Maureen patted her father’s arm. “That’s what I figured out, somewhere in the last week. But — if we can’t afford much, then we have to build so that we can! What we don’t dare do is get used to evil. We have to hate it, even if we can’t do anything else.”
“Which doesn’t settle what we do with the prisoners,” George Christopher said. “I vote for killing them. I’ll do it myself.”
And he hadn’t brought any back from his pursuit, Maureen knew. And he’d never understand. Yet in his way he was a good man. He’d shared everything he had. He worked longer than anyone else, and harder, and not just for himself.
“No,” Maureen said. “All right. We can’t let them go. And we can’t keep them as citizens. If all we can afford is slavery, then keep them as slaves. And put them to work so we can afford something more. Only we don’t call them slaves, either, because that makes it too easy to think like a slavemaster. We can put them to work, but we call them prisoners of war and we treat them as prisoners of war.”
Hardy looked confused. He’d never seen Maureen so assertive. He looked from her to the Senator, but all he got from the Senator was the look of a man tired unto death.
“All right,” Al said. “Eileen, we’ll have to organize a POW camp.”
The Final Decision
The peasant is eternal man, independent of all Cultures. The piety of the real peasant is older than Christianity, his gods are older than those of any of the higher religions.
The van had not been new when the comet fell. In these past few months it had aged many years. It had bulled its paths across roadless land and through fresh sea bottom. It stank of fish. Maintenance had been impossible, and continual rain had caused years of corrosion. Half blinded with one headlamp working, it seemed to know that its era was dead. It groaned, it limped; and with every jolt of its dying shock absorbers, Tim Hamner felt a needle of pain stab his hip.
Shifting gears was worse. His right leg wouldn’t reach the clutch pedal. He used his left, and it was like an ice pick being wiggled in the bone. Still he drove fast across the potholed road, balancing the jouncing against the need for speed.
Cal Christopher was on guard at the barricade. His weapon was an Army submachine gun. He carried a bottle of Old Fedcal in the other hand, and he beamed, he swaggered, he wanted to talk. “Hamner! Good to see you.” He thrust the bottle through the truck window. “Have a drink — hey! What happened to your face?”
“Sand,” said Tim. “Look, I’ve got three wounded in the truck bed. Can somebody drive for me?”
“Gee, there are only two of us here. Rest are celebrating. You guys won, huh? We heard you’d had a fight and beat them off-”
“The wounded,” Tim said. “Is there somebody at the hospital?”
“You better believe it. We had wounded here, too. But we won! They weren’t expecting it, Tim, it was beautiful! Forrester’s brew really clobbered them. They won’t stop running until—”
“They did stop. And I can’t take time to talk, Cal.”
“Yeah, right. Well, everybody’s celebrating at City Hall, and the hospital’s right next door, so you’ll get plenty of help. They may not be sober, but—”
“The barricade, Cal. I can’t help you with it. I got hit myself.”
“Oh. Too bad.” Cal moved the log aside, and Tim drove on. The road was dark, and none of the houses were lit. He saw no one along the way, but the going was easier here; the potholes had all been filled in. He rounded a bend and saw the town.
City Hall glowed softly through the dark. Candlelight and lanterns in every window: not an impressive sight after the brilliant glare of the atomic plant, but still a sign of celebration. The crowd was too big for the building. It had spilled onto the street despite the tiny flurries of snow. People formed tight clumps against the chill and the wind, but their laughter reached him for all that. Tim parked next door, in front of the county convalescent home.
People moved toward him from outside City Hall as he climbed from the cab. One was running — off-balance. Eileen, her sunburst smile wide and familiar. “Easy!” he cried, but too late. She crashed into him and hugged him tight, laughing, while he tried to maintain balance for both. Agony twisted and grated in the bone. “Easy. Jesus Christ. There’s a piece of metal in my hip.”
She jumped back as if scalded. “What happened?” And saw his face. Her smile faded. “What happened?”
“Mortar shell. It went off just in front of us. We were up on the cooling tower with the radio. It blasted the radio to bits, and it shredded the cop, uh, Wingate, his name was, and I was standing right between them, Eileen. Right between them. All I got was a blast of sand from the sandbags and this thing in my hip. Are you okay?”
“Oh, sure. And you’re all right, aren’t you? You can walk. You’re safe. Thank God.” Before Tim could interrupt she went on. “Tim, we won! We must have killed half of the cannibals, and the rest are still running. George Christopher chased them for fifty miles!”
“They’ll never try us again,” someone boasted, and Tim realized he was surrounded. The man who spoke was a stranger, an Indian, by his looks. He handed Tim a bottle. “Last Irish whiskey in the world,” he said.
“Should save it for Irish coffee,” someone laughed, “but there ain’t no more coffee.”
The bottle was nearly empty. Tim didn’t drink. He shouted “There are wounded in the back! I need stretcher bearers!” He called again, “Stretcher bearers. And stretchers, come to that.” Some of the merrymakers moved toward the hospital. Good.
Eileen was frowning, more in puzzlement than sadness. She kept looking at Tim to be sure he was still there, that he was all right. “We heard about the attack on the plant,” she said. “But you beat them. None of our people hurt—”
“That was the first attack,” Tim said. “They hit us again. This afternoon.”
“This afternoon?” The Indian was incredulous. “But they were running. We chased them.”
“They stopped running,” Tim said.
Eileen put her mouth close to his ear. “Maureen will want to know about Johnny Baker.”
“He’s dead.”
She looked at him, shocked.
Men came with stretchers. The wounded were in the back of the van, wrapped in cocoons of blankets. One was Jack Ross. The men carrying the stretchers stopped in surprise at seeing the others: Both were black. “Mayor Allen’s police,” Tim told them. He wanted to help carry, but he was lucky to carry himself. He found the stick Horrie Jackson’s fishermen had given him and used it for a cane as he limped into the hospital.
Leonilla Malik directed them into a heated front room. It had a large office table set up as a surgery. They put the stretchers on the floor and she examined the men quickly and carefully. First Jack Ross; she used her stethoscope, frowned, moved the instrument, then lifted a hand and pressed hard on the thumbnail. It went white and stayed that way. Silently she pulled the blanket over his head and went to the next.
The policeman was conscious. “Can you understand me?” she asked.
“Yeah. Are you the Russian spacewoman?”
“Yes. How many times were you hit?”
“Six. Shrapnel. Guts are on fire,” he said.
As she felt for the pulse, Tim limped out of the room. Eileen followed, hugging at his arm. “You’ve been hit! Stay here,” she said.