Sixth Column (4 page)

administration. In the course of my work I got an idea that I wanted to write a

thesis on migratory labor and decided that in order to understand the subject

I would have to experience the conditions under which such people lived."

"I see. And it was while you were doing your laboratory work, as it were,

that the army snagged you. "

"Oh, no," Thomas corrected him. "I've been on the road more than ten

years. I never went back. You see, I found I liked being a hobo."

The details were rapidly arranged. Thomas wanted nothing in the way of

equipment but the clothes he had been wearing when he had stumbled into

the Citadel. Ardmore had suggested a bedding roll, but Thomas would have

none of it. "It would not be in character," he explained. "I was never a

bindlestiff. Bindlestiffs are dirty, and a self-respecting hobo doesn't associate

with them. All I want is a good meal in my belly and a small amount of money

on my person."

Ardmore's instructions to him were very general. "Almost anything you

hear or see will be data for me," he told him. "Cover as much territory as you

ran, and try to be back here within a week. If you are gone much longer than

that, I will assume that you are dead or imprisoned, and will have to try some

other plan.

"Keep your eyes open for some means by which we can establish a

permanent service of information. I can't suggest what it is you are to look for

in that connection, but keep it in mind. Now as to details: anything and

everything about the PanAsians, how they are armed, how they police

occupied territory, where they have set up headquarters, particularly their

continental headquarters, and, if you can make any sort of estimate, how

many of them there are and how they're distributed. That would keep you

busy for a year, at least; just the same, be back in a week. "

Ardmore showed Thomas how to operate one of the outer doors of the

Citadel; two bars of "Yankee Doodle," breaking off short, and a door

appeared in what seemed to be a wall of country rock-simple, and yet foreign

to the Asiatic mind. Then he shook hands with him and wished him good

luck.

Ardmore found that Thomas had still one mare surprise for him; when he

shook hands, he did so with the grip of the Dekes, Ardmore's own fraternity!

Ardmore stood staring at the closed portal, busy arranging his

preconceptions.

When he turned around, Calhoun was behind him. He felt somewhat as

if he had been caught stealing jam. "Oh, hello, Doctor," he said quickly.

"How do you do, Major," Calhoun replied with deliberation. "May I inquire

as to what is going on?"

"Certainly. I've sent Lieutenant Thomas out to reconnoiter. "

"Lieutenant?"

"Brevet lieutenant. I was forced to use him for work fax beyond his rank; I

found it expedient to assign him the rank and pay of his new duties."

Calhoun pursued that point no further, but answered with another, in the

same faintly critical tone of voice. "I suppose you realize that it jeopardizes all

of us to send anyone outside? I am a little surprised that you should act in

such a matter without consulting with others."

"I am sorry you feel that way about it, Colonel," Ardmore replied, in a

conscious attempt to conciliate the older man, "but I am required to make the

final decision in any case, and it is of prime importance to our task that

nothing be permitted to distract your attention from your all-important job of

research. Have you completed your experiment?" he went on quickly.

"Yes."

"Well?"

"The results were positive. The mice died."

"How about Wilkie?"

"Oh, Wilkie was unhurt, naturally. That is in accordance with my

predictions."

Jefferson Thomas. Bachelor of Arts magna cum laude, University of

California, Bachelor of Law, Harvard Law School, professional hobo, private

and cook's helper, and now a brevet lieutenant, intelligence, United States

army, spent his first night outside shivering on pine needles where dark had

overtaken him. Early the next morning he located a ranchhouse.

They fed him, but they were anxious for him to move along. "You never

can tell when one of those heathens is going to come snooping around,"

apologized his host, "and I can't afford to be arrested for harboring refugees. I

got the wife and kids to think about." But he followed Thomas out to the road,

still talking, his natural garrulity prevailing over his caution. He seemed to

take a grim pleasure in bewailing the catastrophe.

"God knows what I'm raising those kids up to. Some nights it seems like

the only reasonable thing to do is to put them all out of their sorrow. But

Jessie-that's my wife-says it's a scandal and a sin to talk that way, that the

Lord will take care of things all in His own good time. Maybe so-but I know it's

no favor to a child to raise it up to be bossed around and lorded over by

those monkeys." He spat. "It's not American."

"What's this about penalties for harboring refugees?"

The rancher stared at him. "Where've you been, friend?"

"Up in the hills. I haven't laid eyes on one of the so-and-so's yet."

"You will. But then you haven't got a number, have you? You'd better get

one. No, that won't do you any good; you'd just land in a labor camp if you

tried to get one."

"Number?

"Registration number. Like this." He pulled a glassine-covered card out

of his pocket and displayed it. It had axed to it a poor but recognizable picture

of the rancher, his fingerprints, and pertinent data as to his occupation,

marital status, address, etcetera. There was a long, hyphenated number

running across the top. The rancher indicated it with a work-stained finger.

"That first part is my number. It means I have permission from the emperor to

stay alive and enjoy the air and sunshine," he added bitterly. "The second

part is my serial classification. It tells where I live and what I do. If I want to

cross the county line, I have to have that changed. If I want to go to any other

town than the one I'm assigned to do my marketing in, I've got to get a day's

special permit. Now I ask you-is that any way for a man to live?"

"Not for me," agreed Thomas. "Well, I guess I had better be on my way

before I get you in trouble. Thanks for the breakfast."

"Don't mention it. It's a pleasure to do a favor for a fellow American these

days."

He started off down the road at once, not wishing the kindly rancher to

see how thoroughly he had been moved by the picture of his degradation.

The implications of that registration card had shaken his free soul in a fashion

that the simple, intellectual knowledge of the defeat of the United States had

been unable to do.

He moved slowly for the first two or three days, avoiding the towns until

he had gathered sufficient knowledge of the enforced new customs to be

able to conduct himself without arousing suspicion. It was urgently desirable

that he be able to enter at least one big city in order to snoop around, read

the bulletin boards, and find a chance to talk with persons whose occupations

permitted them to travel. From a standpoint of personal safety he was quite

willing to chance it without an identification card but he remembered clearly a

repeated injunction of Ardmore's "Your paramount duty is to returns Don't go

making a hero of yourself. Don't take any chance you can avoid and come

back!"

Cities would have to wait.

Thomas skirted around towns at night, avoiding patrols as he used to

avoid railroad cops. The second night out he found the first of his objectives,

a hobos' jungle. It was just where he had expected to find it, from his

recollection of previous trips through the territory. Nevertheless, he almost

missed it, for the inevitable fire was concealed by a jury-rigged oil-can stove,

and shielded from chance observation.

He slipped into the circle and sat down without comment, as custom

required, and waited for them to look him over.

Presently a voice said plaintively: "It's Gentleman Jeff. Cripes, Jeff, you

gave me a turn. I thought you was a flatface. Whatcha been doin' with

yourself, Jeff?"

"Oh, one thing and another. On the dodge."

"Who isn't these days?" the voice returned. "Everywhere you try, those

slant-eyes-" He broke into a string of attributions concerning the progenitors

and personal habits of the PanAsians about which he could not possibly have

had positive knowledge.

"Stow it, Moe," another voice commanded. "Tell us the news, Jeff."

"Sorry," Thomas refused affably, "but I've been up in the hills, kinda

keeping out of the army and doing a little fishing."

"You should have stayed there. Things are bad everywhere. Nobody

dares give an unregistered man a day's work and it takes everything you've

got just to keep out of the labor camps. It makes the big Red hunt look like a

picnic."

"Tell me about the labor camps," Thomas suggested. "I might get hungry

enough, to try one for a while." .

"You don't know. Nobody could get that hungry." The voice paused, as if

the owner were turning the unpleasant subject over in his mind. "Did you

know the Seattle Kid?"

"Seem to recall. Little squint-eyed guy, handy with his hands?"

"That's him. Well, he was in one, maybe a week, and got out. Couldn't

tell us how; his mind was gone. I saw him the night he died. His body was a

mass of sores, blood poisoning, I guess." He paused then added reflectively:

"The smell was pretty bad."

Thomas wanted to drop the subject but he needed to know more. "Who

gets sent to these camps?"

"Any man that isn't already working at an approved job. Boys from

fourteen on up. All that was left alive of the army after we folded up. Anybody

that's caught without a registration card."

"That ain't the half of it," added Moe. "You should see what they do with

unassigned women. Why, a woman was telling me just the other day-a nice

old gel; gimme a handout. She was telling me about her niece used to be a

schoolteacher, and the flatfaces don't want any American schools or

teachers. When they registered her they-"

"Shut up, Moe. You talk too much."

It was disconnected, fragmentary, the more so as he was rarely able to

ask direct questions concerning the things he really wanted to know.

Nevertheless he gradually built up a picture of a people being systematically

and thoroughly enslaved, a picture of a nation as helpless as a man

completely paralyzed, its defenses destroyed, its communications entirely in

the hands of the invaders.

Everywhere he found boiling resentment, a fierce willingness to fight

against the tyranny, but it was undirected, uncoordinated, and, in any modern

sense, unarmed. Sporadic rebellion was as futile as the scurrying of ants

whose hill has been violated. PanAsians could be killed, yes, and there were

men willing to shoot on sight, even in the face of the certainty of their own

deaths. But their hands were bound by the greater certainty of brutal multiple

retaliation against their own kind. As with the Jews in Germany before the

final blackout in Europe, bravery was not enough, for one act of violence

against the tyrants would be paid for by other men, women, and children at

unspeakable compound interest.

Even more distressing than the miseries he saw and heard about were

the reports of the planned elimination of the American culture as such. The

schools were closed. No word might be printed in English. There was a

suggestion of a time, one generation away, when English would be an

illiterate language, used orally alone by helpless peons who would never be

able to revolt for sheer lack of a means of communication on any wide scale.

It was impossible to form any rational estimate of the numbers of Asiatics

now in the United States.

Transports, it was rumored, arrived daily on the West coast, bringing

thousands of administrative civil servants, most of whom were veterans of

the amalgamation of India. Whether or not they could be considered as

augmenting the armed forces who had conquered and now policed the

country it was difficult to say, but it was evident that they would replace the

white minor officials who now assisted in civil administration at pistol point.

When those white officials were "eliminated" it would be still more difficult to

organize resistance.

Thomas found the means to enter the cities in one of the hobo jungles.

Finny-surname unknown-was not, properly speaking, a knight of the

road, but one who had sought shelter among them and who paid his way by

practicing his talent. He was an old anarchist comrade who had served his

concept of freedom by engraving really quite excellent Federal Reserve

notes without complying with the formality of obtaining permission from the

treasury department. Some said that his name had been Phineas; others

connected his moniker with his preference for manufacturing five-dollar bills"big enough to be useful; not big enough to arouse suspicion."

He made a registration card for Thomas at the request of one of the 'bos.