by Damon Knight
On the fourth day Sid returns again, and this time Harry and Jake Pulaski are with him. “Come out here, Lew!” Harry calls from the hospital yard.
“What’s wrong?” the old man asks before he reaches them.
“Myra Olney is gone,” Jake says. “She’ll freeze in this weather. We have to find her.”
“Gone? What do you mean?” Myra wouldn’t run away.
“No one’s seen her for days,” Harry says. “Eunice went over to find out if she was hurt or something and she was gone. Just not there at all.”
Myra is soft and dependent, always looking for someone to help her do something—the last one who would try to manage alone. “If you find her and she’s hurt,” the old man says finally, “bring her over here. I’ll stay here and wait.” They never find her.
His small patient is recovering fast. He takes the stitches out and the wound looks good. She is a pretty little girl—large grey eyes, the same soft brown hair that her brother has, with slightly more wave in it than his. She is the first to smile at him. He sits by her and tells her stories, aware that the others are listening also. He tells her of the bad places to the east, places where they must never go. He tells her of the bad places to the south, where the mosquitoes bring sickness and the water is not good to drink. He tells her how people bathe and keep themselves clean in order to stay healthy and well, and to look pretty. The little girl watches him and listens intently to all that he says. Now when he asks if she is thirsty or hungry, she answers.
The next day the old man realizes the oldest girl is menstruating. She has swathed herself in a garment tied between her legs, and looks very awkward in it, very uncomfortable. Conversationally, not addressing her at all, he tells the small girl about women and babies and the monthly blood and says that he has things that women use at those times.
The adolescent stands up and says, “Show me those things.”
He takes her to one of the lounges and says, “First you must bathe, even your hair. Then I shall return with them.”
One day he brings wool shirts from the basement and cuts off the sleeves to make them fit the smaller children. He dresses his patient and leaves the other shirts where the children can help themselves. The smaller boy strips unhesitatingly and puts on a warm shirt. It covers him to mid-calf; the sleeves leave his hands free. Presently the others also dress in the shirts, all but the older boy, who doesn’t go near them all morning. Late in the afternoon he also pulls off his filthy garment, throws it down, and picks up one of the shirts. His body is muscular, much scarred, and now the old man sees that he never will impregnate a woman either. Both boys have atrophied testes. He feels his eyes burn and he hurries away, down the corridor, to weep alone in one of the patients’ rooms.
As soon as the little girl can walk again, the children leave the hospital and vanish into the city once more. The old man sits alone in the examination room and feels empty for a long time after they leave. There were no good-byes, no words exchanged, no backward glances. That afternoon he returns to his apartment and stares at the work spread on his tables. It is many days before he can bring himself to open one of the Bibles again.
In December Ruth dies in her sleep. They bury her with the others at the west side of the park where the wildflowers carpet the ground in spring and ferns grow in summer. The night after tier burial Boy wakes the old man with a hand pressed hard on his lips. He drags at him, trying to get him out of bed, and thrusts robe and stout winter shoes at him. He has no light, nor does he need one. Boy is an owl, the old man thinks, awake now, but sluggish and stiff.
Boy leads him out and into the park, winding among the cedars that are as black as coal. A powdery snow has fallen, not enough to cover the ground, but enough to change the world into one unfamiliar and beautiful.
Boy stops abruptly and his fingers are hard on the old man’s arm. Then he sees them. The children are dragging Ruth’s body from the grave. Sickened, he turns away. Finally he knows by the silence that they have gone. Boy’s face is a white blank in the dark night, his fingers start to shake spasmodically on the old man’s arm. They can arouse the city, ring the church bell, hunt the children down, recover the corpse and rebury it, but then what? Kill the children? Post a grave watch? And Dore, what would it do to Dore? The old man can’t seem to think clearly, all he can do is stare at the empty grave. If they knew, if the people knew, they would hunt down the children, kill them all. Many of the men still have guns, ammunition. He has a shotgun and shells. It can’t be for this that the children have survived so long! That can’t be what they came here to find!
Finally he says, “Go get two shovels, Boy. Bring them here. Quietly. Don’t wake anyone.”
And they fill in the grave again. And smooth the tracks and then go home.
The winters have grown progressively worse for the people of the city. Each bitter cold snap enervates them all, and each winter claims its toll. This year Sam Whitten has become more and more helpless, until now he is a bed-ridden invalid who must be attended constantly. His talk is all of his childhood.
They seldom mention the children. It is hoped that they will depart with the spring. Meanwhile, it is easier to pretend that they are not in the city at all.
The old man nurses Sam Whitten so conscientiously that Sid intervenes, spokesman for the rest of the people, he says.
“If you wear yourself down, then who’ll they have if they need help?”
The old man knows Sid is right, but if Sam dies, will the children steal his body also? He is tormented by the thought and can tell no one of his fears. His sleep is restless and unsatisfying; he wakes often and stares into darkness wondering if he has been awakened by a noise too close by, wondering if the children are prowling about the city while everyone sleeps.
In January they have their first real snowfall, only a few inches, and it doesn’t last more than two days, but now the weather turns bitter cold, Arctic weather. And Mary Halloran disappears. This time the bell in the church tower clamors for attendance, and everyone who is able gathers there.
“Jake, you tell them,” Harry says, his voice harsh. He is carrying his rifle, the first time he has had it out in fifteen years.
“Yeah. Me and Eunice and Walter and Mary was going to play pinochle this afternoon, like we always do. Mary didn’t come and I said I would go get her. When I got to her house, she wasn’t there. And there’s blood on her floor. Her door wasn’t closed tight either.”
“She could have hurt herself,” Sid says, but there is doubt in his voice. “She could be wandering out there right now, dazed. We have to search for her before it gets dark.”
“Stay in pairs,” Jake says harshly.
“Today we’ll search for Mary, and tomorrow we’ll search for those goddamn kids,” Harry says.
“Boy knows where they are,” Jake says. He looks around. “Where is he? I saw him a minute ago.”
Boy is gone again. The old man waits up for him until very late, but he doesn’t come back. The next day the old man finds Sid in his room when he returns from his morning visit to Sam Whitten.
“You joining the hunt?” Sid asks.
“No. You?”
“No. They won’t find the kids. Too many places to hide. Someone’ll have a heart attack out there in the cold.” Sid looks out the window toward the park. “Will you come over to the hospital with me in a little while?”
“Something wrong, Sid?” The old man can’t keep the anxiety out of his voice.
Sid shakes his head. “I want to put my notebooks, diaries and stuff, in the vault. Seems like a good time.”
The old man is silent for a moment, then he says, “We can use Boy’s wagon. Do you have much to take over?”
“Couple of boxes. We’d need the wagon.”
That afternoon they walk through the park, two old men in dark cloaks, pulling a stout wagon over the frozen ground. Their breath forms white clouds in front of their faces.
“They didn’t get a glimpse of the
kids,” Sid says. “Didn’t think they would.”
“Are they going out again?”
“Sure. Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow.”
They smile briefly at each other and walk, taking turns pulling the wagon. It is hard to pull over the uneven ground.
“I keep wondering,” Sid says presently, “if this wasn’t part of the plan. Give us all time to die off and then bring out the new people and let them take over.”
“They can’t take over,” the old man says bitterly. “If that was the plan, it’s as much a failure as the first one was.” And he tells Sid about the boys’ testicles.
“That will change their minds for them,” Sid says thoughtfully. “The others who are holding back now. Harry only got five others to go with him and Jake, you know. The rest will go out too if they know this. Why not? Them or us. And we’re all doomed anyway.”
“I know.” They are almost through the park now.
“You think you could get Boy near that girl?”
The old man makes a rude noise. “He’d sooner couple with a snake. I don’t think he could, anyway. Psychologically. Even if I could explain and make him understand, which I probably couldn’t.” He considers it another moment, then shakes his head. He could never make Boy understand.
They take the wagon up the ramp and inside the hospital, and with much struggling they get it down the stairs to the subbasements. The vault is a freezer unit. There is a second section where the temperature was even colder once, and this part made tears come to the old man’s eyes when he first found it. He closed the door of the sperm bank that day, long ago, and hasn’t opened it since. The vault hasn’t been chilled at all for sixty years. It is simply a good place to store valuables. They cleared the shelves of blood plasma, medicines, unidentified vials, and now in their place are boxes of jewelry, books, photographs.
“You in a hurry?” Sid asks. “Might make just one more entry. What you just told me sure has changed everything.”
The old man shrugs and lights another lamp. Already Sid is writing with concentration, and the old man goes out into the corridor. No one has ever visited this section of the hospital often. Machinery is stored here, spare parts for the surgical units, tanks for oxygen, collapsible wheelchairs. The old man has never paid much attention to the machinery. They have had little use for motors to raise and lower hospital beds. Now he strolls through the storage room. Near the back of the room, he stops and stares. A generator. Boxed, a metal-clad box, in fact. Meant to be stored for an indefinite time. Taped to the box is a booklet of instructions. The air in the subbasements is very dry, the booklet is legible.
Sid is still writing, doesn’t notice when the old man glances in at him. The old man follows the diagram in the front of the booklet, through a door marked A-l, to the end of the room with miscellaneous pipes and tanks, to the far end where there is a small stainless steel door four feet above the floor. Behind the door there is a gauge registering full, a valve, a set of instructions riveted to a curved shiny surface. Twenty thousand gallons of fuel oil in a stainless steel tank! The pipes and the holding tanks are all designed so that the oil will flow by gravity when the valves are opened. They provided a Diesel-powered generator to be connected to the freezer unit, he realizes, with enough oil in storage to run it for years. No one ever started the generator; no one ever opened the valves. His feet drag when he leaves the room and joins Sid once more in the vault.
Sid is no longer writing. He is leafing through his diaries, first one, then another, not pausing long anywhere.
“What happened, Sid? How did it start?”
Sid shrugs. “I was reading some of the earliest books,” he says. “Didn’t realize at the time how contradictory the statements were. First they said China hit Russia with missiles. Then they said that type A flu virus was pandemic. Then biological warfare. God knows.”
“I was home on vacation,” the old man says. “We started to run. My father was afraid we’d all die of plague. The cities were emptied practically overnight. I remember that. Was it plague?”
Again Sid shrugs. “A combination, I guess.” He snaps the book shut, puts it back in the box with the others, and pushes the box against the wall. “Ready?”
There are many meetings now. No one is to live alone any longer. Each group must have a man with a gun, and they have to fortify their homes, put bars on the windows, locks on the doors. No one is to wander outside alone, or after dark. And the daily expeditions to find the children will continue. Sid doesn’t disclose the old man’s secret. To the old man he says, “I won’t help them find the kids and destroy them. Neither will I help the kids in any way.”
The old man is tormented now, unable to sleep, and all the while it seems that an obsession is growing within him. He knows that his people are threatened, that the children are the enemy, that their hunger will be more powerful than the strategems adopted by the people. And still he is obsessed with the idea that he has to act for them, make them accept his help. This old man and the man who is his son in all but the flesh, they will save humanity. He is hardly aware when Sam Whitten dies. The ground is frozen now; they will bury him in the spring, and until then the cold will preserve the thin old body. The people have become despondent and more fearful. There are outbursts of talk, then a strained silence among them as they listen to hear if the shadows are alive. Dore and Sid have moved into Monica’s palace. She is tearing down the forest in order to create an early American tavern. The old man doesn’t visit her.
Only Boy still ventures out after dark, but his forays are less frequent and most of the time he is close to the old man. Every day they go to the hospital, where they clean out the vault. They assemble the generator according to instructions and turn on the valves and start one Diesel; slowly the vault is chilled below zero. Unquestioningly Boy does what the old man tells him to do. The old man often addresses him as “Son,” and Boy accepts this also.
Somehow, the old man thinks, he must learn about artificial insemination. He must collect sperm from Boy. He must impregnate the wild girl with it. And he must instruct her, or the eunuch boys, in the method so that when the other girls reach childbearing age, they also can be impregnated. And in the privacy of his rooms, the old man laughs. Boy watches him fearfully. Sid and Dore also watch him when they are there, and Dore’s face reveals his worry. They think he is going mad, the old man knows, and he doesn’t know how to demonstrate that he is not.
Now when Boy starts to leave him, the old man says, “Don’t go out. Don’t leave me alone.” And Boy obediently sits down again. The old man is afraid that Boy will go out and won’t come back again, that he will not be allowed to finish what he knows he must do. He feels ashamed, implicitly lying to Boy, but he does it repeatedly in order to keep Boy nearby. He knows that he has to collect the semen very soon, that time may be working against him now.
Every night he prepares tea for himself and Boy; sometimes they have the flat nut cakes, sometimes the freeze-dried food, which is not as nourishing as it once was. This night the old man drugs Boy heavily and while he sleeps the old man kneels over him, weeping silently, and masturbates him and collects the ejaculate in a sterile flask. He is too blinded by tears to be certain he has covered Boy properly when he leaves him. Later he returns and arranges the blankets, and kisses Boy on the forehead.
It is cold, but not cold enough to preserve the semen; he has to take it to the vault that night, divide it among several vials, seal them, label them, freeze them. It is almost dawn when he returns and drops to his bed exhausted. Time and age, he thinks, unable to sleep, aching and afraid of the way his heart is palpitating. Time and age.
Every night he makes his solitary journey to the hospital with another flask, and each day his face is greyer, he is more fatigued. Dore is insistent that the old man move to the palace, or at least let someone come and stay with him in his apartment. The old man refuses irritably, and Dore leaves him alone. But they are talking about him, he knows. I
t is hard to find time alone now. Someone always seems to be with him, observing him, afraid that if he breaks, they will be without any medical help at all. How very old they all are, he thinks one day, surprised that he has never realized it before. The survivors are all over seventy, all except Boy. It is time for them all to die.
That night when he returns from the hospital, Boy is gone.
For hours the old man sits at his window, staring blindly at the dark city. He is frozen, he cannot weep, cannot think, cannot feel. Soon after dawn he unwraps his shotgun and carefully inspects it, rubs the metal with an oil-soaked rag, and then examines his shells. He loads the gun and puts the rest of his shells into a pouch that he wears like a necklace, and then he goes to the eighth floor where the telescope is. Slowly, painstakingly, he scans what he can see of the city, not looking at the ruined streets and buildings but at the black line where city and sky meet, and finally he finds a place where the air shimmies, and, squinting, he believes he can see smoke. It is very far away, miles up the river, close to the downtown section. He dresses warmly and starts out, not thinking anything at all.
When he nears the downtown area, he. knows where he will find them, and he turns toward the bridge that is still standing, with great gaping holes in the roadbed, and supporting posts that are eaten through in places with corrosion, but not enough to collapse the structure. With their fear of enclosed places, the children will huddle under the bridge, and anyone approaching will be visible a long way off. He doesn’t approach yet. He goes inside an office building and climbs up to the third floor where he can look out and see the children. They are here as he expected: four of them, the smaller ones, are huddled close to a small fire; the older ones are not in sight. As he watches, one of the little ones, who are indistinguishable in their blankets, nods again and again and finally lies down on the ground and draws up into a compact ball to sleep. There is no sign of Boy’s body.