American Science Fiction Four Classic Novels 1953-56

by Gary K. Wolfe

  Now he told Len to come in and shut the door. “I’m afraid we’re going to have a really serious talk, and I wanted you here alone because I want you to be free to think and make your decisions without any—well, any other influences.”

  “You don’t think much of Esau, do you?” asked Len, sitting down where the judge had set a chair for him.

  “No,” said Taylor, “but that is neither here nor there. Except that I’ll say further that I do think a great deal of you. And now we’ll leave personalities alone. Len, you work for Mike Dulinsky.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Len, and began to bristle up a bit, defensively. So that was it.

  “Are you going to continue working for him?”

  Len hesitated only a short second before he said again, “Yes, sir.”

  Taylor thought, looking out at the black sky and the ugly dusk. A beautiful forked blaze ran down the clouds. Len counted slowly, and when he reached seven there was a roll of thunder. “It’s still quite a ways off,” he said.

  “Yes, but we’ll catch it. When they come from that direction, we always do. You’ve done a lot of reading this last year, Len. Have you learned anything from it?”

  Len ran his eye lovingly over the shelves. It was too dark to see titles, but he knew the books by their size and place and he had read an awful lot of them.

  “I hope so,” he said.

  “Then apply what you’ve learned. It isn’t any good to you shut up inside your head in a separate cupboard. Do you remember Socrates?”

  “Yes.”

  “He was a greater and a wiser man than you or I will ever be, but that didn’t save him when he ran too hard against the whole body of law and public belief.”

  Lightning flashed again, and this time the interval was shorter. The wind began to blow, tossing the branches of the trees around and riffling the blank surface of the river. Distant figures labored on the wharves to make fast the moorings of the barges, or to hustle bales and sacks under cover. Landward, between the trees, the whitewashed or weathered-silver houses of Refuge glimmered in the last wan light from overhead.

  “Why do you want to hasten the day?” asked Taylor quietly. “You’ll never live to see it, and neither will your children, nor your grandchildren. Why, Len?”

  “Why what?” asked Len, now blankly confused, and then he gasped as Taylor answered him, “Why do you want to bring back the cities?”

  Len was silent, peering into the gloom that had suddenly deepened until Taylor was no more than a shadow four feet away.

  “They were dying even before the Destruction,” said Taylor. “Megalopolis, drowned in its own sewage, choked with its own waste gases, smothered and crushed by its own population. ‘City’ sounds like a musical word to your ear, but what do you really know about them?”

  They had been over this ground before. “Gran used to say——”

  “That she was a little girl then, and little girls would hardly see the dirt, the ugliness, the crowded poverty, the vice. The cities were sucking all the life of the country into themselves and destroying it. Men were no longer individuals, but units in a vast machine, all cut to one pattern, with the same tastes and ideas, the same mass-produced education that did not educate but only pasted a veneer of catchwords over ignorance. Why do you want to bring that back?”

  An old argument, but applied in a totally unexpected way. Len stammered, “I haven’t been thinking about cities one way or the other. And I don’t see what Mr. Dulinsky’s new warehouse has to do with them.”

  “Len, if you’re not honest with yourself, life will never be honest with you. A stupid man could say that he didn’t see and be honest, but not you. Unless you’re still too much of a child to think beyond the immediate fact.”

  “I’m old enough to get married,” said Len hotly, “and that ought to be old enough for anything.”

  “Quite,” said Taylor. “Quite. Here comes the rain, Len. Help me with the windows.” They shut them, and Taylor lit the candle. The room was now unbearably close and hot. “What a pity,” he said, “that the windows always have to be closed just when the cool wind starts to blow. Yes, you’re old enough to get married, and I think Amity has a thought or two in that direction herself. It’s a possibility I want you to consider.”

  Len’s heart began to pound, the way it always did when Amity was involved. He felt wildly excited, and at the same time it was as though a trap had been set before his feet. He sat down again, and the rain thrashed on the windows like hail.

  Taylor said slowly, “Refuge is a good town just the way it stands. You could have a good life here. I can take you off the docks and make a lawyer out of you, and in time you’d be an important man. You would have leisure for study, and all the wisdom of the world is there in those books. And there’s Amity. Those are the things I can give you. What does Dulinsky offer?”

  Len shook his head. “I do my work, and he pays me. That’s all.”

  “You know he’s breaking the law.”

  “It’s a silly law. One warehouse more or less——”

  “One warehouse more, in this case, violates the Thirtieth Amendment, which is the most basic law of this land. It won’t be overlooked.”

  “But it isn’t fair. Nobody here in Refuge wants to see Shadwell spring up and take a lot of business away because there aren’t enough warehouses and wharves and shelters on this side to take care of all the trade.”

  “One more warehouse,” said Taylor, pointedly repeating Len’s words, “and then more wharves to serve it, and more housing for the traders, and pretty soon you’ll need another warehouse still, and that is the way in which cities are born. Len, has Dulinsky ever mentioned Bartorstown to you?”

  Len’s heart, which had been beating so hard for Amity, now stopped in sudden fear. He shivered and said, with perfect truthfulness, “No, sir. Never.”

  “I just wondered. It seems the kind of a thing a Bartorstown man might do. But then I’ve known Mike since we were boys together, and I can’t remember any possible influence—no, I suppose not. But that may not save him, Len, and it may not save you.”

  Len said carefully, “I don’t think I understand.”

  “You and Esau are strangers. People will accept you as long as you don’t run counter to their ways, but if you do, look out.” He leaned his elbows on the desk and looked at Len. “You haven’t been altogether truthful about yourself.”

  “I haven’t told any lies.”

  “That isn’t always necessary. Anyway, I can pretty well guess. You’re a country boy. I would lay odds that you were New Mennonite. And you ran away from home. Why?”

  “I guess,” said Len, choosing his words as a man on the edge of a pitfall chooses his steps, “that it was because Pa and me couldn’t agree on how much was right for me to know.”

  “Thus far,” said Taylor thoughtfully, “and no farther. That has always been a difficult line to draw. Each sect must decide for itself, and to a certain degree, so must every man. Have you found your limit, Len?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Find it,” Taylor said, “before you go too far.”

  They sat for a moment in silence. The rain poured and a lightning bolt came down so close that it made an audible hissing before it hit. The resultant thunder shook the house like an explosion.

  “Do you understand,” asked Taylor, “why the Thirtieth Amendment was passed?”

  “So there wouldn’t be any more cities.”

  “Yes, but do you comprehend the reasoning behind that interdiction? I was brought up in a certain body of belief, and in public I wouldn’t dream of contradicting any part of it, but here in private I can say that I do not believe that God directed the cities to be destroyed because they were sinful. I’ve read too much history. The enemy bombed the big key cities because they were excellent targets, centers of population, centers of manufacture and distribution, without which the country would be like a man with his head cut off. And it worked out just that way. The enormou
sly complex system of supply broke down, the cities that were not bombed had to be abandoned because they were not only dangerous but useless, and everyone was thrown back on the simple basics of survival, chiefly the search for food.

  “The men who framed the new laws were determined that that should not happen again. They had the people dispersed now, and they were going to keep them that way, close to their source of supply and offering no more easy targets to a potential enemy. So they passed the Thirtieth Amendment. It was a wise law. It suited the people. They had just had a fearful object lesson in what kind of deathtraps the cities could be. They didn’t want any more of them, and gradually that became an article of faith. The country has been healthy and prosperous under the Thirtieth Amendment, Len. Leave it alone.”

  “Maybe you’re right,” said Len, scowling at the candle flame. “But when Mr. Dulinsky says how the country has really started to grow again and shouldn’t be stopped by outgrown laws, I think he’s right, too.”

  “Don’t let him fool you. He’s not worried about the country. He’s a man who owns four warehouses and wants to own five and is sore because the law says he can’t do it.”

  The judge stood up.

  “You’ll have to decide what’s right in your own mind. But I want to make one thing clear to you. I have my wife and my daughter and myself to think about. If you go on with Dulinsky you’ll have to leave my house. No more walks with Amity. No more books. And I warn you, if I am called upon to judge you, judge you I will.”

  Len stood up too. “Yes, sir.”

  Taylor dropped a hand on his shoulder. “Don’t be a fool, Len. Think it over.”

  “I will.” He went out, feeling sullen and resentful and at the same time convinced that the judge was talking sense. Amity, marriage, a place in the community, a future, roots, no more Dulinsky, no more doubt. No more Bartorstown. No more dream ing. No more seeking and never finding.

  He thought about being married to Amity, and what it would be like. It frightened him so that he sweated like a colt seeing harness for the first time. No more dreaming for fair. He thought of Brother James, who by now must be the father of several small Mennonites, and he wondered whether, on the whole, Refuge was very different from Piper’s Run, and if Amity was worth having come all this way for. Amity, or Plato. He had not read Plato in Piper’s Run, and he had read him in Refuge, but Plato did not seem like the whole answer, either.

  No more Bartorstown. But would he ever find it, anyway? Was he crazy to think of exchanging a girl for a phantom?

  The hall was dark, except for the intermittent flashes of lightning. There was one of these as he passed the foot of the stairs, and in its brief glare he saw Esau and Amity in the triangular alcove under the treads. They were pressed close together and Esau was kissing her hard, and Amity was not protesting.

  9

  It was the Sabbath afternoon. They were standing in the shadow of the rose arbor, and Amity was glaring at him.

  “You did not see me doing any such thing, and if you tell anybody you did I’ll say you’re lying!”

  “I know what I saw,” said Len, “and so do you.”

  She made her thick braid switch back and forth, in a way she had of tossing her head. “I’m not promised to you.”

  “Would you like to be, Amity?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know.”

  “Then why were you kissing Esau?”

  “Well, because,” she said very reasonably, “how would I know which one of you I like the best, if I didn’t?”

  “All right,” said Len. “All right, then.” He reached out and pulled her to him, and because he was thinking of how Esau had done it he was rather rough about it. For the first time he held her really tight and felt how soft and firm she was and how her body curved amazingly. Her eyes were close to his, so close that they became only a blue color without any shape, and he felt dizzy and shut his own, and found her mouth just by touch alone.

  After a while he pushed her away a little and said, “Now which is it?” He was shaking all over, but there was only the faintest flush in Amity’s cheeks and the look she gave him was quite cool. She smiled.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “You’ll have to try again.” “Is that what you told Esau?”

  “What do you care what I told Esau?” Again the yellow braid went swish-swish across the back of her dress. “You mind your own business, Len Colter.”

  “I could make it my business.”

  “Who said?”

  “Your father said, that’s who.”

  “Oh,” said Amity. “He did.” Suddenly it was as though a curtain had dropped between them. She drew away, and the line of her mouth got hard.

  “Amity,” he said. “Listen, Amity, I——”

  “You leave me alone. You hear, Len?”

  “What’s so different now? You were anxious enough a minute ago.”

  “Anxious! That’s all you know. And if you think because you’ve been sneaking around to my father behind my back——”

  “I didn’t sneak. Amity, listen.” He caught her again and pulled her toward him, and she hissed at him between her teeth. “Let me go, I don’t belong to you, I don’t belong to anybody! Let me go——”

  He held her, struggling. It excited him, and he laughed and bent his head to kiss her again.

  “Aw, come on, Amity, I love you——”

  She squalled like a cat and clawed his cheek. He let her go, and she was not pretty any more, her face was all twisted and ugly and her eyes were mean. She ran away from him down the path. The air was warm and the smell of roses was heavy around him. For a while he stood looking after her, and then he walked slowly to the house and up to the room he shared with Esau.

  Esau was lying on the bed, half asleep. He only grunted and rolled over when Len came in. Len opened the door of the shallow cupboard. He took out a small sack made of tough canvas and began to pack his belongings into it, methodically, ramming each article down into place with unnecessary force. His face was flushed and his brows pulled down into a heavy scowl.

  Esau rolled back again. He blinked at Len and said, “What do you think you’re doing?”

  “Packing.”

  “Packing!” Esau sat up. “What for?”

  “What do people usually do it for? I’m leaving.”

  Esau’s feet hit the floor. “Are you crazy? What do you mean, you’re leaving, just like that. Don’t I have anything to say about it?”

  “Not about me leaving, you don’t. You can do what you want to. Look out, I want those boots.”

  “All right! But you can’t—— Wait a minute. What’s that on your cheek?”

  “What?” Len swiped at his cheek with the back of his hand. It came away with a little red smear on it. Amity had dug deep.

  Esau began to laugh.

  Len straightened up. “What’s funny?”

  “She finally told you off, did she? Oh, don’t give me any story about how the cat scratched you, I know claw marks when I see them. Good. I told you to keep away from her, but you wouldn’t listen. I——”

  “Do you figure,” asked Len quietly, “that she belongs to you?”

  Esau smiled. “I could have told you that, too.”

  Len hit him. It was the first time in his life that he had hit anybody in genuine anger. He watched Esau fall backward onto the bed, his eyes bulging with surprise and a thin red trickle springing out of the corner of his mouth, and it all seemed to happen very slowly, giving him plenty of time to feel guilty and regretful and confused. It was almost as though he had struck his own brother. But he was still angry. He grabbed up his bag and started out the door, and Esau sprang off the bed and caught him by the shoulder of his jacket, spinning him around. “Hit me, will you?” he panted. “Hit me, you dirty——” He called Len a name he had picked up along the river docks and swung his fist, hard.

  Len ducked. Esau’s knuckles slid along the side of his jaw and on into the solid jamb of the door. Esau howled a
nd danced away, holding his hand under his other arm and cursing. Len started to say something like “I’m sorry,” but changed his mind and turned again to go. And Judge Taylor was in the hall.

  “Stop that,” he said to Esau, and Esau stopped, standing still in the middle of the room. Taylor looked from one to the other and to the bag in Len’s hand. “I’ve just spoken to Amity,” he said, and Len could see that underneath his judicial manner Taylor was in a seething rage. “I’m sorry, Len. I seem to have made an error of judgment.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Len. “I was just going.”

  Taylor nodded. “All the same,” he said, “what I told you is true. Remember it.” He looked keenly at Esau.

  “Let him go,” Esau said. “I’m staying right here.”

  “I think not,” said Taylor.

  Esau said, “But he——”

  “I hit him first,” said Len.

  “That is neither here nor there,” said the judge. “Get your things together, Esau.”

  “But why? I make enough to pay the rent. I haven’t done any——”

  “I’m not sure yet exactly what you have done, but much or little, that’s an end to it. The room is no longer for rent. And if I catch you around my daughter again I’ll have you run out of town. Is that clear?”

  Esau glowered at him, but he did not say anything. He started to throw his things into a pile on the bed. Len went out past the judge, along the hall and down the stairs. He went out the back way, and as he passed the kitchen he caught a glimpse through the half-open door of Amity bent over the kitchen table, sobbing like a wildcat, and Mrs. Taylor watching her with an expression of blank dismay, one hand raised as though for a comforting pat on the shoulder but stopped in midair and forgotten.

  Len let himself out by the back gate, avoiding the rose arbor.