Paradigm

by Helen Stringer

  “We’re not stealing,” said Sam. “Just looking.”

  “Well, you can’t look, neither. Now git!”

  Sam sighed and turned to go, then turned back.

  “I was wondering…”

  “I’m gonna count to ten, then you’re both gonna be—”

  “I just want to know if you still have the telescope.”

  “What?”

  “The telescope. There used to be a telescope here and—”

  “I know there used to be a telescope! Question is, how’d you know? You ain’t never seen one. You ain’t never even seen a star.”

  “Have you?”

  “No.” There was a note of disappointment in his voice. “But I seen a satellite once! And once I saw the moon real clear, craters and all!”

  Nathan leaned closer to Sam. “What on earth is he talking about?”

  “Were you an astronomer?” asked Sam, ignoring his friend.

  “Hell, no. Before my time. But my Daddy was. Just about broke his heart. What’s your name, son?”

  “Sam Cooper. This is Nathan Berlin.”

  “Huh. You wait there. I’m coming down.”

  The old man scuttled over a few feet to a small gap in the railing where there was a rusty platform attached to some chain and a couple of ancient-looking pulleys. Sam couldn’t help flinching as he stepped onto the device, but it seemed to hold his weight without any difficulty. The old man yanked on a lever and waited. Nothing happened. He pulled it back and yanked again. A slow grinding, then nothing.

  “Goddamn machine! Never works!”

  He banged the lever back and forth.

  “Don’t do that!” yelled Nathan.

  “Can you use the stairs?” asked Sam.

  “’Course I can’t use the goddamn stairs! Think I’d have gone to the all-fired trouble of building this useless, festering rig if I coulda used the blasted stairs!?” He banged the lever back and forth again.

  “Stop it!” shouted Nathan, as if he were feeling every metallic blow. “Let me take a look.”

  “What?”

  “He’s pretty good with machines,” said Sam in what he hoped was an encouraging tone.

  The old man looked over at them, then nodded.

  “Not like I can do much from up here.”

  “You could still shoot us.”

  “Sam!”

  “Well, there is that,” chuckled the old man. “But I ain’t feeling quite so inclined as I was earlier.”

  Nathan glared at Sam before making his way to the base of the roughly-built elevator. He knelt down and peered into the box at its base.

  “When’d you build this thing?”

  “Fifty-some years ago. Worked fine then.”

  “You should have built a housing.”

  “A what?” asked Sam.

  “A cover. For the…for this. It’s full of crud. It looks like the only problem is your switch isn’t making the connection.”

  “Huh. Thought so.”

  “Well, if you thought so, why didn’t you—”

  “’Cause I can’t bend down that low! Fifty-some years ago I was a might more spry!”

  “Well why didn’t you make a housing back then?”

  Nathan stood up, sighed and looked around.

  “There’s some tools on that bench over there,” said the old man, gesturing toward a long stone platform covered in an array of implements of various sizes.

  Nathan walked over, his eyes suddenly like saucers. Sam had always been amazed at what his friend could do with a few pieces of bent wire and an old screwdriver, but here was a bench with almost every tool he could have imagined. For a moment he just stood and stared, then slowly reached out and touched them, as if half expecting it to be a dream.

  “You gonna get me down, or what?”

  Nathan snapped back, grabbed a couple of things off the bench and returned to the box. Moments later there was a crack! then a hum and the rusty elevator descended slowly to the floor.

  The old man stepped off, set his gun to one side and looked Nathan up and down.

  “Well, I’ll be,” he said, as if he’d just discovered something with two heads. “If that ain’t the most encouraging thing I’ve seen in thirty years.”

  “It was nothing,” said Nathan. “The switch couldn’t make the connection, is all. I just cleaned it out a bit.”

  “Where are you from?”

  “Nowhere,” said Nathan, glancing nervously at Sam. “Around. Not here.”

  “Well, I coulda told you that. Mind you, I don’t suppose I see the cream of the crop. Most of the ones come here just after whatever they can sell.”

  “I think that probably is the cream of the crop,” said Sam, smiling.

  The old man stared at him for a moment, then slowly started to laugh. Even that was like a machine that hadn’t had enough maintenance: it began with a kind of wheeze that extended into a whistle that was eventually joined by gurgling guffaws. All of which might have led the casual observer to believe that he was having some kind of fit, if it hadn’t been for the crinkled eyes and the upturned corners of the wizened mouth.

  “I think you could be right!” he gasped, finally. “Come on, young ‘uns, I reckon you could do with some food.”

  He picked up the gun and led the way across the huge space to a small door that led to another room and then on to a long narrow chamber that Sam guessed must have once housed the controls for the dome and telescope. Now the benches that had once held state-of-the-art monitors and tracking equipment were laden with home-made shelves groaning under the weight of canned food, machine parts, candles, oil, powdered milk, dried fruit and vegetables, endless crates of bottled water and more than a few of what appeared to be whisky.

  “Wow.”

  “As you can see, we had some time to prepare.”

  “We? You mean you aren’t alone?”

  Sam glanced around nervously. He really didn’t want any more surprises today.

  “Wasn’t. Wasn’t alone. Am now. You boys like bacon?”

  “Bacon?” said Nathan. “What, like real bacon? From an actual pig?”

  The old man chuckled again, pulled out an old black frying pan from under the bench, heated it up on a two-ring stovetop and dropped six pieces of bacon into it.

  Sam closed his eyes and let everything about the bacon envelop him. The snap and sizzle as the fat began to render under the heat and the slow, incremental release of the wonderful smoky aroma as it slowly filled the room.

  “Been a while?”

  “Yes,” said Nathan. “We’ve been getting by mostly on long-eared rabbit things. I’ve a feeling they’re not rabbits, though.”

  “Oh, they’re rabbits,” said the old man. “Well, mostly, anyhow.”

  He slid the bacon onto three slices of bread, folded each in half and handed one to Sam and another to Nathan.

  “Bon appetite. And you can call me Drake. Always best to know who’s making yer food.”

  Sam grinned and bit into the sandwich. It was fantastic. Greasy in all the right ways, crisp and meaty…and above all it was bacon. Real, honest-to-god bacon.

  “Where did you get it?” asked Nathan, his mouth full.

  “Got some cryogenic freezers in the basement. Daddy and the others took it into their heads to freeze themselves when they died and get woken up when things was better.”

  “It didn’t work?”

  “Oh, it worked fine until the generator broke. Then they just kind of dribbled out across the floor.”

  “Eeww!” Nathan stopped eating for a second, but the moment soon passed.

  “We fixed the genny, then Lucy, she was my wife, y’see, she said they’d be real good for food storage. Nigh on indefinite, y’see.”

  “So long as the generator doesn’t break down again,” said Sam.

  “There is that. But there’s just me now, so I don’t reckon she has to keep going too much longer.”

  “How many of you were there at the beginning
?”

  “The beginning? I can’t say to that. I was born after the Second Collapse and there were seventeen then. Eighteen with me. Most had been astronomers, technicians, that kind of thing. This place was easily defended, y’see. So they came here. And they kept looking.”

  “For what? For stars?”

  “No. For signs. For…I guess they were hoping that it was reversible. But the blue sky never did come back.”

  “So the sky really was blue?”

  “That’s what they told me. Now what’s your story? Seems to me you already believed in stars.”

  “My dad was a scientist.”

  “Really? What was his name?”

  “Um…Brooks. Elkanah Brooks.”

  “Brooks?” Drake cocked his head on one side, considering the name, but came up empty. “Nope. Can’t say as I recall a Brooks.”

  “We lived in San Francisco City.”

  Sam wasn’t sure if it was the bacon, the observatory, or the old man, but he hadn’t felt so relaxed in company for a long time. And he’d said his father’s name. Usually he just sidestepped such questions, or made something up, but there was something about Drake that made him feel it was okay.

  “I hear it’s a pretty place.”

  “I guess. I don’t really remember much—I was five when we left.”

  “To the Wilds, eh?” said Drake. “Tough life for a kid.”

  Sam shrugged.

  “So…I’m guessing you boys’d like to see the telescope. Follow me.”

  Drake squeezed past them and led the way to another small door, behind which was a staircase that disappeared into the darkness beneath the observatory dome. He slowly made his way down, clinging to the old metal banister with one hand and feeling his way along the wall with the other. Sam and Nathan hesitated for a moment then clattered down the worn stone steps after him.

  Once at the bottom, Drake gasped to catch his breath before reaching up and turning a switch. For a second nothing happened, but then strips of fluorescent lights flickered and sprang to life, illuminating what turned out to be a cavernous round room, a gloomy echo of the observatory above.

  “I don’t believe it!” said Sam, his voice hushed with awe.

  In the center of the room, cradled by boxes and breezeblocks wrapped in the ragged remains of towels and sheets, was a massive telescope, black and gleaming, a complex apparatus of tubes, dials and lenses and all without a speck of dust.

  The old man walked along its length, touching it gently as if it were an aging relative.

  “I keep her clean,” he said. “I come down here every day or so and make sure she’s clean.”

  He looked up at them with tears in his eyes, then roughly wiped them away with a gnarled hand and chuckled softly.

  “Get a load of me. You’d think it was my kid.”

  “It’s beautiful,” said Sam.

  “It’s fantastic,” gushed Nathan, running his hands over the precision-tooled device. “It’s…I mean…it’s…”

  “Don’t worry, kid,” said Drake, smiling. “There just ain’t the words.”

  “And this was upstairs?”

  “Yep. There’s another piece that it mounts on over there under that tarp. It should still work. Not that there’s much point in setting it up.”

  “Nothing to look at,” said Sam.

  “No.”

  Sam followed the old man back up the stairs to his small living room, leaving Nathan below, examining every inch of the telescope. Drake shuffled over to a dark corner and produced a half empty whiskey bottle and two grubby glasses.

  “No thanks,” said Sam, smiling. “It doesn’t like me.”

  “That’s tough. Water?”

  “Yeah.”

  Drake poured some water into one of the glasses and handed it to Sam before helping himself to a good-sized tumbler of the whiskey and settling down into an overstuffed chair.

  “Not such a bad life,” he muttered, exhaling happily.

  “How long do you think you can stay here?” asked Sam.

  “Until I’m dead, son. I may be the last, but I’m doing my duty by the old place. When I get to the next life, I want to be able to look Lucy and my Daddy and all them as went before right in the eye and say I did my duty by ‘em. I looked after the old place and kept that telescope in good runnin’ order.”

  “But what’ll happen then?”

  “I imagine those no-nothing hooligans from the outlands down there will swarm up here and…well, I don’t like to think about what they’ll do. But I can’t do nothing about that. I can just look after it now is all.”

  It wasn’t the first time Sam had heard such sentiments and he was certain it wouldn’t be the last. But still, it seemed strange to protect something for so many years and then just resign yourself to its destruction when you were gone. It was such a waste of a life.

  “Couldn’t you find someone to take over for you?”

  “What’s the point? I think we both know that no one’s ever gonna to be looking at stars again.”

  “Maybe not, but you never know—it could happen. I’ve heard there are still some places where the sky is blue.”

  “Fairytales and poppycock.”

  Sam sipped his water. It was sweet and clear and not at all like the over-filtered stuff he was used to drinking. Drake watched him, then shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, son. I spoke out of turn. I’m an old man, my life’s just about done. Yours is at the starting post. I can see as how you’d take a more cheerful view of the state of things. I suppose things might get better…and maybe there is blue sky somewheres.”

  Sam smiled and finished his water.

  “If there is, I plan on seeing it,” he said. “But for now, we’d best get going. Thanks for your hospitality.”

  “Don’t mention it. Stop by any time. Just yell first, so’s I don’t shoot you.”

  “Will do.”

  “Oh, and Sam?”

  “Yes?”

  “I did hear tell of a Dr. Brooks.”

  Sam glanced at him sharply. He looked drunk.

  “And his wife. Marion, wasn’t it?”

  “Yes.”

  “Used to work for Hermes Industries’ Research?”

  Sam nodded slowly.

  “Yeah. I heard some guff about a kid they was raising.”

  “Some what?” Sam stared at him, confused.

  “Oh, quit being cagey,” said Drake, waving his whiskey glass about. “I don’t give a tinker’s ass what you are. I was just wonderin’…what does it feel like?”

  “Feel like?”

  “You know…inside.”

  “Inside? I don’t know what you’re—”

  “Is it in your head all the time?”

  “Is what in my head? What are you talking about?” Sam could feel himself getting angry, but he had no idea why. Suddenly, all he wanted was to get out of there.

  “Hell and damnation,” muttered Drake, slugging back the last of his whisky and pouring himself another one. “The kid don’t know.”

  Sam felt trapped. He didn’t want to talk about it but at the same time he did. Drake knew something. Something important.

  “Sometimes…” he spoke in a whisper, hardly daring to say it out loud. “Sometimes I get these terrible headaches. My dad said they were allergies and—”

  “Wait…allergies?”

  “Yeah. Environmental.”

  “Environmental allergies,” said Drake, waving his glass around and grinning. “If that don’t beat all!”

  Sam glared at him. The old man was well on his way to being unable to form coherent sentences, but his amusement at Sam’s attempted explanation was no less galling for that.

  “People get them,” insisted Sam. “I’ve read about them. People used to get them all the time and have to go and live far away from cities. My dad had it too. I can…I guess it runs in families.”

  “That it does,” crowed Drake. “But I doubt you got it from your daddy’s side.�
��

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  It was taking all Sam’s self-control not to just pop the guy, but Drake seemed oblivious to his anger and just slugged back his whiskey again and poured yet another.

  “Y’ever heard of a ‘locule’?”

  “No. Uh…don’t you think you should watch it on that stuff?”

  “Why? Think I won’t be able to drive?” Drake dissolved into another wheezing, creaking gale of laughter.

  Sam stared at him, dumbstruck. The old man had to know how important this was, yet there he sat, swilling booze and dragging the whole thing out.

  “Look,” he began, his teeth gritted, trying to hide his desperation. “Maybe this is just a game for you. I can kind of see how you’d have to take your entertainment where you find it. But it’s my life! My dad gave me some pills and they work, but there aren’t that many left. If you know something, you have to tell me about it!”

  “Pills, eh?” slurred Drake, his eyes clearly losing their ability to focus. “Huh. Nice. Tell you what, son, if they work I’d do whatever it takes to find out where your old man got ‘em.”

  Sam took a step toward Drake, but Nathan chose that moment to burst through the door, his face still flushed with the excitement of seeing the great telescope.

  “I’ve made some drawings,” he gushed. “It’s just…did you see how many lenses that thing had? It’s amazing!”

  “Why?”

  “What?”

  “Not you,” said Sam, glancing back at Nathan. “Him.”

  He turned back to Drake, but the old man’s glass fell out of his hand and he sank back into his chair.

  “No. No you don’t, you old bastard!” Sam grabbed him by his shirt and shook him. “Wake up! What’s a locule? Wake up!”

  “Sam!” Nathan leapt forward and tried to pull him away. “What are you doing?”

  “He knows something!” yelled Sam. “He knows something and he’s just drunk himself into this…this…”

  “Knows something about what?”

  Drake’s eyes opened, blearily.

  “Locules,” he said. “Issa thing inside ‘f a thing with ‘nother thing inside ‘f it.”