He took the woman to the railroad station. She offered him money when he let her out. He shook his head.
“I can spare it,” she said bitterly. “I’ve got all Al had. How much? Ten dollars? A hundred? How much?”
“I couldn’t take it,” said the kid awkwardly.
“Listen, kid,” she said suddenly, “if you don’t want cash—and it is hot money—how about a gun? I’ll give you one of Al’s. The one he killed two cops with, in Des Moines. How’s that?”
The kid writhed in his seat.
“No, thanks. I’ll be going. I’ve got to get home.”
He let in the clutch and rolled away while she stared after him. But she knew he wasn’t going to tell on her. It simply did not enter his mind. He had something else to worry about. The car—Mr. Halstead. That business proposition. He drove in the garage and went over the truck anxiously, hunting even inside the back. If its newness was in any way impaired, he was responsible.…
It was not impaired. Mr. Halstead came back from the office, looking for him. The kid explained that he was late because he’d driven slowly.
“Perfectly all right, my boy,” said Mr. Halstead. “But before you go home I want to talk about that proposition of yours.”
He had been thinking about it. Seriously. The kid could hardly believe what his ears told him as Mr. Halstead talked.
* * * *
He went home practically reeling. When he went in, Mom looked disturbed. The kid didn’t notice. He said in an awed voice:
“Mom, Mr. Halstead’s taking me up! He’s putting in a line of all-wave radios. He wants me to sell and install ’em. Salary and commission for all summer. And I can try to sell one of the big plants on the idea of ultra-short-wave sets for their trucks, for dispatching. Can I take the job, Mom?”
Mom said, smiling rather oddly:
“Son, Mr. Halstead wants to marry me. Maybe—maybe that’s a bribe to get you to consent.”
“It works!” said the kid fervently. “It works, all right! All summer with shortwave sets! Mom, you’re going to marry him? Please?”
* * * *
He went to wash up for supper, walking like one in a dream. He washed his hands. He had to dig under his nails to get them clean. There was clay there. Dirt. From where he’d been working on a steep bank of clay with a tire tool, to make a cave in it.
But the kid didn’t think of that. Being sixteen, he could only really think of one thing at a time, and that—at this time—was not the impropriety of assisting a public enemy to escape the law, nor the wrongness of concealing the final triumph of justice. No. The kid thought of something else. He grinned at his own reflection in the bathroom mirror. Exuberantly.
“All summer working on short-wave sets! Boy!” said the kid.
ENEMY OF THE STATE
Originally published in Collier’s, Nov. 20, 1937, as by “Will F. Jenkins.”
For the first time in many long months, Gregor was not alert to danger, nor prepared instantly to sell his life for the highest possible price; he being scheduled to be shot. He did not even see the furtive figure of the girl who watched him from the hillside above the trail. There were reasons for his obliviousness, though. Starvation was one, and exhaustion was another, and despair may have been a third. He was snow-blind. He crawled on all fours through the snow.
But he knew that he was among high mountains, though he could not see them. He knew that the sun was shining brightly, though he could feel no trace of warmth from its rays. He knew that he would never get beyond the pass, above him somewhere; would never see the warm green valleys on the other side; would never again see any of those who had been his friends and had been wiser than he. They had gotten away when the party began to exterminate its enemies. But nothing actual seemed to matter to Gregor, now. He had endured too much, too long. He was light-headed. He was absorbed in visions.
They were startlingly vivid, those visions, and since he had been snow-blind, they gained in brilliancy. His home, with the fig trees he’d played under, and his brothers and sisters were clearly before him. Home was long since burned down, of course, because it had harbored traitors to the doctrines which were now the official ideology. But he saw it plainly, just as it had been when he was a child. And Peter had been killed when he was arrested by shock troopers, and Alex—an attractive little boy in that sailor suit—had died of typhus in a concentration camp, and Gregor did not like to think about his sister Mariana. But he saw them all very clearly and very long ago. Like snapshots, except that there were colors and they moved. Mariana was playing tag with Peter and Alex. Her slim legs twinkled beneath her little-girl skirts. She tagged Peter triumphantly and laughed.…
Gregor’s left elbow buckled. He went face downward in the snow. Automatically, he raised himself and crawled on. He was not really paying attention. His body did not bother him any more. He knew that it was moving, because every so often it fell down.
The girl on the snowy hillside watched furtively. She saw that Gregor stayed in the beaten trail simply because he was too feeble to move in the softer snow. Twice, as she watched, Gregor blundered into it, and twice he blundered back to the trail.
He crawled toward the pass. Toward the guards in the pass. He would not live to reach them, though. Assuredly not in the storm which visibly moved up from the far-distant lowlands. But the girl remained in hiding. Life was cheap on the road over the pass. Life was cheap everywhere, these days, if one was not a follower of the party in power. The pass was closed by guards put there to keep the enemies of the party from running away. Presently, as winter closed in, they would be replaced by winter’s own sentries, who would keep the pass more tightly closed than human guards could do.
The girl looked furtively down the beaten way. Nothing moved anywhere. Nothing. The storm from the lowlands had already blotted out the lower mountain peaks. A gray, furry mist swirled below it. Snow. Presently it would sweep on up here.
The girl came closer and looked again at Gregor. He was patently blind, and as patently helpless. Obviously incapable of defense.
The girl moved furtively toward him. But before she drew too close, she again looked fearfully down the trail to be quite sure that no living thing moved or saw.
* * * *
Gregor’s mind rose slowly from unconsciousness as a swimmer comes leisurely upward from deep blue depths. First, he knew vaguely that he was warm. He lay quite still and presently—faintly at first but then more strongly—he heard wind blowing somewhere. The sound became the sustained shrieking of the snow-laden mountain gale, in which no living thing can stir. But Gregor was in shelter.
He smelled food. Cabbage soup—peasant fare. The aroma grew tantalizing. He did not smell those other odors which should also inhabit a peasant’s hut. They were absent. This place was clean. He heard someone stir. He moved his head. And suddenly he became aware of bandages over his eyes.
All things reeked of danger to Gregor. He tried to slip his bandage secretly aside so that he could see whether he was to live or die. He was officially scheduled to be shot. But footsteps moved toward him immediately.
“You are awake? How do you feel?”
A woman’s voice. A girl’s voice. At the sound of it, Gregor nerved himself to be alert and cautious.
“Eh?” said Gregor confusedly. “Yes, I am awake, but I do not remember—”
The girl’s voice said soothingly: “I saw you crawling in the snow. I brought you here, and you have slept twenty-four hours. Now can you eat a little?”
Gregor tried to sit up, but he was too weak. The girl lifted his head. The steam of cabbage soup teased his nostrils.
“Now, eat!” she said encouragingly.
The soup was warm. It was delicious. She put the spoon into his mouth and fed him as she would feed a child. He ate as much as she would give him.
“No more,” she said at la
st, firmly. “Now sleep.”
He struggled a little, to protest. But he found himself tucked in. He subsided. And he wanted desperately to ask cunning questions, to prepare himself against the danger which hung over him now. But he was very weary, very weak, very tired of struggle. Slumber flowed over him. But before he quite lost consciousness, he had time to remember where he had heard a voice like the voice of the girl who nursed him. It was another girl on a symbol-marked platform, passionately denouncing all that had existed previous to the party, and mouthing fiercely all the homicidal nonsense now taught in the public schools. And then Gregor relaxed to sleep with a certain satisfaction. He had identified his danger. It was the girl who had rescued him.
Next day he was far stronger. One regains strength rapidly when nothing worse than hunger and exhaustion has sapped it. The girl put fresh poultices on his eyes, bandaging them firmly in place. And Gregor had tried to cast a swift, estimating look about this place when his eyes were uncovered, but the pain of light upon them made it impossible. Scalding tears blinded him. Even now his eyeballs hurt horribly.
“You have no papers,” said the girl. “Why?”
“I was robbed,” said Gregor. “For my papers, I suppose.”
A moment’s silence, which somehow seemed skeptical.
“I am assistant engineer for the Murflan district,” said Gregor glibly. “I went to see if the mines at Brada had been sabotaged, as was reported. I was waylaid and hit on the head. When I came to, my horse was gone and I was already weak. I tried to reach help, but lost my way in the night. I have been wandering for—I have lost count of the days. Always mountains, always bright sunlight upon snow. I went snow-blind. Then you found me.”
The girl said slowly: “That is not even clever.”
Gregor managed to grin.
“Why? Do you hunt spies, too? It is a popular pursuit.”
The girl seemed to hesitate. Then she said: “But I am no amateur. Why have you no papers?”
Gregor felt little cold trickles on his scalp.
“Did you ever hear,” he asked politely but cryptically, “of the numbers twenty-three, and six, and ten?”
Another pause. Suspicion seemed to crackle in the room like lightning. Then the girl said reluctantly:
“N-no. We must be in different divisions.”
“Perhaps,” said Gregor. He wondered privately if the numbers twenty-three and six and ten had any meaning of themselves. “You are in counterespionage, I suppose. But why you should be here—”
“I am here to trap a spy—a traitor,” said the girl, still suspiciously. “His description does not fit you, it’s true. But this hut has been used as a clearinghouse for seditious information. I volunteered to stay here and trap one who has used it.”
“I would bow,” said Gregor, “if I were not still lying down. I wish you luck. But where is here, anyhow? Truthfully, I have been snow-blind for three days. I was after—” He paused. “Too many enemies of the party have been slipping across the mountains, to lie about it abroad. Either we have traitors on the frontier, or there is a pass no one suspects. I was ordered to find out. But I was suspected. I was clubbed and left for dead. When I report what I did learn, though—”
The girl’s voice lost some of its suspicion.
“Then we are comrades,” she told him. “But you have no papers, and you do not talk like a—like a member of the party.”
“I had the misfortune,” said Gregor, “to be intelligently reared. But I may say that I have been vouched for by Hrodny. And he has committed enough murders for the party to be received in the very best society.”
He grinned once more. He was talking ultimately for his life, and he knew it. And therefore he talked flippantly. He had to convince this girl that, papers or no papers, he was approved of by the party. Else she would not dare give him food, though he starved, nor shelter him, though he froze to death.
Still blind and still weak, Gregor was at the mercy of the girl who tended him. And therefore he had to convince her of his devotion to the party if he wished to live.
It was his task for as long as the blizzard lasted.
* * * *
He woke suddenly because of a new noise. He was accustomed to the shrieking wind after three days and nights, but this was a strange sound. On the instant he was fully alert. He woke and by sheer instinct groped for the revolver he did not have.
He heard the noise again. Someone was fumbling at the door. He desperately ripped off the bandage still about his eyes. The hut was blessedly dark. His eyes hurt very little. The gale still blew, though more faintly than before. It was only wind now, which came in gusts, and between the gusts there was relative peace.
Someone fumbled at the door. It heaved open. A dark figure stumbled in, breathing quickly.
Gregor spoke. The girl caught her breath.
“What is it?” he asked breathlessly.
“The gale is nearly blown out. I went outside to see.”
He heard her brushing snow from her garments. Her breath came rapidly. Gregor’s ears caught the tempo. It was uneven; syncopated. One who is out of breath from exertion breathes fast but evenly. This was the breathing of agitation.
“Strange,” said Gregor, speaking into the darkness while a gust of the wind made a wailing sound and died away again. “Very strange that it should take so long to observe the weather.”
Her breathing became faster still, and still more agitated.
“Gregor,” she said unsteadily, “tell me truly. I—I saved your life. You know it. Gregor—you have not lied to me? You told the truth about your work? Will you swear to it? Will you swear by God and all the saints?”
“What would my oath be worth,” asked Gregor caustically, “if I could serve the party by perjury? But what is the matter?”
She seemed to swallow a lump in her throat.
“But, Gregor, if I lied to you instead—if I am not here to trap anybody—if I am here hoping to escape over the pass after the guards come down for the winter—Gregor, would you betray me?” Silence. Gregor was all suspicion, all watchfulness, all caution. This was a pretty trap indeed. But he had known men to be led off to concentration camps or execution because of such traps. His friends, his cousins, his brothers.… Why, his sister Mariana had been betrayed to the secret police by a spy who pretended such utter adoration that Mariana dared ask him to help old General Janos on his hopeless, asthmatic attempt to reach safety. And this girl had saved Gregor’s life, but that did not mean she would not destroy it again at an incautious word from him.
“My dear,” said Gregor cynically, “if you are not yet convinced that I am a party member, denounce me to the police. I am tired of these traps.”
“Gregor—” said the girl as if despairingly, and then was silent.
“I have back my eyesight and some of my strength,” said Gregor sardonically. “If you want help to capture the damned traitor you say you’re after, say so. If not, I’m going back to sleep.”
He settled back. Silence fell in the hut, save for the occasional wailing of the dying storm. Gregor silently congratulated himself on his quickness of wit. This girl had been very convincing indeed. But on his first coming to the cabin, she had boasted that she had been praised by Mannivitch, and Mannivitch did not praise people for squeamishness, but for service to the party. This was a last trap. She had wanted to be absolutely sure of him before he gained strength enough to escape—if he were opposed to the party. Now she would believe. He had gained time in which to gather strength so that the attempt to cross the pass in midwinter would be a shade less than suicide.
He congratulated himself on evading her trap. But she tried yet again. Later on in the night he waked and heard her sobbing. Very convincingly. But he pretended not to hear. And he resented the persistency of her efforts to make him betray himself. He wanted to be grateful, and the nee
d to be always suspicious prevented it.
* * * *
There was sunlight outside the hut, but Gregor could bear even sunlight, now. He sat on the bunk space that had been given up to him, cunningly concealing the full measure of his strength. Concealment and secrecy were second nature now to Gregor.
The girl cooked. And now Gregor saw that she had fed him from a scanty supply of food. He saw, too, that she was a pretty girl even in the makeshift, shapeless garments that made her appear a refugee from party persecution. She cooked cabbage soup again today, adding frost-blackened potatoes that he might be strengthened by it. Gregor wished that he could let himself like her. But he did not dare. No one dared feel any normal emotion nowadays.
“The storm is over,” he observed, “and I have my sight back.”
She did not answer. She went on with her cooking.
“Is it nearer to the guard at the pass,” asked Gregor, “or to the nearest town where I will find members of the party?”
“The guard will probably come down today,” said the girl shortly. “You can wait for it in the trail. It is not far.”
“How many in the pass guard?” asked Gregor idly.
She did not answer. She shrugged.
“You have been most kind,” said Gregor and grinned.
She looked sharply at him, then back to her cooking.
“In other days,” said Gregor, “I would have voiced the hope that God would reward you. But instead, I observe that you deserve the gratitude of the nation for saving a party member’s life.”
She turned suddenly to him. “Listen to me, Gregor,” she said evenly. “I have saved your life. I would like you to keep it. I will swear not to betray you, no matter what you say. Now—did you tell me the truth? Are you a party member? Or are you—are you—” Gregor knew bitterness. Always trying to trap him for the firing squads that had killed so many.
The Third Murray Leinster Page 38