Tim looked at the cold water and shuddered. The wet suit fit him, but there were loose spots, and it was going to be damned cold out there. He tested the air system. It worked. The tanks were fully charged; and that had been impressive, too. When the mechanics at SJNP hadn’t had valves and fittings in stock, they simply went into the machine shop and made them. It was a reminder of another world, a world when you didn’t have to make do with what was around, when you had some control.
“I keep thinking,” Tim said. “If people’s pet goldfish got loose, what happened to the piranhas?”
“Too cold for them,” Jason Gillcuddy said, and he laughed.
“Yeah. Well, here goes.” Tim climbed to the gunwale, sat balanced for a moment, and rolled off backward into the water.
The cold was a shock, but it wasn’t as bad as he expected. He waved at the boat crew, then tried an experimental dive. The water was as black as ink. He could barely see his wrist compass and depth gauge. The gauge was another of the SJNP crew’s miracles, fabricated and calibrated in a couple of hours. Tim turned on the sealed lantern. The beam gave him no more than ten feet of milky visibility.
The sea in Emerald Bay off Catalina had been clear as glass. He had flown through seaweed jungles rich with darting fish… Iong ago.
He kicked down into the white murk, searching for the bottom, and found it at sixty feet. There was no sound but the bubbles from his regulator, the sound of his breathing. A shape loomed up in front of him, monstrous, humpbacked, a Volkswagen, he saw when he got closer. He didn’t look inside.
He followed the road. He passed an Imperial with hordes of fish swarming in and out of the broken windows. No buildings. More cars… and finally a gas station, but it had burned before it was flooded. He kept going. He would be out of air soon.
Finally, civilization: rectangular shadings in the murk. Visibility was too poor to let him be selective. The doors he tried were locked. Locked against the sea… He swam on until he found a smashed plate-glass window. It was frighteningly dark in there, but he forced himself to enter.
He was in a large room; at least it felt large. A dense cloud of white fog to one side proved to be a rack of paperback books turned to mush and floating particles. The mist followed him as he swam away. He found counters and shelves, racks and goods toppled to the floor. He coasted above the floor, finding treasure everywhere — lamps, cameras, radios, tape recorders, Tensor lamps, television sets, nose drops, spray cans of paint, plastic models, tropical fish tanks, batteries, soap, scouring pads, light bulbs, canned salted peanuts…
So many things, and mostly ruined. His air supply cut off abruptly; in panic he looked behind for his diving partner, then realized that despite all his training he was diving without a buddy. That was almost funny. You had to have more than one scuba outfit in the world before you could use the buddy system. He calmed himself and reached back to the air tanks, arm contorting to grasp the regulator valve and turn it to reserve. Now he had only a few moments, and he used them to scoop up objects and stuff them into the goody bag tied to his weight belt.
He left the store and surfaced. He was a long way from the boat. He waved until he had their attention, and let them come to him. He was exhausted when they hauled him aboard.
“Did you find any food?” Horrie Jackson wanted to know. “We found some food with that scuba stuff before we ran out of air. We get back to Porterville I can show you lots of places where there’s food. You dive for it and we’ll split.”
Tim shook his head. He felt an infinite sadness. “That was a general store,” he said.
“Can you find it again?”
“I think so. It’s right under us.” Probably he could, and there would be much to salvage; but in his exhaustion he could not feel any excitement over his find. He felt only a terrible sense of loss. He turned to Jason Gillcuddy as probably the only man who could understand — if anyone could.
“Anyone could walk in there and buy,” Tim said. “Razor blades, Kleenex, calculators. Books. Anyone could afford to buy those; and if we all work very hard for a long time, maybe a few of us will have them again.”
“What did you bring up?” Horrie Jackson demanded.
“General store,” Adolf Weigley said. “Did you get any of that stuff on Forrester’s list? Solvent? Ammonia? Any of that?”
“No.” Tim held up the bag. When they opened it they found a bottle of liquid soap and a Kalliroscope. They all looked at him strangely — all but Jason Gillcuddy, who put his hand on Tim’s shoulders. “You’re not in shape to dive again today,” he said.
“Give me half an hour. I’ll go down again,” Tim said.
Horrie Jackson dug further into Tim’s goody bag. Fishhooks and fishing line. A vacuum tin of pipe tobacco. The peanuts: Horrie opened the tin, passed it around. Tim took a handful. They tasted like… a cocktail party in progress.
“Diving can do funny things to your head,” he said, and knew at once that that wasn’t the explanation. All the world that he had lost was down there under the water, turning to garbage.
Gillcuddy said, “Here. One sip left.” He handed Tim a bottle of Heublein Whiskey Sour that Tim didn’t even remember stowing. One sip, a blast of nostalgia on the palate, and he threw the bottle far over the water. And there, sinister specks on the eastern horizon, were the boats of the New Brotherhood.
“Start the motor. Horrie, start the motor quick. They’ll cut us off,” he said. He strained forward for details, catching his balance when the motor started up, but all he could see was a lot of little boats and one much larger… a barge, with things on it. “They’ve got a gun platform, I think.”
Expendables
It was nor their fault that no one had told them that the real function of an army is to fight and that a soldier’s destiny — which few escape — is to suffer, and if need be, to die.
Dan Forrester looked exhausted. He sat in the wheelchair Mayor Seitz had brought up from the valley convalescent home, and he was plainly fighting off sleep. He was padded against the cold: a blanket, a windbreaker with hood, flannel shirt and two sweaters, one of which was three sizes too big; that one he wore backward. A .22 bullet would not have reached his skin.
The dairy barn was unheated. Outside, the wind howled at twenty-five miles an hour, with gusts at twice that. It blew thin flurries of snow and sleet. The swaying gasoline lantern threw out a bright ring of light, leaving shadows of lunar blackness in the contours of the concrete barn.
Three men and two women took turns rotating the cement mixer by hand, while others shoveled powders into it. Two of red, one of aluminum powder, while the dry cement mixer turned. When the powders were well mixed, others took them out and put them in cans and jars, then cast plaster of parts around them.
Maureen Jellison came in and shook the snow from her hair. She watched from the door for a moment, then went to Forrester’s wheelchair. He didn’t see her, and she shook his shoulder. “Dan. Dr. Forrester.”
He looked up with glazed eyes. “Yes?”
“Do you need anything? Coffee? Tea?”
He thought that through, slowly. “No. I don’t drink coffee or tea. Something with sugar in it? A Coke. Or just sugar water. Hot sugar water.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, please.” What I need, he thought, is fresh insulin. There’s nobody here who knows how to prepare that. If they ever give me the time I can do it myself, but first… “First thing is to bring the benefits of civilization back to the Stronghold.”
“What?”
“I might have known I’d walk into a war,” he told Maureen. “I was looking for the haves. The have-nots were bound to be somewhere around.”