Ambient by Jack Womack Page B

thorned shrubbery and masks of carved tree bark. All
romance, after all, one of those tales you grow up hearing-such
as how blind alligators swim through the sewers' murk, or that if
you piss on the third rail you'll be electrocuted, or that most of
the homebodies once had money in bushels. Certainly not; only
the ones living before the Ebb.
    Driving beneath the Army-green girders of the George Washington Bridge, watching the great flags hanging down from the
arches billow in the breeze, passing the broken stubs of the toll
booth plaza, we reached the Saw Mill Parkway, which was under
Army guard. In lieu of conversation, I turned on the radio, dialing to WINS news. Israeli settlements on the Persian Gulf were
shelled by Iraq. Tass reported that the Czara and the Politburo
met to discuss the growing demand among the Russian people for
vid channels of their own choosing. An unconfirmed report from the White House listed the security adviser missing and unaccounted. The president's Food Commission reported that hunger
in America had been eliminated among those who hadn't starved.
Dryco had done its part in the past to accomplish that goal. Parcels of supplies had been airlifted to starving farm communities
in Indiana at the Old Man's request nine months earlier. That the
supplies consisted of surplus diet pills, laxatives, and pictures of
E was noticed before takeoff. Not even the Old Man's foes claimed
that the huge boxes were deliberately dropped into the midst of
the crowds; they were.

    After an hour-it was just past three-we turned off the parkway onto the estate road; the guards saluted as we passed. The
estate stretched from the river several miles in and several miles
up. There were forty-five buildings on the grounds besides the
main house and the chapel. Guards, relatives, friends, tutors,
proxies, lalas, visitors, and hangers-on stayed in the other houses.
I even had a house provided for me on our weekends. Mine had
fourteen rooms; I'd never seen half of them.
    "Dress," Mister Dryden said to Avalon. He seemed eager for
fun. She put that wonderful wig back on again; slipped on a pair
of black stilettos and pulled on a heavy white ribbed sweater. It
covered her to the tops of her thighs.
    "Wifey ought to like this outfit," she said.
    "She won't notice."
    "You could set her on fire and she wouldn't notice. But I know
who will. "
    "Birthday boy?"
    "Uh-huh."
    "Father equals son," Mister Dryden said, smiling.
    We drove by the airstrip. The Old Man retained four jets, refitted Boeing 837s. Neither the Old Man nor Mister Dryden flew
much anymore; it was too easy to take a plane down. The copters, big black Sikorsky autogiros, were also there. Tucked in one of the hangars was the Old Man's first airplane, a prop job
he and his first partners had bought in Boca Raton, in the days
before he'd even met Susie D; some wit, years past, had scrawled
Rosebud across the nose. The airstrip's radarscopes were in constant operation; if an attack was launched by anyone other than
Russia itself-not likely-exos would take all intruders so well
as most of the neighboring property. A starscope searched the
skies hourly for flying saucers. The Old Man faithfully believed
a Church of E precept that, upon his return, E would come to
earth in some sort of flying saucer, accompanied by a retinue of,
in the Old Man's phrasing, "space critters."

    The Old Man loved security. A twelve-foot stone wall surrounded the central estate. The grounds were further protected by
razorwire, searchlights, alarms; by wolves; by machine-gun towers spaced every five hundred feet along the walls. Copters flew
over every five minutes clockround. There was a small-gauge
railroad running underground from the estate to the Dryco building in the event that a hasty escape became necessary-it never
had, and doubtless never would.
    "Approaching, Martin," said Jimmy, speaking into the intercom as we ranged. "I and I and three."
    "Roger.