by Caldon Mull
“Heh!” I chuckled “Yeah, I can. Gonna get worse for them too as I get used to doin’ it.” I leaned over to Michel “Hey stud, you got dinner planned?”
“Yeah.” Michel grinned “I got some fresh-baked beer bread, some roast and baked vegetables and a fresh ginger steam pudding.”
“No way.” Dean blinked “Where you get all that on the weekend?”
“Way.” Michel frowned “I made it.”
“But the bakery is closed on Sunday.” Dean gawked. “Ginger steam pudding is my favourite.”
“Duh.” I play-cuffed Dean “And who do you think baked half the stuff in the bakery every morning?” Dean’s stomach growled as we turned down into my lane.
“Shit!” Michel looked at Dean “Does everything of yours make such a noise?”
“Yeah, it does.” I laughed. “You should hear him come.”
“How much ginger pudding would that take?” Michel grinned.
Michel and I burst out laughing while Dean blushed and grinned as we headed down my driveway. Michel stopped the car and bounced out, scooping the bags. I shimmied out my side and Dean slipped out next to me.
He looked up at the sky. “Man, its real dark.” He muttered. I looked up and noticed the thick black clouds seemed to be boiling over the tops of the Hills and the trees.
“Yeah. That don’t look right.” I agreed. “Hey stud, pull your truck into the shed next to the Subaru, an’ leave the doors open some.” I called over to Michel. “Dean, buddy, you take the bags into the house an I’ll go check on the shelter.”
“Do you think…?” Dean looked nervous.
“Nah.” I shrugged, icy drizzle flicked from my beanie onto my cheeks. “It’s time I checked it anyway.” They got to work and I walked down along my porch on the little gravel path June had so nagged me to build. I had spent weeks digging and sculpting the bed, then pouring in the crushed rock until it was stable and even. Then she had decided she didn’t want the path there in the first place. I told her to live with it.
The last year had matured the path, the little plants I had set along the border had a good year and the rock scrunched under my shoes to my satisfaction. It was mostly dry and well drained. I took a secret satisfaction in that although I couldn’t fix my relationships, I could build a damn good gravel path. The balcony soared past my head four or five feet as I turned the corner at the end of the house and got to the shelter.
I don’t suppose it started life out as a shelter, and it was too difficult to reach, to be called a cellar but it was part of the charm of the house, and one of the reasons I had bought it. This edge of the house supported the garage above it, the concrete slab settled into the top of the hill. Behind me, some one of two feet from the path, the hill sloped away at a steep angle down to the fence and the Park. The metal door to the shelter was built under the slab and into the top of the hill. It was almost like some Cold War neurotic had thought: ‘ah well got my bunker, let’s build something a-top of it’. I spun the wheel and the door unlocked. I clicked on the light and stepped inside. Sniffing, the air was clean and fresh and the room was dry. I had decided to go large when I put stuff into the room, so the generator and battery setup suited an industrial complex rather than someone’s home.
I grinned to myself when I looked at it, reminded of my bloody-minded folly. UPS, power line conditioners and anti-lightning telephone units all reported their status with flashing green LED’s and my CB radio unit looked virtually new. I strolled over and fluffed some of the cushions on the three futons and patted the packed cotton. All felt dry and fresh. Over by the kitchenette, the stores were good for a month and the 24V microwave and refrigerator both looked good. I flicked on the fridge and it shuddered into life.
I walked to the utility alcove and flushed the toilet. The water tanks were full, and the butane shower head heater had ten cartridges spare. I cranked another handle and ducked through a four foot high hatch into the power room and there was the diesel generator and the ventilated wall. I called it that because the wall was like any other wall, except that it was only built with half the bricks. Every second brick was a space. I was still trying to work out why they had done it like that.
It came to three quarters of the way, halfway down this room, and then there was another space with a ceiling grill and concrete steps up, to outside the kitchen. The generator’s exhaust ran along the north wall to embed itself under the steps. I knew from earlier curiosity that it poked out this wall about eight feet from the ground on the bank under the kitchen porch deck. The concrete space between the steps and the ventilated wall was where I kept plastic drums of diesel fuel. I guess this part was built first, being under the kitchen, and nearest to the shed. I checked on how many gallons of diesel I had, and reckoned it had been standing for over a year, I may as well start using it. I topped up the tank with about two gallons from one of the many plastic tanks I had stacked up near the wall and stabbed the green button.
The generator spluttered and then purred into life, the shiny red metal vibrating to itself on its mountings happily. I checked to see no fumes coming from its exhaust until it passed through the ventilated wall and another five or six feet to its mounting through concrete to outside. I briefly wondered if I should check to see if the grill was still in place on the external pipe, I would hate to gas some poor bird roosting in it, but thought otherwise.
I slipped back into the hatch and sealed it, cracking my knee on the toilet’s jet-master pipe. It flushed while I cursed. I grabbed a six pack of beer from the pile of cases on the way past the fridge and switched off the light, stepped outside. I cranked the wheel shut and walked back up and around the path. I stepped onto the porch and walked to the front door. I looked up, the clouds had become a thick shroud over the top of my hill and the valley, and thick mist roiled in the air, visibility was about five yards. At least the drizzle was still cold. If it had been warm, I would have insisted we all spend the night in the bunker. I opened the door and stepped inside, wiping my feet on the mat.
Michel and Dean were sitting on the settee chatting. The smell of something very tasty was wafting out the kitchen. Three places were set at the table in the dining room, and it was warm and cozy after the cold outside.
“Whazzup?” Michel looked up as I closed the door.
“Everything seems fine.” I shrugged “Come, I’ll show you a switch.” He followed as I walked through to the kitchen and opened the DB Box next to the outside door.
“That don’t look right.” He frowned. Dean bobbed over his shoulder, sneaking a peek.
“I did some modifications.” I grinned. “This one here switched off the main supply, and this one here re-routes the generator. These circuit breakers pick up the slack, but you don’t have to worry about them none.” I pointed “Always make sure the jenny is up and running before you switch over if you don’t want to lose any current, then switch over like this.” I switched on the re-route and made sure they were both watching, switched off the mains.
“Nothin’ happened.” Dean looked around
“Yeah it did.” I closed the lid and opening the fridge, dumped the beers into it. “Trust me.”
“So, what’d you do?” Michel took my place at the DB box and opened it again.
“I got batteries to soak up the differences in charge, sorta like capacitors, and I switched off the mains in case there’s a storm. I put us onto a generator just in case we have a blackout.” I lifted the pot lid and sniffed at Michel’s cooking. He was a natural chef, I knew it would taste as good as it looked. My gut growled. “We gonna eat or what?”
“Yeah, I’m starved.” Dean looked over at the oven “Ginger steam puddin’?”
“You betcha.” Michel smiled and dropped the DB lid, moved over to the stove. “Get your mangy asses to the table, open the wine an’ I’ll be through in a few minutes.”
We carried stuff through to where he had set up places and soon enough we were well into a magnificent meal, laughing and c
hatting and sipping the wine Michel had found somehow. I was not used to drinking wine at all, and made a mental note to stock up if he normally had with supper.
“How’d you figure on the ginger steam pudding?” Dean was asking.
“Buddy, you been buying every payday and a week after that for the last five years. My dad keeps records because it’s not something that everyone wants all the time. True enough, there’s ‘Dean Barker’ waiting for me when I get home and start on the specials for the next day. That way we don’t guess at what the people want and don’t gotta overstock.”
“That makes sense.” Dean sipped his wine “So, who’s doing it now?”
“I guess he is.” Michel shrugged “He’s still a much better baker than I am, and I guess he’s gonna hafta teach one of my brothers if he wants time off, now. It’s been the same for generations, you start on the breads then you get to the biscuits, and finally the cakes and the puddings. Dad reckons that if you are really good, you can move to the Creams and the Ice Creams. That way all the expensive ingredients aren’t bein’ wasted with training some klutz.”
“Will there still be ginger pudding at the Bakery?” Dean grinned.
“Of course.” Michel laughed “I got my job at the Mill, otherwise I would have gone out of my mind. I’m good at baking, but it’s not what I want to do. I’m good at muscle, but it’s also something I’ve done to get away from all of that, give me spending money and some independence.”
“Well, I’m a locksmith because old man Digby wanted an apprentice and I wanted a job.” Dean frowned and looked into his glass or merlot, swirling it. “It’s not like we busy, but there’s enough to keep us going. I thought we should have a look at security rather than just locks, y’know cameras and access and stuff, but he’s not interested in that.”
“Well, there’s that.” I sighed “It’s a case of ‘old business done old style’ and there’s no changing some people.”
“Do you think people should change?” Michel arched an eyebrow.
“Hmm. That’s a good point, stud.” I chewed the inside my cheek, thinking. “Y’see we’re about to hit a new century and people don’t know much about what is going to happen. Take the news, now. Yesterday the krauts announced that they just discovered a new element. They gonna call it ‘Ununnilium’ and it’s now number 110 on the periodic table.”
“Hey, I did Science at school. Doesn’t that only go to 100?” Dean interrupted.
“My point exactly, buddy. Not anymore. See, everything is changing like that. They got a disease that’s floatin’ around and everyone soon gotta wear a rubber, but they busy arguing about who’s gonna get it and what’s it gonna do, so no-one knows much about that anymore. There’s ten extra elements on the periodic table that no-one has seen but they know that’s there and next year Bill Gates has got a new operating system, and we’ll have another President, probably a Democrat the way things are going, or maybe even the same one again and a lot more machines and probably fewer jobs. What I think is that people should be prepared to change, and they should be ready for it.”
“So you think we should all be trying to make ourselves more flexible, give ourselves more options?” Michel nodded.
“Something like that, yup.” I smiled. Michel was a lot brighter than you would think. “Wear a rubber? Man’ that sucks.” Dean wrinkled his nose.
“They say it might save your life.” I yawned “Except that they reckon only people in San Francisco are getting it, and only certain types of guys who go to certain types of places, y’know what I mean…?”
“But what if they’re wrong?” Michel suddenly blurted “What about if anyone could get it. What does it do?”
“It kills you, slowly. There’s no cure.” My eyelids drooped. “I’ll look into it if you want, see what they say about it.”
“Yeah, please, if you would.” Michel topped up Deans’ glass. I waved away a refill. He emptied the bottle into his glass. “I would hate to think I might get something that could kill me.”
“Why you think people are getting it.” Dean sipped his wine, rosy-cheeked.
“Because they’re having sex ‘old style’ an there’s something wrong down there with it.” I shrugged. “What I been trying to say that I’m not gonna die because I’m not gonna change the way I’m doin’ things. It’s a stupid example, but I think it’s a good one. Business, Politics and Science are all showing that if something is not working you have to be alert to different ways and adopt them as you need to. If you gonna get hidebound, you gonna wind up dead, so to speak.”
“Point taken, big guy.” Michel shrugged. “You look tired.”
“I am.” I stretched “I run like a bitch the whole weekend and slammed into just about every meat mountain in three counties and I’m aching to spend at least eight hours flat on my back in my own bed.”
“Oh.” Michel looked disappointed. “I was…”
“Yeah, sorry dude.” I grinned “But you guys make your own arrangements. Dean, should I throw stuff into the spare bedroom, or are you comfortable somewhere else?”
“Um…” Dean licked his lips, shot a glance at Michel who sipped his wine, looking into his glass. “Nah. It’s OK, Andy. Don’t make up the spare bed. I’ll… I’ll ask Michel to help me… get comfortable… if I need… um… help.”
“Cool, then.” I stood up “Thanks for dinner, stud. It’s my turn next.” Michel looked up and beamed. “Don’t worry about the lights or the plugs, the jenny is good enough to handle it. Close up, switch off, do whatever you want, I am going to be comatose.” Dean smiled at me. I grinned back “I will bid you both a very, very good night.” I walked through to my room, kicked off my clothes, stretched out and was asleep within minutes.
I padded through the next morning to an empty house. A pot of my favourite coffee was on the percolator hot plate and a note was under a fridge magnet ‘Taken the Kid to work. Coffee on. Have a good one. M.’ I poured the strong brew into the cup and sauntered into the living room. Everything was neat and in place. The dishes for last night had been washed and packed away and Michel’s room was tidy, the bed made and looking spick. The faint smell of man-musk lingered, giving no small clue… a definite probability rather… of how the evening turned out. The spare room was unused.
“Go Boys.” I muttered, grinned and headed for the shower.
After I was presentable, I drove my car through to work and later, honestly wished I hadn’t.
Chapter Ten
I suppose everyone has those days at work, just not quite the same level. I was just not expecting it. It was a red letter day and I was more nervous than I had been for a long time. Thing was, I had been steadily working my way into the position of indispensable while I had been slogging away on night shift and having the time to do things that while logical for my position was certainly not in the linear path my management had plotted for me. To their big surprise, my work had gained some notice, and more importantly some fame – and suddenly I was a ticket to a number of people who could benefit immediately by association, people that until now wouldn’t give me the time of day… or make that night.
See, my work involved some pretty abstract stuff. What my actual job was, the description rather was to monitor feeds and signals from satellites traveling through space to their actual destination somewhere. I guess once they had launched, they didn’t need all the constant attention from NASA – or whoever had put it up there in the first place, and my company had equipment and staff – me actually, that made outsourcing the projects and maintenance fairly lucrative to tender for.
Thing is, as the technology got more and more advanced, I had replaced several systems over the last year alone, the actual hands-on work became less, and I had become more specialized and experienced in the actual subject. All the courses I had done while bored out of my mind watching red and green lights flicker had made me quite specialized, and quite an authority on the subject. So here I was, a space probe guru… lucky me.
/> Now, the Italians and the Europeans had some sort of race on for a deep-space satellite and we were in it. Except some of the machines we were using were too new for a whole group of people to learn while the race was going on, and this meant that all of the boys putting the probe up were reliant on me to confirm their data. They were also big enough to second me to the task while the nuts and bolts were being built with direction from me, and also influential enough with my company not to really require their permission. Quite simply, if my company didn’t want to play the game and return expertise on one of their big projects, maybe it was time for the business relationship to be re-ordered.
Either way, I was going to be involved, and when you come to multi-million dollar deals, there is always a number of people wanting to become middle men, especially if they could benefit by expending absolutely no effort in looking really good and taking credit for something that is actually a done deal.
I had been busy on this for some months now, and all I was really waiting for was the go- ahead.
Most of the work I had been doing I had automated, so I was able to spend about an hour doing what it used to take me eight or nine hours doing, and I could twiddle my thumbs – or as the case may be spend the extra time learning more about other stuff. The arrangement between our employers and our company had become quite obvious now for even the most hardened dunce to figure out, and the buzzards were circling. So here I was, a golden goose and there were six or seven dead-end higher ranked managers who wanted to bask in the reflected glory of my work. Something, somewhere had to give… and it sure as hell wasn’t going to be me.
I suppose that was too pushy of me, but I thought it out this way. I had my job to do, a set series of tasks. When they were started and done carefully enough, the tasks were over and I was confident of success. Everything else was just fluff, and annoyingly distracting. The more I paid attention to this sort of distraction, the less certain ultimate success would be. So I didn’t, and I wasn’t. This insular behaviour was starting to get under the skin of the very people I least needed around me at this stage in the project.