CHAPTER 7
_Here now in his triumph where all things falter, Stretched out on the spoils that his own hand spread, As a god self-slain on his own strange altar, Death lies dead._
--A Forsaken Garden, _by Charles Swinburne_
Pop was first down. Between us we helped Alice. Before joining them Itook a last look at the control panel. The cracking plant button was upagain and there was a blue nimbus on another button. For Los Alamos, Isupposed. I was tempted to push it and get away solo, but then Ithought, _nope, there's nothing for me at the other end and theloneliness will be worse than what I got to face here_. I climbed out.
I didn't look at the body, although we were practically on top of it. Isaw a little patch of silver off to one side and remembered the gun thathad melted. The vultures had waddled off but only a few yards.
"We could kill them," Alice said to Pop.
"Why?" he responded. "Didn't some Hindus use them to take care of deadbodies? Not a bad idea, either."
"Parsees," Alice amplified.
"Yep, Parsees, that's what I meant. Give you a nice clean skeleton in amatter of days."
Pop was leading us past the body toward the cracking plant. I heard theflies buzzing loudly. I felt terrible. I wanted to be dead myself. Justwalking along after Pop was an awful effort.
"His girl was running a hidden observation tower here," Pop was sayingnow. "Weather and all that, I suppose. Or maybe setting up a robotstation of some kind. I couldn't tell you about her before, because youwere both in a mood to try to rub out anybody remotely connected withthe Pilot. In fact, I did my best to lead you astray, letting you thinkI'd been the one to scream and all. Even now, to be honest about it, Idon't know if I'm doing the right thing telling and showing you allthis, but a man's got to take some risks whatever he does."
"Say, Pop," I said dully, "isn't she apt to take a shot at us orsomething?" Not that I'd have minded on my own account. "Or are you andher that good friends?"
"Nope, Ray," he said, "she doesn't even know me. But I don't think she'sin a position to do any shooting. You'll see why. Hey, she hasn't evenshut the door. That's bad."
He seemed to be referring to a kind of manhole cover standing on itsedge just inside the open-walled first story of the cracking plant. Heknelt and looked down the hole the cover was designed to close off.
"Well, at least she didn't collapse at the bottom of the shaft," hesaid. "Come on, let's see what happened." And he climbed into the shaft.
We followed him like zombies. At least that's how I felt. The shaft wasabout twenty feet deep. There were foot- and hand-holds. It got stuffyright away, and warmer, in spite of the shaft being open at the top.
At the bottom there was a short horizontal passage. We had to duck toget through it. When we could straighten up we were in a large andluxurious bomb-resistant dugout, to give it a name. And it was stuffierand hotter than ever.
There was a lot of scientific equipment around and several small controlpanels reminding me of the one in the back of the plane. Some of them, Isupposed, connected with instruments, weather and otherwise, hidden upin the skeletal structure of the cracking plant. And there were signs ofoccupancy, a young woman's occupancy--clothes scattered around in afrivolous way, and some small objects of art, and a slightly more thanlife-size head in clay that I guessed the occupant must have beensculpting. I didn't give that last more than the most fleeting look,strictly unintentional to begin with, because although it wasn'tfinished I could tell whose head it was supposed to be--the Pilot's.
* * * * *
The whole place was finished in dull silver like the cabin of the plane,and likewise it instantly struck me as having a living personality,partly the Pilot's and partly someone else's--the personality of amarriage. Which wasn't a bit nice, because the whole place smelt ofdeath.
But to tell the truth I didn't give the place more than the quickestlook-over, because my attention was rivetted almost at once on a longwide couch with the covers kicked off it and on the body there.
The woman was about six feet tall and built like a goddess. Her hair wasblonde and her skin tanned. She was lying on her stomach and she wasnaked.
She didn't come anywhere near my libido, though. She looked sick todeath. Her face, twisted towards us, was hollow-cheeked and flushed. Hereyes, closed, were sunken and dark-circled. She was breathing shallowlyand rapidly through her open mouth, gasping now and then.
I got the crazy impression that all the heat in the place was comingfrom her body, radiating from her fever.
And the whole place stunk of death. Honestly it seemed to me that thisdugout was Death's underground temple, the bed Death's altar, and thewoman Death's sacrifice. (Had I unconsciously come to worship Death as agod in the Deathlands? I don't really know. There it gets too deep forme.)
No, she didn't come within a million miles of my libido, but there wasanother part of me that she was eating at ...
If guilt's a luxury, then I'm a plutocrat.
... eating at until I was an empty shell, until I had no props left,until I wanted to die then and there, until I figured I had to die ...
There was a faint sharp hiss right at my elbow. I looked and found that,unbeknownst to myself, I'd taken the steel cube out of my pocket andholding it snuggled between my first and second fingers I'd punched thebutton with my thumb just as I'd promised myself I would if I got toreally feeling bad.
It goes to show you that you should never give your mind any kind ofinstructions even half in fun, unless you're prepared to have themcarried out whether you approve later or not.
Pop saw what I'd done and looked at me strangely. "So you had to dieafter all, Ray," he said softly. "Most of us find out we have to, oneway or another."
We waited. Nothing happened. I noticed a very faint milky cloud a fewinches across hanging in the air by the cube.
Thinking right away of poison gas, I jerked away a little, dispersingthe cloud.
"What's that?" I demanded of no one in particular.
"I'd say," said Pop, "that that's something that squirted out of a tinyhole in the side of the cube opposite the button. A hole so nearlymicroscopic you wouldn't see it unless you looked for it hard. Ray, Idon't think you're going to get your baby A-blast, and what's more I'mafraid you've wasted something that's damn valuable. But don't let itworry you. Before I dropped those cubes for Atla-Hi I snagged one."
And darn if he didn't pull the brother of my cube out of his pocket.
"Alice," he said, "I noticed a half pint of whiskey in your satchel whenwe got the salve. Would you put some on a rag and hand it to me."
Alice looked at him like he was nuts, but while her eyes were lookingher pliers and her gloved hand were doing what he told her.
Pop took the rag and swabbed a spot on the sick woman's nearest buttockand jammed the cube against the spot and pushed the button.
"It's a jet hypodermic, folks," he said.
He took the cube away and there was the welt to substantiate hisstatement.
"Hope we got to her in time," he said. "The plague is tough. Now I guessthere's nothing for us to do but wait, maybe for quite a while."
I felt shaken beyond all recognition.
* * * * *
"Pop, you old caveman detective!" I burst out. "When did you get thatidea for a steel hospital?" Don't think I was feeling anywhere near thatgay. It was reaction, close to hysterical.
Pop was taken aback, but then he grinned. "I had a couple of clues thatyou and Alice didn't," he said. "I knew there was a very sick womaninvolved. And I had that bout with Los Alamos fever I told you. They'vehad a lot of trouble with it, I believe--some say its spores come fromoutside the world with the cosmic dust--and now it seems to have beencarried to Atla-Hi. Let's hope they've found the answer this time.Alice, maybe we'd better start getting some water into this gal."
After a while we sat down and fitted the facts together more orderly.Pop did the fitting mostly. Alamos researchers must have been workingfor years on the plague as it ravaged intermittently, maybe withmutations and ET tricks to make the job harder. Very recently they'dfound a promising treatment (cure, we hoped) and prepared it for rushshipment to Atla-Hi, where the plague was raging too and they weresieged in by Savannah as well. Grayl was picked to fly the serum, ordrug or whatever it was. But he knew or guessed that this lone womanobserver (because she'd fallen out of radio communication or something)had come down with the plague too and he decided to land some serum forher, probably without authorization.
"How do we know she's his girlfriend?" I asked.
"Or wife," Pop said tolerantly. "Why, there was that bag of woman'sstuff he was carrying, frilly things like a man would bring for a woman.Who else'd he be apt to make a special stop for?
"Another thing," Pop said. "He must have been using jets to hurry histrip. We heard them, you know."
That seemed about as close a reconstruction of events as we could get.Strictly hypothetical, of course. Deathlanders trying to figure out whatgoes on inside a "country" like Atla-Alamos and _why_ are sort of likefoxes trying to understand world politics, or wolves the Gothicmigrations. Of course we're all human beings, but that doesn't mean asmuch as it sounds.
* * * * *
Then Pop told us how he'd happened to be on the scene. He'd been doing a"tour of duty", as he called it, when he spotted this woman'sobservatory and decided to hang around anonymously and watch over herfor a few days and maybe help protect her from some dangerous charactersthat he knew were in the neighborhood.
"Pop, that sounds like a lousy idea to me," I objected. "Risky, I mean.Spying on another person, watching them without their knowing, would bethe surest way to stir up in me the idea of murdering them. Safest thingfor me to do in that situation would be to turn around and run."
"_You_ probably should," he agreed. "For now, anyway. It's all a matterof knowing your own strength and stage of growth. Me, it helps to givemyself these little jobs. And the essence of 'em is that the otherperson shouldn't know I'm helping."
It sounded like knighthood and pilgrimage and the Boy Scouts all overagain--for murderers. Well, why not?
Pop had seen this woman come out of the manhole a couple of times andlook around and then go back down and he'd got the impression she wassick and troubled. He'd even guessed she might be coming down withAlamos fever. He'd seen us arrive, of course, and that had bothered him.Then when the plane landed she'd come up again, acting out of her head,but when she'd seen the Pilot and us going for him she'd given thatscream and collapsed at the top of the shaft. He'd figured the onlything he could do for her was keep us occupied. Besides, now that heknew for sure we were murderers he'd started to burn with the desire totalk to us and maybe help us quit killing if we seemed to want to. Itwas only much later, in the middle of our trip, that he began to suspectthat the steel cubes were jet hypodermics.
While Pop had been telling us all this, we hadn't been watching thewoman so closely. Now Alice called our attention to her. Her skin wascovered with fine beads of perspiration, like diamonds.
"That's a good sign," Pop said and Alice started to wipe her off. Whileshe was doing that the woman came to in a groggy sort of way and Pop fedher some thin soup and in the middle of his doing it she dropped off tosleep.
Alice said, "Any other time I would be wild to kill another woman thatbeautiful. But she has been so close to death that I would feel I wasrobbing another murderer. I suppose there is more behind the change inmy feelings than that, though."
"Yeah, a little, I suppose," Pop said.
I didn't have anything to say about my own feelings. Certainly not outloud. I knew that they had changed and that they were still changing. Itwas complicated.
After a while it occurred to me and Alice to worry whether we mightn'tcatch this woman's sickness. It would serve us right, of course, butplague is plague. But Pop reassured us. "Actually I snagged threecubes," he said. "That should take care of you two. I figure I'mimmune."
Time wore on. Pop dragged out the harmonica, as I'd been afraid hewould, but his playing wasn't too bad. "Tenting Tonight," "When JohnnieComes Marching Home," and such. We had a meal.
The Pilot's woman woke up again, in her full mind this time or somethinglike it. We were clustered around the bed, smiling a little I supposeand looking inquiring. Being even assistant nurses makes you allconcerned about the patient's health and state of mind.
Pop helped her sit up a little. She looked around. She saw me and Alice.Recognition came into her eyes. She drew away from us with a look ofloathing. She didn't say a word, but the look stayed.
Pop drew me aside and whispered, "I think it would be a nice gesture ifyou and Alice took a blanket and went up and sewed him into it. Inoticed a big needle and some thread in her satchel." He looked me inthe eye and added, "You can't expect this woman to feel any other waytoward you, you know. Now or ever."
He was right of course. I gave Alice the high sign and we got out.
No point in dwelling on the next scene. Alice and me sewed up in ablanket a big guy who'd been dead a day and worked over by vultures.That's all.
About the time we'd finished, Pop came up.
"She chased me out," he explained. "She's getting dressed. When I toldher about the plane, she said she was going back to Los Alamos. She'snot fit to travel, of course, but she's giving herself injections. It'snone of our business. Incidentally, she wants to take the body back withher. I told her how we'd dropped the serum and how you and Alice hadhelped and she listened."
The Pilot's woman wasn't long after Pop. She must have had troublegetting up the shaft, she had a little trouble even walking straight,but she held her head high. She was wearing a dull silver tunic andsandals and cloak. As she passed me and Alice I could see the look ofloathing come back into her eyes, and her chin went a little higher. Ithought, why shouldn't she want us dead? Right now she probably wants tobe dead herself.
Pop nodded to us and we hoisted up the body and followed her. It wasalmost too heavy a load even for the three of us.
As she reached the plane a silver ladder telescoped down to her frombelow the door. I thought, _the Pilot must have had it keyed to her someway, so it would let down for her but nobody else. A very lovelygesture._
The ladder went up after her and we managed to lift the body above ourheads, our arms straight, and we walked it through the door of the planethat way, she receiving it.
The door closed and we stood back and the plane took off into the orangehaze, us watching it until it was swallowed.
Pop said, "Right now, I imagine you two feel pretty good in a screwed-upsort of way. I know I do. But take it from me, it won't last. A day ortwo and we're going to start feeling another way, the _old_ way, if wedon't get busy."
I knew he was right. You don't shake Old Urge Number One anything likethat easy.
"So," said Pop, "I got places I want to show you. Guys I want you tomeet. And there's things to do, a lot of them. Let's get moving."
So there's my story. Alice is still with me (Urge Number Two is evenharder to shake, supposing you wanted to) and we haven't killed anybodylately. (Not since the Pilot, in fact, but it doesn't do to boast.)We're making a stab (my language!) at doing the sort of work Pop does inthe Deathlands. It's tough but interesting. I still carry a knife, butI've given Mother to Pop. He has it strapped to him alongside Alice'sscrew-in blade.
Atla-Hi and Alamos still seem to be in existence, so I guess the serumworked for them generally as it did for the Pilot's Woman; they haven'tsent us any medals, but they haven't sent a hangman's squad after useither--which is more than fair, you'll admit. But Savannah, turned backfrom Atla-Hi, is still going strong: there's a rumor they have an armyat the gates of Ouachita right now. We tell Pop he'd better startpreaching fast--it's one of our standard jokes.
There's also a rumor t
hat a certain fellowship of Deathlanders is doingsurprisingly well, a rumor that there's a new America growing in theDeathlands--an America that never need kill again. But don't put toomuch stock in it. Not _too_ much.
THE END
Transcriber's Note:
This etext was produced from _Amazing Science Fiction Stories_ January 1960. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and typographical errors have been corrected without note.
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