CHAPTER 6
_Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time._
--Thomas de Quincey
"And a long merry siege to you, sir, and roast rat for Christmas!" Iresponded, very out loud and rather to my surprise.
"War! How I hate war!"--that was what Pop exploded with. He didn'texactly dance in senile rage--he was still keeping too sharp a watch onAlice--but his voice sounded that way.
"Damn you, Pop!" Alice contributed. "And you too, Ray! We might havepulled something, but you had to go obedience-happy." Then her anger gotthe better of her grammar, or maybe Pop and me was corrupting it. "Damnthe both of you!" she finished.
It didn't make much sense, any of it. We were just cutting loose, Iguess, after being scared to say anything for the last half hour.
I said to Alice, "I don't know what you could have pulled, except thechain on us." To Pop I remarked, "You may hate war, but you sure helpedthat one along. Those grenades you dropped will probably take care of afew hundred Savannans."
"That's what you always say about me, isn't it?" he snapped back. "But Idon't suppose I should expect any kinder interpretation of my motives."To Alice he said, "I'm sorry I had to slap your burnt fingers, sister,but you can't say I didn't warn you about my low-down tactics." Then tome again: "I _do_ hate war, Ray. It's just murder on a bigger scale,though some of the boys give me an argument there."
"Then why don't you go preach against war in Atla-Hi and Savannah?"Alice demanded, still very hot but not quite so bitter.
"Yeah, Pop, how about it?" I seconded.
"Maybe I should," he said, thoughtful all at once. "They sure need it."Then he grinned. "Hey, how'd this sound: HEAR THE WORLD-FAMOUS MURDERERPOP TRUMBULL TALK AGAINST WAR. WEAR YOUR STEEL THROAT PROTECTORS. Prettygood, hey?"
We all laughed at that, grudgingly at first, then with a touch ofwholeheartedness. I think we all recognized that things weren't going tobe very cheerful from here on in and we'd better not turn up our nosesat the feeblest fun.
"I guess I didn't have anything very bright in mind," Alice admitted tome, while to Pop she said, "All right, I forgive you for the present."
"Don't!" Pop said with a shudder. "I hate to think of what happened tothe last bugger made the mistake of forgiving me."
We looked around and took stock of our resources. It was time we did. Itwas getting dark fast, although we were chasing the sun, and thereweren't any cabin lights coming on and we sure didn't know of any way ofgetting any.
We wadded a couple of satchels into the hole in the World Screen withouttrying to probe it. After a while it got warmer again in the cabin andthe air a little less dusty. Presently it started to get too smoky fromthe cigarettes we were burning, but that came later.
We screwed off the walls the few storage bags we hadn't inspected. Theydidn't contain nothing of consequence, not even a flashlight.
I had one last go at the buttons, though there weren't any left withnimbuses on them--the darker it got, the clearer that was. Even theAtla-Hi button wouldn't push now that it had lost its violet halo. Itried the gunnery patterns, figuring to put in a little time taking potshots at any mountains that turned up, but the buttons that had beenresponding so well a few minutes ago refused to budge. Alice suggesteddifferent patterns, but none of them worked. That console was reallylocked--maybe the shot from Savannah was partly responsible, thoughAtla-Hi remote-locking things was explanation enough.
"The buggers!" I said. "They didn't have to tie us up _this_ tight.Going east we at least had a choice--forward or back. Now we got none."
"Maybe we're just as well off," Pop said. "If Atla-Hi had been able todo anything more for us--that is, if they hadn't been sieged in, Imean--they'd sure as anything have pulled us in. Pull the plane in, Imean, and picked us out of it--with a big pair of tweezers, likely asnot. And contrary to your flattering opinion of my preaching (which bythe way none of the religious boys in my outfit share--they call me'that misguided old atheist'), I don't think none of us would go overbig at Atla-Hi."
* * * * *
We had to agree with him there. I couldn't imagine Pop or Alice or evenme cutting much of a figure (even if we weren't murder-pariahs) with thepack of geniuses that seemed to make up the Atla-Alamos crowd. TheDouble-A Republics, to give them a name, might have their small-braintypes, but somehow I didn't think so. There must be more than oneEdison-Einstein, it seemed to me, back of antigravity and all thewonders in this plane and the other things we'd gotten hints of. Also,Grayl had seemed bred for brains as well as size, even if us smallmammals had cooked his goose. And none of the modern "countries" hadmore than a few thousand population yet, I was pretty sure, and thathardly left room for a dumbbell class. Finally, too, I got hold of amemory I'd been reaching for the last hour--how when I was a kid I'dread about some scientists who learned to talk Mandarin just for kicks.I told Alice and Pop.
"And if _that's_ the average Atla-Alamoser's idea of mental recreation,"I said, "well, you can see what I mean."
"I'll grant you they got a monopoly of brains," Pop agreed. "Not sense,though," he added doggedly.
"Intellectual snobs," was Alice's comment. "I know the type and I detestit." ("You _are_ sort of intellectual, aren't you?" Pop told her, whichfortunately didn't start a riot.)
Still, I guess all three of us found it fun to chew over a bit the newslant we'd gotten on two (in a way, three) of the great "countries" ofthe modern world. (And as long as we thought of it as fun, we didn'thave to admit the envy and wistfulness that was behind our wisecracks.)
I said, "We've always figured in a general way that Alamos was theremains of a community of scientists and technicians. Now we know thesame's true of the Atla-Hi group. They're the Brookhaven survivors."
"Manhattan Project, don't you mean?" Alice corrected.
"Nope, that was in Colorado Springs," Pop said with finality.
* * * * *
I also pointed out that a community of scientists would educate fortechnical intelligence, maybe breed for it too. And being a group pickedfor high I. Q. to begin with, they might make startlingly fast progress.You could easily imagine such folk, unimpeded by the boobs, creating awonder world in a couple of generations.
"They got their troubles though," Pop reminded me and that led us tospeculating about the war we'd dipped into. Savannah Fortress, we knew,was supposed to be based on some big atomic plants on the river downthat way, but its culture seemed to have a fiercer ingredient thanAtla-Alamos. Before we knew it we were, musing almost romantically aboutthe plight of Atla-Hi, besieged by superior and (it was easy to suppose)barbaric forces, and maybe distant Los Alamos in a similarpredicament--Alice reminded me how the voice had asked if they werestill dying out there. For a moment I found myself fiercely proud that Ihad been able to strike a blow against evil aggressors. At once, ofcourse, then, the revulsion came.
"This is a hell of a way," I said, "for three so-called realists to bemooning about things."
"Yes, especially when your heroes kicked us out," Alice agreed.
Pop chuckled. "Yep," he said, "they even took Ray's artillery away fromhim."
"You're wrong there, Pop," I said, sitting up. "I still got one of thegrenades--the one the pilot had in his fist." To tell the truth I'dforgotten all about it and it bothered me a little now to feel itsnugged up in my pocket against my hip bone where the skin is thin.
"You believe what that old Dutchman said about the steel cubes beingatomic grenades?" Pop asked me.
"I don't know," I said, "He sure didn't sound enthusiastic about tellingus the truth about anything. But for that matter he sounded mean enoughto tell the truth figuring we'd think it was a lie. Maybe this _is_ somesort of baby A-bomb with a fuse timed like a grenade." I got it out andhefted it. "How about I press the button and drop it out the door? Thenwe'll know." I really felt like doing it--restles
s, I guess.
"Don't be a fool, Ray," Alice said.
"Don't tense up, I won't," I told her. At the same time I made myselfthe little promise that if I ever got to feeling restless, that is,restless and _bad_, I'd just go ahead and punch the button and see whathappened--sort of leave my future up to the gods of the Deathlands, youmight say.
"What makes you so sure it's a weapon?" Pop asked.
"What else would it be," I asked him, "that they'd be so hot on gettingthem in the middle of a war?"
"I don't know for sure," Pop said. "I've made a guess, but I don't wantto tell it now. What I'm getting at, Ray, is that your first thoughtabout anything you find--in the world outside or in your own mind--isthat it's a weapon."
"Anything worthwhile in your mind is a weapon!" Alice interjected withsurprising intensity.
"You see?" Pop said. "That's what I mean about the both of you. Thatsort of thinking's been going on a long time. Cave man picks up a rockand right away asks himself, 'Who can I brain with this?' Doesn't occurto him for several hundred thousand years to use it to start building ahospital."
"You know, Pop," I said, carefully tucking the cube back in my pocket,"you _are_ sort of preachy at times."
"Guess I am," he said. "How about some grub?"
* * * * *
It was a good idea. Another few minutes and we wouldn't have been ableto see to eat, though with the cans shaped to tell their contents Iguess we'd have managed. It was a funny circumstance that in this wonderplane we didn't even know how to turn on the light--and a good measureof our general helplessness.
* * * * *
We had our little feed and lit up again and settled ourselves. I judgedit would be an overnight trip, at least to the cracking plant--weweren't making anything like the speed we had been going east. Pop wassitting in back again and Alice and I lay half hitched around on thekneeling seats, which allowed us to watch each other. Pretty soon it gotso dark we couldn't see anything of each other but the glowing tips ofthe cigarettes and a bit of face around the mouth when the person took adeep drag. They were a good idea, those cigarettes--kept us from havingideas about the other person starting to creep around with a knife inhis hand.
The North America screen still glowed dimly and we could watch our greendot trying to make progress. The viewport was dead black at first, thenthere came the faintest sort of bronze blotch that very slowly shiftedforward and down. The Old Moon, of course, going west ahead of us.
After a while I realized what it was like--an old Pullman car (I'dtraveled in one once as a kid) or especially the smoker of an oldPullman, very late at night. Our crippled antigravity, working on theirregularities of the ground as they came along below, made the riderhythmically bumpy, you see. I remembered how lonely and strange thatold sleeping car had seemed to me as a kid. This felt the same. I keptwaiting for a hoot or a whistle. It was the sort of loneliness thatsettles in your bones and keeps working at you.
"I recall the first man I ever killed--" Pop started to reminiscesoftly.
"Shut up!" Alice told him. "Don't you ever talk about anything butmurder, Pop?"
"Guess not," he said. "After all, it's the only really interesting topicthere is. Do you know of another?"
It was silent in the cabin for a long time after that. Then Alice said,"It was the afternoon before my twelfth birthday when they came into thekitchen and killed my father. He'd been wise, in a way, and had usliving at a spot where the bombs didn't touch us or the worst fallout.But he hadn't counted on the local werewolf gang. He'd just been slicingsome bread--homemade from our own wheat (Dad was great on back to natureand all)--but he laid down the knife.
"Dad couldn't see any object or idea as a weapon, you see--that was hisgreat weakness. Dad couldn't even see weapons as weapons. Dad had aphilosophy of cooperation, that was his name for it, that he was goingto explain to people. Sometimes I think he was glad of the Last War,because he believed it would give him his chance.
"But the werewolves weren't interested in philosophy and although theirknives weren't as sharp as Dad's they didn't lay them down. Afterwardsthey had themselves a meal, with me for dessert. I remember one of themused a slice of bread to sop up blood like gravy. And another washed hishands and face in the cold coffee ..."
She didn't say anything else for a bit. Pop said softly, "That was theafternoon, wasn't it, that the fallen angels ..." and then just said,"My big mouth."
"You were going to say 'the afternoon they killed God?'" Alice askedhim. "You're right, it was. They killed God in the kitchen thatafternoon. That's how I know he's dead. Afterwards they would havekilled me too, eventually, except--"
* * * * *
Again she broke off, this time to say, "Pop, do you suppose I can havebeen thinking about myself as the Daughter of God all these years? Thatthat's why everything seems so intense?"
"I don't know," Pop said. "The religious boys say we're all children ofGod. I don't put much stock in it--or else God sure has some lousychildren. Go on with your story."
"Well, they would have killed me too, except the leader took a fancy tome and got the idea of training me up for a Weregirl or She-wolf Deb orwhatever they called it."
"That was my first experience of ideas as weapons. He got an idea aboutme and I used it to kill him. I had to wait three months for myopportunity. I got him so lazy he let me shave him. He bled to death thesame way as Dad."
"Hum," Pop commented after a bit, "that was a chiller, all right. I gotto remember to tell it to Bill--it was somebody killing his mother thatgot _him_ started. Alice, you had about as good a justification for yourfirst murder as any I remember hearing."
"Yet," Alice said after another pause, with just a trace of the oldsarcasm creeping back into her voice, "I don't suppose you think I wasright to do it?"
"Right? Wrong? Who knows?" Pop said almost blusteringly. "Sure you werejustified in a whole pack of ways. Anybody'd sympathize with you. A manoften has fine justification for the first murder he commits. But as youmust know, it's not that the first murder's always so bad in itself asthat it's apt to start you on a killing spree. Your sense of values getsshifted a tiny bit and never shifts back. But you know all that and whoam I to tell you anything, anyway? I've killed men because I didn't likethe way they spit. And may very well do it again if I don't keepwatching myself and my mind ventilated."
"Well, Pop," Alice said, "I didn't always have such dandy justificationfor my killings. Last one was a moony old physicist--he fixed me theGeiger counter I carry. A silly old geek--I don't know how he survivedso long. Maybe an exile or a runaway. You know, I often attach myselfto the elderly do-gooder type like my father was. Or like you, Pop."
Pop nodded. "It's good to know yourself," he said.
* * * * *
There was a third pause and then, although I hadn't exactly beenintending to, I said, "Alice had justification for her first murder,personal justification that an ape would understand. I had no personaljustification at all for mine, yet I killed about a million people at amodest estimate. You see, I was the boss of the crew that took care ofthe hydrogen missile ticketed for Moscow, and when the ticket wasfinally taken up I was the one to punch it. My finger on the firingbutton, I mean."
I went on, "Yeah, Pop, I was one of the button-pushers. There werereally quite a few of us, of course--that's why I get such a laugh outof stories about being or rubbing out the _one_ guy who pushed all thebuttons."
"That so?" Pop said with only mild-sounding interest. "In that case youought to know--"
We didn't get to hear right then who I ought to know because I had a fitof coughing and we realized the cigarette smoke was getting just toothick. Pop fixed the door so it was open a crack and after a while theatmosphere got reasonably okay though we had to put up with a low lonelywhistling sound.
"Yeah," I continued, "I was the boss of the missile crew and I wore avery handsome
uniform with impressive insignia--not the bully oldstripes I got on my chest now--and I was very young and handsome myself.We were all very young in that line of service, though a few of the menunder me were a little older. Young and dedicated. I remember feeling avery deep and grim--and _clean_--responsibility. But I wonder sometimesjust how deep it went or how clean it really was.
"I had an uncle flew in the war they fought to lick fascism, bombardieron a Flying Fortress or something, and once when he got drunk he told mehow some days it didn't bother him at all to drop the eggs on Germany;the buildings and people down there seemed just like toys that a kidsets up to kick over, and the whole business about as naive fun aspoking an anthill.
"_I_ didn't even have to fly over at seven miles what I was going to beaiming at. Only I remember sometimes getting out a map and looking at acertain large dot on it and smiling a little and softly saying,'Pow!'--and then giving a little conventional shudder and folding up themap quick.
"Naturally we told ourselves we'd never have to do it, fire the thing, Imean, we joked about how after twenty years or so we'd all be given jobsas museum attendants of this same bomb, deactivated at last. Butnaturally it didn't work out that way. There came the day when our sideof the world got hit and the orders started cascading down from DefenseCoordinator Bigelow--"
"Bigelow?" Pop interrupted. "Not Joe Bigelow?"
"Joseph A., I believe," I told him, a little annoyed.
"Why he's my boy then, the one I was telling you about--the skinny runthad this horn-handle! Can you beat that?" Pop sounded startlingly happy."Him and you'll have a lot to talk about when you get together."
I wasn't so sure of that myself, in fact my first reaction was that theopposite would be true. To be honest I was for the first moment morethan a little annoyed at Pop interrupting my story of my Big Grief--forit was that to me, make no mistake. Here my story had finally beenteased out of me, against all expectation, after decades of repressionand in spite of dozens of assorted psychological blocks--and here wasPop interrupting it for the sake of a lot of trivial organizationalgossip about Joes and Bills and Georges we'd never heard of and whatthey'd say or think!
But then all of a sudden I realized that I didn't really care, that itdidn't feel like a Big Grief any more, that just starting to tell aboutit after hearing Pop and Alice tell their stories had purged it of thatunnecessary weight of feeling that had made it a millstone around myneck. It seemed to me now that I could look down at Ray Baker from aconsiderable height (but not an angelic or contemptuously superiorheight) and ask myself _not_ why he had grieved so much--that wasunderstandable and even desirable--but why he had grieved so _uselessly_in such a stuffy little private hell.
And it _would_ be interesting to find out how Joseph A. Bigelow hadfelt.
"How does it feel, Ray, to kill a million people?"
* * * * *
I realized that Alice had asked me the question several seconds back andit was hanging in the air.
"That's just what I've been trying to tell you," I told her and startedto explain it all over again--the words poured out of me now. I won'tput them down here--it would take too long--but they were honest wordsas far as I knew and they eased me.
I couldn't get over it: here were us three murderers feeling a trust andunderstanding and sharing a communion that I wouldn't have believedpossible between _any_ two or three people in the Age of the Deaders--orin _any_ age, to tell the truth. It was against everything I knew ofDeathland psychology, but it was happening just the same. Oh, ourstrange isolation had something to do with it, I knew, and thatPullman-car memory hypnotizing my mind, and our reactions to the voicesand violence of Atla-Alamos, but in spite of all that I ranked it as awonder. I felt an inward freedom and easiness that I never would havebelieved possible. Pop's little disorganized organization had reallygot hold of something, I couldn't deny it.
* * * * *
Three treacherous killers talking from the bottoms of their hearts andbelieving each other!--for it never occurred to me to doubt that Pop andAlice were feeling exactly like I was. In fact, we were all so sure ofit that we didn't even mention our communion to each other. Perhaps wewere a little afraid we would rub off the bloom. We just enjoyed it.
We must have talked about a thousand things that night and smoked acouple of hundred cigarettes. After a while we started taking littlecatnaps--we'd gotten too much off our chests and come to feel tootranquil for even our excitement to keep us awake. I remember the firsttime I dozed waking up with a cold start and grabbing for Mother--andthen hearing Pop and Alice gabbing in the dark, and remembering what hadhappened, and relaxing again with a smile.
Of all things, Pop was saying, "Yep, I imagine Ray must be good to makelove to, murderers almost always are, they got the fire. It reminds meof what a guy named Fred told me, one of our boys ..."
Mostly we took turns going to sleep, though I think there were timeswhen all three of us were snoozing. About the fifth time I woke up,after some tighter shut-eye, the orange soup was back again outside andAlice was snoring gently in the next seat and Pop was up and had one ofhis knives out.
He was looking at his reflection in the viewport. His face gleamed. Hewas rubbing butter into it.
"Another day, another pack of troubles," he said cheerfully.
The tone of his remark jangled my nerves, as that tone generally doesearly in the morning. I squeezed my eyes. "Where are we?" I asked.
He poked his elbow toward the North America screen. The two green dotswere almost one.
"My God, we're practically there," Alice said for me. She'd waked fast,Deathlands style.
"I know," Pop said, concentrating on what he was doing, "but I aim to beshaved before they commence landing maneuvers."
"You think automatic will land us?" Alice asked. "What if we just startcircling around?"
"We can figure out what to do when it happens," Pop said, whittling awayat his chin. "Until then, I'm not interested. There's still a couple ofbottles of coffee in the sack. I've had mine."
I didn't join in this chit-chat because the green dots and Alice's firstremark had reminded me of a lot deeper reason for my jangled nerves thanPop's cheerfulness. Night was gone, with its shielding cloak and itsfeeling of being able to talk forever, and the naked day was here, withits demands for action. It is not so difficult to change your wholeview of life when you are flying, or even bumping along above the groundwith friends who understand, but soon, I knew, I'd be down in the dustwith something I never wanted to see again.
"Coffee, Ray?"
"Yeah, I guess so." I took the bottle from Alice and wondered whether myface looked as glum as hers.
"They shouldn't salt butter," Pop asserted. "It makes it lousy forshaving."
"It was the _best_ butter," Alice said.
"Yeah," I said. "The Dormouse, when they buttered the watch."
It may be true that feeble humor is better than none. I don't know.
"What are you two yakking about?" Pop demanded.
"A book we both read," I told him.
"Either of you writers?" Pop asked with sudden interest. "Some of theboys think we should have a book about us. I say it's too soon, but theysay we might all die off or something. Whoa, Jenny! Easy does it.Gently, please!"
That last remark was by way of recognizing that the plane had started anauthoritative turn to the left. I got a sick and cold feeling. This wasit.
Pop sheathed his knife and gave his face a final rub. Alice belted onher satchel. I reached for my knapsack, but I was staring through theviewport, dead ahead.
The haze lightened faintly, three times. I remembered the St. Elmo'sfire that had flamed from the cracking plant.
"Pop," I said--almost whined, to be truthful, "why'd the bugger everhave to land here in the first place? He was rushing stuff they neededbad at Atla-Hi--why'd he have to break his trip?"
"That's easy," Pop said. "He was being a bad boy. At least tha
t's mytheory. He was supposed to go straight to Atla-Hi, but there wassomebody he wanted to check up on first. He stopped here to see hisgirlfriend. Yep, his girlfriend. She tried to warn him off--that's myexplanation of the juice that flared out of the cracking plant andinterfered with his landing, though I'm sure she didn't intend the last.By the way, whatever she turned on to give him the warning must still beturned on. But Grayl came on down in spite of it."
* * * * *
Before I could assimilate that, the seven deformed gas tanksmaterialized in the haze. We got the freeway in our sights and steadiedand slowed and kept slowing. The plane didn't graze the cracking plantthis time, though I'd have sworn it was going to hit it head on. When Isaw we _weren't_ going to hit it, I wanted to shut my eyes, but Icouldn't.
The stain was black now and the Pilot's body was thicker than Iremembered--bloated. But that wouldn't last long. Three or four vultureswere working on it.