by C. L. Moore
After a while I lit a cigarette and asked myself what next. But I knew the answer to that one without thinking. Until I was sure the troupe was safe I couldn’t relax enough to take the next step, whatever it might be. There was no reason at all behind this feeling I had. The troupe had disowned me. At least, Guthrie had. But the sense of responsibility I had taken up for the little group I’d worked with wasn’t something I could lay down again at will.
I studied street signs to orient myself. I looked up for the Dipper in the starry dark and found the North Star weakly blinking. The theater had been set up at the south side of town. I started off cautiously, keeping in the shadows.
CHAPTER XXIV
I HAD BEEN WALKING for maybe ten minutes when I heard the first church bell begin to toll. It startled me. It didn’t sound like an alarm, but seconds later another bell began to sound, and beyond that another, far off at the north edge of town. One bell was big and deep, one rang slightly flat, the third had a tenor note to its tone. They didn’t ring very well together, and probably they weren’t trying. All they meant to do was fill the night with the solemn sound of their tolling. I wondered if somewhere men were pulling and releasing the ropes that turned them, or are church bells rung mechanically? And either way—why? Why tonight is this besieged and frightened town? I walked faster.
I passed furtive pedestrians now and then, and stayed out of their sight when I could. I didn’t want anything to do with either rebel or Comus forces yet. The bells tolled on. I knew there was probably a big public-address screen somewhere near the center of town, and there might be news on it I needed to know. But it would have to keep.
I passed the little dark park where I had spent my bad time alone. I passed the pool and the tree and turned the corner into the street where the theater had been set up. In the faint light of the nearest unbroken street lamp I could see the bleachers still standing, looking gaunt and deserted in the empty street.
On the far side of the bleachers the big square bulk of the round truck sat silent. Its round loud-speakers yawned up at the sky. The cab was empty. The troupe—had it gone? I stood there feeling foolish in the deserted street, the church bells knelling slowly in deep eddies of sound that filled the air around me. Naturally the troupe would have taken shelter somewhere, and fast, when the sirens first began to blow the Hey, Charlie, and the crowds scattered. But where would they have gone?
On the verge of turning away, I paused to listen. Voices? A muffled sound, curiously resonant, but voices speaking, and not very far off. I laughed suddenly at myself and started across the street toward the sound truck. The pavement at the edge of the grandstands was littered with the debris of the escaping audience—dropped handkerchiefs and hats, one shoe, several handbags turned inside out by provident looters. I kicked through the Utter ad reached up to tap at the door in the flat rear of the truck. I could hear the sound reverberate inside, and there was a sudden hush of the muffled voices, except for one that spoke on imperviously. I couldn’t hear the words.
After a moment there was a sound of footsteps inside and Guthrie’s voice said, “What is it?”
“Rohan,” I called. “Let me in.”
A pause. Then, “You alone?”
“Yes. Open up.”
Very cautiously the door opened a narrow crack. I could see Guthrie’s cheek and one eye, and just below his face the single eye of a Comus pistol looking straight at me. There was another pause. Then Guthrie grunted and pushed the door open. “Come in,” he said.
The inside of the truck looked cavernous without the tightly packed and folded grandstands taking up most of the space. Standing up in the middle of emptiness on one side were the banks of instruments that had operated the lie-detector devices. At right angles to them, flat against the front wall, stood the television apparatus. The screen was lighted and a man was speaking portentously. The rest of the troupe, gathered at the screen, turned to look at me in surprise, and as I glanced from face to face, seeing Polly and Roy together, the Henkens and Cressy, I also saw Ted Nye’s little dark excited face in the group and for a moment of surprise that rocked me back on my heels I thought again Ted was here in the truck.
Then common sense took over. It was Ted on the television screen. It was Ted speaking in the portentous voice. He wore a black band around his sleeve and his face looked self-consciously grave, but I knew the elation that shone just behind the gravity of his look.
“… the period of national mourning,” he was saying. “Messages are already beginning to arrive from the heads of foreign states, and it is good to know that the world mourns with us the loss of the greatest man of modern times. The President’s body will lie in state from …”
The realization of what had happened hit me belatedly and not with great surprise. Ever since I heard the church bells tolling I must have known with a part of my mind what that knell was sounding for. But the jolt was strong just the same. For a timeless moment I stopped hearing Ted Nye’s voice at all. I stopped perceiving anything around me.
So much was going on in my mind. Awe and incredulity. The unthinkable idea of a nation without Raleigh. I couldn’t remember a time when that strong, calm face hadn’t dominated the whole continent. The nation itself was the very shape and substance of the man Raleigh, and it didn’t seem conceivable that we could continue without him. And along with the solemn personal loss, because he was so strong when we needed him, a long time ago. Because he did so much for us that no other man alive had been able to do.
I looked at the faces turned toward mine. On all of them the same look of stunned incredulity was strong. This was an idea thatwould take getting used to. All of us had known it was coming. But when the moment really came, its impact was hard.
I looked at Guthrie, and then looked again, closer, shocked at the gray, desperate blankness of his face. He didn’t look like a man sharing a national loss with two hundred million fellow countrymen. He looked like somebody with a stunning private shock and grief he had not shared with anybody. At first I thought the death of Raleigh had just hit him harder than most. But then I realized there had to be more to it than that. I saw his gaze move to the group by the television screen and fall upon Cressy’s softly curved cheek turned away from him, the pale curls shining in the colored light of the screen.
“Where’s the man who took my part?” I asked over the sound of Ted Nye’s voice. I had to know where we stood, what had happened. I had the feeling that time might be running out on us.
“He left,” Guthrie said shortly.
“Ran like a rabbit,” Polly added with obscure satisfaction. “What happened to you, Rohan?”
I started to answer, but the scene on the television screen changed then and we all turned to watch. Nye had gone off camera briefly, and a long, panning shot moved with impressive slowness from left to right above the roofs of nighttime. New York. I could see the lights in solid, glittering banks. Everyone was aroused and listening and stunned by the news of the nation’s bereavement. Across three thousand miles I could hear the solemn tolling of church bells as the east coast mingled its knell with the tolling in the town around us. The nation was awake and all through this summer night history was on the turn.
Polly said again, “Where were you, Rohan? I thought I saw——”
I shook my head at her sharply. If Guthrie didn’t already know the part I’d played in breaking up the play he didn’t need to know now.
I said, “I just got here. What happened?”
Cressy smiled up at me. “The show broke up, that’s what. There was a lot of yelling and we made it into the truck just in time. They bounced stones off the sides until Guthrie took a few shots outside. Do you know what happened?”
“Whatever it was, it’s all clear out there now,” I told her. I didn’t look directly at her when I spoke. The likeness to Miranda was too poignant.
Guthrie put his hand on my arm. “Rohan, I want to talk to you.” His face was haggard in the dim light from the televi
sion screen. “Come outside if it’s safe to. What do you think?”
“It’s safe right now,” I said, “but——”
The panorama of New York flickered sidewise off the screen and a voice said with enormous solemnity:
" width="13" align="justify">“Ladies and gentlemen, Mr. Robert Dudley, the Vice-President of the United States, has an important announcement. Mr. Robert Dudley.”
The Vice-President’s pale, unfamiliar face looked out at us unhappily. A nerve twitched under his eye and television make-up couldn’t entirely hid how wan he looked. He said in a voice that shook just a little:
“Ladies and gentlemen, I—pending action on the part of Congress, I——” He swallowed and then got it out in a rush. “I feel it my duty to surrender office in favor of Mr. Theodore Nye, recently named Secretary of State and coordinator for Comus.”
Guthrie’s hand on my arm pulled stronger. His voice was shaking a little too. “Outside,” he said, reaching for the door. “Come on.”
It was cool and still down in the street except for the continuous heavy tolling of the distant bells. Guthrie looked around nervously. “I thought for a while we were set up for a lynching,” he said. “They’ve gone to the big news screen to listen now, but they’ll be back. Rohan, things are bad. I want you to do a job for me.”
“You can’t trust me,” I said. “Remember?”
He brushed that aside. “Hell is going to pop,” he said. “Right here in Carson City. Any minute.” He jerked his head toward the truck and the sound of the voice from New York. “I knew this was coming,” he said, “but I didn’t expect it so soon. I——”
“You knew Raleigh was going to die?” I heard my own voice going thin with disbelief. “You knew——”
He said wearily, “Rohan!” There was infinite cynicism in the way he said it. I felt a flush of sudden embarrassment at my own naїveté hot in my face. Maybe it takes a Comus man to know when Comus is lying.
I said, “So they’ve found the Anti-Com.”
“Not quite, from what I’m told,” Guthrie said. “But they know the town it’s in. A place called Corby, about twenty-five miles from here. They may have the thing by now.”
I stood there hardly listening, staring up at the stars that twinkled through the naked girders of the grandstand and thinking what a fool I was. What a fool the whole nation was if it believed that Raleigh had died tonight.
Guthrie knew better. I wondered how many others knew, or had leaped to the same conclusion Guthrie had. It was much too pat. How long ago had the old man really died then? Days ago? Weeks? But Nye hadn’t dared release the news until he thought he had his hands on the Anti-Com. If Raleigh had been a safety fuse that held Nye in control Raleigh too had been a safeguard for Nye. As long as the President lived the nation would respect his government. Nye was part of it. If Raleigh died before Nye could be sure Comus could hold the nation steady, then Nye might be done for.
But now Nye felt secure. Now he could announce the death. Now he could shove Vice-President Dudley out and seize the power in name that he had held in fact for so long. Now there was nothing to restrain him. Now——
“You get it?” Guthrie said urgently. “While Raleigh was alive Comus didn’t dare clamp down hard on California and risk an open rebellion. This means Nye’s ready to strike. It’s coming, Rohan. Any minute it’s going to break.”
“What is?” I asked. “What’s going to happen?”
“For one thing, I think Nye will blow Corby right off the map. If he has to. He’s got to stop the Anti-Com one way or another. I think the Comus forces are closing in now on Carson City. We know there are rebels here who know things we still have to find out. There’s a lot of rebel ammunition and a lot of rebel forces right here in this town. We’re going to see the kind of fighting in California tonight the country hasn’t seen since the Five Days’ War. Rohan——” He leaned forward and shook my arm urgently.
“Rohan, I want you to help me. I want you to get Cressy out of town before the trouble starts.”
I looked at him blankly. “Cressy?” I said.
He grimaced in the thin darkness. “Cressy is—she’s my responsibility,” he said. “I told you. I’ve got to stay. This is my job and I’m going to follow orders the way I always have. But Cressy—she deserves something better. My wife and I never had a daughter, Rohan, but I—I kind of feel if we had she’d be just like Cressy. She’s a good girl and she’s going to have her chance. She needs help. I want you to see she gets it.”
“Nobody can get out of town,” I said.
“With the right pull, I can manage things. They’re passing Comus cars in and out. I think I can work it.”
I said, “Wait a minute, Guthrie. Use your head. I’ll go if you can get a pass for us. But I’ll take the whole troupe with me.”
He looked at me suspiciously. ‘The whole troupe?”
“I can’t leave them here!” I said. “They’ll be lynched. Besides, once we’re outside Carson City, what then? The country’s full of renegades. The more of us there are the safer. You’ll have to get us some guns. Pod Henken and Roy can use them. I’ll bet Polly can too. And we’ll need all the defense we can get.”
Guthrie said doubtfully, “I don’t know, Rohan. I’m not sure I can——”
“It’s the whole troupe or ny,” I told him.
He hesitated a moment longer. Then he gave in quite suddenly. “All right, have it your way. There isn’t time to argue. Get back in the truck and wait for me. I’ll have to move fast. It shouldn’t take more than half an hour at the most. Be ready to move when I say so.”
He turned and ran off heavily down the dark street.
I watched him go. My heart was pounding with deep, uneasy thuds and my hands had begun to shake again. I was as scared as I’d ever been in my life. Because I knew what I was going to do—or try to do—and the risk was so great I didn’t dare think about it.
I remember the meeting place Elaine had assigned for the rebels to gather next. I wondered if there was time enough to do what I had to do. I heard the heavy tolling to the church bells. I looked up at the stars winking in the dark. I asked myself how much longer before the white glare of explosion would light up the nation from the spot where California used to be.
CHAPTER XXV
THE SCHOOLHOUSE HAD a big ornate AR for Andy Raleigh over the door. The schools, like almost everything else in the nation, were a part of Comus. They’re Communications, aren’t they? Looking up at the big AR as I went up toward the unlit building, I wondered how the Anti-Com could possibly knock out anything as diversified and as powerful as the thing Ted Nye had made of Comus. I didn’t think it could be done. But the gamble had to be made.
A classroom with knee-high chairs and kindergarten tables seemed like a very strange, incongruous place for the meeting of revolutionaries. Or maybe appropriate, after all. Here where the first seeds of acquiescence had been planted in the minds of the newly schooled, maybe the fruits of rebellion were about to be harvested. It was anybody’s guess at this point.
In the dim room lit only by street lights shining through the window walls I couldn’t at first pick Elaine out of the crowd. There was a lot of going and coming, quite orderly. Everything seemed superficially under control, but the air of hysteria was building in the room, and I knew they were finding out how tight the ring had been drawn around Carson City. Maybe they guessed as Guthrie had guessed what was about to happen next.
I got Elaine by the arm as Guthrie had taken me. When she saw who it was she came willingly, with just a flash of that old, intensely personal look which had passed between us before now, then times were not so ruinous. But the flash went by and was past, and everything was strictly business out there in the hall that smelled of chalk and children.
“I got to talk fast,” I said. “Don’t argue. First—you said the Anti-Com isn’t in Carson City. I wasn’t sure before. Now I believe you. Is it in a town called Corby, about twenty minutes from her
e?”
The look of slightly dazzled dismay she turned to me wa answer enough. “All right,” I said. “Next question—is that safety fuse here in Carson City? I need to know because I think I’m going to be able to leave town in the next half hour. Don’t fence with me. If the thing’s here—if it’s finished and if it’s portable—I’ll take it to Corby for you. Yes or no?”
She gave me a look of desperation. “I can’t answer you, Rohan! I haven’t the authority. Even if I had I wouldn’t dare. I——”
I said harshly, “Face it, Elaine! How could things be worse? Comus is searching Corby right now for the Anti-Com. What have you got to lose? There’s nothing you can tell me now about the Anti-Com that Comus and Nye won’t know within the next hour anyhow, when they find it. The worst I could do would be to take your safety fuse and run to the nearest Comus cop with it. How could that hurt anything now? The best thing that could happen would be to get the fuse to Corby before the Anti-Com blows the lid off California. I’ll do it if you’ll let me. How about it?”
She looked up searchingly into my face, hesitated a moment longer, and then sighed a very deep sigh and said, “Wait.” I saw her dark outlines merge with the outlines of the shifting crowd. I saw her stop a passing man, speaking urgently in a whisper, and measure something large and square in mid-air between her outstretched palms.
When she came back she took me by the arms, her hands cold and unsteady, and stood looking up into my face again, still with that anxious, uncertain stare. She drew a deep breath and began to speak quite fast in a very low voice.
“The Anti-Com’s in Corby. In the basement of the Methodist church. You can’t miss the stone tower from anywhere in town. I’ve sent for the safety fuse. If you can get it to the Anti-Com crew they can wire it into the circuit in less than a minute.” She paused. “You know the chance you’re taking,” she said.