by Sandy Nathan
“Jeremy no like me?” she said.
“No! Jeremy... I really like you, Ellie. I’ve never liked anyone like I like you. And I really like talking to you. It’s not just because you don’t understand me, either. I think you do understand me.”
“OK.” She skipped over the lawn, up on her little hooves. She looked weightless.
The back of the mansion had simple landscaping, some bushes around the house, then acres of lawn flowing to a cliff overlooking the sea. Below, the rock face was crowded by a maze of jagged boulders slammed by breakers.
“Be careful,” he yelled. “It’s a cliff.”
Eliana careened toward the precipice, arms over her head, coat flapping, that irrepressible smile beaming from every inch of her body. She looked like she’d fly over the edge, but she pivoted and came to a stop. She was standing close to the brink, looking over, when he got there.
“You have to be careful,” he chided her.
She pointed at the ocean, babbling excitedly. He was surprised, because Henry said she was afraid of water. Water, but not an ocean.
“They come,” she said. “This good. They come here.”
“Who’s coming here?”
“My people come.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow.”
“Well, it had better be before—well before—7:35 in the morning. Otherwise, everything above ground will be toast.”
“OK,” she nodded. “Before toast.” She put her hand in her coat pocket. He saw her hand moving. He knew she had something in there and wanted to see what it was. He’d find out soon enough.
“It’s time to go back. It’s getting dark. There are marauders out here.”
She stood on the very edge, looking at the panorama very carefully, moving her head from right to left. She peered over the face, noting the rocks and the surf pounding on them. She seemed to be memorizing them. Without moving, she faced the ocean. She raised her hands over her head. At her arms’ fullest extension, her eyes were closed. He thought he saw something fly from her heart. They were pulsations of the type he felt when he touched her, but hers were almost visible. She returned her hands to her sides very slowly, turning to him and holding out her arm to be grabbed.
“Is OK,” she said. “Before 7:35.”
He took her arm and pulled her back to the house, and then stopped. “No, Ellie. This is how a gentleman escorts a lady.” He offered her his arm and showed her how to put her hand through it. “See, now you’re my date. Would you like to go to dinner with me, Ellie?”
“Date. Dinner.”
He didn’t know if she understood. She greeted everything with such sweet enthusiasm. He stiffened when he saw the hulking figure observing them from the rhododendrons by the house. Sam Baahuhd, the village headman—Sam of the village—stood in the shadows.
Sam’s presence jerked Jeremy back to the reality of the Hamptons. The “staff” at the estate was a clan of settlers who had wandered in over the last couple of hundred years. They were as trustworthy as a gang of rattlesnakes and way smarter. They lived in the farm’s barns and outbuildings because Jeremy’s ancestors had recognized that they needed a resident army, not good gardeners.
In the beginning, absentee owners visited their summer homes to find them occupied by half-wild savages. The flood of criminals grew higher and more desperate as escapees from the camps took to the forests. Marauders had turned the other great landholdings in the Hamptons into pirate enclaves. The villagers fought—and won— battles with marauders a couple of times a year.
Sam looked the way he always did, wearing dirty canvas pants, a quilted wool jacket that appeared a hundred years old, and a widebrimmed hat. Its band was a rattlesnake skin, the rattle prominently displayed. His reddish, matted hair stuck out from under the hat, complementing his red beard and sunburned skin. The way his skin cracked and peeled around his nose showed that he once had been fair, but the sun had tanned him like hide.
Sam Baahuhd was close to seven feet tall. His size accounted in part for his status of leader of the village, as did the fact that he was the oldest son of the previous headman.
Sam Baahuhd’s last name meant “Bad,” which summed up life in rural Connecticut. The natives settled disputes with guns and fists. Blood feuds between villages and families ripped the countryside. Hooch—rotgut whiskey—and homegrown hallucinogens were staples of life, along with violence.
“How do you do, Sam?” He clutched his pistol’s handle. Jeremy watched Sam carefully, searching for signs of intoxication. He smelled sweat and stale alcohol on Sam’s clothes, but not the sharp bite of fresh booze.
The headman returned Jeremy’s greeting. “Fair n’ fi’, Mr. Egerton. It’s a troll evenin’.” Jeremy knew this meant, “Fair and fine, Mr. Edgarton. It’s a great evening.”
Sam spoke his clan’s version of the dialect that had evolved in the Hamptons. Full of clipped sounds and missing letters, their way of speaking defied categorization, though it sometimes sounded almost British. Outsiders found it all but impossible to comprehend.
“Yes, I noticed you when Ellie and I were in the rose garden. You stood by that magnolia my mother loves. Rupert was by the elm.”
Sam nodded. “We’re watchin’ fer ya’, Mr. Egerton. If any of ‘em busts in here, we’ll get ‘em.”
“Thank you, Sam. That’s good of you.” Jeremy knew how they’d “get ‘em.” Anyone trespassing on “their” territory was dead, though women might be enlisted as wives. Jolted out of the rapture of Eliana’s presence, Jeremy remembered why he was there. “Sam, I’ve got to talk to you. Everything’s changed. You need to stop—”
“Aye, Mr. Egerton, ah know. Ain’t had a drop all day.”
“You can’t do that, Sam. I told you that you had to taper off slowly. You’ll get sick if you stop fast.”
“Ain’t got sick yet.”
“It’s happening tomorrow morning, Sam.”
“Ah know. Tha’s why ah quit.”
“How did you know? I just found out.”
Sam chuckled. “Mr. Egerton, tha’s why ye had me drinkin’. So the feds wouldn’t know about me. It worked, too. Not a fed come near here. Daren’t, ah reeked so.” The giant let out a throaty laugh. “Yer plan worked a vengeance, plus ah got ta’ pour down all th’ hooch ah could hold.”
Jeremy grimaced. “Look, Sam. You’re an alcoholic by now. You can’t just quit. You’ll get DTs, and maybe convulsions. But how did you know it was tomorrow?”
“Th’ hooch don’t cut ma Power that much, Mr. Egerton. Ah’m an ol’ dog and ah got th’ Power and th’ Voice stronger than any headman in the Hamptons, ever. Ah could be passed out drunk—an’ ah have been many a time this las’ year—an’ know a fed was comin’ and where he was.”
“That’s true, Sam. I know.” Jeremy felt guilty about his part in making Sam a drunk. But it was necessary. They had to cloak him to save him. The feds tracked any rumor of paranormal activity, which the headmen had in spades. The village chiefs would make perfect interrogators, if the feds could co-opt them. The government had even developed electromagnetic sensors that could identity the brain waves emitted by the headmen when they were working their magic.
“Look, we’ll talk later. I’ve got to get Ellie inside.” He jerked a bit, remembering something. “I’m forgetting my manners. Eliana, this is Sam Baahuhd—Sam of the village. He takes care of the estate for my family.” Eliana bowed as gracefully as only she could, and smiled. “This is Eliana, Sam. She’s visiting us.”
Sam’s eyes rested on Eliana, dropping from her silvered eyes and hair to her hoofed feet and back up her slim form. When their eyes met, both of them jumped. She held her hands out and Sam took them, engulfing her slender fingers with his. They stayed like that, eyes locked.
Jeremy felt woozy. He could see Sam’s energy pour out and around Eliana, but hers came back to him just as forcefully. It was like the sun had sprung up between them. Time slowed. Sam was doing something, and so was Ellie.
Jeremy had seen Sam like that before, when he was healing people. He could heal all sorts of injuries. The only thing he didn’t seem to be able to heal were diseases coming into the Hamptons from outside. Now he was enmeshed in some private world with Ellie.
Jeremy looked at Sam and Eliana, all but embracing. Her face was enraptured; Sam’s, amazed. They broke apart, smiling at each other.
“Ye got a troll lil’ girl, Mr. Egerton,” Sam said. “Troll an’ fi’ as a queen.”
“Yes, Sam.” He wanted to get away from Sam’s knowing look. He acted like he knew her way better than Jeremy did.
Jeremy opened the back door for Ellie. The odor of roasting beef and other good things filled his nostrils. The door slammed and he entered another world.
28
“Linc, are you OK?” Ron looked very worried.
Lincoln Charles stood in the doorway to the steel rotunda, blinking under harsh lights. “Hail to the Chief” still blasted and the illuminated ceiling indicated the way out. Commandos and secret service men were all over.
Should he tell them what Yuri had said? He needed to think. “I’m fine, Ron. No big deal.”
“But the door was locked. We couldn’t open it.”
“Didn’t I say everything was fine?”
“Yeah.”
“It was. Let’s go.” Linc stood tall and marched out of the steel corridor. His secret service men and the SWAT team parted before him.
“What was it?” asked Ron. “They couldn’t get the door open, and then it just opened up.”
“It was a hologram, Ron. A practical joke. Someone dressed up and pretended to be Tsar Yuri a long time ago. They made an electronic image of him and set it to go off when we entered the room.” The lie came easy. “I’m going to go back to my apartment and take a nap.”
“What shall we do, Linc?” Ron looked so concerned.
“Oh, the scientists can poke around in there and see what they find. But it was a bogeyman, like I said. A trick.”
“You’re sure?”
“Absolutely. Just a joke.”
“What did he say?”
“Best wishes and it’s about time you found me. That sort of thing.”
“We heard shouting.”
“Right! Whoever played Yuri was a Russian all right—noisy. I’m taking a nap.”
“Linc! We’ve got a lot more room now. Can we let a few more people in?”
He considered. “Do we have enough food for them?”
“No, sir.”
“Then forget it.”
Linc went back to their apartment. Thank God, Martha was out somewhere. She was the only one he could tell, and he didn’t want to upset her. He sat, fiddling with a paperweight, remembering every word Yuri had said. He couldn’t stop shuddering.
Normally, he’d call a meeting and tell his advisors all about it, but this was really bad. People would feel awful if they knew all Yuri had called them. Idiots and losers. Everyone would be very upset if they knew it was a thousand years later than they thought. They couldn’t even count time right.
Very depressing thoughts. Also, the fact that Yuri had technology to record his voice and use it against him like that was shocking. A hologram locked up the president of the United States and gave him a tongue-lashing? Unsettling. Not to mention what would happen tomorrow.
Linc began to think. OK, the world would blow up tomorrow morning. They already knew that. They were safe in the bunkers beneath the White House and Congress. For how long? Did they have sufficient food and water? Linc hadn’t checked on the supplies. He assumed his staff had taken care of it. Were they really safe?
Yuri’s hologram said it could blow up the White House at will. If the hologram could blow up the White House when he was in the room, it could do it now, or any other time, too. It probably would do it when everything else went off tomorrow. Why? Why not? To make a point: nothing was safe from Yuri.
Linc wanted to get on his treadmill and run until he felt better, but, when he turned it on, the lights dimmed and threatened to go out. He turned the treadmill off.
Sitting on one of the camelback sofas, an eighteenth-century furniture masterpiece, Linc pondered. If Yuri gave him and the tsar and other world leaders a doomsday message, he wanted to make them feel really bad. The hologram had said that he might even kill himself because of what he’d found out.
Linc Charles would kill himself because his society had failed? Linc didn’t feel suicidal. He felt angry.
Yuri wanted everyone to feel bad before they died. He probably wanted them to cry and scream and try to stop the destruction. That pissed Linc off so much. He had devoted his lifetime to giving people hope and helping them reach their highest potential in a rotten world—he knew it was rotten. And now a dead maniac wanted them to feel bad in their last hours?
Not on his watch. He would tell no one what Yuri said.
A knock on the door. “Mr. President? Can I come in?”
“Only if you’ve got a ham sandwich, Ron.”
Ron laughed and entered the apartment. “Sir, the scientists are putting together a time capsule for posterity. They’re going to bury it deep below the bunker. Would you record a message that will capture the essence of our time and culture for the ages?”
“Sure, Ron. I’ll work on it right now. Can you get that sandwich?”
“Absolutely, sir.” Smiling broadly, Ron clapped him on the back and left.
The sandwich arrived, as did more congressmen bearing paintings and furniture. He let them in; they’d give the stuff to someone else if he didn’t take it.
Linc sat at his desk, trying to put together a speech that would define his era. After his session with Yuri’s hologram, it was hard.
He felt bad about what Yuri had said, and about a lot of things. Would he have worked harder and been more honest if he’d realized his life was a game? A game within a game. He had felt sometimes as if he were a figure on a game board, moved around here and there, saying things because they needed to be said, not because he believed them. As if his life wasn’t real, and he wasn’t real.
And now, it turned out the whole planet was a game set up by a madman a thousand years before. Nothing was real.
Linc thought about a lot of things, big and little. He felt bad about what he had told that woman from the Anti-Terrorism Unit headquarters. He knew she was a fruitcake. He didn’t know why he’d said what he did to her. Hope, maybe. That undying optimism that maybe someone out there could stop the disaster at the last second. Any crazy goofball.
She was a cull. He knew that when he’d seen where her call originated. Anyone calling from the Anti-Terrorism Unit Director’s Office at that time was a discard. The people who could rebuild a productive and healthy society, if radiation levels ever permitted it—the “good pile”—had been transported to what they hoped were safe facilities.
The others—the “bad pile”—were deemed by their supervisors to be too unstable to take confinement. The woman was a nut case. So why did he give her carte blanche to go after one of his most admired and beloved friends? Linc ground his teeth.
Maybe it was spite.
He’d seen Veronica Edgarton at parties and state events for ages. He’d finally gotten to know her when she was building the theme park on her estate. It was a good cause, providing employment in a backward area. And, hell, if those hillbillies had a water slide, maybe they’d clean up more often. So, he had authorized her project and all the cement and electronic gewgaws she wanted. Computers to run the rides. Gizmos to make her autistic son happy. He authorized all the shipments and even gave her a federal economic development grant to help pay for it.
Linc had loved Veronica Edgarton from the first instant he saw her. It was years earlier at a benefit at which her junkie husband played. He shook his head. She had the worst taste in men, first that social deviant and now the general. Never even looked at Linc. Now it was too late. Earlier that day, his top secret sources had told him that s
he had married the general. They were spotted in Siberia yesterday, and then they went dark. She was holed up under the ice with him.
So fuck Veronica and her mansion. If that lunatic agent blew it up, so much the better. Tomorrow morning, it would be dust anyway.
Two hours later, he was still stewing about his message for the time capsule. The problem with trying to define his era was that everything he thought about it had now been destroyed. Linc sat back. How could he write something that responded to that? How could he explain how the world ended? But what to say came to him, the way the answer always did:
My friends, this is President Lincoln Charles of the United States of America, speaking to you from the Oval Office of the White House. We’ve been in an unprecedented period of peace and prosperity the last hundred years. Our dear Tsar Yuri Sokolov began this prosperity with his Bloodless Revolution, turning Russia back into the divinely mandated monarchy it is.
We in the United States followed his example by instituting reforms and laws that have stunned the world because of their democratic process and attention to the rights of individuals.
We are the number one nation in the world because we have the heart and the soul of the universe behind us. Our great Constitution holds us up and inspires our growth and development. At present, no one in our great country is hungry and no one is illiterate. We have no racial discrimination or discrimination in anything. It’s a great country and I’m grateful that I was elected president.
As I sit in the White House, I look forward to a secure and peaceful future for all time.
To close, I will sing our national anthem, “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
He stood up, put his hand on his heart, and sang.
29
Jeremy steeled himself and unlocked his mother’s bedroom door. He walked into the room boldly and flipped the switches, turning on the lights in his mother’s boudoir. Tiny bulbs in the ceiling pointed here and there, illuminating paintings, furniture, and antiquities. The colors of the Persian carpets came to life under his feet. They were priceless; the room was priceless.
