Earth Abides

by George R. Stewart

  For a wild moment he had an idea that they might say some kind of marriage vows. Quakers could marry themselves. Why couldn't others? They could stand up together, and face toward the east where the morning sun would rise. And then he sensed that the mere babbling of words was in itself much more dishonest even than a straightforward feeling for the knee under the table. He realized that he had been silent for what might have been a full minute. She was looking across at him with level calm eyes, and he knew that she read his thoughts.

  In his embarrassment he rose suddenly to his feet, upsetting the chair as he got up. Then the table between them had ceased to be a symbol joining them together and now held them apart. He stepped from behind it, and across toward her as she rose up too. And then there was the softness of her body against his.

  O Song of Songs! Thine eyes, my love, are gentle, and the fullness of thy lips is soft and firm. Thy neck is ivory, and the smoothness of thy shoulders like warm ivory. The softness of thy breasts against me is like fine wool. Thy thighs are firm and strong like the cedars. O Song of Songs!

  She had gone now, into the inner room. He sat, still with breath and heart quick, tense and waiting. He had only one fear now. In a world where there were no doctors and even no other women, how could anyone risk the chance? But she had gone. He realized that she, too, in her great affirmation, would consider this also and care for it.

  O Song of Songs. My love, thy bed is fragrant as boughs of the pine tree, and thy body is warm. Thou art Ashtoreth. Thou art Aphrodite, that keepest the gate of Love. Now my strength is upon me. Now the rivers are pent up. Now is my hour. Oh receive me in thine infinitude.

  * * *

  Chapter 7

  He lay quietly awake after she slept beside him, and his thoughts rushed by him so fast that he could not stop them long enough to get to sleep. That was what she had said before, earlier in the evening—no matter what happened to the world, it did not change the person, and he remained what he had been. Yes, that was the way! Though so much had happened, and even though he might be deeply moved by that great experience, yet still he was the observer—the man who sat by the side, watching what happened, never quite losing himself in the experience. The strangeness! In the old world it might well never have happened. Out of destruction had come, for him, love.

  He slept. When he woke, it was daylight, and she was gone. He looked around the room fearfully. Yes, it was really a shabby little room, and he suddenly had a fear that perhaps all this seemingly great experience of love was, after all, only something which in the old days would have been no more than a pick-up of a restless waitress and a grimy room in a cheap hotel. And she—she was no goddess, no hamadryad glimpsed whitely in the dusk! Except at the moment of desire, she would never be Ashtoreth or Aphrodite. He trembled a little to think of how she might look in the morning light. She was older than he; perhaps he was merely mixing her in some vague kind of mother-image. "Oh, don't worry," he thought, putting it into words, "there never has been perfection yet, and it certainly isn't going to start now for me." Then he remembered how she had first spoken, not in question or command, but merely in affirmation. Yes, that was the way it ought to be. Take what was good in a situation, not worrying about what might not be there.

  He got up and dressed. As he dressed, he sniffed the aroma of coffee. Coffee! That was a kind of modern symbol, too.

  She had the table set in the breakfast-nook when he came out, as any commuter's wife might have done. He looked at her almost bashfully. He saw again, more clearly by morning light, the wide-set black eyes in the dark face, the full ripe lips, the swelling curve of the breasts beneath a light-green smock.

  He did not offer to kiss her, and she did not seem to expect it. But they smiled back and forth, one at the other. "Where's Princess?" he said.

  "I put her out for her run."

  "Good—And it's going to be a good day, too, I think."

  "Yes, looks like it. Sorry there are no eggs."

  "No matter. What is it? Bacon, I see."

  "Yes.

  They were little words, meaning nothing, yet there was a great joy to say them. A greater joy, perhaps, saying the little things than saying something much greater. A whole contentment came over him. This was no affair of the rented room. His luck was in! He looked across into her level eyes, and felt new security and courage rise up within him! This would endure!

  They moved back, later that day, to the house on San Lupo Drive, chiefly because he seemed to have more possessions—books, especially—than she did. It was less trouble to move to the books than to move the books to them.

  The days went more swiftly and more comfortably after that. There were many ways of sharing. "What was it?" he thought. "'A friend doubles joys and cuts griefs in half'?"

  She never talked about herself. Once or twice he tried to draw her out with questions, thinking that she might need to tell things. But she did not respond easily, and he decided that she had already made her adjustment in her own way. She had drawn the veil across the view toward the past; now she looked forward only

  Yet she made no apparent attempt at secrecy. He learned from casual remarks that she had been married (happily, he was sure), and had had two small children. She had gone to high school but not to college; her grammar lapsed occasionally. Her soft accent, which he had noticed when she first spoke, had perhaps the touch of Kentucky or Tennessee in it. But she never mentioned having lived anywhere except in California.

  Her social status must have been, Ish judged, somewhat lower than his. But there was nothing more ridiculous to contemplate, now, than all that business of social classes.

  "Amazing, how little everything like that matters now!" And the days slid by easily.

  One morning, finding that they needed some supplies, he went down to start the car. He put his thumb on the starter button. There was a sudden click, nothing more.

  He pressed it again, and it clicked. That was all.

  He heard no sudden comforting whir as the motor took over, no reassuring little bangs as the cold cylinders began to fire. Panic fell upon him again. He pressed the button once more, and still once more, and every time came only the little click. "Battery gone!" he thought.

  He got out, raised the hood of the car, and stared hopelessly at the orderly but complex array of wires and gadgets. It was too much for him. He had a sudden hopeless feeling within him; he went back to the house.

  "The car won't start," he said. "Battery gone, or something!" He knew that his face must be even more woebegone than his voice. That was why he could hardly believe it, when she laughed. "There's no place we have to go so badly as all that," she said. "To look at you, you'd think that things had gone to pieces!"

  Then he laughed too. It made all the difference in the world whether you had that other to cut the grief in half, and the trouble suddenly seemed tiny. A car was convenient when you wanted to go to the stores and load up with some more supplies. But you could live just as well without a car. She was right—they had really no place that they needed so badly to go!

  He had imagined a desperate day, tying to find a new car or to fix up the old one. As it was, they made it a sport, even though it did take them most of the morning before they located another one. Most of the cars had no keys in them, and while he might have shorted a wire somewhere, they agreed that it would be an inconvenience to have to drive a car without a key. And when they found one with a key in it, the battery, unused now for several months, would not work. At last they found one that had a key in it, and was parked on a hill. The battery was too weak to turn the engine over, but it would burn the lights faintly, and Ish judged that it would send out enough of a current to fire the spark-plugs.

  They got the car rolling downhill, and then after a minute the cylinders began to bang and putter and backfire. Ish and Em laughed together happily at the adventure of it. At last the gasoline worked up through the feed-pipes, and the engine warmed, and began to run smoothly. Now they laughed in
triumph, and went speeding at sixty miles an hour down the empty boulevard, and Em leaned over and kissed him. And suddenly, queer as it seemed, Ish realized that he had never felt so happy in his life.

  This car was not such a good one as the station-wagon. Because of this, they used it merely to make some exploration through the warehouse district, checking up in the classified telephone book to locate dealers in batteries. At last they forced the entrance to the proper room and found dozens of batteries with the acid not yet in them. There were also supplies of acid, and although neither of them was mechanically minded, they made the experiment of pouring the acid into a battery of the right size. They took it back, and put it into the station-wagon. It worked perfectly, the first time.

  As at last the motor of the station-wagon hummed tunefully, responding to the pressure of his foot on the throttle, Ish thought that on that day he had met, and faced, two problems. First, he had seen that he could do a great deal toward keeping a car running for a long time. But of even greater importance, he had faced the possibility that there would come a time when there would no longer be any cars, and yet still he could live happily and without fear.

  The next day, indeed, the new battery in the station-wagon was dead again. Either it was defective or he had made some mistake in installing it. This time, however, he was in no panic. In fact he did not even bother to do anything about it for a couple, of days. Then they repeated the process. Either by luck or by greater care, they had better success, and the battery continued to work.

  Sleek with lacquer, shining with chromium, their motors machined to the thousandth of the inch, their commutators accurate as watches, they had been the pride and the symbol of civilization.

  Now, they were locked ingloriously in garages, or stood in the lots, or were parked at the curb. The dead leaves dropped, the blowing dust settled. The rains fell, and spotted the dust, and made the leaves stick more tightly and then more dust and more leaves fell. The windshields were so thickly coated that you could scarcely see through them now.

  More deeply, they changed little. The rust ate here and there, but on the grease-smeared surfaces it could not work rapidly. Unused, the coils and the timers, the carburetors and the spark-plugs, all remained as good as ever.

  In the batteries the slow processes of chemistry worked day and night, breaking down, neutralizing. A few months, and the unused batteries were dead. But as long as the battery and acid were kept separate, neither deteriorated, and it would always be a small matter to add the acid and start out again with a new battery; the batteries were not the weakest link.

  More likely it was the tires. In the rubber the processes of decay worked slowly. The tires would last a year, five years. But nevertheless, the weakness worked in them. The air leaked from the tires, and after the car had stood on the flat tires for a while, they were no longer of any use. Even in the warehouses, decay worked in the rubber. The stored tires would have ten years, and still some life. Twenty years they would last, perhaps even more. Quite likely the roads, themselves, would be broken and men forget how to drive cars and lose the desire for driving them before the cars themselves were rendered undrivable.

  Her head rested in the crook of his arm, and he looked down upon the black liquid eyes. They lay on the davenport in the living-room. Her face looked darker than ever now in the twilight.

  There was one question, he knew, that they had not yet faced, and now she brought it forward.

  "That would be fine!" she said.

  "I don't know."

  "Yes, it would."

  "I don't like it."

  "You mean you don't like it about me?"

  "Yes. It's dangerous. There'd be no one else but me, and I wouldn't be any use."

  "But you can read—all the books."

  "Books!" he laughed a little as he spoke. "The Practical Midwife? The Pathology of Parturition? I don't think I'd like to face it, even if you would."

  "But, yet, you really could find some books and read them. That would be a lot of use. And I wouldn't really need so much help." She paused a moment: "I've been through it twice before, you know. It wasn't bad."

  "Maybe not. But it might be different this time without hospitals and doctors and all that. And just why, why do you think so much about it?"

  "Biology, don't they call it, or something like that? I guess it's natural."

  "Do you think life must go on, we have a duty to the future, all that?"

  She paused a minute. He could tell that she was thinking, and thinking was not the best thing that she did; she reacted at deeper levels than those of mere thought.

  "Oh, I don't know," she said. "I don't know whether life needs to go on. Why should it? Just as likely I'm selfish. I want a baby for myself. I mean, oh, I don't talk this sort of thing well. I'd like to be kissed, though." He did it.

  "I wish I could talk," she said. "I wish I could tell what it is I think about it."

  Then she stretched her arm out, and took a match from the box on the table. She smoked, more than he did, and he expected her to take a cigarette also. But she did not. It was a big kitchen-match, the kind she liked. She turned it between thumb and finger, saying nothing. Then she scratched it against the box.

  The matchhead spurted into a flare. Then the fierceness faded out, and the wood of the match-shank burned quietly in yellow flame. Suddenly she blew it out.

  Vaguely he knew that she, who did not find words easily, had tried—perhaps half unconsciously—to act out something that she could not say. Slowly he thought that he understood. The match lived, not when it lay in the box, but merely when it burned—and it could not burn forever. So too with men and women. Not by denying life was life lived.

  He thought then of his old fear during the first days and of the time when he had overthrown it, when he had unlashed the motorcycle from the tail-gate of the station-wagon in the desert and tossed it to one side. He remembered the wild feeling of exaltation which had come when he had offered defiance to death and all the powers of darkness. He felt her body stir gently in his arms. Yes, he thought humbly, that strong courage was his only at great moments—with her it was part of daily life.

  "All right," he said, "I suppose you're right. I'll read the books."

  "You know," she said, "I might need a little more help than that!"

  Her body was close and warm against him. Still he held back, feeling all the loneliness and the emptiness and the terror. Who was he to set mankind again on the long and uncertain road to the future? But it was only for a moment. Then her courage and the confidence of her courage flowed out from her to him. "Yes," he thought, "she will be the mother of nations! Without courage there is nothing!"

  And then suddenly he was conscious again of her body, and his strength came upon him.

  To thee be the glory, because the love of life was brighter before thy face than the fear of death was dark. Thou art Demeter and Hertha and Isis; Cybele of the Lions, and the Mountain-Mother. From thy daughters shall spring tribes; and from thy grandsons, nations! Thy name is The Mother, and they shall call thee blessed.

  There will be laughter and song again. Maidens will walk in the meadows; young men, leap by the brooks. Their children's children shall be again as the pine trees of the mountainside. They shall call thee blessed, because in a dark time thy look was toward the light.

  While they were still uncertain, Em looked out one morning and said, "See, some rats!"

  He looked. Sure enough, two rats were nosing their way along the base of the hedge, foraging about or merely investigating. Em pointed out the rats to Princess through the window, and then opened the door. But being a dog who gave tongue to tell the hunter where the chase was leading, she leaped out baying, and the rats vanished before she was anywhere near them.

  That afternoon they saw more rats at several times, one place and another, near the house, in the street, or running in the gardens.

  Next morning the wave had engulfed them. Rats were everywhere. These were m
erely ordinary-looking rats, no larger or smaller than rats were expected to be, not particularly fat or particularly lean—just rats. Ish thought of the way the ants had been some time ago, and felt a cold shiver run through him.

  The only thing to do was to make an investigation, and thus render the rats less horrible, because when you knew something about the situation, you saw the interest that lay in it.

  In the station-wagon they drove about here and there, often crushing some rat which decided to dash across the street, just ahead of their tires. At first they shuddered a little at the soft squash, and looked at each other, but before long it had become so common that they thought nothing about it. The area which the rats were occupying was roughly the city, although they spread outward from the built-up area, covering somewhat larger an area than the ants had done.

  What had happened, in general, was clear enough. Ish remembered some kind of statistics which declared that the number of rats in a city was generally about equal to the number of people.

  "Well," he explained to Em, "you start then with, say, a million rats, half of them being does or bitches or whatever you call lady rats. Some of the stores and warehouses are rat-proof, but still there has been for all this time what you can call an unlimited supply of food."

  "Then how many rats should there be now?"

  "I can't do that problem in my head. I'll try later."

  That evening at home he sat down to it as a mathematical problem. With the aid of his father's encyclopedia he determined that rats had approximately one litter a month, with an average of about ten young. That is, one month of uninterrupted breeding might have produced about a population of ten million rats in this given area. These young females, in turn, would begin to breed before they reached the age of two months. There must be some casualties, of course, and he had no way of determining just how many of the rats would live to maturity. But, certainly the increase must be prodigious under the circumstances. His mathematics broke down.