Butler, Octavia: Clay's Ark

"Here" was a small high valley-a little space between the ancient rocks that formed the mountains. There was a large old house of wood and stone and three other wooden houses, less well built. A fifth house was under construction. Two men worked on it with hand tools, hammering and sawing as almost no one did these days.

"Population explosion," Eli said. "We've been lucky lately."

"You mean people have been surviving whatever it is you do to them here?" Blake asked. "That's what I mean," Eli admitted. "We're learning to help them."

"Are you some kind of ... well, some kind of religious group?" Keira asked. "I don't mean any offence, but I've heard there were . . . groups in the mountains."

"Cultists?" Eli said, smiling a real smile. "No, we didn't come up here to worship anybody, girl. There were some religious people up here once, though. Not cultists, just . . . What do you call them? People who never saw sweet reason around the turn of the century, and who decided to make a decent, moral, Godfearing place of their own to raise their kids and wait for the Second Coming."

"Leftovers," Blake said. "At least that's what we called such people when I was younger. But this place looks as though it hasn't been touched by this century or the last one. Looks more like a holdover from the nineteenth."

"Yeah," Eli said, and smiled again. "Get out. Doc. Let's see if I can talk Meda into cooking you folks a meal." He took the keys, then waited until Blake and Keira got out. Then he locked their doors and got out himself.

Blake looked around and decided that almost everything he saw reminded him of descriptions he'd read of subsistence farming more than a century before. Chickens running around loose, pecking at the sand, others in coops and in a large

chicken house and yard. Hogs poking their snouts between the wooden planks of their pens, rabbits in wood-and-wire

hutches, a couple of cows. But every building was topped by photovoltaic intensifiers. The well had an electric pump- clearly an antique-and on the front porch of one of the houses, a woman was using an ancient black Singer sewing machine. There was a large garden growing over perhaps half the valley floor. And near the two most distant houses were small structures that might have been, of all things, outhouses.

Blake had turned to ask Eli about it when suddenly, Rane was in his arms. He hugged her, startled that even this strange place had made him forget her danger for a moment. Now, flanked by both his daughters, he felt better, stronger. The feeling was irrational, he knew. The girls were no safer for their being with him. Their captors still had the guns. And they were all still trapped in this isolated, atavistic place. Worst of all, something was being planned for them- something they might not survive.

"What did you hear?" he asked Rane while Eli was busy talking to Meda.

"I think they're on some weird drugs or something," Rane whispered. "That guy Ingraham-his hands shake when he isn't using them, and when he is, he has other tics and twitches."

"That doesn't have to mean drugs," Blake said. "What about the woman?"

"Well ... no twitches, but if you think I'm too outspoken, wait until you meet her." "What did she say?"

Uncharacteristically, Rane looked away. "It wasn't anything that would help. I don't want to repeat it."

Keira touched Rane's arm to get her attention. "Was it about you being more likely to survive than the two of us? Because if it was, we got that too."

"Yes." "Plus?"

"Kerry, I'm not going to tell you."

It must have been bad then. There was very little Rane would hesitate to say. Blake resolved to get it out of her later. Now, Eli was coming toward them, motioning them into the wood-and-stone house. The dark-haired woman, Meda, came with him, stopping abruptly in front of Blake so that he had to stop or collide with her. She was a tall bony woman with no attractiveness at all beyond the long, thick, dark brown hair. She may have been attractive once, but now she had no shape, poor coloring, and not even the sense to cover herself as Keira had. She wore jeans cut off at mid-thigh and a man's short-sleeved shirt, buttoned to her skinny midriff, then tied. Blake wondered whether Rane might be right about the drugs.

"For your own sake," Meda said quietly, "you ought to know that we can hear better than most people. I don't usually care who hears what I say, but you might. Now what I told your kid, what she was too embarrassed to repeat, was that I

meant to ask Eli for you. I like your looks. It doesn't matter whether you like mine. Everybody here looks like me,

sooner or later."

"Jesus Christ," Blake muttered disgustedly. He began to laugh, not meaning to, but not able to stop. "You are crazy," he said, still laughing. "All of you." The laughter died finally, and he could only stare at them. They stared back impassively.

"What are you going to do?" he asked Eli. "Give me to her?"

"How can I?" Eli asked. "I don't think I own you. Meda and your kid have a way with words, Doc. With more people like them, we never would have avoided World War Three."

Blake managed to stifle more laughter. He rubbed a hand across his forehead, and was surprised to find it wet. He was standing in the hot desert sun, but between his daughters and his captors, he had hardly noticed.

"What are you going to do with me?" he asked.

"Oh, you'll spend some time with her. That can't be helped. I wish it weren't necessary, but she's your jailer-which is what she was really asking to be. We're going to have to confine you pretty closely for a while, and things will work out better if your jailer is a woman."

"Why?"

"You'll know, Doc. Just give it a little more time. Meanwhile, for the record, what you and Meda do together is your business." He turned, faced Meda. "There are limits," he said softly. "You're getting to like this too goddamn much, you know?"

She glared at him for a moment. "You should talk," she said harshly, though somehow, not quite angrily. She turned and went inside, slamming the door behind her.

Eli sighed. "Lord, I hope you'll all make it-all three of you so we won't have to do this again soon." He glanced to where Ingraham stood watching, managed a crooked smile. "You figure she'll feed us?"

"She'll feed me," Ingraham said, smiling. "She invited me to dinner. Let's go in and see if she's set a place for you."

They herded Blake and the girls into the house, somehow communicating amusement, weariness, hunger, but no threat. It was almost as though the Maslin family had been invited to eat with new friends. Blake shook his head. On his own, he would have tried to break away from these people-whatever they were -long ago. Now . . . He wondered what his

chances were of getting Eli alone, getting his gun and the car keys. If he didn't move soon, Rane or Keira might be

separated from him again. These people were in such bad physical condition, they had to take precautions. Abruptly, it occurred to him that a simple precaution might be to drug something they were to eat or drink. "What are you planning, Doc?" Eli asked as he sat down in a big, leather wing chair.

The house was cool and dark, comfortably well-kept and old. Blake had to fight off the feeling of security it seemed to offer. He sat on a sofa with his daughters on either side of him.

"Doc?" Eli said. Blake looked at him.

"I wonder if I can stop you from getting hurt."

"Forget it," Ingraham said. "He's going to have to try something. Just like you'd have to in his place." "Yeah. Listen, you still have that knife?"

"Sure."

Eli nodded, gestured with one hand. "Come on." "You mark the wall and Meda'll find some way to get you, man." "I'm not going to mark the damn wall. Come on."

"Don't break my knife either." Ingraham reached toward his boot, then his hand seemed to blur. Something flashed toward Eli, Eli blurred, and the floorboards beneath Blake's feet vibrated. Blake looked down, saw that there was a large, heavy knife buried in the floor between his feet. It had hit the wood just short of the oriental rug. He gave Eli a