Normally he would go out for a game of golf, but he wasn’t scheduled for anything this afternoon. He did not particularly want to leave the house, either. The world seemed full of danger. He wondered how Madeline had managed the drive over to church, if that was where she’d gone.
He took his wallet from the ridiculous Bermuda shorts. Everything had been replaced; he thought there might even be more cash than before. He slid out the plastic card Sully had given him, looked over the meaningless numbers and letters. Sully had said the person on the other end was a very close friend, somebody he cared about a great deal. If Ruppert contacted him, it would draw the attention of Terror. Of course, both he and the person on the other end clearly had Terror’s attention, anyway.
He remembered what Sully had promised him: “what you always wanted.” He still couldn’t guess what Sully might have meant by that.
He spent most of the afternoon laid out on the couch in the living room, conjuring up music and movies on the screen. He avoided the news altogether-it only offered confusion and lies.
Madeline arrived home in the evening, her makeup smudged and blotted. There was a dullness in her normally bright eyes that he hadn’t seen before. She sat in a recliner across the room.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
“I’m…” Madeline’s voice was soft. She cleared her throat, then began to speak in careful, businesslike tones, as if dictating to a stenographer. “I met with my life counselor and told her about our problems.”
“You told her everything?”
“Of course not. Everyone seems to think we were on vacation somewhere, so I’m going along with that. I meant about the…the other woman.”
Ruppert wanted to protest again that there had not been another woman, but the hard, determined look on Madeline’s face warned him not to try.
“She pointed out that divorce is still a sin, and that a woman’s duty is to hold a marriage together. I don’t know if I’ll ever trust you again, Daniel, but we have to keep going.”
Daniel felt relief, but also a tinge of disappointment. Some little part of him had apparently been hoping she would leave him, but she would never do anything so strongly discouraged by the church.
“So what do you want to do?” he asked.
“She told me that the best way to heal a damaged marriage is to go back to the purpose of marriage, and that’s to create life.”
“You want to have a baby?”
“I want four.”
“What?”
“It’s not natural for people to put off children as long as we have, Daniel. I’m almost thirty. It’s our duty to have children, and anyway I’m tired of getting sneered at by the young mothers in my groups. I want to have so many children that nobody can question us. If we time it right, we can have at least four. She told me that I’d be so busy as a mother that I wouldn’t have time to be so self-centered and worried about my own feelings. So that’s what we’ll do, Daniel. I’m going to the doctor on Monday to get a schedule, and I expect you to make me pregnant.”
“Do I get any say in this?”
“You had your say when we got married.”
Ruppert didn’t feel at all excited about the idea, with Terror watching them so closely now. Children would make them even more vulnerable. Children would force them to be obedient citizens. He supposed that was the idea.
“Madeline, I really don’t think a child is going to solve our problems.”
“I’m not interested in your opinion. It is your duty to God to sire children, and mine to bear them.”
They sat in silence for a minute, and then Ruppert asked in a quiet voice, “What did they do to you?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“I’ll tell you what they did to me. They threatened to drown me. They electrocuted me. They nearly beat me to death. They kept me in a freezing cell-”
“I don’t want to know!” she screamed. She bolted from the chair to her feet. “Maybe they were punishing you for your sins. Did you ever think of that? Did you ever think maybe you deserved it?”
“No, I never thought that.”
“They said you were a sexual deviant. They had proof. They made me swear again and again I would make sure you lived a clean and moral life. That’s what I’m going to do. From now on, we’re going to be a normal family.” She stalked out of the room. Her high heels clicked on the hardwood floor of the foyer as she crossed to the stairs.
Ruppert stared at the blank video wall, which he’d turned off, leaving it like a slab of polished obsidian in the middle of the room. He could see his own dark reflection looking back at him.
It wasn’t just the constant surveillance and the secret laws and the powerful agencies, he thought. It wasn’t just the state church, or the crushing weight of propaganda generated through every available medium, though all these were important tools. Ultimately their power was to colonize individual relationships, to use ideology to isolate those who questioned the state of the world from their own families and friends. If you wanted any kind of intimacy or any kind of success in life, you had to play along. If you pretended to believe a thing long enough, eventually it just became easier to go ahead and believe the thing was true, especially when every mechanism of social and economic reward depended on you adhering to the prescribed beliefs.
“You guys really know what you’re doing, don’t you?” he said to his dark reflection. The reflection stared back at him, unblinking, and said nothing.
THIRTEEN
At the GlobeNet studio on Monday, a makeup girl painted over the bruises on Ruppert’s face and the injuries to his hands, then sprayed on a fake tan. One of the producers hung a plastic lei around Ruppert’s neck and told him they were going to “ad-lib” some chatter about Ruppert’s recent vacation. Ad-libbing meant they would read some scripted informal chatter, the type that reassured the audience that GlobeNet reporters were just regular folks like them.
When he’d settled in between Amanda Greene and the new, younger, hipper sports reporter, he waited for the theme music to pass and then read: “Good evening and welcome to GlobeNet-L.A.’s nightly news. I’m Daniel Ruppert, returning from a fantastic week on St. Lucia.” This confused him-wasn’t the lei associated with Hawaii rather than the Caribbean? Would the audience bother to notice?
“Looks like somebody wishes they were still on vacation.” Amanda delivered the line as if it were perfectly spontaneous. Following the stage direction floating before him in giant holographic letters, Ruppert pretended to notice he was wearing the lei.
“Oops!” Ruppert said, holding up the plastic flowers with a finger. “I guess I had such a good time I forgot I was coming back to work!”
“I think we all feel that way on Mondays, Daniel,” Amanda said.
“That’s right, Amanda.” Ruppert forced his charming newsguy smile. “Well, big news from the mayor’s office: This year’s Fourth of July parade is going to be bigger than ever, including tanks driven by the brave men and women at Fort Irwin and a spectacular air display courtesy of the fine boys at Los Angeles Air Force Base. Ten thousand flags will hang along Sunset Boulevard to celebrate.” Video of workers hanging flags and bunting played as he spoke. “Police are promising to sweep up the homeless and the drug addicts to make the parade safe for good citizens…”
After the taping, a notice appeared on the green desk in front of Ruppert summoning him to George Baldwin’s office. He trudged down the wide corridor, keeping his hands in his pockets to hide their shaking. The Terror agent’s office was at the end of the hall, walled with black glass where most offices had clear windows. His body seemed to grow heavier with each step. Could they be displeased with him already?
As Ruppert drew near the closed glass door, a glowing female face emerged from the black glass as if swimming up from deep waters-Baldwin’s digital assistant.
