News in bed, mocahwallpapers.com
Back on the pier in Oakland Mr. Tanaki and Higgins took their leave of us. They were headed back in the boat to San Francisco to spend the night, telling us they would arrange for an army truck to pick us up in the morning and meet us here again. The soldier who’d driven us down the hill was sitting and waiting in his jeep, smoking a cigarette. In front of our gate, I asked if he could drive an older couple to the University station and to sweeten the deal I brought him a bottle of scotch and a few cigars from the library cabinet, for him and his friends. Everyone parted happily.
Back home I asked Jaime to join me in the office.
“What are we going to do with the remaining wafers?” was my burning question.
“I’m not sure” he said, “but we need to save at least two of the 100’s as test samples. Four would be better if we ever want to try to get the equipment running again and resume production.”
“So that’s settled” I told him. “We’ll leave four in the safe. The rest we’ll take with us. I was thinking of cutting one up four ways for the captain and his wife and children. I know I'm being generous, but we’ll all be on his boat for a long time. He might even be sailing us back here in three months, and I’d like him to be on the same page, the same playing field we’re on.”
“I’m good with that” Jaime replied.
Naomi was at the door of the office. “It’s the governor, he called and told us he’s on his way over here.”
“I bet I know what that’s all about” I said.
A half hour later he was at our front gate with his limo and two assistants, this time only two jeeps of soldiers accompanying him. Back in the library I couldn’t help but notice that Natalie looked resplendent, in the same clothes as yesterday but with a glow to her face that was almost an aura. The governor and Bill also had a gleam in their eyes.
“I’d like you to tell me everything you can about these wafers” the governor began. “After seeing Natalie this morning and talking to her, I took one and so did Bill. The effects are amazing. Roland, I’m sure you were right, and now I see why you said this development was more important than the war.”
I gathered everyone to the dining room where we all sat down, all thirteen of us, and asked once again for everyone to tell their stories to the governor. Jaime had by far the longest but the governor and his aides drank in every word, eagerly. I asked Jane to break open one of the cases of wine and pour us each a glass. A little later Lucille stepped into the room and was astonished to see so high a dignitary at our table. She left in a flush but was back a few minutes later with a large platter of crackers, with slices of cheese and salami and fresh tomatoes, which we all enjoyed with visible delight.
After an hour of talk, the governor turned and asked me the poignant question: “How many of these do you have left?”
“Not many, governor, but I’ll tell you this. We need to save a few to be able to replicate them in the future. We all owe Mr. Tanaki a huge debt of gratitude, and I feel I owe him some in exchange. With Jaime’s permission, I can spare you four more, of greater density, which can be cut into four pieces matching the ones you yourselves experienced. So that makes sixteen. Don’t give one to the president, or for that matter, anyone with a finger on the nuclear trigger, in fact, don’t give one to anyone without sleeping on it for a whole week with your enhanced intelligence. This is a powerful bomb just like a nuclear device, unleashed within our heads, not destructive but constructive, so powerful that I’m not sure what to do with it. But I trust in your discretion and goodwill. Use it wisely and always remember the common people and the common good.”
He stood up. “Thank you, Roland; I’ll never forget this or your advice.”
I went alone to the safe and separated the four wafers for the governor. I put two in another envelope for Mr. Tanaki and left two in the safe. Of the weaker ones, there were eight, so I placed four in my wallet for Ken and his family and put the other four in another envelope for Jaime, to do whatever he pleased with them. I was glad to have resolved the matter. Now I was done with it. It was all settled, no more playing god with people. I was never cut out for that role. What I wanted was peace and quiet.
I walked back to the dining room, handed out the three envelopes and said, “there, it’s finished until the next batch comes up ten years from now. It’s out of my hands, and my conscience is clean.”
As he left, he thanked us again and said there’d be a truck here early to relocate our radio operators and Naomi’s friends to their new homes. He bid us goodbye and told us to stay in touch. I asked him one favor, that we be informed as soon as it was safe to return, when power and order were restored. He promised he would.
We spent the rest of the evening packing more things and setting all our luggage and boxes in two long rows in the front hallway. As the piles grew, I saw that it would take two trucks to carry such a load down the hill and I wondered if the launch we were on today would be large enough to carry us to the boat in one trip. The cans of food from the pantry filled at least ten boxes but I didn’t want to leave them there and have looters move into the house, feasting and damaging the place until all was gone.
We talked about it, and Claire came up with the smart idea of hiding all the excess food in the panic room along with Abbott’s supplies so that the same thing wouldn’t happen to their house. We decided to hide everything desirable to another human being in that room. Charlie, after asking, packed up four crates of various liquors and cigars but there were many other bottles left on the shelves in the basement and the library, so all these along with the silverware, the rifles and ammunition were sequestered away. The two handguns we divvied up, one for each group.
This took a good many hours and every time we thought we were finished some other set of items would come to someone’s mind that also had to be stashed away. After the food it was candles, and they were everywhere. Then it was matches and lighters. I dreaded the thought of some vandal in my house lighting a fire.
It was a sad business for me as we were stripping the house bare, making her ugly, the only home I’d ever known. But I also knew that desperate people would stay behind rifling through every house on every street and probably survive for months on the scraps they found. My greatest fear was that they might torch each place before they left, as armies often did, to ruin it for their competitors. The last thing we did, reluctantly, was to till up and destroy the vegetable garden next door and bury all of our sacks of perishable foods, the ones we couldn’t take with us, in a hole we dug behind the garage.
Our work ended around eleven. Scout went to bed. The others retired to the basement to celebrate one last night in this temporary abode with one last bottle of whiskey at Charlie’s suggestion. His radios were all packed up and I could see that his plan, in their absence, was to get drunk. Only Claire stayed with me. She could sense that I was melancholy, though I did my best to hide it. We went to bed and as I lay in the dark, I began to tremble. There was nothing she could do to console me except hold me tight.
This house was everything to me, my whole life, almost my soul, and I was about to leave it to the wolves and vandals to be torn and rent apart. But it would be me they’d be tearing apart. I could feel it in my gut as if it were happening already.
I turned to Claire and told her I couldn’t leave. I’d stay behind alone and with the pistol in my hand stave off every one of them until I ran out of bullets and was killed. At least I’d die in the cradle I was born in, where I belonged. Her head was next to mine and she was following every scene of this tragic, western scenario as I rolled it out in my over-vivid imagination.
Then she did somehow calm me down. It felt like a warm blanket was pulled over me and my trembling stopped. She whispered in my ear that I had to go with her, that there was no choice, that we needed to be in a safer place. She told me that she could sense that she was pregnant.
