by C. L. Moore
“Don’t worry about it,” Elaine said. “I expected he used post-hypnotic suggestion on you. If he wasn’t sure you were fully in sympathy with our side he had to implant certain mental blocks to make sure you wouldn’t remember until it was safe to. Does that mean you haven’t been really convinced about us until tonight?”
“I’ve had some problems,” I said with restraint. “But——”
Elaine said, “Wait,” and turned toward the door. I heard the sound of feet on the stairs, subdued voices talking excitedly, very low, and then a key in the lock.
Elaine said to me, “I didn’t tell you this. This is the Carson City headquarters. Now we’ll hear what’s been happening. Whether you left things until too late.”
Two men came into the office, one of them disheveled and the other still buttoning his shirt as if he hadn’t had time to finish dressing. A woman followed them closely, and then three m men. They looked at Elaine and me.
“Where’s Beardsley?” someone asked.
“He was at the theater,” Elaine said, her voice under heavy restraint. “What happened there? Does anybody know?”
The disheveled man said, “I was there. When the alarm sounded we all tried to scatter. I don’t think they expected anything like that so soon, because at first it was easy to get away. But they moved fast. Before Beardsley and Ferguson could clear the stands, the Comus cops closed in.”
“Not both of them!” Elaine said, her voice flatting a little. The man nodded somberly. Elaine got her voice under control and said calmly, “What about the gunfire?”
“Comus, stopping some runaways,” the man said. “None of ours, as it happened. But it shows they’re not fooling.”
“You think they know?” somebody in the background asked.
“Rohan,” Elaine said, “tell them about the theater.”
So I stood up and told them. While I was talking more and more people came into the room, most of them hurrying, looking shocked and a little exhilarated, as if now that things were starting life had somehow taken a turn for the better.
I told them about the play itself, the insistence on giving it verbatim, without changes in pace or action. I told them about the sound truck with its intricate, unnecessary apparatus. I remembered the line of silvery circuits painted along the insulated undersides of the benches. And I thought how often, sitting there preoccupied in the bleachers tonight, I had found the words, “Anti-Com!” springing into my mind without any real reason I could think of.
There had always been something a little wrong about the play. I’d sensed it without knowing why. Thinking about Crossroads with detachment, I could see now that it was two plays. It had two levels. If you knew anything about the Anti-Com you responded on both levels. For people who knew a lot about it, Guthrie’s instrument panel must have blazed with constant reactions. That maze of electronic equipment in the truck, intricate beyond any possible need of the play itself, had been triggered to catch the last subliminal responses of people who knew more than they should.
The word was never mentioned in the play. There was no reference of even the obliquest sort. And yet time after time I had found the one unspoken name coming up irresistibly in my mind as cues kicked off thoughts and responses centering around the one unspoken word.
Somebody said doubtfully, “But could it work? Without any direct physical connection?”
I shrugged. Somebody else answered for me. “Oh yes, it could work. It’s the same principle as a lie jacket with a larger field. The body’s own electromagnetic field could trigger it.1;
“But how could he locate one person in the whole crowd?”
“How do you locate a disturbance in any electrical field? Hell, that’s no problem. How they meant to follow them up afterward is anybody’s guess, but you can be damn sure they’d thought of it.”
Someone else said, “What about the rest of the traveling theaters? They must have picked up a lot of our people already.”
“Expendable,” Elaine said shortly. “Nobody outside this area knows enough to be dangerous anyhow. But Ferguson and Beardsley aren’t expendable. Neither am I. If Comus gets any one of us——”
“Alive,” somebody added.
There was a pause. Elaine glanced from face to face.
“They took Beardsley and Ferguson,” she said. “Well?”
Silence for a moment. Then, from the rear of the crowd, “Both alive when we saw them,” a voice said. There was another silence, briefer this time.
Elaine said, breaking it, “We’ll hear. There’s time yet. Any more questions?”
“Yes,” a voice said. “What about this theater? It’s given two or three performances already. This isn’t the first time the lie detector’s been used in this area.”
I said, “It’s the first time it’s worked. I loused up the only two performances we gave. Tonight was the first chance Guthrie had to screen the audience.” I was silent a moment, realizing clearly for the first time a possible explanation for my shattering freeze-up of last night.
Was it simply that the levels of censorship in my mind been shifting all along? I knew, down under, what the play Crossroads would do if it went on as written. I’d blocked it once by a brilliant performance that threw the emphasis off. I’d blocked it a second time by a total freeze.
A dazzling light sprang into full bloom in the middle of my mind. Had that compulsive freeze been nothing worse than the unconscious censor clamping down? Was that the only way it knew how to stop the trap from snapping on the rebels I had come to sympathize with? Could it mean that my ability to act, to hold an audience, to live the part I played, wasn’t gone after all? I stood there speechless, a blaze of tentative joy beginning to pour through me in a warm flood. Maybe, then, there was still a chance——
Elaine said sharply, “Rohan, what is it?”
I looked at her rather sheepishly. “Nothing. An idea I had about—my own work. I didn’t know it showed.”
Elaine said, “Something did. You looked so happy I thought maybe you had some ideas about Comus. God knows we need ideas.” She glanced around the room. “With Ferguson and Beardsley gone I think I’m next in line of command. George, will you see what you can find out about the captures? Johnny, get up to the top of the monument and see what the situation is. I think——”
Somebody came up the stairs running. Everybody turned. A breathless young man leaned against the doorframe and said, “They’re stopping anybody who tries to leave town. Somebody said they’d seen Prowlers on the road coming in. Where’s Beardsley?”
Elaine said, “Johnny, get started. Beardsley won’t be here, Tony. I’m in control so far. What happened to you?”
“When I heard the siren I started out,” the young man said. “A couple of blocks away two men closed in on me. One of them had a hypodermic. I slapped it out of his hand just in time. Some of the boys saw us fighting and got there just in time.”
Elaine nodded. “Brewster, take charge of rounding up as many as you can to patrol the streets and watch for arrests. Try to recapture our people if you can.”
A thickset man said, “I’ll try, but I’m afraid it’s too late.”
“Well, try!”
He nodded and turned quickly to the door, beckoning to people as he passed them. I had a sudden thought.
“Wait a minute,” I said loudly. “Hold on. About the theater troupe—nobody in the play had any idea what they were doing. You’ve got to understand that.”
The words seemed to fall very flat. Nobody spoke. There was a small silence and then Brewster said, “Come on,” and went out with his own group. I looked at Elaine.
“What about my troupe?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I’ve got a lot to think about, Rohan. They can look after themselves.”
Before I could protest a commotion near the door resolved itself into a woman with her hair wildly wind-blown. She was talking in gasps, as if she had been running.
“Johnny says you wa
nt to know—about the monument,” she said. “I was just—up there.” She paused to catch her breath. “All around the outskirts—in the fields—I’ve never seen so many machines. Tanks. Prowlers. Hedgehoppers. A ring of ‘em, right around the town. A mouse couldn’t slip through. They must have been waiting in the woods. They’ve got—radar set up, too. We’re—locked in.”
I said, “What about my troupe?” Nobody paid any attention.
“What are the machines doing?” Elaine asked. “Just sitting there?” The woman nodded, pushing the wild hair off her forehead.
There was a muffled shout on the stairs. Footsteps thudded. An elderly man came in, his face grayish. He pushed directly through the crowd to Elaine.
“Ferguson,” he said. “Dead. He got the ring to his mouth as they took him up the steps to the Comus Building. But Beardsley” He paused, shaking his head. “Sam couldn’t make it,” he said. “They’ve got him.”
“Alive?”
The old man nodded.
Elaine said, “Couldn’t he reach his ring?”
“He had it up to his mouth. I saw him. And then he—I don’t know—he just let it drop again. He couldn’t quite make it when the chips were down.”
Silence. Then Elaine said, “Where is he now?”
“They’re questioning him at Comus headquarters.”
“Under direct television hookup with Nye’s office, I suppose,” Elaine said. Her shoulder sagged a little. “Well, that’s that.”
“How bad is it?” someone asked.
Elaine said softly, “I was sure Sam would use the poison if he had to.” She looked down at her own ring. “I guess we never really know,” she said, “until we have to do it ourselves.” She was silent a moment longer.
“It’s bad,” she said. “Sam knows what town the Anti-Com’s in. Not the exact location, but the town. It could be worse.”
“Isn’t that enough? As soon as they mind-scan Beardsley can’t they just move in on that town——”
Elaine said, “Maybe. Remember, though, Nye wants the Anti-Com intact if he can get it. As long as he doesn’t know what it is or how it works he’s vulnerable. Even if he blew up this one, we might still build another.”
“But he won’t risk our turning it on!”
Elaine laughed shortly. “We aren’t going to turn it on. That’s something Beardsley doesn’t know.”
There was a dead silence. Somebody said thinly:
“Why aren’t we going to turn it on?”
Elaine said with sudden fierceness, “Because it isn’t safe! Because yesterday Comus raided a distribution center and we had to destroy the only safety device we had for the Anti-Com. That’s why we won’t use it.”
A voice said after a moment’s shock silence, “I thought it was all finished. All ready to operate.”
“It is,” Elaine said less angrily. “It’s finished. It’ll work. It’ll knock out Comus. But we got to one of the calculators for the first time last week and we found out it’ll do something else, too—something we hadn’t realized. There’s going to be tremendous amount of energy released. It’ll knock out Comus, all right, but it can bounce right back on us, too. It could blow the state clear off the map and gouge another bay out of the Pacific.”
“It could,” somebody said, “or it would?”
Elaine shrugged. “There’s a chance it wouldn’t. I’d hate to take the chance. We did have a safety device that would channel off the energy harmlessly. Since we lost it yesterday morning we’ve been working right around the clock on anew one. It’s nearly done. But it isn’t attached to the Anti-Com. If it were——” She shrugged delicately. “If it were, Comus would end. Right then, at that moment.”
We all looked at each other, I with wild speculations. What was it that could put an end to Comus in the wink of an eye?
“Where is the safety?” someone asked.
Elaine shook her head. “I’d better not say. There’s still a chance. A pretty slim one, but a chance.”
In the silence as everyone thought that over, the distant trickle of gunfire sounded from far off, near the edge of town. Someone near the door said stolidly, “If it was me, I’d take a chance. I’d use the Anti-Com and let it blow if it wanted to. We’re done for either way. We might as well take Comus with us. If we’ve got any chance at all, I’d say take it.”
There was a brief babble of talk, most of it in agreement. Elaine said, “We’d never know what happened if that’s what they decided at the Anti-Com when the time comes.”
“If it blows,” the stolid voice insisted.
Elaine nodded. “If it blows.”
“What’s going to happen then?”
“Right now,” Elaine said, “Nye is probably questioning Beardsley on the Comus channel from New York. As soon as he talks they’ll know what town the Anti-Com is in and they’ll start a house-to-house search for it. Sooner or later they’ll find us. If we’re lucky, the Anti-Com will go on, Comus will——” She hesitated. “Well, Comus will end. And all over the country rebel groups will rise take over.”
“How will they know?”
Elaine smiled. “They’ll know. If the Anti-Com goes on, nobody in the country will have any doubt what’s happened. At best, it’ll work fine. At worst, the explosion might light up half the continent for a minute or two. Oh, they’ll know, all right.”
“But what are we going to do?” a voice demanded impatiently. “There must be something we can do!”
“There is,” Elaine said. “We’re doing it. I ought to hear from the workshop where the safety fuse is being finished within the next half hour. Then it’ll be a matter of getting the fuse to the Anti-Com before the Comus forces find it. There’s just one thing to remember now—be sure you’re all armed and be sure you put up a strong resistance if Comus tries to take over Carson City. I know those are standing orders. I just wanted to remind you it’s more important than ever now.”
I said mildly. “Why?”
“That’s how we drove Comus out of California,” Elaine said. “It’s how we’ll keep them out as long as we still have a chance to turn on the Anti-Com.”
A man with a torn shirt and a scratched face said, “After all, Andrew Raleigh’s still President. The old man could still kick Nye out—and he would, if we raised enough trouble. If the lid blows off here, it’ll blow all over the state, and Nye can’t hush that up even with the Comus walls. He’s still afraid of Raleigh.”
“Comus will have to move in on the town where the Anti-Com is,” I reminded them.
“And there’ll be fighting. We’ve got strong forces there and lots of ammunition and weapons. But Nye’s got a good! excuse for that kind of trouble. After all, if he knows the Anti-Com’s there not even Raleigh could object.”
Elaine added, “Nye won’t do anything drastic. That’s why we’re waiting this out. If Comus can infiltrate the Anti-Com town he’ll do it. Remember he wants the Anti-Com in one piece, so his technicians can find a defense against it There’s only one thing we’ve got to do now.” She glanced around the room.
“Johnny, get your group together and find some way out of town. We’ve got to get past the Comus ring.”
Johnny shook his head doubtfully. “They’re only passing out their own cars,” he said. “But we’ll try.” He beckoned to several of the bystanders and they went out together.
I said to Elaine, keeping my voice quiet, “Have you thought why the town’s boxed in like this? Do you know what they’re still looking for?”
She met my eyes calmly. “Yes, I know.”
“They’re looking for you,” I said.
She spread out her hand as if she were admiring the blue stone of her ring. I knew she was wondering if when the moment came she, like Sam Beardsley, might falter in doing what had to be done. But in my own mind I knew she would not falter.
“Not only me,” she said. “Anyone who knows more than Sam about the Anti-Com. We’ve got to find some way out of town.”
Someb
ody was running up the stairs outside. For no reason I found myself thinking again of the Swann Players, isolated in the besieged and probably hysterical town. I started to say, “The troupe ought to be looked after, Elaine. They didn’t know what they were doing. I wish——”
But then the door burst open and a young man came in, breathless, saying before he had fully entered the room, “They’re through with Beardsley. I heard most of it. He spilled everything he knew—you’d better clear out of here fast. They know this is headquarters. They’re on their way.”
The crowd eddied wildly for a moment. Then Elaine’s voice, pitched high, sounded over the brief uproar. She was giving orders quickly and calmly. Looking at her, I saw the way the pulse beat in her throat, and her hands were trembling, but you wouldn’t have known how scared she was by anything in her voice. I hoped her thinking was straight She was telling them where to scatter and naming the next meeting place. And in the next few minutes the room filled with orderly regrouping and then the quick tide of their dispersing swept me down the stairs with the rest.
Outside the streets were almost dark. Glass from the street lights gritted underfoot. Somebody had decided against too much illumination, and he had been quite right. It was easier to scatter here in the dimness.
Elaine’s hand was on my arm. “I want to finish talking to you, Rohan,” she said. “Wait with me. You know too much now and I don’t want you picked up——”
Down one of the dark streets the sound of purring motors came swelling, nearer and louder by the second. ‘Hoppers, I thought, Or even a Prowler or two. I hadn’t seen a Prowler’s big crimson bulk since I crossed the border into this rebel land. It made me chill a little to remember how their great swollen sides loom over you as they come.
Somebody said, “That’s them! Run! Scatter!”
And we ran.
When I stopped at last, out of breath, in a pocket between two old wooden buildings in a dark street, I found I was alone.
I stood there quiet, fighting to get my breath back, listening. Far off I could hear outbursts of shouting now and then, but no footsteps sounded near me. I could smell dust and old wood and the damp scent of dew-wet, tred grass from some unseen lawn. If there was anyone in these buildings he was as still as I was, listening and waiting. I couldn’t see any motion in the street at all.