Short Fiction, Poul Anderson [simple e reader .TXT] 📗

I could work somewhere closer to home, I’d be off like a shot.”

Arch set down his cup. Suddenly he didn’t want any more coffee. My God, he thought, am I responsible for that?

A smaller plane carried them to Boston, where they caught a bus for Westfield. The driver had an automatic rifle by his seat. Arch huddled into himself, waiting for he knew not what; but the trip was uneventful.

The town didn’t seem to have changed much. Most of the cars were converted, but it didn’t show externally. The drug store still flashed neon at a drowsy sidewalk, the Carnegie library waited rather wistfully for someone to come in, the dress shop had the same old dummies in the window. Elizabeth pointed at them. “Look,” she said. “See those clothes?”

“They’re dresses,” said Arch moodily. “What about them?”

“No style change in six months, that’s all,” said Elizabeth. “It gives me the creeps.”

They walked along streets banked with dirty, half-melted snow, under a leaden sky and a small whimpering wind. Their house had not changed when they entered, someone had been in to dust and it looked like the home they remembered. Arch sank tiredly into his old armchair and accepted a drink. He studied the newspaper he’d bought at the depot. Screaming headlines announced revolt in Russia⁠—mass uprisings in the Siberian prison camps⁠—announcements from the Copenhagen office of the Ukrainian nationalist movement⁠—It all seemed very far away. The fact that there were no new dress styles was somehow closer and more eerie.

A thunderous knock at the door informed him that Culquhoun had noticed their lights. “Mon, it’s guid to see ye again!” The great paw engulfed his hand. “Where’ve ye been a’ the while?”

“Can’t tell you that,” said Arch.

“Aweel, you’ll permit me to make my own guesses, then.” Culquhoun cocked an eye at the paper. “Who do they think they’re fooling, anyhow? We can look for the Russian bombers any day now.”

Arch considered his reply. That aspect had been thoroughly discussed at the project, but he wasn’t sure how much he could tell. “Quite possibly,” he said at last. “But with their internal troubles, they won’t be able to make many raids, or any big ones⁠—and the little they will be able to throw at us should be stopped while they’re still over northern Canada.”

“Let’s hope so,” nodded Culquhoun. “But the people in the large cities won’t want to take the chance. There’s going to be an exodus of considerable dimensions in the next few days, with all that that implies.” He paused, frowning. “I’ve spent the last couple of months organizing a kind of local militia. Bob has been making capacitite guns, and there are about a hundred of us trying to train ourselves. Want in on it?”

“They’d probably shoot me first,” whispered Arch.

The red head shook, bear-like. “No. There’s less feeling against you locally than you seem to think. After all, few if any of the people in this area have been hurt⁠—they’re farmers, small shopkeepers trading in the essentials, students, college employees. Many of them have actually benefited. You have your enemies here, but you have more friends.”

“I think,” said Arch thinly, “that I’m becoming one of my own enemies.”

“Ah, foosh, mon! If you hadn’t brought the stuff out, somebody else would have. It’s not your fault that we don’t have the kind of economy to absorb it smoothly.”

“All right,” said Arch without tone. “I’ll join your minute men. There doesn’t seem to be anything else to do.”

The wave of automobiles began coming around noon of the next day. Westfield lay off the main highway, so it didn’t get the full impact of the jam which tied up traffic from Philadelphia to Boston; but there were some thousands of cars which passed through.

Arch stood in the ranks of men who lined Main Street. The gun felt awkward in his hands. Breath smoked from his nostrils, and the air was raw and damp. On one side of him was Mr. Hinkel, bundled up so that only the glasses and a long red nose seemed visible; on the other was a burly farmer whom he didn’t know.

Outside the city limits a sign had been planted, directing traffic to keep moving and to stay on the highway. There were barriers on all the side streets. Arch heard an occasional argument when someone tried to stop, to be urged on by a guard and by the angry horns behind him.

“But what’ll they do?” he asked blindly. “Where will they stay? My God, there are women and children in those cars!”

“Women and children here in town too,” said Hinkel. “We’ve got to look after our own. It won’t kill these characters to go a few days without eating. Every house here is filled already⁠—there’ve been refugees trickling in for weeks.”

“We could bunk down a family in our place,” ventured Arch.

“Save that space,” answered Hinkel. “It’ll be needed later.”

Briefly, a certain pride rose through the darkness of guilt which lay in Arch. These were the old Americans, the same folk who had stood at Concord and gone west into Indian country. They were a survivor type.

But most of their countrymen weren’t, he realized sickly. Urban civilization had become too big, too specialized. There were people in the millions who had never pitched a tent, butchered a pig, fixed a machine. What was going to become of them?

Toward evening, he was relieved and slogged home, too numb with cold and weariness to think much. He gulped down the dinner his wife had ready and tumbled into bed.

It seemed as if he had not slept at all when the phone was ringing. He groped toward it, cursing as he tried to unglue his eyes. Culquhoun’s voice rattled at him:

“You and Betty come up to the college, Somerset Hall, right away. There’s hell to pay.”

“How⁠—?”

“Our lookout on the water tower has seen fires starting to the south. Something’s approaching, and it doesn’t look friendly.”

Sleep drained from Arch and he stood in a grayness where Satan jeered at him: