Continuum 1, page 18
part #1 of Continuum Series
“Nuber? There was a town, Newburgh,” said Malachi. “I drove through it the summer I was eighteen. But that area of the Hudson Valley was destroyed, you know, in the floods and earthquakes.”
“This place is on higher ground, ten or fifteen miles inland.”
“You’re a New Yorker, sir?”
“I was born in Maryland. I have almost no memory of the old time. Barely five, the year of the war, and I spent my youth in witless sin and folly until I was given light. Andrew is my right hand,” he said, and smiled at the young man as they climbed the steps of Malachi’s porch. “We separated a few months ago so that he could explore western New York while we went through New England. Then he rejoined us in the north. Tell Mr. Peters about Nuber, Andrew.”
They settled on the porch, for the Preacher wanted to watch the preparation of the camp site in the meadow. Andrew spoke almost bookishly. “What they call Nuber is an area fifteen miles by twenty — say three hundred square miles — where there were wealthy estates in the old time, and some arable land too, not spoiled by commercial agriculture. Long before the last buildup of political tensions in 1993 the rich people of that region were running a private oligarchy, nominally within the American political framework. They had a little bit of foresight, enough intelligence to see that the commercial-technological rat race couldn’t keep up much longer — raw materials were running out for one thing — and they may have been wise enough to fear the end result of political insanity in a world with atomic power. At any rate they were much concerned with survival — their own, that is. According to their cult, so far as they had any beliefs, altruism was a bad word, and they had always considered their society as not much more than a source of loot and personal power. They dug in against the storm. They built underground refuges, hoarded enormous quantities of food, fuel, arms, ammunition. They couldn’t make new guns, but even now, I understand, there’s a miniature subterranean factory in Nuber that turns out gunpowder, and usable cartridges for the old weapons.”
“Nice people,” said Malachi.
“It is after all,” said Andrew sententiously, “a primary preoccupation of any dictatorial state.”
“Yes,” said Malachi. The Preacher watched the meadow.
“They shall be humbled,” said Jude, his voice sudden and harsh. His white hands knotted in front of him. “It is in Ezekiel: Moreover the word of the Lord came unto me, saying, Son of man, when the house of Israel dwelt in their own land, they defiled it by their own way and by their doings: their way was before me as the uncleanness of a removed woman. Wherefore I poured my fury upon them for the blood that they had shed upon the land, and their idols wherewith they had polluted it.”
“Amen,” said Andrew mildly. He might even have a sense of humor, Malachi thought, but his devotion was complete and obvious. Intelligence and literacy he possessed, both wholly at the service of Preacher Abraham. He continued: “They hired a lot of laborers, technicians, and a police force. Also a great many more personal servants than was usual among the rich at that time, paying high for them. Mostly they seem to have been following the advice of a man named Bridgeman, one of history’s little Hitlers. Before the world blew up the police were called security guards — I suppose nobody asked, security for what? Then the world did blow up, they did survive, the police force was an army, some of the technicians were a palace elite, Bridgeman was king in everything but name, and the blue-collar people and servants were slaves. Specifically, Mr. Peters. Nuber today makes no secret of being a slave-holding state. Bridgeman had a mint, turning out pretty gold and silver and copper money: trust him to think of that and grab control of it, among people who had thought all their lives that money was a paper fairy-tale told by themselves.”
“He must have known a little history.”
“Yes, Mr. Peters, but not enough to do him any good. His official title, by the way, assumed right after the twenty-minute war, was —” Andrew smiled, his young face pleasantly professorial. “Guess.”
“Couldn’t.”
“Secretary,” said Andrew. “Secretary of the Nuber Historical Society. Well, in a year or so he began hankering after something more like imperial purple, the name as well as the game, and somebody eager for his job stuck a ten-inch knife in his back, taking the job and the name of king. Bridgeman should have expected it: it was the kind of political operation Nuber was built to understand.”
Malachi asked: “Preacher Abraham, do you propose to advance on a vicious military state, with a horde of defenseless children? How? How and why?”
“I will first explain the why,” said Preacher Abraham. “Because it does seem impossible. Mr. Peters, the world cannot be saved unless we show God’s power in us by doing the seemingly impossible.”
“Oh,” said Malachi. “The world is sickened of attempts to save it. The world is saving itself now in the only way it has or ever can — by small, brave individual efforts at recovery now that the storm’s over. It will take centuries. Institutions have never done it and never will. Well, I see you don’t agree, you’re not hearing me.”
“To God nothing is impossible,” said the Preacher, as if he truly had not heard. “As to the how, Mr. Peters, we go there under God’s guidance. As I have been assured by his very voice.” His face was glowing. “Do not tell me this is a subjective experience — those wise little words! I know, Mr. Peters, I know! If we fail, then the failure itself is God’s will: we can only die in the Lord a little sooner than the natural time.”
“Have the children asked to die young?”
“You seem angry. The children understand, as perhaps you do not yet, the meaning of eternal life.” The Preacher rose. “Thank you for the meadow, Mr. Peters, and for this little time of rest.”
But Malachi had risen too and grasped his arm. The Preacher gazed back unmoving. “Preacher Abraham, will you allow me to come with you? Will you give me your light, as you see it, and perhaps — perhaps —”
“No one who wishes to follow me is refused,” said Preacher Abraham.
“I think he has no faith,” said Jude.
“If some follow me for the wrong reasons,” said Preacher Abraham mildly, “perhaps right reason will come later. We shall break camp early in the morning. Come to me then if you will.”
“Will you — stop in now and have something to eat?”
“Thank you, sir, but I see you keep goats and chickens. We must no longer exploit the captivity of living things. But thank you for the offer, which was kindly meant.”
Malachi sagged, watching the Preacher depart with Andrew and Jude. Tad sighed harshly. “I don’t think you sold him, Malachi.”
“Come inside, Tad. The elderberry’s near-about the best I’ve got. I distilled her some, see, and exploited her captivity in a bottle, sort of. Maybe she ain’t a living thing, though.”
“Seemed like one, time I sampled her last.” Tad reached for the glass, drank, and nibbled his lips. “She’s living.” Malachi dropped in his big armchair by the hearth, the armchair where Jesse discovered Shakespeare and Mark Twain and Melville. “You look a mite bushed, Malachi.”
“Am.”
“I a’n’t exactly making you out.”
“Could you look after this place a while, Tad? Feed the stock — and help yourself naturally. Keep an eye out the public doesn’t go off with the books for luck charms?”
“Could of course, Malachi.”
“Place’d be yours, come to that, I’m not back in a reasonable time. I’ll write that in the form of a will, tonight.”
“Jesus, Malachi, I don’t see you in one of them fucking nightgowns.”
“Maybe I’ll be let to keep my pants.” Malachi refilled his glass. “Jesse,” he said. “I believe Jesse is hooked on the New Jerusalem.”
Tad reached down a blacksmith’s hand to Malachi’s bowed scrawny shoulder. “Ayah. Uhha.”
“Why do we love?”
“I don’t know,” said Tad. “I’ll mind the house. No trouble.”
“Jesse,” said Malachi, and drank his glass empty, and flung it against the fireplace stones.
There are many new islands. Wherever the land was low to the west of the Green Mountains the climbing water intervened, carving them into new solitude. Littie islands, maybe good for a family and a farm if anyone chose to come; larger islands, where deer could breed, and bear, and the new-come coyotes, and wildcat. The toiling waters were fresh in the first few years except for flood rubbish and other pollution, then brackish as the vastly expanding Sea of St. Lawrence (but it was becoming easier to speak of the Lawrent Sea, or sometimes just the Lorenta) swallowed the Richelieu River, and the earthquake that destroyed St. Jean, Rouses Point, Plattsburg, a hundred other towns, brought southward the taste of ocean. In a few years another earthquake, another adjustment to the fearful stresses of the new weight of water on the land, flung together Lake George, Sacandaga, the upper tributaries of the Hudson, in a muddy boiling confusion. The Ontario Sea breaks through along the country that once knew Lake Oneida and the Mohawk River; some now call that passage Moha Water. Where the Lorenta and Hudson and Ontario Seas come together at the southeastern corner of the great Adirondack Island, outrageous complex tides tear about in a crazy Sabbat of the elements, and scour an unknown bottom. In the Year 9, they say, steam hung for six months over four hundred square miles of that tidal country; there was no one to go in under it and search for the cause. No volcano — none known, that is, not yet; but today there are hot springs along the southeastern coast of Adirondack that certainly did not exist in the old days.
At a place called Ticonderoga small sailing vessels can often make fair passage to and from Adirondack Island, passing out of sight of land for hardly more than an hour if the wind is right. Where the sea is narrower up in the north there’s too much jungle and, they say, malaria or something like it; the Ticonderoga crossing is the best. Then, if you must go south, there are several places — Herkimer, Fonda, Amsterdam — where Moha Water can be crossed with not much danger except from pirates. Amsterdam, to be sure, is a little too near the tidal country and its frequent mists, which the pirates are apt to understand better than the ferry captains do. The devils come nipping out from the heavily wooded shores in their canoe fleets — true savages, reversions to the Stone Age, many of whose grandfathers must have sold insurance, real estate, and advertising just like anybody.
As for crossing the Hudson Sea in the far south, that’s for professional heroes. Those tidal waves are treacherous and frightful. The pirates there have all the advantages, and they can do things with a lateen rig and a shallow craft that no decent sailor would think of doing unless he’d sold his soul to Shaitan. There, in fact, modern piracy may have developed; the canoe operators up north are imitators, amateurs. That corner of the world south of the Catskills needs more earthquakes. “The Crusaders will have rough travel, if they mean to go as far as Nuber.”
“Yes,” said Jesse, who had come to Malachi dragging his feet after Tad Doremus went home. Malachi was back on his porch; bats were darting in the cool air; at the far end of the meadow some of the children were singing. “But Andrew came north by way of Fonda, and he didn’t have any trouble. Malachi…”
“Get it off your mind.” Malachi patted the step beside him, and Jesse sat there. Malachi could feel his warmth. Wisdom, or fear, or that dismal blend of the two called caution prevented Malachi from putting an arm over the boy’s shoulder as he would have done an evening or two earlier.
“What does it mean when — when all of a sudden everything changes, like upside down — I mean, you start believing one or two things different, or even just try to think how it would be if you did believe those things, and then a hundred other things change, and — and —”
“Your syntax is slipping.”
“I know. I got excited.”
“Like turning the kaleidoscope?”
“Man, yes — it is like that, sort of.”
“I guess,” said Malachi presently, “it means you have to look at the new pattern… Do your folks know you’re thinking of leaving with the Preacher?”
“I haven’t been home,” said Jesse almost sullenly. “Gah, you always know everything. If I told ’em they’d lock me up till he’s gone, you know they would… Are you going to tell them?”
Malachi brooded. “If I intended to, I would tell you first. I don’t think of you as a child these days, Jesse.”
And Jesse thought in panic and misery: But I’m not ready — not ready to be anything else. Oh, it’s easy for YOU to be wise, Malachi! “Malachi, I — oh, I wish to God my old man — the — the bull —”
Jesse was lost in a sudden agony of weeping such as Malachi had never seen. It was easy then to take hold of him and cherish him as if he were still a child. “I know,” said Malachi, rocking him lightly. “I loved him too, your father. We used to play chess. He was a wonderful man, Jesse. Everybody knew it.”
“So how can you believe he’s dead? There has to be a — a — the Preacher — yes, I talked to the Preacher for a minute, and he blessed me. Don’t say anything, Malachi, just don’t say anything for a while.” He gasped and blew his nose. “I’m not going back to the house tonight. I’m to sleep in John’s tent. They’re going to have sandals for me.” He took the leather shoes from his neck, and set them inside the porch rail, his hands saying: So much for my stepfather. “Can I leave them there, Malachi?”
“Yes.”
“I guess you’re pretty disappointed with me.”
“No… Jesse, I am considering going with Preacher Abraham myself, for my own sake. I even spoke to him about it.”
Jesse started and turned his wet face to Malachi in the dusk. “You! Why?”
“Oh, let us say that sometimes I too find Melton Village to be a kind of dead end. I have worked for the town, and you might say loved it — an ugly duckling — ai-yah, Malachi’s Thing. But I need to learn what’s happening in a bigger world. I’ve got in a rut. Why, man, for more than your lifetime I’ve had no news of the world except what’s trickled in as gossip from the occasional traveler or tramp, most of it worthless. I expect. It’s shameful. I needed something to fetch me loose. Besides, Preacher Abraham interests me, and he said that no one who elected to follow him was refused. He has his own kind of wisdom. It’s not my kind, Jesse — I won’t pretend. But perhaps I can be of some use to him, who knows?”
Jesse’s stare would not let him go. “You’ve got other reasons. You’re not quite leveling with me, Malachi.”
“Maybe not. Not crooked either. Some things I find hard to explain, even to you. Suppose we just let it work out”
Jesse relaxed. “AH right” One of the natural surges of affection that made him what he was brought him back to Malachi, warm and close. He sat still with his head resting over Malachi’s heart, and said at last: “Well, I’m glad you’re coming along.” Then he was gone, walking down the meadow to the little camp fires.
Malachi carried the shoes indoors and put them away in an old trunk already loaded with history — the ancient kaleidoscope for instance, given to Malachi by his grandmother long before the Year Zero and still miraculously unbroken for Jesse’s brief pleasure and amusement; and his father’s diary that ended in the old year 1972, when the extinction of the Republic was obvious; and a photograph of a girl who had died with so many others in 1993.
The company of two hundred started in the early morning, marched east two or three miles to reach the old mountain road, and followed it south. They camped for the night where they could look toward distant Burlington Ruins, an old wound of flood and earthquake never healed. Malachi slept alone that night under the big dark. He had brought on his back a rolled blanket and change of clothing. He contributed a sack of potatoes to the general supply and whatever else he could find that seemed innocent in the Crusaders” terms. He also wore at his belt his old hunting knife, which Preacher Abraham deplored. “I cut my food with it,” said Malachi, “and sometimes I whittle. And no, sir, I’ll decline the tunic for the present and just wear these.” They studied each other, antagonists not too unfriendly; Malachi perhaps had an advantage in knowing where the true conflict lay. “Now if you can persuade me of the existence of God, Preacher, I will wear the tunic and throw away my knife. But don’t rush it, sir. I’m inclined to make up my mind on my own time. Meanwhile let me be the oddity among you. I wash and I don’t eat little girls.” The Preacher brooded and then smiled, and surprisingly patted Malachi’s arm before he turned away to more important matters.
At home Malachi had often slept outdoors, in his back yard or out in the meadow. He knew the Pleiades, and the wandering of the planets and the stars. He had found his strength more than equal to the day’s march, and was healthily tired. The camp-fires burned low; Malachi noticed Jude and one or two others taking up sentry duty out at the fringes of the light. Then someone — Malachi could not see him in the dark -sounded on a bugle the ancient army music of Taps. How did it happen the Preacher had resurrected that, and did he have any idea of the far-off associations of ideas? After the music died slowly — no one can hear it unmoved — there was a rhythmic murmuring all through the camp; it ended all in the same moment, and Malachi understood it was the sound of the children praying. Somewhere among them, Jesse, snug in a tent with the disciple John and three or four others. It would take Jesse no time to learn the words and rituals: he was always a quick study. Malachi sighed, and after less pain than he had feared, he slept.
In hilly country Preacher Abraham did not demand of his children more than twelve to fifteen miles of marching in a day. A majority of them, Malachi guessed as the march resumed in the morning, would have been delighted to exceed that. But an army, and sometimes a civilization, must proceed at the pace of its weakest marcher. Some were very young. The mue-girl Dinah, twelve years old, slight and small with the patient look of sainthood, had a defect in her knee-structure that made her stiff-legged and slow. Whenever she tired Jude carried her. These were the only times when his haggard face lost its frown and became tender; but with that frail burden he could make no speed himself.
