Westlake, Donald E - Novel 51 by Humans (v1.1) Page A

air?
Maybe once, at Carnival.”
                Frowning, Maria Elena said, “The
company is Brazilian. Isn’t it?”
                “The subsidiary is Brazilian. That’s the company you know about. But the
main company is far from here. The stockholders don’t live in Brazil .”
                “Where do they live?” I’ll go there,
Maria Elena thought. With photos, with statistics. How dare they not be part of
what they’ve done? How dare they not even have to lie?
                “Where do they live?” The pilot
looked down at the copper- colored river they would follow for the next quarter
hour. “Some in Britain ,” he said. “Some in Germany , Italy , Guatemala , Switzerland , Kuwait , Japan. But most in the United States .”
                “The United States .”
                “The multinational corporation is
responsible to no country,” the pilot told her, “but it was an American idea.”
                “They couldn’t do this in America . That’s why they come here.”
                “Well, of course,” the pilot said,
and laughed.
                They flew for a while in silence,
Maria Elena full of her own thoughts. The lives destroyed—her own life
destroyed—and she could never even see the people who did it. The people who benefit. This was the place where they
did the bad things, but they themselves were far away, unreachable. Her
occasional dreams of righting wrongs, saving those who had not as yet been polluted,
were even more idle than she’d thought. There was nothing to be accomplished
here, in Brazil , if the decisions were being made seven thousand miles to the north, by
people who never came here, perhaps didn’t entirely understand the results of
their decisions, had never been faced with the end reality of what they did.
                But how could she reach them, so far
away? That was even more of a fantasy than the one she cherished about invading
a penthouse apartment in Rio , with
its grand view of Sugarloaf out the picture windows, breaking into the party of
tuxedoed men and ball-gowned women, weeping, shouting, showing them the
pictures, making them understand.
                She wouldn’t even have that fantasy
any more, to soothe her into sleep at night, if the tuxedoed men and
ball-gowned women were merely dolls, toys, remote-controlled from beyond the
horizon. Without the fantasy, without the comforting false belief that remedy was possible, how would she ever sleep
again? What fantasy could take its place? “The United Nations is in America ,” she said at last.
                “What was that?”
                She repeated what she’d said, and
the pilot nodded, agreeing with her, saying, “In New York, that’s right. What
about it?”
                “I’ll never get to New York ,” she said. Not now. Maria Elena might have someday, but that was all over now.
                “Why not? Anyone can go to New York .”
                “In this plane?”
                “Not in this plane,” he acknowledged.
“But there are planes.”
                “They cost too much money,” Maria
Elena said. “I would never have that much money.” Never again.
                “You could win the lottery,” he
suggested.
                She laughed, her throat aching.
“That’s true, I could. But they have quotas in America . Immigration quotas.”
                “Not for visitors. Short-term
visas.”
                “What could a person do with a short-term
visa?”
                “Well, then you hide,” he said. “You
become an illegal resident.”
                “What could a person do, of value,
who was hiding from the law?”
                ‘Then you apply for a long-term
visa,” he advised her. “And save your