The Shelter Cycle (15 page)

The first paper was folded three times, and she opened it to reveal a cross-section of their shelter's construction. Her father's handwriting, in red ink, pointed out changes in the ventilation system, detailed the steps of the backfill, how to bury the whole thing without crushing it. She folded the plans away. Next were two watercolors, their paper rigid with dried paint: one by Maya, of a horse standing beneath a tree; another by Francine, her age (7) in the sky next to a sun that shone down on a girl whose smile stretched beyond the edges of her face.

The next sheet of paper was official stationery. It was old, the address in Malibu, before the move to Montana. It took a moment for Francine to understand it, though there were only three lines: a letter from the Messenger to her parents, either telling them that they must marry or giving their marriage her blessing.

A blue envelope held a card with a picture of a sunset on it. It was from her grandparents, to her parents, saying,
You have our love even if we cannot be with you, even if we cannot agree. We appreciate your prayers and welcome them even if we do not understand.

Next was a love note from her father to her mother, dated 1979, that she couldn't quite bring herself to read. Not yet. And then the last piece of paper, at the bottom of the pile: another letter from the Messenger, a more recent one. It was from 1981.

 

Hello My Daughter,

I have been thinking of you and your family, Dearest Loving Hearts Who Keep the Flame of Life on Earth. Some Keepers of the Flame in the field have told me they are waiting for a signal before they plan on taking any action in terms of survival. This is not the case with you and your family, for which I am glad and for which the Masters are glad.

Blessed heart, I have several letters from you here and must respond all at once. As for reports of Maya's disobedience: I remind you that she is still a very young girl, and harsh measures will not avail you. Say the Heart, Head and Hand decrees with her before she goes to bed at night. Decree for her, yourself. Decree the Tube of Light over her while she sleeps.

Most importantly, congratulations on welcoming a new soul into your family! I am in agreement that Francine is a fine name, and you have my blessing to use it for your daughter. Already I can tell that she has lived important lives in previous embodiments, and has returned to us for a reason. Your daughter will be the mother of a daughter of great Light indeed.

All my Love forever,

Mother

P.S. You will soon receive (or may already have received) a mailing concerning our Royal Teton Food Storage Program. We are offering a comprehensive food program for survival created by our staff of food-production professionals and nutrition consultants. It includes organic grains, beans, and vegetables, many of which are grown right here on the ranch, and optional meat and dairy. Our food units are for sale only to registered Communicants.

 

Francine set down the sheet of paper. She went into the bathroom, peed one last time, washed her hands. Carefully she then set the papers back in the bucket, unwound the scarf from her neck. She closed her eyes, drifted toward sleep.

 

•

 

In the morning, it took a moment to remember where she was. The scarf on the bedpost, the bucket on the floor. When she opened the curtains, the windows were frosted over; she shivered, closed them again, pulled on her clothes.

Downstairs in the lobby, the fire was burning, and people were sitting around the hearth with newspapers and laptops, drinking coffee from paper cups. The buffet was not yet open; the door to the dining room was locked. Francine turned and went back up the stairs, down the hallway, following the arrows on the walls, past her own room. At the bottom of a narrow stairway, she pushed open the door.

Steam was everywhere, rising from the hot water in the long pool into the dark sky overhead. Was anyone here? It was impossible to say. She stepped out of her clogs and felt the coldness of the concrete through her stocking feet.

Voices. She squinted: a man and a woman with a baby floating in an inflatable ring. The baby laughed, splashed, disappeared into the clouds of steam.

Francine took off her socks, rolled up her pant legs. She sat on the edge of the pool, easing her feet down into the hot water. When she was a girl, this had been one of the special places, one of the rare times they were out in the world with other people, people who weren't members of the Activity. They were more exposed than at any other time, even if they weren't allowed to wear bathing suits; they wore long shorts, knee socks, tights. She remembered how exciting it had been to splash along through the thick steam, uncertain whether the other children around her, their faces hard to see, were people she knew. She remembered the touch of skin underwater, of fingers suddenly around her ankle and suddenly gone. At night there were lights over the pool; she would float on her back in the hot water and stare up at the edge of the darkness, the stars.

“Good morning,” a woman said. “A beautiful one.”

“Yes,” Francine said.

The woman wore a flowered bathing cap and had two long, wet white braids on her shoulders; she plowed through the water, running in slow motion. After a moment she returned, coming through the steam.

“Cold out,” she said.

“My butt's freezing,” Francine said.

“So get in.”

“Can't,” she said. “I don't have a suit. And I'm not supposed to. The hot water.”

“When are you due?”

“Five weeks. A little more than a month.”

The water magnified the woman's lower body, made her legs seem to bend away at an odd angle. She kicked them, circled her arms, going through a series of motions. Exercises. She continued to look at Francine, not moving away. Her earlobes stuck out the bottom of her cap; small turquoise studs shone there.

“You're Francine, aren't you?”

“That's my name, yes.”

The woman laughed. “You don't look so different from when you were a little girl. Your face. I knew you then. I knew your parents. I'm Juliet Stiller.”

“Mrs. Stiller,” Francine said. “Courtney's mom.”

“I know, I don't look the same. I'm old! I have to come down here almost every morning for my arthritis.”

More voices. Bodies leapt into the water, colored suits flashed here and there. Francine felt wetness on her head; she looked up and cold flakes landed on her face.

“It's snowing.”

“It is.”

“I was thinking back,” Francine said. “How we used to come here.”

“Yes—I remember times when Courtney was a teenager that I tried to keep her away, but of course that didn't work.”

Francine kicked her legs gently, felt the cold where her calves were wet, above the surface of the hot water. She looked down, then up at Mrs. Stiller again.

“How is Courtney?”

“She's down in California—Oakland—with her girlfriend, now.” Mrs. Stiller held a long, blue foam tube under her arms; she straightened one leg so her toes broke the surface of the water, then the other. “She comes back a couple times a year, tells me how wrong I am about everything.”

Francine tried to remember what had happened to Courtney, after she disappeared, after that night in the shelter. She was really Maya's friend. Had she come back? Had she stayed away?

“She's my daughter,” Mrs. Stiller said. “The only one I have. Have to love her—you'll see how it is when you have your daughter.” Now she splashed with her hands, drifting farther away, closer again. “I like the cold snowflakes and the hot water together,” she said. “Don't you?”

“Yes.”

“I saw you yesterday.” Mrs. Stiller swung her arms wide, then together in front of her, just under the surface of the water. “Did I say that? Your old place is gone, of course.”

“Yes.”

“Looked like you went up to the shelter.”

“To think if we'd lived down there, all those years,” Francine said. “If we hadn't been wrong—”

“Were we wrong?” Mrs. Stiller sank lower in the water, blew bubbles, rose again. “No one knows what would've happened if we hadn't built the shelters. We were trying to survive and we did survive, and now there's a world out here, still a place where Light can be gathered. And I've never been with so many creative, determined folks working in the same direction. Never before, never since.”

“You're still involved?”

“With the Activity? Oh, no.” Mrs. Stiller laughed. “Not exactly. After the Messenger, without her it became more like a publishing company, really—no real leader, none of the people we knew. No one down in Corwin Springs is really practicing like we did—and you know, what happened to the Messenger, the loss of her, that was more startling than the world not ending.”

As she listened to Mrs. Stiller, as clouds of steam pressed down all around her, Francine tried to concentrate on the wetness of the water, the cold concrete beneath her. The snowflakes seemed to come down hot, like cinders, cooling slowly on her skin. The water around her legs felt cold. Icy. She reached her hands in, splashed her face, held her cold fingers over the sockets of her eyes.

“Are you feeling all right?” Mrs. Stiller said. “Any cramping?”

“Why?” Francine said. “Why did you say I would have a daughter?”

“Did I say that?”

“Just now.”

“I don't remember.”

“You did say it.”

“You were friends with the Youngs' boy,” Mrs. Stiller said. “I remember you running around together. I remember seeing your two blond heads, way up in the canyons.”

“Colville,” Francine said. “I saw him not long ago.”

“You must have had a lot to talk about, plenty of memories.”

“Yes.”

“I wonder,” Mrs. Stiller said. “Would you join us this afternoon? A few friends of mine—we meet at my house around three o'clock.”

“I don't know if I'll still be here, later today.”

“Think about it. No, don't think—see how you feel. We study the Teachings, decree, raise our voices together, listen to taped dictations. My house, you know which one it is. A yellow door, the diamond-shaped windows. Even yesterday I could see all your energy, all the Light inside you. I can feel it now.”

“I'll think about it,” Francine said. “Right now, I'm freezing.”

“Of course. Go inside now, dear. Eat something. Drink something warm.”

 

•

 

The hearth was slightly rounded, of polished stone; a broken wagon wheel was etched high above the flames. Francine sat watching the fire, her feet up near the metal grate. She ate a bowl of oatmeal, sipped at lemon tea. She imagined how it would be, if she went to Mrs. Stiller's house. Would she remember the decrees; would she be able to keep up? The speed of the voices had always risen to a hum, like insects vibrating, leaving hardly time or space to breathe. A swarm of words. Perhaps the decrees would return, the Teachings still inside her, waiting to be brought into practice, to surface.

A man with bifocals and a gray mustache sat across from her, reading the
New York Times.
He kept glancing up, as if about to say something; she'd noticed this, the friendliness of strangers since she'd been pregnant, her pregnancy a reason to engage her. It was a little like walking a dog, how it brought strangers close. She thought for a moment of Kilo, either circling the back yard or asleep under the kitchen table. Or maybe Wells had started to let the dog sleep on the bed, since she'd been gone. Wells, worrying now, wondering. Francine laid a hand flat on her belly, her shirt warm from the fire.
Your daughter will be the mother of a daughter of great Light
indeed.
To think that the woman who wrote that was now the woman feeding apples to horses, the path from one to another running at the same time as Francine traveled around the canyons as a girl, in and out of the shelter and away, far away, to another life, until here she was again, circling back, a person with a person inside her.

 

 

 

How would I even go about teaching you, being a mother in that way? Perhaps I would tell you to think of yourself as a radio station, sending forth good thoughts, peace and goodwill. Would that be too much? Would I believe it? Perhaps I will ask that you tell your mind to act with decision, alertness and quickness, not to waver; when you have a sudden feeling to do a certain constructive thing, stick to it and do it, whatever the outcome. That is something that the Messenger taught us, and I would like to believe it, to be able to act without wavering. I would like to believe that we are not these lower bodies, but that we are beings using these vehicles to accomplish an end. I will say, I will tell you that whatever happens, don't make matters worse because you're afraid of looking foolish. I will say to forgive yourself, to forgive others, to learn while your body sleeps.