Concord, Chapter 1
Projections
I have traveled much in Concord. —Henry David Thoreau
Saul Klein awoke before dawn with his dream to outrun.
He rose from his narrow bed and splashed water from the basin onto his face, watched it drip down again in the mirror. A lean hawk’s face sagging at the chin and jowls. An old man’s face, shimmering in the migraine halo he woke up to most mornings. He knew only one cure.
In running togs he stepped outside the rooming house, padding down the porch steps into the silent street. The chill air stippled the skin of his bare arms and legs. The sky was black. Simulated gas lamps illuminated immaculate cottages huddling together in their wisteria shawls. He set off at a jog, leaving his cul-de-sac behind.
In some dreams she was restored to him, to that long gondola afternoon, smiling confidingly, still in love with him in spite of the drowning world. They were good dreams, and rare.
His usual path led him through the tightly packed residential streets into the village downtown, past the shops and cafes on Main, past the pearlescent outline of the Creche dome and the sparse white steeple of the Chapel, dwarfed by the high curving needle of the Conn. Ordinarily he’d swerve onto the village green, jogging lightly past the bandshell, and through the sculpted line of deciduous trees to the trail bordering of Walden Pond. Then he’d run a lap or two around the pond before retracing his steps homeward, long before the sun began to sparkle on the Conn’s glassy tip. Before the others had opened their eyes, he’d be home and showered, the edge of his headache dulled. He would be ready to face the latest in the endless succession of similar days that his team had so painstakingly designed.
But that was before the dreams turned bad. Last night, for instance, had returned him to his last moments with Suzanne, their bodies jostled in the hurtling van, fleeing the mob, bound for the sea. Gunshots, muffled booms, the agony of a new world struggling to be born. He felt her lips brush his lips, touch his ear: the hiss of her breath, the hum of her voice. But the words, the words were gone. He stretched out his hands, but her face shrank rapidly to a dot and was swallowed in the exploding darkness.
He turned away from the village center, picking up speed as he left the last of the houses behind. Legs pumping, he ran into the ag fields, between coleopteran greenhouses, before plunging into the forest of conifers that ringed the community like a cyanic wooden wall. A tall man in his mid-fifties, gray and lean, running under the dark arms of trees that had been planted in a densifying spiral, the better to hide Concord’s still center from its plunging edge. His breath came in pants. He might outrun it yet, the dream of the woman who had been his lover, and Marco’s wife. She had abandoned them both, abandoned the project, abandoned Concord, long ago.
He raced through the too-regular rows of spruce and pine trees, fanning their blue branches like hands to block his way. His own hands flashed mechanically up and down as he pushed himself to run harder, trying to shake the sore grit out of his ankles and hip joints.
He dodged a root and plummeted into a clearing and brought himself up short, gasping.
A doe, poised between branches, long neck upraised, turned its head to look at him with its infinitely soft liquid eyes. At her feet a fawn wobbled on spindly legs, awkward as though newborn. It too swiveled its head to take him in. For a moment they regarded each other, man and deer, as blood hammered in his ears. Panting, he stumbled against a tree, putting his hand out for support.
The fawn disappeared.
It took him longer than it should have to understand what had happened, why the doe did not react to the sudden obliteration of her fawn. His mouth twisted with disappointment. Following the line of his arm he spied the thin shimmer of the array of lenses embedded in the creases of the trunk he touched. They were projector lenses, of course, each no larger than the head of a pin. In town they were so omnipresent as to be unnoticeable, filling in the gaps of the villagers’ floating existence, projecting extinct species onto tree branches of the Green, coloring leaves for the seasons, or changing as their residents’ whims dictated the façades of houses from brick bungalows to clapboard Cape Cods to the white suburban ranch style characteristic of the mid-twentieth century. So they were at work even here, the projectors, in the experimental forest where few villagers strayed. He took his hand away from the trunk and the fawn reappeared, still looking in his direction. Its mother nuzzled it before the two of them took to their hooves, silently bounding away into the fading dark.
“They flee from me,” Saul recited under his breath, “that sometime did me seek.”
Vividly and painfully he saw her again: Suzanne, sixteen years ago, holding on for dear life in the backseat of the security van rolling through fire to the embarkation point. When they came to a halt she had leaned into him, put her lips to his ear, and whispered. He remembered every detail of those last days and hours: the touch of her hand, the green gleam of her eyes. Why could he not remember what she had said? He remembered all too well waking without her, on the submarine, and the dull anguish in Marco’s eyes. The burden in his arms. Who exactly had abandoned whom?
With a sigh he pushed himself away from the tree and began jogging again, then running, until he was sprinting like a man pursued toward the experimental forest’s edge.
Later he’d think back on this moment and question his motives. Was he following the deer? Trying to catch them? What if he had succeeded? The beautiful doe, in flight, glancing back at him in mockery. He hurled himself after the holograms, pursued by the breath of his dream, eyes streaming. Trees flashed past. Overhead, the sky was being stripped of its black crepe a layer at a time, lightening steadily. He saw the white flash of the doe’s tail and stretched out his hands. Then his foot struck a root, and he fell.
White shock. He sprawled prone into a bed of pine needles, suspended electrically in the moment of impact, without pain. Groaning, he rolled onto his back and stared up through the fractal web of branches into the lightening sky. He pulled himself into a sitting position and froze. He wasn’t alone.
Standing at the clearing’s edge a lean black man looked down at him, not tall, wearing an incongruous black wetsuit, with a black duffel bag slung over one shoulder. The man’s face was pitted with acne scars and his hair and goatee were gray. His eyes were black and lustrous as the deer’s. He extended a pointing finger, hesitantly, then touched it to his forehead. Saul imitated the gesture. His hand came away bloody.
“Attendez,” the black man said. He plucked a faded bandana from his duffel bag and extended it.
Saul got warily to his feet. He shook his head, as though to make the stranger disappear, and nauseous pain stabbed at his eyes. “You’re real.”
The black man stared at him. Saul accepted the bandana and dabbed at his wound with it.
“Who are you?”
“I am called Ali,” the black man said. His English was strongly accented, with a West African lilt. Senegal, Saul figured, or Mali. “You are?”
“Saul,” Saul said, reluctantly.
“Monsieur Saul.” Ali put his palms together. “We need your help.”
We. “Where did you come from?”
Ali shook his head. “There is no time. Please.” He took a step in the direction Saul had been going, to the forest’s edge, beckoning for him to follow.
“You’re right,” Saul said. “There is no time. You had better leave. Now.”
Ali stared at him. “We need un medécin, a doctor. S’il vous plait.”
“A doctor.” Saul glanced at the brightening sky. “I’m sorry, but it’s too dangerous. If they find out you’re here…”
Ali jutted his head. “Comment? Why is this? Who is ‘they’?”
Saul shook his swimming head. Ali approached him. He smelled like sweat, and salt, and fear. Once again he put his palms together in supplication. “Monsieur. Aidez-nous. You must.”
Saul could no longer resist looking over his shoulder. The trees were still. The sky was turning pink.
“You must decide, monsieur,” said Ali. He turned and strode off through the trees, as if confident that Saul would follow.
And he did follow, though he knew all too well where the path must lead.
Like the other residents of Concord, Saul habitually avoided views of the sea: its imperial history, its long decline, its plastics and algae blooms. The blind permutations of dead waves like an image of the nothingness of the world: mare nostrum, mare incognita. It was a blank surface in which he could only expect to see himself.
The forest ended abruptly, without thinning: a wall of conifers at Concord’s edge, beyond which the mossy earth gave way to the gray painted steel of the immense deck, running in a straight line to the left and right as far as the eye could see. A hundred feet below the ocean surged. There was no railing, no gunwale, but bollards were set at intervals on the deck’s edge, and tied to one of these was a length of nylon rope. Crouched beside it was another dark-skinned man in a ragged wetsuit, struggling to raise some sort of burden. Ali ran toward him while Saul lagged behind, fighting his nausea and fear.
“You have to hurry,” he called after Ali. “They’re coming.” He could picture them, the Constable and his deputies, men with hidden faces and long guns. If they found these men there, and Saul with them…
Would they drag him below, he wondered, kicking and screaming to Sundown House? Or would they simply throw him overboard? He glimpsed himself floating in Concord’s wake, a castaway. It was a weirdly attractive image.
His dream was strangely close to him. The hum of her voice in his ear.
Ali and the other man grappled at the rope. As the other man belayed, Ali lowered himself onto his belly and groped at the suspended burden. With a desperate heave he brought up the body of a third man with a loop of rope slung under his armpits. He was unconscious. Ali and his companion rolled him onto the deck until he lay spread-eagled on his back, breathing shallowly. Ali looked back at Saul and made an impatient gesture with his hand. Saul started forward. He saw that Ali’s companion was much younger, and powerfully built. He raked Saul briefly with a suspicious gaze before returning his attention to the unconscious man.
“This is Yann,” said Ali, gesturing at the younger man. “He is my nephew. And this is his father, my older brother, Jean-Baptiste.”
Saul nodded uncomprehendingly. “I haven’t been here in a long time,” he said, staring out over the water. “It’s not exactly encouraged.”
“Il a besoin d’un médecin,” said Yann. He glared up at Saul.
“A doctor, monsieur,” Ali said. He touched Saul’s knee, to get his attention. “You said there was a doctor.”
“Where the hell did you come from, anyway?”
“Does it matter?” Ali’s eyes were large and liquid and sorrowful.
Not to the Constable, Saul thought.
Grasping the bollard with both hands, he leaned out cautiously to peer over Concord’s edge. The rope dropped swaying, following the incurved line of the hull, and ended at a battered-looking sailboat, bumping against the massive steel hull like a toy in a bathtub. Saul couldn’t imagine where it had come from, or perhaps he didn’t want to. He turned to Ali.
“You need to climb back down from here, get back into that boat, and sail away as fast as you can. They’re coming.” He groped for his high-school French. “Les forces de sécurité.”
“Nous n’avons pas le temps pour cela,” Yann said sharply.
“He’s right,” said Saul. “No time.”
Ali made a placating gesture. “This man needs medical attention.”
“He won’t get it,” Saul said grimly. “Security is on its way.”
“Sécurité? Bon. Security is what we need. Security, and a doctor. A ship such as this must have resources, many resources. Surely you can afford to be generous to three desperate men.”
“It doesn’t matter what I can afford,” Saul said. “I’m not in charge. And this isn’t a ship. It’s the sovereign territory of Concord.”
“Que dit-il?” Yann said to Ali. His hand rested on the unconscious man’s forehead.
“Concord,” Ali repeated. “The Concord Corporation?” Saul nodded. “You are a shareholder?”
“A Founder,” Saul said. “But don’t think that gives me any sway with security. If they catch you, they’ll shoot you. Or worse.”
Ali’s nodded thoughtfully. “We are caught, it seems, between the devil and the deep blue sea.” Saul was startled by the little smile on his face.
Yann said something in French too rapid for Saul to follow. “Non, non,” Ali said softly, but the younger man would not be placated. He sprang to his feet, an ugly-looking knife in his hand, shouting “Il faut qu’il nous aide!”
“Non,” said Ali to his nephew, with the same strange half-smile on his face. “Nous ne sommes pas des sauvages.”
Saul looked into the young man’s face: more than desperate, a face betrayed. Abandoned. Why was she, Suzanne, so present to his mind? She had abandoned both of them, husband and lover, to take her chances on the ruined mainland. Each of the men who had loved her, now at sea, responded with wounded bewilderment. Marco, First Founder, took refuge at the invisible center of things, a seldom-seen figurehead; Saul, the Second Founder, moved to the margins. He joined the staff of the Lyceum, where he might watch over the rising generation, preparing them for the future he and Marco had devised: Concord, sovereign city floating free, making a clean break from the mistakes of the past. Ghosts don’t walk on water. He persuaded himself he’d forgotten Suzanne, put her away with the rest of the world. The years passed. But now she had returned to him in dreams, meeting him nightly in the seasick dark.
Ali was watching his face. “Founder’s syndrome,” he said suddenly. “Eh? I have heard of such things.” He put a pacifying hand on Yann’s arm, who shook it away. Tears were standing in his eyes.
“Saul,” Ali said. “I think you are a friend. As a friend, I beg you. We have no more food, no water, no medicine. The sea is merciless. We will take our chance here, with men. Like men.” He indicated his bag. “I have codes, I have currency. Is it not possible for us to purchase a share in your territory?”
“Your money’s no good here,” Saul said. “They will kill you. And if they catch me talking to you, they’ll probably kill me too.”
Ali nodded, but it was if he were responding to words unsaid. “I do not envy you,” he said gently.
Saul thought again of his dream: gloved hands reaching out to seize the woman he loved and tear her away from him. At dream’s end he was floating in the water, in Concord’s wake, watching his life’s work disappear. A wild desire took hold of him. He grasped Ali by the shoulders, ignoring the tip of Yann’s knife grazing his ribs. “Take me with you.”
Ali seemed truly surprised for the first time. “Comment?”
“Take me with you,” Saul said urgently. “Let’s leave, together. Right now.”
“My brother needs a doctor,” said Ali.
“He’s one man,” Saul said. “If you want to live, you’ll take me with you. But we have to leave now. S’il vous plait.”
They stood tensely, three men, one pressing the tip of a knife into Saul’s side. A limb of the sun climbed over the horizon and flooded the scene with red light, casting their long shadows onto the silent forest. With a sigh, Ali unshouldered his duffel bag and pushed it into Saul’s hands.
“Oncle!” Yann cried. A vein pulsed in his temple. “Qu’est-ce que tu fais?”
“What are you doing?” Saul echoed. “I told you, we don’t use money here, not even crypto. Not anymore.”
“I choose the devil I have met,” said Ali calmly. His eyes swept the line of trees behind Saul, then rested again on Saul’s face. “You not just a Founder, Saul. You are a man. Remember that. And remember us.”
Saul, clutching the duffel, took a step back. Yann gripped his knife, but Ali took him firmly by the wrist and lowered it.
“If you will not help us,” Ali said to Saul, “perhaps you can help yourself.”
Saul searched for words, but found none. He took a last look at them: the wizened older man, the angry young one, and Jean-Baptiste like a dead fish on the cold steel deck. He crumpled the duffel bag to his chest and turned away.
Remember us. The words followed him as he ran.
He ran for the line of trees, angling away from the path he’d taken earlier. He risked one last glance over his shoulder, saw Yann gesticulating at his uncle, Jean-Baptiste supine on the deck, and Ali following Saul with sad eyes. He lifted a hand in farewell and the sun streamed through his fingers like a blessing.
As soon as he was under cover Saul stopped running. He dropped to a crouch and listened. Yes. The crackle of radios and the snapping of twigs.
He crab-walked his way into a hollow half-filled with fallen pine needles and waited there, listening. Maybe, he thought wildly, they’re coming to their senses. Maybe they’ve already dropped down the rope and into their boat and are sailing away.
Indistinct voices. A shout. An agonizing silence before the shots. He closed his eyes. One volley, two. There would be no need for a third.
He crouched there, rocking on his heels, the duffel bag cradled to his chest. He trusted me, he said to himself. That man trusted me. Why?
After what seemed a long time he heard the radio buzzing nearby. The Constable’s voice. “Routine incursion,” he said in his improbable accent, west Texas by way of Moscow. “Send a hygiene squad for the boat.”
Saul backed silently away from the sound of footsteps, duffel bag clenched in both hands. Ten yards, twenty. He got to his feet and ran as though he could run straight out of the floating nightmare in which he’d trapped himself and thousands of other shareholders. He’d told Ali that he wasn’t in charge, and he wasn’t. It was true what he’d said: if the Constable had caught him with the refugees he would have been killed, too. Killed or sent to Sunrise House before his time. But these facts did not erase his sense of guilt.
It would be all too easy to let himself be caught, to let himself be taken, to let it all be over. He realized he was weeping as he ran, yet he ran lightly, without effort, toward home. He felt like he were rising. And the wild desire was still in him, the words he’d spoken to the refugees: Take me with you.
He was gone. Into the hollow stepped the Constable, a thickset man in red-stitched cowboy boots, chinos, a white polo shirt, and a red baseball cap. He dropped into a crouch and studied the traces on the ground. His fingertips brushed the disturbed pattern of needles at his feet, turned his head to catch the rustle of leaves in the distance.
The radio crackled and the Constable lifted it to his mouth.
“Routine incursion,” he said again, thoughtfully. “Nothing to worry about.”
