The Long Tomorrow

by Leigh Douglass Brackett

  Hostetter said, “I suppose you’ve heard of the New Ishmaelites.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, now you’re going to see them.”

  Len followed Hostetter’s gesture, squinting against the reddening light. And on top of a low and barren bluff he saw a gathering of people, perhaps half a hundred of them, looking down.

  18

  He jumped to the ground with Hostetter. The driver stayed put, so he could move the wagon into a defensive line if the order came. Esau joined them, and some other men, and the old chap with the bright eyes and the mighty shoulders, whose name was Wepplo. Most of them had guns.

  “What do we do?” asked Len, and the old man answered, “Wait.”

  They waited. Two men and a woman came slowly down from the bluff and the leader of the train went just as slowly out to meet them, with a half a dozen armed men behind to cover him. And Len stared.

  The people gathered on the bluff were like an awkward frieze of scarecrows put together out of old bones and strips of blackened leather. There was something horrible about seeing that there were children among them, peering with a normal childlike wonder and excitement at the strange men and the wagons. They wore goatskins, very much like old Bible pictures of John the Baptist, or else long wrappings of dirty white cloth like winding sheets. Their hair hung long and matted down their backs, and the men had beards to their waists. They were gaunt, and even the children had a wild and starveling look. Their eyes were sunken, and perhaps it was only a trick of the lowering sun, but it seemed to Len that they burned and smoldered with an actual glow, like the eyes he had seen once on a dog that had the mad sickness.

  “Will they fight us?” he asked.

  “Can’t tell yet,” said Wepplo. “Sometimes yes, other times no. Depends.”

  “What do you mean,” demanded Esau, “it depends?”

  “On whether they’ve been ‘struck’ or not. Mostly they just wander and pray and do a lot of real holy starving. But then all of a sudden one of ’em’ll start screaming and frothing and fall down kicking, and that’s a sign they’ve been struck by the Lord’s special favor. So the rest of ’em whoop and screech and beat themselves with thorny branches or maybe whips —whips, you see, is the only personal article their religion allows them to own—and when they’re worked up enough they all pile down and butcher some rancher that’s affronted the Lord by pampering his flesh with a sod roof and a full belly. They can do a real nice job of butchering, too.”

  Len shivered. The faces of the Ishmaelites frightened him. He remembered the faces of the farmers when they marched into Refuge, and how their stony dedication had frightened him then. But they were different. Their fanaticism roused up only when it was prodded. These people lived by it, lived for it, and served it without rhyme, reason, or thought.

  He hoped they would not fight.

  They did not. The two wild-looking men and the woman—a wiry creature with sharp shin bones showing under her shroud when she walked, and a tangle of black hair blowing over her shoulders—were too far away for any of their talk to be heard, but after a few minutes the leader of the train turned and spoke to the men behind him, and two of them turned and came back to the train. They sought out a particular wagon, and Wepplo grunted.

  “Not this time. They only want some powder.”

  “Gunpowder?” asked Len incredulously.

  “Their religion don’t seem to call for them starving quite to death, and every gang of them—this is only one band, you understand—does own a couple of guns. I hear they never shoot a young cow, though, but only the old bulls, which are tough enough to mortify anybody’s flesh.”

  “But powder,” said Len. “Don’t they use it on the ranchers, too?”

  The old man shook his head. “They’re knife-and-claw killers, when they kill. I guess they can get closer to their work that way. Besides, they only get enough powder to barely keep them going.” He nodded toward the two men, who were going back again carrying a small keg. A thin sound, half wailing and half waspish, penetrated from the second wagon down, and Esau said, “Oh Lord, there’s Amity calling me. She’s probably scared to death.” He turned and went immediately. Len watched the New Ishmaelites.

  “Where did they come from?” he asked, trying to remember what he had heard about them. They were one of the very earliest extreme sects, but he didn’t know much more than that.

  “Some of them were here to begin with,” Hostetter said. “Under other names, of course, and not nearly so crazy because the pressure of society sort of held them down, but a fertile seed bed. Others came here of their own accord when the New Ishmaelite movement took shape and really got going. A lot more were driven here out of the East, being natural-born troublemakers that other people wanted to be rid of.”

  The small keg of powder changed hands. Len said, “What do they trade you for it?”

  “Nothing. Buying and selling are no part of holiness, and anyway, they don’t have anything. When you come right down to it, I don’t know why we do give it to them. I guess,” said Wepplo, “probably it’s on account of the kids. You know, once in a while you find one of ’em like a coyote pup, lost in the sagebrush. If they’re young enough, and brought up right, they turn out just as smart and nice as anyone.”

  The woman lifted her arms up high, whether for a curse or a blessing Len couldn’t tell. The wind tossed the lank hair back from her face, and he saw with a shock that she was young, and might have been handsome if her cheeks were full and her eyes less hunger-bright and staring. Then she and the two men climbed back to the top of the bluff, and in five minutes they were all gone, hidden by the cut-up hills. But that night the Bartorstown men doubled the watch.

  Two days later they filled every cask, bottle, and bucket with water and left the river, striking south and west into a waste and very empty land, sun-scorched, wind-scourged, and dry as an old skull. They were climbing now, toward distant bastions of red rock with tumbled masses of peaks rising blue and far away behind them. The mules and the men labored together, toiling slowly, and Len learned to hate the sun. And he looked up at the blank, cruel peaks, and wondered. Then, when the water was almost gone, a red scarp swung away to the west and showed an opening about as wide as two wagons, and Hostetter said, “This is the first gate.”

  They filed into it. It was smooth like a made road, but it was steep, and everybody was walking now to ease the mules, except Amity. After a little while, without any order that Len could hear, or for any reason that he could see, they stopped.

  He asked why.

  “Routine,” Hostetter said. “We’re not exactly overrun with people, as you might guess from the country, but not even a rabbit can get through here without being seen, and it’s customary to stop and be looked over. If somebody doesn’t, we know right away it’s a stranger.”

  Len craned his neck, but he could not see anything but red rock. Esau was walking with them, and Wepplo. Wepplo laughed and said, “Boy, they’re looking at you right now in Bartorstown. Yes, they are. Studying you real close, and if they don’t like your looks, all they have to do is push one little button and boom!” He made a sweeping gesture with his hand, and Len and Esau both ducked. Wepplo laughed again.

  “What do you mean, boom?” said Esau angrily, glaring around. “You mean somebody in Bartorstown could kill us here? That’s crazy.”

  “It’s true,” said Hostetter. “But I wouldn’t get excited. They know we’re coming.”

  Len felt the skin between his shoulders turn cold and crawl. “How can they see us?”

  “Scanners,” said Hostetter, pointing vaguely at the rock. “Hidden in the cracks, where you can’t see ’em. A scanner is kind of like an eye, way off from the body. Whoever comes through here, they know it in Bartorstown, and it’s still a day’s journey away.”

  “And all they have to do is push something?” said Esau, wetting his lips.

  Wepplo swung his hand again, and repeated, “Boom!”

  �
��They must have really had something almighty secret here,” said Esau, “to go to all that trouble.”

  Wepplo opened his mouth, and Hostetter said, “Give a hand with the wagon here, will you?” Wepplo shut his mouth again and leaned onto the tail gate of a wagon that seemed already to be rolling smoothly. Len looked sharply at Hostetter, but his head was bent and his whole attention appeared to be on the pushing. Len smiled. He did not say anything.

  Beyond the cut was a road. It was a good, wide road, and Hostetter said it had been made a long time ago before the Destruction. He called it a switchback. It zigzagged right up the side of a mountain, and Len could still see the marks on the rock where huge iron teeth had bitten it away. They moved up slowly, the teams grunting and puffing, and the men helping them, and Hostetter pointed to a ragged notch very high up against the sky. He said, “Tomorrow.”

  Len’s heart began to beat fast and the nerves pricked all through his stomach. But he shook his head, and Hostetter asked, “What’s the matter?”

  “I never thought there’d be a road to it. I mean, just a road.”

  “How did you think we’d get in and out?”

  “I don’t know,” said Len, “but I thought there’d be at least walls or guards or something. Of course they can stop people in the cut back there—”

  “They could. They never have.”

  “You mean people walk right through there? And up this road? And through that pass into Bartorstown?”

  “They do,” said Hostetter, “and they don’t. Didn’t you ever hear that the best way to hide something is to leave it right out in the open?”

  “I don’t understand,” said Len. “Not at all.”

  “You will.”

  “I guess so.” Len’s eyes were shining again in that particular way, and he said softly, “Tomorrow,” as though it was a beautiful word.

  “It’s been a long way, hasn’t it?” said Hostetter. “You really wanted to come, to stick to it like that.” He was silent a minute, looking up at the pass. Then he said, “Give it time, Len. It won’t be all that you’ve dreamed about, but give it time. Don’t make any snap decisions.”

  Len turned and studied him gravely. “You keep sounding all the time like you’re trying to warn me about something.”

  “I’m just trying to tell you to—not be impatient. Give yourself a chance to get adjusted.” Suddenly, almost angrily, he said, “This is a hard life, that’s what I’m trying to tell you. It’s hard for everybody, even in Bartorstown, and it doesn’t get any easier, and don’t expect a shiny tinsel heaven and then break your heart because it isn’t there.”

  He looked hard at Len, very briefly, and then looked away, breathing hard and doing the mechanical things with his hands that a man does when he’s upset and trying not to show it. And Len said slowly, “You hate the place.”

  He could not believe it. But when Hostetter said sharply, “That’s ridiculous, of course I don’t,” he knew that it was true.

  “Why did you come back? You could have stayed in Piper’s Run.”

  “So could you.”

  “But that’s different.”

  “No, it isn’t. You had a reason. So have I.” He walked on for a minute with his head bent down. Then he said, “Just don’t ever plan on going back.”

  He went ahead fast, leaving Len behind, and Len did not see him alone again the rest of that day and night. But he felt as shocked as he would have if, in the old days, Pa had suddenly told him that there was no God.

  He did not say anything to Esau. But he kept glancing up at the pass, and wondering. Toward late afternoon they were high enough up on the mountain that he could see back the other way, over the ridge of the scarp, to where the dessert lay all lonely and burning. A terrible feeling of doubt came over him. The red and yellow rock, the sharp peaks that hung against the sky, the gray desert and the dust and the dryness, the pitiless light that was never softened by a cloud or gentled by rain, the vast ringing silences where nothing lived but the wind, all seemed to mock him with their cheerlessness and lack of hope. He wished he was back—no, not home, because he would have to face Pa there, and not in Refuge, either. Just somewhere where there was life and water and green grass. Somewhere where the ugly rock did not stand up every way you looked, like—

  Like what?

  Like the truth, when all the dreams are torn away from it?

  It wasn’t a happy thought. He tried to ignore it, but every time he saw Hostetter it came to him again. Hostetter seemed broody and withdrawn, and after they camped and had supper he disappeared. Len started to look for him and then had sense enough to stop.

  They were camped in the mouth of the pass, where there was a wide space on both sides of the road. The wind blew and it was bitterly cold. Just before dark Len noticed some letters cut in the side of a cliff above the road. They were crumbling and weather-worn, but they were big, and he could make them out. They said FALL CREEK 13 mi.

  Hostetter was gone, so Len hunted up Wepplo and asked him what they meant. “Can’t you read, boy? They mean just what they say. Fall Creek, thirteen miles. That’s from here to there.”

  “Thirteen miles,” said Len, “from here to Fall Creek. All right. But what’s Fall Creek?”

  “Town,” said Wepplo.

  “Where?”

  “In Fall Creek Canyon.” He pointed. “Thirteen miles.”

  He was grinning. Len began to hate the old man’s sense of humor. “What about Fall Creek?” he asked. “What does it have to do with us?”

  “Why,” said Wepplo, “it’s got damn near everything to do with us. Didn’t you know, boy? That’s where we’re going.”

  Then he laughed. Len walked away fast. He was mad at Wepplo, mad at Hostetter, mad at Fall Creek. He was mad at the world. He rolled up in his blanket and lay shivering and cursing. He was dog-tired. But it was a long time before he fell asleep, and then he dreamed. He dreamed that he was trying to find Bartorstown. He knew he was almost there, but there was fog and darkness and the road kept shifting its direction. He kept asking an old man how to get there, but the old man had never heard of Bartorstown and would only say over and over that it was thirteen miles to Fall Creek.

  They went through the pass the next day. Both Len and Hostetter were now morose and did not talk much.

  They crossed the saddleback before noon, and after that they went much faster, going down. The mules stepped out smartly as though they knew they were almost home. The men got cheerful and eager. Esau kept running up as often as he could get away from Amity and asking, “Are we almost there?” And Hostetter would nod and say, “Almost.”

  They came out of the pass with the afternoon sun in their eyes. The road pitched down in another switchback along the side of a cliff, and way at the bottom of the cliff there was a canyon, with the blue shadow of the opposite wall already sliding across it. Hostetter pointed. His voice was neither excited, nor happy, nor sad. It was just a voice, saying, “There it is.”

  Book Three

  19

  The wagons went down the wide steep road with the brake shoes screeching and the mules braced back on their haunches. Len looked over the edge, into the canyon. He looked a long time without speaking. Esau came and walked beside him, and they both looked. And it was Esau who turned around with his face all white and angry and shouted at Mr. Hostetter, “What do you think this is, a joke? Do you think this is real funny, bringing us all this way—”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Hostetter. He sounded tired now, all of a sudden, and impatient, and he spoke to Esau the way a man speaks to an annoying child. Esau shut up. Hostetter glanced at Len. Len did not turn or lift his head. He was still staring down into the bottom of the canyon.

  There was a town there. Seen from this height and angle it was mostly a collection of roofs, clustered along the sides of a stream bed where some cottonwoods grew. They were ordinary roofs of ordinary little houses such as Len had been used to seeing all his life, and he thought that many of the
houses were made of logs, or slab. At the north end of the canyon was a small dam with a patch of blue water behind it. Beside the dam, straggling up a slope, there were a couple of high, queer-looking buildings. Close by them rails ran up and down the slope, leading from a hole in the cliff to a dump of broken rock. There were tiny cars on the rails. At the foot of the slope were several more buildings, low and flat ones this time, with a curving top. They were a rusty color. From the other side of the dam a short road led to another hole in the cliff, but there were no rails or cars or anything connected with this one, and rocks had rolled down across the road.

  Len could see people moving around. Smoke came from some of the chimneys. A team of tiny mules brought a string of tiny cars down the rails on the slope, and the carts were dumped. After a minute or two the sound drifted up to him, faint and thin like an echo.

  He turned and looked at Hostetter.

  “Fall Creek,” said Hostetter. “It’s a mining town. Silver. Not very high-grade ore, but good enough and a lot of it. We still take it out. There’s no secret about Fall Creek, never has been.” He swept his hand out in a brief, curt gesture. “We live here.”

  Len said slowly ,“But it isn’t Bartorstown.”

  “No. That’s kind of a wrong name, anyway. It isn’t really a town at all.”

  Even more slowly, Len said, “Pa told me there was no such place. He told me it was only a state of mind.”

  “Your Pa was wrong. There is such a place, and it’s real. Real enough to keep hundreds of people working for it all their lives.”

  “But where?” said Esau furiously. “Where?”

  “You’ve waited this long. You can wait a few hours longer.”

  They went on, down the steep road. The shadow of the mountain widened and filled the canyon, and began to flow up the eastern wall to meet them. Farther down, on the breast of an old fall, a stand of pines caught the light and turned a harsh green, too bright against the red and ochers of the rock.