A put-up job, he thought. The long arm of Marcus Appleton reaching out for him. And reaching out most desperately. There must, he told himself, be something in that paper that Appleton would go to any lengths to hide.
But he was in no position at the moment—if he ever were to be in position—to do anything about it. There was no one who would listen.to him. There was no one he would dare to talk with. There is no appeal, the ghostly face had said. And that was right; there was no way to appeal.
Ann Harrison, he thought.
Good Lord, there was Ann Harrison.
Had she been the trigger, her coming up to see him, that had brought this all about?
And had he said anything about her? Had he said she had the paper—if she really had the paper?
If he had been questioned under drug, he undoubtedly had implicated her. But it seemed impossible to believe that he had been so questioned, for if he had (and the court had really been a duly constituted court) he'd not have been convicted.
He stood shaky in the night just before the dawn and the questions and the doubts and the fumbling for an understanding went on roaring through his brain.
No longer a member of the human race.
No longer anything.
Just a blob of protoplasm tossed out in the street-naked of possessions and of hope.
With but one single right remaining—the human right to die.
And that, of course, was what Appleton had planned.
That was what he counted on—that with no other right, a man would exercise that one remaining right.
"I won't do it, Marcus," said Daniel Frost, talking to himself and to the night and to the world and to Marcus Appleton.
He turned from where he stood and went fumbling down the street, for he had to get away, before the light could come he must find a place to hide. To hide from the mockery and the anger and the callous cruelty that would greet him if he should happen to be seen. For now he was no longer of the world, but an enemy. Every hand would be raised against him and he'd have no protection beyond the protection of the dark and hidden place. He was, henceforth, his own protector, for there was no law nor right that he could claim.
Within him grew a cold hard knot of anger and of viciousness that wiped out the self-pity that remained. A knot of hard, cold anger that such a thing as had happened to him could be allowed to happen. It was not civilized—but who had ever claimed that the human race was civilized? It could probe through the cosmos for other earthlike planets, it could pry at the lid of time, it could conquer death and aim at eternal life, but it was still a tribe.
There had to be a way to beat this vicious tribe, there had to be a way to square accounts with Apple-ton—and if there were a way he would seek it out and use it and use it without pity. But not right now.
Right now he must find a place to hide. He would be all right, he knew, being honest with himself, so long as he was able to hang onto that knot of anger which twisted in his belly. The one thing that he must never do was to give way to a slobbering pity of himself.
He reached an intersection and hesitated, wondering which way he should go. From far off, somewhere on another street, came the thin whining of an electric motor—a cruising cab, perhaps.
To the river, he thought—that would be the place where he would be most likely to find a place where he could hide, perhaps even get some sleep if he could manage sleep. And after that, he told himself, would come the problem of locating food.
He shivered, thinking of it. Was this what life was to be from this moment forward—a seeking of a place to hide and sleep, the eternal hunt for food? In a little while, with the threat of winter, he'd have to start drifting south, wandering (at night, when he'd be unobserved) down through that great complex of coastal cities which really was one city.
The light was growing in the east and he must be on his way. But he felt a strange reluctance to turn in the direction of the river. He wasn't really running yet and he didn't want to run—except for the tattoos on bis face there was no reason that he should. But the first step that he took toward the river, he would be in flight, and he shrank from flight, for it seemed that once Jie took that first step he'd never stop his running.
He stood looking up and down the empty street. There might be some other way, he thought. Perhaps he should not even try to hide. There must be someplace where be could demand the justice that was coming to him, but even as he thought of it he knew what the answer would be: That he had had his justice.
It was a ridiculous thing to think about, he knew. He had no chance at all. He would not be heard. The evidence of his status and his crime was upon his face for everyone to see. And he had no rights.
Wearily he turned in the direction of the river. If he had to run, he'd better start the running before it was too late.
A voice spoke to him: "Daniel Frost."
He spun around.
A man who apparently had been standing in the shadow at the base of the building on the corner stepped out onto the sidewalk—a hunched, misshapen figure with a large cap squashed flat upon his head and with tatters hanging from his coat sleeves.
"No," said Frost, uncertainly. "No…"
"It's all right, Mr. Frost. You're to come with me."
"But," said Frost, "you don't know what I am. You don't understand."
"Of course we do," said the man with the tattered sleeves. "We know that you need help and that is all that matters. Please stay very close behind me."
20
Despite the lighted lantern, the place was dark. The lantern cast no more than a shallow puddle of illumination and the humped shapes of the people in the room were simply darker shadows in the dark vastness they inhabited.
Frost halted and in the dark he felt the impact of eyes he knew were watching him.
Friend or foe? he wondered—although out on the street (how many blocks from here?) the man who'd been his guide had indicated friend. You need help, he'd said, and that is all that matters.
The man who'd guided him walked forward toward the group seated by the lantern. Frost stayed where he was. His feet hurt from all the walking and he was tired clear through and the effects of the drug, he thought, might not have entirely worn off. The needle, or the dart, or whatever it had been that had struck him in the neck must have been really loaded.
He watched the guide squat down and whisper with the others seated by the lantern and he wondered where he was. It was somewhere on the waterfront, for his nose had told him that much, and probably was a cellar or a basement, because they had gone down several flights of stairs before they had arrived. A hideout of some sort, he guessed, the very kind of place he would have hunted on his own.
"Mr. Frost," said an old-man voice, "why don't you come over here and sit down with us. I suspect that you are tired."
Frost stumbled forward and sat down on the floor near the lantern and the voice. His eyes were becoming
somewhat accustomed to the darkness and now the hump5 were human and the faces were white blurs.
"I thank you, sir," he said. "I am a little tired."
"You had a bitter night," said the man.
Frost nodded.
"Leo tells me you've been ostracized."
"Ill leave if you want me to," said Frost. "Just let me rest a little."
"There is no need of that," said the man. "You now are one of us. We are all ostracized."
Frost jerked up his head and stared at the man who spoke. He had a grizzled face, the jowls and chin shining with a two-day stubble of white whiskers.
"I don't mean we wear the mark," the old man said. "But we still are ostracized. We are non-conformists and today you cannot afford to fail to conform. We don't believe, you see. Or, perhaps, on the other hand, you might say that we believe too much. But in the wrong things, naturally."
"I don't understand," said Frost.
The old man chuckled. "It is clear to see you don't know where you are."
"Of course I
don't," Frost said testily, impatient with this baiting. "I have not been told."
"You're in a den of Holies," said the man. "Take a good look at us. We are those dirty and unthinking people who go out at night and paint the signs on walls. We are the ones who preach on street corners and in parks, we are the ones who hand out all those filthy and non-Forever tracts. That is, until the cops come and run us all away."
"Look," Frost said, wearily, "I don't mind who you are. I am grateful to you for taking me in, for if you hadn't, I don't know what I'd have done. I was about to look for a place to hide, for I knew I had to hide, but I didn't know how to go about it. And then this man came along and…"
"An innocent," said the old man. "A sheltered innocent thrown out in the street. Of course you wouldn't have known what to do. You'd have gotten into all sorts of trouble. But there really was no need to worry. We've been watching over you." "Watching over me? Why should you do that?" "Rumors," said the man. "There were all sorts of rumors. And we hear all the rumors that there are. We make it our business to hear every sort of rumor anr; to sort them out."
"Let me guess," said Frost. "The rumor said someone was out to get me."
"Yes. Because you knew too much. About something, incidentally, we could not determine."
"You must," said Frost, "watch over many people."
"Not so many," said the grizzled man. "Although we keep well informed about Forever Center. We have some pipelines there."
I bet you do, thought Frost. For somehow, despite his rescue, he didn't like this man.
"But you are tired," said the man, "and likely also hungry."
He rose and clapped his hands. Somewhere a door came open and a shaft of light spread into the room.
"Food," said the man, speaking to the woman who stood in the crack of doorway. "Some food for our guest."
The door closed and the man sat down again, this time close to Frost, almost side by side with him.
The odor of an unwashed body poured out from him. He held his hands limply in his lap and Frost could see that the hands were grimy, the nails untrimmed and with heavy dirt embedded underneath them.
"I would imagine," said the man, "that you may be somewhat chagrined in finding yourself with us. I wish, however, you would not feel that way. We really are good-hearted people. We may be dissenters and protes-tants, but we have a right to make our voice heard in any way we can."
Frost nodded. "Yes, of course, you have. But it seems to me there might have been better ways for you to get a hearing. You've been at it for—how long has it been, fifty years or more?"
"And we haven't gotten very far. That's the point you wdsh to make?"
"I suppose it is," said Frost.
"We know, of course," said the other, "that we will not win. There is no way of winning. But our conscience tells us that we must bear witness. So long as we can continue to make our feeble voice heard in the wilderness, we will not have failed."
Frost said nothing. He felt his body sinking into a comfortable lethargy and he had no wish to try to pull it out. The man reached out a dirty hand and laid it on
Frost's knees.
"You read the Bible, son?"
"Yes, off and on. I've read most of it."
"And why did you read it?"
"Why, I don't know," said Frost, startled at the question. "Because it's a human document. Perhaps in hope of some spiritual comfort, although I can't be sure of that. Because, I suppose, in many ways, it is good literature."
"But without conviction?"
"I suppose you're right. Without any great conviction."
"There was a time when many people read it with devout conviction. There was a day when it was a light shining in the darkness of the soul. Not too long ago it was Me and hope and promise. And now the best that you can say of it is that it's good literature.
"It's your talk of physical immortality that has brought all this about. Why should people read the Bible any more or believe in it or believe in anything at all if they have the legal—not the spiritual, mind you, but the legal—promise of immortality? And how can you promise immortality? Immortality means going on forever and forever and no one can promise that, no mortal man can promise forever and forever."
"You're mistaken," said Frost. "I have not promised it."
"I'm sorry. I speak too generally. Not you, personally, of course. But Forever Center."
"Not entirely Forever Center, either," said Frost. "Rather man himself. If there had been no Forever Center, man still would have sought immortality. It is a thing that, in the very nature of him, he could not have ignored. It's not in man's nature to do less than he can. He may fail, of course, but he'll always try."
"It's the devil in him," said the grizzled man. "The forces of darkness and corruption work in many ways to thwart man's inherent godliness."
Frost said: "Please, I don't want to argue with you. Some other time, perhaps. But not right now. You must understand that I am grateful to you, and…"
"Would anyone else in all this land," the man demanded, "have held out a hand of fellowship to you at a moment such as this?"
Frost shook his head. "No, I don't imagine there is anyone who would."
"But we did," said the man. "We, the humble ones. We, the true believers."
"Yes," said Frost, "I give you that. You did."
"And you don't ask yourself why we may have done it?"
"Not yet," said Frost, "but I suppose I will." "We did it," said the man, "because we value not the man, not the mortal body, but the soul. You read in old historical writings that a nation numbers not so many people, but so many souls. And this may seem quaint and strange to you, but those old writings are a reflection of how men thought in those days, when the human animal always was aware of God and of the life hereafter and was less concerned with worldliness and the present moment."
The door came open and the light streamed out into the room again. An old and wrinkled woman moved into the range of the lantern light. She carried in her band a bowl and half a loaf of bread and these she banded to the grizzled man. "Thank you, Mary," said the man, and the woman backed away.
"Food," said the man, putting down the bowl in front of Frost and handing him the bread. "I thank you very much," said Frost. He lifted the spoon that was in the bowl and carried a spoonful of the substance to his mouth. It was soup, weak and watery.
"And now I understand," said the grizzled man, "that in just a few more years a man need not even go through the ritual of death to attain immortality. Once Forever Center has this immortality business all written down and the methods all worked out, a man will be made immortal out of hand. He'll just stay young and go on living and there won't be any death. Once you get born, then you will live forever." "It won't be," said Frost, "for a few years yet." "But once it can be done, that will be the way of it?" "I suppose it will," said Frost. "Once you have it it's just plain foolishness to let a man grow old and die before you give him eternal youth and lif e."
"Oh, the vanity of it," the old man wailed. "The terrible waste of it. The impertinencel"
Frost did not answer him. There wasn't much of an answer, actually, to be given. He simply went on eating. The man nudged him in the arm. "One thing more, son. Do you believe in God?" Slowly Frost put the spoon back into the bowl. He asked: "You really want an answer?" "I want an answer," said the man. "I want an honest one."
"The answer," said Frost, "is that I don't know. Not, certainly, in the kind of God that you are thinking of. Not the old white-whiskered, woodcut gentleman. But a supreme being—yes, I would believe in a God of that sort. Because it seems to me there must be some sort of force or power or will throughout the universe.
The universe is too orderly for it to be otherwise. When you measure all this orderliness, from the mechanism of the atom at one end of the scale, out to the precision of the operation of the universe at the other end, it seems unbelievable that there is not a supervisory force of some land, a benevolent ruling
force to maintain that sort of order."
"Order!" the man exploded. "All you talk about is order! Not holiness, not godliness…"
"I'm sorry," Frost said. "You asked for an honest answer. I gave you an honest one. Please take my word for it—I would give a lot to have the kind of faith you have, blind, unquestioning faith without a single doubt. But even then I wonder if faith would be enough." "Faith is all man has," the man told him, quietly. "You take faith," Frost said, "and make a virtue of it. A virtue of not knowing…"
"If we knew," the man said, positively, "there would be no faith. And we need the faith."
Somewhere someone was shouting and there was the far-off sound of feet pounding rapidly.
The grizzled man rose quickly and in the act of rising one of his feet stepped sidewise and caught the bowl of soup and overturned it. In the light of the lantern, it ran like slow oil across the floor.
"The cops!" someone shouted and everyone was moving very rapidly. Someone grasped the lantern and lifted it and the flame went out. The room was plunged in darkness.
Frost had risen, too. He took a step and someone bumped into him, driving him backward in an awkward stumble. And then he felt the floor give way beneath his feet with the faint popping and snapping of long-rotten boards and he was plunging downward. He threw out his arms instinctively, clutching for any support that he might find. The fingers of his left hand closed upon the end of a broken board, but even as he grasped it, the weight of his falling body snapped it and he was through the floor and faffing.
His body landed with a splash and evil-smelling water rose in a sheet and slapped him in the face.
The fall had thrown him forward and now he raised himself so that he squatted in the foulness that was all about him—the darkness and the foulness a part of one another.
He twisted about and glanced up and he could not see the hole through which he'd fallen, but from the floor above him came the thud of running feet and the sound of distant voices, drawing rapidly away.
New thuddings came and new voices, very sharp and angry, and the splintering of boards as someone broke a door. Feet pounded once again on the floor above him and thin beams of light danced across the hole where he had fallen.
Why Call Them Back from Heaven Page 8
