The Sheep Look Up

by John Brunner

  A moment, and a highway patrol car came screaming past and made a frantic left toward the downtown area, siren blasting. They caught a glimpse of a man next to the driver, perfectly white, barking into a microphone.

  After that, rumbling, Army trucks, at least eight or nine, each crammed with masked men carrying guns.

  “Run out and ask what’s happening!” Dorothy cried, and Philip jolted into action. But before he made it to the road they’d driven past. He came back wiping his eyes and coughing.

  “Too late!” he forced out. “But there must be some way to find out what’s going on! Do we have another radio?”

  “Yes, mine,” Dorothy said, and hurried to fetch it.

  Set to the Conelrad band, it uttered a little girl’s voice, chanting. Or was it a little girl? “Castor was bigger than Pollux! So when they were both at their frolics, Pollux offered his ass to Give pleasure to Castor, Who had a huge prick and three bollocks.”

  The voice dropped an octave and a half and added in normal businesslike tones, “Stand by. Keep your sets tuned to this wavelength for further information.”

  Philip, growing frantic, wound the dial again. Pastypale, Dorothy tried the phone and confirmed that it was totally useless, not even a hum on the line.

  “Wowee, man!” the radio said, and gave a neighing laugh. “This is a great high, surely is. This is a fantastic—Hey, you stinking mother, leave that switch alone! This is my show! You cut me off and I’ll cut you off.” The sound of a bottle being smashed. “Get away from there or I’ll carve you good, hear?”

  Another station was playing the Ode to Joy from Beethoven’s Ninth at 45 instead of 33, and someone was finding that so funny he was laughing louder than the music.

  There was nothing else on the dial at all, not even on the police band, but that meant nothing. The lie of the land here was bad for short wave, and this set wasn’t a very good one.

  Alan reached past Philip and switched the set off.

  “Phil, you got a wife and kids down there. Get along home.”

  “But—”

  “You heard me!” Gruffly. “I’ll lock up with Dorothy, then drive her home. I got my gun, I’ll be all right. You tell the police about Mack on the way, okay?”

  Philip nodded, heart hammering. “I’ll ride Pete home too, then. He can’t drive.” He hesitated. “Thanks.”

  THE DESCENT INTO HELL

  It was hard for Pete to get into Philip’s car. Some impulse—a pang of conscience, maybe—had led him to switch to the next size smaller in the range he patronized when he bought the year’s new one back in June. Having made sure Pete was settled okay, he felt in the glove compartment. Filtermasks.

  “Here!” he said, offering the one Denise generally used—the kids’ would be far too small. Pete took it with a mutter of thanks. Even with the precipitator on the ventilator, this stench would be hard to endure. Already the air was full of greasy black smuts.

  “Think it is an attack?” he said, muffled. “Or just rioting?”

  “God knows,” Philip answered, bringing something else out of the glove compartment: Denise’s .22. “Take this as well.”

  “Right.” Pete set it on his lap, dark hand loosely around the butt.

  “So let’s go. Your place first.”

  Philip gunned the engine and headed for the exit from the parking lot—and had to stand on the brake as he reached it. Coming from the city center like a bat out of hell, a madman with wide staring eyes at the wheel of a Maserati.

  VROOM!

  “What the—?”

  And behind him a Mustang, and a Camaro, and a big Lincoln, and ...

  There was a gap. Philip grabbed it. And heading into the city: nothing. Not a car for ten blocks, twelve, fifteen! But coming the other way so many cars they were cramming the whole of their half of the road, overflowing into the other half, ignoring red lights, cutting in on each other, scraping though not in fact colliding ...

  “I seen that before,” Pete said. “Panic.”

  “Yeah.”

  Ahead, an Econoline jumped a red from their right and cut across their bows to try and join the out-from-town traffic. It locked fenders with a Cadillac and both stalled.

  “Oh-oh,” Philip murmured, and dodged around the Econoline’s tail before the light turned red against him. He felt extraordinarily calm. It was as though he had been subconsciously awaiting this day, the day when the heavens would fall, and had used up his whole reservoir of fear and anxiety. He would get home, and either find Denise and the kids, or not find them. Then he’d either find them later somewhere else, or never find them because they were dead. It was all fixed, all outside his control.

  He glanced at Pete. “Is Jeannie home?” he demanded.

  “Likely,” Pete grunted. His hands tensed suddenly on the gun. “Look out ahead!”

  A block in front of them: a gas station afire, huge yellow licking tongues of flame. Someone vainly struggling to rig a hose. Passers-by, delighted, yelling and trying to prevent him by throwing cans and bottles. Philip made a fast right and dodged through some side streets he hadn’t known about, which brought them out eventually in the right place. Miraculous. People obeying a red light. He got on to the parallel avenue and rolled.

  All the time the scream of sirens.

  Now and then the crisp snap of guns.

  “Try the radio again,” Pete said, and pressed the on button. Music. Everything quite normal. Roaring Mortimer’s crazy version of Summertime with the high-speed double talk like an old King Pleasure number.

  “Summertime boys and girls and those intermediate and the killing is wheezy laze an’ gemmun an’ it’s a GAS a GAS a KNOCK SEE JIM! Heddle-ah-boh!”

  At which point: silence. Pete, surprised, turned the set off and on again, but now there was nothing anywhere.

  Here, the windows of five or six stores broken. But so far none of the other regular symptoms of a riot day like barriers closing streets and patrol cars and detour signs and ... Wonder what became of the Army trucks and the men in them? And everyone on the sidewalks kind of cheerful. Slowing as traffic became more dense in the road ahead, Philip stared from side to side. They were still nowhere near the main area of the fire which was making the air so dirty. It might be somewhere around 18th and Stout, he guessed, maybe at the big post office. He saw a boy grab a middle-aged woman by the skirt and smack her bottom, and she jumped away and left the skirt in his hand, and she wore no panties and walked on quite unconcerned.

  “Everybody’s going crazy!” Pete whispered. “Like Mack!”

  “I don’t believe it,” Philip snapped. “Look, there’s a squad car ahead. We can ask them ...”

  Surrounded by a grinning group of young people. Hell! Very slowly, Philip crept past the squad car, drawn up by the curb, and saw incredulously why the crowd had gathered. The driver and the man beside him were locked in each other’s arms, kissing passionately.

  A girl was drawing a skull and crossbones on the car’s trunk with a lipstick. It was a good one, artistic, with the right number of teeth and everything.

  But at that point someone shot at them, and there was a sudden hole in the rear left corner of the car’s roof and the back window shattered and starred.

  Philip was so startled, he almost ran off the road, but recovered before he hit any of the pedestrians. And then there was a proper police barrier. Being familiar, it was a reassurance as well as a stinking nuisance.

  “Hell, I know that cat!” Pete said as a black patrolman waved them to a stop. He wound down his window and peeled off his mask, risking a fit of coughing.

  “Chappie! Chappie Rice!” he called.

  “Who the—? Ah, shit, it’s Pete Goddard! Didn’t see you in months, man!” The patrolman glanced up to make sure no more cars were approaching, and bent to Pete’s window.

  “Chappie, meet Phil Mason that I work for now. Say, what the hell is going on?”

  “Man, I just got here! Didn’t ought to be on duty, but they
recalled everyone they could reach. All I know is the city’s like bent its brain. Back in Arvada and Wheatridge they put the Army in, two hundred fifty men from Wickens. Like three or four hundred houses afire, gangs of crazy kids out on the street bare-ass naked, singing this wild song and breaking everything up. Over by the post office they’s like four big buildings afire, stores and office blocks, and gas stations being blown up all over, and now right here we got a sniper—Say, you see that hole in your roof?”

  “We saw it!” Philip snapped. “Officer, I’m trying to ride Pete home. What’s the likeliest way? He lives at—oh, shit! What’s the number?”

  Pete gave it. Chappie Rice looked grave.

  “Like they say, man, if I wanted to get there I wouldn’t start from here! But if you back up to that last intersection and go three blocks south and ...”

  And they made it.

  The area was dead. Everything disturbing the city seemed to be very far away, though in fact it was no more than five blocks distant at its closest. The street Pete lived on had closed up tight like a scared clam. There was literally no one in sight as Philip drew up in front of his apartment building, except that curtains were fluttering at windows.

  “Wait,” Philip advised. “Snipers?”

  Thirty tense seconds. Nothing happened. Pete said, “Oh God. Thank God. I see Jeannie!”

  Philip glanced toward the window of their home. There she was, waving wildly.

  “Thanks for the mask—and the gun!” Pete said, opened the door, awkwardly struggled to get his legs out of it. Philip set the parking brake, hastened around the car to help him, but here came Jeannie at a run.

  “Oh, Pete baby! I been trying to call you, and all the phones are out!” She flung her arms around him and nearly knocked him off balance. “Are you okay, honey?”

  “We—uh—we had a bit of trouble at the warehouse,” Pete said. Philip recalled with a pang of dismay that he’d said nothing to the patrolman about Mack’s death; against the scale of what was happening to the city it had seemed negligible.

  “But are you okay?”

  “Yeah, fine, thanks to Phil.”

  Jeannie rounded on Philip and hugged him and kissed him and left his cheek a trace wet: tears. “I don’t know how to thank you!” she exclaimed. “If anything bad happened to Pete, I’d go crazy.”

  Like everybody else ... “That’s all right,” Philip said gruffly. “I—uh—I better be getting home myself. Can you make it indoors, Pete?”

  “Oh, from here it’s easy. I do it all the time. Uh—thanks again.”

  Philip turned to get back in the car. Crossing the sidewalk, Pete called out.

  “See you tomorrow, if they sort all this out!”

  “Yeah!”

  In his own home street: a car burning lazily, its nose against a mailbox. On the opposite sidewalk, a dog squatting on its haunches howling. The sound made Philip’s spine crawl. Nobody was visible around here, either.

  Across the entrance to the underground garage beneath his apartment block, the steel anti-thief grille. He stopped inches from it and blasted his horn.

  No one came to let him in.

  Somewhere he had a key they’d given him, but he’d never used it because ...

  He rustled in the glove-compartment, hoping it might be there, and while he was stirring up the contents—used tissues smeared with Denise’s lipstick, broken sunglasses belonging to Josie, BankAmericard receipts, a spare spark plug, incredible junk—the car, and the ground, shook, and a monstrous thump hurt his ears. He jumped and stared wildly over his shoulder. Soaring into the air not more than a half a block away, a cloud of smoke shot through with dazzling sparks, like a magnesium flare.

  The hell with the car!

  He leapt out, not slamming the door, not even shutting off the engine, and ran for the street-level entrance. For this grille he did have a key; he’d demanded one because the guards kept falling sick. He didn’t shut it behind him, but raced for the elevators—

  And couldn’t wait for one to arrive, so made for the stairs.

  Panting, he reached his own floor, and the door of the apartment was locked against him, and he hammered and banged and pounded on it and there was another explosion outside that shook down dust from a crack in the ceiling he didn’t recall seeing before.

  Inside the apartment, the sound of movement He shouted.

  Locks being unfastened. The clink of the security chain.

  And there was Denise weeping.

  “Oh, honey!” He swept her into his arms, frantic, and felt her shake and shake. “Honey, it’s all right now! I’m here, and ...”

  And I left my gun in the car, and I left the car door open and the engine running. Christ, am I crazy too? Has the whole fucking world taken leave of its senses in an hour?

  “It’s not all right,” Denise said. Her tears had ceased, and her voice had the chill of marble. She shut the door and turned to face him. “I can’t contact the police.”

  “Honey—”

  “It’s not all right. It’s Josie.”

  There was an instant of utter silence. Nothing happened. Inside, outside the building—anywhere, to the ends of the universe.

  “I thought she was just asleep. But Harold killed her.”

  THE REFERRED PAIN

  ... burning out of control. As darkness falls, Denver from the air looks like the pit of a volcano. Gas stations, stores and private homes are going up in smoke. All the time, mingled with the roar of flames, one hears the crackle of shots. Sometimes that’s the police fighting a desperate rearguard action against the populace of a city which seems to have turned against them in the blink of an eye. Sometimes it’s the Army and National Guard reinforcements which are trying to restore order in the surrounding suburbs. Already two thousand men destined for Honduras have been reassigned and parachuted into the area with full battle equipment. For this is no ordinary riot.

  And the lava of this volcano—well, it’s people. Tens of thousands of them, old and young, black and white, overflowing into the surrounding country. All major highways serving the city are blocked by colossal jams, involving an estimated eighteen thousand cars. Some collided, some broke down, the drivers of others were killed by snipers ... but the reasons don’t matter, only the outcome. Abandoning their cars, often within a block or two of home, the population is on the move, carrying what they can, leaving what they can’t to the flames. Observers are comparing this to the aftermath of war to give an idea of the scale of it, but that doesn’t tell you much. The catastrophe has struck from nowhere, and no one knows what the hell is going on ...

  OUT OF HAND

  President: But we need those men! The Tupas are within mortar range of San Pedro Sula!

  State: Let the spics do their own dirty work for a change. This isn’t just a riot—this is civil war.

  Defense: I’m afraid that’s broadly true, Mr. President This is not a subversive uprising, though. It’s more like what you’d expect if someone were to

  PORTION OF TRANSCRIPT OMITTED AVAILABLE ONLY TO PERSONNEL WITH TRIPLE-A-STAR SECURITY CLEARANCE

  so of course the antidote was never stockpiled. We must try and obtain supplies from a pharmaceutical company at once. In the meantime—well.

  Intelligence: In the meantime, there’s only one thing to do. Put the area under martial law, the whole state if need be, and cordon it with troops under orders to shoot to kill if anyone refuses to obey them.

  Justice: Yes, there’s no alternative, sir. This country is simply not equipped to cope with four hundred thousand lunatics.

  OCTOBER

  THE TICK-TOCK MEN

  Fernando: ... Why, he does,

  Nor will contented rest until the world,

  The whole great globe and orb by land and sea,

  Ticks to his pleasure like a parish clock.

  You are a cogwheel, Juan, as am I:

  He’s shaped us round, and prettied us with jags,

  And gilded us with gold—
>
  Juan: Add: gelded us!

  Fernando: Aye, so he has, my brother. And ’tis all

  Part of his clockwork. See you, he’s the weight;

  We follow from him in an engined train;

  Ducats are oil to make our axles turn

  Without a squeak.

  Juan: I’ll squeak, i’faith! I’ll rant

  And call down hurricanoes on his head,

  I’ll conjure earthquakes to beset his path!

  Fernando: You’ve no escapement, Juan. You’re enchained.

  At your vain wrath he will politely nod

  And say you have come forth to strike the hour,

  He’s ’bliged to you ...

  —“The Tragedy of Ercole,” 1625

  STATEMENT OF EMERGENCY

  “Thank you. Friends and fellow Americans, no president of the United States has ever had a more melancholy task than I have at this moment. It is my sad duty to inform you that our country is in a state of war. A war that is none of our choosing. And, moreover, not a war with bombs and tanks and missiles, not a war that is fought by soldiers gallant on the field of battle, sailors daring the hostile sea, airmen streaking valiant through the skies—but a war that must be fought by you, the people of the United States.

  “We have been attacked with the most cowardly, the most monstrous, the most evil weapons ever devised by wicked men. We are the victims of a combined chemical and biological attack. You are all aware that our crops have failed disastrously last summer. We, the members of my cabinet and I, delayed announcing the truth behind that story in the vain hope that we might contain the threat of the jigras. We can no longer do so. It is known that they were deliberately introduced into this country. They are the same pest which ruined the entire agriculture of Central America and led to the sad and unwished-for conflict in Honduras.