by LeMay, Jim
“Yeah.”
“So Doc and Stony and Mitch are non-technics, and you and Lou are technics, or anyhow sort of, but they still think you’re good guys. Doc told me so.”
“Yeah, people didn’t fit into the two categories as neatly as I made it sound. They think Lou and I are okay because we’re kind of in between. We didn’t do the high-tech things they blame for making their lives miserable. I only taught technics-to-be and Lou designed things they used everyday like roads and sewers. And we don’t speak some high-falutin’ accent. Mitch was in between too, a non-technic that finished high school and got certified to work on automobiles in a technical school. By the Last Days he had his own shop and made a decent living for himself and his family. Stony and Doc though, I don’t think they had much education or very regular jobs.”
“How did they make a living?”
“The government had programs that paid minimally for little or no work. Some people thought that was okay but some felt embarrassed living on the dole. I think Stony and Doc fit in the latter category.
“Chou’s Disease was the most horrendous tragedy in mankind’s history. It’ll haunt those of us who lived through it to our graves. Everyone has to deal with it in his own way. Stony does by believing a righteous god punished us. Doc blames the technics.”
“And what do you think, Matt?”
“It wasn’t a pissed-off deity, of course.” Matt thought it over for a moment. “In a way maybe the technics did cause it. But not in the way Doc believes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Remember how we discussed natural selection?”
“Yeah, that’s when critters change because conditions around them change?”
“Hey, you do listen to me sometimes.” John could hear the smile in his voice. Then Matt resumed his pedantic style. “Natural selection is the process by which species either adapt to changes in their environments and perpetuate their kind or are destroyed by the changes. In the early twentieth century, scientists developed a new weapon to fight bacteria: antibiotics. Its use really expanded in the mid-twentieth. It seemed like bacterial infections would be a thing of the past pretty soon.
“But they underestimated bacteria.
“They live every place on earth: in the air, the water, the ground, deep-sea thermal vents, specs of dust, melting snow, even within the earth, in rocks miles underground. Some even thrive in environments poisonous to most life forms, even arsenic-rich ecologies. They love filth. I’ve told you how creatures in nature participate in arms races. When prey becomes faster or develops camouflaging coloration predators develop more acute senses or learn to hunt in groups. Bacteria like rotting food for example, and that’s how we started our arms race with them: preserving food to kill them. We cooked, salted, smoked, pickled and froze it. We didn’t know we were fighting a war in those days. We thought of spoiled food as a natural phenomenon like the rain and sun. Bacteria live in our bodies too, by the trillions. They invade us moments after birth, stay with us all our lives and cause our decay after death. If you could weigh all the biomass on earth over half of it would be bacterial.”
John shivered to think of all those foreign bodies in his own.
“Scientists mistakenly disregarded the effect of natural selection on bacteria but they’re ancient. They were evolving by natural selection billions of years before the atmosphere was even breathable by any modern life, at least three billion years before the first multi-cellular life form. After all the ecologies they had adapted to they could write the book on natural selection. At first antibiotics seemed to have a powerful edge, but bacteria quietly, tenaciously and persistently developed new defenses to against antibiotics.”
“Couldn’t they come up with new medicines?”
“They did at first but bacteria adapted and changed too fast for them to catch up. Given a nutritious environment, a bacterial population doubles every 20 minutes. Say an antibiotic attacks a population of malignant bacteria and kills all but one cell. The survivor divides into two individuals in twenty minutes, then into four, and so on. And most of the newcomers are resistant to the antibiotic. I ran the numbers once. In twelve hours the population rises to almost 70 trillion individuals.”
“Wow!”
“Yeah. Pharmaceutical companies began to drag their feet in finding new antibiotics. Why spend a billion dollars in research for a drug that can become useless because of one mutated bacterial cell? It was more profitable to go after sexier diseases and there were indeed some great medical advances: drugs or vaccines for most kinds of cancers, new ways of growing organs to replace diseased ones. People got excited about those advances while at the same time they didn’t realize how dangerous bacteria were. Scientists and non-scientists alike grew complacent. After all, bacteria had never gotten completely out of control. We unilaterally gave up the arms race but the bacteria didn’t. A few scientists realized how tenacious they were, how dangerous. Nobody listened. Then, in 2072, came the most malevolent superbug of all. Chou’s won the ancient arms race.
“And that’s how the so-called ‘technics’ may have made Chou’s Disease possible.”
Matt stood up, stretched and yawned. “I need to check the mules before I wake Mitch to spell me. We’d better get a little sleep before dawn.”
John suddenly realized how tired he was. They started back to camp.
“Bengali,” Matt said abruptly.
“What?”
“Bengali. That’s the eleventh language.”
* * *
Late the next morning they passed the ruins of Trevalyn on their left, Coleridge Gardens next to it and then the fields and gardens in the Grange River bottom. About noon they crossed the bridge over the river. Massive Haas House stood south of the road like a feudal lord, surrounded on three sides by smaller subservient outbuildings and corrals, all ringed by stately oaks like stalwart warders. They were home, or as close to a home as perennially itinerant folk can have.
Haas House’s public rooms – bar, dining room and game room – and the kitchen occupied the first floor with guest rooms on the second. Bernie and his women lived on the third. The gang would take their usual second-floor lodgings.
Except for John Moore. As a member of the hotel’s staff he warranted a room, at least a semi-private one with another staff member. That had turned out to be a carriage house apartment over what had once been a two-car garage that he shared with the stable boy, Joey. Obtaining the job with Bernie had been serendipitous for both of them. John had arrived at Haas House with the gang but not yet a member. Since each member was expected to provide his own scratch if John were to become a member he needed a job to raise money to buy it. As it happened Bernie was also desperate. It was harvest time, the busiest time of year, and he was short-handed. When John petitioned him for a job Bernie hired him as apprentice brewer in spite of his youth. Now Bernie considered him an indispensible staff member for the winter.
There had been three women on the staff then and two stout young farmers who only worked during the harvest market. John had been shy around the women at first though he soon became comfortable with Carmela de la Paz, the oldest, Bernie’s favorite and second in command. She kept track of inventory, planned meals and supervised the other women. She was slender and supple as a willow with a cascade of black hair and liquid brown eyes. She moved through the densest crowds of drinkers or diners with sinuous ease and her grace and kindness made guests feel welcome. At times, though, John noticed an air of profound sadness about her. Which lost loved ones, he wondered, recalling Doc’s grief, did she mourn?
The two younger women, in their low-cut chemises and swishy skirts, because of the new awkward sensations women caused, at once fascinated and confused him. Lovey, the youngest and most flirtatious, got her nickname from Lovella and her penchant for calling people “Love.” She was always ready with a promiscuous smile and a licentious remark, many of which John didn’t understand at first. Sometimes an initially obscure meaning becom
ing apparent as he fell asleep made him blush and smile. Dovey, from Davonna, was a little older and more voluptuous, her ribaldry more subtle and a smile, while ever as ready as Lovey’s, that hinted at hidden pleasures that Lovey wore on her sleeve. For some reason John found the gap between Dovey’s teeth especially sexy.
The two young farmers Luke and Jake, raised and sold their major crop, barley, a basic ingredient of his beer, to Bernie. By the time of the harvest market their growing season was over. In the couple of weeks before they had to start winter preparations they worked for Bernie, helping Joey with the guests’ animals, bouncing in the bar or anything he needed. Their youthful energy and rough humor made them popular with guests and household alike.
Two additional members had joined Bernie’s “family” in the gang’s absence. Over a year before, the youngest of Bernie’s women, Millie, had run off with a scrounger gang. The leader had abandoned her after she became pregnant. Ashamed, half-starved, five months pregnant and fearing Bernie wouldn’t accept her but with nowhere else to go, she had returned. Bernie and his household welcomed her warmly and Carmela nursed her through the baby’s birth, just a month before the gang’s return.
Bernie had never forgotten the Coleridge Gardeners’ animosity. Indeed, the rumors of depravity within Haas House that customers occasionally whispered to him as a favor seemed to have grown worse over the years. He dared not even count on the support of those who sneaked over for a drink or a toke if Gephardt initiated a pogrom against them; if ejected from Coleridge Gardens for supporting Bernie they and their families would starve. He married Millie within a week of her return, hoping the townspeople hadn’t noticed exactly when she returned or her advanced stage of pregnancy. She named the little boy Bernhard after his “father.” A shy, pretty, diminutive girl of seventeen or eighteen with a pixie face surrounded by a cloud of pale blond hair, she didn’t seem the type to run off with a scrounger gang to John. Most days she brought the baby down to the public room or kitchen where the women cared for him while they worked. Though Bernie chided them for shamelessly spoiling him he was the worst offender.
John didn’t understand the danger posed by the rumors. To him, in all the world, only Haas House felt safe and secure.
Chapter Four
Alicia seethed as she bathed and dressed, today in blouse and skirt instead of her usual work-day shirt and trousers. For her this first day of the week-long harvest market was the worst. The boring opening ceremony consumed most of the morning, beginning with a prayer thanking God for His bounty – though the drought had sharply limited this year’s bounty – followed by the church choir leading the public in a hymn related somehow to harvests and then the reading of public announcements. The Mayor’s welcome to visitors and stall keepers, always mercifully brief since the Mayor claimed to like the ceremony no more than Alicia, closed the meeting. She wished her mother would just put an end the ceremony but Reverend Gates, her mother said, had started it and she wasn’t about to cede control of it to the church. Besides, the harvest market was also an important social event – some distant farm families otherwise seldom came to town – and people had come to expect an official sort of opening.
The opening ceremonies would, of course, be different this year: No stumbling through the opening prayer by senile old Reverend Gates, no delivery of public announcements in Grover Gordon’s dour, sonorous drone, though she didn’t look forward to one of Gephardt’s fiery prayers threatening the arrival of Armageddon and his Four Horsemen. The kind if Christian she wanted to be was one who followed the kindly Jesus her Sunday school teacher Miss Ellen had taught about, not the dreadful, destructive God of Paul Gephardt.
Following all that would be the custom Alicia hated most of all, her mother’s promenade through the market to greet the merchants and select some item from their goods. She hated the market’s filth and the disreputable people who rented its stalls. The practice had started during the first harvest markets, soon after the Last Days. There had been no stalls then and no money. People displayed their trade items on spread-out blankets or tarps and exchanged them by barter. The only gain the Mayor obtained from the market in those days was the “gifts” of its participants. Then as now, only after the Mayor finished at a stall could it open for business. Alicia, Jaclyn and Ronald must accompany her, the Mayor said, because families were more important than even before the Last Days. Survivors of fractured families would feel reassured seeing their leaders’ families intact.
If they only, knew, Alicia thought as she started toward the kitchen for breakfast, how “intact” this family was. Mother and Ronald hated each other, Alicia hated Ronald, and Jaclyn hated them all.
After the market foolishness was over, about mid-afternoon, she would participate in something potentially every bit as bleak. Marianne had arranged a picnic for the two girls, Marianne’s boyfriend Donnie Hicks and some guy from a farm up north along the Grange River that Donnie wanted Alicia to meet. Donnie was a numbskull and tended to associate with others of his kind. Alicia was in no mood for Donnie and one of his moronic friends.
Meals partaken of by the whole family were silent, grim affairs. She braced herself for breakfast but found only Jaclyn at the kitchen table eating oatmeal porridge and toast. Even more surprisingly she was well-scrubbed, wore her best dress instead of her customary ragged shorts and wore her hair down, well-brushed and free of the usual pigtails. Her appearance was especially surprising since she had spent the last week grounded for being out so late. Alicia stopped in the doorway and looked at her in surprise.
Jaclyn glared at her. “What are you looking at?”
Alicia forced down a smart-assed comment about her unaccustomed grooming. Jaclyn would turn anything she said, even a compliment, into an argument and Alicia was already in a bad mood.
“Nothing.” She spooned oatmeal into a bowl and poured a cup of tea from a pot Sissy had left steeping. “Where’s Mother and What’s-his-name?” (Her nicest term for Ronald.)
“I heard them have a big holler-fest and Ronald stormed out. I haven’t seen Mother yet but she yelled at him that he’d better be at the opener.”
Jaclyn finished eating, put her bowl in the sink and left. In this house the moments Alicia most relished were those spent alone.
* * *
Ronald did indeed join them on the wooden deck at the market just before the celebration started to sit stiffly between the Mayor and Reverend Gephardt. Alicia and Jaclyn sat on their mother’s other side. To Alicia’s surprise and relief, Gephardt’s prayer contained no mention of apocalyptic terror. The hymn was “Bringing in the Sheaves.” Gephardt’s mellifluous voice made the public announcements, if not more interesting, at least less irritating than Gordon’s nasal monotone. The Mayor’s final address was limited to two or three terse sentences.
At last the Mayor, with Ronald, the sisters and young servants Sissy and Merle, passed through the market. They stopped at each stall for a brief word and selection of some minor item. The Mayor, always a bit aloof, had been more so the last few months, Alicia believed, because of the drought and worry about Jaclyn. Today she was more remote than ever. So keenly, and she hoped surreptitiously, did Alicia observe her mother that she hardly realized when they passed into the stalls segregated for itinerant scroungers and traders.
There, at one of the stalls, was the boy she had sat with uphill from the revival last year, John Moore. She caught his eye, smiled at him, but he turned away quickly. She had been so wrong to think he liked her. He had seemed nice for a scrounger, not nearly as cocky or dumb as the local boys, even kind of shy. Of course he might be gay. Wasn’t his gang all men? When they moved on to the next stall she forgot him.
After finishing at the market the small cortege returned to the house, except for Ronald who disappeared to wherever he went during the day. Sissy and Merle carried a load of goods from the market and would return for the rest. Alicia and Jaclyn changed into their everyday clothes and left. They walked together but each
isolated by their separate thoughts toward Bridge Road where their destinations would diverge.
All at once Jaclyn said, “He’s pretty cock (a high compliment among Coleridge Gardens’ adolescents), isn’t he?”
“What? Who’re you talking about?”
“Don’t say you don’t think so too. I saw you smile at him.” When Alicia still looked nonplused Jaclyn slapped her shoulder. “John Moore, you ninny! He likes me better than you though. When I get big enough I’m gonna make him take me scroungin’. We’ll see and do all kindsa cock stuff. I might even come back and tell you about it sometimes.”
Alicia stopped, put her hands on her hips. “Jaclyn, he’s almost my age and you’re still a little girl.” At least she now understood why Jaclyn had dressed up: for John Moore!
“I won’t always be little. You’re just jealous. John Moore and I prob’ly won’t even come back to see you after all. Or Mom either.” She had pointedly not even mentioned her father.
“John Moore doesn’t care about you, little gnome, or any other girl. He’s gay.”
Jaclyn glared fiercely and flew at her, slapping with madly flailing hands. “He’s not gay! And I’m not a gnome.”
Alicia grabbed her wrists and laughed. “Whoa, whoa. Hey, right. You’re not a gnome, but my little girl.” The latter had once been Alicia’s affectionate nickname for her.
Jaclyn wrenched away and stepped back. Her chin trembled, on the verge of crying. She shouted, “I hate you, you bitch!” and raced away so Alicia couldn’t see her tears.
Alicia bit her lower lip. She had meant her teasing as a joke, even maybe as a way of lessening the gap between them. Instead she had made it worse. She couldn’t pursue Jaclyn to apologize because of the damned picnic. She went down from Bridge Road to the river. Marianne had chosen a site on the east bank of the Grange north of the bridge.
* * *
Much later, in the gloaming, Alicia stormed along the bank, slipping in the mud where the trees and undergrowth forced her too close to the river. The picnic had turned out worse than she had even believed possible. Part of the fault, admittedly, had been her lousy mood. But the boys’ drunkenness had certainly not been her fault. They had started on a jug of hard cider that morning during the closing strains of “Bringing in the Sheaves” and opened another at the picnic site before she arrived. Alicia had noticed Marianne’s barely concealed fury at their inebriation as she introduced her to Donnie’s friend, Clifford something. Nor was Clifford’s stupidity her fault. At first Marianne had interrupted the boys’ crude jokes with forced-lively conversation to draw Alicia into the conversation. When Alicia finally responded to some of Clifford’s puerile comments he at first mistook her subtle answers as flirting and then, after a few pulls at the cider jug, as insults in some way. Marianne moved over to sit between them, talking inanely to distract Clifford from his anger as she passed out food. Eating seemed to sober the boys up a little until, after the food was gone, they finished the second jug.