by Jerry Ahern
Michael looked up from the diary. “I can’t read any more of this.” Natalia—abruptly—took the diary from Mi-chael’s hands. She continued after a moment— Rourke presumed spent locating Michael’s place —to read. “Several weeks passed and we soon realized that the employers had needed us. We had not needed them. But still, there were very few of us. Selected younger members of the employers’ families—the woman whose bed I shared among them—were taken under tutelage and shown how best to prepare meals, to tend the gardens which grew beneath the artificial light, to clean what needed to be cleaned about the survival retreat of which we now were the masters. The chief butler among us was skilled with mathematical compu-tations and with the cooperation and intelligence of the chief gardener, the food supply’s yield was calculated. Twenty-four of the new masters— among these myself—had survived. More than one hundred of the former masters, the employers, remained. But by best estimates, only one hundred people could be supported by the garden without overtaxing the soil, without overusing the grow lights. Realizing that only one hundred could survive, those of us who now held sway drew random lots from among the more than one hundred of our employers. Twenty-nine names were selected, among these the oldest and least fit to work, to survive. In the dark of night when the lights were turned off, by candlelight we moved through the corridors—at gunpoint, we forced these selected ones toward the air lock doors. And then we turned them out to die.”
Natalia looked up, almost whispering, “I wish I had cigarettes.” Rourke watched her eyes as they flickered back to the diary. “The population began by natural means to grow and there was little illness. Again, from among the employers there were names selected. The employer’s daughter whom I had made my wife had borne me a child and though her name was selected, my wife’s name was set aside and another was chosen. As the years passed and it was realized that the earth outside our home beneath the ground might never be restored to where it could support life, those of the original group of servants who survived as the new masters formed the Counsel of Ministers in order to assume the awesome responsibility of determining who would live and who would go through the doors to their death, this to spare the greatest numbers any guilt. Voluntarily, our segment of the population was limited to twenty-four, mean-ing that seventy-six of our former employers, now our servants, would be permitted. When a child was born to us, the new masters, our population would be one or perhaps two too great. When a child was born to the new servants, their popula-tion would be too high as well. It was at these times that the Counsel of Ministers—Ministers because we prayed for guidance in our choices and prayed for the remission of our continual sins—we would determine from among the new servants who would die. It could not be done by lot—the gardeners were important, too important often to die. The lower classes of servants were used—the tailors, the seamstresses. Fibrous plants were grown and their bounty converted to cloth from which clothing could be fashioned with great skill. Slippers were worn because there was no leather for shoes. Life continued among both classes while inexorably, birth would come and death would be selected. No longer could only the old or infirm be selected to go, but from among the young. “I write this as I lay in the bed of my death—and I welcome death as death has come to be welcomed by all of our class, for death saves another life from . i being taken. And this is my consolation, that when my death comes, there will be ninety-nine only among all who dwell here and when a new child is born, no one will need to go. May God forgive me and all like me for what I was forced to do.”
Natalia closed the book.
John Rourke looked at his son. “They don’t know of this—the Ministers? They don’t know what is contained in the diary?”
“I think the old one does—he carries a key. It’s his badge of office. He told me he didn’t know—“ Natalia interrupted. “If this diary has been locked for nearly five centuries, and John opened it by prying the lock with his knife, then why are there fresh scratches near the keyhole?”
Rourke looked at her.
Michael whispered, “He did read it—the old one read it.” John Rourke closed his eyes. He spoke. “The old one you talked of—he revered the diary too much to destroy it. You told him of the aircraft and the pilot. You told him about us—the Retreat. All his life, he thought he’d been carrying out some preordained mission of murder based on some holy book. Now he finds it’s the diary of a murderer and that all he’s been doing is carrying out a tradition of killing the innocent.”
“His mind might—“
Rourke looked at his son. “That weapons vault is the only place they could be—all the people from here. I think I know what we’ll find once we locate it.” And John Rourke felt Natalia hold his right arm very tightly as he picked up the twin stainless Scoremasters from the conference table.
Chapter Fifty-Three
Paul Rubenstein stayed near the inside of the air lock, listening—but there was no sound from outside. Behind him, he heard Madison speak. “The woman with Michael’s father—she cannot be his mother. She is too young. Michael’s father seems too young—he looks almost not at all older than Michael.” Paul looked at her and smiled. “That’s a long story. Michael’s mother is at our place—our Retreat. And Natalia is John Rourke’s friend.” “But Michael’s father and the woman Natalia— they look at each other like Michael looks at me, like I look at Michael.”
Rubenstein shrugged. “I told you—it’s a long story. But you’re right—I know the look. There’s a girl—Michael’s sister. Her name is Annie. You’ll like her, Madison—and she looks at me that way.” and he smiled inside himself, feeling the smile as it crossed his lips. “That probably sounds real peculiar. Well, but—“ “I think that you are a good man. That is what she smiles at.”
Paul Rubenstein studied her face a moment. Then he replied, “Thank you—very much,” and he looked away rather than feel more embarrassed than he already felt. That no one came through the doors as yet somehow frightened him more than if dozens of the cannibals were attacking. And what had become^of the people who lived here?
He shivered, shaking his shoulders, flexing the muscles there to shake off the feeling.
The Schmeisser in his hands, he crouched beside the door. “Madison—remember, keep a lookout behind us.”
“I remember,” the girl answered.
Flexing his shoulder muscles had not gotten rid of the feeling.
Chapter Fifty-Four
John Rourke spoke as he ran, Natalia and Michael flanking him as they turned from one corridor into the next. “Think about it. Once they realized the ones they called Them were outside, when the Ministers and the rest of the uppercrust died, they wouldn’t consign their bodies to be eaten. Assuming that the air was at least mar-ginally breathable at least a century ago, that accounts for moving the arms from the vault. They’re using the original vault which would have been sealable as a burial chamber for the Families. If your husband or wife or child died, could you send their body through the air lock to be ripped to pieces?” “But where is it?”
Natalia asked, panting. Rourke’s own body, he realized, was tiring more rapidly because of the prolonged exposure to the thinner air—Natalia’s as well. But Michael, who had lived in the thinner atmosphere for fifteen years, in this heavier atmosphere inside the Place, more like the atmosphere that had once been upon the surface of the earth, seemed to thrive. They stopped at the mouth of a corridor they had not yet explored.
Rourke stared along its length—a massive gray steel door at the far end.
“The vault,” Natalia whispered.
Michael started—very slowly—walking around it, saying, “If they knew we had found our way inside and that the air lock’s integrity was broken and that the cannibals would—“ He let the sentence hang.
“A fear built for a century,” Natalia whispered.
“They’d look at it as a final decent act—the old one and the other Ministers,”
Rourke added. Rourke hel
d the liberated M-16’s pistol grip in his right fist. He
looked at his son. “When the cannibals had Madison before you tried to get her
out, were they about to—“
** “No,” Michael answered quickly.
“Did Madison say why she wasn’t a breeder?”
“No, she—what the hell are you—“
“I don’t know yet—I’m thinking out loud. Forget about it,” and John Rourke walked ahead. If it were nothing with Madison—he suddenly remembered during the fighting. He had given one of the cannibals a knee smash and ie had had virtually no effect.
He stopped at the vaultdoor. His gloves were on but he wouldn’t risk it—he took the black chrome A.G. Russell Sting IA from inside his trouser band, gently tossing the knife toward the door. There was no sparking of electricity. He picked up the knife, re-sheathing it.
He touched the flash deflectored muzzle of the M-16 to the combination dial, then to the opening handle of the vault door, holding the M-16 by the synthetic buttstock only. There was no sparking of electricity either time. He looked to his right—double doors, the kind that swung inward and outward, but a chain looped through the door handles and drawn tight, a padlock on the chain. “Natalia—work on cracking the vault. Mi-chael—keep her covered. Call me when it’s open.”
“Where are you going?” his son called from behind him. “What are—“ “Do as I said,” Rourke answered softly.
Rourke stopped a good fifty feet from the in chained double doors. He shouldered the M*16, the selector set to semi. He sighted on the chain link rather than the lock, firing.
“What are you—“
“Never mind!” It had been a miss. He fired again, connecting, but the chain didn’t break.
“You want the chain broken—just tell me about it,” Michael called from behind him.
Rourke lowered his rifle, then nodded. “I’m sorry I lost my temper. So use your cannon and break the chain.”
Michael stood beside him now, the Magnum Sales Stalker extended in both fists before him.
“Hold your ears, Natalia,” Rourke called, covering his own ears. The gleaming stainless steel revolver bucked once in Michael’s hands and he lowered it a moment, then raised it again to sight through the scope. The revolver fired again. Michael turned to his father. Rourke took his hands from his ears. “You watch yourself with that thing shooting indoors—gonna mess up your hearing.” “What?” and Michael laughed. “I couldn’t hear you.”
Rourke feigned a punch toward his son’s midsection, Michael dodging, laughing. Rourke felt two things inside himself as he walked toward the double doors, the lock shattered and obviously so—gladness for having Michael, and a sickness for what he thought he would find beyond the doors.
Chapter Fifty-Five
Rourke stood in the center of the room. Michael had gone back to Natalia.
There was a single stainless steel surgical table. Beside it was a covered tray.
He lifted the covering from the tray, folding back the white cloth.
He closed his eyes.
The Ministers had many sins. v
He opened his eyes.
He turned away and left the room, but some-thing caught his eye as he did and he stopped. Rourke walked toward a nearly emptied surgical cabinet. The top shelf held a large mortar and pestle.
The middle shelf was empty as was the lower shelf. There was fine dust in the bowl of the pestle— Madison had spoken of never experiencing medi-cal treatment. Michael had said the old one seemed to consider it a sin to attempt to prolong life. It was possible that the Ministers cheated on this, but Rourke doubted it.
Then there was only one other answer.
He shook his head and walked from the room.
He could see Natalia—she was on her knees by the combination dial for the vault.
Rourke kept walking, feeling very tired. He stopped, beside Natalia, handing
Michael his M-16. “Stand up—and hold me—please,” and he watched her eyes as she
looked up at him, as she got from her knees, as she looked at him again, then
her arms folding around him and Rourke leaned his face against her head. His
voice sounded off to him. “I thought we were through with it, ya know? With all
this insanity. Karamatsov is gone. Rozhdestvenskiy is gone. I thought it was all
gone with them. I really did. And then these cannibals—“ Rourke felt Natalia’s
hands touch at his neck—their coolness, their softness. “I really thought that
after all of this—“ and he laughed, holding her body tight against him. He felt
Michael’s hand on his shoulder. “I really—“
“Dad, what—“
Rourke licked his lips. He looked up, at his son, and at the woman he had not been supposed to love but did. “Inside that room—it’s a very basic surgery. I found tools—the kind you’d only use for one thing. And then evidence they were making pills—and two empty shelves. We’re going to open that vault—and every single person from here—“ “I found the combination. All I have to do is—“ “I’ll do it. Don’t come in unless I tell you to.”
“I can—“
“Please,” Rourke whispered, and he stepped away from Natalia a single step. He leaned his lips to her forehead, touching her there. Then he turned to the vaul’t door. He placed his left hand on the handle. “You want your rifle, Dad?” Michael asked.
Rourke only shook his head. He worked the handle downward hard, then pulled on the vault door, swinging it open. “Don’t go inside,” he Ol whispered, going inside.
The overhead light bulbs—he imagined they had found a way of making their own filaments and reusing the bulbs—were bright. He could see clearly. Nearly one hundred people—seven men in three-piece business suits and red bedroom slip-pers; seven women in elaborate re-creations of high fashion dresses from five centuries ago (but they too, incongruously, wore the red slippers); a half dozen children, two boys and four girls, in fashionably expensive looking clothing from five centuries ago, wearing diminutive versions of the red slippers; roughly seventy-five men and women and children in gray slippers, the men wearing the off-white jackets of busboys, the women in severe gray maids’ uniforms, the children dressed iden-tically to the older members of their caste. Infants as well. A few of the business-suited men were missing—the ones from the fight in the cave and the attack of the cannibals, Rourke surmised. Those men were dead. And so was everyone in the room.
Rourke dropped to his knees beside the body of a dead little boy—one of the servant class, a descendant of one of the former masters who had begun it all five centuries earlier. Rourke’s right hand reached out to the boy, the boy sitting against the back of a man, a woman’s head resting in the boy’s lap. Rourke closed the boy’s eyes, and then he closed his own… “Dad!”
Rourke didn’t open his eyes. “Stay outside with Natalia, son,” and then he opened his eyes and he stood, staring down at the dead clustered around him. He began to walk the length of the vault, stepping over the dead, stopping to examine a dead child or a dead woman or a dead man to be certain—but they were all dead.
He found the old one, knowing it was the man Michael had spoken of. The watch chain—Rourke held up the key, letting it sway a moment pendulum fashion. Rourke shook his head, then bent to the man-he replaced the key and closed the man’s eyes.
The far end of the room—he started toward it now. Cloth bags were there—the shapes were enough to show him, stacked one atop the other. Generations of the Families.
He looked at the old one. “For what?” John Rourke whispered.
He would not have expected an answer even if any of them had remained alive. There was a dead woman near his feet as he stopped near the vault door, her eyes dull but once pretty he knew. He looked at her right hand as he closed her eyes—the skin was rough textured from toil. If it were a symbol of poetic justice for the sins of her ancestors—if all of it w
ere that, John Rourke thought. He shook his head, “Aww, shit,” and he stood up and walked back to the living.
Chapter Fifty-Six
“They’re all dead—mass murder or mass sui-cide, I don’t know which,” Rourke told them as he walked, again Natalia and Michael flanking him. “The surgery was used for castrations—the Coun-sel of Ministers realized what they had done sending people out into the outside world. Some of them survived by eating the others and there was no other way for the Ministers to reduce their population without sending out surplus people. So, they castrated the men. The reason we only saw men outside was because of the few who were strong enough to stay alive and be accepted into the cannibals—the ones Madison calls Them— none were women.” And he looked at Natalia. “Even if you were out there, with no weapons, no martial arts training—you wouldn’t have had a prayer.”
