The corridor made a left bend and at the far end where the corridor stopped there were two ornate wooden doors, like something one might expect forming the doorway of a conference room.
“You will go inside and await the Ministers,” the one who had spoken earlier told him, opening the right hand door. Michael noticed the door handle. It looked to be made of gold and ornately figured. “What about you guys?” Michael asked.
“The Ministers will see you.” The man held open the door. Michael walked through. The room was lit with conventional-looking ceiling fixtures, but bulbs rather than the fluorescent tubes which would have been more in keeping with the room, he thought.
A long, expensive-looking conference table dominated the center of the room, space to sit perhaps two dozen people: mentally, subcon-sciously, he began counting the chairs—twenty-eight, one larger chair at each end. At the far end, before the larger of the two largest chairs, were two candles, but neither candle was lit. He was alone in the room as far as he could ascertain. He looked to the walls on each side of the room, and then to the wall on the far side of the room. Murals, crudely painted, very stylized, at once modern, primitive and yet almost juvenile, filled the walls. His mouth was suddenly dry. It was the Night of The War, cities burning, missiles raining down from the skies. He had seen none of this where they had taken shelter that night in the barn opposite their house. But he had heard the stories around the campfires of the Resistance, remem-bered the stories his father had told of overflying the cities that night as they were systematically turned to ashes. Both flanking walls depicted this horror and he looked away from it, to a horror that had been worse, one he had seen, did remember, could never forget. It was the last sunrise, the holocaust, the end of the world, the sky aflame, lightning bolts crackling through the skies, ball lightning rolling across the ground, bodies on fire—death.
“These have meaning to you, young man?”
He turned around. The conference room doors closed. There were seven men, all in immaculately tailored business suits and red fabric bedroom slippers, their ages varying from younger than his own to what he judged might be late seventies. The same voice—the oldest one of them was slightly bent, balding to the point where a wispy fringe of white crowned the sides of his head, the light from the overhead bulbs gleaming dully off his head. “You remember this from stories?” “I saw this—with my own eyes—the holocaust, when the skies caught fire.”
“Heresy,” one of the others murmured.
“But I—I am very old, and I saw none of this.”
“It’s a long story—but we utilized a special scientific process, for cryogenic sleep.”
“What is this cryo—this—“
“Cryogenic sleep.”
“We?”
“My father and mother, my sister, our two friends. The six of us. We’d thought we were the only people left alive.”
“You wear shoes of leather, boy.”
Michael Rourke looked at his feet, and then at their own. “They were made five centuries ago but well-cared for.”
The old one who had done all of the speaking except for the word “heresy” laughed.
“Five-hundred-year-old shoes on a five-hundred-year-old man who looks to be perhaps thirty years old—
“I turn thirty next month—but what I say is true. Who are you?” Michael asked.
“I am the man who will decide your fate, along with my six associates.”
Michael Rourke licked his lips. “What is the Place?”
“It is our home.” The old one smiled, almost laughing.
“Who are Them?”
“Outcasts, young man—they are outcasts.”
“From where?”
“From the Place, outcasts sent from the Place over the course of the last several decades.”
“Where is Madison?”
“She who was Madison fifteen, until it was decided she would be one who goes?”
“Yes—the one you call Madison fifteen.”
“She was called that, but she is called nothing now.” Michael started for the old one, but the man raised his hands, palms outward and he smiled. “For the moment, this girl is quite safe and quite well. You will see her again, I assure you.”
“I came here in peace. I saved Madison from the ones you call Them. I forced her to bring me here. I search for people of my own kind. Do you have aircraft?” “Machines which fly? Of course not.”
“Someone does—there was a crash. I couldn’t find the wreckage. But the pilot—I found his parachute. And he was being killed by Them. That’s how I came to rescue Madison. I only came for knowledge—not for violence. Believe that.” “You came with the guns. This one is called a handgun,I think?”
“Yes—a handgun.”
“And the other one—it is called?”
“An automatic rifle.” He said nothing of his knowledge of the arsenal which he had gained from Madison.
“We have many such implements, but they are never used. They are dusted, they are given oil—“ “Where do you get oil from?”
“Peanuts which we grow. We distill an oil to a specific formula given to us over the ages.”
“Why do you keep guns if you don’t have a use for them?” “They were used by our progenitors and have religious value to us and this is why we preserve them. But we do not need to make shoot with them.” “To make shoot,” Michael repeated. “Right.” He wished he smoked like his father had. “Listen —I came in peace. Give me my guns, give me the girl—I’ll leave with her.”
“Your guns have been added to ours. There they shall remain.”
“Fine—gimme the girl, then. You keep the guns.” “We will not give you the girl and allow you to leave, as you say, because then you might tell others of this place.”
“There are no others,” Michael told him. “Except the cannibals. No others. Whoever came in that plane, I don’t know where he came from, and even if I did, I wouldn’t tell him about you—if you let us go in peace.” “Have you no curiosity, young man—about us? We have about you. Tell us your story and we shall tell you ours.”
“I’d love to, but maybe some other time. I’ll bring Madison back to visit or something.”
The old one laughed. “A sense of humor—my goodness. How refreshing.”
“Thanks. Now—“
“No. We shall recount our story. We have never before had the chance,” and the old man started from the doors and crossed near Michael. Michael felt the temptation to reach out and throttle the man, use him as a wedge to get past the others and find Madison and escape. The old man just looked at him. “If you attack me, it will gain you nothing. It is nearly time that I become one who goes. Harming me, or the threat of harming me will not gain your freedom from here. But you must be curious.”
“All right, I’m curious—tell me.”
The old man smiled and Michael noticed that a cataract partially covered his left eye. “Do you have doctors?” Michael asked as the old man shuffled toward the head of the table, “We have healers but an attempt to prolong the time before one goes is forbidden.”
“Super—just let people die.”
“One does not do this thing you say, young man—one goes.” The old man was easing into the largest chair, before the two candies. “You go outside and get torn apart by those can-nibals like you sent Madison.
You die—pure and simple.”
The old man laughed.
The other six men moved about the room, one lighting the two candles at the head of the conference table, another opening a wall safe behind an inset wood carving in the back wall, the carving out of place amid the mural of the end of the world. From the safe, another of the six assisting him, he withdrew two books. One was leather-bound and the size of a Bible or un-abridged dictionary, the other smaller, leather-bound as well, but the size of a diary. “What are those?” Michael asked.