by Jim Stark
"But I thought you guys did all that tunneling stuff to find the devil ... and then kill him,” said Tirone to the monk. “At least that's what—"
"We—uh—kind of lied about that,” said Smiley, with a sinful smirk. “But we never said it out loud, so of course we never got caught."
"So ... like, you drilled up through the floor over there,” asked Tirone, “like right into the fallout shelter at the lodge?"
"Smiley stamped his foot on the kitchen floor in—in what's that called again?” Julia asked.
"Morse Code,” said Smiley, smiling. “Three long, three short, and three long—for S.O.S., meaning ‘You can save our buttocks any time ... and right now would be good,’ you know?” He giggled at his own retelling of the story.
Tirone didn't know, and was going to ask, but Julia carried on with her story before he could get a word in edgeways.
"And the monks down in this stage-type place—"
"Staging area,” interjected Smiley.
"—and the monks from the stage area drilled up through the floor right in the kitchen in the shelter,” Julia continued, “and then they put this ladder up and one of them climbed up and his face was all dusty and dirty and he was smiling a lot and we all got to go down the ladder and they got us all in this little train and—well, all except for..."
"Diefenbunker forty-one,” said Smiley, sadly. “He stayed behind with Victor's body, you know ... in case he came back to life, but...” His voice failed him.
"That monk got killed from the bomb,” Julia whispered to Tirone.
"It's okay,” said the grieving monk as he collected himself. “He's in heaven now, the lucky guy."
"Anyway,” said Julia, “we got going on this little train, and the tunnel has lights on the ceiling all along the way, and Venice still had her video camera thing with her, so she took lots of pictures and interviewed the people that were in her car—she was in the front one here, just behind the engine. Me and Mikey and Randy and Lucky and Becky were all squashed in here together—and ... and Venice too—I said that already, eh?"
Julia put her forearms on the edge of the small ore-car and peered in, wondering again how they had all fit in there, and hoping that her baby didn't get squished from being all wedged in there. Tirone put his forearms on the edge beside hers, and silently wondered the same things. Julia pushed off and walked back one car, continuing her tale.
"And my mom was in this one,” she explained as she put her hands on the second dirty ore-car. “She screamed and hollered a lot—oh, she was real scared.” Then Julia's emotions took a tangent, and then returned, as if that memory was too difficult for her. “But then Doctor Valcourt made her take a pill and she got all spacey, you know? And then we sang ‘Happy Birthday’ to Randy—he's nineteen now, and ... and guess what!?” Julia squealed as she grabbed Tirone's big hand and held it to her chest.
"Uh—what?” asked Tirone as he tried to keep his hand dormant, and his feelings concealed—he was from another generation, or at least another background.
"They're getting married!” she squeaked as she let go of his rough hand and danced an impromptu pirouette. “Randy and his girlfriend Lucky! So we sang ‘Happy Birthday’ again, except the second time we changed it to ‘Happy Wedding'! Oh, it was so fun! But then...” her face went from giddy to morose in an instant.
Tirone waited, but Julia seemed unable to go on.
"The power went off in the tunnel,” said the monk. “It was cut when that big bomb exploded over there. We were already on the Ontario side of the river, the Canadian side, but..."
"And then the whole world started to shake,” said Julia, tentatively. “I thought it was an earthquake—we all did. We heard this scary rumbling sound, and it was like all black, and everybody was screaming—oh, it was just awful. But then one monk had a flashlight with batteries in it and he made it shine and shouted at us to shut ... well, he said ... like a bad word, and...” Julia looked shyly at Smiley, and wondered if she was “telling tales out of class,” as they called it at Victor-E.
"He shouted that we all had to ‘shut the fuck up,’ was the way he put it,” admitted the monk. “It ... worked,” he added, with a shrug.
"So we all, like, shut ... up,” continued Julia. “And they got us all off the train one by one and out in front of the train and we made our own little snakey train by holding hands and we had to all walk real slow in the dark except for that one flashlight up at the front that the monk had and boy, I tell you, we sure were happy when we saw the light coming from this big cave here! Oh, we were just like a bunch of little kids! And this one sort of old monk—uh—number—"
"Four,” said Smiley.
"Yeah, four,” said Julia. “He asked our monk with the flashlight where Jesus was—I mean Victor—well, that's what he meant—and when he heard that Victor was already dead from the cancer even before the bomb and then got blown up by the bomb, the old monk made this cross-type motion with his hand and said some funny words in—uh—"
"Latin,” said Smiley.
"And then he smiled real big-like and said that God was working in ... how did that go?” she asked Smiley.
Smiley smiled. “He said: ‘God works in strange and wondrous ways.’”
"Yeah, that was it!” said Julia. “So then they all said this little prayer for Victor and for the monk that stayed behind in case Victor came alive again, and then they said we could all have a nice hot shower and get our clothes all washed and dried, and then we had to wear some picky robes till our clothes got all dry, and then we went for a nice big supper with wine but I couldn't drink any because of the baby ... and ... and then you and Annette came here!” she finished with a Goldie Hawn smile and flourish.
Chapter 86
CHAIN LETTER
Sunday, May 15, 2033—11:05 a.m.
Gil Henderson felt ridiculous dressed in a tent, with a hood hanging down over his eyes. He was sweltering under the thing, and he couldn't fathom why a hundred or so crazed monks ... well, not so crazy, as it turns out ... would toil in their vineyards and hard-rock tunnels for their entire adult lives in such mediaeval attire. Good thing there's still room for true eccentrics in this old world, he thought. The awkward get-up and these bizarre believers were his only hope now, but he had convinced himself that in spite of all that had happened, and could still happen, he would likely make it through this alive.
Unbelievable, he repeated in his mind yet again. It had become a word that wouldn't go away, not because a professional journalist couldn't find a dozen alternatives without a thesaurus, but because no other word really said it. The events of the previous day had literally defied belief. If I had penned these events in the form of a novel, he thought, no self-respecting publisher would read past page ten!
Gil crawled into the back of a Jesus-E wine delivery van, and was followed by three actual monks ... or what he presumed were actual monks; he couldn't actually see their faces. Two monks were already on board, occupying the only two actual seats in this relic of the 20th century, one in the driver's seat and one in the passenger seat. As Gil sat down on the metal floor, right behind the driver's seat, with his back against the side of the van, his thoughts returned to last night. The whole bunch of them—well, minus the Roy kids, Tirone Lucas, Noel, Venice, Julia and himself—had crowded around the only Sniffer that was owned by the monks, an early 2027 model that had been kept safely out of sight ever since the day of its purchase—until yesterday evening. It was intended and even labeled “for emergency use only,” and had served its intended purpose admirably—so he'd been told—in the time since the Whitesides’ lodge on Wilson Lake had been vaporized by a backpack nuke, yesterday, at 4:41 p.m. And I was excluded from the Sniffer-huddle just because I'm not a Human Three or in transition to become a Human Three! he recalled bitterly as he wiggled his position on the van's floor in a losing effort to get comfortable.
The bomb was a mere firecracker even by 20th-century standards, but the blast was still repo
rtedly one-tenth the size of the Hiroshima bomb, he had been told—quite big enough to require the evacuation of the town of Quyon, three miles southwest of ground zero, and anyone else within a circular area twelve miles in diameter, or in the “plume” area, thirty miles downwind—east of Wilson Lake—including the Calloway #6 clan and the entire village of Luskville. For the second time in two decades, the WDA—once as the woefully misnamed World Democratic Alliance, now as the equally misnamed World Democratic Authority—had blown up the Whitesides’ lodge. And this time they got it right, Gil said to himself. Even the manor house, some two miles west of the epicenter, had its windows blown out by the blast effect, or so he'd been told by those who'd had access to that primitive, first-generation Sniffer.
Well, this time they got it almost right, Gil edited his thought. A smirk crawled over his face yet again, the one that always accompanied that word “unbelievable."
He adjusted his position on the ribbed floor of the delivery van, and lifted his hood for a quickie glance at the monks in the front—the pilot and co-pilot—and at the monk opposite, Diefenbunker ninety-one. This monk was young, and seemed almost Islamic in his willingness to die for his God, even if Victor wasn't the reincarnated Christian savior. When Diefenbunker ninety-one looked up and caught Gil's eye—and his smirk—he got onto his knees, reached over and yanked the reporter's hood back down. Then he ... well, he flattened his hand and slapped the hood right where he figured Gil's cheek ought to be ... and got it exactly right.
Gil wanted to kick the little bastard right in the crotch, but he knew he deserved the slap. It was hard to grasp the importance of keeping up the act, no matter what, as he'd been warned, repeatedly. Unbelievable, he thought again. The fate of the world was taped tightly to the inner thigh of his left leg, under his cassock, in the form of those three old-fashioned analog videotape cassettes. He heard the engine start, and then the van began to move out of the hangar-like entrance to the Diefenbunker.
Everybody thought that the LieDeck Revolution of 2014 would stand as the defining story of the 21st century, and perhaps of all time. Everybody was wrong. This story, the one I'm in the middle of, gets that honor, he said to himself. He made a mental note to remember that thought for the time, hopefully soon, when he would sit down to write his life profile. He unconsciously reached down to feel his thigh, to make sure the cassettes were still there. In response, Diefenbunker ninety-one kicked him in the shin, hard.
"Quit hitting me,” whispered Gil. “That really hurt, you son-of-a—"
The real monk kicked his shin again, harder this time, and on the very spot where the first blow was undoubtedly bluing up into a bruise. Gil shut up. He shouldn't have drawn attention to the cassettes, and he shouldn't have said a word, not even in a whisper. He had been awake most of the night, and he hoped that his judgment wasn't impaired by the lack of sleep. Unbelievable, he thought again as they slowed at the front gate of the Jesus-E property.
And then the van stopped! That wasn't supposed to happen. Gil breathed heavily, and his heart palpitated wildly. He wanted desperately to look up to see what was happening. He wanted to ask. He kept his head down and his mouth closed.
"Out of the vehicle,” came an authoritative voice from outside.
Gil didn't move. He figured the WDA agent for an American, likely from the Deep South. He had pronounced it: “vee-hicle.” Canadians, and most Americans, said “vee-icle,” with no telltale “h” sound and not even much respect for the “i” ... “veekull.” He heard the driver's window scroll down as the agent repeated the order.
"You have no right under world law,” said the driver—Diefenbunker fourteen, one of the older monks, who had been with Jesus-E since it was founded in 2017.
"These are extraordinary times,” yelped a different voice from outside. This agent's anger did not sound professional, like the first voice. It was shrill ... almost panicky. Gil began to question the strategies and tactics that had been adopted for this mission.
"Without law there is no order,” said the driver, far more emphatically than seemed necessary. “And without order, there is chaos and death.” He was quoting the allegedly immortal words of the putative “king of peace,” General George Brampton himself, the Honorary Chairman and founder of the WDA, exactly as his words appeared in the WDA Charter. The driver was challenging these WDA agents to obey their own damned laws or face the wrath of the only true power on the planet.
There was a sudden and disturbing silence as the driver turned off the engine, and Gil wondered why he did that. Because ... because ... they always do that to conserve fuel, he realized. Waste-not Human Threes, he recalled. “No changes of your behavior patterns from what you would do if the circumstances were benign,” Lilly had warned the Jesus-Eers. Smart move, thought Gil.
After half a minute, presumably occupied by a consultation among the WDA agents, the second outside voice tried again. “Where are you going?” it demanded.
"You have no right."
"How many in the back?"
"You have no right under world law."
Another few seconds passed, and Gil could feel his body fairly spitting sweat. His bladder, relieved just before departure, seemed about to release an aftershock, and even his intestinal tract felt suddenly slippery and loose, unwilling and unable to wait. He had always thought the phrase “to almost shit yourself” was just an idle expression. Now he knew it was a physiological reaction to real terror. Unbelievable, came the thought again. I've got to remember that for my life profile.
"Have you ... committed a crime since your last LV session?” asked the first WDA voice.
"No one in this van is due for an LV session,” said Diefenbunker fourteen. The real monks in the van had all been LieDeck-verified within the last two weeks—Lilly made sure that that was the case—so they could legally refuse even this question until the one-month anniversary of their last LV session. These two agents had active LieDecks handy, and operating, and the monk's statement, amounting to a refusal, had not caused a beep. “You have no right under world law to ask more,” he reiterated, “unless you have a solid basis for suspecting that—"
"The world is now under martial law, in case you haven't heard,” said the second voice outside, the shrill one.
"The world has been under martial law for nineteen fuckin’ years,” shouted the driver ... with astonishing ferocity. He hadn't sworn since he was a teenager, but there was no ring-rust in this voice. He was regressing, on purpose, all the way to Human Two ... and hopefully to good effect. “Now you either ARREST us for something,” he continued on in the same harsh tone, “or you fuckin’ LET ... US ... GO!"
Gil gulped air deeply, twice. He had to. He'd had a mild form of cardiac arrhythmia for twenty years, and every time his heart lurched like that, it felt like death. The monk opposite lifted his right boot up and shot his leg out, scraping his heel up Gil's shin. Gil grimaced at the pain, but he made no sound, and he didn't move. On the plus side, the shock of this blow had stopped the heart palpitations. Unbelievable, he said to himself.
"Go ahead,” said the first voice from the outside—the more professional one.
Diefenbunker fourteen buzzed up his window, started the engine of the old delivery van, and slowly pulled away.
It was only a couple of miles to the small town of Carp, and there they got onto the eight-lane Queensway, which cut a swath to and through Ottawa. As the van accelerated, Gil tried to set his mind to reviewing what he had to do when he got to the Canadian Press Building in downtown Ottawa, just like Lilly had instructed him to do, but in truth he was getting worried as to whether he'd get there at all, and focused on what would happen if this adventure didn't end well! No doubt we're being followed now, he said to himself, without daring to look up or ask.
Ten or twelve minutes later—Gil dared not even look at his watch—the van exited the Queensway, went through three traffic lights, turned, and came to a stop. Gil had been told by Annette that there was one stop to
be made along the way. She was the non-monk mastermind of this dangerous mission, but Gil had been denied information about what this stop entailed, why it was needed, and whether it could compromise his personal part of the mission, which seemed to him the only bit that mattered. He heard the back doors of the van open, and he heard what he thought was the sound of two monks at the back getting out. Then the doors closed, and the van began moving again. Soon, judging by the change of speed, they were back on the Queensway. Whatever the stop had been about, it hadn't ended in disaster.
A quarter of an hour later, the van left the arterial route again to begin its journey through the traffic of Ottawa. Finally, thought Gil. He wanted to get up on his knees and peek out of the window to see if they were being followed, but his shin still hurt, and he dared not even ask. Surely Lilly made contingency plans for that, he assured himself ... silently. Annette and Lilly had differed more than once, and sometimes loudly, on what the best tactics might be—or so he'd heard.
They were being followed, at an indiscreet distance, by a blue car that had latched onto their tailpipe the moment they pulled out of the Jesus-E gate. The driver of the van had kept his vehicle under the speed limit all the way on the Queensway, and had never moved from the slow lane. After he turned onto the Metcalfe exit and stopped at the first red light, Diefenbunker fourteen pulled Jesus-E's only Sniffer out from under his robe and handed it to the monk in the passenger seat.
The co-pilot monk—whose name/number Gil had forgotten—then ordered up a pre-arranged Netsite and began singing “Jungle Bells,” a satiric tune sung to the melody of “Jingle Bells” by a Human Three comic. Gil was all for prudence and codes and all that, but ... “Jungle Bells"? Once again he felt resentful that he had not been included in the strategy sessions back at the Diefenbunker, even though he knew full well it was for his own protection, and that of the overall mission. “They can't ever get out of you what you don't know,” Lilly had impressed upon him.