“Yes. Fine.”
“Good. We don’t have much of a selection.” He filled them and held one out for me. “To the outside world,” he said.
That was a strange toast. I glanced through the window at the endless plain. “Cheers,” I said.
We talked for a few moments of inconsequentials. How short the summer had been this year; the apparent withdrawal of the raiders who had harassed stages and attacked settlements in the area (“too cold for them here in winter,” offered Marsh); the rumor that a firearms manufacturing plant had been set up in Nevada, and was now turning out weapons and ammunition in quantity. We refilled the glasses. My host was friendly enough, God knew, and solicitous for my welfare. But I sensed a barrier, and a lack of warmth in his smile. “You’re in time for dinner,” he said at last. “We’ll eat shortly.” He studied me thoughtfully. “If you like, I believe we can replenish your wardrobe.”
Marsh enjoyed his role as host, but I sensed he would have been uncomfortable in my position, as suppliant. “Thank you,” I said. “You’re very kind.” And I thought of Max. “I’d like to take some water out to my horse.”
“Is he in the barn?”
“Yes.”
“I’ll take care of it. Meantime, if you’re ready, let’s look at your quarters.”
* * *
He provided me with a spacious and, by prairie standards, luxurious room on the third floor. A big double bed stood in its center, with pillows piled high and a quilt thrown over. I lacked a fireplace, but there was a steady flow of warm air from a vent. The atmosphere was masculine: varnished walls, a mounted deer’s head, an antique pistol over the bed, and a military ensign bearing rifles and bugles and the numeral IV by the door. A small desk had been placed near the window. An ancient dictionary lay on the desk, and a battered copy of Pierce’s Travels Through the Dakotas on a side table.
I threw off my clothes, leaving them in a pile on the floor, and retreated into a tan-tiled bathroom. I showered in glorious hot water, toweled off, and tried the garments my host had provided. They were a size large, but they were clean and smelled faintly of pine. I washed my own clothes and hung them to dry.
The smell of steak and potatoes drifted up from the kitchen. I wandered downstairs, pausing to look through a window at the rooftop lights. They blazed through the rushing snow. What a prodigious waste of power it all was. I wondered how they were able to manage it?
Marsh must have heard me coming: he was waiting when I arrived on the second floor. “I hope you feel better, Quincey,” he said.
I did. Very much so.
We returned to the room in which we had talked earlier. A pot of coffee was waiting. He poured, and we sat down by the fire. We were barely settled when he looked up, past my shoulder. “Eleanor,” he said, “this is Mr. Quincey.”
I rose and turned, and was astonished. So, I might add, was Eleanor.
“Jeff,” she said, and I watched dismay, relief, fear, affection, and everything between, ripple across her face.
And I: my God, it was Ellie Randall.
For those few seconds, I could only stare.
Probably, no one ever quite recovers from the first big passion. Ellie had been mine. We’d had three months together when we were both growing up in the Forks. And that was all there was. She lost interest and walked out of my life. I didn’t even have the consolation of losing her to someone else. Shortly after that I left the area, and when I went back ten years later she was gone and nobody knew where.
So I stood gaping back, shackled by the old resentment, breathless again. She was as gorgeous as I remembered. And that too shook me: I think in some dark corner of the mind, I’d hoped eventually to come across her and discover that the near-supernatural creature of my twentieth year had been a figment of youthful daydreaming. That, to a mature adult, she would really be quite ordinary. Perhaps even a trifle dull. That I’d conclude I’d been lucky to have got away.
But in that darkened room she seemed composed of firelight and shifting shadows, more spirit than flesh. (Although the flesh was not to be overlooked.) Her familiar features were classic, dark, and, now that she’d recovered from her initial shock, amused. She shook her head in sheer pleasure and her black hair swirled across her shoulders. Delight filled her eyes, and I felt the entire room, the chairs, the lamps, the fire, and certainly me, come erect.
I knew already I would lie alone on the plains during years to come and replay this meeting. From that moment, I developed a loathing for Edward Marsh that nothing could ever efface.
We embraced, a fleeting, phantasmagoric thing, her lips brushing my cheek, her shoulders vibrant and alive in my hands. Her eyes touched mine. “Jeff, it really is you, isn’t it? What have you been doing all these years?”
Her smile melted me into my socks, and I was twenty years old again. I didn’t trust my voice, so I grinned, foolishly no doubt, retreated to my coffee, and mumbled something about traveling extensively.
Marsh moved into the gap. “Well, that’s interesting,” he said, eyes brightening. “How odd that you two would know each other.”
“We grew up together. Jeff and I were good friends for a long time.” Her eyes settled on me. “It is good to see you again, Jeff.” The smile never faded. “Listen, I have to finish dinner. But we have a lot to talk about.” She swung round and trooped out. And the room sank back into the normal flow of time.
“She hasn’t changed,” I told Marsh. He was watching me with interest, and I knew what he was wondering. The rational tack, of course, was to change the subject. “What kind of installation was this originally?” I asked, heading in the first direction that suggested itself.
He took a long breath and examined his coffee. “A research facility of some sort,” he said. “Ellie can tell you more about it than I can.”
“Oh?”
He shrugged. “Yes, she’s closer to the history of the place than I am.” There was something dismissive in his tone, as if there were more important matters to consider. His eyes glided over me.
“Will there be others at dinner?” I asked.
“No,” he said distractedly. “There is no one else here.”
I looked down at my shirt.
“It belonged to Ellie’s brother-in-law, actually,” he said. “He left a few years ago.”
Ellie’s brother-in-law? Why not “my brother”? “Where is he now?” I asked conversationally.
“We don’t know. Occasionally, someone comes by with a letter from him. Last we heard, he was in Zona.”
I gradually received the impression, one that was reinforced through the evening, that he was measuring me, that he was involved in a calculation and that I was somehow a variable.
Marsh had traveled widely. He explained that he had been born in Canada, in a town not far from Ottawa. “We all grew up in the shadows of that enormous wreck. And I’ve stayed away from the ruins since. Don’t like them.” He shook his head. “No sir. Don’t like them one bit.”
“I know what you mean,” I said, not sure at all that I did.
“We’re headed backward, Quincey. All of us. Still losing ground even while you and I sit here. And I don’t like being reminded of it.” He raised his arms in a sweeping gesture that took in the walls, or maybe the world. “They’re all yellow now,” he said. “Fading. And when they’re gone, I suspect none of us will even remember who we were.”
I realized finally he was referring to his books, marshaled around the room like a military guard. I repressed a shrug. I’ve never read a book, and am barely able to manage trade documents, if the truth be known. “I’m not so sure,” I said. “Life is hard, but it could be worse. I mean, there’s always food and drink, if a man’s willing to work. And women enough, God knows.” I wished Ellie had been there to hear that. I hoped he would repeat it to her, and she would understand that I had been having a very fine time on my own, thank you.
A few minutes later, Ellie announced that dinner was ready. We retired to the d
ining room, and she flashed me another big smile. I thought I saw in it a glint of regret. I applied the construction most favorable to myself, and attacked dinner with a sense of good cheer.
The table would have supported dinner for ten. We ate by candlelight, warmed by two fireplaces.
The meal consisted of steak and potatoes and green beans and buttered corn and hot rolls. Marsh broke out a decanter and filled the glasses, and we toasted “old friends.” His proposal. I was still wondering about the nature of the facility. “What,” I asked, “is the ring? The ring-shaped ridge?”
Ellie tried her drink, and obviously approved. “They used this place to break into atoms,” she said. “They were trying to discover what matter really is.”
“Why?” I asked.
“I’m not entirely sure.”
“Did they leave records?”
“In a way. They wrote their results into computer banks.”
“Oh.” The computers don’t work anymore.
She sliced off a piece of steak, turned it on her fork, and slid it between her lips. “Not bad,” she said, eyes gleaming. “Given time, maybe we’ll figure out how to fix them.”
We ate quietly for a few minutes. “How do you come to own a place like the Tower?” I asked Marsh.
“I don’t own it,” he said. “It’s Ellie’s, actually.”
She tried her wine and let me see she approved. “I married into it. Two or three years after you left, I married Corey Bolton. His family had been here for generations.” She propped her chin on her fist and looked right through me. “Corey died in a raid several years later. After that his brothers cleared out, and I more or less inherited the place.”
“It’s big,” I said.
She smiled. “You don’t know the half of it. Most of the complex is underground.”
Marsh smiled reflexively. He looked uneasy.
I expected him to say something. But he only patted his mouth with his napkin. The silence stretched out.
“I wonder what does lie inside atoms?” I said.
“Energy,” said Marsh.
“Yes.” Ellie nodded agreement. She had changed, of course. The buoyancy of the adolescent had given way to cool dignity. Her eyes, which had been unabashedly playful, glowed now with mystery and intelligence. The sense of what I had lost began to overwhelm me, and I was sorry I had stumbled into the place. Better a cold night on the plain than this. “But there’s obviously more to it than that.”
“And the ridge?” I asked again.
“Oh. It’s a tunnel. We can reach it from here, actually. They fired atoms, or parts of atoms, I’m not sure which, through it. When they collided, they broke apart, and it was possible to see what was inside.”
“It’s hard to believe,” I said, “that anyone could ever do that.”
“So.” She announced the subject change with her tone. “What have you been doing since you left the Forks, Jeff?” She touched a wall panel and Mozart filled the room. We talked about greenhouses (the Tower had two), and the source of their power (solar), and Marsh’s trip to the Pacific, and how Chicago looks from offshore.
I learned that Marsh had been a colonel with irregulars formed to defend a group of Minnesota settlements. That Ellie was trying to pull together a comprehensive account of pre-Crash activities at the Tower, that the trail seemed to lead to Minneapolis, and that eventually she would make the trip. Ellie’s comment to that effect ignited the colonel’s disapproval, and I understood that I had blundered into an old argument. “Too dangerous,” he said, dismissing the matter.
When we’d finished, he insisted on clearing the table, and carrying the dishes into the kitchen. I was impressed by the manner in which he stayed with her and made himself useful. But I noticed also, on several occasions, silent exchanges taking place between them. Was she reassuring him about our relationship? I suspected so, and was pleased that he might, even momentarily, consider me a potential rival.
In all, it was a delicious and entertaining evening. I was sorry to see it end.
* * *
The storm had eased off, and the sky had cleared. But the wind had lost none of its force, and it drove the loose snow across the landscape.
The clothes I’d washed were still damp. I waited, listening for the last footsteps to come upstairs, and then I went down and arranged my garments in front of the fire. I threw an extra log on, and sank into a chair in front of the blaze. It was warm and pleasant. And it was not long before sleep overtook me.
I dreamt of her that night, as I had on other nights. And, as was the usual climax to these nocturnal reunions, I awoke depressed with the weight of her loss. I sat staring at the fire, which was now little more than embers, aware of the wind and sounds deep in the belly of the building and the flow of moonlight through the windows.
And I realized I was not alone.
A patch of darkness disconnected itself and came forward.
Ellie.
“Hello,” I said.
She wore a heavy woolen robe, drawn up around the neck, her black hair thrown over the collar. I could not see her expression, but the glow from the window touched her eyes. “Hi, Jeff,” she said. “Is there anything wrong with your room?”
For a wild moment, I wondered whether she had just come from there. “No,” I said. I pointed at the clothes strung by the fire. “I just got too comfortable here. There’s no problem.”
After a brief silence, she said, “I didn’t expect to see you again.”
I had got up, but she gestured me back into my seat, and stirred the fire. “You’ve a lovely home,” I said. “You’ve done well.”
She nodded. The robe was frayed, oversized. But it didn’t matter: she was breathtakingly beautiful. “Corey was good. I couldn’t have asked for more.”
“I’m sorry you lost him,” I said.
“Thanks. It’s a long time ago now.” She slipped into an adjoining chair. “Jeff, I’m glad to find you here. I was afraid I wouldn’t really get a chance to talk to you.”
I was prodding myself to be generous, to avoid letting any of the old anger show. But it was hard. “We don’t really have much to talk about,” I said.
“Yes, we do.” She gazed at me steadily, and I imagined I could see sparks reflected in her eyes. “I can’t change what happened between us. I can’t even say that I would, if I could. I loved Corey, and I wouldn’t have missed my years with him for anything.” She touched my forearm, just her fingertips, but the effect was electric. “You understand what I’m telling you?”
“Yes,” I said. But I had no idea.
She stared past my shoulder. “You know that Ed is not my husband.”
“I’d guessed.”
“When we were attacked, when Corey was killed, Ed was the one who came to the rescue. He rode in with a detachment from Sandybrook and personally killed two of the sons of bitches.”
“And afterward,” I said, “he stayed.”
“Not immediately. Corey’s brothers couldn’t take it anymore out here and they left. When that happened, he tried to persuade me to leave, too.”
“Why didn’t you?”
She took a deep breath. “This is my home.” But her eyes looked away. “When I wouldn’t leave, he came out. Used to sleep in here. Like you. Eventually…” She shrugged.
“This place is dangerous. For two people.”
“We have defenses. Corey wouldn’t have been killed if we hadn’t been surprised.” She shook her head, maybe reassuring herself. “No. I’ll never leave here, Jeff. I love this place.”
We sat quiet.
“But I did want you to know,” she said, “that I’ve never been able to forget you.”
That and fifty bucks, I thought. But I didn’t say it.
The room got very quiet. It occurred to me that Marsh might be standing within earshot. Marsh, who had killed two raiders. “I’m happy to hear it,” I said.
“I know what you’re thinking,” she said, mischievously.
&nb
sp; “What am I thinking?”
“He won’t care,” she said. “Ed doesn’t care about me.”
That made no sense. He doesn’t own the property. If he had no feelings for her, why on earth would he stay in this godforsaken place? I replayed the evening. The way Marsh had introduced her. The way he’d responded when he had discovered we’d known each other. The way he talked to her. “I don’t believe it,” I said.
“Nevertheless it’s true. He feels trapped here, and he blames me.” She pushed up out of her chair. “He stays out of a sense of duty.”
Her grip tightened on my hand, and a tear ran down her cheek. It was a moment I’d contemplated many times when I was younger. Ellie perhaps realizing at last what she had lost. Asking me to forgive. In my imagination, the moment had always seemed delicious. But when it came, I took no pleasure in it.
“You never married,” she said.
“I never stayed in one place long enough. Anyway, no one ever seemed much interested.”
“Well, we both know that’s not true,” she said. She stared at me for a long moment, and, without another word, got out of her chair, pressed her lips against my cheek, and left the room.
* * *
I went to bed. I didn’t sleep well, though, and I was tempted to clear out during the night. But that might have raised questions and embarrassed Ellie. So I determined to get through breakfast, and leave as quickly as I reasonably could.
Bacon and coffee were already on when I started down. I poked my head into the dining room first, saw no one, and made for the kitchen. Ellie was there, manning an electric stove. But I saw immediately that something was wrong. She looked tired, and the joie de vivre of the previous day had been replaced with knife-edged intensity. “Good morning, Jeff,” she said. Her tone was cordial, but not warm.
She wore a white jumper open at the throat, and a knee-length knit skirt. Her hair was brushed back, revealing pale, drawn features. “You okay?” I asked.
“I’m fine.” She delivered a dispirited smile. “How do you like your eggs?”
“Medium well.” I looked at her. “What’s wrong?”
She poked at the bacon. “He’s gone, Jeff.”
Wastelands 2: More Stories of the Apocalypse Page 12