by James Gunn
Instead of being expelled from the Garden of Eden, he thought wryly, he had been abducted to it. To his left, over a rise of white cliff, was the Pacific. To his far right, towering above the long, bare rise of redwoods, were the peaks of mountains, no doubt the Coast Range. In front, across an expanse of brown bark, flower beds, and graveled paths, was a mansion masquerading as a log cabin. Although it was only one story high, Smith-Ng could see wings extending behind the broad front that faced him. The only incongruous elements were the windows that looked more like gun ports and the two-story towers at each corner of the building that looked as if guards stationed there could control the entire cleared area.
And then his captors had urged him out of the car and toward the cabin while the sedan itself had vanished behind the building. As Smith-Ng had been ushered through a door that looked like wood but revealed a thick metal edge, he had had a glimpse behind him of the barrier now closed over the graveled road on which they had entered. The gate was made of metal bars, and it met, on either side, before they disappeared into the surrounding redwoods, a stout chain-link fence that had looked as if it could be electrified.
But where would they get electricity? he had time to wonder before he was thrust into the entryway of the cabin, and the size of the place unfolded before him. Big rooms had opened on either side. To the right had been a library with shelves filled with books from floor to ceiling and tables and chairs scattered across polished wood floors. On one of the tables Smith-Ng had seen a modern computer. To the left had been a living room carpeted in a tan berber; in the middle was a huge wooden coffee table surrounded by brown leather chairs and sofas. Doors farther down the hall had promised more rooms.
Reggie had been waiting in the living room. “Here he is, Reggie,” one of his abductors had said, before they both had turned and left.
Smith-Ng had appraised Reggie, as he had felt himself being studied. Reggie was tall, lean, young, athletic, confident. Beside him Smith-Ng had felt even more physically inadequate, and it had seemed to him that he had lost another competition when he spoke first. “I don't know what you think you can gain from me that's worth a kidnapping charge, but you should know that I am an impoverished, recently divorced academic, and nobody would pay a dime to get me returned."
“Kidnapped?” Reggie had said, smiling. “You must have misunderstood. We want to retain your services as a catastrophe theorist. My people are sometimes too impetuous."
“Blindfold and all?” Smith-Ng had said. “That wouldn't look too good in court."
“That would be hard to prove, wouldn't it? Particularly when we have your E-mail acceptance of our proposal."
They had planned far enough ahead to fake that too. Smith-Ng had considered the complicated matter of proof and the ways in which his character could be attacked, as well the time and money a court case could consume. Time and money meant a great deal to him, perhaps nothing to these madmen. “Since there seems to have been a misunderstanding,” he had said at last, “I presume that I am free to go?"
Reggie had surprised him. “Of course,” he had said. And then, after a pause, “But you might have difficulty finding your way back, and something might happen to you. There are bears and hunters and stray bullets, as well as dangerous paths from which people have been known to fall to their deaths. And all our transportation is out-of-commission at the moment. Perhaps you'd be willing to stay overnight and make an early start."
Smith-Ng had considered his options. It hadn't been the lions and tigers and bears he had been concerned about but the distance he would have had to travel, alone and on foot, and “the stray bullets,” as well as the fall to one's death. These people could easily fake an accident.
“Perhaps we can reach an agreement. If I can perform my services, your transportation might be miraculously repaired."
“You are a perceptive man,” Reggie had said. “That speaks well for your professional competence. What we want of you is your prediction about Judgment Day, about Armageddon."
Smith-Ng had allowed his incredulity to appear, but choked back the natural response, “You're out of your mind.” If Reggie were indeed out of his mind, like Jim Jones and David Koresh, he might decide, like those two, to take his followers with him, and anyone else who happened to be there at the time.
“While you're thinking about it,” Reggie had said, “let me show you around the place."
Smith-Ng had never taken a house tour with less motivation. And yet, in spite of himself, the sheer wonders of the place had overwhelmed his apprehensions. The cabin was like a guest lodge, with perhaps two dozen rooms in each wing, joined by a big dining hall with a long table across the front and two even longer tables extending at right angles, like an English college commons. Behind it was a big kitchen equipped with mixers and beaters and shiny pans hung from a rack above the preparation table, a couple of big refrigerators, and a restaurant-sized stove flanked by microwave and traditional ovens. The stove and traditional ovens, Reggie had said, could be adapted to burn wood.
Behind the kitchen was a pantry room, with freezers and thoroughly stocked shelves, and behind that, in the enclosure embraced by the two wings, was the source of the electricity, an array of photoelectric cells. Reggie also had pointed out the units on the roofs of the cabin wings and said that electricity was stored for overcast days and nighttime in ranks of batteries. Gasoline-powered generators were available for backup.
“With most of the world concerned about the end of everything,” Smith-Ng had said dryly, “you have a big investment in permanence."
“That's why we're survivalists,” Reggie had replied. “Fools trust chance. In times of crisis wise men prepare for the worst.” He had seemed to make an impulsive decision. “I'll show you."
He had led Smith-Ng to a metal plate set in concrete in a cleared area beyond the photoelectric array. He had inserted a key. When he had removed it, the plate had pivoted upward on concealed hinges like some stone doorway into a world of fantastic revelation. Reggie had led him down a steep metal ladder into a concrete room with a circular metal staircase on one side and an open elevator on the other. Reggie chose the elevator, which descended past dark rock walls for minutes before it arrived at the bottom and they stepped out into what seemed like a near-duplicate of the lodge above, including the kitchen and the stocked larder. This one, however, had been carved out of rock, apparently hundreds of feet below the surface. And here there were dormitories instead of individual rooms, and an armory stocked with more weapons than Smith-Ng had ever seen in one place. Automatic rifles were racked against one rock wall; four machine guns and a dozen mortars rested in a corner; hand guns were stored in plastic cases and wooden boxes were stacked high against a wall. Some of the boxes had “hand grenades” stenciled on the sides; others said “ammunition” identified by caliber.
“We will defend ourselves,” Reggie had said, “against the people who chose not to prepare for a worst-case scenario."
“Or take over when government collapses?"
“Someone will have to,” Reggie had said simply. “Better us than the mobs."
“The cost of all this is unbelievable,” Smith-Ng had said.
Reggie had shrugged. “Nothing, really, compared to William Randolph Hearst's San Simeon retreat, and some of our backers could have bought out Hearst with a year's income."
“And what happens,” Smith-Ng had asked, “if all this falls into the ocean? If the catastrophe is a massive earthquake?"
“We are survivalists,” Reggie had said, shrugging. “We have other places as well equipped as this. You'd do well to help us. Not only will you be well compensated, you might be offered an opportunity to seek refuge here when the time comes."
“To join you?” Smith-Ng had said, not hiding his incredulity.
“There are compensations other than mere survival,” Reggie had said. “Let me introduce you to one of them."
They had ascended back to the surface, and back to the living room w
here Victoria had been waiting. Smith-Ng could not imagine that this cool, competent, voluptuous young woman was a reward to be offered for extraordinary services, but the thought that she might offer herself, that she might take charge of his body and mold it to her own sensuous desires, had turned his flesh cold. He could not decide if it was desire or apprehension.
These survivalists wanted a prediction, Smith-Ng thought, standing on the cliff edge above the Pacific, unable to retreat because of his uncertainty about what Victoria might do, unable to respond to their demands for fear that the wrong prediction might set off this cult into a paroxysm of murder and suicide. As self-possessed and confident as they seemed, their behavior suggested a deeper uncertainty that he feared to aggravate. Instead, in good academic fashion, he delayed.
“This place is built for dozens,” he said, “but I've seen only five or six. Where are the others?"
“Off earning a living, of course,” Victoria said. “That's one reason we need you. When do we call them in?"
That was true. This place could support its complement of survivalists for years, but after a few uneventful months morale would begin to deteriorate. Their catastrophe would be that there was no catastrophe.
“What's the big deal?” Victoria asked. “On one side you get payment; on the other"—she poked him again with her stick; it was, he thought, like a threat of rape—"you get the deep blue sea."
“As to the rewards—” he began.
“Money,” she said. “That's no problem. A down-payment up front with a retainer for weekly updates. Promise of a place in a refuge if you want it. And if you can get there in time. And some immediate pleasure.” She smiled and stretched lazily. “You look like you haven't had much recently."
“You'd do that,” Smith-Ng asked, “for the good of the group?"
“Maybe I like short, pudgy, middle-aged men,” she said.
Smith-Ng nodded at Reggie making his way back up the cliff side from his morning swim. “Wouldn't Reggie care?"
“Reggie?” She laughed. “You don't know Reggie."
He didn't want to explore that remark's implications. He had made up his mind. He would have to give them what they wanted, what he was sure now they wanted.
“Okay,” he said. “I'll do what I can."
He brushed past Victoria and her stick and her automatic and led the way to the lodge and the computer he had seen in the library. He switched it on, opened a file he labeled “Catastrophe!,” and confidently typed in his equations. Here he was in charge, and Victoria and Reggie and the goons who had abducted him were at cliff's edge to be poked. He referred to international data banks for stock-market trends, economic indicators, unemployment data, factory closings, interest rates, wage-price movements, financial-institution failures, strikes, lock-outs, bankruptcies, foreclosures, fluctuations in exchange rates, commodity prices, oil and gas shortages, imbalances of trade, assassinations, political instabilities, coups, terrorist attacks, and third-world nuclear capabilities. With Victoria's breath warm in his ear and her left breast pressed against his right shoulder, he inserted values in his equations and sat back while the computer did the calculations.
“We will have this stuff checked, you know,” Reggie said, from behind.
Smith-Ng half-turned. Reggie was still in his towel, like a young god. “So I presumed,” Smith-Ng said, “but I should caution you that there is no one, in my small field, or outside, who will be able to understand more than a small part of what I have just done for you."
The answer came up on the screen in the form of a graph with hills and valleys. Smith-Ng's fingers moved mystically over the keyboard, and the graph twisted to present itself in a simulation of three dimensions. Now it looked like an Escher landscape. Once more his fingers performed their magic, and the hills and valleys were painted with colors that transformed the landscape into a fairyland without fairy folk. But somewhere there was a pot of gold.
Reggie grunted. “What does it say?"
“Forget Judgment Day,” Smith-Ng said, looking back at Victoria and then Reggie. “Forget Armageddon. What this says is that the chances of worldwide economic collapse are forty-seven per cent over the next thirty days, sixty-five per cent over the next three months, eighty-three per cent over the next year."
“Never one hundred?” Reggie complained.
“If you want certainties talk to prophets."
“What about other catastrophes?"
“I've already done calculations on volcanic eruptions, nuclear war, asteroid collision, supernova and solar explosion, a new ice age, the greenhouse effect, plague, pollution, and overpopulation. It would be easy enough to download them into your computer, even to superimpose them on this graph. But their variables are greater, and they would merely add levels of uncertainty."
“Golly!” Victoria said, breathless before his expertise.
“Gee,” Reggie said.
“I've programmed your computer to adjust the readings for the various sources I've tapped, as they change, and the probabilities will be automatically adjusted, probably increasing. See here and here and here.” Smith-Ng pointed out the peaks and valleys, swathed in their various colors, and how their trends could be interpreted.
By the looks on their faces, he knew he had won. He had given them what they wanted, scientific confirmation of their dreams. The problem was not catastrophe but the people who had a vested interest in catastrophe. Howard Ruff was right, if Western civilization didn't fail, they would be terribly disappointed.
He had also introduced a variable into the equation that was his insurance policy against the survival of Western civilization and the outrage of the survivalists: No matter how much new data refined the graph, catastrophe always would be pushed at least a month into the future.
And if by some chance he was wrong, and civilization did collapse, he might have a refuge here against the night.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
December 25, 2000
Barbara Shepherd
Everything in the commune had gone so smoothly since Isaiah's death that Barbara Shepherd felt uneasy. She still dreamed of the prophet; he was standing as she had seen him last, his arms outstretched, the tines of the pitchfork emerging from his back, his eyes sad, judging her. But the days were perfect.
The weather had been magnificent with plenty of northern California sunshine alternating with rain at just the right moments. The crops were bountiful, the horses and cattle were thriving, and the television audiences had responded to her with an enthusiasm that suggested an unfilled need for a female religious figure, maybe even a matriarchal God. Perhaps the ancient Greek cult of the white goddess spoke to something fundamental in the human psyche.
Even the women whose daily existence she had shared were blossoming under the new regime. With the easing of Isaiah's monastic rules, meals had improved, field labor was less obsessive and intermingled with other tasks, and Shepherd had inaugurated a series of classes for the women's new leisure hours. Some of them needed lessons in reading, but others enjoyed classes on literature, painting and sculpture, crafts, agricultural and domestic arts, history, women's studies, scripture, particularly the scripture of apocalypse, and philosophy. That was Shepherd's favorite, and she enjoyed seeing the faces of her students brightening with unfamiliar ideas.
Janet had resisted the changes with every ounce of resentment in her swollen body. But even she had surrendered to Shepherd's leadership the day the communal dining table had been inaugurated. At dinner Shepherd had asked Janet to stand and announced that she would be the person to whom they all should turn for decisions about the everyday operation of the commune. And then Shepherd had walked to Janet's side, had put one arm around her waist and a hand on her pregnant belly, and had said, “Janet's baby will be born on Christmas Day.” Janet had treated it as the Second Annunciation, carrying her burden with an unfamiliar pride and even pleasure, and deferring to Shepherd as if she were indeed the Angel Gabriel.
It was the kin
gdom of God on Earth, the Garden of Eden without the serpent, in spite of the fact that here it was, December 25, and Janet had not yet felt a contraction. Shepherd had never felt so happy, so needed, so complete. At last she was living up to her name. And yet she could not enjoy it.
In the first place, there were no men. There could never be any men or the entire enterprise would collapse. That was why all the feminist utopias killed off the men in one way or another. Occasionally, one of the younger women came to Shepherd in the night, looking for comfort, and Shepherd took her into her bed and held her, nothing more. And yet Shepherd wondered if “nothing more” might turn into something she might not like, if she, too, might need comfort, if she might grow to appreciate the softness of women.
That was part of it. But mixed in with it was the reality that their little corner of peace and contentment wasn't cut off from the rest of the world, and the rest of the world was dying from terminal anxiety. Murder, rape, violence, robbery, immorality, terrorism, serial killings, mass slayings, war and the threat of nuclear destruction, plague, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, weird weather, threats from space, insurrection, and unrelenting fear about what the end of the year might bring. Six days more before the terminal date, and the world was falling apart. Here they were sheltered, protected by the hand of God. Isaiah might have seen it as a sign of heavenly favor; his little band had been blessed. But it didn't feel right to Shepherd. She had not been born again simply to be pastor to those already saved.
And that was part of it. Mostly, however, she felt uneasy about good fortune, as if she didn't deserve it, as if once the wheels of fate were running too smoothly she had to throw a sabot into the machinery. She had transformed tranquility into chaos too often not to recognize the symptoms. That was why, in the end, she had agreed to admit the reporter from this check-out-stand tabloid.