Gary sat down hard, staring at the lighted dial.
“Only a few months ago, you will remember, the army security office released the details of one such agent who attempted to cross the river under it, at an undisclosed point along the Minnesota shore. He was cut down amid a hail of bullets before he could climb from the water, and the river swallowed his body. A pity, I think, for once we capture one of those fellows we can definitely prove his origin and his nationality to the world.
“Meanwhile, weak signals continue to trickle in from the Pentagon, proving that some brave Americans are still alive in that underground fortress — quite possibly the only Americans still living east of the Mississippi. A few days ago I was privileged to see some rare photographs obtained by reconnaissance planes flying over parts of Illinois and Kentucky — photographs which showed no living thing in those unfortunate states. No smoke curled upward from chimneys, no children or adults moved about the houses and yards, there was not even a dog to track the smooth expanse of snow. Without a doubt, the only American survivors are those who have secreted themselves in an underground bastion, while the despicable enemy agents patrol the rest.”
“You're a lying sonofabitch and you know it!” Gary hurled back at the smooth voice.
“And now, closer to home… Right here in federal court today a former Missouri farmer named Edward Evans won his long-contested case against the government. Evans, who with thousands of others was hastily evacuated from the frontier when the bombs fell, protested that the government did not allow him anything near a fair price for his land. The Evans farm lay entirely within the ten-mile strip now called 'No Man's Land,' and of course he lost it all, not even being allowed to harvest his crops. A federal jury agreed with the distressed farmer, awarding him twenty dollars an acre more than the government offered. Other such suits are expected to follow.
“Street cars are running again, after a long absence from our streets, and I must say they make a strange, if welcome, sight. Following the ban on pleasure travel due to the critical shortage of oil and gasoline, public busses were next to feel the pinch and their schedules were drastically curtailed. This in turn played havoc with the habits of bus riders and local defense plants reported a serious increase in absenteeism and tardiness. Street cars were the answer, and happily the rails had never been ripped up. Let's welcome back the noisy old trolley and save gasoline.
“And as for rubber tires! Mister, mention that word around town and you are knee-deep in argument. Akron, Ohio — -if that unfortunate city still stands — will have number one priority when we march across the river once more.
“An optimistic note in today's news comes from the postal department. By next summer, declares the postmaster general, the cost of mailing a first class letter should be down to about ten cents — perhaps even less if other ways can be found to bolster post-office revenue. There is also reason to believe that smaller cities and towns — as well as rural routes — may again be receiving mail every day instead of every second or third day as they do now. You may expect this before next summer. The loss of books, magazines, advertising and other types of third and fourth class mail plunged the department into the red, of course, and it had been a slow uphill fight coming back. I'm sure that my listeners will be pleased with the prospect of loosening that wartime belt by at least one notch.”
“Oh, go to hell!” Gary reached out angrily and shut off the radio.
The suave voice was lying with every other sweet sentence it uttered, lying or spreading propaganda of the most transparent sort. He had seen the army working that line of endeavor too well in Italy to be taken in by it, had seen the effects of smooth talk on newly conquered, vastly bewildered Germans. It seemed all right at the time, seemed the thing to do to a defeated enemy. They had to be re-educated, given refresher courses in democracy, and what better way to do it than feed them propaganda pills sugar-coated with news? And now the United States was receiving the same treatment from the same hands — the twenty-two United States west of the all-important river. Those twenty-two states were under martial law, no question of it. The radio announcer had unconsciously confirmed it by his honeyed words, his phrasing of the news; in a situation such as the present one the army passed on what was broadcast, what was printed.
He was still alive, still walking around in the contaminated zone, therefore declared the army he was an enemy agent. What could be the reason for spreading that? To cover up their inability to accept him back, to hide their fear of him and others like him? Or was it the foundation for something else to come, the preparatory steps of reconstruction such as the schoolteacher had hinted? Was he branded an enemy agent for the sake of convenience — when the mopping-up process came?
In the year and a half since awakening in that dirty hotel room he had not met one person who might be such an agent, who might actually have entered the country for war-making purposes. He had seen only countless hundreds of ordinary people fighting to stay alive — to prolong their lives until the day the government came to their rescue. Of course the chimneys didn't smoke, not any more, not during the daylight hours unless you wanted strangers. He had cautioned Hoffman's wife of that folly and she now did her cooking under cover of darkness. And of course there were no more dog tracks on the snow — dogs had vanished long before cannibalism came into the picture. But there were people in and about many of the houses; it might be that they no longer rushed out to stare at an airplane overhead, but they were there even though the photographer chose to ignore them. There were thousands of them still alive in the contaminated zone — waiting for what? Waiting to be “reconstructed"? Was that the real reason in telling the western states they no longer existed?
Rotation of troops — that was a sweet one! Troops were rotated by the trainload only when several thousand of them were in the line, and why should several thousand be needed when only a handful of “enemy agents” ran free across the river? Did good tax-paying citizens with tight belts swallow that? Had they all lost the ability to think for themselves?
That dumb lout Harry had been an enemy agent, so they quickly knocked him off. Harry would have lacked the humor to appreciate the joke, Harry would have demanded a better reward for the effort of crawling the cable. But crawl it he did, neglecting to give the password, and they cut him down before he could leave the water. Then maybe a high-flying fish fell over that trip wire and set off the flare, while afterwards someone in a radiation suit came down to the shore and kicked the fish back into the water. But of course the army could get away with that sort of thing — the ten-mile strip of No Man's Land took care of leaks. There were no civilians within ten miles of the river line.
There had been but one thing in the news broadcast that caught his imagination and held it — those brave, unknown survivors who still held the Pentagon cellars.
That was worth looking into — next spring when he could travel again.
He had guessed that the intact cables under the bridge meant that east-west communications remained open, and this was proof of it. The incoming signals may or may not be weak — you couldn't take that lying announcer's word for it — but signals were received. In view of the implied declaration of war on survivors such as himself, there would be little point in mentioning still other survivors in Washington — eventually they would have to be accounted for as other than “enemy agents.” Top brass, therefore, had some reason for their still being “alive,” some reason for talking about them. Gary decided that the cellar holdouts definitely needed investigation. Next spring.