by C. L. Moore
I stood still among the reeds, pulled the gun out of my pocket, and took careful aim. I waited for another burst of gunfire from behind us. When it came—and none too soon, for now the 'hopper was topping the ridge—I pulled the trigger steadily.
The 'hopper gave a violent lurch. Fire sprang out in brief, bright sparks from its underside where my bullet struck. I was glad they didn't ignite anything. That was pure luck, for an instant after a gush of heavy black oil burst out of its transmission chamber and poured sluggishly over the rocks. I had been holding my breath without realizing it, expecting an explosion. For one vivid moment it seemed to me I was looking into Elaine's bright black, expectant eyes that asked of me something I didn't have to give her. Protection? The thought that I should spare her from danger if she stood between me and what I wanted? I never spared myself. I knew now I never spared Miranda. No, if Elaine expected that from me then she expected too much.
But when I saw the black oil come panting out of the nervous little 'hopper's vitals in thick gushes I had a moment's foolish grief for the machine that I could not let myself feel for living creatures.
All this happened in a split second of action and response. The moment I pulled the trigger I had dropped flat on my face to the ground, and not a moment too soon. Three or four bullets whistled over my head among the reeds. I'll never know if they were Comus bullets or rebel. The threshing and thumping around me in the reeds paused suddenly, and then when nothing happened resumed its cautious advance. Voices called softly. I called too, asking with the rest what had happened. Nobody seemed to know.
Moments later, exchanging suspicious looks, we came out of the underbrush wiping mud and sweat off our faces. The helicopter was laboring to get off the ground back there in the meadow. Gunfire rattled sporadically around the building we had abandoned and now and then a stray bullet went wailing thinly over our heads. I looked up in time to see three or four men scramble to the disabled 'hopper and heave it over the ridge and out of sight.
I started up the slope after it. A bullet sang past my ear and smacked the rock six feet ahead of me, sending up splinters of stone in my face. Over to the left I heard a solid, thudding sound and didn't know it for what it was until a man beside me coughed and pitched forward and began to slide gently down the slope in a little avalanche of pebbles. I felt adrenalin pour fresh energy into every nerve and muscle I had as I hurled myself upward and dropped over the top of the ridge, landing on my bruised side. I slid a dozen feet before I could stop myself.
The gray-haired man was wrenching the 'hopper door open and I saw Elaine scrambling out backward, dragging the blanket-wrapped bundle across the seat. Even now, in all this stress, it seemed to me she handled it with awe, as if it might be the Grail. And maybe it was. Maybe it was a part of the biggest thing in California. Bigger than the biggest redwood. Bigger than San Francisco Bay. Bigger than Los Angeles. Bigger than the world, at least to Nye and to me and to all the rebels in the whole country. If it was what it might be ...
There was an outburst of gunfire from the slope I'd just left, echoed by firing from the canebrakes below. It was loud at first as the guns of the rebels sounded in full chorus, and then it got ragged, because the slope was in full sight from the reeds and there wasn't any shelter out there. We had only minutes more of safety here.
I saw the gray-haired man look around with fast, considering glances, sizing up the situation. I jumped to help Elaine. My hands itched to feel the outlines of what it was she had wrapped in the blanket. Not that in my ignorance I could tell anything, but at least there'd be that much to report to Nye even if this whole project fell through from this point on. More eagerly than a bridegroom reaching for the bride, or a father reaching for his first-born, I took the bundle in my hands. For one tantalizing instant I felt its irregular and mysterious form beneath the blanket, intricate, blurred, indescribable.
Then an outburst of shouts and the crack of firing exploded from the far side of the little clearing where the 'hopper sat. I was too absorbed to think what it meant. The gray-haired man was quicker. He grabbed my shoulder and spun me around, snatching the blanket-wrapped Grail away from me. He heaved it back onto the 'hopper seat. He seized Elaine's arm and whirled her away. "Stand back!" he said. "Elaine, get away from the 'hopper."
She knew what he meant if I didn't.
"Oh no!" she said with anguish. "Tony, we can make it somehow. This is almost the last unit. Tony, we can't——"
"We've got to!" he yelled at her. "We're surrounded. I have to do it. Stand back." He dragged the gun from his belt, shouting, "Scatter! Scatter!" to the nearer men. The firing grew stronger from both sides now, coming up the slope from the meadow and closing in on us from the trees beyond the clearing. The gray-haired man leveled his gun at the bundle on the 'hopper seat.
Elaine cried, "No, Tony, don't!" and tried desperately to throw herself between him and the bundle. He didn't speak, but he gave her a heavy backhanded blow across the face that sent her staggering. And then he pulled the trigger.
The explosion seemed enormous. The Grail itself must have had its own potential destruction built into it for just such an emergency as this. Flying bits of glass or metal hissed by us in the shaken air. The clearing was blinding-bright for an instant, then invisible as our eyes reacted to the flash. When I could see again there was nothing but smoke, the twisted wreckage of the 'hopper, and a blue-violet afterimage of the explosion that swam on the surface of my eyes and half obscured everything I looked at.
I heard a familiar voice still yelling, "Scatter, scatter!" from just behind me, and I turned blindly and stumbled toward it. The haze in the clearing seemed filling up with struggling figures and the flash and noise of gunfire. I saw the gray-haired man running through the trees away from me. Comus had caught up with us at last.
And everything was over. I had nothing to show for all my efforts, all my risks. I'd touched the precious mystery, but no more. Like Whats-His-Name and the Grail, I could feel it but never see it. It had to be a part of the Anti-Com. In my daze it seemed to me not only that it had to be, but that I'd been all but led here, guided by forces out of a dream and my own compulsive behavior. I had touched the precious thing, and then, like the Grail, it had vanished in a flash of light seven times brighter than day.
I looked around wildly. Elaine wasn't anywhere in sight. I saw rebels whose faces I recognized either down in the dust or running. I saw a gray-headed figure disappearing among the trees. And sudden blinding rage flooded through me at the sight of him. The man who had snatched success out of my hands in the instant I touched it. The man who had smashed the Grail.
In the midst of my anger I heard a still, small voice. Quite coolly it suggested, "If you can't take back the Grail itself, why not take back the man who knows about it?" I spun with the dust slipping under my feet and lurched after the running man ...
I remember a bullet sang by me and slit my shirt sleeve neatly as I turned. The next thing I remember is a man's running back just ahead of me, and hurling myself at him, almost missing, catching him around the knees so we crashed down together across the rocky slope. I heard the breath go out of him in a grunt of surprise and pain. I had a rock in my hand as I scrambled to my knees, and I hit him with it across the back of the head, praying as I struck that I wasn't hitting too hard. He grunted again and went slack.
I grabbed for his limp hand and wrenched at the blue cyanide ring. It wouldn't come off. He must have been Wearing it a long time, I thought, almost wonderingly. I looked at his gray head and marveled at the secrets he must have stored away in there that I'd give so much to know. So much, so much!
The blue glass set wasn't very hard. It couldn't be if the wearer had to bite through it when the time came. I tapped his hand on a rock until the glass broke and the colorless liquid ran out onto the stone, bitter-almond-smelling, deadly. I held my breath until the breeze blew it away.
Then I lay down beside him in the dust and waited. It seemed like a long time. The noise aroun
d us slowly died away. Finally somebody's foot against my shoulder turned me over and I looked up into the disciplined face of a stranger.
"Get up," he said. "You're under arrest."
I sat up stiffly. "I think I've got a rebel leader for you here," I said. "Take us to headquarters."
He gave me a skeptical look.
"That's a new one. Don't worry. Headquarters is where you're going."
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CHAPTER XX
NOBODY KNOWS HOW big a bite of the tax dollar Comus draws, but it isn't a small one. Comus doesn't stint itself. The local captain's office had thick carpeting with a rich, raised pattern and gold thread curling through it. The furniture was all glass. The captain himself looked green and yellow because of the stained-glass insets in the window behind him.
I sat in a black glass chair with gold fringe under it and argued fiercely across the gilt glass desk with the captain. He was a dapper ma who looked uncomfortable out of uniform, and he didn't like me.
For a while I thought I'd have to go clear through to Ted Nye before they'd let me out of custody. I felt arrogant and self-confident. I think it may have been my confidence that tipped the balance. They listened to my story, looked over my ID cards, checked my photograph with my face, and finally with sour reluctance, agreed to talk to Guthrie. I told them no more than I had to.
"The man I captured for you is one of their top brass," I said over and over in various versions. "For God's sake look after him even, if you don't believe me." Grudgingly they said they would.
They had to get through clear back to Washington to find Guthrie's call number, but after that it didn't take too long. On the wall screen above the captain's desk Guthrie, after a while, dawned glowering. The whole image kept jiggling, and behind Guthrie I could see the inside of the sound truck from the front end toward the back. The rear door wasn't quite shut and through the slit I could see a sunny road unreeling as the caravan jolted toward Douglass Hats. They must have waited a long time for me.
Guthrie blew up.
I let him blow. He said he hoped they'd hang me. He said he hadn't known where the hell I was or what the hell to do, and if I didn't get to Douglass Flats in time for the evening performance he would——
I said briskly, "Oh, shut up, Guthrie. Listen, I've got news for you. Things have been happening. I want to talk to Ted Nye as soon as I can do it privately, so I wish you'd make an appointment for me. It shouldn't be hard—he expects me." I put that in for the benefit of the captain. Guthrie started to interrupt and I shouted him down.
"I'll be with you as quick as a helicopter can get me there," I said. "You haven't got a thing to worry about. Just talk to the captain here and tell him who I am. I don't want to lose any more time."
Guthrie glared at me, drummed on the table, and counted ten. The red flush that had suffused him receded slowly as he got himself under control. With great reluctance he started talking to the captain.
Half an hour later, bathed, shaved, and with all my abrasions medicated, I stepped into a helicopter and rose into the bright, hot noonday sky heading south. Half an hour after that I stepped out again onto the street of Douglass Flats.
The three trucks of our caravan sat side by side in a little grove of light-leaved trees around a stone camp stove just like the one we'd left in the redwoods. The same grease-stained plank table sat beside it. Public camps must be pretty much alike all through California. Beyond the flickering leaves I could see the roofs of Douglass Flats under a clear sky.
Pod and Eileen Henken were playing cards at one end of the table. Roy Copley, looking very young and boyish, was practicing a variety of inflections in his "red-hot-coffee" speech while Polly watched and listened critically, her red head on one side. I didn't see Cressy, and Guthrie was out of sight too.
Polly was the first to see me. I don't know just what I'd expected from them—angry reproaches or the complete freeze-out seemed likeliest. What actually happened surprised me. Polly looked up and said almost casually, "Well, there you are. It's about time. God, you look terrible. Listen, Rohan, how do you like this for a reading? Go on, Roy, give us that half turn again and stutter a little before you start talking."
And Roy stepped back, swung round in a half turn, faced me, and stuttered spontaneously into his speech as fresh and new as if he'd never spoken the words before. I gave my head a little shake and my mind took a half turn of its own, rotating back into the world of the Swann Players as if I'd never left it. For part of my mind it was a hard shift to make. But for another part the change was the easiest thing in the world. I felt as if I'd really never been away from the troupe. A part of me never had.
"Put more bite into it," I told Roy critically. "It's good. Let's have it once more."
Polly gave me a grudging smile. "Had lunch?" she asked. "I'll open something."
I nodded casually. "Thanks. I wish you would."
No, I'd never been away. And yet in a very clear sense I had been, and my absence had wrought some change in the troupe. I wasn't sure what. And it didn't matter. They'd known I'd come back. After last night they'd known no power on earth could keep me off the stage in Douglass Flats. I felt thankful for small favors. Life would be simpler now with the Swann Players.
I asked about a permit to open tonight, and Polly, setting a freshly unsealed plate of what looked like beef stew before me, said Guthrie had seen to it on the way in. She handed me a fork. Roy dipped his finger in spilled coffee and drew an oval on the tabletop.
"The rebels aren't very strong in Douglass Flats," he said, giving the oval eyes, nose, and mouth. "Guthrie saw the local mayor and he says it's okay." He added a band across the forehead, and a padlock. Then he wrote "Rohan" instead of "Comus" as a label for the padlock, and gave me a wry grin. "Rehearsal this afternoon? God, how I hate the stage."
I took a bite of the stew and shook my head at him. I felt fine, confidence was warm in me, but exhaustion had begun to shiver under the confidence and I knew I was going to fold up if I didn't get some rest between now and tonight. The Cropper years had left me tough, but there's a limit to what any man can take.
"You might run through it once from about twenty-one on," I said. "Just to make sure. We skipped some of it last night. I'm sorry about that. We'll play it straight from now on. But I've got to get some rest. Maybe Guthrie would read my lines for you."
At this point Guthrie came to the door of the sound truck, saw me, and yelled, "Mr. Rohan!" in an arbitrary voice. I picked up my plate of stew and crossed over to join him.
Cressy looked at me, large-eyed and startled, from the window that opened into the body of the truck from behind the driver's seat. All I could see of her was her round folded arms on the sill, and her chin on her hands and the halo of silvery-yellow curls with the light behind them. I gave her a wary look. After last night who knew how she felt?
She said in a perfectly friendly voice, "When did you get back? We were all wondering——" Here she paused and then asked, "Anything wrong?"
I shook my head slowly. "No. Nothing wrong." But I hardly heard my own words. Seeing her there framed in the window like a three-dimensioned portrait of herself, I thought again, automatically, Miranda—a copy of Miranda—not like her, and yet—Miranda.
And the strange thing was that not until this moment had I thought of Miranda since I left the camp that morning. It was the longest time I'd ever gone, waking and sober or sleeping and drunk, without the unquiet ghost that moved between me and the world. I felt strangely lightened and relieved, and strangely saddened. "No," I said again. "Nothing wrong."
Guthrie said to her in a gentle voice, "Run along, Cressy. Mr. Rohan and I have to talk business awhile." She raised her eyebrows at him, gave me an impersonal smile, and said, "Okay, I can take a hint." Guthrie stood for a moment watching her go, some of the old sadness returning to his face. It was curious how she made us both feel sad at this moment. But when he turned to me the anger came back, and in my own mind the bright, hot confiden
ce which sadness had submerged came flooding up in response. I swung around to face the television screen as he switched it on with a loud, impatient click.
Space dissolved in front of us. We spanned the Rockies with a glance, swooped across the Great Plains, leaped the Appalachians, and without passing through doors at all were suddenly inside Comus City, New York, talking to unstable secretaries who kept dissolving as we talked to them into other secretaries just as unstable. The last one of all dissolved into Ted Nye.
He looked up across his littered desk, distracted and irritable. His eyes were sunken into dark hollows in his little pinched face. He didn't look as if he'd slept in a week.
"What the hell do you want?" he demanded. "Talk fast. You've got one minute." I could hear two of his intercoms buzzing and winking out of sight, and there were voices in the room talking with a note of hysteria in them. Things weren't going too well in Comus City. Above the voices I heard one distinct trilling cheep and grinned with the realization that one denizen at least of the heart of empire felt pretty good today.
"Anything new on the Anti-Com?" I asked casually. Nye scowled at me, punched something on the desk, and picked up his earphone cup, as I had thought he would. Unless there were lip readers behind him, whatever else I said would be fairly confidential.
He said snappishly, "Go on. What have you got?"
"Good news. If you're worried about the Anti-Com getting completed too soon you can relax. I got one of the important units blown up this morning. It'll take a while to rebuild unless they've got replacements."
His little tense face went slowly dark with a heavy flush. "How do you know? Tell me what happened. Talk fast."
I laughed. The careless confidence I floated on was intoxicating as liquor. Now I had him. Now I couldn't fail. I gave him the story. He listened, tapping a pencil against his teeth and watching me as if he could drag the words out faster by sheer concentration.
When I was through he said, "But you don't know the package was what you think?" He was almost pleading with me to say I was sure, and the hand that held the earcup shook against his cheek.