Several shifted their eyes to the Veds.
Warren looked annoyed. “I’ve been meaning to change your names, might as well start now so poor Ellis doesn’t get confused. From now on Ved One will be called…Bob, and Ved Two…” Warren twisted his lips, thinking. “Ved Two will be Rob.” He nodded, agreeing with himself. “Restitch your shirts right after dinner, understand?”
The two nodded in perfect unison, which appeared to irritate Warren.
Conversation dried up for a few minutes, the vacuum filled by the ticking of the clock and forks scraping plates clean. Warren glared around the table while the others stared at their food.
“Just the six of you maintain this whole farm?” Ellis asked. He didn’t really care, just wanted the silence to disappear. He needed noise, the flow of words to knock out the thoughts crowding their way into his head, thoughts about Peggy and a photograph with the word sorry written on it. Warren said it was written in a Sharpie marker, but Ellis imagined it was scrawled in blood. He should have left a note. He should have said goodbye.
“Just the six of us live here,” Warren said. “We add new converts by invitation only, of course.”
“Mib will be moving in soon,” Hig said. Ellis noticed that this Firestone fieldhand had a slightly darker tan than anyone else at the table except Warren.
“Which is good, because we could use someone who can run the glass shop,” Warren said.
Dex pointed at Yal. “We’ve lost several glasses lately.”
“Yes, it will be wonderful when Mib arrives.” Yal stood up then, and with a restrained look began to clear the table of empty bowls.
“Yal’s tired of being the new kid,” Bob said—or was it Rob?
“Six live here?” Ellis asked.
“Technically there are seven, but Pol doesn’t live here anymore. Used to, but got picked for the underworld High Council. I gave him permission to serve. Thought it would be in everyone’s best interest to have a”—he formed air quotes with his fingers—“man on the inside, as it were. Pol was one of the original three who found me. You’ll meet Pol tonight. Great organizer. If I died tomorrow, Pol would take over.”
“Take over what?”
Warren just grinned.
Yal came by and picked up the bowl of potatoes, and Ellis noticed the bloody bandages on the stumps of the last two fingers on Yal’s right hand.
As night arrived, Warren lit the hurricane lamp near the door and escorted them into the living room, leaving Yal to handle the cleanup. “It takes a long time to break them of the bad habits they pick up living in the underworld. They think everything is easy. They get here and find they’re wrong,” Warren explained with his new wise man’s voice—the Detroit Dalai Lama.
The living room’s décor was right out of the Civil War, with a couch and two matching black upholstered Queen Anne chairs that looked like something Lincoln might have been shot in. Pea-green-painted walls and dark mahogany only added to the formal funereal atmosphere. Everything had the smell of old books, old wood, and old people that might have been some form of rot. The place was hot too. The sun had baked the house, and the heat lingered in the wood, stone, and plaster. Dex and Hig shoved the windows open, hoping for a breeze, but got only the loud racket of crickets. This had been the life of pre-air-conditioned homes and why so many houses had porches.
Ellis, who felt his shirt sticking to him, was about to suggest moving to the porch when Warren took a seat in the big chair near the dormant fireplace. He put his bare feet up on a stool and said, “Don’t you love this room? I can’t walk in here and not think of Washington and Jefferson and all the others that created our great country.”
“I don’t think the United States exists anymore.”
Warren’s eyes lit up. “That’s just it—it does. This room—this farm is like one of those seed banks they created to allow us to rebuild the world after a global disaster. This village is the seed—the cutting—that will help us regrow America. We’ve got everything: a producing farm, blacksmith, glass, and pottery shops. Hell, we even have Edison’s lab here. This is the heart and soul of America.”
Hig sat on the couch. Ellis sat beside him.
“As we repopulate, we can expand outward from here. We can clear the land, build more farms, and then send some men to start looking for old mines. Maybe we can get a refinery working again.”
“Hard to repopulate without women.”
“Dex has that covered, right, Dex?”
“The ISP kept all the patterns going back to the first ones. They won’t be exactly originals, not like the two of you,” Dex said with reverence, as if speaking to twin popes. “They were altered for disease resistance, and aesthetic appearance, but natural selection should erode these initial genes back to a random state.”
“Still, a pretty small gene pool, right?” Ellis said. His mind filled with thoughts of royal families and jokes about rural West Virginia.
“Hey, the whole world started with just Adam and Eve, and we did fine with that,” Warren said. “So the plan is for Dex to grow us a little harem of women. We’ll be like two old pride lions, like the biblical patriarchs of old begetting a whole new nation of Americans. Go forth and multiply, you know? Think about that. We’ll literally be the founding fathers of the new United States.”
“And what if these women don’t have any interest in being human incubators? You ever consider that?”
“Outdated thinking, my friend. That’s the product of a feminist movement that doesn’t exist anymore. We’ll teach them it’s a sacred duty and great honor. They’ll be thrilled to contribute in such a vital way.”
“Even so, you’re in your sixties now, right? By the time these women are of age, you’ll be in your eighties.”
“Not a problem. Dex says he can extend my life for another hundred years at least.”
“Yeah, well, maybe you…you got your new heart and clean pancreas. I don’t think I’m gonna be around much longer.”
“Jesus, didn’t they fix you already?” Warren asked.
Ellis felt the crackle in his chest—wind across a field of steel wool. “No.”
Warren turned to Dex and hooked a thumb at Ellis. “Needs a new set of lungs.”
Dex nodded. “Absolutely. Not a problem.”
Are all major surgeries dispensed out of vending machines now? Ellis was thinking to ask when he noticed a flash outside. No one moved—no reaction at all. Just as Ellis was thinking they didn’t see it, he heard a creak followed by the slap of the screen door.
“Pol is here,” Yal called.
Pol-789—or fake Pol—Ellis didn’t know anymore—entered the living room. As youthful in appearance as all of them, and still dressed in the flamboyant orange robes of state, Ellis thought the Chief Councilor looked a bit like a college freshman attending a Halloween toga party.
“Aha!” Pol said the moment he saw Ellis, and added with a big smile, “Wonderful. You made it. I’ve been looking everywhere.”
“You’ve met?” Warren asked.
“Yes,” Pol said, smiling. “Briefly, at least. Ellis Rogers was in my office yesterday with Pax-43246018.”
Ellis was impressed the Chief Councilor remembered Pax’s full name. Ellis had never been good with names, particularly foreign ones with odd-sounding vowels and double consonants. Memorizing a series of numbers after a single telling was hopeless. He imagined Pol was the sort that could have recited his license number—if only they still had them.
“We’d just been introduced, and I was making plans to come here to reunite old friends, when events transpired beyond my control.” Pol stared at Ellis, marveling, studying him until Ellis felt uncomfortable.
“What kind of events?” Warren asked, indicating Pol should take a seat.
Pol turned back to the kitchen. “Yal? Can I get a glass of wine?”