by Various
"I've been one for ten or twelve years. I escaped from a Commune in Tannerville when I was in my senior year. They never even got me into one of the coffins. As I said, I'm a waker." He spoke slowly, gently and he hoped soothingly. "You don't have to be afraid of me. Now tell me who you are."
The girl pushed a lock of almost yellow hair from her eyes with the back of her hand, but it was her only show of carelessness. She was strong and light. She was considerably smaller than he and could probably handle herself as well as he in this country. The landscape was thick with bushes, conifers and rocks. She would have no trouble in getting away from him if he scared her; and he would scare her with almost any sudden movement. It had been too long for Nelson to keep track of when he had been accompanied by others and he hungered for companionship; especially for a woman. The patrol that had captured Sammy and Jeanne and the old man, Gardner, had also gotten Edna and almost had gotten him. The fact that the girl was alone now more than likely meant that she had no one either. They needed each other. Nelson did not want to scare her off.
So he sat down on the ground with his back to a large rock and rummaged in his pack to find a can.
"You hungry?" he asked looking up at her. He couldn't be sure at the distance, but he thought that her eyes were brown. Brown, and huge; like a colt's. He held the can out where she could see it. She repeated the gesture of a while ago to brush back that same lock of almost yellow hair, but there was a change in her face which he could see even twenty feet away, and another, more subtle change about her which he had to sense. "You're hungry, all right, aren't you?" he said. He almost tossed her the can, but realized in time that she would run. He considered for a moment and then held it out to her. She focused her eyes on the can and for a moment Nelson might have been able to reach her before she turned and ran; but he had better sense than to try.
Instead, he watched the play of conflicting desires about the girl's face and body. He could see the uncertainty and indecision in the girl's nearly imperceptible movement. But she did not come.
Well, at least she didn't run, either; and Nelson could claim to having broken ahead some in stirring up any indecision at all. He found the can's release and pressed it with his thumb. There was a hiss as the seal came loose and an odor of cooked food as the contents sizzled with warmth. Nelson looked up at the girl and smiled.
It could have been wishful thinking, but it seemed to him that she was a step or two closer than she had been before he had taken his eyes off her to open the can. He couldn't be sure. He smelled the food for her benefit and told her, "It's pork and beans." He held it out to her again. "I stole it from a patrol warehouse a few weeks back. It sure does smell good, doesn't it? You like the smell of that, don't you?" But she still wasn't convinced that this wasn't a patrol stunt to get hands on her and haul her back to a mausoleum. He couldn't blame her. He slowly pushed himself to his feet and walked to a spot about ten feet from where he had been, and still about twenty feet from her, and put the can carefully on the ground. He went back and seated himself against the same rock to wait for her to make up her mind.
* * * * *
It didn't take long. Without taking her eyes from him, she moved like an animal to the food and stooped slowly, keeping alert for any sudden move on his part, and picked up the food. She stood up, and stepped back a couple of steps.
She ate with her fingers, dipping them in and extracting hot food, with no apparent concern for the heat. She pushed the food into her mouth and licked her fingers carefully of clinging food. She ate rapidly, as if for the first time in weeks. And she kept her eyes, all the time, on Nelson.
Nelson didn't care, now; he wouldn't have jumped her, or done anything to scare her at all, even if her guard were to be let down for a moment.
He let her finish her meal, then smiled at her when she looked at him. She still held the empty can, and she was wiping her mouth with her free hand. She stared at him for almost half a minute before he said slowly, "You like that food. Don't you?" She said nothing. She looked at him and at the can she held. He knew what was going on in her mind and he believed that he was winning. "You know we'll both be needing someone out here, don't you?" But her answer was an uncertain expression on her face as she stared at him.
"Loners don't last too long out here. Being alone gets to you sooner or later," he said. "You go mad or you get careless and the patrol gets you."
The girl opened her mouth and glanced around quickly, then back at Nelson. She bent over, still watching Nelson all the time, and put the can down. Then she stepped backwards, toward the edge of the clearing, feeling the way with her feet and a hand held back to tell her if she were backing into a tree or rock. When she was almost to the edge of the clearing, almost to the trees, she stopped and stared at him. There were shadows now; it was almost night, and night came quickly in this country. Nelson could not see her face as she looked at him. She turned suddenly and ran into the trees. He made no effort to stop her or call her back; any such effort would have been futile and for his purposes, disastrous. No such effort was necessary.
He spent the night sheltered between some boulders and awoke the next morning rested by an undisturbed sleep.
He found a small creek near by and washed his face to awaken himself. It was a clear morning, with a warm sun and a cool wafting breeze. He felt good; he felt alive and ready for whatever the day had to offer. And he felt ready for breakfast.
He found another can of pork and beans in his pack and opened it. It was, he noted, almost the last. His supplies were getting low. He considered the situation as he slowly ate his breakfast.
Of course there was only one thing to do. He supposed that he could have gotten by simply by hunting his food, but hunting was at best seasonal and required that he keep more or less to a specific area; agriculture was about the same, only worse. A farm meant a smaller area than a hunting preserve and it also meant sticking to it more. It meant buildings to store food against winter. It meant inevitable--and almost certainly prompt--capture by a patrol. No, all things considered, there was only one answer and he knew the answer from long experience. Find a patrol warehouse and steal your food there.
The question of course, was where and when. There was a patrol station near where Nelson now was, and that was the natural target. He had a few furnace beam guns--three, to be exact--and since the patrol could detect the residue from a furnace beamer a mile away even at low force, the only safe thing to use one on was the patrol. And to be frank, he rather enjoyed his brushes with the patrol. Like him, they were wakers--people who had never known the electronic dreams which were fed to all but a few of Earth's peoples. People who had never lain asleep in nutrient baths from their seventeenth birthday living an unreal world built to their own standards. Of the billions on earth, only a few hundred were wakers. Most of those were patrol, of course, but a few were rebels.
That was he, and also the girl he had seen yesterday. And it had been Edna and Sammy and Jeanne and Gardner; and maybe a dozen other people he had known since he had escaped from the Commune, when he had been just a kid--but when he had seen the danger.
For the past two and a half centuries or so, almost everyone raised on Earth had been raised in a commune, never knowing his or her parents. They had been raised, they had been indoctrinated and they had mated in the communes--and then gone into Sleep. More than likely, Nelson's parents were there still, dreaming in their trance, having long ago forgotten each other and their son, for those were things of a harsher world over which one could have no control. In Sleep one dreamed of a world that suited the dreamer. It was artificial. Oh, yes, it was a highly personalized utopia--one that ironed out the conflicts by simply not allowing them. But it was artificial. And Nelson knew that as long as the universe itself was not artificial nothing artificial could long stand against it. That was why he had escaped the commune without letting them get him into the nutrient bath in which the dreamers lived out their useless lives. His existence gave the l
ie to the pseudo-utopia he was dedicated to overthrowing. The called it individualism, but Nelson called it spineless.
* * * * *
Above him was sky stretching light blue to the horizons--and beyond the blueness of stars. He felt a pang of longing as he looked up trying to see stars in the day sky. That was where he should be, out there with the pioneers, the men who were carving out the universe to make room for a dynamic mankind that had long ago forgotten the Sleepers of the home world. But no, he decided. Out there he would not be giving so much to mankind as he was here and now. However decadent these people were, he knew that they were men. Nelson knew that somehow he had to overthrow the Sleepers.
Before something happened while they lay helpless in their coffins, dreaming dreams that would go on and on until reality became harsh enough to put them down.
What if the spacefarers should return? What if some alien life form should grow up around some other solar type star, develop space travel, go searching for inhabitable worlds--solar type worlds--and discover Earth with it's sleeping, unaware populace? could dreams defend against that?
Nelson shuddered with the knowledge that he had his work cut out for him, and awoke to his own hunger. He fished out a can and started to open it before he remembered, and fished out another can as well. He pressed the release on both and the tops flew off, releasing the odor of cooking food.
He leaned over and set one can on a flat rock that was just inside his reach, then scooted back about a foot and using his fingers, scooped up a mouthful of his own breakfast. Half turning his head, he caught sight of her out of the corner of his eye, about fifteen feet away, tense and expectant but ready to spring away if she thought it was necessary. He turned back and concentrated on eating his own breakfast.
"This sure is good after all night," he said, after a few minutes, making a show of gulping down a chunk of stew beef, and sucking the gravy from his fingers. He did not look back.
"My name is Glynnis," he heard abruptly. He sensed the uncertainty in her voice, and the--distant--hint of belligerence, but even so he could tell it was a soft voice, musical and clear--if he could judge after not having heard a woman's voice in so long.
"Glynnis," he said slowly. "That's a pretty name. Mine's Hal Nelson. Like I told you last night."
"I haven't forgotten. Is that for me?" She meant the food, of course. Hal Nelson looked around. She was still standing by the tree. She was trying to seem at ease and making an awkward show of it.
"Yes," he told her. She took a step closer and stopped, looking at him. He turned back to his own eating. "No need to be scared, Glynnis, I won't hurt you." He became uncomfortably aware that she had not spoken his name yet and he wanted her to very much.
"No." Then a brief pause before she said, "I'm not used to anybody."
"It isn't good to be alone out here with the animals and food so hard to come by--and the patrol searching for wakers. You ever have any brush with the patrol?"
She had come up and was eating now; her answer came between eager mouthfuls. "I seen them once. They didn't know I saw them--or they would have caught me and taken me back with them."
"Where're you from? What are you doing out here?"
For a moment he thought she had not heard him. She was busy eating, apparently having classified him as a friend. Finally, she said, "My folks were out here. They were farmers for a while. I was born out here and we moved around a lot until my daddy got tired of moving. So we built a farm. He built it in a place in a valley off there"--She vaguely indicated south--"And they planted some grain and potatoes and tried to round up some kind of livestock. We had mostly goats. But the patrol found us."
Nelson nodded, bitterly, he knew what had happened. Her father had gone on as long as he could until at last, broken and uncaring he had made one last ditch stand. More than likely he had half wanted to give up anyway, and had not only because of the conflict of his family and saving face. "You were the only one who got away?" he asked.
"Uh-huh. They took the others." She spoke without emotion, peering into her food can to see if there was any left. "I was out in the field but I saw them coming. I hid down low behind some tall grain and got to the forest before they could find me." She examined the can again, then decided it was empty and put it down.
"Do you know what they do to people they take?" Nelson asked.
"Yes."
"Your daddy tell you? What did he say?"
"He said they take you back to the Mausoleum and put you to sleep in a coffin." She looked up at him, her face open, as if that was all there was to it. Nelson decided that she was as guileless as he had expected her to be, and reflected absently on that factor for a moment.
A light breeze was up and the air was full of the scents of the forest. Nelson liked the pungent smell of the pines and rich odor of chokeberries and bushes; and the mustiness that could be found in thickly overgrown places where the ground had become covered with a brown carpet of fallen pine needles. Some days he would search places in the forest until he found one or another brush or tree whose leaves or berries he would crush in his fingers simply so that he could savor the fragrance of them. But not this morning.
He rose to his feet and reached over to pick up Glynnis' discarded food container. She drew away from him, bracing herself as if to leap and run. He stopped himself and froze where he stood for a moment, then drew back.
"I didn't mean to scare you," he said. "We can't stay here, because if you stay somewhere they find you. We can't leave the containers here, either, because if they find them it might give them a clue in tracking us."
She looked ashamed, so he reached over, ready to draw back his hand if she acted as if she were scared. She tugged at her lower lip with her teeth and stared at him with eyes that were wide but she did not spring to her feet. Somehow Nelson knew that the girl was acutely aware of how much she needed help out here. Suddenly, her right hand darted out and for a split second Nelson feared he had lost after all. But she reached over for the discarded can, picked it up and handed it to him. He reacted a little slowly, but he smiled and took the container. Their hands touched briefly and the girl drew hers away, immediately looking ashamed for so doing. Nelson continued to smile at her, and rather stiffly, she answered with a smile of her own. He put the container into the knapsack with the others and then slipped into the armstraps. Glynnis helped him.
* * * * *
They walked for an hour, that first day together, neither speaking. Glynnis stayed close by his side and Nelson could feel her proximity to him. He felt good in a way he had not felt in along time. When the silence was finally broken, it was Nelson who broke it. They were topping a small hill in a section of wilderness that was not as heavily wooded as most and the sunlight was warm against Nelson's face. He had been thinking the matter over off and on all morning, and now he asked, "Have you ever raided a patrol depot?"
"No," she answered, a trace of apprehension in her voice.
They topped the hill and began moving down the other side. "Sometimes it's a pushover, when nobody is there. Other times it's mortal hell. The patrol is always anxious to get their hands on wakers, so they try to keep an eye out for them at the depots. That means a fight unless we're very lucky. If the depot we pick is too heavily manned--"
"What do you mean, 'Depot we pick'?"
"We need more food. We either shoot some, raise some, or steal some."
"Oh," she said, but there was apprehension in her voice.
"We don't have any choice. We'll wait until almost dark. If the depot is guarded by too many men, or for some reason an extra number is there for the night, then we're in trouble unless we play our cards just right. You just do as I tell you and we'll be all right." He reached back and fumbled with the side pouch on his pack. "You know how to use one of these? Here, catch." He tossed her in his spare furnace beamer.
She almost missed it. She caught it awkwardly and held it gingerly with both hands, looking first at the gun and then him.
Then, still gingerly, but with a certain willingness, she took the gun by the grip and pointed it to the ground, her eyes shut hard. Then, suddenly, her expression changed and she glanced up at him, worriedly.
"Oh, you said they could tell if we fired one of these."
"Don't worry," Nelson said. "The safety is on. Let me show you." He took the gun and explained to her how to use it. "Now then," he concluded. "When we get to the depot you stay outside the alarm system. I'll go in, leaving you to guard. Try not to use this unless you have to, but if it is necessary, don't hesitate. If you fire it, I'll know. My job will be to slip past the alarm and get inside to the food. If you fire, that'll be a signal that you've been discovered by the guards and we have to get out of there."
"Won't this give us away the same as shooting game?"
"Sure, but we get more food this way and maybe some other stuff. Especially reloads for the furnace guns. And, if we're lucky, we can ground the patrol. One more thing, Glynnis," he added. "Are you sure you can kill a man?"
"Is it hard?" she asked innocently. Nelson was rattled only for a second.
"No, it isn't hard, except that he'll probably be trying to kill you, too."
"I've hunted some game with this." She held up her hunting knife so that the blade caught the sunlight. She had kept it clean and sharp. Nelson could see, but there were places where the blade had been chipped.
"Well, maybe there won't be any need to kill anyone at all," he said, a little more hastily than he intended. "I guess you'll do fine, Glynnis, I'll feel a lot safer knowing you're out there." He would feel as he had felt when Edna had gone with him on raids.
* * * * *
Toward evening they came to the depot Nelson had picked out. They were on a high although gently sloping hill, among the trees that crested it, looking down at the depot about a quarter of a mile away. There was still enough light to see by, but the sky was darkening for night. For the past two or three hours, Nelson had been repeatedly drilling Glynnis over her part. It was simple, really, and she knew it backwards, but she patiently recited her role when he asked her, whether out of regard for his leadership or an instinctive realization of his pre-raid state of nerves, he did not know. He made her recite it again, one last time. She spoke in low tones, just above a whisper. Around them the gathering of dusk had quieted the world. He waited for it to get a little darker, then he touched her shoulder and clasped it for a second before beginning his way to the depot.