Sixty days and counting - Kim Stanley Robinson [138]
“I wonder how much investment capital is out there. Or whether trained labor will be the real shortage.”
“I guess we’ll find out.”
“That’s a good thought.” And young Henry grinned.
Evening in the park, and Frank buzzed Spencer and joined him and Robin and Robert at a new fregan house. East, into a neighborhood he had never been in before, a kind of border between gentrification and urban decay, in which burned or boarded-up buildings stood mutely between renovated towers guarded by private security people. An awkward mix it seemed, and yet once inside the boarded-up shell of a brownstone, it proved to be as sheltered from the public life of the city as any other place. Home was where the food was.
Same crowd as always, a mix of young and old. Neo-hippie and postpunk. Some new thing that Frank couldn’t name with a media label. The fregan way. Mix of races, ethnicities, modes of operation. A potluck indeed. It was like this every night in so many different places around Northwest. What was happening in Washington, D.C.? What was happening anywhere else, everywhere else? No one could be sure. The media was a concocted product, reporting only a small fraction of the culture. What would they do for a sense of the zeitgeist when the culture had fractalized and the media become not a mirror, but one artifact among many? Had it ever been any different? Was this somehow new? If people walked away from the old mass culture of mass consumption, and everybody did something homegrown, what would that look like?
“How many fregan houses are there altogether, do you suppose?” Frank asked Spencer as they sat on the floor over their plates.
Spencer shrugged. “Lots I guess.”
“How do you choose which to go to?”
“Friends spread the word. I generally know by five, or Robert.”
“Not Robin?”
“Robin usually just goes where we go. You know Robin. He barely knows what city we’re in.”
“What planet is this?” Robin asked from behind them.
“See? He doesn’t want to be distracted with irrelevancies. Anyway, you can always call me.”
“I only have my FOG phone now,” Frank said. “And even that I’m trying not to use too much. I want to stay off the grid when I’m not at work.”
“I know,” Spencer said as he chewed, glancing at Frank speculatively. He swallowed. “I should tell you, no one can guarantee this group doesn’t have all the various kinds of informants in it. You know. It’s loose at the edges, and law enforcement is kind of nervous about the feral concept. I’ve heard there are people taking money from the FBI just to make some bucks, and they tell them all sorts of things.”
“Of course.” Frank looked around. No one looked like an informant.
Spencer went back to wolfing down his meal. There was a big crowd tonight and there wasn’t going to be quite enough food. At the start of every potluck they had all started to say a little thanksgiving. In most houses, they all said together, “Enough is as good as a feast,” sometimes repeating it three or four times. Maybe that was the third great correlation, enough and happiness. Or maybe it was science and Buddhism. Or compassion and action. No, these were too general. It was still out there.
Some of Spencer’s friends sat down, and he introduced them to Frank, and Frank leaned forward squinting, repeating their names. He joined their chat about the windy autumn, the park, the cops, feral gossip. Apparently this group was going back over west of Connecticut the next night.
“Do you ever see the jaguar?” Frank asked them.
“Yeah, I saw it once I think, but it was at night you know.”
The young women were happy to have Spencer’s attention. Frank was regarded by them in the same way they regarded the other older single males in the room, meaning a bit distantly if at all.
Eventually Frank left. His treehouse had been nearby. Long walk down Piney Branch Parkway to his VW van, sleep on that nice mattress, cold breeze flowing down the window at the back of the pop-up.
Thus the feral life, the most extreme set of habits Frank had lived so far. A life on foot,