Selection Event (13 page)

Martin had thought about this while he was underground and the answer came easily. “Population.”

Curtiz stopped chewing and grinned. “Population?” He glanced at Ryan for his reaction, but Ryan was staring at his untouched plate and starting to shiver.

“Why population?” Curtiz asked, pushing a lump of food into his mouth.

“The African famines of the last forty years. If population had been controlled, air and water pollution in the industrialized world wouldn't be what they are. Where would be the profit in cutting down the rain forests? As for crime, the more people there are in any given place, the more crime there is, and more control has to be exerted over them. Then everyone has less freedom.”

Holding his knife and fork in the air over his place, Curtiz had listened carefully, chewing slower and slower. “Let me get this straight, Marty. You're saying the fewer people there are, the less control is needed over them?”

“Seems that way. Why do people need to have laws in the first place except to keep them from bothering each other. We used to have laws regulating how much noise people like Stewart could make with their car stereos, but now who's he going to bother?”

“You shot my car, you mother!” Stewart yelled, blowing a few pieces of food out of his mouth. “I haven't forgot that, you bitch!”

“Shut up, Stewart,” Curtiz said. “This is interesting. Tell me, Marty, since you went to college, you probably studied political theory. What kind of political system has worked out best? With the position I'm in, I need to know this and you could help me a lot here.”

“I don't know, Mr. Curtiz. What I learned about political theory probably wouldn't be very helpful.”

“No, no, Marty, please.” He waved his knife in little circles over his plate. “Tell me what you know.”

“Political theory is a lot like dream theory.”

“What?”

“Everybody has a theory and none of them work out very well for very long. With such a low population, I don't know of anything that would apply.”

“Then what you're saying, Marty, if I can synthesize all this in a few words, is that I'm unnecessary, that I'm wasting my time here because whatever political framework I institute, it isn't needed anyway.”

Martin tried to backtrack without seeming like it. “You could do something different. This is new territory. No one ever considered this situation.” 

Curtiz' face reddened and the corners of his lips turned down when he spoke. “I remember people like you.” Curtiz asked. “Didn't you like the groceries in your pantry and the meat in your freezer, Marty? Did you like having a roof over your head and toilet that flushed? How about movies, Marty? Didn't you like watching movies?”

“Yes, I liked those things.”

“Sure you did, Marty. Sure you did. But you'd march against the oil companies and protest a few animals getting killed. You'd bite the hand that fed you, wouldn't you Marty. I know what kind of person you are. God, I hate you educated people. You are so stupid.” He stared at him across the table, tapping his teeth behind his lips.

Martin looked down at Max. The boy's food had hardly been touched.

Ryan looked up from his plate. His breathing was irregular and his cheekbones shone with sweat.

“Ryan, we need Martin's full cooperation. We want him to need us as much as we need him. Take a few of your people and begin his treatment.”

Ryan hesitated. “Sir... we're all a little—” He swallowed and his throat made a dry click. “—a little behind schedule, if you know what I mean.”

Martin knew what he meant. One look across at the other five men told him that they were all in need. Huge sweat marks had spread under their arms and two of them shivered visibly.

“Why can't I have a gun?” Stewart said around his chewing. “I got my rights like everybody else. I coulda tooken care of those guys on my own.”

“Shut up, Stewart!” Curtiz thundered. The woman next to him didn't blink. “I don't think I can trust you to help me out here, Martin. You seem to have a basic distrust of resource management.” He had stopped chewing and held his knife and fork motionless over his plate.

“Yeah, Marty,” Stewart said, “you're a pain in the ass. You shot my car, you mother.”

“I'm sorry, Mr. Curtiz. I didn't mean to create a problem.

“This is a great moment, Martin. You're sitting here in the middle of history, at my table, and you're telling me that no matter what I do, it isn't going to work.”

“That wasn't what I meant, and I apologize, Mr. Curtiz. I'm sure your organization will serve you well.”

“If I had a gun, I'd serve you well, a-hole.”

“Shut up, Stewart. I'm seeing the same thing I used to see in the old world, Martin. You expect me to fail.” He gazed down the table at him. “There's something you need to understand, Martin. This is the New America. The new and improved America, and I am going to make it work. This is something I can do. Now, Marty, I don't want to be too heavy here, but until the time is right to establish a democratic system, I own you. Get it?” 

“Yeah,” Stewart said, scooping peas into his spoon with his thumb, “You get it now, dumb-ass?”

  “Yes sir, I understand.” Martin reminded himself again that his goal was to get away from these people and that he didn't need Curtiz to think he was ready to challenge him at every turn. “I've been out of touch with people for a long time. My expression may be a little awkward. I apologize.”

“Ryan, take Martin down to his room and lock him in. Then you and your men can take care of yourselves. We'll deal with him in the morning.”

“Thank you, Mr. Curtiz,” Ryan said gratefully.

“Leave the boy here till he finishes,” Curtiz said.

“He can bring his plate with him,” Martin said.

“Good night, Marty. Get 'im out of here, Ryan.”

“C'mon,” Ryan said, now standing behind him. “Be quick.”

Martin stood up, casually palming the mushy paper napkin from beside his plate.

Ryan walked behind him down the hallway and when they came to Martin's room, Martin turned and stood in the doorway, facing Ryan.

“Bring the boy down as soon as he's finished, all right?”

“Get inside.”

“Ryan, help me take care of the boy.”

“I have my own concerns.” The dim light in the hallway made Ryan's face look cavernous and skull-like, as stripped of flesh as the woman was of spirit.

“But if you can, Ryan, bring him down. The boy would be safer with me than with Curtiz.”

“If I can,” Ryan said. “Get inside.”

Martin stepped back and closed the door for Ryan to lock. He heard the key turn in the lock and then Ryan's receding footsteps and another door opening and then closing. Martin carefully pulled the door open. The wadded napkin he'd shoved into the latch-hole had kept it from locking. He now carefully packed it in place.

Down the corridor in the dining room, Martin heard low voices in conversation, then Stewart laughed loudly. Chairs scraped over the floor and he saw shadows moving across the dining room walls.

He quietly reclosed the door and heard muted footsteps on the carpet and rustling clothes as they went past. He listened another minute but heard nothing else, no door opening or closing nor any movement at all.

He waited several more minutes, five perhaps, straining to hear any sound at all, and then again carefully opened his door and stepped out into the darkened hallway, with only the slightest idea of what he was going to do next.

Chapter 21

Isha stopped suddenly — she smelled hot food. It had been a long time since she had smelled cooking meat. She trotted one way down the street and then the other until she found its direction and then went toward it.

It was three streets over, and as she got closer, she smelled more and more smoke in the air, along with the hot meaty smell. Finally, through the rain, she could see the smoldering embers of a house that had burned. She shook herself again to lighten the weight of her wet hair and to clear her eyes. Then she approached cautiously, keeping herself hidden behind cars and hedges.

Two houses away, she smelled something besides the cooked-meat smell from the burned house — something alive and dangerous.

She flattened her ears and very carefully watched for movement around the ruin — and something moved. Two somethings moved.

They were as big as men but they were cats, long and low spotted cats, and they moved in utter silence, bellies close to the ground, circling the house and watching the embers. One of them paused and lifted its blunt muzzle into the air and sniffed.

Isha flattened her ears even more and silently dropped her belly to the wet ground.

The cat switched its thick tail twice and turned its attention back to the smoldering ruin. It took two... three... slow steps into the wet ashes, lowered its head, gripped something in its jaws, and stepped carefully backward, dragging the charred thing with it. It held the dead cooked thing against the ground with one paw and ripped half of it away in its teeth. Its huge jaw muscles pulsed as it chewed and cracked bones in its mouth.

Isha slowly backed away, turned, and ran.

Chapter 22

The corridor turned ninety degrees, and beneath a closed bedroom door was a line of yellow light across the carpet.

“...hasn't told me nothing,” Max was saying. “He just kept tryna get me to eat but I was full from the candy you gave me.”

“You be sure to tell me everything he says to you,” Curtiz said.

“Boy, lookit these.” It was Stewart's voice. “Wow.”

Martin heard Max giggle. He forced himself to breathe slowly and evenly.

“Boy...” Stewart said. “She's not bad looking either. How long you think she'll last?” Stewart yukked softly. “What'll we call her? She's gotta have a name.”

“What'll we name her, Max?” Curtiz asked.

“Linda,” Max said.

“I like that,” Stewart said loudly. “Linda baby.”

“Keep your voice down, god damn it,” Curtiz said. Then after a pause. “You want to do her? Go ahead.”

“Come on, Mr. Curtiz!” Stewart whined. “Come on, let me.”

“Shut up, Stewart.”

Martin listened another minute to Curtiz' encouragements and Stewart's giggles, and every repugnant suspicion was confirmed.

Using Max on Martin, keeping the woman as a slave — the man was more cunning and degenerate than Martin imagined. The landscape had changed; Martin's choices changed.

Always choices, he thought, and never easy ones.

Ideally, what he wanted now was to get himself and the woman away from them. He wondered what Diaz would do... probably grab one of the cars and overnight it to New Orleans.

All right, Martin thought, what would
I
do if I were the person I wanted to be?  

Martin crept down the hallway and located Ryan. He slept in a back room with his god in his blood. A small lamp on his bedside table had not been turned off and his syringe lay there, next to a half-filled glass of water. In the next room, which was probably a converted shop, were five cots, and the other men lay on them in their clothes, sleeping deeply. They looked dead.

Martin quietly went out to the van they had driven to San Francisco and retrieved a coil of nylon rope, went back to Ryan's room, silently closed the door, looped one end of the rope around the knob, pulled it tight and looped it around the shop door, and then secured the other around the base of a toilet in a bathroom around the corner. Tying doors shut was something he'd learned in the dorms at college.

He stood a moment in the dark living room, listening to the rain dripping off the eaves and plopping onto the plants around the house. How, he wondered, could all this be happening? He was no rescuing hero. Why, after the catastrophe the world had gone through, was it turning out to be as crude and cruel as it had been in the old world?

The answer was not complex: this was not a new world. This was the same old world that he had left behind when he had gone underground. Curtiz and Stewart were simply transplanted from one time to another, bringing with them all their greed from the old world. This wasn't a new world at all. It was the last rotten remnants of the old one.

Martin found the closet where Curtiz had stored the weapons they had brought back. He took out one of the automatic shotguns, held it near a window in the light. He turned off the safety and quietly shoved six cartridges into it. He went down the hall and gave Curtiz' bedroom door a brisk shove open.

Stewart was lying on top of the woman, who was only half undressed. His head jerked toward Martin and he grunted, “Hunh?” Wearing only his undershorts, Max sat in a chair in the corner with a can of Coke in one hand. Curtiz stood on the other side of the bed, barefoot, with just his pants on, smoking a cigarette, which he slowly took out of his mouth. The look on his face was somewhere between fear and utter hatred.

“Get off the woman, Stewart,” Martin said, holding the shotgun loosely and letting it play between the two men.

“What are you doing, don't kill me, what are you doing?!” Stewart squeaked as he scrambled off the far side of the bed, covering his groin with his cupped hands.