Hostetter methodically unlaced his boots.
“I thought they knew,” Len said. “I thought they were sure of it.”
“Research isn’t done that way.”
“But how can they spend all that time, and maybe that much more again, if they know it might be all for nothing?”
“Because how would they know if they didn’t try? And because there isn’t any other way to do it.” Hostetter flung his boots in the corner by the potbellied stove. Usually he set them there, neatly, and not too close to the heat.
“But that’s a crazy way,” said Len.
“Is it? When your pa put seed in the ground, did he have a guarantee it was going to come up and yield him a harvest? Did he know every calf and shoat and lamb was going to stay healthy and pay back all the feed and care?”
He began to pull off his shirt and pants. Len sat scowling.
“All right, that’s true. But if his crop failed or his cattle died there was always another season. What about this? What if it does come out—nothing?”
“Then they try again. If no such force-field is possible, then they think of other ways. And maybe some part of the work they did will give them a clue, so it isn’t all lost.” He slapped his clothes over the hide-seated chair and climbed into his bunk. “Hell, how do you think the human race ever learned anything, except by trial and error?”
“But it all takes such a long, long time,” said Len.
“Everything takes a long time. Birthing takes nine months, and dying takes you all the rest of your life, and what are you complaining about, anyway? You just got here. Wait till you’re as old as the rest of us. Then you might have some reason.”
He turned his back and covered his head with the blanket. After a while Len blew out the lamp.
The next day it was all over Fall Creek that Julio Gutierrez had got drunk at Sherman’s and knocked Frank Erdmann down, and Ed Hostetter had stepped in and practically carried Gutierrez home. A brawl between the senior physicist and the chief electronics engineer was scandal enough to keep the tongues all wagging, but it seemed to Len that there was a darker, sadder note in the gossip, a shadow of discouragement. Or maybe that was only because he had dreamed all night of rust in the wheat and new lambs dying.
27
Esau came banging at the door before it was light. It was the third morning in January, a Monday, and the snow was coming down in a solid desperate rush as though God had suddenly commanded it to bury the world before lunch. “Ain’t you ready?” he asked Len. “Well, hurry up, this snow’s going to slow us down enough as it is.”
Hostetter stuck his head out of the bunk. “What’s all the rush?”
“Clementine,” said Esau. “The big machine. They’re going to test her this morning, and Erdmann said we could watch before work. Hurry up, can’t you?”
“Let me get my boots on,” Len grumbled. “She won’t run away.”
Hostetter said to Esau, “Do you figure you can work with Clementine someday?”
“No,” said Esau, shaking his head. “Too much math and stuff. I’m going to learn radio instead. After all, that’s what got me here. But I sure do want to see that big brain do its thinking. Are you ready now? You sure? All right, let’s go!”
The world was white, and blind. The snow fell straight down, with hardly a vagrant breath of air to set it swirling. They groped their way through the village, still able to follow the deep-trodden lanes, and conscious of the houses even if they could not really see them. Out on the road it was different. It was like being in the fields at home when it snowed like this, with no landmark, no direction, and the same old dizzy feeling came over Len. Everything was gone but up and down, and presently even that would go, and there was not even any sound left in the world.
“You’re going off the road,” said Esau, and he floundered back from the drifted ditch. Then it was Esau’s turn. They walked close together, making the usual comments on the cursedness of fate and the weather, and Len said suddenly, “You’re happy here, aren’t you?”
“Sure,” said Esau. “I wouldn’t go back to Piper’s Run if you gave me the place.”
He meant it. Then he asked, “Aren’t you?”
“Sure,” said Len. “Sure.”
They plowed on, the chill feathery flakes patting their faces, trying to fill up their noses and mouths and smother them quietly, whitely, because they disturbed the even blankness of the road.
“What do you think?” asked Len. “Will they ever find the answer? Or will it come out zero?”
“Hell,” said Esau, “I don’t care. I got enough of my own to do.”
“Don’t you care about anything?” Len growled.
“Sure I do. I care about doing what I want to do, and not having a lot of damn fool old men telling me I can’t. That’s what I care about. That’s why I like it here.”
“Yes,” said Len. “Sure.” And that’s true, you can do what you want and say what you want and think what you want—except one thing. You can’t say you don’t believe in what they believe in, and that way it isn’t much different from Piper’s Run.
They stumbled and blundered up the slope, between the artfully tumbled boulders. About halfway up to the gate Esau started and swore, and Len shied too as he sensed a dark dim shape moving, in all that whiteness, furtively among the rocks.
The shape spoke to them, and it was Gutierrez. The snow was piled up thick across the top of his shoulders and on his cap, as though he had been standing still in it for some time, waiting. But he was sober, and his face was perfectly composed, and pleasant.
“I’m sorry if I startled you,” he said. “I seem to have mislaid my own key to the gate. Do you mind if I go in with you?”
The question was purely rhetorical. The three of them walked on together up the slope. Len kept glancing uneasily at Gutierrez, thinking of the long night hours spent with the papers and the jug. He felt sorry for him. He was also afraid of him. He wanted desperately to question him about Solution Zero, and why they couldn’t be sure a thing existed before they spent a couple of hundred years in hunting for it. He wanted to so much that he was certain Esau would blurt the question out, and then Gutierrez would knock them both down. But nobody said anything. Esau, too, must have been awed into wisdom.
Beyond the safety gate there was a drift of snow, and then only the darkness and the dank, freezing chill of a place shut off forever from the sun. Gutierrez went ahead. He had stumbled that first time, but now he did not stumble, walking steadily, his head held high and his back very straight. Len could hear him breathing, heavy breathing like that of a man who had been running, but Gutierrez had not been running. Where the passage bent and the light came on, far down over the inner door, he had left them far behind, and Len had a curious cold feeling that the man had forgotten them entirely.
They stood side by side again under the scanners. Gutierrez looked straight ahead at the steel door until it swung open, and then he strode away down the hall. Jones came out of the monitor room and looked after him, wondering out loud, “What’s he doing here?”
Esau shook his head. “He came in with us. Said he lost his key. I suppose he’s got some work to do.”
Jones said, “Erdmann won’t be happy. Oh well. Nobody told me to keep him out, so my conscience is clear.” He grinned. “Let me know what happens, huh?”
“He was drunk the other night,” said Len. “I don’t reckon anything will happen.”
“I hope not,” said Esau. “I want to see that brain work.”
They left their coats in a locker room and hurried on down to the next level, past the picture of Hiroshima, past the victims with their tragic impassive eyes. And the voices reached them from beyond the door.
“No, I am sorry, Frank. Please let me say it.”
“Forget it, Julio. We all do things. Forget it.”
“Thank you,” said Gutierrez, with immense dignity, with great contrition.
Len hesitated outside, looking at E
sau, whose face was a study in violent indecision.
“How does she go?” asked Gutierrez.
“Fine,” said Erdmann. “Smooth as silk.”
Their voices fell silent. Len’s heart came up into his throat and stuck there, and a cold cord was knotted through his belly. Because there was now another voice audible in the room, a voice he had never heard before. A small, dry, busy whisperand-click, the voice of Clementine.
Esau heard it, too. “I don’t care,” he whispered. “I’m going in.”
He did, and Len followed him, walking softly. He looked at Clementine, and she was no longer sleeping. The many eyes on the panel board were bright and winking, and all through that mighty grid of wires there was a stir and a quiver, a subtle pulse of life.
The selfsame pulse, thought Len, that beats down there below. The heart and the brain.
“Oh,” said Erdmann, almost with relief. “Hello.”
The high-speed printer burst into a sudden chatter. Len started violently. The eyes on the panel board winked as though with laughter, and then it was all quiet, all dark again, with the exception of a steady light that burned as a signal that Clementine was awake.
Esau sucked in his breath. But he did not speak because Gutierrez beat him to it.
He had taken some papers out of his pocket. He did not seem to be aware that anyone was there but Erdmann. He held the papers in his hands and said, “My wife felt that I shouldn’t come here and bother you today. She hid my key to the safety gate. But of course this was far too important to wait.”
He looked down at the papers. “I’ve gone over this whole sequence of equations again. I found where the mistake was.”
Something tightened and became wary behind Erdmann’s face. “Yes?”
“It’s perfectly plain, you can see for yourself. Here.”
He shoved the papers into Erdmann’s hand. Erdmann began to scan through them. And now there came into his face an acute discomfort, a sorrow, a dismay.
“You can see,” said Gutierrez. “It’s plain as day. She made a mistake, Frank. I told you. You said it wasn’t possible, but she did.”
“Julio, I——” And Erdmann shook his head from side to side and glanced in desperation at Len, and found no help there, and began to shuffle again through the papers in his hands.
“Don’t you see it, Frank?”
“Well, Julio, you know I’m not mathematician enough——”
“Hell,” said Gutierrez impatiently, “how did you get to be an electronics engineer? You know enough for that. It’s all written out plain. Anybody should see it. Here.” He fumbled at the papers in Erdmann’s hands. “Here, and here, you see?”
Erdmann said, “What do you want me to do?”
“Why, run it through again. Correct it. Then we’ll have the answer, Frank. The answer.”
Erdmann moistened his lips. “But if she made a mistake once she might do it again, Julio. Why don’t you get Wentz or Jacobs——”
“No. It would take them all winter, a year. She can do it right now. You’ve tested her. You said so. You said she was smooth as silk. That’s why I wanted it to be today, while she’s still fresh and unused. She can’t possibly make the same mistake again. Run it through.”
“I—well,” said Erdmann. “Well, all right.”
He went over to the input mechanism and began to transfer onto the tape. Gutierrez waited. He still had his heavy outdoor clothes on, but he did not seem to feel that he was hot or uncomfortable. He watched Erdmann, and from time to time he glanced at the computer and smiled and nodded, like a man who has caught someone else in an error and thereby vindicated himself. Len had withdrawn into the background. He did not like the look on Erdmann’s face. He began to wonder if he should go, and then the lights on the panel began to glow and wink at him, and the dim voice hummed and murmured, and he was as fascinated as Esau and could not go.
He was startled when Erdmann spoke to them. “I’ll be free in a bit. Then I’ll answer your questions.”
“Would you rather we’d come back later?” asked Len.
“No,” said Erdmann, glancing at Gutierrez. “No, you stick around.”
Clementine pondered, mumbling softly. Apart from that it was very still. Gutierrez was calm, standing with his hands folded in front of him, waiting. Erdmann fidgeted. There was sweat on his face and he kept wiping it off and running his hand over his mouth and looking at Gutierrez with an expression of utter agony.
“I think there were some circuits we missed on the overhaul, Julio. She hasn’t been fully checked. She might still——”
“You sound like my wife,” said Gutierrez. “Don’t worry, it’ll come out.”
The output printer chattered. Erdmann started forward. Gutierrez knocked him out of the way. He snatched the paper out of the printer and looked at it. His face darkened, and then the color left it and it was gray and sick, and his hands trembled.
“What did you do?” he said to Erdmann. “What did you do to my equations?”
“Nothing, Julio.”
“Look what she says. No solution, recheck your data for errors. No solution. No solution——”
“Julio. Julio, please. Listen to me. You’ve been working too long on this, you’re tired. I put the equations just as they were, but they——”
“They what? Go on and say it, Frank. Go on.”
“Julio, please,” said Erdmann, with a terrible helplessness, and put out his hand to Gutierrez as one does to a child, asking him to come.
Gutierrez hit him. He hit him so suddenly and so hard that there was no way and no time to dodge the blow. Erdmann stepped back three or four paces and fell down, and Gutierrez said quietly, “You are against me, both of you. You had it arranged between you, so that no matter what I did she would never give me the right answer. I’ve thought of you all winter, Frank, in here talking with her, laughing, because she knows the answer and she won’t tell. But I’m going to make her tell, Frank.”
He had stones in his pockets. That was why he had kept his coat on, in the warmth of Bartorstown. He had a lot of stones, and he took them out and threw them one by one at Clementine, shouting with a wild joy, “I’ll make you tell, you bitch, you lying bitch, deceitful bitch, I’ll make you tell.”
Glass on the panel board crashed and tinkled. Circuit wires twanged. One of the big glass tanks that held a part of Clementine’s memory burst open. Frank Erdmann scrambled up unsteadily from the floor, yelling for Gutierrez to stop, yelling for help. And Gutierrez ran out of stones and began to beat on the panel with his fists and kick it with his boots, screaming, “Bitch, bitch, bitch, I’ll make you tell, you’ve got my life, my mind, my work stored up in you, I’ll make you tell!”
Erdmann was grappling with him. “Len. Esau, for God’s sake, help me. Help me hold him.”
Len went forward slowly, as a sleepwalker moves. He put his hands out and took hold of Gutierrez. Gutierrez was very strong, incredibly strong. It was hard to hold onto him, hard to drag him away from the ravaged panel, and now there were new lights winking and flashing on it, red lights saying I am wounded, help me. Len looked at them, and he looked into Gutierrez’ eyes. Erdmann panted. There was blood coming out of the side of his mouth. “Julio, please. Take it easy. That’s it, Len, back a little farther, now—— It’s all right, Julio, please be quiet.”
And Julio was quiet, all at once. There was no transition. One second his wiry muscles were straining like steel bars against Len’s grasp, and the next he was all gone, limp, sagging, a frail and hollow thing. He turned his face to Erdmann and he said with infinite resignation, “Somebody is against me, Frank. Somebody is against us all.”
Tears ran down his cheeks. He hung like a dying man between Len and Erdmann, weeping, and Len looked at Clementine, blinking her bloody eyes for help.
Find your limit, Judge Taylor said. Find your limit before it is too late.
I have found my limit, Len thought. And it is already too late.
; Men came and relieved him of his burden. He went down with Esau into the belly of the rock, and he worked all day with a face as blank as the concrete wall, and as deceitful, because behind it there was violence and terror, and astonishment of the heart.
In the afternoon the whisper came along the line of the great machines. They took him back home, did you hear, and the doctor says he’s clear gone. They say he’ll have to stay there locked up, with someone to watch him.
As we are all locked up here in this canyon, Len thought, serving this Moloch with the head of brass and the bowels of fire. This Moloch who has just destroyed a man.
But he knew the truth at last, and he spoke it to himself.
There will be no answer.
And Lord, deliver me from the bondage of mine enemies, for I repent. I have followed after false gods, and they have betrayed me. I have eaten of the fruit, and my soul is sickened.
The fiery heart beat on behind the wall, and overhead the brain was already being healed.
That night Len floundered through the deep new-fallen snow to Wepplo’s. He said to Joan, quietly so that no one else should hear, “I want what you want. Show me the way.”
Her eyes blazed. She kissed him on the lips and whispered, “Yes! But can you keep it secret, Len? It’s a long time yet till spring.”
“I can.”
“Even from Hostetter?”
“Even from him.”
Even from him. For a lamp is set to guide the footsteps of repentance.
28
February, March, April.
Time. A tight passivity, a waiting.
He worked. Every day he did what was expected of him, under the very shadow of that concrete wall. He did his work well. That was the ironic part of it. He could become interested now in the whole chain of great machines that harnessed and transmitted the Power, and he could admit the fascination, the sense of importance it gave a man to hold those mighty brutes in check and guidance as you held a team of horses. He could do this because now he recognized the fascination for what it was, and the fangs of the serpent were drawn. He could think what power like that would do for places like Refuge and Piper’s Run, how it would bring back the bright and comfortable things of Gran’s childhood, but he understood now why people were savagely determined to do without them. Because once you set your feet on the path you went on and on until you couldn’t go back again, and suddenly there was a rain of fire from the sky. You had to get back to where it was safe and stay there.
American Science Fiction Four Classic Novels 1953-56 Page 63