Nobody had a beef.
We sat out for Fresh Start.
After we cleared Passaic, New Jersey wasn’t too hard to take. It was good to see countryside again, hills and patches of earth, and even the highway we sort of followed had poplars growing right up out of it at fairly regular intervals. Some of them housed birds, who sang. Long-abandoned automobiles lent a note of color, mostly rust-red, and were arranged singly and in bunches with the randomness of true natural beauty. But it was the trees beside the road that held my eyes—while I had toiled in the city, autumn had been spraying latex around the land. It seemed that no two leaves were the same color.
We marched in silence. I limped for all I was worth, but I didn’t seem to impress anyone very much. No, take that back—I impressed the hell out of me. As I hobbled through growing darkness I thought often of Alia, wondered for the thousandth time what name you could give to the thing that had happened to us on our last night—the night before I set out to track and kill Carlson, months ago. I wondered what she thought of me, when she did, if she did. I wondered what I thought of her, and knew I could not postpone finding out much longer. She had come to my home when I first returned from the city, but I had had Dad send her away. She never returned, and I left her as my only loose end when I left home again shortly thereafter. Seems like you just shouldn’t ever leave a world behind with loose ends in it—you might not be back.
Here I was doing it again.
Long after sundown Collaci called a halt beneath a half-crumbled overpass and announced we were camping for the night. Bedrolls were opened and canteens passed round. Nobody offered me a drink. I collapsed where I stood, a hair too melodramatically if my tailbone had anything to say about it, and made my eyes unfocus as I stared at Collaci. He laughed and threw something at me—I had ducked and caught it with my outflung arm before I realized I’d been suckered again.
It was a four-day-old edition of Got News, the weekly my father and two other men had begun nearly two decades ago, when they began consolidating Fresh Start and feeling the need for a public-relations arm. Lately it was a photo-offset eight-pager, nearly half that classified ads.
But page one was still the traditional spot for news. The 36-point bold head said: “JACOB STONE DEAD.” Beneath it a subhead added: “Founding Father of Fresh Start Found Apparently Slain.”
I scanned the copy. Jacob Stone, respected leader and thinker, had been found dead in his home. Foul play was suspected, but there was no clue to the identity of his assailant, if any. Further details would be forthcoming; Security Chief Collaci had promised to issue a statement soon etcetera.
For a story that said nothing, it sure said a lot.
No mention of my tape or manuscript, no mention of my name anywhere. Not even so much as a description of the cause of death. That tight a lid on a story of this magnitude was almost incredible—hell, I guess Dad was one of the most respected men in the world. A lot of people must be finding this story baffling. The cover-up could not last: soon the Council would have to (a) publish the truth, or (b) offer up a fall guy. It seemed from the events of the past twelve hours or so that my name was patsy. But why, dammit, wouldn’t the truth serve?
Sure it would shock a lot of people. But truth is truth. Or so I believed.
I decided to ask Collaci. I looked up to see him lying about ten yards from me, cocooned in his sleeping bag, facing the other way. A foodtab dinner had taken him no longer than reading the paper had taken me. The odds were even that the old hunter was sound asleep—he had that predator’s ability to sleep where and when it was safe, instantly—with the corollary ability to come awake just as instantly. But I was burning to hear some kind of explanation for the things I had read—I decided to risk approaching the sleeping wolf from behind.
I didn’t actually tap-dance to him, but no one could have said I was tiptoeing. Or pussyfooting. A pussy in platform shoes would have made less noise approaching Collaci than I did. None of the guards he had inevitably posted nor the other eating, resting members of the hunting party even felt it necessary to raise their weapons, growl, or even glance my way. We were in the country, plugless all, and they knew I knew they could track me perfectly by scent.
As of course could Collaci, even sound asleep. And my self-esteem rose some trifling fraction when he troubled to roll over and face me, gun preternaturally occurring in his fist, before I had covered half the distance between us.
“Sorry to wake you, Teach’,” I said, pitching my voice for his ears only.
“What do you want?”
I sat down beside him. “Been reading the paper.”
He grunted.
“Mighty interesting lead story. All that’s missing is the story.”
He grunted again.
“What kind of shit is that, anyway?”
He looked at me for a long moment, weighing something, and then his lip curled. “You’re young, boy,” he said sourly, “and I’ve been missing my two flankers and tailgunner all day, so I’m not inclined to grow you up politically tonight. Figure it out.” And with that he rolled over savagely and shoved the gun back under his pillow, leaving me with venom dripping out of my ears, mightily confused. He must have had some reason for showing me the paper in the first place. I couldn’t decide if he loved me or hated me.
It occurred to me that I never had known.
A large man with a face like an underdone turnip tossed me a bedroll, and as I bent to lay it out and unzip it, added a tin of K-rations with considerable vim. The tin caught me on the tail, which smarted enough already, and I spun angrily. He was covering me with a reconditioned Winchester, grinning. Have you ever seen a turnip grin? I thought longingly of turnip stew, then gave it up and sat down to eat.
It was a wonderful meal, with the consistency of old stove cement and a flavor between shoeleather and toasted mucus. I washed it down with spit and thought hard. By rights, by all logic, Collaci should have had a million questions to ask, about my claim that Wendell and I could communicate with Muskies, if nothing else. But he displayed no curiosity, no inclination to swap stories—or even civilities. I could imagine him deciding that the story I’d left behind for him was a fiction. I could picture him deciding to put the arm on me for murdering Dad. But I couldn’t picture him behaving the way he was now—it didn’t fit, it didn’t jibe. If Collaci had a theory that featured me as a liar, he’d be testing it, asking probing questions, interrogating me. As far as I knew he was the last living, Pre-Exodus cop in the world—and he was acting more a dog fetching a stick.
An hour’s thinking produced no results. I swore softly for a while in Swahili and slept.
And woke, unknown time later, into an uproar of gunfire and shouting men.
Hot-shots split the darkness, and brilliant yellow-green flame blossomed in the trail of one of them, leaving a momentary ghastly view of men struggling from sleeping bags, firing as they came. Then blackness fell again and only the hot-shots and muzzle-flashes were visible.
You don’t need to see to fight. My nostrils flared even as I wriggled one-handed from my sleeping bag, and I counted at least eight Muskies, at such close quarters it was impossible to pin down the number with accuracy. Jerked from sleep, surrounded by shouting, shooting men, I could not easily enter the undermind state, but I tried. If my complexion had allowed it, I would have paled. The fragmentary interface I achieved indicated nearly a full Name of windriders within a three-mile radius!
We were outgunned.
Outgunned? I didn’t have a match. But then, I didn’t want—or need—one. If I could reach Collaci at once, and make him believe me.
I threw back my head and bellowed. “Heeeeyyyy RUBE!” I don’t know what the hell it means, but it fetched him like it always does. He reared up out of the gloom, a smoking Musky-gun in his hand, and pulled one from his belt for me.
I didn’t have time to be flattered or grateful. “Teach’, hear me good,” I rapped. “Have your men hold their fire.”
He gave a full second to staring at me, then snarled and began to turn away. I grabbed his shoulder. “Teach’, I know what I’m doing! There’s a couple dozen of ’em—let me parley or we’re dead.”
He started to pull away, and my heart sank. Then he checked, turned back. “What do I do?”
“Thank God! Get your men to hold fire, shut up and stand still.”
He opened his mouth, then shut it and turned to the chaotic battle raging in the night. “Freeze!” he roared.
Discipline pays off—all firing ceased, and the shouts were supplanted by the sound of men falling where they stood, then by silence. “Start an Om,” I hissed, seating myself in hasty half-lotus.
“What the—”
“Do it,” I whispered savagely.
Collaci sat beside me in classic za-zen posture, filled his gut with air, and began: “AAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOOMMMMM…”
For long startled moments he was alone, his men wondering if the Boss had cracked. Then two voices joined him, one on the same note and one on the tonic. As the rest came in, I turned inward and entered the undermind.
Four score and seven years ago our forefathers founded upon this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal…
Forze corinze heaven years I go arf ore fathers found it a ponthisk on tin enter noon hay shun…
For scorin’ savin’ years Agro are forefingers…
(astonishment)28
(greeting)
(interrogative)28
(identity)
(confusion)28
(identity)
(suspicion)28
(IDENTITY)
(identity)28
pause.
(interrogative)28
(incomprehension)
(interrogative)28
(incomprehension) (receptivity)
(interrogative)28 (hate)28
(comprehension) (love)
(astonishment)28
another pause, and an added depth of communication.
(Name?)28
(Wendell Morgan Carlson)
(sudden comprehension)28 (sympathy)28
Thank God!
(requests?)28
(go in peace)
(it is done)28
(wait) (Name?)
(it is proper)28 (Sirocco)28
(identity) (farewell)
(identity)28 (farewell)28
…con sieve din libber tea end dead a cay to tooth a proper zish in that Allman are creative sequels…
Fore scorn’s heaven years aglow…
The group Om-chant pillowed me gently back to reality like a psychic parachute, and I was back in my conscious, the consciousness-occupying word games gone, no longer needed. The night sky no longer smelled musky.
The Sirocco Clan had gone.
As his own nostrils confirmed this, Collaci stopped Om-ing beside me. I wondered if I should tell him that he had just joined the Carlson Clan.
“Anyone hurt?” he called softly. The Om ceased; stillness returned to the night.
“All here, all whole, major,” came a hoarse voice.
“Shift guards and sack out,” he ordered and was obeyed. There was no conversation, and not because the Boss wouldn’t have liked it.
He turned to me then, and looked at me in silence through the dark for a long time. He passed me his pipe and lit it for me. I nearly choked: it was hash. And as I sucked deep on the token of friendship he began to talk softly, speaking at first of apparently unrelated things. It was his way of saying thanks—I guess he hated losing men under his command. I kept my lip buttoned and both ears open, and by dawn I understood why the Council had decided that I must die.
Chapter Eight
Excerpts from The Building of Fresh Start, by Jacob Stone, Ph.D., authorized version: Fresh Start Press, 2001
Although Fresh Start grew slowly and apparently randomly as personnel and materials became available, its development followed the basic outline of a master plan conceived within a year of the Exodus. Of course, I had not the training or experience to visualize specifics of my dream at that early stage—but the basic layout was inherent in the shape of the landscape and in the nature of the new world Carlson had made for us all.
Five years prior to the Exodus, a man named Gallipolis had acquired title, by devious means, to a logged-out area some distance northwest of New York City. It was an isolated two hundred-acre parcel of an extremely odd shape. Seen from the air it must have resembled an enormous pair of green sunglasses: two valleys choking with new growth, separated physically by a great perpendicular extrusion of the eastern mountain range, almost to the western slopes, leaving the north and south valleys joined only by a narrow channel. The perpendicular “nose” between the valley “lenses” was a tall, rocky ridge, sharply sloped on both sides, forming a perfect natural division. The land dropped gently away from the foot of this ridge in either direction, and dirt roads left by the loggers cut great loops through both valleys. The land was utterly unsuited for farming, and too many miles from nowhere for suburban development—it was what real estate brokers called “an investment in the future.”
Gallipolis was a mad Greek. Mad Greeks in literature are invariably swarthy, undereducated, poor, and drunk. Gallipolis was florid, superbly educated, moderately well off and a teetotaler. He looked upon his valleys and he smiled a mad smile and decided to hell with the future. He had a serviceable road cut through the north forest past the lake, to a lonely stretch of state highway which fed into the nearby Interstate. He brought bulldozers down this road and had six widely spaced acres cleared west of the logging road loop in the north valley, and a seventh acre on the lakeshore for himself. On these sites he built large and extremely comfortable homes, masterpieces of design which combined an appearance of “roughing it” with every imaginable modern convenience. He piped in water from spring-fed streams high on the slopes of the Nose (as he had come to call the central ridge). He built beach houses along the lake shore. It was his plan to lease the homes to wealthy men as weekend or summer homes at an exorbitant fee, and use the proceeds to develop three similar sites in both valleys. He envisioned an ultimate two or three dozen homes and an early retirement, but the only two things he ultimately achieved were to go broke before a single home had been leased and to drop dead.
A nephew inherited the land—and the staggering tax bill. He chanced to be a student of mine, and was aware that I was in the market for a weekend haven from the rigors of the city; he approached me. Although the place was an absurdly long drive from New York, I went up with him one Saturday, looked over the house nearest the lake, made him a firm offer of a quarter of his asking price, and closed the deal on the spot. It was a beautiful place. My wife and I became quite fond of it and never missed an opportunity to steal a weekend there. Before long we had neighbors, but we seldom saw them, save occasionally at the lake. We had all come there for a bit of solitude, and it was quite a big lake—none of us were socially inclined.
It was for this wooden retreat that my family and I made in the horrible hours of the Exodus, and only by the grace of God did we make it. Certainly none of the other tenants did, then or ever, and it must be assumed that they perished. Sarwar Krishnamurti, a chemist at Columbia who had been an occasional weekend guest at Stone Manor, remembered the place in his time of need and showed up almost at once, with his family. He was followed a few days later by George Dalhousie, a friend of mine from the Engineering Department to whom I had once given directions to the place.
We made them as welcome as we could under the circumstances—my wife was in a virtual state of shock from the loss of our eldest son, and none of us were in much better shape. I know we three men found enormous comfort in each other’s presence, in having other men of science with whom to share our horror, our astonishment, our guesses and our grim extrapolations. It kept us sane, kept our minds on practical
matters, on survival; for had we been alone, we might have succumbed, as did so many, to a numb, traumatized disinterest in living.
Instead, we survived the winter that came, the one that killed so many, and by spring we had laid our plans.
We made occasional abortive forays into the outside world, gathering information from wandering survivors. All media save rumor had perished; even my international-band radio was silent. On these expeditions we were always careful to conceal the existence and location of our home base, pretending to be as disorganized and homeless as the aimless drifters we continually encountered. We came to know every surviving farmer in the surrounding area, and established friendly relations with them by working for them in exchange for food. Like all men, we avoided areas of previous urbanization, for nose plugs were inferior in those days, and Muskies were omnipresent and terrifying. In fact, rumor claimed, they tended to cluster in cities and towns.
But that first spring, we conquered our fear and revulsion with great difficulty and began raiding small towns and industrial parks with a borrowed wagon. We found that rumor had been correct: urban areas were crawling with Muskies. But we needed tools and equipment of all kinds and descriptions, badly enough to risk our lives repeatedly for them. It went slowly, but Dalhousie had his priorities right, and soon we were ready.
We opened our first factory that spring, on a hand-cleared site in the south valley (which we christened “Southtown”). Our first product had been given careful thought, and we chose well—if for the wrong reasons. We anticipated difficulty in convincing people to buy goods from us with barter, when they could just as easily have scavenged from the abandoned urban areas. In fact, one of our central reasons for founding Fresh Start had been the conviction that the lice on a corpse are not a going concern: we did not want our brother survivors to remain dependent on a finite supply of tools, equipment and processed food. If we could risk Musky attack, so could others.
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