The Beginning of Sorrows

by Gilbert, Morris

  But he hadn’t been bored for the last three days, because the markets, of course, had been performing bizarre permutations since the blackout had hit the United States. Of course anything that affected America’s market affected the entire world, and Ang had amused himself for almost an entire day constructing a model predicting what each market in the ten spheres of economic influence would do next. His modeling had proved to be, so far, 82 percent correct, and he’d made another million or so adjusted dollars for himself and had almost single-handedly managed to stabilize the tantrum-prone globally based financial derivatives market.

  But now, on the third day of the blackout, he was getting bored again. The floor of the exchange was still lively—in comfortable times it was quiet, with muted and dignified voices talking into SATphones and the drone of Cyclops-generated audio—but for the last three days there had been lots of shouting and hysterics.

  Too much for little blackouts in the hinterlands, Ang thought with irritation. Everything’s smoothing out again—the Euromark hardly even flinched, after all! Don’t these imbeciles realize that nothing really important has been affected . . . just some squatters in Texas, I guess, and some yahoos in the South . . . and some apple farmers in the Northeast. None of the co-ops have been affected, the imports are still coming in, the exports are still going out, and Cyclops is still humming . . . what’s the uproar all about?

  Of course, Angstrom Klerk, being much smarter than most human beings, didn’t have all of his wealth tied up in the never-never cyberland of the stock market. For years he had been stashing gold and silver coins and precious jewels, and they weren’t stashed in any inaccessible bank vault, either. He’d designed a home safe and security system, and then had actually built and installed it himself, with his own hands, and all without Cyclops’s red eye ever seeing a thing. Ang certainly wasn’t one of those weird end-of-the-world militants; it was just that it had given him great satisfaction to completely insure himself against any force or man or woman or organization or entity.

  After lunch, the buzz was decreasing somewhat as the numbers flashing across the hundreds of Cyclops screens continued to stabilize. Ang leaned back in his creaky but comfortable chair and grinned, running his hands through his hair. Two more benchmark securities that were touchstones of his model had just done exactly what he’d predicted they’d do. Life was good.

  The lights went out. Ang could have sworn that his beloved Cyclops sighed, and then went dark.

  The silence was heavy, assaulting the ears with its oppressiveness. It seemed to last for a long time . . .

  But then the screaming began.

  After two minutes, eight people were already dead from being trampled in the inky blackness, forty-six others had broken bones, and eighty-two others had gotten bruised and scraped and bashed.

  Still in his private cubicle, still sitting in his personally modeled ergonomic chair, Angstrom Klerk began to laugh wildly, though tears were rolling down his face.

  His vault, his lovely safe he’d created and formed with his own hands to hold his treasures, was behind two inches of titanium-reinforced steel.

  There were no manual controls to open it.

  Angstrom Klerk began to think that maybe he wasn’t so smart after all.

  On Directorate Highway 94 just west of Denver, the traffic flowed heavily but smoothly down the four-lane mountainside, which happened to be particularly steep at a 12 percent grade. Most of the vehicles were commuters from the big city, the lucky and rare few who still owned property in the foothills. Mostly through bribes they were able to hold off the Sixth Directorate’s increased pressure to assign them to the Man and Biosphere co-op cities. Some of them were relatives of high-ranking officials in the organization, and thereby retained favor. No matter who they were or who they knew or what they’d done, every passenger of every car lost their breath with fright when their cars quit.

  When the batteries in the cars went out, so did the brakes, thanks to an engineer named Sevvy Quint who’d invented a braking system powered by the battery rather than the ancient fossil-fuel method that was polluting our beloved Lady Earth. Very quickly, a few of the drivers on Directorate Highway 94 began to wish mightily that Sevvy Quint had never been born.

  The cars heading down the dangerous incline began picking up speed, and then bouncing off of one another, too crowded to leave the road and nowhere to go if they could. Drivers going up the mountain were faced with the impossible prospect of steering straight while their vehicles lost power and began backing down the slope. These turned out to be the fortunate ones, however— much more fortunate than their fellow drivers moving down at increasing speed. All of the backward moving cars eventually spun sideways into the side of the mountain from which the highway had been cut, or into the median wall. Most of them came to a stop, and those that somehow managed to turn all the way around had their progress stopped by the immobile ones. All of them were left with the horrifying sight of the cars in the lanes thundering downhill at terrifying speeds. A little more than halfway down, at a very sharp right curve, these juggernauts jumped the median retaining wall and crashed headlong into the immobile drivers. This area soon became a death pit.

  Those that managed to fly past the curve were faced with a left hand curve every bit as vicious at the one they’d just successfully navigated. The guardwall didn’t last past the second vehicle that hit it, and it collapsed to allow car after car to plunge off into the canyon. It was a 2,200-foot drop to a shallow, icy creek below.

  Gazing at the bottom, when it was finally over, one old-timer said that it looked like the old tin-can garbage dumps of the earlier century, where he used to go and shoot rats with his .22 pistol.

  Even the most militant Greens of the Man and Biosphere Project cared little for North Dakota. Plans for an Arctic biome were still far in the future—because the snow would live. Even humans couldn’t conquer and kill the snow wilderness.

  Darlie Lundvaal, now sixty-two years old, reveled in the fact that she still lived alone, self-sufficient and triumphant, in her grandfather’s house by the shores of Lake Sakakawea. She was a stark and bony woman, her limbs strong, her skin like blistered leather from the decades of savage winters. Her hair, now as white as the eternal snow surrounding her, was still thick and luxuriant, and reached below her waist. She brushed it twice a day, and shampooed it every other day, drying it by the fierce heat of her fires. The only thing that Darlie resented about getting older was that she couldn’t get warm as easily as she could when she was young and vigorous. That, and the fact that she had outlived her husband by three years now. They’d been lonely years, but still Darlie had no wish to go live in her designated retirement co-op city of Helena, Montana. She’d been to that sprawling Gotham once. Once was enough.

  Grunting a little, she heaved a fat oak log onto the fire.

  “Last one, Lord,” she said, pursing her lips and narrowing her eyes. “Those good aged oak logs burn fine and long. But then . . . but then . . . the cold.”

  She pulled her ancient rocker up as close to the stone hearth as she dared. Darlie already had on several layers of clothing, with the oldest but warmest pure wool on top. She also had a sassy orange wool cap that she’d knitted herself and wool gloves that her husband had given her for the last Christmas they’d celebrated together. Staring down at them, she smiled to herself and reflected dryly, “Shows you how foolish all my squirreling stuff away is . . . I never wore these gloves, they were so fine I was ‘saving’ them. Well, for certain I won’t be wearing them out now . . .”

  Rocking steadily, she ate and drank her last cup of tea with the last dollop of sugar and the last homemade bran muffin. All to go with the last oak log. She ate and drank slowly, with relish, thinking how very good everything had tasted for the last three days.

  “All together, I tell You, Lord, it’s been a good life,” she murmured calmly, laying her head back and closing her eyes. “And it looks like I’ll be just going to sleep. And, Lo
rd, I say that it’ll be a good death.”

  After a little while she whispered, “Even so, come Lord Jesus.”

  The western desert in the heat of the day

  Reinhart looked down at the old city of Albuquerque, New Mexico.Part of the city was burning, and part of it looked as though it had been bombed. A squadron of his beloved F16 Tornadoes flew off in an arrow-straight formation toward the south. Reinhart backed his horse, and motioned Zoan to pull back farther into the shelter of the overhanging cliff behind them.

  The horse beneath him was flecked with frothy white sweat and blew her lips together with a slobbering sound. Leaning over, Reinhart patted the horse and thought for a moment about the four days he had spent with Zoan in the Indian camp, and the two days and two nights they had spent crossing the empty desert. Those had been strange days for him. He would not easily forget Zoan and his friends.

  “A long ride, my friend,” he said rather awkwardly. When Zoan merely nodded, Reinhart slipped off his horse and handed the lines of the simple rope bridle to him. Uncomfortably, Reinhart tried to think of some way to adequately express his gratitude. Finally he said, “I’m forever in your debt, Zoan. I would have died if it hadn’t been for you.I hope that I may have the opportunity to repay you someday.”

  Zoan smiled and it lightened his whole face; he looked like an innocent young choirboy. “I’m glad we met, Reinhart. And I think we will meet again.”

  At those words Reinhart felt that Zoan, perhaps, still thought that Reinhart might betray him. The German felt the need to, once again, impress on his friend that he would never reveal the secret. “I won’t tell anyone.” He smiled then. “I won’t swear because I know you don’t like it, Zoan. But I will not tell anyone about you and your friends and the canyon.”

  Zoan did not answer. His unusual eyes grew darker as the pupils dilated, and he seemed to look through, and beyond, the German for a moment. “If he finds out,” he said quietly, “you’ll die.”

  Oberleutnant Reinhart Angriff, a loyal German of the Luftwaffe, a professional soldier and warrior by heart and blood and history, felt a terrible fear at Zoan’s calm words. Rigidly controlling the bile in his throat, and deepening his voice to a growl, he said evenly, “On my honor as a soldier, Zoan. I will never speak of you to anyone. Now— I must say good-bye. Thank you once again, my friend.” He bowed slightly and clicked his heels together, a long-forgotten gesture of respect from men of his race.

  Zoan said, “God go with you, Reinhart Angriff. I’ll pray for you.And I’m glad to call you friend.” Then he turned the stallion back to the north and disappeared into the heat-shimmers of the cruel desert.

  TWENTY-ONE

  THE CITY OF HOT SPRINGS was old, its homes aged, its commercial buildings antiquated. The soul of the town—and most of its square mileage—was actually a two-centuries-old national park, with fine old hardwoods carefully tended through the years. Hot Springs burned like a dead dry thornbush.

  The fire was started by an old couple who, in their fear of the anarchy that resulted from the blackout, shakily lit candles in every room in their old house. The parlor’s green velvet drapes that dated from the antebellum era burned in less than thirty seconds. Ena Drennan, at seventy-four years old, was overcome by smoke in less than five minutes. Her husband, Mackey, died a few minutes later, trying to drag her out. The house burned down to the ground in about twenty minutes, and the brisk, rising fall breeze carried the sparks from street to street.

  The Commissary Headquarters for Hot Springs was located in the old Arlington Hotel. Commissar Xanthe St. Dymion had a third-floor room with a single dingy window that had ages ago been painted shut, so the fires, and the confused shouts of the people outside, didn’t awaken her.

  But the screaming did.

  She had come starkly awake, then jumped out of bed and yanked the dusty velvet curtain back from her window. The raging fire lit up the night sky. At the great intersection of Grand and Central, she could see people running, yelling, pointing, panicked. The screaming woman was somewhere in the building, maybe on the first floor. Along with all this Xanthe’s quick mind registered another odd and frightening thing: All the power is off. No lights. She glanced back at the ever-present Cyclops screen inset into the wall. Even the red-eyed monster, as Brother Mitchell called it, is dead.That’s why I haven’t been called out . . . no one knows how to communicate without Cyclops anymore. No high commissar would ever think of having to knock on doors to call out the troops by voice command . . .

  “A complete breakdown,” she murmured. Quickly she dressed and left her room. The elevator was dead, so she groped her way carefully down the stairs. The screaming had stopped, but she could hear more muffled shouts from the street.

  Outside she saw a stygian scene of confused and frightened people running, shouting, sometimes pushing others and fighting. Some of the shouts, as she moved along, turned into screams of fear. She moved toward the center of the intersection, where the big decorative fountain formed the center of a little-used traffic circle. Many people, mostly men, were milling around aimlessly, although some did seem to be trying to organize a bucket brigade. The ancient Grand Hot Springs Hotel, on one corner, was ablaze and somehow that gave her a wrench. The old twelve-story building was beautiful in a way. Xanthe had loved the hotel’s faded grandeur, but now yellow tongues of flame licked from every window. Even as she watched, a woman in a pale pink nightgown threw herself out of a window on the top floor uttering a shriek that was cut off as she struck the pavement.

  Xanthe was thunderstruck; until now she hadn’t actually comprehended the dangerous scenes around her. She stood still, trying to decide what to do. A man pushed her, his face distorted with fear and rage, and Xanthe pushed him back. He ran off, cursing.

  She was confused, disoriented, and growing more afraid. Frowning, she took a step toward the men who had managed to form a shaky line and were passing buckets back and forth from the fountain to the Grand Hotel. It was a hopeless exercise, she realized, and stopped again. Even as she watched, three men ran by, chasing a young girl who looked behind her as she ran fleetly, her face white and terrified. With sudden decision, Xanthe ran back to the Arlington. Commissars were running around outside, as confused and frightened as the mobs. And now Xanthe could see that two of the windows on the top floor—the fifth—were smoking ominously.

  Running hard, she flew in and up the stairs to her room. Already she could smell the harsh, acrid smoke, though she couldn’t see any yet. With quick and sure movements, she gathered up her weapons and snapped them onto her belt and side holster: an Israeli-made Uzi, stubby but deadly; her personal side arm, a Glock 9 mm; her baton-Tazer; and a long, slender dagger that fit into a sheath in her right paratrooper’s boot. Quickly she loaded her munitions belt, cramming her breeches pockets full of the half-empty boxes of cartridges. Without hesitation, leaving her few personal possessions, she turned to run out of the room. But at the doorway she stopped, then hurried back to the scarred wooden dresser and opened the top drawer. Her gray eyes thoughtful and faraway, she took out the brooch that Noemi Mitchell had given her. Xanthe started to put it in her pocket, but then she snatched off her black beret and pinned it over the jaguar insignia on the front of the band.

  “I need to . . . feel close to you, Sister Mitchell,” she whispered. Then she added hesitantly, “And You, too, God. You, too. Help me, please. Just—help me to do the job You’ve given me to do. I’ll do whatever You tell me.”

  Even die?

  Xanthe didn’t know if God had asked this hard question, or if she was testing herself.

  But she knew the answer, because she’d heard it from the wisest old man she’d ever met: Though He slay me, yet shall I trust in Him! The sound of a high-pitched scream penetrated the deep sleep of Allegra Saylor. She was a light sleeper and the harsh sound brought her back to the world with a start. She sat up and searched for the alarm clock, but total darkness met her eyes. She groped for the lamp, threw the switc
h. Nothing.

  “Blasted power’s out . . . ,” she muttered. Rising, she fumbled a little in the cluttered drawer of the nightstand until she found the tiny flashlight. She flicked it on, the small one-inch beam an instant comfort.

  Hurrying across the hall, she found that her four-year-old son, Kyle, was still asleep. Unlike her, he was a heavy sleeper. Allegra watched him for a long moment, part of her reveling in the simple joy of watching her child sleep, part of her filled with confusion.

  Leaving Kyle’s room, she went into the living room, stubbing her toe painfully against the couch. Moving to the window, she drew the heavy drapes back—then gasped with fear. The entire street across from her little cottage was blazing! Instantly she knew that her little old wooden house was doomed. Dashing back into her room, she dressed, mumbling furiously to herself at the difficulty in finding suitable clothing for the cold night. And we’ll have to leave—! I’ve got to get some clothes—Okay, calm down, take one minute to save a lot of heartache later . . .

  At the age of twenty-two, Allegra Saylor was a lovely, waifish-looking woman, slender, willowy, and delicate. But at the same time she had enough strength of mind and willpower, said her husband, Neville, “to stock a store.” Neville Saylor, a Marine pilot, was based at Twenty-Nine Palms in California. Allegra and Kyle had come to Hot Springs for a two-week visit with her parents, Merrill and Genevieve Stanton. They lived in a big Victorian house just down the street, but Allegra had stubbornly insisted on renting this little cottage. She knew that her son could be a handful, and her parents deserved all the peace and quiet they could get after raising five kids. No need in them starting all over again at their age . . . she was suddenly very worried about them. Quickly she took another look out the living room window and saw some dark shadows breaking into houses across the street that hadn’t caught fire yet.