by Sandy Nathan
“How d’ya get it off?” he whispered savagely. His Voice reverberated inside of her. She couldn’t resist him.
“Here,” she started to undo one catch. Some part of her screamed silently: Help me. Please help me. Please.
He raised his torso, trying to undo the straps. He held himself up with one arm, and fumbled with the other hand, his legs spread on each side of hers. She couldn’t get away. She wasn’t fast enough. Help, help me, she thought nonstop. She wouldn’t cry out, wouldn’t make a noise. Maybe the babies would be safe.
He swore fiercely, splattering her face with his spittle.
And then he was gone. She watched him flying through the sky, gripped by teeth whiter and sharper than her own. Something huge had grabbed the Big. Long white hair fanned out from the creature’s jaws, flowing from a rounded head like a mane. It was Shaq, her dear little dog. She knew it absolutely, even though he was huge and filled the sky. She heard the crunch of bones as Shaq consumed the Big. The dog’s face and bright black eyes hovered over her.
“Thank you, Shaq. Thank you, baby dog. If you were your old self, I’d give you a rib roast all for your own.”
Lena picked up her gun and stood in front of the tent. She wanted to be hysterical, but there was no time. Everything Sam had said was true. That was one of the smaller Bigs. He didn’t look so awful, but he was. He messed with her mind. She couldn’t resist him. She was showing him how to undo her vest! Lena shuddered.
“Hell, I made it easy for him. Now I’m gonna make it hard for the rest.” She covered the babies with bulletproof vests, saying, “You be quiet while I’m gone. I’m gonna do a little hunting. Make the world a safer place.”
She looked around for a place to set up. Somewhere she could be hidden and have a vantage of the openings to the underground and their camp. She found what she wanted, a little rise several hundred yards away with a few scrub oaks for cover and a view of everything.
She settled down in the dried leaves, becoming part of the landscape. “OK, you little squirrelies, come to Mama.”
41
“Let’s put it over here.” Jeremy selected a location for his computer lab/mission control center that was close enough to what they thought was the underground’s rear entrance to be convenient, but not so close that a horde of Bigs would run into it as they stormed out of the shelter.
The group followed him and the packhorses. The field where the mansion and its gardens had been gave no evidence that the shelter existed—or that the estate had ever existed. The meadow was peaceful: bright sun, a sweet breeze, the crash of the surf, and delightful bird sounds. A bucolic scene overshadowed by a grating sense of foreboding.
This place was wrong. Something wicked lurked here. Grace felt it as a grinding in her belly and a sensation like grit in her mouth.
“Do you feel weird?” she said. The others nodded.
Sam put his finger to his mouth and Grace understood. The Bigs knew they were there. How, she couldn’t imagine. They were hundreds of feet down, separated by a series of impermeable metal gates and cement. But they knew the group was there.
Motioning with his hands, Sam pulled them together and pointed toward the shelter, shaking his head with his finger to his mouth. Grace understood immediately. They needed some way of protecting themselves from the psychic intrusions of their enemy. They needed protection now, and they would need it all the time they were engaged with the Bigs.
Wes and Bud looked at each other and smiled. They dropped into a crouching position and began a dance, singing in a language Grace had never heard. Their native tongue, she realized. They danced in a wide circle, around the tent housing the computers, around the grassy area, including the grassy dome she thought was the shelter’s rear door.
Their dance became wilder; they spun and leapt, acting out a war party’s attack. They bent to the ground, stalking, and then thrust with invisible spears and lances. Both men whooped and screamed to announce victory.
And the meadow was full. People were there; she could see their shadowy outlines the way she had seen Shaq up in the clouds. The way she saw her Rinpoche when she needed his help. They were bonneted Indians. War chiefs. Bud and Wesley’s ancestors had come. Of course!
She leapt into the circle, her hands in the namaste position, folded over her heart as if in prayer. Namaste, the Sanskrit word meaning, “I bow to the divine in you.” She began to chant her mantra, slowly at first and then faster. Her voice rose, higher and louder. She danced wildly, becoming a warrior woman.
Shri Rinpoche appeared before her. Shri Rinpoche filled the meadow, the sea, and the forest. Her teacher was present, along with an ancient American Indian shaman—Grandfather. She knew who he was, though she had never met him. Grandfather and the Ancestors, warriors of all eternity.
The rest of the party entered the circle and called to whatever gave them strength. And the invisible world came.
“OK, now we can talk,” Grace said. The presence of the holy ones enclosed them safely. “If we didn’t have their help,” she nodded toward the invisible beings surrounding them, “we’d be lost. I didn’t realize what Sam meant about the Bigs.”
“They will attack your mind,” he said. “You will think I’m bad. You may think your friends are bad. They may try to make you want to join them, to kill for them. They are very strong.”
“Well, we’ll have to take responsibility for our own minds. Bud and Wes, you have spiritual guides and support. I have my Rinpoche. I don’t know what the rest of you believe in, but now’s the time to call on it for help. So, what should we do?”
“Why do anything?” Mel said. “It’s going to cost us dearly to get down there. If we can get into the shelter, we’ll be at a disadvantage. They know the place. They have all these powers. There are seven levels, and they’ll undoubtedly make us go all the way down to get them. What is it that we want down there?”
“We want to keep them from getting the general’s weapons,” Jeremy said. “That’s the number one priority. If they get them, they can blow us out of the water. They can send one rocket where we came from and there’ll be no more cliff. No more babies or us if they reach the arms. I don’t need to say anything about what will happen to us if we end up their prisoners.
“Which brings up another topic,” Jeremy said. “When I landed here from Ellie’s planet by myself, I got pretty depressed. I went over to that cliff and looked over. If you’re about to be taken, if you can make it to that cliff and jump over—that’s a solution. You will die, and they won’t get you.”
“I have a more portable solution of the same sort,” Grace said. “I have suicide capsules. Bite one and you’ll be dead in seconds. I would rather be dead than end up in that pit. I’ve got enough for all of us.”
“Lady!” Sam said.
“I will not end up in the pit. That’s the end of the discussion,” she said. “So, what are we doing?”
“We don’t need to go down there,” Jeremy said. “We do need to stop their acquisition of the big weapons.” He went back in the tent to check his computers.
“Holy fucking shit!” He was glued to the screen. “They’ve got two thirds of the password.” Everyone ran into the tent.
Grace looked into the computer screen. A Big was holding a better version of Jeremy’s face up to the monitor. He said, “Jeremy Edgarton, prisoner of Hermitage Academy.” Grace could have mistaken his voice for her son’s.
“How did they get that?” she gasped.
“I don’t know. I’ve only said it out loud twice in my life, once when I programmed it and the second time was back in the tent. We were all there.” He looked bewildered.
Grace glanced at the others. “It couldn’t have been one of us. None of us knows how to use the computer to contact the Bigs. And none of us has been down there to visit and tell them directly. I see what you mean, Sam, about planting doubt.”
“That is just regular doubt, lady. What the Bigs will do is much worse.”
&n
bsp; “Great. What now?”
“Well, they have one strike left. If they don’t get the password on the next try, the system will lock tight and I’ll be the only one who can get in.”
Jeremy picked up an electronic device that looked like a wand and waved it around the seams of the tent. Lights lit up on the tent corner and the computer.
“Son of a bitch!” he exclaimed. “The goldies laced every single thing they moved here with bugs. The Bigs picked up the goldies’ transmissions of what we’re saying.” He spoke into the bug. “Hi, guys! Having fun spying? You may have killed us, assholes.” He pulled the bug off the tent, twisted something in the back and tossed it in a bucket. “I’ve been doing that for days. You disable them by twisting the back. See?” He held the wand to the bucket and no light appeared.
“They’re broadcasting us on their networks. We’re the Late Night Comedy Show. The Bigs must have figured out how to pick up the signals. That‘s how they knew the password. Our ‘friends’ from Ellie’s world gave them what they needed to decipher it. Shit. Now they just have to get the rest, and they’ll be able to fry us.”
“How can they do that?” Henry asked.
“How else would they get that code? I used to broadcast from that lab all the time. If you can broadcast, you can receive. They picked up the signals going to Ellie’s planet and deciphered them. Man, I never would have believed they were that smart.”
“Some are not smart,” Sam said. “Those are strong and have the Voice.”
“This is great,” Jeremy ran his hands over the stubs of his dreads. “OK, I say, blow them up. I brought lots of plastic explosive.”
“There’s another issue,” Grace tossed in. “Sam’s people that are still down there. We’ve started this conversation, but we haven’t finished it. Sam, how many of your people can take care of themselves? If we brought them out, how many could survive without taking the able-bodied people away from productive work?”
He pulled his lips together as though trying to swallow them and grimaced. “Lady, they need to be fed and cleaned. They would need to be dressed if they had clothes.”
“Can they be taught? Can they speak?”
“Some can speak a little. They don’t think like you or me, but they are people, lady. They are alive here,” he touched his heart.
“The thing is, we don’t know about winter in this place. We may be starving very soon. Can we take care of disabled people? I’m being the devil’s advocate. I’d like to take care of all of them.”
“Well, I’ll tell you how to make it through the winter,” Bud said. “Shoot the horses and eat them. You got enough horseflesh there to get you through just culling out the old ones. If you want to take the disabled people and kids back to the cliff, we can use the horses and make travois. Those are horse-drawn rigs made out of long poles. We can rig them up and train the horses to pull them. And Wes and I can show you things that our people did to survive. We’re survival experts.”
“Well, that’s good. One problem down. What’s next?”
“Well, we need Jeremy to blow up the underground computer lab and the entrance to the munitions storage so that it can never be breached—without blowing up all the general’s explosives and killing us.”
“Yes,” they said.
“And once that’s done?” she said. “What are they likely to do, Sam?”
“They will either stay inside or come out.” He thought. “If they are frightened by the blast, they will use the guns they have from Arthur’s room and Sam Baahuhd’s and shoot out the glass of the solar fields.” He gestured in the direction they had come.
“That’s where Lena is!” Henry exclaimed.
“Yes,” Sam said.
“We’d better go help her!”
“Can you shoot like her?” Sam asked.
“No.”
“Then stay away. She’s stronger alone.” Sam was very definite. “If they get her and you, they’ll stomp the children’s heads.”
Grace recoiled. “No.”
“That is how they kill children.” He shrugged. “Some of the Bigs, who want to make a new,” he searched for a word, “tribe, will go out the back.
“Some—Sam Big and the biggest Bigs—will stay below and wait for us. Some will come out after us, out the front or other ways they find. Those are the ones who have the disease and rage. They will not be afraid of us, and they will not be able to wait below when they start to get angry. They will kill everything they see.”
“OK, I’m going to blow the computer lab,” Jeremy said. “Should I do the canary hole and the back door? Will that lock them in?”
“They will get out,” Sam said. “I am not the only digger. They have tunnels. Not so many, because they can’t fit through my tunnels. And not so many tunnels, because the dirt from digging is hard to,” … he searched for a word … “put somewhere. But they will get out.”
Jeremy looked a little crazed. “I’m supposed to blow stuff up without killing the good guys, as soon as I figure out where the openings are.”
“I know where they are,” Sam said. “I will show you.”
“One problem down. I’ll get my kit and the plastic and wire them up. I need everyone else to find the bugs the goldies planted and pull them down. Mel, James, Mom, everyone, find those lights and defuse them. They’re everywhere.
“I will not be entertainment.” He shouted at the tent and all of its surveillance devices. “Those assholes may get us killed, just because they’re bored with their stupid lives.”
Sam and Jeremy stood on the grassy areas placing the explosive charges.
“This is the back door,” Sam said, standing in the grass and indicating a point by his foot.
“I thought it was that mound,” Jeremy said, pointing at something a few feet away.
“No, it’s here. I can feel it.”
Jeremy brought a large hand drill and cut through the turf easily. About three feet down, he heard a metallic clank. “You’re right.” He set a charge there.
They went on to locate the lab and the area where the main entrance to the shelter had been, the mezzanine that led to the mansion’s ballroom.
“This will blow up half the meadow,” he said after setting the fuses.
And on to the canary hole.
“I guarantee, no one will ever go through this again,” Jeremy said. He set the third charge like a pro.
The rest was a matter of pushing a button.
42
Everyone on the planet who had a space big enough to permit a screen sat in front of it. Most of the monitors had been recently upgraded and enlarged. Those who did not have room for a private screen clustered in public areas. Public viewing equipment had also been enhanced.
The space before the great screen of the elders was so jammed that some people expressed irritation when others came late and blocked their views or stepped on them as they found a seat. Unheard of, but true. Everyone on the planet watched as Lady Grace and her people approached the battle.
The tall doctor knew that the entire population was watching, because he had organized the plan. He was behind the upgrading of the screens. As the show began, he sat beside equipment that monitored who was watching and how much of a gratuity they’d paid for the privilege.
That was his innovation: After viewing the Wesley Silverhorse and Bud Creeman broadcasts, he had tuned in to a soap opera from the planet Earth. It was disgusting, but enthralling. Now his systems allowed him to watch an infinite number of programs, as well as receive instruction in merchandising and sales, which the Earth channels broadcast endlessly. He came up with the idea of making the same programming available to his people, for a small charge.
The council of elders had been hesitant about his idea of charging for the privilege of watching one’s screen, because the concept of charging for anything intangible was foreign to their culture.
“Don’t call it a charge!” he explained, “Call it a gratuity. A gift of gratitude for the
joy their civilization gives them. For the privilege of having a private screen, a newer, bigger, full-sound screen in each—well, almost each—place.
The elders readily took to that concept. And the people were grateful. The programming available was wildly exciting. Not only could they receive all the television programs that had been produced on Earth and most of the galaxies, they could also watch Lady Grace and her friends.
When that programming became indispensable to their existence, the doctor planned to increase the suggested gratuities. They would later become charges for services that could be cut off if they weren’t paid. Such tactics were foreign to his soul, but his soul was becoming increasingly perplexing to him. Ever since he had touched her. He could still feel that touch.
It wasn’t all her; he also knew that his people needed things. Not just screens, but things like new sources of nourishment and energy. Theirs was an old planet, with old people. That’s why they’d tried the hybrid project, which was a great risk. It did bring them new people, who now needed more things. Their systems—transportation, energy, and food production—were wearing down. They needed things for the first time and had to learn how to pay for them. His plan with the screens was the first of his new concepts for saving the planet. The council of elders didn’t know the rest yet.
The surveillance devices he’d sent to the humans fed into a central control where their technical people sifted through the multitudinous views of the humans’ reality and picked out the best strands. Those they combined into a show, the highlights of the day on Earth. He might direct the technical people to show the whole day. Those who were grateful enough could watch it around the clock.
The evening’s episode was beginning. He turned to his more than life-sized screen—and why shouldn’t he have such a screen? He was behind everything. There she was, going into her tent. Ten cameras caught her telling the others that she was changing into commando garb. Inside the tent, she stripped off her clothes and stood facing one of the surveillance devices. It picked up every color and nuance.