“You got a nickname?”
“Kerry.”
“Oh yeah. That’s better. Listen, Kerry, nobody at the ranch is going to hurt you; I promise you that. Anybody bothers you, you call me. Okay?”
“What about my father and sister?”
Eli shook his head. “I can’t work no miracles, girl.”
Blake stared at him, but for once, Eli refused to notice. He kept his eyes on the road.
Past 3
IN A HIGH VALLEY surrounded by stark, naked granite weathered round and deceptively smooth-looking, he found a finished house of wood on a stone foundation and the skeletal beginnings of two other houses. There was also a well with a huge, upended metal tank. There were pigs in wood-fenced pens, chickens in coops, rabbits in hutches, a large fenced garden, and a solar still. The still and electricity produced by photovoltaic intensifiers appeared to be the only concessions to modernity the owners of the little homestead had made.
He went to the well, turned the faucet handle of the storage tank, caught the cold, sweet, clear water in his hands, and drank. He had not tasted such water in years. It restored thought, cleared the fog from his mind. Now the senses that had been totally focused on survival were freed to notice other things.
The women, for instance.
He had scented at least one man in the house, but there were several women. Their scents attracted him powerfully. Yet the moment he caught himself moving toward the house in response to that attraction, he began to resist.
For several minutes he stood frozen outside the window of one of the women. He was so close to her he could hear her soft, even breathing. She was asleep, but turning restlessly now and then. He literally could not move. His body demanded that he go to the woman. He understood the demand, the drive, but he refused to be just an animal governed by instinct. The woman was as near to being in heat as a female human could be. She had reached the most fertile period of her monthly cycle. It was no wonder she was sleeping so badly. And no wonder he could not move except to go to her.
He stood where he was, perspiring heavily in the cold night air and struggling to remember that he had resolved to be human plus, not human minus. He was not an animal, not a rapist, not a murderer. Yet he knew that if he let himself be drawn to the woman, he would rape her. If he raped her, if he touched her at all, she might die. He had watched it happen before, and it had driven him to want to die, to try to die himself. He had tried, but he could not deliberately kill himself. He had an unconscious will to survive that transcended any conscious desire, any guilt, any duty to those who had once been his fellow humans.
He tried furiously to convince himself that a break-in and rape would be stupidly self-destructive, but his body was locked into another reality, focused on a more fundamental form of survival. He did not move until the war within had exhausted him, until he had no strength left to take the woman.
Finally, triumphant, he dragged himself back to the well and drank again. The electric pump beside the well switched on suddenly, noisily, and in the distance, dogs began to bark. He looked around, knowing from the sound that the dogs were coming toward him. He had already discovered that dogs disliked him, and, rightly enough, feared him. Now, however, he had been weakened by days of hunger and thirst and by his own internal conflict. Two or three large dogs might be able to bring him down and tear him apart.
The dogs came bounding up—two big mongrels, barking and growling. They were put off by his strange scent at first, and they kept back out of his reach while putting on a show of ferocity. He thought by the time they found the courage to attack, he might be ready for at least one of them.
Present 4
EVENTUALLY, THE MERCEDES AND the Jeep emerged from the storm into vast, flat, dry desert, still following their arrow-straight dirt road. They approached, then passed between ancient black and red volcanic mountains. Later, they turned sharply from their dirt road onto something that was little more than a poorly marked trail. This led to a range of earth and granite mountains. The two cars headed into the mountains and began winding their way upward.
By then they had been driving for nearly an hour. At first, Blake had seen a few signs of humanity. A small airport, a lonely ranch here and there, many steel towers carrying high voltage lines from the Hidalgo and Joshua Tree Solar Power Plants. (The water shortage had hurt desert settlement even as the desert sun began to be used to combat the fuel shortage. Over much of the desert, communities were dead or dying.) But for some time now, Blake had seen no sign at all that there were other people in the world. It was as though they had left 2021 and gone back in time to primordial desert. The Indians must have seen the land this way.
Blake wondered whether he and his daughters would die in this empty place. It occurred to him that his abductors might be more likely to feel they needed him if they thought of him as their doctor. They might even give him enough of an opening to take his daughters and escape.
“Look,” he said to Eli, “you’re obviously not well. Neither is your friend Ingraham. I have my bag with me. Maybe I can help.”
“You can’t help, Doc,” Eli said.
“You don’t know that.”
“Assume that I do.” Eli squeezed the car around another of a series of boulders that seemed to have been scattered deliberately along the narrow mountain road. “Assume that I’m at least as complex a man as you are.”
Blake stared at him, noting with interest that Eli had dropped the easy, old-fashioned street rhythms that made his speech seem familiar and made him seem no more than another semi-educated product of city sewers. If he wished, then, he could speak flat, standard, correct American English.
“What’s the matter with you, then?” Blake asked. “Will you tell us?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
Eli took his time answering. He smiled finally—a smile full of teeth and utterly without humor. “We got together and decided that for your sake and ours, people in your position should be protected from too much truth too soon. I was a minority of one, voting for honesty. I could have been a majority of one, but I’ve played the role long enough. The others thought people like you wouldn’t believe the truth, that it would scare you more than necessary and you’d try harder to escape.”
To the surprise of both men, Keira laughed. Blake looked back at her, and she fell silent, embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, “but not knowing is worse. Do they really think we wouldn’t do just about anything to get away now?”
“Nothing to be sorry for, girl,” Eli said. The accent was back. “I agree with you.”
“Who are the others who disagreed?” Keira asked.
“People. Just people like you and your father. Meda’s family owned the land we live on. Ingraham … well, he was with a gang of bikers that came calling one day and tried to rape Meda—among other things. And we have a private hauler and a music student from L.A., a couple of people from Victorville, one from Twenty-nine Palms, and a few others.”
“Ingraham tried to rape someone, and you let him stay?” Blake demanded. He was suddenly glad Ingraham was driving the car ahead. At least he would not have time to try anything until they got where they were going—but what then?
“That was another life,” Eli said. “We don’t care what he did before. He’s one of us now.”
Blake thought of Ingraham’s gun against Rane’s head.
Eli seemed to read his thoughts. “Hey,” he said, “I know how it looked, but Ingraham wouldn’t have shot her. I was afraid you or she might make a dumb move and cause an accident, but there’s no way he would have shot her.”
“Was the gun empty?” Keira asked.
“Hell no,” Eli said, surprised. He hesitated. “Listen, I’ll be this straight with you. The safest person of the three of you is Rane. She’s young, she’s female, and she’s healthy. If only one of you makes it, chances are it will be her.” He slowed, looked at Blake, then at Keira. “What I’m trying to do is buil
d a fire under you two. I want you to use your minds and your plain damn stubbornness to make a liar of me. I want you all to survive.” He stopped the car. “We’re here.”
“Here” was a small high valley—a little space between the ancient rocks that formed the mountains. There was a large old house of wood and stone and three other wooden houses, less well built. A fifth house was under construction. Two men worked on it with hand tools, hammering and sawing as almost no one did these days.
“Population explosion,” Eli said. “We’ve been lucky lately.”
“You mean people have been surviving whatever it is you do to them here?” Blake asked.
“That’s what I mean,” Eli admitted. “We’re learning to help them.”
“Are you some kind of … well, some kind of religious group?” Keira asked. “I don’t mean any offense, but I’ve heard there were … groups in the mountains.”
“Cultists?” Eli said, smiling a real smile. “No, we didn’t come up here to worship anybody, girl. There were some religious people up here once, though. Not cultists, just … what do you call them? People who never saw sweet reason around the turn of the century, and who decided to make a decent, moral, God-fearing place of their own to raise their kids and wait for the Second Coming.”
“Leftovers,” Blake said. “At least that’s what we called such people when I was younger. But this place looks as though it hasn’t been touched by this century or the last one. Looks more like a holdover from the nineteenth.”
“Yeah,” Eli said, and smiled again. “Get out, Doc. Let’s see if I can talk Meda into cooking you folks a meal.” He took the keys, then waited until Blake and Keira got out. Then he locked their doors and got out himself.
Blake looked around and decided that almost everything he saw reminded him of descriptions he’d read of subsistence farming more than a century before. Chickens running around loose, pecking at the sand, others in coops and in a large chicken house and yard. Hogs poking their snouts between the wooden planks of their pens, rabbits in wood-and-wire hutches, a couple of cows. But every building was topped by photovoltaic intensifiers. The well had an electric pump—clearly an antique—and on the front porch of one of the houses, a woman was using an ancient black Singer sewing machine. There was a large garden growing over perhaps half the valley floor. And near the two most distant houses were small structures that might have been, of all things, outhouses.
Blake had turned to ask Eli about it when suddenly Rane was in his arms. He hugged her, startled that even this strange place had made him forget her danger for a moment. Now, flanked by both his daughters, he felt better, stronger. The feeling was irrational, he knew. The girls were no safer for their being with him. Their captors still had the guns. And they were all still trapped in this isolated, atavistic place. Worst of all, something was being planned for them—something they might not survive.
“What did you hear?” he asked Rane while Eli was busy talking to Meda.
“I think they’re on some weird drugs or something,” Rane whispered. “That guy Ingraham—his hands shake when he isn’t using them, and when he is, he has other tics and twitches.”
“That doesn’t have to mean drugs,” Blake said. “What about the woman?”
“Well … no twitches, but if you think I’m too outspoken, wait until you meet her.”
“What did she say?”
Uncharacteristically, Rane looked away. “It wasn’t anything that would help. I don’t want to repeat it.”
Keira touched Rane’s arm to get her attention. “Was it about you being more likely to survive than the two of us? Because if it was, we got that too.”
“Yes.”
“Plus?”
“Kerry, I’m not going to tell you.”
It must have been bad then. There was very little Rane would hesitate to say. Blake resolved to get it out of her later. Now, Eli was coming toward them, motioning them into the wood-and-stone house. The dark-haired woman, Meda, came with him, stopping abruptly in front of Blake so that he had to stop or collide with her. She was a tall bony woman with no attractiveness at all beyond the long, thick, dark brown hair. She may have been attractive once, but now she had no shape, poor coloring, and not even the sense to cover herself as Keira had. She wore jeans cut off at mid-thigh and a man’s short-sleeved shirt, buttoned to her skinny midriff, then tied. Blake wondered whether Rane might be right about the drugs.
“For your own sake,” Meda said quietly, “you ought to know that we can hear better than most people. I don’t usually care who hears what I say, but you might. Now what I told your kid, what she was too embarrassed to repeat, was that I meant to ask Eli for you. I like your looks. It doesn’t matter whether you like mine. Everybody here looks like me, sooner or later.”
“Jesus Christ,” Blake muttered disgustedly. He began to laugh, not meaning to, but not able to stop. “You are crazy,” he said, still laughing. “All of you.” The laughter died finally, and he could only stare at them. They stared back impassively.
“What are you going to do?” he asked Eli. “Give me to her?”
“How can I?” Eli asked. “I don’t think I own you. Meda and your kid have a way with words, Doc. With more people like them, we never would have avoided World War Three.”
Blake managed to stifle more laughter. He rubbed a hand across his forehead, and was surprised to find it wet. He was standing in the hot desert sun, but between his daughters and his captors, he had hardly noticed.
“What are you going to do with me?” he asked.
“Oh, you’ll spend some time with her. That can’t be helped. I wish it weren’t necessary, but she’s your jailer—which is what she was really asking to be. We’re going to have to confine you pretty closely for a while, and things will work out better if your jailer is a woman.”
“Why?”
“You’ll know, Doc. Just give it a little more time. Meanwhile, for the record, what you and Meda do together is your business.” He turned, faced Meda. “There are limits,” he said softly. “You’re getting to like this too goddamn much, you know?”
She glared at him for a moment. “You should talk,” she said harshly, though somehow, not quite angrily. She turned and went inside, slamming the door behind her.
Eli sighed. “Lord, I hope you’ll all make it—all three of you so we won’t have to do this again soon.” He glanced to where Ingraham stood watching, managed a crooked smile. “You figure she’ll feed us?”
“She’ll feed me,” Ingraham said, smiling. “She invited me to dinner. Let’s go in and see if she’s set a place for you.”
They herded Blake and the girls into the house, somehow communicating amusement, weariness, hunger, but no threat. It was almost as though the Maslin family had been invited to eat with new friends. Blake shook his head. On his own, he would have tried to break away from these people—whatever they were—long ago. Now … he wondered what his chances were of getting Eli alone, getting his gun and the car keys. If he didn’t move soon, Rane or Keira might be separated from him again. These people were in such bad physical condition, they had to take precautions.
Abruptly, it occurred to him that a simple precaution might be to drug something they were to eat or drink.
“What are you planning, Doc?” Eli asked as he sat down in a big, leather wing chair.
The house was cool and dark, comfortably well-kept and old. Blake had to fight off the feeling of security it seemed to offer. He sat on a sofa with his daughters on either side of him.
“Doc?” Eli said.
Blake looked at him.
“I wonder if I can stop you from getting hurt.”
“Forget it,” Ingraham said. “He’s going to have to try something. Just like you’d have to in his place.”
“Yeah. Listen, you still have that knife?”
“Sure.”
Eli nodded, gestured with one hand. “Come on.”
“You mark the wall and Meda’ll find som
e way to get you, man.”
“I’m not going to mark the damn wall. Come on.”
“Don’t break my knife either.” Ingraham reached toward his boot, then his hand seemed to blur. Something flashed toward Eli, Eli blurred, and the floorboards beneath Blake’s feet vibrated. Blake looked down, saw that there was a large, heavy knife buried in the floor between his feet. It had hit the wood just short of the oriental rug. He gave Eli a single outraged glance, then seized the knife, meaning to pull it free. It remained rooted where it was. He pulled again, using all his strength. Still the knife did not move. It occurred to him that he was making a fool of himself. He sat up straight and glared at Eli.
Eli looked tired and unamused. “Just a trick, Doc.” He got up, walked over, and tugged the knife free with little apparent effort. With one long arm, he handed it handle-first to Ingraham, while keeping his attention on Blake. “I know we look scrawny and sick,” he said. “We look like one of us alone would equal nothing at all. But if you’re going to survive, you have to understand that guns or no guns, you’re no match for us. We’re faster, better coordinated, stronger, and some other things you wouldn’t believe yet.”
“You think a circus trick is going to make us believe you’re superhuman?” Rane demanded. Blake had felt her jump and cringe when the knife hit. She had been frightened, so now she had to attack. His first impulse was to shut her up, but he held back, remembering the value Eli had placed on her. Eli might tell her to shut up himself, but he would not hurt her just for talking. And she might get something out of him.
“We’re not superhuman,” Eli said quietly. “We’re not anything you won’t be eventually. We’re just … different.”
“And sometimes you hurt,” Keira whispered.
Eli looked at her—looked until she stopped studying the pattern on the rug and looked back. “It isn’t like your pain,” he said. “It isn’t as clean as your pain.”
“Clean?”
“Mine is kind of like what an addict might feel when he tries to kick his habit.”
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