“We’d better go,” the man said uneasily.
Marc sighed and followed him to the door.
Entering into the center of the stadium, Marc glanced cursorily at the wave upon wave of faces that rippled down the sides of the bleachers. He walked in the center of a group of silent, armed men, the government man at his side. Planes droned overhead, providing a protective barricade, even in the sky. They walked to a platform in the center of the field and mounted it. The government man led him to a seat and then took his place beside him. Marc glanced around.
The platform was fairly bulging with important persons, politically speaking. Every faction and party had apparently done its utmost to get into the act. Most of the men sat in solemn silence, as though in attendance at a funeral.
Marc guessed that this was to impress the gathering public with the immense gravity of the occasion. When a band played the anthem, Marc could barely get to his feet, but he managed it with a great effort.
“This won’t take too long,” the man from the government whispered as they sat down again. “The President was delayed in arriving, so the Chief will say a few words of explanation, and then you step forward and hand him the formula. You can leave after that if you like.”
Marc nodded. It did take too long; the Chief turned out to be a large thick-necked man with a ruddy face and unlimited lung power. He explained about the formula and its power, and assured everyone that it was not in foreign hands and that the two persons who had seen it, besides the inventor, of course, had destroyed themselves in its use. The rest was largely political. Everyone yawned quietly, with the possible exception of the Chief’s wife.
Marc turned his thoughts toward the sky and a cloud that drifted lazily overhead. It was natural enough that his thoughts turned briefly to George, and the fate of that erstwhile haunt. He gazed far into the heavens, though it was difficult to think of George in the upper regions, even though he had been headed in that direction when last seen. Marc could not imagine to what kind of place in the universe George had returned.
FAR BEYOND the cloud that Marc watched, George sat rigidly upright on a hard piece of atmosphere and shifted uneasily. He glanced at the entity next to him and grinned wryly.
“I’m glad I don’t have to go in first,” he said glumly.
“What are you up for?” the other entity asked. “When you get to the supreme Council it must be bad.”
“Disorderly conduct,” George said, “and attempt at falsifying the fate of a mortal down on Earth.”
“That’s bad,” the other said.
“Yeah,” George said, “but what gets me down is how they recalled me. They planned it all without letting me know. I tell you it was a nasty jolt to my nervous system when I found out that damned catapult had been aimed right smack at the chambers of the High Council. They probably will banish me to hard labor on one of the planets. You know, digging out those craters for the mortals to stare at through their silly spy glasses. It was a terrible shock.”
“How was it on earth?” The other shifted eagerly.
“Well...” George answered, and a reminiscent look came into his eyes, “there was this little redhead, see...” He smiled secretly, and gazed off into the distance. “I guess,” he continued, as though to himself, “on the whole, I’d say it was worth it...”
* * * * * “Mr. Pillsworth!”
Marc awoke from his reverie and turned around. The government man had taken hold of his sleeve.
“Now you give him your formula.”
Marc glanced quickly toward the podium where the Chief was staring back at him expectantly. Stiffly, he rose from his chair and moved forward.
The Chief turned back to the audience.
“Ladies and Gentlemen!” he announced dramatically. “The Pillsworth Formula!”
Suddenly the heavens echoed with a cry from several thousand throats that was almost terrifying in its magnitude. Marc reached into his inside coat pocket, felt far the little black book and found it. Quickly he slipped the pen clasp free and withdrew the book. Then, strangely, he hesitated. Suddenly he wondered if this was the right thing to do. At any rate, it was much too late now. The sooner he handed over the formula, the sooner he could leave and start looking for Julie. He drew his hand from inside his coat and held the book out to the Chief.
IT WAS THEN that the whole affair took on a new and more sensational aspect than even the politicians on the platform had dared hope for. The Chief in reaching out for the book, neglected to extend his hand far enough, and Marc, thinking that he had taken hold of it, let go of it. Suddenly the book began to fall. But only for an instant. Describing a small loop in mid air, it only started down, before it shot upward. Before anyone realized, or even believed, for that matter, what was happening, the little book had risen high beyond the Chief’s grasp and gone soaring rapidly toward the heavens. The cry in the thousands of throats became a gasp of horror.
Marc stood dumbly staring at the black dot in the sky, as it grew smaller and smaller, even in the space of a heart beat. He felt awful in the first moment, and then, all at once, he was assailed with a feeling of great relief. Suddenly, he realized that exactly the right thing had happened to the book and the terrible formula. Smilingly, he turned and looked at the disgruntled expressions about him. The Chief was swiftly turning a lovely green color.
At once Marc realized that he had no further business with these people, or they with him. The world had suddenly become a much brighter and simpler place to live in. Without a word, he turned, walked down the steps of the platform and started across the field toward the exit.
It was just as he neared the exit that the first cheer went up in the stands, and before he got to it, the stadium was screaming from end to end. There was no question that the disposal of the formula had been a great relief to everyone. Marc turned, smiled his agreement to the crowd, and disappeared beneath the stands. Just as he started into the shadows, he saw the figure waiting at the outer doorway.
“Julie!” he cried.
She ran toward him, and there were tears in her eyes. Even before she reached him she had begun to talk.
“I was on my way to Reno,” she sobbed. “I felt so awful I didn’t look at the papers or listen to the radio ... and then I saw a newspaper in the dining car ... with your picture on it ... I thought I’d go out of my mind ... I left the train ... but there weren’t any planes because of the weather ... and ... and ... I just got back ...”
Marc just stood staring at her, too happy, too warm inside to speak.
“Please forgive me,” Julie said. “I’ll give up the clubs ... and ... and everything ... You won’t have to spend your time in the basement ... I’ll even forget about the redhead, if you’ll just take me back ... I thought you were dead! ... You will take me back, won’t you? Please Marc!”
Marc nodded dumbly.
“Oh, thank you, darling!” Julie smiled. “Thank you!”
Marc took her in his arms and drew her close to him.
“Oh, hell,” he grinned, “that’s all right. Just call on me any ...”
Then suddenly he stopped. He wondered vaguely if he hadn’t heard someone else say that before...
THE VENGEANCE OF TOFFEE
The world was on the brink of atomic war and nothing, it seemed, could prevent it. But Toffee had a plan—and a little magic to boot!
THE bombs ticked—in remote places behind locked and guarded doors. The bombs ticked, and the terrible sound was distinct in the farthest corners of the world—wherever a man picked up a newspaper, turned on a radio—or paused to listen to the beating of his own heart. A Bomb ... H Bomb ... X Bomb—the bombs ticked Iouder and louder with the growing hours—and each man dwelt alone now with the dark spectre of his own trembling fear ...
“Yesterday we perfected a new kind of totalitarian death ...” (It was difficult to remember the relaxed voice which had once given the announcer his popularity, for now it seemed that his breath passed over taut nerves
rather than vocal cords. But no one noticed; it was only what he said that mattered now, not how he said. Fear fed on fear with an avid, discriminate appetite—and flourished from the diet.)
“Today we can only be certain that the foreign powers will have caught up with us within the next few hours.
“Can you remember the Atomic Age, ladies and gentlemen? How long ago that was! And yet how swiftly we have progressed from that to the Age of Human Terror.
“The X Bomb—the incomprehensible unit of power and destruction which dwarfs the human soul and reduces it to a negligible fraction of quivering fright—just one small fraction contributing to the monstrous organism of terror which has lately become our modern civilization. How wretched we are to be living in a civilization in which the word ‘city’ has been rendered obsolete by the word ‘target.’ The New York Target ... the Chicago Target ... the Salt Lake and San Francisco Targets. How wretched we are.
“And is it strange that these targets which were once cities are being deserted? Is it strange that men have begun to run from the bombs even before they have begun to fall? That is the nature of terror.
“For the first time in its history the nation looks upon a nomadic society—largely that group of the working people who have ceased working to wander aimlessly, seeking safety within our own borders—living by thievery and lawlessness. Crime has increased so rapidly of late that a comparative estimate is impossible. That, too, is the nature of terror.
“Today the government would force these erstwhile workers back to the hearts of the targets—force them by law back to the factories to engage again in the production of death and destruction.
“‘Necessary,’ the statesmen say. ‘Necessary to national safety.’ But with the statesmen’s words comes the obvious question: Is there still any national safety left for any nation? Does it exist anywhere, to be reserved? Haven’t the fleeing nomads asked themselves this question already, turning their frightened eyes to the unprotecting skies?
“But the statesman must speak—and he must speak logic, even now when logic has deserted us, and words can no longer save us. Every man—statesman or otherwise—knows that it is no longer a question of whether the bombs will drop—but when they will drop—and who will drop them—we or they?
“It is true that no nation has declared war, but terror declares its own war. Can we wait another day to take the initiative? Can they? The undeclared enemy may destroy us tomorrow—or tonight—even within the next few minutes. I may not live to finish this broadcast—and you may not live to hear it ...”
SUDDENLY there was a sharp click, and the voice stopped, silenced as effectively as though a wire had been knotted about the speaker’s throat. Mare Pillsworth, startled at the sudden silence, snapped forward in his chair and looked up. Julie, the lamp light slanting sharply across her face, glared down at him with tense irritation. She removed her hand significantly from the radio switch.
“I’m telling you, Marcus Pillsworth,” she said menacingly, “I can’t stand any more of it. If you turn on that bloody instrument again—if you so much as twitch your bony finger in its direction—one of us is going to die of unnatural causes, and you may have read that the female is notoriously more long-lived than the male.”
Marc stared at her incredulously through the chill dimness of the living room. Then he sighed heavily. This also was the nature of human terror; every man was married to a shrew these days. Women simply weren’t up to it.
But Julie had been better than most—until now. He looked at the tightly drawn lips, the circled eyes and tried to remember his wife’s cool blonde beauty as it had been only a month ago. The contrast was disquieting. Well, these were harrowing times for her.
But they were just as harrowing for everyone else—for him. She ought to realize that. Suddenly, unaccountably, Marc felt his self-control slipping away from him with all the sleazy inevitability of a pair of silk shorts with rotten elastic. Suddenly the distorted face across the room was not at all the face of his wife, but the face of a vindictive stranger who had invaded his rights and his privacy with definite malice in mind. Reason left him, and, with a black sucking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he felt the last measure of his reserve trickle down the drain. Gripping the arms of his chair, he jutted his face out into the light and deliberately leered.
“With the world coming down around our ears,” he snarled, “I suppose you expect me to sit here complacently simpering and snickering and snapping my gum like an addled adolescent? Don’t you care that we may all go to blazes in the next few minutes?”
“No!” Julie screamed, fitting a direct answer to a direct question. “No, I don’t care. I’m tired of caring. I’m tired through with caring. And I’m tired of you sitting there with those great elephantine ears of yours hinged to that radio. You’ve been at it day in, day out, day in, day out, day in ... !”
“Stop repeating yourself like some idiot tropical bird,” Marc snapped.
“Why don’t you ever go down to the office any more?” Julie asked with womanly logic. “Why don’t you get out of here and leave me alone?”
IN heavy martyrdom Marc lifted his eyes to the ceiling. What was the use? Why go through it all again? He’d explained to her a million times that he no longer had any reason to go to the office. The advertising business had been one of the first to suffer. Who cared what the advertising industry had to say at a time like this? Who wanted to be beautiful or healthy or envied when there wasn’t any future in it?
“Turn the radio on,” he said steadily.
Julie’s eyes actually sparked flame. “What? Do you really have the grassy green gall to ask me to turn that thing on again? I don’t believe my ears!”
“I’m not asking,” Marc said “I’m instructing you to.”
“Hah!” Julie snorted to some invisible spectator. “Listen to him!” She eyed him nastily. “Ask me to shinny up the doorsill and do a swan dive into my cocktail. I’ll do that sooner.”
“Marc met her gaze for a moment and momentarily declined the challenge. “I suppose you just want to sit here and never know what hit you?”
“Exactly,” Julie said. “For heaven’s sake what does it matter what hits us after we’re dead? At least I don’t want to sit here chewing my nails while some morbid-minded deficient drives me into a state of complete nervous collapse.”
Marc disengaged himself from his chair. She had a point there, though he’d rot before he admitted it. With considerable unconcern he moseyed across the room and glanced out the window. Then he stopped and leaned closer to the pane. Across the street the world was already ablaze. The night sky glowed red with flame.
“My God!” he cried. “The Fredericks are on fire!”
Julie moved to his side and stared out the window.
“Who are those people?” she asked. “The ones sitting on the lawn there?”
Marc directed his gaze to the right. He should have seen them sooner, except that one’s sense of logic, when one is witnessing a fire, does not readily encompass a group of people lounging on blankets in the glowing radiance—especially when those people are concerned more with food, drink and cards than with the fire—and more especially when the owners of the flaming dwelling are prominent among those present ...
“Aren’t those the Fredericks?” Julie asked.
“Do you suppose they’ve noticed the house?” Marc asked. “But I suppose they must.”
“Maybe not,” Julie said, “They’ve been drunk for days. It started out as a house warming party. Do you suppose this is their idea of a joke?”
MARC turned away. “The papers are full of this sort of thing. The anxiety has driven people mad.” Then suddenly he stiffened. “Maybe they’ve heard something! Maybe they’ve decided to burn their home rather than let the enemy do it for them.” He ran to the radio and snapped the switch.
“Beside every man stalks the black shadow of doom ... !” the announcer groaned.
At the window Julie i
nstantly snapped to a position of rigid erectness. With cold fury she turned and regarded Marc’s lank figure bent attentively to the radio speaker. Her eyes rested on her husband’s impassive posterior, and glittering, unbridled madness flickered in their depths.
“When will the attack fall?” the announcer inquired, and Julie answered him without hesitation. “Now, brother,” she murmured. “Right now!”
Unaware of the declaration of hostilities from the rear, Marc hung on the words of the announcer: “We can only brace ourselves and hope ...”
It was a pity he did not have the foresight—or perhaps hindsight—to follow the announcer’s advice. In the next moment Julie’s foot, propelled so as to accomplish the same work as an iron sledge, completed an arc that terminated in what might crudely be called a bull’s eye.
With a scream of mortal agony, Marc started forward, and jutted his head forthwith into the speaker of the radio. There was a dreadful splintering sound, and then with a squeal, not unlike Marc’s, the announcer fell silent.
Marc was unaware of this latter development; both his soul and body were too consumed with throbbing pain to be concerned any longer with such trivialities as the X Bomb and the demise of the world. The world could go to hell in beach sandals and it would be as nothing to the awful thing which had befallen him. Thrusting his hands forcibly to the seat of his anguish, he dislodged his head from the radio and regarded Julie from a crouching position. Clutching himself in a most unmindful way he stared up at his mate with almost animal loathing.
“What a rotten thing to do!” he rasped. “And what a fiendish place to do it! You ... you’re ... you’re inhuman!”
Julie laughed evilly. “I warned you, you reptile! I told you I couldn’t stand any more!”
The Complete Adventures of Toffee Page 52
