A car stood in the little yard in front of the cabin as I pulled up before it.
“What is going on?” I asked of no one in particular.
“Is there anyone,” asked Joy, “that Carleton would loan the cabin to?”
“Not that I know about,” I told her.
I got out and walked around in front of the car.
The wind was swaying the small pine trees and they were talking back. The waves chuckled on the beach and I could hear the chunk-chunk sound of Stirling’s boat as it pounded gently against the pier.
Joy and the Dog came from the car and stood there beside me. I had kept the engine running, and the headlights bathed the cabin in their light.
The cabin’s door opened and a man came out. Apparently he had dressed hastily, for he was still buckling his belt. He stood and stared at us and then came Slowly down the steps off the little porch. He Wore pajama tops and he had bedroom slippers on his feet.
We stayed and waited for him and he came toward us hesitantly, across the yard, blinking in the light. He probably was no more than middle-aged, but he looked older. His face was rough with stubble and his uncombed hair stuck out in all directions.
“You folks looking for someone?” he asked.
He stopped about six feet away and peered at us, the light bothering his vision.
“We came up to spend the night,” I said. “We didn’t know anyone was here.”
“You own the cabin, mister?”
“No, a friend of mine.”
The man swallowed. I could see him swallow. “We ain’t got no right here,” he said. “We just moved in because it seemed the thing to do. There was no one using it.”
“You just moved in without asking anyone?”
“Look, mister,” said the man, “I don’t want no trouble. There were other cabins here we could have moved into, but it just so happens that we picked this one. We had no place to go and the missus, she was sick. From worry, mostly, I’d suppose. she never was a hand to be sick before.”
“How come no place to go?”
“Lost my job,” he said, “and there was O other work and we lost the house. The bank foreclosed on us. And the sheriff threw US out. The sheriff didn’t want to, but he had to. The sheriff felt real bad about it.
“The people in the bank?”
“New people,” he said. “Some new people came in and bought the bank. The other people, the folks that were there before, they’d not have thrown us out. They would have given us some time.”
“And new people bought the place you worked,” I said. He looked at me, surprised. “How did you know that?” he asked.
“It figures,” I told him.
“Hardware store,” he said. “Just up the road a piece. Up by the all-night service station. Sold sports stuff mostly. Hunting and fishing stuff and bait. Not much of a job. Didn’t pay too much, but it made us a living.”
I didn’t say anything more, I couldn’t think of anything to say.
“I’m sorry about the lock,” he said. “We had to break the back-door lock. If we Could have found a cabin that wasn’t locked, we would have used that one. But they all were locked.”
“One of the bedroom windows was u latched,” I told him. “It shoves a little hard, but you could have got it up. Stirling always left it that way so friends of his could get in if they wanted to. You had to stand on a chunk of wood or something to reach the window, but you could have gotten in.”
“This Stirling? He’s the man who owns the place?”
I nodded.
“You tell him we are sorry. Sorry about moving in and busting up the lock. I’ll wake the others now and we’ll get out right away.”
“No,” I said. “You stay right where you are. If you had a place where the lady could catch a bit of sleep.”
“I’m all right,” said Joy. “I can sleep out in the car.”
“You’ll get cold,” said the man. “This time of year it gets right chilly out.”
“Some blankets on the floor, then. We’ll make out.”
“Look,” asked the man, “why ain’t you sore at me?”
“Friend,” I told him, “this isn’t any time for anyone to be getting sore at anyone. The time is here when we have to work with one another and take care of one another. We have to hang together.” He peered at me suspiciously, a bit uneasily.
“You a preacher or something of the sort?” he asked me.
“No, I’m not,” I said.
I said to Joy: “I want to drive up to the service station and phone Stirling. To tell him we’re all right. He might have been expecting us back at the laboratory.”
“I’ll go back in,” said the man, “and figure out a way so you can spend the night. If you want us to get out, we will.”
“Not at all,” I said.
We got back into the car and I turned around. The man stood watching us.
“What is going on?” asked Joy as we started up the road toward the main highway.
“It’s just the beginning,” I told her. “There’ll be more and more of it. More who lose their jobs and more who lose their homes. Banks bought up to shut off credit. Business places bought and closed to destroy jobs. Houses and apartment buildings purchased and the people evicted and no place for them to go.”
“But it’s inhuman,” she protested.
“Of course, it is inhuman.” And, of Course, it was. These things weren’t human.
They didn’t care what happened to the human race. The human race was nothing to them, nothing more than a form of life cluttering up a planet that could be used for other things. They would use the humans just as the humans once had used the animals that had cluttered up the land. They’d get rid of them, any way they could. They’d shove them to one side. They’d squeeze them tight together. They’d fix it so they’d die.
I tried to envision how it all would work and it was a hard thing to envision. The basic pattern was there, but the scope was far too large to grasp. To be effective, the scope of the operation must necessarily be worldwide. And if the operation had filtered down to a small-town bank and a crossroads store, then it must mean that, in the United States, at least, the operation—so far as industry, business, and finance were concerned—must be nationwide. For no one would buy up a crossroads business until he had in hand as well the mighty industrial complexes which were the lifeblood of the country. And no one would bother with a small-town bank unless he had the bigger banks under his control as well. For years the bowling balls bad been buying stock or taking options on it had been, more than likely, infiltrating pseudohumans, such as Atwood, into strategic positions. For they could not afford to move so openly as they now were moving until they had the basic business of the country held within their hands.
And there were places, of course, where the operation wouldn’t work. It would be effective only in those nations where private enterprise had flourished, where the people owned the industrial and financial institutions, and where natural resources came under private ownership. It would not work in Russia and it would not work in China, but perhaps it didn’t have to. Perhaps it didn’t have to work anywhere except in the majority of the great industrial nations. Close down the bulk of the world’s industry and shut up the world’s financial institutions and the world was whipped. There would be no trade and no flow of currency or credit and the thing that we called civilization would grind to a shuddering halt.
But there was still a question to which there was no answer—a question that bobbed just beneath the surface, popping into view a dozen times a thought: Where had the money come from?
For it would take money, perhaps more money than there was in all the world.
And there was another question just as pertinent: When and how had the money all been paid?
The answer was that it couldn’t have been paid. For if it had, the banks would be overflowing with it and the banking systems would be aware that there was something wrong.
Thinking of that, I remembered something that Dow Crane had said just that afternoon. The banks, he had said, were bursting at their seams with money. Overflowing with it. Cash money that people had been bringing in for a week or so.