Not This August (22 page)

The voice switched to Chinese again.

They stood in utter silence through a complete replay of the ultimatum in three languages. The general reached out at last and gently turned a switch and the radio fell silent. “That will do it,” he said softly. “Feng and Novikov are stubborn, but when their cities begin to go, they’ll come around—or be deposed by rulers who will come around.”

“So it’s all over,” Betsy said wonderingly.

Hollerith’s face was a mixture of bitterness and defiant pride. “No,” he said. “We’ve got to start work on people immediately. They mustn’t make
that
mistake, not ever. It isn’t over and it’ll never be over. What happens next is the Reds build a bombardment satellite of their own—secretly, in spite of all the controls we clamp on them. It’ll take them a few years. We use those years to build a better satellite that’ll shoot them out of the sky—but they’ll know that, so theirs will be armed and steerable. Don’t ever think it’ll be over. There’s always going to be work for people like me.”

Sparhawk was down on his knees talking quietly: “Deliver me, O Lord, from the evil man, preserve me from the violent man which imagine wickedness in their hearts; continually are they gathered together for war…”

Justin noted that he was praying not to Annie Besant or the Zen patriarchs or to Vishu but to the God of his Sunday school and regimental worship. He wondered if somehow the past night had burned away a great deal of wordy nonsense from Mr. Sparhawk’s brain and left the pure metal of worship.

“Croley,” General Hollerith was saying, “this is where you come in. We now have hell’s own problem of supply and housing. I suppose I’m the government hereabouts now, but I’m going to be a very busy man making the Reds decent prisoners of war, keeping them from turning into bandits and scavengers. I’m going to delegate food supply to you; you know rationing procedures from your business and you know where and who the jobbers and wholesalers are. Think you can handle it?”

“Might,” said Croley.

“Billy,” the general said, “you’re a good man and we need you. You can be my right arm in this prisoner-of-war roundup deal or you can work with Croley here getting the food lines in operation again—What’s the matter?”

Billy Justin, once a commercial artist, thirty-eight years old, a pensioned veteran of Korea, four years a dairy farmer and one year a conspirator, trigger man of the weapon that held Earth hostage, newly and suddenly seeker of God, said over his shoulder to Hollerith, “Nothing’s the matter, General. I just decided I couldn’t work with you or Croley. No offense, I hope.”

He knelt beside Mr. Sparhawk, who was praying, “Put up again thy sword into his place for they that take the sword shall perish from the sword. Ye lust and have not; ye kill and desire to have, and cannot obtain; ye fight and war because ye ask not…”

They stared at Billy Justin, but after a while Betsy came and joined him.