“No, no” The woman actually shrank away from him. “That will not be necessary.”
“My loss,” Owen assured her. “I won’t get to know you.” He thought he saw a blush on her face, but it may have been only her natural color returning. He offered the bottle again. “Sure you wouldn’t care for a nip?”
“I don’t drink wine.” .
“It’s not wine, it’s whiskey—the best the machine and me could make. I’d be pleased to teach you the differ-Firmly: “No.”
“Whatever you say, cupcake. But I’ll admit that I’m disappointed. You and me could have one bang-up blanket party right here in the woods, and there’d be no trouble from .them zombies out there.” Owen relaxed on the blanket, stretching out his legs to those corners not already occupied by the woman. “What’s your name?”
“Kehli.”
“You don’t look Irish, but I’ll take your word for it.” He took another swallow and set the bottle aside. “I’m going to rest up a bit, Kelly; I’ve had a busy day and I know I’ll have a busy night. War or no war, there’s going to be a hot time in that old town tonight. If you get lonely you’re welcome to come over and join our party.” He saw the expression on her face, misread it, and added, “Oh, Paoli won’t mind. I’ll tell her I invited you.”
“I think not. No.”
“Maybe you’ll change your mind when you see me in action. Us ol’ Indiana boys have a pretty good reputation at cutting rugs.” Owen squinted up through the treetops at the sunlight and closed his eyes for a nap. “Wake me up if you want anything, cupcake.”
Kehli made no answer.
She had pulled away to one comer of the blanket when he had stretched out and now she doubled her legs to her chest, hugging her knees to her chin and watching the variant. The timber was wholly silent. After a while the woman reached for an apple and ate it slowly, never abandoning her study of the sleeping male. The fascination would not fade. She wondered if it would be exciting to have her own variant, and if so—would she wake up in the morning to find herself looped and blotto. Was blotto fun?
Once, when she was very sure the variant was asleep, she cautiously touched his chest. It felt firm.
Owen would have given a penny or two for her thoughts had he been awake.
Kehli was gone from the blanket.
Owen sat up sleepily, rubbed his eyes, discovered the picnic basket beside him, and realized that the lady hadn’t deserted him. She was probably in the cemetery, supervising the digs. He pocketed the whiskey bottle— after sampling the contents to make sure the quality hadn’t deteriorated while he slept—and got to his feet to search for her.
The crew was preparing to leave the field.
They stood in a ragged line, each with a mummy case balanced on one shoulder and awaiting the word to march. One man was gathering up the tools of the trade and stacking them alongside an unopened grave, the target for tomorrow. When that man was finished with the task, he scooped up a coffin and took his place at the end of the line.
Kehli was satisfied with the tidying detail and turned to discover Owen standing there watching her.
“You’re quitting early,” he said. His own shadow was about his feet. “It can’t be past noon.”
“We have our daily quota.”
“I like the hours around this here town. The factory quit a long time ago.”
“Something must have gone wrong. They usually work until late afternoon.” She hesitated and then asked curiously, “What will you do now?”
“Guess I’ll go back to town with you,” Owen said. He pointed a finger at the waiting line. “I’ve never seen one man carrying a coffin before.” -
“The contents are not heavy. Go get the—Will you bring the blanket and the basket?”
“Chop-chop.”
He folded the pink blanket into a neat square, hung the basket over his arm, and went back to join the waiting line. Kehli stood at the head of the column and Owen fell in immediately behind her, elbowing a zombie aside. The zombie made no protest. The woman called out the marching order and the workmen obediently followed her and Owen. They retraced a path through the weedy grasses that had been trampled down by several previous passages between city and cemetery.
Owen looked around her shoulder at the buildings and the rolling road, heat-hazy in the distance.
“What’s the name of this here town?”
“Thirty-four. The Mother’s Thirty-fourth city.”
“Never heard of it. Is it in Indiana?”
“What is Indiana?”
“That means it’s not in Indiana,” Owen said gloomily. “T sure as hell wish I knew where I was—am. Have you ever heard of heaven or hell?”
“I don’t know those cities.”
“That’s what I thought.” He watched the backsides of the pink coveralls plodding along before him. “Who’s Mother?”’
“Mother is Mother. The sovereign.”
“That means the Queen Bee,” Owen said. “Dig, dig, dig, make bread and bacon and eggs for the Queen Bee and her brood. Some life—I don’t think. How am I going to find out what happened to Indiana?” He watched her brown hair dangling over the neckline of the pink coveralls. “Don’t you know there’s a war on? We just say DYKTAWO?”
“I know of no war.”
“Well, there is,9* he insisted. “Even Lucky Strike Green has gone to war. We’ve got food and gasoline rationing, and wage and price controls, and everybody’s saving up copper and aluminum to help the war effort. If you have any money left over—which ain’t likely—you buy war bonds. Some of the guys I work with are chewing cut plug because they can’t get any cigarettes except Ramses, and nobody in their right minds will smoke Ramses. I don’t have problems with my cigars, though. There ain’t no shortage of cigars or cut plug. We got Cuba on our side.” “I have not heard of this.”
“Actually, there’s two wars on all at the same time— one in Europe and the other in the South Pacific—but we ain’t winning either one of them, hardly. We seem to be getting whupped all along the line. The Nazis are spread out all over Europe and parts of Africa, and now they’re into Russia too. I think Russia is in Europe, somewhere. It’s pretty bad, let me tell you. Well, not all that bad. The Russians are pretty good fighters—they stopped the Nazi Sixth Army at a town called Stalingrad, stopped them cold and beat them to a frazzle. The Sixth Army surrendered about a month ago, but that’s the only place I know of where our side is winning. I guess we’re losing just everywhere else. Something good has got to happen soon.”
“I don’t know those cities.”
“We already lost the Philippines and MacArthur had to run for it—he escaped in a submarine and wound up in Australia, saying he’d be back. Well, maybe he will, but I wouldn’t bet on it. And we lost Bataan and Corregidor and all those places over there, and the British lost Singapore. That’s not in Europe, you understand, that’s the other way.” He waved the cigar in desolate fashion. “All the news the last couple of years is pretty bad. Lose, lose, lose all the damned time. I’d sure like to know what else has happened since … since I was twenty-eight. You’re not much help, cupcake.”
“I know none of those cities—they are not in the Mother’s sovereignty. There is no war—all the cities live in peace. Your variance has produced an awkward mixture of mind.”
“You think I’m crazy?”
“I accept that you are a variant, I accept that you were reconstituted for a purpose other than manual labor, but I don’t understand*your thought processes and speech patterns and so I am led to suspect that your reconstitution was imperfect. There was some error in reclamation, which would be my fault, or an error in your restoration.” She turned to give him a troubled glance. “The other males do not speak of cities or war—they appear to have no memories and do not speak at all unless they are questioned.”
“Paoli said that. She said I was incomplete.”
“I agree with her. Your mind is as strange as your behavior. You appear
to be living in a past life.”
“One of us is crazy,” Owen muttered. He fished the bottle from his pocket and took a swallow to demonstrate that he wasn’t crazy. A man could make a pretty good case for sanity around this town; a man could point his finger at the emptied graves and ask who was sane and who wasn’t.
“Do you want to know what I think, cupcake?”
“I am unable to follow your thought patterns.”
“You already said that, but I’ll tell you anyway. I think we lost—lost the war. I think we got skunked. I think the Germans and the Italians and the Japanese won and they own the whole world now. They put you in charge to run the place for them, that’s what I think. You’re serving the enemy.”
“I serve only the city.”
“Are you a WAAC?”
“What does that mean?”
“The Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps, of course. The President and the generals put their heads together last year and created a female army—all women and girls. They wear the same uniform and everything. Well, they don’t fight in the trenches, but they back up the boys on the home front. I saw some of them in Saint Louis last fall. They were neat.”
“I serve only the city and supervise reclamation. There is no female army.”
“I still say there’s something fishy about this place, Kelly. How long was I dead down there?”
“I am not able to answer that.”
“I figure five or six months—say, from February to August.” The hot sun made him certain of August.
“Surely that isn’t correct.”
“Well, then, how old are you? Right now, today?”
“I am thirty years.”
“Is that so?” He surveyed the figure before him and pursed his lips, nearly dropping the cigar. “Not bad for your age, not bad at all. Me, I’m twenty eight, if you want to wait for me. Been earning my own living since I was fifteen—I rode a bicycle, I was a printer’s devil and delivery boy for the town’s newspaper and job shop. Have you been around here since you were born?”
“I was bom in the city I serve.”
“Really bom? Not just dug up?”
“Only the male work force is reclaimed.”
“How long has the city been there?”
“Always.”
“I doubt that.” Owen cast about for a way to get through to the woman and remembered a code number on the identification bar worn by the blonde traffic warden. “Hey, Kelly! What does b08-136 mean on a bar?” The woman glanced around again. “Was that Paoli? It signifies that she was born in the eight month of the hundred and thirty-sixth year. Was that really Paoli?” “That was really Paoli. She let me know everything, the works. Now then, cupcake, let’s get down to the brass base: the hundred and thirty-sixth year of what?” Kehli said with satisfaction, “I am three years the younger.”
“Bully for you. The hundred and thirty-sixth year of what?”
“Of the Mother’s sovereignty.”
“She is a hundred and thirty-six years old?”
“That is absurd. There was a Mother before her, and a Mother, and a Mother, and a—”
“Knock it off!” Owen cried. “I’m sorry I asked. What you’re trying to say is, your history is a hundred and thirty-six years long and thirty-three more if Paoli is just that old now. All told, a hundred and sixty-nine years right up to today. Are you reading me?”
“I am not looking at you. I cannot read you if I am not looking at you and touching your identification.”
“If I wasn’t an Indiana gentleman, I’d say a dirty word right here” Owen reached out to grasp her shoulder, knowing the unfamiliar touch would provoke a reaction. The woman stopped walking and spun around. Owen stopped and waited while the zombie line behind collided with him and then eased away without being told.
“You touched me!”
“I touched you, cupcake. Now, please listen carefully with both ears. Has somebody’s mother been the Queen Bee here for a hundred and sixty-nine years? Is that the length of your history—your town?”
“That is correct.”
He pointed past her arm. “The town isn’t that old. The road isn’t that old.”
“The city and the road are continually being rebuilt. They must endure.” She turned about and gave an order to the workmen. The homeward march continued.
Owen mulled the information but found that it gave him little satisfaction. If he believed her, if she was right, it meant that he had met up with the Pennsy freight train something more than 169 years ago. It meant that what he’d thought was an instantaneous reawakening was not so instantaneous after all; there had been an intermission between the acts lasting more than a century and a half. Incredible. It meant that this place was the only promised land to be had and that he’d hung around in a never-never nowhere for more than a 169 years waiting for Kehli to dig him up and for a drunken broad to put him back together again in the wrong way. It meant— Owen cried, “Balderdash!”
“What?”
“I don’t believe it, none of it. This isn’t Indiana. Maybe you’ve been knocking around here for a hundred and sixty-nine years taking care of Mother and rebuilding the city and all, but this isn’t Indiana, and there’s still a war going on out there somewhere.” He swept his hand over the great prairie. “Wherever somewhere is. I’ve got to go out there and find Indiana again—I’ve got to find the United States real soon now!”
“I really don’t understand your thought processes.” “Yours ain’t all that easy, cupcake.”
Owen trudged along behind the woman, puzzling it. The scene failed to make sense no matter how he twisted or squeezed it. He was certain this was not his home state, and the summer heat wouldn’t let him believe it was February 1943. That much was acceptable; that much could be taken as gospel. A tiny little gap in months did exist between that February and this August, and he had met a freight train at a crossing and suddenly stopped being twenty-eight years old. That could be added to the gospel. But next—but next he was alive again and bouncing around this place where nobody had ever heard of Indiana, and some people were telling him that he was fitted together wrong. Balderdash.
Kehli stopped so quickly that Owen bumped into her. They had arrived at the edge of the rolling road. The zombies bunched up behind Owen, crowding him.
“Back off, or I’ll punch your snoot!”
Kehli was peering down the road, a hand to her eyes. Owen asked, “What’s going on down there?”
“There appears to be something amiss.”
Owen crushed the cigar under his foot and squinted into the distance. Something amiss—and he thought he could guess what. Five traffic wardens were working the road toward the southwest, working with their backs to Owen and Kehli but being slowly carried toward them. The wardens were checking every male on the, roadway, reading their identifications and staring closely into dull eyes. They advanced like a living pink wall, five bodies wide, and no workman escaped their scrutiny. Here a man received a thump on the chest to provoke a reaction and there another had fingers snapped just above the ridge of his nose. The inspection was prolonged and thorough, missing nothing by not being hurried.
“Trouble?” Owen asked again.
“Perhaps there has been a disturbance, or a subversion of order. They are seeking a specific individual. It is unusual for so many males to be on the road this early in the day.”
“Maybe the factories are closed.”
“They should not be.”
“Tell you what, cupcake,” Owen said judiciously. “I think somebody’s called a strike. The natives are revolting.”
Six
Peace and rest at length have come,
All the day’s long foil is past;
And each heart is whispering,
“Home, Home at last!”
—Thomas Hood
Owen Hall thought he may as well play the zombie— he was in good company, and protective coloration was suddenly the order of the day.
The i
nquisitive wardens working the road didn’t appear to have a sense of humor—they were too intent upon turning up some miscreant. (Perhaps some factory worker had taken home a machine to make bacon for himself.) When the moving road brought the investigators near he dropped his gaze and stared fixedly at Kehli’s pink posterior. He missed any visual byplay, but he heard the exchange between Kehli and the nearest warden. That woman had turned as the road brought her abreast the waiting group.
“Are you responsible for this crew?”
Kehli said, “I am. This is the reclamation crew.”
Owen thought that should have been obvious. They weren’t using the coffins to smuggle in black market butter.
“How long have you been in the field?”
“Since the call, just after sunrise.”
“They haven’t returned to the city in the meantime?”
“No, not until now.”
There was a long moment of speculative silence and Owen knew he was being scrutinized. He held his body stiff and kept* his gaze on Kehli’s rump. The blanket was on one arm and her picnic basket hung from the other. Owen’s vivid imagination said that if the inquisitorial warden had a truncheon, she would now be fingering it with loving care while she searched for a likely spot on his skull.
There was a fink loose in the town. Somebody had snitched on him. The drunken broad, or Paoli, or. the gray old woman at the factory had snitched on him and now he was a wanted man. Maybe, just maybe, the wardens had beat a confession from that hellion behind the green door. Or maybe that succulent cucumber had already turned up on someone’s lunch plate. They had his bug number.
When the warden’s voice was heard again, it was a short distance away. The road had carried her past them.
“Very well. Thank you for your courtesy.”
“Thank you,” Kehli replied, and gave an order to the crew to mount the road.
Ressurection Days Page 7
