Christine checked the time in the bottom right-hand corner of the laptop, but she knew it was the chairman calling from the town car. She looked back at the message heading from her grandfather. She had no idea what this could mean, but she didn’t have time to figure it out now. The cell phone rang again. Christine looked at her apartment. All the lights were on. The chairman could be looking at the same thing.
Could this e-mail be a setup from the chairman? Christine wondered. How would he have found out about her grandfather? Easy enough, Christine reasoned. But why would the chairman send a message. That was another matter, and Christine couldn’t come up with the solution. Even if there might be a reason, the chairman wouldn’t need to do something like that, would he?
The phone continued to ring.
She turned on the shower and picked up the phone, said, “Five minutes,” and slapped the phone shut. She clicked on her grandfather’s message and her screen filled with text. She hit the page down button and the screen was full. Again, the same. She wasn’t going to be able to read this now. She closed her grandfather’s message, popped out the memory card from her cell phone, slid that into the back of the laptop, and downloaded the laptop’s hard drive onto the card. She figured this old machine couldn’t hold that much and wouldn’t crash her phone. Anyway, that was what she hoped when she popped the card back into the phone.
Then it occurred to her: What if someone found the laptop? That would not be good, she thought.
The cell phone was ringing again: it hadn’t crashed. She opened the phone and said, “Right there,” and snapped the phone shut.
She looked in the medicine chest and pulled out the same nail file she had used on Gabriel’s poem. She popped open the back of the laptop and unscrewed the hard drive from inside the computer. She closed the computer without it and put the laptop’s hard drive into her gym bag.
She still had her bathrobe on over her pants. She dropped the robe; grabbed a shirt, socks, and shoes; and dressed as fast as she could. She had to get Gabriel’s poem. She went back to the closet, jammed the computer onto a shelf, retrieved the poem and the gym bag, and was out the door.
When Christine closed the door of the town car, she was assaulted by an arctic burst from the car’s air conditioner. She shivered from the cold hitting the sweat on her back, and her hair was still dripping onto her shirt. Christine looked down and saw that in her haste to take care of all she had to do before she came down to meet the chairman, she had put on her shirt without putting on a bra. As she noticed this, so too did the chairman of the Conglomerate party.
Great, Christine almost said out loud, except that she noticed a small triangle of white paper was peeking from her hip pocket. She looked back at the chairman and at his driver, both of whom were still fixated but not on her pants. She tucked her fingers into her pocket and pushed the paper in along with them.
“Sorry to have kept you waiting,” Christine said as she crossed her arms, “but such is the cost of research. Successful research.”
That caught the chairman’s attention. He raised his eyebrows along with his gaze.
“I’ve made some significant findings that could impact your recovery time considerably,” Christine said. “Nutrition,” she said.
“Nutrition?” the chairman said. “How am I supposed to eat when you’ve got me sedated?”
“Nutritional supplements,” she said. “We’ll mix a vitamin and herbal rejuvenating agent into your sedative drip. This will enrich both your blood and oxygen count, replenish cellular structure and suppleness, revitalizing brain function not only faster but to a greater depth. When you awaken, you will be a radiant light of leadership atop the imperial republic.”
Where’d that come from? Christine thought. She had better knock it off. But the chairman looked captivated by what Christine had said, and his eyes flickered with her vision that lit up like the city on the hill. The idea unleashed a heat from his central nervous system outward, relaxing the muscles and tendons along the way. He wasn’t thinking of the process, or of the immediate future. “A light of leadership atop the imperial republic.” Why, I will have to use that with the board, the chairman thought. Maybe Salter was worth more than he had contracted her for.
“…, Mr. Chairman.” The chairman heard Salter’s voice as if from a distance.
“Yes, yes.” The chairman came around. “Excuse me. I was busy planning ahead. Which nutritional supplements should I be taking now?” She had never been a nutritionist. Fruits and vegetables seemed to Christine a safe way to go.
“Vitamin A, D, the B group. C is important and E will aid molecular recovery,” Christine said. She knew she was tired, because she wanted to laugh out loud that she had used the first five letters of the alphabet.
X, ALONG WITH her friend John, and Ichabod the driver of the I train, followed the arc of their flashlights into the workshop. X was taken at the sound—or, rather, the lack of it. The smells of oil and other lubricants were strong enough so that she could feel it in the back of her throat.
X moved the flashlight. She had never seen so many tools. Some of them she recognized: drills and hammers, and C-clamps of every size. But there were more that X had never seen before. She brought the light down to the foreground; there were work stations equipped with large battery packs in measured intervals across the floor. As X’s flashlight swept the area, she saw racks of wheels and racks of axles, and sections of track that held completed wheel assemblies. Above her there were huge hooks and hoists with thick chains, and there were pneumatic drills and power lines suspended from the beams that crisscrossed the ceiling. There were no lights other than the flashlights. All things to be amazed by, but what got to X was the quiet. X had never seen tools at rest, a work area without workers, a space that spoke of labor, like this place, and yet there wasn’t a sound.
The flat black I train revolved on a platform designed for this purpose. The train driver was showing off his train. X would have thought that the process of turning a train around would be deafening, but like almost everything else in the workshop, the procedure was nearly silent, except for the muted clicks of the well-oiled chain that pulled the huge wheel that turned the section of track that held the train. If it weren’t for the fact that it was impossible and that he had dark glasses on, X would have sworn she saw a sparkle in the blind man’s eye.
They boarded the train and pulled out of the workshop. The train evened out to a steady sway and made its way across town. It wasn’t long before the driver slowed the train down and brought it to a stop, and the doors of the I train opened into the darkness. The train driver came out of the cab and headed for the void.
X knew her companion was surprised. He fumbled with the flashlight when he passed it to her. She realized they must have been pretty far underground because the temperature was cool against her skin. The light trailed along what was a subway station, and X saw that the station was elaborately decorated. The design featured acorns, bushels of them; inlaid ceramic tiles with an acorn cast, stenciled acorns along the borders, and acorns carved into the giant wood beams that arched across the vaulted ceiling.
“It was one of the Vanderbilts’ personal subway stops below Times Square,” the train driver said. “Back in the early 1900s, when the subway was built, Astor and the like wanted their own, exclusive subway cars. The Vanderbilt clan did them one better and built secret subway stops just for their family’s use. This way they didn’t have to mix with the masses and they still could get around town. They had a few stops like this one at Times Square, one at Wall Street, and, of course, their own berth beneath Grand Central Terminal. They were kind enough to reserve it for us,” he said. “It’s not like this is on any map, so I don’t think anyone knows we’re here.
“We’ll take the elevator up,” Ichabod went on. “Follow me.” The three of them walked into the dark. The beam of light was bouncing all over the place and there were details wherever the light fell, until it was stopped in front of th
em by what looked like two massive oak doors complete with brass knockers shaped like acorns.
“What’s with the acorns?” X asked, but Ichabod didn’t hear, because he was concentrating. His hand reached out beyond the beam of X’s flashlight and returned as the two doors swung open to reveal the elevator before them. He stepped inside, and X and John went in behind him. The driver reached between them and pulled the outer elevator doors closed. The elevator looked like a small dining room, complete with a small crystal chandelier. The driver pulled out a battery pack that looked like a portable game player, flipped it open, and ran a wire from the unit to the control panel. He punched in a command on the keyboard and the elevator car’s inner door slid closed and the elevator ascended. The ride was smooth.
“They had better materials then,” Ichabod said. “If you happened to be a Vanderbilt, that is. The craftsmen were artists and they used only the best materials, shipped in from wherever needed.”
It was only a few seconds before they reached their floor.
“Here we are,” the driver announced.
It didn’t look like anything to X, just more of the same blackness, but she could tell the difference in the smell immediately. This place smelled of dust, mold, and wet insulation.
“Careful,” Ichabod said. “There are pipes running overhead. There is a wall covered in wires about ten inches from the opening. We’ll have to shuffle off to the left for a few feet, where it will widen into a passageway. Try not to bump into anything.” And he paused for a second while X and John tried to get in the middle of this small opening. X had to hold the light straight down at their feet, as there wasn’t enough room to bend her arm. “The wiring is ancient and the walls are even more so and we don’t want to do anything that might cause damage, or cause the walls to come tumbling down on top of us.” X and John squeezed closer.
They made it to the wider hallway, and X was able to move her arm and flashlight more freely. It looked like the junction of a million wires and wrapped cables. It was. This place appeared much different from the room where X had seen John first use the telephone. That room had been a stream of primary colors, while this place was completely gray, bone-dust gray.
“Why would a Vanderbilt, or anyone, for that matter, want to come here?” X asked.
John nodded his head.
“This wasn’t always like what you see now. The elevator came up to a hallway off the lobby of the Knickerbocker Hotel, which was also in the Vanderbilt family’s holdings. That way they could avoid the crowded Times Square station if they wished, and it also afforded them a quick exit off the street, should a quick exit be what they needed. They could duck into the hotel and out through the elevator and into their waiting train, should such an action be necessary. And it was. They had their little getaways all over town.”
THE BORDER PATROL didn’t want anyone following Gabriel, so they sent him on an elaborate route to Grand Central. They wanted him at a place they knew would be impossible for Conglomerate electronic eavesdroppers to reach.
Gabriel climbed up from between the levels beneath Grand Central Terminal. He made his way up to the track area. From there he went over to the crosstown shuttle tunnels. He was to meet Walters’s contact at a certain subway entrance.
JOHN SAID, “WE’RE supposed to meet our contact at the door of the Knickerbocker Hotel in Times Square at two fifteen A.M. Would you know where the door to the Knickerbocker Hotel is?”
“Right here,” Ichabod said, pointing his thumb to the back of the door.
“What time is it?” X asked.
There was a knock on the door in response.
X jumped, followed by Y.
“Sounds like it’s two fifteen,” Ichabod said. He turned toward John. After all, it was his mission. The driver could feel the tension coming from the two of them. “Well, I doubt that it could be anyone other than our man,” the driver said, and he walked over to the door of the Knickerbocker Hotel, put a key in the lock, and pulled the door open. X shined the flashlight toward the door and the light shone in Gabriel’s face.
“Gabriel Cruz?” X said.
“What’re you doing here?” Gabriel said.
“How do you know him?” John asked.
“It’s a long story,” X said.
“Follow me,” Ichabod interrupted, and they all fell in behind him. “Shine your light this way,” he said, and then they saw that in front of them was a huge hand-carved oak bar with a massive liquor case enclosed in glass behind it. There were brass spittoons beside leather-topped stools that spun atop white tiled pedestals attached to the floor. Behind the bar was an empty brass pit about a foot deep and six feet wide. X couldn’t imagine what that was for, so she asked.
“Oysters,” the old man said. “Served on a bed of crushed ice.”
They were so busy taking in the place that they were startled when Ichabod cleared his throat and said, “Gabriel, what do you want with me?”
“I’m supposed to give you this,” Gabriel said. “A letter for you from Dr. Walters of Ward’s Island.”
“Maybe you could read it to me?” Ichabod said.
X took the envelope, opened it, and read the letter out loud.
The Conglomerate Rangers
Patsy and George saw the buses emerge from the clouds of dust. One by one they burst through the swirls like football players coming onto the field. There had to be three dozen of them, traveling at high speeds. George walked over and slammed the door to their unit shut. He couldn’t decide if it was better to run away or to stay where they were.
“C’mon,” George said, trying to sound calm, “let’s grab a few things and go out for a while.”
Patsy’s back was rigid. She had seen the buses. George said, “I don’t think it would be a good idea for us to be here.”
That was all George needed to say. Patsy moved to the door while George filled a water bottle and grabbed a flashlight and a few other things. He wasn’t sure where they should go, but staying in camp didn’t feel like the right option either.
IT WAS DARK and they were lost. George had led them north, or at least that’s what he hoped. Both the computer and the water guy had said there was an alternative to their camp up north. But without the sun, George wasn’t sure which way they were going. When the clouds cleared for a minute, George could make out the shapes of housing units up ahead. Had they walked in one big circle? Then George noticed the silhouettes of two people who must have heard Patsy and George approach.
“Who’s there?” a man’s voice called out, sounding too young to be a Coot.
“Just Coots,” George said.
“Where are you going?”
George thought that a curious question. “We’re returning to our unit,” he said.
“You can’t do that,” the voice said.
George flipped on the flashlight, thinking to show themselves and that they were not a threat. “Turn that off,” the voice said.
“And who do you think you are?” another voice spat out.
George heard the crunching of gravel, and then suddenly Patsy and George were illuminated in a floodlight.
“Why are you going back to your unit?”
“My wife left something,” George said.
He saw the camouflage flak jacket of a Conglomerate Ranger and knew that if they were returning for anything of value, these Rangers would be all over them. All personal property was liable to be seized.
“What’s so important that you would ignore an evacuation order?” the Ranger asked. He looked at George’s wrist. “No I.D. tag, no residency. In any event, the evacuation order has been issued.” George realized he was not wearing his bracelet; it was back in the unit.
“What’s she doing here in the first place?” the other Ranger asked as he scanned Patsy’s wristband.
“Never mind,” the hostile Ranger said. “We’re taking her. She’s in the system.” He looked at George. “Are you running drugs? This lady’s prescriptions? Cash? What?
Tell me.”
“Nothing,” George said.
The Ranger spat on the ground. “I don’t trust you,” he said. “I don’t want you in my van. You’re lucky we’re busy, or I’d arrest you right now.”
It was taking George a minute to comprehend what was going on.
“Wait a minute. We can’t be separated,” George said. “She’s my wife.”
“Who the hell are you to tell me what to do?” the Ranger said, and swung George around so his wrist was behind him. He swept his foot behind George’s legs and dropped George to the ground.
“Easy,” the less hostile voice said.
“She is my wife,” George said.
George started to show him his wedding ring, but the partner said, “C’mon, why bother? We were ordered to evacuate the camp and I’m evacuating the camp. He’s not part of this camp. She is.”
“What if he really is her husband?” his partner asked.
“What if,” the other Ranger said, “we’ve got enough of our own Coots to deal with, before we start adding? Without a bracelet he’s unaccounted for. Let’s leave him here.”
Patsy’s eyes went wide.
The Ranger said to Patsy, “Let’s you and me go. I’ll take care of you.” George feared she would panic and might make things worse.
“It’s all right,” George said in his gentle voice. “You go along and I will clear this up with the man and join you in a second.”
Though Patsy didn’t like it, she walked off with the Conglomerate Ranger. George tried to go after her, but the hostile Ranger knocked him back down.
George heard the van start up and a voice say, “Let’s go.” It was the worst thing George had ever heard.
Gone
George, disoriented, went back to their unit. The area looked deserted. Patsy was gone. He had always been afraid of losing Patsy, but he had thought that he would be the first to go; husbands often were. But this was worse. Patsy was gone and he didn’t know where, or why, or how to get her back.
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