It did work. The burning Exxon station was coughing huge gouts of thick, black smoke, probably from the many tires in the service bays. That smoke, combined with the cover of night and the screaming of sirens, allowed Cole and Stan to slide out the back doors and into the darkness as soon as the ambulance stopped. With backpacks strapped tightly and guns at the ready, the two men stepped beyond the safety of the Capital City Green Zone and into the wilds of post-collapse America.
5.13
"I didn't understand," said Linda.
The Fisherman nodded slightly. "What didn't you understand, Madam?"
Linda exhaled with great weariness and gestured toward the audience. "I didn't understand that they were trying to kill themselves. That they were actually trying to collapse the whole system."
"They being...?"
"Everybody!" said Linda, turning away from the imaginary crowd. She took a step toward William, her hands low and outspread in a gesture of exasperation. She could scarcely believe what she was saying. "The Senators and Congresspeople. The CEOs. The bankers. All the usual suspects. But it wasn't just them, William. It was environmentalists, too. Greenies. Designers. Inventors. Progressives. Butchers and bakers and candlestick makers, for Chrissake." Linda looked at the floor and shook her head. "It was all carbon offsets and solar roads and cars that run on water and vertical farming and clean coal and tree planting and dumping tons of iron filings into the sea. And the geoengineering ideas! Building giant sunshades in space? Jesus!" Linda raised her eyes to the Fisherman. "Nobody got it, William."
"Got what, Madam?"
"I think you can call me Linda now," said the President.
The Fisherman smiled and bowed. "Got what, Linda?"
Linda opened her mouth to speak but stopped when the Fisherman raised his hand. "Tell them," he said, pointing toward the audience.
Linda stepped again to the lectern and sighed again. Her forehead was creased, and glistened with beads of perspiration. "You never understood about death!" she said, her voice rising, an angry accusation. The people in the audience continued to watch in respectful attention.
"You never grokked that none of your so-called solutions could work inside of a system that insisted on endless material growth." Linda's voice was sure and commanding now. She was being given an opportunity to say what was really in her heart. To tell the truth she'd held inside. The truth she'd felt she couldn't tell. The words tumbled out. "And the growth you could never face into was that of your own numbers. As if all there was to do was figure out how to grow more food and make cars that ran on sparrow farts and then, by God… then you could just keep growing and growing and growing. Eight billion. Ten. Twelve! I mean, why the hell not? If all the humans on Earth can fit shoulder-to-shoulder into the state of Texas, then we've got lots of room, right? Jesus! How stupid can you be? You built an entire global system designed to defy human death at all costs. And not just death! You thought you could defy pain! And discomfort! Develop more pharmaceuticals. Saturate your bodies with chemicals and your minds with distractions. Figure out solutions to every last goddamned discomfort and inconvenience your fat, couch-coddled asses could feel. And all it took was killing off everything else!"
Linda stopped, closed her eyes, and inhaled deeply. She turned and glanced shyly at the Fisherman, as if afraid she might be punished for breaking the rules. She hung her head. "I’m just so tired, William," she said softly.
William took a step closer. "They couldn't understand," he said.
Linda shook her head, then looked up at the Fisherman. "All they did was fight me," she said. Her voice was tinged with a moan of sadness. "The corporations. My own government. The people. They fought me at every turn. I could see that we needed to question our deepest assumptions. That we needed to change everything. That we needed to shut down the global industrial machine and find some real way to walk more lightly on the Earth. That we needed to allow our numbers to diminish. But they just couldn't go there. They couldn't face it. They couldn't face that the life they knew had to die." Linda’s face was plaintive with quiet apology. "And I just couldn't fight them any longer."
"And yet you said that they were trying to kill themselves."
Linda's eyes widened. "That's just it, William. They tried to defy death at every turn, but they were also craving death. That's the only way I can explain it. I mean… look at our collective actions over the past few decades. We kept going even when the consequences of our actions became undeniable. It looks to me like the people, unconsciously, at least, actually wanted to crash the system. As if that's the only way they could break free. Like an addict who tries to hit bottom. So that they'd either die and get free of the pain or find, at the bottom, some other way out of it.”
“They’re tired too,” said William.
Linda nodded in agreement. “Well… yeah. But they couldn't admit it out loud. They knew they could never break free of the cultural mandates to cheat death and seek comfort and grow, grow, grow. To always trade today for tomorrow. They knew they were addicts. And they knew, even before I came out and said so, that there were others out there. The aliens. The Strangers. The gods. Whomever. So they were, like, acting out. Taking the deepest, darkest path they could find, hoping for an intervention." Linda scoffed. "My coming in and saying, 'No, I think we can come together and consciously create a new society'... I think it was just a distraction, William. Just more blather, even if I seemed to actually understand the problems we faced. They didn't believe me. They, too, as you said, were exhausted with trying. They just wanted release. Death.”
The Fisherman waved a hand and materialized a glass of water on Linda's podium. With no reaction to the act of manifesting itself, Linda picked up the glass and drank.
"It's interesting, Linda, how you use the past tense," said the Fisherman.
Linda frowned.
"When speaking of your people," he said, waving toward the audience. "'They knew they were addicts', you said. 'They were exhausted,' you said."
Linda closed her eyes and took a moment to do a gut check. Her head nodded slightly and she opened her eyes. "I think part of me considers them already dead," she said, pointing to the vast audience in the great, cavernous hall of Phobos, her face shifting from thoughtfulness to surprise as her words settled into her consciousness. A tear quivered on the edge of her eyelid. "I mean... I just don't see..." Her voice fell away to a whisper and she exhaled slowly and deeply. She shook her head. "I guess I'm done with them, William," she said. "Done trying to lead them. Trying to persuade and convince. I'm done."
The Fisherman tilted his head. "Yet back on Earth you've just announced your bid for re-election," he said with a smile.
5.14
Mary could hear her escorts’ boots clunking sullenly on the pavement. The muttering soldier and the head-shaking soldier were clearly not happy to be walking. Especially with the explosion they'd all heard a few moments before, somewhere off to the East, out past the cordon. But they'd been ordered to assist the President's "senior advisor," and said "senior advisor" had insisted that they walk, and that they keep to their mission, explosion or no explosion. Mary smiled to herself. They were so easy to read. And they obviously considered her a whacko. That was fine by her. Rather than try to get involved, they had resigned themselves to just standing back and watching the show. Which left Mary alone to work.
She was following that image of the kids in the sky. There was a feeling of movement to the image. A feeling of beginnings and endings. As if the image were a rainbow. As if she could find the end of that rainbow if only she walked far enough, and in the right direction. As if the pot of gold at rainbow's end might be the children themselves. So far the image had brought them down Capitol Street to the State House, through Capitol Park and up Gage Road to the Memorial Bridge, in the center of which they now stood. Before them, across the Kennebec, was one of only a handful of buildings with interior lights still shining: the hospital.
Mary stopped. It didn't m
ake any sense, that the feeling had brought her here, to the one place they knew the children were not. Shaking her head in confusion, she turned to scan the sky. She must have lost the trail...
"Ma'am?" said Agent Gilder, who stood to one side. The soldiers were a few yards away, leaning on the bridge's railing.
"Yes?" said Mary.
Gilder nodded across the river. "Go on. You're right." She indicated the hospital with a wave of her hand. Her eyes shone in the Gridlight. "Don't doubt yourself."
Mary turned and regarded the hospital again. In the distance beyond she could see the flickering flames of a burning building. The result of that explosion. Probably a gas tank. Or maybe the Burners. But she didn't see any signs of the kids. "Do you see...?" she asked Agent Gilder.
"I just know this is right," said Gilder. She pointed to the exit ahead. "We take Stone Street. Then double back to the hospital."
"But..."
Gilder shook her head emphatically. "Doesn't matter, Ma'am," she said. "It's where we go next. Your initial impulse was correct."
Grabbing Gilder’s hand, Mary led the four of them across the bridge.
5.15
Keeley flicked out the light. Mary had told her she'd be late and not to wait up. For once, Keeley was inclined to obey. She was exhausted. Except for Linda's speech, the night had been a complete bust. No response from Stan. No leads on the kids. And her sour stomach had returned. Linda's strong, hopeful words had filled her heart with determination, but determination alone was not enough. Not tonight. She needed help. And she needed sleep. Come morning, her plan was to hit the ground running. Find Stan. Figure out just how they were going to get in to see Linda. Step up the search for the kids. Get to work on the re-election campaign. The ship of state was chugging along, just as ol' Albert Singer had said. It was time for Keeley to find her sea legs.
Keeley pulled her sleep mask over her eyes and rolled onto her side. The mask almost completely covered the slight reddening of her skin that, in her exhaustion, Keeley had failed to notice.
5.16
The hospital had few patients. There was the poor man who'd been badly burned in an explosion at a service station outside the cordon, and there were two still-living victims of the strange new alien flu, Greensleeves, both tucked away in the previously unused fourth-floor infectious disease ward, and both expected to expire as rapidly as the previous six. Other than that, the place was empty, which made their search go more quickly than Mary had expected it would. The emptiness created a "psychic silence" that helped cast the image Mary was following into sharper relief. Agent Gilder had been right: if it was a rainbow they followed, the pot of gold was somewhere here in the hospital, despite the military's failure to find it.
Mary led them with flashlights through a dark hallway in the hospital's unused wing. Back when the city was mostly emptied, many buildings, such as the hospital, had been "downsized," with sections locked up or partitioned off. In MaineCentral's case, the unused wing had simply had its breakers flipped and the double-doors closed. It was easy enough to enter.
Mary walked slowly, face slack, eyes open but softly focused. Agent Gilder followed right behind her, searching for signs. The two privates hung well back, just wanting the nonsense to be over so they could return to their post. What doors they had tried had all been locked. So far, Mary had not needed to go in.
It was Gilder who found the door. It had a feeling to it, a sign, a beckoning, and the agent knew it as soon as she saw it. "Here," she said simply as they turned the corner. She walked to the door and pulled on the handle. The door was locked.
Mary, sensing that Gilder was correct, went searching for a key in the abandoned nurse's station across from the door. Finding none, she pointed her flashlight up at the soldiers’ faces. "We need to get in here, gentlemen," she said. "Can one of you please go find somebody who can unlock this door?" The two soldiers looked at each other and shrugged. Acting in accord with some pecking order unknown to Mary, the head-shaking soldier turned and started down the hall, shaking his head.
It took only a few minutes before he returned with a nurse, a stout, gray-haired woman with a deeply creased face. In her hand was a large ring of keys. She drew one as she approached the door, peering suspiciously at Mary. "That's the old MRI room," she said, her voice crabbed and peevish. "There's new equipment upstairs." She stopped and inspected Mary from top to bottom, as if expecting Mary to give up her silliness and tell her never mind.
"We need to go in," said Mary with a hopeful smile. The nurse rolled her eyes and unlocked the door. The door swung open easily, revealing another ring of keys on the floor just inside.
Gilder gasped as she scanned the room with her flashlight. There, lying side by side on the patient table inside the old MRI scanner, were Cole and Linda’s three children.
5.17
Ness stood in the back yard near the chicken coop. She stood in the Gridlight and the moonlight, her arms at her sides, the "chicken knife" on the ground where she had dropped it. Some part of Ness, the part of her that had survived the death of her husband and her subsequent descent into depression and madness, the part of her that cooked the meals and loved the children and remembered very little of her life before, stood for a long, long time, seeing nothing, thinking nothing, feeling nothing. She stood while the bright light flashed overhead. She stood as the light washed like a scanner across her wrinkled face. She stood as the large, metallic, bowl-shaped craft landed just beyond the chicken wire.
The other part of Ness, the part of her that had compelled this body to walk across the continent, the part of her that extended across time and distance to another life and another body, the part of her that watched and waited, the part of her that was Other-than-Ness, knew exactly who she was, and what was happening, and understood the compelling needs that shaped this moment. She watched the strange craft as its illuminated surface faded to a dull, reddish glow.
A small, grayish, four-fingered hand reached out from behind her and touched her forehead. The Other-than-Ness looked up to see the hand pulling back, then sighed softly as the hand's owner stepped out in front of her, revealing his slight, thin, carmine-robed body, his large, shiny black, almond-shaped eyes, and his huge, bald head. Other-than-Ness used Ness's body to form a welcoming smile.
"YOU ARE WELL," the tiny being said in her mind.
"I AM," said Other-than-Ness.
"AND YOU CONTINUE TO LEARN," said the being.
"I DO," said Other-than-Ness. "I DO NOT SEE HOW THEY CAN BEAR IT MUCH LONGER."
"THE TIME APPROACHES," said the being.
Other-than-Ness sighed. "AS IT ALWAYS HAS," she said.
The tiny being cocked his hooded head. "YOU ARE IMPATIENT?" he asked.
"WE ARE," said Other-than-Ness.
"WE?" The tiny being pulsed a wave of feigned confusion toward the other.
"THERE ARE MANY OTHERS LIKE ME," said the Other-than-Ness. "AS YOU WELL KNOW."
"AH," said the being. "THE OTHERS."
"AND WE AWAIT OUR TIME."
The red-robed being gazed up at the Grid for a few moments, then back at the old woman's body standing before him. "THE TIME APPROACHES," he repeated. "THE CHOICES WILL BE MADE. UNTIL THEN, THE CHILDREN MUST BE PROTECTED." He stared steadily into Ness's eyes, seeing the Other-than-Ness inside. "DO YOU UNDERSTAND?"
"I WILL DO AS YOU HAVE DIRECTED," said the Other-than-Ness.
“I MUST GO, DAUGHTER," he said.
"WE WILL MEET AGAIN," said the Other-than-Ness.
The tiny being held out a finger and touched Ness's forehead once again, then turned and started toward the craft, walking through the chicken wire as if it were a strands of smoke, disappearing completely before he was half-way to his ship. The Other-than-Ness was alone once again. She had a duty to perform, but she also had plans of her own. It was time to take steps to achieve both ends. The Other-than-Ness took a step backwards in Ness's mind and watched as the strange craft rose into the air and flashed away.
>
After a time, Ness blinked her eyes and continued toward the coop to grab a night-befuddled bird for her soup pot.
5.18
Grace was the first to spot them: two tiny lights in the pitch black, distant motes in an otherwise starless sky. Initially, they were right on the edge of visibility, faint blurs in the blind spot. Eventually they grew strong enough to focus on.
"Do you guys see those lights?" asked Grace.
Emily and Iain swept their awareness outward and eventually spotted them. "I do," said Emily. Iain grunted his agreement. Dennis growled. They watched for a time.
"They seem to be getting bigger," said Grace.
"Or closer," said Iain.
The three waited and watched a while longer. The lights were definitely increasing in size and intensity. When they were large and bright enough, they revealed their pale green coloring, and began to take on a football shape.
"Eyes," said Emily, finally.
"Yes," said Grace.
Dennis barked once. A warning.
The eyes came steadily closer. As they neared, the kids could begin to see, or maybe just imagine, to whom they might belong: a small black cat. The cat approached to what seemed a distance of perhaps ten feet, then stopped. In the blinking, changing glow from its eyes they could infer that it was washing its face with a paw.
"I supposed you want to get out of here," said the cat. The cat did not speak in English, but the kids knew what it had said.
"We sure do," said Iain.
"Yes," agreed Emily and Grace.
"Follow me," the cat said. It turned and began to walk away. With its eyes pointed the other direction, the kids could barely see it, just a faint fuzzy halo. They hurried to follow. Without the light from its eyes, they were lost here. Without the light from its eyes, there was no other direction.
Rumi's Field (None So Blind Book 2) Page 17
