For peace is certainty, and there is no certainty but death.
Four days, to set the stubborn feet firmly on the ground, teaching them not to run.
Because I am finished with running. Now I will stop and choose my way.
Sooner or later a man has to stop and choose his way, not out of the ways he would like there to be, or the ways there ought to be, but out of the ways there are.
Five days, in which to choose.
There were people in the town. It was the time of the fall trading, the hot dead time when the shinnery stands gray and stiff and the bear grass rustles in the wind and every plank of wood is as dry as a cracked bone. They came in from the outlying ranches to barter for their winter supplies, and the traders’ wagons were lined up in a row at the end of the one short, dusty street.
All over the land, he thought, it is the time of the fall trading. All over the land there are fairs, and the wagons are pulled up, and the men trade cattle and the women chaffer over cloth and sugar. All over the land it is the same, unchanging. And after the trading and the fair there is the preaching, the fall revival to stock the soul against the winter too. This is life. This is the way it is.
He walked the street restlessly, up and down. He stood by the traders’ wagons, looking into the faces of the people, listening to their talk.
They have found their truth. The New Ishmaelites have found theirs, and the New Mennonites, and the men of Bartorstown.
Now I must find mine.
Joan watched him from under the corners of her eyelids and was afraid to speak.
On the fifth night the trading was all done. Torches were set up around a platform in the trampled space at the end of the street. The stars blazed bright in the sky and the wind turned cool and the baked earth breathed out its heat. The people gathered.
Len sat on the crushed dry shinnery, holding Joan’s hand. He did not notice after all when the wagon rolled in quietly at the other side of the crowd. But after a while he turned, and Hostetter was sitting there beside him.
30
The voice of the preacher rang out strong and strident. “A thousand years, my brethren. A thousand years. That’s what we was promised. And I tell you we are already in that blessed time, a-heading toward the Glory that was planned for them that keeps the way of righteousness. I tell you——”
Hostetter looked at Len in the flickering light of the windblown torches, and Len looked at him, but neither of them spoke.
Joan whispered something that might have been Hostetter’s name. She pulled her hand away from Len’s and started to scramble around behind him as though she wanted to get to Hostetter. Len caught her and pulled her down.
“Stay by me.”
“Let me go. Len——”
“Stay by me.”
She whimpered and was still. Her eyes sought Hostetter’s. Len said to both of them, “Be quiet. I want to listen.”
“—and except you go as little children, the Book says, you won’t never get in. Because Heaven wasn’t made for the unrighteous. It wasn’t made for the scoffer and the unbeliever. No sir, my brothers and sisters! And you ain’t in the clear yet. Just because the Lord has chose to save you out from the Destruction, don’t you think for a minute——”
It was on another night, at another preaching, that I set my foot upon the path.
A man died that night. His name was Soames. He had a red beard, and they stoned him to death because he was from Bartorstown.
Let me listen. Let me think.
“—a thousand years!” cried the preacher, thumping on his dusty Book, stamping his boots on the dusty planks. “But you got to work for it! You can’t just set down and pay no heed! You can’t shirk your bounden duty to the Lord!”
Let it blow through me like a great wind. Let the words sound in my ears like trumpets.
I can speak. A power has been given me. I can kill another man as that boy killed Soames, and free myself.
I can speak again, and lead the way to Bartorstown as Burdette led his men to Refuge. Many will die, just as Dulinsky died. But Moloch will be thrown down.
Joan sits rigid beside me. The tears run on her cheeks. Hostetter sits on the other side. He must know what I am thinking. But he waits.
He was part of that other night. Part of Refuge. Part of Piper’s Run and Bartorstown, the one end and the other and in the middle.
Can I wipe it all away with his blood?
Hallelujah!
Confess your sins! Let your soul be cleansed of its burden of black guilt, so the Lord won’t burn you again with fire!
Hallelujah!
“Well, Len?” said Hostetter.
They are screaming as they screamed that night. And what if I rise and confess my sin, offering this man as a sacrifice? I will not be cleansed of knowledge. Knowledge is not like sin. There is no mystical escape from it.
And what if I throw down Moloch, with the bowels of fire and the head of brass?
The knowledge will still exist. Somewhere. In some book, some human brain, under some other mountain. What men have found once they will find again.
Hostetter is rising to his feet.
“You’re forgetting something I told you. You’re forgetting we’re fanatics too. You’re forgetting I can’t let you run loose.”
“Go ahead,” said Len. He stood up, too, dragging Joan with him by the hand. “Go ahead if you can.”
They looked at each other in the torchlight, while the crowd stamped and raised the dust and shouted hallelujah.
I have let it blow through me, and it is just a wind. I have let the words sound in my ears, and they are nothing but words, spoken by an ignorant man with a dusty beard. They do not stir me, they do not touch me. I am done with them, too.
I know now what lies across the land, the slow and heavy weight. They call it faith, but it is not faith. It is fear. The people have clapped a shelter over their heads, a necessity of ignorance, a passion of retreat, and they have called it God, and worshiped it. And it is as false as any Moloch. So false that men like Soames, men like Dulinsky, men like Esau and myself will overthrow it. And it will betray its worshipers, leaving them defenseless in the face of a tomorrow that will surely come. It may be a slow coming, and a long one, but come it will, and all their desperation will not stop it. Nothing will stop it.
“I ain’t going to speak, Ed. Now it’s up to you.”
Joan caught her breath and held it in a sob.
Hostetter looked at Len, his feet set wide apart, his big shoulders hunched, his face as grim and dark as iron under his broad hat. Now it was Len’s turn to wait.
If I die as Soames died, it will not matter except to me. This is important only because I am I, and Hostetter is Hostetter, and Joan is Joan, and we’re people and can’t help it. But for today, yesterday, tomorrow, it is not important. Time goes on without any of us. Only a belief, a state of mind, endures, and even that changes constantly, but underneath there are two main kinds—the one that says, Here you must stop knowing, and the other which says, Learn.
Right or wrong, the fruit was eaten, and there can’t ever be a going back.
I have made my choice.
“What are you waiting for, Ed? If you’re going to do it, go on.”
Some of the tightness went out of the line of Hostetter’s shoulders. He said, “I guess neither one of us was built for murder.”
He bent his head, scowling, and then he lifted it again and gave Len a hard and blazing look.
“Well?”
The people cried and shouted and fell on their knees and sobbed.
“I still think,” said Len slowly, “that maybe it was the Devil let loose on the world a hundred years ago. And I still think maybe that’s one of Satan’s own limbs you’ve got there behind that wall.”
The preacher tossed his arms to the sky and writhed in an ecstasy of salvation.
“But I guess you’re right,” said Len. “I guess it makes better sense to try and chain the devi
l up than to try keeping the whole land tied down in the hopes he won’t notice it again.”
He looked at Hostetter. “You didn’t get me killed, so I guess you’ll have to let me come back.”
“The choice wasn’t entirely mine,” said Hostetter.
He turned and walked away toward the wagons. Len followed him, with Joan stumbling at his side. And two men came out of the shadows to join them. Men that Len did not know, with deer rifles held in the crooks of their arms.
“I had to do more than talk for you this time,” said Hostetter. “If you had denounced me, these boys might not have been able to save me from the crowd, but you wouldn’t have grown five minutes older.”
“I see,” said Len slowly. “You waited till now, till the preaching.”
“Yes.”
“And when you threatened me, you didn’t mean it. It was part of the test.”
Hostetter nodded. The men looked hard at Len, clicking the safeties back on their guns.
“I guess you were right, Ed,” one of them said. “But I sure wouldn’t have banked on it.”
“I’ve known him a long time,” said Hostetter. “I was a little worried, but not much.”
“Well,” said the man, “he’s all yours.”
He did not sound as though he thought Hostetter had any prize. He nodded to the other man and they went away, Sherman’s executioners vanishing quietly into the night.
“Why did you bother, Ed?” asked Len. He hung his head, ashamed for all that he had done to this man. “I never made you anything but trouble.”
“I told you,” said Hostetter. “I always felt kind of responsible for the time you ran away.”
“I’ll pay you back,” said Len earnestly.
Hostetter said, “You just did.”
They climbed up onto the high seat of the wagon.
“And you,” Hostetter said to Joan. “Are you ready to come home?”
She was beginning to cry, in short fierce sobs. She looked at the torchlight and the people and the dust. “It’s a hideous world,” she said. “I hate it.”
“No,” said Hostetter, “not hideous, just imperfect. But that’s nothing new.”
He shook out the reins and clucked to the big horses. The wagon moved out across the dark prairie.
“When we get a ways out of town,” said Hostetter, “I’ll radio Sherman and tell him we’ve started back.”
THE SHRINKING MAN
Richard Matheson
To Harry Altshuler for faith, hope and clarity.
I also wish to thank Dr. Sylvia Traube for her generous assistance.
Chapter One
First he thought it was a tidal wave. Then he saw that the sky and ocean were visible through it and it was a curtain of spray rushing at the boat.
He’d been sunbathing on top of the cabin. It was just coincidence that he pushed up on his elbow and saw it coming.
“Marty!” he yelled.
There was no answer. He scuttled across the hot wood and slid down the deck. “Hey, Marty!”
The spray didn’t look menacing, but for some reason he wanted to avoid it. He ran around the cabin, wincing at the hot planks underfoot. It would be a race.
Which he lost. One moment he was in sunlight. The next he was being soaked by the warm, glittering spray.
Then it was past. He stood there watching it sweep across the water, sun-glowing drops of it covering him. Suddenly he twitched and looked down. There was a curious tingling on his skin.
He grabbed for a towel and dried himself. It wasn’t so much pain as a pleasant stinging, like that of lotion on newly shaven cheeks.
Then he was dry and the feeling was almost gone. He went below and woke up his brother and told him about the curtain of spray that had run across the boat.
It was the beginning.
Chapter Two
The spider rushed at him across the shadowed sands, scrabbling wildly on its stalklike legs. Its body was a giant, glossy egg that trembled blackly as it charged across the windless mounds, its wake a score of sand-trickling scratches.
Paralysis locked the man. He saw the poisonous glitter of the spider eyes. He watched it scramble across a loglike stick, body mounted high on its motion-blurred legs, as high as the man’s shoulders.
Behind him, suddenly, the steel-encased flame flared into life with a thunder that shook the air. It jarred the man loose. With a sucking gasp, he spun around and ran, the damp sand crunching beneath his racing sandals.
He fled through lakes of light and into darkness again, his face a mask of terror. Beams of sunlight speared across his panic-driven path, cold shadows enveloped it. Behind, the giant spider scoured sand in its pursuit.
Suddenly the man slipped. A cry tore back his lips. He skidded to a knee, then pitched forward onto outstretched palms. He felt the cold sands shaking with the vibration of the roaring flame. He pushed himself up desperately, palms flaking sand, and started running again.
Fleeing, he glanced back across his shoulder and saw that the spider was gaining on him, its pulsing egg of a body perched on running legs—an egg whose yolk swam with killing poisons. He raced on, breathless, terror in his veins.
Suddenly the cliff edge was before him, shearing off abruptly to a gray, perpendicular face. He raced along the edge, not looking down into the vast canyon below. The giant spider scuttled after him, the sound of its running a delicate scraping on the stone. It was closer still.
The man dashed between two giant cans that loomed like tanks above him. He threaded, racing, in between the silent bulks of all the clustered cans, past green and red and yellow sides all caked with livid smears. The spider had to climb above them, unable to move its swollen body rapidly enough between them. It slithered up the side of one, then sped across their metal tops, bridging the gaps between them with sudden, jerking hops.
As the man started out into the open again, he heard a scratching sound above. Recoiling and jerking back his head, he saw the spider just about to leap on him, two legs slipping down a metal side, the rest clutching at the top.
With a terrified gasp, the man dived again into the space between the giant cans, half running, half stumbling back along the winding route. Behind him, the spider drew itself back up to the top and, backing around in a twitching semicircle, started after him again.
The move gained seconds for the man. Plunging out into the shadow-swept sands again, he raced around the great stone pillar and through another stack of tanklike structures. The spider leaped down on the sand and scurried in pursuit.
The great orange mass loomed over the man now as he headed once more for the edge of the cliff. There was no time for hesitation. With an extra springing of his legs, he flung himself across the gulf and clutched with spastic fingers at the roughened ledge.
Wincing, he drew himself onto the splintered orange surface just as the spider reached the cliff ’s edge. Jumping up, the man began running along the narrow ledge, not looking back. If the spider jumped that gap, it was over.
The spider did not jump it. Glancing back, the man saw that and, stopping, stood there looking at the spider. Was he safe now that he was out of the spider’s territory?
His pale cheek twitched as he saw thread-twined cable pour like shimmering vapor from the spider’s tubes.
Twisting around, he began running again, knowing that, as soon as the cable was long enough, air currents would lift it, it would cling to the orange ledge, and the black spider would clamber up it.
He tried to run faster, but he couldn’t. His legs ached, breath was a hot burning in his throat, a stitch drove dagger points into his side. He ran and skidded down the orange slope, jumping the gaps with desperate, weakening lunges.
Another edge. The man knelt quickly, tremblingly, and, holding tight, let himself over. It was a long drop to the next level. The man waited until his body was swinging inward, then let go. Just before he fell, he saw the great spider scrabbling down the orange slope at him.
He
landed on his feet and toppled forward on the hard wood. Pain drove needles up his right ankle. He struggled to his feet; he couldn’t stop. Overhead, he heard the spider’s scratching. Running to the edge, he hesitated, then jumped into space again. The arm-thick curve of the metal wicket flashed up at him. He grabbed for it.
He fell with a fluttering of arms and legs. The canyon floor rushed up at him. He had to miss the flower-patched softness.
And yet he didn’t. Almost at the edge of it, he landed feet first and bounced over backward in a neck-snapping somersault.
He lay on his stomach and chest, breathing in short, strangled bursts. There was a smell of dusty cloth in his nostrils, and fabric was rough against his cheek.
Alertness returned then and, with a spasmodic wrenching of muscles, the man looked up and saw another ghostlike cable being spun into the air. In a few moments, he knew, the spider would ride it down.
Pushing up with a groan, he stood a moment on trembling legs. The ankle still hurt, breathing was a strain, but there were no broken bones. He started off.
Hobbling quickly across the flower-splotched softness, the man lowered himself across the edge. As he did so, he saw the spider swinging down, a terrible, wriggling pendulum.
He was on the floor of the canyon now. He ran, limping, across the wide plain of it, his sandals flopping on the leveled hardness. To his right loomed the vast brown tower in which the flame still burned, the very canyon trembling with its roar.
He glanced behind. The spider was dropping to the flowercovered softness now, then rushing for the edge. The man raced on toward the great log pile, which was half as high as the tower itself. He ran by what looked like a giant, coiled serpent, red and still and open-jawed at either end.
The spider hit the canyon floor and ran at the man.
But the man had reached the gigantic logs now, and, falling forward on his chest, he wriggled into a narrow space between two of them. It was so narrow he could hardly move; dark, damp, cold, and smelling of moldy wood. He crawled and twisted in as far as he could, then stopped and looked back.
American Science Fiction Four Classic Novels 1953-56 Page 65