by Ryder Stacy
“No crops?” Rath interjected. “Why, that’s terrible. Even here in Century City—and this is a city that doesn’t seal itself off—we have hydroponic gardens. Without fresh food, your health, even your ability to procreate, must suffer and—”
“Yes, it is a problem. When the—trouble—began, I proposed getting supplies of fish and seeds from the surface, so that we might eat better, but Stafford—our dictator, who I will explain about momentarily—says all things from the surface are evil, contaminated. We suffer ill health as you have stated, and breeding for us is impossible. Sex does not exist in Eden. We had our last child ten years ago. We are dying out.”
Two
Rockson was amazed by Danik’s story so far. He asked, “Who created Eden? How was such a project begun back in the twentieth century? Who had that vision?”
“The money came from an American millionaire. Edward Renquist. Renquist was obsessed with the idea that World War Three was inevitable. This was because Renquist’s own father perished in Hiroshima.”
“Was Renquist’s father Japanese?” Rath asked.
“No, his father, Johnathan, was an American POW in Hiroshima at the time the Americans nuked it—thus ending World War Two. Jonathan survived the blast—unlike most of the city’s inhabitants—because the jail was a solid building on the outskirts of the city.
“The cell he was in had a hole blown in it, though. He survived by immersing himself in a cesspool, breathing through a reed. Unfortunately, he was discovered the next day by crazed survivors. Since he was an American, like those who dropped the bomb, they tortured him to death—peeled his skin off inch by inch with surgical scissors.
“Renquist was born the day his father died. He grew up to be a brilliant youth and patented many inventions from the age of twelve onward. He was always fearful, though. Mankind used atomic weapons in Japan, in 1945, and Edward Renquist was certain the nukes would be used again.
“He decided he would survive nuclear war when it came. He created the concept, the design, the specialized equipment to build a self-contained buried world, a sealed biosphere—and called it Eden.
“He wanted to decide who would live in the survival city. After the war, which he knew would come, after the nuclear destruction was unleashed by the irrational minds of mankind, he wanted to start fresh, with nothing but brilliant men and women. He wanted a new world, with himself in charge.
“But Renquist didn’t live to take advantage of his creation—he was killed, most likely in the vaporization of Austin, Texas, just two days before he was to join the people he selected in Eden. The city was sealed off. Its location was always a closely guarded secret, and if someone did survive to try to find it, they could hardly do so—a half mile of rock was avalanched over the site by special machinery automated in advance for that task.
“My great-grandfather Ralf Danik was one of the original groups chosen to survive the war in the radiation-free city. He was an engineer of the waterworks of Eden. My ancestor, and the others with him, had no idea if the system they had created would work. If not, they would all suffocate, or starve, or die of disease. But it did work. And since it had been sealed off before the fallout from the bombed cities came, it was radiation free. The only radiation-free place in the world.
“The people of Eden have never had news of the outside world—none at all. Most of us in Eden believe we are the only people in the world. We live from generation to generation inside the cave. Safe. Secure. But gradually growing weaker. No one knows just why. Perhaps mankind just wasn’t made too live so long in caves. By my generation—the fifth—nearly all of us were sterile. And a movement arose.
“Some of us—I was the leader in the effort—said we must dig our way out, that we must attempt to live on the surface again. Preliminary probes with detection equipment were burrowed up in pipes to the surface. They showed higher radiation than normal, less oxygen. But it was liveable, basically. I wanted the tunnel to be widened—I wanted us out.
“That’s when the election was held. We had democratic elections of our council every seven years. I ran against a man named Stafford, a scientist who was convinced we should stay underground, that we should devote all our efforts to restore our genetic structure, so that we could have children better adapted to living underground. He was—and is—convinced there is no way for us to exist on the surface. He said our babies could be born in artificial uteruses, if women couldn’t give birth.
“My party, the Surface party, won the election handily, but Stafford broke into the century-old store-houses of weapons, and his followers armed themselves and pulled a coup d’état.
“I and the others who had been freely elected were hunted down and killed one by one. Our only hope was to reach the surface. And six of us made it—through a series of ancient construction tunnels that had failed to collapse entirely after the burial of the city.
“It was a wild world we encountered. Supplyless, we decided to head north, toward the United States—or where the United States used to be. We were Americans. We hoped to find other Americans. But all we found was death.
“You must understand—underground we had no idea it was winter. Bitter cold. It was never any season underground. We had forgotten the word. We had forgotten the meaning even for bird and cloud—and for one other concept I learned on the perilous trek to this place: beauty. For this world of yours, regardless of the dangers, is beautiful. None of us were sorry to leave Eden. We weren’t really alive down there.
“I really didn’t know exactly where we were heading . . . Our records showed a place called Denver was near the mountains called the Rockies. We found an old map in an abandoned house and some clothing. Rags, but they were warmer than our thin clothing.
“We tried to hunt, with sharpened sticks, but were seldom successful. We ate the few small animals we killed raw, not even having a means of lighting fires until we found a magnifying glass to focus the sun on twigs. Of the six who started out from Eden—myself, Run Dutil, Sysin File, the others—I alone survived to reach this area. And then I was dying, too. I was delirious, out of my senses. And, unknown to me, I was about to be eaten by some huge creature—which your patrol men shot dead. They brought me here, gave me medical attention, and fed me and gave me that delicious thing—coffee—yes, that’s it. Coffee. Wonderful.
“I used your rapid-learning tapes, listened to them while I slept. Absolutely an amazing achievement. Sleep learning. Fantastic. Your kind Dr. Schecter told me to rest after I had eaten, and attached the sleep-learning device. It told me all about your fabulous city. Century City is full of art, of fresh air, and—love. Yes, love. Something we had forgotten. We though of procreation only as a process, not as the result of the love between male and female. I have learned so much of your people already. Eden will only live if it becomes one of your allied free cities. Open to the world. Dedicated to the fighting of the Soviet occupiers. Help me, Rockson—come back with me and help me free Eden.”
“Wow,” Rockson said. He didn’t know what else to say.
“You must go to Eden with Peth Danik, Rockson,” Rath said. “Not only for their sake, but for our sake. To stop Stafford, the mad dictator of Eden, from releasing Factor Q.”
“Factor Q? What’s that, Danik?”
“Rockson, I am sorry to say that when Stafford raided the ancient war supplies stored in Eden, he found a terrible weapon—a germ-warfare canister, Factor Q. It’s sort of a virus really—that spreads on the wind. Once released on the surface—which is what Stafford has threatened to do—no human will be alive within a week. The canister must be incinerated without being opened. Burned totally at high temperature. That means of its deactivation must be accomplished before Stafford uses it. Stafford says if the people protest his rule, if they wish to try to live on the surface despite his warnings, he will release the virus above Eden. So that no one could ever hope to live on the surface.”
“I see,” Rock said grimly.
“Stafford’s
a real Jim Jones case,” Rath added. “Stafford must be stopped. Will you try, Rockson?”
Rockson sighed. “We’re snowbound . . .”
“You made it up to Alaska and back once in the winter.”
“With sled dogs, and an Eskimo guide. I don’t have either here . . . Danik, if I mounted an expedition, say a six- or seven-man attack force, can you lead me to Eden?”
“I don’t know the way there. I just wandered here. I don’t know the location of Eden. God, I’m sorry, Rockson.” Danik buried his thin face in his hands.
“You have to find a way to Eden, Rockson,” Rath demanded. “You will find a way. You’re the Doomsday Warrior.”
“Thanks for your confidence. But there are things I can’t do—like miracles.”
“You’ll find a way.”
Three
Danik lay down in his warm feather bed and looked up at the softly glowing ceiling above him. “Century City,” he said softly, to himself. “I am in Century City, a free American city. There is life, life vibrant and healthy, out here in the wilderness of America. Here are people, not sickly diseased mutations, not cannibals as Stafford had claimed—but good, brave Americans.”
Danik reached over to the table and took up the sleep-learning earphones and placed them on his head. He closed his eyes. Dr. Schecter had told him to relax, to rest and listen to this particular tape: “Accounts of the Exploits of Ted Rockson, by Detroit Green.” Schecter reasoned that on hearing of the exploits of Ted Rockson, Danik’s unconscious would have to admit the possibility that Ted Rockson could do the impossible. Namely, that Rockson could go to Eden with his small squad, defeat Stafford, prevent Factor Q from being unleashed. Schecter believed, along with the psychiatric staff, that Danik’s blocked memories of his trek might be released if Danik believed there was hope. “You’ll remember enough of your trek to lead our man to Eden,” Schecter had encouraged. “You will.”
Danik sighed. He put on the earphones and lay back trying to relax. He did want to hear of Rockson’s exploits. Danik wanted to know more about this man with the white streak in his hair and mismatched eyes. The man they called the Doomsday Warrior.
Everyone was depending on him to remember. And he couldn’t. The only thing he remembered of the trek was coming out of the half-collapsed tunnel from Eden with his companions in the nighttime. And following the star—the North Star. Then all was a blank until the moment he was being carried by two men into Century City. They’d carried him up to a sheer mountain wall, banged on the rocks as if they were knocking on a door. Then, amazingly, a doorway had opened and they had moved on into a long green-lit corridor, the doorway sealing behind them silently. He remembered other people—men and gorgeous tall healthy women—coming to meet the men who carried him. These people wore white uniforms.
He had been placed on the table and wheeled down a maze of corridors to a white room. He remembered tubes being stuck into his arms and a kindly old man the others called Dr. Schecter leaning over him and doing things with instruments that beeped and clicked. Then there had been the blissful warm darkness. And when he awoke—the doctor had said, “How are you?”
The man called Rath had come, questioned him briefly, and told him to rest again. In response to Danik’s own questions they had given him his first sleep-learning tape, the one that told the history of Century City. He could practically recite it:
On one fateful fall day in 1989, the skies over America had filled with death. Death coming in the form of a thousand nuke warheads fired by the Soviet Union, a surprise attack that was to devastate the United States. A surprise attack that would raise clouds of deadly fallout that would also make much of the world—including the Soviet Union—a radioactive desert. Madness. And yet it happened . . . But that was only the beginning, not the end.
Oh, what a story came next. The building of Century City. The story of a proud and brave people—Americans, surviving. Men and women trapped in their vehicles in the miles-long highway tunnel near Denver, sealed off from the fallout by avalanches, had dug out. They’d seen what had happened and sealed themselves in again. There were trailer trucks of supplies on that buried road, and men and women with all sorts of skills. They endured. They had slowly, over a hundred years, carved out this fantastic city, and still fought the Soviet occupiers of America. Century City, the product of the survivors of a nation of tinkerers—tinkerers like Edison, Ford, Du Mont, tinkerers with visions, with no holds on their imagination—because they were free.
The tape had told Danik of the century-plus of struggle against the brutal occupiers, and of the millions of less fortunate Americans that lived in fortress cities of the conquering armies of Russia, as slaves—slaves that toiled for their masters sixteen hours a day seven days a week, to supply the Reds with all their clothing, weapons, and foodstuffs.
But there was more, much more to America than slavery. Danik had learned that a league of hidden free cities—some small military bases, some large complexes like Century City, existed in the Rocky Mountains. These hidden bases were waging a successful guerrilla war against the Russians. And the leader of that epic struggle was the man he had met just that afternoon, the man they called the Doomsday Warrior. Which was why Danik was anxious to listen to Rockson’s exploits now. He adjusted the earphones; Danik fell asleep and dreamed. The dream he dreamed—compliments of the sleep tape—told the story of the Doomsday Warrior. From the time Ted Rockson had wandered into Century City as a teenage boy: Rockson’s parents, who had lived with him far into the wilderness, were killed by a KGB patrol. Rockson had journeyed through the wilderness to Century City virtually unarmed. He ate what he found or killed. The distance was a thousand miles. Once in the free fortress-city, he quickly rose through the ranks of Freefighters to command position, first as a lieutenant, eventually becoming a general, and then, finally commander of all the Resistance forces.
The tape summarized, in varying detail, many of Rockson’s exploits, especially the last. It had been a mission to the Arctic Circle itself, after a madman named Killov, who threatened the world from the bitter darkness of the northern winter with deadly atomic missiles. Ted Rockson had trekked to the north and challenged Killov and his KGB army with a mere handful of companions—the Rock Team, as he called them.
The Rock Team were seven individuals of rare skills and fighting abilities. Besides Rockson, it consisted of:
Detroit Green, the bullnecked black man—a crack shot and a fearsome opponent in hand-to-hand. Green was a champion grenade thrower. He always carried twin bandoliers with dozens of his “pineapples” attached to them across his chest.
Then there was Chen, the martial arts expert with the pencil-thin moustache. He had taught Rockson his fighting skills. Chen carried a beltload of shuriken, or star-knives. Some of the five- and six-pointed metal stars were for slicing throats at a hundred yards. Others were more lethal, carrying mini plastic charges of explosive, for ripping apart enemy units.
McCaughlin, a seven-foot-tall bear of a man, not light on his feet of course, but a real powerhouse, was a human battering ram most useful when a door that couldn’t be opened had to be. The crew-cut Scots-American was a crack shot with the .9mm Liberator rifle. But more important, he was a real humorist. Often, he was the morale builder of the Rock Team. When things got rough, when all hope appeared lost, McCaughlin’s gentle wit and wry jokes saved the day. He was a must on every mission.
Then there was Archer, the near-mute mountain man who Rockson had once saved from a quicksand pool. Archer was the oddest of the bunch. He lived deep in the twisting maze of conduit tunnels deep below Century City, preferring isolation and quiet to companionship. And why not? Archer, named thus because of his fantastic homemade metal crossbow and the special arrows that he always carried, had lived alone most of his life. Until he was found in his desperate condition by Rockson. Now Archer had allegiance to Rockson and Rockson alone. Because he always wore his same bearskin clothing, and seldom if ever bathed, some inhabitant
s of the rather neat underground city shunned him—and he shunned them. Still, when out in the open, his scent wasn’t too bad, and he was a good man to have around.
Scheransky was the latest addition to the team led by the Doomsday Warrior. He was a Russian defector, who liked to describe himself as “Russian, not Soviet.” He was proud of his people and their ingenuity and many achievements, and lived for the day when the hated dictatorship of his native land could be brought down to let democracy finally reign. A short man, he had once been chubby, but now this dark-eyed, blond-haired technical wizard had slimmed down, gotten hard and muscled in the fight for freedom.
Rona Wallender, the only female member of the Rockson team, had been left behind on the Rock Team mission to Alaska. Not that the Amazon-like tanned beauty had wanted to be left behind. She was a crack shot, and trained in survival and the martial arts. Frequently, Rona was Rockson’s companion when he hunted bear and deer in the wilderness of the Rockies. And the stunning redhead, all five foot ten of her, never failed to bag her share of dangerous quarry. She had been Rockson’s lover for years. Not that the Doomsday Warrior didn’t dally here and there with other females from time to time.
Danik learned that last Rock Team mission to save freedom had ended with a triumph for his forces of liberty. While the Rock Team had engaged Killov’s army in a deadly firefight in the Arctic darkness, the Doomsday Warrior had commandeered a Soviet jet and chased after the deadly missile launched by KGB head Killov. Rockson had destroyed Killov’s deadly missile in midair. Then Rockson had crash-landed in the desert. And after being captured by a Soviet patrol, he had encountered a strange megastorm. The nature of that storm, and its consequences for Rockson, was classified material, and not available on tape.