A large anthology of sci.., p.257
A Large Anthology of Science Fiction, page 257
Tony was silent. He had been answered.
“Furthermore,” Captain Elm went on presently, “these people aren’t worth saving. Go out and see for yourself. They are as lifeless as they can be and still walk around. But they’re healthy and useful as breeding machines. They’re perfect as the nucleus of the new race, for they’ll obey.”
“Some won’t like it,” Tony said, thinking of Laura and of Bat Silver.
“You refer to those who were with us on the day side, I suppose. With the exception of you and me, they all die.”
“For God’s sake, why?”
“Because they have initiative, because they might revolt.”
“You’re playing God, Captain!”
“I am God, as far as all of you are concerned. Remember, I led you to safety under conditions of the oath. Your lives are mine. I choose to save only those who are the most placid, the dullest, the most obedient. My bodyguard, the band I have led since the armies disintegrated five years ago into bands of guerrillas, must die.
“Those young men have learned to be hard and keen. I don’t want their kind. I want only those who were stupefied by five years of chaos and further shocked by being caught in a darkness they couldn’t understand. They can be molded into anything. Well, do you still object?”
“I’m a little stunned,” Tony said. “Let me look around.”
“Surely. But remember your oath. Violate it and you die.”
AS HE walked about the city with his rifle under one arm, Tony Post turned a sharp scrutiny on the men and women who labored. As he saw the dull hopelessness in their eyes, their automatic movements, he began to believe that Captain Elm was correct. These people were walking dead. House builders placed one stone on another at the direction of an armed guard; water carriers slogged along with glazed eyes on the ground; out in the fields he could see the slow and lifeless movements of the cultivators.
They had met disaster and disaster had won.
“How are you getting along?” he asked a group who were lifting the last slab of rock into place at a house door.
They turned their empty faces toward his voice, stared for a long moment, then returned to their task.
Why? Tony asked himself fiercely as he circled the stockade. I’m alive, he thought, and I want to live. But they don’t seem to care. They haven’t been through any more than I have. There’s something unnatural about all this.
He waved a hand at Laura, who was in command of a gang of stone carriers, and went over to the cook shack.
This was presided over by Washington Adams, tall, gaunt Negro who was the only representative of his race. He was asleep when Tony entered, nodding by a huge copper pot that simmered over an open fire. He was to die, Tony thought, only because he was one of the odd singles; if a Negro woman had been saved, Washington Adams would have been included in Captain Elm’s nucleus. Tony cleared his throat, and the man opened chocolate-colored eyes.
“Mistuh Post, suh!” he said in a voice full of music. “Kin I ’commodate for’ sumpin’ ?”
“No, thanks. Just stopped in to see how you like it here.”
The cook stirred the pot with a peeled sapling and said from a wide row of shining teeth, “Sho’ is fine, suh. Reckon I is mighty lucky. Mo’ lucky dan my woman. Sho’ was a good woman, dat Lucy.”
“She was killed?”
“Reckon, suh. One minute we in a haymow, settlin’ fo’ de night, hid from a gang in so’jer clothes. Next minute I is someplace else. Dunno ’bout Lucy, suh.” He stirred the pot again, dipped in a finger and stuck it to his tongue. “Sho’ was a good woman.”
Tony’s frown deepened as he walked toward the far edge of the plateau where Jake Lain supervised the quarry gang. The Negro had seemed in full command of his faculties, and he had been brought out of the night like those automatons building the city. Why should Washington Adams have recovered from the shock which had killed desire and thought in the others?
A commotion at the quarry caught his attention. There, where a wide face of shattered stone jutted upward, the workers piled blocks for the carriers. Jake Lain, long knife in his belt, paced back and forth with a feral glide, watching, watching.
When Tony was yet some distance away, the single woman in the gang threw down a block of stone and faced Jake Lain.
“Why?” she demanded. “We’ve got all eternity to finish, and you drive us like beasts. Why, in God’s name?”
“Go back to work,” Jake commanded. “Cap’n Elm’s orders.”
“To hell with Captain Elm then!” She placed hands on her hips and twisted a wide, contemptuous mouth at Jake Lain. “To hell with Captain Elm! I’m no slave. I’m free!”
Tony cried a warning, but too late, for Jake moved in a blur of speed. His knife flashed; the heavy blade bit into the woman’s head and she fell. Tony jerked up his rifle, a chill of horror on the back of his neck. He pulled down on Jake, but held his fire as he became aware of two facts.
First, he caught a flash of movement toward the side—Captain Elm’s personal squad was approaching and they would shoot him if he killed the guard. Second, the quarry gang spilled out of the pit and moved on Jake. He swung his rifle at the men.
“Halt!” Tony ordered. “One more step and I start shooting.”
They faced him quietly, dully, and Tony saw the fire go out of them. It had been a feeble flame at best, and now had died.
“Back to your work,” Tony said.
They half turned to obey when a voice spoke at Tony’s side. Captain Elm was here.
“These men are no longer valuable. Kill them!”
TONY pivoted to see the captain, gray hair shining in the sun, arranging a small group of his bodyguard into a firing squad. They stood in a ragged line, leveling their rifles, but before they could fire a man stepped forward from the lip of the quarry and stood over the motionless and bleeding woman.
He was big, with shoulders as broad as Captain Elm’s; his dark eyes, Tony noted, were ablaze.
“What—what—” he growled inarticulately, and clenched huge fists.
The others behind him caught some of his emotion; they faced the captain, a sullen quintet.
Captain Elm’s hand flickered, no more. Tony could not follow the movement which produced a gun that spoke five times—five shots, so close together they could hardly be counted.
The quarry gang remained standing for what seemed an eternity, each with a neat black hole between his eyes. Then, one by one, they toppled forward, backward, to the side, kicked once or twice and lay still. Captain Elm turned to Tony Post.
“I wasn’t sure of you before,” he said in a low but pleasant voice. “But I see you are loyal, Tony. When the stockade is completed, report to me. We’ll put everyone inside, let out the guards one at a time and disarm them; then call out the list I have prepared.”
Captain Elm turned away.
“Bury those men,” he ordered the guard.
“I think the woman is still alive,” Tony said.
Captain Elm walked away.
Tony stood for a moment in indecision and tried to bring this unreality into focus. It couldn’t have happened.
But there lay the bodies, each casting an outline of shadow toward the hills. And there was the burial squad, rifles not yet lowered. Yonder walked Captain Elm, eyes straight ahead.
Jake Lain, his wolf eyes on Tony, said, “You didn’t need to butt in, Tony. I can take care of myself. Don’t forget it!”
Tony blinked back to reality and knelt beside the woman. Blood flowed from the long gash in her head, blood pumped by a yet-beating heart. He looked at her face, twisted in anger, despair and surprise, and somewhere in his head a bell tolled a bitter note.
He carried the woman to the hospital shack, laid her on the rough table, half lifted a hand at the white-haired doctor and went back into the sun.
Tomorrow, he thought. Tomorrow.
Perhaps that was their trouble. This insidious illusion of sunlight had stopped time in its tracks. With the world forever at three o’clock, they had gone from one sleep to another as a man awakes from an afternoon nap and takes up a book he had dropped. The length of those sleeps, the amount of work done between them, the amount of food, all were governed by Captain Elm.
They had been shocked by the cataclysm into a stupor from which a killing schedule of work in the endless daylight allowed them no release. The human characteristics of these living dead were stifled by exhaustion, weariness of body and spirit.
The revolt at the quarry indicated the presence of such characteristics, and the attitude of Washington Adams, whose rest was not as rigidly limited as the others. They were all capable of growing back to normal.
But the stupefying schedule of work was designed by Captain Elm to prevent revolt when their time came to die. Yet, Tony told himself fiercely, they must be saved. They were the new world. They had a right to a tomorrow.
But how?
Captain Elm had a hundred armed young men who would kill like emotionless machines. Tony could not stage a revolt alone. Could he get help?
He would see.
HE FOUND Laura Belmont with her gang of carriers, their backs bent under heavy stones. Though she watched him warily, she did not keep him at her usual distance.
“Tony—you saw what happened?”
“At the quarry? I was there.”
“What does it mean, Tony?”
“It means this: Captain Elm is master here.” He added experimentally, “As he should be.”
“They didn’t have a chance,” Laura said bitterly.
“Did they deserve one? By our own word we belong to the captain. We took the oath, each of us.”
“Yes. We—took—the—oath.”
Tony felt an inner surge. Here was an ally. A plan began to take shape in his mind, a plan that was double-edged in that even if it failed he could save himself and Laura.
“Come along,” he said, and led the way to the edge of the plateau near the now-deserted quarry pit.
He called Bat Silver, who supervised a house gang. The big man joined them, swinging a heavy club. Tony held a caucus in the quarry pit and gave Bat specific and simple instructions.
“If it doesn’t work,” Tony said, “follow us, Bat. But I think it will, if you do your part.”
Bat Silver gave Tony a steady look, slanted downward a little to the shorter man’s eyes. “I know I’m not smart like you, Tony, but I’ll do the best I can.”
“I’m sure it’ll be good enough, Bat.” They shook hands, and Tony and Laura left. They dropped down the slope of the plateau, swung across the small stream below and headed for a far wooded hill like swift shadows.
When they had disappeared, Bat went back into the city and told a few of the planned execution. Then he went to the house of Captain Elm.
The guard took his club as he entered, and Captain Elm pierced him with a hard, blue glance.
“Well?”
“Tony and that girl have run off, Captain.”
“What girl?”
“That blonde one that went on the other side with me and Tony and Jake. Tony told the people that you was going to kill ’em, and to stay out of the pen. Look!”
Bat waved at the window. Something was happening in the city. Men and women clustered together, and their confused murmur was a kind of low growl. Captain Elm got to his feet.
“I got a message for you, Captain, from Tony.”
“Well?”
“He said you’d have to keep all the guard here to handle the people. And he said you’d be afraid to come after him and the girl. He said if you didn’t come after ’em, they’d come back sometime and kill you.”
Captain Elm smiled gently; a gun appeared in his hand. “Is that all?” he asked.
“Aw, look, Captain!” Bat Silver protested. “I’m for you. I swore an oath.”
Eye to eye, they stared for a long moment. Captain Elm lowered his gun.
“It’s clear that Tony’s ruse to get me out of camp is sound. It has only one fault. These people won’t revolt. They can’t understand. Very well, Bat. As soon as I have killed Tony and Laura, I’ll be back. I’ll decide about you then.”
Captain Elm was gone. Through the window Bat saw him throw a short command at the officer of the bodyguard and then disappear on the trail of Tony and Laura.
BAT SILVER was now alone in the room. He had done what Tony wanted; he had put Captain Elm on their trail. Tony and the girl would kill him and come back. But what about the guard, Bat wondered. Maybe they wouldn’t let Tony be Captain Post. Bat could see clearly that it was up to him to do away with the guard.
He buckled two guns around his waist and stepped out into the sun. He beckoned to the commander of the guard, a suspicious young man who kept wary eyes on Bat.
“Captain Elm said I was in charge,” Bat said. “Take all your men out behind them boulders. I’ll talk to the people.
If they try to jump you, start killing.”
“Captain Elm didn’t tell me anything about you, chum.”
“He’s gonna be mad when he comes back,” Bat said, “if you act up.”
The commander of the guard was confused. Captain Elm’s specific orders had been to prevent a revolt at any cost. Now this big man, backed by an air of authority and two guns, gave a variation of that order.
“Well?” Bat snapped. “Get goin’ !” The commander gave in. He called his men, dispatched a messenger to call those from the crowd, and deployed behind a line of rocks that was well out of earshot. Bat suppressed a grin and strode toward the crowd massing near the stockade.
“Listen!” he cried, mounting a flat rock. “All of you—listen!”
Even Bat was shocked by the great face of apathy which turned its many eyes to him. These people were not angry; they were not afraid. They simply didn’t understand. They came forward like animals that had been called in a loud voice.
They’re still like out there in the dark when Tony told ’em the oath, Bat thought. The poor devils!
“Listen,” he said. “You don’t want to die, do you? Well, Captain Elm is gonna kill you if you let him. He’s got some crazy idea about only one race, and all but about twenty of you are gonna die. Are we gonna stand for it?”
He waited for the roar of “No!”, but it didn’t come. They looked at him, these men and women, but they didn’t understand.
“Look,” Bat said. “You ain’t sheep, you’re people. You got a right to live. Nobody’s got a right to kill you just because he thinks he ought to. Them guards out there behind the rocks is gonna shoot you down when the captain gets back. Well, we’re ten to their one, so let’s take their guns away from ’em. Not kill ’em, because they’re people too. But we gotta protect ourselves. Come on; let’s go! Remember how you used to be. You’d fight then to live. Let’s fight now!”
They continued to stare with empty eyes. They didn’t remember.
Bat scanned the faces, trying to locate eyes that showed a spark. As he did so, he caught a movement far back in the center of the crowd. Somebody was coming toward him. Bat grinned. He was going to win, after all.
But it was Jake Lain, who had somehow remained with these. Well, Bat thought, maybe Jake would help.
He saw Jake’s purpose almost too late, when he was within striking distance, his knife singing an arc at Bat’s legs. Bat fell rather than jumped from the rock, jerked out a gun and fired point blank.
The first slug knocked Jake Lain several feet away; he hit the ground on his shoulders, a comic surprise on his wolfish face. Swift as a charging cat, he was on his feet and attacking again.
Then, methodically and without emotion, Bat emptied his gun into the incredibly swift body of the guard. When Jake was still, and dead, Bat flung a look at the line of boulders where the armed young men had gone. Several score were on their feet and watching. Bat motioned them to stay where they were before turning back to the crowd.
They were muttering among themselves, and Bat took this as a good sign. He waited for a few minutes, but when he gathered that they were discussing his fight with Jake, he held up his hands for silence.
“This guy,” Bat said, indicating Jake, “was gonna kill me because I said something against Captain Elm. The rest of ’em out there by the rocks feel the same way, only they’ll kill all of us. Now come on; get it through your heads. We can take their guns away and nobody’ll get hurt. They’re only a hundred, and we’re eight or nine hundred. Let’s go. Whadda you say?”
Silence. They were still cattle.
“Beat it!” Bat snarled at them. “Get back to work! Whadda I care what happens to you?”
They trooped away, but somewhat to Bat’s amazement they did not return to work. Some went inside houses they had helped to build, and lay down to sleep; others entered the first temporary shelters; some lay on the ground.
Then, with a last look at the city, Bat Silver turned toward the triple trail of Captain Elm, Tony Post and Laura Belmont.
TONY and Laura covered the first few miles in silence. She kept a position either to one side or behind—never in front—as they crossed a land that was cracked and dry, but striped with the bright green fringes of small streams.
Somewhere, Tony thought, there are rivers.
They came presently to one, still carrying debris on its muddy breast. They stood on its bank and identified broken bits of household furniture and a child’s wooden doll. Tony realized with a sense of shock that there were no children in this new world. He turned bright dark eyes on the girl who stood just out of reach; a little smile touched his mouth.
He spoke for the first time: “Well?”
Her eyes flickered at him. “Which way now?”
“Upstream. If we can’t make a bridge or find a ford, we’ll have to swim across. Can you?”
“Yes.” She made a motion for him to precede her. “What’s in your mind, Tony?”
Before replying he led the way around a huge boulder which had been part of a mountaintop.
