But Jack himself made a stronger impression. If Fastbinder was their new king of Hell, then Jack Fast was their new god of Hellfire.
The new king of Hell stepped off of the stage. The bottoms of his bionic boots landed on the bully and splattered him in every direction. The blood lust infuriated the albinos, but Fastbinder said, “No!”
Whiteslaw watched the people quivering with their need to feed. Fastbinder strode away, the crowd parting before him, and nobody moved until Fastbinder announced, “Eat.”
They ate.
Whiteslaw was as white as one of Fastbinder’s albinos, and his lightweight shirt was drenched with sweat.
“They do enjoy their chow,” Fast said, escorting the senator down the steps and into a small side chamber, which was covered with a fabric door with clear plastic windows. When Senator Whiteslaw felt the air-conditioned air he nearly fainted with relief. Fast nudged him into a folding director’s chair and waved at a wheeled catering cart. Inside was a mountain of ice and bottles of water.
Whiteslaw snatched one of the bottles and drained it in four great gulps. He didn’t even mind the painful bout of brain freeze that came and went as a result, just grabbed another one.
“Good?” Fast asked.
“Best water I ever tasted.”
“It’s from a rare desert spring in New Mexico,” Jacob Fastbinder announced happily. “I recently purchased zee bottling plant and zee store that sells it.”
“Good investment,” Whiteslaw said when he finished his third bottle. “I’m gonna have nightmares about those cave people for the rest of my life. Is this where you people live?”
Jack sprawled in a chair. “You kidding me, Herbie? This is just a sort of green room, for you to relax in after the show. I think it’s time we took you on the tour.”
Whiteslaw became distressed at the thought of leaving the air-conditioning. “Can’t I stay here until it’s time to leave?”
Jack laughed. “You came all the way down, you gotta see the city, Herbie! First, though, some lunch?” Jack pulled a deli tray of cold cuts out of the refrigerated cart.
Whiteslaw shook his head and plucked his soggy shirt from his chest. “What’s so important about my being here?”
“We wanted to make a demonstration,” Fastbinder said matter-of-factly. “Not just for the cave people, but for your benefit, too.”
“After all, Herbie, the next President of the United States needs to know what kind of an ally he’ll be getting if he decides to be friendly with the Federation of United Subsurface Tribes,” Jack said.
“And what kind of enemy he’ll have on his hands if he decides not to stay friendly,” Fastbinder added. “That is zee reason for bringing you here.”
“Well, I am certainly impressed.”
“You are being disingenuous. Come on, Senator Herbie.”
There was a rear exit, leading to a golf cart, which wasn’t air-conditioned. Whiteslaw couldn’t stifle a groan.
“You’ll be perfectly comfortable in just a few minutes,” Fastbinder promised. He drove the cart between a pair of boulders and down a long, rocky incline, and Whiteslaw felt the temperature grow more bearable by the second.
“It’s twenty-five degrees cooler at the city level,” Jack Fast said. “There it is.”
Whiteslaw no longer noticed the temperature as he took in the “city,” where hundreds of cave people were returning to their work. They chopped doors and windows and rooms out of the rock. There was a turbine whining against a far wall, and a generator sprouted electrical cables that snaked across the ceiling. The generator powered a web of lights attached to the cavern’s roof.
“See the water? That’s what makes this place work,” Fast said, waving at two black sockets in the distant wall. Rivers emerged from both mouths and quickly merged into one strong current.
“The rivers come from way up, and they channel lots of air down with them,” Fast explained. “They keep the city cool all the time. The channels are partially dry, at least this time of the year, and the river eroded a natural deep channel in the center, so you’ve got easy walking all the way up.”
“They give us access to zee world above. One goes east, one goes northeast. Add to that river from zee southwest, which led Jack here in zee first place.” Fastbinder nodded to the third river, the largest of them all, which cascaded from an ugly black pit in the wall and piled on top of the water from the other rivers.
Whiteslaw was lost in his admiration when the explosion came. Shattered rock poured from the roof above the river and slammed into the water. Whiteslaw shouted.
“It’s cool,” Jack said.
“We’re being attacked!” Whiteslaw blurted.
“It is only zee afternoon blasting,” Fastbinder said. “We’re damming zee water. See?”
Whiteslaw watched the strong river flow widen as the shattered rock continued tumbling into it. He was shaking too hard to ask why.
“See, the rivers bring us stuff,” Fast explained. “The dam is being built like a big shallow sieve to catch shipments and seafood.”
