We walked along in silence for a while. Then I said, “Look, Alice, I blew my top a while ago, and we almost got into trouble. So why don’t we agree to let bygones be bygones and start out on a nice fresh foot?”
“Nothing doing! I will refrain from quarreling, but there’ll be none of this buddy-buddy stuff. Maybe, if we drank this Brew, I might get to liking you. But I doubt if even that could do it.”
I said nothing, determined to keep my mouth shut if it killed me.
Encouraged by my silence—or engaged—she said, “Perhaps we might end up by drinking the Brew. Our water is gone, and if you’re as thirsty as I am, you’re on fire. We’ll be at least fourteen hours without water, maybe twenty. And we’ll be walking all the time. What happens when we just have to have water and there’s nothing but the river to drink from? It won’t be as if the stuff was poison.
“As a matter of fact, we know we’ll probably be very happy.
And that’s the worst of it. That X substance, or Brew, or whatever you want to call it, is the most insidious drug ever invented. Its addicts not only seem to be permanently happy, they benefit in so many other ways from it.“
I couldn’t keep silent any longer. “That’s dangerous talk!”
“Not at all, Mister Temper. Merely the facts.”
“I don’t like it!”
“What are you so vehement about?”
“Why?” I asked, my voice a little harder. “There’s no reason why I should be ashamed. My parents were hopheads. My father died in the state hospital. My mother was cured, but she burned to death when the restaurant she was cooking in caught fire. Both are buried in the old Meltonville cemetery just outside Onaback. When I was younger, I used to visit their graves at night and howl at the skies because an unjust God had allowed them to die in such a vile and beastly fashion. I…”
Her voice was small but firm and cool. “I’m sorry, Dan, that that happened to you. But you’re getting a little melodramatic aren’t you?”
I subsided at once. “You’re right. It’s just that you seem to needle me so I want to—”
“Bare your naked soul? No, thanks, Dan. It’s bad enough to have to bare our bodies. I don’t want to make you sore, but there’s not much comparison between the old narcotics and this Brew.”
“There’s no degeneration of the body of the Brewdrinker? How do you know there isn’t? Has this been going on long enough to tell? And if everybody’s so healthy and harmless and happy, why did Polivinosel try to rape you?”
“I’m certainly not trying to defend that Jackass,” she said. “But, Dan, can’t you catch the difference in the psychic atmosphere around here? There seem to be no barriers between men and women doing what they want with each other. Nor are they jealous of each other. Didn’t you deduce, from what that Russell-type woman said, that Polivinosel had his choice of women and nobody objected? He probably took it for granted that I’d want to roll in the grass with him.”
“All right, all right,” I said. “But it’s disgusting, and I can’t understand why Durham made him a god of fertility when he seems to have hated him so.”
“What do you know about Durham?” she countered.
I told her that Durham had been a short, bald, and paunchy little man with a face like an Irish leprechaun, with a wife who henpecked him till the holes showed, with a poet’s soul, with a penchant for quoting Greek and Latin classics, with a delight in making puns, and with an unsuppressed desire to get his book of essays, The Golden Age, published.
“Would you say he had a vindictive mind?” she asked.
“No, he was very meek and forbearing. Why?”
“Well, my half-sister Peggy wrote that her steady, Polivinosel, hated Durham because he had to take his course to get a credit in the Humanities. Not only that, it was evident that Durham was sweet on Peggy. So, Polivinosel upset the doctor every time he got a chance. In fact, she mentioned that in her last letter to me just before she disappeared. And when I read in the papers that Durham was suspected of having murdered them, I wondered if he hadn’t been harboring his hate for a long time.”
“Not the doc,” I protested. “He might get mad, but not for long.”
“There you are,” she said triumphantly. “He changed Polivinosel into a jackass, and then he got soft-hearted and forgave him. Why not? He had Peggy.”
“But why wasn’t Polivinosel changed back to a man then?”
“All I know is that he was majoring in Agriculture, and, if I’m to believe Peggy’s letters, he was a Casanova.”
“No wonder you were a little sarcastic when I gave my lecture,” I said. “You knew more about those two than I did. But that doesn’t excuse your reference to my baldness and false teeth.”
She turned away. “I don’t know why I said that. All I do know is that I hated you because you were a civilian and were being given such authority and entrusted with such an important mission.”
I wanted to ask her if she’d changed her mind. Also I was sure that wasn’t all there was to it, but I didn’t press the point. I went on to tell her all I knew about Durham. The only thing I kept back was the most important. I had to sound her out before I mentioned that.
“Then the way you see it,” she said, “is that everything that’s been happening here fits this Doctor Boswell Durham’s description of the hypothetical Golden Age?”
“Yes,” I said. “He often used to lecture to us on what an opportunity the ancient gods lost. He said that if they’d taken the trouble to look at their mortal subjects, they’d have seen how to do away with disease, poverty, unhappiness, and war. But he maintained the ancient gods were really men who had somehow or other gotten superhuman powers and didn’t know how to use them because they weren’t versed in philosophy, ethics, or science.
“He used to say he could do better, and he would then proceed to give us his lecture entitled How to Be a God and Like It. It used to make us laugh, because you couldn’t imagine anyone less divine than Durham.”
“I know that,” she said. “Peggy wrote me about it. She said that was what irked Polivinosel so. He didn’t understand that the doctor was just projecting his dream world into classroom terms. Probably he dreamed of such a place so he could escape from his wife’s nagging. Poor little fellow.”
“Poor little fellow, my foot!” I snorted. “He’s done just what he said he wanted to do, hasn’t he? How many others can say the same, especially on such a scale?”
“No one,” she admitted. “But tell me, what was Durham’s main thesis in The Golden Age?”
“He maintained that history showed that the so-called common man, Mr. Everyman, is a guy who wants to be left alone and is quite pleased if only his mundane life runs fairly smoothly. His ideal is an existence with no diseases, plenty of food and amusement and sex and affection, no worry about paying bills, just enough work to keep from getting bored with all play and someone to do his thinking for him. Most adults want a god of some sort to run things for them while they do just what they please.”
“Why,” exclaimed Alice, “he isn’t any better than Hitler or Stalin!”
“Not at all,” I said. “He could bring about Eden as we can see by looking around us. And he didn’t believe in any particular ideology or in using force. He…”
I stopped, mouth open. I’d been defending the Professor!
Alice giggled. “Did you change your mind?”
“No,” I said. “Not at all. Because the Professor, like my dictator, must have changed his mind. He is using force. Look at Polivinosel.”
“He’s no example. He always was an ass, and he still is. And how do we know he doesn’t like being one?”
I had no chance to reply. The eastern horizon was lit up by a great flash of fire. A second or two later, the sound of the explosion reached us.
We were both shocked. We had come to accept the idea that such chemical reactions just didn’t take place in this valley.
Alice clutched my hand and said sharply. “
Do you think the attack has started ahead of schedule? Or is that one we weren’t told about?”
“I don’t think so. Why would an attack be launched around here? Let’s go and see what’s up.”
“You know, I’d have thought that was lightning, except that— well, it was just the opposite of lightning.”
“The negative, you mean?” I asked her.
She nodded. “The streak was—black.”
“I’ve seen lightning streaks that branched out like trees,” I said. “But this is the first tree that I ever…” I stopped and murmured. “No, that’s crazy. I’ll wait until I get there before I make any more comments.”
We left the gravel road and turned right onto a paved highway. I recognized it as the state route that ran past the airfield and into Meltonville, about a mile and a half away. Another explosion lit up the eastern sky, but this time we saw it was much closer than we had first thought.
We hurried forward, tense, ready to take to the woods if danger threatened. We had traveled about half a mile when I stopped so suddenly that Alice bumped into me. She whispered, “What is it?”
“I don’t remember that creekbed ever being there,” I replied slowly. “In fact, I know it wasn’t there. I took a lot of hikes along here when I was a Boy Scout.”
And there it was. It came up from the east, from Onaback’s general direction, and cut southwest, away from the river. It slashed through the state highway, leaving a thirty-foot gap in the road. Somebody had dragged two long tree trunks across the cut and laid planks between them to form a rough bridge.
We crossed it and walked on down the highway, but another explosion to our left told us we were off the trail. This one, very close, came from the edge of a large meadow that I remembered had once been a parking lot for a trucking company.
Alice sniffed and said, “Smell that burning vegetation?”
“Yes.” I pointed to the far side of the creek where the moon shone on the bank. “Look at those.”
Those were the partly burned and shattered stalks and branches of plants about the size of pine trees. They were scattered about forty feet apart. Some lay against the bank; some were stretched along the bottom of the creekbed.
What did it mean? The only way to find out was to investigate. So, as we came abruptly to the creeks end, which was surrounded by a ring of about a hundred people, we tried to elbow through to see what was so interesting.
We never made it, for at that moment a woman screamed, “He put in too much Brew!”
A man bellowed, “Run for your lives!”
The night around us was suddenly gleaming with bodies and clamorous with cries. Everybody was running and pushing everybody else to make room. Nevertheless, in spite of their reckless haste, they were laughing as if it was all a big joke. It was a strange mixture of panic and disdain for the panic.
I grabbed Alice’s hand and started running with them. A man came abreast of us and I shouted. “What’s the danger?”
He was a fantastic figure, the first person I had seen with any clothing on. He wore a red fez with a tassel and a wide green sash wound around his waist. A scimitar was stuck through it at such an angle it looked like a ducktail-shaped rudder. The illusion was furthered by the speed at which he was traveling.
When he heard my shout, he gave me a wild look that contributed to the weirdness of his garb and shouted something.
“Huh?”
Again he yelled at me and sped on.
“What’d he say?” I panted at Alice. “I’ll swear he said ‘Horatio Hornblower.’”
“Sounded more like ‘Yorassiffencornblows,’” she replied.
That was when we found out why the crowd was running like mad. A lion the size of a mountain roared behind us—a blast knocked us flat on our faces—a wave of hot air succeeded the shock—a hail of rocks and clods of dirt pelted us. I yelped as I was hit in the back of one leg. For a moment, I could have sworn my leg was broken.
Alice screamed and grabbed me around the neck. “Save me!”
I’d have liked to, but who was going to save me?
Abruptly, the rocks quit falling, and the yells stopped. Silence, except for the drawing of thankful breaths. Then, giggles and yelps of pure delight and calls back and forth and white bodies were shining in the moonlight as they rose like ghosts from the grass. Fear among these uninhibited people could not last long. They were already joshing each other about the way they’d run and then were walking back to the cause of their flight.
I stopped a woman, a beautiful buxom wench of twenty-five— all the adult female Brew addicts, I later found, were pretty and well-shaped and looked youthful—and I said, “What happened?”
“Ah, the fool Scrambler put too much Brew in the hole,” she replied, smiling. “Anybody could see what’d happen. But he wouldn’t listen to us, and his own buddies are as scrambled as he is, thanks to Mahrud.”
When she uttered that name, she made that sign. These people, no matter how lightly and irreverently they behaved in other matters, were always respectful toward their god Mahrud.
I was confused. “He? Who?” I said, inelegantly.
“He haw?” she brayed and my body turned cold as I thought she was referring to Polivinosel. But she was merely mocking the form of my question. “The Scrambled Men, of course, Baldy.” Looking keenly at me in a single sweep that began at my feet and ended at the top of my head, she added, “If it weren’t for that, I’d think you hadn’t tasted the Brew yet.”
I didn’t know what she meant by that. I looked upward, because she had pointed in that direction. But I couldn’t see anything except the clear sky and the huge distorted moon.
I didn’t want to continue my questioning and expose myself as such a newcomer. I left the woman and, with Alice, followed the crowd back. Their destination was the end of the creek, a newly blasted hole which showed me in a glance how the dry bed had so suddenly come into existence. Somebody has carved it out with a series of the tremendous blasts we’d heard.
A man brushed by me. His legs pumped energetically, his body was bent forward, and one arm was crooked behind his back. His right hand clutched the matted hair on his chest. Jammed sideways on his head was one of those plumed cocked hats you see the big brass of men’s lodges wear during parades. A belt around his otherwise naked waist supported a sheathed sword. High-heeled cowboy boots completed his garb. He frowned deeply and carried, in the hand behind his back, a large map.
“Uh—Admiral,” I called out.
He paid no attention but plowed ahead.
“General!”
Still he wouldn’t turn his head.
“Boss. Chief. Hey, you!”
He looked up. “Winkled tupponies?” he queried.
“Huh?”
Alice said, “Close your mouth before your plate falls out, and come along.”
We got to the excavations edge before the crowd became too thick to penetrate. It was about thirty feet across and sloped steeply down to the center, which was about twenty feet deep. Exactly in the middle reared an enormous, blackened, and burning plant. Talk about Jack and your beanstalk. This was a cornstalk, ears, leaves, and all, and it was at least fifty feet high. It leaned perilously and would, if touched with a finger, fall flaming to the ground. Right on top of us, too, if it happened to be toppling our way. Its roots were as exposed as the plumbing of a half-demolished tenement.
The dirt had been flung away from the roots and piled up around the hole to complete the craterlike appearance of the excavation. It looked as if a meteor had plowed into the ground.
That’s what I thought at first glance. Then I saw from the way the dirt scattered that the meteor must have come up from below.
There was no time to think through the full implication of what I saw, for the huge cornstalk began its long-delayed fall. I was busy, along with everybody else, in running away. After it had fallen with a great crash, and after a number of the oddly dressed men had hitched it up to a ten-horse team and
dragged it away to one side, I returned with Alice. This time I went down into the crater. The soil was hard and dry under my feet. Something had sucked all the water out and had done it fast, too, for the dirt in the adjoining meadow was moist from a recent shower.
Despite the heat contained in the hole, the Scrambled Men swarmed in and began working with shovels and picks upon the western wall. Their leader, the man with the admirals hat, stood in their middle and held the map before him with both hands, while he frowned blackly at it. Every once in a while he’d summon a subordinate with a lordly gesture, point out something on the map, and then designate a spot for him to use his shovel.
“Olderen croakish richbags” he commanded.
“Eniatipac nom, iuo, iuo,” chanted the subordinate.
But the digging turned up nothing they were looking for. And the people standing on the lip of the crater—like the big city crowds that watch steam-shovel excavating—hooted and howled and shouted unheeded advice at the Scrambled Men. They passed bottles of Brew back and forth and had a good time, though I thought some of their helpful hints to the workers were definitely in bad taste.
Suddenly, the semi-Napoleon snorted with rage and threw his hands up so the map fluttered through the air.
“Shimsham the rodtammed shipshuts!” he howled.
“Rerheuf niem, lohwaj!” his men shouted.
“Frammistab the wormbattened frigatebarns!”
The result of all this was that everybody quit digging except for one man. He was dressed in a plug hat and two dozen slave bracelets. He dropped a seed of some sort within a six-foot-deep hole cut almost horizontally into the bank. He filled this with dirt, tamped it, then drove a thin wire down through the soil. Another man, wearing harlequin spectacles in which the glass had been knocked out, and a spiked Prussian officer’s helmet from the First World War, withdrew the wire and poured a cascade of Brew from a huge vase. The thirsty soil gulped it eagerly.
There was silence as the Scrambled Men and the spectators intently watched the ceremony. Suddenly a woman on the excavations edge shouted, “He’s putting in too much again! Stop the fool!”
Classic PJ Farmer Page 9