Read Underground Airlines Online
Authors: Ben Winters
Underground Airlines (43 page)
When I woke up I was alone.
Bridge was gone. All remnants of that tent were gone, the poles and the canvas, the machines and the generator.
I was alone in the cornfield, lying on my back, aware first of the clot of bandages on my back, the blood seeping around me in a puddle. It was like I had been left behind by aliens. Like I was a fossil from an ancient evaporated sea.
I lay there until I felt I could stand, then I stood until I felt I could walk, then I started off in search of a phone.
Martha’s beloved
wasn’t dead. He had been sold offshore. He was in the Special Economic Zone. That’s what I’d discovered on the TorchLight search in Newell’s office.
Samson, being recaptured, after his brief, happy, free life, after falling in love with Martha and fathering Lionel and being found again, suffered the fate of many escapees who are subsequently caught: he was sold, for pennies on the dollar, to the controllers of an oil rig called the
High Water
working in the SEZ.
The SEZ was created during the Texas War, a nautical territory of the United States to be jointly administered by the Department of Defense and the Department of Energy. Because the gulf rigs and the oil they bring up are considered of vital national interest, laws have been passed to modify or suspend regulations regarding the treatment of Persons Bound to Labor inside its boundaries. No Franklins out on the waves.
At Bell’s, when we were tempted to misbehave, when we got out of line, and when we cautioned each other—
Hush up, now; Don’t be dumb, man
—it was always the SEZ we were thinking about.
What you trying to do?
we’d say.
Get your ass sold offshore?
In the times of Old Slavery, in Maryland or Virginia, they would trade rumors about the hot hell of the cotton lands; at Bell’s we sweated over the SEZ. It floated in our imaginations then, as I saw it floating terrible now in Martha’s, thinking about the man she loved. A machine island floating on dark water, shrouded in black smoke. A fortress carapaced in scaffolding and metal decks, masted with smokestacks. Gas fires burning orange in its vents, satellite dishes rotating slowly on its towers.
“Might be better,” I said to her, “if he
was
dead.”
“No,” she said. “No.”
I told her everything. I told her about you, darling. I told her the whole story. Sitting on the thin bedspread in the hotel room, told her about Bell’s and about you, told her about Chicago and about Bridge, told her about Barton and Jackdaw and Dr. Cormer in the field of corn.
About what you said, about two worlds, this world and another one, us now and us later, what we are and what we are going to be.
We’re in Chicago, and I still have never been to Canada. We’re in Chicago, not permanently, but right now. Today. Everything I see I wish that you were seeing. I went to a hot-dog cart for lunch. I ate three hot dogs, thinking of you. I bought one for Lionel, then another one.
And here I am, on an elevator, riding the elevator up to visit a company that makes elevators. Martha and her boy are across the street at a coffee shop called Joey’s. Martha is reading the
Chicago Tribune
. Lionel is reading the comics and drinking chocolate milk. Martha’s hatchback is directly outside, visible from the front door of the building I’m in, parked in such a way that we can get out quickly if need be. Lionel knows only that we are on an adventure, and that is enough; that is more than enough.
In this world, in the real world, I am stepping off the elevator onto a thin green carpet. My shoes are black and highly shined, and my gait is confident and purposeful. I am a few minutes early for my appointment, here at the offices of Hugh Moorland Elevator and Escalator Company, a privately held corporation: established in 1927, annual sales of just under $1.2 billion, corporate parent to Murdock Elevators of Murdock, Louisiana.
“Good morning, sir. What can we do for you?”
“Hi. How are you? I have an appointment.”
The gentleman smiles. He invites me to have a seat. I sit and leaf through a magazine.
Martha and I have learned that elevator design varies widely between companies and involves a large amount of highly technical proprietary information: the mechanical functioning of the pneumatic systems, the tensile strength of cables, the interior electrics, the design and movement of the counterweights. Even the size and shape of elevator buttons, their response times, their relative luminosity when depressed.
You never know which of these details, if any, will prove relevant to your goal, which is, in this case—as one small part of a much larger plan—to simultaneously shut down elevator service in every building on a plantation that comprises thirty-two separate structures.
“Mr. Powell?”
“Guilty as charged,” I say. I hop up.
“Great to meet you,” the woman tells me. “Come on back.”
“You betcha,” I say, finding a voice, a happy midwesterner, road warrior, traveling salesman.
This is today. More plans are in motion. More ideas are in play. Every day is two worlds; every day we split into two.
A map of the Gulf Coast with the current location of all the rigs was hard to find, but we found one. A technical diagram of an individual rig such as the
High Water
is proving much more difficult to find, but difficult does not mean impossible.
Everything can happen. Everything is possible.
My first and deepest thanks go to my wife, Diana Winters, and to our children, Rosalie, Ike, and Milly. I love you.
I am so fortunate to have Joëlle Delbourgo as my literary agent—and confidante and friend—and to have Shari Smiley and now Joel Begleiter watching my back on the West Coast. It was thanks to Joëlle that this book ended up at Mulholland Books/Little, Brown and in the very good hands of editors Joshua Kendall and Wes Miller. Their sensitivity and enthusiasm were transformative.
Cheers to all my other new friends in the Hachette universe: Reagan Arthur, Pam Brown, Sabrina Callahan, Ben Allen, and their respective teams. I knew any organization that had Michelle Aielli in it was one for me.
I am very grateful to the artist Oliver Munday for creating this book’s beautiful cover.
I had a lot of help in Indianapolis. Thanks to my students, colleagues, and friends in the MFA program at Butler University (named for its founder, the noted Indiana abolitionist Ovid Butler); to Officer Daniel Rosenberg and his colleagues on the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department; to Paul Bacon and his family; to Wilma Moore at the Indiana Historical Society; to Charles Harris and his colleagues at Peerless Pump; and to Professor Antwain Hunter, also at Butler. My respect and gratitude also go to the Indy literary community, especially the Indiana Writers Center, the Indianapolis Public Library, and the staff and supporters of Indy Reads.
I also had help from Kevin Hastie; from Brooke Pierce; from Ian “Gee” Chu and his cousin Dan; from Dr. Jason Organ; and, on issues of constitutional law, from Professor Morton Horwitz, who was extraordinarily generous with his very valuable time.
Thank you to everyone at Quirk Books in Philadelphia, especially Jason Rekulak, for putting me on the path I travel now.
I have taken liberties with its course, but there really is a little river called Pogue’s Run and it really does travel for much of its length below the city. I am grateful to Stuart Hyatt for inducting me into its secrets. You can visit Monument Circle in Indianapolis, but there’s no statue there of Lincoln; the Soldiers and Sailors Monument, erected in the wake of the Civil War, was the first such edifice in America built to honor the common soldier.
Ben H. Winters
is the author of eight novels, most recently
World of Trouble,
the concluding book in the Last Policeman trilogy, a nominee for the Anthony Award and for the Edgar Award from the Mystery Writers of America.
Countdown City
was an NPR Best Book of 2013 and the winner of the Philip K. Dick Award for distinguished science fiction.
The Last Policeman
was the recipient of the 2012 Edgar Award; it was also named one of the Best Books of 2012 by Amazon.com and
Slate.
The Last Policeman Trilogy
The Last Policeman
Countdown City
World of Trouble
Bedbugs
Android Karenina
Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters
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Table of Contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Welcome
- Map
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Part One: North
- Part Two: South
- Part Three: North
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Also by Ben H. Winters
- Newsletters
- Copyright
The characters and events in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
Copyright © 2016 by Ben H. Winters
Cover design by Oliver Munday
Cover photograph of face by joSon / Getty Image # 164249137
Cover copyright © 2016 by Hachette Book Group, Inc.
Author photograph by Nicola Goode
Map by Darren Bennett / DKB Creative (www.dkbcreative.com)
Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.
The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First ebook edition: July 2016