by Sandy Nathan
“Oh, no,” Jeremy cried. “Don’t break it.”
The creature tossed the eye on the floor. “We’ll use it on someone else,” was the gist of his garbled speech. A group milled around, huge brutes with heavy jaws and foreheads, eyes sunken into cheekbones that looked like they belonged on primitive men. They wore belts and bits of fur, but were otherwise naked.
“They’re mutants,” Jeremy said.
The monsters jumped as the tail of the eye began moving. It coiled like a snake, making a base that allowed the eye to rise and point upward. Murmurs of disbelief came through the speakers. Guttural sounds. The eye began to rock back and forth.
Golden mist rose from it, then sparkles. Eliana’s lovely form appeared in space, hovering like an angel. She spun and danced while the beasts exclaimed in awe. One put his hand through the hologram, and pulled it out, more mystified than before.
“Watch,” said Jeremy. They did, and the hologram of Ellie dancing began to spin faster and wilder, finally disappearing into the room at large.
The eye exploded. The monsters screamed and ran.
“I AM THE TEK. I AM WATCHING YOU.” Jeremy screamed into the mike. “KEEP THE COMMANDS OR YOU WILL DIE.”
“You didn’t tell me I could kill anyone, Mom, so the explosion was mostly just light.” Images of the shelter’s interior continued to play. The largest of the monsters mouthed words, but the sound wasn’t good.
“Lovely, Jeremy. Fantastic.” She grabbed his face with her hands and kissed him. “I must meet your Eliana. She’s exquisite.”
Sam crept closer, wild-eyed. Jeremy turned to him. Sam stood rigid and spoke fervently. “You must stop! You do not know what you do.”
Jeremy cut the power on the cameras.
“Sam Big has the Voice and he has the Power.” Sam trembled.
“Like Sam Baahuhd? Sam could make people do what he wanted with the Voice. And he healed people with the Power,” Jeremy said.
“Not like Sam Baahuhd. Much stronger. You cannot resist the Voice of Sam Big. If I heard him say, ‘Sam, come back,’ from that machine, I would go. I could not resist.”
“You’d go back?”
“I couldn’t resist. All the Bigs have the Voice and the Power. They use them to make people do what they want. They use them to hurt people. Sam Big is the worst.”
“They’re mutants. Did the powers Sam Baahuhd had mutate, too?”
“I don’t know what that means.” Sam looked like he wanted to run. “What you did will make them angry. No one can stop them. Even if the rest of us use our Voices together, we cannot stop them.”
“You have powers?”
“Everyone in the underground has powers. We are not allowed to use them.”
“But you have powers?”
“I have the Voice, and I have the Power, but not like the Bigs.”
“Well, maybe what we did wasn’t such a good idea,” Jeremy said.
“And maybe it was,” Veronica answered. “It’s still dark. I think we should go back to bed. They’ll either kill us as we sleep or something wonderful will happen.”
11
“Mom, where’s Mt. Kailash?” They’d eaten their K rations and were relaxing after dinner.
“It’s in Tibet, Jeremy,” Veronica said.
“Why did you tell them you were there?”
“I didn’t want to say, ‘We’re right around the corner, just look!’” She laughed.
“Have you been there?”
“Yes I have. Tibet is one of the highest altitude countries in the world, and Mt. Kailash is high even for there.”
“What were you doing there?”
“I went there with the general. We were there for two months.”
“Why did he go there?”
“He was searching for a site for our cryogenic bunker. He built several bunkers around the world to fool anyone who might want to break in after we were inside. The general probably figured that no one would look for him in the holiest spot on the planet. I went to Tibet for a different reason. I didn’t know what it was until I got there. Are you sure you want to know about this, Jeremy? It’s not a very nice story.”
Jeremy nodded at Sam. “Yeah, we’re interested.”
She smiled with a sadness he’d never seen in her eyes. “I got it into my head that I wanted to circumambulate Mount Kailash. Walk around it. That’s what everyone does there, if they are up to it. The general opposed it, so I wanted to do it. He wanted me to take a military escort, which I refused. I was gone a month. I decided to do the tour ‘the right way.’ The basic trip around the mountain takes about fifteen hours, if you’re in really good shape. Pilgrims try for 13 circuits. Those trying for enlightenment do 108. I thought I’d go for that. I didn’t make it. Mount Kailash is 22,000 feet high; no one sets foot on it, of course. It’s too sacred. We traveled the pilgrim’s path, between 15,000 and 18,000 feet. Even with the best yaks and guides, I couldn’t do it.
“But I did walk around Lake Manasarovar, a sacred lake near the mountain. I read the Buddhist and Hindu texts—in English, of course—and walked around the lake and mountain with the other pilgrims. I wanted to meet a real lama, a spiritual teacher. I wanted a teacher of my own.
“Mt. Kailash was the most intoxicating place I’ve ever been. The altitude intensified everything: the colors of the pilgrims’ clothing, the prayer flags, the piety of the people praying everywhere. The monasteries, candles. The incense and chanting. The monks calling us to prayer with conch shells. Statues of the Buddha, Shiva. When I was there, I actually believed that peace could prevail on earth. I believed in the power of love. I believed in God for a while.
“I could have stayed there forever. Because I didn’t have a military escort, the monks were gracious and open. I found one who captivated me. He was the head of one of the monasteries. I stayed for a week at his sanctuary, charmed by an ancient Asian man. They called him Shri Rinpoche. Rinpoche means ‘precious one,’ and ‘shri’ is a term of respect.” She smiled.
“I’ve loved two men in my life, Jeremy. Three, counting you. I loved your father until I thought my heart would break. And I loved Shri Rinpoche, and my heart did break. Meditating in the presence of a true master is heaven, nothing less. The love that flows …
“I fell into ecstasies at the monastery. I didn’t know that I could feel such joy. I swooned with it. I was in love with everything, especially with him—and he was an 80-year-old monk. Don’t get any ideas. He was the most perfect man I have ever met. I will never forget him, or his country. He initiated me into his school of meditation. That was the happiest time of my life. Only when your father was well and our family was together came close to it. But this was just bliss, with no strain or worries. I could have been a nun.”
“You, Mom?”
“Yes, Jeremy, me. The whore of Babylon.” Tears rimmed her eyes. Her lips trembled.
“What happened to the monk?”
“A few days later, when we were back in Russia, the general had my dear Rinpoche flogged to death outside my rooms. I don’t know how many of the monks he killed. A little payback for my disobedience. I was his prisoner from then on. That’s when I stopped believing in God.”
Her voice dropped to the faintest whisper. She repeated a phrase that he didn’t understand.
“What’s that, Mom?”
“It’s my mantra. It’s why I’m alive. It’s why I changed. I’m not the person I was, Jeremy. I want you to believe that so much. I’m different.”
He put his arms around her. “I’m trying to be different, too. I’m sorry about the monk.”
She wiped her face with a handkerchief Jeremy offered her. “He died without crying out. He repeated his mantra until they slit his throat. They didn’t break him. He died a perfect death.”
12
“Mom?” Jeremy whispered. “Are you asleep?”
“No. I can’t sleep.”
“Me, neither.”
The events of the day and talking
about Shri Rinpoche had shaken her up. Veronica could hear Sam’s gurgling snores and steady inhalations of breath.
“Mom, we’ve been saying all this stuff about being friends and trusting each other. I need to get straight with you. We can’t just go ‘Nicey-nicey, everything’s fine.’ Because it’s not. A lot of stuff happened. You did a lot of stuff.” His voice was low, but very intense. He turned up the electric lantern so they could see each other.
She dreaded what he had to say.
He glared at her. “Did you and Dr. Tambourg set me up?”
“What do you mean?”
“He diagnosed me as a high-functioning autistic. He told everybody at the school and everywhere about it. I spent my life with everyone thinking I was nuts. Did you tell him lies about me?”
She sat up. “We concocted that diagnosis, yes. You aren’t autistic. You have a genius-level IQ. I took you to Dr. Tambourg because I needed to protect you. Do you remember all the tests Dr. Tambourg gave you? For days?”
“How could I forget?”
“He needed to know what you are, and he found out. Dr. Tambourg came up with that diagnosis because it protected you. Your ‘disability’ allowed me to supply you with the materials you needed for your work. Computers, satellite hook ups. Things that were illegal for everyone else. You were able to build the shelter because of that diagnosis. Sam is alive because of it. Mark Tambourg was the most respected psychiatrist in the country. He covered for you with the military, the FBI, and with Special Forces. He put his life in jeopardy for you.”
“Why?”
“Because he was a good man. And because he knew you could save our world if you were given enough time and the materials to do it. He was a revolutionary, Jeremy. I became active in the resistance because of him. You knew revolution was coming.”
“Yeah. And I knew you were working with us. But …”
“You were still lonely. And afraid.”
“You left me, Mom. You stuck me in my ‘basement pad’ at the school and took off with … Well, who was the first after daddy died? Do you even remember?” Jeremy rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. “Fuck!”
Her stomach lurched. This was it: what really held them apart. “I don’t remember who it was.”
“Dicks! Just dicks, weren’t they?” He glared at her, hands forming fists. “You left me for a bunch of dicks!”
“Yes, that’s all they were, for years. Dicks that I used and dicks that used me. But it wasn’t quite so simple.” Her eyes locked on his. She had to make him understand. “Jeremy, did you ever wonder how I knew Mark Tambourg?”
“You knew everyone.”
“I knew many people, but people in society, and politicians and industrialists. I stayed away from intellectuals. They ended up in camps. But I knew Mark. Why?”
Jeremy shook his head.
“Why would anyone know a psychiatrist?”
“You were seeing a shrink?” He looked incredulous.
“Yes. I suffered terribly in my years of entertaining dicks. I felt like something was devouring me inside. I couldn’t stop what I was doing. So I went to a psychiatrist.”
Jeremy’s eyes widened and he turned away.
“I don’t want to talk about this, either, but I think we need to. And I think clearing it up is the only way we’ll be a real family.”
He turned back to her, looking guarded.
“The way I acted was a disease. But Mark said he could cure me.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I met with him four days a week when I was in New York and talked to him on the phone when I was traveling. I did it for more than two years.”
“Did it work?”
“Not at all. Same anguish, same desire.” She made a bitter little snort.
“Why didn’t it work?”
“Mark told me that whatever made me act the way I did was so buried that I hadn’t gotten desperate enough or shook up enough to make it surface. Whatever it was didn’t matter—once the general fell for me, I was his prisoner. What a fool I was, Jeremy, to think that I could tame a monster. Or get away from him.
“That’s when I really abandoned you, darling. Not only was I the general’s prisoner, I stayed away so that he didn’t find out how smart you are. You would have ended up in a bunker in Siberia, designing things for him.
“I was a rotten mother and a terrible person. I didn’t want to be bad, Jeremy. I tried as hard as I could to stop.” She felt a million years old, her face drawn. Jeremy stared at her. She couldn’t read his expression.
“I’m not like that anymore, I swear to you.” She knew he would never forgive her. Trying to work things out with Jeremy was as useless as going to that shrink.
Veronica pulled herself out of bed and into a crouching position, as though she were going to run down the corridor and leap out the container’s door. But she couldn’t move, Sam was in the way. She looked around wildly. When she saw no way out, Veronica fell on her side, sobbing. The brave front she’d kept up crumpled.
Her hands covered her face and tiny cries escaped her. She felt Jeremy put his arms around her, trying to make her calm down, but the black despair she’d known with the general consumed her. Hope didn’t exist; her life was ruined and she couldn’t fix it. Veronica felt herself spiral downward, scarcely registering Jeremy’s pleas. Her body stiffened and her hands became claws. She wasn’t aware of anything.
“Mom! Mom! Wake up.” Jeremy shook her. “Sam! There’s something wrong with my mom!”
Sam moved so fast he was a blur. He lay next to her, cupping her with his body. One arm curved over her head, and the other stroked her rigid limbs. He whispered in her ear.
Her arms relaxed. Sam lay them down softly and kept his arm around her, stroking her with the other hand. He kept whispering to her. She felt very sleepy, almost drugged.
“Sam, is that you?” She opened her eyes. “Is that you, Sam?”
“Aye,” he said.
“Oh, I’m so glad. I thought you were gone. Is it another time, Sam?”
“Yes, lady. I’m here. Sleep.”
Jeremy couldn’t get the way she had looked at Sam out of his mind. So soft and sweet, unlike the way she was with other men. He knew his mother had thought he was their old headman, Sam Baahuhd. People wondered if she and old Sam had ever been lovers. Jeremy knew they hadn’t been.
It was a new time, a new world. But was it one that permitted love?
13
Jeremy found himself standing on a flat rock shelf high above a rolling plain. The shelf was hundreds of feet deep and a thousand feet long, cut out of a much larger cliff face. They were in a broad cave stuck into a rock mountain. A stone arch curved above them, sheltering them from the elements. Some ancient adobe buildings were on the end of the shelf, down from their container.
He ran to the edge of the ledge. A river meandered in the valley below. Big bright green trees followed the river, and the banks along both sides were lush and green. They could grow things down there. They had water. He ran back to the container to tell the others when he saw it: Another crate stood behind theirs. They’d sent the one with the weapons.
“Mom! Mom!” he dashed inside and stopped dead. His mother and Sam were cuddled together, their arms around each other. The sight brought him up short. They looked so tender, like they belonged together. It shocked him. It was like seeing his mom with Sam Baahuhd, if everything in their world had been different.
He shook his mother’s foot. “Mom! Mom! They did it.”
She raised her head sleepily. “What?”
“They moved us, and they sent the other container!”
She scrambled out of bed and to the open door. “Oh, my God, Sam. Look at where we are!” She stepped onto the shelf’s stone floor and looked around. They could see back to where the estate and bomb shelter were to the east. It was a long way. They could see any enemy coming for days.
“Oh, thank you, golden people.” She threw her arms over her he
ad and danced in a circle. “Sam, look! They moved us! They gave us what we wanted.” She ran to him and hugged him as he emerged from inside. He stood blinking in the sun.
“I don’t hurt,” he said, unbuttoning his shirt so he could see the bandage on his belly. Veronica pulled aside the dressing and examined the wound.
“It’s healed, Sam. Not even a scar.” She removed the bandage. He walked into the sunlight and she gasped. “You look …”
Sam stared at his forearms and stomach. Jeremy also gawked. Sam wasn’t gray any more. His skin was flesh-colored like his own, a different color than Jeremy’s, but a regular human color. Sam’s skin tone was very fair with a pink/ivory cast. He had a redhead’s complexion. He looked up and Jeremy could see his face. Wide cheekbones, straight nose. Huge green eyes. The girls in his high school would have gone crazy over him.
“Sam, smile!” Jeremy called.
Sam did. His teeth were perfect and white.
His mother had put her hand to her throat and stood staring. Sam’s closely cut reddish hair sparkled in the light, as did his nubby beard. His chest and belly were exposed by the open shirt. Muscles covered his stomach, which was brushed with dark red hair.
“Oh …” Sam had noticed the river valley below. He staggered back, covering his eyes. Then he was doubled up on his knees. He put his hands over his head and groveled on the ledge.
“Oh, shit! He’s freaking out. He’s never really been outside like this. He just saw the area around the container before.” Jeremy rushed to him. “This is the outdoors, Sam. It’s beautiful. We’re on a ledge. That’s a river down there. There’s lots of space.”
Sam remained curled up.
“It’s OK. You’ll get used to it.” Jeremy couldn’t get Sam to respond.
“Sam, dear. Try these,” his mom placed a pair of sunglasses on his face. “The general’s own magic glasses. Guaranteed to cure fear of open spaces and everything else. I know it’s a shock, dear, but it will get easier.” She put an arm around Sam and rubbed his back. “See. That’s better, isn’t it? Just take it slow and easy.” She hugged him gently and helped him stand. “It’s a river valley, a very beautiful one. Don’t look until you feel up to it.”
