“I am educating the girls,” Miss Denis said. “It’s a slow process, but we have plenty of time. And I believe my lessons have begun to take hold. We’ve had a good time together, haven’t we, girls?”
“Yes, Miss Denis,” the girls chorused.
“And we don’t need this man around the premises, do we?”
“No, Miss Denis.”
“You see?”
“Now just a minute,” Miller said. “I think you’re laboring under a misapprehension. Some men have been responsible for wars. Not all men. I for example, was an ardent pacifist at a time when it was distinctly uncomfortable to be one. In the Second World War, I served in an ambulance unit. I have never taken a human life, and I never intend to.”
“So you’re a coward as well as a man,” Miss Denis said.
“I do not consider myself a coward,” Miller said. “I have been a conscientious objector out of conviction, not cowardice. My ambulance unit operated on the front lines, like soldiers, except that we were not armed. I have been under fire. I have been wounded, though not badly.”
“How utterly heroic,” Miss Denis said, and the girls laughed.
“I’m not trying to parade my accomplishments before you,” Miller said. “I’m simply trying to make you see what sort of a man I am. Men differ, you know.”
“They’re all the same,” Miss Denis said. “All of them. Dirty, hairy, smelly promiscuous beasts who start wars and kill women and children. Don’t try to tell me about men.”
I must,” Miller said. “You don’t know much about them. Tell me, what did you do to stop the wars you hate so much?”
“What can any woman do?” Miss Denis asked. “The captives must follow the conquerers.”
“Nonsense,” Miller said. “There was plenty women could have done if they’d really wanted to stop wars. Have you ever read Lysistrata? Aristophanes tells how the women of Greece refused to cohabit with their husbands until they stopped fighting. It makes the point—”
“I have read the play, “Miss Denis said. “It was hardly a practical solution.”
“Why not? Wasn’t it because too many of you women loved war and worshipped soldiers? You could have, stopped it if you’d wanted to. But you didn’t! Nietzsche said—”
“Don’t stand there quoting your damned men authors at me,” Miss Dane said. “Your logic is specious. The fact is, you men had the power and you abused it. You treated women as playthings, and you used the Earth as one big battleground until you warred yourselves right out of existence. You’re finished now, washed up, over. You’re an extinct species. You stand there with your funny hairy face and you look as strange as a dinosaur or an auk. Go off and die somewhere, Miller. We women are going to have our chance now.”
“You may find breeding difficult,” Miller said.
“But not impossible. I kept in very close touch with the latest work being done in parthenogenetie research. Reproduction without the male is distinctly possible.”
“Perhaps it is,” Miller said. “But you aren’t a trained scientist. Even if you were, you don’t have the equipment.”
“But I do know the places where the research was carried out,” Miss Denis said. “We may find one of the women scientists still alive. Our chance is even better of finding lab equipment intact. With that, plus my own knowledge of the subject, I think I can lick the problem.”
“You’ll never do it,” Miller said.
“I think I will. But even if I can’t, I’d rather see the race die out than let men take over again.”
She was growing red-faced and angry. Miller said quietly, “I can well understand that you have grievances against men. Some men. But surely we can talk this through and reach some mutually satisfactory—”
“No! We’ve done all the talking were going to do! Get out of here!”
“I’m not going,” Miller said.
Miss Denis moved quickly to the pile of weapons and picked up a spear.
“Girls,” she said, “get ready.”
The girls were still fascinated with Miller. They hesitated a moment. Then, obedient to Miss Denis’ strong personality, they took handfuls of rocks from their knapsacks. They were excited now. They watched Miss Denis expectantly.
“Are you leaving?” she asked.
“No!”
“Stone him!”
A hail of rocks flew through the air. Miller turned away to shield his geiger counter, and felt stones pelt him in the back and legs. He could hardly believe it was happening. These girls whom he loved—and especially Suzie—wouldn’t be stoning him. They would stop in a moment, they would be ashamed.
But the rocks flew, and one caught him on the top of the head, half-stunning him. He shook his head, turned and ran forward, still holding the geiger counter. Miss Denis tried clumsily to impale him on her spear. He avoided the thrust and grabbed the spear with his left hand. They wrestled for it.
One-handed, he almost pulled it away; but Miss Denis, strong and squat as a bull, was too much for him. She wrenched the spear free and hit him over the head with the knobbed end. And the girls cheered!
Miller was on his knees now, and the rocks were still raining around him. A spear-point prodded him in the side. He rolled away from it and regained his footing.
“Kill him!” Miss Denis screamed. “Kill the dirty man!”
The girls, their faces flushed with excitement, advanced on him. Miller felt a spear graze his side. He turned and ran.
He didn’t know how long he ran through the green twilight of the forest. At last he couldn’t run any more. He drew his pocket knife and turned; but no one was following him.
Miller lay down on the cool ground and tried to think. That woman, that Miss Denis, must be crazy. An old man-hater, a hard-bitten Lesbian gone stark raving mad. And the girls? He was sure they hadn’t wanted to hurt him. Perhaps they loved him But they were under the influence of the old bitch.
He checked and found that he hadn’t lost his geiger counter or his glasses in the flight. He was grateful. Without them, it would be difficult to find his own camp.
He had always known that people were a little crazy. He should have realized that the survivors of an atomic holocaust would be even crazier than usual. That insane Miss Denis. Imagine man being an extinct species!
With a shock, Miller found that lie could imagine it. After all, how many men had survived? How many women? What number of those survivors had geigers, what number would be able to overcome the hazards that lay ahead?
Still, that didn’t affect him. The human race wasn’t his responsibility. He had been a fool to release the demons of hope and desire. Now he would have to conquer them all over again. But he could do it. He would live the rest of his life among his books and paintings. Perhaps he would be the last truly civilized man.
Civilized . . . Miller shuddered and remembered the face of Suzie and the others, their panther eyes watching. Too bad he hadn’t been able to effect some sort of compromise with Miss Denis. But under the circumstances there was nothing he could do—
Except abandon every principle he had ever lived by.
Could he do it? He looked at the knife in his hand and shuddered under the weight of the demons on his shoulders. His hand tightened around the hilt.
A moment later, the world’s last civilized man was dead. With him perished the world’s last pacifist and conscientious objector, the final art collector and ultimate bibliophile.
In the place of these admirable creatures was Miller, the small knife gripped in his hand, looking around the forest for something.
He found it. A lightning-blasted bough three feet long, and heavy.
Quickly he trimmed off the excess sprouts. Soon, Miss Denis was going to have the horrid epitome of all hairy, smelly, dirty, club-wielding maledom bursting in upon her. He hoped she would have time to realize that she had called the beast to life herself. It would be quite a surprise for her.
And shortly after that, the girls were in for a s
urprise. Especially Suzie.
THE COVENANT
Five famous science-fiction authors pool their talents in this “round-robin” novelette that stretches man almost to the breaking point on the rack of Time and Space. Here is a rare pyrotechnic display of sf writing skills and styles.
Part One
By Poul Anderson
“Time,” she said.
Ban stirred, uneasy in this dim and rustling air. From outside, he would not have thought The Oracles wide enough to hold as many rooms as now appeared to stretch, doorway beyond arched doorway, further than he could see. Or was this a single great many-vaulted chamber? He didn’t know. It was too dark to tell. Too many wings moved under the invisible ceiling. He wondered where the light came from, what little there was of it.
“I beg your pardon, prophetess?” His voice sounded strange in the bones of his head. “I don’t quite understand.”
“It is as well,” said the one who sat across the black table. Her face was not veiled, and he should have been able to see what she looked like. But somehow he had only a blurred impression—eyes which caught more light than they should, so that they became blind luminous ellipses—perhaps, he guessed confusedly, more than somewhat afraid, it was because he could not stop watching her hands. They lay palms down on the table, relaxed, but with strength in every line. They had less taper than a woman’s hands commonly do, but he thought he had never seen any so beautiful.
“If you understood,” she said, “you might not dare to act.”
That touched his pride. He sat up straight, clenching his gun, and answered: “Prophetess, the Cloud People killed friends of mine. Also, I am the son of the Warden—I have duties—” He faltered beneath her gaze. Something scuttered across the dusky stone floor. Pompousness drained from him. Almost wryly, he finished, “If the Cloud People take the City itself, what Wardenship will there be for me to succeed to?”
Did she nod? “Yes,” her low tones replied, “there will be nothing then but the Heaths . . . a few lonely huts where men huddle and mutter, forgetting they ever raised a City . . .” After a pause: “Time is the strength of the Cloud People, even as Space is the strength of man. What you must overcome is Time itself.”
Ban sat in twilight, and the rustlings and whisperings seemed to go around and around his head, but he could only see the hands of the prophetess. He fumbled for comprehension: “A man may walk or ride or fly in Space—from here to there—but no man can swim Time’s river. Unless you—What is an Oracle? One who has mastered Time, ever so little perhaps, but not altogether helpless before it?”
She made no answer. “Forgive me,” he said. “I am surely wrong. I didn’t mean you were merely human, prophetess.”
“There was an age once, which may come again if the last men flee out onto the Heaths, when lightning destroyed where it would,” she told him. “Now, a hundred times a year, the highest towers of the City are crowned with lightning, and unhurt. That is one force which men have come to understand a little; and so they are not its pawns. There are others. Once, it may be, there were many others. But the world is very old, and much has been forgotten.”
Then the silence lengthened so unendurably that he got the courage, or the desperation, to remind her: “Prophetess, I came to ask on behalf of the City—of all mankind, maybe—how the Cloud People can be overcome. For none of our weapons has served. You have not replied to my question.”
“Not yet,” she said. “Not ever, in full. For there is no destiny. Time is not a single river, sweeping from the birth of the stars to their last cinders. It is more akin to a huge many-branched delta.”
She sighed. “Armies have been broken. So by now, Captain Ban, you should know the uselessness of armies. One man alone, though—”
Her words were like fingers closing on his heart. But he found the strength to say, “Myself.”
“I can tell you nothing.” The shakenness in her voice was the most unnerving thing of all. “I can promise you nothing. I can only say, go secretly and alone to the island. Remember that Time is the strength of the Cloud People, but Space is the strength of man, and remember that in the end Time and Space are the same. More than that, I cannot say. It is too dark.”
The beautiful hands rose to cover the face he had never quite seen. “It has always been too dark,” she screamed. “Go!”
Ban rose. He didn’t even stop to make obeisance. He almost ran, stumbling over his feet and his gun. For a moment the room echoed with his noise, then he lost awareness of the echoes because his own heartbeat grew so loud.
When he emerged on the terrace—never quite sure how he had done so—it was like waking from nightmare. He spent a while simply leaning on the rail, breathing hard. Piece by piece, he began to recognize familiarity. He looked a thousand sheer feet down the black side of The Oracles to an incongruous park where clipped trees and formal flowerbeds made star patterns. Several other towers were visible, though even at this height the City stretched too wide to be encompassed in a glance. He saw the colonnaded tiers of Alpha, graceful against a deep blue late-afternoon sky; the startling red slimness of The Needle; the shifting polychrome which rescued the massive facade of Arsenal from monotony. The sun was low, striking long rays between those walls, flaming off windows and making parks, forests, gardens, crop fields glow an impossibly intense green. Here and there the light flashed off wings, bird or human. And far on the eastern edge of the world lay a blinding silvery gleam of sea.
It was quiet up here. A breeze ruffled Ban’s sweat-dampened yellow hair. He shivered, drawing the tunic closer about his big young body. From somewhere, freakishly borne across a mile or two, he heard faint merry strains of music. Hard to believe that anyone could dance to a ballad while the Cloud People laired on this same planet. But he had done it himself, a few days ago. (Only days? It felt like centuries, now.) Life persisted unto the final destruction, and life was not a single thread. It was war and defeat and misery, yes, but it was also eating and sleeping and lovemaking and playing games to pass idle hours and looking at the stars with wonder and disputing with your blacksmith neighbor whose shop got too noisy and—
Urmuz came from behind one of the weeping willows which, with stone seats and an intricately playing fountain, ornamented this terrace. He looked out of place here, his great frame squat and hairy in a black tunic, his face battered beneath a military helmet. “What did she say, sir?” he rumbled. “Any help at all?”
Ban blinked, stared around him, clasped his gun as if to draw strength from iron. He felt dimly surprised, through all the turmoil within him, that he should reply with coolness, “I don’t know. I did get some advice. But who ever heard of an Oracle making a straight answer?”
Urmuz spat. “Old Mother Grotta, on the twelfth floor, she’ll speak plain. I told you not to monkey around with these here upper-level seeresses. Let’s go find Mother Grotta right now.”
Ban actually chuckled. “I don’t need homely common sense, Urmuz, or a fake love philtre—”
“Dammit, captain, her love philtres work! I know!”
“The situation has gone beyond that.” Ban’s smile vanished, though his lips remained tense. “I suppose it was always beyond that, though we realized too late what the coming of the Cloud People meant.”
“What good are these upper-level prophetesses?” persisted Urmuz. “They’re frauds, captain, that’s what they are. Their words’re so bloody vague that after things’ve happened, they can always claim that’s what they meant. Me, I’ll waste my money on blondes and booze.”
“Be quiet!” Ban yelled. “What do you know about it, you mud-brained sub-level mechanic? Go back to school and learn about the prediction paradox, at least, before you start quacking—” He saw the ugly face stricken, and knew he was only venting his own fear. Urmuz had stood with him in the last battle, when others fled and the Cloud People laughed unseen. Urmuz had guided his first baby footsteps, and taught him to handle a gun, and carried him home from youthful nights
when they drank down stars and moon and sang the sun awake . . . “I’m sorry,” said Ban. “Nerves.”
“Nothing to be sorry about, captain,” said Urmuz. “Part of my job, being cussed out. Well, so what did she tell us to do?”
Ban looked away. “I have to do it alone,” he said. “Secretly.”
Another emerged from the willows. She was as young as he, and her light white robe did not much hide fullness and suppleness. The loose hair streaming down her back was the color of a sunset after storm, and her eyes were great and gray in a sweetly shaped face. “Ban,” she said, making his name beautiful to him. “Captain Ban—”
“Yes?” He turned with eagerness to watch her, thinking that he would probably not have many more hours to watch anything at all.
She stopped before him, flushing, and they stood a while in mutual awkwardness.
Finally she sighed. “May you reveal what the prophetess told you?” she asked.
Ban shook his head. “Best I don’t.”
“He has to go somewhere secret,” blurted Urmuz. “Why don’t you wait here, captain, and I’ll get our kit and we can start right out?”
“At once?” breathed the girl.
“I think so,” said Ban. “No way to tell when the Cloud People will attack next, but it will be soon—and that next attack will bring them to the edge of the City.”
She looked seaward and shivered. “Mists out there,” she said, “and cold, and thin singing. Is that how it will be?”
“If we don’t stop them,” he said. “Yes, I’d better leave at once.”
Before I become so afraid I can’t leave at all, he thought.
“I’ll get our kit, sir,” repeated Urmuz.
“You stay here,” said Ban.
“Sir!”
All at once Ban had no strength left to argue. “Very well,” he said. “Go fetch the stuff, then, and come back here.”
“Yes, sir!” Urmuz snapped a salute.
“Don’t tell anyone,” said Ban. “Not even my father.”
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