there would be no woman there, no adult.
He had explained to both children what they would feel in their bodies, and explained to both of them the obvious limitations their environment would impose.
But he had planned for that as well…
They sat in the great room, Rourke on the couch, Michael on the reclining chair, but the chair not reclined, the back up straight. Annie sat cross-legged, Indian fashion, on the floor. Behind them—Rourke suddenly noticing it—was the soft hum of the cryogenic chambers. “We six are the future—it’s important that all six of us survive to make that future. I haven’t really taught you anything, either of you, except the means to improve your skills, to acquire real knowledge. Sixteen years will pass after tonight before I see either of you again, yet daily each of you will see me, see your mother—she is unchanging. SeePau] and Natalia. I’m not leaving you—either of you— an easy task. Not at all. If something comes up for which I wasn’t able to prepare you, you’ll have to solve it. If it cannot be solved, then awaken me from the sleep and hope that I can solve it. If either of you is so seriously injured that the medical techniques I’ve taught you and the reference material available cannot alleviate the situation, then awaken me from the sleep. If there is a problem with the/ Retreat systems which you cannot solve, th?n awaken me. At even the slightest intimafion that the cryogenic systems are failing or thepower is failing, awaken the four of us instantly. Instantly.”
He looked at Annie. “I want you to pursue your interest in things creative—creativity is vital to survival, mentally as well as physically. Don’t redecorate the Retreat—I kind of !ike it the way it is. But exercise your mind, practice the fighting techniques I’ve taught you—but don’t break your brother in half.”
“Dad,” Michael laughed.
Annie only smiled.
“Move up from those .38s out of my Python— start into .357 Magnums. Don’t get hooked on single action revolvers like your brother.” “I like that Detonics Scoremaster you let me try once—it’s pretty and it’s accurate.”
“Fine—but wait a few years before you get into
it, and the gun is yours.”
“All right.” She smiled, the corners of her mouth dimpling. He looked at Michael. “I’m not sounding chauvinistic—at least I hope not. But you’re two years older, and you’re a man. Fourteen is a rough age to start being a man, but you started when you were younger than that and saved your mother’s life with those Brigands, helped your mother and Annie out of that swollen lake when the dam burst. You’ve got an ego I haven’t seen the like of since my own. That can be a positive feature if you can control it. A negative feature if you can’t. But you’ll be in charge. I think Annie accepts that,” and Rourke looked at his daughter. She smiled, laughing a little, but nodded. He looked back to Michael. “If I didn’t think you could handle it, I wouldn’t say you were in charge. You’re the one responsible for yourself, your sister and, while we sleep, for the four of us. And when you work with that smokeless powder you’re experimenting with, don’t blow yourself up.” He looked at his son and laughed. Michael stood up, stabbing his hands into the side pockets of his Levi’s, the cuffs turned up because they were Levi’s Rourke had put in the Retreat to wear for himself and Michael was not yet his height. “I won’t let Annie down—I won’t let you, or Mom, or Paul or Natalia down. I don’t know how smooth it’s gonna go for the next sixteen years, but it’ll be all right.” John Rourke stood, Michael Rourke walking toward him. John Rourke outstretched his right hand to his son. His son took it. Annie stood up, embracing them both. In a few hours, John Rourke would sleep again.
Chapter Seven
The scoped Stalker slung diagonally across his back, Michael Rourke started down from the rocks, into the valley, the Retreat—his father had told him once that^Jatalia Tiemerovna referred to it as “Rourke’s Mountain”—in the distance. He had begun ranging the mountains surrounding the Retreat when he was twenty and in nearly ten years, he had seen no sign of animal life, but the vegetation—where it grew at all—was thicker and lusher with each spring. He quickened his pace— Annie, who had turned into a superb cook, was fixing meat. It was a special- occasion delicacy usually—for his birthday or her own, but this was not January, the month of both their birthdays. Annie, that morning, had simply said, “I’m tired of being a vegetarian—I’m taking some meat out of one of the freezers. Make sure you’re not late for dinner.” Michael Rourke hadn’t argued.
A rabbit or a squirrel—had he seen one, he would not have shot it, but attempted to follow it.
^ He would have brought such an animal food from their gardens. But no such animal existed.
No birds flew in the sky. No insect buzzed.
Some type of beetle to attack the vegetables in the gardens would have been welcome, but there were none.
Perhaps in other parts of the world, or at lower a altitudes—perhaps. He had taken one of the three Harley Davidson Low Riders once, taken it far from the Retreat. That had been five years ago. He had ranged for more than a hundred miles in the four cardinal directions. He had found the rusted, gutted remains of an automobile. He had found the ruins of what had once been a city—skeletons of buildings now. Not even a human bone survived. But the strategic fuel supplies were intact—it had been the announced reason for the trip. He had checked two of the reserves and they still held their precious gasoline.
Annie would range from the Retreat as well at times. He didn’t worry that terribly much for his sister. She had begun mastery of the Detonics Scoremaster .45 she had liked so much, begun its mastery when she was fifteen. At twenty-eight— almost—she was a superlative shot. At one hundred yards, without a scope, using just the Bo-Mar iron sight, she could consistently hit objects Michael could barely see with the naked eye.
They had begun reading through the Bntannica when in their late teens. He had reached the end of volume seventeen of the Macropaedia and found it amusing to read the information concerning tax laws. Taxes were no more. Michael remembered an expression his father had used once—something regarding the in-evitability of death and taxes. Taxes were no longer inevitable. He wondered if death were.
The thought was vaguely disquieting to him that he had known more people who were now dead than still alive. As best he had been able to ascertain in nearly sixteen years of monitoring the airwaves on the Retreat radio, Qf studying the stars and the daytime sky as well, of searching the ground for the slightest sign, no one else lived on the earth.
He had been tempted once to take one of the Harleys and drive/toward Colorado where the Soviet Womb had Keen. But if anyone had survived there, they would likely be his enemies now as they had been his father’s enemies almost five centuries earlier.
At night, when he monitored the radio or studied the stars through the telescope, he would sometimes sit with a glass of the corn-based whiskey—it was quite good now and, at least to him, the taste was as pleasing as the occasional glass of Seagram’s Seven; other times he would stare at the cryogenic chambers. Annie would always fall asleep earlier than he, perhaps while they watched a film together on the video recorder. But there were the alone times—and as he watched the cryogenic chambers, he would consider what it would be like when there were no longer just two people walking the earth, but six instead. As he walked along the mountain road leading to the Retreat now, he wondered again. What was the woman Natalia like?
He remembered from his early childhood seeing his mother and father kiss. From films, he had seen others. One film in particular—the man and the woman lay in bed beside one another. He was not sexually ignorant of the technical aspect of it—he had read, his father in his wisdom having provided things for them both. And before his father had slept, his father had told them both things, answered questions.
But he watched the woman Natalia sometimes, wondering. And he wondered at his father’s remarks about the imperative of all six of them surviving.
Michael Rourke sometimes thought that he thought like his father—and if he did, he realized, then he knew what his father planned and it alternately warmed and frightened him… “I got the recipe from that cookbook Mom wrote once. What do you think?” Michael Rourke put down the glass of Sea-gram’s—it was, after all, a special occasion. “I liked it, Annie. What did you call it again?” “Beef Stroganov. But I didn’t have any wine, so I used some of your homemade beer.”
“Terrific. The man who marries you—“ and Michael Rourke shut up. He watched his sister’s brown eyes, brown like his. She moved her hair—she kept it at waist length—back from her face. “What do you think Dad has planned?” she asked, her voice soft—like Michael remembered his mother’s voice being soft. “You want my honest opinion?”
“Yeah, I want your honest opinion. I’m gonna get dessert. Strawberry shortcake—come on and refill your glass.” She stood up, walking back toward the stove and the counter beside it. Michael climbed down from the
