“You aren’t like anyone I ever saw before,” said the old man. “From whence dost thou come?”
“Jefferson County,” said Eben.
“It must be far, far away,” said the old man. “I have never heard of it. Are you telling the truth when you say you have never heard of Byles, the Messiah?”
“Yep,” said Eben. “And what’s more I don’t reckon I care whether I hear about him or not. I want to know which road to take to get to the city.”
The old man looked around. “I have never been along any of these roads. In fact, I don’t remember this crossroad at all no matter how many times I have come down this hill. And as for a city, why I know only of Gloryville and Halleluyah, one behind me and one before me on this road I travel.”
“I never heard of either of them,” said Eben. “But I got to find out which one goes to the city because I’ve got a load of vegetables here that I aim to trade to the city folk.”
“Vegetables! At this season of the year?”
“Why not? It’s September, ain’t it?”
“September! Why thou must be mad. This is January!”
Eben shrugged. “That ain’t finding the way to the city.”
“Wait,” said the old man. “See here. You say you have vegetables. Let me see them.”
Eben lifted the edge of the canvas and the old man began to gloat and his jaws to slaver. He picked up a turnip and marveled over it. He caressed a leaf of lettuce. He stroked the rosy skin of an apple. And when he picked up a beautiful ear of corn he cooed.
Eben was a trader. His eye became shrewd and his pose indolent. “I reckon the wagon’s pretty heavy anyway. If mebbe you got something or other to trade I might let you have somethin’. ’Course vegetables—in January—is pretty scarce and the city folks will be willin’ to pay a right smart amount. But mebbe now you got somethin’ valuable that might persuade me to trade. I ain’t asayin’ I will but I ain’t asayin’ I won’t.”
“Wait here!” cried the old man and bounded up the hill as though mounted on springs.
Eben waited for an hour with patience, pondering what article the old man might produce for trade. It was certain he couldn’t have much for he seemed very thin and poor.
There was a tinkling of donkey bells and, in a moment, half a dozen men leading beasts of burden came into sight and down the hill. Eben had misgivings. He was sure he had not any use whatever for six donkeys. But the donkeys were not the articles of trade. The men brought the animals to a halt and unloaded from them with ceremony two big jugs a beast.
“Now!” said the old man. “These for your wagonload of vegetables.”
Eben looked dubious. He plucked a shoot of grass and chewed it. “Can’t say as I’m much enthused.”
“Not . . . not enthused! Why, by the saints! My good fellow, these jars be full of the famous Glory Monastery Brandy!”
“Reckon I ain’t got no license to sell liquor,” said Eben.
“But it’s all we have!” cried the old man. “And we are starved for good food! The peasants have to spend so much time praying during the summer that they hardly get a chance to plant and so we have to make them fast all winter. Only this brandy, made from grapes grown on our slopes, is in abundance.” He stepped nearer Eben, whispering. “It’s Byles’ favorite brandy and that’s why we make so much of it.”
“Nope,” said Eben.
“But just taste it!” cried the old man.
“Don’t drink,” said Eben. “I reckon I better be getting on to the city.”
“Please don’t leave!” begged the old man. “Carlos! Run back and bring up twelve donkey loads of brandy.”
Carlos and the others hurried away and Eben philosophically chewed his shoot of grass until they came back and the additional twenty-four jars were unloaded.
“Now,” begged the old man. “Will you trade?”
It came to Eben that many of his vegetables might possibly spoil if he kept them until he reached the city and of course he might be able to do something about the brandy.
“Well . . .” said Eben. “I might give you a few things. This brandy is pretty cheap in the city.”
“How much will you give us?”
“Well . . . mebbe a quarter of the load. After all you only got thirty-six jars here and they hold mebbe not more than five gallons apiece and . . .” he scratched with his toe in the dirt, “. . . that’s only about a hundred and eighty gallons of brandy. Yep, I can let you have a quarter of the load—providing you let me do the selecting.”
They agreed and presently the mules were laden with turnips and corn and leaf lettuce and apples and the wagon was lighter by a quarter.
Eben watched them pick their way among the rocks, up the hill and out of sight until their voices, badly mixed in a dolorous hymn about one Byles, faded to nothing.
He then began to lift the brandy off the road and into the wagon. But he very soon found, to the tune of a snapping spring, that he had made far too good a trade. Not only was he unable to transport this stuff but unless he lightened his vegetable load he could not go on with this injured wagon. Scowling he started to walk up the hill to see if he could find a sapling with which to mend his wagon. But he did not get far from the wagon before the thump of marching feet brought him hurrying back.
Sixteen soldiers, with an officer, were coming along the dusty white road. They formed two files between which marched five men whose heads were bowed and whose hands were tied. Eben was not familiar with the dull-gray of their uniforms but he suspected that maybe the guvvermunt had changed the color since he’d last seen army men. Soldiers, officer and prisoners paid him no attention but marched on along the white road and around the edge of a chalky cliff and out of sight. Shortly after there was a blast of firing followed by four more blasts and the soldiers with their officer came marching back.
Business concluded, the officer saw Eben. At the leader’s signal the column of men stopped and their dust behind them settled. The officer stared at Eben, then at the wagon, then at Lucy and back to the wagon. Finally his eye lingered upon the jars.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?” demanded the officer.
“I’m Eben Smith and I reckon the guvvermunt would be plumb put out if anything was to happen to me.”
“Put out?” and the officer laughed loudly. “My man, I suppose you do not realize that a totalitarian state is far too powerful to be overthrown. You have seen what happens to the enemies of the Greater Dictatorship. What do you have there?”
“Brandy,” said Eben.
“What?”
“Brandy and vegetables.”
“And what, may I ask, is brandy?”
“You drink it,” said Eben.
“Hmmm,” said the officer. “I must inspect this.”
Eben got a water bucket out of his wagon and poured a couple gallons of brandy into it. He handed the bucket to the officer who drank thirstily.
It surprised Eben that the fellow did not choke or gasp and then he realized that this brandy must be of a very smooth quality indeed. The officer handed the bucket on to his men. It was soon empty.
“Fill it up,” said the officer.
About half an hour later the officer and the soldiers were sitting in a semicircle around the tail of the wagon, telling one another they were all the best of friends.
“Fill it up wunsh more,” said the officer.
Eben filled up the bucket but he did not present it. “Who,” he said, “is going to pay for this? Brandy is very expensive.”
“Charge it to the state,” said the officer. And then thought better of it and reached into his pocket, bringing out a roll of paper. He tendered a bill. “That’sh plenty to pay for it. Now give me the bucket.”
Eben shook his head. “This must be Confederate
money like my grandfather Boswell used to talk about. It won’t pay for the brandy.”
“Sergeant!” bawled the officer. “Arrest thish man for treashon!”
But when the sergeant got up he promptly fell flat on his ugly face and when the soldiers got up they fell down.
“Maybe you could take something elsh for payment,” said the officer.
Eben had been wishing for some time that he was not there all alone at the mercies of these soldiers. And now he looked at them shrewdly. “Well, I reckon mebbe I might take a few rifles.”
“What?”
“Well,” said Eben, “this brandy is pretty expensive. And if you don’t pay me for it and leave me alone why I don’t guess I’ll be able to get any more of it for you. Mebbe I can trade some of these rifles to Jeb Hawkins for rabbit hunting.”
“Can’t do it,” said the officer.
“No more brandy,” said Eben.
Three hours later the last soldier had wobbled away and sixteen rifles, sixteen bullet bandoliers, one automatic and five clips lay under the canvas along with the vegetables. Once more Eben searched for a sapling to bond his broken spring for he was certain now that he would not abandon so much as a drop of the remaining hundred and seventy gallons of brandy.
As soon as he got to the top of the boulder-strewn hill, it became dark and he could not find any trees. As soon as he walked around the cliff on the white road and found the graves there he abandoned that section. He was just about to explore the metal road when something was seen to be moving along it. Eben went back to his wagon and waited.
It was the strangest kind of a vehicle he had ever seen for it had no wheels. It was just a big, gleaming box which scudded along the surface without a sound. There was something frightening about it.
When it came abreast of the wagon it stopped and a section of it clanked outward. A thing which was possibly a man, leaned out, staring at Eben. Its head was nearly as big as its body and it had two antennae waving above its brow as well as its huge, pupilless eyes.
“Musta escaped from some carnival,” muttered Eben to himself.
“ERTADU BITSY NUSTERD HUABWD UDF IUWUS KSUBA NADR,” said the driver.
“Reckon you must be some furriner,” said Eben. “I don’t understand you.”
“RTFD HRGA BJBKUT BTSFRD KTYFTY?” said the driver.
“Can’t you talk English?” said Eben curiously.
The driver got out. His spindly legs did not lift him to a height in excess of Eben’s shirt pocket. He began to rummage around inside the cab of the wheelless vehicle and finally produced some tubes and coils which he assembled rapidly into some sort of instrument. This he plugged into a hole in the side of the vehicle and then aimed a sort of megaphone at Eben.
“RTDR UTDF BJYSTS JIRFTC GYTFCV HUBJYT?” said the driver.
“That’s a funny-looking outfit you got there,” said Eben. “But shucks, I seen a lot of radios that was better. The thing don’t even play.”
The driver twiddled the dials while Eben spoke and then, much mystified, left off. “BRSD TYRT RTFDAY!”
“Don’t do no good,” said Eben. “I can’t understand a word of it.”
On that the driver beamed. He tuned one dial sharply. “Then you speak elementary English,” said the phone.
“Of course I do. And if you do too, why didn’t you do so in the first place?”
“I think you will not be insulted if I do. But usually, you know, it is considered vulgar to talk plain English. Tell me, can’t you really encipher?”
“Don’t reckon I ever caught myself doing it,” said Eben, amused.
The driver walked around Eben, examining him. “In our language schools, you know,” said the phone, “we encipher and decipher as we speak. It is grammatically correct. But you seem to be from some very distant land where plain English is still spoken. It must be a very dull place.”
“I reckon we get along,” said Eben. “What you got in that thing, there?”
“The truck? Oh, some junk. I was taking it down to the city dump. What have you got in that thing?”
“Well,” said Eben, “I got some brandy and I got some vegetables but they’re both pretty valuable.”
“Brandy? Vegetables? I don’t know those two words.”
“Well,” said Eben, “I got some brandy and I got some vegetables but they’re both pretty valuable.”
“Brandy? Vegetables? I don’t know those two words.”
Eben chuckled to himself. And this feller was accusing him of being ignorant! “Well, I’ll show you.”
He gave the fellow an apple and the driver immediately pulled a small lens of a peculiar color from his pocket and looked it all over.
“It’s to eat,” said Eben.
“Eat?” blinked the driver, antennae waving in alarm.
“Sure,” said Eben.
More anxiously than before the driver remade his examination. “Well, there’s no poison in it,” he said doubtfully. And then he bit it with his puny teeth and presently smiled. “Why, that is very good indeed! RTDA HRTA—”
“Now don’t start that again,” said Eben.
“It’s excellent,” said the driver. “Do you have many of these?”
“They’re pretty rare,” said Eben.
“What is that in the jars?”
Eben gave him a drink of the brandy and again the driver beamed.
“How this warms one! It’s marvelous! Could I buy some from you?” And he took out a card which had holes punched in it.
“What’s this?” said Eben.
“That’s a labor card, of course. It shows my value. Of course as the driver of a waste wagon I don’t earn very much, only forty labor units a week, but it should be sufficient—”
“What kind of junk have you got in that wagon?”
“What does that have to do with my buying some of this?” said the driver.
“Mebbe we can cook up a trade,” said Eben.
“Trade? What is trade?”
“Well, you got something I might want and I got something you want and so we swap. I give you what I got and you give me what you got and there you are.”
“How quaint! Never heard of such a thing. But I haven’t anything in my truck that you could want.”
“Never can tell,” said Eben.
The driver lifted up the top of the box vehicle and Eben, peering in, very nearly fell in!
The whole load was gold bracelets and necklaces and diamond and ruby rings!
Eben could not trust his speech for a little while and then, casually, “That looks like gold.” He tossed a bracelet indolently in his horny hand, feeling its weight.
“Yes, of course,” said the driver.
“Real gold.”
“Certainly,” said the driver.
“Reckon,” said Eben, eyeing the other with shrewdness, “you figure this ain’t much account.”
“Well, since transmutation factories lowered the price on gold to three units a ton nobody wants to wear it and the Street Department had to clean up the back of the Woman’s Distribution Center and so I am taking it down to the city dump of course. It is much easier to make sand into gold than to remelt the gold.”
“Then I reckon this load is worth, at three a ton, mebbe six-seven dollars. Tell you what I’ll do. I’ll give you a basket of apples and a jar of brandy for the lot.”
The driver looked at Eben in astonishment and then, before the man could change his mind, leaped into the truck and backed it swiftly to eject the load of jewelry beside the spring wagon. Sweatingly he then lifted the five gallon jar of brandy and the basket of apples into his cab and went scudding back from whence he had come without another word.
Eben felt uncomfortable. Very seldom did his conscience bothe
r him about a trade, but now . . . He picked up pieces of jewelry at random and bit them, leaving clear teeth dents in them. It most certainly was gold!
Immediately upon that he became even more uncomfortable. Supposing somebody came along and stole it! Hurriedly he began to carry it behind a bush and bury it and as he worked another alarming thought came to him. People would think he’d stolen it! He should have gotten a bill of sale! And as he did not have one he would never dare let on that he had this stuff. Forlornly he finished hiding it. Why, they’d send him to jail for years and years! They’d say he’d gone and robbed somebody! And then came the final blow! The guvvermunt said it was against the law to have gold! He’d broken the law! And they’d put him away for years and years!
“Hullo!”
He leaped about to find that his preoccupation had let four men in uniform come up the chalky road unnoticed. They had a very severe appearance but still there was a furtiveness about them which belied instant aggressiveness.
“A little while ago,” said the spokesman, a young man, “a friend of ours came along here and got something from you.”
“Wasn’t my fault,” said Eben.
“No, no, you don’t understand. He and his soldiers came back singing and walking in circles and muttering about a wonderful drink and . . . well . . . we became curious, naturally, as to what made them so happy.”
Eben looked them over. “Well . . . I guess it won’t do no harm. It was brandy. There’s some of it in the water bucket.”
The spokesman drank and smacked his lips. He passed the bucket to his companions and they drank ecstatically, handing the empty bucket back for replenishment.
“Nope,” said Eben.
“Sir, we are officers in the Hurricane Guard of the Dictator himself!”
“That don’t make no difference,” said Eben. “If you want brandy you got to trade me something for it.”
They studied him for a while and then went into conference among themselves. Then they again consulted Eben.
“We will buy your brandy,” said the eager young spokesman. “How much do you want for it?” And he offered the assembled capital of the four.
The Scifi & Fantasy Collection Page 9
