Love Conquers All

by Fred Saberhagen

  “Must have been an old building,” another policeman remarked.

  “Did someone say it was a monastery?” Art put in, shocked at the indication of bigotry without being surprised by it.

  “Yes,” the river engineer (or whatever the man with his calculator was) answered. “Oh, not Church of Eros. One of the old Christian ones.”

  “That’s hardly an excuse.” Art watched the plume of smoke grow fatter. All this time a continuing trickle of passengers was continuing to emerge from the stairhead and straggle into place in their loose formation on the green.

  “Well, I live around here,” one of the police commented. “Not right for people to take the law into their own hands, but what can you expect? The rumor has been going around that the monkeymonks up there have been carrying on some kind of experiments with abortion specimens. Not just the kind where the scientists gain knowledge from them, but creating some kind of monsters. Chastity, I don’t believe all I hear, but how do you expect people to take it when they’re so mysterious?”

  No one said anything for a little while. A poor attitude for even a private policeman to take, thought Art, practically condoning rioting and vandalism. But it would be futile to argue.

  Shortly the engineer remarked: “Here come a couple more refugees.” Hiking across the inviting park, from the direction opposite the smoke, came a couple who had evidently been picnicking, for he carried a red plastic picnic cooler and she a small outdoors pack and a folded translucent blanket.

  The man was tall, lean, thirtyish, and freshly sunburnt. The girl was a full-bodied brunette of eighteen or twenty. As they drew near, Art saw that what he had at first taken for sunglasses on her face were really artificial eyes of what must be an advanced design. They might have been opaquely dark sunglasses except that the thickness of their bulky frames was molded in flush to the skin, all around her eyes. She was neatly and modestly dressed in a sports bikini of the latest style, her translucent bra extended in twin peaks by finger-long cones of pinkish nipple-colored plastic.

  As the couple approached the shelter, the man spoke to the police in a husky, somewhat hurried voice. “Officers, we’re very glad to see you. I hope you can provide us with some kind of escort back across the river, or get us on the train to Chicago if possible. Our boat was destroyed, you see.” The girl said nothing, looked around nervously, and stayed close to her companion. She looked at Art, but he had trouble reading her expression; the artificial eyes functioned like a mask. Faint cat’s-eye gleams shone in their dark lenses, and the plastic frames were studded with artificial jewels. Or could those stones possibly be genuine?

  “Sure, you can come along,” the officer with the collar insignia said. “Got your boat too, hey?” He changed his position and stretched as the last rescued passenger, sitting in a wheelchair (so there had been one, after all) was heaved into view at the stairhead by a team of puffing police. “I guess we’re all here now. Let’s start getting these people over the water.”

  THE TWO saved picnickers walked beside Art to join the other evacuees. As the whole group with its escort of police began to move, the girl let out a sudden, choked little cry, and Art saw her actually begin to tremble. Following the direction of her gaze, he beheld a new eruption of rioters boiling out of the woods and cutting across the passengers’ path, evidently with the intention of intercepting them before they could reach the river. Art now also saw in midstream a large launch that had evidently just been called from across the river and was now heading in to the near bank where a small dock waited at the end of the passengers’ present line of march.

  The march continued. The officer barked an order or two, and his blue-uniformed men, now about a dozen strong, closed in beside the much more numerous troop of people they were convoying, their screen forming most tightly at the point where the threat was greatest.

  There were perhaps thirty people in the mob approaching. Half a dozen or so were women, and these were screaming loudly, urging on the men. Most of the men wore the gaudily colored and oversized codpieces favored these days among the youth of the Basic Income class. One who was so garbed, a large, florid young man with close-set eyes, went right up to the police line and peered over uniformed shoulders at the shrinking sheep behind as if about to choose one for slaughter.

  “Any triplet priests in there?” the florid one demanded. “Any sublimatin’ vivesectionists? We got one already, but there’s some more experiments we’d like to try.” He seemed on the point of trying to push his way through the protective line, and one of the bigger police shoved him roughly back. When he demonstrated anger at this treatment he found himself looking at a drawn handgun.

  “We’re just passing through, bigmouth,” the policeman told him. “Now you just pull your jaw out of our way and let us pass.”

  There were no firearms visible among the rioters, and indeed Art could not see that they carried weapons of any kind. The sight of the gun knocked them back almost like a physical force. Moving like the cells of some multiple organism, keeping together as if under the control of a single mind, they fell into retreat.

  One we got already. The words echoed in Art’s mind. But maybe they were only brag and bluff.

  The passengers with their convoy of police moved on unmolested toward the dock, which was now only about a hundred meters off. The immediate threat was apparently over but the girl with artificial eyes, walking beside Art, continued to breathe as if on the verge of hysteria. Her escort held her by the arm and kept speaking to her in a low voice, but his efforts to calm her had little effect.

  The police, evidently to keep a prudent distance from a patch of dense woods into which the rioters had retreated, had bent the convoy’s line of march almost parallel to the river. Now in those infested woods another outbreak of shouting rose up, blended with the noises of running feet trampling the undergrowth. The girl moaned and moved away from the noise, leaning against Art like a frightened child. He put an arm around her full body and squeezed it in a polite caress. “My name’s Art, by the way. What’s yours?”

  He would scarcely have been surprised to receive no answer, but one came. “Rosamond. Rosamond Jamison. Oh!”

  Now from the woods came a man’s voice shouting, but words indistinguishable but pain, fear, and despair all blended in. The man who was walking on the other side of Rosamond Jamison froze in his tracks, so quickly that those walking behind him had trouble avoiding a collision. “That was Steve,” he said to himself in a low voice that Art nonetheless overheard distinctly. In another moment Rosamond’s escort had caught up with the police lieutenant and was grabbing at his shoulder. “Did you hear that? A man’s in trouble over there. Aren’t you going to do something?”

  The voice shouted again, this time in terrible wordless agony.

  The lieutenant, who had started to say one thing, began again with something else. “I’ve got my own job to do, getting these people safely on their way. That could be some kind of trick, just to get us into the woods.”

  “No it isn’t. Didn’t you hear that scream just now? You think that could have been a trick?”

  The lieutenant, inflexible, shook his head. “I’ve got my orders, my job. That’s it.”

  “You can’t just go on.”

  The lieutenant turned away.

  The tall, sunburnt man, anxiety unabated, hurried back to Rosamond. “Here.” To her he gave the weighty-looking picnic cooler. She took it automatically and carried it with some difficulty as she continued moving forward with the refugee column. The man said to Art: “Try and look out for her, will you? See that she gets on a train to Chicago?”

  ‘Of course, I’ll try to help. But what are you-?”

  Muttering some last, unintelligible phrase over his shoulder, the man was gone. Moving with unexpected strength and speed, he had pushed his way through the police escort on the inland side and was running toward the woods before anyone but Art became aware of his intention.

  “Halt!” the lieutenant b
ellowed, when he did catch on. “Come back here! Don’t be a sublimatin’ fool!”

  The fleeing man did not pause or turn. In another moment he was out of sight in the woods. Rosamond, struggling forward with her picnic cooler, looked after her companion only briefly and then faced forward again, concentrating her efforts on keeping up with the convoy’s rapid pace. She was having a hard time doing so now. In the rear of the column shifts of volunteers were practically carrying the wheelchair and its terrified occupant.

  Art put a hand on the cooler’s carrying grip. “Let me help.”

  “Oh, thank you.” But she seemed reluctant to let him take the weight. When he did so, however, they made better time.

  The boat, which was moored at the dock by , the time they got there, proved to be some sort of sight-seeing craft,, evidently commandeered for this occasion. With all the refugees aboard, it was quite crowded, and some had to sit or squat on the deck between rows of seats. Most of the police remained behind on shore, and as the boat pulled away from the dock Art saw them beginning to march in loose formation back up the slope toward the emergency exit from the tube. Other trains would be arriving behind his, Art realized.

  ALONG the eastern, Illinois shore the woods looked wilder and less park-like than those of Iowa just left behind. When the boat scraped bottom on the eastern side, the police pilot made an announcement, straining to be cheerful. “Folks, will you all wait right here in this area, please? We have to take the boat back across the river and pick up some people from another eastbound train. Then we’ll get you all on your way to Chicago very shortly. Get off the boat promptly please, step right into the water there. It’s not deep.” There was no dock here on the eastern shore and one policeman was in the water himself, handing passengers off into the knee-deep Mississippi. Plenty of volunteers rallied around the wheelchair again, with grins and jokes. People were sometimes marvelous.

  A few steps had to be taken on the oozy river bottom to reach the muddy shore. Once on solid ground most of the passengers gravitated inland, as if hoping, in spite of what the guides had said, that there might be another tube terminal right at hand. Thirty or forty meters inland a narrow unpaved road roughly paralleled the river, but traffic seemed nonexistent. Beyond the road and behind a wire fence, the tree-covered bluffs rose up unpromisingly. The passengers who had probed the farthest soon came back with unhopeful reports. There was apparently no place to go and nothing to do but wait as they had been told. No one knew where the point of access to the east-bound tunnel might be.

  Art and Rosamond, having the cooler to carry and both of them lacking any desire for an aimless hike, remained somewhat behind most of the other passengers as the latter drifted up to hang around the road. The two of them sat down upon a grassy bank where the sun, now lowering close over Iowa, still shone brightly. Rosamond was quiet, and seemed less fearful now, though she was still looking intently back over the river.

  “He’ll probably come over in the next boatload,” Art offered, trying to be comforting. “He’s probably all right and they’ll be able to pick him up and bring him along.”

  She turned to him and reached across the cooler to tickle the palm of his hand, and smiled at him beneath her enigmatic eyes. “I think I would enjoy some sex right about now.”

  “Of course.”

  They spent an enjoyable ten minutes at it, with Art’s paper shirt spread over the rough grass beneath their bodies. Afterward as they lay together together relaxing Rosamond began to shiver; the sun was so low that it had lost its heat, and a cool breeze had come up. In a little while she sat up and pulled her discarded bikni on again but of course it was too small to provide any real warmth. Art picked up the paper shirt, now notably wrinkled and soiled, and held it out. “Afraid this is the best I can offer you. There doesn’t seem to be a clothing vendor anywhere around.”

  “You’ll be cold, won’t you?”

  “I’m a little fat.” He stood up and adjusted his codpiece and transparent trousers. “I guess that helps to keep one warm.”

  Rosamond pulled on the shirt, and then sat down in the grass again with her legs crossed, feet and all tucked completely in under the garment so that it fell around her like a small tent. The shadow of a bush fell over her now and in the dulled light the shirt was practically opaque, and she was concealed and shapeless from the neck down. Now it was Art’s turn to shiver slightly, and his shiver was not caused entirely by the cold. Unwholesome thoughts had come unbidden to his mind. He controlled himself, however and, like a gentleman, looked away.

  Just as he thought he had the temptation to repression really squelched it popped up again with a new ploy. The poor girl was still shivering, wasn’t she? He should do what he could to help, right? “Want my trousers?” he asked. It was incidental, he told himself, it was not important in this emergency, that removing the trousers would mean taking off the codpiece too and this would mean stripping his de-tumescent body of his proper sexual emphasis.

  She appeared not to find anything wrong or suggestive of sublimation in his offer, but declined it all the same. “No, this is fine, thank you. You’ve been a wonderful help. I hope I can repay you some day.”

  He slew a mosquito on his bare shoulder. The river before them was beginning to reproduce a sunset. Around them on the riverbank a number of the other stranded passengers had also paired off and were embracing or resting between embraces. The presence of these others made real impropriety unthinkable and helped Art put temptations from his mind.

  There were more boats in the river now, police or other official crafts of some kind, and their searchlights were beginning to play over the far bank. Groups of people were still moving around over there. They had improvised banners to carry, and rhythmic chants to sing. From where Art sat on the eastern bank the words of neither song nor sign could be distinguished, but the powerful tones of the chanting carried across the water.

  III

  AS THE train began to slow for the Chicago terminal, Rosamond leaned across the seat arm and snuggled once more against Art’s shoulder, while one of her hands, like some small animal seeking shelter, strayed inside his tattered shirt. “Art, are you sure you can’t take the time to meet Daddy tonight? I know he’s going to want to thank you for helping me.”

  “I wish I could, but I’m really anxious to catch up with my family.” Of course he hadn’t told her why he was trying to catch up with them. He glanced at his watch; it was nearly midnight. “Some other time.”

  “You be sure and call us while you’re in Chicago. I mean it.” She dug out a pencil and a piece of paper from the pouch attached to the seatback in front of her, and scribbled a number, using the top of the picnic cooler as a desk. When he touched the plastic top, in reaching to pick up the paper, it felt at least as cold as ice. Like her eyeframes, the cooler was perhaps more expensive than it had seemed at first sight; whatever picnic remnants were inside were probably frozen solid.

  As he emerged from the tube car into a vast cheerful cave of ceramic tile and warm light, Art looked around to wave goodbye to Rose, and caught only a glimpse of her in the crowd, being met and welcomed by a couple of men. Strange girl. But he forgot about her quickly in heading for a huge electronic display describing the city’s public transportation system.

  It was late enough for the traffic to be light, and the taxi he had chosen as the probable fastest means of transport made good speed through the well-illuminated streets. Still Art shifted restlessly in his seat, and pulled at his beard impatiently. He had the feeling that minutes counted, that even new Rita might be taking some irretraceable step toward an illegal parturition. The feeling was no doubt irrational; any actual-birth would have to be months away, of course. But there was some kind of federal law against even conspiring to commit an illegal parturition. Midwifery, as the news media usually called it. Art didn’t know exactly how far one could go without running afoul of the law. He didn’t know exactly what the law said. It was one of those things he hadn’t
wanted to learn about, probably because all along he had been subconsciously afraid that someday it would menace him and Rita.

  How could she do such a thing, get them into this kind of trouble? In her note she had said that she still loved him. She had used the word twice. But now he was being rhetorical with himself; he knew his wife, and she was perfectly capable of doing this thing, loving him or not.

  While waiting for a traffic signal to change the cab driver turned in his seat and glanced back at Art through the bullet-proof partition. Through the intercom speaker the driver’s voice asked: “Someone meeting you?”

  “Yes.” Art stretched the truth. “At the block entrance. It’s a block of townhouses.”

  The cabbie faced forward again without answering. Art had just killed his hopes of collecting an easy bodyguard fee, in what the cabbie must know was a good neighborhood.

  They were moving again. Now the building walls that had lined both sides of the street fell back. The cab was entering a section of the city that had a look of newness, of having recently been rebuilt. Under new streetlamps that closely simulated daylight, tall elms warmed their fine June leaves. On each side of the wide, gently curving boulevard were new-looking stone walls, smooth enough to be unscaleable but still with enough irregularities in their texture and color and shape to give them almost the look of natural formations. The walls were windowless, two or three stories high, and Art knew that they enclosed townhouse blocks, about the size of the old city blocks they had replaced. The pedestrian entrances, never more than one on a side, were narrow-mouthed and well-lighted; inside each entrance, Art supposed, there would be a security guard in a protected booth. Vehicle ramps curved down from the street to enter a subterranean level of each block.