Collected fiction, p.214
Collected Fiction, page 214
His ammunition was rigidly limited. He must prove his usefulness to the band in one way or another, and he did not care to waste his two remaining bullets. They might be needed for an emergency. Warily he questioned Sand.
“The men hunt,” the graybeard explained. “The women and children search for food. There are still some cans left in cellars, if they can be found.”
“What else do you do?”
“What else can we do? It takes all our time to get food enough to live.”
In the past, such hungry nomadic tribes had little scientific or cultural advances. They became warriors, like the hordes of Genghis Khan, living tip on the loot of conquered nations. Or else they became agriculturists, raising their own produce and eventually finding time to build a culture of their own, as the Egyptians had done.
This tribe, however, knew nothing of agriculture. It was a throwback to primeval times, when man was emerging from bestial stupidity and groping for the light. Yet there was a difference, which Woodley noticed even in his conversation with Sand.
These people did not grope. They were satisfied, dully complacent. No questions existed in their minds. It was an effort for them to think. Sometimes they would try, but not for long.
It was as though a mental barrier existed, shutting them remorselessly into their own savage existence.
Not even Sand and Geth, the chief, were intelligent. That showed in the language. A corruption of English, it made use of only the words that were necessary to everyday existence, and had to be pieced out with primitive gestures. There was something strangely childlike about them.
THAT night, cooking his food over a small fire he had built in the basement, Woodley talked at length with Sand and Geth. He had finally overcome their objection to fire, after showing them how it might be controlled by quenching it with soil and water.
He learned little and much. The tribe had always lived here. It wandered about, following game. Most of the other tribes had gone east into the open country, but Geth stayed because, by dint of diligent search, canned food might still be found amid the ruins.
It had not always been thus. The chief remembered that a long time ago, the city had been a paradise of food, to be had for the taking. Who owned it? He did not know. He recalled vast mobs surging through the city, anarchistic, mindless, looting and feeding and wasting. But that was long ago.
The shops were utterly depleted now.
The tribe itself had gathered together for mutual protection. Existence circled around the unending search for food. Weapons? They had not made any, because they did not know how. This puzzled Woodley a good deal. He sensed in them a certain mental lack, for they were utterly without the desire for experimentation.
Geth and his people lived and fed, and that was all. It was a race in ruin. Who had built the city? No one knew. Few even wondered. There were vague stories about a time when the world had been different, and the specter of hunger had not stalked eternally. But these were only legends.
“Yet I do not know,” said Geth, staring somberly into the fire. “Sometimes I have queer dreams of a different world. And when I awaken, I am very hungry, though not with my stomach. I want something, I do not know what.”
“That is true,” Sand assented. “Most of us dream. I do. Sometimes I see a city filled with people wearing odd garments.” He made an impatient gesture. “It does not matter. Show us how to make fire, Woodley.”
That was strangely difficult. The savages could not seem to grasp first principles. They watched and blunderingly imitated, but it was long before they succeeded in emulating Woodley’s patient example.
Gnawing on a bit of scorched deer-meat, Geth said:
“You may stay with us for awhile, anyway. As long as you are useful.”
There began a period of troubled readjustment for Woodley. Still fearfully handicapped by his lack of memory, he tried to fit himself into the life of the primitive tribe. It was, to him, a completely alien situation, for which he had never been intended. Yet he persevered, for in his mind was the spark of reawakened initiative which the others apparently did not possess.
More than once this strange lack puzzled and distressed Woodley. He tried hard to teach the tribe new tricks. But the women made stupid, ridiculous mistakes when they learned to build fires and cook, and the men were inept at making or casting spears. The simplest strategy was beyond them. It was incredibly difficult for them to learn anything new.
GRADUALLY he became part of the tribe. Memory, or something else, told him where the precious cans of food could be found. Without quite knowing why, he led the others to shopping districts, apartments with kitchens in which were well stocked cupboards, and similar places.
By dint of hard, insistent effort, he made weapons for the men and showed how they should be used. They eventually learned to handle spears, but the use of bows was much harder to master. Still Woodley planned new ways of killing game, and managed to make a few traps. These, though, were often robbed by wolves and bears that came from the open lands to the east.
Always he wondered and questioned. Was all the world like this? Had civilization survived anywhere? He could find out little. At night, sitting beside the fire that had brought heat and warmth to the tribe, he worked on various useful artifacts and pondered. There were so many objects in the city that looked useful, if he could only remember how to use them. But always he ran up against his barrier of amnesia.
He found books, mildewed and ancient, but he could not read them. The pictures helped little. There was a hint of baffling familiarity, and that was all. Theories were useless unless they could be made practical.
One thing he did learn—there was a possibility that civilization still existed. A city lay westward, which no man had ever entered. It was guarded by a moat, canyon-deep and wide as a river. Beyond the moat could be seen a city, or something that resembled one, and there were people in it.
Woodley did not follow this clue immediately. He was in a decidedly precarious position, a stranger in a hostile world, safe only so long as he stayed with Geth’s tribe. He procrastinated, waiting day after day, making his preparations. He needed weapons. He sought vainly for more ammunition.
Clothing he did discover, however, and discarded his wolf-pelt for a strong whipcord shirt and breeches, which he found in an airtight show-case.
He shaved daily and cut his hair to a civilized length. Instead of boots, however, he preferred sandals manufactured from deerhide, for they made little noise when he stalked game.
One day he wandered back across the bridge and found himself in Manhattan. He was armed with a steel knife and a bow, as well as with the Luger he always carried in a leather holster he had found. Consequently he did not fear attack.
Memories surged back, stronger than ever. He was in territory that should have been familiar to him, he knew. Once he caught sight of a fur-clad, hurrying figure far up a street, but it dodged out of sight and was gone.
He walked on toward the south, passed another park that was now a tangled thicket. He came into a district that brought back poignantly vivid memories.
“Greenwich Village,” he thought abruptly.
There were wrecks of machines all around, buses and automobiles, some with whitened skeletons still in them. Many were overturned or had smashed into store fronts. Whatever catastrophe had overtaken New York, it had come with terrible suddenness.
MEMORY led him down a narrow alley to a flight of steps, guarded by a corroded iron rail. He descended into a dingy, large room, filled with tables, and with a small dais at one end.
Slowly he moved forward, clouds of dust rising about his sandaled feet. He remembered dim lights, and soft music, and faces shifting like phantoms in a softly luminous glow. He had come here before. He had come here with Janet, to dine and dance and talk . . .
A shadow darkened the threshold. Woodley whirled. His hand went to his Luger at sight of the hunched, fur-clad figure standing before him. He waited.
The savage shuffled forward. Long, filthy hair hung straggling about the sun-blackened shoulders. The vacuous face, with shallow eyes of pale blue, was turned to Woodley. She put out her hands in a fumbling, vague gesture. On the back of one of them was a crescent-shaped scar.
Woodley’s eyes rose again to the face.
It was Janet.
CHAPTER V
Strange City
DISBELIEF was Woodley’s first reaction. He felt stupid, paralyzed. The world had stopped moving, and all that existed was the terribly familiar face at which he stared. The cellar room was suddenly suffocatingly hot. Woodley’s heart was beating fast. He could feel its pounding and the hollowness beneath it. He could not think. His mind would not work. He could only stand there in the half-light like a hypnotized bird.
“Janet,” he said softly.
The blue eyes wavered. Janet made a mournful sound deep in her throat. Her hands were still outstretched, and Woodley gripped them.
“Do you—remember me?” he asked hoarsely.
She only stared uncomprehendingly. Woodley found himself talking without volition, words that tumbled out from the abyss of his lost memory.
“We—we were going to be married, you and I. We met first in Palm Beach. Don’t you remember that?”
Poignantly he saw a broad yellow beach and blue water stretching to the horizon beyond it, gay striped umbrellas and a slim figure lying beneath one of them . . . Janet! But that Janet was alert and intelligent.
Her eyes were shallow and dull. She listened without understanding, murmured meaningless sounds and searched Woodley’s face, then touched his shaven cheek gently with one hand.
He felt a surge of hopelessness. She, too, had forgotten. But why should she have returned to this ruined Village restaurant, so replete with memories? Gently he took her hands again.
“You’re coming with me. You’ll remember.”
Unresisting, she let him lead her up into the street. The sunlight there was blinding. No one was visible, but Woodley kept a vigilant watch as he set out toward the bridge. Often he stole sideward glances at Janet. She was still lovely, despite the changes that had brutalized her.
As they walked, Woodley tried to arouse some gleam of light in her darkened mind. It was useless. She recalled nothing. She was sunk in an apathy too deep for him to plumb. Sickeningly he remembered the dull, moronic women of Geth’s tribe.
What was to come next? He could not say. He had felt that, should he find Janet again, life would begin for him once more. But he had not counted on this tragic meeting.
Slowly he made a plan. He would take Janet back to the tribe, then set out to find the mysterious city that was supposed to lie westward. He might find help there. Too long he had remained sunken in the apathy that brooded over the world today, in the wake of the cryptic cataclysm that had ruined it.
The pair met no one till they were in what had once been Long Island City. From around a corner Sand appeared, a spear in one hand and the carcasses of a few rabbits in the other.
“Woodley, who it this? You have found a mate?”
“Yes,” Woodley said hesitantly. “I suppose so.”
“Well, let us go and tell Geth.”
The red-haired chief shrugged in acceptance of the new member and offered Janet a deer-steak, which she seized hungrily.
“She doesn’t look strong,” he grumbled. “However, that is your business, Woodley.”
JANET’S advent aroused scarcely any curiosity. She was accepted and forgotten. Nothing could disturb the cloud of dullness that shadowed the tribe. Little could interest these savages, save the ever-present need of filling their stomachs.
That night Woodley spent in torture, alone with Janet by a fire, trying frantically to strike some responsive chord in her mind. It was a useless effort. Physically she was unchanged, save for the natural metamorphoses worked by years of struggling against arduous hardship. Mentally she was under the same influence that blunted the intelligence of the others.
In the morning Woodley sought out Geth and Sand.
“I’m leaving,” he told them.
“Why?”
“To find food.” They would understand that readily enough. “If I succeed, we’ll always have plenty. Meanwhile, this new girl is my mate. No one must harm her. Will you protect her, Geth?”
The chief nodded his shaggy red head.
“I shall guard her, too,” Sand declared. “But why does she not go with you?”
“She would be in the way. There will be danger . . .”
Within the hour Woodley took his departure, armed and carrying with him a quantity of dried and salted meat. He did not see Janet before he left. Instead he purposely turned all his thoughts forward.
If the mysterious city existed, if he found it—There was a chance of finding help there, and some explanation for the catastrophe that had apparently overtaken the whole world.
His journey was uneventful. He walked over the bridge to Manhattan, crossed the Hudson River far upstream by the George Washington Bridge. The few savages in Manhattan had not attempted to molest him, warned off, perhaps, by sight of the Luger at his belt. They still remembered firearms.
He went inland through New Jersey, and into Pennsylvania. The supply of meat he carried served a double purpose. He met roving bands of fur-clad men, and gave them food in exchange for information. A moat-surrounded city? Yes, there was one. It lay farther south, though. Woodley bore south, following a river that led him into a ruined metropolis. He remembered the name Philadelphia.
Following the rumors, he turned west once more, into a land of pine-dad mountains. Few savages dwelt here, yet the legends were less vague.
One night, Woodley saw a light in the sky. It was the first artificial illumination he had seen since his awakening in a New York cellar. Steady, pallid and cryptic it glowed beyond the mountain ridges, beckoning him on.
He was unshaven and tattered, his eyes deeply sunken, his cheeks haggard. Too intent on his purpose to waste time in stalking game, he often went hungry. But he clung to his weapons, knowing that without them he might fall prey to the wild animals that roamed this wilderness.
The source of the light was farther away than he had thought. It was not until after nightfall of the next day that he topped a rise and found himself on the edge of a broad plateau. Ahead was the city.
IT was a great white jewel rising out of the flat plain. Buildings, increasing in height as they neared the center, lifted to form the outline of a hemisphere made of dozens upon dozens of pale structures which, at the distance, seemed to be of stone. Faintly Woodley could make out the greenness of verdure atop the buildings, vast roof-gardens far above ground level. His heart pulsed faster. His throat went dry.
The city did exist, after all!
Till now Woodley had not quite given credence to the tales he had heard. The savage tribes had mentioned a city with a moat around it that a few had seen, though only from a distance. It might have been a myth, but it was not. The will-of-the-wisp he had followed by vague clues from the shores of the Atlantic Ocean had materialized into amazing reality.
The towers seemed to grow as he advanced, until the city was gigantic. He could make out few details. Presently even these were lost, for a high wall entirely surrounded the metropolis. He stood on the brink of an abyss—the moat that surrounded the city. It was at least as broad as the Hudson River near its mouth, and bottomless, as far as he could make out.
He hesitated, found a stone and dropped it over. No sound came up. Descent was impossible. It was like looking down a steep cliff ever the edge of the world. Beyond the pit the city rose, cryptic and colossal. No gates were visible in the white walls, which were darker in contrast with the pale glow of the towers within.
How could he enter? Would the inhabitants of this city be hostile? That was a chance that must be taken.
Woodley knew distinctly that such a bizarre metropolis as this was no part of his memories of the past. It was completely new and alien. Yet the intelligence that must have reared it seemed to have died out from the world.
He shouted. There was no response, though he scarcely expected any. He unslung the bow from his back, selected an arrow and carefully blunted the tip on a stone. It would be easy to send the shaft over the wall, attract someone’s attention. But his motive might be misunderstood. Retaliation would be painful.
How could he send a message? The thought of pencil and paper came to him, but he had neither, nor could he remember how to write. English words came easily to his tongue, yet he could remember nothing of reading or writing. At last he compromised by winding a strip of cloth about the arrow’s head and sending it arcing up.
It dropped from sight behind the wall. Woodley waited for an outcry that did not come. He had as yet had no glimpse of the city’s inhabitants. For an instant he had the queer thought that they might not be human.
Slightly to his left, a movement in the wall itself caught his eye. A smooth, white tongue of stone thrust out, licking toward him with surprising speed. It elongated till it became a bridge that spanned the abyss, one end resting lightly on his side of the great moat. The whole incident took place in silence.
PUZZLED, Woodley moved to the bridge and examined it more closely. It was not of stone, after all, but some substance he could not recognize—a plastic, perhaps. Anyhow, it was broad enough to tread safely.
He stepped out upon it. Instantly vertigo assailed him. He felt movement beneath his feet and looked back. There was an abyss behind him, and the wall of the pit was receding into the night.
Swaying, Woodley turned his head. The rampart of the city leaped toward him. Before he could move, he was swept through a portal that opened abruptly at his approach. He stood in a flat-floored, domed white room. The light seemed to come from within the walls themselves. There was no trace of the opening by which he had entered. The bridge, or part of it, was now the floor on which he stood.
