Even without leaving the floodlighted main cavern, without leaving the marked paths, there were plenty of wonderfully beautiful walks to take. If I could afford to be away as much as an hour, there was one place in particular we liked to go-north in the big room, a good half mile from the buildings. The path meandered among frozen limestone mushrooms, great columns, domes, and fantastic shapes that have no names and looked equally like souls in torment or great exotic flowers, depending on the mood one was in. At a spot nearly a hundred feet higher than the main floor we had found a place only a few feet off the authorized path where nature had contrived a natural stone bench. We could sit there and stare down at the toy village, talk, and Maggie would smoke. I had taken to lighting her cigarettes for her, as I had seen Zeb do. It was a little attention she liked and I had learned to avoid getting smoke caught in my throat.
About six weeks after Zeb had left and only days before M-Hour we were doing this and were talking about what it would be like after the revolution and what we would do with ourselves. I said that I supposed I would stay in the regular army, assuming that there was such and that I was eligible for it. “What will you do, Maggie?”
She exhaled smoke slowly. “I haven’t thought that far, John. I haven’t any profession-that is to say, we are trying our best to make the one I did have obsolete.” She smiled wryly. “I’m not educated in anything useful. I can cook and I can sew and I can keep house; I suppose I should try to find a job as a housekeeper-competent servants are always scarce, they say.”
The idea of the courageous and resourceful Sister Magdalene, so quick with a vibroblade when the need arose, tramping from one employment bureau to another in search of menial work to keep her body fed was an idea at once distasteful to me—“General Housework Cooking, live in, Thursday evenings alternate Sundays off; references required.” Maggie? Maggie who had saved my own probably worthless life at least twice and never hesitated nor counted the cost. Not Maggie!
I blurted out, “Look, you don’t have to do that.”
“It’s what I know.”
“Yes, but-well, why don’t you cook and keep house for me? I’ll be drawing enough to support both of us, even if I have to go back to my permanent rank. Maybe it isn’t much but-shucks! you’re welcome to it.”
She looked up. “Why, John, how very generous!” She crushed out the cigarette and threw it aside. “I do appreciate it-but it wouldn’t work. I imagine there will be just as many gossips after we have won as before. Your colonel would not like it.”
I blushed red and almost shouted, “That wasn’t what I meant at all!”
“What? Then what did you mean?”
I had not really known until the words came out. Now I knew but not how to express it. “I meant-Look, Maggie, you seem to like me well enough . . . and we get along well together. That is, why don’t we—” I halted, hung up.
She stood up and faced me. “John, are you proposing marriage-to me?”
I said gruffly, “Uh, that was the general idea.” It bothered me to have her standing in front of me, so I stood up, too.
She looked at me gravely, searching my face, then said humbly, “I’m honored . . .—and grateful . . . and I am deeply touched. But-oh, no, John!” The tears started out of her eyes and she started to bawl. She stopped as quickly, wiping her face with her sleeve, and said brokenly, “Now you’ve made me cry. I haven’t cried in years.”
I started to put my arms around her; she pushed me back. “No, John! Listen to me first. I’ll accept that job as your housekeeper, but I won’t marry you.”
“Why not?”
“"Why not?” Oh, my dear, my very dear—Because I am an old, tired woman, that’s why.”
“Old? You can’t be more than a year or two older than I am-three, at the outside. It doesn’t matter.”
“I’m a thousand years older than you are. Think who I am where I’ve been—what I’ve known. First I was “bride", if you care to call it that, to the Prophet.”
“Not your fault!”
“Perhaps. Then I was mistress to your friend Zebadiah. You knew that?”
“Well . . . I was pretty sure of it.”
“That isn’t all. There were other men. Some because it was needful and a woman has few bribes to offer. Some from loneliness, or even boredom. After the Prophet has tired of her, a woman doesn’t seem very valuable, even to herself.”
“I don’t care. I don’t care! It doesn’t matter!”
“You say that now. Later it would matter to you, dreadfully. I think I know you, my dear.”
“Then you don’t know me. We’ll start fresh.”
She sighed deeply. “You think that you love me, John?”
“Uh? Yes, I guess that’s it.”
“You loved Judith. Now you are hurt—so you think you love me.”
“But-Oh, I don’t know what love is! I know I want you to marry me and live with me.”
“Neither do I know,” she said so softly that I almost missed it. Then she moved into my arms as easily and naturally as if she had always lived there.
When we had finished kissing each other I said, “You will marry me, then?”
She threw her head back and stared as if she were frightened. “Oh, no!”
“Huh? But I thought—”
“No, dear, no! I’ll keep your house and cook your food and make your bed—and sleep in it, if you want me to. But you don’t need to marry me.”
“But-Sheol! Maggie, I won’t have it that way.”
“You won’t? We’ll see.” She was out of my arms although I had not let go. “I’ll see you tonight. About one-after everyone is asleep. Leave your door unlatched.”
“Maggie!” I shouted.
She was headed down the path, running as if she were flying.
I tried to catch up, tripped on a stalagmite and fell. When I picked myself up she was out of sight.
Here is an odd thing—I had always thought of Maggie as quite tall, stately, almost as tall as I was. But when I held her in my arms, she was short. I had to lean way over to kiss her.
CHAPTER 12
On the night of the Miracle all that were left of us gathered in the main communications room-my boss and myself, the chief of communications and his technical crew, a few staff officers. A handful of men and a few dozen women, too many to crowd into the comm shack, were in the main mess-hall where a relay screen had been rigged for them. Our underground city was a ghost town now, with only a skeleton crew to maintain communications for the commanding general; all the rest had gone to battle stations. We few who were left had no combat stations in this phase. Strategy had been settled; the hour of execution was set for us by the Miracle. Tactical decisions for a continent could not be made from headquarters and Huxley was too good a general to try. His troops had been disposed and his subordinate commanders were now on their own; all he could do was wait and pray.
All that we could do, too—I didn’t have any fingernails left to bite.
The main screen in front of us showed, in brilliant color and perfect perspective, the interior of the Temple. The services had been going on all day-processional, hymns, prayers and more prayers, sacrifice, genuflexion, chanting, endless monotony of colorful ritual. My old regiment was drawn up in two frozen ranks, helmets shining, spears aligned like the teeth of a comb, I made out Peter van Eyck, Master of my home lodge, his belly corseted up, motionless before his platoon.
I knew, from having handled the despatch, that Master Peter had stolen a print of the film we had to have. His presence in the ceremonies was reassuring; had his theft even been suspected our plans could not possibly succeed. But there he was.
Around the other three walls of the comm room were a dozen smaller screens, scenes from as many major cities-crowds in Rittenhouse Square, the Hollywood Bowl jam-packed, throngs in local temples. In each case the eyes of all were riveted on a giant television screen showing the same scene in the Great Temple that we were watching. Throughout all America it would be the same—every mortal soul who could possibly manage it was watching some television screen somewhere—waiting, waiting, waiting for the Miracle of the Incarnation.