Norton, Andre - Anthology (17 page)

 
          
 
"Never mind the keys," Nolan said.
"That's not what I came here to talk about—"

 
          
 
"You'll talk about it nonetheless!"
Fraswell was almost screaming.

 
          
 
"Here, what's the trouble?" a female
voice shrilled. Mil-trude, looking the worse for ten days without a bath, stood
in the doorway, hands on broad hips. "Well—looky who's here!" she
said as she saw Nolan. Behind her, Leston peered over her shoulder.
"Finally caught him, did you, Alvin?"

 
          
 
"Yes—I caught him. He's stubborn! But
he'll crack! I assure you of that!"

 
          
 
"What about the fancy woman he was
keeping?" Mil-trude queried grimly. "Turn her over to me; I'll see
she makes him cooperate."

           
 
"Get out!" Fraswell roared.

 
          
 
"Here, you Alvin!" his spouse
snapped. "Mind your tone!"

 
          
 
Fraswell swept an empty concentrate flask from
the table and hurled it viciously; it struck the wall beside Miltrude; she
screeched and fled, almost knocking her son down in passing.

 
          
 
"Make him talk!" Fraswell yelled.
"Get those keys; do whatever you have to do to him, but I want
results—now!"

 
          
 
One of the men holding Nolan gave his arm a
painful wrench.

 
          
 
"Not
here—outside!"
Fraswell sank back in his chair, panting. "Of
course, you're not to do him any permanent injury," he.muttered, looking
into the corner of the room as they hustled Nolan away.

 
          
 
Two men held Nolan's arms while a third
doubled his fist and drove it into his midriff. He jackknifed forward, gagging.

 
          
 
"Not in the stomach, you fool,"
someone said. "He has to be able to talk."

 
          
 
Someone grabbed his hair and forced his head
back; an openhanded slap made his head ring.

 
          
 
"Listen, you rich scum," a
wild-eyed, bushy-headed man with gaps between his teeth hissed in Nolan's face.
"You can't hold out on us—"

 
          
 
Nolan's knee, coming up fast, caught the man
solidly; he uttered a curdled scream and went down. Nolan lunged, freed an arm
and landed a roundhouse swing on someone's neck. For a moment he was free,
facing two men, who hesitated, breathing hard.

 
          
 
"In a matter of minutes there's going to
be a stampede, right across this spot," he said blurrily. "It's a
wild herd— big fellows, over a ton apiece. Warn your men."

 
          
 
"Get him," a man snapped, and leaped
for Nolan.

           
 
They were still struggling to pin his legs
when a heavy crashing sounded from behind the house. A man screamed —a shocking
yell that froze Nolan's attackers in midstroke. He rolled free and came to his
feet as a man sprinted into view from around the corner of the house, pale face
rigid with terror, legs pumping. A heavy thudding sounded behind him. A big
male tusker charged across the wheel-rutted turf, the remains of a wrecked rose
trellis draped around his mighty shoulders. The man dived aside as the beast
galloped on into the cover of what remained of the woodlot, whence sounded a
diminishing crashing of timber.

 
          
 
For a moment, the three men stood rigid,
listening to a sound as of thunder in the mountains, then, as one, they whirled
and ran. Nolan hurried around to the front of the house.

 
          
 
Fraswell was on the front terrace, his head
cocked, a blank expression on his big features, the boy Leston beside him. The
director shied when he saw Nolan, then charged down the steps, ran for the
corner of the house—and skidded to a halt as a tusker thundered past.

 
          
 
"Good God!" Fraswell backed, spun,
started for the porch. Nolan blocked his way.

 
          
 
"This is your work! You're trying to kill
us all!" Fraswell shouted.

 
          
 
"Dad," Leston started as two men
sprinted into view around the side of the house. One carried a rifle.

 
          
 
"Get him!" Fraswell yelled,
pointing. "He's a fanatic! It's his doing!"

 
          
 
"
Don't be a fool
,
Fraswell," Nolan snapped. "If you're in danger, so am I—"

 
          
 
"A fanatic!
He
intends to pull me down with him! Get him!" Fraswell jumped at Nolan; the
other two men closed in. Wild fists pummeled Nolan; clutching hands caught his
arms, dragged him down. A boot caught him in the side.

           
 
He grabbed the ankle, brought the man down on
top of him. The other man was dancing sideways, gun at the ready.

 
          
 
"Kill the bloodsucker," the one
Nolan had felled shouted as he scrambled up. "Here—gimme that!" He
seized the gun from the other's grip, aimed it at Nolan's head. It was tall,
thin Leston who jumped forward, knocked the gun down as it fired. A gout of lawn
exploded beyond Nolan.

 
          
 
"Pa . . . you can't—" the boy
started; Fraswell whirled on him, struck him an open-handed blow that sent him
sprawling.

 
          
 
"A traitor in my own
house!
You're no son of mine!"

 
          
 
The drumming of the approaching herd was a
continuous surf-roar now. The man with the gun threw it down and ran for the
dock. As more tuskers swung into view, Fraswell turned, too, and ran for it,
followed by his two men.

 
          
 
Nolan struggled to his feet, noted the
animals' course, then set off at a dead run toward a stand of native thorn on a
low rise near the path of the charging herd, snatching up a broken branch from
the uprooted gardenia hedge as he went. The lead animals were less than fifty
feet behind him when he stopped and turned, waving the branch and shouting. The
approaching tuskers shied from the hateful scent, crowding their fellows to the
right of the thorn patch— onto a course that led to the dock.

 
          
 
Nolan dropped down on the grass, catching his
breath as the herd thundered past. Through the dust he could see the group
gathered down on the pier and on the deck of the boat.

 
          
 
A man on the pier—Fraswell, Nolan thought—was
shouting and pointing toward the house. Someone on the boat seemed to yell a
reply. It appeared there
was
a difference of opinion
among the leadership and the rank-and-file of the UHP.

 
          
 
"Time for one more little nudge,"
Nolan muttered, getting to his feet. A few elderly cows, stragglers, were
galloping past the grove. Nolan searched hastily, wrenched off a stalk of
leather plant,
quickly
stripped it. A thick, pungent
odor came from the ripe pulp. He went forward to intercept a cow, waving the
aromatic plant, turned and ran as the cow swung toward him. He could hear the
big animal's hooves thudding behind him. He yelled; down below, the men
crowding the pier looked up to see Nolan sprinting toward them, the tusker
cantering in his wake.

 
          
 
"Help!" he shouted. "Wait!
Don't go!
Help!"

 
          
 
The men turned and ran for the gangway.
Fraswell caught at a man's arm; the man struck at him and fled. The plump
figures of Miltrude and the director held their ground for a moment; then they
turned and bolted onto the boat.

 
          
 
As they turned to look back, the sound of the
ship's engines started up. The gangplank slid inboard when Nolan was fifty feet
from the pier. He tossed the branch aside as the cow
braked
to a halt beside him, nudging him to capture the succulent prize. Nolan gave a
piercing scream and fell, leaving the cow to stare after the hastily departing
vessel, munching peacefully.

 
          
 
A tall, lean youth came around the side of the
house to meet Nolan.

 
          
 
"Uh
.. .
I—" he said.

 
          
 
"Leston . . . how did you get left
behind?" Nolan asked in dismay.

 
          
 
"On purpose," the boy blurted.

 
          
 
"I don't think your father will be
back," Nolan said.

 
          
 
Leston nodded. "Want to stay," he
said. "I'd like a job, Mr. Nolan."

 
          
 
"Do you know anything about farming,
Leston?" Nolan asked dubiously.

           
 
"No, sir."
The boy swallowed. "But I'm willing to learn."

 
          
 
Nolan looked at him for a moment. He put out
his hand and smiled.

 
          
 
"I can't ask any more than that," he
said.

 
          
 
He turned and looked across the ruined lawn,
past the butchered hedges and the mutilated groves toward the languishing
fields.

 
          
 
"Come on, let's get started," he
said. "The plague's over, and we've got a lot of work ahead before harvest
time."

            
How will our
civilization or even our world come to an end? World endings have provided many
plots for writer-speculation concerning the future. Flood and fire,
catastrophes resulting from mankind's own irresponsible actions, have all
appeared in print. But this story of the fight for survival made by a single
family is an excellent example of mans stubborn refusal to quit.

Pa had sent me out to get an extra
pail of air. I'd just about scooped it full and most of the warmth had leaked
from my fingers when I saw the thing.

You know, at first I thought it was
a young lady. Yes, a beautiful young lady's face all glowing in the dark and
looking at me from the fifth floor of the opposite apartment, which hereabouts
is the floor just above the white blanket of frozen air. I'd never seen a live
young lady before, except in the old magazines—Sis is just a kid and Ma is
pretty sick and miserable—and it gave me such a start that I dropped the pail.
Who wouldn't, knowing everyone on Earth was dead except Pa and Ma and Sis and
you?

Even at that, I don't suppose I
should have been surprised. We all see things now and then. Ma has some pretty
bad ones, to judge from the way she bugs her eyes at nothing and just screams
and screams and huddles back against the blankets hanging around the Nest. Pa
says it is natural we should react like that sometimes.

When I'd recovered the pail and
could look again at the opposite apartment, I got an idea of what Ma might be
feeling at those times, for I saw it wasn't a young lady at all but simply a
light—a tiny light that moved stealthily from window to window, just as if one
of the cruel little stars had come down out of the airless sky to investigate
why the Earth had gone away from the Sun, and maybe to hunt down something to
torment or terrify, now that the Earth didn't have the Sun's protection.

I tell you, the thought of it gave
me the creeps. I just stood there shaking, and almost froze my feet and did
frost my helmet so solid on the inside that I couldn't have seen the light even
if it had come out of one of the windows to get me. Then I had the wit to go
back inside.

Pretty soon I was feeling my
familiar way through the thirty or so blankets and rugs Pa has got hung around
to slow down the escape of air from the Nest, and I wasn't quite so scared. I
began to hear the tick-ticking of the clocks in the Nest and knew I was getting
back into air, because there's no sound outside in the vacuum, of course. But
my mind was still crawly and uneasy as I pushed through the last blankets—Pa's
got them faced with aluminum foil to hold in the heat—and came into the Nest.

* * *

Let me tell you about the Nest.
It's low and snug, just room for the four of us and our things. The floor is
covered with thick woolly rugs. Three of the sides are blankets, and the
blankets roofing it touch Pa's head. He tells me it's inside a much bigger
room, but I've never seen the real walls or ceiling.

Against one of the blankets is a
big set of shelves, with tools and books and other stuff, and on top of it a
whole row of clocks. Pa's very fussy about keeping them wound. He says we must
never forget time, and without a sun or moon, that would be easy to do.

The fourth wall has blankets all
over except around the fireplace, in which there is a fire that must never go
out. It keeps us from freezing and does a lot more besides. One of us must
always watch it. Some of the clocks are alarm and we can use them to remind us.
In the early days there was only Ma to take turns with Pa—I think of that when
she gets difficult—but now there's me to help, and Sis too.

It's Pa who is the chief guardian
of the fire, though. I always think of him that way: a tall man sitting
cross-legged, frowning anxiously at the fire, his lined face golden in its
light, and every so often carefully placing on it a piece of coal from the big
heap beside it. Pa tells me there used to be guardians of the fire sometimes in
the very old days—vestal virgins, he calls them—although there was unfrozen air
all around then and you didn't really need one.

He was sitting just that way now,
though he got up quick to take the pail from me and bawl me out for
loitering—he'd spotted my frozen helmet right off. That roused Ma and she
joined in picking on me. She's always trying to get the load off her feelings,
Pa explains. Sis let off a couple of silly squeals too.

Pa handled the pail of air in a
twist of cloth. Now that it was inside the Nest, you could really feel its
coldness. It just seemed to suck the heat out of everything. Even the flames
cringed away from it as Pa put it down close by the fire.

Yet it's that glimmery white stuff
in the pail that keeps us alive. It slowly melts and vanishes and refreshes the
Nest and feeds the fire. The blankets keep it from escaping too fast. Pa'd like
to seal the whole place, but he can't—building's too earthquake-twisted, and
besides he has to leave the chimney open for smoke.

Pa says air is tiny molecules that fly
away like a flash if there isn't something to stop them. We have to watch sharp
not to let the air run low. Pa always keeps a big reserve supply of it in
buckets behind the first blankets, along with extra coal and cans of food and
other things, such as pails of snow to melt for water. We have to go way down
to the bottom floor for that stuff, which is a mean trip, and get it through a
door to outside.

You see, when the Earth got cold,
all the water in the air froze first and made a blanket ten feet thick or so
everywhere, and then down on top of that dropped the crystals of frozen air,
making another white blanket sixty or seventy feet thick maybe.

Of course, all the parts of the air
didn't freeze and snow down at the same time.

First to drop out was the carbon
dioxide—when you're shoveling for water, you have to make sure you don't go too
high and get any of that stuff mixed in, for it would put you to sleep, maybe
for good, and make the fire go out. Next there's the nitrogen, which doesn't
count one way or the other, though it's the biggest part of the blanket. On top
of that and easy to get at, which is lucky for us, there's the oxygen that
keeps us alive. Pa says we live better than kings ever did, breathing pure
oxygen, but we're used to it and don't notice. Finally, at the very top,
there's a slick of liquid helium, which is funny stuff. All of these gases in
neat separate layers. Like a pussy caffay, Pa laughingly says, whatever that
is.

* * *

I was busting to tell them all
about what I'd seen, and so as soon as I'd ducked out of my helmet and while I
was still climbing out of my suit, I cut loose. Right away Ma got nervous and
began making eyes at the entry-slit in the blankets and wringing her hands
together—the hand where she'd lost three fingers from frostbite inside the good
one, as usual. I could tell that Pa was annoyed at me scaring her and wanted to
explain it all away quickly, yet could see I wasn't fooling.

"And you watched this light
for some time, son?" he asked when I finished.

I hadn't said anything about first
thinking it was a young lady's face. Somehow that part embarrassed me.

"Long enough for it to pass
five windows and go to the next floor."

"And it didn't look like stray
electricity or crawling liquid or starlight focused by a growing crystal, or
anything like that?"

He wasn't just making up those
ideas. Odd things happen in a world that's about as cold as can be, and just
when you think matter would be frozen dead, it takes on a strange new life. A
slimy stuff comes crawling toward the Nest, just like an animal snuffing for
heat—that's the liquid helium. And once, when I was little, a bolt of
lightning—not even Pa could figure where it came from—hit the nearby steeple
and crawled up and down it for weeks, until the glow finally died.

"Not like anything I ever
saw," I told him.

He stood for a moment frowning.
Then, "I'll go out with you, and you show it to me," he said.

Ma raised a howl at the idea of
being left alone, and Sis joined in, too, but Pa quieted them. We started
climbing into our outside clothes—mine had been warming by the fire. Pa made
them. They have plastic headpieces that were once big double-duty transparent
food cans, but they keep heat and air in and can replace the air for a little
while, long enough for our trips for water and coal and food and so on.

Ma started moaning again,
"I've always known there was something outside there, waiting to get us.
I've felt it for years—something that's part of the cold and hates all warmth
and wants to destroy the Nest. It's been watching us all this time, and now
it's coming after us. It'll get you and then come for me. Don't go,
Harry!"

Pa had everything on but his
helmet. He knelt by the fireplace and reached in and shook the long metal rod
that goes up the chimney and knocks off the ice that keeps trying to clog it.
Once a week he goes up on the roof to check if it's working all right. That's
our worst trip and Pa won't let me make it alone.

"Sis," Pa said quietly,
"
come
watch the fire. Keep an eye on the air,
too. If it gets low or doesn't seem to be boiling fast enough, fetch another
bucket from behind the blanket. But mind your hands. Use the cloth to pick up
the bucket."

Sis quit helping Ma be frightened
and came over and did as she was told. Ma quieted down pretty suddenly, though
her eyes were still kind of wild as she watched Pa fix on his helmet tight and
pick up a pail and the two of us go out.

* * *

Pa led the way and I took hold of
his belt. It's a funny thing, I'm not afraid to go by myself, but when Pa's
along I always want to hold on to him. Habit, I guess, and then there's no
denying that this time I was a bit scared.

You see, it's this way. We know
that everything is dead out there. Pa heard the last radio voices fade away
years ago, and had seen some of the last folks die who weren't as lucky or
well-protected as us. So we knew that if there was something groping around out
there, it couldn't be anything human or friendly.

Besides that, there's a feeling
that comes with it always being night, cold night. Pa says there used to be
some of that feeling even in the old days, but then every morning the Sun would
come and chase it away. I have to take his word for that, not ever remembering
the Sun as being anything more than a big star. You see, I hadn't been born when
the dark star snatched us away from the Sun, and by now it's dragged us out
beyond the orbit of the planet
Pluto
,
Pa
says, and taking us farther out all the time.

I found myself wondering whether
there mightn't be something on the dark star that wanted us, and if that was
why it had captured the Earth. Just then we came to the end of the corridor and
I followed Pa out on the balcony.

I don't know what the city looked
like in the old days, but now it's beautiful. The starlight lets you see pretty
well—there's quite a bit of light in those steady points speckling the
blackness above. (Pa says the stars used to twinkle once, but that was because
there was air.) We are on a hill and the shimmery plain drops away from us and
then flattens out, cut up into neat squares by the troughs that used to be
streets. I sometimes make my mashed potatoes look like it, before I pour on the
gravy.

Some taller buildings push up out
of the feathery plain, topped by rounded caps of air crystals, like the fur
hood Ma wears, only whiter. On those buildings you can see the darker squares
of windows, underlined by white dashes of air crystals. Some of them are on a
slant, for many of the buildings are pretty badly twisted by the quakes and all
the rest that happened when the dark star captured the Earth.

Here and there a few icicles hang,
water icicles from the first days of the cold, other icicles of frozen air that
melted on the roofs and dripped and froze again. Sometimes one of those icicles
will catch the light of a star and send it to you so brightly you think the
star has swooped into the city. That was one of the things Pa had been thinking
of when I told him about the light, but I had thought of it myself first and
known it wasn't so.

He touched his helmet to mine so we
could talk easier and he asked me to point out the windows to him. But there
wasn't any light moving around inside them now, or anywhere else. To my
surprise, Pa didn't bawl me out and tell me I'd been seeing things. He looked
all around quite a while after filling his pail, and just as we were going
inside he whipped around without warning, as if to take some peeping thing off
guard.

I could feel it, too. The old peace
was gone. There was something lurking out there, watching, waiting,
getting
ready.

Inside, he said to me, touching
helmets, "If you see something like that again, son, don't tell the
others. Your Ma's sort of nervous these days and we owe her all the feeling of
safety we can give her. Once—it was when your sister was born—I was ready to
give up and die, but your Mother kept me trying. Another time she kept the fire
going a whole week all by herself when I was sick. Nursed me and took care of
the two of you, too.

"You know that game we
sometimes play, sitting in a square in the Nest, tossing a ball around? Courage
is like a ball, son. A person can hold it only so long, and then he's got to
toss it to someone else. When it's tossed your way, you've got to catch it and
hold it tight—and hope there'll be someone else to toss it to when you get
tired of being brave."

His talking to me that way made me
feel grown-up and good. But it didn't wipe away the thing outside from the back
of my mind—or the fact that Pa took it seriously.

* * *

It's hard to hide your feelings
about such a thing. When we got back in the Nest and took off our outside
clothes, Pa laughed about it all and told them it was nothing and kidded me for
having such an imagination, but his words fell flat. He didn't convince Ma and
Sis any more than he did me. It looked for a minute like we were all fumbling
the courage-ball. Something had to be done, and almost before I knew what I was
going to say, I heard myself asking Pa to tell us about the old days, and how
it all happened.