The Beginning of Sorrows

by Gilbert, Morris

  Victorine finally looked her mother in the eye. “I love you, too. Very much. Now, how about some food?”

  The night before, as Tessa Kai had secretly been planning a special day for Dancy, she’d taken all the rest of their dried beef strips and soaked them overnight in cooking sherry. Early that morning she’d wrapped the softened meat strips around pieces of Asian pears, which kept forever. Tessa Kai had always said it was because they were actually wooden fruit: Their consistency was like soft wood, and they certainly tasted like it. Still, when cooked with spicy meats, they made a good, mild-flavored base.

  Then she’d started a long and slow-cooking sauce made of sat-sumas— that rare citrus fruit still grown in a few places in the South that looked like old dried-up oranges and tasted sweeter than sugared tangerines—and butter. She’d also made a dish of julienne potatoes and onions diced into tiny bits, with a sauce made of powdered cream and butter. She hoped it would be something like lyonnaise, though it was unlikely, with the tasteless Proto-Syn cream.

  It was delicious, perhaps the best meal they’d had since the blackout, even though Tessa Kai insisted that it was like dog food. Every morsel was carefully wrapped for snacks later. Victorine allowed Dancy to have two cups of heavily sweetened and creamed coffee, while she drank the heavy, bitter brew—it was boiled— black. She liked it. Actually, it was a little like the espresso her father used to buy and share with Victorine. Suddenly Victorine longed for an espresso, in a tiny, delicate china cup with a twinge of lemon peel waved over it . . . Odd the things that occur to you, that you miss and want . . . For the first time since the blackout, Victorine let her mind and thoughts wander a little. She relaxed.

  The sun was deliciously warm, and even burned a little on Victorine’s face and hands. Tessa Kai and Dancy started picking up shells and making little drawings in the sand that the waves promptly erased. It was an idyllic day, and Victorine thought that she could almost forget—not completely, but almost—the terrible days that they had been through, and the ones that were surely to come. Lying back on the blanket, she closed her eyes, though she didn’t drowse. She just concentrated on relaxing her aching leg muscles, the tightness in her shoulders and neck and jaws. She thought of her father, and she thought of Tessa Kai’s words about her heavenly Father, too.

  Something was wrong. Victorine shot up and looked around wildly.

  Dancy and Tessa Kai were standing in the little surf. They had grown quiet, and their sudden stillness and silence were, perhaps, what had startled Victorine. Dancy was gripping Tessa Kai’s arm, hard, and her face was strained and white. “What is it?” Victorine called, running to them.

  “I—I—don’t know,” Dancy said. She sounded confused.

  Tessa Kai said in an urgent tone, “She told me to be quiet. She said she heard something.”

  “Heard something? Like—like what?” Victorine demanded.

  She and Tessa Kai looked at Dancy. Dancy was pale, the color draining from her cheeks. Her eyes were unfocused, staring into the far distance to the east. Then she tightened her mouth into a small, straight line and said, “Someone’s coming, Mother. They’re coming.”

  Victorine froze, then whirled and searched frantically up the beach. It was empty, deserted.

  Dancy looked chagrined. “Maybe—maybe on the road—”

  Victorine said quickly, “It doesn’t matter. You two go upstairs. Now.” She turned and ran back to the fire, frantically kicking sand over the flames. Then she grabbed the shovel and started covering it good. It would have to be better than good—it would have to be out and covered with clean white sand. Dancy and Tessa Kai ignored Victorine’s command to run upstairs. They both now sensed that Victorine wouldn’t have time to erase all traces before they got close.

  Dancy muttered to her grandmother, “They are on the road, Grandmother. And I think—I think it’s the Pikes.”

  “Filth,” Tessa Kai sniffed. “I’ll get the food and things, Dancy.

  You start sweeping up our footprints, okay? Hurry, child, hurry!”

  The three worked so fast and hard that Victorine didn’t even have an opportunity to order them upstairs again. Within minutes, the fire was out and covered, the few footprints on virgin sand had been swept, and the litter from the picnic had been whisked up. They hurried to the condo, with Victorine coming behind, quickly sweeping up the marks of their steps.

  If Victorine had thought quickly enough, they could have gone up the west stairwell and then, perhaps, the gang walking from the east would never have seen them. But then, Victorine thought of many, many things, for a long time, that she might have done, or should have done differently. As with all regrets, they did no good whatsoever.

  Without speaking, making as little noise as possible while carrying so much, they hurried up the stairs. They reached the landing between the third and fourth floors, and to their horror, the gang had reached the condos. Framed in the open portholes in the east-facing wall, Victorine, Dancy and Tessa Kai were exactly in the line of vision of the men and women only fifty feet away on the street.

  Victorine froze. “Don’t move,” she whispered furiously. “Can see movement in peripheral vision better . . .”

  The three of them stood perfectly still.

  The men, laughing and talking loudly, were swaggering along, some brandishing baseball bats, some holding guns. One even had a horsewhip he was cracking on the road and making hooting cattle calls. They could see three women, walking tiredly. One of them stopped, pulled a bottle out of the pocket of her leather jacket, and swigged enormously, then wiped her mouth. Her hair was tangled and matted, and when she swiped at her face it left a dirty streak across her mouth. It was very hard for the three not to move while she stood there, idly looking around. Once it seemed that she looked straight at them. But then, carelessly, she tipped the bottle again and took a long hard drink, then capped it and slouched on. Victorine started breathing again, and Dancy made a small, high noise in her throat.

  The last of the group—there were about thirty of them now, Victorine thought—were straggling on, and she was thinking, We made it, we did it, they didn’t see, they can’t see . . .

  Unbelievably, beside them, was a horrible clang and then a shriek, quickly cut off. Tessa Kai had dropped the iron pot she was holding, and was clawing at her face.

  Before she had time for a conscious thought, Victorine pulled Dancy down to the gritty, cold floor, beneath the sill of the opening.

  Tessa Kai grimly pulled a spider out of her hair, then, with great deliberation, threw it down and stepped on it. As if she were in a dream, Victorine watched, her eyes on her mother’s cheerfully bright yellow Wellie as she ground it back and forth. “Well, that’s done it for sure,” Tessa Kai breathed.

  They were shouting. A man’s rough voice called, “Hey, Brucie Goose! You hear that! Somebody’s up there—look! On the stairs!”

  Though she tried to move quickly, Victorine couldn’t seem to control her body. She felt as if she were underwater, far underwater, with weights all over her, weighing her down, burdening her, so she could only move in slow motion . . . she raised her eyes to her mother’s kind brown ones.

  Men’s voices were shouting, while some of the women were calling shrilly. They heard footsteps, hard and loud, in the parking lot. Men were running toward the stairs.

  “I love you both so much,” Tessa Kai said sweetly. “And it won’t be long before we’re together again. But right now”—incredibly, she smiled at Victorine—“I’m going home.”

  Clutching her funny big pocketbook close, Tessa Kai turned and walked down the stairs.

  Victorine and Dancy both felt as if they were indeed in a horrible, uneasy dream, unreal, stifling, where you can neither move nor speak.

  Tessa Kai disappeared.

  A man’s greasy voice echoed in the stairwell: “It’s an old woman! C’mere, Bruce, look! Hey, Grandma, how you dealing with it, huh? You can’t be by yourself . . . who else is up there, taking car
e of you?”

  Dancy, in Victorine’s arms, stiffened. Victorine felt her deep intake of breath as she opened her mouth to shout.

  And then Victorine did something that forever after both horrified her, but also gave her great gladness. She clapped her hand over Dancy’s mouth, and held her arms in a vise so she couldn’t move. Dancy whimpered, but the tiny sound was lost.

  “You filthy pig—no, that’s an insult to pigs,” Tessa Kai was saying calmly. “Well, whatever you are, I can take care of myself. See?”

  “Lookit that! Grandma’s got—two! Two little popguns! Hey, look—”

  A gunshot. It sounded very loud, and echoed deafeningly, in the tunnel of the stairs. Dancy flinched, her whole body jerking spasmodically.

  He bleated, “Shot me! You—” Scuffling noises. Another shot, then two more.

  His voice was black with rage. “Shot me! Old woman shot me! C’mere, you idiot, help me! Get me back to the doc, now!”

  Their footsteps receded. Crouching on the floor, Victorine still holding Dancy in a stranglehold, they heard the gang shouting, then laughing. The man’s rumbling growls faded.

  It was quiet again.

  Victorine and Dancy got up so slowly; they looked as if they were old, old women. Victorine put her arm around Dancy’s waist, and together they walked down the stairs. A soft twilight was enveloping the world. They didn’t see Tessa Kai until they were standing right over her.

  She was sprawled in an awkward position on the second and last steps. Her handbag was still threaded on her left arm. Both of her ladylike silver .22’s were gone.

  It took Victorine and Dancy a long time to carry her up to her home. They washed her and did her hair, and dressed her in an old white dress that she had always liked, and had worn every New Year’s Eve. They laid her in bed and perfumed her. Victorine took a long time arranging her hands outside the perfectly smooth coverlet. Dancy took Tessa Kai’s old Bible and read Psalm 103. Tears streamed down her face, but her high, childlike voice was steady and calm. Victorine didn’t cry.

  When they left, Victorine locked the door. She never saw her mother’s house again.

  The White House

  Washington, D.C.

  “Wha—”

  The president’s voice cracked. He cleared his throat, a dry, choking sound, and began again. “What are they shouting?”

  “They want in.” Alia Silverthorne spoke in terse sentences these days.

  “But why?”

  Stiffly and slowly, Alia moved to stand in front of the roaring fire in Luca and Minden’s formal sitting room. There was no nonsense about “Project Final Unity Situation Room” now. Cyclops, and the White House, and Washington, and perhaps the whole world, had been dark for more than three weeks now. “They’re cold, hungry, angry, and scared. Just as we are. Sir,” Alia added as an afterthought.

  Luca remained motionless at the window. It was bleak outside.Even the light of day seemed halfhearted and weary.

  “Sir, you really must move away from the window,” Alia said— for at least the hundredth time. President Therion just didn’t get it.The hundreds of people besieging the White House were angry and determined to make someone pay for what had happened to them. And President Luca Therion’s defenses were very weak, indeed. But he just couldn’t seem to comprehend that, either.

  “I don’t understand,” he murmured, an eerie echo of Alia’s private thoughts. “Why are they threatening me and Minden? I told them . . .I told them that it was a conspiracy, a dangerous fundamentalist religious faction . . .”

  “Yes, sir, they understand that.”

  Finally he turned away from the window to face her. “How do you know, Commissar Silverthorne?”

  “Because last night they hanged four people from the gates,” she answered neutrally. “They have signs hung around their necks that say ‘religious fanatic’ and ‘traitor.’ One of them was a priest.”

  Luca’s sensitive face was unreadable, especially in the uncertain firelight. Alia studied him carefully, and he seemed unaware of her scrutiny. He really is perfectly self-deceived . . . he has truly convinced himself that somehow this disaster has nothing to do with him or Minden or the ohm-bug or the Germans—

  Or me, one part of her disciplined mind tidily supplied.

  She was much too fatigued to go into that mental minefield again.

  “Where is Minden?” she asked, choking back a yawn by sheer willpower.

  “Meditating,” he answered, nodding toward the adjoining bedroom.

  “Sir, I really must stress again that neither of you should ever be alone for any length of time,” Alia said as severely as she could manage. “Will you go get her, or do you want me to?”

  “Neither,” he said gruffly. “Leave her alone. And I will ask you to keep silent, please, Commissar Silverthorne. I’m trying to meditate myself.”

  Alia considered this, and decided to let it go. There was no outside entrance into the bedroom. Minden and Luca were probably as safe as they could be with Alia guarding them, for she was fairly certain that in the end—which could come any day now—she was going to be the only one left standing with them. She leaned against the mantel, savoring the warmth of the fire, trying to regain some strength from it.Blinking heavily, she let her eyelids shut only for a moment . . .

  All this . . . because of that silly little germ, she daydreamed. And Niklas . . . Niklas . . . I wonder . . . if he’s dead . . . horrible, unthinkable way to die! Smothering, dying, sick, thirsty, starved, shut up with hundreds of dead and dying people in the dark . . . Entombed, alive, entombed, alive, entombed, alive . . .

  With a smothered half-scream, Alia woke up.

  She’d fallen asleep, standing on her feet, leaning against the mantelpiece.

  Guiltily she glanced at Luca Therion. He didn’t turn around.

  “Alia, go to bed.”

  “I can’t, sir, I—”

  “I order you. I’m still president of the United States of America. Go to bed.”

  Alia straightened to her full height of five feet, four inches tall. “I’ll obey your order, sir. But I ask permission to sleep on the sofa.”

  “Permission granted,” he said dully. “It doesn’t matter anyway, does it, Alia? Aren’t we all going to die?”

  “Not on my watch, sir,” she said evenly.

  She settled down on the hard sofa, and Luca returned to the window. “Sir . . .” she said in a soft, pleading voice.

  “Aren’t the snipers on the roof?” he asked carelessly.

  “Yes, sir, but they can’t shoot a bullet heading for your head.”

  “Isn’t this window bulletproof?”

  Alia sighed. “Yes, sir, it’s supposed to stop up to a .50 caliber.”

  “So?”

  “So there are always M-60’s, sir.”

  “Ah, yes,” he said gravely. “There’s always a bigger gun out there, in the dark, where you can’t see it . . .”

  Minden came floating in. It really did seem as if she were floating, for she wore a filmy white dress trimmed in a long airy fur, like the finest ermine. She was radiant. “Oh, wonderful, Alia, you’re here! No, no, sit down, here, right by me. Luca, come here, my darling. I have such good news, such wonderful news!”

  Alia immediately became concerned for Minden’s sanity: there was no such thing as news any more. There was no Cyclops. There were no newspapers, or SATphones, or even radio waves or electromagnetic impulses. The ohm-bug had eaten them all . . . Alia was fuguing out a little, and made herself concentrate on Minden’s raptures.

  “ . . . ritual cleansing is the first step. I insist, Luca, that you do it tonight. Now.”

  Luca wearily took her hand and stroked it. “Minden, dear, there’s no water. Remember?”

  She jerked back her hand and said irritably, “Don’t talk to me as if I’m a troubled child, Luca. There will be water. Trust me. We will have water. Then—then—you must do the invocations. It’s taken me so long—I’ve been so blind! Bu
t the invocations and incantations, Luca, open the door . . . and then comes the empowerment.”

  Luca looked uncertain. “The—empowerment?”

  “Oh, yes,” Minden said in a low voice. “You have no conception, Luca, no possible comprehension of what I have learned, what I have finally seen . . . It’s a miracle.”

  “What-–how—”

  “Tor,” she said in an almost inaudible whisper. “Tor showed me.”

  “Tor—von Eisenhalt?” Luca was losing ground.

  Impatiently Minden jumped up. “It took me three weeks to—to— find it, Luca. It’ll take you a little while, I know. But look—”

  She rushed to the window, flinging the heavy draperies aside impatiently.

  Luca and Alia gazed after her, mystified. Alia, her mind slow and stupid, finally got up. “Minden—My Lady—” she said helplessly.

  Minden turned around, and for a moment Alia thought she saw—something. Something Else. Not Minden, not a woman, not even a human. Something pale, forbidden, of the wraiths, the ghouls, the gray and tattered spirits of ancient tales told in darkness . . .

  I must be hallucinating from fatigue, Alia said, shutting her eyes tight.

  When she opened them, Luca was standing by Minden, touching her face. “You’re bleeding,” he said. He sounded afraid.

  She touched one long pale finger to the corner of her eye. “It doesn’t hurt,” she whispered. Pointing with her blood-tipped nail, she said, “Look. It’s snowing.”

  The three stood, unmoving, watching clean fat flakes swirling down.

  Alia turned and ran from the room.

  She had to get containers onto the roof fast.

  At least they wouldn’t die thirsty.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  COLONEL DARKON BEN-AMMI, who was the steadiest hiker of them all, stumbled and fell to his knees. Vashti Nicanor wondered at it, but only for a moment. She knew her Mossad comrade very well, and knew that he had done it on purpose. He was walking by Captain Con Slaughter’s side.

  Slaughter roused from his daze and hurried to help the older man to his feet. “You all right, Colonel?”