American Science Fiction Four Classic Novels 1953-56

by Gary K. Wolfe

  He thought he did know. And it was amazing, considering that he didn’t care at all about Amity, how much the idea upset him.

  He rose and went out into the warm night. The compound was dark and silent, except for an occasional thump from the stables where the big horses moved in their stalls. He crossed it and went up through the sleeping streets of the town, deliberately taking the long way round so as not to pass the new warehouse. He didn’t want to talk to the guards.

  The long way round was long enough to take him past Judge Taylor’s house. Nothing was stirring there, and no light showed. He picked out Amity’s window, and then he felt ashamed and moved on, down to the docks.

  The door of Dulinsky’s office was locked, but Esau had a key now, so that didn’t mean anything. Len hesitated. The wet smell of the river was strong in the air, a presage of rain, and the sky was clouded. The watch fires burned, farther down the bank. It was quiet, and somehow the office shed had the feel of an empty building. Len unlocked the door and went in.

  Esau was not there.

  Len stood still for quite a while, in a black fury at first, but calming down gradually into a sort of disgusted contempt for Esau’s stupidity. As for Amity, if that was what she wanted she was welcome to it. He wasn’t angry. Not much.

  Esau’s cot had not been touched. Len turned back the quilt, folding it carefully. He set Esau’s spare boots straight under the edge of the cot, picked up a soiled shirt and hung it neatly on a peg. Then he lit the lamp beside Esau’s bed, turned it low, and left it burning. He went out, locking the office door behind him.

  It was very late when he got back to the compound. Even so, he sat for a long time on the doorstep, looking at the night and thinking. Lonely thoughts.

  In the morning he stopped by to pick up the letter Dulinsky had for him to take to Shadwell, and Esau was there, looking so gray and old about the face that Len almost felt sorry for him.

  “What’s the matter with you?” he demanded.

  Esau snarled at him.

  “You look scared to death,” said Len deliberately. “Is somebody making you threats about the warehouse?”

  “Mind your own damn business,” said Esau, and Len smiled inwardly. Let him sweat. Let him wonder who was here last night, when he was where he had no business to be. Let him wonder who knows, and wait.

  He went down and got on board the ferry, a great lumbering flat thing with a shack to shelter the boiler and the wood stack. A light, steady rain had begun to fall, and the far shore was obscured in mist. A southbound trader with a load of woolens and leather was crossing too. Len helped him with his team and then sat with him in the wagon, remembering what magic things these wagons had been to him when he was a boy. The Canfield Fair seemed like something that happened a million years ago. The trader was a thin man with a gingery beard that reminded him of Soames. He shuddered and looked away, down-river, where the slow strong current ran forever to the west. A launch was beating its way up against it. The launch made a mournful hooting at the ferry, and the ferry answered, and then from the east a third voice spoke and a string of barges went down well in front of them, loaded with coal that glistened bright and black in the rain.

  Shadwell was little and new and raw, and growing so fast that there were half-built buildings wherever Len looked. The waterfront hummed, and up on a rise behind it the big Shadwell house sat watching with all its glassy eyes.

  Len walked up to the warehouse office where he had to go to deliver his letter. A lot of the men who would have been building were not working today on account of the rain. There was a little gang of them bunched up on the porch of the general store. It seemed to Len as though they watched him pretty close, but then that was probably only because he was a stranger off the ferry. He went in and gave the letter to a small elderly man named Gerrit, who read it hurriedly and then eyed Len as though he had crept out of the mud at low water.

  “You tell Mike Dulinsky,” he said, “that I follow the words of the Good Book that forbid me to have any dealings with unrighteous men. And as for you, I’d advise you to do the same. But you’re a young man, and the young are always sinful, so I won’t waste my breath. Git.”

  He flung the letter in a box of wastepaper and turned away. Len shrugged and went out. He headed off across the muddy square toward the traders’ compound. One of the men on the porch of the general store came down the steps and ambled across to Gerrit’s office. It was raining harder, and little streams of yellow water ran everywhere along the naked ground.

  There were a lot of wagons in the compound, but none of them bore Hostetter’s name. Most of the men were under cover. He did not see anyone he knew, and no one spoke to him. After a while he turned around and went back.

  The square was full of men. They stood in the rain, and the yellow water splashed around their boots, but they did not seem to mind. They were all facing one way, toward Len.

  One of them said, “You’re from Refuge.”

  Len nodded.

  “You work for Dulinsky.”

  Len shrugged and started to push by him.

  Two other men came up on either side of him and caught his arms. He tried to get free, but they held him tight, one on each side, and when he tried to kick they stomped his ankles.

  The first man said, “We got a message for Refuge. You tell them. We ain’t going to let them take away what is rightfully ours. If they don’t stop Dulinsky, we will. Can you remember that?”

  Len glared at him. He was scared. He did not say anything.

  “Make him remember it, boys,” said the first man.

  The two men holding him were joined by two more. They threw Len face down in the mud. He got up, and when he was halfway to his feet they kicked him flat again and grabbed his arms and rolled him. Then somebody else grabbed him and then another and another, roughing him around the square between them, perfectly quiet except for the little grunts of effort, not really hurting him too badly but never giving him a chance to fight back. When they were through they went away and left him, dizzy and gasping for breath, spitting out mud and water. He scrambled to his feet and looked around, but the square was deserted. He went down to the ferry and got aboard, although it was a long time before it was due to go back again. He was wet to the skin and shivering, although he was not conscious of being cold.

  The ferry captain was a native of Refuge. He helped Len clean up and gave him a blanket out of his own locker. Then Len looked up along the streets of Shadwell.

  “I’ll kill ’em,” said Len. “I’ll kill ’em.”

  “Sure,” said the ferry captain. “And I’ll tell you one thing. They better not come over to Refuge and start trouble, or they’ll find out what trouble is.”

  Toward midafternoon the rain stopped, and by five o’clock, when the ferry docked again at Refuge, the sky was clearing. Len reported to Dulinsky, who looked grave and shook his head.

  “I’m sorry, Len,” he said. “I should have known better.”

  “Well,” said Len, “they didn’t do me any damage, and now you know. They’ll likely come over to the rally.”

  Dulinsky nodded. His eyes began to shine and he rubbed his hands together. “Maybe that’s just what we want,” he said. “Go change your clothes and get some supper. I’ll see you later.”

  Len started home, but Dulinsky was already ahead of him, posting men to watch along the docks and doubling the warehouse guard.

  At the compound Fisher spotted Len and asked him, “What happened to you?”

  “I had a little trouble with the Shads,” said Len, still too sore to want to talk about it. He went into his cabin and shut the door, and began to strip off his clothes, dried stiff with the yellow mud. And he wondered.

  He wondered if Hostetter had abandoned him. And he wondered if Hostetter or anyone else would really be able to do much, when the time came. He remembered the voice saying, You may not always be saved.

  When it was dark, he walked over to the town square, and the r
ally.

  11

  The main square of Refuge was wide and grassy, with trees to make shade there in the summer. The church, austere and gaunt and authoritative, dominated the square from its northern side. On the east and west were lesser buildings, stores, houses, a school, but on the southern side the town hall stood, not as tall as the church but broader, spreading out into wings that housed the courtrooms, the archives, the various offices necessary to the orderly running of a township. The shops and the public buildings were now closed and dark, and Len noticed that some of the shopkeepers had put up their storm shutters.

  The square was full. It seemed as though all the men and half the women of Refuge were there, standing around on the wet grass or moving back and forth to talk, and there were others there, farmers in from the country, a handful of New Mennonites. A sort of pulpit stood in the middle of the square. It was a permanent structure, and it was used chiefly by visiting preachers at open-air prayer meetings, but political speakers used it too at the time of a local or national election. Mike Dulinsky was going to use it tonight. Len remembered what Gran had told him about the old days, when a speaker could talk to everybody in the country at once through the teevee boxes, and he wondered with a quivering thrill of excitement if tonight was the start of the long road back to that kind of a world—Mike Dulinsky talking to a handful of people in a village named Refuge on the dark Ohio. He had read enough of Judge Taylor’s history books to know that that was the way things happened sometimes. His heart began to beat faster, and he walked nervously back and forth, vaguely determined that Dulinsky should talk, no matter who tried to stop him.

  The preacher, Brother Meyerhoff, came out of the side door of the church. Four of the deacons were with him, and a fifth man Len did not recognize until they came into the light of one of the bonfires that burned there. It was Judge Taylor. They passed on and Len lost them in the crowd, but he was sure they were heading for the speaker’s stand. He followed them, slowly. He was about halfway across the grassy open when Mike Dulinsky came from the other side and there was a general motion toward the center, and the crowd suddenly clotted up so he couldn’t get through it without pushing. There were half a dozen men with Dulinsky, carrying lanterns on long poles. They put these in brackets around the speaker’s pulpit, so that it stood up like a bright column in the darkness. Dulinsky climbed up and began to speak.

  “Tonight,” he said, “we stand at a crossroads.”

  Somebody pulled at Len’s sleeve, and he turned around. It was Esau, nodding to him to come away from the crowd.

  “There’s boats on the river,” Esau said, when they were out of earshot. “Coming this way. You warn him, Len, I got to get back to the docks.” He looked furtively around. “Is Amity here?”

  “I don’t know. The judge is.”

  “Oh Lord,” said Esau. “Listen, I got to go. If you see Amity, tell her I won’t be around for a while. She’ll understand.”

  “Will she? Anyway, I thought you were bragging how nobody could——”

  “Oh, shut up. You tell Dulinsky they’re coming. Watch yourself, Len. Don’t get in any more trouble than you can help.”

  “It looks to me,” said Len, “as though you’re the one in trouble. If I don’t see Amity, I’ll give the message to her father.”

  Esau swore and disappeared into the dark. Len began to edge his way through the crowd. They were standing quiet, listening, very grave and intent. Dulinsky was talking to them with a passionate sincerity. This was his one time, and he was giving everything he had to it.

  “—that was eighty years ago. No danger menaces us now. Why should we continue to live in the shadow of a fear for which there is no longer any cause?”

  A ripple of sound, half choked, half eager, ran across the crowd. Dulinsky gave it no time to die.

  “I’ll tell you why!” he shouted. “It’s because the New Mennonites climbed into the saddle and have hung onto the government ever since. They don’t like growth, they don’t like change. Their creed rejects them both, and so does their greed. Yes, I said greed! They’re farmers. They don’t want to see the trading centers like Refuge get rich and fat. They don’t want a competitive market, and above all they don’t want people like us pushing them out of their nice seats in Congress where they can make all the laws. So they forbid us to build a new warehouse when we need it. Now do you think that’s fair or right or godly? You there, Brother Meyerhoff, do you say the New Mennonites should tell us all how to live, or should our own Church of Holy Thankfulness have something to say about it too?”

  Brother Meyerhoff answered, “It hasn’t to do with them or with us. It has to do with you, Dulinsky, and you’re talking blasphemy!”

  A cry of voices, mostly female, seconded him. Len pushed himself to the foot of the stand. Dulinsky was leaning over, looking at Meyerhoff. There were beads of sweat on his forehead.

  “Blaspheming, am I?” he demanded. “You tell me where.”

  “You’ve been to church. You’ve read the Book and listened to the sermons. You know how the Almighty cleansed the land of cities, and bade His children that He saved to walk henceforth in the path of righteousness, to love the things of the spirit and not the things of the flesh! In the words of the prophet Nahum——”

  “I don’t want to build a city,” said Dulinsky. “I want to build a warehouse.”

  There was a nervous tittering, quickly hushed. Meyerhoff ’s face was crimson above his beard. Len mounted the steps and spoke to Dulinsky, who nodded. Len climbed down again. He wanted to tell Dulinsky to lay off the New Mennonites, but he did not quite dare for fear of giving himself away.

  “Who,” asked Dulinsky of Meyerhoff, “has been telling you about cities?” He paused, and then he pointed and said, “Is it you, Judge Taylor?”

  In the glare of the lanterns, Len saw that Taylor’s face was oddly pale and strained. His voice, when he spoke, was quiet but it rang all over the square.

  “There is an amendment to the Constitution of the United States that forbids you to do this. No amount of talk will change that, Dulinsky.”

  “Ah,” said Dulinsky, in a satisfied voice as though he had made Judge Taylor fall into some trap, “that’s where you’re wrong. Talk is exactly what will change it. If enough people talk, and talk loud enough and long enough, that amendment will be changed so that a man can build a warehouse if he needs it to shelter flour or hides, or a house if he needs it to shelter his family.” He raised his voice in a sudden shout. “You think about that, you people! Your own kids have had to leave Refuge, and more and more of them will have to go, because they can’t build any more houses here when they get married. Am I right?”

  He got a response on that. Dulinsky grinned. Out on the dark edges of the crowd a man appeared, and then another and another, coming softly from the direction of the river. And Meyerhoff said, in a voice shaking with anger, “Always, in every age, the unbeliever has prepared the way for evil.”

  “Maybe,” said Dulinsky. He was looking out over Meyerhoff’s head, to the edges of the crowd. “And I’ll admit that I’m an unbeliever.” He glanced down at Len, giving him the warning, while the crowd gasped over that. Then he went on, fast and smooth.

  “I’m an unbeliever in poverty, in hunger, in misery. I don’t know anybody who does believe in those things, except the New Ishmaelites, but I can’t recall we ever thought much of them. In fact, we drove ’em out. I’m an unbeliever in taking a healthy growing child and strapping it down with bands so it won’t get any taller than somebody thinks it should. I——”

  Judge Taylor brushed past Len and mounted the steps. Dulinsky looked surprised and stopped in midsentence. Taylor gave him one burning glance and said, “A man can make anything he wants to out of words.” He turned to the crowd. “I’m going to give you a fact, and then we’ll see if Dulinsky can talk it away. If you break the township law it won’t affect Refuge alone. It will affect all the country around it. Now, the New Mennonites are peaceful
folk and their creed forbids them from violence. They will proceed by due process of law, no matter how long it takes. But there are other sects in the countryside, and their beliefs are different. They look on it as their duty to take up the cudgel for the Lord.”

  He paused, and in the stillness Len could hear the breathing of the people.

  “You’d better think twice,” said Taylor, “before you provoke them into taking it up against you.”

  There was a burst of applause from the outer edge of the crowd. Dulinsky asked scornfully, “Who are you afraid of, Judge—the farmers or the Shadwell men?” He leaned out over the rail and beckoned. “Come on up here, you Shads, up where we can see you. You don’t have to be afraid, you’re brave men. I got a lad here who knows how brave you are. Len, climb up here a minute.”

  Len did as he was told, avoiding Judge Taylor’s eyes. Dulinsky pushed him to the rail.

  “Some of you know Len Colter. I sent him to Shadwell this morning on business. Tell us what kind of a welcome you gave him, you Shads, or are you ashamed?”

  The crowd began to mutter and turn around.

  “What’s the matter?” cried a deep, rough voice from the background. “Didn’t he like the taste of Shadwell mud?” The Shadwell men all laughed, and then another voice, one that Len remembered only too well, called to him, “Did you give them our message?”

  “Yes,” said Dulinsky. “Give the people that message, Len. Say it real loud, so they can all hear.”

  Judge Taylor said suddenly, under his breath, “You’ll regret this night.” He ran down the steps.