by John Purcell
* * * * * * * * * * * * * *
I hitched Lollipop to the cart, snatched up Humphrey’s cap, and hopped into the saddle. We had to limit ourselves to a trot on the way back, because the cart bounced and shuddered with every bump in the road. It seemed a very long trip.
When we got to the bottom of New York Ave., Lollipop cut straight across 15th Street, onto Pennsylvania Avenue. We turned left into a crescent shaped driveway and pulled up to the North Portico of the White House.
I wasn’t sure why Lollipop had taken us here, but I trusted her instincts. As I hopped to the ground, Humphrey sat up. I came around behind the cart and helped him to his feet.
I said, “How are you feeling?”
“Splitting headache. Otherwise fine.”
“Someone should check you over. Is there a doctor here in DC?”
He gestured to the entrance. “Blue Room.”
These words triggered a cascade of memories, and the layout of the White House pieced itself together in my mind. The Blue Room was simple enough to get to: through the front door and straight ahead.
As we crossed the entrance hall, I could hear music wafting out from the East Room, rhythmic and dissonant, like the music Lewis had played on trumpet. The doors were closed, so I couldn’t see inside, but it sounded as though the dance was well underway.
The doors to the Blue Room were standing open. Above the threshold, a hand painted sign read: Nightingale Clinic. Humphrey and I entered to find a woman working at a loom. She was squat and muscular, and wore her long silver hair in a bun.
She turned as we came in and smiled, recognizing Humphrey immediately. “Hello, Humphrey. Where’s your cap?”
Humphrey said, “Can’t wear it. Head’s banged up.”
“Oh dear. Let’s have a look.”
As she approached us, she offered me her hand. “I’m Dr. Nightingale.”
I shook it, saying, “My name it Teo. I just brought Humphrey down from the Fruitlands. He was attacked there and knocked unconscious.”
“LobeBots.”
“Yes. Are there a lot of them in DC?”
“More and more. Queen Scarlett’s been conducting her little experiments on us.” She turned to Humphrey. “I’m surprised you let yourself get caught.”
“Needed forty winks. Woke up, four of 'em had me.”
“Four of them?”
“Working together.”
She frowned. “This is getting serious.”
I said, “I saw them do the same thing in the Ruins, in even greater numbers.”
Dr. Nightingale shook her head ruefully, taking Humphrey by the arm. “Come sit and we’ll see what’s what.”
The Blue Room was now a mixture of the very old and the very new. On one side, Dr. Nightingale had shelves filled with gleaming medical devices, as well as a futuristic examining table. And yet she sat Humphrey down in an antique armchair that matched a nearby loveseat and daybed. Across the room, three ancient looms stood side by side, filling all available space.
But the most striking piece of furniture was the desk at the back of the room, near the windows. It was five times the size of any desk I’d ever seen, uselessly huge. Next to it, a human skeleton dangled from its own little yardarm. I assumed Dr. Nightingale kept it for medical purposes.
As she examined the back of Humphrey’s head, I ventured over to the doorway that connected with the Green Room and peered through it. That room was now filled with antique beds, most of them with elaborate wooden headboards and footboards. Apparently, the White House bedrooms had been freely plundered. All the beds were unoccupied, neatly made up with colorful bedspreads that might have been produced on Dr. Nightingale’s looms.
I crossed to the other doorway, which connected to the Red Room, and found a similar sight, although the beds were much newer and more functional. Some were actual hospital beds, and many were occupied. This was clearly the real infirmary.
I rejoined Humphrey and Dr. Nightingale, who had finished probing the back of his head. She said, “Your skull’s in good shape, not counting the goose eggs, but I want to be sure there’s no internal bleeding. I need you on the examining table.”
I said, “How long will that take?”
“About twenty minutes.”
“I’m going to look around. I’ll be back before you’re done.”
I wasn’t sure what to make of my father’s White House memories. While the overall layout was clear, his recollection of specific rooms was vague, with two exceptions: the Map Room and the White House bowling alley. These I could picture in detail.
Crossing the entrance hall, I took the marble staircase down to the ground floor. I entered the Map Room to discover that it was now a storage room. Shelves loaded with school supplies lined the walls, crowding out the oil portraits in their gilded frames.
The area around the fireplace, however, had been kept clear. I knew exactly what to do. Kneeling down, I reached inside the chimney and released the catch. The fireplace, marble mantelpiece included, detached itself from the wall. I stepped back and swung it open on its hinges, revealing the vertical shaft behind it. A metal ladder fixed to the wall descended into darkness. Stale air wafted up from below.
There was no need to go exploring. My father had provided detailed memories. The shaft dropped 17 feet, through an interior wall in the subbasement, to a long, sloping corridor. Half a mile east, beneath the Metro tunnels, the corridor leveled out, ending at a thick steel door. This could only be opened with the proper access code, and led to a second door that required a second code. Beyond that, a reinforced elevator shaft dropped another 21 feet to the Presidential Bunker, where Trip Savage spent his final hours.
I swung the fireplace back into place and headed for the White House bowling alley. I could picture it clearly: a narrow, windowless room with a single lane, lying directly beneath the North Portico.
The alley received no natural light, but Glorbs lined the walls. At first, I thought the room had simply been vandalized, but the damage was more methodical than that. Someone had been searching for something, tearing up floorboards, pulling down ceiling tiles, bashing into walls. Bowling balls were scattered across the room. The surface of the alley had been reduced to splinters. The podium that supported the scorekeeping terminals had been ripped from its base. The ball-return cover had been pried loose and flung aside. The destruction seemed quite recent. There was no sign that they had found what they were looking for.
As I was heading back to the stairs, I passed the doors to the Diplomatic Reception Room. Although I had no clear recollection of it, something compelled me to look inside. Barging in, I startled the room’s only occupant, a man with coal-black skin and long, beaded hair.
He almost dropped the paint pallet he was holding in the crook of his arm. He pointed his paintbrush at me and said, “Next time, consider knocking.”
In the middle of the room stood a large table, as round as the room itself. Art supplies of all sorts filled its center, and easels surrounded it.
I said, “I’m sorry, that was terribly rude of me.”
He eyed me quizzically. “Apology accepted. What’s your name?”
“My name is Teo.”
“My name is Hofmann. You’re not from DC.”
“That’s right. And you’re an art teacher.”
He nodded. “I teach art to the children, yes, but I think of myself as a painter first.”
He turned back to his work, adding new brushstrokes to the wall.
A mural ran around the entire circumference of the room, interrupted only by doorways and windows. I had never seen anything like it. It might have been a landscape, except that none of the shapes was quite recognizable. It might have been an abstract design, except that it was filled with light and shadow. The colors clashed and yet they were in harmony. The compositio
n was a jumble and yet everything was in balance.
I said, “Did you paint this entire mural yourself?”
“Yes.”
“It looks like you’re almost finished.”
“I’ll never finish. That’s the point.”
“What do you mean?”
He gestured at the wall to his right. “If you come back next week, this section will be brand new.”
“But you’re covering over you own work.”
“Exactly. Everything in life is transitory. Why should I make an exception for my art? This mural will be complete the day I die, regardless of what state it’s in, and that’s all I plan to leave behind.”
This was an interesting concept, but I didn’t have time to discuss it. “Do you happen to know how the bowling alley was damaged?”
He shook his head slowly. “We’re all still in shock.”
“It happened that recently?”
“Oh, yes. Three weeks ago today.”
“Was the bowling alley really that important?”
“I’m sorry, I’ve given you the wrong impression. We weren’t shocked by the destruction, per se. It was the presence of GR peacekeepers here in DC, in this very house. Most shocking indeed.”
“Peacekeepers destroyed it? How many?”
“Just two, but that was enough.”
“You were here when it happened.”
Hofmann set down his pallet and brush on the table and offered me a chair. We both sat. The child-sized chair was perfect for me, but Hofmann dwarfed his.
He said, “Yes, I was painting, as I do every night. The commotion started about 2 AM. Prior to that, I hadn’t heard a sound. The noise was so unexpected, I simply stood and listened for a few moments, trying to think of an explanation. By the time I came out into the Center Hall, Dr. Nightingale was hurrying down the stairs. We both followed the sound to the bowling alley.
“When we got there, floodlights were blazing. One peacekeeper was destroying the lane with a pickax. The other stood and watched, and it was he who turned on us, with a pistol in his hand. He fired a shot that just missed our heads. He meant to miss. He was demonstrating the power of his weapon. It was only the size of a derringer, but the bullet blew an enormous hole in the wall behind us. He told us to sit with our hands laced behind our heads. Needless to say, we did as he asked.”
“What did the peacekeepers look like?”
“I’ve never seen peacekeepers before. I have nothing to compare them to.”
“Young or old?”
Hofmann shrugged. “I can’t say. Their helmets and goggles obscured their faces.”
“How long were they here?”
“Four hours. They were reluctant to admit defeat.”
“Do you have any idea what they were looking for? Did they say anything?”
“A few words in Chinese. I don’t speak the language. They finally packed up their equipment and left. They never gave us a second glance.”
“Did they search anywhere else?”
“Not as far as I know.”
“They didn’t go into the Map Room?”
Hofmann shook his head. “I would have heard that. Are you suggesting they were looking for Trip’s bunker?”
“What do you think?”
“If so, they simply should have asked. Everyone in DC knows where to find it.”
“Really? Why is that?”
“It’s part of our creation myth, so to speak.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Let me put it another way. The Potomac Clan wouldn’t exist had it not been for Trip’s bunker. That and the Congressional Bunker.”
“It’s how they survived the Great Starvation.”
Hofmann gave me another quizzical look. “Quite right.”
“I’d like to hear the story, but I don’t have much time.”
“If you’d like, I can tell it without embellishment.”
“Please.”
Hofmann crossed his arms. “After UNK/C hanged Trip Savage, DC was left to the poor and dispossessed, but not for long. You see, UNK/C guarded all their own Domes but this one was Trip’s alone. So, as the Great Starvation set in, it was left unguarded. Soon it was overrun and ransacked. Some people were returning to their homes, but the vast majority had exhausted food supplies in other locations. Ultimately, this Dome ended up like everywhere else Outside, stripped of every edible form of plant and animal life.
“Just before the hoards descended, Cassius appeared for the first time. He told our ancestors exactly where to find the Presidential and Congressional bunkers. He ordered them to leave no one behind and to stay below for two years. The supplies of food and water in the bunkers were more than adequate. When the Potomac Clan finally emerged, the meek, if you will, inherited the earth.”
I wasn’t sure what he meant. “Why do you call them meek?”
Hofmann looked puzzled. “I’m paraphrasing the Sermon on the Mount.”
“I’m sorry, I don’t know what that is.”
He suddenly understood. “You’re from the Domes, aren’t you?”
“Yes.”
“Trust me. If you’re short on time, you don’t want me to explain Christianity.”
I thanked him and headed back upstairs to the Blue Room. I entered to find Humphrey perched on the edge of the examining table, legs dangling. Dr. Nightingale was jotting something on her clipboard.
I said, “Tests all done?”
Dr. Nightingale nodded. Humphrey nodded, too, looking out of sorts.
I said, “Any results?”
Humphrey said, “Much ado about nothing.”
Dr. Nightingale capped her pen. “Humphrey’s all bent out of shape because I want him to spend the night.”
Humphrey glared at her. “Supplies are overdue.”
She tucked her clipboard under her arm. “Teo got them this far. I dare say he can get them another hundred yards to the kitchen.”
Humphrey scowled. “Lollipop needs me.”
“Give Teo the remote and he’ll get her settled on the South Lawn. You can take a bed by the window and keep an eye on her from here.”
Humphrey spoke under his breath. “She’s thought of everything.”
I said, “Why are you keeping him overnight?”
“Borderline concussion.”
Humphrey muttered, “Borderline worrywart.”
I realized he was enjoying himself.
Dr. Nightingale turned to him. “Quit grousing. If the tests look good in the morning, you can go about your business and good riddance to you!”
I addressed Humphrey. “Speaking of business, do you ever take fares to Baltimore?”
He shook his head.
I said, “Too dangerous?”
“No customers.”
“Would you be willing to take us?”
“Not all the way.”
“How far?”
“695.”
“Fair enough. We’d be taking my three friends and our iPup.”
“Your funeral.”
“Should we meet you here?”
Dr. Nightingale turned to me. “Where are you spending the night?”
“To tell you the truth, I have no idea.”
“Why don’t you stay here? There are plenty of beds in the Green Room. It will be more convenient for both of you.”
“Would my friends be able to stay, too?”
“Of course.”
“They’re at the dance right now. I don’t know what time it gets over.”
“Nobody does. But I’ll be right here. Just wake me if you need anything.”
“Where do you sleep?”
She gestured at the gigantic desk with the skeleton beside it. “Right over there, next to Old Trip. That was his desk.”
I couldn’t believe my ears. “I beg your pardon?”
Dr. Nightingale looked apologetic. “I’m sorry. Of course you wouldn’t
know.”
“Those are President Savage’s bones?”
“It’s a bit macabre, I suppose, but we’re all used to it.”
“Why on earth do you keep them around?”
“Just a little reminder of where leadership gets you.”
Humphrey said, “Amen to that.” He fished a remote out of his pocket and handed it to me. “Supplies are overdue.”
