Becuz I drugged him, I think to myself. Two drops in his wine from a tiny brown bottle. Eccinel, that’s what Slim called it.
DeMalo ain’t easy is why, Jack’s sayin. We shook his throne when we blew Resurrection. He don’t know when or where we’re gonna hit him next.
All right, I says, I hear you.
We can trash his playroom, he says. You wanna go back?
No, I says, we’ll leave it.
A cool night breeze stirs the earth air of the bunker. A little ways ahead, I can see moonlight stream down the stairs. Jack’s up ’em an out like a shot. He hates these Wrecker places. Claims they’re full of ghosts. I dunno about ghosts, but I’m more’n ready to git outta this tomb. I put a foot on the first step. What was that? From the corner of my eye I caught a gleam. My torch jest glanced on somethin. I cast about till I find what it is. My skin prickles all over.
The gleam is metal. A lock on a door. A lock that’s bin sanded an oiled. The door’s set well back in the shadows. You’d hafta to be lookin to see it.
Jack, I says. Git back down here.
It’s a tumbler lock. Alone, I’d be outta luck. But I ain’t. I’m with Jack. So I’m in luck. He’s got a lifetime of scoundrel knowhow. Sure enough, he’s cracked tumblers before. He protests, he wants to go, but I prevail. Jest a quick look inside, then we’ll be gone.
He listens an turns. Listens. An turns. He woos that lock open. An we go through the second door.
This time, I light our way. Torch in one hand, shooter in the other. The ground beneath our feet slopes downwards. Gradual, like a long, slow ramp. Here, too, the walls an floor is hard-packed earth. The ceilin’s shuttered with planks. Propped up with struts an girders.
I says, Whoever made this place didn’t have comfert in mind.
Maybe they had to do it in a hurry, says Jack.
I take a closer look as we pass. There’s signs of fresh repairs. Many of the shutter planks look new. It’s bein kept in good order. We go down, down, deeper into the earth. The air grows cooler an thicker. I hate it. I sweat. I breathe deep.
Finally, Jack stops. Okay, we seen enough, let’s go, he says.
As the words leave his lips, I take a step. There’s a click-click-click-click. We’re blinded by light. I shoot, on instinct, an dive at the ground. Wood cracks. Dirt rains down on top of us. My shot must of hit the roof. Probly smashed a shutter plank. As the din fades to silence an no one shoots back, we slowly git to our feet. We cough the dust from our throats. We stare as we brush ourselfs off.
Eight roundels of light cling to the walls ahead. Four line the left wall. The same on the right. They shine a straight path to a iron slab door. With a big iron wheel in the middle of it. Jack an me look at each other. His eyes gleam pale in his filthy face. His hair’s dusted thick with dirt.
Door three, he says. Be my guest.
Sudden sweat wets my hands as I crank the wheel to the right. It moves smoothly. Well oiled, like the lock. There’s a soft hiss. I feel the door sigh. I tug an it swings wide open.
Let’s see what he’s got in here, says Jack.
As we step past the door, red lights appear in front of us. They’re scattered all over, high, low an in between. There’s a lot of ’em, but they ain’t bright. Not like the ones on the ramp outside. These murmur a dull glow. Like the last of a sunset on a cloudy winter day.
It’s our movement that triggers the lights, says Jack. Somehow it sets ’em off.
We lift our torches. It’s a room full of cupboards. Rows of cupboards. Heavy wooden ones, tall, with glass doors. Trunks an metal chests. Boxes an crates an barrels cut in half. Anythin that could be fitted with a shelf seems to be here. They’re stacked an tucked an crowded together. There’s shelfs in every single one. An every single shelf is filled with jars. Glass jars with lids.
The jars hold seeds. Seeds of all colours an sizes an shapes.
It’s a seedstore, I says.
A Wrecker seedstore, says Jack.
He starts to move along one of the rows. I make my way down the next one. Starin, touchin. This feels like a dream. It don’t seem possible there could be so much here. Some jars is full, right to the top. In some only a small handful of seeds. There ain’t a speck of dust. It’s all perfectly clean. Shelfs, jars, floor. The air is dry an cool. A bit musty but there ain’t no damp. Each jar has a bit of old paper stuck to it with a hand-drawn picture of what the seed is. Flowers. Vegetables. Fruits, trees, grasses. With a figger of a man to show how tall it’ll be, full grown.
I’m making a new world, one blade of grass at a time. Healing the earth and its people.
I wedge my torch between two metal cupboards. I take a small jar an hold it to the light. The seeds inside gleam. They’re tiny an thin, a kinda reddish colour. I give ’em a gentle shake. They shift an sigh in their long, dry sleep.
Jack’s voice falls dead in the muffled air. There’s tree seed here, he says. If I’m readin these pictures right, they’re good fer drylands. His torchlight bobs on down the row.
Now it makes sense. What DeMalo said to me. When he’d drunk the drugged wine an his guard was down. Jest before he passed out in my arms.
I wanted to tell you. I’ve found something amazing. If it’s what I think it is, it’s going to change everything.
He could reseed the whole earth with all this.
Saba, c’mere. Jack’s voice sounds a tight, urgent note. With clumsy hands, I put the jar back where it came from. I hurry to find him at the far end of the room. It’s clear of cupboards here. There’s four tables bin pushed together to make one big table. Books an papers cover the top of it, piled in neat stacks. There’s stone fatlights to work by. A chair. A cot with a blanket. An a half-empty bottle of wine. DeMalo. He works here. Sleeps here sometimes, it seems.
Jack’s lookin at the end wall. Starin up at it. There’s big sheets of heavy paper tacked the length of it. They’re coloured, mainly pink, yellow an orange. With thick blue snakes an thin blue lines an blue splodges of all sizes. Words in black. Numbers too. A lotta squiggly lines.
What is all this? I says.
They’re maps, says Jack.
I only seen dirt maps before, I says.
Well, look on these real good, he says. He takes my hand an pulls me to the furthest map on the left. This one’s New Eden, he says. Divided into sectors. See the numbers? Weepin Water, where we are now, that lies south, right? Sector One.
Uh huh, I says.
He puts his finger on the map. I figger that puts us about here, he says. Got that? Okay. He tugs me along to the next map. Here’s New Eden agin, he says. You see the shape? This is how it sits in the land all around it. It’s the one an only green patch. That must mean trees an growth. Becuz we know all these yellow bits an they’re bleak. We got the Raze to the east, to the west lies the Waste, to the south—d’you see?—here’s the Black Mountains, an south of them lies where Hopetown was, an here’s Sandsea—
—Silverlake’s there somewhere, I says.
It won’t be on no map, he says. An here, to the north, it’s the Shield all the way to this big stretch of blue. Must be water.
New Eden looks so small, I says.
He moves me to the next map. On this one, it’s even smaller, he says. On the next one, New Eden’s jest a dot. Saba, d’you see? This is the world beyond. Beyond any place you an me ever bin. This is a world we never heard of, never dreamed of.