House of Gold (7 page)

Someone took up another subject, an old favorite. Who was the greater American: John Wayne or Jimmy Stewart? (Hands down: Wayne, but Opus Dei Bill, normally quiet, could always be
counted on to make The Case for Stewart.)

"I guess I should go get my wife," Sam said to no one in particular.

A few minutes later, standing next to their cars, the Woodwards and Fisks decided to meet at Sam's house.

Chapter Three

Dirty Croquet

"Trying to talk to somebody about this thing is like telling a mother she's not doing a good job raising her children," Melanie observed as they sat at the kitchen table in Sam and Ellie's house. "No, that's not right."

She bit her lower lip, struggling to find her point.

When they got back to the house, Buzz and Sam soon discovered that Mel and Ellie had been confronted
by the other wives about their plans to move away from Cleveland while Buzz and Sam had had been grilled on the porch by Tim and the others.

"No. You're onto something here," Ellie spoke up after a moment of reflection. "Here's another way of looking at the problem. Let's just suppose you were Maggie, and you heard that Sam and I were moving away out of fear for Christopher's life–all because
of a computer problem. Let's grant that from her point of view, the worst it can cause is a depression, and at best, the computer bug is probably just some hyped-up non-event. Okay?

"By our decision to move, by our actions, we are saying to them, even if we don't say it straight out: 'If you don't move, your children are probably going to starve to death, or die from some other horrible cause–violence
or disease. If you allow this to happen to your kids, you're not fulfilling your responsibilities as a parent.'"

Buzz banged a fist on the table. "I get it. Right, Ellie. If I'm Tim Penny or Mark Johnson, well, I know I'm a good dad, and a good dad would never put his children in such danger, therefore–"

"Therefore, it
has
to be a non-event," Ellie finished for him. "It's got its own kind of circular
logic."

They all turned to Sam. After all, he had convinced the three of them to move.

"And therefore," he said quietly, "Buzz and Mel, Sam and Ellie have gone crazy."

There was something in his voice, something sad.

"What is it, honey?" Ellie reached for his fidgeting hand.

"Don't you see what this means?" he continued. "It means they'll never investigate. And they'll never change their minds
if they don't investigate. The more we try to convince them, the stronger they'll resist. The problem really isn't that they're
in denial
about a computer bug. Nobody is dumb enough to deny that the computers need to be fixed. Real denial is when you reject something you know is true–like the widow who makes believe her husband is still alive.

"The problem here is that the average person rejects
the premise that a computer problem can
cause a collapse.
If they reject that premise, then they relieve themselves of the responsibility of investigating it. And how can we blame them: who wants to face something as ugly as mass starvation, chaos, and disease? Better to reject the premise and sleep soundly at night.

"Maybe we're technically right about this thing–but maybe the sane people are
the ones who ignore it. At least they'll get to enjoy the next year and a half–even if it means they won't prepare and they'll probably..." he couldn't finish.

They'll probably die,
Buzz finished in his head. He could tell that Mel didn't quite get Sam's point.

"I'll never accept that there is something insane about accepting the truth," Buzz said.

He pronounced each word slowly, with utter conviction,
and looked each of the others in the eye, one by one.

"Maybe, Sam," Ellie said suddenly, brightly, as if coming out of days of pondering. "If we really get going on this, and if your company sells quickly, we can make preparations for our friends, too. Maybe they'll come up at the last minute, and we'll be able to take them in. Maybe we're supposed to be like an...an advance team. Maybe that's
why God is inspiring us to do what we're doing–because we are willing and able to make preparations. Very few people have our financial resources."

"That's a lot of maybes," Buzz said, catching Sam's resignation like an airborne virus.

Sam's always right. They'll never come. They'll buy their five sacks of rice at Sam's Club and stick them in their basements or at Mark's 'farm,' then sleep soundly
at night thinking they're prepared.

"Let's keep a positive attitude," Melanie added with false optimism, sensing that the men were weary. "There's still a lot of time left–more than a year and a half.

"Maybe the press will catch on, or the government will start telling people to make preparations. More information will come out. More facts. The Pennys and Johnsons are smart–real smart. As smart
as they come. But they will catch on eventually."

Sam looked at her. He decided to tell her the truth–what he had already figured out.

"The press will never catch on," he began. "Oh, they'll have reports on the bug, more and more as the months pass by, but keep in mind that reporters are even more ignorant about computers and complex systems than the CEOs who hire Edwards. The press will add to
the mass rationalizations, repeat the party line that it will only cause a bump in the road–and make it even harder for us to convince our friends. They'll add to the confusion with conflicting reports. You see the denial in our friends–reporters and editors are just as human.

"Right now, there is very little about the problem in the mainstream media. The best information is on the Internet. Mark
and Tim aren't even online.

"As for the government, I would be surprised if those in charge at the highest levels–especially in the intelligence agencies which are supposed to figure this kind of stuff out–I'd be surprised if they don't know the truth. You can read it between the lines in some of the reports to the congressional subcommittee on the issue.

"They probably feel as helpless as everybody
else. Suppose you're the guy in charge, and you start telling the man on the street the truth–there are only two possible outcomes. First, the man on the street ignores you, and you've just convinced him, as we've just convinced our friends, that you're a lunatic; or, second, the man on the street listens to you, and on the very next day–"

"–the bank runs begin, which doesn't help anybody," Buzz
finished.

They were all on the same page now.

"So it's a Catch-22," Ellie summarized.

Buzz stood up and walked over to the wall next to the window which showed the view of the lake, which tonight, in the moonlight, was barely visible. He began gingerly slamming his forehead into the wall.

"Arrghh!"

"Right Buzzy, arrghh," Melanie said glumly.

Buzz stopped banging. He turned to his friends.

A heavy
calm fell on them.

"And where does that leave us?" Ellie broke the silence, unaware that her right hand was rubbing her shirt below her stomach–her womb.

Again, they looked to Sam. He closed his eyes, then opened them, placing his palms flat onto the table, stretching his long arms.

"We move forward," he said calmly. "And pray for our friends, and assume that whatever preparations we do make,
we're making for them, too. Buzz and I will fly to Montana next weekend and start scouting for a place to buy."

They spent the rest of the evening discussing what they would need to look for in a site. A farm? A ranch? On a mountain or on a plain? What would they do for power? Solar, wind, hydro, generators? What would they eat? Where would they get bulk food? How would they cook it? How would
they heat their homes? Wood? Coal? Wasn't there a better fuel than wood–Sam had found a website run by a bunch of former back-to-the-land hippie-types extolling the virtues of solar heating. Greenhouses? Root cellars? Should they buy an existing farm and fix it up? Cows or chickens–or both or neither? Wait, why not stay in Ohio? Too close to population centers, that's right. Then how about Minnesota–or
northern Wisconsin? Melanie wanted to know why not somewhere warm–New Mexico or Arizona. Hard to farm in the desert, and that's where everybody will be going–south, toward the warm weather. But it's so
cold
up north–Exactly. That's the whole idea.

It was a frustrating conversation. They felt lost, without bearings. Finally, Buzz suggested they all take a general area and do research. Sam for site
location and off-grid electrical systems. Ellie took food purchasing, storage, and preparation. Melanie, farming and farm tools. (
What a hoot! Me, a farmer?
she thought.) Buzz took water systems, miscellaneous items as they came up, and ongoing research on the bug (he almost enjoyed the last).

None of them were experts. None had ever planned for the end of civilization.

+  +  +

A week later, after
Mass, Buzz and his wife were driving to her parents' compound, as he called it. It was an unusually warm, clear afternoon. Her sisters and their husbands would be at the house.

"You'll have to tell them soon, Mel. You don't want them finding out from our friends, or when the real estate sign goes up on Tuesday. And you don't want to tell them over the phone."

She didn't reply. She knew he was
right.
Today is the day.

Still, she replied, "They won't see the sign. They never drive by our house."

She held sets of stapled papers on her lap. They were a hodgepodge of reports about the computer problem which Buzz had printed up from several sites on the Internet.

They pulled into the driveway at the end of a cul-de-sac in an exclusive gated subdivision–Pheasant Hollow–and wound past spectacular
rows of shaped hedges, wood-chipped faux hills, and trees bred especially for their current usage. It seemed like it took half a day of driving before Buzz and Mel were able to view the enormous house, which was set deep on a gentle slope. It was impossible to categorize the home architecturally–it was a modern combination of custom gables, three kinds of genuine pastel stone facings, arches,
giant windows, small round windows, and six–not five, not four–garage door openings: two in the front, four in the back, on a lower level of the slope. Also accessible from the back: the indoor pool.

"Gamma's house!" Packy cried.

Oh, crudbuckets,
Buzz muttered mentally as they pulled around to the back,
they've set up the croquet course again.

Buzz steered their battered little Festiva alongside
a sparkling four-wheel-drive Navigator, a massive Town and Country, and, of course, Howie's beloved Lexus, which he only drove on Sundays, or so it seemed to Buzz.

He deduced that Mr. O'Meara's super-size-me Mercedes and Mrs. O'Meara's Jag convertible must be in the garage.

This illustration of Kublai-Khan-Gone-Suburban, which, strangely enough, was no longer uncommon in any tony suburb of any
American city, was a spawn of stock market profit–silicon chips, and emerging markets.

George O'Meara, now seventy-one and retired, had founded his own private fund-management firm in the 1960s. Back then, O'Meara had convinced ten men with nothing better to do with a million dollars to roll the dice with him. Today, an individual investor who desired to reap the growth dividends from the now
legendary O'Meara Portfolio needed to cough up a cool sixteen million for the privilege.

The old man had once mentioned that the house was paid for with
interest compounded from interest.

The O'Mearas also owned a spectacular summer home on forty acres on the lake in northern Michigan, and the perfunctory condo on a golf course in Florida for those getaway weekends when the Cleveland winter became
too oppressive.

"Please take the baby for me," Mel asked, still in the car. "He's fallen asleep."

"Let's roll down the windows. We'll hear him cry if he wakes up."

A look of horror came to her eyes. "My mother would throw a fit."

Speak of the devil,
Buzz thought, as Helen O'Meara approached the car from afar.

She was dressed impeccably in a white tennis outfit outlined with light blue lace. Ten
years younger than her husband, she looked twenty years younger courtesy of the latest advances in cosmetic surgery. Those scalpels and suction machines were getting so good it was hard to tell Does She or Doesn't She anymore. She was trim, healthy–physically perfect in every matronly way. She shared a red mane with her daughter–now undetectably phony–and little else. She was tall, as was George.

It was family lore that an elf with unruly red hair would be born to an O'Meara every other generation. This elf would be male–and destined to be a brawler, a murderer, a drunk, extortionist, con man, or some other unholy version of a man found under the general heading of good-for-nothing. George, given an extra Martini or two, would regale his family members with the stories of his infamous
Uncle Sean O'Meara, who robbed banks in the old country and ended his life rotting from syphilis in a gaol in County Galway.

Buzz had once been shown a portrait of Uncle Sean portrayed as a young man, and damned if he wasn't a tiny little streak of freckles with electric red screaming out of his scalp–a visual male reproduction of Mel, right down to the funny way he stood back on his heels with
his toes pointed outward.

By Melanie's way of thinking, she had even screwed up by being born the wrong sex, messing up hundreds of years of tradition. She had been her mother's last child, the never outwardly acknowledged accident who came five years after Mrs. O'Meara's designated
final
daughter, Mandy–or perhaps George's final attempt to hit a boy on the dartboard of fertility. No harm done–George
had two brothers, and there were four nephews to carry on the family name.

The O'Mearas weren't Catholic, despite the Irish heritage. They were fallen-away Episcopalian, "planted" in central Ireland by some forgotten English king during a century lost in the dustbin of history. Mel's conversion to Catholicism after taking a course on world religions at Texas A&M, however, had not been a heartbreak.
It had been a practically expected disappointment.

What else should they have anticipated from the elfin terror? Thief...prostitute...ne'er-do-well...

...Catholic.

It was all the same.

Markie darted to his grandmother and received a hug, then headed toward Ashley, one of his older cousins, who was reclining in a
chaise longe
on the stone patio that separated the house from the vast green wonderyard.