Empire of Women & One of our Cities is Missing (Armchair Fiction Double Novels Book 25) (26 page)

“If they choose that, yes,” Cheryl told
her.
 

“What about my cousin?” Chen Phiang
asked.
 
“Do we punish them only for
taking property, and not for the harm they have done him?”

“We’re trying to make a world for free
men,” Yorovich added.
 
“Property has a
secondary place with us.
 
Shostovar and
Grennig have violated everything we believe in.”
 

From his chair Lin Yeng spoke slowly,
lisping because of his cut lip.
 
“I think
we might use two penalties.
 
I’ll miss
some time from work because of what they’ve done.
 
Shostovar and Grennig should make that up in
general community labor.
 
Secondly, they
should be sent back to school with our kids until the teachers are satisfied
that their incorrect attitudes have changed.”
 

“With these two,” Roswell reminded us,
“that sentence could run forever.”
 

“I was thinking about special classes,”
Lin Yeng explained.
 
“A reading program,
let’s say.
 
They might be made to spend a
certain period each day with books selected by Stewart Roswell, and Roswell
could give them examinations at intervals.”
 

That settled it.
 
Yorovich and Psorkarian were sent to bring
the two men in.
 
By that time the community
accepted them as our police arm.
 
The
decision was made by the whole group acting together, with no prompting from
me.
 

I saw our dream emerge into a still
sharper reality.
 
Cheryl was right.
 
Christmas had been a time for the renewal of
my faith.
 

IV
.
 
The
Valley—March,
The First Year

ON AN afternoon in March I rode west out
of the village with Boris Yorovich to Cedar Lake, a very small, artificial
lake, which had once been a motion picture, set.
 
Since the village was wired for electricity,
Yorovich had spent months trying to work out a scheme to give us power
again.
 
He had a general knowledge of
electronics and he had done a great deal of technical reading during the winter.
 
The narrow dam that made Cedar Lake had a
drop of nearly thirty feet.
 
Yorovich
thought he could find material in Canster’s appliance shop and build a
generator to take advantage of the flow of water.
 

“I could use three men most of the
summer, Jerry,” Yorovich said.
 

“We can spare them.
 
The kids will do a lot of the farm
work.”
 

“I may want more part of the time.”
 
He pointed down the gully below the dam.
 
“I want to channel three more streams into
the lake, Jerry, so we’ll have a larger flow of water over the dam; it’ll help
prevent a freeze-up next winter.”
 

“We should have electricity, Boris,
particularly for refrigeration.
 
I think
I ought to let you have all the manpower you need.”
 

“It’s tough when we can’t use Shostovar
and Grennig.”
 

“We agreed on the punishment and we’ll
stick it out.”
 

That policy was the final evolution of
the decision we made Christmas Eve.
 
We
gave the men their choice:
 
exile or
reform.
 
If they chose to stay in our
valley, they did so as children.
 
At the
time both of them had been hilariously amused; they weren’t laughing any
longer.
 
As soon as they had done the
extra labor to pay for the stolen liquor and Lin Yeng’s lost time, we assigned
them to the library and a special class conducted for them alone by Virginia
Grant.
 

“It’s working out,” Yorovich told
me.
 
“At least for
Shostovar.
 
He’s beginning to take
us seriously.”
 

“Roswell agrees with you.
 
In any case, Boris, this is different from
our old idea of criminal punishment.
 
We
could have locked the two of them up for a couple of months; this way we have a
chance of changing the way they think and making them useful adults.”
 

“What about Grennig?”

“He talks a fast line, but it’s a sham;
he hates us all…”

During the past three months I had read shelves
of books on government; I had talked endlessly with Debby Zacharias and
Stewart Roswell, picking their minds clean of ideas.
 
I concluded that the most workable, the most
man-centered government was the form I knew best—the constitutional organization
of the United States.
 

My cigar was out.
 
I tossed it in the fire.
 
I stripped off my clothes and slid down into
the envelope of blankets on my cot.
 

Three hours later I was awakened by a
frantic pounding on the door.
 
“Derry!
 
Derry, tome twick!”
 
It was a child’s voice, shrill with terror.
 
I leaped out of bed, throwing a log on the
dying fire as I crossed toward the door.
 
The boy on the step was Don Harrow, the five-year-old adopted by Igor
Morrenski and Emily Marsh.
 
Don threw
his arms around my neck.
 
I carried him
close to the fire.
 
He was wearing his
woolies.
 
Snow had soaked through the
cloth and the child was trembling from the cold.
 

“Karl Grennig’s beating up my Daddy!”
Don said through chattering teeth.
 
“An’
he hit my Mommy an’ made her face bleed…”

The Morrenski’s cottage door was
open.
 
Igor lay on the floor in front of
the dying fire.
 
I took his battered face
in my hands and he seized my arm convulsively.
 
In a choked whisper he said,

“Go after them, Jerry.
 
He stole my wife.”
 

“After I get you—”

“The hell with me!
 
I’m all right.
 
Grennig has my Emily!”

“Which road did they take?”

“East, to the desert.
 
Grennig has one of the horses.”
 

I ran to the corral.
 
Psorkarian kept some small arms there.
 
Apparently Grennig hadn’t known that, for
the cabinet was still locked.
 
I opened
it with my own key and took out a rifle before I mounted one of the Cossack’s
horses.
 

I rode in bleak darkness, hearing
nothing but the howl of the wind.
 
The
powdery snow tore at my face like a thousand needles of ice.
 
I was constantly bent low over the side of my
horse so I could make out the trail in the snow.
 
When I passed the four-thousand-foot marker
the snow on the road was slush; a thousand feet lower it became a cold,
driving rain.
 
I had no more hoof marks
to follow.
 
If Grennig made the desert,
he stood a good chance of getting away.
 

But there was one factor he hadn’t
calculated: the quixotic behavior of a mountain storm.
 
Suddenly I was out of the rain.
 
Moonlight stabbed down through the broiling,
wind-driven clouds.
 
I was able to see
the highway ahead.
 

I pushed my horse faster.
 
The advantage shifted to me.
 
Grennig was carrying a woman; I rode
alone.
 
I cantered another mile before I
came to the long slide, which the desert bombing had thrown over the road.
 
I saw Grennig then, almost across the slide
area.
 

I fired my rifle high above his
head.
 
I heard Emily Marsh scream as
Grennig dug spurs into his horse’s flank.
 
She had been slumped across the saddle, playing unconscious until she
knew someone was behind her.
 

She pushed herself from his horse,
rolling on the asphalt.
 
Grennig reined
in his mount and went back after her.
 

I caught up with them as they fought on
the shoulder of the highway.
 
I swung
from the saddle and prodded the German back with my rifle.
 
He stood facing me with bared teeth.
 
For the first time since I had known him, his
eyes were neither candid nor child-like.
 
The mask was gone and I saw the man:
 
shrewd, savage,
calculating —
an ape with the
cerebral cortex of a human being.
 

“You can go, Grennig,” I said, nodding
toward the desert.
 
“You don’t have a
choice any longer.
 
But Emily’s going
back with me, where she belongs.”
 

“Always the Gallahad,” he sneered.
 

I smashed his face with my fist.
 
His eyes glazed but he held his grip on
consciousness.
 
He seized a rock and
tried to hammer it into my skull.
 
I
jerked my head aside.
 
The stone ripped a
gash in my cheek with an agonizing fire of pain.
 
I doubled my knees and kicked him from
me.
 
He groped for the rifle, lying on
the road.
 
I threw myself at him.
 
He swung the butt of the rifle in a wide
arc.
 
It grazed my shin.
 

Grennig jerked back the bolt as I struck
him with my shoulder.
 
We both went down
and the rifle was between us.
 
The explosion
was muffled by our bodies.
 
I saw the
look of surprise in his face—and the slow emptiness of death…

V.
 
The City and the Valley—November,
The
Second Year

BY NOVEMBER—a year and a half after the
war began—the population in the valley had grown to two hundred and fifty.
 
I no longer felt any doubt.
 
Some men had understood George Knight.
 
We all would in time.
 

Yet there was always one question in my
mind.
 
Our greatest opportunity had been
Los Angeles.
 
Knight’s broadcasts had
been made primarily to the city.
 
But Los
Angeles chose war.
 
Why?
 

In November we set up our first formal
government and we held our first election.
 
I was chosen president by a vote of two hundred and twenty.
 
Thirty of our children, defined as still socially
immature, did not vote.
 

We held our election late in the
afternoon, and afterward Cheryl and I walked up to the knoll above the
lake.
 
I felt a need to be alone with
her, and the others understood that.
 

Cheryl and I sat together, looking at the
lake in silence.
 
The sun was setting and
the fall wind was bitter with the first icy touch of winter.
 
Cheryl moved closer to me.
 
She slid her hand beneath my shirt to keep it
warm.
 
I felt the gentle touch of her
finger tracing the muscle of my chest—her favorite, almost unconscious
gesture of affection.
 
I remembered that
on this knoll we first found our love for each other; I drew her face toward
mine.
 
She lay in my arms with her lips
soft and liquid on my cheek.
 

Far away I heard the sound of sudden
gunfire.
 
I pushed Cheryl from me.
 
On the village street someone was
screaming.
 

I sprinted toward the village.
 
Yorovich came out of the lodge and tossed me
one of our submachine guns.
 
The street
was in chaos.
 
Our citizens were
scurrying into the shelter of the empty stores.
 
Bearded strangers on horseback were riding up and down the road, firing
rifles into the mob.
 

Yorovich and I opened up on the
horsemen.
 
Four flung up their hands and
fell in the street.
 
The others retreated
to the eastern end of the village and barricaded themselves in an empty
building.
 
Yorovich and I pinned them
down long enough for our people to take cover and our men to break out their
guns.