Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalipse

"You’re wrong, Mrs. Pratt. You do have something interesting going on here. You have survived. Your society has regressed but not collapsed. You’re functioning under conditions where you shouldn’t have."

The same old crap. I raise my eyebrows at him. He stares into the fire and says quietly, "To say Washington is rioting says nothing. You have to see a twelve-year-old hurl a homemade bomb, a man sliced open from neck to crotch because he still has a job to go to and his neighbour doesn’t, a three-year-old left to starve because someone abandoned her like an unwanted kitten…You don’t know. It doesn’t happen Inside."

"We’re better than they are," Rachel says. I look at my grandchild. She says it simply, without self-aggrandizement, but with a kind of wonder. In the firelight the thickened gray ropes of skin across her cheek glow dull maroon.

McHabe said, "Perhaps you are. I started to say earlier that we’ve learned that the virus doesn’t affect just the skin. It alters neurotransmitter receptor sites in the brain as well. It’s a relatively slow transformation, which is why the flurry of research in the early years of the disease missed it. But it’s real, as real as the faster site-capacity transformations brought about by, say, cocaine. Are you following me, Mrs. Pratt?"

I nod. Jennie and Rachel don’t look lost, although they don’t know any of this vocabulary, and I recognize that McHabe must have explained all this to them,

"As the disease progresses to the brain, the receptors which receive excitory transmitters slowly become harder to engage, and the receptors which receive inhibiting transmitters become easier to engage."

"You mean that we become stupider."

"Oh, no! Intelligence is not affected at all. The results are emotional and behavioural, not intellectual. You become-all of you-calmer. Disinclined to action or innovation. Mildly but definitely depressed."

The fire burns down. I pick up the poker, bent slightly where someone once tried to use it as a crowbar, and poke at the log, which is a perfectly shaped moulded-pulp synthetic stamped "Donated by Weyerhaeuser-Seyyed."

"I don’t feel depressed, young man."

"It’s a depression of the nervous system, but a new kind-without the hopelessness usually associated with clinical depression."

"I don’t believe you."

"Really? With all due courtesy, when was the last time you—or any of the older Block leaders—pushed for any significant change in how you do things Inside?"

"Sometimes things cannot be constructively changed. Only accepted. That’s not chemistry, its reality."

"Not Outside," McHabe says grimly. "Outside they don’t change constructively or accept. They get violent. Inside, you’ve had almost no violence since the early years, even when your resources tightened again and again. When was the last time you tasted butter, Mrs. Pratt, or smoked a cigarette, or had a new pair of jeans? Do you know what happens Outside when consumer goods become unavailable and there are no police in a given area? But Inside you just distribute whatever you have as fairly as you can, or make do without. No looting, no rioting, no cancerous envy. No one Outside knew why. Now we do."

"We have envy."

"But it doesn’t erupt into anger."

Each time one of us speaks, Jennie and Rachel turn their heads to watch, like rapt spectators at tennis. Which neither of them has ever seen. Jennie’s skin glows like pearl.

"Our young people aren’t violent either, and the disease hasn’t advanced very far in some of them."

"They learn how to behave from their elders-just like kids everywhere else."

"I don’t feel depressed."

"Do you feel energetic?"

"I have arthritis."

"That’s not what I mean."

"What do you mean, Doctor?"

Again that restless, furtive reach for a non-existent cigarette. But his voice is quiet. "How long did it take you to get around to applying that insecticide I got Rachel for the termites? She told me you forbid her to do it, and I think you were right; it’s dangerous stuff. How many days went by before you or your daughter spread it around?"

The chemical is still in its can.

"How much anger are you feeling now, Mrs. Pratt?" he goes on. "Because I think we understand each other, you and I, and that you guess now why I’m here. But you aren’t shouting or ordering me out of here or even telling me what you think of me. You’re listening, and you’re doing it calmly, and you’re accepting what I tell you even though you know what I want you to—"

The door opens and he breaks off. Mamie flounces in, followed by Peter. She scowls and stamps her foot. "Where were you, Rachel? We’ve been standing outside waiting for you all for ten minutes now! The dance has already started!"

"A few more minutes, Mama. We’re talking."

"Talking? About what? What’s going on?"

"Nothing," McHabe says. "I was just asking your mother some questions about life Inside. I’m sorry we took so long."

"You never ask me questions about life Inside. And besides, I want to dance!"

McHabe says, "If you and Peter want to go ahead, I’ll bring Rachel and Jen-me.