The nightmare was over. As he entered his house half an hour later, Creel said, “Where’s the gun?”
“The gun?” Fara stared at his wife.
“It said over the ‘stat a few minutes ago that you were the first customer of the new weapon shop.”
Fara stood, remembering what the young man had said: “Well advertise his presence.” He thought in agony: His reputation! Not that his was a great name, but he had long believed with a quiet pride that Fara Clark’s motor repair shop was widely known in the community and countryside. First, his private humiliation inside the shop. And now this lying to people who didn’t know why he had gone into the store.
He hurried to the telestat, and called Mayor Dale. His hopes crashed as the plump man said:
“I’m sorry, Fara. I don’t see how you can have free time on the telestat. You’ll have to pay for it. They did.”
“They did!” Fara wondered if he sounded as empty as he felt.
“And they’ve paid Lan Harris for his lot. The old man asked top price, and got it. He phoned me to transfer the title.”
“Oh!” Fara’s world was shattering. “You mean nobody’s going to do anything? What about the Imperial garrison at Ferd?”
Dimly, he was aware of the mayor mumbling something about the empress’ soldiers refusing to interfere in civilian matters. “Civilian matters!” Fara exploded. “You mean these people are just going to be allowed to come here whether we want them or not, illegally forcing the sale of lots by first taking possession of them?” A thought struck him. “Look,” he said breathlessly, “you haven’t changed your mind about having Jor keep guard in front of the shop?”
The plump face in the telestat plate grew impatient. “Now, see here, Fara, let the constituted authorities handle this matter.”
“But you’re going to keep Jor there,” Fara said doggedly.
The mayor looked annoyed. “I promised, didn’t I? So he’ll be there. And now, do you want to buy time on the telestat? It’s fifteen credits for one minute. Mind you, as a friend, I think you’re wasting your money. No one has ever caught up with a false statement.”
Fara said grimly, ‘Tut two on, one in the morning, one in the evening.”
“All right. We’ll deny it completely. Good night.”
The telestat went blank; and Fara sat there. A new thought hardened his face. “That boy of ours—there’s going to be a showdown. He either works in my shop or he gets no more allowance.”
Creel said, “You’ve handled him wrong. He’s twenty-three, and you treat him like a child. Remember, at twenty-three you were a married man.”
“That was different,” said Fara. “I had a sense of responsibility. Do you know what he did tonight?”
He didn’t quite catch her answer. For a moment he thought she said: “No. In what way did you humiliate him first?”
Fara felt too impatient to verify the improbable words. He rushed on, “He refused in front of the whole village to give me help. He’s a bad one, all bad.”
“Yes,” said Creel in a bitter tone. “He’s all bad. I’m sure you don’t realize how bad. He’s as cold as steel, but without steel’s strength or integrity. He took a long time, but he hates even me now because I stood up for you for so long when I knew you were wrong.”
“What’s that?” said Fara, startled; then gruffly: “Come, come, my dear, we’re both upset. Let’s go to bed.”
He slept poorly.
CHAPTER THREE
THERE WERE DAYS when the conviction that this was a personal fight between himself and the weapon shop lay heavily on Fara. Though it was out of his way, he made a point of walking past the weapon shop on his way to and from work, always pausing to speak to Constable Jor. On the fourth day, the policeman wasn’t there.
Fara waited patiently at first, then angrily. He walked finally to his shop and called Jor’s house. Jor wasn’t home.
He was, according to his wife, guarding the weapon store. Fara hesitated. His own shop was piled with work, and he had a guilty sense of having neglected his customers for the first time in his life. It would be simple to call up the mayor and report Jor’s dereliction. And yet he didn’t want to get the man into trouble.
Out in the street, he saw that a large crowd was gathering in front of the weapon shop. Fara hurried. A man he knew greeted him excitedly: “Jor’s been murdered, Fara!”
“Murdered!” Fara stood very still, and at first he was not clearly conscious of the thought that was in his mind: Satisfaction! Now, even the soldiers would have to act. He realized the ghastly tenor of his thoughts, but pushed the sense of shame out of his mind. He said slowly, “Where’s the body?”
“Inside.”
“You mean those . . . scum—” In spite of himself, he hesitated over the epithet. It was difficult to think of the silver-haired weapon shop man in such terms. His mind hardened. “You mean, those scum killed him, then pulled his body inside?”
“Nobody saw the killing,” said another man, “but he’s gone and hasn’t been seen for three horn’s. The mayor got the weapon shop on telestat, but they claim they don’t know anything about him. They’ve done away with him, that’s what, and now they’re pretending innocence. Well, they won’t get out of it as easily as that. Mayor’s gone to phone the soldiers at Ferd to bring up some big guns.”
Something of the excitement that was in the crowd surged through Fara, the feeling that big things were brewing. It was the most delicious sensation that had ever tingled along his nerves, and it was all mixed with a strange pride that he had been so right about this, that he at least had never doubted that here was evil. He did not recognize the emotion as the full-flowering joy that comes to a member of a mob. But his voice shook as he said, “Guns? Yes, that will be the answer, and the soldiers will have to come, of course.”
Fara nodded to himself in the immensity of his certainty that the Imperial soldiers would now have no excuse for not acting. He started to say something about what the empress would do if she found out that a man had lost his life because the soldiers had shirked their duty, but the words were drowned in a shout:
“Here comes the mayor! Hey, Mr. Mayor, when are the atomic cannons due?”
There was more of the same general meaning as the mayor’s car landed lightly. Some of the questions must have reached his honor, for he stood up in the open two-seater, and held up his hand for silence. To Fara’s astonishment, the plump-faced man gazed at him with accusing eyes. He looked around him, but he was almost alone; everybody else had crowded forward. Fara shook his head, puzzled by that glare, and then flinched as Mayor Dale pointed a finger at him and said in a voice that trembled, “There’s the man who’s responsible for the trouble that has come upon us. Stand forward, Fara Clark, and show yourself. You’ve cost this town seven hundred credits that we could ill afford to spend.”
Fara couldn’t have moved or spoken to save his life. The mayor went on, with self-pity in his tone, “We’ve all known that it wasn’t wise to interfere with these weapon shops. So long as the Imperial government leaves them alone, what right have we to set up guards, or act against them? That’s what I’ve thought from the beginning, but this man . . . this . . . this Fara Clark kept after all of us, forcing us to move against our wills, and so now we’ve got a seven-hundred credit bill to meet and—”
He broke off with, “I might as well make it brief. When I called the garrison, the commander laughed and said that Jor would turn up. And I had barely disconnected when there was a money call from Jor. He’s on Mars.” He waited for the shouts of amazement to died down. “It’ll take four weeks for him to come back by ship, and we’ve got to pay for it, and Fara Clark is responsible.”
The shock was over. Fara stood cold, his mind hard. He said finally, scathingly, “So you’re giving up, and trying to blame me all in one breath. I say you are all fools.”
As he turned away, he heard Mayor Dale saying that the situation was not completely lost as he had learned tha
t the weapon shop had been set up in Glay because the village was equidistant from four cities, and that it was the city business the shop was after. This would mean tourists, and accessory trade for the village stores.
Fara heard no more. Head high, he walked back to his shop. There were one or two catcalls from the mob, but he ignored them. The worst of it, as the days passed, was the realization that the people of the weapon shop had no personal interest in him. They were remote, superior, undefeatable. When he thought of it, he felt a vague fear at the way they had transferred Jor to Mars in a period of less than three hours, when all the world knew that the trip by fastest spaceship could never be made in less than 24 days.
Fara did not go to the express station to see Jor arrive home. He had heard that the council had decided to charge Jor with half of the expense of die trip, on the threat of losing his job if he, objected. On the second night after Jor’s return, Fara slipped down to the constable’s house, and handed the officer one hundred and seventy-five credits. He returned home with a clearer conscience.
It was on the third day after that the door of his shop banged open and a man came in. Fara frowned as he saw who it was: Castler, a village hanger-on. The man was grinning. “Thought you might be interested, Fara. Somebody came out of the weapon shop today.”
Fara strained deliberately at the connecting bolt of a hard plate of the atomic motor he was fixing. He waited with a gathering annoyance that the man did not volunteer further information. Asking questions would be a form of recognition of the worthless fellow. A developing curiosity made him say finally, grudgingly; “I suppose the constable promptly picked him up?”
He supposed nothing of the kind; but it was an opening.
‘It wasn’t a man. It was a girl.”
Fara knitted his brows. He didn’t like the idea of making trouble for women. But the cunning devils! Using a girl, just as they had used an old man as a clerk. It was a trick that deserved to fail; the girl was probably a hussy who needed rough treatment. Fara said harshly, “Well, what’s happened?”
“She’s still out, bold as you please. Pretty thing, too.”
The bolt off, Fara took the hard plate over to tie polisher, and began patiently the long, careful task of smoothing away the crystals that heat had seared on the once shining metal. The soft throb of the polisher made the background to his next words, “Has anything been done?”
“Nope. The constable’s been told, but he says he doesn’t fancy being away from his family for another month or so, and paying the cost into the bargain.”
Fara contemplated that for a minute, as the polisher throbbed on. His voice shook with suppressed fury when he said finally, “So they’re letting them get away with it. It’s all been as clever as hell. Can’t they see that they mustn’t give an inch before these . . . these trangressors? It’s like giving countenance to sin.”
From the corner of his eye, he noticed that there was a grin on the face of the other. It struck Fara suddenly that file man was enjoying his anger. And there was something else in that grin—a secret knowledge. Fara pulled the engine plate away from the polisher. He faced the ne’er-do-well. “Naturally, that sin part wouldn’t worry you much.”
“Oh,” said the man nonchalantly, “the hard knocks of life make people tolerant. For instance, after you know the girl better, you yourself will probably come to realize that there’s good in all of us.”
It was not so much the words, as the I’ve-got-secret-in-formation tone that made Fara snap, “What do you mean—after I get to know the girl better! I won’t even speak to the brazen creature.”
“One can’t always choose,” the other said with enormous casualness. “Suppose he brings her home.”
“Suppose who brings who home?” Fara spoke irritably. “Castler, you—” He stopped. A dead weight of dismay plumped into his stomach; his whole being sagged. “You mean—” he said.
“I mean,” replied Castler with a triumphant leer, “that the boys aren’t letting a beauty like her be lonesome. And, naturally, your son was the first to speak to her.” He finished: “They’re walkin’ together now on Second Avenue, comin’ this way.”
“Get out of here!” Fara roared. “And stay away from me with your gloating. Get out!”
The man hadn’t expected such an ignominious ending. He flushed scarlet, then went out, slamming the door. Fara stood for a moment, stiffly. Then, with jerky movements he shut off his power and went out into the street. The time to put a stop to that kind of thing was—now!
He had no clear plan, simply a determination to end an impossible situation. It was all mixed up with his anger against Cayle. How could he have had such a worthless son, he who paid his debts and worked hard, and tried to be decent and live up to the highest standards of the empress?
He wondered if there mightn’t be bad blood on Creel’s side, not from her mother, of course—Fara added the qualification hastily. There was a fine, hard-working woman, who would leave Creel a tidy sum one of these days. But Creel’s father had disappeared when she was a child.
And now, Cayle with this weapon shop girl, who had let herself be picked up—he saw them as he turned the corner onto Second Avenue. They were heading away from Fara. As he came up, the girl was saying:
“You have the wrong idea about us. A person like you can’t get a job in our organization. You belong in the Imperial service, where they can use young men of good appearance and ambition.”
Fara was too intent for her words to mean anything. He said harshly, “Cayle!”
The couple turned, Cayle with the measured unhurriedness of a young man who had gone a long way on the road to acquiring steel-like nerves; the girl was quicker, but dignified.
Fara had a feeling that his anger was self-destroying, but the violence of his emotions ended that thought even as it came. He said thickly, “Cayle, get home at once.”
He was aware of the girl looking at him curiously from strange, gray-green eyes. No shame, he thought, and his rage mounted, driving away the alarm that came at the sight of the flush that was creeping into Cayle’s cheeks.
The flush faded into a pale, tight-lipped anger as Cayle half-turned to the girl and said. “This is the childish old fool I’ve got to contend with. Fortunately, we seldom see each other. We don’t even eat our meals at the same table. What do you think of him?”
The girl smiled impersonally, “Oh, we know Fara Clark. He’s the mainstay of the empress in Glay.”
“Yes,” the boy sneered. “You ought to hear him. He thinks we’re living in heaven, and the empress is the divine power. The worst part of it is that there’s no chance of his ever getting that stuffy look wiped off his face.”
They walked off; and Fara stood there. The extent of what had happened drained anger from him as if it had never been. There was the realization that he had made a mistake. But he couldn’t quite grasp it. For long now, since Cayle had refused to work in his shop, he had felt this building up to a climax. Suddenly, his own uncontrollable ferocity stood revealed as a partial product of that deeper problem. Only, now that the smash was here, he didn’t want to face it.
All through the day in his shop, he kept pushing it out of his mind, kept thinking: Would this go on now, as before, Cayle and he living in the same house, not even looking at each other when they met, going to bed at different times, getting up, Fara at 6:30, Cayle at noon? Would that go on through all the days and years to come?
Creel was waiting for him when he arrived home. She said: “Fara, he wants you to loan him five hundred credits, so that he can go to Imperial City.”
Fara nodded wordlessly. He brought the money back to the house the next morning, and gave it to Creel, who took it into Cayle’s bedroom.
She came out a minute later. “He says to tell you goodbye.”
When Fara came home that evening, Cayle was gone. He wondered whether he ought to feel relieved. But the only sensation that finally came was a conviction of disaster.
CH
APTER FOUR
HE HAD BEEN CAUGHT in a trap. Now he was escaping. Cayle did not think of his departure from the village of Glay as the result of a decision. He had wanted to leave for so long that the purpose seemed part of his body hunger, like the need to eat or drink. But the impulse had grown dim and undefined. Baffled by his father, he had turned an unfriendly eye on everything that was of the village. And his obstinate defiance was matched at every turn by the obdurate qualities of his prison—until now.
Just why the cage had opened was obscure. There was the weapon shop girl, of course. Slender, her gray-green eyes intelligent, her face well-formed and carrying about her an indefinable aura of a person who had made many successful decisions, she had said—he remembered the words as if she were still speaking them—“Why, yes, I’m from Imperial City. I’m going back there Thursday afternoon.”
This Thursday afternoon she was going to the great city, while he remained in Glay. He couldn’t stand it. He felt ill, savage as an animal in his desire to go also. It was that, more than his quarrel with his father, which made him put pressure on his mother for money. Now, he sat on the local carplane to Ferd, dismayed to find that the girl was not aboard.
At the Ferd Air Center, waiting for the Imperial City plane, he stood at various vantage points and looked for Lucy Rail. But the crowds jamming toward the constant stream of interstate planes defeated even his alert eyes. All too soon his own vast machine glided in for a landing. That is, it seemed too soon until he saw the plane coming toward him. A hundred feet high at the nose, absolutely transparent, it shimmered like a jewel as it drew up in the roadstead.
To Cayle there came a tremendous excitement. Thought of the girl faded. He clambered aboard feverishly. He did not think of Lucy again until the plane was hurtling along over the evergreen land far below. He leaned back in his comfortable chair then, and wondered; What kind of a person was she, this girl of the weapon shops? Where did she live? What was her life as a member of an almost rebel organization? . . . There was a man in a chair about ten feet along the aisle. Cayle suppressed an impulse to ask him all the questions that bubbled inside him. Other people might not realize as clearly as he himself did that, though he had lived all his life in Glay, he wasn’t really village. He’d better not risk a rebuff.
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