Mysterium (15 page)

“He’s not that kind of man,” Evelyn ventured. “He told me a story once. . . .”

“About himself?”

“Yes. But he told it like a story about someone else. He said, suppose there was a man, and this man had a wife and a son. And suppose he was always careful about what he said or did, because he might lose his job or something bad might happen to his family, and he cared about his family more than anything. And then suppose the man was out of town, and there was a fire, and his house burned down with his wife and child in it.”

“He lost his wife and son in a fire?”

“Yes. But that’s not the point. He said it was the worst thing that could happen to this man—a complete loss of everything at the center of his life. And he survived it somehow, he went on living. And then, Dex said, the man noticed a strange thing. He noticed that there was nothing left to hurt him. What could be worse than
this
? Death? He would have
welcomed
death. Losing a job? Trivial. So he stopped hiding his opinions. He told the truth. He got in trouble, but there was no threat that meant anything to him. No more terrors. For instance, he used to hate riding in airplanes, he was a white-knuckle flier—but not anymore. If the plane fell out of the sky and he was killed . . . well, that was territory his wife and child had already visited. Maybe he’d find them there, waiting for him.” She shivered. “You understand? He was brave almost by accident. It got to be a habit.”

“Is this a true story? Is that how he seemed to you?”

“Some of the edges have worn off. This was all a long while ago. But yes, that’s how Dex seemed.”

Brave, Demarch thought, but probably not dangerous. A man with nothing to lose has nothing to defend.

Later, on the verge of sleep, Evelyn said: “There are more soldiers around town. Another truckful came past today.”

Demarch nodded, not far from sleep himself. He was thinking of Dorothea. He was thinking of Christof’s small face, his eyes bright as porcelain china.

“Symeon? Is something bad going to happen to the town? When you were talking on the phone—”

“Hush. It was nothing.”

“I don’t want anything bad to happen.”

“Nothing bad will happen to you,” the lieutenant said. “I promise. Now sleep.”

In the morning there was half an inch of snow on the ground. Demarch’s boots crunched on the frozen paving stones as he walked to his car; wet snow tumbled from the branches of the trees as he drove to the heart of the town, where the dismantling of Two Rivers had already begun.

CHAPTER 8

The last of autumn was an unsettled time in Two Rivers.

Mornings were often achingly cold; afternoon skies were cloudy or a stark, brittle blue. Woodsmoke drifted through the commons. Women in the food lines wore down jackets or bulky cloth coats; men shuffled forward with parka hoods drawn or caps pulled over their ears. No one lingered in the streets.

Things were changing, people whispered.

For instance: every day now, between the hours of seven and eight in the morning, two or three militia trucks would come into town popping blue smoke from rust-caked tailpipes. The trucks were drab green and always manned by six or eight soldiers. A truck would park outside a building—most often a store or warehouse—and the soldiers would stretch and climb shivering down from the tailgate and file inside. Inside, they would box items and tag them and stack them for loading into the truck.

They took not everything, but each of a kind: one toaster, one television set, one of every variety of home and office computer. Nothing was spared this inventory of the town, not chairs or shoe polish or window shades; but special attention was devoted to technical devices, especially anything with a microchip or a memory.

It seemed to Calvin Shepperd, ex-charter pilot and watchful citizen—who made the trip to the food depot every three days because Sarah refused to suffer the indignity—that the soldiers must be taking all these objects to some gargantuan museum . . . a museum of notions and appliances, a kind of Noah’s ark of dry goods.

It was systematic looting, he thought, and it would take a while to complete, but eventually this work would be finished, the town would be cataloged and all its treasures itemized and locked away, and then . . . well, he couldn’t guess. He didn’t know what would happen then; he knew only that the idea of it filled him with dread.

On a cold morning late in the year, Linneth Stone gave Dex Graham a map packed in a cardboard tube.

He unrolled the document across the chipped Formica top of a table at Tucker’s. Tucker’s Restaurant had reopened in mid-October with the permission of the Bureau. The menu was limited to eggs, cheese, bread, coffee, milk reconstituted from powder, and a kind of chopped steak everyone had learned to avoid. Still, the opening had been a morale booster. Dex supposed it was meant to be.

Last night’s wet snow kept the breakfast trade at home. Dex and Linneth were alone in the diner. Linneth had disguised herself in a casual blouse and modest skirt, but she still looked odd here, Dex thought, misplaced in a vinyl booth. He tried to imagine what her natural setting would be. Someplace more dignified. Someplace with a carpet, not this peeling linoleum. Tablecloths, not Formica.

He used the salt, pepper, and sugar dispensers to peg down three corners of the map. Then he drew a breath and took his first comprehensive look at the new world.

The map shocked him, although he had anticipated much of what he saw. The shock came not from the novelty but the blunt declaration of it. The miraculous, in blue ink and fine print.

Linneth was patient while he stared. She said, “Tell me what strikes you.”

He put together his impressions. “The East is more crowded than the West.”

She nodded. “The East was settled first, of course. English and French colonies. All the old cities: Boston, Montmagny, Montreal, Manhattan. During the War of Brittany, the colonies declared their independence. The Republic was a consolidation of the fifteen eastern provinces. It expanded west as the aboriginals were killed or resettled. Obviously, a great deal of the Far West is still virgin land.”

He traced the blue snake of the Mississippi River from the province of Mille Lacs to the city of New Orleans. To the west was a grid of prairie and mountain provinces: Athabasca, Beausejour, Sioux, Colorado; Nahanni, Kootenay, Platte, Sierra Blanca, from the Beaufort Sea to the border of New Spain. New Spain was approximately Mexico, with a panhandle up the western coast as far as what would have been southern Oregon. There was no Canada. The Republic ruled everything north of the fortieth parallel.

“The Spanish lands are disputed, of course. The war.”

“The whole map is less crowded.” Cities were sparse even as far east as the Great Lakes. “What’s the population of the world?”

She frowned. “I remember reading the estimate. Two billion?”

“Where I come from, it was nearer six.”

“Oh? I wonder why?”

“I don’t know. The two histories must be fairly similar. We speak the same language, more or less, and I recognize some of these names. If our histories are like a tree—one branched left, one branched right—it might be useful to know where they divided.”

Linneth seemed to concentrate on the idea. It was new to her, Dex supposed. She hadn’t been raised on
Star Trek,
the “parallel world” as a place where Mr. Spock wears a beard.

“If the histories ‘branched,’ as you say, it must have happened a long time ago. The religions are different.”

“But there are still parallels. We both have a prominent Christianity, even though they’re different in detail.”

“Considerably. Before Calvary, then?”

“Or not long after. First century, second century, say. Before the Romans adopted Christianity. Before Constantine.”

Linneth blinked. “But they didn’t. The Romans, I mean. There
were
no Christian emperors.”

Charlie Tucker brought two plates of bread and cheese, for which Dex exchanged a handful of food coupons. Charlie gave Linneth a long look. He had heard her accent. He looked worried.

She nibbled a wedge of cheese and waited for Charlie to wander back behind the cash desk. “Some of the Apologia are addressed to the Antonine emperors. Ecumenicists are always pointing to Clement, who gives a good impression of an erudite pagan. But no Roman emperor explicitly embraced the Cross. It’s an odd idea. So perhaps that’s the point of division—your Christian emperors.”

“Maybe.” Dex thought about it. And then he reminded himself why she was here. “Is this for your dossier?”

“History isn’t my subject. In any case, the Proctors emptied your libraries. They can ferret this out for themselves.” She added, “I would hardly dare counsel them on religious matters. This would all be very blasphemous if it weren’t a matter of record.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m still not sure when I’m talking to you and when I’m talking to the Bureau.”

“Perhaps I should wear two hats. One when I’m myself, and one when I’m an agent of the state.”

“Which one are you wearing now?”

“Oh, my own. My own particular hat.”

“In either hat, you have me at a disadvantage. You know my history—”

“Very little, to be truthful. Only what I’ve learned from you or the public material. The books were all locked away months ago.”

“Still, you know more about my history than I know about yours.”

She opened her calfskin case. “I brought this for you. I borrowed it from one of the militiamen. He said it was for his daughter, but he was reading it himself. A children’s book, I’m afraid, but it was the only history I was able to locate on brief notice.”

The book was a tattered duodecimo in hard covers, the title etched in gold leaf:

THE EVENTS OF HISTORY, FROM CREATION TO THE PRESENT DAY, WITH ILLUSTRATIONS.

It gave off a pungent reek of wet canvas. Dex took it from her.

“You can form an approximate notion,” Linneth said, “though I do not vouch for the details.”

He looked at her again. He wondered what the book represented—was it a promise kept, a strategic offering, simple kindness? Her face was unclouded, in some ways as perfect a face as Dex had ever seen, round and generous and serene. But reserved. For every ounce given, an ounce was withheld. And maybe that was not surprising, under the circumstances, but still . . .

She said, “I would like a book in return.”

“Which book?”

“One of yours. I peeked into your room, when the Proctors brought me to your door the first time. You own books. You’re a reader. But not history. Something literary. Something you like. I think that would be instructive.”

“For which hat?”

Briefly, she looked offended. “My hat.”

He had been carrying the dog-eared paperback of
Huckleberry Finn
in his jacket pocket for a month, and he was reluctant to part with it. He took it out and handed it to her. “The text is more than a century old. But I think you’ll get the drift.”

“The drift?”

“The essence. The meaning.”

“I see. And the book is a favorite of yours?”

“You could say that.”

She accepted it reverently. “Thank you, Mr. Graham.”

“Call me Dex.”

“Yes. Thank you.”

“Tell me what you think of it.”

“I will.”

He rolled up the map and volunteered to walk her back to the civilian housing at the Blue View Motel. Outside, she frowned at the weather—sunny today, but cold enough that an early snow hadn’t melted from the road. In her white jacket she might have been anyone, Dex thought. Any good-looking woman on a windy sidewalk. The wind reddened her cheeks and earlobes and carried away her breath in foggy wisps.

He wondered when he would see her again. But he couldn’t think of a plausible reason to ask.

She stopped and faced him at the corner of Beacon and Oak. “Thank you for escorting me.”

“You’re welcome.”

She hesitated. “Probably I shouldn’t say this. But I’ve heard rumors. Rumors about curfew violations. The Proctors are looking into it. Dex—”

He shook his head. “I’ve already had this warning. Demarch threatened me personally.”

Her voice was nearly a whisper. “I’m sure he did. That is, he
would.
It’s in his nature. But I don’t mean to threaten you. All I mean to say is, be careful.”

She turned and hurried away, and he stood on the windy sidewalk looking after her.

The
Two Rivers Crier,
a weekly newspaper, had not seen an issue since the crisis in June. That autumn, it published a new edition.

The
Crier
had been edited from an office on Grange Street, but the presses were in Kirkland, sixty miles away; since June, much farther than that. Where the town of Kirkland had been, today there was pine forest and an icy creek.

The new
Crier,
a single folded sheet of rag pulp, was a collaboration between a past editor and a committee of Bureau surveillants. The text consisted of announcements from the military and the Proctors. Power failures in the east end were sporadic and would be repaired before the end of the month; a new food depot had been opened at the corner of Pritchard and Knight. There was also a ringing editorial in which the reappearance of the paper was said to augur better times for Two Rivers, “carried as if by stormy gusts into a strange ocean and sailing under the calm winds of cooperation toward safe harbor.”

Prominent on the back page was a column announcing a program under which single men between the ages of seventeen and thirty-five were permitted to request relocation and job training elsewhere in the Republic, a living wage to be paid until such time as the men were established in their new lives. It was open to “White Men, Jews, Apostates, Negros, Mulattos, and Others—All Welcome.” It attracted considerable attention in town.

There were only a few volunteers. Many were transients who had been passing through when the accident happened and saw no reason to stay. Some were young men chafing at the friction of martial law. All were accepted for relocation.

The first convoy left town November 3 with a cargo of twenty-five civilians.