“kitten, try thinking just the number 48.” Dani spoke quietly, reassuringly. Then he turned to Warhol, “three at once is probably too many.”
A few seconds later, kitten’s voice was triumphant. “Got it.”
“Right now, can you hold that one and look for 97?” kitten nodded and closed her eyes. Again it took a few seconds before her “got it” sounded soft and clear. The third beacon was located quickly. “I’ve got all three Colonel.”
Warhol nodded and the portal generator operators started to push power into the circuit. Kitten had been isolated now, with luck the days when opening a portal would be painful were gone. A few seconds later, the telephone built into the system rang. Warhol picked it up and listened carefully. “Dani, kitten, the portal the other end opened exactly where it was supposed to. This is a good day’s work people. Any plans for the rest of the day.”
Dani thought for a second. “I’m going to sell all our stock in airlines and bus companies.”
Chapter Forty Seven
Sapulpa, Oklahoma, USA
Some things are never forgotten. They may be a sudden, violent event that brands itself on the memory by the sheer unexpectedness of its horror. Or they may be the result of years of suffering that slowly grind the memory into the configuration that makes their grim truth indelible. For the Sampsons, both now over eighty years old, their memories of the dust bowl were moulded by the years they had endured the repeated storms. John Sampson remembered the choking clouds of dust that reduced visibility to a few feet and killed people by filling their lungs with dirt. His father had been a farmer until the great dust storms had literally blown his land away. His crops had gone, his cattle had starved. Only the government Drought Relief Service had saved them by buying the emaciated cattle at well over market price. The starved beasts were too wasted to slaughter for meat, instead, they had been shot and buried.
Ellen’s memories were of a different kind but no less vivid. She remembered the dust that seeped into the house no matter how carefully the doors were closed and sealed. Her mother had soaked strips of sheet in a mixture of flour and water before spreading them over the window and door frames. Every time she had hoped that this would be the storm when she got it right, when the dust wouldn’t fill her house. Every time, she had been heartbreakingly disappointed. The storm would strike their home, the dust would enter and the air inside turn hazy as it permeated every nook and cranny. Ellen Sampson remembered her baby brother choking to death on the dust before he reached his third month of life. Her mother had never recovered from the loss, she had spent days sitting in the one room of their home, listening to the wind howling outside. She’d done that until the day she’d taken the family shotgun and blown out her brains.
The government had done what it could, it had taught the farmers to use new techniques that conserved the soil and trapped water. They had paid the homesteaders a dollar an acre to use ideas such as crop rotation, strip farming, contour plowing and terracing. The payments took the grinding poverty out of the dustbowl but they didn’t solve the basic problem. It had taken the return of regular rain after a decade of drought to do that.
By then, John Sampson and his family had given up and left. They’d become ‘Okies’, migrant workers desperately seeking somewhere they could live and earn a regular wage. For years that had been a seemingly-impossible dream, but it was John Sampson that had achieved the family goal. He had managed, he wasn’t quite sure how, to land a job at the Lockheed aircraft factory. He’d started by sweeping the floor, trying to close his eyes to the dust that reminded him of their lost farm in Oklahoma. Then, he’d been promoted to the assembly line where he’d started to earn real money. By the time war had broken out, he had made it to foreman and the Sampson family lived comfortably. Then, he’d been transferred back to Oklahoma, to help set up a satellite production line in Lawton. That was where he’d met Ellen, one of thousands of young women recruited to help produce the aircraft America needed to win the war. Their marriage had lasted for sixty years.
Some things are never forgotten. John Sampson had driven to the local plaza to collect the week’s groceries, using a significant fraction of his weekly gasoline ration to do it. In some ways, there was a strange comfort in that, the use of coupons and vouchers for their shopping took him back to the days of World War Two when his life had been in front of him. Despite the rationing, he and his wife lived comfortably. They both had good pensions, their children had long left to live their own lives and now only appeared when there was a holiday or a new grandchild to display. So, the weekly shopping trip was no very great imposition. Only, this time Sampson had noted how the wind was already increasing while the sun beat down with a steady leaden glare. Sampson knew that glare well, and as he drove he had watched the horizon upwind. He knew what he was looking for and every time he scanned the horizon he was afraid that he would see it.
“John, there’s something wrong isn’t there?” Ellen Sampson was staring at the horizon as well.
“I’ve got everything we had listed. You know, I really think things are getting a little easier now. I got us two nice steaks for our dinner tonight.” Yes, steak was back in the stores and the gasoline ration had been increased. Sampson felt a little sorry for the people who had bought diesel-engined cars and trucks. Diesel fuel was all taken up by the armed forces and what little they didn’t need was given to other armies that were running short. No diesel for civilians but there was a little gasoline for those who needed it. As senior citizens, the Sampsons had an extra ration allowance. After all, nobody could expect an eighty year old couple to walk five miles to the store.
“I didn’t mean the stores John. I remember weather like this from when I was a child. There’s a storm coming.” She meant a dust storm but her memories stopped her from using the words.
The couple went inside their home. Ellen started to cook the steaks her husband had brought while he went around the house, ensuring everything was closed down and sealed. He kept the thought to himself but running through his mind also were the memories of the dust bowl and the 1930s. He took comfort in the fact that houses now were very different from the shacks that had been built back then. The windows in their home didn’t have opening frames, they were fixed shut to let the air conditioning work more efficiently. The house had no chimney to let the dust in and the doors all had draft excluders. Perhaps this time it would be different.
By the time they had finished eating, the wind had picked up still further. They were washing the dishes together when Sampson glanced out of the window and saw the sight he had been fearing. The horizon had changed, what had once been an array of fields was now dominated by a reddish-black cloud, one that was sweeping towards them with frightening speed.
“Ellen, it’s a Black Lizard. They’ve come back.”
His wife looked out of the window and saw the cloud of dust approaching. “Oh no. Not again. Please, I don’t think I can stand it, not again.” Tears trickled out of the corners of her eyes as she watched the clouds that were now towering over them, the wind wailing and twisting the dust into strange, abstract patterns. Sampson hugged her as the dust storm hit their house.
The force of the impact shook the whole house, causing shudders to run through the structure. Their oven opened as the door fell down and the newly-washed plates in the sink started rattling with the vibration. What really changed things was the darkness. It was as if a switch had been flipped, the day went from early afternoon to blackest midnight without any warning or transition period. Ellen Sampson panicked as she fumbled for the light switch, then sighed with relief as the main room lights came on. Her husband had remembered how the Black Lizard shut out the light and had known exactly how to reach the switch in the pitch darkness. Outside the howling of the wind picked up as the main body of the storm reached them.