Last Call For Caviar (12 page)

.

CHAPTER 16

D
ILEMMAS

The day hung hot and humid around my neck, though when I’d left home in the first cool rays of morning light, there had been nary a cloud to mar the day.

It was late afternoon, and I sat with my legs dangling from the observation deck of the Astrarama, eating my tuna sandwich. I saw from my aerie a cloud wall of menacing cumulous mounding ever higher over the sea. A smear of darker charcoal gray etched a sharp line along its lower edge. The sky underneath the towering mass was a green-hued band backlit by streaks of yellow crackling down from above. The unmistakeable funnel shape of half a dozen tornadoes swirled downward from the thunderstorm and danced across the slate-colored waves.

Cali and Japan had been torn apart by earthquakes, and closer to home, the hills of Tuscany were trembling these days. At the heel of Italy, lava was flowing down the slopes of Mount Vesuvius over the ruins of Pompeii yet again. Here on the Cote d’ Azur we’d been spared such terrors. The earth neither trembled nor did mountaintops explode, but the violence of thunderstorms and the tornadoes they spawned was increasing ominously in frequency and intensity. Any day, destruction would come howling our way from beyond the horizon.

So far, the waterspouts had stayed offshore, creating an eerily beautiful spectacle on the horizon. But they could cross any body of water and become a tornado that could rage uphill as far inland as where I sat on my mountain throne.

I felt a paw resting on my arm and broke my sandwich in half. Buddy took it gently between his teeth from my hand. When I arrived at the Astrarama, I filled his bowl with dried dog food from the large sack of kibble I left here last week, mixing in scraps of chicken that I’d brought from home. Even though he licked his bowl clean in seconds, he’d been staring longingly at my lunch for the last fifteen minutes, practicing the golden retriever mind-meld, a special technique unique to the breed, not unlike the Vulcan mind-meld that Spock deployed on Captain Kirk in reruns of
Star Trek
. Goldens typically use this technique on susceptible humans whenever any tasty treats are present, which they believe should be shared.

It had taken me the better part of two weeks for Buddy to trust me. The first time I went back to the training center after the Midsummer’s Eve party, near the end of June, he’d stayed hidden for the first hour, though I felt his eyes watching me as I searched the buildings and abandoned grounds. Wind sighing through a row of empty kennels, a grooming brush left behind on a shelf, a training harness hanging from a hook, the door to the dog runs clanging against the wall—these were the only traces of former tenants.

Finally, I’d sat down on a patch of grass with my back turned to where I thought he was hiding. I closed my eyes, listening to the sound of the breeze rustling in the trees, and waited. Finally, his curiosity got the better of him, and I heard his approach; his nails clicked every other step on the cement path. He was limping, from the sound of it, but I didn’t move until I felt his nose nudge me in the back.

I turned around to find him wagging his tail with a tennis ball in his mouth that he promptly laid at my feet with a bark of encouragement. I obliged and played with him for the next half hour, until he finally tired and plopped down by my side.

I spent hours with him that first day, trying to accustom him to the sound of my voice and the touch of my hand. I noticed he favored his left hind leg. Searching the clinic office for veterinary supplies, I found oxygen peroxide, Betadine and gauze, with which I cleaned and dressed his wound. Luckily, it wasn’t too bad. He’d probably tangled with barbed wire; the four-inch gash was only lightly infected, since he’d kept it clean with regular licking.

I went to the facility every other day for two weeks, always bringing him a special treat. We spent hours climbing the adjacent trails and playing ball. He let me bathe him and seemed to enjoy the feel of water streaming down his coat. But despite my entreaties, he wouldn’t follow me down the trail that led towards town and home.

I wondered if he knew something, in that uncanny way animals sense the coming danger of an earthquake or fire. Regardless, he was firm in his conviction that there was nothing good for him down below. Maybe he could smell on the wind the violence, fear and despair, the end of a chapter for our species. Or he was staying close to the center because this was where he’d last seen his owner, and awaited his return. Whatever the reason, I couldn’t blame him wanting to freely roam among these beautiful hills.

He’d found the sacks of dog food stacked against the wall in a storage room and systematically pawed them open, one by one. Golden retrievers were hunting dogs, so his natural instincts must have come to the fore; he hadn’t starved. There was water leaking from a faucet. He had shelter and bedding in the kennels.

They say goldens have the intelligence of a six-year-old child and can recognize and understand hundreds of words or commands. This was one smart and resourceful pup; he’d figured things out on his own. I would have to say he seemed more like a very smart kid of at least ten, and he’d certainly earned his boy scouts badge for survival. I thought about changing his name to Scout or Trooper; he definitely was one.

Part of me wished I could take him with me, but I didn’t know how much longer I would be safe staying in my own home, or what I was going to do thereafter. He seemed a part of these hills, and I knew I wouldn’t really be doing him any favors, taking him down to civilization only to abandon him all over again if I had to run.

I finally got word from Charlotte. Within seventy-two hours of receiving my email, she got in touch with Leah and was only too happy to leave the devastation of California behind. She was hysterical when they had first spoken, overwhelmed by the carnage, the fear that was overtaking everyone there. She’d gotten out of San Francisco on her own and met Noah and Jack in Garberville, halfway to Oregon.

I was safe in the south of France for the time being, but just like the storm that lay in wait over the horizon this morning, something bad was brewing and it wouldn’t be long in coming. Either Slava would take over, with his special brand of brutality, and Monaco would become a prison with gilded bars; or the tide of desperate humanity surging towards us from the southwest would one day overwhelm the security perimeter and ravage our stores of food, resources and wealth. Every day, kilometer by kilometer, this desperate human tide was gaining ground. The end—one way or another—was nearly at hand.

In all the movies about the end of the world, which had been so popular a few years back—whether a super-plague turned your neighbors into an army of vampire zombies, a volcanic super—eruption, or an earthquake-induced tsunami, taller than any Manhattan skyscraper—the end typically unfolded in the space of ten graphic minutes; in a spectacular display of technicolor FX, most of mankind was wiped from the Earth.

What was happening here was a slow-motion breakdown of our ecosystem and society simultaneously. There wasn’t one specific event to point to, or escape from. It was as though a Pandora’s Box of ailments and afflictions had been opened, and pockets of death festered everywhere on our globe. It would probably be a long, slow illness—lasting perhaps a score of years—till the patient finally died.

The earthquake out of California made me realize that the dilemma wasn’t how to escape the inevitable—whether a natural disaster or death at the hands of your fellow man. Since it was coming at us from every side, I guess the choice really came down to who you wanted to fight and die with.

Somehow, sitting here high on this peak, brushing the burrs from Buddy’s coat and watching the storm grow darker and move toward land, I felt detached from all the chaos and worries down below. The strife and jockeying for power that was playing out along the Riviera was just so many ants swarming over the rotting scraps of blood and tissue left on an old bone.

This peace I was enjoying in the sunshine on this hill, watching the storm that smothered the skyline of Monaco and crept like a dark army up the slopes towards me, was an interlude of solace and escape.

Sometime in the next few days, I would have to meet with Anjuli-Lucy; I’d been putting her off since the Sheik’s party. The last thing I wanted was to be on her radar, especially if she was working with Slava. So I kept a low profile and stayed away from anywhere I might run into her. Yet if I didn’t want trouble from that quarter, this meeting was my chance to convince her I wasn’t a threat.

Lucy’s vanity was her weak spot. With her charisma and striking looks, Lucy was born to play the role of the mysterious priestess, Anjuli del Solaire, and to date, her performance had been mesmerizing. It wasn’t power for power’s sake that drove Lucy, though she liked status and wealth. It was the adulation of the crowds that was her drug. Lucy was drawn to powerful men for what they could give her. Someone had to be pulling her strings, and Slava was the most powerful man around. His was another radar upon which I didn’t want to appear as even the most insignificant blip.

The first tendrils of the storm crossed the Moyenne Corniche and were steadily advancing. I watched through my binoculars as the land below was swallowed whole. A circle of blue sky remained overhead, but the wind was picking up; I could see the trees at the training center, lower down, bending from the force of the coming gale. Within the hour, it would overtake us here on the hill. There would be no heading back down today. I shivered as the first gusts swirled across the open deck and rattled the metal roof covering the dome.

I worried that the storm might knock out the generators, though I imagined Arnaud had weathered many storms during his years living at the Astrarama and probably was prepared for all sorts of emergencies. With less than an hour before the storm hit, I headed to the garage for the camping lanterns that I’d noticed on a shelf. There was water and food here, not to mention whiskey, so theoretically we should comfortably ride out this storm.

Outside, though the sun wouldn’t set for another two hours, day had turned to night as the storm lashed the Astrarama. It sounded like a shower of golf balls pelting the metal dome, but rice was cooking for dinner, and so far, the generators hummed along. I made a bed on one of the couches, with blankets and pillows scavenged from the bedroom closets. The Rolling Stones’ Gimme Shelter played through the earphones of my iPod. Buddy lay snoring at my feet while I nursed a tumbler of whiskey and read one of Arnaud’s UFO pamphlets about visitors from strange and distant worlds.

For now, Buddy and I were safe while the storm raged outside. I couldn’t know what damage was being wreaked down below. I’d have to wait to see what tomorrow would bring…

It was the silence that woke me much later. I opened the door and stepped out into the coolness of the night. The sky overhead was clear; the storm had passed. I hadn’t been up here at night in so long, I’d forgotten how brightly the stars shone out of the darkness, so far from the glare of man-made lights.

I smelled the freshness on the air, the world washed clean by the rain; in the stillness, a promise of the new day only hours way. On impulse I decided to wheel the Celestron telescope outside onto the viewing deck. I removed the cover and set to work cleaning and adjusting the lens. When I looked through the eye scope, multitudes of worlds came into focus and spread across the heavens in glorious profusion.

I searched for the summer triangle, located between Draco and Pegasus, the winged horse. I found the bluish-white star Vega in the constellation of Lyra; the super-giant Deneb, sixty-thousand times brighter than our sun, anchoring the tail of Cygnus the Swan; and Altair, shining forth from the breast of Aquila. Time stood still as I located old friend Cassiopeia. Polaris, the North Star in Ursa Minor, crowned the Dragon, coiled high in the heavens; Arctus blazed from the constellation of Bootes, and lower in the west lay the band of stars known as Corona Borealis.

I saw Betelgeuse appear in Orion low down in the eastern sky and knew dawn wasn’t far off. On the Hunter’s heels would follow Sirius the Dog Star, also know as the Scorcher, the brightest body in the sky after the sun and moon.

When Sirius appeared, ancient Greeks knew the dog days of summer approached, the strange and breathless days of August when the world sweltered under an oppressive heat. It’s an ill-omened time, according to Brady’s Clavis Calendarium, “when the seas boil, wine sours, men burn with fevers and rage in anger, and dogs go mad.” It would soon be August, and the dog days would be upon us, perhaps for the last time.

I felt Buddy’s nose nudging my hand. I needed to get a couple more hours of sleep before heading down the hill. I didn’t know what kind of damage I would find at home. The sky was brightening; dawn was but an hour away as I closed the doors and went inside.

I felt myself drifting away, and I wondered, in that last conscious second before sleep claimed me, where the Purifier lurked, hidden from view in the reaches of space, moving closer every day to the appointed time of judgement on our world.