by Sandy Nathan
Sam darted up the ladder like a gymnast.
24
Her door opened and someone came in. The dark outline of a man approached her bed. She screamed and her body jerked as though something was shaking it. She kept screaming and thrashing until a child’s voice came out of her mouth.
“Daddy, Daddy, don’t hurt me anymore.”
The cave’s acoustics were so keen that everyone could hear her.
“I’ve never heard such terror in my life,” Henry said. “I don’t doubt it was him for a minute. I knew that puffed up F. Bentham Piermont was a stinking SOB.”
“Her father?” Mel asked. “He was the richest man in the country.”
“Rich don’t mean good, Mel.”
“Remember when you told me that someone got her started the way she was, Henry?” Jeremy said.
“Yeah.”
“I wish I could kill him.”
“He’s already dead, Jeremy. Roasting in hell.”
She screamed, out of control and unable to stop. And then Sam was there. He picked her up and carried her to his room. “Oh, Sam,” she cried. “Help me.”
“Ah will, lady.” He laid her down on a bed and held her to him. The terror came again and she started to scream, but he took it. He was like a tide pulling out, an irresistible force taking everything with it. The terror, pain, memories, physical sensations, all the evil she’d done, all torn away.
Sam tore off his clothes and pulled at the neck of her uniform, trying to remove it. She held on, “No. No.”
“Lady, ah need to get closer. Let me.”
They lay together naked, wrapped around each other. His body was very hot, burning. Her eyes rolled back in her head. Something came off of him. She saw blue halos at the edges of her vision. An indigo sea. He kept pulling the pain from her, defeating the monster. Images came up. Her wedding night with the general.
The cement bunker with the cryogenic machines appeared in her mind. He could see it. He was inside her mind, seeing the computer lab and storage containers filled with what they’d need for a new life. The open space with a table and chairs. The sculpted bays containing the coffin-like devices in which each of them would be frozen to live until a better time.
“Forget about me, Sam. I’m no good, and I’ll never be any good. I’ll ruin your life.” She wanted to jump off the edge of the cliff, but Sam held her.
He kept holding her, body burning, pulling off whatever arose inside her. “Run, Sam. Get away from me …”
She lay empty, deserted as a beach with the tide run out. She felt nothing, no pain, no terror. Only the freedom of emptiness.
He twined around her, arms around her, leg draped over her. It was like being in him, breathing him in and breathing him out. As though he entered her with each breath and she entered him. In that way, she knew all of his world and what had happened to him underground and how he knew what she knew and the pain and terror of it. She knew the thread of similarity between his life and hers.
When she slept, she dropped into black unconsciousness. It was his world, the dark world of no light. The dark, deep, glowing world.
The cave was black when she awoke. He was next to her, pulled away a bit, staring at her intently. He trembled. She could feel his need. “Please, lady, let me. It’s my Power. Ah canna stop it w’ ye.” He spoke the dialect of the village. “Let me, lady.”
She lay back, powerless to stop it and wanting it to happen.
He knelt next to her and rubbed his face on hers, running his cheeks along hers, moving his face along her forehead. He rubbed his face along her torso and over her shoulders, touching her with the insides of his wrists and forearms. Moving constantly, silently. He touched all of her, but not with his hands.
Something arose inside of her, a light. It rose and exploded into bliss. She wanted to scream and swear, but he said to her, “No, lady. This is for thee and me. No one else.”
She bit back the sounds and let pleasure pulse through her, again, and again. And again. Sweat covered her body.
Sam still knelt next to her. He sat back on his heels, swept his arm over her legs and then ran his fingers up the bottoms of her feet. Her knees sprang apart and outward. He moved between her legs, fumbled for a moment, and entered her.
She gasped when she felt him so deep, and he pulled out a bit, then started rocking forward and back. He didn’t lie on top of her. He held himself up on his hands, elbows straight, so that they only touched where they were joined.
The sea rose again, moving toward her this time. Flowing in, inundating her with richness. The tide covered her, drowning her. Blue lights played in the corners of her mind. She struggled, but it was no use. The light inside her flared and flared again. Her hips moved.
“Oh, please, Sam. Please.” When she could stand it no more, she reached for him. “Please.”
He lowered his whipcord body onto hers, grasped her around the shoulders, and buried his face in her shoulder. He surged and then joined her in bliss.
“Was that your first time, Sam?”
“Aye. Like that.” He caressed her cheek. “Ah couldna, y’see. They were all ma cousins.”
“The Commands.”
“Aye. The Commands. We touch each other in the underground, lady. We do that.”
She wanted to ask him if his lover had had hands, but couldn’t do it.
“Kiss me, Sam.”
“Show me how, lady.”
She reached up and showed him, and then the cycle of the tide began again.
When they awakened, dawn was barely tinting the cave walls. He looked at her with his green eyes and wide cheekbones and beautiful earnestness. He was disturbed.
He said, “Ah am a man.”
He took her hand and put it on his chest. “Ah have a heart.” She could feel its pulsation and his energy flowing from it.
“Ah have lain with thee and loved thee.
“Ah love thee.
“Ye can hurt me, lady.”
She couldn’t speak for a moment, but managed to stammer, “I won’t hurt you, Sam. I’ll never hurt you. I love you.”
She wrapped herself around him and caressed him until he dropped into sleep.
Veronica sat up, moving carefully so he didn’t awaken. This was the man she wanted, that she’d been searching for her entire life. Who knew everything about her and loved her anyway. Who was a lover beyond imagination. Who was good and kind.
Oh, God. She would betray him. She rocked back and forth, seeking something to help her. Some anchor. Some power greater than her insanity.
She cast about for something. The image of her teacher came to her. Sam had sketched a Buddha on the wall by their bed. He’d been carving a bas relief of the Buddha when she had called him a thief.
She dropped her forehead to the cave’s stone floor. “Shri. Shri Rinpoche. Help me.” He was there as powerfully as he had been when he was alive.
“Oh, Shri. Help me.” She lay at his feet. “Help me.”
He’s dead because of me, she thought. Oh, God. I betrayed him like all of them. He got close to me and died. She felt herself spinning off an edge, entering freefall.
Do you think you are so powerful? His silent voice sounded as if he were there. I was destined to die at the hands of the general, just as he was destined to kill me. Nothing you could have done would have stopped it. No person can stop the death of another, or change its place or time even an instant. You must understand that, my beauty.
What do I do, Shri? How do I keep from wrecking this?
He laughed. His voice sounded deeper than it had in life. It felt as though it was coming from the stone walls. You need to learn discipline, beauty, his voice said. You need to learn control. You need to apply your warrior skills to your mind. You need to clean out your soul. His voice was kind and gentle, yet a steel sword.
Shri continued: You must renounce who you were. Renounce every part of your life that caused you pain. Walk away from it. Do not go back and pick it up
again.
And you must obey him as though he were I. He is your teacher in life, and your husband. Obey his commands. Please him as you would please me.
Now, meditate.
She sat up in the cross-legged position he had shown her, plummeting into blue-black darkness. No sound, no visions, nothing. The light between her eyes came, a four-pointed star pulsating light. The lights up her spine began spinning. Her breath softly moved in and out of her relaxed mouth. All these, she had felt before.
The intensity of this meditation, she hadn’t felt. The substance. The being. She boiled in it, cooked in it. It was Satchitananda: Existence. Awareness. Bliss. God.
She disappeared into it.
When she returned from the void, she began what she had to do. Sam slept deeply. The tools he had used to carve lay on the floor. A sharp knife was among them.
She picked up the knife and raised it.
25
When she was finished, she put the knife down and picked up Sam’s shirt from the floor. She put it on, then slipped into the main part of the cave. Everyone was still asleep. She walked across the cave and opened the storage bin. Its track system had been recharged the day before. She used the control and spun the canisters until the one with her belongings in it was in the front. She began pulling out everything she owned.
Everyday clothes, ball gowns, furs, and jewels. A service of imperial china taken from the Tsar’s palace, sterling silver for forty with all the extra pieces. Linens and candelabras to set up a new empire. When she was done, everything, down to her underwear and shoes, was arrayed before the container.
She stood apart from it, free.
“Veronica,” Henry’s deep voice announced his presence. He was the first to wake up. He gawked when he saw her. “What happened to your hair? You’ve cut it off.”
“Mom! What did you do? What’s all this stuff?” Jeremy was up next.
“I’ll answer your questions. Wait until everyone’s here.”
They came out of their caves and the adobe buildings, one by one, registering surprise at her hair and her things laid all around.
Sam appeared, wearing the pants to his uniform and looking puzzled.
“I want to thank all of you for being my friends. I went through a trial last night and came through whole, with the assistance of …” she faltered.
“Sam of Emily, your husband,” Sam stepped in. “She is ma wife. Ah take the lady as ma wife.”
She fought back tears. He’d accepted her. “And I take you for my husband, Sam.
“He helped me a great deal last night. But I had an experience of my meditation teacher this morning. What I’m doing now came from him, not from Sam. Sam isn’t telling me to do this.
“To be who I want to be, I need to separate myself from the person I was. I need to give up vanity and pride in my looks and possessions. I need to be a different person. The only way I can do it is like this.” She indicated her hair.
She’d cut it off with the knife. It was very short and a rough job at best. She stood wearing only Sam’s shirt. Veronica indicated all the things arrayed around the camp. “This is everything I’ve got in the world. I’m giving it to you. I’m giving you the weapons, as well. To be held jointly. They’re very dangerous; you need to be careful. So, you can take whatever you want. And there’s a whole lot of gold in the container. We brought it to back a new currency.”
“Wait,” Sam said. “Ah am your husband. By the law of the village, all you own is mine. Ah will say what you give away.” He said it with a tinge of the Voice, just a suggestion of power, not a command.
She agreed immediately. “All right, Sam. Pick what you want, and the others can have what’s left.”
“Ah will keep all the gold.” Sam took things she’d never expect. Like a palace-sized sterling candelabra. Two of her fur coats. Ball gowns. The jewelry. Place settings for ten of the sterling flatware and china. And all her everyday clothes and shoes. Plus her lingerie. He examined the lacy under things with great interest.
“You should not give away the weapons. You should hold them, and teach us how to use them. You will be their caretaker, for all of us.”
She agreed and then spoke to Jeremy. “We owned a lot of property all over the world. I don’t know if we can ever get it back, but I’m giving it to you, Jeremy.”
Sam interrupted again. “Nay, lady. Share it with the three of us, you, me and Jeremy. You don’t know how many children we will have. We may need it one day.”
“All right, Sam. The last thing is—I am no longer Veronica Piermont Edgarton. I sever all ties with that person. She is not me and her past is not my past.
“I was trying to think of what I’d like to be called. I love it when Sam calls me ‘lady.’ And I have a name that no one knows. I always thought it too … sweet, or nice to fit me. But I am sweet and nice.”
She smiled, eyes glistening. “I’m going to go by my middle name. It’s always been part of me, Grace. I’d like to be called Lady Grace. Or just Grace, if you want. I don’t want to be a Lady, like royalty. I want to be a lady, a good woman that you can trust.
“So that’s it, please help yourselves.”
After some balking, they did. Lena never had had good china and silver. The remaining Imperial Russian tableware did the trick. “But everyone can borrow it if you’re having a formal affair.”
James made off with a couple of ball gowns and a spectacular feather boa. “I’ve always wanted a Dior.”
“Feel free to wear it whenever you wish, James. It’s time that people were who they really are,” Grace said.
Sam watched her, proud and relieved. What she did was part of the tradition of the village. When a person needed to be free of a bad past, he or she gave away everything and took a new name.
His ancestor Sam Baahuhd brought Emily into the shelter naked, with nothing of her old life, not even her name. When he healed her, she became the love of his life.
What wasn’t told outside the line of Emily was that she had been with many men before Sam, using them. Nor was it told that she was a killer and torturer for the feds. She had been very dangerous. When Sam Baahuhd healed her, everything changed.
The lady came to him, smiling. “Did I do the right thing?”
“Yes, lady. Lady Grace.” He kissed her.
Part Two
26
The group sat in a circle on the cliff. Jeremy’s printouts of the underground shelter’s interior were laid out before them.
“I would like nothing better than going over there and wasting those bastards,” Grace said. “But the bottom line is: We don’t have what it takes to mount an assault on the shelter and liberate those who can be saved. We’re not soldiers. I’m the only one who’s trained, and I’ve just been frozen for who knows how long. The rest of you are emaciated. We’ll have to march many miles, fully armed, carrying food, water, and medical supplies for ourselves and the people we hope to rescue.
“Or let’s say we somehow win the battle and get them out. And who are ‘them’? All of Sam’s people, the disabled ones? Or just the children? Or both? Some are going to be sick. Some dying. We’ll have to care for them. Where? Here? How do we get them back here? If we can’t get them back here, we’ll have to care for them near the shelter. Where?”
“Grace, I need to say something,” James said. “Why do we have to save them? Most of the people we saw in those pictures will never be able to take care of themselves.” He shot a glance at Sam. “Sorry, Sam. But that’s the truth.”
Sam opened his mouth as though he were going to speak, but Mel beat him to it. “James, you saw the photos. Don’t you think that we have a moral obligation to try to rescue whoever we can? Sam Big raping that guy did it for me. That’s wrong.”
“Yeah, it’s wrong. But it’s not like he hasn’t done it before. What good does it do if we end up getting fucked over ourselves?”
“James, you’re just like you were on the golden planet. Figuring out way
s to suck up and avoid fighting for what’s right.”
Henry raised his hand. “Stop it, boys. There’s something to be said for trying to get along, and there’s something to be said for fighting when you have to.”
“We don’t have to, is what I’m saying,” James replied. “We can stay here and lie low.”
“And act like chickens the rest of our lives,” Mel retorted.
“Maybe it’s not cowardice, Mel,” said Grace. “Maybe it’s facing the facts. Let’s talk about inside the shelter. We saw the photos of the Bigs. They’re horrible. So’s the shelter. It’s going to be crawling with parasites, bacteria, you name it. Does the sanitation work, Sam?”
“The part that works is good.”
“But not all of it works. It’s a swamp of filth and disease. What was that growing on you when we found you?”
“It was the flour, lady. The white disease.”
“Fungus and mildew. He had big patches of it. That’s what the people we rescue will have. The underground shelter is too filthy to use as a field hospital. We’ll have to bring tents—but we have those. And cots. And penicillin and drugs. Our antibiotics are all that’s between us and the germs and microbes of this world. We may need those supplies ourselves. I know this is hard to hear, Sam. Can we afford to take in the people in the shelter? Assuming we can rescue them. Can we feed and clothe and rehabilitate them when we don’t have food for ourselves?” She looked around the group. “Anybody have anything to add?”
“OK. What you and James say is true. Rescuing Sam’s people is a stretch. But if we don’t go, that doesn’t make the Bigs go away,” Mel said. “We all had that nightmare of that monster searching for us. If we wait, they’ll come out and find us. When they find us, they’ll sit under our cliff until we run out of supplies.”
