She saw his look and nodded. "I've been trying to get pregnant by him for three years now, but I think he's shooting blanks. The doc says it definitely isn't me."
Gar tried, unsuccessfully, to hide his grin at this. Maybe he had a chance after all.
She saw his look and smiled inwardly. She knew he had a crush on her... but she wasn't the sort to make the first move, and he'd never asked her out.
'Maybe it's time to get a bit more aggressive.' she thought to herself. First, though, she needed time to get situated, and to get her mind to a better place.
Jim got his great-granddad's journal back out and read it in bed, while his wife slept beside him. He knew he needed to get a look at the area around the outside of the shelter, and this reference to a camera sounded like just the ticket. He'd have to go down to the computer command center and check it out in the morning.
Johnny Corcoran sat in the control room, reading Jim's note, nodding to himself. He knew Jim was right; they needed to be cautious, at first. Having people run out of the Cave willy-nilly was the absolute last thing they wanted... there could be dangers lurking out there that they had no idea about.
He hated to keep the information to himself, and wondered if he should tell his wife. 'Yeah, right' he thought. 'Might as well announce it over the PA system.' He loved the woman dearly, but he knew, from first hand experience, that she could never keep her mouth shut.
He looked back up, at the two century old map on the ancient bulletin board, seeing again the areas that had been hardest hit, according to what little they'd been able to pick up from the network of satellites, so very long ago.
Dan Archer, the founder, had somehow managed to tap into the network of military satellites, keeping a rough log of the major cities that had been hit... and if the map was accurate, the number was appalling.
One was less than two hundred miles away, and was listed as a major military site. Others, which were merely large population centers, showed as huge red clusters on the map. He knew that the more little red dots there were in a specific area meant the heavier the concentration of bombs and missiles that had hit them. They were areas he'd only read about in the old books and had been taught about in history classes.
Jim sat at the ancient computer desk, tapping in the last of a dozen passwords, and the old machinery far above him went to work. A flat door in the mountain top raised up out of the way, a tall mast extended upwards by perhaps fifty feet, and the digital video cameras at the top started projecting images from four different directions, giving him four views of the surrounding countryside, each on a seperate monitor.
To the east and north, there was nothing but rolling countryside, meadows and forest, mostly, which is what the old maps depicted. To the west was a road, or at least, a path, which looked like it got a fair amount of traffic. This troubled him, since he knew it wasn't on the old maps of the area, which great grandpa Dan had made from aerial photographs, taken so very long ago.
To the south was what appeared to be a small village, consisting of a number of what appeared to be crude log houses. Surrounding the village were acres of cultivated land, much more than what was needed to feed the occupants of perhaps a dozen homes.
'Probably use some of the goods for trading.' He thought as he continued to observe them. There were perhaps thirty people in the fields, cleaning up weeds and harvesting the odd vegetable from time to time. They appeared to be tomatoes and carrots.
Using the computer's controls, and a joystick that the kids usually used for the old computer games that were still in use, he panned around, seeing some other crops, including corn, beans of some sort, several types of grain, and what appeared to be pumpkins.
A small pasture on the eastern edge of the farmland held half a dozen cows and a bull, along with several calves, all of which looked decidedly thin.
Panning the camera back to the village, he realized what was missing--- there was no sign of any sort of mechanical transportation, not so much as a single car. There were, however, several wagons sitting by a large, barnlike structure.... probably pulled by cattle, since he saw no evidence of horses.
John D'agastino sat back in the Archer apartment, nodding to himself as he listened to Jim. He'd followed in his Great Grandfather's footsteps, and was the spiritual leader of the community.
If what Jim was telling him was true, they would want to tread very carefully. They didn't want to startle the people in the village to the south of them, and would need to observe them for at least a few days before they made contact. The pathway, crude as it was, suggested that the villagers were visited by someone, from time to time, but the question was--who?
Jim waited as Father Johnny sat back, digesting all that he'd told him. He knew the Minister would think long and hard before saying anything, and his responses, when they came, would be insightful and well thought out.
"You're right, Jim, we have to be cautious, at first... we don't want to startle them too much. Around here, 'stranger' might well mean 'enemy'. How do you want to proceed?"
Jim rubbed his chin for a moment. "Well, first off, I don't want to tip our hand too early.... foot patrols only, and even then, only at night. I don't want our vehicles exposed too soon. We should probably prep a few Humvees and big pickups... pull wheels and tires out of the storage rooms, once the Argon gas has been pumped out of the chambers and bottled up. Get new hoses and belts on the engines, too. Get the engines prepped and running, and maybe a few Armored Personnel Carriers and tanks, too... just in case we need them. I wonder if the old 'duck blinds' are still in place?"
"No idea.... as for the trucks and whatnot, they won't be a problem. I was talking to Gar the other day. He spent a few days looking over the vehicles in the motor pool a few weeks ago. Said he didn't understand it, but every car and truck he looked at appeared to be ready to run. Matter of fact, he got into a few of them, started them... said they started right up."
Jim nodded. His father had once told him that he'd thought Grandpa Dan had made a deal with something they couldn't explain, but he hadn't elaborated on the statement. Still, there were a lot of systems that never seemed to need any kind of maintenence, which made no sense to him. Light bulbs never burned out, and none of the household appliances ever failed, despite the fact that they had a whole warehouse full of replacements.
He didn't know that an old friend of Great Grandpa Dan's, by the name of DJ, had laid down a spell of regeneration upon every mechanical device in the Cave; wear and tear literally healed itself, and the aging process never touched any machine in the place. It was his idea of a 'parting gift' to the inhabitants of the Cave, who were mostly people he'd grown extremely fond of.
Sarah Mitchell led her small class through the forms of Kung Fu that had been passed down through her family since the Sealing; her Great Grandpa Brad had always stressed to his daughter and two sons the importance of self defense. This was the advanced class, mostly kids in their late teens, along with a sprinkling of older folks who joined in just to keep in shape.
Martial arts were a popular form of exercise in the Cave, and just about everyone in the place had a good grounding in at least one or two schools. Some, like Sarah, would have been considered 'Black Belts', in the old world.
In an adjoining gymnasium chamber, Bob Tyler was doing the same, though his own specialty was Judo, and at the end of the two hour session, both classes would jump into the adjoined swimming pool to cool down and horse around for a few hours.
Two days passed, with Jim Archer spending much of the time keeping an eye on the monitors. It was time to talk to his informal council.
Jim Miller and Sarah Mitchell came in first, and he waved them over to the big coffee makers on the table by the wall, which also held an assortment of donuts, biscuits, muffins, and rolls.
Father John and his wife, Jenny, turned up next, each grabbing a cup of coffee before taking seats at the council table.
Doc Martin and Gar Davidson soon followed, with John Corcoran right behind them.
Leeanne Samuels and Jim Miller came in last, each carrying large file folders and their favorite coffee cups.
