by C. L. Moore
He was close, slanting closer across the street. Even firing left-handed I ought to get him with any luck. But with my finger on the trigger, suddenly I paused, watching Guthrie.
He was in trouble. He stood all alone in the street, in bad trouble from some inward rebellion of his own.
This was Cressy he had to shoot.
I saw his gun hand rise and level the weapon at her. And I saw his gun hand somehow seem to rebel. Slowly the muzzle of the pistol sank and he stood watching her run, her hair blowing in the night wind, her sks belling about her. In the dimness I couldn’t see his face, but an anguish of irresolution was in every line of him. I remembered that other dark night in the truck station after we had fought off the renegades. I remembered Guthrie looking down into his glass and talking in slow, gentle tones about Cressy and his wife and his own past, the things he had hoped for and never had.
I thought, He won’t do it. He can’t. And I watched with a paralyzed fascination. I knew I ought to shoot. I shouldn’t take any chances with him. But I had the obscure feeling that this was a decision Guthrie had to make, his own crossroads in the center of his own life. He had the right to choose for himself without interruption from anybody. It was very important that he should make his choice unaided.
He drew a deep breath and lifted his gun again, trying to take aim. Then he dropped his arm as if all strength had gone out of it. I thought, It isn’t only that this is Cressy that bothers him—I think. It was more than that. Maybe he too knew that the whole United States was in the box she carried. If he fired and Cressy fell, the box fell too, and we would all fall with it and crack wide open on the dusty street.
He lifted his hand again, the third time. Again there was revolution in his mind and his muscles. I could hear him breathing hard. Then I saw him raise his other hand to brace the reluctant wrist. I saw his feet shift on the pavement, taking a firmer stance. I heard that strange roaring so loud in my ears I could hear nothing else at all.
Guthrie squinted along the barrel of his gun. …
I couldn’t wait any longer. I didn’t dare. My finger was on the trigger. I felt it tighten without any orders from my mind. I felt the gun jolt, I heard the explosion. My shot cracked loud in the reverberating street, audible for an instant even over that increasing roar.
A fraction of a second after my bullet hit him his own shot exploded from his gun. But it exploded harmlessly upward into the roaring air, because he was falling as he fired.
Cressy didn’t even look back. She only ducked her head over the box, hugging it tighter, and staggered up the steps of the Methodist church.
I let my gun hand drop to the wet grass. In spite of the roaring in my ears I felt as if an immense silence were settling around me in the empty street. I saw the church door open and Cressy vanished through it to her rendezvous with history. I sat there alone on the damp dark grass with the smell of blood and geraniums strong around me. The stars were very bright and I felt very much alone.
The roaring in my ears was distant but so strong I wondered why I hadn’t blacked out by now. I shook my head gently trying to make the noise stop. And then for the first time it dawned upon me that the sound wasn’t inside my head. I wasn’t in the town at all.
It was in the sky.
And it was coming nearer, converging upon Corby out of the black night of the continent. It was Ted Nye’s last throw of the di I had expected bombers or bombs upon Corby long before now. Ted Nye at last had made his choice. He knew he had gambled and almost lost. Almost …
A strange, childish little rhyme sang through my head.
Ted—Dead.
Nye—Die.
I felt it circle around and around, following the walls of my skull. The town was full of the wail of sirens and the reverberations of gunfire, but the hollow thunder of the bombers was beginning to blanket all other sound. I felt very light, very dizzy. I felt somehow as if my whole life until this minute had been a long rehearsal for the real thing. For this moment on the dark grass with the stars winking over me.
Suddenly my ears ached with silence.
A silence that fell like a physical blow over Corby and the world. I thought I had gone deaf. I thought I was hovering on the verge of a faint. The sirens had stopped screaming. The gunfire had faltered to a ragged, astonished stop. No voices shouted.
And in the sky, wiped out as if with one enormous gesture, the heavy throbbing of the bombers had ceased to sound.
My reason caught up with my unbelieving senses. The Anti-Com, I thought. The Anti-Com just went on.
Comus is dead.
I felt one moment of anguish and loss for all the power, that wonderful, intricate, beautiful thing which had saved the nation in its day, before corruption touched it. For the lustrous world I had known and would never know again. The world had gone darker and grimmer and heavier in this moment while history turned around me in the silence and the night. A new world lay ahead. All I could be sure of was that it would be a harsh world, full of sweat and bloodshed and uncertainty. But a real world, breathing and alive.
“What’s past is prologue,” I thought. “Wait and see.”
I sat there on the trampled grass, dizzy and confused and somehow, strangely, very happy. Very calm.
Around me in the town voices were beginning to rise again. Gunfire broke out spasmodically here and there. But no sirens. No lights except for the light of fires. Comus lay dead across the continent like a vast, inert giant.
I sat quietly waiting for the crash beyond the mountains where the bombers had begun to fall.
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Also by C. L. Moore
Novels
Earth's Last Citadel (1943) (with Henry Kuttner)
The Mask of Circe (1948) (with Henry Kuttner)
Doomsday Morning (1957)
Collections
Beyond Earth's Gates (1949)
Judgment Night (1952)
Shambleau and Others (1953)
Northwest of Earth (1954)
No Boundaries (with Henry Kuttner (1955))
C L Moore (1911 – 1987)
Catherine Lucille Moore was born in Indianapolis in 1911. Prolonged illness when young meant she spent much of her time as a child reading the fantastic tales of the day, a background that no doubt spurred her on to become a writer of science fiction and fantasy herself. Moore made her first professional sale to Weird Tales while still in her early 20's: the planetary romance 'Shambleau', which introduced one of her best-known heroes Northwest Smith. She went on to produce a highly respected body of work, initially solo for Weird Tales and then, in collaboration with her husband, fellow SF writer Henry Kuttner, whom she married in 1940, for John W. Campbell's Astounding Science Fiction. Moore was one of the first women to rise to prominence in the male-dominated world of early SF, and paved the way for others to follow in her footsteps. Moore ceased to write fiction after Kuttner's death in 1958, concentrating instead on writing for television. She died in April 1987 after a long battle with Alzheimer's Disease.
Copyright
A Gollancz eBook
Copyright © C.L. Moore 1957
All rights reserved.
The right of C.L. Moore to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This eBook first published in Great Britain in 2011 by
Gollancz
The Orion Publishing Group Ltd
Orion House
5 Upper Saint Martin’s Lane
London, WC2H 9EA
An Hachette UK Company
A CIP catalogue record fo
r this book
is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978 0 575 11938 3
All characters and events in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher, nor to be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published without a similar condition, including this condition, being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
www.orionbooks.co.uk
Table of Contents
Title Page
Gateway Introduction
Contents
Chapter I
Chapter II
Chapter III
Chapter IV
Chapter V
Chapter VI
Chapter VI>
Chapter VIII
Chapter IX
Chapter X
Chapter XI
Chapter XII
Chapter XIII
Chapter XIV
Chapter XV
Chapter XVI
Chapter XVII
Chapter XVIII
Chapter XIX
Chapter XX
Chapter XXI
Chapter XXII
Chapter XXIII
Chapter XXIV
Chapter XXV
Chapter XXVI
Chapter XXVII
Chapter XXVIII
Website
Also by C. L. Moore
Author Bio
Copyright