“For one thing, you’re hurting someone. Lynn and I aren’t hurting anyone.”
“Aren’t you? But let’s leave you and Lynn for the moment. Getting back to murder, I concede of course that someone gets hurt when you murder them, but so what? What’s wrong with hurting people?” This conversation was taking the edge off Al’s fear of the place.
“You’re kidding me, right?” said Tom. “Everyone knows that murder is wrong. How would you like it if someone murdered you or your friends? How can you question if it’s wrong?”
“You know that both you and I think murder is a terrible thing, but I want to understand how one can reasonably get there without being, as you put it, legalistic,” said Al. “Maybe your revulsion and my revulsion to murder are just a feeling or an emotion on our part. It might simply be my biochemistry that makes the cessation of life unpleasant. However, we began this conversation with the statement you made asking me to prove to you that sleeping with Lynn is wrong. I simply wanted an example, the simplest possible example, that there can be one thing that can be proven wrong without resorting to rules. Show me how you prove that anything is wrong. Even horrendous deeds like murder, rape, or genocide. Saying ‘everyone agrees that it’s wrong’ doesn’t prove it to be wrong. At the risk of preaching, things can really only be wrong if there is some kind of moral or ethical law outside ourselves, akin to the physical laws, which we offend by breaking that law. If morality is real, you and I have to discover it, not invent it. If morality and virtue are relative and made up arbitrarily, there is not a single act that can be demonstrated to be wrong by trying to answer the question ‘what’s wrong with this or that act or behavior?’”
Silence. Finally, not wishing to leave it there, Al began again. “Tom, I’m sorry I went on so long. I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t believe what you and Lynn are doing is wrong, but I sincerely believe it’s equally wrong for me to use our friendship to punish you for your actions. If my assessment is wrong, you and Lynn will be fine. If my assessment is right, then wrong actions will bring bad consequences, and in that case, as your friend, I would want to be there to help in any way I can. Can’t we agree to disagree about your relationship with Lynn and maintain our friendship?”
“Al, when you disapprove of my relationship with Lynn, you’re disapproving of and rejecting me. How can we go on from there?”
“Tom, if we don’t go on from there, won’t we just be two solitudes, unable to discuss or share? We can’t have friendship without honesty. We have to work through this. As far as I’m concerned, I’ve put my oar in, spoken my mind, and done my duty by you as your friend. Now let’s move on. My silence doesn’t mean I’ve changed my mind—only that I want to move on.”
By unspoken agreement they decided to talk about something else. Al and Tom were still talking when Lyle McGrath, the leader of the Third Platoon, came to hand over responsibilities for the next watch to them.
Floyd’s platoon took over the watch along the wall. There was not a star to be seen, and the early morning was even darker than before. Al and Tom were given the east end of the encampment, just past one of the watchtowers, where a crude wall of broken stone and branches had been erected to hinder a potential attack by enemies creeping along the top of the wall.
Floyd came to show Al and Tom their guard position. They walked past the tents of the First Platoon. By the light of a lantern inside a tent, they could see Hoffstetter’s corpulent silhouette against the fabric. He was holding an oblong object about the length of his forearm the way a mother would hold a baby. They heard soft songs in a language they did not understand. Al looked at Floyd questioningly, and Floyd shrugged his shoulders.
Leaving this solitary light, they made their way by feel to their guard position, staying close to the outer parapet. They had to pass through the darker gloom of one of the towers, and Al felt the hackles rise on the back of his neck as the draft coming up the tower stairs from the dead city below blew against his face.
“This is it,” said Floyd. “Your job is to make sure nothing creeps along the wall or climbs up the stairs in the tower. Good luck!” They heard him pick his way back toward the light, seeing the silhouette of his frame against the dull light from Hoffstetter’s tent.
Al wanted to talk about what they had seen in Hoffstetter’s tent, but he was afraid to speak for fear of alerting an approaching enemy. They stood at their post, seeing nothing, but straining their ears for any sound. There were noises, some from outside the city wall. A stone rattled below inside the dead city and echoed hollowly among the stone buildings. But silence followed. This sequence of noise, followed by fear, followed by silence was wearing on their nerves.
At last the east lightened, and Al could see his hands and the end of his crossbow. As the light grew, he looked back along the wall to the camp and saw Hoffstetter making his way slowly toward them.
“He’s up early,” said Tom, gesturing with his crossbow toward the ambling figure.
“Perhaps he didn’t sleep at all,” said Al. “I wonder what he wants. He hasn’t given our platoon the time of day until now. He spends almost all of his time with McTavish and his subordinate—what’s his name?”
“His name is Jim Wilson,” said Tom.
By this time Hoffstetter had reached Tom and Al. He looked directly at Al, smiled, and held out his hand.
“Al Gleeson, if I’m not mistaken,” said Hoffstetter.
Al reluctantly took his hand and felt himself blushing.
“Senator Hoffstetter!” said Al.
“So I get to speak again to the famous Al Gleeson,” said Hoffstetter, “the hero of the first expedition to this place. I never forget a face.”
Al shifted position uncomfortably, dreading the next question about his presence here. It never came.
“I’m very interested in the ape¬men,” continued Hoffstetter. “Would you tell me about them?”
“There’s not much to tell,” said Al. “Since we haven’t seen any, I think McTavish has begun to wonder if they exist at all.”
Hoffstetter laughed easily. The laugh, in Al’s mind contrived and intended to simulate friendship, increased Al’s distrust of the man. Hoffstetter kept looking at Al, expecting more, so Al felt compelled to go on.
“There’s not much to tell,” repeated Al. “They’re shorter than we are and look something like the pictures we see of hominid reconstructions. We shot several as they attacked. They kept coming until they had been so damaged that they couldn’t continue. The curious thing is they weren’t like animals. Animals show emotion and run to protect themselves. These seemed more like machines.”
“Where’d they come from?”
“I’m not really sure. If I had to guess, I’d guess they came out of the tunnel that McTavish blew up yesterday. We were trapped in a tower when they arrived, so we didn’t really see where they came from.”
“Hmmm,” said Hoffstetter, “although I’m a physicist, I’m very interested in human evolution. I used all my pull as a senator to be allowed to look at these pre-humans first hand. I’d been hoping we’d see some by now.”
Al extended his hand to Hoffstetter.
“Well, Professor Hoffstetter, we’re likely to see the ape¬men soon enough, although I’m pretty sure we’ll wish we hadn’t seen them. Thank you for stopping by to say hello. I think McTavish would want us to keep attentive, so we should get back to our sentry duty.”
Hoffstetter’s eyes hardened, but he took Al’s hand and then also shook Tom’s.
Then he smiled. “Of course, duty calls. If anything further comes to mind, please come and see me.” With that he strode back to camp.
“Why is he here anyway? Shouldn’t he be trying to get us home?” said Tom.
“There’s more to this than he’s telling us. I wish I knew what it was.” And Al turned to scan the wall once again.
Chapter 33 The Citadel
Just as the light grew stronger, a drizzle began. They hastily built a campfire
in the tower, and everyone took turns warming up their breakfast. After breakfast, they broke camp as quickly as they could and began the trek along the wall. Apparently, when McTavish had contacted headquarters at City Point, the decision had been made to move as quickly as possible to the citadel and not wait for the reinforcements. The drizzle probably had something to do with this change of plans.
The Twenty-fifth Platoon was in the rear and had been given the task of carrying as much firewood as they could manage. When they reached the last tower by the mountainside, the First Platoon scouted the citadel while the Second guarded the road from the last tower to the citadel gates. Within ten minutes McTavish reappeared and waved them all in.
When they had gathered just inside the citadel gates, McTavish began issuing orders. He had to shout to be heard over the steady rain. The First and Second platoons were to make a thorough search of every building. The Third Platoon was divided in half. One half was ordered to guard the rubble heap blocking the tunnel, and the other half was asked to guard the citadel gate and see if they could close it and fortify it. Finally, Floyd’s platoon was told to find a way to rig climbing ropes up the mountain face to provide a backdoor escape route out of the citadel in case they were trapped.
As the group dispersed, Floyd asked Al and Pam to oversee the escape construction. Doing so would be awkward; they had been avoiding each other since their walk at City Point. Al tried to appear nonchalant, as if nothing were wrong.
“What do you think, Pam?” he asked.
Pam put her hands on her hips and thought for a moment.
“We know where the ledge is, but we’re not sure where we’ll be trapped. Why not set up two escape routes, one from the citadel wall and one from the rubble heap?”
“That’s good!” said Al. “We should also find a position that we could man to cover our retreat, since we have more than 100 people to get up the mountainside.”
They placed pitons and ropes from the top of the rubble heap to the ledge they had used during their previous escape. They also placed ropes and pitons from the top of the citadel wall up the mountainside as a second access point for an escape. They then climbed to a higher ledge, which backed into a shallow cave. At the back of this cave there was a small, deep pool. Although no visible spring flowed into the pool, a small stream flowed out and ran out of the cave, cascading down rock fissures, alternately appearing and disappearing from view until it bubbled into a small pool on the west side of the citadel square.
This ledge was ideal as a lookout post. One could survey the whole citadel and even see the main gate. Roughhewn seats in the stone indicated that this had been used for such a purpose at a previous time.
Working together did much to relieve the tension between them. Both Pam and Al were so engrossed in their work they forgot the recent past for a time, and talked eagerly about the next phase of the project.
By late afternoon the rain had stopped and the ropes for the escape route were in place.
The First and Second platoons chose to occupy two buildings on the plaza near the main citadel gate. McTavish decided he would use a building at the southwest side of the plaza as his headquarters and assigned the building next to his to Floyd’s Twenty-fifth Platoon. There was a tower back of Floyd’s building and a stair to the west citadel wall. McTavish asked each platoon to organize their own sentry schedule. Floyd was given responsibility for the lookout ledge and the west portion of the wall.
As evening came, the clouds had cleared and the moon was already high over Halcyon. The next day would see another four platoons enter the city.
Early in the morning, during the third watch, Al was on the lookout ledge while Tom and Dwight were patrolling the west wall. In the pale, pre-dawn light, Al saw two dark figures cross the plaza toward the tower rubble. One of them looked to be Hoffstetter, by his ponderous size and curious shuffling gait. He couldn’t be sure of the other. They began climbing the rubble as if looking for something.
This seems very odd. Should I raise the alarm? For what? Maybe McTavish sent them to look for something? At four in the morning? McTavish already thinks I’m a civilian who bolts at every shadow. Do I really want to add to that?
Eventually Al lost sight of them in the shadows of the rubble. He did not see them reappear.
Soon the sun was up, and a short time later, there was a flurry of activity as the camp started to rouse.
Floyd came up to the lookout and said, “We can’t find Jim Wilson.”
“Is Hoffstetter still here?” asked Al.
“Why? Do you know something?”
“During my watch I thought I saw Hoffstetter and another guy search for something at the tower rubble heap. I lost them in the shadows and didn’t see where they went. Maybe the second person was Wilson?”
“You’d better go and report it to McTavish,” said Floyd. “I’ll relieve you and watch for you here at the lookout post.”
Al climbed down and went looking for McTavish. At first the adjutant informed Al the platoon commander was busy. But Al insisted, so the assistant relented and let him in.
McTavish looked up from a crude map of the city he was studying and said rather brusquely, “What can I do for you?”
“Linder sent me down,” said Al. “I’ve been up at the lookout, and I have some information that might be useful.”
“Go on.”
“It was early in the morning, before first light. I saw two people crossing the square to the rubble heap. They climbed about the heap as if searching for something, and then I lost them in the shadows. Although I kept watching, I never did see them go back the way they came.”
“Did you recognize either of them?” asked McTavish.
“One of them looked like Hoffstetter, but I wasn’t sure about the other one. Hoffstetter wouldn’t also be missing, would he?”
“You know about Wilson, do you?”
“Yes, Linder told me.”
McTavish then called an aide and asked for a thorough search for Hoffstetter.
“If it’s all right with you,” said Al, “I’d like to return to my post, since Linder is standing in for me.”
“Yes, of course,” said McTavish. “Thank you,” he added perfunctorily, without gratitude.
As McTavish turned his eyes back to the map, Al made his way out of the building, across the square, and back up to the lookout. He told Floyd of his conversation with McTavish and then resumed his sentry duties. When the bell sounded that his watch was over, he returned to his room and met Floyd just coming to see him. They sat down on a stone bench in the corner.
“As you might have guessed,” said Floyd, “Hoffstetter is also missing.”
“What does this all mean?” asked Al. “Where could they have gone?”
The two said nothing for a few moments.
“I think I would have seen them if they’d left the rubble heap. Could they have become trapped in the rubble?”
“Maybe they found a way into the tunnel,” said Floyd. “Why don’t we look where you think you saw them?”
They crossed the square and made their way toward the rubble heap. At Al’s direction they began at the bottom and searched. The broken stone was treacherous, and some pieces shifted when they put their weight on them. Finally, near the top they found a large section of the tower that had collapsed. By worming their way through a window, they found an open space in the rubble. They squeezed through gaps between large blocks of stone for about thirty feet until they came upon a larger pocket, which was lit by a greenish glow. The glow came from an opening that looked into a long tunnel.
“So this is where they went,” said Floyd. “Why would they come here?”
“And why would Wilson go with Hoffstetter?” asked Al. “I can see Hoffstetter being a little cracked, but why Wilson?”
Floyd grimaced. “I don’t know. I really don’t know,” he said. “Now what do we do?”
“Right now everything is conjecture,” said Al. “We really aren’t
sure that Wilson and Hoffstetter went inside. I’ve already gone to McTavish once. If we go again we’ll reinforce his conviction that we’re not good enough to be part of a military operation.”
“I guess you’re right,” said Floyd. “If he really takes your story seriously, he’ll send some one here to investigate, and then he’ll know as much as we know now. Let’s wait and see what McTavish does. Eventually we’ll have to tell him. Should we block up this hole?”
“I’d like to!” said Al. “But if we do, how will Wilson and Hoffstetter get back if they find their way back to the tunnel? I think the best we can do is wait for McTavish to act on what I told him, and keep an eye on the rubble hole from the lookout.”
McTavish ordered Floyd’s platoon to stand guard over the citadel while the other three platoons searched the lower city, house to house. Late in the afternoon, four more platoons arrived from City Point and were given another large building to use as their barracks.
Since Al had the second dogwatch from 16:00 to 18:00 for the coming evening and had agreed to take the midnight to 04:00 watch for Stan, he slept until early in the afternoon, had a bite to eat, and then caught up on the latest news. There was still no sign of Wilson or Hoffstetter. Much of the lower city remained to be searched, but there was no trace of recent human activity anywhere.
Al climbed back up to the perch a little before his watch was due to start, to relieve Pam, who had the watch before him. She seemed quite on edge. They talked for a few minutes. She’d not seen or heard anything, but she’d had the uncomfortable feeling that she was being watched.
She said good night and made her way back down. Al watched her longingly until she was out of sight. He knew better than to dwell on her and forced himself to deliberately look around the citadel. He also had the uncomfortable feeling that he was being watched.
The moon was just setting. Al could see the dark figures of the sentries on the citadel wall below him. Occasionally the moonlight glinted from a crossbow or a drawn blade.
The Halcyon Dislocation Page 27