Reaching out, he touched her hand. Her flesh was cold, hard, as pale as stone. “Darling,” he said gently.
With an effort, she was able to focus on him. “Hi,” she said, a little sadly. “How are you?”
“Do you really hate us this much?”
She smiled. “Not you, us. All of us.”
“Why?”
“Well,” Nina said, in a remote, detached voice, brought down to reality by fantastic concentration of will, “it just seems so goddamn hopeless. Everything . . . like Max says. There’s nothing. We’re living in deadness.”
Kaminski, pretending not to hear, pretending not to listen, sat frozen, taking in every word, responding with intense pain.
“I mean,” Nina said, “there was the war, and now here we are. And Jackie, too. For what? Where can we go? What can we look for? We’re not even allowed to have romantic illusions, anymore. We can’t even tell ourselves lies. If we do—” She smiled, without rancor. “Then they take us to the forced labor camps.”
It was Kaminski who answered. “We have Jones . . . The Whirlwind, sweeping us away. That’s the worst thing about our world . . . it’s permitted the beast to come.”
Tyler sipped her cocktail and said nothing.
“What now?” Nina asked. “You can’t keep your world going . . . you realize it’s finished. Jones has come. You have to recognize him. He’s the future; it’s all interwoven, tied-up, mixed. You can’t have one without the other . . . your world has no future of its own.”
“Jones will kill us all,” Kaminski said.
“But at least it’ll have meaning. We’ll be doing something.” Nina’s voice trailed off, moving farther away from them. “It’ll be for something. We’ll be reaching out, like we used to.”
“Empty idealism,” Cussick said unhappily.
Nina didn’t answer. She had disappeared into an inner world; her face was blank, devoid of personality.
On the raised platform at the rear of the room a commotion had begun swinging into life. The floor show of the place: the nightly spectacle. Patrons turned their attention to it; the clog of people at the foot of the stairs craned their necks eagerly. Listlessly, Cussick watched, indifferent to what was happening, his hand still resting on his wife’s.
The floor show involved two figures, a man and a woman. They smiled at the audience, and then removed their clothing. Cussick was reminded of the first day he had seen Jones, that day in early spring, when he had tramped across the slushy black ground to visit the carnival. The bright April day he had witnessed the assorted sports and freaks and mutants collected from the war. Recollection welled up inside him, a mixed nostalgia for his own hopeful youth, his vague ambitions and idealism.
The two figures on the stage, professionally agile and supple-bodied, had begun making love. The action was carried out as a ritual: it had been done so many times that it was a series of dance-motions, without passion or intensity. Presently, as a kind of mounting tempo, the sex of the man began to change. After a time it was the rhythmic motions of two women. Then, toward the conclusion, the figure that had originally presented itself as a woman transformed itself to a man. And the dance ended as it had begun: with a man and a woman quietly making love.
“Quite a feat,” Kaminski admitted, as the man and woman put on their clothing, bowed, and left the stage. They had exchanged clothes: the final effect was overwhelming. A round of sincere applause rippled through the room: the couple were artists. “I remember when I first saw hermaphrodite mutants in action. Now it seems just one more”—Kaminski searched ironically—“One more example of Relativism in action.”
For awhile none of the four people spoke. Finally Tyler said: “I wonder how far we can go.”
“I think we’ve gone as far as we can,” Cussick answered. “All we can hope for now is to hang on.”
“Did we go too far?” Kaminski asked, appealingly.
“No,” Cussick said flatly. “We were right. We’re right now. It’s a paradox, a contradiction, a criminal offense to say it. But we’re right. Secretly, covertly, we’ve got to believe it.” His fingers clutched convulsively around his wife’s cold hand. “We’ve got to try to keep our world from falling completely apart.”
“Maybe it’s too late,” Kaminski said.
“Yes,” Nina agreed suddenly. “It’s too late.” Her fingers jerked away from Cussick’s. Jaw working spasmodically, she hunched forward, teeth chattering, pupils dilated. “Please, darling—”
Cussick rose, and Tyler beside him. “I’ll take care of her,” Tyler said, moving around the table to Nina. “Where’s the women’s room?”
“Thanks,” Kaminski said, accepting a cigarette from Cussick. The women had not returned. As he lit up, Kaminski remarked: “I suppose you know Jones has written a book.”
“Different from the Patriots United publications?”
From the floor by the table Kaminski lifted up his brown-wrapped package; he untied it carefully. “This is a summary. The Moral Struggle it’s called. It outlines his whole program: what he really wants, what he really stands for. The mythos of the movement.” He set the bulky volume down in the center of the table and riffled the pages.
“Have you read this?” Cussick asked, examining it.
“Not the whole thing. It isn’t complete; Jones is pontificating it orally. The book is transcribed from his harangues . . . it’s growing by leaps and bounds.”
“What did you mean,” Cussick asked, “when you said we were near them? Who were you talking about?”
A strange, oblique, withdrawn look appeared on the older man’s face. Gathering up his book, he began to rewrap it. “I don’t remember saying that.”
“As we were coming in.”
Kaminski fooled with his package; he laid it back on the floor, against the table-leg. “One of these days you may be brought into it. But not yet.”
“Can you give me any information?”
“No, not really. It’s been going on awhile; it’s important. Obviously, it’s here in this area. Obviously, it involves a number of individuals.”
“Does Jones know?”
Kaminski shuddered. “God forbid. Sure, maybe. Doesn’t he know everything? Anyhow, he can’t do anything about it . . . he has no legal power.”
“Then this is under Fedgov.”
“Oh, yes,” Kaminski agreed bleakly. “Fedgov is still in business. Trying out a few last tricks before it goes down to ruin.”
“You don’t sound like you think we can beat this thing.”
“Do I sound like that? All we’re up against is a prophet . . . we ought to be able to handle that. There’ve been prophets before; the New Testament is full of them.”
“What do you mean by that? There’s John the Baptist; you mean him?”
“I mean Him Who John foretold.”
“You’re raving.”
“No, I’m repeating. I hear that kind of stuff. The Second Coming . . . after all, He was supposed to show up again, sometime. And the world certainly needs him, now.”
“But that puts the drifters in the position of—” Cussick grimaced. “What’s the term?”
“Hordes from Hell.” Blowing clouds of gray cigarette smoke, Kaminski continued: “Satan’s Legions. The Evil Ones.”
“Then we haven’t gone back a hundred years. We’ve gone back a thousand.”
“Maybe this won’t be so bad. The drifters aren’t people; they’re mindless blobs. Let’s assume the worst: let’s assume Jones gets a war whipped up. We finish the drifters here, and then clean the planets one by one. After that—” Kaminski gestured. “To the stars. With bulging battleships. Hunting down the bastards, exterminating the race. Well? What then? The enemy’s gone; a race of gigantic amoebae has perished. Is that so bad? I’m only trying to see the possibilities in this. We’ll be out beyond the system. And right now, without the spur, the hatred, the sense of fighting an enemy, we just sit around.”
“You’re saying what Jones says
,” Cussick reflected.
“You bet I am.”
“Want me to show you your error? The danger isn’t in the war; it’s in the attitude that makes the war possible. To fight, we have to believe we’re Right and they’re Wrong. White versus black—good versus evil. The drifters have nothing to do with it; they’re only a means.”
“I’d disagree with you on one point,” Kaminski said intently. “You’re convinced, are you, that in the war itself there’s no danger?”
“Sure,” Cussick said. But he was suddenly uncertain. “What can primitive, one-celled protoplasm do to us?”
“I don’t know. But we’ve never fought a war with nonterrestrials. I wouldn’t want to take the chance. Remember, we still don’t know what they are. We may be surprised one of these days. Surprised or even worse. We may find out.”
Threading their way among the tightly-packed tables, Tyler and Nina returned to their seats. Pale and shaken, but fully in command of herself, Nina sat clasping her hands together, her attention on the raised platform. “Are they gone?” she asked faintly.
“We were wondering,” Tyler said, “how those hermaphrodites decide. That is, while Nina and I were in there, one of them might come in, too, and we wouldn’t know whether to resent it.” Daintily, she sipped at her drink. “A lot of unusual-looking women came and went, but neither one of the hermaphrodites.”
“There’s one of them over there,” Nina said shakily. “Over by the tune-maker.”
Leaning against the square metal machine stood one of the dancers, the one that had originated as a young man. It was still a woman, as it had ended its act. Slender, with close-cut sandy hair, wearing a skirt and blouse and sandals, it was a perfect androgyne. Its smooth, neutral face was empty of expression; it looked a trifle tired, nothing more.
“Ask her to come over,” Nina said, touching her husband’s arm.
“There’s no room,” Cussick said flatly; he didn’t want to have anything to do with it. “And don’t you go over.” He saw her sink back. “You stay here.”
Nina flashed him a swift, animal-like glance and then subsided. “You’re still feeling that way, are you?”
“What way?”
“Let it go.” Nina’s hands moved restlessly on the surface of the table. “Could we have something to drink? I’d like cognac.”
When their fresh drinks arrived, Nina lifted her glass in a toast. “Here’s to,” she announced. The other glasses came up; there was a faint clink as they touched. “To a better world.”
“God,” Kaminski said wearily, “I hate talk like that.”
Faintly amused, Nina asked: “Why?”
“Because it doesn’t mean anything.” Slumped over, Kaminski struggled with his whiskey sour. “Who isn’t for a better world?”
“Is it true,” Tyler said, after a time, “that they’ve sent out scouts to Proxima Centaurus?”
Kaminski nodded. “They have.”
“Any luck?”
“The data hasn’t been sifted.”
“In other words,” Tyler said, “nothing of value.”
Kaminski shrugged. “Who knows?”
“Jones,” Nina murmured.
“Then ask him. Or wait for the official release. Don’t bother me about it.”
“What’s this business with Pearson?” Cussick asked, to change the subject. “I’ve heard rumors that he’s working night and day, lining up men, organizing projects.”
“Pearson is determined to stop Jones,” Kaminski answered remotely. “He’s sure it can be done.”
“But if we get as fanatic as they are—”
“Pearson is worse. He eats, sleeps, thinks, lives Jones. He can’t rest. Every time I go into his wing there’s a battalion of weapons-cops hanging around: guns and tanks and projectiles.”
“You think it’ll do any good?”
“Darling,” Nina said, measuring her words, “don’t you see anything positive in it?”
“Like what?”
“I mean, here we have a man with this wonderful talent . . . he can do something we’ve never done. We don’t have to guess anymore. We know. We can be sure where we’re going.”
“I like to guess,” Cussick said flatly.
“Do you? Maybe that’s where the fault lies . . . maybe you don’t realize that most people want certainty. You’ve rejected Jones. Why? Because your system, your government, is built around not-knowing, around guesswork. It assumes nobody can know.” She raised her cold blue eyes. “But now we can know. So in a way, you’re outmoded.”
“Well,” Tyler said, amused, “then I’m out of a job.”
“What did you do before you came to Security?” Cussick asked her.
“I didn’t do anything: this is my first job. I’m only seventeen. I feel a little out of place with you people . . . I really don’t have any experience.”
Indicating the girl’s glass, Kaminski said: “I can tell you one thing: that wormwood’ll rot your nervous system away. It attacks the upper spinal ganglia.”
“Oh, no,” Tyler said quickly. “I’m doped against it.” She touched her purse. “For this, I have to depend on a synthetic neutralizer. Or I wouldn’t want to take it.”
Cussick’s respect for her rose another notch. “What part of the world do you come from?” he asked curiously.
“I was born in China. My father was a policy-level official in the Kweiping secretariat of the Chinese People’s Communist Party.”
“Then you were born on that side of the war,” Cussick said, amazed. “You grew up on”—he grimaced—“what people used to call the Jewish-atheist-Communist side.”
“My father was a devout Party-worker. He fought with all his soul and heart against the Mohammedans and the Christian fanatics. He brought me up; my mother was killed by bacterial toxins. Since she wasn’t an official, she wasn’t entitled to shelter. I lived with my father in the Party offices, a mile or so underground. We were there until the war ended.” She corrected herself: “That is, I was there. My father was shot by the Party near the end of the war.”
“Shot for what?”
“Deviationism. The Hoff book was being circulated in our area, too. My father and I set up portions by hand . . . we circulated them among Party workers. It was quite revolutionary; many of us had never heard of the multiple-value system. The idea that everybody might be right, that everybody was entitled to his own way of life, had a startling effect on us. The Hoff concept of personal style of living . . . it was exciting. Neither religious dogma nor anti-religious dogma; no more wrangling over which interpretation of the sacred texts was correct. No more sects, splinter groups, factions; no more heretics to shoot and burn and lock up.”
“You’re not Chinese,” Nina said.
“No, I’m English. My family were Anglican missionaries before they became Communists. There was a community of English Communists living in China.”
“Do you remember much about the war?” Kaminski asked her.
“Not much. The Christian raiding parties from Formosa . . . mostly just the printing at night. The secret distribution.”
“How did you get off?” Cussick asked. “Why didn’t they shoot you, too?”
“I was eight years old—too young to shoot. One of the Party chiefs adopted me, a very kind old Chinese gentleman who still read Laotze and had gold carvings cut into his teeth. I was a ward of the CP when the war ended and the Party apparatus disintegrated.” She shook her head. “It was all such a terrible waste . . . the war could so easily have been avoided. If people had only been just a little less fanatic.”
Nina had gotten to her feet. “Darling,” she said to her husband, “please, could you do me a favor? I’d like to dance.”
One section of the crowded floor had been cleared for dancing; a few couples pushed mechanically back and forth. “You really feel like it?” Cussick asked warily, as he got to his feet. “Maybe for a minute.”
“She’s a lovely girl,” Nina said distantly, as the tw
o of them found their way out onto the packed floor.
“It’s interesting, her circulating Hoff’s material among Party officials.”
Suddenly Nina clutched her husband tight. “I wish—” Her voice broke achingly. “Isn’t there some way we can go back?”
“Back?” He was perplexed. “Back where?”
“The way we were. Not quarreling all the time. We seem to be so far apart. We don’t understand each other anymore.”
He held his wife close to him; under his hands her body was surprisingly fragile. “It’s this damn thing . . . someday it’ll be over, and we’ll be together like we used to.”
Stricken, Nina gazed up imploringly. “Does it have to be over? Does it have to be gotten rid of? Can’t we accept it?”
“No,” Cussick said. “I’ll never accept it.”
The woman’s sharp nails dug futilely into his back. For an interval she rested her head against his shoulder, tumble of blonde hair billowing into his face. The familiar scent of her tickled his nose: the sweet perfume of her body, the warmth of her hair. All this, the smoothness of her bare shoulders, the silky texture of her dress, the faint sheen of perspiration glowing on her upper lip. Harshly, he held her against him, squeezing her silently, yearningly. Presently she uptilted her chin, smiled waveringly, and kissed him on the mouth.
“We’ll try,” she said softly. “We’ll do our best. Right?”
“Sure,” he answered, meaning it with all his heart. “It’s too important—we can’t let our lives slip away like this. And now that we have Jack—” Roughly, his fingers crumpled into the base of her neck, lifting her torrent of thick hair. “We don’t want to leave him for the vultures.”
10
AFTER THE DANCE he led her back to the table, gripping her small fingers tightly until both of them had taken their seats. Kaminski sat slumped over, half-asleep, muttering vague hoarse sounds. Tyler sat trimly upright; she had finished her drink and ordered another.
The World Jones Made Page 8