by Damon Knight
The useless rifle was still in his hands; he looked at it and swore, in a monotone, without knowing what he was saying. The machine gun was still firing a few yards away; others were coming into action, and he could see the heavier flare of mortars in several places. One fired just as a plane went over it; there was a heavy burst of gray smoke where the gun had been, and fragments went spinning. Then out of nowhere there was a tilt-winged plane diving as Dick looked up. It was growing with impossible speed, and he could see flickers of light at its wingtips; and as he ducked, straining close to the parapet, he saw bullet-puffs march irregularly across the balcony beside the machine gunners. Then there was one bright flash at the nose of the plane, and simultaneously parapet and gunners lifted to a heavy blow.
Rubble pattered down around him. When he could see again, half the balcony was gone; there was no sign of the gun or gunners. His head smarted; he put his hand to it and drew it away, smeared with blood and masonry dust. He could not tell whether he was badly hurt or not.
He staggered to his feet, still gripping the rifle. One last explosion fountained up, over where the Promenade should have been; then the broken huddle of buildings lay silent and dark. There was no more gunfire, and the swift planes were circling or hovering.
Numbly, he saw that the stairway he had come up was gone. He was marooned on the balcony.
Out beyond the lower slopes of Eagles, one of the planes was beginning a series of curious maneuvers: dipping close to the roofs, pulling up in an abrupt climb, hovering, then beginning again. Straining his eyes, he saw a flicker of motion between roofs and plane at the bottom of its dip. It was a hairline, a cord or cable with a dot of something at the end of it, whipping violently in the wind. Then something happened, it was cast off or reeled in, he couldn’t tell which. As the plane dipped once more, there was another flicker—he saw the line shoot out, and this time stand taut in the air between the roofs and the plane.
The plane hovered, pitching violently in the up-currents, but holding its place. Other planes were beginning to go through the same maneuvers; one or two of the struck and held almost immediately.
Then he saw dark shapes sliding down the cords—men in heavy flying suits, helmeted, with gear slung around them. Like kites, the planes hung everywhere over the gray waste; and men were swarming over the ruined roofs.
Dick saw a man with a rifle appear suddenly on the rim of a tower; he could not hear the shot, but one of the invaders threw up his hands and fell. The others nearby took cover, and faintly Dick heard the chatter of automatic rifles. The man on the tower spun outward, his weapon floating away, and fell twisting out of sight.
Planes which had successfully dropped their men were cutting the cords and moving off; new ones, an apparently endless supply, were taking their places.
The planes were working nearer. In the full daylight, the invaders’ leather jackets gleamed, their goggles shot glints of white. Some were going down into Eagles, disappearing; others, with climbing gear, were working their way systematically over the roofs.
The balcony under Dick’s feet shuddered to an abrupt subterranean roar. Black smoke swirled up, carrying a confused echo of screams and shouts. A few hundred yards distant, another black plume shot out of an open roof.
Dark scrambling figures began to appear on the balconies again—slaves, waving their arms to show they were weaponless. The invaders closed in around them. More spurts of black smoke came up; more slaves appeared. If the invaders had already discovered that all the freemen in Eagles had been slaughtered …
A few hundred feet away, on an exposed balcony smaller than his, Dick saw two figures come into view, a male and a female. The buck was a familiar stocky shape, with immense, heavy shoulders and a grizzled head. As he turned to look up at the sky, Dick recognized the Old Man. It was only then that he looked again at the girl, and saw that it was Elaine.
Dick stood up slowly. She was in slave’s rags, her hair disordered and her face blackened, but he could not mistake those green eyes, or the characteristic gesture with which she put one wrist to wipe her forehead. She had not seen him yet.
The Old Man turned sharply, recognized him, and seemed to gather himself. He took Elaine by the arm as if to point her out. Staring intently across the gap, he called, “Dick—!”
The appeal was unmistakable. Mercy for mercy; a favor for a favor. If Dick could save his own neck and Elaine’s, then he ought to be able to save the Old Man’s, too.
Now he saw recognition in the girl’s face, and she held her arms out, calling, “Dick! Oh, Dick!”
Too soon, an invader plane was dipping towards them. The grapnel shot out, caught the peak of a nearby roof, and held. A second plane got down its line a few hundred yards away. Dick saw the goggled faces staring down at them, and he saw the uniformed figures emerge from under the planes’ bellies, beginning to slide down the taut lines.
His mind was working feverishly fast. Everything came together, the slave turnover, Elaine, the Old Man, all his life at Eagles, Buckhill … and without any conscious intention, his arm came up with the rifle. The stock fitted itself into his shoulder. Over the bead sight he saw the Old Man’s startled face.
He squeezed the trigger, and saw the blocky figure fall.
Elaine stood in an attitude of frozen horror for a moment, then turned and ran for the stairway. In a moment, she was gone.
The Old Man, with a spreading bloodstain on the front of his smock, rolled half over on his side, then dropped back and lay still.
The invaders, disengaging themselves from their droplines, were staring across at him. “Who’s that?” called one of them.
“Dick Jones of Buckhill.”
They were climbing across to him, cautiously, holding their guns ready. “That’s right, I know him,” said one. He was a lean youngster, with Puget Sound colors in his shoulder patch; the other one, older, was wearing the Boss of Salt Lake’s insignia. “Good thing you shot that slob when you did,” he said, climbing over the parapet. He showed Dick his sub-machine gun, grinning tightly with excitement. “I had my finger on the trigger.”
A furious gush of white suddenly sprang up in the middle of the field of roofs, tall as a geyser, carrying whirling clouds of fragments with it. The balcony staggered with the shock. “My God, did you see that?” cried the young officer as if unaware of what he was saying.
“Something big must have blown.”
“My God, my God,” the younger one went on saying, his eyes bright and feverish. Suddenly he swung up his rifle and began firing at some figures that had appeared on a nearby open roof. A few dropped, the rest went out of sight. “There’s never been anything like it,” said the young man, staring around him with a fascinated and happy expression.
Dick glanced across at the body of the Old Man, lying motionless and somehow smaller than it had been before. He saw the empty stairwell down which Elaine had vanished, and looked out across the smoking field of roofs, almost unrecognizable now: the places where he had followed Keel by moonlight, fought Ruell, made love to Vivian… .
“I don’t know if you’ve heard what happened at Buckhill,” the older officer was saying at his ear. He hardly heard the words. “Bad luck—your family all massacred. Slobs hiding in the woods, but they’ll get ’em sooner or later.”
“I’ll do that myself,” said Dick, without turning. He wanted to fix this last sight of Eagles in his memory, just as it was. There was his youth, deep down there, buried in ash and locked under the fallen rooftops. All right, let it lie.
He looked to the east, toward Buckhill. There was no feeling left in him now: but he knew he was a Man at last, and had his work ahead of him.
About the Author
Novelist, short story writer, and critic Damon Knight has been publishing his work for over sixty years. Born in Oregon in 1922, Knight moved to New York City and became a part of the Futurians, a group of writers, editors, and fans who used science fiction as an avenue for social commentary and cr
itique. He began his writing career at the age of nineteen, and his novels include Hell’s Pavement, A For Anything, The Rithian Terror and A Reasonable World. Knight is perhaps best known for his classic short story, “To Serve Man,” which was made into an unforgettable episode of the television series The Twilight Zone. His critical writings are also highly esteemed among science fiction aficionados, and are collected in In Search of Wonder, winner of the prestigious Hugo award.
Although he is not as well known as some of his contemporaries, Knight and his work, creative and critical, helped to legitimize science fiction as an important literary genre. His work blends a unique imaginative vision with keen social commentary, focusing on the ways in which technology can both serve and enslave human beings. Knight’s latest novel, Humpty Dumpty: An Oval, proves that this master is still a vibrant voice in contemporary science fiction.
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eBook Info
Title:A for Anything
Creator:Damon Knight
Subject:Fiction
Publisher:RosettaBooks
Contributor:Damon Knight
Date:2002
Identifier:0-7953-0426-9
Language:en
Rights:Copyright © 2002 by RosettaBooks, LLC