Dark Yesterday [The Classic Tomorrow Trilogy]

by Arthur Leo Zagat

  "My—” Dikar checked himself. He'd remembered what “wife” meant. It was the same as mate. “Yes. She is my wife."

  "I thought so when you called her 'my Marilee.’ Well, don't you worry about her. I saw the way you fought the soldier and I thought one of you might be hurt, so I brought some stuff along. I'll just put a plaster on this cut to hold it together, and then you can carry her up to the house and I'll fix her up right."

  "Carry her-!” The way Martha Dawson's hands were working at Marilee's side, Dikar knew that she could heal her, but—"But won't They find her there? Won't that get you into trouble with Them?"

  "I've had trouble enough. A little more won't hurt. Besides, I don't think They'll find her, or you neither, unless they search a lot harder than they have already—Oh!” She rocked back on her heels, her eyes widening. “But they will. They'll find that soldier dead in the field and they'll know I couldn't have killed him but they'll be sure I know who did it."

  "We can hide Jubal in the woods."

  She shook her head.

  "No. That won't do. They'll see the blood all around here, and they'll find him, never fear, them blacks is like Indians. Oh goodness. I don't know what to do."

  "I do,” Dikar exclaimed. “Look, Martha Dawson. One of us wanted to give us away to them an’ we had to kill him.” By the calm way the woman had acted when she saw how bad hurt Marilee was he knew he could tell her that without her getting excited. “We'll fix things so it will look like he shot Jubal with an arrow, an’ that Jubal killed him with his gun before he died."

  "Good!” The woman nodded. “That will do it. But you better carry your wife up the hill while your friends are fixing things. We'll go up by the road, the way come down, so as not to leave more tracks than can be helped."

  * * * *

  Dikar told the others what to do and then be picked Marilee up in his arms, and went to the road, Martha Dawson beside him, went up the road toward where the house was a pale glimmer in the deep dusk that now had come down over the hill and the fields. just as they reached the house, Dikar heard a shot, and he knew that Tomball had no face any longer, knew that Bengreen was laying the long gun back in Jubal's dead hands, and that Danhall and Henfield were wiping out as much as they could of the marks that would show there had been more there than just Jubal and Tomball.

  Martha Dawson opened a door for Dikar, and he went into darkness that smelled a little like the eating place on the Mountain. The door closed behind him, and he felt a hand on his arm.

  "Bring her upstairs,” the woman said. “This way."

  Dikar didn't know what she meant, but he went the way her hand guided him. His toes struck wood, and he half stumbled. “Come on,” the woman said, tugging at his arm.

  "But there's somethin’ in the way here. I can't go any further."

  "Something? Oh dear Lord! Don't you know what stairs are?"

  "Stairs?"

  "Wait. I'll strike a match.” Dikar stood stock-still, listening to the sound of her going away from him. He didn't like this place. He was afraid of it. It was too closed in. He could hardly breathe. The woman was coming back, and there was a strange, scratching sound and then there was a little flame growing on the end of a tiny piece of wood in her hand, and her other hand was cupped over it, and she was looking at Dikar as if she'd never seen a Boy before.

  "Don't know what stairs are,” she said again. “Well, I never-! Look. There they are in front of you.” Dikar looked and he saw a kind of hill built out of wood. “Hurry and take her up, before someone comes."

  Dikar climbed up what Martha Dawson called stairs, and came to a level place, and they went along the level place, and came to more stairs that he climbed. At the top of these stairs they came into a big room whose roof was high in the middle but slanted down low towards the sides, so that there were hardly any walls at all except in one place where the wall was made higher to make space for a little window.

  Dikar stood still, Marilee nestled in his arms, and looked around him. By the light of another match Martha Dawson held he saw that the room was full of tables and little benches, and boxes, and a lot of things Dikar had never seen before, all old-looking and dirty and piled every which way on top of one another, right up to the roof. So full was the room that Dikar couldn't see where he was to put Marilee.

  "Wait,” the woman said and went past Dikar to a box that stood on end in the middle of the pile's front, a black box almost as big as she was. She knocked on this in a funny way.

  The box moved—not the box but the side that was all Dikar could see of it. The side swung out on one up-and-down edge, like a door, and inside the box was a tall man with a thin white face and gray hair. The man was stooped over, and his eyes, deep-sunk in his face, glittered in the matchlight like the eyes of animals glitter in the night-blackened woods.

  The man saw Dikar. His lips pulled away from his teeth and his hand came up, and in his hand was a little gun that aimed right at Dikar.

  CHAPTER VIII: SEARCH

  "It's all right, John,” Martha Dawson said. “They're all right. They escaped from a concentration camp, and this young man's wife is bad hurt and I've promised to hide her here with you."

  The man John peered past Martha Dawson, looking more closely at Dikar. “From a camp?” His voice was deep, much deeper than Dikar thought could come from so thin a chest, and it was a very tired voice. The woman moved so that the match light from inside her cupped hand fell on Dikar. “Aye, I see now. I could only see a black shape in the dark, and I thought that I had been betrayed, and that they had forced you to show them where I was."

  "Never!” Martha Dawson cried out, and then. “Who would betray you, John? Who would tell them you are here?"

  John looked at her, and Dikar saw that there were deep lines in his face, lines of pain, and that his lips were gray. “I've just had bad news, Martha. They raided zee-seven this morning, so suddenly there was no chance to blow it up, and they took Ed Stone alive. But we're keeping our friends standing. Bring her in here, my friend,” he said to Dikar, moving back into his box. “Bring her in."

  John's voice came out of blackness inside the box, but something in that voice told Dikar he need not be afraid of him, nor of anything in the blackness, and he went into the box carrying Marilee. Martha Dawson's match went out, and Dikar stopped short, the blackness thumbing his eyes.

  Martha Dawson pushed against Dikar's back, and he got moving again, and the other side of the box wasn't there, as he'd expected, but he went right on into a feel of bigger space. He heard sound of door-closing behind him, felt a hand on his arm stopping him, and then there was light.

  The light came from a shining thing that hung by a wire over Dikar's head, and Dikar saw that he'd gone right through the box into a room hidden behind the pile.

  "Lay her there,” John said, pointing to a bed that stood against one side of the room. “It's clean and comfortable, I assure you."

  Dikar put Marilee down on the bed, and Martha Dawson was beside the bed. Her hand took hold of Marilee's wrist and she seemed to be listening for something, and then she smiled and said, “Her pulse is strong.” She put her hand on Marilee's forehead, and said, “She has no fever at all."

  Dikar didn't know what the words meant, but he knew that Martha Dawson meant that Marilee would be all right, and breath hissed from between his teeth. “Martha,” John said. “You'd better go down and make some hot water to wash her with, and bring it up with the iodine and bandages. You ought to have light on down there anyway, or our sweet guardian might start wondering what you're up to."

  Martha (the man called her that, Dikar noticed, instead of the longer Martha Dawson) looked queerly at John. “Our guardian won't notice anything,” she said. “He's dead. This young man killed him."

  "Ah,” John nodded. “That means trouble, of course. Well, we can only hope and pray as we've done all along. Go on, my dear."

  He moved, and there was darkness again. Dikar heard the boxdoor open a
nd shut. The light came back, and Dikar was peering around the room, so much in it strange to him.

  There was the bed on which Marilee lay and a little table in the middle of the room, and a little bench with a back. The wall of the room in which was the door was covered with things Dikar vaguely recalled were named “books.” The roof slanted down to the wall opposite this, and this was low except for a narrow space where it was built higher to make space for a window, but the window was covered over with a gay-colored, thick rug so that Dikar couldn't see them.

  But it was at the fourth wall at which Dikar stared longest. A narrow table along the full width of this. Under the table were a lot of small black boxes, and on top of it was a jumble of wires and black boards standing up and lying down, and round things marked with little white lines, and a lot of shining things like what hung from the ceiling and made light in the room. In the middle of the wall above the table was something that Dikar recognized.

  It was from a thing like it that the Voice in Dikar's dream had come, the Voice that had spoken about the dusk that had come to America, and the tomorrow that might never be. Dikar remembered the name of this thing, and said it aloud.

  "A radio,” he said.

  "Yes,” John said. “And now you know that you're in one of the stations of the Secret Net.” His hands went wide. “The oldest of them, my friend. Five years I've operated it from here, five long years since I escaped from a concentration camp and in all the five years I have not seen the sun. In those five years I have had from that loud speaker"—he pointed to the thing on the wall that Dikar had recognized—"news of the unearthing of hundreds of our stations, news of the death of hundreds of our co-workers. Time and time again that speaker has brought me word that we were almost ready to rise against the invaders, and time and time again it has brought me word that they had found our leaders and hung them, and that all the work was to be done over again.

  "Yes,” John said. “This is the oldest of the stations, now that at last Ed Stone's gone, and I am the luckiest of the agents of the Secret Net, but tonight, my friend, I somehow have a feeling that my luck has run out. Perhaps that is only because I am tired and hungry, for Martha dares not bring me food until dark. They do not, I know, suspect that I am here, but they know I am alive, somewhere, and always they keep a sentry, out there in the woods, watching my wife and waiting for me to contact her.” He smiled, and his smile was bitter. “That is why they have permitted her so long to live on here, unmolested. But I must hear your story. I thought that the prison camps were now too well guarded for anyone to escape from them. How did you and your wife manage it? What camp do you come from?"

  Dikar shook his head. “We come from no camp. I don't even know what you mean by that word, camp."

  "You—you don't-! You're American, aren't you?"

  "Yes,” Dikar said. “We are American.” He knew, without just knowing how, that he could talk to this man freely and that it was important that he talk to him. “We come from the Mountain, off there beyond those woods."

  And then Dikar went on to tell John about the Bunch, and about how they came to live on the Mountain, and about their life there.

  John listened without interrupting, except to ask a low-toned question or two, when Dikar stopped, and soon after Dikar started talking, Martha came in and listened too, while she tended Marilee. Dikar told about his dream, and how he had come down into this far land and seen what went on here, and how he had gone back to the Mountain.

  "I knew then that somehow, sometime, I must lead the Bunch down off the Mountain and try to take back this land for America,” he came near the end of his story. “But I could not think how we few could do anything against the black and yellow men when you who are so many could do nothin’ against them. Perhaps you can tell me, John?"

  "Perhaps I can,” John said, his eyes shining. “I must think. But you did come down again to us, Dikar.” (Dikar had told them his name.) “And without any plans. Why did you do that?"

  Dikar told him about Tomball, and what Tomball had done, and how Tomball died.

  "There you are,” John turned to Martha. “There's the innate depravity of human nature for you. Here are these youngsters who were isolated from the world when the oldest of them was only eight, who grew up together in such an ideal communion as man has not known since Eden, and yet a renegade turns up among them who would sacrifice them all because his personal ambitions were thwarted. Doesn't that make you despair, my dear?"

  "No!” Martha answered, her hands still busy with Marilee. “No, John. Because if Dikar's story has in it one black-souled renegade, it also has in it forty who have worked for one another and lived for one another, sweetly and unselfishly, from childhood to young man- and womanhood. Because it has in it courage and loyalty and self-sacrifice and love that was not taught out of books. Despair, John? No. Dikar's story gives me new hope, new courage."

  John moved to Martha, where she knelt by Marilee's bedside, and laid his hand on her head. “I'm wrong, Martha. You are wiser than I. Far wiser—” Just then Marilee stirred, and her eyes opened.

  "Dikar,” she whispered. Then, fright in her voice: "Dikar!"

  Dikar leaped to her. “It's all right, Marilee. Everything is all right. We've found fr—"

  "Hush,” John broke in. “Quiet. Listen.” At once the room was throbbing with silence.

  Into that silence, well-muffled, came the sound of men's voices, shouts. “The patrol's here,” John said low-voiced. “They're looking for the sentry you killed. You'd better get downstairs quick, Martha. They might come to ask you about him."

  Martha was on her feet, her face set, her hands trembling. John's arm went around her, and he was holding her close to him. He was saying something Dikar could not quite make out, and then they were apart and Martha was going toward the door, straight, trembling no longer. The light went out, and the door opened and closed.

  "Let's take a look outside,” Dikar heard John say, and he heard him moving in the darkness. Then there was pale light in the darkness, starlight breaking the blackness of a wall, John's hand blotching it as it held aside that which hung over the window.

  Dikar darted across the floor and was pressed against John, looking out.

  Just below was the smaller roof Dikar had seen from the woods, and below that, yellow light lay on the ground. Down at the bottom of the hill, bright lights danced in the yellow grass and on the brush and trees at the edge of the woods. Black against these lights were the forms of men, and it was from these men that the shouting came.

  "Look,” John whispered, “there in the wheat.” Dikar saw the black shape of his finder pointing, and looked in the direction the finger pointed.

  Where the finger pointed, in the middle of the field, was one man who did not move. The arm held a light, and the light was on his face, and Dikar could see that the face was round and yellow. The mouth of that face was a straight, thin line and the eyes were slanted slits in the yellow skin, and there was a look on the face that made Dikar afraid.

  "That's Captain Li Logo,” John said. “He's provost for this district. He's shrewd as a fox and cruel as a tiger. It's hard luck that he had to come along with the patrol, on this night of all nights."

  Dikar felt Marilee press against him from behind. “Go back to bed, sweet,” he said. “You'll hurt yourself more."

  "I'm all right, Dikar,” Marilee whispered. “I feel fine. And I want to see too."

  A louder shout came through the window. “They found the body,” John said quietly but, pressed against him, Dikar could feel that now he was trembling.

  The lights moved together, clustering at one place just at the edge of the woods. Captain Logo went down to where the lights clustered, and the babble of shouts from there stopped, and all Dikar could hear was a single high-pitched voice.

  "I'll open the window,” John said, “if you'll let me get at it.” Dikar and Marilee moved back a little.

  "Are you sure you're feelin’ all right?”
Dikar whispered under cover of a scraping noise in front of them.

  "Sure. The woman gave me something to drink, before I quite woke up, and it's made me all warm inside, and strong again."

  Cold wind came in on them, and the sounds from outside were louder, the sound of that single high-pitched voice, but Dikar could not understand what it said. Then there was another shout, hoarse like Jubal's, and a light showed within the edge of the woods, and Captain Logo went in there.

  "They've found Tomball,” Dikar said. “We'll soon know if we've fooled them."

  Logo's high voice stopped the shouting again. The other shapes were separating. They were running back and forth in what John had called wheat, their lights shining on the yellow grass, and on their black faces. They were all dressed in green, like Jubal, and had queer round things on their heads, and they all had long guns like Jubal's.

  "There are seven of them,” Marilee said. “I counted."

  One of the lights stopped, suddenly, and the one that carried it bent low, and straightened again, and as a shout came from him Dikar saw what the light shone on.

  "Jeeze!” he grunted. “It's my bow. I forgot all about it. There was one by Tomball, so now they know there was at least one more of us."

  Captain Logo came to the black who had found Dikar's bow, and he looked at it, and then he put his band to his mouth, and there was shrill sound from him. The blacks all came running to him, and clustered about him a minute, and then they were all running up the hill toward the house, their long guns in their hands, slanted across the front of them, their lights out.

  "That's torn it,” John said, low-toned. “They're coming to search the house, and they're certain to find this hideout. My premonition was right. My luck has run out. Well,” he said, pushing back from the window. “There's only one thing left to do."