Some Will Not Die

by Algis Budrys

  Something that was half reflex twisted Cot’s mouth at the mention of the AU, but he kept silent.

  “How else was Ted going to get a central government started among a bunch of forted-up farmers and lone-wolf nomads? Beat ’em individually at checkers? We needed a government—and fast, before we ran out of cartridges for the guns and went back to spears and arrows.”

  “They didn’t have to do it the way they did it,” Cot said bitterly.

  Mr. Holland sighed. “Devil they didn’t. And, besides, how do you know exactly how it was done? Were you there?”

  “My mother and father were. My mother remembers very well,” Cot shot back.

  “Yeah,” Mr. Holland said dryly. “Your father was there. And your mother was always good at remembering. Does she remember how your father came to be here in the first place?”

  Cot frowned for a moment at the obscure reference to his father. “She remembers. She also remembers my uncle’s leading the group that wiped out her family.”

  Holland smiled cryptically. “Funny, the way things change in people’s memories,” he murmured. He went on more loudly. “The way I heard it, her folks were from Pennsylvania. What were they doing, holding down Jersey land?” He leaned forward. “Look, son, it wasn’t anybody’s land. Her folks could have kept it, if they hadn’t been too scared to believe us when we told them all we wanted was for them to join the Republic. And anyway, none of that kept her from marrying Bob.”

  Cot took a deep breath. “My father, sir, never fought under Berendtsen. His Integrity did not permit him to take other people’s orders, or do their butchery.”

  “Ahuh,” Mr. Holland said. “Your father got to be awful good with that carbine. He had to,” he added in a lower voice. “And I guess he had to rationalize it somehow.

  “Your father built up this household defense system,” he said more clearly. “I guess he figured that an armored bunker was the thing to protect his property the same way his carbine protected him.

  “Which wasn’t a bad idea. Berendtsen unified this country, but he didn’t exactly clean it up. That was more than they gave him time for.”

  Holland stopped and drained his mug. He put it down and wiped his mouth. “But, boy, don’t you think those days are kind of over? Don’t you think it’s time we came out of those hedgehog houses, and out of this hedgehog Integrity business?”

  Mr. Holland put his palms on the table and held Cot’s eyes with his own. “Don’t you think it’s time we finished the unifying job, and got us a community where a boy can walk up to his neighbor’s house in broad daylight, knock on the door, and say hello to a girl if he wants to?”

  Cot had been listening with his emotions so tangled that none of them could have been unraveled and classified. But now, Holland’s last words reached him, and once again, the thought of what had happened the previous night was laid bare, and all his disgust for himself with it.

  “I’m sorry, sir,” he said stiffly. “But I’m afraid we have differing views on the subject. A man’s home is his defense, and his Integrity and that of his family are what keep that defense strong and inviolate. Perhaps other parts of the Republic are not founded on that principle, as I’ve heard lately, but here the code by which we live is one which evolved for the fulfillment of those vital requisites to freedom. If we abandon them, we go back to the Dirty Years.

  “And I am afraid, sir,” he finished with a remembrance of the outrage he had felt the previous night, “that despite your questionable efforts, I shall still marry your daughter honorably, or not at all.”

  Holland shook his head and smiled to himself, and Cot realized how foolish that last sentence had sounded. Nevertheless, while he could not help his impulses, he was perfectly aware of the difference between right and wrong.

  Holland stood up. “All right, boy. You stick to your system. Only—it doesn’t seem to work too well for you, does it?”

  And, once again, Mr. Holland turned around and walked away, leaving Cot with nothing to say or do, and with no foundation for assurance. It was as though Cot grappled with a vague nightmare; a dark and terrible shape that presented no straightforward facet to be attacked, but which put out tentacles and pseudopods until he was completely enmeshed in it—only to fade away and leave him with his clawing arms hooked around nothing.

  It was worse than any anger or insult could have been.

  His footsteps were unsteady as he crossed the club floor. The rum he had drunk, combined with a sleepless night, had settled into a weight at the base of his skull. He was about to open the door when Charles Kittredge laid a hand on his arm.

  Cot turned.

  “How do you do, Cottrell,” Kittredge said.

  Cot nodded. Charles was his neighbor on the side away from Mr. Holland. “How do you do.”

  “You look a little tired,” Charles remarked.

  “I am, Charles.” He grinned back in answer to his neighbor’s smile.

  “Shouldn’t wonder—holding a drill at 0800.”

  Cot shrugged. “Have to keep the defenses in shape, you know.”

  Kittredge laughed. “Why, for God’s sake? Or were you just rehearsing for the Fourth?”

  Cot frowned. “Why—no, of course not. I’ve heard you holding Drill, often enough.”

  His neighbor nodded. “Sure—whenever one of the kids has a birthday. But you don’t really mean you were holding a genuine dead-serious affair?”

  Cot was having trouble maintaining his concentration. He squinted and shook his head slightly. “What’s the matter with that?”

  Kittredge’s voice and manner became more serious. “Oh, now look, Cot, there’s been nothing to defend against in fifteen years. Matter of fact, I’m thinking of dismounting my artillery and selling it to the Militia. They’re offering a fair price”

  Cot looked at him uncomprehendingly. “You can’t be serious?”

  Kittredge returned the look. “Sure.”

  “But you can’t. They’d stay out of machinegun range and shell you to fragments with mortars and fieldpieces. They’d knock out your machinegun turrets, come in closer under rifle cover, and lob grenades into your living quarters.”

  Kittredge laughed. He slapped his thigh while his shoulders shook. “Who the devil is ‘they,’ ” he gasped. “Berendtsen?”

  Cot felt the first touch of anger as it penetrated the deadening blanket that had wrapped itself around his thoughts.

  Kittredge gave one final chuckle. “Come off it, will you, Cot? As a matter of fact, while I wasn’t going to mention it, all that banging going on at your place this morning practically ruined one of my cows. Ran head-on into a fence. It’s not the first time it’s happened, either. The only reason I’ve never said anything is because your own livestock probably has just as bad a time of it.

  “Look, Cot, we can’t afford to unnerve our livestock and poison our land. It was all right as long as it was the only way we could operate at all, but the most hostile thing that’s been seen around here in years is a chicken hawk.”

  The touch of anger had become a genuine feeling. Cot could feel it settling into the pit of his stomach and vibrating at his fingertips.

  “So, you’re asking me to stop holding Drill, is that it?”

  Kittredge heard the faint beginning of a rasp in Cot’s voice, and frowned. “Not altogether, Cot. Not if you don’t want to. But I wish you’d save it for celebrations.”

  “The weapons of my household aren’t firecrackers.” The words were carried as though at the flicking end of a whip.

  “Oh, come on, Cot!”

  For almost twenty-four hours, Cot had been encountering situations for which his experience held no solutions. He was baffled, frustrated, and angry. The carbine was off his shoulder and in his hands with the speed and smoothness of motion that his father had drilled into him until it was beyond impedance by exhaustion or alcohol. With the gun in his hands, he suddenly realized just how angry he was.

  “Charles Kittredge, I charge y
ou with attempt to breach the Integrity of my household. Load and fire.”

  The formula, too, was as ingrained in Cot as was his whole way of life. Chuck Kittredge knew it as well as he did. He blanched.

  “You gone crazy?” It was a new voice, from slightly beyond and beside Charles. Cot’s surprised glance flickered over and saw Kittredge’s younger brother, Michael.

  “Do you stand with him?” Cot rapped out.

  “Aw, now, look, Cot…” Charles Kittredge began. “You’re not serious about this?”

  “Stand or turn your back.”

  “Cot! All I said was—”

  “Am I to understand that you are attempting to explain yourself?”

  Michael Kittredge moved forward. “What’s the matter with you, Garvin? You living in the Dirty Years or something?”

  The knot of fury twisted itself tighter in Cot’s stomach. “That will be far enough. I asked you once: Do you stand with him?”

  “No, he doesn’t!” Charles Kittredge said violently. “And I don’t stand either. What kind of a fool things going on in your head, anyway? People just don’t pull challenges like that at the drop of a hat anymore!”

  “That’s for each man to decide for himself,” Cot answered. “Do you turn your back, then?”

  An ugly red flush flamed at Kittredge’s cheek. bones. “Damned if I will.” His mouth clamped into an etched white line. “All right, then, Cot, what goes through that door first, you or me?”

  “Nobody will go anywhere. You’ll stand or turn where you are.”

  “Right here in the club? You are crazy!”

  “You chose the place, not I. Load and fire.”

  Kittredge put his hand on his rifle sling. “On the count, then,” he said hopelessly.

  Cot re-slung his carbine. “One,” he said.

  “Two.” He and Kittredge picked up the count together.

  “Three,” in unison.

  “Four.”

  “Fi—” Cot had not bothered to count five aloud. The carbine fell into his hooked and waiting hands, and jumped once. Kittredge, interrupted in the middle of his last word, collapsed to the club floor.

  Cot looked down at him, and then back to Michael, who was standing where he had been looking at Cot’s face.

  “Do you stand with him?” Cot repeated the formula once more.

  Michael shook his head dumbly.

  “Then turn.”

  Michael nodded. “I’ll turn. Sure, I’ll be a coward.” There was a peculiar quality to his voice. Cot had seen men turn before, but never as though by free choice. Except for Holland, of course, the thought came.

  Cot looked at the width of Michael’s back, and reslung his carbine. “All right, Michael. Take your dead home to your household.” He stood where he was while Michael hoisted his bother’s body over his shoulder. According to the formula, he should have publicly called the boy a coward. But he did not, and his next words betrayed his reason. “He was a good friend of mine, Michael. I’m sorry he forced me to do it.”

  As he walked home, past Mr. Holland’s house, Cot did not turn his head to see if there were lights in any of the windows. He had kept his family’s Integrity unbreached. He had forced another man to turn. But he did not himself know whether he hoped Barbara would understand that, in a sense, he had done it to redeem himself for her.

  Two days later, at dinnertime Geoffrey and Alister came in five minutes late. Geoffrey’s face was wide and numb with shock, and Alister’s was glowing with a rampant inner joy. It was only when Geoffrey turned that Cot saw his left sleeve soaked in blood.

  “Geoffrey!” Cot’s mother pushed her chair back and ran to him. She pulled a medkit off its wall bracket and began cutting the sleeve away.

  “What happened?” Cot asked.

  “I got my man today,” Geoffrey said, his voice as numb as his features. “He rightfully belongs to Al, here, though” A grin broke through the numbness, and a babble of words came out as the shock of the wound passed into hysteria.

  “That crazy Michael Kittredge climbed a tree up at the edge of the practice terrain. Had a ’scopemounted T-4 and six extra clips. Must have figured on an all-out war. First thing I knew, it felt like somebody hit my shoulder with a baseball bat, and I was down, with the slugs plowing the ground in circles around me. I tried to do something with my rifle, but no go. Kittredge must have had crosseyes or something—couldn’t hit the side of a cliff with a howitzer, after the first shot damn fool stunt, ’scope-mounting an automatic somebody should have taught him better—and there I was, passing out from the recoil every time I squeezed off. You never saw such a blind man’s shooting match in your life!

  “Then out of this gully he’d been imitating an elephant wallowing through, up pops Al! Slaps the old blunderbuss to his shoulder like the man on a skeet- shoot trophy, and starts blasting away at Kittredge’s tree like there was nothing up there but pigeons! Tell you, the sight of that came nearer killing me than Kittredge’s best out of twenty-five.

  “Well, the jerk might have been crazy, but he wasn’t up to ignoring a clipload of soft-nose. He swings that lunatic T-4 of his for A1, and this gives me a chance to steady up and put a lucky shot through a leaf he happened to be in back of at the time. He’s still out there.”

  Cot felt his teeth go into his lower lip. Michael Kittredge!

  “He shot you from ambush?”

  “He wasn’t carrying any banners!”

  “But that’s disgraceful! Cot’s mother exclaimed. She finished wrapping the gauze over the patch bandage on Geoffrey’s bicep.

  Cot looked at Alister, who was standing beside Geoffrey, his face still shining. “Is that what happened, Alister?” he asked.

  Alister nodded.

  “Sure, that’s what happened!” Geoffrey said indignantly. “Think this’s a mosquito bite?”

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” Cot asked gravely.

  Geoffrey began a shrug and winced. “Fool kid with a bug.”

  Cot shook his head. “The Kittredges may be lax in their training, but Michael knew better. In a sense, that was a declaration of war. If Michael was out there, the rest of his household may not have known about it, but when they find out they’ll be forced to support his action.”

  “So it’s a declaration of war,” Alister suddenly said, his tones a conscious imitation of Geoffrey’s. “What have we been drilling for?”

  Geoffrey’s eyes opened wide, and the secretive laughter returned to his expression as he looked at his younger brother.

  “Not to start a war—or get involved in one,” Cot said. “Their gunnery will be sloppier than ours, but their armor plate’s just as thick.”

  “What do you want to do, Cottrell?” his mother asked. Her delicate face was anxious, and her hands seemed to have poised for the express purpose of underscoring the question.

  “We’ve got to stop this thing before it snowballs,” Geoffrey said. “I didn’t get it before, but Cot’s right.”

  Cot nodded. “We’ll have to call everybody in to a meeting. I don’t know what can be done about the Kittredges. Maybe we’ll all be able to think of something.” He beat the side of his fist lightly against his thigh. “I don’t know. It’s never been done before. But the Kittredges aren’t the AU. We can’t handle the problem by simply dropping our shutters and fighting as independent units. The whole community would finish in firing on each other. We’ve got to have concerted action. Perhaps, if the community lines up as a solid block against them, we’ll be able to forestall the Kittredges.”

  “Unite the community!” His mother’s eyes were wide. “Do you think you can do it?”

  Cot sighed. “I don’t know, mother. I couldn’t guess.” He turned back to Alister. “We’re going up to the club. It’s the only natural meeting place we’ve got. I think you’d better break out the car. The Kittredges might have more snipers among them.”

  He picked his carbine up from the arms rack, and started to follow the busily efficien
t Alister down to the garage.

  “I’ll go with you,” Geoffrey said. “Only takes one arm to work the turret guns.”

  Cot looked at him indecisively. Finally, he said, “All right. There’s no telling what the Kittredges might be up to along the road.” He turned back to his mother. “I think it might be advisable to put the household on action stations.” She nodded, and he went down into the garage.

  The road was open, and glaring white in the sunlight of early afternoon. The armored car’s tires jounced over the latitudinal ruts that freight trucks had worn into the road, and one part of him was worried about the effect on Geoffrey, battened down in the turret. He looked up through the overhead slits and saw the twin muzzles of the 35mm cannon tracking steadily counterclockwise.

  Where did it begin, what started it? he thought with most of his mind. The chain of recent events was clear. From the moment that Mr. Holland had discovered him, that night four days ago, event had followed event as plainly and as inevitably as though it had been planned in advance.

  If he had not been upset by his meeting with Mr. Holland, he would not have called Drill the following morning. If he had never seen Barbara at her window at all, there would have been nothing for Geoffrey to taunt him with, and no fear of exposure to drive him to the club. If he had not been drinking, Mr. Holland’s references to Uncle James would not have cut so deeply. Had there been no Drill, there would have been no quarrel with Charles Kittredge, and even if there had been Drill, Charles’s remarks would not have been so objectionable had there been no smoldering resentment from his talk with Mr. Holland.

  For, it was true, he had been angry. Had he not been, Charles and Michael would not be dead, and he and his brothers would not now be in the car, trying to stop an upheaval of violence that would involve the entire community. But his anger had not been his responsibility. A breach of Integrity remained a breach of Integrity, no matter what the subjective state of the Party at Grievance.

  But where did it really begin? If his mother had ever introduced him to Barbara, would any of this have happened?