by Ron Charach
—Unappealing?
—Redundant. The old me would have said abhorrent and would’ve reminded you that there’s not only suicide—there’s also the possibility of reform.
—Oh my precious Reform Jew. Sorry, I can’t resist... Yes, so you overthrow me and try to run your own Operation Noah...
—Operation Noah! Remind me, weird harold, why it is you chose six of one kind of animal–-lettin’ me and amos b. off the hook for a moment—and exactly what species it is s’posed to be?
—Ah, disowning our own hard-earned membership in the eight, are we? All the steroids, all the Viagra and Cialis you can pop…
—I reckon if somethin’ happened to me, you could sub in pretty nicely and try a dual role around here—if it weren’t for your weak knees, stiff neck and spinelessness in general... No get-it-up pill could help you, galloway.
galloway shrugs off the taunt. —You could run this little game of Streetfighter cum Survivor all by yourself, or perhaps with some duly elected townies—no doubt with liberal democratic principles to guide you. Even figure out what to do with the rest of the eight—but my, how quaint they seem when viewed from the comfort of a bunker...
—They’re, okay, we’re really quite the insurance policy for you, aren’t we? A Might Makes Right society only you can control...
—Patterned after what was here all along. I remind you: remember armies, Mr. Gandhi? Remember Secret Services? Those whacko patriot and sovereign citizen groups, with their own militias, that got the newly minted head of Homeland Security to move in with us... How many civil liberties were there in the end, once your cherished notions of “privacy” and social welfare collapsed? And all it took was a few packets of RDX and HMX on a few well-chosen subway lines to soften us up for the main Event.
—Yup, I reckon you need the eight the way Maggie Thatcher needed her IRA, her Skinheads, her Argies—living proof that absolute authority is the only way, lest anarchy prevail.
—Pro-fucken-found, as a great man once said. Anyway, in my little world, it’s IQ not physical strength that ultimately makes right. Which is one of the reasons that you, and even that wife and daughter of yours, keep it interesting for me. Gives an added dimension, an extra wrinkle for me to have to deal with. Mind you, it always was an IQ aristocracy, the world we lived in. ’Til the cynics started stacking the government with know-nothings like Dubya who the Unca Dicks and Halliburtons and defense contractors and Pentagon and right-to-carry NRA could keep in their back pocket.
henry goes glassy-eyed. Politics’ll do that.
—You still there, Doctor Morganstern? The old henry would have wanted to get inside my head, maybe toss a few psychological theories my way—about my unconscious reasons for setting things up this way...
—galloway, I doubt your type even has an unconscious—you’re nothing if not deliberate, deliberate to th’ core.
—How about this: maybe I peopled this world with powerful goons in order to “replay a trauma”—a “clash between Superpowers”—like the one that I cannot bear remember and am therefore condemned to repeat, ha ha—Or should I use more high-tech language and say to “reboot,” ha ha. You must admit that the possibility of big ned having it out with cabana—ohhh, who’d have dreamed that a little virtual reality could have produced such a pair of super-goons? Much more immediate than the Arabian camel or Russian bear or Chinese panda or the sheiks of Araby versus the balding American eagle.
Suddenly henry’s eyes start at the sight of a plump cockroach shuffling across the plush carpet on its way to the kitchen.
—Shit, even here? Even now?
—What do you think? We’re underground, aren’t we? I’ll have to put more of that edible brown goo out... Remember how the old doomsday books predicted they’d inherit the earth? They were right on that one. I mean, you’ve noticed just how lacking this town is in pregnant women...Seems every day Halverson is called for a miscarriage or “spontaneous abortion”; we just can’t keep up with them. Just as well, imagine the doozies there’d be in a few generations, with more and more rads leaking in. It’s amazing, though, that enough townies are still healthy enough to even have sex, given the radiation readings under their portion of God’s little dome. Those get-em-up, keep-em-up drugs are true miracles.
—What are the latest readings? I feel nauseous some days...though it could be the company…
—Don’t even ask—it’ll only, how would your wifey put it—“depress” you. No, henry, you just go on living for today alongside ole papa harold, and I’ll teach you a bit more of that high technology you always scoffed at—so maybe you can run this place when I’m gone...
—Ha! Someday my son this will all be yours—thanks a heap o’ shit, pa.
—Well, I can always hand over my mantle to cabana.
—Ah, the old roaches-inherit-the-earth scenario.
—It’s roaches in the end, no matter who takes over. And, don’t get romantic ideas about the “the last of the normals” procreating or anything like that. Remember the blood lines and how funny your kids would be, with all them recessive conditions ’n all...
—A meeting of young and old, that really threatens you, doesn’t it?
—I know I’m dealing with an old romantic; almost romantic enough to do that to some poor unsuspecting future-generation babe. Well, henry, papa harold saved you from Armageddon, if not from a fate worse than death—you might be stupid enough to try and do the same for someone else. Restrict yourself to attacking that relatively well-preserved middle-aged wife of yours—and reserve your daughter for spontaneous live visuals.
—Bastard! This time he does let the snifter fly—galloway ducking it like a batter at a plate, wincing as it smashes on the mahogany mantelpiece, rocking a fine colonial wall clock. But henry doesn’t pounce again. Sees himself too clearly to follow through.
—My, oh my, aren’t you authentic, mister morgan? You love truth even more than strong drink. Or hate me more than you love strong drink. Once again you misread me. All I meant is: stay away from her because she’s our last form of jade-proof entertainment around here—I’m getting pretty tired of Les Femmes Erotiques, aren’t you? Even the nude blonde on the beach sequence I’ve watched a million times.
—That’s no nude blonde on a beach, philistine! That’s a naked woman rising from the sea. She helped re-define “spume.”
—Oh such a sad romantic, henry morgan. I’m trying to remind you that our last bit of Livent will last only ’til you blow our cover by telling her or anyone else about the local Who’s Who...
—And what do you think your sister Rose—excuse me “ma” would have to say, if she ever found out about the little no-pay-per-view we have going here?
—You really want to foment panic don’t you? Maybe she’d try to stir up the golems around here, just to defeat me. She always did resent “male privilege.” It’s been delicious, saddling her with the hairiest beasties this side of Tibet and watching her struggle in a sordid light-housekeeping arrangement...
—Revenge is sweet...ain’t it Zwyxy? henry stands and heads for the trapdoor, looking over his shoulder. —Pardon if I don’t offer to clean up...
—It would be out of character—your new character, that is. Just don’t be surprised if next time you knock, you are not admitted. No matter what the radiation readings are. He then pushes a luminous green button and morgan exits into the anteroom. Watchin’ morgan’s back on a little TV screen, galloway buzzes him out of the plush lead-lined bunker, both men losin’ their unlikely conversation partners, as they’ve resentfully come to view each other.
galloway switches his movie back on and stares, presses the mute button. As worried as bored. Bored with the “little girl and her baby” ruse that he’d sent ned out to chase; nearly bored with the all-look-and-no-touch guileless displays of the supple-limbed Carla through his wall o
f one-way-mirror—young Carla always did look a tiny bit like morgan, somethin’ that bothered galloway and could interfere with his pleasure. For a moment he is even bored with havin’ to escape the living monsters he knows are in hot pursuit.
He heads for the kitchen cabinet to open a fresh bottle of water, causin’ an early-warning alert to go off among five or six roaches meetin’ around a pool of spilled popcorn, antennae wavin’ like rotifers.
Lookin’ at the splinters of glass and the amber stain of brandy down his mantel, he reminds himself that Boredom Is the Enemy. He contemplates for a moment the needle tracks along his arms.
Thank goodness I’m back to the oral and nasal routes. I could always do the big S that I keep taunting morgan with, but in my case it would be murder-suicide. Who else around here has the know-how to keep things going? Luckily, my own dad, who had a healthier lifestyle than me, died well before sixty—that means just a few more years of this. And with tortured souls like henry and his progeny still walking on this last bit of synthetic earth, there’s always a little sex-citement to be had.
Still, older sister Rose’s snarky words kept repeating in his mind: convincing the US government to build a survival site bigger than Biosphere was an act of genius, but to have the compound designed with a Wild West theme—kind of The Pentagon Does Pixar—was an act of comic genius. Too bad about the rainforest biome packing it in so early, the outside air slowly leaking in.
Didn’t you mean cosmic genius, dear sis?
He tears off a sheet from a dwindlin’ stack of old office-memo stationery, barely yellowed these nearly twenty years, which still reads:
UNIVERSAL DEHYDRATORS
Harold Galloway, President
If You C’n Serve It,
We C’n Preserve It.
We Don’t Waste
A Drop of Taste.
The motto that helped him win the good favors of vastly more powerful, if far less intelligent, men in the NSA and the Pentagon. Ah, yes, what a dry universe it turned out to be. He scribbles a quick note: Boredom Is the Enemy.
He grabs a dustpan and whiskbroom (one of those cute little sets where the handle of one fits plum into the handle of the other)—oh what hadn’t he thought of rescuing from the past world—and begins sweeping up the bits of glass along the mantel. Checks the time on the wall clock. Still accurate. Then fishes through the pile of movies he’ll be showing the eight tonight in the movie room: Mad Max and Road Warrior. Tomorrow Terminator and Terminator II. The final cauldron scene in T-2 says it all…Oh, an’ the endless episodes of Star Wars and Star Trek…
There’s a tear in his reel of A Clockwork Orange, the first half hour of which is just about right for tiny attention spans—’specially the part where Alex and his droogs wheedle their way into the home of an old veck and his ptitsa, tolchock the former while they in-out his wife before his very glazzies ’til both their rots are creeching with the horror-show ache of it all, oh my brothers... Thanks for that, brother Burgess. Those jockstraps worn outside the pants were the best.
The big ones would sit and watch for hours, guns safely checked at the door and ma sometimes dragged along as chaperone. One day I’ll run out of entertainment for them. Ha—for them...
awakening
Henry Morgan wakes up in a bone-chilling sweat; he needs to vomit but cannot find the strength. What remaining strength he has goes towards pushing against an elephant sitting squarely on his chest, shifting its weight now and then to one of his arms, and sometimes his blurry eyes open to the gleaming white-tiled walls of the tiny infirmary. He doesn’t need his Merck Manual to know that he’s having The Big One.
The first person he opens his eyes to is Doc Halverson’s nurse.
—You’re going to be fine, if you rest for a few weeks. mister galloway sent Doc Halverson to inject you with an anti-clotting agent and something to keep your heart from speeding.
—How did I get here?
—You were carried here late last evening—about four or five in the morning—by black amos barton and ma.
black amos barton. Just as well. But ma…
—Who’s taken my place in the eight?
—Townie kid, I’m not sure of his name; doesn’t talk much, not many of them do. Now don’t fret about that. Try to get some sleep. You’re better off right where you are.
—Nurse.
—Yes, Mister Morgan?
—No visitors.
—Absolutely. You’re about due for another injection for the pain. And, please. Keep those nasal prongs in—you still need the oxygen—that’s probably why you’re still in pain.
—galloway gas, he mumbles.
—I beg your pardon, Mr. Morgan? Or would you rather I call you Dr. Morganstern?
—Henry will do nicely...oh, and nurse...
—Yes?
—No galloways. I don’t want to see galloways.
—There’s more than one?
—No galloway and no ma rosemary. My requests should go straight to Doc Halverson. Ayeeeee ohoooo, I’m having a doozey pain now.
—That’s because you’re stirring up a hornet’s nest. Just lie back, and let the heart monitor tell us what it can, and try to get some shut-eye. It took quite a while for us to revive you. We’re not really a proper hospital here…
Heart attack. The great equalizer. The final proof that women really are superior. Just as he’d suspected all along: heart attack and stroke. ’Til they go off the rag and slowly catch up with us. He tries to turn his mind away from thoughts of Rose Seeton: but how about that ma rosemary? Didn’t she turn out to be a piece o’ live action! But such thoughts go straight to the heart.
For three days and nights there are no visitors. Just messages from Claire sayin’ that Halverson has her on a gradual drug-withdrawal program—that by the time he is out of the infirmary, she’ll be back on her feet too and off that bastard galloway’s drugs.
On day four Sheila Gordon pays a visit, bringin’ young Louise along with her—a youngster who would have been a smart-lookin’ teenager, were it not for the sickly complexion shared by all kids of her vintage. The two have to wait outside Henry’s room while he struggles with his bedpan—with the help of the nurse.
It seems a good ten minutes before he’s able to see them. Sheila notices that Henry’s breakfast tray of toast and jam and oatmeal has barely been touched.
—How you doing, Henry? Oh, sorry, this is Louise—she and her lovely little boy have become my new family. I’ve gone from being a mom to being a grandma.
—Pleased to meet you, miss, says Henry, a bit surprised that the young woman dressed in an attractive print dress doesn’t blush or look away. In fact she seems remarkably confident—surprisingly so, since he imagined she’d be some kind of feral child when he first heard about her livin’ out on range land outside galloway’s dome. Maybe the radiation readin’s outside the dome aren’t as bad as galloway claims. Wouldn’t that be funny? Stayin’ put in whacko-land when you might just as well have left.
—Who’s caring for baby? henry asks.
Sheila Gordon is impressed that Morgan has hung on to some social skills—despite his long sleepwalk with the eight.
The visit lasts ten or fifteen minutes—they don’t want to tire him out. As they take their leave, Louise says —He sure don’t look like one of those “big eight” guys. He’s nicer. Sheila looks back over her shoulder, in a double-take. Dr. Henry Morganstern is looking every day of his fifty-plus years. A worn, distinguished look has taken the place of the rugged handsomeness. Strictly Gray Panther material. Must have been rinsing his hair all along.
As the older woman leaves with her adopted teen in tow, Henry notices that both of them have thinning hair in the back—even the younger girl, whose longer hair only emphasizes it. Louise also gives a cough that sounds as rattly as all the ot
her kids’—like she’s been smoking a pack a day for ten years.
One weekend night, Claire visits. Already she looks like she belongs in the land of the living—havin’ put on a much needed ten or fifteen pounds. Would she stir up old resentments? Why bother with that now?
Claire knows better than to stay long.
Henry Morgan turns through a sheaf of poems Claire left with him—from what she calls his “journal.” Much of it is his own writing, but among the papers is his favorite medical poem—a little-known piece by a poet who had attended a mitral valve surgery. James Kirkup’s poem begins with a dedication:
A Correct Compassion
To Mr. Philip Allison, after watching him perform a mitral stenosis valvulotomy in the General Infirmary at Leeds.
How renewing it is to see these opening lines again:
Cleanly, sir, you went to the core of the matter.
Using the purest kind of wit, a balance of belief and art,
You with a curious nervous elegance laid bare
The root of life, and put your finger on its beating heart.
A balance of belief and art—he turns those words over in his mind for a while. Would his own sick heart rise again to such levels?
A garland of flowers unfurls across the painted flesh.
With quick precision the arterial forceps click.
Yellow threads are knotted with a simple flourish.
Transfused, the blood preserves its rose, though it is sick.
Some of the stanzas make him squeamish, odd` for a former medic. But he feels a curious thrill when he sees a couple of those old-friend perfect descriptions:
Now, in the firm hands that quiver with a careful strength.
Your knife feels through the heart’s transparent skin; at first,
Inside the pericardium, slit down half its length,
The heart, black-veined, swells like a fruit about to burst,