by Roger Elwood
Drummond scowled. He was worried. It wasn’t like Robinson to be unreasonable. Somehow, the man had acquired a mental blind spot where this most ultimate of human problems was concerned. He said slowly, “That won’t work either. First, it’d be hard to impose and enforce. Second, we’d be repeating the old Herrenvolk notion. Mutants are inferior, mutants must be kept in their place—to enforce that, especially on a majority, you’d need a full-fledged totalitarian state. Third, that wouldn’t work either, for the rest of the world, with almost no exceptions, is under no such control and we’ll be in no position to take over that control for a long time— generations. Before then, mutants will dominate everywhere over there, and if they resent the way we treat their kind here, we’d better run for cover.”
“You assume a lot. How do you know those hundreds or thousands of diverse types will work together? They’re less like each other than like humans, even. They could be played off against each other.”
“Maybe. But that would be going back onto the old road of treachery and violence, the road to Hell. Conversely, if every not-quite-human is called a mutant,’ like a separate class, he’ll think he is, and act accordingly against the lumped-together ‘humans’. No, the only way to sanity—to survival— is to abandon class prejudice and race hate altogether, and work as individuals. Were all … well, Earthlings, and subclassification is deadly. We all have to live together, and might as well make the best of it.”
“Yeah … yeah, thats right too.”
“Anyway, I repeat that all such attempts would be useless. All Earth is infected with mutation. It will be for a long time. The purest human stock will still produce mutants.” “Y-yes, that’s true. Our best bet seems to be to find all such stock and withdraw it into the few safe areas left. It’ll mean a small human population, but a human one.”
“I tell you, that’s impossible,” clipped Drummond. “There is no safe place. Not one.”
Robinson stopped pacing and looked at him as at a physical antagonist. “That so?” he almost growled. “Why?”
Drummond told him, adding incredulously, “Surely you knew that. Your physicists must have measured the amount of it. Your doctors, your engineers, that geneticist I dug up for you. You obviously got a lot of this biological information you’ve been slinging at me from him. They must all have told you the same thing.”
Robinson shook his head stubbornly. “It can’t be. It’s not reasonable. The concentration wouldn’t be great enough.” “Why, you poor fool, you need only look around you. The plants, the animals— Haven’t there been any births in Taylor?”
“No. This is still a man’s town, though women are trickling in and several babies are on the way—” Robinson’s face was suddenly twisted with desperation. “Elaine’s is due any time now. She’s in the hospital here. Don’t you see, our other kid died of the plague. This one’s all we have. We want him to grow up in a world free of want and fear, a world of peace and sanity where he can play and laugh and become a man, not a beast starving in a cave. You and I are on our way out. We’re the old generation, the one that wrecked the world. It’s up to us to build it again, and then retire from it to let our children have it. The future’s theirs. We’ve got to make it ready for them.”
Sudden insight held Drummond motionless for long seconds. Understanding came, and pity, and an odd gentleness that changed his sunken bony face. “Yes,” he murmured, “yes, I see. Thats why you’re working with all that’s in you to build a normal, healthy world. That’s why you nearly went crazy when this threat appeared. That … that’s why you can’t, just can’t comprehend—”
He took the other man’s arm and guided him toward the door. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s go see how your wife’s making out. Maybe we can get her some flowers on the way.”
§
The silent cold bit at them as they went down the street. Snow crackled underfoot. It was already grimy with town smoke and dust, but overhead the sky was incredibly clean and blue. Breath smoked whitely from their mouths and nostrils. The sound of men at work rebuilding drifted faintly between the bulking mountains.
“We couldn’t emigrate to another planet, could we?” asked Robinson, and answered himself: “No, we lack the organization and resources to settle them right now. We’ll have to make out on Earth. A few safe spots—there must be others besides this one—to house the true humans till the mutation period is over. Yes, we can do it.”
“There are no safe places,” insisted Drummond. “Even if there were, the mutants would still outnumber us. Does your geneticist have any idea how this’ll come out, biologically speaking?”
“He doesn’t know. His specialty is still largely unknown. He can make an intelligent guess, and that’s all.”
“Yeah. Anyway, our problem is to learn to live with the mutants, to accept anyone as—Earthling—no matter how he looks, to quit thinking anything was ever settled by violence or connivance, to build a culture of individual sanity. Funny,” mused Drummond, “how the impractical virtues, tolerance and sympathy and generosity, have become the fundamental necessities of simple survival. I guess it was always true, but it took the death of half the world and the end of a biological era to make us see that simple little fact. The jobs terrific. Weve got half a million years of brutality and greed, superstition and prejudice, to lick in a few generations. If we fail, mankind is done. But weve got to try.”
They found some flowers, potted in a house, and Robinson bought them with the last of his tobacco. By the time he reached the hospital, he was sweating. The sweat froze on his face as he walked.
The hospital was the town’s biggest building, and fairly well equipped. A nurse met them as they entered.
“I was just going to send for you, General Robinson,” she said. “The baby’s on the way.”
“How … is she?”
“Fine, so far. Just wait here, please.”
Drummond sank into a chair and with haggard eyes watched Robinson’s jerky pacing. The poor guy. Why is it expectant fathers are supposed to he so funny? It’s like laughing at a man on the rack. I know, Barbara, I know.
‘They have some anaesthetics,” muttered the general. “They … Elaine never was very strong.”
“She’ll be all right.” It’s afterward that worries me.
“Yeah— Yeah— How long, though, how long?”
“Depends. Take it easy.” With a wrench, Drummond made a sacrifice to a man he liked. He filled his pipe and handed it over. “Here, you need a smoke.”
“Thanks.” Robinson puffed raggedly.
The slow minutes passed, and Drummond wondered vaguely what he’d do when—it—happened. It didn’t have to happen. But the chances were all against such an easy solution. He was no psychologist. Best just to let things happen as they would.
The waiting broke at last. A doctor came out, seeming an inscrutable high priest in his white garments. Robinson stood before him, motionless.
“You’re a brave man,” said the doctor. His face, as he removed the mask, was stern and set. “You’ll need your courage.”
“She—” It was hardly a human sound, that croak.
‘Tour wife is doing well. But the baby—”
A nurse brought out the little wailing form. It was a boy. But his limbs were rubbery tentacles terminating in boneless digits.
Robinson looked, and something went out of him as he stood there. When he turned, his face was dead.
“You’re lucky,” said Drummond, and meant it. He’d seen too many other mutants. “After all, if he can use those hands he’ll get along all right. He’ll even have an advantage in certain types of work. It isn’t a deformity, really. If there’s nothing else, you’ve got a good kid.”
“If!, You can’t tell with mutants.”
“I know. But you’ve got guts, you and Elaine. You’ll see this through, together.” Briefly, Drummond felt an utter personal desolation. He went on, perhaps to cover that emptiness:
“I see why you
didn’t understand the problem. You wouldn’t It was a psychological bloc, suppressing a fact you didn’t dare face. That boy is really the center of your life. You couldn’t think the truth about him, so your subconscious just refused to let you think rationally on that subject at all.
“Now you know. Now you realize there’s no safe place, not on all the planet. The tremendous incidence of mutant births in the first generation could have told you that alone. Most such new characteristics are recessive, which means both parents have to have it for it to show in the zygote. But genetic changes are random, except for a tendency to fall into roughly similar patterns. Four-leaved clovers, for instance. Think how vast the total number of such changes must be, to produce so many corresponding changes in a couple of years. Think how many, many recessives there must be, existing only in gene patterns till their mates show up. We’ll just have to take our chances of something really deadly accumulating. We’d never know till too late.”
‘The dust—”
‘Yeah. The radiodust. It’s colloidal, and uncountable other radiocolloids were formed when the bombs went off, and ordinary dirt gets into unstable isotopic forms near the craters. And there are radiogases too, probably. The poison is all over the world by now, spread by wind and air currents. Colloids can be suspended indefinitely in the atmosphere.
“The concentration isn’t too high for life, though a physicist told me he’d measured it as being very near the safe limit and there’ll probably be a lot of cancer. But it’s everywhere. Every breath we draw, every crumb we eat and drop we drink, every clod we walk on, the dust is there. It’s in the stratosphere, clear on down to the surface, probably a good distance below. We could only escape by sealing ourselves in air-conditioned vaults and wearing spacesuits whenever we got out, and under present conditions that’s impossible.
“Mutations were rare before, because a charged particle has to get pretty close to a gene and be moving fast before its electromagnetic effect causes physico-chemical changes, and then that particular chromosome has to enter into reproduction. Now the charged particles, and the gamma rays producing still more, are everywhere. Even at the comparatively low concentration, the odds favor a given organism having so many cells changed that at least one will give rise to a mutant. There’s even a good chance of like recessives meeting in the first generation, as we’ve seen. Nobody’s safe, no place is free.” “The geneticist thinks some true humans will continue.”
“A few, probably. After all, the radioactivity isn’t too concentrated, and it’s burning itself out. But it’ll take fifty or a hundred years for the process to drop to insignificance, and by then the pure stock will be way in the minority. And there’ll still be all those unmatched recessives, waiting to show up.” “You were right. We should never have created science. It brought the twilight of the race.”
“I never said that. The race brought its own destruction, through misuse of science. Our culture was scientific anyway, in all except its psychological basis. It’s up to us to take that last and hardest step. If we do, the race may yet survive.” Drummond gave Robinson a push toward the inner door.
Elaine. Give her my regards. Then take a long rest before going back to work. I still think you’ve got a good kid.” Mechanically, the de facto President of the United States left the room. Hugh Drummond stared after him a moment, then went out into the street.
The Queen of
Air and Darkness
The last glow of the last sunset would linger almost until midwinter. But there would be no more day, and the northlands rejoiced. Blossoms opened, flamboyance on firethorn trees, steel-flowers rising blue from the brok and rainplant that cloaked all hills, shy whiteness of kiss-me-never down in the dales. Flitteries darted among them on iridescent wings; a crownbuck shook his horns and bugled. Between horizons the sky deepened from purple to sable. Both moons were aloft, nearly full, shining frosty on leaves and molten on waters. The shadows they made were blurred by an aurora, a great blowing curtain of light across half heaven. Behind it the earliest stars had come out.
A boy and a girl sat on Wolund’s Barrow just under the dolmen it upbore. Their hair, which streamed halfway down their backs, showed startlingly forth, bleached as it was by summer. Their bodies, still dark from that season, merged with earth and bush and rock, for they wore only garlands. He played on a bone flute and she sang. They had lately become lovers. Their age was about sixteen, but they did not know this, considering themselves Outlings and thus indifferent to time, remembering little or nothing of how they had once dwelt in the lands of men.
His notes piped cold around her voice:
“Cast a spell,
weave it well
of dust and dew
and night and you.”
§
A brook by the grave mound, carrying moonlight down to a hill-hidden river, answered with its rapids. A flock of hellbats passed black beneath the aurora.
A shape came bounding over Cloudmoor. It had two arms and two legs, but the legs were long and claw-footed and feathers covered it to the end of a tail and broad wings. The face was half human, dominated by its eyes. Had Ayoch been able to stand wholly erect, he would have reached to the boy’s shoulder.
The girl rose. “He carries a burden,” she said. Her vision was not meant for twilight like that of a northland creature born, but she had learned how to use every sign her senses gave her. Besides the fact that ordinarily a pook would fly, there was a heaviness to his haste.
“And he comes from the south.” Excitement jumped in the boy, sudden as a green flame that went across the constellation Lyrth. He sped down the mound. “Ohoi, Ayoch!” he called. “Me here, Mistherd!”
“And Shadow-of-a-Dream,” the girl laughed, following.
The pook halted. He breathed louder than the soughing in the growth around him. A smell of bruised yerba lifted where he stood.
“Well met in winterbirth,” he whistled. “You can help me bring this to Carheddin.”
He held out what he bore. His eyes were yellow lanterns above. It moved and whimpered.
“Why, a child,” Mistherd said.
“Even as you were, my son, even as you were. Ho, ho, what a snatch!” Ayoch boasted. “They were a score in yon camp by Fallowwood, armed, and besides watcher engines they had big ugly dogs aprowl while they slept. I came from above, however, having spied on them till I knew that a handful of dazedust—”
“The poor thing.” Shadow-of-a-Dream took the boy and held him to her small breasts. “So full of sleep yet, aren’t you?” Blindly, he sought a nipple. She smiled through the veil of her hair. “No, I am still too young, and you already too old.
But come, when you wake in Carheddin under the mountain, you shall feast.”
“Yo-ah,” said Ayoch very sofdy. “She is abroad and has heard and seen. She comes.” He crouched down, wings folded. After a moment Mistherd knelt, and then Shadow-of-a-Dream, though she did not let go the child.
The Queen’s tall form blocked off the moons. For a while she regarded the three and their booty. Hill and moor sounds withdrew from their awareness until it seemed they could hear the northlights hiss.
At last Ayoch whispered, “Have I done well, Starmother?”
“If you stole a babe from a camp full of engines,” said the beautiful voice, “then they were folk out of the far south who may not endure it as meekly as yeomen.”
“But what can they do, Snowmaker?” the pook asked. “How can they track us?”
Mistherd lifted his head and spoke in pride. “Also, now they too have felt the awe of us.”
“And he is a cuddly dear,” Shadow-of-a-Dream said. “And we need more like him, do we not, Lady Sky?”
“It had to happen in some twilight,” agreed she who stood above. “Take him onward and care for him. By this sign,” which she made, “is he claimed for the Dwellers.”
Their joy was freed. Ayoch cartwheeled over the
ground till he reached a shiverleaf. There he swarmed up the trunk and out on a limb, perched half hidden by unrestful pale foliage, and crowed. Boy and girl bore the child toward Carheddin at an easy distance-devouring lope which let him pipe and her sing:
“Wahaii, wahaii!
Wayala, laii!
Wing on the wind
high over heaven,
shrilly shrieking,
rush with the rainspears,
tumble through tumult, drift to the moonhoar trees and the dream-heavy shadows
beneath them,
and rock in, be one with the clinking wavelets of lakes
where the starbeams drown.”
§
As she entered, Barbro Cullen felt, through all grief and fury, stabbed by dismay. The room was unkempt. Journals, tapes, reels, codices, file boxes, bescribbled papers were piled on every table. Dust filmed most shelves and corners. Against one wall stood a laboratory setup, microscope and analytical equipment. She recognized it as compact and efficient, but it was not what you would expect in an office, and it gave the air a faint chemical reek. The rug was threadbare, the furniture shabby.
This was her final chance?
Then Eric Sherrinford approached. “Good day, Mrs. Cullen,” he said. His tone was crisp, his handclasp firm. His faded gripsuit didn’t bother her. She wasn’t inclined to fuss about her own appearance except on special occasions. (And would she ever again have one, unless she got back Jimmy?) What she observed was a cat’s personal neatness.
A smile radiated in crow’s feet from his eyes. “Forgive my bachelor housekeeping. On Beowulf we have—we had, at any rate, machines for that, so I never acquired the habit myself, and I don’t want a hireling disarranging my tools. More convenient to work out of my apartment than keep a separate office. Won’t you be seated?”