He puzzled over it and dismissed it. The entrance room, apart from
the sign, had a knickknack shelf of Japanese carved ivory and an
old-fashioned umbrella rack, but that added nothing to his knowledge.
He had already guessed that the owners of this home were well off. Also
it had been recently painted; so they were not demoralized, as so much
of the world had been demoralized, by the coming of the possessors.
Even the elaborate sculpturing of its hedges had been maintained.
The man came back and with him was a girl of fifteen or so. She was
tall, slim and rather homely, with a large jaw and an oval face. "Guy,
he's not much to look at," she said to the pockmarked man. "Meggie,
shall I let him in?" he asked. "Guy, you might as well," she
shrugged, staring at Chandler with interest but not sympathy.
"Stranger, come along," said the man named Guy, and led him through a
short hall into an enormous living room, a room two stories high with a
ten-foot fireplace.
Chandler's first thought was that he had stumbled in upon a wake. The
room was neatly laid out in rows of folding chairs, more than half of
them occupied. He entered from the side, but all the occupants of the
chairs were looking toward him. He returned their stares; he had had
a good deal of practice lately in looking back at staring faces, he
reflected. "Stranger, go on," said the man who had let him in, nudging
him, "and meet the people of Orphalese."
Chandler hardly heard him. He had not expected anything like this. It
was a meeting, a Daumier caricature of a Thursday Afternoon Literary
Circle, old men with faces like moons, young women with faces like
hags. They were strained, haggard and fearful, and a surprising number
of them showed some sort of physical defect, a bandaged leg, an arm in
a sling or merely the marks of pain on the features. "Stranger, go in,"
repeated the man, and it was only then that Chandler noticed the man
was holding a pistol, pointed at his head.
* * * * *
Chandler sat in the rear of the room, watching. There must be thousands
of little colonies like this, he reflected; with the breakdown of
long-distance communication the world had been atomized. There was a
real fear, well justified, of living in large groups, for they too were
lightning rods for possession. The world was stumbling along, but it
was lame in all its members; a planetary lobotomy had stolen from it
its wisdom and plan. If, he reflected dryly, it had ever had any.
But of course things were better in the old days. The world had seemed
on the brink of blowing itself up, but at least it was by its own hand.
Then came Christmas.
It had happened at Christmas, and the first sign was on nation-wide
television. The old President, balding, grave and plump, was making a
special address to the nation, urging good will to men and, please,
artificial trees because of the fire danger in the event of H-bomb
raids; in the middle of a sentence twenty million viewers had seen him
stop, look dazedly around and say, in a breathless mumble, what sounded
like: "_Disht dvornyet ilgt_." He had then picked up the Bible on the
desk before him and thrown it at the television camera.
The last the televiewers had seen was the fluttering pages of the Book,
growing larger as it crashed against the lens, then a flicker and a
blinding shot of the studio lights as the cameraman jumped away and
the instrument swiveled to stare mindlessly upward. Twenty minutes
later the President was dead, as his Secretary of Health and Welfare,
hurrying with him back to the White House, calmly took a hand grenade
from a Marine guard at the gate and blew the President's party to
fragments.
For the President's seizure was only the first and most conspicuous.
"_Disht dvornyet ilgt._" C.I.A. specialists were playing the tapes
of the broadcast feverishly, electronically cleaning the mumble and
stir from the studio away from the words to try to learn, first, the
language and second what the devil it meant; but the President who
ordered it was dead before the first reel spun, and his successor was
not quite sworn in when it became his time to die. The ceremony was
interrupted for an emergency call from the War Room, where a very
nearly hysterical four-star general was trying to explain why he had
ordered the immediate firing of every live missile in his command
against Washington, D. C.
Over five hundred missiles were involved. In most of the sites the
order was disobeyed, but in six of them, unfortunately, unquestioning
discipline won out, thus ending not only the swearing in, the general's
weeping explanation, the spinning of tapes, but also some two million
lives in the District of Columbia, Maryland, Virginia and (through
malfunctioning relays on two missiles) Pennsylvania and Vermont. But it
was only the beginning.
* * * * *
These were the first cases of possession seen by the world in some
five hundred years, since the great casting out of devils of the
Middle Ages. A thousand more occurred in the next few days, a hundred
in the next hours. The timetable was made up out of scattered reports
in the wire-service newsrooms, while they still had facilities
for spot coverage in any part of the world. (That lasted almost a
week.) They identified 237 cases of possession by noon of the next
day. Disregarding the dubious items--the Yankee pitcher who leaped
from the Manhattan bridge (he had Bright's disease), the warden of
San Quentin who seated himself in the gas chamber and, literally,
kicked the bucket (did he know the Grand Jury was subpoenaing his
books?)--disregarding these, the chronology of major cases that evening
was:
8:27 PM, E.S.T.: President has attack on television.
8:28 PM, E.S.T.: Prime Minister of England orders bombing raid against
Israel, alleging secret plot (order not carried out).
8:28 PM, E.S.T.: Captain of SSN _Ethan Allen_, surfaced near Montauk
Point, orders crash dive and course change, proceeding submerged at
flank speed to New York Harbor.
9:10 PM, E.S.T.: Eastern Airlines six-engine jet makes wheels-up
landing on roof of Pentagon, breaking some 1500 windows but causing no
other major damage (except to the people aboard the jet); record of
this incident fragmentary because entire site charred black in fusion
attack two hours later.
9:23 PM, E.S.T.: Rosalie Pan, musical-comedy star, jumps off stage,
runs up center aisle and vanishes in cab, wearing beaded bra, G-string
and $2500 headdress. Her movements are traced to Newark airport where
she boards TWA jetliner, which is never seen again.
9:50 PM, E.S.T.: Entire S.A.C. fleet of 1200 jet bombers takes off
for rendezvous over Newfoundland, where 72% are compelled to ditch
as tankers fail to keep refueling rendezvous. (Orders committing the
aircraft originate with S.A.C. commander, found to be a suicide.)
10.14 PM, E.S.T.: Submarine fusion explosion destroys 40% of New York
City. Analysis of fallout indicates U.S. Navy Polaris missiles were
detonated underwater in bay; by elimination it is deduced that the
submarine was the _Ethan Allen_.
10:50 PM, E.S.T.: President's party assassinated by Secretary of
Health, Education and Welfare; Secretary then dies on bayonet of Marine
guard who furnished the grenade.
10:55 PM, E.S.T. Satellite stations observe great nuclear explosions in
China and Tibet.
11:03 PM, E.S.T.: Heavily loaded munitions barges exploded near North
Sea dikes of Holland; dikes breached, 1800 square miles of reclaimed
land flooded out....
And so on. The incidents were countless. But before long, before even
the C.I.A. had finished the first playthrough of the tapes, before
their successors in the task identified _Disht dvornyet ilgt_ as a
Ukrainian dialect rendering of, My God, it works!--before all this, one
fact was already apparent. There were many incidents scattered around
the world, but not one of them took place in Russia itself.
* * * * *
Warsaw was ablaze, China pockmarked with blasts, East Berlin demolished
along with its western sector, in eight rounds fired from a U.S. Army
nuclear cannon. But the U.S.S.R. had not suffered at all, as far as
could be told by the prying eyes in orbit; and that fact was reason
enough for it to suffer very greatly very soon.
Within minutes of this discovery what remained of the military strength
of the Western world was roaring through airless space toward the most
likely targets of the East.
One unscathed missile base in Alaska completed a full shoot, seven
missiles with fusion war-heads. The three American bases that survived
at all in the Mediterranean fired what they had. Even Britain, which
had already watched the fire-tails of the American missiles departing
on suicide missions, managed to resurrect its own two prototype
Blue Streaks from their racks, where they had moldered since the
cancellation of the British missile program. One of these museum-pieces
destroyed itself in launching, but the other chugged painfully across
the sky, the tortoise following the flight of the hares. It arrived a
full half-hour after the newer, hotter missiles. It might as well not
have bothered. There was not much left to destroy.
It was fortunate for the Communists that most of the Western arsenal
had already spent itself in suicide. What was left wiped out Moscow,
Leningrad and nine other cities. It was even fortunate for the whole
world, for this was the Apocalypse they had dreaded, every possible
nuclear weapon committed. But the circumstances were such--hasty
orders, often at once recalled; confusion; panic--that most were
unfused, many others merely tore great craters in the quickly healing
surface of the sea. The fallout was locally murderous but quite spotty.
And the conventional forces invading Russia found nothing to fight. The
Russians were as confused as they. There were not many survivors of the
very top brass, and no one seemed to know just what had happened.
Was the Secretary of the C.P., U.S.S.R. behind that terrible brief
agony? As he was dead before it was over, there was no way to tell.
More than a quarter of a billion lives went into mushroom-shaped
clouds, and nearly half of them were Russian, Latvian, Tatar and
Kalmuck. The Peace Commission squabbled for a month, until the
breakdown of communications cut them off from their governments and
each other; and in that way, for a time, there was peace.
* * * * *
This was the sort of peace that was left, thought Chandler looking
around at the queer faces and queerer surroundings, the peace of
medieval baronies, cut off from the world, untouched where the rain
of fallout had passed by but hardly civilized any more. Even his own
home town, trying to take his life in a form of law, reduced at last
to torture and exile to cast him out, was not the civilization he had
grown up in but something new and ugly.
There was a great deal of talk he did not understand because he could
not quite hear it, though they looked at him. Then Guy, with the gun,
led him up to the front of the room. They had constructed an improvised
platform out of plywood panels resting on squat, heavy boxes that
looked like empty ammunition crates. On the dais was a dentist's chair,
bolted to the plywood; and in the chair, strapped in, baby spotlights
on steel-tube frames glaring on her, was a girl. She looked at Chandler
with regretting eyes but did not speak.
"Stranger, get up there," said Guy, prodding him from behind, and
Chandler took a plain wooden chair next to the girl.
"People of Orphalese," cried the teen-age cutie named Meggie, "we have
two more brands to save from the imps!"
The men and women in the audience cackled or shrilled "Save them!
Save them!" They all had a look of invisible uniforms, Chandler saw,
like baseball players in the lobby of a hotel or soldiers in a diner
outside the gate of their post; they were all of a type. Their type was
something strange. Some were tall, some short; there were old, fat,
lean and young around them; but they all wore about them a look of
glowing excitement, muted by an aura of suffering and pain. They wore,
in a word, the look of bigots.
The bound girl was not one of them. She might have been twenty years
old or as much as thirty. She might have been pretty. It was hard to
tell; she wore no makeup, her hair strung raggedly to her neck, and
her face was drawn into a tight, lean line. It was her eyes that were
alive. She saw Chandler and she was sorry for him. And he saw, as he
turned to look at her, that she was manacled to the dentist's chair.
"People of Orphalese," chanted Guy, standing behind Chandler with the
muzzle of the gun against his neck, "the _meeting_ of the Orphalese
Self-Preservation _Society_ will now come to _order_." There was an
approving, hungry murmur from the audience.
"Well, people of _Orphalese_," Guy went on in his singsong, "the
agenda for the day is first the salvation of we _Orphalese_ on
McGuire's _Mountain_."
("All saved, all of us saved," rolled a murmur from the congregation.)
A lean, red-headed man bounded to the platform and fussed with the
stand of spotlights, turning one of them full on Chandler.
"People of Orphalese, as we are _saved_, do I have your consent to
_pass on_ and proceed to the next order of _business_?"
("Consent, consent, consent," rolled the echo.)
"And then the _second_ item of business is to _welcome_ and bring to
grace these two newly _found_ and adopted _souls_."
The congregation shouted variously: "Bring them to grace! Save them
from the imps! Keep Orphalese from the taint of the beast!"
Evidently Guy was satisfied. He nodded and became more chatty. "Okay,
people of Orphalese, let's get down to it. We got two new ones, like I
say. Their spirits have gone wandering on the wind, or anyway one of
them has, and you all know the et cetera. They have committed a wrong
unto others and therefore unto themselves. Herself, I mean. Course, the
other one could have a flame spirit in him too." He stared severely at
Chandler. "Boys, keep an eye on him, why don't you?" he said to two
men in the front row, surrendering his gun. "Meggie, you tell about the
female one."
The teen-aged girl stepped forward and said, in a conversational tone
but with modest pride, "People of Orph'lese, well, I was walking down
the cut and I heard this car coming. Well, I was pretty surprised, you
know. I had to figure what to do. You all know what the trouble is with
cars."
"The imps!" cried a woman of forty with a face like a catfish.
The girl nodded. "Most prob'ly. Well, I--I mean, people of Orph'lese,
well, I was by the switchback where we keep the chevvy-freeze hid, so I
just waited till I saw it slowing down for the curve--me out of sight,
you know--and I rolled the chevvy-freeze out nice and it caught the
wheels. Right over!" she cried gleefully. "Off the shoulder, people of
Orph'lese, and into the ditch and over, and I didn't give it a chance
to burn. I cut the switch and I had her! I put a knife into her back,
just a little, about a quarter of an inch, maybe. Her pain was the
breakin' of the shell that enclosed her understanding, like it says.
I figured she was all right then because she yelled but I brought her
along that way. Then Guy took care of her until we got the synod. Oh,"
she remembered, "and her tongue staggered a little without purpose
while he was putting it on, didn't it, Guy?" The bearded man nodded,
grinning, and lifted up the girl's foot. Incredulously, Chandler saw
that it was bound tight with a three-foot length of barbed wire, wound
and twisted like a tourniquet, the blood black and congealed around it.
He lifted his shocked eyes to meet the girl's. She only looked at him,
with pity and understanding.
Guy patted the foot and let it go. "I didn't have any more C-clamps,
people of Orphalese," he apologized, "but it looks all right at that.
Well, let's see. We got to make up our minds about these two, I
guess--no, wait!" He held up his hand as a murmur began. "First thing
is, we ought to read a verse or two."
He opened a purple-bound volume at random, stared at a page for a
moment, moving his lips, and then read:
"Some of you say, 'It is the north wind who has woven the clothes we
wear.'
"And I say, Ay, it was the north wind, but shame was his loom, and the
softening of the sinews was his thread.
"And when his work was done he laughed in the forest."
Gently he closed the book, looking thoughtfully at the wall at the back
of the room. He scratched his head. "Well, people of Orphalese," he
said slowly "they're laughing in the forest all right, I guarantee, but
we've got one here that may be honest in the flesh, probably is, though
she was a thief in the spirit. Right? Well, do we take her in or reject
her, O people of Orphalese?"
The audience muttered to itself and then began to call out: "Accept!
Oh, bring in the brand! Accept and drive out the imp!"
"Fine," said the teen-ager, rubbing her hands and looking at the
bearded man. "Guy, let her go." He began to release her from the chair.
"You, girl stranger, what's your name?"