Summer Of The Apocalypse Part 15

"Ten minutes, tops," said Eric. They turned onto West Aberdeen Avenue. When he was five, he had chased an ice cream truck down this street. He'd delivered papers here when he was twelve. He knew who lived in most of the houses. The white-bricked one with the lavender trim belonged to the Stewarts, whose two daughters were on the student senate at the school. The Isenbergs lived in the cedar house. Their son, Chaim, was the only Jew Eric knew. Beyond them were the Johnsons, the Cardwells and the Gizzys. All with busted in windows and no signs of life. Home, he thought, I'm nearly home. Leda said, "A couple of week ago, gangs started going around setting cars on fire, breaking windows, beating anyone well enough to be on the street. Not just kids either. Old guys. Sick, angry. People shot anyone coming to their doors. Scary stuff. They were just afraid, I guess, and they couldn't do anything about it, so they lashed out." She brushed hair away from her face, then waved her hand at the houses.

"Probably this happened late. One or two guys with baseball bats or something, fever just starting, little bit of itch in their throats. Nothing left to do. Everybody dying and all that gla.s.s unbroken. Must have seemed like some kind of metaphor."

Eric sighed gratefully; his shoulders relaxed, and he realized how tense he'd been. It was the most she had spoken since this morning.

A movement behind a mini-van parked in the Gizzy's driveway across the street caught his attention. A Doberman, its ears up and pointed, watched them intently. As they pa.s.sed, Eric saw that its muzzle was torn, and part of the side of its head was ripped as if it had been in a fight or had collided with some barbed wire.

Leda continued, "Of course, the gangs only lasted a few days. The bug caught 'em, or the National Guard or the helicopter boys."

The Doberman stood. Another dog, a collie, emerged from the shadows by the house and joined him. A couple others lay in the shadow, their mouths open, panting.

"That's a big dog," said Leda. It stepped toward them. "Nice puppy," she said.

"Looks well fed." Eric scanned the ground for a rock or stick, but gra.s.s lapped against the sidewalk, and the dead roses in the flower bed sprawled over mud. He shuffled along sideways, keeping his face toward the dog. Sweat beaded under his arms although it was still cool. "What do you think he's been eating?"

"Gross thought," said Leda, walking backwards, watching the dog. "Kibbles and Bits?" Growling and stiff-legged, the Doberman crossed the gutter onto the edge of the street. Leda raised her hand over her head and mimed a throw. It ducked and retreated a step, then started barking. The other dogs stood, heads low, growling deep.

Eric said, "They don't seem too friendly. Maybe we just need to get out of their territory." He remembered dogs from when he carried papers, and he thought he recognized the collie from the Kissle's house up the block. It had always greeted him at the door with s...o...b..ry licks on his hands when he collected once a month, but it didn't look playful now with its lips raised off its gums and its tail straight down and still.

Eric kept moving, thirty feet, fifty feet. Heads low, the dogs crossed the street, matching their pace. The Doberman led, still barking: loud, repet.i.tive, explosive, insane-sounding.

"How big's their territory?" asked Leda. Her low, calm voice comforted Eric. He swallowed dryly. Step by step, the dogs advanced.

Eric said, "No sudden movements." Then the other three dogs started barking. "Run!" he yelled, and he sprinted up the lawn.

Arms pumping, breath tight, Leda beside him, he headed for the broken picture window above a knee-high growth of shrubbery. Barking stopped, but a frantic clatter of claws on asphalt spurred him on. He thought of his Achilles tendons, unsocked, glaring below the short pants, crying out "Meat, meat, meat." And he knew the thought should have been funny, but it wasn't. He dove through the window, trying not to land on the broken gla.s.s, Leda right with him, and they slid across a hardwood floor into a gray and blue pin-striped sofa. A Tiffany lamp on an end table, teetered, fell, and shattered on the floor. "Up! Up!" he yelled, pulling on her arm. Barking boomed outside the window, and he saw them hesitating. He thought, maybe going into a strange house was too new for these dogs who'd learned to adapt so fast. The Doberman circled twice, howling, all black gums and shiny teeth, then charged the bushes, the others in tow.

"s.h.i.t!" Leda pushed him in the back, and they scrambled into a short hall with three closed doors. Eric tugged at the first door k.n.o.b, and it didn't turn, then things began to slow down for him, became almost dream like. Leda reached for the k.n.o.b when Eric's hand slipped off. She'd cut her palm; a shallow flap of skin waved free and blood streaked her wrist. Her dark hair hung down, covering her face. Eric thought, we'll have to get that cut wrapped.

Still, while he stared at her wrist (a drop of blood broke free and floated lazily to the floor), since so many horrible things had happened to him in the last few days, since so many times he'd been running or scared, the oddness of his detachment occurred to him. He thought, four months ago I was going to school, watching MTV, and now I'm hoping a stranger, an older woman I slept with last night, can get a door open in sombody's house before a man-eater dog can attack me. He thought it almost laughable. A scratching noise in the living room and then a series of thuds told him of the dogs' progress. Then a distinct metallic sound from beyond the locked door. Leda pulled, and he heard from the other side a semi-loud c.h.i.n.k-c.h.i.n.k, like someone shaking a bottle full of coins up once then down. I know that sound, thought Eric.

"Get away!" hissed a voice on the other side.

Leda looked toward him in surprise, her hair flying in her face in slow motion, her own teeth bared, her hand on the k.n.o.b. The Doberman rounded the corner, tensed his thighs and sprang for Leda's throat. A connection flashed in Eric's mind, a sound memory from a scene in Terminator II: Linda Hamilton stalking the second terminator, the one made of liquid metal. Mad as h.e.l.l, she marched toward it, her one arm hurt or broken, and in the other hand she held a pump shotgun. In a real strength move, one that marveled Eric then, she chambered a sh.e.l.l home with one hand. She jerked the gun up and down once. c.h.i.n.k-c.h.i.n.k.

Eric caught Leda's arm and threw himself backwards. Her head jerked. The dog sailed toward them. They fell.

Suspended, the Doberman hung in the air, mouth agape, teeth luminous.

Then a section of the door blasted out, catching the Doberman, throwing it against the wall. It almost seemed to stick for a moment, and Eric thought he saw, in the second before it slid wetly to the floor, a look of profound disappointment in its furious face. Cordite and burnt wood smoke eddied to the ceiling. Cowering, the other dogs stood at the entrance to the hallway. Eric thought, I didn't even hear the shotgun.

c.h.i.n.k-c.h.i.n.k.

Grabbing Leda's collar, Eric scrambled backwards to the next door, which swung open easily under his pressure. Still on his backside, he pulled Leda after him. She kicked the door shut.

"You're choking me," she gasped, and he let go of her collar.

"Get out of my house!" screamed a voice, and the roar of the gun was deafening this time. In the hollow ringing that followed the explosion, the sound of alphabet blocks scattering across the floor seemed unnaturally loud.

"Get away from my baby!"

On the wall adjoining the other room stood a crib, a tightly sheeted bundle resting in the exact middle of a bare mattress. c.h.i.n.k-c.h.i.n.k. Another sh.e.l.l in the chamber! thought Eric. A pie plate-sized hole appeared in the wall, knocking a corner off the crib blowing sheetrock dust in on them. Eric stood, picked up a kid's rocking chair and heaved it through the unbroken window. While Leda flopped a blanket over the ragged knives of gla.s.s and went through the opening first, the repet.i.tive metallic c.o.c.king of the gun followed by a click beat out a manic rhythm, and a rising wail penetrated the wall. Filled with grief and death, and hardly human, the sound chased them out of the house. Later, after they'd crossed two more lawns, pa.s.sed through two more picture windows (careful to yell out before entering, "Anyone home?"), down two more bedroomed hallways, shutting doors behind them, and crawled out two more bedroom windows to throw off the dogs. They sat with their backs against a sun warm cinder block garden wall.

Eric said, "Looks like you cut your hand."

Sweat soaked Leda's maroon shirt in wide circles from her armpits to the her belt. Her head was back and her eyes closed. "Yeah." She breathed deeply and when she exhaled, she shuddered. "Guess not everybody's dead yet." Quietly she watched as he tore a sleeve off the shirt, then wrapped her hand. Next to them, water dripped sporadically from drooping branches of a willow. Nearly touching the gra.s.s, the longest branches appeared to set the drops down as if they were washing the ground, or baptizing it. Silence stretched between thema"she sat, cradling her hand in her lap, staring blankly across the gra.s.sa"but the silence calmed Eric. He didn't feel awful about her anymore, sad that she hated him, but not upset. They'd shared s.e.x and near death, and of the two, death was more overwhelming. Nearly dying unites people, he thought. "How long do you think we were in that house?" he asked, making small talk. He guessed that the whole incident from the time they dove through the picture window until they hurdled the chain link fence in the back yard was less than a minute.

"An hour and a half... a lifetime," said Leda.

Faraway, dogs barked. Eric listened intently; they didn't seem to begetting closer. "Let's go," he said.

"We're nearly there."

Leda nodded and pushed herself upright.

When they rounded the corner onto Panorama St. a few minutes later, and his house finally came into view, he thought, how will I face him? They turned up the driveway. What will I say? Gla.s.s sprinkled the front yard here too. One of the curtains hung outside the window. He thought, I'm not the same as I was a week ago. I'm not the same kid.

He opened the front door.

Chapter Nineteen.

SACRIFICIAL BOOKS.

That's an elaborate story," the quaky voice on the other side of the door said after Eric finished explaining who they were and why they were in the library's bas.e.m.e.nt. The voice, who had introduced himself as a Gone Time survivor, asked, "How do I know you're not just a clever liar?" Despite the quiver, the voice seemed learned, each word carefully p.r.o.nounced.

Eric pressed his forehead against the wood. Outside, the bullhorned announcement boomed over and over, "Give up your books for the good of the people." His feet hurt. Water from the tunnel had soaked his boots, and now his feet felt hot and damp.

"Let us in," Eric said, exasperated. "I tell you, I'm seventy-five years old and have walked all the way from Littleton because I thought you might be able to help us. My friend here lives in the mountains. We don't have anything to do with those people threatening the library."

"So you say. If you are seventy-five, than you're lucky to have got this far." The voice sounded as old as Eric felt.

"Ask me something from the Gone Time. Not something I could have read in a book. If you 're as old as you say you are, then you 'll know what to ask."

Through the wood, Eric heard a whispered discussion, but he couldn't catch any of the words. Sour-faced, Teach sat on the trap door at the bottom of the stairs behind Eric, sc.r.a.ping the last of the muck off his water-darkened moccasins.

Finally, the voice said, "Okay. Three questions. If you answer them correctly, then we will open the door. If not... we will use the Old Science against you, and you will die." Eric smiled wryly at the phrase "old science" and the doomsday tone the voice used to say it. He guessed that the people in the building, whoever they were, had held off Federal's men with such a warning, but it sounded ridiculous to him, almost superst.i.tious.

"Ask away," Eric said.

The three questions were, "What did the phrase, 'Plastic or paper?' mean? What exactly was the Pepsi Generation? and, What was call waiting?"

After he answered, several locks clicked, then the door swung open revealing the same white-smocked, elderly woman who'd surprised them as they exited the tunnel, and a truly ancient appearing man in a wheel chair.

Nearly bald except for a fringe of wispy white hair that reached to his collar, and dark liver spots that marred the smooth skin on his head, he scrutinized Eric through a milky-gray cataract haze, but he seemed to see fine as Eric crossed the threshold. The woman stepped protectively to the old man's side. Eric looked past them. His eyes widened. Rows of books stretched behind the man in the wheelchair, thousands and thousands of books, lit only by narrow shafts that slipped through the cracks between the boards on the windows. Grinning broadly through yellowed and broken teeth, the old man extended his hand toward Eric. "I'm Pope," he said, "the Librarian. I thought Federal had killed all of the Gone Timers but myself."

"Yes," said Eric, and shook his hand absently. As far as he could see, stretching into the darkness, from floor to ceiling, were books. He walked past the old man, down the nearest row, trailing his fingers across the bindings. "Yes," he repeated. Eric thought, I'm here at last, and the books survived. A smile ached on his face. Fatigue dropped away from his legs and back. Leda, he thought, if you could only see this. You were right, about the learning, about the persistence of knowledge. At thirty-nine, when she'd discovered she was pregnant, she'd said, "The child has to be taught, Eric. Promise me that we'll teach him to read." Even after fifteen years together he still shivered in amazement at her love. Her dark hair framed her face, and the only signs of age were tiny crow's-feet in her eyes'

corners, but her gaze was so intense that he'd been taken aback. "Of course," he said. "Why wouldn't he?"

She hadn't smiled, didn't break the stare. She'd said, "If something happens to me, you will have to be his teacher."

Not enough light penetrated for him to see t.i.tles, but the backs of the books felt fine and solid. He pa.s.sed his fingers across the embossed letters of a thick, leather-covered volume, then inhaled deeply and smelled the library smell, millions of pages pressed together, the weight of thought and information heavy in the air. "Oh, Leda," he whispered. "Oh, Troy."

Something lightly touched the back of Eric's leg. Pope sat in his chair beside him. Eric had not heard the chair rolling. "We share our time in books, don't we?" whispered Pope. "This has been my life work." Eric grasped Pope's wrist and squeezed gently. "They are beautiful." Deeper back in the rows, more narrow streaks of sun penetrated through the boarded windows, casting thin, b.u.t.tery light on other books standing neatly on dustless metal shelves.

From behind him, the woman said, "We ought to go upstairs. It's not safe down here." Reluctantly, Eric turned away to follow Pope, the old woman and Teach to an elevator. "How do you power it?" asked Eric.

Raising himself slightly from the chair, Pope pushed the up b.u.t.ton and the doors slid open. "Generators on the roof and solar panels spread throughout the campus." Eric, Teach and the woman stepped into the elevator. Pope blocked the doors with his chair. "Tell me again why you're here." He rested his chin on his chest as Eric told him of the troubles in Littleton, of the illnesses and stillbirths. Pope nodded his head slightly at each detail, as if in agreement.

Teach cleared his throat after a few minutes of this. "Seems like a closet's an uncomfortable place to get to know each other."

Pope let the door close and pressed a b.u.t.ton. Teach's shock as the elevator rumbled into movement tickled Eric.

On the second story, a muslin curtain covered one tall, partially open cas.e.m.e.nt window that overlooked the quad in front of the library. Pope said, "We can see out, but they can't see in." Seven large army tents filled the back third of the gra.s.sless area, and five heavy machine gun nests built of sand bags faced the structure. Behind the tents, and on both sides between red stone buildings, the ubiquitous scrub and greasewood stood, a wall of tough vegetation that encircled the camp. The loudspeaker, still blaring its message about giving up the books, hung from a pole beside the middle gun nest. A few yards from the broad marble steps that led to where Eric guessed were the front doors a rolled barb wire fence blocked the entrance. Behind that, a ditch paralleled the long front of the building. By leaning close to the muslin, Eric saw the ditch and wire made a neat ninety-degree turn at the far corner. No soldiers were visible.

Pope said, "Federal surrounded us two weeks ago. It is pathetic, really. His men lie in that ditch, watching twenty-four hours a day. Meanwhile, my people come and go as they please through the tunnels. They think the buildings are haunted, because of us, so they are even unaware of the tunnel entrances."

"People?" said Teach.

Pope squinted at the big man. "A library requires more manpower than you would suspect."

"What do they want?" asked Eric. He wondered if the men who had carried out the execution the day before were in the camp now. A soldier dressed in green, pushing a wheelbarrow, appeared between the tents and headed for the library. He dumped his load between the machine guns and the ditch. Eric strained to see what the small pile was. A second soldier followed the first with a similar wheelbarrow, and after him the line continued.

"Books," the woman whispered. "Oh, Pope. Do you think they've found the Chemistry library, or the Bio lab's?"

"So much for the ghosts," said Eric.

"The traps would not discourage them forever," said Pope grimly. "It doesn't matter if they did." Despite his words, he still sagged into his chair, as if someone had severed one of his strings. More books joined the pile, a barrow load every few seconds.

The message booming over the loudspeaker clicked off. Through the open window came the thud of books piling onto books and the metallic squeal of the barrow wheels as the low stack grew and spread out.

Teach said, "Why the library? What's he want?"

More books. .h.i.t the ground. Eric looked back. The old woman gripped Pope's shoulder; he had closed his eyes. Behind them, rows of books spanned the distance from light to dark. Shadowy gla.s.s display cases stood beside dusty tables, and Eric imagined students working quietly, heads down, pens scratching notes.

"Many things, I suppose. Federal knows knowledge is power. He fears our existence here. The books frighten him. The building itself too maybe. The campus. We foiled him in Commerce City by luck. I did not even know of him," wheezed Pope. "I had sent an expedition to warn them about the water, and all but the stubborn moved north and into the mountains three days before Federal arrived. He conscripted the remaining young men, killed most of the others and tortured the oldest to find out where the rest had gone. An eleven-year-old girl saw it all from hiding and warned us of his approach. We had time to prepare." He coughed dryly into the flat of his hand and wiped it with a handkerchief the old woman gave him. "Federal thinks he is the new Genghis Khan, riding with his warriors over the wastes of the world. He thinks we will oppose him, so he decided to eliminate us first. He thinks that our power comes from the books. Just the Old Science between him and a crown. The man who would be king of nothing." Pope coughed again, then said to the woman, "Contact the staff. Events are moving faster than I planned." She nodded and disappeared between the rows.

"Why nothing?" Eric paid attention to the men piling books. At first he thought that they were innumerable, the uniformed men coming like an infinite line of men and wheelbarrows, but he'd seen the same soldiers several times now, and he realized there must be only fifty or so of them.

"We have preparations to make. But come, I will show you why Federal is a fool." Pope turned his chair and wheeled himself to the elevator. When he reached the doors, he looked back at Eric as if to say something, then frowned. "Where is your young companion?" Teach had gone. Puzzled, Eric said, "My grandson and two of his friends may have followed us here. Perhaps Teach went to look for them."

Pope grimaced. "That complicates matters, but nothing can be done about it." Another floor up, Pope led Eric into what looked like a fully equipped radio lab. Silver and black consoles packed a counter top that ran around the large room. Eric found the soft, electric lighting bouncing off the dust-free surfaces nostalgic, reminding him of his dentist's office, everything clean and fingerprintless.

"Federal's ambitions may be larger than the world. Do you know anything about SETI?" asked Pope as he flipped several switches. A low, subsonic hum that Eric felt in his teeth filled the room. Pope continued. "It was the Search of Extraterrestrial Intelligence. C.U. took part, as did numerous other universities, building huge radio dishes aimed at the stars specifically with the idea of picking up other civilization's signals." Two large speakers mounted next to the ceiling on shelves hissed into life when Pope rotated a dial on a console packed with needle gauges. Lightly, the smell of ozone and warming electrical components filled the room. "We never found any. Why not?" He twisted another dial, and the speakers crackled as Pope rotated through the radio bands. "The SETI project theorists struggled with several possibilities: one, we weren't searching the right bands. Maybe extraterrestrial communicated with gravity waves or ESP. Two, our equipment wasn't sensitive enough to pick up their signals, or three, we were alone."

He threw a switch and spoke into a microphone. "Staff members," he said, "take your positions. We are at. . ." He glanced at his watch."... five minutes and holding. Wait for my signal please." Then he continued, as if he hadn't interrupted himself. "Millions of star systems with planets are within radio distance of Earth." Pope hunched forward. The dial he reached for was an uncomfortable reach for a man in a wheel chair. "Millions of chances for intelligent life to develop, and it might have. But time is vast, and maybe intelligent life isn't stable. Perhaps it's an evolutionary dead end. Intelligence just flickers in time and we have missed it all around us in our own eighty-year radio flicker." He rotated the dial from one extreme to the other, and only light static came from the speakers.

a.s.sembled on the shelf next to the radio array sat an obviously home-made panel. Over a hundred toggle switches pointed down, each neatly labeled with a number. On the wall, along with other charts, diagrams and pictures, hung a map of the campus with corresponding numbers marking buildings and the gaps between them. Pope flipped a switch to one side of the panel, and small lights glowed red above all but two of the switches. He tapped them both with his fingernail. One lit, but the other stayed dark. He spoke into the microphone again. "Davis or Courtney, check connections on fifty-seven." A speaker crackled on the radio panel, and a s.e.xless, nervous sounding voice said, "Fifty-seven. Yes, sir."

"What's all this?" asked Eric. He bent down and looked past Pope's knees and under the shelf. A ma.s.sive bundle of wires from the panel plunged through a sloppy hole in the sheet rock.

"Old science for Federal," said Pope. "As I said, we had warning he was coming. But I've always known about him. My real preparations started the summer I realized I wasn't going to die in the plague, sixty years ago."

Pope turned off the panel lights and sighed deeply, and in the sigh Eric heard a profound sadness. "It is difficult to accept, but all the evidence, all rational thought argues that humanity is the sole intelligence in the universe. There is no one out there."

Pope went back to the radio array and rotated the dial again. Other than a steady beeping that Pope identified as a satellite signal, he found nothing. He said, "But I'm not scanning the stars anymore. My equipment is now tuned to receive Earth's signals, and I have picked up no other stations for years. I am searching the right bands. My equipment is sensitive enough. Like the SETI project years ago, I am left with only theories to explain this. One, n.o.body else is signaling, or two, we are alone. Undamaged radio equipment must exist everywhere, in every corner of the Earth. The ability to power it, and the knowledge to use it must still survive if the percentage of surviving population is similar elsewhere as it was here. I now ask the same questions that deviled SETI. Why are the radio waves empty? Why has no one visited us?" Pope's milky eyes blazed at Eric; his knuckles whitened on the wheel chair arms. The same voice broke in on the radio again. "Loose wire at fifty-seven. Should be good now, Sir." Eric thought of the small parties of explorers who had left Littleton over the years, one trying for Colorado Springs, one for Kansas City, one for Salt Lake City, that had never come back.

"I have concluded that rational thought must argue all of the rest of human kind is dead. The planet is empty of intelligence except for this narrow strip in the Rocky Mountains," said Pope.

"That doesn't make sense. Why would we be the only ones left? Diseases don't strike geographically." Eric searched for an argument. Surely Pope must be wrong, he thought. Surely more than a few hundred people survived. But he thought again of Littleton's isolation. Why hadn't they been contacted? Where had all the young explorers gone? He said, "It didn't miss Colorado. So many died here too!" Eric remembered sitting on his porch in Littleton the last few years. As the sun dropped below the peaks and cast their long shadows across the plains, he'd imagined little communities like his own, dotted across the country. Only s.p.a.ce and the need to attend to the daily needs of survival kept them isolated. But the sense of those other people, the sure faith in their existence, had inspired him as he rocked in his chair watching the eastern horizon darken. A wall of pink-lined clouds had caught the last of the sun; an evening breeze ruffled the edge of the blanket he'd draped on his lap. He had been resting from a long day. We'll fill the highways again, he'd thought. We'll expand ourselves and be great again. Humanity has been set back, but this is only temporary. Knowledge will heal and bind us. He was ashamed to remember he'd then thought that the plague might have been a good thing. He'd thought that before, too. We were close to killing ourselves at times. Overpopulation, territorial jealousies, friction over historical occupation of the land had caused war and suffering. As the last of the sun edged the mountains pink, he'd thought, no one's shooting at each other in the Golan Heights. They aren't lobbing Molotov c.o.c.ktails in Dublin anymore.

He said, "Why might they all die everywhere else?"

Pope cut the power to the radio. "The plague began it, but my guess is we did the rest ourselves. Various, persistent toxins, I believe, both nuclear and chemical. At least in the Rocky Mountain region, the water table has gotten worse. The farther from the Continental Divide, the worse it is. The community in Commerce City, for example, drank from a water supply that had become increasingly poison. Too much upstream: rotting, underground gasoline tanks, stored pesticides and chemical solvents that were leaking from their barrels. I don't know what all caused it. Maybe just buildings and cars and roads melting back into the land."

With one push on his wheels, he crossed the room, opened a cabinet and took down what looked like a walkie-talkie, but where Eric expected to see speakers, there were instead several switches. Pope shrugged wryly. "It's a poetic image, don't you think? All our cities and factories, houses and stores, dissolving in the rain like sugar cubes, and all their toxins stored within and beneath them letting go, one corroded storage container after another. In Commerce City, the people were getting sick. Babies miscarried or were born deformed. I sent them into the mountains."

"That's what's happening in Littleton too. Is it our water?" Eric thought of the South Platte that ran by the edge of town. Most water came from there, but the stream had been crystal clear for years, its water sweet and cool. "Should we move up into the mountains too?"

"Mountains may be the last to go, but they'll go if the pollution continues." Pope linked his fingers across his chest and closed his eyes, squeezing a tear in their corners. "It's getting worse, I told you. We started measuring here thirty years ago when we began losing contact with other survivors. The water table's going bad, and the lower in elevation you go, the higher the toxin level is. I can't tell from herea"there is no way to know without sending an expeditiona"but the seas may be sick. Nothing is more downstream than the sea."

Ripple's words about upstream and downstream came back to Eric. She'd said of the Gone Timers, "They took upstream and disposed downstream like upstream was forever and no one lived below." In the background, an amplified voice started shouting again, but the words were indistinct in the windowless room. Raising a hand, Pope pointed to a chart hung on a wall. "Somehow we poisoned the water, and if the sea dies, we will die too. Most of our breathing air comes from ocean-based photosynthesis, but I've been graphing other changes in the air."

A timeline marked the bottom of the chart, and a line starting at five years after the plague climbed like stair steps to today. In the last five years, the steps came closer together.

"What's being measured here?" asked Eric. His thinking centered on Pope's last words. Surely he is wrong, thought Eric. The water table may be polluted, but it has to vary! A local problem in some places maybe, but not a global onea"not one that could take in the sea. In the books somewhere there must be a solution!

Outside, the voice shouted incessantly. Pope twitched a finger toward the main library area.

"Push me, would you? My arms aren't what they once were, and we need to keep an eye on him." Grabbing the handles, Eric maneuvered the chair through the door and toward another muslin-covered window. When they reached it, Pope plugged an AC adapter from the walkie-talkie into a wall socket. On the quad below, the pile of books had grown to several feet thick.

"Remember the nuclear accident at Chern.o.byl?" Pope waited for Eric to nod. "The graph shows the rise in air-borne radiation. The plague killed too quickly. Not all nuclear power plants around the world must have been shut down safely. What I think we are seeing here in each one of these jumps . . ." He drew in the air the stair steps on the graph. ". . . is a power plant losing containment. They are burning and pumping radiation into the atmosphere."

An image of a slowly rising tide of poisons came to Eric. Each year his community could move higher, but in the end there would be no place to retreat to, and the air could kill them before they reached the top.

"Is this what you see?" asked Eric, thinking of his own vision. "That humanity is finished?" He thought, if all this is true, then why try to save the library? What's to be gained? The last barrow full of books. .h.i.t the pile, and soldiers scurried around the pod, picking up guns, heading this way and that. As if answering the thought, and not the question, Pope said, "As long as we live, we live. I have work to do here, and I am not ready to quit it quite yet." He cranked open the small ventilation window that rested at the bottom of the tall, narrow expanse of gla.s.s so they could hear the loudspeaker. "Besides, I still want to deal with Federal."

"But why?" Eric wanted to collapse. As quickly as the euphoria of seeing the books had come, the weight of his age had returned. "Why not walk away and give him the library if he's going to die anyway?" Through the open window, the voice boomed, "Surrender the library or we burn the books." Beside the stack, two soldiers stood with torches. Two others flanked them, their M-16s held ready at waist level. The rest had taken positions in the ditches; some pointed their guns at the library doors, while others watched the roof and windows.

Pope said, "Fairly illogical request, don't you think? I know his intent is to burn these books too. He knows I know that. What makes him think the threat to burn part of the books would make me give him the rest?"