interior door, a rechargeable flashlight in his jacket, the light swaying as he moved.
The barred hermetically sealed door. He opened this—cold. The air seemed somehow thinner to him. But he could breathe it. He had tested the Geiger counter against the luminous face of the Rolex. But it read nothing now. He checked it against the watch face again—the radiation detector worked. But there was no high level of background radiation. Rourke climbed through the tunnel, securing the hermetically sealed door behind him. He kept climbing upward, toward the final door. Did a viable world lay above it?
He worked away the bar. The rubber gasket still had its integrity but the rubber was a little dry—he made a mental note to lubricate it. He used the Geiger counter again with the door only open a small crack so he could close it quickly.
No alarming level of background radiation.
He opened the door, turning his face away, putting on the glasses. There was no way to test for ozone content. Skin cancer was a risk he would endure—but the signs of excessive incoming solar radiation would show up quickly. He moved through the last door into the blinding sunlight. Squinting against it, despite the dark-lensed glasses, he climbed out, exhausted from the climb, muscle weary, his breathing labored—the air was rarer than it had been but that was to be expected.
The digital readout on the cryogenic chamber had shown 481 years to have passed. v He stood up—around him was desert, at the base of the mountain and beyond. Binoculars—he took the Bushnells from their case at his side. Shivering again against the cold, he estimated the ambient temperature in the fifties and it was midday.
He focused the Bushnell eight-by-thirtys—in the far distance, there was green, patches of it, like sparse grass.
John Rourke dropped to his knees—half from exhaustion and half from a more compelling necessity.
He made the sign of the cross.
Chapter Two
Still using the escape tunnel and keeping the main entrance sealed, Rourke sortied into the world often throughout the next several days, testing the atmosphere against his own skin. After six days, he determined that although prolonged exposure to the sun would have its effects because of the thinness of the atmosphere, a sufficient amount of the ozone layer had survived and/or been restored so that with some care it would not be lethal to be out of doors. He determined this as best he could—only long-term time would truly tell, perhaps fatally.
But life in itself was a gamble.
Judging from the exact readout on the chamber in terms of years and decimal values thereof—and from readings on the position of the sun and some of the more regular constellations in the brilliant night sky (there was less distortion now because of the thinner atmosphere)—he calculated the date of his awakening as September twelfth, and the year as well.
He was also able to set his watch precisely, as well as the electric clocks throughout the Retreat.
Time was now a definitive commodity, measur-ing, rather than merely elapsed time, an orderly progression.
One by one, he had checked the systems within the Retreat—a minor repair here, an alteration there.
He experimented with the food. It had survived, the meal irradiated to kill bacteria before storage proving now exceedingly worthwhile. He was on solid foods, his appetite coming back to him, his bodily functions normal.
A complete physical—as complete as a physi-cian can give himself. His heart rate was better than it had been since his early twenties. So was his pulse. His hearing was better, too.
Smoking no longer a habit, he consumed three cigars a day or less. He calculated that, at that rate, he had enough for three years, perhaps a little longer. He had prepared. Tobacco could be grown.
He had begun a program of rigoroYis physical activity, large muscle group function tostrengthen the heart and to tone the body and develop lung power. At midday on the sixth day he used a soil test kit to determine the viability of the land near the Retreat, for the first time using the main entrance. The soil was richer than it had ever been, despite the sandy appearance. It was bleached by the stronger sun. He was tanning rapidly and by the fifth day had begun to wear one of his broad-brimmed Stetsons against the sun. Beneath the topsoil, the ground was still dark and rich. Some nutrients were in bizarre combina-tions—but it would grow food.
He had tested all of his weapons and ammuni-tion—all was in order.
Gradually, he was recharging the battery for the Harley Low Rider.
But he was alone.
Chapter Three
On the seventh day, September eighteenth, he did not rest. He was not God and so there was no special reason, for dramatic meaning or otherwise, to do so.
His plan was one he had considered carefully, one in which he had no choice but to place his confidence. For the survival of them all, it was necessity. / He stood—one of his cigars, the first of the day, was clamped tightly in the left side of his mouth between his teeth, unlit. Rourke stared at the cryogenic chambers.
His hair was cut. He could feel his muscle power returning more rapidly than he had anticipated. He was clean shaven and had a full stomach. Alive in all but the fullest sense of the word. He activated the controls of the cryogenic chambers, to awaken his son and his daughter.
He sat down on the sofa which had been pushed aside to make room for the cryogenic chambers when they had first been brought to the Retreat, watching the slow awakening process begin—the gas began to swirl in different patterns, to slowly dissipate.
He watched…
John Rourke was fascinated—the process took hours. He felt overly clinical, but he made notes as he watched, smiling too as expression returned to the face of his young daughter, to the face of his young son. Annie’s hair had grown—perhaps two inches. Michael’s hair had grown as well—he could give Michael a haircut. The longer length hair looked pleasing on Annie. Rourke watched them turn their heads, evi-dently passing through the state where dreams and returning consciousness co-mingled, as he had—it fascinated him how long this process seemed to endure. And he wondered what children’s dreams were. His dreams in childhood had long since faded in his memory.
Rourke watched. He noted things in the legal pad before him. He remembered things in his heart—he won- dered how it would be to watch his wife Sarah, Natalia, Paul. How would it be for them? To awaken.
Annie began to sit up. Michael—always the harder of the two children to awaken—still moved, but in a supine position, tossing, turning. The lid of Annie’s chamber began to rise, coordinated with the rising of her seven-year-old body. That she had been born 488 years ago did not escape him—the irony of it.
The cryogenic chamber’s lid was fully open.
“Hello, sweetheart,” Rourke whispered—for the first time since his awakening having someone with whom to speak.
“Da—“
Her mouth wasn’t working properly yet and he ift laughed, standing up, walking over to stand beside the chamber, reaching out his right hand to hold her hands. “We’re all alive. We made it. You’ve been sleeping for four hundred and eighty-one years.”
“How—how—“
“How long is that? It’s a very long time, longer than any other human being has ever slept and then awakened. The people on the Eden Project— they’ve been sleeping a little longer, but they’re still asleep. They should be for another twenty-one years. Do you understand me?”
Annie yawned, like only a little girl yawns, her body scrunching up, her mouth open, her arms outstretching.
And she smiled—he had remembered how beautiful her smile was, at least he had thought he had. But seeing it now was even more than he had remembered. He noticed too that the small chicken pox scar that had been on her eyelid, and the mark on her hand from the removal of a wart— both scars were gone now. She hugged her arms—awkwardly—around his neck. He lifted her from the chamber, kissing her cheek.
In the cryogenic chamber to the right, Rourke’s left, Michael was beginning to move with greater determination it seemed—and he was starting to rise, the lid of the chamber rising, the slightly sweet smell of the cryogenic gas again as it dissipated.
