John Sayles - The Anarchist's Convention and Other Stories

"SPEAK TO THE LIGHT."

"What do you want me to say?" He felt a little ridiculous, talking alone in the middle of nowhere. "Listen, I'll leave if I'm trespassing or something."

"WHAT DO YOU WANT?"

"Nothing." He began to back off the grass, kicking his duffel bag behind him. "I don't want a thing."

"FREEZEI"

Brian froze.

"COME TO THE LIGHT."

Things were getting a little too Biblical for his comfort. There was no mistaking the authority behind the Voice, it meant business. He slowly approached the bank of blue lighting.

"WHAT IS YOUR NAME?"

"Brian McNeil."

"SPEAK DOWN."

"What?"

"SPEAK DOWN. INTO THE LIGHT."

"Brian McNeil."

"DO I KNOW YOU?"

"Jesus, I hope not." He could feel vibrations through his feet when the Voice spoke.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE?"

"I was hitchhiking. This looked like a good flat place to sleep out. I'll go somewhere else. I'm sorry, whoever you are."

It was silent for a while and Brian heard a faint crackling, like static. Bugs had discovered the lighting and were swarming around him.

"DO YOU LIKE CHINESE FOOD?'

Oh yes, it had taken hold all right. Brian had talked with more than a few acid dabblers and none had mentioned sound-and-light Christmas spectaculars. "Sure," he said, "but I haven't had any in a while."

"TAKE TWO STEPS FORWARD."

He stepped.

"NOW ONE TO THE LEFT."

Do the Hokey-Pokey, he thought. What is this?

"SEE THE ROPE"

A short length of rope seemed to grow out of the ground.

`PULL IT."

Brian yanked and a yard-square flap of turf came up, the covering to a manhole shaft. A string of blue Christmas-tree bulbs lit the way down a bolted ladder. Brian couldn't see bottom.

to PULL THE LID BACK SHUT WHEN YOU COME DOWN," said the Voice, "AND TRY NOT TO LET ALL THE BUGS IN."

Brian considered a moment until the same feeling he'd had often on the road before swept him, the oh-well-what-the-hell feeling of being too tired and too bummed out to resist much of anything. He tied his laces and started down, thunking the cover over his head.

He heard metal sliding and a little more light filtered up the shaft. Several rungs down he saw that an airlock had opened and the hole widened into a small cement-walled room. There was nothing in the room but a steel vault-door beyond which Brian could hear an electrical cricketing. A bolt shot and the door pushed open. A hand clamped around Brian's arm.

"C'moan in."

The hand and the Voice's lack of volume startled him.

"Don't be skittish, I don't bite. I retreat."

' What?"

"Name's Ira Treat." Brian was pulled inside by a short man who looked to be around fifty. The man held his nose up in the air like a dog searching for a scent on the wind. He aimed his head at Brian when he spoke but it was clear that he couldn't see. "Welcome to the safest residential structure in the entire U.S. of A."

Everything inside seemed to be of shiny, metal. Banks of fluorescent lights buzzed overhead and Brian had to shield his eyes.

"It's a bomb shelter?"

"It's my home, son. Where you headed?"

"California."

"Got people there?"

"Nope."

"You might want to reconsider. The Baja isn't so bad, and up toward Oregon, but the rest you're a sitting duck. They got that Vandenburg A.F.B. there and Fort Ord and the Presidio. Nope, California will go in the opening rounds. You hungry?"

Treat's eyeballs were barely visible under thick folds of flesh, as if they had burrowed deep to avoid the light. He wrinkled his nose when he spoke.

"A little," said Brian.

"Well you come right in and make yourself comfortable. This here is about as cozy as you're ever likely to get." He cocked an ear to the beeping and whining of the instruments farther into the room, frowning to concentrate. Didn't see a little girl up there dawdlin around the road, did you? My Derry is sposed to be back about now."

"Didn't see anyone."

"Choir practice or some such. Girl has got one sort of nonsense or the other keepin her at school all hours just about every night of the week. Sits down to dinner, grunts hello and she's off to bed. I just wave to her in passing. You go to school?"

"I used to."

"Drifter, huh? Sound pretty young, what are you, seventeen, eighteen? Good age to be a drifter, long as you stay clear of the primary strike areas."

Brian smiled at the word. "Drifter" was something they used to say on Gunsmoke on TV.

"You'll be staying for the night then. Gonna get cold."

"Oh. Uh, I left my bag and all up there. And if it's — "

"No trouble, no trouble. Not gonna rain, just get cold. Your bags are fine. C'moan, have a seat."

The room was a long tube, everything built in flush to the wall. All of it was gleaming metal, coppers and silvers and bronzes and golds, one entire wall of chrome-knobbed drawers opposite a wall of dials and instruments. Each instrument gave off its own steady sound reading. There was an electric-blue carpet and tubular frame furniture, each piece bolted to the floor. Treat sat Brian down on one of the couches.

"Looks like the inside of an atomic sub or something."

Treat snorted happily. "This isn't just any hole in the ground filled with gadgets," he said. "Oh no. This is part of me." He waved his arms to include the whole room. "Electronics, sonar, radar, all that technology is only an extension of the man who controls them. Shelter is what marks and protects the extremities of your body."

He waved at the wall of instruments. "My ears are twenty miles long. My temperature is fifty-eight degrees and falling exterior, a steady seventy-five interior. My skull can withstand a direct hit from any prenuclear warhead. My lungs can filter the bulkiest industrial waste or the tiniest subatomic particle. My stomach holds twenty years' supply of food and water. My excretions are solid cubes suitable for landfill or road construction. My skin will hold up against fire and ice. All I have to do is stay inside it. Chicken chow mein sound all right?"

"Fine."

Treat crossed to a panel of switches. He counted over and down and flicked one.

"At the sound of the tone," said a woman's voice, "the time will be eight twenty-seven — and ten seconds BOOP! At the sound of — "

He flicked it off. "Girl should be here any minute now. They got an activities bus drops them home. Might's well put the beans on."

Brian was having problems with the fluorescent lights. He seemed to be able to see the suspended gas molecules, to see the stream of electrons bolting through. He knew it was too small and too fast but he saw it just the same. He didn't even want to think about the dots on the carpet.

"At one time," said Treat, making his way to the wall of pullouts and appliances, "this area was lowest priority in the whole shootin match. All you had to worry about was the fallout and wind drift and all the secondary effects. So I sunk my money into a farm and built me a little civil-defense root cellar like the other folks around here had. The eyes were just beginning to dim a bit, doctors hadn't put the final word on them yet." He squatted and pulled out a huge drawer from the wall. Like a drawer in a morgue, filled with canned goods in compartments. Treat counted back and over, lifted one can, up and over and lifted another. He pushed the drawer shut with his foot.

"Then came the ironical part. The fellas in charge of dispersal at the Defense Department looked at a map and saw the same thing I did. Nothing here the other side would be interested in. So they laid in a slew of missile silos three miles down the road. Biological-testing station, it says on the fence, but I talked with some of the truckers bringing material in and it's nothing of the sort. Figured wherever I moved it'd be the same story, some damn thing drawing fire, so I made my stand here. Dug in."