the task of seizing my assets fell to him. Arcadia has managed to survive as long as it has by maintaining deep relationships with long-standing banking houses. It makes it easier for us to survive the ebb and flow of global finance, but it also means we are centrally managed. That much easier to excise the rootless from their allowances.
“Spend it on some tree farms, would you?” I ask.
“Gladly,” he laughs. “Silas,” he says, his voice becoming serious. “I'm not telling you to give up. Don't crawl off into the woods and let the humus have you. Stay hidden. Do you understand? It'll be the only way you can find out what is going on.”
“What is going on?” I ask.
He ignores my question. “Do you remember Victoria's Diamond Jubilee?” he asks.
“Vaguely,” I reply. We had been in London for the celebration, and he had dragged me into some scam involving gold from Witwatersrand. He had claimed it was an opportunity investment for Arcadia, but I hadn't entirely bought that line of bullshit. I had been right too; the other party had tried to cheat us, and a rather straight-forward enterprise had become complicated. And bloody.
“There was a party we attended. A masked ball.”
“There was?” I have the same memory problems as Callis—all Arcadians did—and the older memories suffered the most. But Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee had only been a little over a hundred years ago.
“I met a woman there, a banker's daughter. She introduced me to her father. I made a small investment with him before we left London.”
“Ah,” I say, suddenly understanding why he was telling me this. “And this investment has been quietly maturing ever since, hasn't it?”
“The bank has a branch in Adelaide,” he says. He tells me the name of the bank. “They'll be expecting you.”
“And then what?” I ask.
“Find out what happened,” he says. “Find the reporter.”
Mere.
A strange emotion tugs at me. “And then what?” I repeat, at a loss of what else to say.
“Help me find the root of this poison before it infects all of Arcadia,” he says.
What other choice do I have, really? The rootless die after a while. They can't find soil that will nourish them, and the other method of staying alive is bloody.
It never ends well.
He gives me a different number to reach him at—a private line I can call directly. After I hang up, I scour the house, looking for a source of useful news. Fortunately, the caretaker is one of those who prefers to thumb through a paper over breakfast rather than scan a newsfeed on a computer. I find a stack of newspapers in a recycling bin in the spare bedroom, but there's only a week's worth. If there was a story to be found in the Southern Ocean, the world has moved on already.
Australian elections are coming up and the front-runner has just been caught in the sort of scandal that would derail a US candidate, but as Down Under isn't as tightly wound as North America, the media has to work pretty hard to make the story seem worthy of the attention they're giving it. Piracy is up along the Somalian coast. People are still killing each other in Central Africa. Countries in the Middle East are changing governments. Again. Though it has been a long time since much dramatic change swept across Outremer. It used to take centuries for these lands to change hands, and now it is a matter of decades. A pipeline rupture near the Black Sea has caught the media's fancy as well as a story about infidelity between a Hollywood power couple. Based on the amount of column inches devoted to each story, it's hard to gauge which is the worse disaster, though I suspect the Hollywood couple's agents are milking the story a bit as neither has had a decent hit in the last five years.
The ecological and environmental impact of the pipeline rupture makes me want to run back to the woods and hide underground, but that's been the reaction for decades now and what has it gotten us? Arcadia weeps as
“Spend it on some tree farms, would you?” I ask.
“Gladly,” he laughs. “Silas,” he says, his voice becoming serious. “I'm not telling you to give up. Don't crawl off into the woods and let the humus have you. Stay hidden. Do you understand? It'll be the only way you can find out what is going on.”
“What is going on?” I ask.
He ignores my question. “Do you remember Victoria's Diamond Jubilee?” he asks.
“Vaguely,” I reply. We had been in London for the celebration, and he had dragged me into some scam involving gold from Witwatersrand. He had claimed it was an opportunity investment for Arcadia, but I hadn't entirely bought that line of bullshit. I had been right too; the other party had tried to cheat us, and a rather straight-forward enterprise had become complicated. And bloody.
“There was a party we attended. A masked ball.”
“There was?” I have the same memory problems as Callis—all Arcadians did—and the older memories suffered the most. But Queen Victoria's Diamond Jubilee had only been a little over a hundred years ago.
“I met a woman there, a banker's daughter. She introduced me to her father. I made a small investment with him before we left London.”
“Ah,” I say, suddenly understanding why he was telling me this. “And this investment has been quietly maturing ever since, hasn't it?”
“The bank has a branch in Adelaide,” he says. He tells me the name of the bank. “They'll be expecting you.”
“And then what?” I ask.
“Find out what happened,” he says. “Find the reporter.”
Mere.
A strange emotion tugs at me. “And then what?” I repeat, at a loss of what else to say.
“Help me find the root of this poison before it infects all of Arcadia,” he says.
What other choice do I have, really? The rootless die after a while. They can't find soil that will nourish them, and the other method of staying alive is bloody.
It never ends well.
He gives me a different number to reach him at—a private line I can call directly. After I hang up, I scour the house, looking for a source of useful news. Fortunately, the caretaker is one of those who prefers to thumb through a paper over breakfast rather than scan a newsfeed on a computer. I find a stack of newspapers in a recycling bin in the spare bedroom, but there's only a week's worth. If there was a story to be found in the Southern Ocean, the world has moved on already.
Australian elections are coming up and the front-runner has just been caught in the sort of scandal that would derail a US candidate, but as Down Under isn't as tightly wound as North America, the media has to work pretty hard to make the story seem worthy of the attention they're giving it. Piracy is up along the Somalian coast. People are still killing each other in Central Africa. Countries in the Middle East are changing governments. Again. Though it has been a long time since much dramatic change swept across Outremer. It used to take centuries for these lands to change hands, and now it is a matter of decades. A pipeline rupture near the Black Sea has caught the media's fancy as well as a story about infidelity between a Hollywood power couple. Based on the amount of column inches devoted to each story, it's hard to gauge which is the worse disaster, though I suspect the Hollywood couple's agents are milking the story a bit as neither has had a decent hit in the last five years.
The ecological and environmental impact of the pipeline rupture makes me want to run back to the woods and hide underground, but that's been the reaction for decades now and what has it gotten us? Arcadia weeps as
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