by Sandy Nathan
“If anyone can do it, you can. Sam’s been sleeping all morning. I gave him some pain pills and they knocked him out. There’s a uniform for him when he wakes up. He hasn’t eaten, either.”
“Don’t worry, Mom. I’m on it.”
The lady left. Sam heard Jeremy moving things. He dragged something to the front of the container and sat down noisily.
“OK, you motherfuckers, I’m back.” Sam opened his eyes to see Jeremy seated before a computer. The screen shone brightly. He cracked his knuckles, and then shook out his hands. “We’ll see how bad the goldies fucked me up.” He began typing and talking to himself. “Most of the satellites are probably dead, but there should be some that work.” Sam heard a whirring noise from the computer. “I’ll run a search algorithm. If I can get a hot bird, I know the hardware in the underground will work. I designed it to take anything. I’ll bounce a signal off one of the tin cans, restart the surveillance systems inside, and it will be show-and-tell time down below.”
Sam couldn’t resist studying the Great Tek. Jeremy had his back to him, absorbed in the computer. The screen’s light shone on his hair, making it glow. He looked like Jer the Tek that Sam Baahuhd and all the headmen since him had described in the meetings.
Jeremy’s hair hung in a tangled mass down to his waist. He was tall, not a little shrimp, as Sam Baahuhd had portrayed him. Sam had never seen anyone with Jeremy’s skin color. “Café au lait” it was called, which he also knew from the legends. His mother was the lady and his father had been a famous Afroman. Chaz Edgarton was a musician beloved by the village. Whenever he had visited the estate, he came out to the barn to play for the villagers, though sometimes he was so loaded he fell off the bench.
Sam worked himself up to a semi-sitting position so he could watch the Great Tek. Awe filled him. The Great Tek was God. He had given them the Commands and the Book, which ruled their lives.
“I live by the Commands,” Sam whispered.
“What?” Jeremy turned to face him, eyes piercing. Sam could see his cocoa skin. His lips were wide and his nose broader than those of the villagers. Sam recoiled from his intensity.
“I live by the Commands, O Great Tek,” Sam stammered.
“You mean the Commandments?”
“No, the Commands.”
“What are those?”
“On the night before the end of the world, the Great Tek stood before Sam Baahuhd and gave us the Commands. He gave us the Commands so that we might survive and live to take over the world,” Sam spoke with the dramatic cadence of the Book Readers, who were the only ones allowed to read the book.
“You sound like a snake man,” Jeremy said, wrinkling his face.
“No snake men!” Sam invoked one of the Commands.
“You’re damned right. Those guys were poison, going around scaring everyone to death. But what are the Commands?”
“They’re from you, O Great Tek.” Sam touched his heart with his hand and bowed. “Your gift to us. They are the law in the underground.”
“What? My name is Jeremy. Who’s this Great Tek?”
“Sam Baahuhd told us you were the Great Tek. You could do anything with your powers.” Sam looked at Jeremy, disbelief on his face. Didn’t the Tek know this? “He told us how you gave us the Commands on the last night of the Earth.”
“What are you talking about? I’m a pretty good tech, but I’m not magic.”
Sam was shaken. “The Commands are written in The Book, a magic book of light that the angel Eliana gave you. The Commands were written in it when you spoke.”
“Oh, I remember that now. The notebook’s no big deal. That’s how they write in Ellie’s world. With light. There’s light everywhere—walls, billboards, across the sky. After a while, you start praying for an eclipse. El’s no angel. She’s my wife.”
“Did you give us the Commands?”
Jeremy wiped his face with his hand. “Jeez. What happened that night? It’s been so long. I remember being really upset. I tossed out some ideas that I thought would make the underground work. What are the Commands?”
“The first Command is to take over the world when we get out of the shelter.”
“Why?”
“Because the general is out there waiting for us and will kill us and take over the world if we don’t.”
“I’m not so sure about that. What were the other commands?”
“The headman has total power. He can kill all of us if he wants. Sam Baahuhd was the first headman. His oldest son would be the next headman, and his oldest, forever.”
“Well, Sam would do a good job. I don’t know about Rupert and those who came later. What about individual rights? The Constitution, checks and balances?”
“You took all Constitutional rights away. I don’t know what the other things are.”
“Oh, boy. What else?”
“We had to learn to read in six months,” Sam ducked his head. “O Tek, I tried to learn to read, but the Bigs closed the library. They took the Book from us so that only the Readers can see it. I tried …”
“They closed the library! They had no right to do that. I set that up for the people. What were the rest of the commands?”
“We were to exercise and come out warriors ready to fight the general. But they closed the gym.”
“The gym! I used to work out there with Arthur every day. You have to stay in shape or you end up like this.” He indicated his emaciated form. “What are the rest of the Commands?”
“Only one husband and one wife, fidelity. No boingy boingy with your cousins. No weed, mushrooms, or hooch. We had to speak regular English.”
“Those are pretty good. Do people follow them?”
Sam blinked and lowered his head. “I do, Great …”
“I’m Jeremy! Stop that Great business.”
“Jeremy. I follow them. Some others do.” He was silent.
“The leaders don’t.”
Sam shook his head. “No. They make hooch. Mushrooms and weed grow in the fields. The headmen have had many wives for a long time. When the Bigs came, it was different. The Bigs don’t have wives.”
“What do they do?”
“They have the Pit. The women go into the Pit.”
“What! What are you saying?”
“The headman can do anything he wants. That’s what he wanted.”
“What a disaster. OK, I’ll give you a COMMAND right now. Follow the Commands all you want, but if they’re bullshit or make life worse, don’t follow them. Do something that works.”
“Yes, Great …”
“Jeremy. That’s my name. I want to get a 360-degree view inside that shelter. I want to know what’s happening down there.” He looked at Sam as though remembering something. “Oh, yeah. You want anything to eat? We’ve got Russian army rations. It’s slop, but edible. My mom put some clothes out for you. She’ll be mad at me if I don’t take care of you. Now she’s someone whose commands you should pay attention to.”
Sam was sitting up eating the most delicious food he’d ever tasted when the lady came back. Jeremy had helped him put on the uniform’s shirt and pants. He’d seen that Sam had no idea of how to put them on.
Sam looked up when the lady came.
“Jeremy, did you notice anything about this area when you were walking?” the lady said. She was dressed in a black uniform with her hair wrapped in a white fuzzy cloth. The uniform showed her body’s form. She was small around her waist and swelled at her chest. He could have wrapped his hands around her waist easily. Not around the top of her. Her hips were curved, but not big.
“I noticed lots of things, Mom.”
“This place looks like the West Coast. Remember our ranch near Santa Barbara? The oaks grew far apart like these. I saw magpies with the yellow trim on their beaks—those only live in Central California. And those trees in the distance look like redwoods. Do you have any idea where we are? Or how long it’s been since everything blew up?”
“No. But with o
ne of the computers, I’ll be able to take some measurements off the stars and figure it out.”
“This doesn’t feel like Connecticut. Could the skin of the planet slip over time?”
“So the West Coast ended up the East Coast? And the East Coast became …”
“Europe? But where would Europe and Asia go? To the West Coast? That’s impossible … How much time would have to pass for the upper layers of earth to move thousands of miles? And for the polar ice caps to reform? I was under glaciers in the bunker. That area was forest when we were sealed in.”
“It would take ages for that much change, if it happened at all.”
“You know what else? I don’t know what year it was when I woke up. The chronometers in the bunker were broken. I don’t know if it was the same time there as it is here. Could the goldies have lifted me from one time and place into another time and place to be with you?”
“Probably. They could do pretty near anything.”
“And what’s the date here? Sam, do you know how long your people have been in the shelter?”
He jumped when she spoke to him. “The singers of songs say 105 generations.”
“So at nineteen years a generation, that’s five years short of 2,000 years.” Sam was amazed at how fast Jeremy made the calculation.
“We do not have nineteen years a generation.”
“How many then?”
“Fourteen.”
Jeremy’s jaw dropped. “OK. That’s 1,470 years. That’s still a long time. I built the underground to last that long. Do you think it really could be that long?”
“Sam, tell us about the underground. What’s its history?”
Sam hesitated before speaking. He was not supposed to talk about this. He knew the history as remembered by the line of Emily—the true history. What the Speakers would say about their history would be different. He knew the Tek wanted the truth. “For a time after Jer the Tek made the shelter, things were good. Everyone followed the Commands and the Book. Everyone learned to read. There was enough food. The babies were all good and not too many were born.
“But then things changed. Sam’s descendants from Mollie, his first wife, were the rightful rulers, according to the Commands. They took the Book away. They had the disease and hurt people, killing them, sometimes. Their babies were often sick or missing arms or legs.
“They killed those that weren’t of Sam from Mollie, except for the Arthurs and Emilies and those with their blood. They needed us. We ran the computers and the shelter’s systems. We were smarter than the others. The Sams by the line from Mollie divided the shelter. They locked the others up and stopped following the Commands. The air became bad. We didn’t have enough food or water.
“The Bigs came. The Bigs are very bad.” Sam hadn’t talked so much in his life. But he needed to tell them. “If they catch you, kill yourself. Especially you, lady.” She had to understand the danger. “They know you. You canna go down there.” The brogue of the village crept into his speech.
“I don’t want to, Sam, believe me.”
That’s all he could say. He wanted to tell them about the rest of it, but it was forbidden and too horrible to talk about. Sam sat leaning forward, eyes down, head bowed.
“Jeremy, does that sound like 2,000 years of history to you?” The lady’s voice was soft.
“It could be anything from fifty years up. What about the furniture they took from mom’s house, Sam? Does it look old?”
“There is no furniture. Only pieces of wood and bits of fur. And some metal things. Spoons and candle holders and dishes.”
“Everything else has disintegrated?”
“In the old days, they say the underground was like the big house. Beautiful. All that is gone.”
“How long would it take for furniture to fall apart like that?” Jeremy mused.
“A long time. Sam, where did they get that thing they put in you? Do they have more of them?” the lady asked.
“I don’t know where they got it. They knew how to put it in me, but I don’t think they have more. They would have used them before. They didn’t make it.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes. They don’t make anything. They just fight.”
“Where did they get it?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, sooner or later, they’re going to figure out that they can live outside the shelter and come out. We need to be ready,” Jeremy said.
They’d been sitting in the opening of the container. The lady’s eyes landed on a spot on the ground some distance from them.
“Jeremy, where did you put the box with the parts of the eye in it?”
“Under the container in the back.”
“Well, it’s over there now.” She pointed at the open space in front of them. “I just saw it move.”
The box with the eye in it moved a foot while they watched, heading in the direction from which Sam and Jeremy had come.
“It’s going back.”
“Yeah, it must have a recall function.”
“Its track will lead them straight to us.”
“Yes, eventually. But it’s not fast.” At the rate it was going, the box would take a couple of days to get back to the big meadow.
“Where will it go?”
“To the canary chute? The back door? I don’t know.” Jeremy’s eyes narrowed. “Did they destroy all the computers, Sam?”
“Computers were in the library and in Arthur’s room. The Bigs closed those. I don’t know what is there now. I was not allowed near.”
“Jeremy, could you take a picture of the inside of the shelter?” the lady said.
“Ninety percent probability that I can. The audio and video surveillance devices should be operational. If I can find a live satellite, I can activate them from here. What are you thinking?”
“Remember the way they used to market real estate using holograms in the old days? It was like being inside the house, a 3D view of the room. If we had one of those of the interior of the shelter, we’d know how bad it is.”
“Doesn’t the way Sam looks tell you?” Jeremy asked.
“Yes, very clearly, but it isn’t a complete view or something we could broadcast. And I have an idea that could solve some of our problems. It’s a long shot, but it may work.”
Sam could barely hear them. He sat paralyzed, watching the box move.
9
They moved the metal box back under the storage container and surrounded it with large stones. That halted its homeward progress and gave them a limited sense of security.
“Let’s get down to business. We have to figure out what to do with that nasty thing.” Veronica moved the plastic table and chairs to the other side of the container, as far from the box as possible. “We’ve got to get to safety. We need the weapons in the other container. We need Eliana and the others. We’re likely to perish without those things, and very soon. I’m going to call the golden planet again.”
“You’re going to call Eliana’s people for help?” Jeremy said.
“That’s how I got here,” she said.
“But you don’t know them. They’re really bad.”
“They weren’t to me.”
“You don’t know the goldies like I do. They sneak and lie. You can’t trust them.” She could see Jeremy’s hackles rise. He looked like a cat who’d run into a killer dog and was going to have to fight for his life. Veronica could feel their old patterns rearing up. “But maybe you do understand the goldies, Mom. You got Arthur to hack into my computer. Did you have him do anything else?” She could see a screaming fit on its way. Might as well tell him the rest.
“Yes. I had him monitor your room at the Hermitage, Jeremy.”
“You had my room bugged? You spied on me?” he snarled. “I can’t believe it. But maybe I can. That is so you. Did you get an earful?”
“Yes … but you did the same thing to the village, Jeremy. Maybe you should have thought about how they …”
“You steal my laptop, bug my room, and turn my friend Arthur against me. Now you want to contact the assholes who stole Ellie and tried to kill me. Really swell, Mom.”
“I didn’t turn anyone against you. Arthur was my friend, too. He knew how things were for me.” Jeremy opened his mouth to start shouting. “Listen to me, Jeremy! I was alone in a foreign country, watched twenty-four hours a day. I couldn’t go anywhere or talk to anyone who wasn’t in the general’s pocket. Your voice was all I had.
“They were trying to rescue me, Arthur and our military, but they couldn’t. You knew that, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” His face was unreadable.
“I know how you feel about me, Jeremy. You’ve made it very clear in person, and over those transmissions. You swore at whatever you were programming and me in equal measure. But that’s all I had to keep myself sane. Your curses were the best part of my life.”
“Yeah, right.”
She turned the side of her face to him and lifted her hair. Fine white lines ran along her jaw and hairline. “Do you know what those are?”
“He hit you?” Jeremy’s mouth opened a bit.
“The beatings weren’t the worst. He did things to me that were so bad that I will never, ever tell another soul about them.” She lost her poise, struggling to explain. “Please, Jeremy. Try to understand.”
“But I saw you on TV and in magazines, at fancy parties. On yachts. Smiling and laughing.”
“Oh, yes. When the bruises faded, I’d get all done up and make a show of being the fabulously happy paramour of the worst mass murderer in history. It was staged, Jeremy. I was acting.”
“But you married him. He took you with him in the bunker.”
“I put myself there, Jeremy. He picked me over thousands of others, because I was the best. I went through a military training that made whatever Arthur did with you look like kindergarten. I did that in the hope that I would live—and one day get free, so I could be with you. And I did it. I’m here.” She felt like whatever had held her together for all those years was blowing to smithereens.