The Last Man: Part Ten

Bethune handed me one of the bricks. The texture was coarse, and seemed as if it might crumble under the slightest pressure. In fact they were quite strong. This was the source of the stale ammonia smell I had noticed while bound and blindfolded. I tested the brick’s weight in my hand. Each was much lighter than it appeared. They were light enough that children could carry a dozen or more on their backs. I watched them come and go, returning empty handed and leaving quickly with a fresh bundle.

She lifted it from my hand and placed it among the others, her fingers trailing from the brick almost lovingly, as if it was a prize possession. Bethune faced the wall and regarded it with great satisfaction, the way a muralist might stand before his work, fully dwarfed and engulfed by that work. She turned, her face much brighter than before. Her collection had enlivened her.

They were stacked to the ceiling, 12 high and three deep, running the length of a long shadowy chamber that formed the foundation of a building. The city had been built and rebuilt so many times that it was literally honeycombed with such chambers. The people of the Low City had carved tunnels that interconnected the chambers and sewers in an impossible maze. That was the real power Bethune and her followers could rely upon. In open battle they would be decimated by Section Twenty-one troops, but in the Low City Bethune’s fighters would bleed their enemy in Guerilla-style combat, or unleash attacks on the city itself.

“This is what you wish the Corporation and Section Twenty-one to see?”

“Not so much see as know,” she took my arm again, leading me away. John Brown remained behind. “These bricks, their waste, is our weapon. The Corporation should know that we long for a peaceful life, but we will settle for a just death if provoked.”

My thoughts were terribly conflicted. I recalled our conversation about memory and Sentinel and altering my thoughts. Was betrayal of these people as simple as the burden of memory? Could I reform and reshape memory to thwart sentinel? I replied to her as honestly as I knew how.

“I feel torn.”

“Of course you do.”

“Part of me would betray you.”

“And part of you sympathizes with our struggle.”

“Without doubt.”

“An honest man,”

“An honest man will have no other,” I replied, quoting Thomas Jefferson.

“Best I should be on good behavior then,” she smiled.

Perhaps my reticence was in understanding the relationship between the people of the Low City and the Corporation. To be sure it was complex, and hardly a simple conflict between good and evil. It was as intimate as old world marriages, as conflict, hate and vengeance bonds adversaries for eternity. Perhaps it was something more. Perhaps it was that Bethune, by employing children and bargaining with the lives of all the rest, had come to reflect her enemy much more than she realized. Had had each side descended to the inhumanity or proposed inhumanity of their adversary? It was an easy line to cross in war, for all its myriad moral and ethical negotiations and entanglements.

I needed to rest a moment. It was all too much, both the journey and sorting all of this out. I felt as weak as I had in the sewers earlier. Bethune gently stroked my cheek. She had softened considerably, her caring reminding me of the woman in the Channels who had saved me with that same loving touch as a child. This time I believe it was genuine on her part.

“You don’t look well.”

“I’ve had better days.”

A bit of fresh air will do nicely.” There was a hidden intention behind her words. Perhaps there was genuine respect and caring, but how much it was from unselfish humanity was impossible to say. What was true, above all else, was that I was a propaganda tool for Bethune and her movement. It was important never to forget that simple fact.

From the catacombs we entered the sewers again. A phalanx of bodyguards led the way, while more followed as a rear guard. They were vigilant and ready for a fight at every turn. Throughout the sewers Sentinel had been smashed or disabled almost as quickly as Section Twenty-one put them up. Unprepared or unwilling to fight a brutal and protracted war against the Low City, Section Twenty-one quickly abandoned the effort. At one junction, there among the brownish-gray filth, we came upon evidence of how hastily Section Twenty-one had quit the fight. Still partially clad in their black uniforms, and picked over my dogs and other vermin were the remains of two troopers.

The sewers at last opened to a narrow stretch of beach. It came sudden and unexpected around the last bend. The salty sea air came over me as a merciful release of pressure might save a smothering man. I gulped in that first breath, and felt its power rush into every cell of my body, returning me to full life. Bethune’s fighters seemed unmoved by it, and Bethune herself almost seemed repelled at first. They had grown accustomed to the sewers, the dark labyrinth and stealing from place to place to keep clear of Sentinel and Section Twenty-one. Both sides doubtless had long ago forgotten what the real reason for the conflict was. All wars are the same. The real reasons fade and are buried from the first blood, the first drop of blood and an endless parade of crimes and perceived crimes by all sides.

Filth ran in a ruddy-brown rivulet from the lip of the sewer opening. It trickled across the narrow sand where it mixed with the sea. The lazily swelling surf drew it along the shore line in an oily sheen. The sun had swung back to where I had last seen it at the settlement among John Brown’s family. A solar day had passed for the world. A lifetime had passed for me, it seemed.

A dozen or so of Bethune’s security force dropped to the sand and took up defensive positions along the sea wall. It was much easier to discern the successive levels of the city here than in the tunnels and sewers. They were built upon one another like stratified layers of rock. They bulged outward under their combined mass and the weight of the new city rising through low clouds. We were very near the Reclamation center. The low rumble of its massive furnaces shook the earth. Wind off the sea scattered the smoke plume from towering stacks into a thick orange brown haze.

It was hardly more than fifteen or eighteen centimeters to the beach. I climbed down first and held a hand to Bethune. She took it gratefully. With a grimace and self-effacing groan Bethune struggled from the opening down to the beach.

“Thank you, my dear,” she held tight to my arm. She smiled philosophically. “The Corporation has done away with the aged. I’ll tell you, it is quite a privilege. I cherish every day for its new perspectives and greater knowledge, but it comes at the terrible price of a vibrant and increasingly unusable body.”

“It almost makes the Corporation’s case,” I offered, referring of course to Reclamation.

We went slowly along the seawall. Periodically my gaze would drift to the ruins out at sea. By this light the fires seemed brighter and more certain than ever. They flickered wildly, no doubt the excited motions of people moving back and forth. I thought to ask Bethune about them, about whether she had been there or knew anything of the people there. The question, at least for now, seemed entirely out of place.

“If you happen to believe the Corporation should hold the power of life and death,” she said. “Shouldn’t that freedom be sacrosanct to the individual?”

“When are the individual’s rights outweighed by the needs of the community?”

“Or the Corporation?”

I nodded. “Or the Corporation.”

“The rights of the individual are at the core of our struggle in the Low City.”

“And so you would sacrifice thousands for that noble cause?” I baited.

“If absolutely necessary,” she replied quickly.

“For the needs of the society the rights of those individuals are bartered.”

Bethune stopped and stared at me for some time. There was a storm of thoughts and emotions in her eyes. They were at once explosive and surprised. All at once her expression changed and she smiled broadly.

“I believe you almost are ready to face the Corporation. But first there is one last thing you must see.”

We turned and started back for the sewers. The bodyguards retreated as well, forming something of a protective human envelope around us. I paused a moment for one last glance to the ruins. I lingered just a little too long. One of the guards ushered me up into the sewer and back among the world of shadows.