“Thank you,” Tye said.
“Will we see you again?” Milly asked.
“Almost certainly,” he said.
Tye lit the lantern, and the fellowship headed down into the tunnel system, ready to walk the final steps of their journey. The concrete corridors were cold and cracked. Water stains marked the ceiling, but most of the fluorescent lights looked intact. Calvin had said they were only used in emergencies so the bulbs were preserved, but he’d also said he’d never seen them illuminated. Rats and bugs scuttled about, but the tunnels were remarkably clean.
The map Calvin had drawn was clear enough, and they made an occasional turn following the numbers and letters painted on the walls and floor. Once they heard footsteps down one of the passages, but other than that they saw and heard no people. Tye knew they were getting close when the tunnel widened and one by one the ceiling lights came on as they reached them.
“Who’s doing that?” Milly asked.
“Nobody. They’re controlled by a motion sensor,” Tye said.
“What’s a motion sensor?”
“It reads sound waves and detects movement. No moving parts, but I’m still surprised they’re working,” Tye said.
“They have electricity?” Milly said.
Tye chuckled. She still sounded like a child asking if magic was real, despite having seen electricity provided by solar panels and batteries. Argartha had power to spare, and Tye was eager to discover how they achieved the feat.
“Hello there.” The voice echoed through the tunnel and Tye froze. Milly reached for her Glock, and when she realized it was gone, she fell in behind Tye, as did Robin.
“Turnip,” Tye said. “Go see who our friend is.”
The cat trotted off toward the sound. Several tense seconds passed, and in the silence it crossed Tye’s mind again how vulnerable the fellowship was. He’d taken so much on faith; the turtle, Argartha, and now that the end was almost in sight, doubt seeped through him like dirt in clear water.
When Turnip reappeared, she was accompanied by a knight of Argartha. Tye recognized the gray body armor, sword, gun and silver club. This knight was in much better spirits than Lord Commander Vantros.
“Well met, friends,” she said as she approached. “My name is Lexy Fu, and I’m a knight of Argartha and the head of the Orientation division.” She held out her hand, and Tye took it and then she extended it to the others. “I see you still follow the old ways.”
“A little. We’re happy to be here. Tired and hungry, but happy to have made it,” Tye said.
“Understandable. Calvin informed us you were coming, and I’ve had accommodations readied for you. We also heard from the squires, so we’ve been expecting you. Come,” Lexy said.
She sauntered away down the corridor and Tye followed without discussion. What was there left to discuss? They were all in, whether they wanted to be or not. The knights were in charge of the squires, so Lexy surely knew who and what they were, and since she was being so friendly, Tye let his guard down a little.
The wide corridor opened into a large hall, but it was dark so Tye had no idea what the room was used for. Lights cut a path through the blackness, and they came to a set of steps. They climbed them and at the top there was a double steel door.
“We’re here. You ready?” Lexy said.
The knight threw open the doors revealing a concrete landing that overlooked Argartha. Tye stepped out into the cool night and his breath caught. The city below sparkled like a thousand fireflies, and the air smelt of wood smoke and fresh bread. Squares of light marked the outline of buildings, and tall streetlamps lit shoveled sidewalks. There were people there; walking at ease, not shooting each other or running from virals. A trail meandered into the shallow valley before them, and Tye and his fellow travelers followed the path toward the bright lights, and the sound of music.
Chapter Thirty-five
Year 2078 – Respite
Randy and Hazel were the last two at the bar, everyone else having gone home. Technically Old Days Pub was closed, but Gimli let them come and go as they wished. Old Days had been the ancient resort’s club back before The Day, and the oak bar, bamboo stools, and paneled walls survived the tsunami because it was at the top of Citi.
Hazel was drunk and Randy was half there, and he cherished having her all to himself. “The fire was a way of giving us purpose and keeping us focused until a time when the world was ready for us again. How do you respond to that?” Randy said.
Hazel burped. “Want a kiss now?”
Randy said nothing. He felt sick.
She laughed and said, “Makes sense, though, if you take all your philosoph’in out of the equation. Your grandmother understood people would want to leave here. The natural order eventually takes over and some people just can’t stay in one place.” She was making her case for leaving the island, pleading for him to hear her, but when it came to staying on the island or leaving, he couldn’t give in.
Randy drank beer made from turmeric root. It was dark orange and bitter, but packed a punch. “People came here from thousands of miles away to enjoy the peace and tranquility. It’s as close to heaven as anything I’ve ever heard of.”
Hazel drank her mother’s label. Like the gone world, they had wine from grapes, and liquor made from corn, papaya, berries, and apples. The papayas were indigenous, but the rest had been cultivated by Ash and her family since The Day.
“That’s because you haven’t heard anything except what you’ve been told. For all we know that wall isn’t brown, it’s blue. How would we know?” Hazel said.
“The sacred texts?”
“All made up fantasies like the fabled bible,” Hazel said. “We don’t have copies of any of the religious instruction manuals, but many of the books in the Foundation refer to various faiths and there are still a few people alive on Respite that have been to a church or equivalent. The mix of old world and new that began on The Day has shifted to people who’ve experienced nothing but Respite, but still many folks practice the old ways. Makes them feel normal, I guess. Bollocks.”
“I get what you mean,” Randy said. “With the inconsistencies in the sacred texts, we only know what’s real and what’s fantasy because they told us so.”
“Exactly. Is magic real? Have people gone to the stars? Is anyone else out there? Or here on Earth? Can rabbits talk? Can little boys fly?”
“Don’t make fun of me.”
“I’m not.”
“You’re not asking the right questions. Instead, ask can rabbits communicate? Do little boys think they can fly?”
“Do rabbits, orcs, and Hollus exist?” she asked. “I’ve never seen any of them.”
“Hollus? You citing sacred text Calculating God worries me a little,” Randy said.
She laughed.
“Really. Faith isn’t your thing.”
She stopped laughing. “You’re wrong. I have faith in what I can see, and taste, and touch.” She closed her eyes, sucking in the scent of candle smoke and stale beer. She said, “Shit don’t mean shit.”
They both laughed. Outside in the jungle, two sea petrels yammered back and forth, their mournful bleating echoing through Citi. Palm leaves rattled, and the sounds of humanity going about their lives brought a smile to Randy’s face. “You should drink more. You… you seem happier,” he said. Randy wanted to ask her why she was unhappy, but then he asked himself. They lived a life that had been sought after by the old ones. Hazel should be happy.
She took a sip of wine. A gentle breeze pushed through an open window, and the two candles on the bar flickered and almost went out. “Your mom had guts pulling the message out of her butt at the perfect time,” Hazel said. “With the maps and a functioning sailboat, it wasn’t hard for her to sell her plan.”
“Most people didn’t believe her, but your dad did,” Randy said.
“Like I said, your mother could have come up with a plan to go to space and my dad would’ve signed on,” she said.
“Yeah.” There was the huge unmovable tangled ball of shit that was their family history.
“The charts and maps showed a big world. Only the older folks grasped what it meant to cross an ocean and bob around on thirty-foot waves,” Hazel said. She sipped her wine as the aroma of basil and oregano cut through the candle smoke.
Randy finished his beer and went behind the bar and refilled. “Turns out it didn’t matter what anyone thought,” Randy said.
“You got that right. Respite law is clear when it comes to salvage. Finders keepers,” Hazel said. “Your mother found the boat, with the help of Jerome and my father, but she led them. It was her property by law and she could take the Jolly Roger anywhere she wanted.”
“Dad tried to stop her, but you can imagine how well that went,” Randy said.
“About as good as it did for my mom,” Hazel said. “Being a little kid, I actually believed my parents wouldn’t fight about my father leaving. I thought mom would understand and accept dad sailing off with your mother.”
“That’d be a first.”
“The way everyone agreed on who should go counts as a first,” Hazel said.
“Not everyone.”
“There wasn’t a single nay vote for Tye Rantic or Jerome Hess, and Tye was fifty-eight when they left and Jerome only twenty-one with no experience off island,” Hazel said.
“True, but as I recall, your grandfather wanted to go,” Randy said.
She laughed. “He did, but nobody took him seriously. He was too old and everyone knew it.”
“And the elders had no problem telling him so,” Randy said.
“I’m still amazed your mother asked for their permission at all,” Hazel said.
“I remember a few nights when she came home ranting to dad. She needed the council because if the elders didn’t want her to leave the island, they could prevent it. She couldn’t have gotten the boat out and stocked without help,” Randy said.
“People have left the island and come back. That is nothing new,” Hazel said.
“I’m not talking about a paddle to a nearby island, or floating around on a life raft. The elders understood that finding the launch was significant, along with all the instructions. It had been left there for a purpose, and they were afraid of what that might mean. That they hadn’t known about it made them very nervous.”
“I get that. I do. There has to be common ground,” she said.
“We’re sitting in it,” Randy said.
Hazel said, “Things were never the same after our test. We were never the same. Nothing remains as it was. Even this.” She threw up her arms indicating Old Days Pub. “Someday all this will be gone, and perhaps people will come here and find what we leave behind, just like the originals did. We’re nothing. What we do means nothing.”
“Sounds like what my mother said when people called her crazy for wanting to leave,” Randy said.
“Remember the day they left? I sat on Great Rock for hours, until I couldn’t see the sun reflecting off the boat,” Hazel said.
“Yes. I watched it also, from the trees behind you,” Randy said. “That was when you’d throw rocks when you saw me, so...”
She laughed. “Maybe you’re right.” She looked into her empty bamboo cup. “I should drink more.”
“No you shouldn’t. That was stupid of me to say.”
“No it wasn’t. You’re always calm and rational. Yesterday when that kid called me a cop, and I freaked. You calmed me down. Not many people could’ve done that. My mom and maybe dad.”
“What was that, Hazel? There are worse things than being a cop.”
“See, that’s when you piss me off.” She looked at her empty glass and got up. She walked away from him, but changed her mind and spun back around. “I never said being a cop was bad. It’s just not…”
“Not what you thought you’d be doing?”
“I get why people see fire guards as cops. The sacred texts speak of cops enforcing the laws, keeping order and dispensing justice. That’s not fire guards. I see us as priests, in a way.”
“Priests? You don’t believe in God?”
“I don’t. Priests stand for something that comforts people, and makes them feel safe. Helps them see they’re not alone in this world, and people care about them and are looking out for them. It’s all goose shit, but fire guards do all these things. Some more than others, but thanks to the guards, nobody ever froze or went hungry or died of dehydration.”
Randy watched Hazel get more wine. He had to change the subject. “Do you think my mom loves your father?” Randy said. He felt loose, things were going well, and relaxing and drinking made this easier for him to say to the woman he loved. Hazel had spent most of her life building an intricate structure of hatred based on specific people. In a small isolated community like Respite, old fights never died and family history trumped law. He was challenging the foundations of that structure, putting doubts between the bricks, digging at the mortar joints with inconvenient questions.
“Shit don’t mean shit,” Hazel said. She rarely cursed, but wine and truth had a way of loosening old bonds.
“But shit does mean shit,” he said. Things slowed, and his voice echoed extra loud. Randy wobbled and beer erupted over the edge of his cup. A cloud passed before the moon and Old Days fell into shadow. The jungle outside was quiet, and even the night owls had given up the ghost for the evening.
“She uses him like she doesn’t love him, but he never complained that I heard,” she said.
“Why do you think he never said anything?” Randy asked.
“You know why.”
He did.
“Love is bezoomny,” Hazel said.
He nodded. His eyelids were creeping downward.
“Wake up,” Hazel said.
“I was just resting my eyes,” Randy said.
She grabbed his wrist and lifted his cup. “Drink up.” Randy downed half his beer and wiped foam from his mustache. They sat in silence for a time, sipping their drinks, trying to picture the past in their minds.
“I wish I knew more about what was out there. I think maybe that’s why I wasn’t so pissed at your mom when I was young. I wanted to know like her. I shared her curiosity and restlessness. I just can’t believe, can you?” Hazel said.
“Yeah, I believe it all,” Randy said. He sounded defensive, but he didn’t give a crap.
“How? I mean, you claim to be a man of science, yet you act out of faith,” Hazel said.
This was such familiar ground there was no unexplored part of the debate. “You can be both, and neither,” Randy said. “There is no motive to stretch the truth here.”
They argued about everything, but it was delightful. She challenged him, made him consider everything he said before he said it. He got away with no bullshit when he was talking with Hazel. It had always been that way, even from the first moment they’d met at Foundation, and he knew he loved her. Nothing had changed over the years except their family history and their parents doing everything possible to pull them apart. That made Randy try harder, but Hazel never did.
Hazel laughed, and that was a welcome sound. She didn’t laugh enough. That’s what he meant when he said she should drink more. The right way to say it was she should laugh more. That laugh made his heart pound and his legs go to jelly. After all the years she could still make his pulse race. She took a swig of wine and wiped her mouth with the sleeve of her shirt. She smiled at him and burped.
“I used to go to Spyglass Station whenever the ear was turned on hoping to hear something from my mother. Didn’t miss a session until I was fire guard,” Randy said.
“I never went. I felt betrayed and didn’t care what my father had to say. There was no shortage of guards wanting ear duty so those shifts were easy to trade. Plus I didn’t…”
“What?”
“I didn’t want to end up like your mother. Who would believe me if I was the only one to hear a message?”
“I would have be
en there.”
“Even better.”
Randy took a pull of beer and said, “Start respecting me Hazel or I can’t be around you anymore.”
“I like it when you’re forceful,” she said and leaned in close.
“Slow it down, you’re drunk and you have duty tomorrow,” Randy said.
She turned nasty, the wine shifting her mood like the tide. “You and that damn Hendricks’ order and control. Do you ever stop worrying about duty? Do you ever just lie on the beach, close your eyes and imagine you live in a sacred text?”
He said nothing.
“Because of that god-damn duty and honor, my father’s gone,” Hazel said. Her eyes were glassy and her cheeks red.
Silence stretched on for several minutes. Randy didn’t know how to get through to Hazel when she was like this despite trying to break her cocoon most of his life. She stared at the bar, her face twisted and sad. Talk of her father made her dour, and when she screwed herself up, nothing but time brought her back down. He had to leave her alone. She’d talk when she was ready. She always did.
A gust of wind pushed through Citi and the creaks, pops and whistles of the old structure sounded like seashells being dragged over sand by the tide. Outside, palm leaves rattled, and the night symphony awoke. Insects and birds squeaked and chirped, screaming for the sea breeze to leave them be. To that, the wind roared harder.
Randy drank his beer, she her wine. Half an hour slipped away before she spoke, and when she did, she sounded tired and afraid. “I hate your mother for what she did to my mom.”
Hazel wasn’t a hateful person, but even the most delicate of flowers can grow thorns. Randy said, “You can’t blame my mother for a grown man’s actions. She never misled anyone.”
“This is why it’s so hard to trust yo…” Hazel caught herself.
“Trust you… me,” Randy said. “I’m not my grandmother or mother and I’ve never lied to you.” That wasn’t strictly true, but he’d never told her any major lies. “How can you lay that at her feet?”
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