by Don Wilcox
Their evil little faces stared at me a moment, then they snorted.
“Faw! Faw! Faw!” and away they ran.
I stood in the big bleak room wondering what to make of their insults. On the balcony some of the parents craned over the railings at me.
“Greetings!” I cried. “I’m Grimstone, Keeper of the Traditions. I’ve just come—”
“Faw!” the men and women shouted at me. “Faw! Faw!”
No one could have made anything friendly out of those snarls. “Faw,” to them, was simply a vocal manner of spitting poison.
Uncertain what this surly reception might lead to, I returned to my refrigerator room to procure one of the guns. Then I returned to the volley of catcalls and insults, determined to carry out my duties, come what might.
When I reached the forequarter of the ship, however, I found some less hostile citizens who gave me a civil welcome. Here I established myself for the extent of my 2366-67 sojourn, an honored guest of the Sperry family.
This, I told myself, was my reward for my favor to Bob Sperry and Louise Broscoe a century ago. For here was their grandson, a fine upstanding grayhaired man of fifty, a splendid pilot and the father of a beautiful twenty-one year old daughter.
“Your name wouldn’t be Louise by any chance?” I asked the girl as she showed me into the Sperry living room.
“Lora-Louise,” the girl smiled. It was remarkable how she brought back memories of one of her ancestors of three centuries previous.
Her dark eyes flashed over me curiously.
“So you are the man that we Sperries have to thank for being here!”
“You’ve heard about the quotas?” I asked.
“Of course. You’re almost a god to our family.”
“I must be a devil to some of the others,” I said, recalling my reception of catcalls.
“Rogues!” the girl’s father snorted, and he thereupon launched into a breezy account of the past century.
The sterilization program, he assured me, had worked—if anything, too well. The population was the lowest in Flashaway history. It stood at the dangerously low mark of fifty!
Besides the sterilization program, a disease epidemic had taken its toll. In addition three ugly murders, prompted by jealousies, had spotted the record. And there had been one suicide.
As to the character of the population, Pilot Sperry declared gravely that there had been a turn for the worse.
“They fight each other like damned anarchists,” he snorted.
The Dickinsons had made trouble for several generations. Now it was the Dickinsons against the Smiths; and these two factions included four-fifths of all the people. They were about evenly divided—twenty on each side—and when they weren’t actually fighting each other, they were “fawing” at each other.
These bellicose factions had one sentiment in common: they both despised the Sperry faction. And—here my guilt cropped up again—their hatred stemmed from my special favor of a century ago, without which there would be no Sperrys now. In view of the fact that the Sperry faction lived in the forequarter of the ship and held all the important offices, it was no wonder that the remaining forty citizens were jealous.
All of which gave me enough to worry about. On top of that, Lora-Louise’s mother gave me one other angle of the set-up.
“The trouble between the Dickinsons and the Smiths has grown worse since Lora-Louise has become a young lady,” Mrs. Sperry confided to me.
We were sitting in a breakfast nook. Amber starlight shone softly through the porthole, lighting the mother’s steady imperturbable gray eyes.
“Most girls have married at eighteen or nineteen,” her mother went on. “So far, Lora-Louise has refused to marry.”
The worry in Mrs. Sperry’s face was almost imperceptible, but I understood. I had checked over the “Who’s Who” and I knew the seriousness of this population crisis. I also knew that there were four young unmarried men with no other prospects of wives except Lora-Louise.
“Have you any choice for her?” I asked.
“Since she must marry—and I know she must—I have urged her to make her own choice.”
I could see that the ordeal of choosing had been postponed until my coming, in hopes that I might modify the rules. But I had no intention of doing so. The Flashaway needed Lora-Louise. It needed the sort of children she would bear.
That week I saw the two husky Dickinson boys. Both were in their twenties. They stayed close together and bore an air of treachery and scheming. Rumor had it that they carried weapons made from table knives.
Everyone knew that my coming would bring the conflict to a head. Many thought I would try to force the girl to marry the older Smith—“Batch”, as he was called in view of his bachelorhood. He was past thirty-five, the oldest of the four unmarried men.
But some argued otherwise. For Batch, though a splendid specimen physically, was slow of wit and speech. It was common knowledge that he was weak-minded.
For that reason, I might choose his younger cousin, “Smithy,” a roly-poly overgrown boy of nineteen who spent his time bullying the younger children.
But if the Smiths and the Dickinsons could have their way about it, the Keeper of the Traditions should have no voice in the matter. Let me insist that Lora-Louise marry, said they; but whom she should marry was none of my business.
They preferred a fight as a means of settlement. A free-for-all between the two factions would be fine. A showdown of fists among the four contenders would be even better.
Best of all would be a battle of knives that would eliminate all but one of the suitors. Not that either the Dickinsons or the Smiths needed to admit that was what they preferred; but their barbaric tastes were plain to see.
Barbarians! That’s what they had become. They had sprung too far from their native civilization. Only the Sperry faction, isolated in their monasteries of control boards, physicians’ laboratories and record rooms, kept alive the spark of civilization.
The Sperrys and their associates were human beings out of the twenty-first century. The Smiths and the Dickinsons had slipped. They might have come out of the Dark Ages.
What burned me up more than anything else was that obviously both the Smiths and the Dickinsons looked forward with sinister glee toward dragging Lora-Louise down from her height to their own barbaric levels.
One night I was awakened by the sharp ringing of the pilot’s telephone. I heard the snap of a switch. An emergency signal flashed on throughout the ship.
Footsteps were pounding toward the ballroom. I slipped into a robe, seized my gun, made for the door.
“The Dickinsons are murdering up on them!” Pilot Sperry shouted to me from the door of the control room.
“I’ll see about it,” I snapped.
I bounded down the corridor. Sperry didn’t follow. Whatever violence might occur from year to year within the hull of the Flashaway, the pilot’s code demanded that he lock himself up at the controls and tend to his own business.
It was a free-for-all! Under the bright lights they were going to it, tooth and toenail.
Children screamed and clawed, women hurled dishes, old tottering granddaddies edged into the fracas to crack at each other with canes.
The appalling reason for it all showed in the center of the room—the roly-poly form of young “Smithy” Smith. Hacked and stabbed, his nightclothes ripped, he was a veritable mess of carnage.
I shouted for order. No one heard me, for in that instant a chase thundered on the balcony. Everything else stopped. All eyes turned on the three racing figures.
Batch Smith, fleeing in his white nightclothes, had less than five yards’ lead on the two Dickinsons. Batch was just smart enough to run when he was chased, not smart enough to know he couldn’t possibly outrun the younger Dickinsons.
As they shot past blazing lights the Dickinsons’ knives flashed. I could see that their hands were red with Smithy’s blood.
“Stop!” I cried. “Stop or I�
��ll shoot!”
If they heard, the words must have been meaningless. The younger Dinkinson gained ground. His brother darted back in the opposite direction, crouched, waited for his prey to come around the circular balcony.
“Dickinson! Stop or I’ll shoot you dead!” I bellowed.
Batch Smith came on, his eyes white with terror. Crouched and waiting, the older Dickinson lifted his knife for the killing stroke.
I shot.
The crouched Dickinson fell in a heap. Over him tripped the racing form of Batch Smith, to sprawl headlong. The other Dickinson leaped over his brother and pounced down upon the fallen prey, knife upraised.
Another shot went home.
Young Dickinson writhed and came toppling down over the balcony rail. He lay where he fell, his bloody knife sticking up through the side of his neck.
It was ugly business trying to restore order. However, the magic power of firearms, which had become only a dusty legend, now put teeth into every word I uttered.
The doctors were surprisingly efficient. After many hours of work behind closed doors, they released their verdicts to the waiting groups. The elder Dickinson, shot through the shoulder, would live. The younger Dickinson was dead. So was Smithy. But his cousin, Batch Smith, although too scared to walk back to his stateroom, was unhurt.
The rest of the day the doctors devoted to patching up the minor damages done in the free fight. Four-fifths of the Flashaway population were burdened with bandages, it seemed. For some time to come both the warring parties were considerably sobered over their losses. But most of all they were disgruntled because the fight had settled nothing.
The prize was still unclaimed. The two remaining contenders, backed by their respective factions, were at a bitter deadlock.
Nor had Lora-Louise’s hatred for either the surviving Dickinson or Smith lessened in the slightest.
Never had a duty been more oppressive to me. I postponed my talk with Lora-Louise for several days, but I was determined that there should be no more fighting. She must choose.
We sat in an alcove next to the pilot’s control room, looking out into the vast sky. Our ship, bounding at a terrific speed though it was, seemed to be hanging motionless in the tranquil star-dotted heavens.
“I must speak frankly,” I said to the girl. “I hope you will do the same.”
She looked at me steadily. Her dark eyes were perfectly frank, her full lips smiled with childlike simplicity.
“How old are you?” she asked. “Twenty-eight,” I answered. I’d been the youngest professor on the college faculty. “Or you might say three hundred and twenty-eight. Why?”
“How soon must you go back to your sleep?”
“Just as soon as you are happily married. That’s why I must insist that you—”
Something very penetrating about her gaze made my words go weak. To think of forcing this lovely girl—so much like the Louise of my own century—to marry either the brutal Dickinson or the moronic Smith—
“Do you really want me to be happily married?” she asked.
I don’t remember that any more words passed between us—
A few days later she and I were married—and most happily!
The ceremony was brief. The entire Sperry faction and one representative from each of the two hostile factions were present. The aged captain of the ship, who had been too ineffectual in recent years to apply any discipline to the fighting factions, was still able with vigorous voice to pronounce us man and wife.
A year and a half later I took my leave.
I bid fond good-by to the “future captain of the Flashaway,” who lay on a pillow kicking and squirming. He gurgled back at me. If the boasts and promises of the Sperry grandparents and their associates were to be taken at full value, this young prodigy of mine would in time become an accomplished pilot and a skilled doctor as well as a stern but wise captain.
Judging from his talents at the age of six months, I was convinced he showed promise of becoming Food Superintendent as well.
I left reluctantly but happily.
CHAPTER VI
The Final Crisis
The year 2466 was one of the darkest in my life. I shall pass over the hopeless situation, I found, briefly.
The captain met me personally and conveyed me to his quarters without allowing the people to see me.
“Safer for everyone concerned,” he muttered. I caught glimpses as we passed through the shadows. I seemed to be looking upon ruins.
Not until the captain had disclosed the events of the century did I understand how things could have come to such a deplorable state. And before he finished his story, I saw that I was helpless to right the wrongs.
“They’ve destroyed ’most everything,” the hard-bitten old captain rasped. “And they have not overlooked you. They’ve destroyed you completely. You are an ogre.”
I wasn’t clear on his meaning. Dimly in the back of my mind the hilarious farewell of four centuries ago still echoed.
“The Flashaway will go through!” I insisted.
“They destroyed all the books, phonograph records, movie films. They broke up clocks and bells and furniture—”
And I was supposed to carry this interspatial outpost of American civilization through unblemished! That was what I had promised so gayly four centuries ago.
“They even tried to break out the windows,” the captain went on. ” ‘Oxygen be damned!’ they’d shout. They were mad. You could not tell them anything. If they could have got into this end of the ship, they’d have murdered us and smashed the control boards to hell.”
I listened with bowed head.
“Your son tried like the devil to turn the tide. But God, what chance did he have? The dam had busted loose. They wanted to kill each other. They wanted to destroy each other’s property and starve each other out. No captain in the world could have stopped either faction. They had to get it out of their systems . . .”
He shrugged helplessly. “Your son went down fighting . . .” For a time I could hear no more. It seemed but minutes ago that I had taken leave of the little tot.
The war—if a mania of destruction and murder between two feuding factions could be called a war—had done one good thing, according to the captain. It had wiped the name of Dickinson from the records.
Later I turned through the musty pages to make sure. There were Smiths and Sperrys and a few other names still in the running, but no Dickinsons. Nor were there any Grimstones. My son had left no living descendants.
To return to the captain’s story, the war (he said) had degraded the bulk of the population almost to the level of savages. Perhaps the comparison is an insult to the savage. The instruments of knowledge and learning having been destroyed, beliefs gave way to superstitions, memories of past events degenerated into fanciful legends.
The rebound from the war brought a terrific superstitious terror concerning death. The survivors crawled into their shells, almost literally; the brutalities and treacheries of the past hung like storm clouds over their imaginations.
As year after year dropped away, the people told and retold the stories of destruction to their children. Gradually the legend twisted into a strange form in which all the guilt for the carnage was placed upon me!
I was the one who had started all the killing! I, the ogre, who slept in a cave somewhere in the rear of the ship, came out once upon a time and started all the trouble!
I, the Traditions Man, dealt death with a magic weapon; I cast the spell of killing upon the Smiths and the Dickinsons that kept them fighting until there was nothing left to fight for!
“But that was years ago,” I protested to the captain. “Am I still an ogre?” I shuddered at the very thought.
“More than ever. Stories like that don’t die out in a century. They grow bigger. You’ve become the symbol of evil. I’ve tried to talk the silly notion down, but it has been impossible. My own family is afraid of you.” I listened with sickening amazement. I was the Trad
itions Man; or rather, the “Traddy Man”—the bane of every child’s life.
Parents, I was told, would warn them, “If you don’t be good, the Traddy Man will come out of his cave and get you!”
And the Traddy Man, as every grown-up knew, could storm out of his cave without warning. He would come with a strange gleam in his eye. That was his evil will. When the bravest, strongest men would cross his path, he would hurl instant death at them. Then he would seize the most beautiful woman and marry her.
“Enough!” I said. “Call your people together. I’ll dispel their false ideas—”
The captain shook his head wisely. He glanced at my gun.
“Don’t force me to disobey your orders,” he said. “I can believe you’re not an ogre—but they won’t. I know this generation. You don’t. Frankly I refuse to disturb the peace of this ship by telling the people you have come. Nor am I willing to terrorize my family by letting them see you.”
For a long while I stared silently into space.
The captain dismissed a pilot from the control room and had me come in.
“You can see for yourself that we are straight on our course. You have already seen that all the supplies are holding up. You have seen that the population problem is well cared for. What more do you want?”
What more did I want! With the whole population of the Flashaway steeped in ignorance—immorality—superstition—savagery![*]
Again the captain shook his head. “You want us to be like your friends of the twenty-first century. We can’t be.”
He reached in his pocket and pulled out some bits of crumpled papers.
“Look. I save every scrap of reading matter. I learned to read from the primers and charts that your son’s grandparents made. Before the destruction, I tried to read about the Earth-life. I still piece together these torn bits and study them. But I can’t piece together the Earth-life that they tell about. All I really know is what I’ve seen and felt and breathed right here in my native Flashaway world.
“That’s how it’s bound to be with all of us. We can’t get back to your notions about things. Your notions haven’t any real truth for us. You don’t belong to our world,” the captain said with honest frankness.
