Murray Leinster (Duke Classic SiFi) (5 page)

Arthur was frowning to himself and scribbling in a note-book.

"Of course," he announced abstractedly, "the pressing problem
is food. We've quite a number of fishermen, and a few hunters.
We've got to have a lot of food at once, and everything considered,
I think we'd better count on the fishermen. At sunrise we'd better
have some people begin to dig bait and wake our anglers. They'd
better make their tackle to-night, don't you think?"

There was a general nod.

"We'll announce that, then. The fishermen will go to the river under
guard of the men we have who can shoot. I think what Indians there
are will be much too frightened to try to ambush any of us, but we'd
better be on the safe side. They'll keep together and fish at nearly
the same spot, with our hunters patrolling the woods behind them,
taking pot-shots at game, if they see any. The fishermen should make
more or less of a success, I think. The Indians weren't extensive
fishers that I ever heard of, and the river ought fairly to swarm
with fish."

He closed his note-book.

"How many weapons can we count on altogether?" Arthur asked Van
Deventer.

"In the bank, about a dozen riot-guns and half a dozen repeating
rifles. Elsewhere I don't know. Forty or fifty men said they had
revolvers, though."

"We'll give revolvers to the men who go with the fishermen. The
Indians haven't heard firearms and will run at the report, even if
they dare attack our men."

"We can send out the gun-armed men as hunters," some one suggested,
"and send gardeners with them to look for vegetables and such
things."

"We'll have to take a sort of census, really," Arthur suggested,
"finding what every one can do and getting him to do it."

"I never planned anything like this before," Van Deventer remarked,
"and I never thought I should, but this is much more fun than
running a bank."

Arthur smiled.

"Let's go and have our meeting," he said cheerfully.

But the meeting was a gloomy and despairing affair. Nearly every
one had watched the sun set upon a strange, wild landscape. Hardly
an individual among the whole two thousand of them had ever been
out of sight of a house before in his or her life. To look out
at a vast, untouched wilderness where hitherto they had seen the
most highly civilized city on the globe would have been startling
and depressing enough in itself, but to know that they were alone
in a whole continent of savages and that there was not, indeed,
in all the world a single community of people they could greet as
brothers was terrifying.

Few of them thought so far, but there was actually—if Arthur's
estimate of several thousand years' drop back through time was
correct—there was actually no other group of English-speaking people
in the world. The English language was yet to be invented. Even
Rome, the synonym for antiquity of culture, might still be an
obscure village inhabited by a band of tatterdemalions under the
leadership of an upstart Romulus.

Soft in body as these people were, city-bred and unaccustomed to
face other than the most conventionalized emergencies of life, they
were terrified. Hardly one of them had even gone without a meal in
all his life. To have the prospect of having to earn their food,
not by the manipulation of figures in a book, or by expert juggling
of profits and prices, but by literal wresting of that food from its
source in the earth or stream was a really terrifying thing for them.

In addition, every one of them was bound to the life of modern
times by a hundred ties. Many of them had families, a thousand years
away. All had interests, engrossing interests, in modern New York.

One young man felt an anxiety that was really ludicrous because
he had promised to take his sweetheart to the theater that night,
and if he did not come she would be very angry. Another was to have
been married in a week. Some of the people were, like Van Deventer
and Arthur, so situated that they could view the episode as an
adventure, or, like Estelle, who had no immediate fear because
all her family was provided for without her help and lived far
from New York, so they would not learn of the catastrophe for
some time. Many, however, felt instant and pressing fear for the
families whose expenses ran always so close to their incomes that
the disappearance of the breadwinner for a week would mean actual
want or debt. There are very many such families in New York.

The people, therefore, that gathered hopelessly at the call of Van
Deventer's watchmen were dazed and spiritless. Their excitement
after Arthur's first attempt to explain the situation to them had
evaporated. They were no longer keyed up to a high pitch by the
startling thing that had happened to them.

Nevertheless, although only half comprehending what had actually
occurred, they began to realize what that occurrence meant.
No matter where they might go over the whole face of the globe,
they would always be aliens and strangers. If they had been carried
away to some unknown shore, some wilderness far from their own
land, they might have thought of building ships to return to their
homes. They had seen New York vanish before their eyes, however.
They had seen their civilization disappear while they watched.

They were in a barbarous world. There was not, for example,
a single sulfur match on the whole earth except those in the
runaway skyscraper.

Arthur and Van Deventer, in turn with the others of the cooler
heads, thundered at the apathetic people, trying to waken them
to the necessity for work. They showered promises of inevitable
return to modern times, they pledged their honor to the belief that
a way would ultimately be found by which they would all yet find
themselves safely back home again.

The people, however, had seen New York disintegrate, and Arthur's
explanation sounded like some wild dream of an imaginative
novelist. Not one person in all the gathering could actually realize
that his home might yet be waiting for him, though at the same time
he felt a pathetic anxiety for the welfare of its inmates.

Every one was in a turmoil of contradictory beliefs. On the one hand
they knew that all of New York could not be actually destroyed and
replaced by a splendid forest in the space of a few hours, so the
accident or catastrophe must have occurred to those in the tower,
and on the other hand, they had seen all of New York vanish by
bits and fragments, to be replaced by a smaller and dingier town,
had beheld that replaced in turn, and at last had landed in the
midst of this forest.

Every one, too, began to feel am unusual and uncomfortable sensation
of hunger. It was a mild discomfort as yet, but few of them had
experienced it before without an immediate prospect of assuaging the
craving, and the knowledge that there was no food to be had somehow
increased the desire for it. They were really in a pitiful state.

Van Deventer spoke encouragingly, and then asked for volunteers for
immediate work. There was hardly any response. Every one seemed
sunk in despondency. Arthur then began to talk straight from the
shoulder and succeeded in rousing them a little, but every one was
still rather too frightened to realize that work could help at all.

In desperation the dozen or so men who had gathered in Van Deventer's
office went about among the gathering and simply selected men at
random, ordering them to follow and begin work. This began to awaken
the crowd, but they wakened to fear rather than resolution. They
were city-bred, and unaccustomed to face the unusual or the alarming.

Arthur noted the new restlessness, but attributed it to growing
uneasiness rather than selfish panic. He was rather pleased that they
were outgrowing their apathy. When the meeting had come to an end he
felt satisfied that by morning the latent resolution among the people
would have crystallized and they would be ready to work earnestly
and intelligently on whatever tasks they were directed to undertake.

He returned to the ground floor of the building feeling much more
hopeful than before. Two thousand people all earnestly working
for one end are hard to down even when faced with such a task as
confronted the inhabitants of the runaway skyscraper. Even if they
were never able to return to modern times they would still be able
to form a community that might do much to hasten the development
of civilization in other parts of the world.

His hope received a rude shock when he reached the great hallway on
the lower floor. There was a fruit and confectionery stand here, and
as Arthur arrived at the spot, he saw a surging mass of men about it.
The keeper of the stand looked frightened, but was selling off his
stock as fast as he could make change. Arthur forced his way to
the counter.

"Here," he said sharply to the keeper of the stand, "stop selling
this stuff. It's got to be held until we can dole it out where
it's needed."

"I—I can't help myself," the keeper said. "They're takin'
it anyway."

"Get back there," Arthur cried to the crowd. "Do you call this
decent, trying to get more than your share of this stuff? You'll get
your portion to-morrow. It is going to be divided up."

"Go to hell!" some one panted. "You c'n starve if you want to,
but I'm goin' to look out f'r myself."

The men were not really starving, but had been put into a panic by
the plain speeches of Arthur and his helpers, and were seizing what
edibles they could lay hands upon in preparation for the hunger
they had been warned to expect.

Arthur pushed against the mob, trying to thrust them away from the
counter, but his very effort intensified their panic. There was a
quick surge and a crash. The glass front of the showcase broke in.

In a flash of rage Arthur struck out viciously. The crowd paid
not the slightest attention to him, however. Every man was too
panic-stricken, and too intent on getting some of this food before
it was all gone to bother with him.

Arthur was simply crushed back by the bodies of the forty or fifty
men. In a moment he found himself alone amid the wreckage of the
stand, with the keeper wringing his hands over the remnants of
his goods.

Van Deventer ran down the stairs.

"What's the matter?" he demanded as he saw Arthur nursing a bleeding
hand cut on the broken glass of the showcase.

"Bolsheviki!" answered Arthur with a grim smile. "We woke up some
of the crowd too successfully. They got panic-stricken and started
to buy out this stuff here. I tried to stop them, and you see what
happened. We'd better look to the restaurant, though I doubt if
they'll try anything else just now."

He followed Van Deventer up to the restaurant floor. There were
picked men before the door, but just as Arthur and the bank president
appeared two or three white-faced men went up to the guards and
started low-voiced conversations.

Arthur reached the spot in time to forestall bribery.

Arthur collared one man, Van Deventer another, and in a moment the
two were sent reeling down the hallway.

"Some fools have got panic-stricken!" Van Deventer explained to
the men before the doors in a casual voice, though he was breathing
heavily from the unaccustomed exertion. "They've smashed up the
fruit-stand on the ground floor and stolen the contents. It's nothing
but blue funk! Only, if any of them start to gather around here,
hit them first and talk it over afterward. You'll do that?"

"We will!" the men said heartily.

"Shall we use our guns?" asked another hopefully.

Van Deventer grinned.

"No," he replied, "we haven't any excuse for that yet. But you might
shoot at the ceiling, if they get excited. They're just frightened!"

He took Arthur's arm, and the two walked toward the stairway again.

"Chamberlain," he said happily, "tell me why I've never had as much
fun as this before!"

Arthur smiled a bit wearily.

"I'm glad you're enjoying yourself!" he said. "I'm not. I'm going
outside and walk around. I want to see if any cracks have appeared
in the earth anywhere. It's dark, and I'll borrow a lantern down
in the fire-room, but I want to find out if there are any more
developments in the condition of the building."

Despite his preoccupation with his errand, which was to find if
there were other signs of the continued activity of the strange
forces that had lowered the tower through the Fourth Dimension
into the dim and unrecorded years of aboriginal America, Arthur
could not escape the fascination of the sight that met his eyes. A
bright moon shone overhead and silvered the white sides of the tower,
while the brightly-lighted windows of the offices within glittered
like jewels set into the shining shaft.

From his position on the ground he looked into the dimness of the
forest on all sides. Black obscurity had gathered beneath the dark
masses of moonlit foliage. The tiny birch-bark teepees of the now
deserted Indian village glowed palely. Above, the stars looked
calmly down at the accusing finger of the tower pointing upward,
as if in reproach at their indifference to the savagery that reigned
over the whole earth.

Like a fairy tower of jewels the building rose. Alone among a
wilderness of trees and streams it towered in a strange beauty:
moonlit to silver, lighted from within to a mass of brilliant gems,
it stood serenely still.

Arthur, carrying his futile lantern about its base, felt his own
insignificance as never before. He wondered what the Indians must
think. He knew there must be hundreds of eyes fixed upon the strange
sight—fixed in awe-stricken terror or superstitious reverence upon
this unearthly visitor to their hunting grounds.

A tiny figure, dwarfed by the building whose base he skirted,
Arthur moved slowly about the vast pile. The earth seemed not to
have been affected by the vast weight of the tower.