XV

 

 

“i think we can take it the result was negligible,” said General Barghin heavily. “We got City Hall okay. We learned that much before they took out the scanner missile. But the warhead was only a ton, conventional.”

Mud squelched around his feet as he shifted uncomfortably. The field headquarters was under canvas and ready for evacuation at fifteen minutes’ notice, as was the entire crescent of the—not defenses; cordon was a better term. A fine of men and weapons intended to contain what seemed quite happy to remain where it was.

Dr. Gordon waited to see if anyone else was going to speak. No one did. He coughed and said, “General, I thought you were using scanner missiles because they were too fast to shoot down?”

“We were,” agreed Barghin. “Thunderhorses oughtn’t to be able to catch them. One did. We’re flying a series of nuisance raids at the moment, trying to provoke them into using up their stocks. They had about sixty. So far we’ve made them use eleven. But how much that will help, God knows. The monster’s liable to be in a hell of a temper after what we did to him, and if he knows how to soup up Thunderhorses to hit scanner missiles flying at two thousand per hour, I wouldn’t put it past him to build ’em out of used car parts.”

“Anything on the chemical line of approach?” asked a listening colonel. “Someone said—”

“You can’t expect results in a hurry on that side,” Gordon interrupted. “They have some of the biggest computers in the country working on the job. And so have the Russkis. But they’re handicapped! How’d you like to have to figure out that the quickest way to stop a human being was potassium cyanide if all you had at hand was a bit of mummified skin and a skeleton?”

“I see your point,” said the colonel dryly.

A runner threw back the tent flap and ducked to avoid the swinging lamp. “Signal, general,” he said, saluting. “And more to come, looks like.”

Barghin took the scribbled note. “Looks like the cue for Mechanical Shovel,” he said cryptically. “Let’s hope this one works. Colonel, get me a breakdown of all the weapons larger than small arms known to have been in the Jacksonville area prior to the monster’s arrival.”

The colonel dodged out in the runner’s wake.

 

City Hall was a pile of rubble, its roof caved in and its walls bellied out. But the strength of the signal from within proved that the master had been able to survive even this.

After all, Peter realized, he’d taken the pressure of the deep Atlantic. A stack of loose debris probably wouldn’t even dent his hide.

They were among the last to reach the spot. A gang of at least a thousand men and women were at work on the rubble, manhandling it away, throwing it into the square. Peter joined in on the end of a chain, with Luke beside him, catching lumps of concrete and dumping them.

A jagged five-pound block hurtled through the air towards Luke. Too late, Peter realized that Luke had not yet turned back from dropping its predecessor, and tried to catch it. He missed.

Luke’s head suddenly caved in from behind. For a moment he showed signs of startled pain. Then he tumbled forward on his face, and blood began to well out under his hair. Peter made to bend and see if there was any help for him, but a new jolt of pain reminded him that the master cared nothing about the fate of his subjects.

At least he could be given a burial. Peter contrived to make a sort of cairn above his friend’s body, and then to move away and heap the debris elsewhere.

Like slaves toiling to build the pyramids, Peter thought. And at the whim of a far worse master than a Pharaoh. …

There were probably other bodies under the heaped rubble when they finally extricated the master, with ropes and brute strength. Some had to wash his hide until it was glossy and clean; some had to hunt material and build a new palanquin for him. Then they all had to carry him, chanting Old Hundred, to a large church five blocks away, and install him there in new splendor.

Twice during the proceedings there were sharp, crackling explosions from overhead, and once what looked like the nose cone of a missile ploughed a bloody furrow through a group of workmen. Nobody was allowed to help the dying. Even the elemental compassion of breaking in their skulls with a heavy block to end their suffering was rewarded by another gust of agony.

Either the master was panicking, or he was determined to make what he regarded as idiots understand he meant what his spokesmen had said.

What were the rest of the enslaved population doing? Peter tried to get a clue from staring about him while they were carrying the master to his new abode. Some of them, doubtless, would be at the missile base, manhandling fifty-ton rockets. Some were probably compelled to scout the perimeter of the master’s domains, so that they could be driven to hunt down would-be intruders. Some were engaged in clearing the ruins of the buildings that had earlier been dynamited, and in laying paving. And some were engaged on a special task. …

Down one of the main streets that crossed next to the old church, men and women were laboriously pushing laden handcarts. The carts were piled with weapons: carbines, sporting guns, automatics, together with ammunition for them; and besides these, axes, butcher knives, even cutlasses and swords that must have been taken from a museum.

“Can you handle firearms?” they were saying wearily as they passed among the crowd. Those who answered affirmatively received guns. Those who did not, mostly women, were given knives or axes or hatchets.

He’s forming an army, Peter told himself silently. So he does know his powers are limited!

He was so elated by the realization that the master could no longer intend to handle his opponents out of his personal resources that he was taken by surprise when the weapons-bearers came to him and asked him the monotonous question. “Can you handle firearms?”

He couldn’t lie, he knew. And in any case to say no would mean receiving a cutting weapon that could not run out of ammunition. What was the least deadly of firearms? He said cautiously, “I can handle a .22 pistol.”

It was the truth. He could also handle machine guns, carbines, repeating rifles and many more deadly weapons. But the weapons-bearer did not stop to ask questions. He thrust a little target pistol and a box of shells into Peter’s hands and pushed past.

There was a lull now, while the rest of the weapons were given out. Peter wondered if he dared drop his gun down an open sewer somewhere, and so avert the risk of behaving as the gunners on the beach had done with their cannons. But someone else was trying it, refusing to keep the axe he had been allotted and shouting that he was a pacifist and had never used violence and never would.

Some spirits were still burning bright. But the poor devil was being tormented and lashed. It could be seen in his eyes. In the end, he accepted the axe and sprawled fainting, the axe held tightly in his hands.

Peter walked blankly down the street looking for food. One of the many cases of bananas which had been brought ashore from the wrecked cargo ship caught his attention, and he found that it still held two or three hands of blackened fruit. He ate frantically. A woman with one eye turned to a red pit came and mutely held out bleeding hands to him, and he gave her half of what he had found, less out of pure fellow-feeling than because he was suddenly overwhelmed with joy that Mary was not in the same pitiable condition. Unless another of the monsters turned up, she was safe out at the Atlantica site. Probably safer than anywhere else on Earth.

If she was still there, and hadn’t done something crazy like insisting on joining a rescue operation.

But he didn’t like to think of possibilities like that. For that reason, he had thought as little as he could about Mary these last few days. He always ended up picturing her either crushed to death like poor Luke, or in a state like the one-eyed woman. It was better not to think, just to sit passively and endure.

Until at last the order came for the army to advance.

 

“Missiles over New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond and Savannah,” was the report. Barghin’s face grew suddenly grave.

“Thank God there’s no uranium or other fissile material down there,” he said. “We'll just have to pray that this monster doesn't know how to make H-bombs out of old tin cans. What damage did the missiles do?”

“Co-ordinating the reports now, sir,” the radioman replied “No serious damage in New York. It exploded before it hit. The worst seems to be in Richmond. It hit a supermarket, and they’re still digging out corpses.

“Washington reports panic along most of the eastern seaboard. People have fled to the woods in New England, and all major highways are choked with cars. Crowds have been beseiging seaports and fighting their way aboard ship. One freighter has had to put out from Boston at gunpoint.”

“What’s the President doing?”

“He’s in Minnesota somewhere at an emergency hideout left over from the Cold War. Reports are he will broadcast to the nation this evening.”

“Get me evacuation reports.”

The radioman switched to another circuit and fired crisp questions. “Complete for a depth of thirty miles,” he said. “They’re opening refugee centers in Atlanta, Birmingham and Montgomery. Only, a hell of a lot of people are lighting out from there now they know about the evacuation.”

“Go west, you fool!” said Barghin humorlessly. “Any further contact with those poor bastards from Jacksonville?”

“Light small arms engagements all along the western quadrant of the front. Detachment commanders report they’ve almost completed their withdrawal.”

“Okay. I only hope we get some of them back with their minds intact. Mechanical Shovel had better begin now. And have someone move in a couple of countermissile groups. I don’t want any more of those souped-up Thunderhorses to get more than a mile from their base!”

 

Chanting in obedience to the mental whip, marching in rhythm with gongs and drums, the army started out in gathering darkness. Some limped. Some tried to lag and were driven remorselessly back to their place in the line.

A few keeled over, and the columns parted when they came to the place where the bodies lay.

Men had done this to each other, too. Feeling the habit of marching taking over from his conscious volition, Peter had visions of other armies of history. They had thought men were finished with such cruel stupidity. Perhaps this last time was going to set the seal of guarantee on the hope.

They came to the roadblocks marking the limit of the master’s dominion, and scrambled over or went around. The vanguard reformed. They plodded ahead.

Peter was toward the rear of his column. In the night he could see only a few paces ahead. It took him completely by surprise when shots rang out and he was suddenly goaded to raise his pistol and shoot it.

If they were going to waste ammunition like this, he would escape the hell of having to shoot his fellow men.

Lights sprang up, concealed in bushes and isolated houses. The army scattered. Some were compelled to charge forward, firing wildly. But there was no counterfire, and they advanced again to find that the men who had turned on the lights had left their posts and retreated.

The pattern was the same for more than an hour: lights; an attack; discovery of a deserted post. An air of uncertainty which Peter was sure was communicated from the master hung over the army. And then—

Half-tracked trucks, troop carriers, ambulances; a fantastic menagerie of vehicles covered in armor lumbered out of the night. There were sharp rifle-cracks, and mingled with them dull plopping noises like mortar fire. With every plop a net sprang from a device attached to one of the vehicles, trapped men and women like birds in a snare, and closed itself automatically. Derricks unfolded, grabbed the filled nets, loaded them with their human cargo into the vehicles. Screams rang out, and shots flew wild over the countryside.

But before more than half the “army” had been thus ignominiously captured, Peter and the rest who were still at large were compelled to turn and run.

Of course! Marvelling at the ingenuity that had sent robot-controlled machines to save them, he obediently fled.