by Ryder Stacy
“Here, while we’re waiting,” Rock said, “we have some canned juices and bread. Please, help yourselves.” He opened a sack and spread the victuals out on a work table. The Technicians eyed the presence of the precious sustenance as a criminal eyes a gold necklace. Moving slowly at first, so as not to appear desperate, they headed slowly over to the tableful of bounty. But by the time they reached it they couldn’t contain themselves. They reached down greedily and ripped chunks of bread, stuffing them in their mouths in huge pieces that they were barely able to swallow. They took tremendous gulps of the apple and orange juice. Rock looked on, remembering his own childhood days of hunger and how wonderful it had been to come into a Free City and be given all that his growling stomach could hold.
Ullman seemed embarrassed by the manners of his people and looked at Rockson disapprovingly. “We’re usually not like this, I assure you. There aren’t more well-mannered people on this planet than the Technicians. We—”
“It’s all right,” Rock said, smiling down warmly, repressing an urge to pat the childlike creature on the head. “I’ve been hungry myself, believe me. Very hungry! And I don’t remember waiting politely when food was offered.”
“You are x = x,” said Ullman, his huge black eyes looking directly into Rockson’s. “You are a straight equation, Rockson.” Rock wasn’t sure of the mathematics but he understood the emotion.
In no time at all, Erickson had a big fire going outside in the ten-football-fields sized, concrete underground complex. Two autostoves burned sharp blue flames alongside the wood fire, which had a whole boar on a spit, turning slowly. Food sizzled away and the smell of all the rich juices positively saturated the stale air of the underground silos. Rock led Ullman, with his people tightly grouped together behind him, out to the waiting victuals.
Some of the other Freefighters had gathered tables and chairs from the piles of junk that lined the walls and dusted the spider webs and dirt from them. The entire area around the cooking fires was ringed with eating tables, like a picnic ground.
“Everybody just sit down now,” Erickson bellowed out. “Me and my staff—that’s you,” he said, pointing to Green, “and you, Archer, will help me serve. So just sit down, twiddle your thumbs or some appendage and get ready for a feast.” The Technicians sat down around the tables that were too high for them, on chairs from which their legs dangled loosely. But their faces were shining, their hearts beating with vigor for the first time in years. Rock sat next to Ullman at the head of one of the three long tables. Soon the food was being piled out in steaming, delicious helpings.
The Technicians gobbled it all down and asked for more. Rock knew they would regret it later but didn’t say a word. They had to gorge themselves, to fill that acid-grinding emptiness in their stomachs. They ate and they ate and then they ate some more. Two hours later, all thirty-one of the Technicians were lying on the floor groaning in painful happiness.
Rockson sat and talked with Ullman who still chewed on some of the artifruit pudding that McCaughlin had whipped up out of powders mixed with the Technicians’ water.
“I can’t thank you enough, Ted Rockson,” the leader said. “We were at our breath’s end. You have given us a respite. Now you must tell me what it is like on the outside. None of us has ever been beyond a few miles surrounding these silos. Vorn told us of lands beyond the blackness, but even he had just gone out to the edges where there was some hunting. Animals would stray there to roll in the black dust. Vorn thought it helped them alleviate bugs and insects that had attached to their hides. What is out there, Rock? Is it all black? Are there more Americans like you? Have the Russians—”
“One question at a time,” Rock said, laughing, leaning back in his folding wooden chair. “First, there is a huge world out there. Although much damage was done by the war, large parts of the United States are healthy, and damaged parts, at least many of them, are starting to come back as well. This blackness that surrounds you, Ullman, is the worst of it. You had the insane luck to have your people evolve in the center of possibly the worst concentration of hits in the country. So, no, it’s not all black. Not at all. It’s green and blue—there are forests, lakes, birds and flowers. Many parts of our country are still as beautiful as the day before the bombs went off. As for there being more Americans out there, why there are over—” Rock looked across at the Technician. Ullman was sound asleep, his small mouth open and breathing deeply. Rock glanced around the floor. All the Technicians had fallen asleep. They lay with little smiles on their white faces. Rock grinned. He felt a strange tenderness for the peculiar race. Across the vast storage depot, the Freefighters sat around, finishing up the remains of dinner and playing cards. A serious poker game was in progress with the clothing and goods they had received from the Macy’s creatures as bets. Lang was sitting upright, though Rock knew his leg hadn’t been healing too well. Perkins sat off to the side, breathing raspily. Rock was worried about him. The man just didn’t look well at all. Tomorrow he would have to ask the Technicians if they had any medical devices that might be of help.
But for now he would let them sleep. Let them dream pleasurable dreams for the first time in years instead of the nightmares they were used to. Tomorrow he would learn some of the secrets of the Technicians.
Thirty-Seven
Colonel Killov sat in his eightieth-floor office in the monolith watching the Olympic Games from Crete via satellite TV. Twenty years after the war the Olympics had been promoted by the Russians as a tool for getting the peoples of the occupied countries to take their minds off the realities of their harsh, everyday lives. The Reds now did gala publicity worldwide for the games, making the different nationalities root for their country—as if it mattered. The satellite hook-up was lined and fuzzy—perhaps because the Reds were using a 110-year-old American Telsat. Technology connected with space development had gradually deteriorated over the last century, with maintenance of existing ground controls to the Russians’ own killer satellite force still orbiting around the planet being the only thing kept up to date. Several of the Russian premiers had wanted to do away with the ground stations, the main one located in Moscow, as being too costly. But each had been voted down by the entire Presidium. The killer sats were the Reds’ ace in the hole. They ruled now, but their country’s own volatile history made them collectively aware that anything could happen. If, somehow, one of the captive nations got hold of a missile—none were capable of building one—and launched it, the Reds would still be able to knock it from the sky. Thousands of technicians manned radar and other defensive early-warning control systems around the world, waiting to detect the missile or plane that never came.
Killov banged the twenty-six-inch color TV with the side of his hand. There! A little better. The fact that the American satellite could continue to transmit television signals around the world was a testament to their technology at the time of the war. Somehow, it always slightly amazed Killov, when he had read of the past, that the Russians had been able to defeat the Americans, who he had to confess, to himself only, had been quite intelligent and ingenius when it came to technological breakthroughs and long-lasting equipment. The stuff the Russians sent out of their factories was lucky if it made it off the assembly line without cracking or dropping into a hundred useless pieces.
Killov sat back in his velveteen armchair and watched as the pole vaulter from the Soviet Union easily beat the Malawi pole vaulter. Once again, the Russians were winning nine out of ten medals. Guess we’re all just better athletes, Killov thought cynically. He reached over to the bar bureau next to his chair, opened it and mixed himself a martini, dry. The sour taste poured down his throat with an easy pleasure. He took another swig and watched the Olympic games continue.
The Reds won the next three events—long jump, hurdle and tumbling—gold, silver, and bronze. They’d better let someone win, Killov thought, or there’ll be riots around the world. The boys back in the Athletics Committee in Moscow were getting a little greed
y.
The phone on his desk rang. A report of strange occurrences in the Far West region—sector five, vector three.
“An entire Blackshirt parakite commando squad was wiped out, sir,” the KGB major in charge of coordinating incoming data from the western regions told Killov.
“What?” the commander of all the Blackshirts in America screamed into the phone. “What the hell do you mean was wiped out? You mean crashed? What?”
“No, sir, I wish I did,” the officer on duty, just forty-five floors below Killov, said meekly. “The report just reached me, Colonel, and I felt you would want to hear it. Three days ago, one of our drone watchers saw what looked like a line of rebels in that region. The drone suddenly went dead and the officer in charge felt that there was enough information to warrant sending out a search-and-destroy team. Parakite commandos—the best, sir, elite corps. They were dropped right over the target area according to the pilot of the Soyuz transport. He saw the rebels himself. The men headed down, seemed to be getting the best of the bandits and the plane headed off. The commandos were to be picked up by helicopter within the next hour with whatever prisoners they had taken.” The officer stopped suddenly, as if afraid to go on.
“And?” Killov said brusquely.
“And—they were all dead when the chopper force arrived. Every last one of them, Colonel. Cut to bits. The crew found four dead mutant horses that the bandits had apparently used as cover but no dead. I just now received the message, sir, and called the officer in charge to confirm the story in its entirety. It’s all true.”
“Damn!” Killov exploded, slamming down the phone. This, he would have to see for himself. He called his service officer and had him arrange a flight of four choppers, the big jet-powered Minsk IIs, armed to the teeth, for immediate flight to sector five, vector three.
The screaming fleet of helicopters hovered over the battle zone, settling down just off to one side, sending up waves of black soot from the scorched earth. Killov, attired in full Blackshirt strike uniform, black leather, full plastasteel face mask, carrying a sub himself in case of attack, stepped out of the lead chopper and walked quickly over to the bodies, still lying where they had fallen. Buzzards had congregated around some of the more rapidly festering corpses, picking out eyeballs and tongues and other tasty morsels. Killov fired a full burst from his submachine gun, beheading five of the long-necked, ugly birds as the rest flew off, wings flapping like sheets, screeching shrilly.
He looked over the slaughter. They’d been killed by bullets and what looked like grenades, judging by the amputations that lay around the dark ground in their own little display backdrops of blood. And . . . what was that? Killov bent down and picked up a sharp, five-pointed throwing device. One of Chen’s that had failed to detonate. It had stuck halfway through the throat of a Red lieutenant, whose hands were still around his throat in a frozen grip of death. What the hell was it? Killov wondered. He had never seen the bandits use this sort of weapon. Could there be armed tribes far out in these unknown regions who are beginning to attack? Was there more to the picture than he had realized? That was the one thing the Russian KGB leader hated, not knowing.
He walked among the rotting bodies, looking at the wounds on each, poking around the dirt under the bodies, looking for he knew not what. Around him, his officers, nearly twenty-five of them, scouted around the black dirt, following the lead of their commander. They too had no idea what they were searching for, but imitated Killov. The colonel spent an hour walking around the field, examining every thing, every bloodstain, every splattered gut, every shell casing for a clue. At last Killov walked across the dirt to where the bandits had made their defense. It still seemed incredible. More than forty of the KGB’s top men wiped out by what couldn’t have been more than a small force. He walked around the dead hybrids, holding his nose from the stench of the swollen, decomposing animals, their guts already strewn like moldering garbage from their bloated stomachs. He again examined the shell casings, the empty boxes of ammo. It was the Freefighters, he was suddenly sure of it. He had seen too many of these defensive encampments in the past not to recognize one now. Blood here too. Some of their men had been hit, he thought with at least a little satisfaction. And possibly killed as well. The bandits never left their dead.
“Sir, over here,” one of Killov’s officers yelled out. The colonel quickly walked over to the man who was kneeling down next to one of the dead mutant horses. “A locket of some kind.” The officer stood up, handing Killov a small, gold pocket watch on the end of a long, brass chain. The colonel flicked the little dial on the top and the front piece popped open. Inside was a watch, still ticking, and on the inside of the shiny cover was the inscription, “To my darling Peter Slade. May he be the best doctor Century City ever had.”
“Century City, I’ve heard that name before,” Killov said out loud to Petrovsky and Vorshnev, two of his top officers.
“Yes, sir,” the gaunt-faced Vorshnev replied, nearly a carbon copy of Killov himself, with eyes as cold as an arctic glacier. “The name has been linked by our analysis computers as being the most probable base of operations of Ted Rockson.”
Killov’s eyes lit up like an exploding phosphorous bomb. “Rockson, what the hell would he be doing all the way out here? Something’s going on and I want to find out what.” The KGB leader strode back to his chopper in long, angry steps, yelling all the while to his note-taking underlings around him. “I want this whole area, from this point all the way back to the Rockies to be filled with drones. I want four Special Squads made ready for this mission only, to be on full alert at all times until I take them off. Two parakite teams and two helicopter assault squads. He’s going to have to come back this way sometime, whatever the hell he’s doing out there,” Killov said, looking out into the black wasteland which stretched off to the horizon. The chopper took off, again raising a tornado of soot. “And when he does, we’ll be ready for him.”
Thirty-Eight
The next morning Rockson greeted Ullman, the first Technician to awaken. “You ate your fill last night,” Rock said, “That’s for sure.”
“Hunger = emptiness x caloric needs divided by time lapse since last sustenance.” Rock grinned back, somehow deciphering the message. “We haven’t eaten like that since Vorn dragged back an entire elk-type creature nearly three hundred day cycles ago. That was before he began losing his strength. At the end he was capable of carrying only small game—rabbits, several birds. We are not big, Ted Rockson, I know, but we have lost nearly thirty percent of our body mass in the last year. You see us at our lowest bodyfat-to-muscle ratio.”
“McCaughlin, up and at ’em,” Rockson yelled over to the grumbling Scotsman who turned uncomfortably on the hard concrete floor of the cavernous silo complex. Slowly, he began rousing himself, scratching his red beard, cursing his joints which felt like hell warmed over after a night on this extra-firm rock mattress.
“But, Rockson, you must relay your information about the world to me. Our conversation last night was terminated by my descent into biological satiation. What is it like out there?” Ullman’s black eyes glimmered, a dull golden streak in the middle like a light at the end of a long tunnel. His face seemed much pinker after the feast of the previous evening.
“It’s beautiful, and ugly, out there, Ullman,” Rock said, sitting in one of the old wooden chairs that men of the missile crews must have used in the twentieth century. “Parts of America are lush and green but much of it is still terribly damaged. But this is the worst, by far, that we’ve seen. You’d be wise to leave this area.”
“Leave?” Ullman snorted. “We’ve lived the past five generations here. This is our entire world. It is too late for that, I’m afraid. But tell me, Ted Rockson, where do you and your people live? Are there more like you?”
“We’re the Freefighters of the hidden cities,” Rock said, his nostrils flaring at the sudden scent of the eggs and boar bacon breakfast that McCaughlin and Erickson were preparing ne
arby on the small autostoves. Rock continued as the leader of the Technicians listened, fascinated. “The Reds invaded right after their first strike, sending in millions of troops. And now.” Rock looked down at the flat, gray floor. He hated to say the words. “And now, they rule America from their fortress cities.”
“The Russians are here? In America?” Ullman seemed genuinely surprised and disturbed. “We had known, of course, from records that our original ancestors kept, of the attack. Then all the missiles here were launched and the entire base was sealed up tight as a tomb. The original Technicians had tons of food and oxygen down here. When the bombs went off all over this area, they were untouched. They didn’t come up for nearly five years—and then, seeing the blackened condition of the land, submerged again and began working on their own pure science. Doing what they knew best.
“We’ve caught transmissions from time to time but always garbled. The radiation in the surrounding environment inhibits the transmission of nearly all frequencies of radio or television.”
“Well, they are out there. The Reds still have armies of men here and they think they run things. But times are changing, Ullman. We undertook this journey to find out more about these Black Beam weapons of yours. Such devices could make us superior to the Reds’ armor and their field artillery.”
“Ted Rockson, all that is ours shall be yours. I—we—are all Americans. We have kept working decade after decade, developing weapons and medical equipment from our discoveries, in several fields of research. We have kept the machinery, the laboratories functional here, made as many devices as we could, preparing for the day when we would be called on. For what purpose we have never known for sure. But now, it becomes clear. We developed our technology for the day when you arrived. And now our function can be fulfilled. Yes! Yes!” Ullman grew more and more excited, his big eyes nearly bulging out of the egg-shaped head. He and his people had been so empty, both nutritionally and spiritually for so long. Now there was meaning again. That was the deepest hunger of all.
