by Jerry
“No, nothing like that, nothing stupid,” was the answer; but Lola scarcely heard.
She stood as if transfixed, staring at the woman from half-closed eyes, cunning in her thought. So far, every time she had mentioned that wish, the creature had evaded in some fashion. The thing was suddenly as clear as glass. If there were such a wish—and the monster had reluctantly admitted there was—then it was the only possible wish. All the others were mutilations, miserable affairs entailing some tremendous sacrifice in exchange.
But the ultimate wish! Well, ultimate meant—ultimate!
She had a sudden high sense of destiny.
“What is it?” she demanded, abruptly, fiercely.
“Don’t be a fool,” said the young woman curtly. “Stick to the things you can put your fingers on: money, beauty, love—things that T can tell you about.”
Lola stared at her like a trapped animal. “Why can’t you tell me? What’s wrong? If I choose it, I’ll know what it is; so why not tell me?”
The answer was curiously sharp: “It’s not good for human beings to know what the ultimate wish is. It grows out of the nature of things.”
“Oh, you—” Lola began; but the woman cut her off: “It’s none of my business, dearie, but I honestly think you should forget all about it. In my opinion, you wouldn’t choose it if you knew what it was. There, that’s as much as I’ll tell you.”
“If it’s an ultimate wish,” said Lola slowly, “it must satisfy—everything.”
Her bewilderment actually hurt her physically. Her brain was a dark pool of thoughts that followed now one path, now another, as she blankly searched her own desires for a clue to the secret.
“Forget it, forget it!” said the blonde. “Think of love, physical love; a husband for this very night.”
“And all my savings to pay for him!” said Lola grimly.
“Marriage to the man you love. No longer Lola Pimmons, but Mrs. John Russell Craig?”
“To a jailbird, you mean. Nothing doing.”
“Mistress?”
“Of a legless man with a horribly scarred face. Ugh!”
“Revenge?”
“What good would it do me?”
“Beauty?”
A tinge of color crept into Lola’s cheeks. “Beauty,” she said, and her eyes glowed. “Beauty forever!”
“Not forever,” was the dry comment, “but subject to the wear and tear of life.”
Lola sent her a wild glare. She swayed dizzily from sheer dismay. “How long would it last? Do you mean to tell me—”
“Dearie,” said the other, “you’re thirty-two now. Some women fall to pieces at thirty-five, others hold on till forty-five. I could tell you when Nature would strike you, but that’s another wish.” The shock was too great to absorb all at once. Her face bleached to a sickly gray; the black, burning realization stung along her nerves that, no matter how she worked it, her youth, all hope of normal life, was gone before it had ever begun.
Abruptly, she couldn’t face that fate. “No, no,” she gasped. “There must be a way. Youth. You can make me younger. I should have thought of that before. Twenty—sixteen—”
“That’s another wish. Do you really want to live your life over again?”
Lola said nothing; but it was a silence of appalled comprehension. The hard-boiled voice beat at her consciousness:
“Money,” it said. “Money is by far your best wish.”
Lola stirred. Some of the life came back to her body. She said grimly: “So you left money to the last. All the way through, you’ve urged money on me. Well, I won’t take it. It isn’t enough. I want the greatest wish there is, the ultimate wish.”
“Is that final?” The young woman’s voice was strangely far away, as if she had somehow withdrawn a part of herself. Her eyes were dark, ice-cold and enigmatic.
For a fraction of a second, Lola hesitated. It wasn’t that a thought came. Her mind was swamped in a swirl of black passions. It was simply the enormous, instinctive caution in her nature.
The shadow of vague fear passed. “Yes,” she blazed, “yes!”
“Very well!” The young blonde was matter-of-fact. “You have made your wish.”
“Well”—Lola was impatient—“when will I receive—”
She was talking to empty air.
She saw the truck two minutes later, as she stepped off the curb. It careened around the corner, and loomed vast above her slight form. She had time for one desperate flash of terrible insight. Then—
Death came, hard and irresistible, bringing ultimate surcease to the volcanic, acidic and tormented flesh that had been Lola Pimmons.
THE END.
FOREVER TOMORROW
Cleve Cartmill
A world divided between eternal night and everlasting day—and the key in a madman’s hands . . .
BAT SILVER hunched his great shoulders and stumbled through the rubble of the building and the dead it had crushed.
He was dimly conscious that a miracle had spared him in this catastrophe which had all but wiped out animal life. He was not afraid, now that earthquakes had laid the city flat. If another flung him to the ground, he would simply lie still. Nothing could fall on him, for nothing was left to fall.
Heaps of shattered stone here and there had piled like snowdrifts against crushed and twisted automobiles and street cars, but he gave these a wide berth and stumbled toward the Sierras from which tongues of flame licked at a stormy sky.
Bat’s mild eyes were glazed from shock, and shock had made his round face vacuous as a cretin’s. He moved woodenly, instinct pushing him toward the edge of the city and the open plain beyond.
The ground shuddered again, and Bat fell on his face. Piles of stone shifted uneasily with a grinding noise, and a few feet to one side a wide crack opened to swallow the litter of buildings and corpses along what had been a street. Bat rolled away from the chasm and retreated at a frenzied crawl. The roar of crashing stone sounded, and fountains of dust belched from the rift. Bat Silver broke into a cold sweat. He had not foreseen the possibility of being engulfed.
He marched on, wondering incuriously if he were the only person alive. Finally he reached the plain after three successive ’quakes had thrown him to the ground. He was bruised and dazed, but he was alive. He was also hungry.
He stepped across a flattened fence and entered the ruins of a little house. He averted his eyes from the parts of bodies that were visible and found edible scraps. He wolfed these at some distance from the house, his empty eyes wheeling about for signs of life.
He found none. Here and there was the twisted wreckage of a car, blown by that incredible wind from God knew where. He saw the carcass of a horse through which the wind had blown small sticks and bits of stone.
How long ago, he wondered, had that first shock blacked out the day? He had slept twice, after a fashion, and somehow preserved his life. Had two days passed?
He remembered nothing that resembled night.
The sun broke through heavy clouds at that moment, far out over the Pacific. Three o’clock, Bat estimated. That had been the hour of disaster—how long ago?
He stumbled on.
After a long and weary march, he became aware of a disturbing fact. The sun still stood at three o’clock. He knew that he had marched three hours, at least. His sense of time had been developed to a fine point in the years after the world’s armies had collapsed; he couldn’t be wrong.
Three o’clock.
He puzzled over this. The sun should have set an hour ago. Had it been three o’clock since the first ’quake leveled the city? Had the sun stopped?
For him, it had. He never understood afterward that Earth had ceased to rotate and now kept one face forever to the sun as the moon revolves around Earth. For Bat Silver the sun stood still.
Now, through his confused and disordered thoughts, sifted one idea only—preservation of his life. He dropped in the middle of a field when his legs would carry him no farther, and sle
pt.
Voices awakened him. He smiled at a small group of men and one woman. He was not alone any more. He cried a little, turning away so they would not see.
Not that they would have cared. They were dazed too, except for the slim and dark Tony Post, and young Captain Elm, whose startling gray hair and bright blue eyes combined to give him an air of slightly sinister wisdom which his gentle smile rather accentuated.
“Come,” he said to Bat Silver. “You will help. Administer the oath to this man, Tony.”
LITHE and whiplike Tony Post, rifle under one arm, attempted to answer Bat’s question as the scouting party of four from Captain Elm’s headquarters crossed the twilight strip into the eternal night. He told of a mysterious wave or force, called trepidation, which had caused Earth’s speed of rotation to vary at intervals. The first was recorded in 1790, when astronomical time as measured on Earth was 34 seconds from correct universal time.
It didn’t make sense to Bat. He listened with only half an ear as Tony mentioned 1897, 1937, 1940 and 1958, in which year Earth dropped a full hour behind universal time. While Tony related how, on March 20, 1964, trepidation had stopped Earth dead on its axis and counteracted centrifugal force, which would have tossed all movable objects into space; how the atmosphere had ripped planes and birds from the sky and whipped away shattered mountaintops as it rushed to the poles; how the oceans, freed from centrifugal force, had divided to gather at the poles; how a series of earthquakes shook the globe into the form of a perfect sphere—while Tony talked of these phenomena, Bat privately decided that the sun had simply stopped. Then he examined the other two members of the party.
These were Jake Lain and Laura Belmont. Jake carried a long knife and moved with a wolfish glide; Laura strode at a wary distance from the others and had two guns slung on the smooth bulge of her hips.
She seemed as suspicious as a hunted cat. She leaned slightly forward on her small feet, her right hand flickering near a gun butt, and she never came within arm’s reach of the others.
Bat Silver ended his scrutiny as Tony Post addressed him directly.
“So you see, Bat, that the sun didn’t stop.”
Bat pointed behind.
“But look, Tony. There it is—three o’clock.”
“All right!” Tony snapped. “Have it your way. Keep your eyes open, all of you, for a fire.”
They were soon inside the dark, slogging through slanting snow, bending into a howling wind. Bat Silver located a far gleam of flame and led the way at a run.
They found a group of men and women whose exhaustion had halted their groping toward the volcanic horizon. They had flung themselves around a fire, hungry, numb and terror-stricken; and now slept while swirling snow salted their ragged coats, while a fury of elements growled overhead and the ground squirmed uneasily beneath them.
Tony Post prodded recumbent forms. “All right! Snap out of it! Everybody up!”
One by one they came awake, like the dead returning to life. One by one they got to their feet by a series of jerks and swayed dumbly in the wind. They seemed indifferent to life or death as Tony Post’s words lashed their tired minds.
“You are to come with us, by orders of Captain Elm. We have food, which you may eat after you have taken an oath. If anyone refuses to take the oath, he will be left here to die. If he violates it later, he will be killed instantly. Do you understand?”
Obviously, Bat Silver thought, they didn’t have the faintest idea what Tony was talking about. Their eyes were like the eyes of horses that have worked until they can’t stand. They repeated the oath after Tony, but it was clear they didn’t know what it meant.
“I pledge my will, my body, my life, my complete loyalty to Captain Elm until he releases me from the pledge.”
They mumbled the words.
They ate the food which Bat distributed, set their empty eyes on him in a kind of thanks and waited the command to march.
Tony approached Laura Belmont, who stood at the edge of the firelight, the wind whipping her hair to create a shifting pattern of black and gold. He frowned when a wary movement put her beyond arm’s reach; he dropped his voice below the wail of the storm.
“You come with me, Laura. Jake and Bat can take this bunch. We may find others.”
With a hand almost on her gun butt, she replied, “I’ll stay with Bat, Tony. You take Jake.”
Tony’s eyes glinted. “I’m in command.”
“Yes, I know. I’m not disobeying. But you and I have the guns. If somebody needs—”
“Killing?” he supplied when she hesitated. “Maybe you’re right. Okay. You go in with Bat. If you must kill someone as an example, select a white man if possible. That’s an order from Captain Elm.”
“What’s it all about, Tony? I don’t want to shoot anybody.”
“Remember,” he cautioned. “You took the oath.”
“But what does it mean?”
“I don’t know. But for the time being, we’re carrying out orders to the letter. Later—we’ll see.”
He called Jake, went off into the dark; Laura herded the miserable dozen toward the ragged skyline.
VARIOUS scouting parties, composed mainly of Captain Elm’s bodyguard, saved no more than a thousand and brought them to headquarters on the western slope of the Sierras. Here in the perpetual afternoon they began to build the city and the high stone stockade in the center.
They worked when Captain Elm commanded; they rested when he permitted. Makeshift shelters protected them, food details brought such goods as possible from the ruins of the nearest cities, armed guards watched every move they made.
They came gradually to believe that they were the sole survivors of the human race, that the sun apparently would never slide any farther down the western sky.
They were in a continual stupor of exhaustion, with one or two exceptions. Only the hard-eyed young men who were the bodyguard, perhaps, had energy enough to wonder about Captain Elm’s plans—the bodyguard and Tony Post.
He stood some time later in Captain Elm’s house, in the room piled with such books as they had salvaged and with spare arms and ammunition, and watched the rock houses similar to this rising in rows. The stockade itself was nearly finished. Tony had reported for orders.
“Our first task,” Captain Elm said, “is to finish the city.”
Tony turned and searched the square face of his superior for the cause of his own uneasiness. The mouth was wide and full, pleasant not evil. The eyes were bright and blue, but not sinister. The eyebrows were neat and dark, in contrast to the shock of gray hair, but they seemed at rest. Captain Elm’s big brown hands too were relaxed. Yet Tony sensed impending disaster, a doom to which he was unable to put a name.
“Then what?” he asked.
“The executions.”
“What executions?”
“Perhaps less than ten per cent of those oxen out there are worth saving. The others die.”
“Captain!”
Captain Elm rose from his rough chair and looked at his dark, slim lieutenant. He smiled gently.
“And did you think, Tony, that our purpose here was simply to start over with what was left of civilization?”
“What else?”
“This: we’ll not duplicate the stupid mistakes of the past.” Captain Elm gestured at the books stacked along one wall.
“These are more or less complete records of history. They have one common theme—clashing cultures, religious and racial hatreds and death.”
“And so?”
Captain Elm gave Tony a level stare. “Don’t use that tone to me, my friend.”
“Pm not afraid of you,” Tony said quietly.
“Ah, no, Tony. I believe you. But I shall kill you, nonetheless, at the first sign of disobedience.”
“Yes, I know that. But you’ve just proposed to murder about nine hundred men and women. I don’t like it.”
“You state the proposition badly, Tony. I propose to make a new world—one cultu
re, one religion, one race, and peace. A perfect world.”
“Well, that’s a bright dream.”
“It shall come true and grow brighter. I have here a list of the nationalities represented in our city. We have one member of each sex from the following races: Mexican, Hawaiian, Chinese, Japanese, and Mongol.”
CAPTAIN ELM read the list from the flyleaf of a book on which, with the sharpened point of a lead bullet, he had also worked out a number of computations.
“I have also selected a corresponding number from the white race. By crossing and recrossing these according to a plan I have evolved, one race will emerge after a given number of generations. Everyone will be alike: calm, peaceful, with no racial hatreds, no conflicting social or economic systems.”
“You include maybe two dozen, Captain. What about the others?”
Captain Elm motioned through the window at the stockade. “They go inside, to be killed as quickly as possible.”
“The slaughter pen.”
“That depends on the point of view, Tony. Historians a thousand years from now will see that this mass killing was necessary to produce the magnificent civilization they will enjoy.”
“Let me ask you: If your seedlings are around a score in number, won’t survivors in other parts of the world throw your system out of gear?”
“There aren’t any other survivors.”
“How do you know?”
“Simple. North America, except for a narrow strip along this coast, South America, Europe, Africa and a large part of Russia are on the dark side. Before the moon had completed her first two weeks journey from west to east, the air had begun to freeze. Life can’t exist in that everlasting dark and cold. When the atmosphere rushed away from the equator, all life south of us died in a comparative vacuum and all life north of us died from atmospheric pressure. We can consider all life dead on such island groups as Japan, the Philippines, Australia and the like, because when the sea divided they were swept clean. In the corresponding strip in Asia, some have survived. I doubt this, because volcanic activity here hinted at almost incredible destruction from the mountains of Asia. However, there may be a few; as soon as we can prepare an armed air cruiser with auxiliary wing jets, we’ll hunt them down and kill them. That will leave our little band intact.”