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“Your every need, since you arrived, we’ve met. Food, medical care, clothing, entertainment.” His mouth stretches into a sneer. “But perhaps you have other needs to which we have neglected to attend?”
“I don’t think I understand,” I say.
“Well, of course you don’t,” he says, and winks at me. “You’ve enjoyed the food here, no doubt. You’ve enjoyed the lodging here, equally without doubt. Perhaps,” he says, smirking at the other elders, “you should also enjoy the girls, if you want. That could be easily arranged.”
A few of the men snicker. It sounds like titter, titter.
“Your comrade in arms, Epap, has availed himself of the girls here. And there’s more than enough to go a
round. I’m sure you’ve seen how many pretty ones we have here. We keep the … less appealing ones out on the farm, out of harm’s way.”
“Out of sight, out of mind,” an elder offers, to the sound of more guffaws.
“See,” Krugman says after a moment, “this is the part where you laugh along with us. Where we slap you on the back, take you by the shoulders, lead you to the viewing room.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I say.
“The little thing is uninitiated.” The elder who says this, a tall man with squirrely eyes, taps his fingers atop his protruding stomach. The other men laugh along with him.
“The lad is a little uptight, poor thing,” Krugman says. “Repression has wound him up. Really, we should have been more considerate of his needs. Shall we, then? Head to the viewing room? Girls in abundance there.”
Sissy speaks behind me. “I don’t think so. But speaking of abundance … how do you have so much food? Where do you get all the supplies from? And what of the medicine, the tools, the dining silver, the glass—”
“You have questions, I see,” Krugman says, regarding us with cool, assessing eyes. For a protracted moment, no one speaks. Then he smiles with his engaging charisma again. “And you will not be satisfied until you have answers,” he says, in a not-unfriendly tone. “Like little cats, you two. Two curious little cats. Meowing away like street cats in heat.”
One of the elders smiles, his lips parting crooked.
Krugman sniffs, studies the fortress wall. “Come then,” he says, pointing outside, “I’d be more than happy to comply. But let’s go to my office, shall we? It’s in the corner tower of the wall. Not too far, a short walk from here.”
Right then, the closed door behind Krugman opens. A young girl starts walking out, her hair disheveled, pressed up on one side. She startles at the sight of all the men, pulls the blanket tighter around her body, quickly over the slight slip of shoulder skin. Her head shoots down, she mumbles an apology, then slides back inside, closing the door.
Nobody says anything. Then Krugman turns back around, facing everyone, his expression beaming. “Well,” he says, his vinegary breath fanning toward me. “She’s certainly been ‘initiated.’”
The roar of laughter in the tavern shakes the floorboards. And even after we exit the tavern and head toward Krugman’s office, the trill of laughter follows us. On each side of the street, doe-eyed girls stop and bow.
22
AS KRUGMAN AND his two henchmen, along with Sissy and I, cross the cobbled town square, Krugman points above us. A long cable stretches from the roof of a nearby cottage out toward the fortress wall. “That cable line supplies my office with power,” Krugman says. “For all my toys and gadgets I keep there. Easiest way to find my office is to look up. The power cable will lead you right there.”
It does. Right out of the cluster of cottages, off the cobblestone path, into the meadows. All the way to Krugman’s office located in the corner tower of the fortress wall.
We climb up a tight spiral staircase inside the wall, the metal clanging under our boots as we corkscrew upward. At the top, we’re led down a long corridor and into his office. It’s impressive. Floor-to-ceiling windows span the diameter of the office and frame an impressive, panoramic view. The sharp, crisp tone of the interior is softened by the blending of traditional furniture. Rustic oak bookshelves line one side of the office, the shelves curiously empty of books but filled instead with framed pictures—clearly drawn by children—of rainbows and sunsets and ponies. On the other side of the office is a large flagstone fireplace. An oval carpet, wheat-colored with floral borders, lies in front of a fireplace. Above the fireplace hangs a framed painting of lush green meadows and blue lakes and flowers and a blazing hot yolk of a sun.
A girl—barely thirteen years old—steps forward. She serves each of the elders with a tumbler of whisky.
“Have a seat,” Krugman says, indicating an odd-looking sofa chair. We hesitate. “It’s called a chaise longue,” he says, noticing me studying it. “That’s the classic pronunciation, but of course, you wouldn’t know that. Look at that handwoven sea-grass base. The subtle creaking sound when you sit or lie on it, how it converts into a bed, just enough room for two to snuggle. The pared-down cushions, the organic aesthetics. Love it.” He smiles. “But you didn’t come here to ask about office décor, did you? Come, what questions burden you?”
Sissy and I look at each other. I start to speak, stop. I’m not sure how to begin.
Krugman, noting my struggle, smiles congenially. His chin presses inward, folding into a double chin. His black mole pops out, its hair fanning out like rat whiskers. He smiles, settles into his high-backed leather chair. “Here we are,” he says. “Have at me. With whatever ails you.”
I clear my throat. “First off, we want to thank you for everything. Your hospitality has been amazing, the welcome more than we could have ever dreamed. The food, the singing, the—”
“Where do the train tracks lead to?” Sissy says.
Krugman’s eyes swivel slowly around with relish, eyelids closing languidly before opening. They clamp down on Sissy like wet gums. It is almost as if he has been waiting for this very moment when he can finally stare at her unabated.
Sissy is unfazed by his look. “And that’s just to start with. Tell us why you were hardly surprised by our arrival. If I were living here and six travelers materialized out of nowhere, I’d be beyond myself with shock. Instead, it almost seemed like you were expecting us. Tell us why.”
“I can. It might take—”
“And tell us more about this village. Where do you get all the food? All the supplies. This furniture. The glass. The freaking piano. Up here in the mountain, you should be barely scraping by. Instead, you’re living in the lap of luxury. You might have impressed Epap and the others with this place, but to me, it all begs more suspicion than awe.”
“And tell us about the Scientist, about Elder Joseph,” I say. “How did he die? Who was he? When—”
Krugman smiles as if—
“… there’s something humorous about our questions?” Sissy says tersely, glaring at him.
Krugman leans back and bellows out laughter that jiggles his whole belly. The cyclopean mole on his chin peers out at us again. “Nayden nark, nayden nark,” he says, his eyes moistening. “I don’t think that at all. It’s just that the two of you are such a charming pair, the way you keep finishing each other’s thoughts. So cute.” He nods at the server. She walks past the two henchmen, leaving immediately.
“Fact is,” Krugman says as the office door swings shut, “I’ve been meaning to have this conversation with you. With Gene anyway. As the eldest male in the group, he’s the de jure leader, no?” He gets up from his chair, turns his back to us.
“It’ll be easier,” he says, “if I start at the very beginning. I don’t know how much you know, so let’s assume you know nothing.” For a long time, he stares outside. “This might be difficult for you to … accept. If at any moment you’d rather I—”
“We’re ready,” Sissy says. “Just tell us already.”
He slants his body sideways, staring outside. And that is how he speaks, not at us, but outside. “We call them duskers—the things that want to eat you, drink your blood.” Krugman turns to us. “But I see you’ve already been told. What do you call them? I’m rather curious, actually.”
“Nothing,” I say. “I mean, they’re just … people. We are the abnormalities, the freaks. The hepers.” I spit the last word out contemptuously.
“I’m about to tell you something that is going to, well, astound you, for lack of a better word. I’m sorry it’s coming at you all at once, but I’m afraid there’s no other way about it.” And now he angles himself back toward the window, keeping his eyes fixed on the distant mountains.
“Centuries ago, for reasons too complex to get into, the world was being torn apart by schism and faction between warring nations. The major superpower
s—called America, China, India—were amassing mind-boggling arsenals of nuclear, cyber, and biochemical weapons. Smaller nations, afraid of being left out, were forced to pick sides and fall in line. In a world saturated with nuclear, cyber, and biochemical arms, and stacked to the rim with every arsenal of counterattack, it became clear: nobody was going to pull the trigger. To do so would be to commit catastrophic suicide, to annihilate the whole world in hours, if not minutes. Everyone would lose, there would be no victor.
“And so ensued a different kind of arms race, the objective of which was not to amass the most weapons, but to build a new kind of weapon. A secret weapon so unconventional and unanticipated that it would both take out the unsuspecting enemy nations and allow an actual victor to emerge from the rubble. But what was this weapon? What would it look like, what would it be?”
One of the elders walks to Krugman, whisky bottle in hand. He refills Krugman’s tumbler. Krugman’s fingers whiten against the glass. He throws his head back, gulps his drink down.
He continues. “A small group of renegade scientists in a little island country named Sri Lanka tried to engineer a new kind of weapon. They called themselves the Ceylonites, a grandiose name for what was nothing more than a band of postgrad engineering students with too much time on their hands, too much school debt to repay, and who, during a global depression, could not turn down an entrepreneurial opportunity of a lifetime. To develop military arms: not nuclear, not cyber, not biochemical. But genetic.”
He gives off a shrill laugh, high-pitched, the kind that is not itself convinced of the underlying humor. “A genetic weapon. In short, a genetically mutated supersoldier. Resistant to nuclear fallout. Resistant to every form of biochemical warfare known to man. And, being fully fleshed and free of computer chips, resistant to cyberattack. And not just resistant, but resilient. A supersoldier capable of attacking not through the well-protected channels of the sky, air, and cybernet, but through boots on the ground. What nation maintained defense systems against a land campaign anymore? All land defenses had long fallen into disuse, crumbling Maginot Lines as sturdy and useful as the cobwebs that filled them. But a land campaign by resilient supersoldiers would be brutal, surprising, devastating. What if such a supersoldier could be genetically engineered?”
