The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy (30 page)

“Yes, and sing! I dance!” She did a rat-a-tat with her hooves like a flamenco dancer. “Music. And painting.”

“How’s the food?” James asked.

“Lots food! Everyone have lots—and have place to sleep. All have lots.” She raised her hands, indicating bounty.

“No homelessness and no poverty. Great cultural life.” Mel looked at the others. “Not bad.”

“Do ye raise things there? Sheep and cattle? Do y’ have horses?”

She stared at Sam, looking like she had no idea what he was talking about. He realized she hadn’t been to the barn or seen the cattle in the fields. He felt something come from her as he had when they first met, something like tendrils of thought. They reached him and she understood.

“No animals but pets. No eat dead animal! Make sick.” She looked revolted.

“She’s a vegetarian, Sam,” Lena said. “Ate uncooked grits at our house. No water. She’s scared stiff of water.”

Sam could live without meat, especially if there wasn’t any. “No
trees?”

“No trees. No flowers, just gold. See through it. Sun bright, all time. And moons! Lots moons!”

Sam didn’t know if he could live in such a place. “How about dirt? Is there any dirt?”

“No dirt. Gold and light. People and music and pets and children.”

“Do they have wars and atomic weapons? Is there much crime?” Mel asked.

“What is war? What is crime?”

“When people hurt each other.”

Ellie recoiled. “No hurt person. Why hurt person?”

“Never mind. That’s good enough. Will we get to go? Will they ask us?” Mel looked ready. She stood quietly, listening for the sweet trilling sound in her mind that her people used to communicate with her. Nothing. Standing on one hoof, she laid her other foot across her knee and rapped it with her fingertips. Again, nothing. The lovely chiming from her world was silent, as it had been since she’d found the school. Eliana shook her head. A moment later, she opened a jeweled purse she carried. She fingered something. Flashing light came out.

“They no say,” she replied. “Not yet.”

T
he cold hit her like a million rubber hoses. Her breathing stopped and her heart jolted. Val had planned on staying underwater as long as she could to hide from the dog. Once in the river, she didn’t have any option: the cold had shocked her stiff. She couldn’t push herself out. Couldn’t move, couldn’t scream. The frigid water held her in icy claws.

Come on! Come on! Something inside her screamed. You’ve got to get air. Lights sparkled in her head when she finally shoved against the river bottom, pushing with her thighs, forcing her face above water. She gasped as the current snatched her away. She clawed and sputtered, fighting blindly.

A fallen tree saved her. She drifted past it, numb. Her legs, held down by the boots, tangled in the branches. Val pulled herself up the trunk and out of the water.

The wind blasted her. She was as cold out of the water as in it. Light flickered in the trees above. She ducked under the tree trunk,
huddling on a tiny patch of muddy shore. Was that the monster?

Shivering took her. She curled into a ball. How could she survive? What should she do? Val saw something fluttering on the bank. She reached for it without thinking. A plastic bag. Garbage. It was all over; the tree pulled it in from the river. Her back against the tree, she pulled her weapon from her holster and checked it. It was fine. She wrapped it in the plastic bag, then in another bag, and replaced it in her holster.

Her pistol was supposed to be waterproof, but who knew how long that would last under these conditions? Having taken care of her weapon, she looked around, ignoring her shaking body. The river flowed to her left, toward the Atlantic. To her right and across the river, probably not too far away, was the estate. It was on the Atlantic shore, perched on a narrow bay. The river ran parallel to it. The estate was huge, pointing inland like a finger. The road she’d been on was the access. It ran along the property’s boundary, crossed the river, and then backtracked to the main house.

How could she get over there and not be eaten by the monster? Without a thought, Val picked up where she’d been before the explosion. She’d been made for this, from the time she was one of six little girls in a pink room, from the time she killed her sister, and then went to war for real.

The cold didn’t bother her enough to slow her down; none of it bothered her. The missiles would go off tomorrow, or not. Who cared? She’d go to the front if she didn’t die tomorrow. What difference did anything make? She’d be made bureau chief, or not. What the fuck did it matter?

Nothing would stop her. Val was on a mission authorized by the president of the United States. She always completed her mission. She would get to the estate and kill anyone she found. She’d go out in a blaze even her supervisor wouldn’t believe.

“D
on’t get too excited about staying here.” Jeremy was pissed off. The others would rather go to a planet they knew almost nothing about than live in his masterpiece. “You don’t know that they’re coming. They may see us and turn around.” He stood in front of the group, seething.

“I was going to spend the rest of my life down here. Now Ellie’s come and that may change—but I’m not sure if I’ll leave. Or if any of us should. We don’t know much about her planet.

“I had a speech prepared, and I’m going to give it. Anyone who goes in my shelter follows my rules. If you can’t agree to my rules, you don’t get in. If that means I have to lock it up tomorrow morning and let everyone fry—I will do that.”

He looked at them, tough and hard. The others stared at him in disbelief.

“You can’t mean that, Jeremy,” Mel said.

“Yeah. I’ve spent years making this place. I’m not going to let
people come in and act however they want.”

“You’ll lock us out if the spaceship doesn’t come?” Mel looked flabbergasted.

“A minute ago you didn’t want to be here,” Jeremy retorted. “Yeah, I do mean it. You have to agree to abide by my rules. Here they are.

“First—I command whoever comes out of this shelter to take over the planet—no matter when that is. Two thousand years from now or fifty years from now, I want you to get out of here and take over whatever you see. When the general comes after us, I want him to get the surprise of his defrosted life.

“That’s my number one command.” He turned to Ellie. “Ellie, I need some paper. Could you give me a couple of sheets from your notebook?”

Ellie reached into her purse and pulled out the book. Showers of light flew.

She spread the pages. They could see dazzling letters, incised in light. The book shimmered. She took one part in one hand, gripped it with the other, and tore the book lengthwise along the spine. She handed half to Jeremy and put the other half back in her purse.

“Look—this is The Book.” He raised it over his head. “Arthur, you be the scribe. Write down what I say.”

Arthur took the book and found a pen in his pocket. When he looked back, The Book was already written on the front page. “It writes itself,” he said, holding the volume at arm’s length and leafing through the pages. The others stared. “Everything you said is in it.”

Jeremy chuckled. “That’s my kind of technology. Why should I command you to take over the planet? Because the general and his son are coming. We’ve already had the kind of world he’ll make. I don’t want that. No one wants that.

“I want warriors down there, disciplined warriors. That’s what my commands will create.

“I want to make a good world.” Anger powered his words. “My whole life I’ve seen rich people lord it over poor people, and smart people over not so smart. I don’t want any more of that.

“Whoever goes in my shelter follows my commands. If I’m in the
shelter, I’ll enforce them. If I’m not—and this is command number two—Sam will enforce them.”

Sam jumped and looked at him. “Ah will?”

“If I’m not here, Sam is my headman. He will run the place. And he’ll do it the way I say. That’s in perpetuity: his oldest son will take over when he’s gone.”

“What are you thinking, Jeremy?” Mel gaped. “That’s undemocratic.”

“Yeah, it’s undemocratic. Lincoln Charles was elected democratically. The US Constitution was rewritten by popular vote. Democratic doesn’t mean good.

“Sam will do anything necessary to keep this place running, and himself alive. He’s hard and canny enough to keep the village under control. I don’t think the rest of you could do that, except maybe you, Rupert. But Sam’s run the village for years. He’s the boss.

“Command number three is for Sam and Rupert and the rest of the village: you must learn to read. You can’t be illiterate. The future depends upon operating this place. I’ve got tapes, and self-study courses for seven languages. But now, you must learn to read.

“And this is another command: the people who came with me must teach the villagers to read. I want everyone old enough to hold a book to be literate in six months.”

Sam gasped. “We cain’t—”

“Yes, you can. If you don’t, you’ll die. The systems in here will keep you alive, but you have to take care of them. This shelter should keep the village—your kids’ kids’ kids, dozens of times out—alive until it’s safe to leave. But you must be able to read. And you must speak proper English. You must be taken seriously when you get out.

“The next command is you must to want to live. I’ve been thinking about this since my dad died. Why would a species be so stupid as to stick shit in our veins that will kill us? Not in my world. I’d stick anyone who’s inclined to that out the canary hole. No room in here for people with death wishes.

“Here’s another command: no hooch, no mushrooms, no weed. No anything else that you think up to get high. Sam, if anyone brings
a still in here, or the makings of a still, I want you to kill them.”

The group gasped. “Kill them, Jeremy?” Mel said.

“Kill them. I will if I’m here. One slip, and this place could go up. We need self-controlled people. Warriors. We’re fighting a war to survive. It’s not over when we get out—we’ll fight harder then.

“Here’s a proclamation, Sam: you are no longer an ox. You will now stop acting like one. I know exactly how smart you are. I’ve seen you juggle rents and crop yields, and then act like you were dumb. I hereby take away everything that keeps you and your people from being who you really are—good, decent people.

“The old village is done, Sam. I know about the hooch and mushrooms and orgies. It’s over. You won’t last a year in here if you live like that.

“No more multiple wives. Warriors don’t live that way. True warriors live right. My warriors have one husband or one wife, and they’re faithful to them. That’s a command—one spouse per man or wife. Fidelity. Period.

“And no boingy-boingy with your cousins. That’s a big command.” Sam and Rupert stared at him. “Do you know what I mean? Boingy-boingy? Fucking?” Their faces said they knew what that was. “Do you know what a cousin is?” They didn’t. “Arthur, teach them what cousins are. You have too many birth defects in the village, Sam. It’s from that.

“Do you know why I did all this? Why?” He waved his hands to indicate the massive structure around them. “Why did I do it? Tell me!”

“To help people?”

“To save the world?”

“To save us?”

The others threw in reasons, looking a little afraid of him.

“Humanitarian feelings?”

“Mostly because I was so pissed. I’ve never believed in Good Tsar Yuri, even as a kid. He was like Santa Claus or the Easter Bunny. I never believed in them either. I grew up on the stories of the wonderful
man who gave us peace forever. I could look out the window in mom’s town house and see people getting arrested on the street. Why was everyone afraid if we had peace? Why was there an eye in the middle of the ceiling of my first-grade classroom? Why did people disappear? Even little kids knew about that.

“When I started messing with computers and remade the ‘net, I knew. Yuri didn’t get rid of the atomics.

“We’ve been fed a crock of shit. Tsar Yuri brainwashed us so that we’d believe every kind of shit he fed us. I think what’s going on now is get-back from Yuri. He’s giving us what we deserve.”