by Algis Budrys
“Those savages.” Her face was still rigid, flexing only enough to let her lips move, but her voice cracked like a piano wire whip. “People like that shouldn’t be alive. People who’d do a thing like that!”
Garvin dragged a long breath, letting it seep out slowly. A wave of pain washed up from his leg, and he closed his eyes for a moment. What could he say? That people were not savage by option? Already she had forgotten what it meant to the unorganized people of the area, having to compete with armed foraging teams.
His own mind was clear now. He had thought of another solution to the Conner problem.
For Margaret’s sake—possibly for Carol’s as well, and for the sake of young Ted, who had to somehow grow up in this world, and do his man’s work in it—he was grateful that his next step now would be what it would.
He squeezed Margaret’s hand. “I’ll take care of it,” he said somberly.
* * *
Hobbled by bandages, Garvin ran clumsily across the driveway with his men. The narrow space between the two buildings roared and echoed with the sleet of gunfire between the enemy and the covering guard in his building. Ahead of him, he heard the spasmodic and much lighter fire of his advance men as they cleaned out the enemy in the building’s basements. He lurched under the shifting weight of the sack of dynamite sticks that he, like all the other men in his party, was carrying.
Holland, running beside him, put a hand under his elbow. “You making it okay, Matt? We would have handled this without you coming along.”
Garvin spat out a laugh. “I’ll have to touch it off.” He passed the corner of the building and limped rapidly toward the entrance that would take him into the basement, where some of the men must already be placing their charges against the girders and bearing walls.
* * *
Margaret stared at him incredulously. “Matt! All those people. You killed all those people just because I said…”
He stood wordlessly in his living room, his vision blurring with each new thrust of pain up his leg, his shoulders down, the empty sack dangling from his hand. He rubbed his eyes wearily.
“Matt, you shouldn’t have listened to me. I was upset. I—”
He realized he was swaying, but he did not try to control himself as strongly as he would have if any of his men had been present.
“I didn’t do it because of anything you said,” he tried to explain, the words blurring on his tongue. “I did it because it was the only way left. I had to order it and do it myself because I’ve got the responsibility.”
“You had to kill those people?”
“Because there are more people. Take a look out some other window—out some window that shows you the rest of this city, with the buildings still standing.”
“No, Matt, I can’t.”
“Have it your way, then.” He dropped into a chair, looking down at the gummy stain on his coverall leg, wishing in his weariness, that it had been Gus, of the two of them, who had happened to stand slightly behind the other.
Another night fell, and Garvin stood at a window and watched it.
“Christmas Eve, Jack,” he said to Holland, who was watching with him.
“Yes, sir.”
Matt grunted, half ruefully. “Can’t see it, can you, Jack?”
Holland hesitated, frowning uncertainly. “I don’t know, sir. I can see it—I can understand the reasons for it, all right. But it doesn’t…” He looked quickly at Garvin, obviously wondering whether it was safe to go on.
Matt chuckled again, more freely. “I won’t eat you just because you tell me that what we did doesn’t feel right. This is still a free republic.” He gestured at the dark buildings, and his face twisted with regret. “Out there, it isn’t, yet. But it’s the same as it was when Gus and I knocked on your father’s wall and told him what his choice was, the same way Gus knocked on my wall. Gus was wrong, that night after the ambush. He was right, but he was wrong. We can make them do things our way—if we knock louder than Gus ever thought we could make ourselves do.” He turned away from the window and put his hand on Holland’s shoulder.
“Better go change the downstairs guard, Jack.”
He looked down at the moonlit rubble that had been the next building. He could almost read the sign that surmounted the tumble of brick, metal, glass, and flesh.
LEARN YOUR LESSON
—COOPERATE—
Matt Garvin, President,
Second Free American Republic.
“Yes, sir,” Holland said. He turned to go. “Merry Christmas, sir.”
SECTION TWO
PROLOGUE
The ground in the foothills was rocky, covered by loose gravel, and treacherous. The car heaved itself up over a sharp ridge with torturous slowness and pancaked down on the other side with a hard smash. The steering levers whipped back and forth just short of the driver’s kneecaps, and the motors raced.
“No more seeing, Joe,” the driver told Custis. “Lights?”
“No. Bed ’er down, Lew.”
The driver locked his treads, and cut the switches. The damper rods slammed home in the power pile, and the motors ground down to a stop. The car lay dead.
Custis slid down out of the turret. “All right, let’s button up. We sleep inside tonight.”
The driver dogged his slit shutters and Hutchinson, the machinegunner, began stuffing rags into the worn gasproof seal on his hatch. Robb, the turret gunner, dogged down the command hatch. “Load napalm,” Custis told him, and Robb pulled the racks of fragmentation shells he’d been carrying in the guns all day. He fitted new loads, locked the breeches, and pulled the charging handles. “Napalm loaded,” he checked back in his colorless voice.
“Acoustics out,” Custis said, and Hutchinson activated the car’s listening gear.
Henley, standing where the twin .75s could pound his head to a pulp with their recoiling breeches, asked: “What’re you going to do now, Custis?”
“Eat.” Joe broke out five cans of rations, handed three to the crew and one to Henley. “Here.” He squatted down on the deck and peeled back the lid of the can. Bending it between his fingers, he scooped food into his mouth. His eye sockets were thick with black shadow from the overhead light. His face was tanned to the cheekbones, and dead white from there to the nape of his recently shaved skull. The goggles had left a wide outline of rubber particles around his eyes. “We’ll see all the bandits you want in the morning.”
“You mean you’ve made us sitting ducks on purpose?”
“I mean if I was a bandit I wouldn’t talk to nothin’ but a sitting duck, and I’m under contract to let you talk to some bandits.”
“Not from a position of weakness!”
Custis looked up and grinned. “That’s life, Major. Honest, that’s the way life is.”
“There’s somebody,” Custis said at daybreak. He stepped away from the periscope eyepiece and let Henley take his look at the soldiery squatted on the rocks outside.
There were men all around the battlewagon, in plain sight, looking at it stolidly. They were in all kinds of uniforms, standardized only by black-and-yellow shoulder badges. Some of the uniforms dated two or three Republics back. All of them were ragged, and a few were completely unfamiliar. West Coast, maybe.
Or maybe even East.
The men on the rocks were making no moves. They waited motionless under the battlewagon’s guns. At first glance, the only arms they seemed to have were rifles that had to be practically smoothbores by now—and it had taken Custis a while to find out why these men, who looked like they’d known what they were doing, were trusting in muskets against a battlewagon. There were five two-man teams spread in a loose circle around the car. Each team had an rifle fitted with a grenade launcher. The men aiming them had them elevated just right to hit the car’s turtledeck with their first shots.
“Black-and-yellow,” Henley said angrily.
Custis shrugged. “No blue-and-silver, that’s true,” he answered, giving Henley the;need
le again. “But that was thirty years ago. It might still be Berendtsen.”
Custis went back to the periscope eyepiece for another look at the grenadiers. Each of them had an open, lead-lined box beside him with more grenades in it.
Custis grunted. Napalm splashed pretty well, but it would take one full traverse of the turret to knock out all five teams. The turret took fifteen seconds to revolve 360 degrees, while a grenadier could pull a trigger and have a grenade lofting in, say, one second’s time. A few seconds later the grenade would have covered the outside of the car with radioactive dust that would make it death to stay inside, or death to get out. Nor could the battlewagon get out of the grenade’s way in time—the basis of an interdictory weapon like this was that it would be used as soon as you made the slightest move, but, you could believe, no sooner than that.
“Stalemate,” Custis grunted. “But no worse than that. Generous of ’em.” He unbuckled his web belt and took off his .45. He walked under the command hatch and unclogged it.
“What’re you doing?” Henley demanded.
“Starting.” He threw the hatch back and pulled himself up, getting a foothold on the saddle and climbing out on top of the turret. He flipped the hatch shut behind him and stood up.
“My name’s Custis,” he said carefully as the men raised their rifles. “Hired out to the Seventh Republic. I’ve got a man here who wants to talk to your boss.”
There was no immediate answer. He stood and waited. He heard the hatch scrape beside him, and planted a boot on it before Henley could lift it.
“What about, Custis?” a voice asked from off to one side, out of range of his eyes. The voice was old and husky, kept in tight check. Custis wondered if it might not tremble, were the old man to let it.
He weighed his answer. There was no sense to playing around. Maybe he was going to get himself killed right now, and maybe he wasn’t, but if he played games here he might never get a straight answer to anything.
“Theodore Berendtsen,” he said. “About him.”
The name dropped into these men like a stone. He saw their faces go tight, and he saw heads jerk involuntarily. Well, the British had stood guard over Napoleon’s grave for nineteen years.
“Turn this way, Custis,” the same worn voice said.
Custis risked taking his eyes off the grenadiers. He turned toward the voice.
Standing a bit apart from his troops was a thin, weather-burned man with sharp eyes hooded under thick white eyebrows. He needed a shave badly. His marble-white hair was shaggy. There were deep creases in his face, pouches under his eyes, and a dry wattle of skin under his jaw.
“I’m the commander here,” he said in his halting voice. “Bring out your man.”
Custis stepped off the hatch and let Henley come out. The political officer gave him a savage look as he squirmed up and got to his feet. Custis ignored it. “Over there—the white-haired one,” he said without moving his lips. “He’s the local boss.” He stepped a little to one side and gave Henley room to stand on the sloping turret top, but he kept watching the old commander, who was wearing a pair of faded black coveralls with that black-and-yellow shoulder badge.
Henley squinted up toward the thin figure. The back of his neck was damp, even in the chill morning breeze, and he was nervous about his footing.
“I’m Major Thomas Henley,” he finally said, “direct representative of the Seventh North American Republic.” Then he stopped, obviously unable to think of what to say next. Custis realized, with a flat grin, that his coming out cold with Berendtsen’s name hadn’t left the major much room to work in.
“You’re out of your country’s jurisdiction, Major,” the commander said.
“That’s a matter of opinion.”
“That’s a matter of fact,” the commander said flatly. “You and Custis can come down. I’ll talk to you. Leave the rest of your men here.”
Henley’s head turned quickly. “Should we go with him?” he muttered to Custis.
“Lord, Major, don’t ask me! But if you’re plannin’ to get anywhere, you better talk to somebody. Or do you expect Berendtsen to plop down in your lap?”
Henley looked back at the thin figure on the hillside. “Maybe he already has.”
Custis looked at him steadily. “They shot Berendtsen in New York City thirty years ago. They threw what was left of his body on a garbage heap. And a year later there was a tomb over where they threw it.”
“Maybe, Captain. Maybe. Were you there?”
“Were you?”
* * *
Custis felt annoyed at himself for getting so exercised about it. He glared at the major. Then his common sense came trickling back, and he turned away to give Lew his orders about keeping the car sealed and the guns ready until he and Henley got back.
Thirty years dead, Berendtsen was. Judged for treason, condemned, killed—and men still quarreled at the mention of his name. Custis shook his head and took another look at the old, dried-out man on the hill, wearing those patched, threadbare coveralls.
Most of the commander’s men stayed behind, dispersed among the rocks around the silent battlewagon. Ten of them formed up in a loose party around the commander and Henley, and Custis walked along a few yards behind the two men as they started off into the mountains.
It was turning into a bright but cool day. Looking up into the west, Custis could see the mountaintops pluming as high altitude gales swept their snow caps out in banners. The track they were walking on wound among boulders higher than Custis’s head, and he felt vaguely uncomfortable. He was used to the sweeping plains where his father had raised him; where, except for the spindly trees along the sparse creeks, nothing stood taller than a man.
The commander’s base was a group of low, one room huts strung out along the foot of a butte, with a cook-fire pit in front of each one. Their outlines were broken by rocks and boulders piled around them. There were prepared slit-trenches spotted around the area, two machinegun pits covering the approach trail, and a few mortar batteries sited on reverse slopes. From the size of the place and the depth of the organization, Custis judged the commander had about four hundred people in his outfit.
Custis wondered how he could keep them all supplied, and the answer he got from looking around was that he couldn’t do it very well. The huts were dark and dingy, with what looked like dirt floors. A few wan-looking women were carrying water up from a spring, balancing pails made out of cut-down oil cans. They were raggedly dressed, and the spindly-legged children that trotted beside them were hollow-eyed. Here and there, among the rocks, there were a few patches of scraggly garden. Up at one end of the valley, a small herd of gaunt cows was grazing on indifferent grass.
Custis nodded to himself It confirmed something he’d been thinking for a couple of years; the bandits were still crossing the plains to raid into Republican territory, but they’d never dared set up their own towns on the untenable prairies. It was an impossible thing to have every man’s hand against you and still try to make the change to a settled life.
But with women and children, the bandits needed a permanent camp somewhere. So now they were pulled back all the way into the mountains, trying to make a go of it, but with their weapons wearing out. They were dying on the vine, something left behind, and by the time the cities started spreading out their holdings again, there’d be little here to stop them. If the cities could ever get themselves organized. Maybe everything was dying. The legendary East and South were too far away to count. Maybe everything that counted was dying.
“In here,” the commander said, gesturing into a hut. Henley and Custis stepped inside, followed by two men with rifles and then the commander. The hut was almost bare except for a cot and a table with one chair, all made out of odd pieces of scrap lumber and weapons crates. The commander sat down facing them with his veined, brown-mottled hands resting on the stained wood.
Custis spread his feet and stood relaxed. Henley’s hands were playing with the seams along his
pant legs.
“What about Berendtsen, Major?” the commander asked.
“We’ve heard he’s still alive.”
The commander snorted. “Fairy tales!”
“Possibly. But if he’s still alive, these mountains are the logical place for him to be.” Henley looked at the commander meaningfully.
The commander’s narrow lips twitched. “My name isn’t Berendtsen, Major. I don’t use his colors. And my men don’t call themselves The Army of Unification.”
“Things change,” Henley answered. “I didn’t say you were Berendtsen. But if Berendtsen got away from New York, he’d have been a fool to stay near there, or use his own name anywhere. If he’s in these mountains, he might not care to advertise the fact.”
The commander grimaced. “This isn’t getting us anywhere. What do you want from me?”
“Information, then, if you have it. We’ll pay for it, in cash or supplies, whatever you say, within reason.”
“In weapons?”
Henley paused for a moment. Then he nodded. “If that’s what you want.”
“And to blazes with what we do to the people in the independent towns? I suppose so. What about your own people in the outlying areas, once we’re re-armed?”
“It’s important that we have this information.”
The commander smiled coldly. “There’s no pretense of governing for anyone’s benefit but your own, is there?”
“I’m loyal to the Seventh Republic. I follow my orders.”
“No doubt. All right, what do you want to know?”
“Do you know of any groups in this area that Berendtsen might be leading?”
The commander shook his head. “No. There aren’t any other groups. I’ve consolidated them all. You can have that news gratis.”
“I see.” Henley smiled for the first time Custis had ever seen. It was an odd, spinsterish puckering of the lips. The corners of his eyes twinkled upward, and gave him the look of a sly cat. “You could have made me pay to find that out.”