Maybe that’s your angle. Carrot and stick in one.
He tapped at his teeth with his thumb, watched Tesla unfold around them. Low-rise buildings of stone and solar glass, fronted by broad sidewalks and charging stations for electric vehicles. Signs for restaurants and bars, holographic arcades and coffeehouses advertising brands of marijuana. The people on the street favored rugged, practical clothing, jeans and boots and cowboy hats. There was a genial air, people smiling at one another as they passed, stopping in small groups to talk.
He imagined US Army Seraphim drones circling above, raining down finger missiles. Vehicles exploding, walls cracking and collapsing. Or worse, bomber-dropped incendiaries; in the dry climate, the heat would reach levels hot enough to shatter stone and boil solar glass.
“Everyone is so young,” Natalie said.
“Youth is strength,” Ariel said without hesitation. Definitely memetic. Professional communications had always been about the attempt to generate memes, to make a message viral; abnorms just took that to a higher level. Back when he’d been a DAR agent, Cooper had read a brief arguing memetics was the most dangerous gift. As politicians had long known, people preferred short, catchy answers to complex ones, even if the short answers were oversimplified to the point of ridiculousness. Phrases like “old-world thinking” could be as devastating as a bomb, and much farther ranging.
After all, remember how many times you saw “I am John Smith” scrawled on a wall.
And now he’s a hero, and that’s the title of his bestselling book.
“Youth is being young,” Cooper said. “Strength is something else.”
Ariel smiled politely, continued the tour. “The average age in the Holdfast is 26.41, although that’s misleading; the number of parents and grandparents who move here with gifted children skew the math. The median is closer to sixteen.”
“A city of children,” Natalie said.
“Not a city, a new community, united in a common purpose. When people are invested in what they’re doing, biological age is less important than energy and focus. Look at Israel’s growth after the Second World War. A generation of passionate Jewish youth transformed a desert into a global power.” The motorcade purred to a halt outside a gracious brick building on a neighborhood street. “And here we are.”
Cooper had been expecting traditional diplomatic quarters—a luxury hotel, one floor cordoned off for them, agents posted everywhere. Instead, Ariel led them into a lovely three-story apartment, tastefully decorated in Western style, tile floors and sheer drapes. The back half of the house looked out onto a public square surrounding a tall tree with thick rubbery leaves, no doubt a genetic variant that required minimal water. Despite the cold, men and women chatted on benches, read d-pads in the sun. A group of boys kicked a soccer ball. Todd pressed against the window, his breath fogging the glass.
“Your security detail is quartered on the first floor; if you need anything, just pick up the phone.”
Todd said, “Can I go play?”
Cooper hesitated. He wanted his children to experience this world—that was one of the reasons he’d agreed to bring them—but this was more exposed than he’d imagined. As if reading his thoughts, Ariel said, “The security team can accompany him if you’d like, but it’s not necessary.”
“Why’s that?”
Ariel smiled. “You’re in New Canaan. Approximately fifteen percent of our police force are readers; they move through the cities looking for dangerous personality discrepancies. Pedophiles are screened out, as are those with violent tendencies.”
“You have tier-one readers wandering the streets?”
“Of course not. There are tier-one readers in the Holdfast, but mostly they choose to live in special facilities where their needs can be met by automation so they never need to see another human being. They’d go mad wandering the streets. The readers in the police are generally threes. They can sense imbalance, sociopathy, psychopathy, but they’re still able to function in human society. The system has been exceptionally effective—there hasn’t been a child hurt by an adult anywhere in the Holdfast in years.”
“What about terrorists?”
“Not a threat. These being diplomatic quarters, that protocol is expanded to include political insurgents. Your children are safer here than they are in your front yard in Washington.”
New-world thinking. Gotta love it. He caught Natalie looking at him, shrugged. She said, “Sure. Be home by dinner.”
Todd whooped and streaked for the door.
“If it’s okay with your mom and dad,” Ariel said to Kate, “there’s a sandbox and swings, other kids your age.”
His daughter wrapped her arms around herself. “I don’t really like playing with other kids.”
“That’s because you’re gifted.” Ariel smiled. “I know how you feel. I used to feel the same way. Normal kids can be so mean. Trust me, it’s better here.”
Kate looked up at Cooper, a question in her eyes. A hope, he realized, and remembered his own childhood. He’d been a military brat, and so always an outcast, but that had been made far worse because he was gifted. It seemed like he’d had to fight for his place every day of his life.
Imagining his beautiful baby girl feeling that way broke his heart.
He squatted down in front of her. “Mom will go with you, sweetheart. You don’t have to play with the other kids unless you want to.” He put a hand on her shoulder. “It’s up to you.”
Kate bit her lip. Then she nodded. “Okay.” Natalie held out one hand, and Kate took it.
“Now, Ambassador Cooper, we have a dinner planned this evening. The car will be back to pick you up at seven, if that’s all right.”
“It’s not.” He stood and turned to the communications director. “I want to talk to Epstein.”
“Mr. Epstein is engaged—”
“Now.”
Ariel was considerably cooler on the ride away from their apartment. After she had realized that he wasn’t kidding, there had been a hushed phone call, a lot of yes, sirs and sideways glances. Like any official, she didn’t like having her legs kicked out.
Cooper didn’t care. If Epstein was hoping he’d play the polite diplomat, the man had lost his touch.
Though Epstein Industries was officially headquartered in Manhattan, the real power center was here, in a complex of silver cubes that shimmered with reflected sky. The tallest was a six-story building topped with a bristling array of equipment. Satellite dishes and climatic trackers and scientific gear, he knew, but also laser defense shields and antiaircraft batteries and surface-to-air missiles. Gear that should never have been okayed for a private corporation. However, $300 billion bent a lot of rules. The gerrymandered whole of the NCH proved that, the nested sieves of legal loopholes that turned the Holdfast into something like a private nation-state.
Flanked by four security guards, he and Ariel walked to the building. Cooper imagined an Avenger missile streaking toward it. Extremely low-altitude trajectory, remote guided, stealth build, integrated ECM, hypersonic. When it came to stopping an Avenger, the countermeasures on the roof would be as effective as a kid’s slingshot. Cooper imagined the building vaporizing, a shock wave rolling out, pushing glass and stone in a lethal globe.
The atrium was broad and sunlit and backdropped by the skyline of Cleveland, columns of smoke rising from the city center, a news ticker five feet high scrolling. A massive tri-d screen with spectacular resolution. Apparently President Clay had formally declared martial law in the city; regular army tanks were rolling down Ontario Street.