by Jerry
“Franz has told you why we are here. We believe the human race is doomed to slavery and annihilation unless some of us break away. My father left us a treasure of books that his father before him had salvaged from the holocaust. They tell of a way of life before the land was ravaged. It was a better way, believe me. We men have lived in Boru, a small valley back in the hills. But now we’re leaving there. Long ago our father told us of a green valley to the east, high in the mountains where things grow as they did in the time before all this. We have a map; and we’re going there to find freedom. We need you to keep this freedom.”
A hush of silence held the room for a moment, and was broken finally by the man who had come with the three girls. “Will The Leader be there?”
Sten stared hard at the man. “You will be your own leader. Can’t you see that? Your Leader is only an illusion! There is no leader but yourself, and perhaps the God in my father’s books.”
The man sat a moment, then shook his head. “Not without The Leader—I couldn’t face it.”
“You have your choice,” Franz said coldly.
The man rose and grasped the arm of the tall woman that had come in with him. “Then we have no business with you,” he said as he led the woman to the door. The woman looked back hopelessly as she followed the man out.
“And you?” Sten asked the remaining women.
The blonde girl smiled and took hold of Johnathon’s arm. “I will go.”
They all turned to the shy-looking girl who sat next to Karl. She looked hard at the man next to her before speaking. “Yes, me too,” she almost whispered.
“Good. That’s two. Kathryn, what about you?”
She looked Sten squarely in the eye. “I’ve decided to stay. Why should I leave this good life to be devoured by beasts or Root-Diggers on the outside?”
Sten sighed. “Then we need more. And quickly. We must leave by tomorrow night at the latest.” After the women had been escorted to their cubicles, Franz led the men through the corridors toward the center of the city. In each great square they passed squads of soldiers dressed like themselves, staring straight ahead in the same unconscious way.
When they paused in the middle of a hall to plan their strategy, Karl turned to Franz. “Something’s bothering me, Franz. Just where do they put their dead? We haven’t passed anything like a graveyard.” Franz laughed. “Death is rare in Panamia, my friend. When a person grows old or very ill, he is summoned by The Leader. He never comes back. I never knew anyone to come back. As far as any one knows they’re still at the headquarters of The Leader.”
A huge cavern-like room loomed ahead where all the main passageways intersected. In the middle of the square sat a great round building, forbidding, yet beautiful. Doors opened on all sides leading into the great domed structure.
“And this is where The Leader dwells. Nice, eh?” Franz said.
The men stood looking at the huge dome until it seemed to them that they were being noticed, then they passed on through the square. At the far edge, Franz suddenly stiffened. “Walk fast. Hurry,” he muttered. Sten quickened his pace to keep up with the others, then felt a chill run over him as he saw the officer with the thick glasses watching them from a window in the dome.
“I wonder what would happen,” Karl muttered, “if a guy could get into that dome for a few minutes to play with the machinery?”
“Perhaps it could be done,” Franz replied. “But it would be your last act on earth. Nevertheless, it would be interesting to see what would happen to the people if the machinery stopped.”
Sten noted the thoughtful expression on Franz’s face. The man’s eyes searched the corridor, where, by listening carefully, he could hear the high whine of The Leader.
Kathryn was home from her job when they returned.
“Well, how is your enlistment program coming?” she asked when they entered.
Sten looked at her and felt his stomach pull tight within him.
“Not so well,” Franz replied. “Those I knew when I was here have forgotten what they believed then or are gone. It’s too dangerous to speak to many new ones.”
“There aren’t many fools in Panamia,” she retorted.
Johnathon grasped Sten’s arm entreatingly. “Sten, come with us, we’ll see the girls. They have friends who may be interested. We only have a few more hours, let’s not waste them.”
“No, you go on. I’ll stay here for a while.”
“As for me,” Franz said, rising, “I’ll go with Karl and Johnathon. I have to check on something.”
Kathryn sat at the table watching Sten as, the others left. He looked away from her eyes. “You’ll be alone again soon. Tell me, don’t you ever get lonesome all by yourself all the time?”
“I have The Leader. He is always near.”
“You have nothing then. Don’t you realize it is nothing?” He rose and walked to the nook where her recreation machine sat on a shelf. Grasping it with both hands, he wrenched it from the wall and let it fall to the floor, smashed. She stared at it dumbly.
“See! There is your Leader—a smashed machine!” Sten shouted. He moved to her side and leaned close to her. “Kathryn, you’re a woman. You’re not stone! Don’t you feel anything at all?” Her neck turned slowly red as he pulled her toward him.
“No, I feel nothing,” she said woodenly. “Is this supposed to be something special, the touch of a man?”
“It can be.” He put his face into her hair. Slowly he pulled her head back and looked into her eyes, then he kissed her, hard.
She fought free of him and began pacing back and forth. “I don’t know. I don’t know. Perhaps you are right, but I don’t know if I can do it.”
“Here, what’s this?” Johnathon entered smiling. “Has there been a change of heart? Good. Then we can leave. Franz here tells me he found the lady he went looking for too.”
Kathryn looked again at the dream machine lying on the floor, then at Sten. She seemed to gather up strength for a brief moment. “I’ll go,” she whispered.
“I’m glad,” Sten said. “We can leave right away then. What about your girl, Franz?”
“She is waiting for me,” Franz smiled. “I made sure of that. But it is a long way. Give me an hour. Better yet, I’ll meet you at the tunnel in an hour and a half.”
Franz laid his hand on Sten’s shoulder and spoke in a low voice. “If I’m not there in an hour and a half, go on. I’ll catch you outside.” He squeezed Sten’s shoulder. “Be careful, my friend. And good luck.” Sten looked at the door for an instant after Franz had gone. “We must be careful. We don’t want to be noticed.”
“Soon there will be nobody to notice us,” Johnathon said exuberantly. “We can yell and run and laugh, and there will be nobody to care, not even The Leader.”
A silence fell over the room as he mentioned the name. Sten broke it to issue an order for everyone to gather his things. Kathryn gazed longingly round the room as the others moved out. She bit her lip with the effort it took to keep from pulling back as Sten led her from the room.
They passed through the corridors without incident, stopping when they reached the intersection that led to the tunnel. They stood there at the edge of the intersection, anxiously awaiting Franz.
Sten stiffened as he saw the officer that had stopped them before approaching down the corridor, followed by a soldier. The men snapped to attention and stood as if guarding the women.
The officer swaggered up to Sten. “Here, what are you doing with these women?” He studied Sten’s face. “Don’t I know you? Ah yes, you were with that scar-faced provost that’s been snooping around lately. Your actions are most out of the ordinary. I think we had better go along to The Leader’s headquarters and check on this.”
“We have other orders,” Sten stated flatly.
“What! You dare disobey!”
“We have orders. But look, here comes our officer now. Ask him.” As the officer turned, Sten lunged forward and struck him a blow on the n
eck, knocking him to the floor. Instantly he fell on top of him. There was a fierce struggle as the officer tried to reach inside his tunic for his weapon. Suddenly the officer gasped. When his body was still, Sten slowly withdrew his knife from the man’s chest. The soldier stood staring stupidly at his fallen officer until Karl clubbed him from behind.
“We’ve got to get out of here,” panted Sten.
“Franz! What about Franz?”
“I don’t know. He should be here by now. But he said he’d catch us.” As they fled down the corridor, the view-screens along the way were blaring the usual message of the glory of The Leader. Abruptly the voice died away, the whine faded to a diminishing hum, and there was an increasing stillness. The whine stopped and the corridors were silent. The women, terror stricken by the stillness, screamed and fell writhing on the floor. Shouts filled the corridors as panicked throngs left without the symbols of The Leader ran from their cubicles in terror.
“What is it?” Karl shouted above the din, shaking his head to clear it.
“The whining noise. It stopped.” Sten gasped. “Franz! It’s Franz! He must have gotten in and wrecked the dynamos.” He pulled Kathryn to her feet and shook her to stop her sobbing.
Then, as suddenly as it had stopped, the whine began again, slowly gaining momentum until it reached its former pitch. With this, the sobs of the women subsided and calmness slowly crept back through the corridors.
“It’s started again,” Karl began running toward the tunnel. “They must have spare dynamos. Poor Franz, all for nothing.”
Again the view-speakers were blaring, this time warning the people that a saboteur had made an attempt to destroy The Leader.
The women were gasping for breath when they reached the door to the tunnel. Sten plunged through the door, hurrying the others in after him, and then threw his weight against the wall. With three men pushing against it, the wall gave way and they entered the tunnel.
It was night outside. They walked slowly, consoling the women, who were sobbing again at the loss of the shrill god they had known for so long. The heat that radiated from the sand was suffocating.
“We have to hurry on,” Sten told the women. “We can’t be caught in this sand tomorrow. There are foothills ahead where we can rest.”
It was morning when the men, carrying the women, entered a rocky canyon and wearily slumped down in the shade of a cliff. The women barely moved, sleeping the sleep of the exhausted.
“Lord, I’m tired,” Karl groaned.
Sten laughed. “At least we accomplished our mission. Except . . . for Franz.”
The men sat silent.
“Maybe Franz fulfilled his purpose, too,” Karl said. “That dynamo was the woman he had waiting for him. He probably got a lot of satisfaction out of knowing that for one minute, at least, Panamia was without The Leader.”
The other men didn’t answer. They were asleep.
They woke as the sun was going down. Sten climbed the cliffs to look out over the desert in search of the other party. He returned dejected.
“They’re half a day overdue now,” he said. “Our food’s low so we’ll have to go on and hope they catch up later. Bradley has another map.”
He noticed the women sitting against the base of the cliff, terrified.
“What’s wrong?”
Kathryn looked around them at the barren ground and at the clear sky stretching away to the horizon. “What’s wrong? Look at this. I feel like I’m floating in air. There’s nothing over us!”
The men laughed.
“Don’t laugh,” Marta wailed. “It’s a horrible feeling. This emptiness is killing me. Sing, shout, do something! But let’s not have such silence!”
Stella, the shy girl with the mouse-colored hair, began crying again. Karl gently pulled her head over on his shoulder.
THEY LEFT at dark, winding up through the canyon and back into the hills where the scrub trees began. All night they traveled, tearing their flesh on the jagged limbs and rocks in the darkness. Only, the occasional muffled sob of the women broke the stillness.
In the morning they rested in a small valley where a trickle of water coarsed through its head. They rested under a pinion tree, the women receiving some solace from the flimsy natural roof over their heads.
Sten slept three hours, then rose without waking the others and scouted ahead. He consulted his map and climbed a tall hill to search for the mountain range they were seeking.
When he returned, Johnathon and Marta were gone.
“He said he had to go,” Karl explained. “Marta couldn’t take this, and he wouldn’t go on without her. He said he knew he couldn’t make you understand. And asked you to take care of your father’s books. He hoped that someday he could join us in the valley.”
“Can he stand living there?” Sten asked glumly.
“Franz said once that it had been done before. I guess they don’t bother you much if you obey.”
Sten squatted on his heels and stared out over the desert where Johnathon and Marta had disappeared, sending them a silent Godspeed.
When they started out that afternoon, Stella was still sobbing. Karl tried to console her, but at every new turn they took, there was fresh terror in her eyes. Kathryn walked along with her, helping her over the rough places and trying to cheer her, but she couldn’t conceal her own terror as she stared ahead at the vast distances.
They rested at sundown. While the men were bringing water, Stella rose and started back down the hillside. Kathryn was thrown aside when she tried to stop her, and soon the girl was running madly down the hill, shrieking and sobbing wildly.
Karl dropped his pack and ran after her, begging her to stop. But she ran on, heedless of obstacles. There was a sudden sharp wail of terror as she ran blindly off the edge of a cliff.
Sten met Karl carrying her crushed body back up the hill. Karl hugged the dead girl close to him and did not look at the other man.
That night, for the first time, they built a fire. Karl sat grief-stricken through most of the night staring into the flames. Kathryn sat leaning against Sten during the evening, fascinated by the flickering of the fire—the first she had ever seen.
At dawn Sten awoke and nudged Kathryn. A grey squirrel was scolding them from a limb above. He laughed at Kathryn’s wide-eyed surprise at the antics of the little animal.
They rose without waking Karl, who was sleeping heavily in front of the burned-out fire, and walked down to the edge of the creek. A chipmunk scampered away in front of them and a blue-jay screeched from a near-by tree. A meadow-lark trilled its fine notes somewhere down the creek. They sat here at the edge of the creek-bank and leaned back on the grass.
Kathryn stared to the west where a line of white clouds were playing along the horizon. “You know something, Sten? I don’t notice the silence so much anymore, and the distance doesn’t worry me now, either. I guess maybe there’s something here after all.”
Sten pulled her close and smelled the good smell of green grass beneath them.
The next afternoon they had nearly reached the top of the pass. They were just below timber-line. Finally, looking to the east, they saw a great empty space, with a tall mountain range rising jagged on the other side.
“That’s it,” Sten exulted. “Fifty miles wide, and in the top of the mountains.”
“I’m glad,” Karl said. “But you’re on your own now, Sten. I’m going back.”
“Back? To Panamia?”
“Yes. There’s nothing for me here. Perhaps back there I can find something. Maybe I can take up where Franz left off. I don’t know. There must be others who are not afraid of life.”
Silently Sten offered his hand.
Karl squeezed it hard and looked into his eyes. “Good luck to you in your valley. I know where it is now, maybe some day I can return. And perhaps Bradley and the others will make it yet. Until another day then . . .” he turned abruptly, and started back down the mountain.
Sten and Kathryn, hand in
hand, watched him disappear through the trees. When they could no longer see him, they lifted their eyes to the hidden valley. They saw, even from this distance, the lakes that lay scattered through it, and the winding lines of cottonwoods that grew along the rivers, and the plains where the green and grey of the sagebrush blended. Sten breathed deeply of the crisp air and let his breath escape in a low whistle.
“It was worth it, wasn’t it? It’s ours. And we won’t always be alone, Kathryn. Others will come. Man is not dead. It may take a while, but others will come.”
The woman slipped her arm around the man’s waist and they stood for a time looking out over the valley. Then they started the long descent.
MAN IN A MAZE
William F. Temple
SCIENTISTS CAN BE INHUMAN. LIKE WHEN THEY TRY TO PUT A—
IF YOU DIP TWENTY-FOUR pairs of rabbits’ back legs in liquid air, and twenty-three pairs freeze and fall off, but only one leg of the twenty-fourth pair falls off, what different quality resides in that odd rabbit’s leg which causes it still to adhere?
Tyler wondered about it. He made a characteristically neat note in his desk diary to order more rabbits in the morning.
How many rabbits to dip before it happened again? Or maybe it wouldn’t happen again. No matter. The importance of an event was usually in ratio to its rarity, and nothing could be rarer than uniqueness. It was one of those ends you had to pull until you got—something.
Too late to start pulling now—it was 3 a.m. and he was very tired. He’d let his thoughts play around it idly as he drifted towards sleep. That border on the edge of dreamland was fertile country for any seeds of inspiration. You might bludgeon your brain with reason all day and find no answer, no clue. And then, when you’d given up and retired defeated to bed and the sleep-fog was thickening in your brain, the answer would blossom like a magic flower from your subconscious.
Then you’d have to fight yourself awake and sketch its outline, before it faded, in the bedside notebook. But sometimes you hadn’t the strength. And in the morning your only memory was that you’d had an inspiration, an idea that might have changed the world. But now it was as surely lost as the lyrics of Sappho.