“Space Shuttles,” Michael corrected, seemingly automatically. “Shuttles, ships—but the Eden Project. They should return in about twenty-one years if the data was correct. But what if the Eden Project never returned, and what if we were the only people on Earth?”
“I wouldn’t have anybody to play with,” Annie said softly. Rourke smiled, holding her. “More important that that—and I know playing is important—but more important than that even: survival, not just of ourselves, but the human race. The three of us here, and your mother, and Uncle Paul and Natalia—only six people. I thought a long time about this. Ourchancesofrcbmlding, of makinga new world—the only way is for all six of us to be adults at the same time, for all six of usto be as close in age as possible. And so I have a plan. You’d both have to be very brave and be very smart.”
“What is it that you want us to do, Daddy?”
He looked at his son’s lean face, the brown eyes, the full shock of dark brown hair—it was as il somehow he were studying his own reflection in a mirror, but the light bünging him the reflection had taken a quarter century to return from the mirror to his eyes. “For the next five years, I’m going to teach both of you everything, some things you probably shouldn’t know until you are much older.
We’re going to work very hard—“
“Will we have a chance to play, Daddy?” Annie smiled, “Yes—there’ll be time for that, too.”
“Why five years?” Michael asked him.
“Because, son, in live years you’ll be nearly fourteen biologically,” and he looked at Annie on his lap, her dark honey blond hair caught up in the breeze, her brown eyes sparkling. “And you, young lady—you’ll be nearly twelve. That’s awfully young for both of you—“ “Fourteen is pretty old,” Michael insisted.
Rourke let himself smile. “It’s going to have to be. Because in five years, if everything goes as I plan, I’m taking the cryogenic sleep again. For sixteen years. And when you are thirty, Michael— and Annie, you’ll be twenty-eight. Then all the chambers will open, your mother’s, Paul’s, Natalia’s—and mine again.” He looked at his son. “You’ll be about two years older than Natalia, Michael.”
He looked at Annie. “And you’ll be just a little younger than Paul Rubenstein. And Mommy and Daddy won’t be that much older than either of you. Then there’ll be six of us—and we can build the world again if we have to.” They didn’t understand, Rourke thought. His children didn’t understand.
But in Michael’s eyes, he saw something. Rourke knew that he would. “Our first lesson in survival and in growing up begins today. So run—don’t run far, but run and play-“ Annie kissed him on the lips and slipped off his lap, running after Michael. Rourke watched as they played tag down the mountain road from the entrance of the Retreat. “Play,” John Rourke whispered. “While you can.” He inhaled on his cigar but it had gone dead. He lit it again in the blue-yellow flame of his Zippo.
Chapter Five
The most important task at the beginning had been teaching Annie to do more than just pretend to read. And she had learned quickly. And he had immediately begun each child in the ways of self-preservation. Michael had been taught the rudiments of marskmanship before the Night of The War. And from what Sarah had told him, Michael had learned these rudiments well. He found himself—John Rourke—sometimes watching Michael in those first days.Nine yearsoldand the boy had already killed. But it seemed not to affect him. The subject matter to be taught and mastered had been overwhelming, Rourke had realized from the start. Electronics, plumbing, electrical work, motorcycle maintenance—all these to preserve the Retreat and what it housed. Cooking, from the use of the stove and the microwave oven to how to build a fire in the wild. Wood was scarce and the search for it had taken Rourke away from the children with the pickup truck to far beyond the base of the mountain. No life—but trees to cut down. Eventually, as the years passed, he had taught Michael to handle the full-sized McCuIloch Pro-Mac 610. Rourke’s palms had sweated, his stomach churning, letting an eleven-year-old boy handle a chain saw. Both children he had taught the rudiments of sewing—putting back buttons and mending ripped seams and holes in Levi’s. Annie had quickly gotten into the books Rourke had put up for Sarah and by the time she had reached age ten spent much of her leisure time doing needlepoint as she listened to recordings, watched videotapes, and questioned her father.
Marksmanship training for both of them progressed, Annie utilizing the CAR-15 because of the shorter buttstock length, Michael managing one of the Ml 6s. Target practice in the early years was confined to the .223 because Rourke had such an abundance of ammo for this caliber as well as a large number of M-16s and replacement parts, all of this from the United States Air Force base on the New West Coast, part of the supplies he and Rubenstein and Natalia had brought back with them. Occasional handgun marksmanship was practiced, utilizing miscellaneous .38 Special ammunition fired through Rourke’s Metalifed Colt Python.
It was not until Michael reached age twelve that Rourke in earnest began teaching him the use of the .45.
The training gun was the blue Detonics .45 Rourke had taken from the Soviet agent who had worked with Randan Soames near the early site of of;
U .S. II headquarters. Michael had quickly taken to it. Annie’s marksmanship with Rourke’s CAR-15 reached such a level that after a time he began joking with her that Annie’s real last name should be Oakley rather than Rourke. The martial arts. Childrens’ bodies are supple, strong, flexible—they learned quickly and well, Rourke teaching them the basics of Tae Kwon Doe and letting them progress into other variations. It was not until Michael was thirteen and Annie eleven that Rourke began teaching the children what to do in order to kill with their hands.
He paralleled their instruction, which at times meant holding Michael back, at times pushing Annie forward. But teaching both children simultaneously was the only way for him.
The children studied history. Having lived through its most important epoch, its most pivotal period, they seemed naturally drawn to the discipline. Questions—why had U.S. and Soviet relations fallen to the point where the Night of The War had been the only alternative?
It was then that Rourke showed them something he had begun shortly after the Awakening-it was then that the children had realized why at night he had sat alone in a far corner of the Great Room, music low on the air, a typewritergoing.lt was a memoir of events leading to the Night of The War, and events afterward. It was not finished and Rourke had confided to his son and daughter that he felt it never would be—there was always more to add. Shakespeare, Cervantes, Ovid in the original Latin—it was good mental discipline, he had told them.
The sculpture of Michelangelo, the music of Beethoven and Liszt, the philosophy of Aquinas, Sartre, Rand. He realized early on that he was merely introducing the children to things they would have to learn without him. The fertile soil outside the Retreat yielded corn, potatoes, asparagus, tomatoes, peas. The winters were hard and long and cold and the growing seasons short, but in these times, as in all other times they shared, they shared the work together. John Rourke discovered that he not only had children, he had friends.
They would talk long into the evening— literature, philosophy, music, science, the arts.
Medicine. By the time the last year had begun, both Michael and Annie had learned first aid to the point where either would have been qualified to assume the duties of a paramedic. He had placed medical and dental knowledge above all else but self-defense, for without their health, in this hospitable yet forbidding world, they would perish.
Michael, at nearly fourteen, had begun to seriously assault Rourke’s limited—but not too limited—-supply of .44 Remington Magnum ammunition. The boy had become enamored of one particular pair of guns. John Rourke had never favored single action revolvers. Michael Rourke favored them.
At the range area beyond the entrance to the Retreat, Rourke stood, watching his son.
Michael, only two inches shorter than Rourke now, held the eight-and-three-eighths-inch-barreled Stalker in’both hands at full arms length, the webbed sling for the massive Magnum Sales-converted Ruger Super Blackhawk swaying slightly in the breeze as it hung from its barrel and base-of-the-butt-mounted swivels. John Rourke watched as Michael Rourke studied the target—a pine cone one hundred yards distant—through the 2X Leupold scope. Even with the sound-dampening earmuffs John Rourke wore, the sound of the Stalker as it discharged was intense. In the distance, the dot that had been the pine cone seemed to vaporize as Rourke studied it through the Bushnell armored eight-by-thirtys. “You hit it.”