Heller said, helpfully, "It says on their blue and gold caps and badges 'American Legion Post 89, Des Moines, Iowa.' Is that a member country?"
Miss Simmons quite rightly ignored him. "So you must note, class, and note with horror and indignation, the attitude of irresponsibility which prevails here. If these men would only do their duty... Wister, what are you looking at?"
"These leaves," said Heller. "All in all, these trees are doing pretty good in all these oil fumes from the river. I think the soil is probably slightly demineralized, though."
"Pay attention to your classwork!" snapped Miss Simmons. "Now, class, if the UN would ever do its duty,
we could end utterly and forever man's lemming fixation on self-destruction."
"What's a lemming?" said a girl.
"They are hordes of horrible rats that go plunging in masses into the sea annually, committing mass suicide," said Miss Simmons helpfully. "If it wished, in a single, soul-stirring surge, the UN could rise up with clarion voices and cry 'DEATH TO THE CAPITALIST WARMONGERS' Wister, what in the name of God are you looking at NOW?"
There were three seagulls lying along the concrete parapet. Their feet were stuck into black blobs of oil, pinning them to the concrete. Two were dead. The third, his feet stuck and his feathers saturated with oil, was still making feeble efforts to get free.
"Those birds," said Wister. "They got into an oil slick."
"And I suppose that will make it easier for you to trap them and blow them up with an atomic bomb! Ignore his antics, class. There is always some student who tries to get others to laugh." A helicopter was coming down the river very low and the sound blotted her voice out.
Heller was putting on a pair of gloves from his kit. He went over and verified that the two motionless ones were actually dead. Then he went to the third one. It feebly tried to defend itself with its beak.
Kneeling, Heller got a small spray out of his haversack. By Gods, he skirted on the edges of real Code breaks: it said Solvent 564, Fleet Supply Base 14 right on it in Voltarian! I made a note of it. Somebody might notice!
He took out a redstar engineer's rag and protected the bird's eyes and air holes and rapidly sprayed its feathers. Of course, the oil vanished.
Then he unstuck its feet, wiped them off and sprayed them. He inspected the bird, found a couple of spots he had missed and handled those. He was always so maddeningly neat!
He took out a water bottle and filled the cap. The bird, head loose by now, started to strike, then thought better of it and took some water from the cap. The bird did it several times.
"You were dehydrated," said Heller. "It's the hot sun. Now take a few more sips." What a fool. He was talking to it in Voltarian and it was an Earth bird!
Then he took out half a sandwich and broke it up and laid it on the grass. The bird stretched its wings, doubtless with some surprise. It was going to fly away but saw the sandwich and decided to have lunch first.
"Now, that's a good bird," said Heller. "You stay away from that black stuff. It's oil, understand? Petroleum!"
The bird let out some kind of a squawk and went on eating the sandwich. I don't know why it squawked. It couldn't understand Voltarian.
Heller looked around. Of course, the Nature Appreciation class was gone. Heller listened intently. He heard nothing. He did a fast scout.
And then he was sniffing. What the Hells was he sniffing about?
He glanced back. The seagull was just taking off. It sailed by him and curved outward over the river and was gone.
Sniffing some more, Heller trotted ahead and was shortly in the reception center of the General Assembly Building, according to the signs. There was even an information sign but he didn't approach it.
He seemed to find the place very curious. The light
was coming through the walls from outside in a translucent effect. He went over to a wall and examined it to find out why, probably.
He went over into the Assembly Hall and there was the class.
Miss Simmons was lecturing. "... and here it is that the delegates could rise with one voice and in stentorian and noble tones denounce nuclear weapons forever. But alas, they do not. The men who occupy this place are silenced by their own fears. They cower...."
Heller was examining some marble.
The class trailed out on Miss Simmons' heels and, with her still lecturing and totally ignoring the guide who seemed to have attached himself to the party, went into the Conference Building and were shortly in the gallery of a chamber labelled:
The Security Council
They gazed across the two hundred or so empty public seats—for, of course, nothing was in session and would not be for another couple of weeks—and Miss Simmons continued her lecture. ". . . And so we come at last to the lair of the powerful few who, even if the General Assembly did act, this fifteen-nation body would veto any sensible ban proposed. The five permanent members—United States, France, United Kingdom, Russia and China—each have the right to turn down, individually, the anguished pleas of all the peoples of the Earth! They block any effort anyone makes to outlaw nuclear power and disarm the world! Greed, lust for power, megalomania and paranoia cause these self-anointed few to surge onward and onward, closer and closer to the brink."
Heller had been admiring the gold and blue hangings and a mural. But at her last words, he spoke sharply. "Who keeps preventing a solution?"
Miss Simmons spoke out with a clarion voice of her own. "The Russian traitors who have sold out the revolution and asserted themselves the tyrants of the proletariat! Who asked that question? It was a very good one!"
"Wister did," said a girl.
"Oh, you again! Wister, stop disturbing the class!" Miss Simmons led them back outside.
Heller's eyes lingered on a huge statue of a muscular figure that was putting a lot of effort into something.
Heller asked, "What is that statue doing?"
Miss Simmons said, "That is a Russian statue. It is a worker being forced to beat a plowshare into a sword. It personifies the betrayal of the proletariat." She had looked back, moving her glasses off her eyes to see. "Ah, that was a good question, George."
Wister was looking around to see who George was and so were the other students.
She had gathered them together under the Statue of Peace. "Now, today, students, was just a start, an effort to orient this course for you. But I will review why we started here, so pay very close attention.
"All that you will see in our future Sundays of Nature Appreciation is doomed by nuclear war. It will make it far more poignant for you, as you admire the beauties of nature, to realize, as you look at every blossom, every leaf, every delicate paw and each bit of soft, defenseless fur, to realize that it is about to be destroyed forever in the horror and holocaust of thermonuclear war!"
Oh, she was right there! If Heller didn't win and a Voltar invasion got turned loose, those crude atomic bombs would seem like a picnic!
"So, class," she went on, "if you do not yet feel, individually and collectively, the craving urge to instantly sign up with the Anti-Nuclear Protest Marchers, I assure you that you soon will—New York Tactical Police Force or no New York Tactical Police Force. Class dismissed. Wister, please remain behind."
The students wandered off. Heller came up to Miss Simmons.
She lifted her glasses up to try to see him. "Wister, I am afraid your classwork is not improving. You were interrupting and disturbing the others. You were not paying attention!"
"I got everything you said," protested Heller. "You said that if the UN couldn't be made to function, the planet would destroy itself with thermonuclear weapons."
"Weapons made by such as you, Wister. My words were far stronger. So you get an F for today. If your daily classwork is a bad average, you know, of course, that even a perfect, INFLUENCED, final examination won't save you. And if you flunk this course, Wister, you won't get your diploma and then nobody will listen to yo
u and you'll never get that coveted job of blowing up this planet. Small as it is, I do my bit for the cause, Wister. Good afternoon." And she stalked off.
Heller sat down.
And how pleased I was! Miss Simmons had him stalled. What a marvelous, brilliant woman! Her straight hair and glasses hid the fact that she was also quite good looking. And even though she obviously hated men, I felt a great tenderness for her, a longing to hug her and tell her what a truly magnificent person she was!
My ally! At last I had found one to give me hope in my sea of chaos!
Oh, it did me good to see Heller just sitting there, staring at the grass.
The fate of empires lay in the delicate and beautiful hands of a woman. But this was not the first time in the age-long histories of planets. I prayed to the Gods that her grip on fate would remain tenacious and strong.
Chapter 6
Heller glanced at his watch and it winked 3:00 P.M. He glanced at the sky: there was a pattern of cloud to the north and a stir of wind.
He got up and, at a fast trot, began to cover the long blocks home.
Suddenly he stopped. Something had caught his eye up ahead. Miss Simmons was just disappearing down a subway stairs, way up ahead.
Heller glanced up and down the street. It was Sunday afternoon and there wasn't anyone about. The usual midtown Sunday desertion. He trotted on. He seemed to be heading for the stairs. It came to me in a flash that maybe he was going to murder Miss Simmons! That is the first plan that would have occurred to me. Apparatus training is always uppermost.
But he passed on by the stairs.
A sharp voice from the bowels of the station! "No! Go away!"
Heller sprang over the rail and dropped onto the steps. He went down six at a time. He burst out onto the platform.
Miss Simmons was standing there, on the other side of the turnstile. A ragged wino was reeling back and forth in front of her. "Gimme a buck and I'll go away!"
She raised her cane to strike at him. He easily grasped it and yanked it out of her hand. He threw it aside.
Heller yelled, "You, there!"
The drunk looked around. He stumbled and scrambled for a more distant exit stair and went through a steel revolving gate.
Heller fished out a token and went through the turnstile. He walked over to the cane and picked it up. He came back and handed it to Miss Simmons.
"Things are pretty deserted on Sunday," he said. "It isn't safe for you."
"Wister," said Miss Simmons with loathing.
"Maybe I should see you home," said the insufferably polite and courteous Royal officer.
"I am perfectly safe, Wister," said Miss Simmons, acidly. "All week I work cooped up. All week I am mobbed with students. Today the class was finished early and it is the first time in MONTHS I have a chance for a quiet walk alone. And who turns up? YOU!"
"I'm sorry," said Heller. "I just don't think it's very safe for a woman to be walking around by herself in this city. Particularly today when there are so few people about. That man just now——"
"I have lived in New York for years, Wister. I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself. Nothing will ever happen to me!"
"You ever walk around alone much?" said Heller.
"I don't get a chance to, Wister. There are always students. Please leave me alone, Wister. I am going to have my walk in spite of you or anybody else. Go away somewhere and play with your atom bombs!"
A train roared up, the doors opened. She turned her back upon him pointedly and entered a car.
Wister trotted down the train a few cars and, steadying an automatic door before it could close, got aboard. The train sped along.
I was trying to figure out what his angle was. He lived only a couple blocks away from the station they had just left. She was definitely in his road on his way to a diploma. It would be greatly to his benefit if she were disposed of. The Apparatus textbook handling would be to do just that. Had I found a real ally only to lose her?
The shuttle train pulled into Grand Central. Heller had his eye on Miss Simmons, seen through intervening car doors. She got out of the train.
Heller also went out of the door.
Miss Simmons probably did not see him. She was following directions which took her to the Lexington Avenue line. Heller followed at a distance.
She got to the Lexington Avenue IRT uptown platform. Then she walked way on up the platform to where the front end of the train would stop.
She stood there, leaning on her cane, waiting for the next express.
A young man in a red beret walked toward her. Heller started to move forward and then stopped. The young man was a clean-looking youth. He had on a white T-shirt and it said Volunteer Guard Patrol on it.
He spoke to Miss Simmons. "Miss," he said politely, "you shouldn't be riding the front cars or the back cars of a train, especially on Sunday. Ride in the center where there are more people. The gangs and muggers are out real heavy today."
Miss Simmons turned her back on him. "Leave me alone!"
The volunteer guard drifted down the platform. He must have sensed Heller had seen the interplay. He said
to Heller as he passed, "Rapes by the trainful and they never learn."
An express roared in and came to a hissing halt with a roar and clang of doors opening. Miss Simmons got into the first car. Heller stepped in to the middle of the train. The doors slammed shut and they roared away, lurching and banging at high speed.
A tough-looking drunk sized up Heller. Heller took his engineer gloves out of his haversack and put them on. It was an effective gesture. The tough one promptly staggered down the swaying train to the next car back.
White tiles of stations flashed by, one after another. They rode and rode and rode, all at very high speed through the dark tunnels, the sound a pounding roar. At each infrequent stop, Heller would half rise to see if Miss Simmons was alighting, would see that she was not and would then sink back.
After a very long time, the signs on the tunnel poles said:
Woodlawn
Miss Simmons got out. Heller waited until the last moment and then got out. Miss Simmons had vanished up a stairs.
Shortly, Heller emerged into daylight. Miss Simmons was striding along northward. He waited a bit. He looked at the sky. It was overcast. Wind was whipping stray bits of paper along roadways.
It was then I realized what he must be doing: he had probably read one of the G-2 manuals, the one about how to tail a Russian spy. He was simply practicing. He had not read any Apparatus manuals and so he would not be well enough trained to know that he should simply
murder Miss Simmons. Having accounted for his actions, I felt much easier. Miss Simmons would be quite safe after all and I still had an ally.
Several picnickers were evidently going home, their hair blown about by the wind. Otherwise there was no traffic.
At least two hundred yards behind Miss Simmons, Heller followed along.
She went some distance. A sign pointed:
Van Cortlandt Park
She turned in that direction, striding along in her heavy laced boots, swinging her cane, the perfect picture of a fashionable hiker in the European style.
She made some more turns. They were well into a kind of wilderness interlaced with infrequent bridle paths.
The wind was rising and trees were bowing. Some belated picnickers fled toward civilization. After that it was a deserted expanse of thickets and trees.
Heller was closer to her now but still thirty yards or more behind. Due to the twists and turns of the trail, he was usually masked from her. She was not looking back.
Ahead was a vale. The path went down into a long hollow and then turned up at the far end. It was a totally hidden area, surrounded by large trees.
Miss Simmons got a third of the way up the far slope. Heller stepped forward to go down the path.
Abruptly, from the undergrowth around her, six men sprang up!
One leaped agilely into the trail in front of her, a ragged white youth.
A black jumped into the trail behind her!
Two Hispanics and two more whites blocked her way to right and left!
Heller started to go down the trail toward them.
A harsh, cold voice said, "Hold it, sonny!"
Heller looked back to his left.
Emerged from a tree but still behind it stood an old gray-faced, unshaven bum. He was holding a double-barrelled shotgun trained on Heller. He was twenty feet away.
Another voice! "Just stop right there, kid!"
Heller looked back and to his right. Another man, a black, was standing there with a revolver pointed at him, thirty feet away. "We been waitin' all afternoon for a setup like this, kid, so don't make any sudden moves."
The man with the shotgun said, "This is one time, sonny, when you don't get a piece all to yourself. You can have some later, if there's any left."
Excited laughter was coming from the men around Miss Simmons. They were jumping up and down.
She struck at them with her stick!
A black grabbed it and yanked it out of her hand!
The others screeched with laughter and the one with the stick started to dance with it, waving it. The others started to dance around Miss Simmons.
Heller shouted in a strong voice, "Please don't do this!"
The man with the shotgun said, "Take it easy, sonny. It's just a gang rape. Some fun for a Sunday. Me and Joe is a little too (bleeped) out to do more than watch, so you just get smart and be like us and maybe we won't have to kill you."
"What kind of beasts are you on this planet?" shouted Heller.
"You got any money?" said the man with the revolver. "The big H comes high these days."
The crowd around Miss Simmons was dashing in at her and dancing back. They were herding her into a flatter place more masked by trees. She was shouting at them to leave her alone.
Heller reached toward his haversack. "Hold it, sonny. Keep your hands in sight. This is a twelve-gauge and both barrels loaded in front of hair triggers. We can get his money later, Joe. Jesus," he said indulgently, "look at those young devils."