The Fountain of Age (32 page)
Except for the very last photograph.
She saw me, that time. It was early morning. Dressed in the dreary brown pantsuit, she came out of her house, stood on her porch, and smiled at me where I waited in my car, camera raised. She even posed a little, as she had done that first day in the studio. Her smile was luminous, suffused with joy. Then she went back inside and closed the door.
The developed shot shows a woman dressed in some sort of gauzy robe, wings spread wide from her shoulders, skin lit from within. Her tiny silver horns catch the dawn light. Her tail wraps loosely around her body. She is beautiful.
But, then, she always was. What makes me unable to stop looking at the picture, what makes me so glad for her, is not her beauty. It is that, finally, the images in Anna’s mind are not of all those other people she can help but of herself, happy. He did that for her. He—whatever the hell he really is—gave her herself. That’s what Anna wanted me to see, on her porch that last day: What can happen when you change for someone else.
“Can” happen. Not “will.” No guarantees.
I frame the photo but I never hang it. I redouble my efforts to pick up clients, which makes both Carol and the electric company happy. I spend too much time at the fake Irish pub, sipping and thinking, and then thinking some more.
And eventually I pick up the phone and call Laurie.
My name is Jill. I am somewhere you can’t imagine, going somewhere even more unimaginable. If you think I like what I did to get here, you’re crazy.
Actually, I’m the one who’s crazy. You—any “you”—will never read this. But I have paper now, and a sort of pencil, and time. Lots and lots of time. So I will write what happened, all of it, as carefully as I can.
After all—why the hell not?
I went out very early one morning to look for food. Before dawn was safest for a woman alone. The boy-gangs had gone to bed, tired of attacking each other. The trucks from the city hadn’t arrived yet. That meant the garbage was pretty picked over, but it also meant most of the refugee camp wasn’t out scavenging. Most days I could find enough: a carrot stolen from somebody’s garden patch, my arm bloody from reaching through the barbed wire. Overlooked potato peelings under a pile of rags and glass. A can of stew thrown away by one of the soldiers on the base, but still half full. Soldiers on duty by the Dome were often careless. They got bored, with nothing to do.
That morning was cool but fair, with a pearly haze that the sun would burn off later. I wore all my clothing, for warmth, and my boots. Yesterday’s garbage load, I’d heard somebody say, was huge, so I had hopes. I hiked to my favorite spot, where garbage spills almost to the Dome wall. Maybe I’d find bread, or even fruit that wasn’t too rotten.
Instead I found the puppy.
Its eyes weren’t open yet and it squirmed along the bare ground, a scrawny brown-and-white mass with a tiny fluffy tail. Nearby was a fluid-soaked towel. Some sentimental fool had left the puppy there, hoping . . . what? It didn’t matter. Scrawny or not, there was some meat on the thing. I scooped it up.
The sun pushed above the horizon, flooding the haze with golden light.
I hate it when grief seizes me. I hate it and it’s dangerous, a violation of one of Jill’s Laws of Survival. I can go for weeks, months without thinking of my life before the War. Without remembering or feeling. Then something will strike me—a flower growing in the dump, a burst of birdsong, the stars on a clear night—and grief will hit me like the maglevs that no longer exist, a grief all the sharper because it contains the memory of joy. I can’t afford joy, which always comes with an astronomical price tag. I can’t even afford the grief that comes from the memory of living things, which is why it is only the flower, the birdsong, the morning sunlight that starts it. My grief was not for that puppy. I still intended to eat it.
But I heard a noise behind me and turned. The Dome wall was opening.
Who knew why the aliens put their Domes by garbage dumps, by waste pits, by radioactive cities? Who knew why aliens did anything?
There was a widespread belief in the camp that the aliens started the War. I’m old enough to know better. That was us, just like the global warming and the bio-crobes were us. The aliens didn’t even show up until the War was over and Raleigh was the northernmost city left on the East Coast and refugees poured south like mudslides. Including me. That’s when the ships landed and then turned into the huge gray Domes like upended bowls. I heard there were many Domes, some in other countries. The Army, what was left of it, threw tanks and bombs at ours. When they gave up, the refugees threw bullets and Molotov cocktails and prayers and graffiti and candle-light vigils and rain dances. Everything slid off and the Domes just sat there. And sat. And sat. Three years later, they were still sitting, silent and closed, although of course there were rumors to the contrary. There are always rumors. Personally, I’d never gotten over a slight disbelief that the Dome was there at all. Who would want to visit us?
The opening was small, no larger than a porthole, and about six feet above the ground. All I could see inside was a fog the same color as the Dome. Something came out, gliding quickly toward me. It took me a moment to realize it was a robot, a blue metal sphere above a hanging basket. It stopped a foot from my face and said, “This food for this dog.”
I could have run, or screamed, or at the least—the very least—looked around for a witness. I didn’t. The basket held a pile of fresh produce, green lettuce and deep purple eggplant and apples so shiny red they looked lacquered. And
peaches
. . . My mouth filled with sweet water. I couldn’t move.
The puppy whimpered.
My mother used to make fresh peach pie.
I scooped the food into my scavenger bag, laid the puppy in the basket, and backed away. The robot floated back into the Dome, which closed immediately. I sped back to my corrugated-tin and windowless hut and ate until I couldn’t hold any more. I slept, woke, and ate the rest, crouching in the dark so nobody else would see. All that fruit and vegetables gave me the runs, but it was worth it.
Peaches
.
Two weeks later, I brought another puppy to the Dome, the only survivor of a litter deep in the dump. I never knew what happened to the mother. I had to wait a long time outside the Dome before the blue sphere took the puppy in exchange for produce. Apparently the Dome would only open when there was no one else around to see. What were they afraid of? It’s not like PETA was going to show up.
The next day I traded three of the peaches to an old man in exchange for a small, mangy poodle. We didn’t look each other in the eye, but I nonetheless knew that his held tears. He limped hurriedly away. I kept the dog, which clearly wanted nothing to do with me, in my shack until very early morning and then took it to the Dome. It tried to escape but I’d tied a bit of rope onto its frayed collar. We sat outside the Dome in mutual dislike, waiting, as the sky paled slightly in the east. Gunshots sounded in the distance.
I have never owned a dog.
When the Dome finally opened, I gripped the dog’s rope and spoke to the robot. “Not fruit. Not vegetables. I want eggs and bread.”
The robot floated back inside.
Instantly I cursed myself. Eggs? Bread? I was crazy not to take what I could get. That was Law of Survival #1. Now there would be nothing. Eggs, bread . . .
crazy
. I glared at the dog and kicked it. It yelped, looked indignant, and tried to bite my boot.
The Dome opened again and the robot glided toward me. In the gloom I couldn’t see what was in the basket. In fact, I couldn’t see the basket. It wasn’t there. Mechanical tentacles shot out from the sphere and seized both me and the poodle. I cried out and the tentacles squeezed harder. Then I was flying through the air, the stupid dog suddenly howling beneath me, and we were carried through the Dome wall and inside.
Then nothing.
A nightmare room made of nightmare sound: barking, yelping, whimpering, snapping. I jerked awake, sat up, and discovered myself on a floating platform above a mass of dogs. Big dogs, small dogs, old dogs, puppies, sick dogs, dogs that looked all too healthy, flashing their forty-two teeth at me—why did I remember that number? From where? The largest and strongest dogs couldn’t quite reach me with their snaps, but they were trying.
“You are operative,” the blue metal sphere said, floating beside me. “Now we must begin. Here.”
Its basket held eggs and bread.
“Get them away!”
Obediently it floated off.
“Not the food! The dogs!”
“What to do with these dogs?”
“Put them in cages!” A large black animal—German shepherd or Boxer or something—had nearly closed its jaws on my ankle. The next bite might do it.
“Cages,” the metal sphere said in its uninflected mechanical voice. “Yes.”
“Son of a bitch!” The shepherd leaping high, had grazed my thigh; its spittle slimed my pants. “Raise the goddamn platform!”
“Yes.”
The platform floated so high, so that I had to duck my head to avoid hitting the ceiling. I peered over the edge and . . . no, that wasn’t possible. But it was happening. The floor was growing upright sticks, and the sticks were growing cross bars, and the crossbars were extending themselves into mesh tops . . . Within minutes, each dog was encased in a cage just large enough to hold its protesting body.
“What to do now?” the metal sphere asked.
I stared at it. I was, as far as I knew, the first human being to ever enter an alien Dome, I was trapped in a small room with feral caged dogs and a robot . . .
what to do now
?
“Why . . . why am I here?” I hated myself for the brief stammer and vowed it would not happen again. Law of Survival #2: Show no fear.
Would a metal sphere even recognize fear?
It said, “These dogs do not behave correctly.”
“Not behave correctly?”
“No.”
I looked down again at the slavering and snarling mass of dogs; how strong was that mesh on the cage tops? “What do you want them to do?”
“You want to see the presentation?”
“Not yet.” Law #3: Never volunteer for anything.
“What to do now?”
How the hell should I know? But the smell of the bread reached me and my stomach flopped. “Now to eat,” I said. “Give me the things in your basket.”
It did, and I tore into the bread like a wolf into deer. The real wolves below me increased their howling. When I’d eaten an entire loaf, I looked back at the metal sphere. “Have those dogs eaten?”
“Yes.”
“What did you give them?”
“Garbage.”
“
Garbage
? Why?”
“In hell they eat garbage.”
So even the robot thought this was Hell. Panic surged through me; I pushed it back. Surviving this would depend on staying steady. “Show me what you fed the dogs.”
“Yes.” A section of wall melted and garbage cascaded into the room, flowing greasily between the cages. I recognized it: It was exactly like the garbage I picked through every day, trucked out from a city I could no longer imagine and from the Army base I could not approach without being shot. Bloody rags, tin cans from before the War, shit, plastic bags, dead flowers, dead animals, dead electronics, cardboard, eggshells, paper, hair, bone, scraps of decaying food, glass shards, potato peelings, foam rubber, roaches, sneakers with holes, sagging furniture, corn cobs. The smell hit my stomach, newly distended with bread.
“You fed the dogs
that
?”
“Yes. They eat it in hell.”
Outside. Hell was outside, and of course that’s what the feral dogs ate, that’s all there was. But the metal sphere had produced fruit and lettuce and bread for me.
“You must give them better food. They eat that in . . . in hell because they can’t get anything else.”
“What to do now?”
It finally dawned on me—slow, I was too slow for this, only the quick survive—that the metal sphere had limited initiative along with its limited vocabulary. But it had made cages, made bread, made fruit—hadn’t it? Or was this stuff grown in some imaginable secret garden inside the Dome? “You must give the dogs meat.”
