Sewer, Gas and Electric

  “I—”

  “I mean I don’t want to be difficult,” Joan said, “but you were so emphatic in your condemnation of compromise. The cynical accommodation of truth to falsehood, you called it. And yet here you are suggesting that there’s no breach of ethics involved in lying to a benefactor. But A is A, isn’t it? Fraud is theft, and theft is immoral. Or do you now want to say that it’s not so, that the truth is more complicated than that?”

  “You bitch,” Ayn Rand said. “You bitch!”

  “I had to be a bitch,” Joan replied. “They wouldn’t let me be a Jesuit. But you see now what I mean about wrestling with shades of gray . . . and why I think pity is also a rational virtue.”

  “You are a monster! A whim-worshipping, muscle-mystic, subjectivist monster!”

  Joan laughed. “What book of Aristotle’s do you get your comebacks from, Ayn? Is there a special appendix on name-calling in the Rhetoric?”

  Ayn just shook her head. “I can’t understand it,” she said. “How could a genius like Harry Gant have married the likes of you?”

  “Oh,” Joan said, “that. That’s right, that was the original question, wasn’t it? Well, you’re not going to like this much, but Harry and I getting married, that was mostly a lark.”

  “A lark?” Ayn said.

  “It happened on a business trip out west, a little over a year after I started work as Harry’s comptroller. In October of ’09 Harry completed a buyout of the Lone Star Supertrain that became the first branch of the Lightning Transit System, and we went to Dallas to close the deal. Then we rented a van and spent a week cruising around the Southwest scouting out rights-ofway to extend the rail line from Texas to California. Just the two of us, alone on the open highway, with Harry all psyched up about his new toy, and me flying high over the environmental preservation compact I’d just negotiated with Dow Tanzania, and, well. . . did I mention that Harry and I had been lovers while I was at Harvard?”

  “No,” Ayn said, not in answer but in horrified anticipation.

  “Yeah,” Joan said. “The attraction hadn’t gone away in the years since, but when we first met up again we were adversaries, and once we quit that we were both too busy with the reorganization of Gant Industries to think about screwing around. But the road trip gave us the opportunity and the space to notice one another again. Of course there was an ethical obstacle to an affair now that Harry was technically my boss, even if he didn’t act like a boss most of the time; a political obstacle, too, because I was already in a running feud with the Creative Accounting Department, and I could guess how Clayton Bryce would react if he heard I was sleeping with Harry. So for almost a thousand miles after the subject first came up, we only talked about doing it—talked about the obstacles, in particular, and how we might squeak around them—like a pair of railroad barons trying to find a way to form a monopoly without violating any anti-trust statutes. We came up with a lot of crazy ideas between us, but it was Harry who came up with the craziest one of all. . .”

  “You didn’t,” Ayn said. “You couldn’t.”

  “We were in Nevada by then,” Joan said, “so yeah, we could. Drivethrough service, no blood test, no waiting—they even threw in a free prenuptial agreement with our wedding license.”

  “You married him?” Ayn nearly screamed. “Just so you could—”

  “In retrospect, it was a very silly thing to have done. Childish, even. A month later even we had a hard time understanding what could have gotten into us. And of course Clayton Bryce went through the roof when he found out, which demolished one of our main rationales for doing it. All I can say is that it seemed sensible enough at the time. Or no, not sensible: like a neat idea. But probably you had to be there.”

  “Reprehensible! To debase the institution of marriage by—”

  “Hey, hey!” Joan warned. “Mind your own glass house there, Ayn. Debase the institution of marriage? Why? Because I didn’t get a green card out of the deal?”

  “How dare you!”

  “I’m simply stating the facts,” Joan said. “You started.”

  “I loved Frank!”

  “Well I loved Harry. Still do love him, I suppose—I mean don’t tell anyone that, but it’s true. And if you say you loved Frank, I suppose that’s probably true, too—but you married Frank just when your last visa extension was due to run out, and I married Harry just when I most wanted to jump his bones, so let’s not kid each other that we were talking through flowers.”

  “But how can you profess to love a man you don’t admire? If you don’t share Gant’s values—”

  “Oh, I share more of his values than you might think, as Harry himself likes to remind me during arguments. And there are plenty of things about him that I admire. He’s smart, creative, capable—I don’t equate talent with prudence the way you do, but I do respect talent, and Harry’s got it. On a personal level he’s as unpretentious as a cab driver: when he’s not off building towers with their tops in the heavens, he acts like a guy, not like a billionaire. He’s funny and he’s kind, and when he does wrong it’s out of laziness or inattention, never out of malice. Yet at the same time he’s got a wicked sarcastic streak that makes him a real hazard to criticize: you no sooner adopt a holier-than-thou posture than Harry does or says something that lets you know he’s got your number, too—only he’s not going to raise his voice about it. And he knows, like my friend Lexa knows, how to fight for what he wants without losing his temper.”

  “So you do admire him—imperfectly. But you don’t share all his values.”

  “He’s my ex-husband, not my messiah.”

  “A person with a healthy self-esteem,” Ayn said, “reserves the highest expression of love for that other who represents the fullest embodiment of his or her values.”

  Joan rolled her eyes. “Give me a break, Ayn,” she said. “If a mirror image is what turns you on, fine, best wishes in your search, but that’s not what I want. I want a lover who’ll challenge my values—someone who’s not afraid to poke fun at me when I take myself too seriously.”

  “No!” Ayn said, stamping her foot. “That’s wrong!”

  “What do you mean, ‘that’s wrong’? It’s a personal preference.”

  “It is an irrational preference!” Ayn said. “If you behave morally, there is no reason you should ever have to be the butt of someone’s joke! To laugh at evil things is good—so long as you do take them seriously, but occasionally you permit yourself to laugh at them. To laugh at good things, at values, is evil. . .”

  “Ayn, are you sure you’re not a liberal?”

  “. . . to laugh at yourself, or encourage others to do so, is the worst evil you can do. It’s like spitting in your own face.”

  “But what’s so terrible about spitting in your own face?” Joan said. “It wipes off. And there are times when you need a dash of cold water to bring you to your senses . . .”

  “This conversation is ended,” Ayn Rand said. “You are more corrupt than I could have imagined! To think that you—”

  “’More corrupt than you could have imagined’?” Kite Edmonds came strolling down the library’s front walk with a book tucked under her arm. “What are we discussing, the Grant administration?”

  “Now I’m surrounded,” said Ayn. “Bracketed by the irrational and the insufferable.”

  Kite feigned hurt. “Is our company really that hellish for you, Miss Rand?”

  “Beyond the power of language to express,” Ayn said.

  “Ayn,” Joan asked, “are you sentient?”

  “What?”

  “Well you are technically a piece of software,” Joan said. “But you’re the most sophisticated personality template I’ve ever matched wits with. So—”

  “Are you asking me if I’m conscious?”

  “It’s a valid question.”

  Ayn tore at her hair. “Shall I send you my answer from unconsciousness?”

  “Now that I’d like to see,” said Kite. She added, to Joan: “Got
a match?”

  Lighting Kite’s cigarette, Joan noted with some surprise that the sun had set. Streetlights and headlamps had been added to the twenty-four-hour-a-day illumination of storefronts and Electric Billboards. High overhead, the running lights of a CNN news blimp headed south became the evening’s first constellation.

  “You’ve been in the stacks a while, haven’t you?” Joan said.

  “Did you forget to miss me?” Kite smiled. “But I think I found what we’re looking for.” Holding the cigarette between her lips, she let the book drop from under her arm into her open hand, and passed it to Joan. It was soft cover, a thick manila folder that had been stapled and bound as a volume. Its wrapping-paper dust jacket read:

  THE CASE OF NOBODY’S PERFECT

  •

  a Ten Most Wanted Mystery

  from the private files of J. Edgar Hoover

  •

  Read the transcripts

  Examine the evidence

  Find the answers

  (solution enclosed)

  “The call number was the hard part,” Kite said. “The call number we got from the videotape was in Dewey Decimal classification code; this library uses the Library of Congress code.”

  “What did you have to do, translate it?” Joan riffled through the case file. It contained, as promised, several dozen police report—style transcript sheets, plus Xeroxes and laserprint copies of a host of documents. Inserted at intervals were cardstock sheets to which glassine envelopes had been affixed, each containing some sort of physical evidence: a spark plug; a computer diskette; a hollow plastic blowdart; straw.

  “It’s not that simple,” Kite said. “You know I never appreciated it before this afternoon, but library filing systems are remarkably arbitrary.”

  “There’s no one right way to organize books, huh?” Joan couldn’t resist shooting a glance at Ayn, who turned away fuming.

  “Evidently not,” Kite said. “Now that call number we had, 171.303 607 949 6”—she recited easily from memory, well-versed from repetition—“that tells us that the book has something to do with ethics, because the 170s, in Dewey Decimal, are all about ethics and moral philosophy; and 171.3, more specifically, means a book whose subject is systems and doctrines of perfectionism. The next three numbers, 036, are a notational suffix meaning ‘persons of the Negro race,’ and the last six numbers, 079496, form the area suffix for Orange County, California. So 171.303 607 949 6 is—”

  “A book describing a doctrine or system for the perfection of Negroes in Orange County. Which is where Disneyland is located.”

  “Very good,” Kite said. “Now not surprisingly, the Library of Congress classification system doesn’t have a specific subdivision set aside for books on that subject. There is a category ‘Perfection, Ethics of,’ and other categories that might fit as well, but as the head librarian took some time explaining to me, the system isn’t really set up to classify books in absentia. If you can’t have the thing in your hands, you ought to at least know the author and title, which of course the Dewey number doesn’t tell you.”

  “So how did you find this book?”

  “I poked around. I looked up the Library of Congress call headings for Perfection, Excellence, Self-Improvement, Beatification, and so on, and then I went prospecting. Waste of time, it turns out, since this is an oversized book, and those are all shelved separately regardless of topic. Besides which, it wasn’t on a shelf.”

  “Then how—”

  “After half an hour or so of searching and not finding anything that looked like it might be what I was looking for, it struck me that I was going about this the wrong way. So I took a step back and reconsidered the problem in light of our larger goal. Then I went and did what I should have done in the first place, even before consulting with the head librarian.”

  Joan thought about it. “You asked an Electric Negro for help,” she said.

  “Eldridge 162,” Kite said. “He’d been shadowing me in the stacks and I hadn’t even noticed. He had the book in his hand, in plain view.”

  “Huh,” Joan said. “Did he say anything to you?”

  “He said Mr. Hoover would be calling us. He also had a special message for you, cautioning you not to lose the Lamp. ‘It’ll be very important later,’ he said.” She turned to Ayn. “So it appears you’ll have to put up with us a while longer, Miss Rand.”

  “Wonderful,” Ayn said.

  At the end of the case file, Joan found a sealed section marked SOLUTION. A red sticker seal warned:

  Enclosed is the complete

  solution to “The Case of

  Nobody’s Perfect.” Don’t spoil

  the fun by peeking unless

  you’re sure you’re stumped!

  “What do you think?” Joan asked Kite.

  “Hmm,” Kite said. “Well ordinarily I enjoy lingering over a mystery as much as the next person, but it seems as though we’re meant to solve this one in a hurry—troublesome library searches aside, we’re being given information hand over fist. So someone has designs on us, and since this is a murder mystery, violent death and the whole nine yards, it’s probably wisest to arm ourselves with as much of the truth as possible, as soon as possible. On the other hand, that could be exactly what the murderer wants us to do.”

  “So should we read the solution, or not?”

  “Couldn’t tell you,” Kite said. “But personally, I like the idea of knowing a lot better than the idea of not knowing.”

  “Yeah,” Joan said. “Me too.”

  “So?”

  “So. . . .” Using her thumbnail, Joan slit the seal. Ayn in her lamp globe couldn’t resist craning forward to look; Kite, noticing this, lifted the Electric Lamp from between the granite lion’s paws and held it above the case file. Joan turned to the first page of the solution.

  Everybody smoked.

  You Have My Sympathies

  “Ash, can you hear me?. . . ASH!”

  In the mess hall aboard the doomed space tug Nostromo, Sigourney Weaver pounded her fist on a table. Ian Holm, playing the severed head of an android, opened his eyes and spat up white fluid.

  “Yes, I can hear you.”

  “What was your special order?”

  “You read it. I thought it was clear.”

  “What was it?”

  “Bring back lifeform, priority one. All other priorities rescinded.”

  Frankie Lonzo kicked the pile of empty beer cans at the foot of his chair. “What time is it, Sal?” he asked.

  Salvatore belched. Heineken. “Sun’s down,” he replied.

  “What time is it, though? What hour?”

  “How do we kill it, Ash? There’s got to be a way of killing it. How? How do we do it?”

  “Seven . . . thirty-two.” Salvatore squinted at the Timex Philharmonic on his wrist. “Seven thirty-two, Frankie.”

  “So nine o’clock this morning plus eleven hours and ten minutes equals . . . equals eight o’clock P.M. and ten minutes.” Frankie smiled. “Almost done, then. Son of a bitch is floundering by now.”

  “You still don’t understand what you’re dealing with, do you? A perfect organism. Its structural perfection is matched only by its hostility.”

  “You admire it.”

  “I admire its purity. A survivor. Unclouded by conscience, remorse. . . or delusions of morality.”

  “I gotta take a leak,” Frankie said, getting up. “Mind the fort, Sal.”

  “Yup.”

  “Last word . . .”

  “What?”

  “I can’t lie to you about your chances, but. . . you have my sympathies.”

  In the bathroom Frankie became mesmerized, as drunken peeing men will, with the abstract patterns of tile on the wall behind the toilet. He swayed a little on his feet, trying to aim, but must have nodded off because the next thing he knew his sneakers were damp and there was screaming coming from the TV room: Yaphet Kotto and Veronica Cartwright being eaten by the Alien while Sigourney Weaver wa
s off chasing the ship’s cat.

  Frankie zipped up carefully—he’d injured himself with his pants before—and lost another few moments’ consciousness at the bathroom sink before slouching back out to the TV room. By then Sigourney Weaver had set the Nostromo’s engines to self-destruct and was racing for the escape shuttlecraft, cat-carrier in hand.

  “Hey Sal,” said Frankie, leaning against the door frame. “Sal, what time is it now?”

  No answer. On TV, Sigourney Weaver started to round a corner, spied a menacing shape, and shrank back against a bulkhead in terror.

  “Sal?” The strobe lighting effect coming from the television made it hard to focus, but by shading his eyes Frankie could make out the long gray loveseat at the other end of the room, and Salvatore’s armchair next to it. He thought he could see Salvatore’s right arm as well, still clutching a Heineken can, but what was funny was, Salvatore’s other arm—the one with the watch—seemed to be missing, along with Sal’s legs, torso, and head.

  Hmm, Frankie thought. And then he thought: Loveseat?

  “There’s no loveseat in here,” he said, aloud, whereupon the loveseat rolled over, popping up a dorsal fin.

  Frankie and Sigourney broke and ran at the same time. But while the monster in the movie crouched down to take a look at the dropped cat-carrier, Meisterbrau followed the real meal. Clawing its way across the carpet, the shark inadvertently tromped on the television remote control, pumping the volume up to maximum.

  Frankie’s feet barely touched the floor between the TV room and the toilet. He slammed the bathroom door shut behind him and shot the deadbolt. The door, installed by the villa’s previous owners and intended to slow down police, was made of inch-thick steel plate, with reinforced hinges.

  “That’ll hold it,” Frankie said, patting the deadbolt. “That’ll hold it.”

  That might not hold it, Frankie thought. Through the door he could hear the Nostromo’s computer, Mother, announcing that the option to override self-destruct would expire in T-minus one minute, which only added to his sense of urgency. He scanned the bathroom for potential weapons but found none, not even a rubber plunger. A special stand inside the medicine cabinet had once held an Uzi, but all firearms had been removed from the villa by the D.E.A.; the rusted safety razor that remained didn’t bear consideration.