by Don Wilcox
“Then there was the fanatical wave of SABA. After Gravelli Vetto got next to this mysterious technique of making people die for awhile and then come back to life, the membership in SABA grew by leaps and bounds.”
I frowned at the ceiling. Lord Tempt must have been right all along. People did want temporary death—at least some people.
“It was amazing to discover how many of the downtrodden masses were ready to fall for this awful blessing which Vetto and his SABA magic offered them. They jumped for it.”
“Like rats jumping into a bottomless hole.”
“But the strange thing is,” said Sally, “that Gravelli Vetto has proved his point. In more than one case he has brought vanished persons back to life.”
“Vetto!” I muttered cynically. “Vetto didn’t do it. He just took the credit. It would take some power greater than Vetto.”
Sally and Bobby were both looking at me intently. Of all the troubled thoughts in their minds this was obviously one of the most confusing—that a low-down money-grabbing heartless fakir like Gravelli Vetto should hold some mysterious power over life and death.
Bobby spoke slowly. “What do you know about it, Flinders?”
“Get me the doctor,” I said. “I’ve got to get out of here. We’ll take a ride over to the Tungsten Mountain and see what’s happening.”
That afternoon we edged our way through the throngs of pedestrians who flooded the streets.
At last we came to a stop on a narrow road that overlooked the five or six entrances to the tungsten mine tunnels.
“They’re singing,” Sally gasped. “Marching to their death singing.”
The long black column that came from far across the city, ten miles distant, widened near the approaches to this mountain—widened into a stream of human figures. One arm of the human delta flooded into the mine entrance within forty yards of us.
These marchers from the human jungles were clad in ragged gray and ugly brown and faded blue. The only touches of brightness in this drab parade were the occasional banners.
With binoculars we could read many of the slogans.
“No food for us. No work from us.”
“We go—but we shall return!”
“No one will miss us until we are gone.”
“This is what the world has done to us. Driven us to our death. Think it over.”
There was something childish, you’ll notice, in the tone of these last words. Lord Temp had often reminded me that children like the fancy of revenge upon their parents or teachers—the sweet delights of standing by and seeing how sorry people are after they’ve died from mistreatment. It’s a fancy that some grown-ups never outgrow, and it was certainly evident in the self-pitying sentiments of many of these banners.
The thing that made it all so terribly gruesome was that each and every marcher who entered the tunnels did melt away at once!
We could see that melting take place from the instant the marchers entered the shadow of the overhanging ledge above the entrance.
The three of us left our car and hiked down the rocky slope to a point that looked in on the tunnel’s mouth and there we saw the complete process.
There was no doubt about it, it took nerve to walk into that shadow. Only a strong net woven of invisible cords of crowd psychology could have held these masses to their purpose. Sometimes a group within the ranks would hesitate and the column would momentarily buckle and send a wave of hesitation surging down the line. These moments had been anticipated, however, and strong leaders had been placed at frequent intervals to check any chance impulses.
Some of the marchers were so horrified by the sight of the melting of their comrades ahead that they slipped blindfolds over their eyes for the last few yards of the march. Others turned around and walked backward, letting their scornful eyes rest upon the capitol city until those eyes passed out of existence.
Whether they entered with a will or reluctantly, singing or in silence, forward or backward, filled with the bitter gall of hatreds or the glad solace of final relief, they all melted away in the same fashion.
Heads faded away like swiftly fading light. Shoulders, arms, chests flattened into empty sagging clothes. And still the bodies would move on into the dark tunnel, until finally there would be only the feet to continue the march, dragging empty clothing after them.
From deep inside the tunnel came the gentle noises of ragged clothes and shoes stumbling along down the sloping mine shafts—hollow whisperings like green leaves sifting down into a dry well.
CHAPTER XVIII
Exit Bobby Hammock
When I was at last able to take my eyes from the sight I noticed that Sally was pale, trembling, and her eyes were filled with tears.
“What faith they must have . . . But will they come back?”
Bobby Hammock was clutching Sally’s hand, unconsciously, no doubt, for I knew his thoughts were of that certain blonde and these, her people.
“Can’t any one stop them?” Sally sobbed.
“Not now.” Bobby’s voice was barely audible. “Your father tried hard enough. But Wurzelle carried the government.”
That was how it had happened. During the weeks of my coma—the weeks when Lord Temp had meant me to be at work distributing his cards—he and Gravelli Vetto had sold this awful bill of goods to the nation.
The gullible unemployed had snatched at it like the proverbial drowning man snatches at a straw. The whole fifty million underprivileged had quickly endorsed it. The demonstrations of dead being returned to life had been so convincing. And these demonstrations had been circulated everywhere through television.
There was the case of a custodian of a building in Cincinnati. He had melted away on the rooftop after raising the flag one morning. On the movie screens you could see the excitement in his eyes—yes, and the honest conviction—as he told the story of his temporary death.
Then his questioners would ask him about his existence during this period of so-called death, and you should see his face light up. Yes, he had had an experience of sorts, he’d admit, but what? He was discreet enough not to say.
The mysterious rumors which followed on the heels of this instance made the thought of temporary death more than a little attractive to some people. Perhaps they too would find some substitute existence—a sort of lark—be it physical or spiritual.
There was the case of the man who had lost his job and gone home to face the music, who had passed into nothingness the minute two old aunts had jumped at him. He had now returned to report that there was nothing harmful, moreover he had won some sweet revenge over the female tyrants of his home. At last they were eating out of his hands. And the firm that had fired him—ah! there was the most wonderful result of all. He’d been rehired.
Multiply these instances by two or three dozen and you have a fair sample of the new and mystifying phenomena that the American public of 2100 were forced to explain.
Add to this the authority of SABA, casting an aura of super-science upon it, and you can see what a tug these doings exerted upon every halfway gullible person.
Not to mention the appeal it had for Goldfish who saw in it an easy solution to the nation’s awful plight.
And so Lord Temp’s boast was made good. The downtrodden masses had asked for temporary death. The government had granted their request and set the place and the time, provided the resting place for their spirits, and purchased the promise from Gravelii Vetto that his phenomenal power would be at work on the dot.
If only Lord Temp had seen fit to run off on a vacation, what a lovely headlong crash Vetto and his SABA fakery would have taken. Ah, me. Sometimes I wished that I had played my friendship with Lord Temp to better advantage.
But I had been in a coma during all these happenings, and now the great holocaust was going on right before my eyes.
“No one can say I did it,” I murmured absently to myself. “But I was darned lucky I got socked—”
“What are you saying?” Sally spok
e up sharply, and I suddenly jerked out of my reflections and remembered I was in company.
“I was just wondering,” I said, “what will happen to them—I mean, before they return to life.”
Sally stared at me, and Bobby uttered an amazed question.
“Do—do you actually believe in these SABA tricks?”
I must have blushed. Suddenly I wanted to tell them everything. Was I not free from any responsibility for this mass suicide, whether it might turn out well or badly?
“SABA—no,” I said slowly. “But this exhibition of power is not SABA. I know what it is. I’ve seen it from the inside.”
“You!” Sally gasped. “But how?”
“I can’t explain. But take my word for it,” I measured every syllable as I spoke, “these people who are going into death will live again!”
Bobby’s face was a picture of anguished hopes. “I have confidence in you, Flinders. If you say it—”
“I do say it. Don’t ask me to explain. But it’s true. There is a Lord of Temporary Death who is playing upon these people. They’re only melting into a separate existence. He means to bring them back two of three years somehow.”
“And Lucille?”
“Her fate was this same temporary death,” I said. “I know it. So take heart—”
I might have held my tongue if I had only stopped to realize that Bobby Hammock’s nerves were on trigger edge. Bobby leaped over the rocks and dashed across the thirty yards that now separated us from the moving column.
“Stop! Stop, Bobby! Comeback!” Sally screamed. Instantly she was running after him and so was I.
But already he was racing into the mouth of the tunnel, passing up the slower marchers. At once the invisible power was working its magic upon him. Even as he ran his head melted into steamy nothingness, his clothing became emptied of him, he was only a pair of legs, a pair of feet, running—running down that hall of whispers where forsaken clothing tumbled down a steep shaft.
“He’s gone!” Sally cried, and in her frenzy she followed after him. She was a few steps ahead of me. I couldn’t catch her.
But one of the leaders within the ranks, ready to prevent any stampeding, caught her hand and hurled her backward. As she was falling I caught her, clutched her tightly in my arms.
The marchers no doubt hurled insults at us, perhaps taking us for enemies, but I was oblivious. I bore Sally away from the scene as fast as I dared—yes, faster. My swimming head cost me; I fainted away as we reached the car.
When the darkness passed away from my eyes I realized that Sally was driving me back to the city one of the longer ways around.
“Any time you wake up, Jim,” she was saying, “you might relax that grip around my waist. I’ll be quite safe, I promise.”
CHAPTER XIX
Lightning Through the Fog
I went back to the hospital with a most heavy heart. My dreams of that night haunted me.
What was Bobby Hammock going through now? Nothing short of an intense love for the starry-eyed blonde could have made him race into that tunnel.
What of Sally’s race to try to stop him? Could that have been anything less than love? Poor Sally. She must have liked him a lot—though I couldn’t remember that they had ever appeared to be sweethearts.
My newspaper at lunch supplied the answer. It was a short feature story, sandwiched in between sensational reports of the great march, of the curious career of Bobby “Hammock,” who was in reality Robert J. Barnes, son of the Honorable Prescott Barnes!
The other patients were talking about it and they were less astonished than I. It was not uncommon for the sons of nationally prominent men to dodge the spotlight and grow up incognito, they mentioned.
“The kid had ideas of his own before he got out of high school,” they were saying. “He figured he’d get out of his father’s limelight and live his own life . . . and see how the other half lived.”
“Now he’s seein’ how they die.”
“He used to be a dreamy youngster at home, they say, and his father didn’t like it because he’d waste so much time lying out in the hammock gazing up at the clouds. So when he walked out he took the name Hammock.”
“Wonder what his father thinks now?”
There it was again, I thought to myself—that child-like gloating over the tall thinking a person’s loved ones are bound to do after he kicks the bucket. I couldn’t help taking a nip at this talk.
“I’m sure Bobby Hammock didn’t leave any misunderstandings with his father, gentlemen. They had a visit not long ago, and the Honorable Barnes made it possible for Bobbie to get a job.”
“If you know all the answers, tell us whether these fifty million suckers will actually come back to life.”
“They will,” I said. “I think they will.”
“That’s a helluva lot of population to come bobbing up all at once.” And this became the subject of a prolonged argument which, I thought, gave me my chance to amble back to my room before I let slip any more answers to such trenchant questions. But just as I was leaving someone popped another at me.
“See here, answer man, IF they all come back, which I very much doubt, what’s Wurzelle going to do about it?” You don’t reckon he’ll be any more anxious to let ’em live the next time than he has been, do you?”
“Maybe Wurzelle will know more by that time,” I said.
But someone topped my remark with one that really set me thinking. “Maybe the fifty million rabble will know more too.”
Well, I’m telling you I felt as unsettled as a flying fish lost in a bottomless fog. I supposed I’d go back to work after the hospital released me. But at present it was impossible to forget all the things that had upset the world. The loss of Bobby was plenty hard, to take; and the whole shock of what I had seen was intensified by my friendship for him.
The last of the great death march came to me by television that afternoon in the hospital. The weird holocaust of the fifty million was done. From that hour forward it was a changed world. Over America the fog of moral confusion deepened.
The shocked state of the American mind and conscience can hardly be described.
Out of the general fog which was engulfing everyone, sharp bolts of lightning were soon to strike at Yours Truly, Jim Flinders. But before I start unloading my personal headaches I’ve got to say something about this nation-wide reaction that was already flooding the air-waves and the presses—America on the morning after—America with a terrific stomach-ache in her conscience.
Fifty million people had swept themselves off the map! It was enough to leave the rest of us stunned.
To me the nation seemed like a big stupid giant who awakens from a drunken dream to discover that he has cut his own arms off and thrown them away.
He tries to tell himself he doesn’t need arms any more. He’s fixed things up with so much automatic machinery that he can simply sit and enjoy comforts and take nourishment without ever moving a muscle.
Nevertheless those arms have been useful in the past, and he’s more than a little astonished at himself for having done away with them.
All at once he gets a terrible premonition that he’s doomed slowly to bleed to death.
“Why,” he cries out, “did I do it?”
At once he tries to blame the arms themselves. But blame as he will, his blaming won’t hold water. Both arms are gone, so it must be that his head or feet had something to do with it; and indeed it was the head—as he recalls from his dream—that had complained so much over the hanging on of useless arms.
The countless pictures of completely deserted cardboard villages and squatter jungles were full of pathos to all but the hardest-hearted of citizens.
In the weeks that were to follow, thousands of books were written on the subject. Millions of words of editorial comment contributed to the discussion. “Exodus” plays, movies, novels, biographies, philosophical treatises deluged the civilized world. Seldom were speeches or sermons delivered without
making reference to the “Great American Exodus.”
Most of the high and mighty of the nation’s Capitol tried to glorify it as the noblest solution to the problem of a dependent and menacing population ever applied in the history of mankind. But millions of common people were shaken with such qualms of conscience that doctors were worked overtime caring for cases of nervous breakdown.
The medical journals had much to say about this wave of borderline illnesses; they found the symptoms most prevalent and the effects most devastating among the lower income groups. Apparently those thousands of insecure job holders who realized they had missed this temporary death march by a narrow margin were hardest hit. They felt helpless and therefore guilty. They would blame themselves for not protesting the government sanction, or for not contributing to a revolution, or perhaps for having voted for friends of Wurzelle.
The well-to-do and overfed citizens also often floundered in the bitter bath of conscience vinegar; however, they could dilute the bitterness with wines of merriment, and laugh and drink together to keep their courage up.
The Glass Capitol paid tribute to the fifty million departed.
Wurzelle and his party waved the flag of patriotism over the event, straining to make the public see it as a memorable sacrifice to restore the nation to her rightful heritage of good living.
Appropriations were granted for the holding of memorial services in every crossroads community. With the fat funds (mailed from the Goldfish Bowl of the Honorable Wurzelle) went the instructions that the speakers of these memorial services repeat the national promise: “A better America will await our departed ones on their return . . .” and there was another phrase added by Wurzelle: “. . . if they return.”
The speakers were instructed to insert this clause in their speeches and make no further comment.
How the news cameras highlighted these words! I can see them now, whipping through my televisor with the evening news. The Great American Exodus was only four months old when the deft fingers of the Honorable Wurzelle began to write that mighty word IF into the promise.
