And Thy Mother
Page 18
The soldiers looked only somewhat less confused by that explanation.
“Anyway, the actual procedure isn’t important right now,” Sam finally gave up. “All that matters is this: I was free to use any woman—those were Thompson’s exact words, ‘use any woman’—I wanted, or any number of women I wanted, as many times as I wanted, until one of them became pregnant. This way, I would be sure that that woman’s child would be my child, not that of some faceless sperm donor.
“So I did what I was told, went into some random house, and the woman in there took off all her clothes and laid down on her bed. And I looked down at her, and she just looked so pitiful, like what she was about to do was the last thing in the world she wanted to do. So, instead of ‘having sex’ with her, I started to talk to her, asking what her name was, and just finding out stuff about her. Then she relaxed, and told me all kinds of things. After a while, I decided that, to keep up appearances, I needed to go to another house. So I went down the road, and she went and got some of her friends, and they met us at this second place, and then those women got other women, and we went from one house to another, and all these women kept telling me more and more things.
“Well, finding all this out took several hours, and I got to wondering if maybe I was keeping the President waiting, or something, so I took my leave of the ladies and came back down to this building. There was a guard at the door, and he told me no, the President wasn’t ready to leave, but they’d be sure to let me know when he was, so I had as much time as I wanted. Then I hightailed it back to the ladies, and we spent a long time talking about all the stuff that happened to them and their ancestors. They showed me documents and videos, and I decided that this was just too important to remain hidden any longer.”
“That’s very interesting, Sam,” Jim said, starting to rise, “and I think you’ve—”
“There’s more,” Sam said with relish, feeling that he was only now getting to the “good stuff,” and Jim sat back down.
“So, the next morning, I came back down here looking for the President. Well, a different guard is here, and he tells me the President left already. This has me confused, of course, because now I’m thinking, where’s my ride back home? Then the guard takes my card and swipes it on this little machine he’s got, and he arches his eyebrows when he sees whatever the thing tells him. He asks me if I’ve gotten a woman pregnant yet, and I tell him no, I haven’t, but I don’t say why, of course. He tells me, ‘you better hurry up, because your card expires day after tomorrow.’ Now I’m confused and a little nervous, so I say to him, I thought I could stay until one of the women became pregnant. No, he says to me, there’s a time limit, and for you, it comes up in two days. So I say, I have to leave even if no woman is pregnant—is that what you’re telling me?
“Then—I kid you not—he looks me right in the eye and says, ‘Leave? Don’t be silly, pal—nobody ever leaves this place.’ Well, the President left, I said, and he answers, yeah, no shit, but he’s the President. There’re special rules for him. Surprise, surprise, I says. So, what’s going to happen to me when my ‘free pass’ runs out, and he laughs and tells me, the same thing that happens to everyone who gets ‘invited’ like you did, and then he just turned away without saying anything else.”
“There’s that word again,” Jim whispered to Mike.
“Yeah—‘invited’,” Mike whispered back. “And, that also explains why we never saw anyone come out of that building yesterday.”
“Those guys going in probably had no idea they were taking a one-way trip,” Jim said sadly, but became silent as Sam continued to speak.
“I went back to the women and told them what that guy had said, and they told me yes, what ‘always happens’ is that first, they collect their fee. What ‘fee’ would that be, I asked, and they looked at me kinda funny and said, you don’t seriously think you get to do this for free, do you? Even if the President ‘invites’ me, I ask. Especially if he invites you, they told me. Somehow they forgot to mention that little point, I said. Then they told me, even if you have the money, when your time is up, they come into this Ghetto and take your life. Better yet, if they discover you can’t afford the ‘fee’, they’ll come after you right away. I said, I doubt I can cover this ‘fee’, so they could be here looking for me any minute. But, they’re not gonna get me, I told them, because you’ve told me all this stuff, and if I don’t get that information out of here and make it known, then we’ve just wasted a lot of time. This made sense to them all, so with my help and using whatever material they could find, we put together some homemade weapons. One of the women was watching the tunnel and, sure enough, within two hours a bunch of goons came out of it. I made sure they could see me, and they followed me into a house, where the women and I used those weapons and killed the guards. A little later, I took these things, went into the tunnel and, well, basically had to sneak all the way back through it on foot. It took a lot of skill and a lot more luck, but I finally made it out. I left quite a few of those Secret Service boys in less than perfect operating condition, but hey—them’s the breaks. Bad news is, at least one of them survived, so they knew who had become the first and, so far, only man ever to escape from the Ghetto. Right away, I became ‘America’s Most Wanted Man’, though of course they couldn’t say why. I decided that I needed to ‘die’, and that’s the first time I faked my death by blowing up a trailer truck. I was able to find a dead guy who looked something like me—sorry to say, that’s not too hard, if you know where to look. I put him in the truck with me, planted my ID on him, jumped out and set off the explosion. They investigated, found my ID and declared me dead, as I hoped they would. Since then, I’ve been able to get back in a few times, and when I do, I bring the ladies all the news I can, like telling his mother what Jim here is doing, and stuff like that. That’s how we made those videos you boys have seen this past week. But in the past year or so, them ‘SS’ boys have become aware of me again, thanks to my recent activities around here.”
“So, you made the videos for me,” Jim said, “but how did you know about…” Then a light went on in his head. “You were the other shopkeeper in that antique store—the one who came out of the back room! That’s why you looked so familiar when I first saw you in your truck.”
“Close… but no cigar,” Sam responded. “That was my twin brother, Joseph.” To the assembled soldiers, he explained that normally twins were treated just like any other two babies would be: shipped off to two different fathers. In his case, however, he and his brother were sent to the same man and raised as brothers. Again, this was somewhat unusual, but not completely unknown.
“Anyway, I had told him to be looking for you.”
“That’s another thing: how did a guy with an un-Treated Bible just ‘happen’ to show up in your brother’s shop the same day I did?”
“That was no accident, Jim, any more than your coming into the shop was your own ‘choice’. You may have thought it was, but you’ve been studied, my friend; your curiosity and high sense of morality have been duly noted. We maneuvered you there. You don’t think so? Did you notice the smell in the bakery next door? Yes, cinnamon buns—your favorite. Put there at my request, to slow you down, so that you could hear... the guitar player on the corner. Playing your favorite song, just as you came by, so you’d be subconsciously drawn in the proper direction, where you’d see... the flash of red—your favorite color—from the hat in Joe’s store window. Even if it was only the corner of your eye, it would register and draw you in.
“And that guy who followed you in, with the Bible? A little weasel trying to unload illegal merchandise, right? Wrong. He tailed you for days, learning your habits. When he saw you headed toward the shop, he was the one who set the whole thing in motion.”
“But... he died when the police showed up... didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did. His nervousness was real, because the police were very real. We knew they had to be, in order to be convincing to you, in case you f
ollowed them outside. He knew what would have to happen, and that it was a suicide mission on his part, yet he took it on willingly. He was a very brave man.
“But you waited in the store, as we thought you would. Even then I wasn’t sure that you would take the pages, but I hoped your curiosity would get the better of you.”
“Well, even if I ripped some pages out, how could you know what they said?”
“You don’t think Joe left his pen on that particular page accidentally, do you? Once I knew that you had taken the pages, well… the rest is history.”
“Where is your brother now?”
“That’s the bad part,” Sam said. “Right after you left, he told me what you had done, and just a little while after that, the police came back to his store and killed him, thinking they had finally found me.” This was apparently news to all the women present, who responded with shock and saddened expressions.
“Just one more reason for me to hate the Secret Service,” Sam added, “as if I needed another.”
“Well, I for one am glad all this happened,” said Jim, as he came around to the front of the room, “though I feel terrible that the little man had to sacrifice his life for this cause, not to mention your brother, Sam. So... let’s try and do something about it,” he said, louder, trying to break the mood. “Let’s make sure that all of these brave men, including Sgt. Donovan, didn’t die in vain.”
The soldiers all nodded, cheered, and “high-fived” each other in total agreement with his little pep-talk. Even Gary and Peter found themselves being included in this exchange, and responded enthusiastically. Despite the show of high morale, there was still no plan to bring these high-sounding ideals to fruition. Jim was working on one, but it needed time to germinate. A distraction would help.
He stepped near to Angela and said, “I just have one more question.” He reached out and took her hand in his, and encountered no resistance from her. While he stood looking into her eyes, his hand explored hers. It was shaped like a man’s hand but... different. Slender. Like her body; similar to a man’s but… rounder… smoother... yet he could sense strength in it. Not at all unpleasant.
Jim would later say that this was one of the most delightful moments of his entire life.
“You aren’t going to kill me, are you?” he asked softly.
She started, as if she’d been in a trance. “Hardly,” she said, still holding his hand and smiling.
“Why not?”
The question was so ludicrous it made them laugh. He imagined someone entering the room at that moment and hearing him ask why he was not about to die.
“Because that wouldn’t be... polite,” she murmured.
Ask a stupid question...
“What about the virus?” She had the most beautiful blue eyes...
“There is no virus.”
CHAPTER 28
Lt. Dario Tedeschi was a Black man, large and powerfully built. His father had what would have, at one time, been called “Asian” characteristics. Yet in this world, the combination of a Black son to an Oriental father with an Italian surname raised no eyebrows whatsoever, for it was hardly unique. No one realized it, but one of the few beneficial side effects of the seven-hundred-year-old practices of “artificial insemination” and “random parental assignment” was that racial and ethnic stereotyping and prejudice were now things of the past.
Today, however, the lieutenant was not contemplating his family heritage, for he was in a quandary. His battalion, the Fourth, originally had been sent up here to take part in ‘war games’. Then he heard that the games were off and the unit was supposed to be returning to base; yet here they still were, out in the middle of nowhere. Colonel Jim Parker, the famous national hero, had been placed in charge of the Fourth for these maneuvers, but as soon as he finally showed up, several days later than expected, he turned right around and headed out again. Then Captain “Buck” Keller, nominal executive officer, or ‘XO’, of the battalion, had issued a flurry of orders and run off with the colonel and a bunch of their best men. Even the visiting General Nathan Chambers was suddenly nowhere to be found.
Normally, this kind of thing wouldn’t bother “Dirk,” as he was known to his friends (though the origin of the nickname remained a mystery to all, by Dirk’s deliberate design). He was accustomed to the rapid changes of plans that were inherent to military life. The problem was that, with all the top brass gone, he was the highest-ranking officer left in the compound, and he had no idea what, if anything, he was supposed to do. Again, normally, this was not a problem either—he would maintain the status quo, until he was told otherwise. But now, one of the sergeants was in his face, telling him, “Our scouts report a large mechanized convoy coming up the road. They seem to be setting up shop about half a mile east of our position.”
“What have they got?” Dirk asked.
“Tanks, artillery, troop carriers, mortars, machine guns—you name it. And, from the looks of things, they got more of everything than we do.”
Dirk thought a moment. “They did call what we were doing up here ‘war games’, didn’t they?”
“Yes, sir, I guess they did.”
“Well then, my guess is—“
“Your ‘guess’, sir?” the sergeant said uneasily.
“Hey, they don’t always tell me everything, either. This time, they all ran out without giving me a proper briefing—so yeah, I’m ‘guessing’. And my ‘guess’ is, those guys are the war-game ‘enemies’. Maybe they haven’t heard yet that the games are off.”
“I don’t know, sir,” was the uneasy reply.
“You’ve seen this artillery yourself, Sergeant?” Dirk wanted to know.
“With my own eyes, sir, and I’ll tell you, those tanks look awfully… mean to me.”
Dirk laughed. “Tanks are supposed to look mean. What did you think—they were gonna look playful?”
The sergeant remained unconvinced, “They just somehow look… I don’t know… more menacing than they should for ‘war games’.”
“Well, if I get time,” Dirk said dismissively, “I’ll go down to their camp and offer their tanks a cookie.”
Jim was violently snapped out of his reverie. From further away, Mike’s ears also perked up.
Jim frowned. “What do you mean, no virus? All those videos said—”
“I mean, there is no virus any longer.” To his quizzical look, Angela responded, “Think about it—you hugged your mother, one of the women gave a hug to Captain Wilkins, another to that young man over there,” setting off another round of blushing from Peter, “and yet all of you are alive and well.”
That’s why I was feeling apprehensive, Jim thought. I was half expecting to see carnage if men and women came into physical contact.
Angela continued, “We discovered that, after about one year, the virus mutated, and became totally harmless.”
“But, in your video, you said something about ‘men were still dying’ more than a year later,” Jim argued.
“Not quite,” Angela rebutted. “Our exact words were ‘after a year, the government said men were still dying’. In this case, as in many others, there’s a big difference between what was said, and what was actually happening.”
“Are you saying—?”
“That’s right,” said Cynthia, sitting near Mike. “The virus was gone before the Walls were even built. The last twelve or so generations of women have been confined to this... place, and systematically eliminated from men’s thoughts for no reason at all.”
“Does the President know?” Mike asked, after a moment of shocked silence.
“Of course,” said Angela, “but it doesn’t make any difference to him now, because the ‘Female Problem’ is no longer the basis of his family’s ‘monarchy’. In the beginning, Kenneth Thompson could not allow a cure to be found, because he needed the virus, and the resulting crisis, to justify his dictatorship.”
“Do you remember Dr. Russell Norman?” Cynthia asked, picking up the story,
“The CBW specialist who visited the Phoenix authorities early in the crisis? He learned about the mutation, and made the mistake of telling his superiors. The virologists at Fort Detrick never developed an antidote because one was not needed—the virus would run its course, but then it would fade away. True, it would be pretty horrific for about a year, but that would be the end of it. It was this mutation that kept it from becoming a true ‘doomsday device’.”
“Thompson was very displeased when he heard that,” Angela continued. “He knew that if this news became public, it could be very good for the nation as a whole—a ‘light at the end of the tunnel’, so to speak—but bad for him. And, as always, his situation was all that mattered. Therefore, of course, everyone who knew or even might know about the mutation had to be... eliminated. That meant all the scientists at Detrick, and everyone in the chain of command, from Dr. Norman up to, and including, Thompson’s Secretary of Defense. They all had to go, so that Thompson could stay.”
“Now, his descendants need nothing,” said Cynthia. “The Thompson rule is so entrenched that men can no longer imagine anything else. They’re not even aware that other possibilities exist, or that something’s missing from their lives.”
“But we are,” said Mike. His face was sad. “And something is missing from our lives... now.”
Cynthia looked at him, and asked softly, “Your father?”
He nodded. “I idolized that man. I still do... but since learning all this, suddenly it’s... not the same.”
She took his hand and stroked it gently. “I guess in one respect, women are actually better off than men; most of us grew up with our real mothers nearby. It has to be a horrible shock to find out that the man you looked up to all these years is probably no more closely related to you than I am. I’m really sorry, Mike.” He looked into her eyes; she smiled slightly and squeezed his hand. Her sorrow was sincere, he could tell, yet her touch felt reassuring.