Once Upon A Planet
Page 2
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Bly Stanton rolled over and groaned aloud. His hand shook as he liftedit to feel a throbbing temple. His fingers felt a sticky wetness, andmemory returned to him--the raiding party of Himlo men, his discovery ofthem, and the alarm he had sounded, the fight, and then the blow whichhad felled him.
He rolled onto his stomach, shoved his hands under him and heavedhimself erect. A sigh of relief escaped his lips. Except for the buzzingin his brain, he felt all right.
Stanton looked down at his dust-covered clothes, and his fingers brushedat the dirt and mud, but when they came to his shirt they halted. Therewas a hole in his shirt, high up, near the heart. It was not a holeexactly, but rather a slit which could have been made either with aknife or sword. There was a dried welt of blood surrounding the skin. Ashudder passed through his tall, strong frame, as he realized that itwas a miracle he was alive. For whatever had done the damage hadpenetrated deep into the flesh.
The moon was full, and after a few seconds had passed, Stanton bent andsearched for his weapon which, he was sure, would be close at hand. Butas he found and picked up the long, double-edged sword, a shudder ofdistaste went through him, and he dropped his weapon and let it laythere.
Once more his fingers brushed at the wetness on his temple. He wonderedwhy the blood was still coming from his head wound, while the cut in hischest had dried up.
He peered around to see if his attackers were anywhere in the vicinity,and decided that his immediate location was clear of danger. Anotherinstant of orientation, and Bly Stanton bent low and scurried from onepatch of cover to another until he reached his goal, the tunnel mouth.Here he would be safe for the present. The Himlo would not dare tofollow him here.
His eyes, long accustomed to the sight of the broken arch, passed overthe inscription worn deeply and almost illegibly on the green-with-agemetal--_Chicago Greater Subway_, 2107 A.D. He was interested only inknowing whether or not danger lurked in the shadows. Again he sniffed. Asmall smile stole across his mouth. Then the lips tightened in theirwonted thin slit, and he started forward at a long lope into thedarkness.
Here and there were offshoots, darker passages which disappeared intothe Stygian gloom. But his path led straight ahead. Then he was before abarricade of rocks, the barrier which his men had placed against thecoming of their enemies.
"Ho, John!" Stanton shouted.
* * * * *
The walls echoed the sound, which was followed by a dying whimper of avoice. "Hi ... Hi! Who goes ...?"
"'Tis I, Bly Stanton," Stanton yelled.
There was a short interval of silence, then a concerted roar of glee,and a dozen men clambered over the rock pile. They shouted his name asthey all tried to touch him at once, and there was adoration in theirwelcome as they pulled and hauled at him.
At length he managed to free himself of their embraces, and as he stoodapart, he asked: "What happened? Did I manage to warn enough of ourmen?"
"Warn us and knock their ambush into a cocked hat. They fell to piecesand ran like scared rabbits when we hit them from all sides. But MarkSmith saw you fall, and he said that the sword which was thrust into youwent all the way in to the hilt," one of them said.
"I guess Mark was looking from the wrong angle," Stanton explained. "Forsure I'm all in one piece. Got a bloody knock on the head, though. Well,let's get back to quarters. I've got a piece I want to talk over withyou all."
A hundred torches made a smoky light of the pitch which otherwise wouldhave been in the vast cavern-like room. Three hundred and ten men stoodabout in various attitudes of attention, all listening to the tall manperched on a flat piece of concrete, facing them.
"I cannot explain why I feel this way," Bly Stanton was saying. "Butthis I know, and for sure! No more killing for me. No more hiding instinking places like this, waiting for the sun to go down so a man canventure out and be a man. No, sirs! Bly Stanton is going out, and inbroad daylight. Bly Stanton is going out and bloody well away from thisplace, out to where the sun hits hills and trees and open spaces. AndBly Stanton is going alone if he has to...."
It was an ultimatum, they knew.
* * * * *
Mark Smith, a short, swarthy-faced man in breeches clipped short at theknees and a leather jerkin for a shirt, stepped forward and waved acasual hand to get his leader's attention.
"I take it, Bly," he said, "that you are bound to leave. Well, that partmay be all right. Surely you have a right to leave if you want to. Butby the same token you must grant us the right to ask why. We have beentogether too long for so abrupt a leave-taking."
"And right you are, Mark," Bly replied. "I owe that and more to each andevery one of you. Three hundred odd of us, all who are left of millions.And against us, as they have been for a hundred years, the Himlo. Andhow many of them are left, would you say? A thousand? Not many more,surely. Think, men, some thirteen hundred men, perhaps a few more. Nochildren, no women, just men.
"I don't have to tell you what happened three hundred years ago. Historyhas no meaning to us any more. For are we not eternal? Death can onlycome to us by violence. Well, not any more for me. Bly Stanton has cometo life. That is how I felt when I came to back there in the ruins, thata new life had been granted me. Well, I intend to live it fully, atpeace. I tell you, Mark, and you, John, and Abel and all the rest ofyou, when I picked up the weapon which I had dropped to the ground, itwas as if I had picked up a live coal. I could not wear it, the brand ofmurder. For we are all murderers, we and the Himlo----"
"Again," Mark Smith interrupted, "I agree with you. We and our enemiesare murderers. Thirteen hundred and some odd murderers. And before weare done, there will be less. But that is how we have lived for too manyyears. So many, we can no longer change our ways. Peace is a lost wordwith us."
"With you!" Stanton said sharply. "But not with me! I have found itagain. And I do not intend losing it quickly. I say I leave these scenesand these ways. Tonight. Who will leave with me?"
He looked about with expectant eyes, but the light in them died as hisgaze swept the cavernous depths and looked into face after face and sawnot a single one which agreed with him. It was not so much a sign ofrevolt, but an acceptance of a fact three hundred years old.
"Then I go alone," he said with finality. "This has become a bitterworld, a world without woman or child, but it is the only world we willever know. And I am going to live peacefully in it. Good-bye."
They opened their ranks to let him pass. Until the last of them wasreached, Bly Stanton thought there would be no answer to his farewell.Then a tall, thin man stepped in front of him. He was Grant Hays, one ofthe four with Smith, John and Abel, who formed the inner leaders underStanton. Grant and Bly had always been the closest of friends.
"Bly," Hays said, his eyes steadfast and warm. "Wait. Before you go....There is more than man to meet out there. The Himlo are one thing,nature another. You must take weapons."
* * * * *
Stanton shook his head hard. "No!" his voice thundered, and sent echoesanswering from the walls. "No! I will never draw a blade against even arat. The old races had their sayings--one I remember well--'Live and letlive.'"
"Good-bye, then, Bly Stanton," Hays said. "And good luck."
Bly Stanton did not turn as he clambered over the rock ramparts. Andafter a while the night hid him in its sable fold.
The man climbed the last ridge of the giant sand dune and looked down ata setting moon sending a long slanting fan of silver over an immenselake. He had seen the lake many years before, had almost forgotten itsexistence so long ago had it been.
He turned and looked at the ruins, rising pyramid-like from the treeline to the north. Chicago had been the name of a vast city which hadexisted here. There had been other cities as large, and some larger.From the deepest recesses of his mind, Stanton remembered an almostforgotten fact. There had been more than three _billion_ people on theEarth at one time. Then, on an aftern
oon long gone, a bomb was droppedon one of the cities. It had been called an atom bomb. The name of thedestroyed city was soon forgotten, as were the other cities which weresoon wiped off the face of the Earth. For man had discovered in the atombomb a weapon which proved to be the agency of his destruction. It ledto bigger bombs, better bombs, more efficient bombs, and at the last abomb which by chain reaction killed almost all the people on Earth. Andthose whom it did not kill it made sterile.
That was the beginning of the end. For in the new way of life, the forceof creation died. Men thought of nothing but hatred of other men. Sothey fought, first with weapons of complex design. Then, as the creativedesire was stifled, the weapons became more simple, until at the lastman went back to a sword and a knife blade for his murderous tasks.
But it was in the death of woman that man