Wild Jack

by John Christopher

  There was a cheer from the men in green, repeated as he scrambled to his feet and started to run for the far side. He had covered three or four yards when, with another sharper cry, he dropped. We could see him writhing and clutching his leg just above the ankle.

  His voice came to us, thin and despairing: “Help me. . . .”

  He managed to get up a second time and hobble on, but he was clearly in great pain. He staggered and fell again, and this time did not rise. Wild Jack’s men laughed as he struggled, and roared with approval when he finally lay still.

  Silence followed. Wild Jack said, “So he was a traitor. I knew it. Now for the city boys. Who goes first?”

  While I was trying to make up my mind to step forward, Kelly did so.

  “I’ll go.”

  Wild Jack stared at him. “Right. Take it gently. And if you do fall, run very fast. No one’s outrun the snakes yet, but there’s no harm in trying.”

  Kelly did not answer but went straight to the bridge. It swayed as he stepped on it, and he hesitated briefly, then walked slowly on.

  Halfway across, the bridge swayed more sharply, moved perhaps by a stiffening in the breeze. Kelly bent down and rested his hands on the ladder. He regained his balance, stood up, and went on carefully to the far side.

  “One over,” Wild Jack said. He did not try to hide his disappointment. “Who’s next?”

  I was ready this time, but Sunyo was ahead of me. He looked straight at Wild Jack, with an expression of contempt and anger. Wild Jack nodded. Sunyo turned from him and headed for the bridge.

  There was no hesitation. He went with assurance, step by steady step, and did not halt until he reached the end. Kelly put his hand out, and Sunyo joined him on firm ground.

  “Fair enough,” Wild Jack said. The disappointment was very plain now, and his men were silent. “That still leaves one.”

  The bridge looked narrower and flimsier than ever. I glanced down at the thicket, where the body of the gingery man lay between two bushes. It lay quite still. The breeze gusted, and the bridge moved with it.

  “Well?” Wild Jack asked. “Do you need a pricking on, city boy?”

  I moved before the man with the knife could come at me. I caught sight of the girl’s face, fiercely intent, as I reached the bridge, and thought for a fleeting moment of Miranda’s very different one.

  And I thought of something else as I stood poised to step on the ladder. Kelly and Sunyo had reached the other side, and the ravine now lay between them and Wild Jack’s men. This was their best chance to escape; they could be deep inside the forest before anyone could get there.

  I called out, “Run for it! Get away while you can.”

  Neither moved. Kelly called back, “We’ll wait for you, Clive.”

  Idiots, I thought; but I had other things to think about. I stepped onto the bridge and felt it move under me. Instinctively my eyes went down. The ladder was about a foot in width—not a lot when it hung swaying over a nasty drop with poisonous snakes at the bottom.

  When I stopped, there was a roar of derision from behind me. I started forward again, placing my feet carefully, one in front of the other. Looking down made me dizzy, and the bridge’s swaying seemed worse when it oscillated against the green of the canyon floor. I took a deep breath, raised my head, and looked ahead, concentrating on the watching figures of Kelly and Sunyo on the far side. I felt for my footholds, step by step. I knew I must be making progress, but the distance before me seemed to get no less.

  When I was three-quarters of the way across, the breeze blew up again, making the bridge move sharply under my feet. Somehow I managed to get down, as Kelly had done, and hold on with my hands. I felt sweat pouring from me. It was a long time before I dared stand and go on.

  Very slowly I approached the end of the bridge. Perhaps ten more steps—nine, eight. . . . The breeze gusted even more severely, and as I fought to keep my balance, I knew that this time I was not going to make it.

  So I stopped trying to balance and, throwing caution to the wind, ran along the twisting narrow span. I managed several steps as it jerked and ­buckled under me, but the end was still some feet off when I knew I was losing my footing. Desperately I jumped and saw Kelly and Sunyo with their hands out, reaching for me. For a moment my feet scrabbled on the edge of the drop, but Kelly’s hand had my arm firmly. Between them, they pulled me up.

  I gasped, “Run for it now! While we have a chance.”

  “No good,” Sunyo said.

  He pointed at the trees on this side. Figures in green were moving toward us. Wild Jack had taken precautions after all; his men were on both sides of the ravine.

  I was still shivering from the crossing. I looked back at the bridge and saw Wild Jack coming over. He made it look easy.

  He was laughing, and my fears returned. We had survived the ordeal which had killed the gingery man, but did that mean anything? Would someone who had thought up something as sadistic as that let us go after passing his test? I could not believe it.

  He jumped from the bridge to stand beside us.

  “Well done, city boys.” He turned and looked down into the ravine. “And well done, Ben! All right, you can get up now.”

  I followed his glance to where the gingery man lay still between the bushes. As I did so, the “dead man” stood up and walked toward us, grinning.

  8

  KELLY SAID, “THEN THERE ARE no snakes in the ravine?”

  “I wouldn’t swear to that,” Wild Jack said. “There will very likely be grass snakes. And perhaps an adder or two.”

  “Are they poisonous?” I asked.

  The support rope had been replaced, and we had crossed back to our starting point. The girl was standing near. She said with a laugh, “You don’t learn much in those cities of yours!”

  Wild Jack said, “You mustn’t be too hard on them, Joan. They don’t have much chance.” He spoke to me: “Grass snakes are quite harmless. Adders have poison fangs, but they won’t attack a man unless he’s fool enough to step on them. And it’s rare for anyone to die from the bite of an adder.”

  “That stuff about taipans,” Kelly said, “—you made all that up?”

  “No. The taipan really is an Australian snake, and it’s just as deadly as I said it was. And there were probably some in the snake houses of some zoos before the Breakdown. There may even have been one or two that escaped, though I don’t think it’s likely. It’s a lot more unlikely that any would have survived. England is a vastly different place from Australia.”

  Ben, the gingery man, was grinning.

  I said, “So he just faked being bitten? He did it very well.”

  “He ought to be able to,” Wild Jack said. “He used to be an actor in the days when he was a city man.” He put his hand on Ben’s shoulder. “And I think he misses the actor’s life a bit now and then, if the truth were known.”

  There had been a feeling of recognition at the back of my mind before this, but I had dismissed it as ridiculous. I said, “Of course, I remember! That TV series about World War II—you played the comic private.”

  “A fan again, after all these years,” he said, full of mock delight. “How it brings it all back! Saddle me a horse, Jack, and I’ll be off to Philadelphia in the morning.”

  Kelly and I laughed. The sense of relief made me inclined to laugh at anything. Sunyo’s expression, though, was one of bitter anger. He looked at Wild Jack.

  “So the ordeal was just a joke, a clever bit of playacting. Why? For your amusement?”

  Wild Jack shook his head.

  “No. We do have a sense of humor in the Outlands which may be a bit different from what you are used to in the cities, but it doesn’t include terrifying people without a good reason.”

  “So what is the reason?” Sunyo asked.

  “You’re not the first to have come into
the Outlands from the cities. There are some who take one look at the forest and run back home to the shelter of their walls. Others persevere and make contact with us or with people like us. They usually say they want to live with us, but they often don’t understand what it involves. It could take a long time for them to realize they aren’t suited to our life, and all that time they’re a drag on us—or worse. When they do finally decide to go back to their cozy cities, they could take information with them.”

  “Would that matter?” Kelly asked.

  “It might. Anyway, we’ve had to find a means of weeding out unsuitable ones at the beginning. Quite simply, you can’t live in the Outlands without reason­able physical ability and also strength of mind. The bridge tests the first, and the tale about the taipans the second.”

  “And if we had failed . . . ,” I said.

  “Southampton city is not far away. We would have taken you there and left you.”

  “And if we should want to go back, now that we’ve passed your test?”

  Wild Jack shrugged. “No one will stop you. We only want men who are volunteers. We are all free in the Outlands.”

  Kelly nodded enthusiastically, Sunyo more dubiously. Wild Jack said, “First things first. You’ve earned something better than bread and water, and I should think you could do justice to it.”

  • • •

  We were taken back to camp in better style than we had gone out, riding on the saddles of the horsemen. I jogged behind the vast bulk of Daniel, who appeared quite amiable now, though I still found him a bit frightening. In the clearing other men in green had breakfast waiting for us.

  Really it was more like a feast. The bacon tasted as good as it had smelled, and there were piles of spicy sausages, as many eggs as you could eat, loaves of bread that was coarse and brown but smelled good and tasted better, jars of golden ­butter . . . with pots of buttermilk to wash it all down. We gorged ourselves until we lay, dazed with food, under the trees.

  Later we wandered round the camp, exploring. It was much bigger than I had thought, consisting of a number of different clearings connected by short trails through the trees. In one clearing, the tree trunks had wooden boxes about eighteen inches square nailed to them. Fat pigeons sat on and around some of the boxes, and others showed a glimpse of beak through round holes in the sides. Wild Jack came along while we were looking.

  “So you’ve found my messengers,” he said. “How do you like them?”

  Kelly echoed, “Messengers?”

  “Since we have no radio or TV, we must communicate by more primitive methods. That one goes back a long, long way—to the Romans or maybe earlier. They’re carrier pigeons. As far as they are concerned, this is home. If you take them away, even hundreds of miles, they will fly back to their boxes. And if you write a message very small—by scratching signs on a leaf, say—and tie it to one of their legs, they will bring it with them.”

  “That gets messages here,” Kelly said. “How about the other way?”

  “Simple. We keep birds from different parts of the country in cages. They take messages to wherever they were born and bred.”

  “So there are more camps like yours,” Sunyo said. “And other Wild Jacks?”

  “Other camps, yes.” He grinned. “But only one Wild Jack.”

  “Your people are different from the savages,” Sunyo said. “Aren’t they?”

  “Savages? That’s a city word. And not one that I’m fond of.”

  “We mean the guys who caught us and brought us to you,” Kelly said. “Whatever you call them.”

  “I would call them human beings,” Wild Jack said. “As we are.”

  “So are the people of the cities,” I said.

  Wild Jack looked at me. “True. Let’s say then that the people of the Outlands are free human beings.”

  “We’re free in the cities, too.”

  “So free that you got sent to a punishment island for nothing?”

  “That was a mistake. Mistakes can happen anywhere.”

  “True again. And your friends?” He turned toward Kelly and Sunyo. “Why were they sent to the island?”

  They told their stories and he listened. At the end he said, “Kelly got into trouble for trying to stop a schoolroom tyrant bullying another boy. And Sunyo’s father had the pictures of his ancestors—pictures which he loved, and which did no one any harm—destroyed by the police of his city. Freedom?”

  I said, “There may be a few things wrong.”

  “A few things? Let’s have a look at your own case again. Perhaps it was a mistake sending you to the island, but what about the charge itself? You were supposed to have talked about the rights of servants. You didn’t, but what if you had? Do you regard that as something bad enough to justify them sending you—or anyone else—to a place like that?”

  “It’s done to prevent civil disturbance. There have been servants who have given trouble in the past. The police don’t want to have it happen again.”

  “Then you admit that the servants aren’t free in your cities?”

  “No, but . . .”

  “But what?”

  “They don’t want freedom. They’re quite happy as they are.”

  “Are they? Have you asked them?”

  “I don’t need to,” I said stubbornly. I thought of Bobby. “You can see they’re contented.”

  “And if you did ask, you could scarcely expect to get an honest answer, could you? Because you are one of the masters, born to rule the lower orders. Is that fair, do you think?”

  I was sure there must be an answer to that but could not think of one. I only said, “Fairness has nothing to do with it.”

  “You’re right, but perhaps it should have. It isn’t just the servants, is it? What about the poor despised savages in the Outlands? Every one of those cities of yours has an energy tower providing its inhabitants with all the heat and power they want. Power to work the machines which make city life so easy. In the Outlands there’s a constant battle against nature for everything. We have no power, no machines. We’re forced to live by the strength of our arms and the sweat of our brows.”

  Sunyo said, “But do you envy the city people their easy life? If so, why did you, a city man, choose to live in the Outlands instead?”

  “I didn’t say I chose.” Wild Jack laughed. “But you are right, my friend from the East! I like this life better than my old one, for all its hardships and dangers. Perhaps simply because of that freedom we were talking about. Even if the people of the cities believe they themselves are free, they are served by slaves. Their luxury and ease rest on a selfishness worse than anything the world has known.”

  “It’s not selfishness,” I argued, “to want to protect yourself.”

  “Yourself or your riches? But it isn’t a question that will be solved by argument. We’re better sticking to practical things—like my birds, which need feeding.”

  He put his hand in the pocket in the front of his trousers and brought it out full of corn.

  He called, “Come then, my pretties. Come and eat.”

  A couple of pigeons, blue-gray in color, flew over and perched, one on his wrist and the other on his fingers. He watched them, smiling, while they pecked at the seeds.

  The birds’ wings, already gleaming in the sunlight, dazzled in brighter colors as they rose, flapping, at the arrival of a newcomer. This one was reddish-brown, and it pushed the others away and settled confidently on Wild Jack’s thumb. He ­ruffled its neck feathers with his free hand, and it pecked his fingers for a moment, though neither angrily nor in alarm, before going on feeding.

  “Rusty’s my favorite,” Wild Jack said.

  He put his hand up near his face, and the bird pecked at his curly beard. It was hard to believe this was the face which a few hours before had looked so frightening.

  “You kno
w it, too, don’t you?” Wild Jack said. He watched the bird, smiling. “He’s our only one of this color. But apart from that, he’s been a good carrier. He has carried many a message for me in his day.”

  “Why do you call him Rusty?” Sunyo asked.

  “Because he’s red, not because he’s slow! He’s getting on now, but in his younger days there weren’t many winged creatures that could outfly him.”

  I said, “Would he come to me?”

  “Try him.”

  He tipped corn into my hand, disturbing the bird. It rose fluttering in the air and then came back to feed from my palm. The pecking beak tickled my skin.

  Sunyo said, “Even though you say they are free human beings too, there is a difference between your men and others in the Outlands, isn’t there? The ones the city people call savages.”

  “You’re very persistent,” Wild Jack said, “but it’s not a bad quality. Those they call savages are people whose ancestors have lived for generations in the Outlands. Some of our men come from them, and they get on well with us for the most part.” He smiled. “When they find strangers raiding their ­vegetable patches, they bring them to us to deal with. But most of us are like Ben and Daniel and myself—men from the cities who have chosen the forest for reasons which seemed good to them.”

  “What was your reason?” Kelly asked.

  He paused before saying, “It’s over and done with. But it was a good reason, I thought. And I have found better reasons since. No, we are not savages, whatever the city people say. Outlaws is a better name, because we live outside their laws. Though we have laws of our own we abide by—and better laws than theirs, I think.”

  Rusty was pecking at the last few grains. I risked tickling his neck, and he let me, pecking at my thumb gently.

  Wild Jack said, “He seems to have taken to you, Clive. I must watch out, or I may lose a bird.”

  • • •

  Later we were shown the weapons used by the men in green. They had knives and heavy sticks and also bows and arrows. The bows were made from the wood of yew trees; it split easily, Wild Jack told us, but at the same time was the strongest wood in the forest. The bows were strung with thin strips of hide. Wild Jack’s bow was as tall as he was, and he was an inch or two over six feet. The wood had been polished to a high gloss, and the string twanged musically when he flicked it.