Selection Event (19 page)

The next question was whether she was alone. The nearest trees were thirty or forty feet away and too narrow to conceal anyone. Several clumps of weedy bushes were closer, but he could see through enough parts of them to know no one was hiding there.

He slipped the fingers of his left hand under Isha's collar, glanced down to check that the butt of the pistol was free of his shirt, and stepped away from his cover, across the sidewalk, across the street and to the edge of the park.

“Hello,” he said. “Are you alone?”

She looked up, closed her book on her finger, and said, “Yes. Are you going to rape me?”

The question startled him. It was one he knew he should answer immediately, but he couldn't seem to get the words together fast enough.

“No. No, I wasn't thinking about it.”

“Okay,” she said. “So you weren't thinking about it then, but are you thinking about it now?”

“No, I'm not going to rape you, all right?”

“Yes, it's all right with me,” she said, still holding her book on her crossed knees with her finger marking her place.

If this were the old world, he would have walked away from her in an instant, but she was the first woman who had spoken to him in over a year. He gazed at her in fascination. She was younger than he, in her early twenties, and she wore faded jeans and a man's white shirt. She had long straight brown hair, parted in the middle.

“Why were you driving around honking today and advertising for people to come here?” she asked.

“I got lonely,” he said. “By the way, my name is Martin.”

She looked at him several moments. “I'm Moreen.”

“I thought if a few survivors got together, it might make all our lives a little easier.”

“My life's easy enough. Hell is other people.” She still looked at him, not moving anything but her lips when she talked, not even her eyes. She was an attractive woman with light brown eyes, high cheek bones, and full lips. The way she looked directly at him made it seem that she could speak nothing but obvious truth.

“Look,” Martin said, “I thought the people that were left could help each other out. And I'd like some company. Maybe you wouldn't. It's my choice to offer; it's your choice to refuse.”

She still sat there looking at him, holding the place in her book as though she might continue reading as soon as he stopped bothering her.

“If you were afraid you might be raped, why did you come here?”

“I wasn't afraid,” she said. “There are crazy people around. I just wanted to know if that's what you had in mind.”

He looked at her looking at him. “No, it isn't,” he said. “Not now, not later, and I'm not crazy.”

“Crazy people don't know if they're crazy. But sometimes they say they are and think they're fooling other people. So you can't ever tell.” She reached down and stroked Isha's head. “You have a nice dog. I've never seen a collie except on TV.”

While telling himself to be cautious, to be observant, Martin told her about Isha and asked her if she'd had any pets. She told him about a horse she'd had, a dog, her guppies, and her voice began to take on some color and life.

After a pause, Martin said, “Look, I have a place with running water, food, and a little electricity. And I also have a car a few blocks away. You're welcome to share my house — with your own room and a locking door. Or not. Your choice. No expectations of you except some company and conversation.”

She looked at him a moment longer, opened up her book where she had kept her finger the whole time, bent the corner of the page over, closed the book and stood up and said, “Okay.”

He asked her if she had anything that she wanted to bring along and she said no. Halfway to his house, she mentioned that it had been raining a lot. Yes, he agreed, it had. The sky's still funny, she had said, and he agreed with that too.

Chapter 33

As he hung his belt and pistol on the chair in the kitchen, she walked ahead of him into the living room and looked around. He liked the way her hips filled out her jeans and how they moved when she walked. At least it was something to look at.

She said, “You have a cat.” Mona slept curled up on the sofa and looked like a pillow.

“Just the three of us,” Martin said. “Hungry? I've got a whole room full of food. A functioning stove and refrigerator.”

She nodded and said, “No thanks. I ate a couple of hours ago.” Her voice was smooth and slow, and she spoke in a drifty sort of way that left no space between the words. “I found a house where the people had cached a year's worth of food.”

“I have some soft drinks or would you like a beer?”

“I don't drink alcohol.”

“Sit anywhere.”

“I don't mind standing for a while.” From where she stood she gazed around at the furniture and the books on the shelves. Her eyes kept going back to Mona.

Martin stood there and she stood there. It made him feel like he was in someone else's house.

“I'm trying to be hospitable,” he said, almost exasperated. He sat down and Isha quickly positioned herself beside his chair with her muzzle resting on her forelegs, watching Moreen without being too obvious about it.

“Sorry,” she said. She sat on the sofa at the end opposite Mona, who looked around sleepily and then ignored everything. “I don't want anything. I'm not used to being around anybody.”

“Tell me why you're alive,” Martin said.

“I was up in the mountains.”

He waited for her to go on, but that seemed like the extent of her answer. He had thought that having someone around would make him feel comfortable and happy, but it was making him feel even more isolated.

Martin leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and spoke aloud what he was thinking: “Am I doing something wrong, something that bothers you?”

She looked at him without expression.

“Look,” he said. “This is a new world, a new place. Back in the old world, people lied a lot, were defensive, said what they thought would get them what they wanted. People were worried that somebody would take advantage of them. But look at what's left. You and me.”

She looked at him, same as before, with no expression.

“I had this feeling,” Martin continued, “when I saw everyone was gone and I was one of the few left, that people would be a little more considerate of each other, less defensive. Judging from the people I've met so far, it was a stupid assumption for me to make.”

“You want me to be friendlier,” she said, still without expression.

“You could talk to me. That's how people get to know each other.”

“And the upshot of all this, now or a week from now, is that you get me in bed.”

Martin slouched. Beside him, Isha moved only her eyes, from him to her and back to him. “I'll be honest with you, even if it drives you away: it had crossed my mind. But raping you hadn't crossed my mind, if you're still worried about that.”

“It would, sooner or later.” She craned her head forward a little, her long hair moving along the sides of her face like a curtain in motion. “I don't need anything from you or from anyone else or from this world. I don't eat much, I don't drink much, I don't talk much. It's what I am now. I'll leave if you want.”

She looked at him blankly. He wondered if she was crazy of if he just hadn't caught on to her yet.

“I was up in the mountains on a religious retreat. I was at a friend's cabin, fasting and meditating. I called my mother and she told me my daughter and ex-husband were dead and that I should stay where I was. I wanted to go back home, but God told me to stay where I was. Finally, when I called her, my mother didn't answer her phone anymore and I knew what had happened. So I stayed where I was. Till last month.”

“You were isolated. So was I.” He told her why.

 She nodded. “God put me up there and kept me safe there. He spoke to me. In his way. In his mercy, he saved me. And you.”

Martin couldn't help himself. “He mercifully spared us after killing your daughter, the woman I wanted to marry, our parents, and, what, seven billion others? That's mercy to write home about.” With every catastrophe, one god or another was always there to be thanked, because humans seemed to think they deserved a memorable disaster every once in a while.

“You're trying to provoke me,” she said. “I won't be provoked.”

“I'm going to fix us something to eat.” He stood up and went toward the kitchen with Isha at his heels.

While Martin boiled some pasta, he fed Isha and Mona, heated up some spaghetti sauce, some corn with a little hot sauce in it, and some asparagus. The food he divided between their plates.

His annoyance with her dissolved as they ate. He was about to ask about her family when she said, “God talks to me.”

That got his attention.

Evening had darkened the room, and within the falls of her hair, her face was concealed by shadow. “As long as I fast and keep myself apart from the world, He talks to me.”

“What does he say? Predictions? Do this or don't do that?” It was hard not to be smart with someone who had god's ear.

“It's... good-feeling. He lets me know I'm doing the right thing. It isn't words exactly. But that's why I don't want you to rape me. It would make me a part of this world and God would stop talking to me.”

“I enjoy being part of his world. I try to avoid the alternative.”

“I can't eat this.”

“Then don't.” Now he was mad at her again. The food, the offering he was making to her, the gift, she was rejecting. “Does it smell bad, or is it your theology?”

“It smells good.”

“So what's wrong with it?”

She looked up at him, light gleamed in her eyes, and then she lowered her head again. But he had figured out what she meant.

“It's warm and smells good,” he said, “and you think if you like it that God will stop talking to you. You're afraid you'll like something about the world.”

She nodded minutely.

“So as long as you keep having a bad time, deprive yourself, and see to it that your life stinks, you're closer to god and he talks to you.”

“You make it ugly,” she whispered.

“Why would god treat you that way?”

She said nothing.

People had been punishing themselves for thousands of years, in big ways and in small, to bring themselves closer to their deities. It was a Middle Ages attitude, right there in front of him.

“If he spoke to you, you'd understand.” Her voice had an edge this time.

Martin was thinking that if god spoke to him, he wouldn't consider it a sign of good health. He didn't say this.

“If you don't want to enjoy the food, wait till it's cold,” he said. “Pour salt over everything. Do what you want.” He ate with a vengeance now, tasting nothing, finishing his plate in minutes so he could get away from her. Her disgust with the world reminded him too much of how he used to be.

While he rinsed off his plate, he said to her, “There's a bedroom down the hall. And there's a lock on the inside of the door.”

“I'll sleep on the floor.”

“Fine. I'll bring you a pillow and some blankets. It'll be cool tonight.”

“I won't need them.”

“Maybe I could find you some rocks to sleep on.”

“No thank you.”

“I'm going out to walk around a little, see what's happening outside. You can come if you want. If you have a good time, I can hit you with a stick.” He slammed the door behind him and hoped she wouldn't follow.

Out on the sidewalk, Isha and Mona beside him, he walked along the street through the deep twilight. Near the western horizon, the sky was cream colored; higher up it was dirty yellow and then it grayed into charcoal overhead. The starlings were out now, hundreds of them, making shuddering whistles and squeaks as they picked through the lawns and gutters.

He walked to the first intersection before he calmed down enough to think straight. He'd had illusions of finding someone who would have been as happy as he was to have some company. Someone he could talk with about the past, who could fill in some blanks, and could talk with him about the future.

Instead, there was Moreen, who had her own program and it didn't include him. It didn't include much of anything except making sure she could be miserable and talk to god. Tomorrow he'd ask her to leave. She'd probably be happier sleeping out in the open, hungry, stalked by wolves.

Why couldn't people leave the dead world behind and get on with discovering a new life, a new country? It might end up being miserable or fatal, but it might not be, and anyway, there it was, waiting to be dealt with.

He thought about Delana. When he was separated from her, he wanted so badly to see her — in his memory she was always lovely, clever, and attentive. But when they were together, it was less than ideal. Sometimes she was grumpy or remote; sometimes he was. Sometimes they argued, sometimes they thought they were talking about the same thing and weren't. Sometimes he made excuses for leaving her apartment early. Sometimes she did the same.

He thought about that, watching the starlings and the charcoal gray sky creep closer to the horizon. Mona watched the birds wide-eyed and made several tentative stalking runs at them. Their noise and flapping wings frightened her enough to hold her back.