INTERMEZZO
Stonecypher stood on Bay Knob, near the ruins of the old FM transmitterstation, looking down at the Tennessee Lakes. Catriona sat behind himand held the revolver on her thigh. Stonecypher said, "I never see itbut I wonder how it looked before the water."
Before him, North Fork, an arm of Kings Lake, twisted across theVirginia line four and one-half miles away, while to Stonecypher'sright, Boone Lake sparkled like a gigantic, badly drawn V. He did notlook toward Surgoinsville Dam securing Kings Lake far to the west.
The Tennessee Lakes were born in 1918 when Wilson Dam spanned theTennessee River at Muscle Shoals, Alabama; but their growth was retardedfor fifteen years, until an Act of Congress injected them with vitamins.Then the mile-long bastions of concrete crawled between the ridges.Norris, Wheeler, Pickwick Landing, Guntersville, Watts Bar, Kentucky,Cherokee, Fort Henry, Boone, Sevier, Surgoinsville--almost innumerabledams blocked the rivers. The rivers stopped and overflowed. The creeksswelled into rivers.
Congressional Committees investigated, the Supreme Court tested the damsagainst the Constitution, ethnologists and archeologists hastily checkedfor Indian relics; and the dams, infused with youthful vigor, matured.Beginning with Norris, which backed up the Clinch and Powell Rivers toinundate 25,000 acres and displace 3,000 families, the dams expandedmighty aquatic muscles. The Tennessee, the Little Tennessee, theNolichucky, the Holston, the French Broad, the Watauga, the Hiwassee,the Little Pigeon--all the rivers spread their waters into lengthy,ragged lakes, changing the map of Tennessee more than any naturalcataclysm, such as the great earthquake of 1811, had ever done. TheLakes provided jobs, electric power, flood control, soil conservation, afisherman's paradise, milder winters, cooler summers, and they coveredall the really good farming land in the eastern part of the state.
Catriona loaded the revolver. It was an obsolete .357 Magnum with a6-1/2 inch barrel, and the cartridge cases of the metal-piercing bulletshad a greenish sheen. "Now, put it in the holstah, and be ca'eful,"Catriona said.
Stonecypher wore the holster, a leather silhouette studded with twospring clips opening forward, on a belt and secured to his leg by athong. Gingerly, he took the revolver and slipped it under the clips."I've kept outa duels all my life," he said, "but, so long as it's foryou, I don't much mind."
"Ah'll mind if he kills you. You do like I tell you, and you can beathim. Why, mah best act in the How-To Cahnival was How to Win a Duel.Cou'se, they didn't know ah was really drawin' befoah the buzzahsounded. Why, ah used to set two plates ten yahds apaht, draw tworevolvahs, and shoot both plates, all in foah-tenths of a second!"
Stonecypher grinned. "Sorry I missed that carnival first time it camethrough here. I coulda seen you in that costume they poured on you,three years earlier."
"Nevah mind the veiled compliments. Now, try it!"
Stonecypher faced the target, a sheet of plastiboard roughly sawed tothe shape of a man, and backed by a heap of earth removed from the new,as yet dry, pond in which they stood. Catriona pressed a small buzzerconcealed in her palm. Stonecypher's big hand closed on the revolverbutt, pushing the weapon up and forward. The sound of the shot rattledaway over the mountain top.
"That's good!" Catriona cried, consulting the sonic timer. "One andtwo-tenths seconds from buzzah to shot!"
"But I missed," Stonecypher protested. "Look bad on tevee."
"You'll hit him. Watch the recoil next time."
Stonecypher drew and fired a second wild shot. He snorted, "ConfoundWesterns, anyhow!"
"Weste'ns?"
"Sure. That's where this duelin' started. Used to, almost ever' movie ortevee was called a Western. Sort of a fantasy, because they were justslightly based on real history. They generally showed a feller in aflowered shirt, ridin' a Tennessee Walking Horse, and shootin' a gun.Ever'body in these Westerns had a gun, and they all shot at each other.
"The youngin's were hep on 'em, so they all wore toy guns, and a wholegeneration grew up on Westerns. When they got big, they carried realguns. I've heard my great-uncle tell about it, how before the Governmentbuilt duel-pens and passed laws, you couldn't hardly cross the Lakeswithout runnin' into a bunch of fools on water skis shootin' at eachother."
"You leave the histo'y books alone foah awhile," Catriona commanded,"and practice. The tenants and ah'll tend to the wo'k. Try it loaded andempty. Hook this little buzzah to the timeah, and practice. Ah've got togo see the chickens."
"'Bye, teacher." Stonecypher dropped the buzzer in his pocket andwatched her vanish into the grove. He fired the remaining shots, nickingthe target once. With the revolver holstered, he followed the path tothe summer pasture.
* * * * *
Belly-deep in red clover, twenty-four cows, twenty-four calves, andtwenty-four yearlings grazed or played in the shady field. Stonecyphercupped his hands around his mouth and yelled, "Smart-calves!Smart-calves to school!"
The entire herd turned sorrowful eyes on him. Seven of the calves andfour of the yearlings trotted to the gate, which Stonecypher held open,and jostled out of the pasture. As the calves began to lie down underthe trees, a white heifer-calf nuzzled Stonecypher's hand and bawled,"Paaapy gyoing a fyightt?"
"Yeah, he's goin' to fight," Stonecypher answered. "Your pappy's gone tothe bullring. He suggested it, and made the choice himself. He's gotreal courage. You oughta all be proud of him."
The calves bawled their pride. Including those remaining in the pasture,they presented a colorful variety of spots, specks, splotches, browns,reds, blacks, and even occasional blue and greenish tinges. Stonecyphersat facing them from a stump. He said, "I'm sorta late for the lesson,today, so we'll get on with it. Some of this will be repetition for youyearlings, but it won't hurt. If you get too bored, there's corn andcottonseed meal in the trough, only be quiet about it.
"Now. To look at you all, nobody would think you're the same breed ofcattle; but you, and your mammys, and Moe are the only Atohmy cattle onEarth. It's usually hard to say exactly when a breed started; but youall started a long, long time ago, on July 16, 1945, near Alamogordo,New Mexico, when they exploded the first Atomic Bomb."
At mention of Atomic Bomb, who had succeeded the Bogger Man as a meansof frightening children, one of the younger calves bawled. Her polled,brindled mother ran in ungainly fashion to the fence and mooed withgreat carrying power.
"All right!" Stonecypher yelled. The cow closed her big mouth, butstayed by the gate. "Can't go by what you hear the tenants tell theirkids," Stonecypher cautioned the calf. "Atomic Bomb is as dead as thetank and the battleship.
"Now, like I was sayin', the scientists put Atomic Bomb on a hundredfoot tower and blowed him up. There was a flash of fire, and an awfulracket, and the blast raised up a lot of dirt and dust from the ground.All this dust achurnin' around in the cloud bumped into little bits ofmetal and stuff that was highly radioactive. That means, the basic atomsof matter had been thrown out of kilter, sorta deranged. The protons andelectrons in an atom oughta be about equal for it to be stable, butthese were shootin' off electrons, or beta particles, and givin' offsomething like powerful x-rays, called gamma rays, and things like that.
"Anyhow, this radiation affected all the sand and bits of rock and dirtin that bomb cloud. This radiation is dangerous. Some of it will goright through several inches of lead. Enough'll kill you. Your ancestorswere ten miles or so from where Atomic Bomb went off.
"They were just plain Whiteface cattle. They weren't supposed to bethere, but I reckon none of the scientists bothered to warn 'em. Thedust started settlin' all over your ancestors. In about a week, therewere sores and blisters on their backs. The red hair dropped off. Whenit grew back, it was gray.
"The scientists got real excited when they heard about it, 'cause theywanted to see how horrible they could make Atomic Bomb. So, they shippedfifty-nine cattle up to Oak Ridge. That was a Government town, a hundredmiles southwest of here, where they made some of the stuff to put inAtomic Bomb. The University of Tennessee was runn
in' an experimentalfarm there. They had donkeys, and pigs, and chickens, and other animalsthat they exposed to radioactivity. Then they killed 'em and cut 'em upto see what had happened. I know it's gruesome, but that's how it was.
"The awful fact is, the scientists slaughtered more than half thatoriginal Atohmy herd for experiments. Some of the rest,they--uh--married. Wanted to see if the calves had two heads, orsomething; if radioactivity had speeded up the mutation rate.
"Back then, they didn't understand much about mutation. Some claimed alittle radioactivity would cause it, some said a whole lot, and somesaid it wouldn't hurt a bit."
"Whaa mootyaaonn?" asked the calf which was not yet assured of theextinction of Atomic Bomb.
"Well, you-all are all mutations. I've told you how life starts from onecell. This cell has thread-like things in it called chromosomes, and thechromosomes are made up of things called genes. Mutations, sort ofunexpected changes, can take place in either the chromosomes or thegenes. You see, when this one cell starts dividing, every gene makes acopy of itself; but, sometimes, the copy is a little different from theoriginal. Lots of things, like x-rays and ultraviolet rays, heat,chemicals, disease, can cause this. Radioactivity had caused mutation insome experiment, so the scientists were anxious to see what happenedwith these cattle.
"Genes determine the way an animal develops. Two mutant genes can startreactions that end up as a man with one leg, or maybe as a bull with theintelligence of an eight-year-old man. Lots of mutations are recessive.They may be carried along for generations. But, when two like mutantgenes come together in reproduction, the animal is bound to be somethingdifferent, the way you eleven calves are.
"Now. The scientists watched the Atohmy cattle for fifteen or twentyyears, and nothin' much happened. They started sayin' radioactivitywasn't dangerous, and a man could walk into a place right after AtomicBomb went off, and it wouldn't matter. They should be here to see themess in Japan today. All the time, though, I think the cattle werechanging. It may have been in little things like the length of hair, orthe shape of an eyeball, or the curve of a horn, so the scientistscouldn't tell without they made exact measurements all the time.
"Then, a bull-calf was born. He had shaggy black hair, and his hornsgrew in a spiral like a ram's. Some scientists said, 'I told you so! Itspeeded the mutation rate!'
"Others said, 'He's a natural mutation, or else, a throw-back toprehistoric wild cattle. It happens in every breed. Atomic Bomb hadnothing to do with it.'
"They married the bull, and then they fixed to slaughter 'im to see whathis insides was like. The bull fooled 'em, though. He came down withcontagious pleuro-pneumonia, the first case in years, 'cause it wassupposed to have been wiped out in this country away back in theNineteenth Century. They had to cremate the bull for fear the diseasewould spread. Ever' one of the calves were normal Whitefaces.
"Finally, the nineteen Atohmy cattle that were left were put up forsale. My great-grandfather, Cary McPheeter, bought 'em and shipped 'emhere to Bays Mountain. He's the man started this farm where there wasnothin' but rattlesnakes, and trees, and rocks."
"Whyy theyea selll um?" a red roan calf interrupted.
"Well, they sold 'em 'cause Oak Ridge had been condemned. That wasseveral years after the German Civil War. It was peace time, for achange, and folks were sick of Atomic Bomb. Anyhow, new, modern plantsfor makin' the stuff had been built in secret places a lot easier todefend. The women were cryin' for more automatic kitchens, so the Bureauof Interior Hydro-electric Power (that's the name Federal Power, Inc.,went by then) put another dam across the Clinch River below Norris. BushLake covered up Oak Ridge.
"There wasn't much mutation, except for color, in you Atohmy cattle,till seven years ago when your pappy, Moe, was born. I remember--"
A hoarse excited voice shouted from a distance. "Thrill party!" itcried. "Thrill party!"
* * * * *
Stonecypher leaped off the stump, stamped his right foot to restorecirculation, and yelled on the run, "That's all today! Stay under thetrees!"
He loped along the pasture fence and across the makeshift target range.Two tenants, Teddy and Will, stood on the dirt heap with pitchforks intheir hands. Over Bay Knob, an old Model 14 butterflier hovered onvibrating wings. Sloppy white letters on the sides of the aircraftspelled such slang expressions as, "Flash the MAGNETS,""SupercOlossalSoniC Flap ship," and "Redheads amble OTHer canop."
An impossible number of middleschool-age boys bulged from the cabinwindows. Methodically, they dumped trash and garbage over thetransmitter station ruins. The butterflier wheeled and flapped over thepasture. Red clover bent and writhed in the artificial wind from theornithopter wings. Cows bawled and ran wild. Calves fell over eachother.
Stonecypher jumped the fence. He wrested the revolver from the holster."Clear out, or I'll shoot!" he howled.
Voices spilled from the butterflier. "He got a handgun!"
"Dis ain't legal!"
"Whatcha say, tall, bones, and ugly?"
Stonecypher aimed the Magnum at the shaven head in the pilot's seat. Theboys looked faint. Agitated air thundered as the butterflier liftedstraight up two hundred feet and glided away in the direction ofSurgoinsville Dam.
Teddy and Will stood by with pitchforks unrelaxed. Will spat a globuleof tobacco juice. "The thangs these here psychologists git made law!" hesneered. "You want me to make out a Thrill Damage Claim?"
"No, Will," Stonecypher said, "just deduct it from taxes."
Teddy looked at the revolver and said, "Ever'body oughta take guns tothem crazy youngin's. Reckon you'll git into trouble?"
"No. It's an empty antique. That's legal. You guys did all right. Letthe calves back in, huh?"
The tenants left by the gate, and, with a minimum of driving, urged thecalves into the pasture. Stonecypher watched the men pass through thegrove. Although the tenants undoubtedly recognized the peculiarities ofthe calves, they never mentioned them. Since the late 1700's, throughRevolution, Civil War, automobile, the Department of Internal Revenue,the multiple bureaus that had controlled the Lakes, the Moon rocket, andthe expedition to Pluto, these people had remained suspiciouslyinterested in strangers, suspicious of indoor plumbing, doubtful of theGovernment, quick-tempered, and as immovable as Chimney Top. They hadexchanged little except log and frame houses for concrete. The tenants,not really tenants, had been squatting on Bays Mountain when CaryMcPheeter bought the farm; and there they stayed.
Stonecypher vaulted the fence. Catriona, with hands firmly planted onhips, stood in the dry pond. Stonecypher said, "If I just knew whatthese thrill parties think they're up to, it might help."
Catriona shook her head of red-yellow hair. "Nevah mind them. Ah toldyou to practice shootin', but the minute ah turn mah back, you run offand staht teachin' those calves! You've got to practice, Stony! You'venevah done any shootin', and L. Dan's killed ten people. Ah--"
"Watch the tears, or you'll have red and green eyes," Stonecypher said.Clumsily, he ejected the shells and reloaded the revolver. He occupiedtwo seconds in drawing and firing. The bullet struck dirt a yard to theleft of the target.