(I have,) she implied. (But I feel more at home here, and it’s just as good a place to do some of my work. Who’ve you got on my old job, by the way?)
(Billy Saunders—ten years of age, but a sharp kid. Maybe we should get a moron, though. The physical strain may be too much for a child.)
(I doubt it. There isn’t much to do now, really. You boys co-operate pretty smoothly since the change—unlike the rest of the world!)
“I don’t know if it’s safe for you to come so far from where you live.” Corinth shifted awkwardly on his feet “Look, let me take you home.”
“Not necessary.” She spoke with a certain bite in her tones, and Corinth realized dully that she loved him.
And all our feelings have intensified. I never knew before how much of man’s emotional life is bound up with his brain, how much more keenly he feels than any other animal.
“Sit down,” she invited, leaning back in her seat. “Rest for a minute.”
He smiled wearily, lowering himself into a chair. “Wish we had some beer,” he murmured. (It’d be like the old days.)
“The old days—the lost innocence. We’ll always regret them, won’t we? We’ll always look back on our blindness with a wistful longing that the new generation simply won’t understand.” She beat a clenched fist against the desk top, very softly. The light gleamed gold in her hair.
“How’s your work coming along?” she asked after a moment. The silence hummed around them.
“Good enough. I’ve been in touch with Rhayader in England, over the short wave. They’re having a tough time, but keeping alive. Some of their biochemists are working on yeasts, getting good results. By the end of the year they hope to be able to feed themselves adequately, if not very palatably as yet—food synthesis plants being built. He gave me some information that just about clinched the theory of the inhibitor field—how it’s created. I’ve got Johansson and Grunewald at work on an apparatus to generate a similar field on a small scale; if they succeed, we’ll know that our hypothesis is probably right. Then Nat can use the apparatus to study biological effects in detail. As for me, I’m going into the development of Rhayader’s general relativity-cum-quantum mechanics—applying a new variation of communications theory, of all things, to help me out.”
“What’s your purpose, other than curiosity?”
“Quite practical, I assure you. We may find a way to generate atomic energy from any material whatsoever, by direct nucleonic disintegration: no more fuel problems. We may even find a way to travel faster than light. The stars— well—”
“New worlds. Or we might return to the inhibitor field, out in space—why not? Go back to being stupid. Maybe we’ll be happier that way. No, no, I realize you can’t go home again.” Helga opened a drawer and took out a crumpled packet. “Smoke?”
“Angel! How on earth did you manage that?”
“I have my ways.” She struck a match for him and lit her own cigarette with it. “Efficient—yeah.”
They smoked in silence for a while, but the knowledge of each other’s thoughts was like a pale flickering between them.
“You’d better let me see you home,” said Corinth. “It’s not safe out there. The prophet’s mobs—”
“All right,” she said. “Though I’ve got a car and you haven’t.”
“It’s only a few blocks from your place to mine, in a safe district.”
Since it was not possible as yet to patrol the entire sprawling city, the government had concentrated on certain key streets and areas.
Corinth took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. “I don’t really understand it,” he said. “Human relationships were never my long suit, and even now I can’t quite—Well, why should this sudden upsurge of intelligence throw so many back to the animal stage? Why can’t they see—?”
“They don’t want to.” Helga drew hard on her cigarette. “Quite apart from those who’ve gone insane, and they’re an important factor, there remains the necessity of not only having something to think with, but something to think about. You’ve taken millions—hundreds of millions—of people who’ve never had an original thought in their lives and suddenly thrown their brains into high gear. They start thinking—but what basis have they got? They still retain the old superstitions, prejudices, hates and fears and greeds, and most of their new mental energy goes to elaborate rationalization of these. Then someone like this Third Ba’al comes along and offers an anodyne to frightened and confused people; he tells them it’s all right to throw off this terrible burden of thought and forget themselves in an emotional orgy. It won’t last, Pete, but the transition is tough.”
“Yeah—hm—I had to get an I.Q. of 500 or so—whatever that means—to appreciate how little brains count for, after all. Nice thought.” Corinth grimaced and stubbed out his cigarette.
Helga shuffled her papers together and put them in a drawer. “Shall we go?”
“Might as well. It’s close to midnight. Sheila’ll be worried, I’m afraid.”
They walked out through the deserted lobby, past the guards and into the street. A solitary lamp cast a dull puddle of luminance on Helga’s car. She took the wheel and they purred quietly down an avenue of night.
“I wish—” Her voice out of darkness was thin. “I wish I were out of this. Off in the mountains somewhere.”
He nodded, suddenly sick with his own need for open sky and the clean light of stars.
The mob was on them so fast that they had no time to escape. One moment they were driving down an empty way between blind walls, the next instant the ground seemed to vomit men. They came pouring from the side streets, quiet save for a murmur of voices and the shuffling of a thousand feet, and the few lamps gleamed off their eyes and teeth. Helga braked to a squealing halt as the surge went in front of them, cutting them off.
“Kill the scientists!” It hung like a riven cloud for a moment, one quavering scream which became a deep chanting. The living stream flowed around the car, veiled in shadow, and Corinth heard their breathing hot and hoarse in his ears.
Break their bones and burn their homes,
take their wimmin, the sons of sin,
wallow hollow an’ open the door,
open an’ let the Third Ba’al in!
A sheet of fire ran up behind the tall buildings, something was in flames. The light was like blood on the dripping head which someone lifted on a pole.
They must have broken the line of the patrols, thought Corinth wildly, they must have smashed into this guarded region and meant to lay it waste before reinforcements came.
A face dirty and bearded and stinking shoved in through the driver’s window. “Uh woman! He got uh woman here!”
Corinth took the pistol from his coat pocket and fired. Briefly, he was aware of its kick and bark, the stinging of powder grains in his skin. The face hung there for an eternal time, dissolved into blood and smashed bone. Slowly it sagged, and the crowd screamed. The car rocked under their thrusts.
Corinth braced himself, shoving at his own door, jamming it open against the milling press of bodies. Someone clawed at his feet as he scrambled up on the hood. He kicked, feeling his shoe jar against teeth, and stood up. The firelight blazed in his face. He had taken off his glasses, without stopping to think why it was unsafe to be seen wearing them, and the fire and the crowd and the buildings were a shifting blur.
“Now hear me!” he shouted. “Hear me, people of Ba’al!”
A bullet whanged past him, he felt its hornet buzz, but there was no time to be afraid. “Hear the word of the Third Ba’al!”
“Let ’im talk!” It was a bawling somewhere out in that flowing, mumbling, unhuman river of shadows. “Hear his word.”
“Lightning and thunder and rain of bombs!” yelled Corinth. “Eat, drink, and be merry, for the end of the world is at hand! Can’t you hear the planet cracking under your feet? The scientists have fired the big atomic bomb. We’re on our way to kill them before the world breaks open like rotten f
ruit. Are you with us?”
They halted, muttering, shuffling their feet, uncertain of what they had found. Corinth went on, raving, hardly aware of what he was saying. “—kill and loot and steal the women! Break open the bottle shops! Fire, clean fire, let it burn the scientists who fired the big atomic bomb. This way, brothers! I know where they’re hiding. Follow me!”
“Kill them!” The cheering grew, huge and obscene between the cliff walls of Manhattan. The head on the pole bobbed insanely, and firelight wavered off its teeth.
“Down there!” Corinth danced on the hood, gesturing toward Brooklyn. “They’re hiding there, people of Ba’al. I saw the big atomic bomb myself, with my own eyes I saw it, and I knew the end of the world was at hand. The Third Ba’al himself sent me to guide you. May his lightnings strike me dead if that ain’t the truth!”
Helga blew her horn, an enormous echoing clamor that seemed to drive them into frenzy. Someone began capering, goatlike, and the others joined him, and the mob snake-danced down the street.
Corinth climbed to the ground, shaking uncontrollably. “Follow ’em,” he gasped. “They’ll get suspicious if we don’t follow ’em.”
“Sure thing, Pete.” Helga helped him inside and trailed the throng. Her headlights glared off their backs. Now and then she blew the horn to urge them on.
There was a whirring high in heaven. Corinth’s breath whistled between his teeth. “Let’s go,” he mumbled.
Helga nodded, made a U-turn, and shot back down the avenue. Behind them, the mob scattered as police helicopters sprayed them with tear gas.
After a silent while, Helga halted before Corinth’s place. “Here we are,” she said.
“But I was going to see you home,” he said feebly.
“You did. Also you stopped those creatures from doing a lot of harm, to the district as well as us.” The vague light glimmered off her smile, it was shaky and tears lay in her eyes. “That was wonderful, Pete. I didn’t know you could do it.”
“Neither did I,” he said huskily.
“Maybe you missed your calling. More money in revivals, I’m told. Well—” She sat for a moment, then: “Well, good night.”
“Good night,” he said.
She leaned forward, lips parted as if she were about to say something more. Then she clamped them shut, shook her head. The slamming of the door was loud and empty as she drove off.
Corinth stood looking after the car till it was out of sight. Then he turned slowly and entered his building.
CHAPTER 8
SUPPLIES were running low—food for himself, feed and salt for the animals left to him. There was no electricity, and he didn’t like to use fuel in the gasoline lamp he had found. Brock decided that he would have to go to town.
“Stay here, Joe,” he said. “I ought to be back soon.”
The dog nodded, an uncannily human gesture. He was picking up English fast; Brock had a habit of talking to him and had lately begun a deliberate program of education. “Keep an eye on things, Joe,” he said, looking uneasily to the edge of the woods.
He filled the tank of a battered green pickup from the estate’s big drums, got in, and went down the driveway. It was a cool, hazy morning, the smell of rain was in the air and the horizon lay blurred. As he rattled down the county road, he thought that the countryside was utterly deserted. What was it—two months—since the change? Maybe there wouldn’t be anyone in town at all.
Turning off on the paved state highway, he pushed the accelerator till the motor roared. He wasn’t eager to visit normal humanity, and wanted to get it over with. His time alone had been peaceful—plenty of hard work, yes, to keep him busy; but when he wasn’t too occupied or tired he was reading and thinking, exploring the possibilities of a mind which by now, he supposed, was that of a high-order genius by pre-change standards. He had settled down phlegmatically to an anchorite’s life—there were worse fates—and didn’t relish meeting the world again.
He had gone over to Martinson’s, the neighbor’s, a few days ago, but no one had been there, the place was boarded up and empty. It had given him such an eerie feeling that he hadn’t tried anyone else.
A few outlying houses slid past, and then he was over the viaduct and into the town. There was no one in sight, but the houses looked occupied. The shops, though—most of them were closed, blind windows looked at him and he shivered.
He parked outside the A & P supermarket. It didn’t look much like a store. The goods were there, but no price tags were shown and the man behind the counter did not have the air of a clerk. He was just sitting there, sitting and—thinking?
Brock went over to him, his feet curiously loud on the floor. “Uh—excuse me,” he began, very softly.
The man looked up. Recognition flickered in his eyes and a brief smile crossed his face. “Oh, hello, Archie,” he said, speaking with elaborate slowness. “How are you?”
“All right, thanks.” Brock looked down at his shoes, unable to meet the quiet eyes. “I, well, I came to buy some stuff.”
“Oh?” There was a coolness in the tone. “I’m sorry, but we aren’t running things on a money basis any more.”
“Well, I—” Brock squared his shoulders and forced himself to look up. “Yeah, I can see that, I guess. The national government’s broken down, ain’t—hasn’t it?”
“Not exactly. It has just stopped mattering, that is all.” The man shook his head. “We had our troubles here at the beginning, but we reorganized on a rational basis. Now things are going pretty smoothly. We still lack items we could get from outside, but we can keep going indefinitely as we are, if necessary.”
“A—socialist economy?”
“Well, Archie,” said the man, “that’s hardly the right label for it, since socialism was still founded on the idea of property. But what does ownership of a thing actually mean? It means only that you may do just what you choose with the thing. By that definition, there was very little complete ownership anywhere in the world. It was more a question of symbolism. A man said to himself, ‘This is my home, my land,’ and got a feeling of strength and security; because the ‘my’ was a symbol for that state of being, and he reacted to the symbol. Now—well—we have seen through that bit of self-deception. It served its purpose before, it made for self-respect and emotional balance, but we don’t need it anymore. There’s no longer any reason for binding oneself to a particular bit of soil when the economic function it served can be carried out more efficiently in other ways. So most of the farmers hereabouts have moved into town, taking over houses which were deserted by those who chose to move away from the neighborhood altogether.”
“And you work the land in common?”
“Hardly the correct way to phrase it. Some of the mechanically minded have been devising machines to do most of this for us. It’s amazing what can be done with a tractor engine and some junk yard scrap if you have the brains to put it together in the right way.
“We’ve found our level, for the time being at least. Those who didn’t like it have gone, for the most part, and the rest are busy evolving new social reforms to match our new personalities. It’s a pretty well-balanced setup here.”
“But what do you do?”
“I’m afraid,” said the man gently, “that I couldn’t explain it to you.”
Brock looked away again. “Well,” he said finally, his voice oddly husky, “I’m all alone on the Rossman place and running short on supplies. Also, I’m gonna need help with the harvest and so on. How about it?”
“If you wish to enter our society, I’m sure a place can be found.”
“No—I just want—”
“I would strongly advise you to throw in with us, Archie. You’ll need the backing of a community. It isn’t safe out there any more. There was a circus near here, about the time of the change, and the wild animals escaped and several of them are still running loose.”
Brock felt a coldness within himself. “That must have been—exciting,” he said slowly.
“It was.” The man smiled thinly. “We didn’t know at first, you see; we had too much of our own to worry about, and it didn’t occur to us till too late that the animals were changing too. One of them must have nosed open his own cage and let out the others to cover his escape. There was a tiger hanging around town for weeks, it took a couple of children and we never did hunt it down—it just was gone one day. Where? What about the elephants and—No, you aren’t safe alone, Archie.” He paused. “And then there’s the sheer physical labor. You’d better take a place in our community.”
“Place, hell!” There was a sudden anger in him, bleak and bitter. “All I want is a little help. You can take a share of the crop to pay for it. Wouldn’t be any trouble to you if you have these fancy new machines.”
“You can ask the others,” said the man. “I’m not really in charge. The final decision would rest with the Council and the Societist. But I’m afraid it would be all or nothing for you, Archie. We won’t bother you if you don’t want us to, but you can’t expect us to give you charity either. That’s another outmoded symbol. If you want to fit yourself into the total economy—it’s not tyrannical by any means, it’s freer than any other the world has ever seen—we’ll make a function for you.”
“In short,” said Brock thickly, “I can be a domestic animal and do what chores I’m given, or a wild one and ignored. For my sake—huh!” He turned on his heel. “Take it and stick it.”
He was trembling as he walked out and got back into the truck. The worst of it, he thought savagely, the worst of it was that they were right. He couldn’t long endure a half-in-half-out pariah status. It had been all right once, being feeble-minded; he didn’t know enough then to realize what it meant. Now he did, and the dependent life would break him.
The gears screamed as he started. He’d make out without their help, damn if he wouldn’t. If he couldn’t be a half-tamed beggar, and wouldn’t be a house pet, all right, he’d be a wild animal.
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