Cathedral of Dreams (34 page)

“I didn't know,” Keith said. “I thought they wanted to warn Newcity that Bradley was going to destroy it.”

“Destroy it?” Bradley laughed. “That's what they told you?”

“Yes, they said that you wanted to stop people from escaping.”

He walked closer to Keith. “All I wanted to do was get rid of the lab and help Rene get the hell out of there. Do you have any idea what was about to happen?”

He gave the appearance as though he may have been angry or frustrated at one time, but that he was tired now. The emotions had worn him down. Keith also noticed that Bradley's eyes were swollen and red. And it wasn't until then that he realized that Rene and Bradley had been in love. The realization shot through Keith and hurt him as well. He could sense what Bradley was going through and almost cried. He turned his head. “How could I know anything more than what I was told?”

“Because you brought the system with you,” Bradley said.

“We don't know that,” Blake said.

“I'll tell you what Rene said. She said that she was afraid that they were going to chip her and the others, that they'd be more aware, more clear, but still not totally free. Is that what all this is about? Freedom?” Keith asked.

“Isn't that enough?” Blake said.

“But what about those inside? What if they want to be in there? Like Stacy and Robert and the others?”

“I think that we find a way to let them have what they want,” Blake said. He stared at Bradley for approval.

The air became still for a moment as though the whole area waited for Bradley's approval, his understanding.

“But they're wrong. They only think they want inside. They don't know what happens to them,” Bradley said. He punched his chest with a finger. “I've seen it.”

“Newcity wants them out, too, you know.” Keith said.

Both Blake and Bradley scrunched their faces up in question.

Keith relaxed as he spoke. For whatever reason, they were listening to him. “The computers. I don't know how, but they create the images to lead people out because the complex itself wants to experience more. If I understand it correctly, it's experiencing through us at this very minute. I don't know how, but it does.”

Blake nodded. “It's become omniscient.”

“Impossible,” Bradley said. “It's man-made. It's a system.”

“It's bored,” Keith said.

“So it wants to spit them out here?” Bradley said. “We can't handle them all at once. As the groups get larger, they get more difficult to handle.”

Philip, who had said nothing to this point, stepped next to Keith. “Not everyone inside has been chipped either.” He held out his arm.

Blake inspected it. He looked at Bradley.

“I knew that,” Bradley said. “They're like clean-up robots. Sometimes when there's an accident, the virus, that's what we called them, would clear out the apartment. We didn't care if the resident was alive and inside, as long as we didn't have to deal with processing another person. We were overloaded as it was. And the system didn't care either. It would merely flag the event as complete and move to the next problem. And there were plenty of them.”

“The place is falling apart,” Keith said.

“But you can't dump that many people into the outside world at once,” Bradley said again.

“There's another way to integrate them, if you have to,” Philip said.

The other men listened to him explain about creating a family unit. “That doesn't separate them, it incorporates them from the beginning. I suspect that one unit can handle maybe five people coming out.”

Blake looked at Bradley.

It was difficult for Keith to tell who was actually in charge. He sensed that the two men had been working together for a long time even though he had never seen Blake before.

“It could work. We never tried that,” Blake said.

“I don't know,” Bradley said. “What if they want to go back in?” He looked straight at Keith.

“We let them,” Keith said. “We find a way to get the system back into shape, become a part of the overall society and let alone those who want to be there.”

“Chipped?” Bradley asked.

“A decision that we can't make yet,” Philip said.

Bradley shook his head. “I don't know.” He looked up at Keith. “And what about you? They still think you're their savior. I'm not sure what to do with you. You are not like all the others.” He waved a hand at Keith. “We've gone through this. You're the boy with the hole in his forehead.”

“Not any more,” Keith said.

“It's true,” Philip said. “The computers let him go. He's free. They've chosen someone else.”

Bradley squared up to Keith. “You don't see them anymore?”

“Not for a while now. First they started to lie to me. Once that happened, I think I separated from it. I'm not sure it had a choice at the end. At least that's how I feel about it right now,” he said. For a moment, he thought about the apparition of his father. Was that a result of the system interfering? Did the system actually open some sort of gate that let other apparitions through? And, most of all, was the gate closed now? Keith couldn't answer the questions at the moment, but knew that they'd be answered eventually.

“I'm not buying this whole thing yet,” Bradley said. “I hear you, but we've got to consider it. We've got to plan how we're going to handle this.”

“I understand,” Keith said. “And if it matters, I'm sorry all this happened.”

“It doesn't matter. It won't until I decide it does.” Bradley started to walk toward the van, and Blake gave Keith a slow nod.

“Now what?” Keith said.

Bradley wasn't walking away, Keith noticed, he was pacing. At a certain point, Bradley swung around on his heels and came back into the circle. “You give up,” he said pointing directly into Keith's face. “All of you. Until I can decide how much of this is the truth and how much are lies to save your skin.” He continued to glare, then slowly turned toward Philip. “Got that?”

Blake said, “Not like prisoners, just no weapons.”

Bradley shook his head. “Bullshit. We post guards. I don't need any more trouble for now.”

So, Bradley was in charge.

“We'll comply,” Keith said. “Is that good with you?” he asked Philip.

“For now.”

“No funny business,” Bradley said. Then he turned to Blake. “Two days. We'll talk with the others.” As he walked toward the van on the bridge, he yelled back. “I'll send a few men to collect your weapons. And a driver.”

Keith and Philip went back to their van to explain what happened. Several of the others weren't happy with their decision. “We could have taken them,” one of them said. Nonetheless, most agreed that they could not have survived. If nothing else, Philip told them that this would give them time to plan.

“I don't like being guarded, not now that we're finally outside. We need to start our own community,” Lori pleaded.

“He's already done that. We can learn from him, even if only for a short while.” Philip opened a space in the conversation for Keith to add something.

“He's right. We should listen to Philip. We've got to buy some time.” Keith followed Philip's lead because he didn't know what else to do. His senses had become overloaded, and it happened in the last few minutes. The fields, the open sky, the water from the creek, it all overtook him at once. He felt a part of the world and noticed the coolness of the air coming from the creek as it met with the air from the fields. There was a line of separation. Perhaps that was the line between them and Bradley, or the line between the chipped and unchipped, the Newcity residents or the outsiders. What was the world telling him?

He looked for the boy or the angel. But he was alone. Realizing that he sensed a deep hunger in his solar plexus, a hollow, empty feeling.

“They're coming,” Philip said, breaking Keith's trance and bringing him back, in part, to the reality of their capture.

“And they have guns,” Lori said. “I don't like this at all.”

One of the men who approached ordered them to hand over their weapons, and Philip nodded his approval. Several of the people looked to Keith as well, but he yielded to Philip's command.

That didn't stop one of them, the gunman who had helped Keith at Newcity, from backing up and refusing to hand over his weapon. He held his pistol out. “You can't take everything from us. Not that easily.”

One of Bradley's men stepped forward, lifted his pistol, and fired into the gunman's chest.

The gunman buckled forward then fell backward. Several of the others yelled and went to him. “Leave him,” Bradley's man said.

That act answered a lot of questions they may have had. Keith saw that violence still wasn't out of the question, no matter how friendly his conversation was with Bradley and Blake.

Nellie took Keith's arm. Lori stood next to Philip. A few of the others paired up as well. Keith worried for them.

Chapter 25

T
hey didn't go back to Bradley's camp where Keith had been taken originally. Instead they took a few back roads and stopped beside a huge barn. Bradley and his crew must have used the barn for shelter before, because it was much cleaner than the barn Keith and the others had accidentally run across the day before.

The whitewashed building had a corrugated metal roof with large areas of rust that randomly spread across it. The barn looked as though it had been built once and then added onto several times. Wood-framed protrusions jutted out on both sides. From the inside, the beams were as thick as a man, and as tall as most of the trees in the area.

All the vehicles were left outside. The fourteen people from Newcity were forced into one of the side areas that had been added to the original barn. The space was loaded with crates and boxes along one of the walls, and piles of bags along the back wall.

Keith walked over to the bags and saw that many of them were seed bags. The crates were unmarked, but he had the feeling that they held more seed bags and had not been opened yet. So, the barn was being used as storage.

In a short while, they were brought small amounts of food, enough to settle their stomachs. A few minutes after they finished two men came and took Philip away. Lori protested but was shoved aggressively and threatened. She ran to Keith and Nellie. “Do something,” she pleaded.

“They're going to question him,” Keith said. “As long as we don't fight them, I think we'll be okay.”

“Like Mike back at the bridge?” she said, referring to the man who had been shot.

“He pointed a gun at them. We did the same thing. We killed one of their men from the van, remember?”

“To escape,” she retorted.

“I didn't say it was right, but what good will it do if we resist them while we're trapped in here? Let's get clear on one thing, shall we? We're the prisoners at the moment. Our rights are limited. We'll know more when Philip returns.” Keith tried to look strong and confident, and perhaps Lori recognized his weak attempt, but she didn't question him.

She grinned briefly. “We'll see,” she said before walking away from them toward the rear of their holding area.

Philip was gone about an hour. When he returned to the area where they were kept, he appeared in a better mood. “That wasn't so bad,” he said. He addressed Keith, “They asked a lot of questions, many of which I didn't know the answers to. But it seems like they're just after the truth.”

“Whose truth?” Lori said coming to his side.

“What if there isn't a true answer?” Keith asked. “What if we're all just guessing?”

“There is no guessing about who I am or what I did while inside Newcity. I knew the answers and I told them. The things I didn't know, I told them that too. Don't make this more complicated than it is. It's simple.” Philip hugged Lori and gave her a kiss before he addressed Keith again. “And you're next.”

Keith and Nellie looked at the doorway together. Guards with rifles stood to either side and were looking in at them.