by Jerry Sohl
The leader leaned over and picked up the large roll of currency. “When they sent you out on this job,” he said, “they didn’t want you to be without funds, did they? Maybe they thought you might even buy yourself out of a situation like this.”
“Nobody sent me out on any job,” Emmett protested.
“No? Is it that you just happened to have this gun and this money?”
Emmett looked from the leader to the faces of the others around him, faces of six men. Dark, sullen, angry. He found the face of Ivy beyond the inner circle. It was expressionless—or did he fancy a look of pleading in her eyes?
He sighed. “All right, I’ll tell you.” Hands released his arms. The buzz of conversation ceased.
“I killed Tisdail,” he said. “I killed him because I stopped at his house for water and he attacked me because he wanted to show his commie bosses he had done something.”
“And then you stole the gun and the money?”
Emmett looked the leader square in the eyes, tempted to lie about that and leave Mrs. Tisdail’s name out of it. But they had known his name and who the sleeper belonged to, so did they also know about Mrs. Tisdail? The look of distrust in the eyes had vanished with the truth. He could not chance a return of it by lying now.
“No,” he said. “Mrs. Tisdail gave them to me. She has always been an anti-Communist and she hated what her husband had turned into. She said she would take the blame for his death.”
“Why should she do that?”
“Because she wanted me to be free to do what I had set out to do.”
“And what had you set out to do?”
“I left Spring Creek because I hated life under the occupation. I thought I might find an anti-Communist group to join. Or join a gypsy band and travel with it until I found such a group. That way I could travel without a permit and without being molested.”
The leader was thoughtful now. He frowned a little. Then he said, “How did you kill Tisdail?”
“With that knife.”
The eyes of everyone went to the knife on the blanket. The leader knelt, took it up and examined it.
“The symbol of resistance,” he said softly. He sighed and rose. “There must be many young men like you, Keyes, eager to have done with the occupation. But a knife”—and he looked at it again —“is such a puerile weapon.” He shook his head as he faced Emmett.
“What a pity it is that men like you can’t rise up and set things right. I know how you must yearn for freedom, how you long to change this world to make it a better place for you and your children. But you are all enslaved by the booster, and courage alone can’t pull you through it no matter how hard you want it to.
“We can try,” Emmett said firmly.
“What kind of talk is that? You can try to die, too, for that’s what will happen to you when your booster day passes—or if you should be caught roaming the rural areas. In that case it would be slow death in a slave-labor camp. I don’t have to tell you that. What puzzles me is that you should have started out at all, knowing all these things.”
“What about you? You and these people here? You are moving about and you don’t seem to worry about being caught.”
“We are what we are because, if we weren’t, we’d be dead or dying. And when you are so close to death, you cease worrying about it.”
“But you are fighting the occupation and that’s what I want to do. I want to be one of you.”
The leader smiled. “We aren’t fighting the occupation. We aren’t the resistance group you think we are.”
“What are you then?”
The big man looked at him with steady blue eyes. “I wish I could tell you.”
“Sir,” a man to the leader’s right spoke up, “there isn’t much time.”
“I know.” He looked at his wrist watch, then at Emmett. “My advice to you is to go home and forget everything that’s happened. Perhaps some day you will be able to help change things.”
“That,” Emmett said with some force, “is what’s wrong today. Go home. Sit around and hope for better things. I’m sick and tired of doing that.”
“There happens to be nothing else you can do, Keyes. I only wish there were. I’m sorry.”
Emmett snapped his jaw shut before he said what he was afraid he’d say. What was wrong with this man? Couldn’t he see how useful Emmett could be? What kind of a movement was this that refused to take a good man?
And then he thought of his freedom from the necessity of booster shots. At least the leader didn’t know about that. Perhaps it would make a difference if I tell him, he thought. But some inner voice cautioned him not to reveal it.
“See that Mr. Keyes gets on his way,” the leader said to the men around him. Then he walked away, glancing at his wrist watch and saying, “We have ten minutes more.”
The shed filled with whispered conversations and the shuffling of feet as the members moved around. Two men pushed Emmett’s belongings to the center of the blanket, and Emmett knelt down and finished the job of arranging them and making the blanket bag. As he did so, his heart sank, for nowhere did he see his currency, his knife or the sleeper. How could he get along without them?
He stood up wearily, lifted the bag to his shoulder. Ivy moved to his side.
“You’ll need these,” she said, handing him the three missing items. “Come on, I’ll show you the way.”
Outside, the moon was low on the horizon, the air quiet and cool. The girl led him across a field and stopped at a hedgerow. She turned to him.
“I’d better not go any farther.”
She stood close to him, her eyes wide and glistening. The moon caught a soft curve of cheek and the shadow beneath. Now a slight breeze caught at her hair, sent a lock of it over her eyes. She brushed it back. He hadn’t realized until then she had not worn her hat.
“Thanks for the sleeper—and the rest,” he said. He felt the pull of her. It moistened his palms, shortened his breath.
She put slender white fingers on his arm. “I know you’re not going home. He—the leader knows it, too. But you can’t come with us.”
“I wish someone would explain things to me. I’m not a child.”
“I know that.” The grip on his arm tightened a little. Her fingers were like fire, even through his jacket. “You mentioned gypsies.” He could hardly hear her, close as she was. He leaned forward.
“Gypsies?”
“Yes. I know where there is a band.” She turned to look beyond the hedgerow and pointed with her other hand. “It’s about ten miles from here. That way. The band is in a town called Cornwall. They’ll be there for two days.” She turned back to him. “They may be able to help you.”
“Thanks.”
She didn’t move. Her cheek looked cool. He reached up, ran his finger tips across it, up to her hair. Her cheek was warm and soft, her hair silken.
Now she set white teeth firmly into the roundness of her lower lip and the grip on his arm was tighter still. He looked at the lip and the teeth and her eyes, and the pull of her was greater than ever.
Suddenly she released his arm. Now he found her lips hot, her body soft and warm and yielding as he held her.
“Ivy. . .”
She broke away. “You’d better go.”
“Come with me.”
“No. I can’t.”
“When will I see you again?”
“Perhaps—tomorrow.” She turned and ran back toward the shed.
She stopped and turned.
“Good luck.” The words floated to him across the darkness of the empty field.
The blackness of the shed swallowed her.
CHAPTER - 6
Emmett stood for a long time at the hedgerow, trying to unwind things, hoping to make sense out of all that had happened, and looking for clues that would guide him on his way.
Twenty-four hours ago he had been in his bed, tossing fitfully, awaiting the hour to leave, more awake than asleep, eager for the great adventure.
But it had been nothing like that. At first he was only interested in putting miles between himself and Spring Creek. And when he had reached what he considered a proper distance, where his face would be the face of a stranger, he had sought out what he had thought were industrious people, perhaps even people like his mother and father. And the genial Cad Tisdail had appeared to be just that at first. And what had happened? He turned out to be a collaborator. Not just a simple sympathizer, but a party worker. And then the horrible struggle and the killing. He had not been ready for that. He grimaced as he remembered it.
After that his objective once more became a matter of distance, miles between the Tisdails’ house and the place he would spend the night, foregoing any search for gypsies or contact with people. And then the incident with the youngsters and the necessity of his revealing the possession of an unlawful weapon. And what after that? Flight again. Flight, flight, flight.
And when he finally reached safety, when he finally searched out and found an isolated spot in the woods where he should have been safe from everything and where he should have been able to rest for a few hours, even this was not to be his, for he was wrenched from rewarding sleep by the passing of a weird assortment of men and women in dark clothes.
Then the interview in the shed, when he offered his services. What mad world was this? Would he ever find what he was looking for? Would he ever come upon a group who would welcome him, teach him what could be done about the occupation? Or was the spirit of freedom so dead that nowhere was there a fight to restore it? Or was it everywhere people in dark clothes who ran through the woods at night and, when questioned, said they were not fighters?
He lay down at the hedge so he wouldn’t be seen because he saw shapes coming out of the shed now. The group was leaving. Now he had to decide. Shall I follow them? Where will they go? Or should I go north as Ivy suggested, to find the gypsies? But gypsies I don’t know about, and this group is here right now and they are going somewhere and I ought to find out where it is. I ought to know what they are up to, what it is they do if they don’t fight.
But even as he thought this, he did not move to go. And he knew why. It was because of a girl. A girl with black hair, white fingers, red lips. Soft lips. And as he thought of her he wondered which figure was hers among those moving across the field at right angles to him, where she was going, why she seemed different from the other women in the group. He once again felt the warmth of her lips, the grip of her fingers on his arm, the way she brushed her hair back into line . . . the way she said “good luck.”
They were gone in a few moments. He rose and his bones ached from the dampness. He stretched, put the bag on his shoulder and pushed through the hedge.
He would go find the gypsies. And maybe—just maybe—she would be there. Tomorrow, she had said, hadn’t she? Maybe he’d see her tomorrow.
He traveled north in the chill of the hour before dawn when earth is at its quietest, hearing only the sound of his feet, the whoosh-whoosh as he went through weeds and grass, and now the crunch of gravel on a road, thinking: Maybe I’ve just left home and I’ve been dreaming while I’ve been walking and all these things haven’t really happened to me and it isn’t dawn yet and I’ll walk until noon and then I’ll sit beside a creek and eat the lunch my mother made for me.
But he knew it hadn’t been a dream because he could feel the roll of currency in his pocket and he could feel the bulge of the sleeper in his jacket pocket.
He trudged on north now, the only man on earth, walking, walking, walking. No turbos. No fliers. Not even the animals that usually ran away at his approach.
It was chilly. His hands were cold. He put them in his pockets.
Suddenly the road branched. He took the more northward one. It was a little better than the other, he discovered when he had gone a few hundred yards. He didn’t like it, but it stretched north and if he had traveled in the right direction, Cornwall should be up ahead there somewhere. Perhaps five more miles.
He walked a little faster. He wanted to reach the town before daylight.
The road changed to a composition surface. He passed a few intersecting roads, tempted to go down them instead, but reasoning the road was improved because it led into a town. Perhaps he was nearing Cornwall.
Now there was no farmer’s field on either side of the road. No fencing, either. Why? Cultivated land reached the limits of Spring Creek, why not here?
Was that a stand of clover? Grass? He could not see well now that the moon had set.
He stopped. Up ahead was a—what? It was on the right side of the road about a half mile away. It looked like a building, but it was taller than any he had seen outside of a town and there was something on top of it. Could it be some sort of structure on the outskirts of Cornwall? A grain elevator? A silo? He wished the moon were out.
There was little cover at the sides of the road now. But in the fields there were clumps of bushes and a few trees. Odd that they should be there if the field was clover.
What was it?
He walked to the side of the road, stood there undecided for a moment, then walked down the shoulder, jumped across the ditch and climbed the other side.
Now he was at the edge of the gravel and weeds, looked down at the field.
It was grass.
He reached out his hand to feel of it.
A light as bright as day blinded him.
He jumped to his feet, saw that the light came from above the building far away on the right. Instantly he fell to the ground, rolled into the ditch.
Now there were other lights. They moved quietly over the area he had just left. He could see the weeds and larger stones at the edge of the ditch in sharp relief against the black sky.
What was this?
He crept along the ditch bottom, thankful the ditch was there, moving slowly until he was more than a hundred feet from where he had been when the light first struck him.
Light burst around him. Only then did he hear the hiss of the flier above, pinpointing him on the ground with a narrow beam. There was no use to run now.
He looked frantically up and down the ditch. Fifty feet away was a culvert and sewer opening. If he could only reach that . . .
Emmett hardly heard the whir of the turbo before it braked to a sudden stop on the road.
A figure bounded out, started for him.
Emmett felt his panic leave him as he drew the sleeper. There was only one of them.
He pointed it, pressed the trigger, heard the click and knew, with consummate relief, that at least he’d get this one. Then he could move on.
But the man did not drop.
Emmett fired again. Again and again. The range grew shorter and shorter.
Then a numbness struck him, lights swirled in his head, and he felt himself floating softly to earth.
It cushioned him nicely.
He could feel the sleep sweeping over him, a pleasantness he did not want to resist.
And then there was nothing.
CHAPTER - 7
Emmett floated gently in sleep’s fringe area, aware of the white sky and the small black sun in the middle of it, his body and his mind suffused with the tingling deliciousness of semiconsciousness.
Then, as if he had been struck a body blow, he realized that the white was not the sky and the small black thing in the center of it not a sun. His mind reeled as he tried to orient himself, tried to place wha
t he saw. And when he could not, his heart leaped.
He sat up, panic sweeping him. He was in a bed.
Where is this?
He shook his head. It helped his mind vault the distance of time that lay immediately behind him until he was back in Spring Creek and he was leaving the house and not looking back and there were fields he was walking across . . . and the fight . . . the woods . . . and a girl named Ivy . . . and his mind rushed through all that had happened until the lights had blinded him and he had tried in vain to drop the man before him with his sleeper.
He looked around, saw the small room, the single window. New clothes were on a chair nearby. But nowhere did he see his old clothes, his bag, his money, the sleeper. He looked down at himself, saw that he was garbed in a loose-fitting shirt and pants.
He got out of the bed, found himself groggy and unsteady, but he made it to the window and looked out. Spread before him was a nicely landscaped lawn as far as he could see. It was filled with white benches, curving cement walks, fountains, pools, trees and bushes.
It was early morning—or was it late afternoon? He couldn’t for the moment decide whether he was facing north or south. He examined the window. The pane was thick, unbreakable plastic. It was not made to open. Turning back to the room, he saw the green-carpeted floor, the delicate green tint of the paneled walls, and the bed he had just left. High in the walls were duct openings. In the wall facing him was a door. But it had no knob.
He went over to examine it, saw a red button where the knob should have been. He pressed it. The door slid open noiselessly, disappearing into the wall. The room opened to a corridor.
Emmett hesitated for a moment, undecided whether or not to put on the new clothes first. The door closed silently. He pushed the red button again. It opened. Satisfied it would open when he wanted to leave the room, he took the clothes from the chair.
The shoes were soft and flexible, sponge-soled and kind to his feet, a contrast to the heavy, hard boots he was used to wearing. The trousers were black and of soft texture, as was the white shirt, and both were cool to the touch.