Not This August

by C. M. Kornbluth

  Justin didn’t know where Mr. Sparhawk was except that he was in some place exactly like this, or what he was doing except that it was exactly what Justin was doing: hanging on.

  A sacrament, Mr. Sparhawk called it, innocently blasphemous.

  “Is the prisoner aware that to absent oneself from one’s assigned agricultural holdings is sabotage of food production?”

  “Spreading the Word of God comes first, Lieutenant Sokoloff. Under the guarantees of religious freedom of the North American People’s Democratic Republic no functionary is empowered to interfere with the private or public worship of a religious body.”

  The passion for legality cut both ways.

  “The prisoner is not a religious body!”

  “I consider myself the disciple of Mr. Sparhawk, Lieutenant Sokoloff, and I consider Mr. Sparhawk a lay preacher.”

  “What is the name of your religion?”

  “It has no name. It incorporates what Mr. Sparhawk finds inspired in all religions.”

  “There are no such religions. The prisoner is a poseur. Is the prisoner aware that he has been denounced as a counter-revolutionary wrecker by a loyal adherent of the N.A.P.D.R., to whom he made inflammatory and seditious speeches?”

  “If you please, Lieutenant, I made no speeches to the lady you mean. I would have spoken to her about God—but I never got the chance.”

  Sokoloff’s face, dim on the fringes of the dazzling interrogation light, wrinkled into a brief grin. He knew the lady, then.

  And so it went for six hours, the two of them pounding each other with stuffed clubs labeled respectively SABOTAGE and FREEDOM OF WORSHIP.

  Justin shifted on the bunk, acutely uncomfortable. That was supposed to be Lieutenant Sokoloff’s margin of victory. The lieutenant would rest well, he would rest not at all. The next session he would swing his padded club with less vigor while Sokoloff’s blows would be as strong as ever. At last, after a week or so of interrupted sleep, scanty meals, inflamed eyelids, and backache, Lieutenant Sokoloff would be flailing away as hard as ever and he would sit apathetically, without the strength or spirit to strike a blow. He would sign anything, admit anything, to sleep on a cement floor instead of the steel-pipe bunk.

  In theory.

  He tried one of Mr. Sparhawk’s heathen tricks which had served him on rainy nights before. He willed his muscles to relax one by one, from his toes up. He sent out his will to gather up his aches into a ball twelve inches in diameter and he floated the ball twelve inches above his forehead, where he could inspect it impersonally. The distractions kept trying to crowd in, but he succeeded in keeping them out by not giving a damn about them. When the ball slowly began to sag down and threatened to re-enter his body, he thought relaxedly that to do so would result in the discovery of the bombardment satellite and that therefore the ball should continue to float. It did, and he slept. Much better than young Lieutenant Sokoloff, who was tossing and turning and worrying about what to do with these lunatics he had been saddled with by that horrible woman.

  The private ceremoniously kicked Mr. Sparhawk in the seat, booting him over the township line. Justin, moving fast, stepped across without assistance. They started down the road.

  Behind them Lieutenant Sokoloff, dark bags under his eyes, yelled: “And don’t you ever come back into this area again, do you hear me?”

  Mr. Sparhawk turned and waved. “Yes, Lieutenant. God bless you.”

  They heard the jeep start up and roar away.

  They had been five days on the Conveyor. They were skin and bones; their backs and buttocks were covered with bruises from all the hours spent rigid on the pipe bunks and hard interrogation light and the lights in their cells. They were filthy; it was part of the system to allow no water for washing and thereby further break down the morale of the prisoner. Mr. Sparhawk’s left thumb and index finger were broken and splinted; a guard, strictly against orders, had whacked him with his night stick. Six of Justin’s molars had been pulled; the unit dentist had examined them, decided fillings were needed, and done considerable drilling before further deciding they could not be saved after all. She had done her work without anesthetic and Lieutenant Sokoloff had stood by to distract the prisoner by chatting about the pleasures of the pretrial cells, which were furnished with regular army cots. These pretrial cells were only for prisoners who had cleared all preliminary hurdles, such as the signing of confessions.

  His jaws ached horribly, he had ridden the Conveyor for five days and they were walking into the town of Washington, Pennsylvania.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  They signed in first thing in the Transients book of the local SMGU. They explained to a puzzled English-speaking sergeant that they were ministers of the gospel and that he might check with his neighboring SMGU, where, through a misunderstanding, they had been detained, interrogated, and cleared. Then—it was about noon—they made their pitch on a busy corner of the main shopping street.

  Mr. Sparhawk lectured on Conscience and Submission; Justin borrowed a hat and passed it. One of the people who dropped in coins was the salesman from Bee-Jay. “Meet me later,” Justin muttered. The man gave him a brief appraising stare and walked away.

  After the lecture they almost quarreled. Justin was for finding a rooming house with a bath and taking a week’s lodgings. Mr. Sparhawk, now that Justin’s irrational desire to see Washington, Pennsylvania, had been gratified, was for a one-day stay mostly devoted to preaching.

  They had dinner in a tavern, Mr. Sparhawk relenting to the point of taking a glass of watery beer and allowing Justin one. But no matter how longingly the disciple eyed the steam table of sausages and roast horse meat, they ate the vegetable plate.

  The dispute was still unresolved when they checked in at a rooming house down near the railroad tracks. Justin’s jaws were aching badly but he didn’t care. The Bee-Jay salesman had passed by the tavern and glanced in while they were eating. The contact had not been broken. Surely they were being followed and marked…

  They bathed in turn, very gratefully, and turned in. Mr. Sparhawk slept on the floor and laughed when Justin offered him the bed. Justin understood the laughter an hour later while he tossed and turned and angrily commanded his muscles to relax. He had made up his mind at last to spread a blanket on the floor and sleep there himself when he heard a scratching on the door.

  The long ordeal was ended.

  He opened up. It was the Bee-Jay salesman, of course, and two other men. They all wore coveralls and carried telephone linemen’s gear in broad leather belts.

  “Come along,” the salesman said softly. “We have a truck. And guns.”

  He assumed they would have guns. “We don’t have to wake up the old man,” he whispered to one of them who was stooping over Mr. Sparhawk.

  “He’s coming,” the man said, and shook him.

  “Friends of mine, Mr. Sparhawk,” Justin whispered. “We’re taking a short trip.”

  “Yeah,” said the salesman. He raised his hand. “No arguments. Explain everything later.”

  “I never argue,” Mr. Sparhawk whispered loftily, and they dressed and went quietly down the stairs, the salesman in front of them and the two strangers behind. The truck was an olive-green A.T. & T. cab-over-engine repair job, the kind of truck that can appear anywhere on the continent without a word of comment or stir of interest as long as there is a telephone within fifty miles. Justin was struck by the brilliant simplicity of the idea. When they were settled in the dark body of the truck with the two strangers, he started to say as much. They told him to be quiet. He didn’t like their manner, but set it down to the strain of a risky mission.

  Mr. Sparhawk settled down on the floor in the padmasana posture while the truck bumped over a lot of railroad tracks and made a lot of left and right turns and a couple of U turns that could only have been meant to confuse their sense of direction. In half an hour the truck stopped definitely, the hand brake rasped along its ratchets, and the motor stopped.

  Th
ey hustled Justin and Mr. Sparhawk out of the truck onto a dimly lit loading deck of concrete. Down a concrete corridor where fork hoists and stacks of pallets stood. Past a thousand stacked new milk cans shining dully. Past crates of pitcher pumps and a thousand cream separators. Into a concrete room where a dozen men awaited them. When the door rolled shut behind them, Justin weakly said, “I’m glad to see you.” But he already knew that it was no joyful reunion but a trial.

  “Now we can talk,” the Bee-Jay salesman said grimly.

  “Yes,” said Justin between his teeth. Then he yelled at them: “Why was Chiunga County deserted?”

  Their faces were shocked. The trapped mouse had turned and bit them on the finger.

  “Not that you give a damn,” Justin said, “but Chiunga happens to be the key to the whole situation, as you’d know if your organization were conducted sensibly. Why haven’t we had any couriers? Why don’t you answer us on the dry wire? Why were we left to rot?”

  “While we’re asking questions, William,” Mr. Sparhawk said mildly, “what on earth are you talking about?”

  They ignored him. The Bee-Jay salesman said slowly: “You might as well know my name, Justin. Sam Lowenthal. I used to be a civilian consultant to the psychological-warfare branch. You don’t have to know who all these people are. It’s enough to say that they constitute a court-martial of the United States Army. You’re on trial for treason. We suspect you of being a stool pigeon, Justin. We thought so when we got a dry-wire message that somebody named Justin had important information for a top contact team. We sent in the team—and never heard from it again.

  “Now we find you here in a fairly important subheadquarters town after a 250-mile journey. People don’t make such journeys nowadays—not unless they’re helped either by us or their friends the Reds. And we know we didn’t help you. And with you is an unexplained person.”

  That was with a jerk of the thumb at Mr. Sparhawk, who had indignantly withdrawn into the padmasana. Justin could see from the shape of his mouth that he was meditating on the syllable “Om.”

  “And once you’re here you brazenly try to make contact with us. Our idea, Justin, is that this is a naïve attempt—motivated by Marxist fanaticism, perhaps—to infiltrate our group and put the finger on us for the Reds. If you have anything to say, speak up—but I suspect you’re going to wind up tonight in the Bee-Jay fertilizer division.”

  The first thing Justin did was take off his shirt. They gasped at the bruises and sores. He told them: “They also drilled my teeth for six hours the other day. Can any of you comfortable masterminds say as much? No, I didn’t break. That’s because I’ve learned a great many things from the eccentric gentleman sitting in the corner there. One of them was patience and another was recklessness. You people could use some of both.

  “I believe you when you tell me the senator and his two friends disappeared after they interviewed me. People are disappearing all the time in this year of grace. I presume they used their razor blades before they were questioned, so my information died with them. Now listen to it this time.

  “Yankee Doodle was a diversionary dummy. The real bombardment satellite, about 99 per cent completed, is under Prospect Hill in Chiunga County in a limestone cavern. It needs electronics men and electronics parts. It needs an ace rocket-interceptor pilot. It needs a bombardier with plenty of VHB time and a background in math. Of course, if you people would rather spend your time holed up comfortably worrying about stool pigeons, that’s your business; I’m not running your campaign for you.”

  Lowenthal was stunned by the outburst. He said shakily: “I used to hear a rumor when I was detached to the AEC—listen, Justin. We’ll quarantine you and pass the matter up higher for a decision as soon as possible—”

  Justin put on his shirt and turned to the door.

  “Justin!” Lowenthal snapped, pulling out a .45 pistol.

  “Yes?” Justin asked mildly.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “Out.”

  “I’ll kill you if you take another step toward the door.”

  “I suppose you will. Why should that stop me? Don’t you realize I was supposed to be shot for walking 250 miles to listen to your drivel about passing it up for a decision? Hell, man, I wasn’t supposed to get past one township line, let alone fifty! I was supposed to be shot for storing that hunk of A-bomb you picked up at my place. I was supposed to be shot for not reporting the top contact crew you sent. I was supposed to be shot for not turning over the bombardment satellite to the Reds as fast as my scared little legs could carry me.

  “Go ahead and shoot, man. But if you don’t, if by some chance I get out of here, I’m going to rustle up some electronics men, some parts, and a crew while you good people are waiting for a decision from higher up. Good-by.”

  He started for the door again. Lowenthal’s pistol slide went back with a click and forward with a thud. “Wait,” the psychologist said when Justin put his hand on the door.

  “What do you want?” Justin demanded.

  “I think,” Lowenthal said slowly, “you may have a valid point. Perhaps we do sometimes display a little less divine madness than we ought to—suppose, Justin, I send you off to Chiunga County in a sealed freight car tomorrow with our Dr. Dace. He’s the head of research and development for Bee-Jay. We can arrange a breakdown from overwork for him.”

  Justin snapped: “Is your Dr. Dace a satellite crew, a team of electronics men, and half a ton of equipment?”

  Dace himself, small, peppery, white-haired, and mean-eyed, got up and snarled, “You arrogant pup, who the hell do you think you are to survey a bombardment satellite? ‘Half a ton of equipment’—do you think that’s the same as half a ton of candy bars? Now sit down and shut up while we plan this thing through.” He suddenly looked conscience-stricken and added lamely: “Er, naturally we all appreciate the, uh, heroism you displayed in making the very arduous trip you did to re-establish contact with us…” He trailed off and sat down.

  The discussion became general and complicated. After a while Lowenthal dismissed four men who seemed to have nothing to contribute on the technical side. Justin suspected they were to have been the firing squad.

  Dace relentlessly probed Justin’s every recollection of the satellite’s appearance and scribbled notes. Lowenthal tsk-tsk’d because Justin had left Gribble on his own.

  “What should I have done?” Justin demanded.

  Lowenthal hesitated. “Maybe parked him in the cave. Or killed him.”

  Justin found himself on his feet raving: “God help the human race if you thugs are its fighters for liberty. If we kill a man like Gribble in the name of security how are we different from the Reds or the Chinese? We don’t even have the excuses they have of ignorance and oppression and hunger. What kind of cowards are you that you’d kill a sick man so you won’t have to worry about betrayal?”

  “Take it easy,” Lowenthal said. “You’ll kill before this is over.” Justin sat down, shaking. He knew he would. He also knew the psychologist was deliberately missing the point.

  A little information about the rebellion as a whole seeped out of the general discussion. Justin could gather that there were many areas which had been quarantined like Chiunga County as too dangerous to work into the scheme. Elsewhere they had the dry wires, postmen, and traveling salesmen for communication. They had seeded professional soldiers across the country—Rawson was Chiunga County’s leader-to-be.

  The situation in the great cities was either they were very strong at a given time or they were wiped out. The cities offered countless hiding places where arms could be stored and food cached and plans made. They offered countless volunteers—among whom were traitors. There were many people in the cities who had responded to the relentless psychological pressure of Red propaganda and thought they were sincere, idealistic Marxists. It was impossible to say without the latest word from the wires whether they had a working organization or a demoralized corporal’s guard
in, for instance, New York. The organization in New York City had collapsed five times and risen six. Thousands had been shot in roundups; there were always thousands more to recruit.

  “We don’t think,” Lowenthal said slowly, “the Reds realize the magnitude of it. They’re hypnotized by their fable of ‘counterrevolutionary wrecking.’ This handicaps them in dealing with the real situation. That’s how the Nazis were handicapped in dealing with underground organizations throughout Europe during World War Two. They were thunderstruck when the French underground recaptured Paris before the Allied troops arrived.”

  “But the Allied troops were on their way,” Justin said pointedly.

  “You’re right. Perhaps I should have cited the uprising of the Warsaw ghetto, where the remnants of the original population organized and supplied an army that held the Nazis at bay for ten days. I had uncles and cousins in Warsaw; I’ve often wondered since I got into this thing whether they fought in the uprising or whether they were shipped to an extermination camp before it happened.”