Clay's Ark Read Free Page B

stone foundation and the skeletal beginnings of two other houses. There was also a well
    with a huge, upended metal tank. There were pigs in wood-fenced pens, chickens in coops, rabbits in hutches, a large
    fenced garden, and a solar still. The still and electricity produced by photovoltaic intensifiers appeared to be the only
    concessions to modernity the owners of the little homestead had made.
    He went to the well, turned the faucet handle of the storage tank, caught the cold, sweet, clear water in his hands, and
    drank. He had not tasted such water in years. It restored thought, cleared the fog from his mind. Now the senses that
    had been totally focused on survival were freed to notice other things.
    The women, for instance.
    He had scented at least one man in the house, but there were several women. Their scents attracted him powerfully. Yet
    the moment he caught himself moving toward the house in response to that attraction, he began to resist.
    For several minutes he stood frozen outside the window of one of the women. He was so close to her he could hear her
    soft, even breathing. She was asleep, but turning restlessly now and then. He literally could not move. His body
    demanded that he go to the woman. He understood the demand, the drive, but he refused to be just an animal governed
    by instinct. The woman was as near to being in heat as a female human could be. She had reached the most fertile
    period of her monthly cycle. It was no wonder she was sleeping so badly. And no wonder he could not move except to
    go to her.
    He stood where he was, perspiring heavily in the cold night air and struggling to remember that he had resolved to be
    human plus, not human minus. He was not an animal, not a rapist, not a murderer. Yet he knew that if he let himself be
    drawn to the woman, he would rape her. If he raped her, if he touched her at all, she might die. He had watched it
    happen before, and it had driven him to want to die, to try to die himself. He had tried, but he could not deliberately kill
    himself. He had an unconscious will to survive that transcended any conscious desire, any guilt, any duty to those who
    had once been his fellow humans.
    He tried furiously to convince himself that a break-in and rape would be stupidly self-destructive, but his body was
    locked into another reality, focused on a more fundamental form of survival. He did not move until the war within had
    exhausted him, until he had no strength left to take the woman.
    Finally, triumphant, he dragged himself back to the well and drank again. The electric pump beside the well switched
    on suddenly, noisily, and in the distance, dogs began to bark. He looked around, knowing from the sound that the dogs
    were coming toward him. He had already discovered that dogs disliked him, and, rightly enough, feared him. Now,
    however, he had been weakened by days of hunger and thirst and by his own internal conflict. Two or three large dogs
    might be able to bring him down and tear him apart.
    The dogs came bounding up-two big mongrels, barking and growling. They were put off by his strange scent at first,
    and they kept back out of his reach while putting on a show of ferocity. He thought by the time they found the courage
    to attack, he might be ready for at least one of them.
     
     
    PRESENT 4
     
     
     
     
    Eventually, the Mercedes and the Jeep emerged from the storm into vast, flat, dry desert, still following their arrow-
    straight dirt road. They approached, then passed between ancient black and red volcanic mountains. Later, they turned
    sharply from their dirt road onto something that was little more than a poorly marked trail. This led to a range of earth
    and granite mountains. The two cars headed into the mountains and began winding their way upward.
    By then they had been driving for nearly an hour. At first, Blake had seen a few signs of humanity. A small airport, a
    lonely ranch here and there, many steel towers carrying high voltage lines