Some Will Not Die

by Algis Budrys

  “Follow a corpse?”

  “Follow a name—a legend. A legend of a time when there was civilization in the world.”

  “Do you really believe that, Henley?”

  “Of course!”

  “Oh, you believe that it’ll work—you can see how a crowd would fall into line, believing it. But you realize, don’t you, that if Berendtsen were to take over Chicago, the first thing he would do is order you and your gang hung.”

  Henley gave it one more try. “Would he? If we were the ones who gave him the opportunity to come back and finish what he’d begun?”

  “I don’t think Ted Berendtsen would have shown that kind of suicidal gratitude. No.”

  “Then you won’t do it?”

  “I’m not Berendtsen.”

  “Then, who is? Do you know where he is?”

  “Berendtsen’s been dead thirty years,” the old man said. “What in heaven’s name did you expect? If he was alive—and he’s not—he’d be sixty years old now. A man that age, in this world—your whole scheme’s fantastic, Major, and rational men would know it. But you can’t let yourselves think rationally about it. You need your Berendtsens too badly.”

  “Then that’s your final word?”

  “I want to ask Custis something, first. You stay and listen. It’ll interest you.”

  Custis frowned.

  “Custis?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Do you think I’m Berendtsen?”

  “You asked me that. No.”

  “You don’t. Well, do you think Berendtsen’s alive?”

  “No.”

  “I see. You don’t think I’m Berendtsen, and you don’t think Berendtsen’s alive—then, what’re you doing up here in these mountains? What were you hoping to find?”

  Custis felt himself getting angry. He felt he was being chivvied into a corner. “Nothing, maybe. Maybe I’m just a guy doing a job, because he has to. Not looking for anything or anybody—just doing a job.”

  The commander laughed mirthlessly. The sound stabbed at Custis out of the growing darkness in the cabin. “It’s time we stopped lying to each other, Joe. You put your car—your entire life—in a position where you might lose them instantly. You know it and I know it, and let’s not argue the merits of dust grenades against napalm shells. Why did you take that kind of gamble? Why were you dangling that bait? Who were you hoping might snap at it?”

  “It was a quick way of finding out what Henley wanted to know.”

  “And how did you propose to get out, once you’d gotten yourself in? You don’t give two cents paper for Henley. You’re an independent armored-car commander on a simple contract job; why all the extra effort? You must have known damned well this mission wasn’t in the interests of the Seventh Republic You’re a child of the age. If you’d let yourself stop and think, you would have realized what was going on. But you don’t care anything about the Eighth Republic, either. A man doesn’t pledge allegiance to one of a meaningless string of numbers. No. What you wanted to do was to pledge allegiance to a man who’s thirty years dead. Now deny it.”

  Custis didn’t have an answer. It was dark outside. He’d played out his string, with the commander and with himself.

  “You want me to tell you I’m Berendtsen, don’t you?”

  “Maybe,” Custis said grudgingly.

  The commander laughed again—a harsh, bitter croak of sound that made the hackles stand on Custis’s neck. Henley was breathing heavily in the darkness.

  “You and Henley—both damned fools. What would you do with your Berendtsen, Joe? Starve with him, up here in these mountains with an old man? If you found him, did you expect him to go and remake the world for you? He tried that, once. And maybe he succeeded, if men can still hope because he lived.

  “But what could he do now, an old man? His sort of life is a young man’s game—if it’s anyone’s.

  “You, Joe—you’re a different breed from this jackal beside you. What do you think Berendtsen started with? What’s the matter with you, Custis? You’ve got a car, and a crew that’ll follow you anywhere. What do you need some ready-made hero for?”

  Custis had no answer at all.

  “Don’t worry, Joe—Henley’s getting an earful. I can hear the gears turning in his head. Right now, he’s planning how to use you. He can see it already. The Chicago machine swinging in behind you. The carefully built-up legend they’ll manufacture around you. The indomitable strong American from the plains. All you’ll have to do is stand up on a platform and shout, and his gang will take care of the rest. That’s what he’s thinking. But you don’t have to worry about him. You can take care of him. It’ll be a long time before anyone like you has to worry about anyone like Henley —years. And I can sit here and tell you this, and the likes of Henley’ll still not worry, because they think they can always run things. Of course, in order to safeguard the legend of Joe Custis, he has to make sure, once and for all, that Berendtsen won’t return—”

  Custis heard the sound of steel snaking out of Henley’s boot-top. He jumped for where the man had been, but Henley’d had minutes to get ready. Custis heard him bump into the desk, and the thin scream of his blade through the air.

  The old man’ll have moved, Custis thought. He’d had time. He heard the ripe sound of Henley’s dagger, and then the dull chunk! as its hilt stopped against flesh. He heard the old commander sigh.

  He stood still, breathing open-mouthed, until he heard Henley move. He went in low, under where the blade might be. As Custis hit him, Henley whispered: “Don’t be a fool Don’t make any noise! With any luck, we can walk out of here!”

  He broke Henley apart with his hands, making no noise and permitting none from Henley. He let the officer slip to the floor and went silently around the table, to where he felt the old man folded over. He touched his shoulder. “Commander—”

  “It’s all right,” the old man sighed. “I’ve been waiting for it.” He stirred. “I’ve left things in a terrible mess. He was quicker to make up his mind than I had expected.” He hunched himself up, his cracked fingernails scraping at his shirt. “I don’t know now…you’ll have to get out without me, somehow. I can’t help you. Why am I so old?”

  “It’s O.K., Commander. I’ve had somethin’ figured out. I’ll make it.”

  “You’ll need a weapon.” The commander raised his head and pulled his shoulders back. “Here.” He tugged at his chest and fumbled the wet knife into Custis’s hand.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Here is New York City, quite a few years earlier, and this is what happened:

  I

  Bob Garvin watched the Army go, his hands in his pockets, an odd light burning in his eyes. He waited until the last truck had swung off Fourteenth Street and turned toward the Lincoln Tunnel, until the last man had marched out of sight, until the flashes of sun on gun barrels had winked out. Then he stepped back, apologized to a citizen he bumped, and walked over to the group clustered around Brent Mackay.

  “Morning, Mayor,” he said.

  “Ah, good morning, counselor! Out here like all the rest of us, I see.” Mackay was an oddity. He looked as lean and hard as any man, but he was soft at the core—like a bag so full of wind that the cloth stretched drum-tight and strong; but, nevertheless, only full of wind.

  “Have to wave bye-bye to the brave soldier boys, you know,” Bob said.

  One of the Mayor’s retinue—a steely-eyed man named Mert Hollis—laughed metallically. A wave of sly chuckles swept over the group.

  “Well,” Bob Garvin said, “let’s get back to work. There’s still a government in this city, even if the Crown Prince has gone a-hunting again.”

  Mackay nodded hastily. “Of course. You’re quite right, counselor.” He turned to the rest of the members of the City Council and their assistants. “Let’s go, boys! Back to the salt mines. Got to get that sewer project in the works.”

  “Ah—Mayor…” Garvin interceded softly.

  “Yes, counselo
r?”

  “I’d think that could wait a little. Rome wasn’t built in a day, you know. l’d like to get that question of voter eligibility straightened out this morning.”

  “Why, certainly, counselor!” Mackay chuckled easily. “You know, that had slipped my mind. Thanks for reminding me.”

  “You’re welcome, I’m sure.”

  The Army of Unification took Trenton easily. It ran into a very strong defense in Philadelphia, and, for a moment, Berendtsen debated whether it might not have been a better idea to enter southern New Jersey, instead of by-passing it. But a flanking column finally battered its way up from Chester, and the city fell. Camden then fell with it, and the strategy of quick gain was justified. With a strong garrison in the Camden-Philadelphia district, southern New Jersey was bound to be gradually assimilated, with a far lower ratio of losses, and meanwhile weeks of time were gained.

  The Army pushed south.

  [Image]

  Eating slowly, Bob Garvin savored his mother’s cooking. He smiled at her fondly as she spooned another portion of potatoes on his plate. “Thanks, Mom, but I’m just about full.”

  “Don’t you like them?” his mother asked anxiously.

  “No, no, they’re fine, Mom!” he protested. “But there’s only so much room, and I’ll want some of that pumpkin pie.”

  Mary looked at him acidly. “Home life of the public figure,” she said. “Popular candidate for Councilman from the Sixth District enjoys home cooking. Goes home for one of Mom’s pies on night before municipal elections.”

  “Mary!” Margaret Garvin looked at her daughter reproachfully.

  Mary looked down at her plate. “Sorry, Mother.”

  “I can’t understand what’s come over you lately,” Margaret Garvin was saying, her face troubled. “You never used to be this way.”

  Mary shrugged. “Nobody’s the way they used to be.” She toyed with her knife. “But I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”

  Margaret Garvin looked anxiously at her son. Bob was smiling slightly, as he often seemed to be. Apparently, he was impervious to anything his sister might say.

  “Well…” Margaret Garvin began irresolutely. She frowned as she realized she had no idea of what she was going to say next. She’d been this way more and more often, since Matt…

  Matt was gone. There was no sense in hurting herself by thinking about it. He was gone, and she was here. And if she seemed to miss his strength more and more every day—well, everyone grew old, some time or the other.

  “I’m going over to see Carol Berendtsen,” she said at last. “You children can manage your own dessert without any trouble. The poor woman’s worn down to a shadow.”

  She missed Ted. Her boy had been her life, since Gus…

  She would not think of death!

  …Since Carol didn’t have Gus anymore. And no one knew where Ted was, beyond an occasional radio report about this city besieged, that town captured. And more than that. More than that—and the same thing that put the pain in Mary’s eyes. Wife and mother, both wondering what was happening inside the man one had borne and the other married, but neither understood.

  Margaret Garvin stood up. Her own oldest boy, Jim, was with Ted. Perhaps she, too, should be worried. But she never worried about Jim. Jim was like seasoned timber, holding up a building. Nothing could hurt him, nothing could move him. Jim could take care of himself. Never worried? Well, no, not that. She knew that Jim was as weak as any man whom a bullet might strike down. But Jim was not the complex, delicate organism that Ted was, or that Bob was. It was impossible to believe of him, as one could easily believe of the other two, that one slight shock could jar the entire mechanism.

  “Will you be here when I come back, Bob?” she asked.

  Bob shook his head regretfully. “Afraid not, Mom. I need a good night’s sleep before tomorrow. Vote early and often, you know.” He chuckled easily.

  She went over to him and kissed him good night. “Take care of yourself, Bob,” she said gently.

  “Always do, Mom.”

  Bob shot a glance at Mary after his mother had left. Mary Berendtsen was staring distantly at her teacup, her eyes lost.

  “Worried about Ted?” Bob asked softly.

  Mary did not look at him. Her mouth twitched into a thin line.

  “I have no quarrel with you,” he said sincerely.

  “You’ve got one with my husband.”

  Bob shook his head violently. “Not with him. With his ideals. His social theories, if you will.”

  Mary looked up, smiling thinly. “You tell me where the one leaves off and the other begins.”

  Bob shrugged. “That’s what makes it look like I hate him personally. But I don’t! You know that.”

  “You’d have him killed if you could get away with it. If you could have gotten him killed, you’d have done it two years ago, when he came back from the north.”

  Bob nodded. “I’ll admit that. But not because I hate him—or don’t admire him, for that matter. Because he stands for the reigning social theory. A theory that’s going to drive us back to the caves and snipers if it keeps on.”

  “Don’t campaign around me!” Mary snapped. “Don’t fog your pretty speeches at me! What it boils down to is that, despite Mackay, despite Chief of Police Merton Hollis, despite the City Council in your pocket, you know damned well that if Ted comes back to stay you’ll be on the outside in two bounces! And then all the pretty plans and fat jobs won’t be worth this!” She snapped her fingers.

  Bob shook his head. “No, Mary,” he said gently. “You’re mad at me, but you know that’s not true. Mackay’s a tool, true, and not a clean one, either. Neither are the things I’m forced to do. But you know why I want to control the government. And it’s not the fat jobs.”

  Her anger spent, Mary nodded grudgingly. “I know,” she sighed. “You’re sincere enough.” She laughed shortly. “Heaven protect the human race from the sincere idealist”

  “And what’s Ted?”

  Mary winced. “Touche.”

  Bob shook his head. “No, not touche. It’s not a new point. What makes it hurt is that you’ve been driving yourself insane with it all along.”

  This time, Mary’s face went white, and a mask slipped tightly down over her features as she fled into the shelter of herself.

  “Look, Mims, you know what I believe—what I’ve believed ever since I can remember. We were born equal. We were born with a heritage of personal weapons to enforce our equality, and it is the personal weapons, in the hands of free men, which should ensure that each man will not be trespassed against—that no one, ever, will be able to regiment, to demand, to tithe, to take from another man what is rightfully his. If we are each equally armed, what man is better than his neighbors? If we are all armed, who dares to be a thief, whether he steals liberty or possessions?

  “And what is Ted Berendtsen’s belief? That men should band together in a group for the purpose of forcing other men to serve that group. How can I compromise to such a man? How can I sit still and let him enforce his tyranny upon us? How can I let him, or his beliefs, live in the same world with myself and my beliefs?”

  For once, Bob’s cynical self-possession had deserted him. He found himself on his feet, his palms resting on the edge of the table, staring fiercely down at Ted Berendtsen’s wife.

  Mary raised her head, her face blanched completely white.

  “Have you been campaigning on that platform?” she demanded.

  Bob Garvin shook his head. “No. Not yet.”

  * * *

  The Army of Unification took Richmond, Atlanta and Jacksonville. Berendtsen’s men moved south.

  Someone threw a rotten cabbage at Mary Berendtsen in the street.

  Newly-elected City Councilman Robert Garvin sat at one end of the long desk—at the head. Brent Mackay, Mayor of the City of New York, sat at the other end, at the foot.

  Merton Hollis, the police chief, sat next to Bob Garvin.

  �
��All right, then, boys,” Garvin was saying, “in this matter of the upcoming national elections, it breaks down like this. Under the Voters’ Eligibility Statute, any one specific member of the family can cast the vote of an absentee member of the Army of Unification, in addition to his own. Right?”

  The City Council nodded.

  “Okay. Now, technically speaking, that extra vote is to be cast in accordance with the expressed wishes of the absentee.”

  He spreads his hands in a helpless gesture. “But with the Army on the move like it is, with no one knowing for sure exactly what it’s doing…Why, without casualty lists, no one even knows who’s dead and who isn’t.”

  “But Robert, we do know—” Mackay began.

  Garvin stopped him with a patient smile. “Please, Mr. Mayor. We’ve got radio reports, true. But they’re vague, and they’re garbled, and who’s to say Berendtsen isn’t concealing setbacks by ordering his operators to give false locations?”

  He shook his head. “No, we can’t go by hearsay. We’ll simply have to accept those votes as if they’d been directed by the absentees. After all, we can’t prove they aren’t.”

  There was a low chorus of suppressed chuckles of appreciation from the members of the City Council.

  “But suppose those votes aren’t cast?” Mackay protested. “After all, the families know they haven’t been in touch with the men. How can they cast those votes, in all conscience?”

  Garvin looked at him in cold amusement. “Mr. Mayor—have you ever heard of anyone, once he’s ready to vote at all, who wouldn’t vote as hard as he could?”