Walter Greatshell - Apocalypse blues

A vast sense of responsibility and purpose welled up inside me. Utik was right-I was the Mother of the Future, me. Somehow all this fell to me. But I had to be careful; if I was going to flex my muscles, I would have to tread lightly, come up with a plan. Approach Sandoval. And most of all, beware the jealous envy of the less-enlightened.

The next day, over our sixth lunch together, I made my case to him.

"No," he said.

I was caught short. The brevity of his dismissal was inappropriate to the well-reasoned, inspiring twelve-point proposal I had spent all night drafting.

"Why not?" I asked.

"Why not?" The question seemed to amuse and disgust him. "Lulu, you're not Eleanor Roosevelt, and I'm not FDR. You're a sweet girl, and I know you had to bring this up as a matter of conscience. I salute you, but that's about it. Now that you've done all you can, try to relax."

"But you-"

"No buts!" A trace of anger flashed across his face. Then he relented a bit, and said, "Look, I know where you're coming from. I used to be a charitable man. When you have great wealth, it's easy to be generous, especially when it's tax-deductible. Humanitarian awards, honorary degrees, hospital wings, plaques-I could have had it all if I hadn't given anonymously. But I'm not here today because I was generous. None of us is, not even you. We survived out of pure selfishness and must continue to do so. It may not seem like it, but we're in a school of piranha here: At the first sign of weakness, they attack. Don't look so down in the mouth-I know it sounds cruel, but once you accept the necessity of it, you will begin to see the higher purpose: honoring the gift of life. We won't redress the world's wrongs by sacrificing ourselves. We must exalt ourselves or risk being destroyed by others who exalt themselves."

"I think that's called looking out for number one."

Sitting back in his seat, he sighed dejectedly. "Okay, look. You want to see your friends? Here's what's going to happen. I shouldn't be telling you this, but there's going to be a ceremony tomorrow night out at the submarine. Big doings. All the Moguls are going to be there, and your friends will be with them. I had planned to tell you tomorrow, but those big sad eyes are killing me-you could have made a fortune for charity." He held out his hand to me. "Is it a date?"

Heart slugging like a prizefighter, I nodded and took it.

The next night, Sandoval personally escorted me from my tent to Utik's armored carriage. We looked impossibly fabulous, I in my jade-and-parchment dress and he in gleaming baronial black tie, as if we were going to some kind of fairy-tale ball. But I felt grotesque, not well. Anxiety had been building and building all day, and the prospect of seeing all those familiar faces again-people it had taken me so long to win over-was caning my stomach like a pinata. What did I have to offer them? What was there to say to each other? I felt like the Whore of Babylon.

Utik got us situated on the divans with brusque efficiency, paying no special attention to me. Refusing the hot-water bottles, Sandoval said to him, "That's fine, Herman. Let's go, we're running late." Utik nodded and took his seat, barking something to the drivers. The vehicle lurched into motion.

"Isn't this exciting?" Sandoval asked me, grinning like an idiot.

I nodded stiffly.

"Bet you thought you'd never see that submarine again."

"Are we going on board?"

"No."

"Then why aren't we dressed for the outdoors?"

"You'll see," he said with a mischievous twinkle.

We sped through the planes, across the airfield, and toward the barrier wall. Looking out a gunport at the Arctic night, I had a brief twinge thinking about the COIL weapon. "They're not going to shoot us by accident, are they?" I asked.

"No," Sandoval replied. "We have a radio beacon that protects us. You see this?" He produced a hefty pen from his sleeve-it was chained to his wrist-and pushed a button on it. A red spot of light appeared on the wall.

"Yeah, it's a laser pointer. I've seen lots of people around here with them. What is it with those things?"

"It's more than a laser pointer. It's also sending out a radio signal to the defensive array. It not only protects us, but anything I point at I can destroy at the touch of a button. One of the perks of Moguldom." He put the thing away, looking pleased as a little kid.

"Where do you get all this stuff?"

"Off the shelf, mostly. This is just a cheap computer accessory that we adapted to the existing missile-defense system. That forehead implant is a slightly modified version of life-signs monitors used for years in animal testing."

"But where does it come from? How does it get here?"

"We fly it in."

"From where? Aren't there Xombies everywhere?"

"Not everywhere. We have a lot of remote bases from which we conduct foraging operations. I have one in Namibia that's fantastic-an abandoned diamond-mining town in the middle of the desert. It has this huge old opera house that you wouldn't believe."

"But if you have all that, why come here?"

"Because, my dear, the people we have running those places are not quite as genteel as you and I. In fact, they're murderers and criminals-literally. They're all former prison inmates."

"What do you mean?"

"Male convicts represent the single largest proportion of Agent X survivors, especially those who were held in maximum security. The Maenads couldn't get at them. Some of our biggest Moguls are captains of the prison-industrial complex, and they organized the labor pool. It's the best-equipped army in the world today. And the only one, as far as I know. About a million heavily armed thugs, all doing our shopping for us."

"What do they get out of it?"

"Peace of mind. Some semblance of order. Life. Without our administrative apparatus, they would degenerate into squabbling factions and be picked off by Maenads. As it is, the attrition rate is…" He stopped himself. "Anyway, trust me, they need us as much as we need them."

We passed uneventfully through the barrier and continued down a long, gentle grade to the sea.

At one point in the drive, Sandoval asked, "Would you like to see where we're going?" When I gave a tentative nod, he directed me to a small window up in the vehicle's turret, resting his hand on my waist as I looked.

Out across the ice was another dome. A lone bubble, dimly glowing in the moonlight.

"You know, Lulu," he said, "without Agent X to bring us together, we might never have met." Then he kissed me.

As we pulled up to the dome, men helped us out of the truck and hustled us inside. We passed through a drumlike revolving door, then a large antechamber full of parkas and boots, and finally a heavy flap bleeding warm air. I could hear music. Our escorts parted the curtain, and my mouth fell open at the sight that greeted us.

It was green. Live green grass as far as the eye could see, an achingly sweet-smelling park with sweet music filling the air and banks of stadium lights making the place look like a concert on a summer night. It was a concert. A silvery voice sang the refrain from a mellow Beatles song.

"That's a lotta sod," said Sandoval, enjoying my reaction.

Rising like a monument from a flowered mound in the center of the grass was the submarine's fairwater, its dive planes hung with bunting, and four musicians dressed in Sgt. Pepper regalia atop the starboard wing. It was the Blackpudlians. Their lurid purple and yellow stage lights shone hotly on the spectators below, turning them into violet cutouts limned in gold. The turf at the base of the mound was incised with a deep, emerald-lit hole-a bottomless spring with porcelain sides, cut as cleanly as if with a cookie cutter. Surrounding the pool and fanning out across the lawn in all directions was a crowd of exquisitely dressed men-and women. Beautiful young women… just like me.