Some were long-dead skeletons, dry and dusty, grinning skull to skull; some were mummified by the keen wind, eyes sunk in perpetual bewilderment; and some were rotten and new, astonishingly, quite new.
They turned again to see themselves, wondering dumbly at what they had seen stretching out infinitely along the wall, all the clasping lovers long gone, no kiss nor handhold there with either bliss or agony.
And very quietly they kissed as they clung and died there, impaled across the cold spiky barrier, feeling and thought growing more feeble every second.
In the north and in the south a fair haired woman and a dark haired man set off slowly to walk towards the wall, love stirring in the innermost recesses of their being.
Josephine Saxton describes herself briefly as—
Age thirty, occupation, woman. Married to artist: Colin Saxton, three children. “The Wall” as yet only published work, but have written two novels and several stories, secret poetry writer, also cookbook.
Not science-fiction writer, knowing little science, but of that lower class who make it up.
Aims: full-time professional writer.
Mrs. Saxton has one thing in common with Walter Moudy: Both are new writers (although Moudy had two stories in print before this one, and a first novel since).
The contrasts—in background, interests, situations, occupations, temperament—emerge as much in the appearance of the two “bio letters” as in their content. Hers is on thin paper, typed in brown ink and elite type, under a “Leics.” (Leicestershire) country address. His is on his office letterhead, from Kansas City (Missouri), secretary-typed on an IBM Executive: Re: Biographical Data (“The Survivor”!:
I was born and raised on a dirt farm In Barry County, Missouri, which is deep Ozark country. I was the second child in a family of eleven. Most people would call us hillbillies, although recently the sophisticating effect of electricity and TV has somewhat blurred the image. I have approximately five or six hundred blood relatives in Barry County, and so far as I know I am the first to graduate from college.
In this order: I have been a farm worker, rambler, powerline-pole digger, migrant fruit picker, college student (one and one-half years), assembly-line welder in a General Motors automobile plant (one year), soldier (three years), college (AB), law student (LIB), lawyer, and writer. All of my college and law school training was at Missouri University.
I am thirty-six. I have been practicing law for nine years and writing the past four years.
No Man on Earth was the first thing I ever wrote. [A novel, published last year—and a good one—j.m] The second thing was “The Survivor.”
THE SURVIVOR
WALTER F. MOUDY
There was a harmony in the design of the arena which an artist might find pleasing. The curved granite walls which extended upward three hundred feet from its base were polished and smooth like the sides of a bowl. A fly, perhaps a lizard, could crawl up those glistening walls—but surely not a man. The walls encircled an egg-shaped area which was precisely three thousand meters long and two thousand one hundred meters wide at its widest point. There were two large hills located on either side of the arena exactly midway from its center to its end. If you were to slice the arena crosswise, your knife would dissect a third, tree-studded hill and a small, clear lake; and the two divided halves would each be the exact mirror image of the other down to the smallest detail. If you were a farmer you would notice the rich flat soil which ran obliquely from the two larger hills toward the lake. If you were an artist you might find pleasure in contemplating the rich shades of green and brown presented by the forested lowlands at the lake’s edge. A sportsman seeing the crystalline lake in the morning’s first light would find his fingers itching for light tackle and wading boots. Boys, particularly city boys, would yearn to climb the two larger hills because they looked easy to climb, but not too easy. A general viewing the topography would immediately recognize that possession of the central hill would permit dominance of the lake and the surrounding lowlands.
There was something peaceful about the arena that first morning. The early-morning sun broke through a light mist and spilled over the central hill to the low dew-drenched ground beyond. There were trees with young, green leaves, and the leaves rustled softly in rhythm with the wind. There were birds in those trees, and the birds still sang, for it was spring, and they were filled with the joy of life and the beauty of the morning. A night owl, its appetite satiated now by a recent kill, perched on a dead limb of a large sycamore tree and, tucking its beak in its feathers, prepared to sleep the day away. A sleek copperhead snake, sensing the sun’s approach and anticipating its soothing warmth, crawled from beneath the flat rock where it had spent the night and sought the comfort of its favorite rock ledge. A red squirrel chattered nervously as it watched the men enter the arena from the north and then, having decided that there was danger there, darted swiftly to an adjacent tree and disappeared into the security of its nest.
There were exactly one hundred of them. They stood tall and proud in their uniforms, a barely perceptible swaying motion rippling through their lines like wheat stirred by a gentle breeze. If they anticipated what was to come, they did not show it. Their every movement showed their absolute discipline. Once they had been only men—now they were killers. The hunger for blood was like a taste in their mouths; their zest for destruction like a flood which raged inside them. They were finely honed and razor keen to kill.
Their general made his last inspection. As he passed down the lines the squad captains barked a sharp order and the men froze into absolute immobility. Private Richard Starbuck heard the rasp of the general’s boots against the stones as he approached. There was no other sound, not even of men breathing. From long discipline he forced his eyes to maintain their focus on the distant point he had selected, and his eyes did not waver as the general paused in front of him. They were still fixed on that same imaginary point. He did not even see the general.
Private Richard Starbuck was not thinking of death, although he knew he must surely die. He was thinking of the rifle which he felt securely on his shoulder and of the driving need he had to discharge its deadly pellets into human flesh. His urge to kill was dominant, but even so he was vaguely relieved that he had not been selected for the assassination squad (the suicide squad the men called it); for he still had a chance, a slim chance, to live; while the assassination squad was consigned to inevitable death.
A command was given and Private Starbuck permitted his tense body to relax. He glanced at his watch. Five-twenty-five. He still had an hour and thirty-five minutes to wait. There was a tenseness inside him which his relaxed body did not disclose. They taught you how to do that in training. They taught you lots of things in training.