The backpack was still cutting into Maggie’s shoulders, and now she took it off, reminded of the day she had met the representative from PATH. A lot had happened since then, but what had she accomplished?
As if she were reading her mind, Tiffany said, “Long story short, the MoMs group has recently received some money, but we don’t have a mission — not a real one, anyway. If I’m going to be on television, it would be nice to have something important to talk about.”
Maggie recognized the tone, the set of the jaw, the refusal to be dissuaded. Don’t do it, she wanted to say. She wanted to warn Tiffany about all she stood to lose, but the sensation that she was looking at a younger, better version of herself destroyed her ability to speak.
“I’m thinking…well, I’m actually thinking two things,” said Tiffany. “The first is that there is some money — quite a lot of it, actually — in the MoMs account. And the second thing is that you might have a few ideas about how that money can best be spent.”
“You have to focus in,” said Maggie. “It’s easy to get distracted if you take on too much at once.”
Maggie wanted to ask how a person chose just one thing in a world where so much needed doing. She wanted to warn Tiffany that progress on any one of the items was impossibly slow. She wanted to say that there were sacrifices involved. Instead, she said, “Tomás is getting a new trial, so it would be wonderful if you could send something for his legal fees. And I’ve completely neglected George…” She held out the backpack with the same mixture of reluctance and relief with which the PATH woman had passed her the quilted bag with the name GEORGE appliquéd on the side, and the woman in front of her took it with the same eager confidence Maggie had once had. It was as if Maggie were both staying and leaving, both giving the prisoners up and holding them close. When the pastor’s wife transferred the files from the backpack to a locked drawer of her desk, Maggie noticed that there were no other papers in the drawer. The surface of the desk was clean too, arrayed only with a set of matching implements, no doubt purchased from the office supply depot in town but never used.
Tiffany went to the donation closet and filled a small duffel with clothing. “What size are your feet?” she asked. She repacked the backpack with food and money and gave Maggie the telephone number of someone she knew in San Francisco. “I’ll be sure to give the same telephone number to Lyle,” she added. “And don’t you worry, I’ll check on him as soon as I’m finished here.”
“And Will,” said Maggie. “Can you find out where Will’s unit is stationed and give him the number too?”
“Of course I can. Don’t you worry about a thing. And don’t forget to call me now and then to let me know how you are.”
Tiffany gave Maggie her cheerleader smile and accompanied her to where the bicycle was tipped over beside the reflecting pool. “This is just between us,” she said. “Not that the pastor wouldn’t fully support everything we’re doing, but he has a lot on his mind right now. What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”
“I’m not sure that’s true,” said Maggie with some of her old fire. “But of course, my lips are sealed.”
“If he has a problem with it, I’ll just tell him it’s my one crazy thing.” When Tiffany laughed, Maggie felt a burst of joy, and better than joy, she felt hope — for herself, for the prisoners, and for the world. Where would she go if she could go anywhere? She’d stay right there in Red Bud, of course, but life was a narrowing down as much as an opening out, and for now Red Bud was the one place on earth she couldn’t be.
She wheeled the bicycle to the top of a low rise and looked around her at the green fields of wheat waving gracefully in the breeze. Please take care of Will, she thought again, but this time it wasn’t so much a prayer to God as to the other people out there, people who might lend a hand to a stranger in time of need.
In the distance, a straight ribbon of highway stretched all the way to California. On either side of it, a flock of oil derricks bowed and preyed on the rich Carboniferous sludge deposited millions of years before, when Oklahoma was a steamy and suppurating swamp. Behind her, the double-domed Church of the New Incarnation had doubled again — it was sprawled on its back giving comfort to the sky and it was also flipped upside down, drowning in the reflecting pool. As she surveyed the familiar landscape, she wondered again if she had done any good at all, and if she had, had she done right? When she had started down this path all those months ago, she had assumed that things would be clearer than they were and that she would be able to look back on her choices and accomplishments with certainty and satisfaction. Partial knowledge, she thought. It was all anybody had. Overhead, a plane tipped its wings at her, filled with people who had other problems and other destinies awaiting them. As she watched it disappear into the distance, a hawk plummeted from the heavens and rocketed up again with a field mouse in its talons. She was sorry for the little creature, but there was nothing she could do for it. Even she knew that saving too many mice would doom the hawk. The world was paradoxical, and if there was a solution to the paradox, it wasn’t for her to know.
13.0 BABYLON
People have been at war for all but twenty-nine years of history. What makes anyone think we’re going to stop now?
I learned that there’s a heck of a lot of mom power out there, and if you just figure out how to harness it, there’s no telling what you can do.
Of course it wasn’t just the moms, it was the money. Winslow and Lexington were all up in arms about it, but when we didn’t need it for the website, Tiffany refused to give it back.
Those guys were getting in pretty deep, so we helped them mirror their site on other servers. They needed to protect themselves.
Once a simulation gets started, it can pretty much run itself.
We found him sitting on the sidewalk outside, and when we brought him into the building, he walked straight up to his old cage and got right in.
I hope they don’t find her. I like to think of her out there somewhere, making the world a better place.
13.1 Will
The morning was still and hot, giving the desert a timeless, lacquered look. Will took out the controller and attached the joystick before lifting the Parakeet he called Polly out of its case. It weighed six ounces and only resembled a bird in the rounded fatness of its body and the beaklike sensors attached to its head. Instead of wings, it had four rigid appendages topped with rotors for vertical lift and a stabilizing rotor in the middle of its back. The payload port on its belly was fitted with a camera that relayed signals to the computer pack that Nate carried over his shoulder.
“I kinda wish I’d been issued one of those Groundhogs,” said Nate, nodding to where third team was climbing into the Humvee that would follow behind a robot that resembled a mini tank. “Those things are awesome.”
“I don’t know,” said Will. “I think the Parakeet is cool.”
“It doesn’t have a gun,” countered Nate. “That’s a major negative right there.”