The Brave New World

They all got excited. Li Yang was quickest with the mailbox key, and opened it while Harper Lee frowned, and said:

"Looks like everyone"s got mail. Even the ghosts from the upper two floors."

"I bet it"s a flyer," said Charlene Lee. "Maybe a store has re-opened close by?"

"It"s from the mayor"s office," said Li Yang. "It says that TV service will resume on the fourth - that"s this Sunday!"

"Give it to me," Harper said, putting out his hand.

Li Yang gave it to him without protesting. Harper Lee was expert at interpreting the written word. He unfailingly picked up the faintest nuances. He fully understood what he"d read the moment he read it. He had been explaining a lot of things to both Charlene and Li Yang recently. Thanks to Harper, they now knew what this whole New World thing was about.

"You"re right," Harper Lee said to Li Yang. He knew from professional experience that saying "you"re right" made an audience think he, Harper, was right. He looked at Charlene.

"He"s right," he told her. "But you busted your TV set in the meantime when you tried to turn it on. I told you not to. I told you I heard about people getting their faces blown off. I told you about the fires. You were real lucky, girl."

"Lay off," Charlene said dangerously.

"Anyway, that"s not really an issue because you didn"t have cable anyway. And it says here it"s cable TV only, channel one on all networks. Sunday, at noon. Special broadcast... blah blah blah... Regular daily program, ten to two... Hey, we"re going to have four hours of TV a day. I mean we could have four hours. But we can"t. No cable."

"We can," said Li Yang.

They both turned to look at him.

"We can," he repeated. "Rose Fogerty had cable. And she sure hasn"t been fooling around with her TV set."

"Wow," said Harper.

"Wow," said Charlene.

"Okay," Harper said briskly. "But let"s agree on something right now. They say they"ll begin transmitting a signal three hours earlier, from nine onward. None of us - none! - touches or even comes close to the TV in Rose"s room before nine on Sunday."

"There might be no electricity," Charlene said. "It"s on and off all the time."

"Well, then we don"t get to watch TV."

They trooped back into the apartment, tired and hungry. They all were almost permanently hungry by now. The communal food supply stored in the kitchen had dwindled to half a dozen cans of beans in tomato sauce and two of meat, some rice and pasta, and a package of dried dates.

Li Yang"s private food stash wasn"t much bigger. He had stopped taking food from the kitchen - it just felt wrong, in the circ.u.mstances. And it had already become obvious that he was much better at coping with hunger than the Lees.

He was lucky to have known hunger from an early age. And his luck was shared by billions of people like him all over the world. Poor African farmers scratching out a living with spade and hoe suddenly became better off than millionaire businessmen, slowly starving in their luxury homes, their pockets full of money that couldn"t buy anything and would soon be declared worthless.

Li Yang and the Lees held a serious conference that afternoon. It was obvious that they could survive no longer than a few days more on the food they had. They had all become much thinner than they used to be; the unheated apartment sucked calories out of their bodies like an invisible vacuum.

Harper Lee had become the leader of their trio. It had been a natural, automatic process; he always knew what to do before anyone else did, or at least appeared to know. He kicked off the proceedings that afternoon by saying:

"I"ve done a lot of talking and listening to various folks. From what I heard, there"s a government outpost already in the New World. They"ve got a full-sized settlement going, with various industries and stuff. And from what I heard, there"s no shortage of food."

"You want us to join that settlement?" asked Charlene.

"No, no. Remember, all that stuff we"ve stored in the apartment upstairs is illegal. We ought to have turned it over."

There was a short, slightly guilty silence as they all thought about their little crime. The police had been round a couple of times to ask if they hadn"t taken any items from the cubes. The three of them had spent an anxious hour carrying all the implant kits, hiber beds and doc.u.mentation scrolls to the empty apartment above theirs. It was safe there, under lock and key, for it transpired that the key to their own apartment fitted the front door of the apartment upstairs. That was how Charlene had been able to get inside when she was hiding from Rose Fogerty.

"So what are you proposing?" Li Yang asked Harper. "I mean, you say we can"t join this government-run settlement. And we can"t survive on our own in the New World. It"s just too cold."

"It isn"t," Harper said. "Last week I talked to a guy who told me it"s full-blown summer over there. We are sure to find food, there"s all sorts of wildlife. All we need is build a launch platform from that tiger rock described in the doc.u.mentation. Then we can send food back here."

"Here? It will arrive on the kitchen table, right here? Just like that?"

"That might be difficult," Harper agreed. "It might arrive on the roof of the building. Or in the bas.e.m.e.nt for that matter. Which leads me to the next point."

He drew a deep breath and said dramatically:

"We"ve got to move house. Let"s face it, we"re living here and not paying any rent. Sooner or later someone will show up to straighten this out."

"Who? Rose is dead."

"Don"t you worry, kid," Harper said to Li Yang. "A piece of real estate property in New York won"t stay without an owner for long. Someone could show up any time. And there"s a second reason for moving. Once we"ve found a good location, we can set up camp in the New World. Preferably far away from this or any other government settlement. Get a settlement of our own going."

"That"s illegal," said Li Yang.

Harper shrugged.

"It"s better than starving to death," he said. "Either way, food will be easier to find in the country. I propose that we hang around until that Sunday broadcast. We"re bound to learn something new then. Maybe they"ll announce a food distribution program or something like that. But if they don"t, we leave on the crack of dawn on Monday. I"m going to get a handcart organized. Just one, so we can"t take much stuff. You"d better start making your minds up what you want to take along."

"Where do you want us to go, Harper?" asked Charlene in that dangerous voice of hers that signaled an outburst could be coming.

"South. As far south as we can. So that we don"t have to worry about winter, in the New World or here."

"We"ll only have food for a few days," said Li Yang.

"We"ll have to try and buy some on the way. Fortunately, my clever sister has acquired lots of nice jewelry in the meantime. So we"ll be able to pay for the food."

"That"s a really stupid, desperate plan," said Charlene.

"You"ve got a better one? Sorry, maybe that"s how I should have started this conversation. So: do you guys have a better plan?"

No one spoke for quite a while.

"But how are we going to travel, Harper?" Charlene asked finally. "Nothing"s running. There are no buses or trains or airplanes."

"We walk," Harper said firmly. "I reckon we can do up to forty kilometers a day. We should get to Chesapeake Bay inside ten days. I got a friend who lives in a tiny place called Fairhaven. Right on the sh.o.r.e of the bay, maybe fifty kilometers from Washington. I"ve been to see him before, and it"s really wild out there. He"s got a little farm going, too. I"m sure he"ll take us in in exchange for a chance to have a crack at the New World himself."

"Maybe we should take Bobby and Janice with us," Charlene said, making Harper smile, because what she said meant she agreed to the move.

"Could be a good idea," he said. "We"ll have to talk about it some more. Hey Bruce, you got anyone you"d like to take with you?"

Li Yang shook his head, and said:

"Perhaps we should try to get bicycles. Fix the handcart so that it can be towed."

"Nice," said Harper. "But bicycles are kind of hard to come by these days. I"ve put in plenty of time looking for one. You know how much people are asking for a bicycle? Couple of thousand dollars for a clunker with a loose chain and flat tires. How much money have you got?"

"Couple of hundred dollars," Li Yang lied. He had a couple of thousand. He had managed to score some cash in the early days following the catastrophe, before the police got its act together and stopped the frenzy of looting that had been taking place.

"That"s more than twice than what I"ve got," said Harper Lee. "And Charlene"s got zip. But she has all that jewelry. A nice fur coat, too. That might fetch a good dollar, even though it"s fake."

"f.u.c.k off," said Charlene. She got up and left the kitchen with a stony face.

Li Yang and Harper Lee looked at each other. Harper could see what was on Li Yang"s mind. He said:

"Don"t worry, I"ll have her under control. She won"t be any trouble, and all that stuff she"s got will be a lot of help."

"Sure," Li Yang said doubtfully.

"Don"t worry," Harper repeated. He got up and added:

"And think about whether you"d like Bobby and Janice to come along with us. I"m not taking them if you don"t want me to."

"All right," said Li Yang.

"See you later."

"See you."

Li Yang stayed by himself in the kitchen for a while. He blew on his fingers and rubbed his hands to warm them up, thinking about Harper"s plan.

He was excited. He had never been out of New York in his entire life. He"d spent all seventeen years of his life in the concrete canyons of the city. Harper had said his friend lived right on the sh.o.r.e of Chesapeake Bay. Maybe there was a beach nearby?

He looked around the dark, gloomy, dirty kitchen and sighed. He was going to be glad to be out of this cold, depressing place. It held many sad memories for him.

Leaving it would be the start of a new, better life. Two new lives: he would be living a second life in the New World as well.

"Yes," he whispered to himself.

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