“Scared green,” commented somebody near Bruce. “He’ll tell us.”
Walt Wilson stood waiting to one side until all was quiet, then he extracted a tack and leaned forward with it pointed at the bare, bony chest.
“What are the names of the seditioners in Fairfield?”
The teacher closed his eyes and leaned back against the tree. The crowd waited, their breaths suspended unconsciously, waiting for the whimpers and apologies and confession, ready to laugh. The teacher was already afraid. Tacks are small things, but they hurt, and they held an aura of ruthlessness that spoke of tortures to come that would frighten him more. There was no sound from him yet, as Walt reached for another tack, but he jerked when it touched him. They laughed and waited, and waited with increasing impatience.
Walt’s smile was fading. People in the crowd called encouragement. “Go on Walt, more.” Walt put in more. He ran out of tacks and was handed another card of them.
“He’s being a martyr,” Bruce said, considering the shiny pale face and closed eyes with irritation. “A martyr with tacks. Trying to hold out long enough to seem noble.”
“Go on Walt!”
“He jumped that time,” said someone behind Bruce. “He’ll run out of nobility before we run out of tacks.” They laughed.
Walt retired to a corner and the young guard took his place.
“Are you, or are you not, a seditioner?”
It went on.
The harsh bright light of the lantern beat on the figures on the platform: the cluster of people at the sides where it curved around the tree; in the middle, leaning back against the trunk, the bony ungainly figure of the teacher, dressed only in shoes and green slacks. The light caught a decorative glitter of metal from Dunner’s chest.
“The names, Mr. Dunner, the names!”
One time he answered. “Nonsense,” he said in his clear teacher’s voice without opening his eyes.
There was no yielding in that answer, only an infuriating self-righteousness. They continued. The tacks were used up.
“Confess.” Already he had wasted half an hour of their time.
He opened his eyes. “I have committed no crimes.”
An angry sibilance of indrawn breath ran over the crowd. The questioner slapped his thick hand against the glittering chest, and Dunner’s arms jerked, and he leaned his head back against the tree trunk watching them with an air of suffering and patience.
The hypocrisy was intolerable.
“Noble. He’s being noble,” Gifford growled. “Give him something to be noble about, why don’t they?”
Someone handed up the corkscrew they had used to frighten the teacher with.
“Now we’ll see,” said someone on Bruce’s left.
The tall bony teacher stood upright, looking with quick jerks of his head from the faces of the crowd to the man approaching with the thing in his hand. Without any pause or relenting the glittering small kitchen object was brought nearer to him. Suddenly he spoke, looking over their heads.
“If you’ll examine the term ‘seditioner’ semantically, you will discover that it had lost its original meaning and become a negatively charged label for the term referent Innova—’ ”
A sudden blow stopped him.
“The names please, Mr. Dunner.” the names, please.”
“Mr. Dunner! Who are the seditioners?”
There are a number of them.” He had answered! A sudden hush fell.
He spoke again. “They are here.”
The questioner asked, “Which ones?” People in the crowd stirred uneasily, not speaking. The names coming would be a shock. Bruce glanced around uneasily. Which ones?
The teacher raised his head sickly and looked at them, turning his face slowly to look across the crowd, with a wild smile touching his lips. They couldn’t tell whose face his eyes touched— He spoke softly in that clear, carrying teacher’s voice.
“Oh, I know you,” he said. “I’ve talked to you and I know your minds, and how you’ve grown past the narrow boundaries of what was considered enlightened opinion and the right ways—forty years ago. I know how you hate against the unchanging limits, and fight yourselves to pretend to think like the contented ones around you, chaining and smothering half your mind. And I know the flashes of insane rage that come to you from nowhere when you are talking and living like the others live; rage against the world that smothers you; rage against the United States; rage against all crowds; rage against whoever you are with—even if it is your own family; rage like being possessed!” Bruce suddenly felt that he couldn’t breathe.
And it seemed to him that William Dunner was looking at him, at Bruce Wilson. The gentle, inhumanly clear voice flowed on mercilessly.
“And how terror comes that the hatred will show, that the rage will escape into words and betray you. You force the rage down with the frenzy of terror and hide your thoughts from yourself, as a murderer conceals his reddened hands. You are comforted and reassured, moving with a crowd, pretending that you are one of them, as contented and foolish as they.” He nodded slightly, smiling.
But Bruce felt as if the eyes were burning into his own, plunging deep with a torturing dagger of cold clear vision. He stood paralyzed, as if there were a needle in his brain—feeling it twist and go deeper with the words.
The man leaning against the tree nodded, smiling. “I’ve had dinner with all of them one time or another. And I know you, oh hidden seditioners, and the fear of being known that drives you to act your savagery and hatred against those of us who become known.” He smiled vaguely, leaning his head back against the tree, his voice lower. “I know you—”
The husky questioner jogged him, asking harshly—
“Who are they?”
Bruce Wilson waited for the names, and incredibly, impossibly, his name. It would come. He stood unmoving as if he were a long way away from himself, his eyes and ears dimmed by the cold weight of his knowledge. He waited. There was no use moving. There was no place to go, no way to escape. From all the multitude of the people of Fairfield there came no sound.
The teacher raised his head again and looked at them. He chuckled almost inaudibly in a teasing gentle chuckle that seemed to fill the world.
“All of you.”
Bruce grasped at the words and found that they were nonsense, meaningless— Swaying slightly he let out a tiny hysterical chuckle.
Like a meaningless thing he saw the questioner swing an instantaneous blow that rammed the teacher’s head against the tree and sent him toppling slowly forward to dangle from the ropes at his elbows.
Around him were strange noises. Gifford was clapping him on the back, shouting in his ear. “Isn’t that funny! Ha ha! Isn’t that crazy! The guy’s insane!” Gifford’s eyes stared frightened out of a white face. He shouted and laughed.
“Crazy!” shouted Bruce back, and laughed loudly and shouted, “What crazy nonsense! We’ll get the truth out of him yet.” It had all been a dream, a lie. He could not remember why he was shaking. He had nothing to fear, he was one of the vigilantes, laughing with them, shouting against the teacher, hating the teacher…
They revived William Dunner and he leaned back against the tree with his eyes closed, not speaking or answering, his body glittering with tacks. He must have been in pain. The crowd voices lashed at those on the platform. “Make him answer!” “Do something!” Bruce took out his pocket lighter and handed it up.
They took the pocket lighter.
The teacher leaned against the tree he was tied to, eyes closed with that infuriating attitude of unresentful patience, not seeing what was coming, probably very smug inside, laughing at how he had tricked them all, probably thinking—
Thinking—
Behind the closed eyes, vertigo, spinning fragments of the world. NAMES, MR. DUNNER. NAMES, MR. DUNNER. The yammering of insane voices shouting fear and hate and defensive rationalization. The faces which had been friendly, their mouths stretched open, shouting, their heavy fists com
ing— Impressions of changes of expression and mood passing over a crowded sea of upturned faces, marionettes being pulled by the nerve strings of one imbecile mind. Whirling and confusion—pain.
Somewhere far down in the whirlpool lay the quiet cool voice that would bring help.
He went down to it.
He was young, listening to the cool slow voice. The instructor standing before the class saying quietly: “It is easy. Your adult bodies have already learned subtle and precise associations of the cause and effect chains of sensations from within the body. The trick of making any activity voluntary is to bring one link of the chain to consciousness. We bring up the end link by duplicating its sensations.”
And a little later the instructor sitting on the edge of his cot with a tray of hypos, picking one up, saying softly, “This one is for you, Bill, because you’re such a stubborn fool. We call it suspenser.” The prick of the needle in his arm. The voice continuing. “One of your steroids. It can produce coma with no breathing or noticeable pulse. Remember the taste that will come on your tongue. Remember the taste. Remember the sensations. You can do this again.” The voice was hypnotic. “If you ever need to escape, if you ever need to play possum to escape, you will remember.”
The needle was withdrawn. After a time the voice of the instructor was at the next cot, speaking quietly while the blackness came closing in, his heartbeat dimming, dwindling, the strange familiar taste—
Somewhere out of time came pain, searing and incredible.
Ignore it… ignore it—Concentrate on the taste. The taste—The heartbeat dwindling Out of the dreaming distance a face swam close, twisted by some odd mixture of emotions.
“Confess. Get it over with.”
Heartbeat dwindling
He managed a whisper: “Hello, Bruce.” A ghost of laughter touched lightly. “I know… you—” A small boy taunt, mocking and then sad. The face jerked itself away and then pain came again, but it was infinitely distant now, and he was floating slowly farther and farther away down a long tunnel—
Night wind stirred across the empty picnic ground. It had been deserted a long time—the light and sound and trampling footsteps gone away, leaving a little whimper of wind. Stars glittered down coldly.
Up on the platform something moved.
When Dr. Bayard Bawling, general practitioner and police coroner, came home at five a. m., he saw the humped form of a man sitting on his doorstep in the dark. He approached and bent forward to see who it was.
“Hello, Bill.”
Dunner stirred suddenly as if he had been over the edge of sleep.
“Hello, Doc.”
Bawling was a stoutish kindly man. He sat down beside Dunner and picked up his wrist between sensitive fingertips. He spoke quietly. “It happened tonight, eh?”
“Yes, tonight.”
“How was it?” The doctor’s voice roughened slightly.
“Pretty bad.”
“I’m sorry. I would have been there if I could.” In his bag he carried a small supply of cortocananoxidase, the life suspender, “death,” and a small jet hypo, a flesh-colored rubber ball with a hollow needle which could be clenched in a fist with the needle between the fingers and injected with the appearance of a blow. Perhaps many doctors had carried such a thing as a matter of mercy since the hangings and burnings had begun.
“I know,” Dunner smiled faintly in the dark.
“I was working on a hard delivery. No one told me about the trial.”
“ ’Sall right—I managed a trance. Took me a while though—Not very good at these things. Couldn’t die fast enough.” He whispered a chuckle. “Thought they’d kill me before I could die.”
The doctor’s fingertips listened to the thin steady pulse. “You’re all right.”
Dunner made an effort to get up and mumbled apologetically, “Let’s get back to the picnic grounds and tie me up to be dead. My arms, strained hanging from those ropes.”
The doctor rose and gave him a hand up. “Make it to the ’copter?”
“Well enough.” He made an obvious effort and the doctor helped him. Once in, the doctor started the blades with a quick jerky motion.
“You aren’t in fit shape to be dead and have a lot of boobs pawing you over and taking your fingerprints for six hours,” he said irritably. “We’ll chance substituting another corpse and dub it up to look like you. I knew you’d be in trouble. Cox at State University has had one your size and shape in a spare morgue drawer for four months now. He set it aside for me from dissection class.” The ground dropped away. The doctor talked with spasmodic nervous cheerfulness. “Had any fillings lately?”
“No.”
“I have your fingerprint caps. We’ll duplicate the bruises and give it a face make-up, and they won’t know the difference. There’s not much time to get there and get it back before morning.” He talked rapidly. “I’ll have to photograph your damage. I’m going to drop you with Brown.”
Working with nervous speed, he switched on the automatic controls and took out a camera from the glove compartment. “Let’s see what they’ve done to you. Watch that altimeter. The robot’s not working well.”
The ’copter droned on through the sky and Dunner watched the dials while Dr. Rawling opened the slit jacket and shirt and slid them off.
He stopped short and did not move for a moment: “What’s that, burns?”
“Yes.”
The doctor did not speak again until he had finished snapping pictures, slipped the tattered clothing back over Dunner’s shoulders, turned off the light and returned to the controls. “Dig around in my bag and find the morphia ampoules. Give yourself a shot.”
“Thanks.” A tiny automatic light went on in the bag as it was opened and illuminated the neat array of instruments and drugs.
The doctor’s voice was angry. “You know I’d treat you, Bill, if I had time.”
“Sure.” The light went out as the bag was closed.
“I’ve got to get that corpse back to the picnic grounds.” The doctor handled the controls roughly. “People stink! Why bother trying to tell them anything?”
“It’s not them.”
“I know, it’s the conformity circle! But it’s their own circle, not yours. Let them stew in it.” He pounded the wheel. “Forty years trading in my good ’copter every year for the same condemned ’copter with different trimmings. Every year trade in my comfortable suit for some crazy fashion and my good shoes for something that doesn’t fit my feet, so I can look like everyone else.” He pounded on the wheel. “And they don’t even like it. People repeating each other like parrots, like parrots. They can’t keep it up. It’s got to crack. It’s bound to stop.” He turned plaintively. “But you can’t stop a merry-go-round by getting ground up in the gears, Bill. Why not just ride it out?”
“It will end when enough people stand up in the open and try to end it.” Dunner smiled. The ’copter landed with a slight jolt that made him suck in his breath suddenly.
“Don’t preach at me,” the doctor snarled, helping him out with gentle hands. “I’m just saying, quit it, Bill, quit it. Stifle their kids’ minds, if that’s what they want.”
They stood out on the soft grass under the stars. Through the beginning pleasant distortion of the morphine, Dunner saw that the doctor was shouting and waving his arms. “If they want to go back to the middle ages, let ’em go! Let ’em go back to the Amoeba if that’s what they want! You don’t have to help them.”
Dunner smiled.
“Go on, laugh,” the doctor muttered. He climbed back into the ’copter abruptly. “If anyone wants to contact me, my copter phone is ML 5346. Can you make it to the house?”
“Yes, of course.” Dunner guessed at the source of the doctor’s upset. “You’ve been a great help, Doc. Nobody would expect you to do more than you’ve done.”
“Of course,” the doctor snarled, slamming the ’copter into gear. “Everything is just fine. It’s a great world. People love the truth:
they love teachers, and I’m a hero!”
He slammed the door, the ’copter taxied away to a little distance, then lifted into the sky with a heavy whispering rush of wind.
The teacher walked toward Brown’s house. Stars swung in pleasant blurred loops through a quiet sky, and the past of screaming crowd and blows seemed very distant. He pushed the doorbell and heard it chime somewhere far away in the house, then remembered Doc waving his arms, and laughed weakly until the friendly door opened.
Games
RONNY WAS PLAYING by himself, which meant he was two tribes of Indians having a war.
“Bang,” he muttered, firing an imaginary rifle. He decided that it was a time in history before the white people had sold the Indians any guns, and changed the rifle into a bow. “Wizzthunk,” he substituted, mimicking from an Indian film on TV the graphic sound of an arrow striking flesh.
“Oof.” He folded down onto the grass, moaning, “Uhhooh…” relaxing into defeat and death.
“Want some chocolate milk, Ronny?” asked his mother from the kitchen.
“No thanks,” he called back, climbing to his feet to be another man. “Wizzthunk, wizzthunk,” —he added to the flights of arrows as the best archer in the tribe. “Last arrow. Wizzzzz,” he said, missing one enemy for realism. The best archer in the tribe spoke to other battling braves. “Who has more arrows? They are advancing. No time, I’ll have to use my knife.” He drew the imaginary knife, ducking an arrow as it wizzed past his head.
Then he was the tribal chief standing nearby on a slight hill, and he saw that too many of his warriors were dead, too few left alive. “We must retreat. We must not all die and leave our tribe without warriors to protect the women and children. Retreat, we are outnumbered.”
Ronny decided that the chief was heroically wounded, his voice wavering from weakness. He had been propping himself against a tree to appear unharmed, but now he moved so that his braves could see he was pinned to the trunk by an arrow and could not walk. They cried out.
The Diploids and Other Flghts of Fancy Page 18