Dominion (17 page)

Illumination flared from a small flatlight clipped to Lucia’s belt, throwing a harsh white glare that lent a supernatural look to the cavern, turning the craggy stone walls the color of bone while the cracks and recesses in them remained pitch black.

“This way,” Lucia said. They walked to the front of the car and then continued along the sloping cave floor. He followed her down a side passage as cramped as a chimney and nearly as steep, floored with a slippery layer of loose sand.

The passage twisted another hundred feet underground, then opened into a spacious cavern with a soaring ceiling. Off to his left, the rock floor dropped off into a sheer cliff. On the opposite side of the cavern, the partially-gutted body of an old trailer, or maybe an RV, rested against the wall. The rest of the room was cluttered with shelves and boxes filled with bits of machinery, dusty file folders, and hundreds of books and magazines. Some areas were portioned off behind makeshift curtains.

The center of the cavern looked, oddly, like anybody’s living room. There was a threadbare couch, four or five mismatched chairs, an ancient record player, a writing desk that looked like it had barely survived a house fire. The only light source was a lamp mounted into the desk, which shone on an elderly man who was now standing up to meet them.

He wobbled, then steadied himself on a walking cane. The man’s silver hair was balding at the top but long and shaggy at the sides, and he also had an unkempt beard. Ruppert couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a beard on a white man, or at least an employed one.

“Lucia,” the man said. “It is so good to see you.” He hobbled towards them, keeping his head high and spine straight despite his ungainly walk. Lucia ran towards him and hugged him—Ruppert couldn’t tell if she was excited or just trying to spare him a few steps.

“You don’t have to get up,” she said as she embraced him.

“Having a good reason to stand is worth the trouble of doing so,” the old man said. “I swear, Lucia, if I had my former life back, I would marry you today and take you to Paris tomorrow.”

“No,” Lucia said. “You’d just keep me as a mistress on the side. Until I got too old and ugly.”

“Impossible.”

“It happened to you.”

“I stand humiliated. Who is your friend?”

“He’s not my friend. He’s a propagandist for GlobeNet-L.A. His name’s Daniel Ruppert.”

“Is that right?”

Ruppert took the man’s offered left hand. The old man’s rheumy eyes took him in with a long, searching gaze that was uncomfortably reminiscent of Pastor John’s penetrating stare.

“I’m retired now,” Ruppert said, forcing a smile.

“My name is Dr. John Smith.” The old man returned the smile, and it did not look forced at all. “Not actually, but my given surname is a bit well known, not to mention an object of some shame for me personally, and in any case I’ve abandoned its use.”

“I understand,” Ruppert said. “Um, nice to meet you.”

“This is the man Sullivan recommended?” Dr. Smith asked Lucia, but without taking his eyes off Ruppert.

“That’s him,” Lucia said.

“He appears reliable enough to me.”
“You haven’t watched his newscasts.”

“And thank God for that,” Dr. Smith said. He inspected the coarse, heavy coat Ruppert was wearing. “Do you know where they bugged you?”

“I’m not even sure if they did.”

“Best to be safe, though. Lucia, will you help the gentleman into the exam room, please? And give the lights a few turns.”

“Over here,” Lucia said. She led Ruppert to the old RV against the wall, which they entered through a curtain made of the same material as Ruppert’s coat. The interior was completely lightless. Ruppert heard a ratcheting noise off to his side, and then a pair of surgical lights stuttered to life overhead. Lucia was turning a hand crank mounted into a metal box on one wall of the RV, apparently to generate electricity.

A low steel operating table occupied the center of the RV, banked by mirrors, a few clunky, boxy display screens, and an assortment of medical equipment that might have been salvaged from a hospital sometime in the early 1970s. Scalpels and assorted bottles of fluid were arrayed on the RV’s kitchen counter. The ceiling, walls and floor were all shrouded by more of the heavy material that composed Ruppert’s coat; it looked like burlap bags fixed in place with yards and yards of duct tape.

“What is this?” Ruppert asked.

“Don’t worry,” Lucia said. “You might not be bugged.”

Dr. Smith stepped up into the RV with a cardboard box tucked under one arm. He heaved it onto the table in the RV’s breakfast nook and began digging through the tangled nest of wires and cable inside.

“You can remove your coat,” Dr. Smith said. “We’re safe enough in here.” He fished out an object Ruppert couldn’t identify, a plastic yellow box the size of a deck of playing cards, with metal antennae radiating out at one end.

Ruppert shrugged off the coat, glad to be free of its weight, and tossed it onto one of the booth seats in the breakfast nook.

“Remove your shirt as well,” Dr. Smith said. He lifted out one end of a wire from the box and inserted it into a row of plugs on the side of the crankbox. “Lucia, a few more if you don’t mind.”

Lucia worked the crank, and soon the little yellow box sputtered to life with a series of sharp beeps. Dr. Smith lifted the device and rapped his knuckle a few times against the side.

Ruppert was slowly unbuttoning his shirt, distracted by the squawking device.

“There,” Dr. Smith said. He looked up at Ruppert. “Well, don’t be shy.”

“Sorry.” Ruppert hurried to strip himself to the waist.

“Step closer, if you don’t mind.” Dr. Smith held out the device toward Ruppert, and it began to beep more rapidly. “Oh, yes. Someone in this room is definitely being tracked. Would you turn around?”

Ruppert rotated to show the doctor his back, making very brief and awkward eye contact with Lucia as he turned. The device’s beeping accelerated into one long, piercing note.

“Here it is,” Dr. Smith said. “Right scapula. Perfect. Mr. Ruppert, we’re going to need you to lie face down on the table.”

“For what?” Ruppert said. His eyes darted to the rack of chunky, obsolete surgical instruments on the kitchen counter. They looked clean and bright, but terribly sharp.

“I’ll have to perform some very minor surgery,” Dr. Smith said. Ruppert whirled, half-expecting the old man to be wielding a scalpel at his bare back. Smith gave a warm smile. “You’re lucky it isn’t cranial.”

“You’re going to cut me open?”

“We’ll use a local anesthetic,” Smith said. “Don’t worry, I can enter laparoscopically. You can watch on the screen.”

“I’m not sure this is a good idea,” Ruppert said.

“It’s a simple procedure,” Smith said.

“You want to wear that coat the rest of your life?” Lucia asked. “There are millions of ex-prisoners who’d cut their own grandmother to get their trackers removed.”

Ruppert looked at the old man. He seemed sane, even kindly. If Terror had implanted a tracking device in his body, Ruppert definitely wanted it out, but he wasn’t sure he was ready to let a bearded old man who lived in a cave perform surgery on his toe, much less an area close to his heart and spine.

“You’re really a doctor?” Ruppert asked.

“I served as a Navy medical officer in two campaigns,” Dr. Smith said. “Iran and Tajikistan. I was once issued an M.D. from the Yale School of Medicine. The Department of Terror has implanted a device in your body which allows them to pinpoint you at any second of any day, and such devices are often fitted with a tiny bubble of lethal toxin that can be broken open by remote control. This bubble, if present inside you, was manufactured by government contractors.

“Now. Do my qualifications meet with your approval, or would you prefer to contact your insurance provider?”

Ruppert looked between them. What choice did he have?

Following directions, Ruppert lay facedown on the cold metal plate of the operating table, which was only about a yard off the RV’s floor. Dr. Smith checked his blood pressure, then worked with the implements on the kitchen counter, while asking mundane questions that made the situation feel almost normal: How recently had Ruppert seen a doctor? Age? Height? Weight? Allergies, previous surgeries?

The old doctor eased into a low chair on Ruppert’s right side. He had sheathed his hands in latex gloves and tucked away his beard and hair behind a green cap and mask.

“I hope you’ll excuse my sitting down for this,” Smith said. “It’s rather difficult to perform while leaning on this ridiculous cane. Lucia, would you swab him here?” Ruppert felt the cool liquid on his bare upper back. “Now activate the screen.”

“She’s only trying to scare you,” Dr. Smith said. “Miss Santos has sufficient experience. I require assistance, and here, that’s either Lucia or the nearest coyote. And I don’t believe you’ll find a coyote with a medical license. Though I understand Harvard has lowered their admissions standards considerably.”

Ruppert felt the needle puncture his skin, and his right shoulder fell numb.

“We’ll give that just a minute to settle in,” Dr. Smith said. “Tell me, Daniel, have you been approached by anyone…unusual, in recent days or weeks?”

“Besides you two?” Ruppert asked.

“I was thinking of someone from the opposite side of things.”

Ruppert immediately decided against telling them about his imprisonment by Terror—it might raise their suspicions, because Terror very rarely released anyone. He opted for a partial truth. “I did get called in to see my pastor at church. Someone decided I didn’t look devoted enough to the One King. That’s what they call God. I assume they mean God.”

“You have heard of psy-ops, right?” she asked as she sat down to face him. “Psychological operations run by the military, or intelligence, or politicians?”

“Right,” Ruppert said. “Like dropping leaflets on other countries when we attack them.” He thought of his own job. “Or planting stories in the news.”

“Sure.” Lucia said, rolling her eyes. “If this was World War I, maybe.”

“What else?” Ruppert asked. “The churches, that’s what you’re saying?”

“You must understand that no government rules by violence alone,” Dr. Smith said. “A state must appear legitimate to its population—at least, a substantial portion of its population. We calculated that one-third of the population is sufficient for absolute control, provided that the remaining two thirds remain factioned and quarreling. Ideally, of course, you would prefer to have majority compliance, but this is nearly impossible to effect reliably over the long term.”

“I’m not sure I’m following you,” Ruppert said. He watched as the viewpoint onscreen nudged past a swollen blob that might have been muscle tissue.

“A question of legitimacy,” Dr. Smith said. “Ordained by the gods, or forced by bloodshed, you see. The priests who cooperate inevitably grow quite wealthy and powerful themselves. They feed upon the system.”

“You’re saying the Dominionist churches are propaganda tools,” Ruppert said. “But that’s obvious.”

“You’re skipping over the point,” Dr. Smith said. “In ancient times, a priesthood sufficed to legitimize the king. Ruling the modern world requires a complex information machinery. Priests, as you’ve mentioned, but also public relations professionals, historians, publishers, news reporters, teachers. The absurd rigmarole of voting and elections. Public rituals to make the commoners feel they are a part of things. Hold your breath and refrain from moving.”