by Sandy Nathan
“OK. I’ll give you a tour,” Jeremy said. He looked like he’d been draggin’ a dead bear for thirty miles and finally let go of it. “The first and only tour. Sam, get Rupert in here, too. I think he’s hiding in the bushes on the other side of the ballroom. We all need to see this place.”
35
“Was there really a giant dog in the sky?” Val began grilling the kid the moment they got in the car.
“No!” he laughed. “They were passing around a bottle and playing the video game that Arthur—the driver—left after the limo went through. This week’s payoff.”
“Payoff?”
“Jeremy goes out to the estate every weekend in one of Mrs. Edgarton’s cars. It’s never searched, and there’s always a ‘gift.’ I’ve never seen corruption like here, and I’ve been stationed four places.”
“Tell me more.” Val knew she had those losers in the station pegged.
“Jeremy goes out to the estate all the time. They’ve been building something out there for years.”
“What?”
“The captain said it was an amusement park.”
“In the Hamptons?”
“That’s what I said. Every time Jeremy goes through, he brings a ‘care package’ for the captain.”
“What kind of care package?”
“Tech stuff mostly. Computer games, gadgets. Internet stuff. Stuff that can be sold for thousands of dollars, anywhere. The captain just bought a nice new house.” The kid nodded knowingly.
This was exactly what she was looking for. “Do you have any documentation of it?”
“No. They turn the cameras off when they see the car. My name is Josh, by the way.” He smiled at her.
“I’m Val Zanner.” she smiled back. “Tell me what happened today.”
Josh told her about stopping Mrs. Edgarton’s limo.
“The Dog Master was in the cab? Wait a minute. His show is live. I watch it as much as I can. He was shooting in New Jersey at the sheep trials today. He couldn’t have been here.” She thought hard. “Tell me what else happened.”
“We never saw Mrs. Edgarton, just heard her voice. Man, is she something.” Josh pulled his collar away from his neck like he was letting out steam. “That voice. We were expecting her; the orders for the day said she was coming through. We thought she was with the general. I couldn’t figure out why she’d drive her limo. She’d take a military chopper from the base or come in a convoy. But when the president spoke—”
“Wait a minute,” Val said. “I talked to him this afternoon. He was in the Oval Office; I dialed there on the dedicated line from the Anti-Terrorism Unit Director’s Office.”
“The president sounded just like he does on TV sometimes, with that cough.”
“He didn’t cough when I talked to him.”
They looked at each other.
“Let’s get out to the Piermont place and see what’s going on.”
Josh nodded. “The captain said Jeremy was going up there to party with a load of kids, but I don’t believe that.”
“Would you believe it if I told you that little Jeremy was a wanted terrorist, part of a cell operating from the Hermitage Academy? He blew up the school today, hiding evidence. That’s why my face looks like this. I was at ground zero.” She swerved, trying to fish her paperwork out her briefcase. “Get my case. I’ve got pictures of them in it.”
He found the photos she’d lifted from the academy yearbook.
“Shit! The old African guy was in the car. And so was this guy— Mel Adams. And her, too.” Val had gotten a picture of Lena from police files. She had a record of sorts—a neighbor had complained that she wouldn’t pick up her dog’s shit. “They were all in the car. And a guy who looked just like the Dog Master. Something’s going down at the Piermont place!”
She punched it, shooting through the countryside. Theirs was the only car on the road, which deteriorated rapidly the farther they went. The next checkpoint was deserted. She didn’t like the way the overhead canopy was swaying, so she pulled around the outside of the kiosks and didn’t go under it.
“Gee,” Josh said, “did you see that?”
“What?” The checkpoint was behind them by that time.
“One of the stations was smashed up. Looked like a car ran into it. A red car.”
“Why red?”
“A lot of red paint was scraped off.”
They drove in silence. The roads got worse.
When she saw the final checkpoint, she stopped in the middle of the road. “What could do this?” The overhang that went from one side of the road to the other was ripped off. The guard stations were pulled out of the ground and torn up. Pieces of sheet metal littered the road.
“Josh, are you sure you didn’t see anything back at the station? No giant flying dog?”
“I didn’t see anything. But I was downstairs after getting the crap beat out of me for stopping Mrs. E’s car. I couldn’t see anything.”
“Now you tell me. That’s great, Josh.”
She punched it again, heading into the forest.
“Do you think we should go back?” he asked.
“No. I’m on a mission. Did you see the video about the missiles being armed?”
“Yeah. I saw it.”
“What did you think?”
“I didn’t know what to think. What do you think?”
Val blinked. The combat pack was telling her to go for it no matter what the cost. A niggling doubt whispered inside her. She’d passed huge concrete installations all afternoon. Were they missiles? Were they armed? Should she go back? No! She was doing her duty.
“I think we ought to get to Veronica Edgarton’s mansion as fast as we can. The answers will be there. Besides, we don’t know what direction whatever wrecked the checkpoint was traveling. It could be at the estate, or it could be going back to New York City.”
Josh looked at her. “OK. I’m sure you’re right.”
“That’s right, Josh. I am right. Let’s go for it.” She rammed the pedal to the floor.
Val was glad she worked out as much as she did; she needed her strength to stay in her seat. The car was bucking like a rodeo horse; the road kept going downhill. Something hurt her hand. She looked and saw that her ring had turned so that its stones were biting into her clenched fingers. She spun it so that the stones didn’t rub. It sparkled, even in the dim light. Her breath caught. She felt like crying.
Fuck that. She pushed the throttle down harder and peered ahead. It was getting darker, both from the sun going down and the fucking trees. She’d never seen so many trees. They had to be subversive. Josh kept looking at her as though she knew what she was doing.
“Hey,” he said, “why don’t we pull over for the night? We can’t see much in this light. We can start again first thing in the morning.” He was scared.
“Let’s just go one more mile. If we haven’t found the mansion by then, we’ll stop.” She felt creepy. They were in hills. First all the trees, then the hills. There was a drop-off to a river on their left, which, if she remembered right, was the Pawtawamauck River. On the other side was a steep forest. Trees. The outdoors freaked her out. She’d lived in a city all her life and saw no need for trees.
“Josh, what was that?”
“What?”
“I saw something running in the forest.”
“I didn’t see anything.”
“It’s over there—look!”
36
Jeremy slipped through the round door. The minute he stepped over the threshold, the other side lit up without him doing a thing. He had hardened up like he’d never been a boy crying about his mother while saying every bad thing about her he could.
Sam’s eyes widened as he walked through with the others behind him. A hall ran off to his right. He could see a computer lab through glass windows. He hadn’t seen a computer, but he knew what the screens meant. The lab was dug under the mansion. It seemed huge to him.
“This is my upstairs
lab,” Jeremy said. “It’s smaller than the one down below. That’s where people will be living and where they’ll need the computers. I’ve transferred all the data and good computers down there. These are old. They’ll probably be destroyed by the blast.”
To the lab’s left was a steel wall with another round door in the center. Sam stared at it, filled with dread. He’d seen them build this shelter; he knew how deep the pit was. He didn’t want to go all the way down. People crowded behind him. All his life, he’d wanted to go to the lady’s parties. Now here he was, with them in fancy clothes all around him, and he wanted to be home with a pillow over his head. But he had to go down—he was the headman. Did the fact that Jeremy was taking him and Rupert down mean he was inviting them to live in it?
“The living quarters are at the bottom.” Jeremy pushed a button on the wall, and the new door screwed out from the wall and swung open. They stepped through it. This area was also brightly lit. Another set of steps down, with a circular door at the bottom, lay in front of them. They went down and through it, and then did it again. Through six doors, all told, and down six sets of stairs.
The shelter had seven levels. They ended up on the lowest one. The doors remained open, all the way up. That’s all that kept Sam down there. He’d have bolted back to the top, if escape hadn’t been clear. The echoes and unnatural light unnerved him.
“I didn’t put an elevator in it because everything’s on solar,” Jeremy said, then corrected himself. “I say I designed the shelter, but it was a collaboration. I did the on-site design, and scientists all over the world commented on it and created specific systems. We built them here. There’s no elevator because we didn’t want to use as much solar power as an elevator takes, and I didn’t know how much the blasts would throw the shaft out of alignment.
“We built the shelter with everything important on the bottom. This level will be radiation-free no matter what. As the radiation clears, we’ll be able to go to the higher levels. I don’t know how long that will take. The shelter is designed for two thousand years’ occupancy. That’s the worst-case scenario.”
Sam looked around, feeling hope desert him. Rupert shuddered and pulled close to his da like a kiddie.
For years, the village had known Jeremy was building something huge behind the mansion. Not knowing was impossible; heavy equipment filled the lawn and gardens. Mountains of excavated dirt dotted the area. Cement trucks came in like trains of ants, and other trucks delivered stuff, one thing after another. Solar panels—hundreds of them. Pipes and electric wire. Enough stuff to make a city.
No one had known what Jeremy was building, and he hadn’t said anything to them. They’d made friends with the workmen when he was gone, hoping they’d talk. The workmen had learned to love hooch and mushrooms on their days off. All that resulted in was the men getting fired when Jeremy came out without warning.
When it was finished, they’d covered the underground city with dirt, and planted grass and bushes. Except for long fingers of glass sunk down six feet, with metal covers over them, nothing showed. Something that big hidden out of sight had given him the willy-shakes—not that he’d admitted it. Trucks kept coming, day and night. Men unloaded stuff into it; what, Sam never knew.
And now he was inside it, looking around the cement world far below the surface. Gray, hard surfaces, lit by electric lights. It was chilly down here and a little damp, more so than the deepest cellar. Strange echoes arose from their boots on the hard floor. No one spoke. The place had no sound. No breeze. No life but theirs.
They were standing at the foot of the six long stairways. To his left, he could see a hall bigger than anything in the village. To his right, a wide corridor was carved back under the house. This was the place they might live and die, if Jeremy let them in. A world of cement. Sam thought, can ah live here? Can ah live here even a day?
Being burned to ashes would be better.
Sam’s knees betrayed him, trembling. Jeremy seemed angry again. Sam was glad; that way, he didn’t notice Sam’s terror.
Jeremy began firing questions at him. “How many people are there in the village?”
“Th’ world is gonna blow fer sure? Yuh know it fer real?” Sam found it hard to talk.
“That’s right, Sam, the whole planet is going to blow up. How many people, Sam? Drop the stupid act. We don’t have time.”
“Sorruh, Mr. Egerton.”
“Drop that dialect, too. Talk like a regular person. I know you can.”
Sam jumped. “How’d ye know?”
“I heard you bargaining with the trader in Jamayuh. You spoke good English then. You had to; he wasn’t from the Hamptons. He wouldn’t have understood you.”
Sam ducked his head. “Yuh can hear all the way to Jamayuh?”
“You’d be surprised at what I hear, Sam. I’ve got this township wired for sound.”
“Wait a minute, Jeremy,” Henry said, cutting in. “Sam just found out about all this. He’s never been down here. Give him a moment to collect his thoughts.”
Sam clutched the amulet he kept in his pocket. This was witchcraft. He was as afraid of Jeremy as he would be of a real snake man.
“It’s not supernatural, Sam; it’s technology.” Jeremy’s voice was softer when he spoke. “I’m a tech. A wizard, maybe—a genius, probably—but just a tech. We don’t have much time. We have lots to discuss, so I’m sorry if I’m short. You know about the machines that have been coming out of the earth?”
Sam nodded, careful to talk regular. “From the start. My boy, Rupert, rode to Jamayuh to see one up close. He jus’ come back.”
Jeremy turned on Rupert, who was trying to hide behind his father. “Get out here, Rupert. I need to talk to you.”
Rupert approached Jeremy as he might approach the king of the snake men, head down, peeking up at him like a kid. No, Sam realized, Ru approached Jeremy like he was God.
“What did you see in Jamayuh, Rupert?” Jeremy’s eye’s flashed.
“A big thing, stuck way up in the sky. I could see the track where it came from, tiltin’ up. That was in th’ gr’und, all wires ‘n’ steel.”
“Can you be more specific, Rupert? It matters. I need to know what kind of warhead it is.”
Rupert stood staring at Jeremy, unable to move. Sam could see that Jeremy’s power, along with the shadows and sounds of the shelter, had terrified his son. He intervened for him. “Ru’ can remember what anything looks like. Did you draw the figures on it, son?”
Rupert nodded. “Ah got ‘em all on this.” He pulled a paper from his shirt.
“Do you have pictures of the things?” Sam said, speaking the best English he ever had. “He’ll pick it out for you.”
“Yes, that’s a good idea. I can show you my command center at the same time. Follow me.” Jeremy turned right and took off at a fast walk, heading down the corridor under the mansion.
Sam saw everything, memorizing the passage the way he would note landmarks in the forest. The hallway had rooms with metal doors on both sides. He saw tracks for sliding doors along the ceiling, and realized that the edges of steel doors slid back into the walls. The place could be shut down six ways from Sunday. It was a fortress.
Jeremy opened one of the doors, talking into a piece of metal on the wall and punching buttons. They entered another corridor, which burrowed back into the earth under the mansion. The door closed and locked behind them. The lab was behind steel walls and through two more sets of doors. These opened after Jeremy talked into a flat panel and showed his palm. They all went inside, pressing close. The lab was a series of rooms off the entry, glass-walled, with the same type of locks on each door.
Jeremy touched something on the wall. The lights went on and the screens lit up. A blue glow suffused the rooms behind the glass wall. Hundreds of computer screens gleamed in half a dozen rooms.
The entrance to the lab was up a few steps from where they stood. Jeremy whirled to face the group, standing in front of the glass doors.
The light from the computers struck Jeremy from the rear. His disheveled hair stuck out in thick corkscrews. The ringlets caught the light and shone, making a halo around his head. The lab disappeared in a sea of monitors and screens, in rooms stretching into the darkness.
Sam began to tremble. It was a holy, awful place.
In his mind, Jeremy looked like a forest spirit or a boogie. He looked more supernatural than the most terrifying snake man raving about hell. He could feel Jeremy’s eyes burning into him. Sam wanted to groan and fall down like they did at the meetings. The boy had the power to see all over the world with those computers. The power to do things Sam could not imagine.
At that moment, Sam realized what it meant to be a Tek, and that Jeremy was the Great Tek. He was lucky to live in the time of the Great Tek and meet him, even if, until now, Jeremy had been a barely civil, rich brat to him.
“OK,” Jeremy said. “This is my temple. I built it with the help of the greatest techs alive. It’s our best work. We built this place hoping to create a new world after the nuclear war. We built it for all of you here, my friends. But there was more to this place. All of you know this, all but Sam and Rupert.
“A bunch of scientists and intellectuals picked from all over the world were supposed to be here with us. I had hoped my mom might come home, too”—he stiffened—“but no one’s coming. Everything happened too fast.”
Sam’s jaw dropped and he practically dropped with it. Jeremy said he and Rupert were invited into the shelter. What of their families? What of the rest of the village? He couldn’t stop himself from crying, “Wha’? Wha’ o’ the village? Wha’ abou’ ma wives and kiddies? An’ Rupert’s?”
Jeremy looked at him. “I always intended for you and Rupert to be in the shelter, Sam. You could pick your favorite wife and children. Up to three kids each.”
Sam stood speechless.
“There wouldn’t be enough room for more, Sam. It was just genetics. Everyone going into the shelter from my end was genius caliber, or saved my life, or both. Or they had powers like you and Ru do. That’s what we need to make a good world. Good genes.” Jeremy waved his hand at the others standing behind him, the people who’d come with him from the city.