Len said uncomfortably, “We didn’t know——”
“They told you to say all those things, didn’t they?”
“What things?”
“About what dreadful people they are out there, and what a hateful world it is.”
“I don’t know exactly what you mean,” said Len, “but every word of what we said was true. You think it wasn’t, you go out there and try it.”
He started to push past her up the steps. She put a hand on his arm to stop him.
“I’m sorry. I guess it was all true. But that’s why Sherman had you talk over the radio, so we’d all hear it. Propaganda.” She added shrewdly, “I’ll bet that’s why they let you two in here, just to make us all see how lucky we are.”
Len said, very quietly, “Aren’t you?”
“Oh yes,” said Joan, “we’re very lucky. We have so much more than the people outside. Not in our everyday lives, of course. We don’t even have as much, of things like food and freedom. But we have Clementine, and that makes up. Did you enjoy your trip to The Hole?”
“The Hole?”
“It’s a name some of us have for Bartorstown.”
Her manner and her tone were making him uneasy. He said, “I think I better go in,” and started once more up the steps.
“I hope you did,” she said. “I hope you like the canyon, and Fall Creek. Because they’ll never let you leave.”
He thought of what Sherman had said. He did not blame Sherman. He did not have any intention of going away. But he did not like it. “They’ll learn to trust me,” he said, “someday.”
“Never.”
He did not want to argue with her. “Well, I reckon to stay awhile, anyway. I’ve spent half my life getting here.” “Why?”
“You’re a Bartorstown girl. You shouldn’t have to ask.”
“Because you wanted to learn. That’s right, you said that this morning. You wanted to learn, and nobody would let you.” She made a wide mocking gesture that took in the whole dark canyon. “Go. Learn. Be happy.”
He got her by the shoulder and pulled her close, where he could see her face in the dim glow from the windows. “What’s the matter with you?”
“I just think you’re crazy, that’s all. To have the whole wide world, and throw it all away for this.”
“I’ll be damned,” said Len. He let her go and sat down on the steps and shook his head. “I’ll be damned. Doesn’t anybody like Bartorstown? Seems to me I’ve heard more griping since I got here than I ever heard in my lifetime before.”
“When you’ve lived a lifetime here,” she said bitterly, “you’ll understand. Oh, some of the men get out, sure. But most of us don’t. Most of us never see anything but these canyon walls. And even the men have to come back again. It’s like your friend says. You have to be a fanatic to feel that it’s all worth while.”
“I’ve lived out there,” said Len. “I think what it is now, and what it could be, if——”
“If Clementine ever gives them the right answer. Sure. It’s been almost a century now, and they’re no nearer than they ever were, but we’ve all got to be patient and devoted and dedicated—dedicated to what? To that goddamned mechanical brain that squats there under the mountain and has to be treated like it was God.”
She leaned over him suddenly, in the faint glow of the lamplight.
“I’m no fanatic, Len Colter. If you want somebody to talk to, remember that.”
Then she was gone around the corner of the house, running. Len heard a door open somewhere at the back. He got up, very slowly, and climbed the steps and went slowly into the house and ate his dinner at the Wepplos’ table. And he did not hear hardly anything that was said to him.
24
The next morning Len and Esau were called again to Sherman’s place, and this time Hostetter was not with them. Sherman faced them over the table in the living room, balancing two keys back and forth between his hands.
“I said I wouldn’t push you, and I won’t. But in the meantime you have to work. Now if I let you work at something you could do in Fall Creek, like blacksmithing or taking care of the mules, you wouldn’t learn anything more about Bartorstown than if you hadn’t left home.”
“Well, no,” said Esau, and then he asked eagerly, “Can I learn about the big machine? Clementine?”
“Offhand, I’d say she’s always going to be beyond you, unless you want to wait until you’re an old man. But you can take it up with Frank Erdmann, he’s the boss on that. And don’t worry, you’ll get all the machine you want. But whatever you pick will mean a lot of studying before you’re ready, and until then——”
He hesitated for only the fraction of a second, perhaps he didn’t really hesitate at all, and perhaps it was only by pure and unmeaning chance that his eyes happened to rest then on Len’s face, but Len knew what he was going to say before he said it and he set himself hard so that nothing would show.
“Until then you’ve been assigned to the steam plant. You’ve had some experience with steam, and it shouldn’t take you too long to master the differences. Jim Sidney, the man you were talking to yesterday, will give you all the help you need.”
He got up and came around the table and handed them the keys. “To the safety gate. Take care of them. Jim will tell you your hours and all that. In free time you can go anywhere you want to in Bartorstown and ask any questions you want so long as you don’t interfere with work in progress. You can make arrangements with Irv Rothstein in the library. And you don’t need to look so stony-faced, both of you. I can read your minds.”
Len looked at him, startled, and he smiled.
“You’re thinking that the steam plant is right next to the reactor and you would rather be anywhere else than there. And that is exactly why you’re going to work on the steam plant. I want to get you so accustomed to the reactor that you’ll forget to be afraid of it.”
Is that the truth? thought Len. Or is it his way of testing us, to see if we can get over being afraid, to see if we can ever learn to live with it?
“Get along now,” Sherman said. “Jim’s expecting you.”
So they went, walking in the early morning up the dusty road and across the slope between the rocks to Bartorstown. And at the safety gate they stopped and fidgeted, each one waiting for the other one to open it, and Len said, “I thought you weren’t afraid.”
“I ain’t. It’s just that—oh, hell, those other men work around it. It’s all right. Come on.”
He jabbed his key savagely in the lock and wrenched it open and went in. And Len closed it carefully, thinking, Now I am locked in with it, the fire that fell from the sky on Gran’s world.
He walked after Esau down the tunnel and through that inner door, past the monitor room where young Jones nodded at them. And isn’t he afraid? No, he’s like Ed Hostetter, he’s never been taught to be afraid. And he’s alive, and healthy. God hasn’t struck him down. God hasn’t struck any of them down. He’s let Bartorstown survive. Isn’t that a proof right there that it’s all right, that this answer they’re trying to find is right?
But the ways of the Lord are past our understanding, and the wicked man is given his day upon the earth——
“What are you mooning about?” snapped Esau. “Come on.” There was a line of sweat across his upper lip, and his mouth was nervous. They went down the stairs again, the steel treads ringing hollow under their feet, past the level where the big computer was, down and down to the lowest step and then off that and out into the great wide cavern with the throb of power beating through it, past the generators and the turbines, and there it was, the concrete wall, the blank and staring face. And the sins of our fathers are still with us, or if not their sins their follies, and they should never, never have——
But they did.
Jim Sidney spoke to them. He spoke twice before they heard him, but this was their first time there and he was patient. And Len followed him toward the looming mass of the steam plant, feeling dwarf
ed and small and insignificant among all that tremendous power. He set his teeth and shouted silently inside himself, It’s only because I’m afraid that I feel this way, and I’ll get over it like Sherman said. The others aren’t afraid. They’re men, just like any other men, good men, men who believe they’re doing right, doing what the government trusted them to do. I’ll learn. Gran would want me to. She said Never be afraid of knowing, and I won’t be.
I won’t be. I’ll be a part of it, helping to free the world of fear. I’ll believe, because I am here now and there is nothing else I can do.
No. Not that way. I will believe because it is right. I will learn to see that it is right. And Ed Hostetter will help me, because I can trust him, and he says it’s right.
And Len went to work beside Esau on the steam plant, and all the rest of that day he did not look at the wall of the reactor. But he could feel it. He could feel it in his flesh and his bones and the tingling of his blood, and he could still feel it when he was back in Fall Creek and in his own bed. And he dreamed about it when he fell asleep.
But there was no escape from it. He went back to it the next day, and the day after that, and regularly on the days that followed, except Sunday, when he went to church and walked in the afternoons with Joan Wepplo. It reassured him to go to church. It was comforting to hear from a pulpit that God was blessing their efforts, and all they had to do was remain patient and steadfast and not lose heart. It helped him to feel that they really were right. And Sherman’s treatment did seem to be working. Every day the shock of being close beside that dreadful wall grew less, perhaps because a nerve continually pricked and rubbed will become too callused to react. He got so he could look at it calmly, and think calmly, too, about what was behind it. He could learn a little about the instruments set into its face that measured the flow of force inside, and he could learn a little more, of layman’s knowledge, about what that force was and how it worked, and how in this form it was so easily controlled. He would get along like that sometimes for several days, laughing and talking with Esau about how the folks in Piper’s Run would feel if they could see them now— Mr. Nordholt, the schoolmaster, who thought he knew so much and dealt his knowledge out so sparingly lest it should corrupt the young, and the other elders of the town, who would take off your hide with a birch rod for asking questions, and, yes, Pa and Uncle David, whose one answer was the harness strap. No, that wasn’t true of Pa, and Len knew all too well what Pa would say, and he didn’t like to think about that. So he would turn his thoughts to Judge Taylor, who got a man killed and a town burned up because he was afraid that it might sometime become a city, and he would think vindictively that he would like to tell Judge Taylor what was under the rock of Bartorstown and watch his face then. And I am not afraid, he would think. I was afraid, but now I am not. It is only a natural force like any other force. There is nothing evil in it, any more than there is evil in a knife, or in gunpowder. There is only evil in the way it is used, and we will see to it that no evil will ever be done with it again. We. We men of Bartorstown. And, oh Lord, the nights of cold and shivering along the misty creek beds, the days of heat and mosquitoes and hunger, the winters in strange towns, all the days and nights and years when we dreamed of being men of Bartorstown!
But the dream was different then. It was all bright and wonderful, like Gran used to tell about, and there was no darkness in it.
He would get along that way, and he would think, Now I really have got over it. And then he would wake up screaming in the night with Hostetter shaking his shoulder.
“What were you dreaming about?” Hostetter would ask.
“I don’t know. A nightmare, that’s all.” He would get up and get a drink of water, and let the sweat on him dry. Then he would ask, casually, “Did I say anything?”
“No, not that I heard. You were just yelling.”
But he would catch Hostetter looking at him with a brooding eye, and wonder if he did not know perfectly well what the nightmare was.
Esau’s fear ran shallower than Len’s. It was practically all physical, and once he was convinced that no unseen force was going to burn his bones to powder he got very casual and proprietory with the reactor, almost as though he had made it himself. Len would ask him sometimes, “Doesn’t it ever worry you—I mean, don’t you ever think that if this reactor thing hadn’t been kept going here there wouldn’t be any need to find an answer——”
“You heard what Sherman said. There could be other ones. Maybe enemy ones. Then where would you be?”
“But if it was the last one in the world?”
“Well, it ain’t hurting anything. And anyway, Sherman said even if it was it wouldn’t matter, somebody’d figure atoms out again.”
Maybe not, maybe never. Maybe he’s only saying that to justify himself. Hostetter had a word for it. Rationalizing. Anyway, it wouldn’t be for a long time. A hundred years, two hundred, maybe longer. I’d never live to see it.
Esau laughed. “That woman of mine, she’s sure a dandy.”
Len didn’t go around Amity much. There was a certain chill between them, a sort of mutual embarrassment that did not make for pleasant conversations. So he asked, “How’s that?”
“Well, when she heard about this atom power being here she had a terrible fit. Swore she was going to lose the baby, it was so bad. And now do you know what? She’s got it all fixed up in her mind that it’s a big lie just to make her think everybody here is awfully important, and she can prove it.”
“How?”
“Because everybody knows what atom power does, and if there’d ever been any here there wouldn’t be any canyon left, but only a big crater like the judge used to tell about.”
“Oh,” said Len.
“Well, it makes her happy. So I don’t argue. What’s the use? She don’t know anything about anything like that, anyway.” He rubbed his hands together, grinning. “I sure hope that kid of mine’s a boy. Maybe I can’t learn enough to work that big machine, but he could. Hell, he might even be the one to find the answer.”
Esau was fascinated by the big machine called Clementine. He hung around it every minute he could in his off hours, asking questions of Erdmann and the technicians who were working there until Erdmann began to talk up a tremendous enthusiasm for radio every time he even met Esau in the street. Often Len would go with him. He would stand looking at the dark face of the thing until a feeling of nervousness crept over him, as though he stood by the bed of a sleeper who was not really asleep but was watching him from under closed, deceitful lids. And he would think, It is not really a brain, it does not really think, it is only called a brain, and the things it knows and the mathematics it can do are only imitations of thought. But through the night hours a creature haunted him, a creature with a great throbbing heart of hell-fire and a brain as big as Pa’s barn.
On the whole, though, he was trying hard and adjusting pretty well. But there were other hours, waking hours, in which another creature haunted him and left him little peace. And this was a human creature and no nightmare. This was a girl named Joan.
25
Three different groups of strangers came into Fall Creek before snow, stayed briefly to trade, and went away again. Two of them were little bands of dark hardy men who followed the wild herds, hunters, and horse tamers, offering half-broken colts in exchange for flour, sugar, and corn whiskey. The third and last were New Ishmaelites. There were about twenty-five of them, demanding powder and shot as a gift to the Lord’s anointed. They would not stay the night in Fall Creek, nor come in past the edges of the town, as though they were afraid of contamination, but when Sherman sent them out what they wanted they began to sing and pray, waving their arms and crying hallelujah. Half the people in Fall Creek had come out to watch them, and Len was there too, with Joan Wepplo.
“One of ’em will preach pretty soon,” she said. “That’s what everybody’s waiting for.”
“I’ve seen enough preaching,” muttered Len. But he stayed
. The wind was icy, blowing down the canyon from snow fields on the high peaks. Everybody was wearing cowhide or horsehide coats against it, but the New Ishmaelites had nothing but their shrouds and their goatskins to flap about their naked legs. They did not seem to mind it.
“They suffer terribly in the winters, just the same,” said Joan. “Starve to death, and freeze. Our men find their bodies in the spring, sometimes a whole band of them, kids and all.” She looked at them with cold contemptuous eyes. “You’d think they’d give the kids a chance, at least. Let them grow up enough to make up their own minds about freezing to death.”
The children, bony and blue with the chill, stamped and shouted and tossed their tangled mops of hair. They would never be able to make up their own minds about anything, even if they did grow up. Habit would have got too big a start on them. Len said, “I guess they can’t afford to, any more than your people or mine.”
A man stepped out of the group and began to preach. His hair and beard were a dirty gray, but Len thought that he was not as old as he looked. New Ishmaelites did not seem to get very old. He wore a goatskin, greasy and foul, with the hair worn off it in big patches. The bones of his chest stood out like a bird cage. He shook his fists at the people of Fall Creek and cried:
“Repent, repent, for the Kingdom of God is at hand! You who live for the flesh and the sins of the flesh, your end is near. The Lord has spoken in flame and thunder, the earth has opened and swallowed the unrighteous, and some have said, This is all, He has punished us and now we are forgiven, now we can forget. But I tell you that God in His mercy only gave you a little more time, and that time is nearly gone, and you have not repented! And what will you say when the heavens open, and God comes to judge the world? How will you beg and plead and cry out for mercy, and what will your luxuries and your vanities buy you then? Nothing but hell-fire! Fire and brimstone and everlasting pain, unless you repent and do penance for your sins!”
The wind made his words thin and blew them far away, repent, repent, like a fading echo down the canyon, as though repentance was already a lost hope. And Len thought, What if he knew, what if I was to go and shout it at him, what’s up the canyon there not half a mile away? Then what good would it all be to him, his dirty goatskin and the murders he’s done in the name of faith?
American Science Fiction Four Classic Novels 1953-56 Page 61