"Looks like the inside of an atomic sub or something."
Treat snorted happily. "This isn't just any hole in the ground filled with gadgets," he said. "Oh no. This is part of me." He waved his arms to include the whole room. "Electronics, sonar, radar, all that technology is only an extension of the man who controls them. Shelter is what marks and protects the extremities of your body."
He waved at the wall of instruments. "My ears are twenty miles long. My temperature is fifty-eight degrees and falling exterior, a steady seventy-five interior. My skull can withstand a direct hit from any prenuclear warhead. My lungs can filter the bulkiest industrial waste or the tiniest subatomic particle. My stomach holds twenty years' supply of food and water. My excretions are solid cubes suitable for landfill or road construction. My skin will hold up against fire and ice. All I have to do is stay inside it. Chicken chow mein sound all right?"
"Fine."
Treat crossed to a panel of switches. He counted over and down and flicked one.
"At the sound of the tone," said a woman's voice, "the time will be eight twenty-seven — and ten seconds BOOP! At the sound of — "
He flicked it off. "Girl should be here any minute now. They got an activities bus drops them home. Might's well put the beans on."
Brian was having problems with the fluorescent lights. He seemed to be able to see the suspended gas molecules, to see the stream of electrons bolting through. He knew it was too small and too fast but he saw it just the same. He didn't even want to think about the dots on the carpet.
"At one time," said Treat, making his way to the wall of pullouts and appliances, "this area was lowest priority in the whole shootin match. All you had to worry about was the fallout and wind drift and all the secondary effects. So I sunk my money into a farm and built me a little civil-defense root cellar like the other folks around here had. The eyes were just beginning to dim a bit, doctors hadn't put the final word on them yet." He squatted and pulled out a huge drawer from the wall. Like a drawer in a morgue, filled with canned goods in compartments. Treat counted back and over, lifted one can, up and over and lifted another. He pushed the drawer shut with his foot.
"Then came the ironical part. The fellas in charge of dispersal at the Defense Department looked at a map and saw the same thing I did. Nothing here the other side would be interested in. So they laid in a slew of missile silos three miles down the road. Biological-testing station, it says on the fence, but I talked with some of the truckers bringing material in and it's nothing of the sort. Figured wherever I moved it'd be the same story, some damn thing drawing fire, so I made my stand here. Dug in."
The electric can-opener and stove were recessed into the wall, the empty cans went down a chute.
"Took three years to build and by the time they got around to the inside work my eyes were pert near gone, so I provided for it in the design. Everything fixed in its place. Not bad, huh? Made my bundle in aerospace after the War, circuitry design. Before all the federal money dried up. They'll be sorry though, the other side starts taking potshots from outer space and they'll wish they stayed behind the Program. Shortsighted sonsabitches." Treat groped in a utensil drawer for a spatula.
"Can I help with anything?" Brian wanted something to keep his mind off the dots. The mottles on the carpet were fluttering around like a cloud of moths.
"You just sit tight, young fella. Got everything I need at my fingertips." He pushed a pot against a lever and water streamed down to fill it. He laid it on a burner to boil.
"Talk to the people down to the school, up to town, you hear them laugh about the Mad Mole. That's what they've hung on me, 'the Mad Mole.' But when she finally hits the fan, and she's gonna one of these days, you'll see them swarming up top like locusts. Let us in, Mr. Treat, they'll say, save us. Save us. And I'll just flip on the loudspeaker and laugh my head off. You heard the story bout the grasshopper and the ant?"
"I think so. Yeah, the grasshopper never plans ahead or something."
"Right. Well I'm the ant." He opened a smaller drawer and pulled out a box of powdered milk. "I worked my tail off and I saved and I saved and I bought a hunk of security for myself and my little girl. Long as an ant stays in his network in the ground he's all set, can't be touched. I worry about the daughter when she's outside all day."
"They probably got drills and all," said Brian. "You know, civil defense." It seemed very important to act straight with Treat, to make a good impression. The weirder the old man got the more important it seemed.
Treat snorted and palmed the excess from the top of a cup of powdered milk.
"We used to have to face the wall and put our heads between our legs," said Brian, "close our eyes and cover our ears." He wanted to do it right then and there. His legs felt like they were tubular steel, bolted to the floor. He didn't dare try to lift a foot for fear he wouldn't be able to. "When I was little, first grade or so. A teacher would come by and tap us when it was through. They tried ringing the bell but some of the kids held their ears too tight to hear."
Treat shook his head. "That's all fine and dandy if you're far enough away from the contact point and if you're warned way in advance. See, first you've got your fireball flash, blinding light. Three seconds later is your primary heat flash, a little temperature rise and if you're lucky it won't fry you or burn up all your oxygen. Then comes a shock wave tearing buildings down and then is your radiation heat flash. You survive everything else and that radiation will still get you in a couple of hard weeks if you're not far enough from the blast. Don't tell me about drills, young fella. When she's out there at school it's like she's being held for ransom and every new morning there's another kidnapping. Don't tell me about drills."
Brian was silent. He touched things. He was really there.
Treat was stirring the milk powder into a pitcher of water. He held his hand steady and his face composed, it was clear he hadn't been born blind. "You drink milk?"
"Not much. Sometimes."
"Real milk?"
"Yeah, I guess so. You know, homogenized."
"Ever hear of strontium go?"
"Yeah. It was on a chemistry test."
"Got to be careful what you let into your body, son, what your let into your shelter. The enemy within is as dangerous as the fire from the sky."
"Yuh." The guy was a certified whacko. Brian noticed a full-length poster on a door at the end of the room. An adolescent rock star in a white leather jumpsuit.
"You're a pretty quiet young fella, aren't you? Got a lot on your mind I suppose."
"Yuh," said Brian. It felt now like blood was running from his left leg into pipes under the floor, through a complicated filter system and then pumped back up into his right leg. "I suppose."
"You kids, you don't talk so much, but you're deep thinkers. Maybe that's good, but it's hard to be around when you depend on your hearing. My little girl, my Derry, she's another deep thinker. Can't get two sentences out of her. But the gears are always turning in that head of hers, I can tell."
Treat perked his nose up as there was a short, deep note from the instrument panel.
"Must be her now."
There was another note, slightly higher.
"It's all done with pressure plates," he said. "You step in my periphery up there and I get a tone. The warmer you get, the closer to the trapdoor, the higher the tone gets."