines that didn’t bear thinking about. Pandemic, a rumor gathering strength.
Speculation. Snippets in the corridors as I oriented myself to location. The kind you didn’t want to hear, but heard anyway. Most on a loop from past years. Because we didn’t want to believe. As you pitched your product.
“Ice caps mean there’s opportunity for resource extraction…”
“You can’t count on fossil fuels forever, so plastics…”
“What I would do is invest in waterproof equipment, always…”
“My boss has a couple bunkers for the end-times…”
“Time to think about getting out…”
Stench of gasoline followed us up into the conference rooms. Stitching hum of drones outside delivering packages. The walls of the main ballroom had been fitted with neon catchphrases too depressingly banal to relate. A bird had gotten trapped there, site of the opening remarks, but we all took video, thinking it might be a drone instead. Some kind of stealth marketing by a competitor.