“Too
bad it didn’t hit you,” Edith Pritchet said quietly. “Then we’d be
out of this.”
Aghast, Marsha gave a little
despairing cry. Around her, the hard, unsympathetic faces of the group were
stark white in the uncompromising flicker of the company flare. “You all
believe it. You think I’m
a—Com
munist.”
Tillingford
turned quickly. An almost hysterical terror
appeared on his brutal,
corrupt face. “That’s right; I forgot. You were all out on a Party
picnic.”
Hamilton started to deny it. Then
weariness overcame him. What did it matter? Probably, in this world, they
had been out on a Communist picnic, a Progressive
rally
with folk dances, songs of Loyalist Spain, slogans and speeches
and petitions. “Well,” he said mildly to his
wife, “we’ve come a long way. Through three worlds to get
here.”
“What
do you mean?” Marsha faltered.
“I wish you had told me.”
Her eyes blazed. “Don’t you
believe me, either?” In the darkness, her slim, pale hand flashed upward;
a
stinging pain burst against his face and
shattered around
him in a blinding turmoil of sparks. Then, almost immediately,
the resentment drained out of her. “It’s not
true,” she said hopelessly.
Rubbing his swollen, burning cheek,
Hamilton said, “It’s interesting, though. We were saying we wouldn’t
know until we could get into people’s minds.
Well, here
we are. We were in Silvester’s mind; we were in Edith
Pritchet’s mind; we were in Miss Reiss’ insane
mind—”
“If we kill her,”
Silvester said evenly, “well be out of here.”
“Back
in our own world,” McFeyffe said.
“Keep
away from her,” Hamilton warned them. “Keep
your hands off my
wife.”
Around them stood the tight, hostile
circle of the group. For a time none of them moved; the six figures were stiff
with tension, arms rigid at their sides. Then
Laws
shrugged and relaxed. Turning his back he walked
slowly off.
“Forget it,” he said over his shoulder. “Let Jack take care of
her. She’s his problem.”
Marsha
began breathing in rapid, shallow gasps. “This
is so damn awful
…
I don’t understand it.” Miserably,
she shook her head. It just doesn’t make sense.”
More stones had fallen around them.
In the eddying
shadows, sounds were
audible, faint and rhythmic,
swelling until they had become drifting
chants. Tillingford, his heavy features cruel and bitter, stood listen
ing.
“Hear
them?” he said to Hamilton. “They’re out there,
hiding in the
darkness.” His coarse face twisted in a
spasm
of loathing. “Beasts.”
“Doctor,”
Hamilton protested, “you can’t believe this.
You must know this
isn’t you.”
Without looking at him, Tillingford
said, “Go join your Red friends out there.”
“Is that the situation?”
“You’re
a Communist,” Tillingford said tonelessly.
“Your wife’s a
Communist. You’re human debris. You
have no
place at my plant, no place in decent human so
ciety. Get out and
stay
out!” After a moment he added,
“Go
back to your Communist picnic.”
“Are you going to fight it
out?” Hamilton asked him.
“Naturally.”
“You’re
actually going to start shooting? You’re going
to kill those men out there?”
“If we don’t,” Tillingford
said logically, “they’ll kill us. That’s the way it is; it’s not my
fault”
“This
stuff can’t last,” Laws said disgustedly to Hamil
ton. “They’re dummy actors in a cheap
Communist play.
This is a shoddy
parody—Life in America. You can damn
near see the real world showing
through.”
A burst of staccato gunfire broke
out wildly. On the roofs of nearby houses, workmen had silently mounted
a machine gun. Puffs of luminous gray cement dust
bil
lowed up as the line of bullets rattled closer. Tillingford dropped
awkwardly down on his hands and knees behind the ruin of his Cadillac. His own
men, squat
ting and running, began to fire
back. A hand grenade was
tossed through the darkness; Hamilton hunched
over, rocking with the concussion as a column of exploding
flame leaped searingly into his eyes and face.
When the
fury had settled, a deep pit lay spread out, half-filled with
littered rubble. Several of Tillingford’s henchmen
were visible among the debris, their bodies distorted into
impossible postures.
As Hamilton dully watched their
broken struggles,
Laws said in his ear,
“Do they look familiar? Look close.”
In the billowing darkness, Hamilton
could not make out the sight with clarity. But one of the shattered, inert
figures had a familiar appearance. Baffled, he
stared down
at it. Who was the person stretched out among the littered
ruin, half-buried by sections of torn-up pave
ment
and still-smouldering chunks of ash?
“It’s
you,” Laws said softly.
So
it was. The dim outlines of the real world wavered
and ebbed, visible
behind this distorted fantasy. As if even the creator of the scene around them
had developed certain fundamental doubts. The rubble-littered
pavement was not the street; it was the floor of
the Bev
atron. Here and there lay other familiar figures. Stirring
faintly, they were beginning to creep back to
life.
Among
the smoking ruins, a few technicians and med
ical workers inched
cautiously forward. They picked their way with care, moving with agonizing
slowness,
step by step, careful not to
expose themselves. Descend
ing from nearby houses to ground level, they
dropped stealthily to the gutted street
…
or was it a street?
Now it seemed more like
the walls of the Bevatron, and
the safety catwalks leading to the floor.
And the red
arm bands of the workmen seemed
more like Red Cross
arm bands. Confused, Hamilton gave up trying to unscramble
the montage of places, shapes.
“It won’t be long,” Miss
Reiss said quietly. With the
break-up of her
world she had reemerged, exactly as be
fore,
in her long corduroy coat, wearing her usual horn
rimmed glasses and clutching her precious purse.
“This
particular conspiracy
isn’t very successful. Not nearly so
well
constructed as the last”
“You
found the last one convincing?” Hamilton in
quired icily.
“Oh,
yes. At first I was almost taken in. I thought—”
Miss Reiss smiled
with fanatical intensity. “So very
clever,
really. I almost believed it was
my
world. But, of
course, when I started into the lobby of my
apartment
building, I realized the truth. When I found the usual
threatening letters on the hall table.”
Shivering and kneeling down beside
her husband,
Marsha said, “What’s wrong
with it? Everything seems
so
hazy.”
“It’s
almost over,” Miss Reiss said remotely.
In
an ecstasy of hope, Marsha clutched convulsively at
her husband. “Is it? Are we going to wake
up?”
“Maybe,”
Hamilton answered. “Some say so.”
“That’s—wonderful.”
“Is
it?”
Panic
fluttered across her face. “Of course it is. I hate
this place—I can’t stand it It’s so—bizarre. So
mean and
dreadful”
“We’ll
talk about it later.” His attention was fixed on
Tillingford; the ponderous capitalist boss had
assembled h
is gang of men and was talking with them in low,
measured tones.
“These goons,” Laws said
softly, “are by no means done. Before we’re out of here, we’re going to
see a
fight.”
Tillingford
had finished his discussion. Jerking his
thumb toward Laws, he said, “String him up. That’s one
out of the way.”
Laws grinned starkly. “Another
nigger about to be
lynched. The capitalists
do it all the time.”
Incredulous, Hamilton almost laughed
out loud. But
Tillingford meant it; he was
in deadly earnest. “Doctor,”
Hamilton
said thickly, “this only exists because Marsha
believes in it. You, all this fighting, this
whole demented
fantasy—she’s already letting it fall apart. It’s not
real—
it’s her illusion. Listen to me!”
“And
that Red,” Tillingford said wearily. He mopped
his bloody, grimy
forehead with a silk handkerchief. “And his Red floozy. Douse them with
gasoline when they’re through kicking. I wish we’d stayed at the plant. We were
safe there for awhile, at least. And we could
have
set up a better formula of defense.”
Like ghostly shadows, the workmen
were creeping through the rubble. More grenades exploded; the air was heavy
with indistinct bits of ash and fragments of debris that rained silently down.
“Look,” David Pritchet said, awed.
Across the dark night sky, huge letters were
forming.
Hazy, uncertain, luminous blurs that gradually bur
geoned themselves into words. Already partially
disinte
grated slogans of comfort, written shakily across the black
emptiness, for their benefit.
We
Are Coming.
Hold
Out.
Fighters Of Peace.
Arise.
“Very
comforting,” Hamilton said, revolted.
From the darkness, the dull
chanting had risen in pitch. The cold wind swirled phrases of shouted song
to the half-concealed group. “Maybe they’ll
save us yet;”
Mrs. Pritchet said
uncertainly. “But those awful words up
there … they make me
feel so strange.”
Here and there, Tillingford’s men
moved, gathering rubble, collecting odds and ends, building up fortified
positions. Almost lost in the swirling clouds of
mist and
smoke, they were only dimly visible. Now and then, a harsh,
bony face was illuminated, rising momentarily
into
sight and then sinking back into the nebulous gloom.
Who did they remind
him of? Hamilton tried to think. The pulled-down hats, the beaked noses …
“Gangsters,”
Laws reminded him. “Chicago gangsters
of the ‘thirties.”
Hamilton nodded. “That’s
it”
“Everything according to the
book. She must have
memorized it
perfectly.”
“Leave her alone,”
Hamilton told him, without much
conviction.
“What comes next?” Laws
said ironically to the huddled shape of Marsha Hamilton. “The capitalist
bandits become crazed with desperation? Is that it?”
“They look desperate
already,” Arthur Silvester com
mented
in his somber way.
“Such unpleasant-looking
men,” Mrs. Pritchet flut
tered
apprehensively. “I didn’t realize such men existed.”
At that moment, one of the fiery
slogans in the sky exploded. Bits of flaming word cascaded down, setting
the heaps of rubble on fire. Cursing, beating at
his cloth
ing, Tillingford reluctantly retreated; a section of burning
rubbish had fallen on him, setting his coat on fire. To his right, his group of
company toughs were half-buried under a vast, incandescent outline-portrait of
Bulganin that had come loose from the sky and fallen directly on top of them.
“Buried
alive,” Laws said, with satisfaction.
More words were falling now. A
gigantic sizzling
Peace
had landed on Hamilton’s tidy little house; the
roof was ablaze, as well as the garage and clothesline. Wretchedly, he watched
it flare up brilliantly and send flickering tongues of flame high into the
night. There
was no responding wail of
sirens from the dark town; the
streets and houses lay stretched silently
out, closed and
hostile to the
incineration.
“Good Lord,” Marsha said
fearfully. “I think that big
Coexistence
is coming loose.”
Crouched with his men, Tillingford
had lost control
of the situation.
“Bombs and bullets,” he was repeating,
over and over again, in
a low, monotonous voice. Only a few of his gang of toughs survived. “Bombs
and bullets won’t stop them. They’re starting to march.”
In
the flickering darkness, a line of shapes was mov
ing forward. The
singing chant had risen to an orgy of feverish excitement; dark and harsh it
swelled out, preceding the stern men making their way through the
burning piles of rubble.
“Come on,” Hamilton said.
Grabbing his wife’s limp hand, he led her swiftly off into the settling chaos
around them.
* * * * *
Finding
his way by instinctive memory, Hamilton led
his wife around the side of their burning house, along the
cement
path and into the back yard. A section of fence had charred through and
disintegrated; pulling Marsha
along, he
shoved his way among the smoking fragments and into the dark yard beyond. The
houses were opaque
forms that loomed ominously. Now and then, a transient
vision of running men appeared ahead; faceless, interchangeable workmen quietly
making their way to the scene of the fighting. Gradually, the shapes and the
sound of gunfire died. The sputter of flames receded. They were out of the
immediate battle.