by Sandy Nathan
“Why don’t I feel triumphant?” She raised her head proudly, ignoring the way she trembled. “Oh, I forgot. You hate me.” Her eyes misted. “Shit. I can’t deal with this.” She dashed away from the container.
Jeremy hesitated, then went after her.
He caught up with his mother within a hundred yards. She was bending down with her hands on her knees, panting. She looked up at him.
“I can’t run for beans. I haven’t recovered from being frozen.”
“Mom, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“I’m sorry, too, Jeremy. I hoped that this homecoming would be very different. In all my dreaming about the future, I forgot that I don’t know how to be with you.” Her shoulders dropped and her hands turned toward him beseechingly.
“I don’t know how to be with you, either, Mom. But let’s try. Please tell me how things were for you. OK? I don’t really know you.”
“Yes, let’s try. And I want to hear what you’re feeling, too.”
“Right now?”
“Yes.”
“It blows my mind that you want to contact the goldies for help. They pretend to be all peaceful and kind, but they’re not. They use other species, and they’ll use you. Don’t trust them at all.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. But I don’t see that we have much choice. Any time now, those monsters in the underground are going to figure out that they can live outside. When they do, they’ll come straight for us. We have no weapons. We’re outnumbered. We saw what they did to Sam. What else can we do but contact the golden planet? We have no options.”
“Sorry, Sam. A little old business between Jeremy and me,” Veronica said when they got back to the container. “I propose to broadcast to Ellie’s people again and ask for help.
“If you can get images of the inside of that place showing exactly what’s going on, Jeremy, I’d like to send them to Ellie’s world and show them what we’re up against. Maybe I can persuade them to give us the munitions crate.”
“Mom, do you think they give a shit? They tossed me out to die.”
“There’s got to be something good in them. They kept you and the rest all those years. They came for you before the conflagration. They helped me. And maybe they’ll fear what those monsters could do …”
“Why? They’re up there, and we’re down here. It won’t affect them one bit.”
“Oh, Jeremy. We’re helpless. And what can they do to us if we ask?”
“You’d be surprised. They’re so far ahead of us, you can’t believe it. But, yeah, you’re right. What choice do we have?”
She turned to Sam. “Did you see any weapons down there? There’s an absolute arsenal. Terrible weapons that the general gave Jeremy. Did they show them to anyone?”
Sam shook his head. “They talk about them. They said they’d kill us with them if we did not obey. But they never showed ‘em.”
“That means they can’t get to them. Or they don’t know how to use them,” she said.
“Or they’re smart enough to know that if they used them down there, they’d blow the shelter to bits and kill everyone in it.” Jeremy looked concerned. “Did you ever hear anything about really big guns?”
“No. But they scream about using them to take over the world. It’s the first Command.”
“You said that before, but I don’t remember saying it.”
Sam held himself erect and struck a theatrical pose. His voice boomed, “And the great Tek stood before his Lab, lightning blazing from his hair. His eyes shot fire. Light surrounded him and the computers in the Lab. And he said, ‘Nay to the snake men! Nay to the hooch! Nay to…’” Sam paused; he couldn’t say “no boingy boingy with your cousins” in front of the lady.
He resumed with, “The great Tek rose into the sky in the yellow light, becoming one with the heavens. ‘I will return, Sam of the village. When you get out, take over the world.’” Sam mimicked the voices of the Book Readers. “That’s how the Readers speak it. That’s what we believe, down below.”
Jeremy raised his hands over his head. “I was just a screwed up kid. The planet was about to be destroyed. Sam would never let what I said turn into a religion. It wasn’t a religion.”
Sam spoke with the booming, syncopated voice of a Reader. “The great golden light took the Angel and the Tek. ‘I will come again, Sam,’ the Tek promised. ‘And we will take over the world.’” Sam imitated the cadence and the worshipful fervor of the Readers. “That’s how they say it, and that’s what they believe.”
“Do you believe that, Sam?” Jeremy asked.
Sam looked at him guardedly. When he spoke, it was in the dialect of the village. Jeremy’s commands had forbidden its use, but everyone underground spoke it anyway, as well as regular English. “Ye have done more good to me than any in ma life. Ye took that out of me,” he jerked his head toward the box with the eye. “Ye washed me an’ gave me food. Ah’d be dead but for you.”
“But I’m just a guy, Sam, like you. I’ve had some education. My mom had learned how to take out the eye. What we did was stuff anyone would do.”
“But ye an’ th’ lady did it.”
Veronica cut in. “Sam, whatever you think or believe is fine. Please know that I’m an ordinary woman. I’m not supernatural. We need to make a plan, not discuss theology.”
“It is different than it was, down there. They say they keep the Commands, but they don’t. They have hooch and mushrooms, and they hurt people.”
“We saw that,” Jeremy responded.
“Worse than w’ me,” he said.
“Let’s get some pictures of it so we’ll know what’s going on,” the lady said. “Jeremy, can you get the cameras on the computers going so we can photograph inside and see it here, as well as broadcasting images remotely?”
“Yeah, if I can find a live satellite. There are some huge Russian ones that are nuclear powered. They’ll work forever.”
“If you could find one that wasn’t Russian, that would be good. The general’s son …”
“Say no more, Mom. I’ll find one that he can’t trace.”
“Can you photograph the interior without light?”
“I’ve got night vision on some of the surveillance cameras, but not all. Do the lights work, Sam?”
“They work in the main room, where Sam Big stays. And in the pit where the women are. The rest of us are kept dark, unless Sam wants someone. We are kept in rooms and canna leave.”
“The women’s pit? Kept in rooms? He wants them for what?” Veronica was appalled.
Sam looked down. “The women are kept for the Bigs.”
Veronica stopped the conversation. “I don’t know why I’m surprised. I saw it in the general’s camps. The worst element, the sadistic goons, take over and terrorize the camp. They do whatever they want to the rest. They get the food, entertainment. Sex. Clothes. Keeping people in the dark is a good way to terrorize them.
“I want some really nasty pictures to shock your in-laws, Jeremy.” She paused a moment. “I thought of something else. A visit from the soon-to-return Great Tek might be a nice touch, if you can broadcast into the shelter.”
“On the screens?”
“Yes. I was also thinking of a hologram in the middle of the main hall. Weren’t you working on holograms before everything blew up? Could you create something that would look real? I could do some wonderful things with makeup and your hair. We’ve got lights. What do you think?”
“Well, I could do a flash from the computers and the overhead lights at once. One blast of light and we’d get the pictures of what we want. The computers would send them to the satellite, then relay them here, and to Ellie’s world. If I get any lasers up, I can broadcast a hologram. What should I say with the hologram?”
“Something on the order of ‘I’m coming and I’m mad.’ We’ll work on that once we know if we can do it.”
“I’ll get to work right now. What about the eye?”
“Can you reverse it so we can
broadcast through it? We could program it with some message.”
“I can do that. Probably.”
Jeremy settled into his computers. They brought the eye and its box inside. Being blocked in its homeward journey seemed to irritate the thing. It rattled against the inside of the box.
As Jeremy disappeared into the tech world, Veronica approached Sam. “Sam, I want to change your bandage.” After doing so, she patted his shoulder. “OK. Let’s eat and go to sleep. I’m exhausted.”
He had something to say and felt so self-conscious that he could barely open his mouth.
“What is it, Sam? Think of me as your mother. You can talk to me.”
Sam had almost no memory of his mother, but he could never think of the lady as his mother. “Ah … If ah could …” How could he ask? “Underground, we sleep together. Could ah …?”
“Sleep with Jeremy and me? Certainly. We can have a nice slumber party.”
They put mats and sleeping bags down for three people. She put her fur coat over them. Sam had never slept in a nicer bed. He could hear Jeremy on the computer and see the light from beyond their corridor of boxes.
“He’s wired in, Sam. That’s computer wizard talk. He’s concentrating so hard he doesn’t know we’re here. He won’t stop until he’s done. We might as well go to sleep.”
He could barely lie near her. He knew that she was utterly forbidden to him, above him in every way.
Something kept coming out of him, feelings, and energy. Images of her face and lips haunted him. The way her chest protruded and her waist tucked in. He couldn’t stop thinking of her. Sleeping next to her was impossible, and leaving her was impossible. He heard Jeremy talking to himself as he worked.
“Yes! Yes! Take that, you motherfucker!” Sam smiled. Jeremy was Jer the Tek.
Jer the Tek and his mother were utterly different from what they said underground. They were people, and they were nice. Not so much greater than him, and yet much greater, too. He wanted them to like him. He wanted to be part of their family. He had a family, once. Vague memories of faces flitted through his mind. He had had a sister. He finally relaxed and drifted away.
“Don’t! Don’t!” The lady cried out in her sleep. “No!”
He woke up and pulled closer to her. “Lady, I’ll keep you safe,” he had said the same thing to his sister before they dragged her from his arms. He put his arm around the lady and held her close.
“Oh!” she said, eyes popping open. “Oh, Sam, it’s you. I was having a horrible dream. The general was chasing me.” She clutched his hand. “He would kill both of us if he found us like this.”
“Aye,” Sam said.
“Hold me, Sam.” He held her, almost paralyzed by what was happening inside him.
Veronica awakened when Jeremy touched her. Sam was sleeping. The sky was dark.
“I did it, Mom. It’s ready. What I did with the eye is going to blow their minds. If you’re going to broadcast to Ellie’s people, you should do it now. I don’t know how much time we’ve got before the eye hits the shelter. I sped it up.”
10
“I want to thank you with all my heart. Being with my son means more than I can say.” Veronica knew her words meant their lives and she let her feelings show.
“We have a third person with us now: Sam. My son rescued him when they threw him out of the underground shelter to die. They attached a tracking device to him, a vicious thing. Fortunately, we were able to remove it.”
As she spoke, Jeremy broadcast photos of the eye. He’d labeled them with what the parts did and a drawing of how the thing fit into a person.
“Because of the medical supplies in the container you delivered to us, our Sam will live. Conditions in the shelter are more heinous than we imagined, and there may be other good people like Sam there. We’d like to rescue them if we can.
“Of course, we can’t, because we are no match for them in numbers or in weaponry.
“I need to ask you for help. Jeremy was able to photograph the interior of the shelter. He will broadcast these images while I’m speaking so that you have a clear idea of what we’re up against.
“I haven’t seen the pictures yet. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to speak if I did. There are a hundred of them, versus three of us, one of whom is gravely injured. They have two caches of missiles and hand-held armaments that I hope you’ll be able to see, in addition to biological and chemical weapons.
“We have garden tools.
“They’ll kill us, or take us for sexual slaves. That is what our future will be, without your help.
“You have no reason to help us, I realize. Your experience with my son and the others was problematic. I believe that we can work together, despite our past differences. I know that doing the right thing carries a satisfaction of its own.”
The images of the underground went out, unseen by either Jeremy or his mother. Jeremy was busy loading and sending.
“We need a safe place. We need land for growing crops and good water. We need a place where we can defend ourselves.
“I ask you with all the love in my heart, please help us. Move us somewhere safe. Give us the container of weapons. Send Eliana home to her husband, and send Henry and Lena and James and Mel home to Earth. They belong here. And as you deliberate this decision, I ask you to review the photos my son is sending. This is what we face.
“This is Veronica Edgarton on the planet Earth, speaking from Piermont Manor, my family’s home.”
She closed her eyes. If those words and the images didn’t work, they were dead. Jeremy was on a screen watching the input he’d captured in the burst of light.
“Did you hear what I said, Jeremy? Did it sound OK?”
“Should be OK. They’ll twist whatever you say to whatever they want. But what you said doesn’t sound too dangerous.”
“What about the latest photos?”
“I’m sending them continuous play.” Jeremy stared at the screen as room after room of the shelter was revealed. “Mom, don’t look.”
“I need to look, Jeremy. I need to know Sam’s world and we need him to identify these people and who might be saved.”
“They don’t look like people. They’re huge, and so ugly.” He turned away, then looked back. “Mom, don’t look! Really.”
She peered at the chaos of the underground. Misshapen bodies and bulging foreheads, massive muscles. A half-dozen fistfights dotted the hall. Two men held a screaming woman while a third stood between her legs. Howling figures were chained to the walls. A huge man raped a child.
“I want still shots of everything, and I want them printed out, here, now.” She studied the images. “I want to kill them, Jeremy. I want to kill every one of them. Son of a bitch! I never dreamed anything could be that bad.”
Jeremy had never heard his mother swear. He did as she asked.
“And they’re doing it on my property. Did you get shots of the munitions?”
“Yeah, right here.” There were computer monitors with cameras on them in the armament vaults. Jeremy had gotten a thorough inventory.
“It looks like they got into the first vault at some time, but long ago. Is that a skeleton?”
“Yeah.”
“I wonder what happened. The other vault is untouched.”
“Do you remember the security system, Jeremy?”
He thought for a moment. “Password protected. Face imprint and vocal password. My voice and my face.’
“That’s good. They can’t fake those. But I wonder how they got into the first vault? Oh, Jeremy, what are we going to do?”
The images kept scrolling over. He got every face and room of the shelter, a flash freeze of hell.
“I think I should give them my I’m-the-Great-Tek-and-I’m-mad speech.”
“YOU FUCKING ASSHOLES! WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” Jeremy screamed into the mike. His image was broadcast as a hologram in the middle of the shelter’s main hall. “YOU THOUGHT I WOULDN’T KNOW, DIDN’T YO
U? YOU THOUGHT I WOULDN’T SEE, DIDN’T YOU?”
His mother had made up his face to look as scary as possible, emphasizing shadows and lights. She used gels to make his dreads stand up straight. She arranged their two spotlights so that one hit him from the back, and the other underneath his chin. He stood before the computer’s camera, dancing in anger.
“I LEFT YOU A GOOD PLACE AND WHAT DO YOU DO? FUCK IT UP.
“I SEE YOU, YOU FAT SON OF A BITCH, BEATING THAT KID. I SEE ALL OF YOU!” Jeremy could see the images of what he was talking about as he spoke, which made him roar in rage.
“I GAVE YOU MY COMMANDS. I GAVE YOU THE BOOK. I GAVE YOU THE LIBRARY. AND WHAT DO YOU DO? WHAT YOU’RE DOING.” He described a few scenes. The participants stopped and looked around in wonder, then terror.
“YOU DON’T DESERVE TO RUN THE WORLD.
“SO YOU WON’T. I TAKE BACK WHAT I SAID TO SAM BAAHUHD. THE REAL SAM OF THE VILLAGE. YOU ARE WORMS COMPARED TO HIM. YOU ARE NOT OF THE VILLAGE.
“I AM JEREMY THE TEK. I AM COMING. CLEAN UP YOUR MESS OR I’LL KILL ALL OF YOU.”
His mother seamlessly took the stage. “This is Veronica Piermont Edgarton, owner of the estate and the property you currently occupy. I’ve just had a peek at your lifestyle. What I saw simply revolts me. I will not have it on my property or anywhere.
“I’d like to correct a misconception. My son Jeremy told my old friend Sam Baahuhd that his lineage could have the village when the lot of you came out from underground.
“You can’t. He didn’t own the village, I do. I wouldn’t sell it to you,” she unleashed a tirade of Russian swear words, “vermin if it were the end of the world. And I certainly won’t give it to you.
“We are coming very soon. Clean up your mess.
“This is Veronica Edgarton, broadcasting from Mount Kailash, in Tibet.”
The sound wasn’t great, but the visuals were. A commotion started in the main hall. A misshapen monster of a man came in, bearing the eye that had been attached to Sam with its cord hanging limp. It had made its way home and they had retrieved it. The man grunted something as an even bigger monster grabbed it from him. Close up images of the larger man filled the screens. He was raving, spewing saliva. He swung the device by its tail, swinging it as though he intended to smash it.
