At night, in the second week, they slept wrapped in each other’s arms for warmth. The last matches were gone, and a battery had burned out in the electric fire starter. Try as he might, hampered by the stiffness remaining in his left hand as well as by inexperience, Hendley could not create enough spark with stones or dry sticks to fan a flame into life. By then they were both hungry, a deep continuous hunger which seemed to add to the cold’s penetration, as if the blanket of flesh covering their bones, already worn thinner, could no longer keep out the chill which spread over the land after the sun went down.
Each day he had tried to put more miles between them and the city. The copter had left them some distance away, but still in sight of the tall, faceless cylinders of the major centers. Viewed across the barren plain, the towers appeared more like dead, naked trees than buildings swarming with human life. Moving always west, away from the hated towers, Hendley kept expecting to see them sink below the horizon, but they remained persistently in view, seeming no further away.
He slept fitfully. Waking in the cold darkness before dawn, he could see the beams of light shooting up from the circular cores of the great cylindrical towers, as if they were giant torches held up to illuminate the sky. Ann shivered in her sleep and tried to hug him more tightly, seeking to warm her body with his. Pity washed through him. Holding her, he felt a growing, spreading ache that was like the cold but deeper, that would not yield to warm rays of the morning sun.
He had brought her to this, and he was failing her.
Once, in the first week, he had trapped a small animal, one of the few species that seemed to be alive on the plain. He had had matches then, had built a fire, and it seemed they had never tasted anything more delicious than the fresh meat they shared in that festive meal. “I think,” Ann had said, “Hendley, I think now we are really free. For the first time.”
Later that night, lying before the warm glow of the fire, they had made love, and it had been like that first day of discovering each other.
Now they no longer made love. They were both dull with fatigue at the end of each day, even though they rested during the period of brutal midday heat. They were weakened by having had little to eat for days. They had tried various wild plants and even grasses that looked edible. Some were acceptable to their stomachs, some were impossibly bitter, one had made both of them sick. Hunger and thirst had jealously driven out other appetites.
The need for water, Hendley knew, would soon be more urgent even than food. In all this brown, empty land they had found no stream, no spring, no sign of water. They had started out with a two-week supply in the canteens provided them, but in the first days, unused to the weight of the desert sun, they had drunk too generously. It was only near the end of the first week that the necessity for strict rationing became painfully clear. There were mountains to the west, creeping infinitesimally higher each day, and Hendley reasoned that there must be water flowing down from the mountains, but he wondered, the strange new ache piercing to his heart as he held Ann more closely, if they would find it in time.
Really free, he thought. It was true. But this freedom was demanding. They were unprepared for it. Nothing in their lives before had equipped them to cope with it. Everything had always been provided—all the needs of mind and body. The social machine had taken care of its moving parts. Could they manage even to exist cut off from the benevolent machine?
There must have been others banished from the cities. Hendley could not guess how many. Had any of them learned to survive? Where would they have gone? Instinctively toward the mountains, as he had, in search of shelter from the sun and life-giving water? Had they begun to regret their transgressions against the Organization, to wish themselves back in the familiar routine of work and reward, the accepted pursuit of an artificial freedom? Had any of them crawled back to the cities, begging to be taken in?
The last question made Hendley start. A new chill crawled up his spine. Was that part of the punishment—reducing the criminal to abject surrender? Did they expect Hendley and Ann to return to the towers as beggars, shaken by cold and tormented by hunger, ready to accept any terms of rehabilitation?
Angrily he shook his head. There was an insidious weakness in the direction of his thoughts, a half-wish concealed behind the resentment. But the wish was for her, the woman whose body he covered with his own, feeling the bones more sharply outlined, seeing the pinched look of hunger around her mouth…
He waited until the sun’s first rays lanced through the concrete fingers projecting along the eastern horizon. Very carefully he eased out of Ann’s tight grasp, trying not to wake her. She stirred once, then fell back into the drugged sleep of exhaustion.
For an hour Hendley labored—doggedly, frustrated and tormented by his repeated failures—until at last a puff of smoke drifted from the small pile of powdery leaves and wood pulp he had fashioned. Perspiring in spite of the early morning chill, his face flushed with anxiety, he fanned the first sparks into a steady glow. At length, adding fresh twigs and seeing firm tongues of flame lick around them, he sat back on his heels and luxuriated in a sense of triumph. He had made his first fire.
There was powdered coffee remaining from their meager rations. When he had heated water he carried a cup of the steaming beverage to where Ann lay. He woke her gently.
“We may not have a feast,” he said. “But there’s hot coffee, and a fire to take away the chill. Come on over closer to it.”
Her happy exclamations of surprise and praise amply rewarded all his effort. He felt a slow surge of pride as he watched her crouch close to the fire, warming her hands and face and thin, shivering body. She drank too deeply of the coffee, scalding her tongue, but when she looked up at him, choking and smiling, her drawn face was flushed with color.
There were some things he could do, he thought with renewed determination. There would be other small animals he could trap, perhaps more of them nearer the mountains. There would be a fire each night to give them warmth and to cook their food. He would have to learn to strip the hides of any usefully covered animals so that the hides could be saved and warmer clothes eventually made from them. He would have to learn a lot of things. It would not be easy—but he had made a beginning.
“That was marvelous of you,” Ann said, reaching for him with one slender hand, pulling him down beside her.
When he let the fire die later, the sun was well above the horizon and the air was warming.
He felt, at the last, a sense of being cheated.
They had reached the foothills ascending in steps to the great purple vastness of the mountains when Ann collapsed for the first time. Hendley was sure that water could not be far away. The last drop had been squeezed from their canteens two days before. Yet even this conviction of being so close to the desperately needed water did not affect him as much as the tracks on which they had stumbled.
They were human tracks—feet soled in what seemed to suggest smooth leather. The tracks had crossed their path a day before they reached the foothills. They had eagerly followed the apparently purposeful line of the footprints—not a single set of prints, but many, indicating that the trail was frequently used. Their own progress was slow all that day, held back by Ann’s weakness. In his excitement over the discovery of the freshly made tracks Hendley had found an untapped core of strength and stamina, and not until Ann stumbled twice late in the afternoon did he become sharply aware of how weak and sick she was.
He had insisted on stopping immediately. Hurriedly he built a fire, before which he made her rest while he scoured the area for fresh roots. From these and the juice squeezed from green plants he made a kind of thick, stringy soup. During the night, in spite of his own deep fatigue, he slept little, watching over Ann anxiously. She kept waking, and what sleep she had was disturbed and restless. He waited several hours after dawn, putting down her objections, before they sat off again.
Early in the afternoon she collapsed. “I’m sorry, Hendley,” she kept repeating as he lifted her and carried her into the shade of an outcropping of rock. “I’m sorry.”
He brushed her words aside almost brusquely. “What have you to be sorry for? I’ve been pushing you too hard—I should have realized. I haven’t let you rest.”
“It’s not that. If only I had some water…”
Hating to leave her for long, he made quick forays through the remainder of the afternoon searching for some sign of water. The foothills were greener than the main desert plain—there had to be water not too far away. It must be there!
But, though he ranged farther each time, he found nothing, returning after each trip with a sharper fear.
Night again found him watching over her worriedly, listening to her dry, hacking cough. Her lips were cracked and swollen. He was vaguely surprised to find his own lips split so that one was bleeding.
And on his last scouting trip he had stumbled badly. A low grade had exhausted him. His strength was waning.
They could not live long without water. The human trail they had followed for two days must surely lead to help, to a source of food and water. But time was running out on them. Should he keep following the tracks, or strike out across the foothills, searching for a stream? He didn’t know, and the uncertainty plagued him through the long night.
Falling into fitful sleep, he dreamed of a rushing mountain stream, clear and cold, frothing as it boiled over beds of rock, cold and sweet and nourishing…
In the morning Ann seemed stronger. They set off at an easy, careful pace. Hendley helped her when the way was steep, carrying her over the most difficult stretches. They climbed steadily, following the fresh trail. When she could go no farther, he lifted her across his shoulders and went on, laboring.
They made little progress. At noon he had to rest. Because the day was cloudy and cool, with a stiff cutting wind whining through the gullies and bending the grasses that covered the foothills. Hendley searched carefully for a sheltered cove. He knew they had gone almost as far as they could go. Alone he might have struggled on for another day, perhaps more. But he would not leave her to save himself.
After a brief rest he made one more fruitless search for water. Exploring a ravine which looked promising, a slash across the hills once carved by a river but now dry, he was gone longer than he had intended. When he returned, he found Ann sprawled on the ground, only half-conscious.
They were absolutely alone in the vast, empty land. To the east now there was only an endless reach of denuded prairie. The towers of the city were no longer visible. The only sign of human existence other than themselves was the tauntingly recent trail they had been following. What men were these? Where did the tracks lead? How far?
He felt again the sense of being cheated, of a promise made, a hope nurtured, which could not be fulfilled.
Shortly after dusk he heard the buzz of an aircraft overhead, but he could not find it. This remote sign of life quickened no hope. The blind copters droning across the sky carried no one who could, or would, save them.
Ann came out of her delirium to stare at him. Her eyes were large, wide open, unexpectedly lucid. “You must go on without me,” she said calmly. “You can make it without me.”
He shook his head. “There is nothing without you.”
“You could find help—come back for me.”
“No, Ann,” he said gently. “We have to face it. There is no help. And I won’t leave you alone.”
She stared at him for a long moment. He saw, peering closely, that her eyes were liquid with tears. “Are you sorry you came?” he asked, not knowing until the words were out what he was saying. “Would you go back?”
She seemed to gather strength for her reply, drawing from a worn, thin body a surprising vigor. Her eyes shone. “Never!” she cried.
He lay beside her on the ground near the fire and folded her into his arms. “Nor I,” he said.
When, some time later, the fire began to die, the two figures bundled together before it did not stir. The fire slowly darkened, its orange glow turning to gray ash, and then to black, obscuring the last feeble flicker…