The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works 1911-1987

by C. L. Moore

  "Guthrie's behind us!" he yelled above the noise. "Look back!"

  I saw the checkered shirt dimly through smoke. A swirl of people in the street moved between him and us, and when the view was clear again for a moment I saw red coats moving behind him. Not only machines were after us. Distantly I heard Guthrie shout, and a bullet spattered on the brick wall above our heads. Chips and brick dust rained over us.

  Pod said in a firm, hurried voice, "You go on. It's only a couple of blocks more. You can make it if I draw Guthrie off."

  I started to say, "No, we'll——"

  Pod cut me off. "Eileen can't go any farther now anyhow," he told me. "Look." I turned my head and saw the red stain spreading across the side of her aproned costume. Her face was as white as her hair in the intermittent glare of the searchlights, but she still held her single carnation and she smiled at me almost placidly.

  "It isn't bad—I think," she told me. "But I feel kind of—giddy. I think I'd better—sit down."

  Pod glanced around the smoky street. We seemed to be standing in rubble in a haze of dust that smelled of old wood and burning. I had no idea how we had got here. It was no surprise to me to see the pillows of a couch spilled helter-skelter across a broken wall. Pod kicked them together into a pile.

  "Sit down here," he said.

  Roy and Polly, carrying the square case between them, hesitated only a moment. "We'd better not wait," Roy said crisply. "Good luck, Eileen. See you later."

  "Get moving," Pod said. "All of you."

  He glanced once at his wife. She smiled up at him and deliberately held the carnation to her nose, inhaling with delicate pleasure. Pod nodded as if she had told him something important. Maybe she had. Then he turned and lumbered heavily along the street, yelling at the top of his voice.

  "Hey, Guthrie, Guthrie!" He waved an arm above his head. Bullets sang over him. Then a little knot of running people swerved between us. I saw a woman in the knot pause in her running when she saw Eileen on the cushions. I saw her stop, bend over the white head, call across her shoulder to a companion. Eileen waved me away with the carnation.

  I ran dizzily after Cressy and Roy and Polly, my eyes stinging with smoke and pain and confused emotion I could not now stop to feel. Not yet. Cressy looked back for me and waited, taking my arm when I came within reach of her. I felt good and reassuring to let myself lean for a moment on her resilient young shoulder. I hadn't realized how weak I was until I touched strength. But I knew my own weight. She couldn't uphold me long. I straightened after a moment. I went on under my own power.

  We had two blocks to run. We stumbled over rubble that blocked off half the street. Behind us suddenly rose the wail of another Prowler and we all looked back instinctively, seeing it loom above a welter of toppling walls and swerve up the street toward us, collapsing bricks and beams falling over it and sliding harmlessly to the ground. People scattered left and right as it came swelling and screaming down the long street. I saw another homemade bottle bomb glitter through the air and smash upon the broad red brow of the machine. Fire spread futilely and burned itself out across the undamaged hull.

  The Prowler swerved again and vanished down a cross street with a fierce, diminishing wail. I had thought as I saw it come how beautiful it was, how perfect in shape and color and power. As Comus had been beautiful, once—perfect and powerful—before corruption took hold.

  They were hunting us through the streets of Corby, but I knew they had lost us now. The chaos they had created was part of the force that defeated them, because the chaos was closing over us and we were only units of the mob, running and dodging and hiding when the Prowlers screamed or the helicopters roared overhead.

  We had only one more block. At the end of the street the gray stone tower loomed against the stars. Once a bullet struck through the belfry arch and a bell sang out with a single startled clang that vibrated in my ears a long time after it had fallen silent again. And I had the curious feeling that Ted Nye was here in the roaring street behind us, searching frantically with fingers three thousand miles long. The Prowlers were his fingertips. The helicopters were his eyes. He was Comus, as Raleigh had been the nation, and with all the powers of omnipotence he was searching the streets of Corby for our four running figures and the box we carried.

  A heavy roaring soared over us suddenly above the rooftops. A searchlight beam splashed down on a diagonal and for an instant bathed us all in its fierce white light that seemed to scorch the skin with terror where it touched us. Cressy and I dropped with a single motion under the shelter of a concrete wall. Roy jerked the box and Polly with it toward the nearest doorway. He made the cover himself, and the box was under the shelter too, but when the firing started Polly was still out in the white glare of the light. I think we all heard the bullet hit her, a solid, smacking sound.

  She dropped as if the bullet had been a fist knocking her flat. The box thumped to the ground as Roy dropped his side of it and sprang out into the white moving beam. Bullets for a moment sang about him as he seized her under the arms and dragged her toward the doorway's dubious shelter. They bounced like spring rain on the pavement, missing the two by a series of repeated miracles in the endless moment before the searchlight beam moved impersonally on and the hail of bullets ceased.

  When Cressy and I reached them Polly was sitting up and cursing with weak fluency, her hand to her side where blood had begun to spring out between her fingers. Roy looked at me, his face suddenly haggard with all the haggardness Polly had worn so long.

  "You'll have to go on by yourselves," he said in a flat voice. "I won't leave her."

  Polly flashed one dazzling upward glance at him. She shut her lips for a moment over a curious look of weakness and warmth; she shut her eyes. Then she opened them again and said, "Get the hell on with it, Roy. I'm okay. Don't be a fool."

  "Shut up," Roy told her. "Lie down and stop worrying. Rohan and Cressy can make it. We're almost there." He gave me a resolute look.

  "Don't argue," he said. "There isn't time. Get going."

  A remote part of my mind laughed silently, thinking of the fresh-faced, irresponsible Roy of a week ago, who never made decisions because it was easier not to. I thought again-about crossroads, and I gave him a brief grin.

  "We're on our way," I said. "Take care of her."

  Cressy had already heaved the box off the ground. "It isn't so heavy," she said. "I can handle it."

  I took hold of one of the handles with my good hand, squeezing her grip of it aside. "We'll go faster together," I said. "It's awkward to run holding it in both hands. Let's go."

  It felt strange to be running without feeling the ground underfoot. Like running in a dream. We cut across the dark street, staggering a little because our pace was uneven. Smoke blew past but, curiously, there seemed to be nobody in the street at all now. From near by and far off shots and yelling and the wail of Prowlers filled the night, but here we ran in a silence like a dream.

  We were halfway to the church when I beard a sharp, cracking sound behind us and felt something hit me heavily in the leg. The impact made me stumble. I was aware of a penetrating hotness that was very cold—or was it a coldness that was very hot—drilling through my thigh. And my leg failed under me.

  I saw Cressy's smeared face turn toward me with a look of appalled surprise as I fell, my leg folding under me. I felt grass under my hand as I caught myself. I had dropped on somebody's dark lawn across the street from the church.

  I said to Cressy, "Go on, go on!"

  She caught the other handle, hefted the box with a two-handed grip before her, and ran without another word. I sat there watching her and trying somehow with all the power in my mind to evoke some magical wall of protection around her and the box. If she fell, the box would fall with her and crash upon the pavement. And the whole United States of America was inside the box. Every state and county, every city and farm and town, all packed neatly away and all the minuscule people going about their lives inside that cra
te. If she jolted it, I thought everyone in the nation would have felt the impact. Even I would. Because I was in there too.

  I was sitting on a patch of dark grass behind a row of trampled geraniums. The night around me reeked with the odor of their crushed leaves, strong and sharp, and the smell of burning and gunfire and blood. I felt my leg gingerly to see what had happened to me.

  The sound of footsteps crunching loud on the rubbled street and coming quickly toward me made me look up. Then I saw a familiar checkered shirt.

  My leg gave a sudden throb, as if the wound knew the gun that had made it. I was sure without reason that my leg was right. Guthrie didn't see me. He didn't even know I was there. His eye was on Cressy in her bedraggled pink ruffles, running through the smoke with the nation in a box in her arms and the church looming just above her.

  Without a sound I slid my hand in my pocket, eased out the gun. I bent my good knee up to brace my good left wrist across. The blood was running down on my leg now, and there was a strange, high, increasing roar in my ears that sounded strange and new. I wondered if I was about to black out. But I had a job to do first. A job I should have done back there in the street when we first hit Corby. I should have shot him then.

  He was close, slanting closer across the street. Even firing left-handed I ought to get him with any luck. But with my finger on the trigger, suddenly I paused, watching Guthrie.

  He was in trouble. He stood all alone in the street, in bad trouble from some inward rebellion of his own.

  This was Cressy he had to shoot.

  I saw his gun hand rise and level the weapon at her. And I saw his gun hand somehow seem to rebel. Slowly the muzzle of the pistol sank and he stood watching her run, her hair blowing in the night wind, her skirts belling about her. In the dimness I couldn't see his face, but an anguish of irresolution was in every line of him. I remembered that other dark night in the truck station after we had fought off the renegades. I remembered Guthrie looking down into his glass and talking in slow, gentle tones about Cressy and his wife and his own past, the things he had hoped for and never had.

  I thought, He won't do it. He can't. And I watched with a paralyzed fascination. I knew I ought to shoot. I shouldn't take any chances with him. But I had the obscure feeling that this was a decision Guthrie had to make, his own crossroads in the center of his own life. He had the right to choose for himself without interruption from anybody. It was very important that he should make his choice unaided.

  He drew a deep breath and lifted his gun again, trying to take aim. Then he dropped his arm as if all strength had gone out of it. I thought, It isn't only that this is Cressy that bothers him—I think. It was more than that. Maybe he too knew that the whole United States was in the box she carried. If he fired and Cressy fell, the box fell too, and we would all fall with it and crack wide open on the dusty street.

  He lifted his hand again, the third time. Again there was revolution in his mind and his muscles. I could hear him breathing hard. Then I saw him raise his other hand to brace the reluctant wrist. I saw his feet shift on the pavement, taking a firmer stance. I heard that strange roaring so loud in my ears I could hear nothing else at all.

  Guthrie squinted along the barrel of his gun ...

  I couldn't wait any longer. I didn't dare. My finger was on the trigger. I felt it tighten without any orders from my mind. I felt the gun jolt, I heard the explosion. My shot cracked loud in the reverberating street, audible for an instant even over that increasing roar.

  A fraction of a second after my bullet hit him his own shot exploded from his gun. But it exploded harmlessly upward into the roaring air, because he was falling as he fired.

  Cressy didn't even look back. She only ducked her head over the box, hugging it tighter, and staggered up the steps of the Methodist church.

  I let my gun hand drop to the wet grass. In spite of the roaring in my ears I felt as if an immense silence were settling around me in the empty street. I saw the church door open and Cressy vanished through it to her rendezvous with history. I sat there alone on the damp dark grass with the smell of blood and geraniums strong around me. The stars were very bright and I felt very much alone.

  The roaring in my ears was distant but so strong I wondered why I hadn't blacked out by now. I shook my head gently trying to make the noise stop. And then for the first time it dawned upon me that the sound wasn't inside my head. I wasn't in the town at all.

  It was in the sky.

  And it was coming nearer, converging upon Corby out of the black night of the continent. It was Ted Nye's last throw of the di I had expected bombers or bombs upon Corby long before now. Ted Nye at last had made his choice. He knew he had gambled and almost lost. Almost ...

  A strange, childish little rhyme sang through my head.

  Ted—Dead.

  Nye—Die.

  I felt it circle around and around, following the walls of my skull. The town was full of the wail of sirens and the reverberations of gunfire, but the hollow thunder of the bombers was beginning to blanket all other sound. I felt very light, very dizzy. I felt somehow as if my whole life until this minute had been a long rehearsal for the real thing. For this moment on the dark grass with the stars winking over me.

  Suddenly my ears ached with silence.

  A silence that fell like a physical blow over Corby and the world. I thought I had gone deaf. I thought I was hovering on the verge of a faint. The sirens had stopped screaming. The gunfire had faltered to a ragged, astonished stop. No voices shouted.

  And in the sky, wiped out as if with one enormous gesture, the heavy throbbing of the bombers had ceased to sound.

  My reason caught up with my unbelieving senses. The Anti-Com, I thought. The Anti-Com just went on.

  Comus is dead.

  I felt one moment of anguish and loss for all the power, that wonderful, intricate, beautiful thing which had saved the nation in its day, before corruption touched it. For the lustrous world I had known and would never know again. The world had gone darker and grimmer and heavier in this moment while history turned around me in the silence and the night. A new world lay ahead. All I could be sure of was that it would be a harsh world, full of sweat and bloodshed and uncertainty. But a real world, breathing and alive.

  "What's past is prologue," I thought. "Wait and see."

  I sat there on the trampled grass, dizzy and confused and somehow, strangely, very happy. Very calm.

  Around me in the town voices were beginning to rise again. Gunfire broke out spasmodically here and there. But no sirens. No lights except for the light of fires. Comus lay dead across the continent like a vast, inert giant.

  I sat quietly waiting for the crash beyond the mountains where the bombers had begun to fall.

  The End

  NEAR MISS

  SF: '58: The Year's Greatest Science Fiction and Fantasy with Henry Kuttner

  (as by Henry Kuttner)

  Something is happening here in Guaymas. So far, only those who see it believe it. That is why no newspaper has carried the story yet. Photographs are regarded with skepticism. Obviously they must be faked. No one outside Guaymas—or Pueblo Pequeño—will accept the evidence.

  But one of these days a man from Life will convince the New York office that he isn't drunk. One of these days an admiral or a physicist or a congressman will be on the spot at the right time. Then you'll hear about what's happening in Guaymas—and, of course, in Pueblo Pequeño. But the press releases may never explain exactly how it all started. The unscrupulous Tom Dillon isn't likely to talk about that, and Tio Ignacio, though loquacious, is not always entirely truthful.

  It all started one bright morning in Lower California ...

  "Those prawns are going to fly to market from now on," Dillon said firmly to the brujo.

  The brujo, or wizard, looked eastward to where the Gulf of California sparkled blue in the sunlight. No airborne prawns were visible. A few villagers strolled across the beach with their long-handled net
s, halfheartedly seeking the prawns for which the small village of Pueblo Pequeño was remotely famous. Possibly a flying fish whirled briefly out of its element and returned—it was too far to be certain.

  "That, now, I look forward with much pleasure to seeing," Tio Ignacio observed. "Old in witchcraft as I am, my ardor is that of a boy when I have the infrequent chance to admire new magic."

  Dillon repressed an impulse to kick the old wizard over the cliff into the Gulf. He said courteously, "I have not made myself clear."

  "It is my feeble intellect that is at fault," said Tio Ignacio. "I thought, no doubt mistakenly, that you planned to supply los camarones grandes with the power of flight."

  "True," Dillon said. "That is why my plane—my machine of flight—is waiting back there on the mesa now. Tomorrow, if all goes well, the week's catch of prawns will be loaded into my plane and, by that means, fly to Guaymas."

  "It is an age of marvels," said Tio Ignacio. "May I offer you a sip of wine?"

  "Thank you ... There is one small difficulty. The people of Pueblo Pequeño refuse to let me carry the prawns. They say that Felipe Ortega always drives them up the peninsula to Santa Rosalia on market day. Tomorrow is market day. Felipe must not reach Santa Rosalia."

  And both men looked thoughtfully to where the road, in which pigs have sunk from sight forever in wet weather, runs from Pueblo Pequeño north to Santa Rosalia.

  Tio Ignacio waited.

  Dillon said, "You have, I understand, certain magical powers. Now if I could persuade you to put a brujería upon Felipe Ortega ..."

  "You wish me to put a spell upon my own nephew?"

  "I had hoped that you would do me the favor of accepting a small present."

  Tio Ignacio sighed.

  "What sorrow," he mumured. "Ask of me anything else, señor, and I obey with alacrity. But this one thing I may not do. My nephew is, unfortunately, immune to spells."

  "When I spoke of a small present, I did not mean—"