Neq the Sword

  each woman was vulnerable to the sincerity of the song,

  the vibrant emotion of it. While his voice and hammer

  were in harness Neq the Glockenspiel was potent even in

  the face of their unified distrust.

  I'd hammer out love

  between all my brothers

  all over this land!

  He finished that song, and sang another, and then an-

  other. It was as though he were marching out of the

  haunted forest again, and in a way he was, for there was

  nothing but song to do the job that had to be done. Vara

  began harmonizing with him, the way Neqa'tad done

  long ago, and slowly the others formed into a circle about

  him, compelled to echo the words.

  He sang. The very room wavered and flowed, shaping

  itself into an ugly badlands mountainside girt by tangled

  metal palisades, irregular stone battlements, a tunnel

  under the awful mountain, a vast cavern filled with ashes.

  Helicon formed, and Helicon's promise infused the group.

  From death came life—the mountain of death that meant

  life for the finest elements in man. The dream became

  tangible, thrilling, eternal; a force that no living man

  could deny.

  At last he stopped. They were his, now, he knew. His

  dream had met their caution and prevailed, however il-

  logically. Helicon would live again.

  Then he saw the vine-box. Jimi had covered it, so that

  the flowers had opened in their darkness, and the nar-

  cotic had seeped into the room while Neq was singing.

  Tyi must have seen it happen, and let it be, for Tyi was

  gone.

  Fifty strong, they unloaded at devastated Helicon. The

  mountain appeared much the same from the outside—a

  looming, forbidding mound of refuse.

  "We shall not need to kill in Helicon's defense," Neq

  said. "We will accept those who climb to the snow line. If

  they are unsuitable, we will send them far away. No one

  who comes to us must be allowed to return to the nomad

  world."

  The others nodded. They all knew the mischief such

  returns had made in the past. Had Helicon truly kept to

  itself, instead of dabbling in nomad politics, the original

  society of the crazy demesnes would have survived un-

  broken. It had been a lesson—one that Neq himself had

  learned most harshly of all.

  The nomads were the real future of mankind. The

  crazies were only caretakers, preserving what they could

  of the civilization the nomads would one day draw upon.

  Helicon was the supplier for the crazies. But Helicon and

  the crazies could not make the civilization themselves, for

  that would be identical to the system of the past.

  The past that had made the Blast. The most colossal

  failure in man's history.

  Yet by the same token the nomads had to be prevented

  from assuming command of Helicon, either to destroy it

  or to absorb its technology directly. There must not be a

  forced choice between barbarism and the Blast. The care-

  taker order had to be maintained for centuries, perhaps

  millennia, until the nomads, in their own time, outgrew it.

  Then the new order would truly prevail, shed of the liabili-

  ties of the old.

  That, at least, was Dr. Jones' theory. Neq only knew

  that they had a job to do. Perhaps the others understood

  it better than he did, for even the scattered children in

  the group were subdued.

  "To many of you, the interior will be strange," Neq

  said. "Think of it as a larger crazy building, gutted at the

  moment but about to be restored by our effort. Each

  person will have his area of responsibility. Dick the Sur-

  geon will be in charge of group health, as he was before;

  he will check the perimeters with the radiation counter—

  the crazy click-box—and set the limits of safety by post-

  ing wamers. Only with his permission—and mine—will

  anyone go beyond these. The mountain is a badlands; the

  kill-spirits still lurk.

  "Jim the Gun will be in charge of mechanical opera-

  tions; restoring electric power, making the machinery func-

  tional. Most of us will work under his direction for as long

  as it takes. A year, perhaps. Without the machinery

  Helicon can not live; it will bring in air and water and

  keep the temperature even and make our night and day.

  Some of you are—were—crazies; you know more about

  electricity than Jim does. He's in charge because he's a

  leader and you are not. Had there been leadership among

  the crazies, Helicon might never have fallen, and would

  certainly have been rebuilt before this."

  They nodded somberly. Leaders existed among the

  nomads, but the crazies didn't operate the same way. In

  time the new Helicon would amalgamate its disparate ele-

  ments and rear its own leaders and technicians and be a

  complete society in itself. Right now everything had to be

  makeshift.

  Neq continued announcing assignments while the others

  stared at the mountain. Cooking, explorations, foraging,

  supply, cleanup—he had worked this out carefully in

  consultation with literate crazy advisers during the truck

  journey here, and he wanted each person to know his

  place in the scheme as he viewed the interior for the first

  time. He put Vara in charge of defense, for the time being:

  -he would cultivate the vines, and clear rooms for the

  flowers to occupy, and set up an effective system of Lights

  and vents so that no one could penetrate Helicon by

  stealth without passing through that narcotic atmosphere.

  The mountain would never be taken by storm! Sola was

  in charge of boarding; she had to assign a private room to

  each man, and provide for some recreational facilities.

  "What about rooms for the women?" someone asked.

  "We have no rooms," Sola said. "We will share with the

  men—a different room each night on strict rotation. That

  is the way it has to be, since we have only eight women

  within the nubile range, and forty men. There is no mar-

  riage here, and bracelets are only sentiment. You all knew

  that before you enlisted."

  Then Vara described the history of Helicon, for the

  majority of this group was aware of only portions of it.

  She told how the Ancients, who had been like crazies with

  nomad passions, had filled the world with people they

  could not feed and had built machines whose action they

  could not control, and had finally blown themselves up in

  desperation. That was the Blast—the holocaust that had

  created the contemporary landscape.

  Not all the people had died at once. More were killed

  by radiation than in the physical blast—actually a massive

  series of blasts—and that had taken time. There were

  desperation efforts to salvage civilization, most of which

  came to nothing. But one group in America assembled an

  army of construction equipment and bulldozed a moun-

  tain from the refuse of one of the former cities. It was

/>   the largest structure ever made by man, and probably the

  ugliest—but within its depths, shielded from further fall-

  out, was the complex of Helicon: an enclave of preserved

  civilization and technology. Only a tiny portion of this

  labyrinth was residential. A larger section consisted of

  workshops and hydroponics, and one wing contained the

  atomic pile that generated virtually unlimited power.

  "Dr. Jones assures us that's still functional," Vara said.

  "It's completely automatic, designed to operate for cen-

  turies. It made the first century, anyway. All we have to

  do is reconnect the wiring at our end." '"

  The name Helicon had been borrowed from a myth of

  the Ancients: it was the mountain home of the muses,

  who were the nine daughters of the gods Zeus and

  Mnemosyne, and were themselves the goddesses of memory

  and art and science. Poetry, history, tragedy, song—it all

  reflected the spirit of Helicon as originally conceived. The

  virtues of civilization were to have been remembered here.

  But Helicon had lacked self-sufficience in one vital re-

  spect: personnel. The people who first stocked it had been

  the elite of the devastated world: the scientists, the highly

  skilled technicians, the ranking professionals. Most were

  men, and most were not young. The few women, children

  of the elite, could hardly replenish the enclave in a genera-

  tion without dangerous inbreeding—and they had sub-

  stantial scruples about'trying.

  So it was necessary to allow limited immigration from

  the outside world. The prospect was appalling to the

  founders, for it meant admitting the very barbarians that

  Helicon was on guard against, but they had no choice.

  Without enough children to educate in the traditions and

  technology of civilization. Helicon would slowly die.

  They were fortunate, for some elements of civilization

  had Survived outside. People who later came to be known

  as the "crazies" because their idealistic mode of operation

  made no sense to the majority, were quick to appreciate

  the potential benefits of collaboration. They provided some

  new blood for Helicon, and pointed out that many bar-

  barians could be safely recruited if they were made to

  understand that there was absolutely no return. Thus Heli-

  con became the mountain of death—an honorable demise

  for those with courage. And regular, secret trade was

  instituted, with Helicon adapting a portion of its enormous

  technical resources to the manufacture of tools and ma-

  chinery, while the crazies provided wood and surface

  produce that was much preferable to the hydroponic food

  turned out by less-than-expert chemists.

  The crazies' vision turned out to be larger than that of

  the founders of Helicon, for the crazies were in touch with

  the real world and were necessarily pragmatic about nomad

  relations, despite the nomads' opinion. They ordered

  weapons from the Helicon machine shops—not modern

  ones, but simple nomad implements. Swords and daggers;

  clubs and quarterstaffs. They issued these to the nomads

  in return for a certain docility: the weapons were to be

  used only in formal combat, with noncombatants inviolate,

  and no person could be denied personal freedom.

  Enforcement was indirect but effective: the crazies cut

  off the supply to any regions that failed to conform. Since

  the metal weapons were vastly superior to the homemade

  ones, the "crazy demesnes" spread rapidly as far as their

  supply lines were able to go. Their services expanded to

  include medicine and boarding, with hostels being as-

  sembled from prefabricated sections produced in Helicon.

  There was nothing the crazies could return in direct pay-

  ment for Helicon's full-scale help—but the improvement

  in the local level of civilization was such that many more

  recruits were available for both the crazies and Helicon.

  All three parties to this enterprise profited.

  But Helicon remained the key. Only there could high-

  quality items be mass-produced.

  Then Helicon had been destroyed. And the crazy

  demesnes had collapsed.

  "And ours was the best system in the world," Vara con-

  cluded. "There are other Helicons in other parts of the

  world, but they were never as good as ours and they don't

  have much effect. Var and I discovered that in the years

  we traveled. To the north they have guns and electricity,

  but they are not nice people. In Asia they have trucks and

  ships and buildings, but they—well, for us, our way is best.

  So now we are going to rebuild Helicon ..."

  Neq took them inside by way of the passage from the

  hostel. "This will be our secret," he said. "Converts will

  have to try the mountain. But the crazies can't send trucks

  up there, so they will bring supplies for trade to this point.

  This hostel is seldom used by nomads in the normal course,

  since it is an end station, not a travel station."

  The tunnel curved into its darkness. The lift is on hostel

  power," Neq explained, reminded again of Neqa and her

  explanations to him so long ago. "Once we restore Helicon

  power . . . but lanterns will do for now." -»

  When they were gathered in the storage room, he opened

  the panel to reveal the subway tracks. A wheeled cart was

  there; he had brought it up when he finished the long

  grisly cleanup job. Only a few of the party could ride it

  at a time, and it had to be pushed by hand, but it was still

  quicker to ferry them this way than to make them all walk.

  The nomad converts in particular were nervous about

  thesedepths.

  When all were assembled on the platform at the other

  end, he guided them up the ramp for the grand tour. The

  nomads were awed, the crazies impressed, and the Helicon

  survivors subdued. Everything was bare and clean—no

  doubt quite a contrast to what the former underworlders

  remembered.

  At the dining hall he paused, feeling a chill himself. He

  remembered the way he had left it, after removing the

  bodies and cleaning out the charred furniture. He had

  stacked the salvageable items in one corner, and had left

  a cache of durable staples in the kitchen area.

  One of the tables had been moved. Some of his dried

  beans had been used. Someone had been here.

  Neq concealed his dismay by continuing the tour. "I

  don't know the purpose of all the rooms, and certainly

  not the equipment," he said. "We'll be drawing heavily

  on the experience of those of you who were here before."

  Inwardly he was chagrined. He and the crazies had

  searched for every possible surviving member of Helicon.

  Compared experiences and his body-count suggested that

  very few were unaccounted for. Was the intruder from

  outside? Most of the tribesmen were terrified of this region,

  and would never enter the mountain even if they could

  find their way in.

  Of course Tyi and h
is army had forced entry here dur-

  ing the conquest of the mountain, so those men could

  penetrate Helicon again if they chose. But Neq had sealed

  over the invasion apertures as well as he could and none

  of them seemed to have been reopened, and no damage

  had been done.

  Someone had come without fear, looked about, had a

  bite to eat, and departed. That person could come again.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  "Yes, she is pregnant," Dick the Surgeon said. "I think

  under the circumstances she should be excused from, er,

  circulation. Our children will be our most important asset

  for some time, for they will be raised in the atmosphere

  of civilization...."

  It was Neq's decision to make, and it would set a

  precedent, but he was aware of his own bias. Intellectually

  he knew that the women had to be shared; emotionally he

  couldn't share Vara. "It's a matter of health," he said.

  "That's your department."

  So Vara did not circulate. Actually the system had not

  been fully implemented yet; people needed time to settle

  in to it. There was some problem about the women's

  arrangements, for they required more privacy than the

  men's rooms provided, sexual aspects aside. Finally they

  were assigned rooms of their own, but were expected to

  make their rounds on schedule.

  If the social system functioned with hesitation, at least

  the reconstruction didn't. The restoration of electric power

  was much simpler than anticipated. A few cables replaced,

  a few circuit-breakers closed, a few fixtures tinkered

  with, a few parts substituted, and there was light and heat

  and circulating air and sanitary facilities in-^operation.

  Helicon had been beautifully designed; they were not

  building or even rebuilding it. They were merely imple-

  menting a system that had been temporarily interrupted.