The rocket port serving New Jerusalem is easier to get to than is the case at most of the older cities. There was a tube station right across from the department store that hid our headquarters. I simply walked out of the store, took the bridge across the street, found the tube stall marked “Rocket Port', waited for an empty cartridge, and strapped myself and my luggage in. The attendant sealed me and almost at once I was at the port.
I bought my ticket and took my place at the end of the queue outside the port police station. I’ll admit I was nervous; while I didn’t anticipate having any trouble getting my travel pass validated, the police officers who must handle it were no doubt on the lookout for John Lyle, renegade army officer. But they were always looking for someone and I hoped the list of wanted faces was too long to make the search for me anything other than routine.
The line moved slowly and that looked like a bad sign—especially so when I noticed that several people had been thumbed out of line and sent to wait behind the station railing. I got downright jittery. But the wait itself gave me time to get myself in hand. I shoved my papers at the sergeant, glanced at my chrono, up at the station clock, and back at my wrist.
The sergeant had been going through my papers in a leisurely, thorough manner. He looked up. “don’t worry about catching your ship,” he said not unkindly. “They can’t leave until we clear their passenger list.” He pushed a pad across the counter. “Your fingerprints, please.”
I gave them without comment. I’ve compared them with the prints on my travel pass and then with the prints Reeves had left there on his arrival a week earlier. “That’s all, Mr. Reeves. A pleasant trip.”
I thanked him and left.
The Comet was not too crowded. I picked a seat by a window, well forward, and had just settled down and was unfolding a late-afternoon copy of the Holy City, when I felt a touch on my arm.
It was a policeman.
“Will you step outside, please?”
I was herded outside with four other male passengers. The sergeant was quite decent about it. “I’m afraid I’ll have to ask you four to return to the station for further identification. I’ll order your baggage removed and have the passenger list changed. Your tickets will be honored on the next flight.”
I let out a yelp. “But I’ve got to be in Cincinnati tonight!”
“I’m sorry.” He turned to me. “You’re Reeves, aren’t you? Hmm . . . you are the right size and build. Still-let me see your pass again. Didn’t you arrive in town just last week?”
“That’s right.”
He went through my papers again. “Uh, yes, I remember now; you came in Tuesday morning on the Pilgrim. Well, you can’t be in two places at once, so I guess that clears you.” He handed my papers back to me. “Go aboard again. Sorry we bothered you. The rest of you come along.”
I returned to my seat and picked up my newspaper. A few minutes later the first heavy surge of the rockets threw us to the west. I continued reading the paper to cover up my agitation and relief, but soon got interested. I had been reading a Toronto paper only that morning, underground; the contrast was startling. I was back in a world for which the outside world hardly existed; the “foreign affairs” news, if you could call it that, consisted of glowing reports of our foreign missions and some accounts of atrocities among the infidels. I began to wonder where all that money went that was contributed each year for missionary work; the rest of the world, if you could believe their newspapers, didn’t seem much aware that our missions existed.
Then I began going through the paper, picking out items that I knew to be false. By the time I was through we were down out of the ionosphere and gliding into Cincy. We had overtaken the sun and had sunset all over again.
There must be a peddler’s pack in my family tree. I not only covered Reeves’s territory in Cincinnati, but bettered his quota. I found that I got as much pleasure out of persuading some hard-boiled retailer that he should increase his line of yard goods as I ever had from military work. I stopped worrying about my disguise and thought only about textiles. Selling isn’t just a way to eat; it’s a game, it’s fun.
I left for Kansas City on schedule and had no trouble with the police in getting a visa for my travel pass. I decided that New Jerusalem had been the only ticklish check point; from here west nobody would expect to pick up John Lyle, formerly officer and gentleman; he would be one of thousands of wanted men, lost in the files.
The rocket to K.C. was well filled; I had to sit beside another passenger, a well-built chap in his middle thirties. We looked each other over as I sat down, then each busied himself with his own affairs. I called for a lap table and started straightening out the order blanks and other papers I had accumulated during busy, useful days in Cincinnati. He lounged back and watched the news broadcast in the TV tank at the forward end of the car.
I felt a nudge about ten minutes later and looked around. My seatmate flicked a thumb toward the television tank; in it there was displayed a large public square filled with a mob. It was surging toward the steps of a massive temple, over which floated the Prophet’s gold-and-crimson banner and the pennant of a bishopric. As I watched, the first wave of the crowd broke against the temple steps.
A squad of temple guards trotted out a side door near the giant front doors and set up their tripods on the terrace at the head of the wide stairs. The scene cut to another viewpoint; we were looking down right into the faces of the mob hurrying toward us-apparently from a telephoto pick-up somewhere on the temple roof.
What followed made me ashamed of the uniform I had once worn. Instead of killing them quickly, the guards aimed low and burned off their legs. One instant the first wave was running towards me up the steps—then they fell, the cauterized stumps of their legs jerking convulsively. I had been watching a youngish couple right in the center of the pick-up; they had been running hand in hand. As the beam swept across them they went down together.
She stayed down. He managed to lift himself on what had been his knees, took two awkward dying steps toward her and fell across her. He pulled her head to his, then the scene cut away from them to the wide view of the square.
I snatched the earphones hanging on the back of the seat in front of me and listened: “—apolis, Minnesota. The situation is well in hand and no additional troops will be needed. Bishop Jennings has declared martial law while the agents of Satan are rounded up and order restored: A period of prayer and fasting will commence at once.
“The Minnesota ghettos have been closed and all local pariahs will be relocated in the reservations in Wyoming and Montana in order to prevent future outbreaks. Let this be a warning to the ungodly everywhere who might presume to dispute the divine rule of the Prophet Incarnate.
“This on-the-spot cast by the No-Sparrow-Shall-Fall News Service is coming to you under the sponsorship of the Associated Merchants of the Kingdom, dealers in the finest of household aids toward grace. Be the first in your parish to possess a statuette of the Prophet that miraculously glows in the dark! Send one dollar, care of this station—”
I switched off the phones and hung them up. Why blame the pariahs? That mob wasn’t made up of pariahs.
But I kept my lip zipped and let my companion speak first-which he did, with vehemence. “serves them right, the bloody fools! Imagine charging against a fortified position with your bare hands.” He kept his voice down and spoke almost in my ear.
“I wonder why they rioted?” was all that I answered.
“Eh? No accounting for the actions of an heretic. They aren’t sane.”
“You can sing that in church,” I agreed firmly. “Besides, even a sane heretic-if there could be such a thing, I mean—could see that the government is doing a good job of running the country. Business is good.” I patted my brief case happily. “For me, at least, praise the Lord.”