“I’m happy with these. I know how to use them—even Dad told me I was a good shot with them.”
“But Daddy never liked you just carrying single actions—too slow to reload.”
“I’ll be all right, Annie—now don’t worry.” He smiled. She walked around behind the back of the bike, inspecting it once more with her eyes. She put her arms around his neck, felt his arms encircle her body, pulling her close. She wondered what the embrace of a lover would be like. At nearly twenty-eight, she had never known that. She felt Michael’s lips brush her cheek. She took his face in her hands, her hands cold in the wind, and kissed him full on the lips, fast. “I love you, Michael—you’re the only brother I’ve got. Be careful.”
Michael Rourke laughed. ifThat the only reason you love me—because I’m the only brother you’ve got?”
She laughed, burying her head against his chest—the shawl worked down from her head as he stepped away to mount the bike, the wind caught her hair. She raised her arms to capture her hair with her hands, holding it back with her left hand. Michael mounted the Harley and gunned the engine to life.
He looked at her once, smiling. “Be seein’ ya, Annie,” and then he turned away. She stood there, the bike starting down the road away from the Retreat, watching him. He looked back once and she waved at him. She kept watching, wrapping the shawl around her head again, stabbing her hands into her pockets, shivering in the wind, but watching him until she could no longer see even a speck of movement that might still be him. ‘t Alone, Annie Rourke turned around and started back into the Retreat, opening the interior door after closing the exterior door, killing the red light and then closing the Retreat door behind her.
In the winter, there was little to do. No garden. She neatly folded her shawl and set it on the edge of the kitchen counter to be put away later. She took off her coat, setting it across the top of one of the stools—the one Michael usually used.
Standing in the cold had made her want to go to the bathroom, and she started across the Great Room. But she stopped, staring at one of the cryogenic chambers. Not her father, or her mother, or the Russian woman Natalia—Natalia was very beautiful. As she—Annie—stabbed her hands into the pockets of her skirt, she stared at another face. Paul Rubenstein. He was not handsome, but she liked the set of his face. She remembered him almost not at all, except that they had all played cards together and Faul Rubenstein had told her she was a very pretty girl and she had giggled.
She smiled thinking of it.
Later she would check the small paper-making operation. Later she would fix a little dinner for herself. Later—later she would go to the bathroom. She stood watching Paul Rubenstein instead.
She was her father’s daughter, she had always known, and before Michael had even begun to realize it, she had realized it.
John Rourke had played God.
John Rourke had let her age to nearly the age of Paul Rubenstein. He had picked Paul as her mate, or husband, but who would marry them? Her father? Was being master of the Retreat like being master of a ship? Or perhaps if the Eden Project did return, the commander of the Shuttle Fleet could perform some sort of ceremony.
She had accepted her father’s decision, not because it was his decision, but because for some reason she could not understand, she had found herself staring at Paul Rubenstein a great deal, fantasizing what his voice would sound like, wondering if the cryogenic sleep would somehow alleviate the eyesight problem which caused him to wear the wire-rimmed glasses which were with his things in the storeroom. She had^washed the glasses once, buffed the lenses. She had wanted to do it.
She looked away from Paul Rubenstein, smiling, laughing a little as she whispered, “My intended.” Annie looked at the face of Natalia Tiemerovna. She—Natalia—was her brother’s “intended,” and Annie knew that. She had considered that a great deal. Michael had talked about their father and “the Russian woman” many times. Annie had decided that her father had been in love with two women—their mother and “the Russian woman.” But something inside of her, and something too in the face of the sleeping “Russian woman” made her feel inside of her that playing at being God wouldn’t prove quite as easy as her father might have thought. She no longer had to urinate. Instead, she started back toward the kitchen—she wondered if Paul Rubenstein would like her cooking. She stopped beside the counter, unbuckling the web belt with the military flap holster from around her waist, the Detonics Scoremaster always carried there when she left the Retreat whatever the reason. She set the gunbelt down beside her shawl, picked up her apron and began tying it about her waist. She could fix something exotic—Michael liked only bland things. A spinach souffle—she could start with that.
Chapter Ten
He had traveled for five days and in two more would turn back, he had promised himself. He would not abandon the search, but rather return to be with Annie for the Awakening. Then perhaps he and his father both could search, Paul Ruben-stein staying behind with the women to protect the Retreat. He had often fantasized what it would be like to rove the new earth with his father, to search out its secrets.
There was his mother to consider, and the Russian woman as well—but he knew his father well. There was something inside his father—and it burned inside him as well.
There was a world to tame, to explore.
Michael Rourke dismounted the Harley Low Rider, letting down the stand, the bike freshly filled some twenty miles back at one of the strategic fuel sites from his father’s map. From the cold temperatures and the spectacular height of the mountains and the distance he had traveled, he judged himself somewhere in Tennessee between what had been Chattanooga and what had been Nashville. There was a high rise of rocky ground with some scrub brush clinging to it for a distance, the rise too steep to navigate with the Harley but not too steep by foot. t He took the key for the Harley, perfunctorily taking the M-16, slinging it across his back, letting the Stalker swing on its sling across his chest as he started up the rocky face. He climbed for a dual purpose—for sign of what he had seen fall from the sky to the northwest and to see if any of the terrain stirred memories in him, memories of the times he and his mother and his sister had moved about these mountains following the Night of The War, searching for his father.
The rocks were a steeper climb than he had anticipated, but he worked cautiously and slowly —a broken ankle or broken leg could have spelled his doom here and he was aware of the hazards of traveling alone in the wilderness. Michael Rourke kept climbing.
When he reached the top, he sagged over the edge, catching his breath. He wondered what it would be like to function in a full atmosphere again where the air was not so thin and cold in his lungs.
He edged completely over the lip of rock, standing up. Had it been summer, he would have worn a hat to guard against the stronger sunlight. He ran his hands through his hair instead, reminding himself he would need Annie to give him a haircut when he returned to the Retreat. The wind caught at his hair again and he pushed a thick strand of it—dark brown like his father’s, he thought—back from his eyes.
Michael Rourke looked behind him—nothing but landscape, however more beautiful it seemed almost day by day to become. He walked across the flat expanse of rock, taking the Bushnell eight-by-thirtys from their case at his left side—they were his father’s.
Before him, as he stopped at the edge of the rock, he thought he might well be able to see as far as the next state.
He focused the rubber-armored binoculars, scanning toward the horizon. Trees were growing in more abundance than he had seen near the Retreat—perhaps being farther north had something to do with it, he surmised—the rays of sunlight less direct, the sunlight level more benign. Michael had placed the binocular strap around his neck, and now he let it fall to his chest.
He took the G.I. Lensatic compass from his leather jacket’s left outside patch
pocket, opened the case and raised the lens, sighting due northwest. He had no
way of knowing if the poles might perhaps have shifted somehow during the
cataclysm, the holocaust. But even if they had, he used the compass only for