“I was a member of the ISP team before coming here,” the one with the DEX stencil said.
“Was part of the problem, now part of the solution.” Warren slid out mutton chops to a parade of plates. “Hig was a tree hugger or something.”
“A bio-doc,” Hig said. “I was a member of HEM.”
“That’s the tree-hugger movement,” Warren added.
“The Hollow Earth Movement,” Hig said softly, passing Ellis the potatoes.
“Whatever. Hig is now our best fieldhand—great with the crops and the animals. Ved One plays a fiddle.”
“I was a composer of holo symphonies,” Ved One said. “But yes, I also play a violin.”
“Ved Two—no relation.” Warren laughed. No one else did, but Warren didn’t appear to notice. “Was a tattoo artist.”
“I interpreted internal personal expressions into outward identities.”
“And last there’s Yal—our newest convert. Yal is our cook. So if you don’t like the food, blame Yal.”
Ellis looked at Yal and waited, but no correction or clarification was forthcoming. Yal sat at the foot of the table struggling to eat left-handed and not doing a good job. Yal’s other hand remained hidden under the table. Ellis noticed for the first time that the order of food passing was consistent. Warren dished out the meat to Ellis first, then to Dex, then Hig, the two Veds, and finally to Yal.
The meal had all the wholesome purity that an unevenly heated stove could provide. The gravy had lumps, the bottoms of the rolls were burned, and the potatoes undercooked. The carrots were tasty, the sheep tough but savory, and the sausage and sauerkraut was wonderful, and Ellis didn’t think he liked sauerkraut. Imperfection bore its own virtue. Just as a concert album littered with technical errors was filled with more life than a perfectly tweaked studio production, the meal possessed more simple honesty than Ellis had experienced in years. This was what all those characters in movies had spoken of when they yearned for a home-cooked meal, back before the McDonald’s revolution, before the quintessential American meal came in a box.
“Had four new lambs arrive this year,” Warren was saying. “Funny as hell to watch Hig and the Veds experience the miracle of birth.”
“Doesn’t seem natural,” Ved One said. “More like a sickness.”
“See what I have to deal with?” Warren sighed. “Oh—and a great job burning the rolls, Yal.”
“I’m sorry. I’ve only worked with a Maker. I’m not used to a stove.”
“We don’t want excuses here. Get your shit together. It’s a stove, not a rocket ship, and your days of relying on a Maker are over.”
“I will do better next time, Ren Zero.”
“The name is Ren!” Warren raised his voice. “Just plain Ren. We aren’t numbers here—we’re people, dammit.”
Several shifted their eyes to the Veds.
Warren looked annoyed. “I’ve been meaning to change your names, might as well start now so poor Ellis doesn’t get confused. From now on Ved One will be called…Bob, and Ved Two…” Warren twisted his lips, thinking. “Ved Two will be Rob.” He nodded, agreeing with himself. “Restitch your shirts right after dinner, understand?”
The two nodded in perfect unison, which appeared to irritate Warren.
Conversation dried up for a few minutes, the vacuum filled by the ticking of the clock and forks scraping plates clean. Warren glared around the table while the others stared at their food.
“Just the six of you maintain this whole farm?” Ellis asked. He didn’t really care, just wanted the silence to disappear. He needed noise, the flow of words to knock out the thoughts crowding their way into his head, thoughts about Peggy and a photograph with the word sorrywritten on it. Warren said it was written in a Sharpie marker, but Ellis imagined it was scrawled in blood. He should have left a note. He should have said goodbye.
“Just the six of us live here,” Warren said. “We add new converts by invitation only, of course.”
“Mib will be moving in soon,” Hig said. Ellis noticed that this Firestone fieldhand had a slightly darker tan than anyone else at the table except Warren.
“Which is good, because we could use someone who can run the glass shop,” Warren said.
Dex pointed at Yal. “We’ve lost several glasses lately.”
“Yes, it will be wonderful when Mib arrives.” Yal stood up then, and with a restrained look began to clear the table of empty bowls.
“Yal’s tired of being the new kid,” Bob said—or was it Rob?
“Six live here?” Ellis asked.
“Technically there are seven, but Pol doesn’t live here anymore. Used to, but got picked for the underworld High Council. I gave him permission to serve. Thought it would be in everyone’s best interest to have a”—he formed air quotes with his fingers—“ manon the inside, as it were. Pol was one of the original three who found me. You’ll meet Pol tonight. Great organizer. If I died tomorrow, Pol would take over.”
“Take over what?”
Warren just grinned.
Yal came by and picked up the bowl of potatoes, and Ellis noticed the bloody bandages on the stumps of the last two fingers on Yal’s right hand.
As night arrived, Warren lit the hurricane lamp near the door and escorted them into the living room, leaving Yal to handle the cleanup. “It takes a long time to break them of the bad habits they pick up living in the underworld. They think everything is easy. They get here and find they’re wrong,” Warren explained with his new wise man’s voice—the Detroit Dalai Lama.
The living room’s décor was right out of the Civil War, with a couch and two matching black upholstered Queen Anne chairs that looked like something Lincoln might have been shot in. Pea-green-painted walls and dark mahogany only added to the formal funereal atmosphere. Everything had the smell of old books, old wood, and old people that might have been some form of rot. The place was hot too. The sun had baked the house, and the heat lingered in the wood, stone, and plaster. Dex and Hig shoved the windows open, hoping for a breeze, but got only the loud racket of crickets. This had been the life of pre-air-conditioned homes and why so many houses had porches.
Ellis, who felt his shirt sticking to him, was about to suggest moving to the porch when Warren took a seat in the big chair near the dormant fireplace. He put his bare feet up on a stool and said, “Don’t you love this room? I can’t walk in here and not think of Washington and Jefferson and all the others that created our great country.”
“I don’t think the United States exists anymore.”
Warren’s eyes lit up. “That’s just it—it does. This room—this farm is like one of those seed banks they created to allow us to rebuild the world after a global disaster. This village is the seed—the cutting—that will help us regrow America. We’ve got everything: a producing farm, blacksmith, glass, and pottery shops. Hell, we even have Edison’s lab here. This is the heart and soul of America.”
Hig sat on the couch. Ellis sat beside him.
“As we repopulate, we can expand outward from here. We can clear the land, build more farms, and then send some men to start looking for old mines. Maybe we can get a refinery working again.”
“Hard to repopulate without women.”
“Dex has that covered, right, Dex?”
“The ISP kept all the patterns going back to the first ones. They won’t be exactly originals, not like the two of you,” Dex said with reverence, as if speaking to twin popes. “They were altered for disease resistance, and aesthetic appearance, but natural selection should erode these initial genes back to a random state.”
“Still, a pretty small gene pool, right?” Ellis said. His mind filled with thoughts of royal families and jokes about rural West Virginia.