CHAPTER II
The Forest Gangs
She gave me a brief outline of the very peculiar social and economicsystem under which her people lived. At least it seemed very peculiarfrom my 20th Century viewpoint.
I learned with amazement that exactly 492 years had passed over my headas I lay unconscious in the mine.
Wilma, for that was her name, did not profess to be a historian, and socould give me only a sketchy outline of the wars that had been fought,and the manner in which such radical changes had come about. It seemedthat another war had followed the First World War, in which nearly allthe European nations had banded together to break the financial andindustrial power of America. They succeeded in their purpose, thoughthey were beaten, for the war was a terrific one, and left America, likethemselves, gasping, bleeding and disorganized, with only the hollowshell of a victory.
This opportunity had been seized by the Russian Soviets, who had made acoalition with the Chinese, to sweep over all Europe and reduce it to astate of chaos.
America, industrially geared to world production and the world trade,collapsed economically, and there ensued a long period of stagnation anddesperate attempts at economic reconstruction. But it was impossible tostave off war with the Mongolians, who by now had subjugated theRussians, and were aiming at a world empire.
In about 2109, it seems, the conflict was finally precipitated. TheMongolians, with overwhelming fleets of great airships, and a sciencethat far outstripped that of crippled America, swept in over the Pacificand Atlantic Coasts, and down from Canada, annihilating Americanaircraft, armies and cities with their terrific _disintegrator_ rays.These rays were projected from a machine not unlike a searchlight inappearance, the reflector of which, however, was not material substance,but a complicated balance of interacting electronic forces. Thisresulted in a terribly destructive beam. Under its influence, materialsubstance melted into "nothingness"; i. e., into electronic vibrations.It destroyed all then known substances, from air to the most densemetals and stone.
They settled down to the establishment of what became known as the Handynasty in America, as a sort of province in their World Empire.
Those were terrible days for the Americans. They were hunted like wildbeasts. Only those survived who finally found refuge in mountains,canyons and forests. Government was at an end among them. Anarchyprevailed for several generations. Most would have been eager to submitto the Hans, even if it meant slavery. But the Hans did not want them,for they themselves had marvelous machinery and scientific process bywhich all difficult labor was accomplished.
Ultimately they stopped their active search for, and annihilation of,the widely scattered groups of now savage Americans. So long as theyremained hidden in their forests, and did not venture near the greatcities the Hans had built, little attention was paid to them.
Then began the building of the new American civilization. Families andindividuals gathered together in clans or "gangs" for mutual protection.For nearly a century they lived a nomadic and primitive life, movingfrom place to place, in desperate fear of the casual and occasional Hanair raids, and the terrible disintegrator ray. As the frequency of theseraids decreased, they began to stay permanently in given localities,organizing upon lines which in many respects were similar to those ofthe military households of the Norman feudal barons, except that insteadof gathering together in castles, their defense tactics necessitated acertain scattering of living quarters for families and individuals. Theylived virtually in the open air, in the forests, in green tents,resorting to camouflage tactics that would conceal their presence fromair observers. They dug underground factories and laboratories, thatthey might better be shielded from the electrical detectors of theHans. They tapped the radio communication lines of the Hans, with crudeinstruments at first; better ones later on. They bent every efforttoward the redevelopment of science. For many generations they laboredas unseen, unknown scholars of the Hans, picking up their knowledgepiecemeal, as fast as they were able to.
During the earlier part of this period, there were many deadly warsfought between the various gangs, and occasional courageous butchildishly futile attacks upon the Hans, followed by terribly punitiveraids.
But as knowledge progressed, the sense of American brotherhoodredeveloped. Reciprocal arrangements were made among the gangs overconstantly increasing areas. Trade developed to a certain extent, asbetween one gang and another. But the interchange of knowledge becamemore important than that of goods, as skill in the handling of syntheticprocesses developed.
Within the gang, an economy was developed that was a compromise betweenindividual liberty and a military socialism. The right of privateproperty was limited practically to personal possessions, but privateprivileges were many, and sacredly regarded. Stimulation to achievementlay chiefly in the winning of various kinds of leadership andprerogatives, and only in a very limited degree in the hope of owninganything that might be classified as "wealth," and nothing that might beclassified as "resources." Resources of every description, for militarysafety and efficiency, belonged as a matter of public interest to thecommunity as a whole.
In the meantime, through these many generations, the Hans had developeda luxury economy, and with it the perfection of gilded vice anddegradation. The Americans were regarded as "wild men of the woods." Andsince they neither needed nor wanted the woods or the wild men, theytreated them as beasts, and were conscious of no human brotherhood withthem. As time went on, and synthetic processes of producing foods andmaterials were further developed, less and less ground was needed by theHans for the purposes of agriculture, and finally, even the working ofmines was abandoned when it became cheaper to build up metal fromelectronic vibrations than to dig them out of the ground.
The Han race, devitalized by its vices and luxuries, with machinery andscientific processes to satisfy its every want, with virtually nonecessity of labor, began to assume a defensive attitude toward theAmericans.
And quite naturally, the Americans regarded the Hans with a deep, grimhatred. Conscious of individual superiority as men, knowing thatlatterly they were outstripping the Hans in science and civilization,they longed desperately for the day when they should be powerful enoughto rise and annihilate the Yellow Blight that lay over the continent.
At the time of my awakening, the gangs were rather loosely organized,but were considering the establishment of a special military force,whose special business it would be to harry the Hans and bring downtheir air ships whenever possible without causing general alarm amongthe Mongolians. This force was destined to become the nucleus of thenational force, when the Day of Retribution arrived. But that, however,did not happen for ten years, and is another story.
On the left of the illustration is a Han girl, and on theright is an American girl, who, like all of her race, is equipped withan inertron belt and a rocket gun.]
Wilma told me she was a member of the Wyoming Gang, which claimed theentire Wyoming Valley as its territory, under the leadership of BossHart. Her mother and father were dead, and she was unmarried, so she wasnot a "family member." She lived in a little group of tents known asCamp 17, under a woman Camp Boss, with seven other girls.
Her duties alternated between military or police scouting and factorywork. For the two-week period which would end the next day, she had beenon "air patrol." This did not mean, as I first imagined, that she wasflying, but rather that she was on the lookout for Han ships over thisoutlying section of the Wyoming territory, and had spent most of hertime perched in the tree tops scanning the skies. Had she seen one shewould have fired a "drop flare" several miles off to one side, whichwould ignite when it was floating vertically toward the earth, so thatthe direction or point from which if had been fired might not be guessedby the airship and bring a blasting play of the disintegrator ray in hervicinity. Other members of the air patrol would send up rockets onseeing hers, until finally a scout equipped with an ultrophone, which,unlike the ancient radio, operated on the ultronic ethereal vibration
s,would pass the warning simultaneously to the headquarters of the WyomingGang and other communities within a radius of several hundred miles, notto mention the few American rocket ships that might be in the air, andwhich instantly would duck to cover either through forest clearings orby flattening down to earth in green fields where their coloring wouldprobably protect them from observation. The favorite American method ofpropulsion was known as "_rocketing_." The _rocket_ is what I woulddescribe, from my 20th Century comprehension of the matter, as anextremely powerful gas blast, atomically produced through thestimulation of chemical action. Scientists of today regard it as achildishly simple reaction, but by that very virtue, most economical andefficient.
But tomorrow, she explained, she would go back to work in the clothplant, where she would take charge of one of the synthetic processes bywhich those wonderful substitutes for woven fabrics of wool, cotton andsilk are produced. At the end of another two weeks, she would be back onmilitary duty again, perhaps at the same work, or maybe as a "contactguard," on duty where the territory of the Wyomings merged with that ofthe Delawares, or the "Susquannas" (Susquehannas) or one of the halfdozen other "gangs" in that section of the country which I knew asPennsylvania and New York States.
Wilma cleared up for me the mystery of those flying leaps which she andher assailants had made, and explained in the following manner, how theinertron belt balances weight:
"_Jumpers_" were in common use at the time I "awoke," though they werecostly, for at that time _inertron_ had not been produced in very greatquantity. They were very useful in the forest. They were belts,strapped high under the arms, containing an amount of inertron adjustedto the wearer's weight and purposes. In effect they made a man weigh aslittle as he desired; two pounds if he liked.
"_Floaters_" are a later development of "_jumpers_"--rocket motorsencased in _inertron_ blocks and strapped to the back in such a way thatthe wearer floats, when drifting, facing slightly downward. With hismotor in operation, he moves like a diver, headforemost, controlling hisdirection by twisting his body and by movements of his outstretched armsand hands. Ballast weights locked in the front of the belt adjust weightand lift. Some men prefer a few ounces of weight in floating, using aslight motor thrust to overcome this. Others prefer a buoyance balanceof a few ounces. The inadvertent dropping of weight is not a seriousmatter. The motor thrust always can be used to descend. But as an extraprecaution, in case the motor should fail, for any reason, there arebuilt into every belt a number of detachable sections, one or more ofwhich can be discarded to balance off any loss in weight.
"But who were your assailants," I asked, "and why were you attacked?"
Her assailants, she told me, were members of an outlaw gang, referred toas "Bad Bloods," a group which for several generations had been underthe domination of conscienceless leaders who tried to advance theinterests of their clan by tactics which their neighbors had come toregard as unfair, and who in consequence had been virtually boycotted.Their purpose had been to slay her near the Delaware frontier, making itappear that the crime had been committed by Delaware scouts and thusembroil the Delawares and Wyomings in acts of reprisal against eachother, or at least cause suspicions.
Fortunately they had not succeeded in surprising her, and she had beensuccessful in dodging them for some two hours before the shooting began,at the moment when I arrived on the scene.
"But we must not stay here talking," Wilma concluded. "I have to takeyou in, and besides I must report this attack right away. I think we hadbetter slip over to the other side of the mountain. Whoever is on thatpost will have a phone, and I can make a direct report. But you'll haveto have a belt. Mine alone won't help much against our combined weights,and there's little to be gained by jumping heavy. It's almost as bad aswalking."
After a little search, we found one of the men I had killed, who hadfloated down among the trees some distance away and whose belt was notbadly damaged. In detaching it from his body, it nearly got away from meand shot up in the air. Wilma caught it, however, and though itreinforced the lift of her own belt so that she had to hook her kneearound a branch to hold herself down, she saved it. I climbed the treeand, with my weight added to hers, we floated down easily.