Point Ultimate

by Jerry Sohl

  They came to a door at the end of the corridor. Tall brought his heater to bear on the lock. It melted, the metal running down the door and jamb like hot wax.

  Short kicked the door open.

  “Halt!” the speaker cried.

  Bells were ringing and lights were flashing everywhere now.

  They ran up the stairs. Two flights. Three flights. Then four, five, and six.

  Emmett was out of breath, panting, his heart beating wildly, his lungs demanding more air than he could give them. He lost count of the number of stair flights.

  Finally they were at another door. Tall melted it completely.

  Emmett made a move to dash through.

  “Wait!” Tall cried.

  Almost at once the doorway and the floor this side of it turned cherry red. Emmett realized if he had dashed through he would have been burned to a crisp.

  “We’ve got to get the tower or the flier will never make it!” Tall cried. The tiny area was getting unsufferably hot.

  Short pointed his heater at a small window on the other side of the room. It melted down. Now the wall was melting, cracking, blistering from the force of the heater.

  “I’ll go out there,” Short said. “It’s on the protected side.”

  “We’ll all go,” Tall said.

  They jumped through the smoking hole, leaned against the side of the cupola. Everywhere about them, except where they were, the roof was smoking and melting.

  “It’s not using full force,” Short said. “Otherwise the whole roof would go.”

  “Maybe we can aim around the corner here,” Tall said, turning toward the wall and stepping toward the edge of the cupola. “Come on.”

  The three moved toward the corner.

  Tall moved out his heater to aim at the tower. He drew his hand back quickly, grimacing in pain. The heater clattered to the roof. “Damn!” he said, holding his burned hand. “We can't do it that way!”

  “If we can't hit the tower, we're ruined!” Short said. “The flier won't get down. The tower'll blast it.”

  “Look out!” Tall crouched, pointing.

  A flier with a brilliant red star on its side zoomed close, banked and turned toward them.

  “Let him have it!” Short cried, aiming his heater at the approaching flier. Emmett aimed both heater and sleeper, clicked away as the flier zoomed close enough for him to see the face of the pilot. A jagged hole in the roof suddenly appeared before them, running along toward them. They jumped to one side. Part of the cupola collapsed behind them. There was little protection now.

  The flier appeared again. This time they aimed and clicked at it again. It wobbled in the air, whooshed past.

  There was a tremendous crash, a piercing shriek of rending metal. Flames shot out beyond them.

  Tall chanced a look over the ragged edge of bricks. “It's hit the tower!” he cried. Then he was on his feet, retrieving his gun.

  They were out of the cupola's protection now, firing their heaters at the tottering tower. It blackened in the heat from the smoldering flier and their heaters. The top of it swayed, guy wires snapping. It wobbled, then fell with a resounding crash to the roof, falling through to the floors below. The whole building trembled with the force of the crash, the dust and smoke blinding them.

  “Over here!” Tall shouted, running to a clear part of the roof. There were many fliers in the sky now, but he jumped up and down, waving his arms at his sides and above his head.

  Short joined him, Emmett running up behind them.

  A long black flier slipped out of the west, made a long arc toward the roof.

  “Come on, come on!” Tall cried. “Cut it short, man!”

  The flier skidded to a bobbing stop and the door opened.

  “Good shooting, boys,” the pilot cried.

  “It’s not over,” Tall said, moving in first.

  Emmett had hardly got aboard when the flier lifted abruptly.

  “We’ve got the speed,” Short said, “let’s have it. We’ll outrun them easily.”

  The flier was rising so rapidly Emmett could hardly hold himself up off the floor.

  “Look out for that one,” Tall shouted, pointing.

  “I see it,” the pilot said. He pressed a stud.

  Emmett lifted his head long enough to see a sudden ball of fire where a flier had been.

  The wind was shrieking past the air vents.

  “I think we’ve done it,” Short said. “I don’t think they’ll get us now.”

  CHAPTER - 20

  The flier was high now. The pilot leveled off, and Tall and Short relaxed their vigilance at the windows.

  “Kick it in the pants,” Short said. “Let’s go.”

  “Did you bring along our clothes, Spence?” Tall asked the pilot.

  “In the aft compartment.”

  “Thanks. I was never more miserable in anything. What a monkey suit!” He rose and started to take off the uniform, looked at Emmett as he did so. “You proved pretty handy with those guns, Keyes. But from what Johannes tells us about you, you’ve had a little experience.”

  “Johannes? Do you know him?”

  He nodded. “And best you get to know us, Keyes. My name’s John Gillis, this is Stanley Norton, and the pilot is Spence Givens. We were ordered to rescue you and I guess we did. Pretty good show, don’t you think?”

  “It was wonderful,” Emmett conceded. Gillis was the tall one. He was older than Emmett had at first thought, for there were many gray hairs among the brown at the temples. He was muscular, sun-tanned, his hair short-cropped, his blue eyes frank and friendly. Norton was dark, stocky, had a cleft chin and resolute lips and bright brown eyes. They were donning loose-fitting, light blue shirts and dark blue trousers.

  ‘There's an outfit here for you/' Gillis called from the rear of the ship. “I hope it fits.” He tossed a shirt and trousers to Emmett. “You'd better take off that outfit you're wearing.”

  “You're a pretty important man, Keyes,” Norton said. “Otherwise we'd never have tried to yank you out from under their noses.”

  “Important? Why?”

  “You're immune,” Gillis said. “That's why.”

  “If you had only told Johannes that when you met him back in Illinois, you wouldn't have had to go through all that agony.” “Stan's right, Keyes. Immune men are almost impossible to find these days. Especially immune men possessing such a hatred for Communist domination.”

  “Are you immune?”

  Gillis nodded. “The three of us.” He gathered up the clothing they had taken off, opened a window and tossed it out. “Good riddance, I say.”

  “Amen.”

  “Now if we only had a place to wash up and a good meal, we'd be back to normal. How long before we get there, Spence?” “About thirty-five minutes.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “A little place in Florida.” Gillis flopped into a seat and grinned across at Emmett. “I suppose you're wondering what this is all about.”

  “I've been looking for the resistance movement,” Emmett said. “It looks as if I've found it.”

  “Johannes told us about you. He was going to tell you about us when you met in Marblehill, but you never made it.”

  “You're quite a guy, Keyes,” Norton said, taking a seat in front of Gillis. “You just leave home, knock off a party member, then nearly wreck an area director's villa. You get around quite a bit for a guy who isn't in Manumit.”

  “Manumit? Pushkin was talking about that back there. What is it?”

  “It's the name of our outfit, Keyes. They thought you were a member of it. We don’t often stage open warfare as we. did today. It’s more of a long-range operation.”

  "Don’t be misled by the name,” Norton said. "Nobody knows where it came from.”

  "It means to free from bondage. It’s really a verb. But it’s stuck through the years. I was twenty-five before I knew it existed, though I knew I was immune long before that. I was lucky to find it. I was
on my way to a slave-labor camp at the time. But that’s too long a story to tell here. Norton’s been in it ever since he was born.”

  "I’ve never known anything else. I don’t see how people live going for their booster every month, licking the Enemy boot. It’s —well, hideous is about the right word.”

  "And this ship—does it belong to the Manumit?”

  "That’s right,” Gillis said. "Oh, we’re not lacking in resources or ability, Keyes. All we lack is manpower. But we’re working in that direction.”

  The flier seemed a stationary thing high above the clouds, but it moved because the coast line was never the same.

  "Won’t they intercept this ship?” Emmett asked. "Send up fliers for attack?”

  "The commies?” Gillis snorted. "Their air force is practically nonexistent. Who are they supposed to fight? This is the first sortie like this I’ve been on for a long time.”

  "Hideous is the word for living under commie domination,” Norton said, "and decadent is the word for the commies themselves. We don’t want to get them stirred up and start thinking about retaliation.”

  "Have you ever wondered how it happened you’re immune, Keyes?” Gillis asked.

  "I don’t think a day’s gone by I haven’t wondered about it.”

  "It’s simple. I don’t know how much you know or how much you’ve figured out for yourself, but the doctor simply failed to inoculate you at birth. The result? You’re immune.”

  "I’m afraid I don’t follow you.”

  “What John means to say is the doctor didn’t give you the plague bacillus.”

  “Plague bacillus?”

  Gillis smiled. “I see you don’t know. Well, the newborn aren’t inoculated against the plague as the Enemy would have everyone believe, Keyes. They’re inoculated with the plague.” “You mean babies are deliberately given the plague?”

  “That’s right,” Norton said. “It’s one of the commies’ most closely guarded secrets.”

  Gillis nodded. “It’s quite a concept. You have to go back to nineteen sixty-nine to understand it. That’s when the plague bombs were dropped, you know. Those exposed to it at that time got the plague. The threat of it lasted their entire lifetime. They had to have booster shots once a month to prevent the onset of symptoms. But the threat of the plague for the people born after the bombs were dropped lasted only a few months. By nineteen seventy, newborn children were in no danger from it. Nature has a way of destroying even the most virulent strains of bacteria, you know. But the Enemy hadn’t counted on that. They thought people would be forever exposed to the contagion.

  “So, when the plague lost its potency for the newborn, to insure that they would get it and have to come for their boosters for the rest of their lives, the Enemy decided to transmit the disease to the newborn by inoculation. Each child so inoculated would be theirs to dominate, for it would be dependent upon them for its freedom from the disease.”

  “I see,” Emmett said. So many things suddenly became clearer now, why the Communists insisted on birth permits, why they made it a law that all children must be born in hospitals, why they raised such a hue and cry over unlawful pregnancy and made such an example of those in that unfortunate condition. And then he thought of the mothers. They actually wanted their children to be born in hospitals because they thought that was the way to keep them from getting the plague! What irony!

  “Johannes is a Manumit agent,” Gillis said. “His main job is recruiting women who are unlawfully pregnant by occupation standards. He says you met him once as he was escorting a group from one point to another.”

  “I met him, but I didn’t know what he was doing until a gypsy girl named Ivy told me he had promised those women their children would be born in peace and security and without fear of reprisal. I see now that the real object must have been to get the immune babies for Manumit. Is that right?”

  “That’s right,” Gillis said, “for they are the immune soldiers-to-be. The army of the immune will some day destroy the Communist grip on the world.”

  “Men like Johannes,” Norton said, “have to recruit small groups, such as that gypsy band you were with. They are told we will help the illegally pregnant and promise a healthy, occupation-free upbringing for their child. That is usually enough to get them to uncover an illegally pregnant woman now and then. There is an appointed time and place where these women go. Men like Johannes lead these groups from point to point until they reach their destination.”

  “Pregnant women,” Gillis added, “don’t need booster shots. That’s not generally known, either, for most of them report for the boosters anyway and the occupation forces never tell them any different.”

  “If all your groups are as faithful as that gypsy band I was with, then your program must be working out all right.”

  “Oh, we have all kinds of people,” Gillis said. “Even some daytime collaborators help us out at night. This business about labor camps for those who don’t get birth permits isn’t a very popular law.”

  “It’s a last resort,” Norton said, “but it’s better than death in a labor camp. That’s their reasoning.”

  “And if the woman lives to have the child in a labor camp, the child goes commie all down the line, full indoctrination from the beginning.”

  Norton shook his head. “There are many like that. There will have to be a lot of undoing when the day comes.”

  “You got anything to eat, Spence?” Gillis asked. “I’m as hungry as a soldier on leave.”

  “Didn’t think about it,” Givens said. “Should have brought something along, I guess. Say, there are some candy bars back there somewhere. Look in the supply compartment.”

  Gillis went back, soon returned with a sack of candy. “Thank God for Givens’ sweet tooth.” He passed the bag around.

  They munched in silence for a while, the only sound the hiss of the flier and the soughing of the wind past the ports and vents.

  Then Emmett said, “I don’t see how you get away with it. Don’t the occupation forces know what you’re doing?”

  Gillis shrugged. “They know there’s something going on, but they’re not sure what it is. The official thinking is that they believe we’re in some sort of money-making business, taking these women somewhere to have their babies. But though they look for the place they can never find it. And the women never return home and the children are never seen. So they don’t know what to think.”

  “I don’t think they’re worried about it at all,” Norton said. “Oh, they’ve disrupted a transfer now and then, but we’ve got most of them through to Point Ultimate.”

  “Point Ultimate?” Emmett put his bar down. “Now that’s what Pushkin was trying to find out about.”

  “Why shouldn’t he?” Gillis said. “He thought you were one of us. He probably still does, if he’s awakened from that dose of sleep the brain in the building handed him.”

  “But what is it?”

  “A destination, Keyes. It’s apt to be anywhere.”

  Norton opened a window and threw his candy wrapper out. “Point Ultimate changes all the time. In the United States it’s been in the Great Salt Lake Desert, the Mojave Desert, in the

  Black Hills, a plateau in the Rocky Mountains--”

  “You must understand,” Gillis interrupted, “that Point Ultimate needn’t be in the United States at all. Sometimes it’s in Sweden, Australia, or in South Africa—anywhere in the world.”

  “That’s right. It’s not a concentrated headquarters. And that’s

  why the Enemy hasn’t raised a fuss about it. Reports from isolated areas don’t get much attention if they’re infrequent and worldwide. You see, the Manumit is working to free not only the United States but the world as well.”

  Emmett frowned. “But how can you move all these women and children around all the time?”

  “I don’t see what you mean.”

  “Well, how long has this being going on?”

  “Roughly about ten years.”
/>
  ‘Well, then, how many children have been born during that time?”

  “About ten thousand.”

  “How can you move ten thousand children and mothers around from one Point Ultimate to another?”

  “Now I see what you mean.”

  “It’s because,” Norton said, “the women and children are not on Earth.”

  “Not on Earth!”

  “That’s right,” Gillis said, grinning. “They’re on Mars.”

  CHAPTER - 20

  The surf billowed and roared along the endless stretch of deserted beach, and spindrift moved slowly north high in the sky. It was a lonely place, unsullied by man’s hand, a sandy waste of rock and shell.

  Out of the haze on the northern horizon far out at sea came the flier, a speck that grew as it moved out of the sky at great speed. Finally it passed over the beach, the hiss of it lost among the trees farther inland and the waves on the shore. It curved low out to sea again, then came in near the breaking waves and floated gently to the sand.

  A door opened. Gillis was the first man out, dropping softly to the sand, his eyes searching the woods to the west, then looking out to the sea. Norton was next. He landed a little more heavily, looked out at the sea. Then Emmett jumped down. It was warm and humid.

  “Aren’t you coming out, Spence?” Gillis asked, squinting up into the flier.

  “I’d better stay here,” Givens said. “We might have to leave in a hurry.”

  “Too bad we can’t go for a swim,” Norton said.

  “We can at least wash,” Gillis said. “That is, if you can stand the salt water. Come on, Keyes.”

  They walked to the water and dabbled in it, washing the grime from their hands and faces.

  ‘When's the submarine due?" Emmett asked.

  “He's still pretty far out at sea,” Gillis said. “It will be a while yet."

  “I don't see why you don’t use the flier. If you can go anywhere you want in it, why bother with a submarine?”

  “Not enough space in the flier. We’ve got to pick up a contingent of PW's—that's what we call pregnant women—at Caracas and take them to Point Ultimate. It's an island off South America this time. You’ll see.”