to catch himself. "I _like_ ex-spacemen. I know lots of you. I sell
you poly. You don't want to get tough with me."
He shoved a block of ten small cubes into Craig's hand and, while Craig
fished for his wallet, he produced a tiny, narrow-beamed flash. The
transaction was quickly over. The cube was small enough to be forced
without much difficulty into Craig's jacket pocket.
The man led him back across the littered yard, through the empty store
building, and out the front door. When Craig emerged onto the street
once more, a uniformed figure was standing nearby.
"He'll need two," whispered the man from behind him.
Craig reached into his pocket and mechanically fumbled two of the small
cubes of waxlike substance from the loose package. He placed them on
the outstretched hand of the Civil Control officer. The officer did not
look in his direction at any time, but accepted the offer and walked
slowly on toward the station.
Craig continued aimlessly down the long street. His head cleared as
he walked and once more began to form a kind of vague plan. There was
anonymity to a street such as this. There was also a kind of freedom.
Everywhere in the universe, there were such streets. Neutralized
streets, where a kind of compromise was reached between law and
lawlessness. They were permitted because it was always necessary to
provide such a place for those who were not permitted elsewhere. Those
who would not fit, could not be "rehabilitated," could neither be
jailed nor permitted complete freedom.
Controllers of one kind or another patrolled such streets, keeping them
in a kind of check--or, more accurately, in a kind of containment. But
no amount of control would ever completely stamp out the likes of Nave,
the bootlegger.
Perhaps here, on this street, Craig could be "lost." Here he might find
security for a time in anonymity, security and time to find a way ...
to what? He did not know.
"Mister! Mister!" cried a thin, high voice from somewhere to his left.
"Here, quick!"
It was a young boy of perhaps nine or ten. Craig caught sight of him as
he motioned urgently. He wore a shabby, torn version of what appeared
to be a space service uniform.
"I'm not buying anything, son," Craig said, pausing briefly.
"Come here, quick!" insisted the boy, his eyes large in a dirty face.
"You already bought too much."
The boy was motioning him to follow. He had stepped between two
buildings. Craig approached him with suspicion.
"What did you say?"
"Slip in here quick! You bought from Nave the peddler. You bought poly,
didn't ya?"
"How did you...." Craig began.
"Tell you later. Slip through here quick or they'll send you to
_Hardy_!"
The genuine fear of the youngster conveyed itself to Craig. With effort
he forced his body through the space between the old buildings. At
first he did not intend to follow the boy, but only to stop him for an
explanation. The boy, however, continued down the tight corridor formed
by the buildings.
"There's a window soon," he said from ahead of Craig. "Hurry. You lost
time with that peddler."
Lost time? Cursing himself for becoming involved again in something he
did not understand, Craig nevertheless followed as best he could. It
was a tight squeeze and he found himself becoming breathless.
"Dive down!" shouted the boy, looking back with terror in his eyes.
Instinctively Craig did so. The rough walls tore at his suit.
"Stop!" shouted a voice from behind Craig. "Stop or we fire!"
Craig suddenly felt the sill of a window which opened into the
building to his left. He quickly pulled himself into it. There was a
sickening whine and a part of the window disintegrated in a cloud of
splinters and plaster.
"Through here," said the boy from the semi-darkness. "They'll blast
their way inside in a minute!"
Craig found himself in another empty building. He followed the boy
through a doorway and felt his way as he half ran along the dark hall.
"Who are _they_?" he panted.
"Controllers."
"Civil Control?"
"Sure. You must be pretty important. I didn't get it all. But they say
the controllers checked up on you after.... I'll explain later."
The hall ended in a dim room piled high with plasmolite packing boxes
in great disarray. The boy chose a box and lifted a lid.
"Follow me. It's a passage."
"Where to?"
"No time now. Down here."
The passage, which seemed to be constructed of plasmolite boxes, seemed
somehow lit by daylight, although Craig could not actually see the
source of the light.
The tunnel ended in broad afternoon daylight. As he climbed out he saw
a large clearing surrounded by ruins.
"We're just inside the old city," the boy said. "We're safe now--unless
those controllers are willing to take more chances than I think."
"Wait a minute, son. You said 'old city.' You mean that this is a part
of pre-war Los Angeles?"
"Well, sure."
"But that's supposed to be...."
"Radioactive? Most of it, anyway. Good thing, too. Otherwise we'd have
no place to go."
"Look, kid, you better explain," said Craig. "You were right about
somebody being after me, but I don't get the 'we' business. Or how you
knew all about this."
"All right, mister, but let's get away from here. Those guys won't come
through to here, even if they find a way--I don't think. But they're
gettin' smarter and you're pretty hot right now."
The boy led the way to what appeared to be a completely demolished
building.
"Used to be the old library," he said.
They circled the heap of plaster, brick, and twisted steel. On the
other side Craig saw what appeared to be a window. The boy let himself
down through it.
Craig was amazed to find a large, relatively clear area inside,
probably part of an old room that had been spared by some freak of the
blast.
"You _live_ here?" Craig asked the youngster incredulously.
"Part of the time." The boy brought up an old crate and offered it to
Craig as a chair. "Listen, mister, I don't know who you are. You're an
ex-spaceman and that's enough for me." There was a slightly amusing
attempt at adult hardness about him. "You shouldn't have wasted time
with Nave. You should have got out of there."
"Why?"
"I don't know. What you done, anyway?"
"I don't remember. Passed out at a bar...."
The boy showed disgust. He glanced at the pocket which contained the
polyester.
Craig smiled. "I don't use this stuff. At least not enough to deserve
what you're thinking." He tossed the remaining cubes on the littered
floor of the room.
The boy maintained his look of scorn for a time, but then softened. "I
was afraid you got kicked out of the service for that."
"How did you know I was ever in it?"
"Easy. You don't know how to walk on a planet yet. Anybody can tell."
"I didn't get kicked out," Craig said. "I came here to take a civil
service job."
"It'd almost be better if you had been."
"I didn't know about Terra. None of us had any idea."
"I know," said the boy sadly. "My father quit, too. _He_ quit to marry
my mother. That was before it was ... so bad."
"Where--" Craig began, then bit off the question.
"Oh, gee, mister, Terra's in an _awful_ bad shape! They took ... my
parents. They hunt us down. They...."
Craig approached the boy and put a hand on his shoulder. "What's your
name, son?"
"Phil."
"Phil what?"
"I don't know exactly. My father had to use so many names toward
the ... end. He once had only one name, but I guess even he forgot what
it was."
* * * * *
They prepared to spend the night in the old library room, but first
Phil left it and made his way into the wilderness of rubble. He
returned dragging a packing box of plastic insulating material, out of
which they fashioned a crude bed. Despite the thousands of questions
that paraded across Craig's mind, he waited each time for the boy to
speak.
"I can't take you any further until...."
"Until you know more about me?"
"In a way. _They'll_ let me know."
Craig would have risked much to identify the "they" Phil referred to,
but he did not ask the question. As he watched the boy preparing the
dimly lit room for the night, he felt sure Phil could be trusted. He
was almost frighteningly mature for his age.
The room was well hidden, for the once great library lay in a powdered
ruin about it on all sides but a part of one. Only by accident or
knowledge would a stranger recognize it in what was literally a world
of rubble. During the moments of silence between the boy's volunteered
statements, Craig tried to visualize the awful catastrophe that had
befallen the old city. Piles of powdered masonry restricted his view
greatly under the gathering night. He could see a scant city block
through the window, but he knew the wreckage around them must extend
for miles.
"You don't have to worry, mister...."
"Craig."
"Mr. Craig. They don't come in here at night."
"Radioactivity?"
"Yes. Not right here, but all around, everywhere."
"What?"
"It's all around us. You go through it to get here, but you can't
_stay_ anywhere but a few places like this."
"How do you know all of these things, Phil?"
"Oh, we know, all right. We had to find out."
"You must have ion counters," he said in what he hoped was a casual
tone.
"We have lots of things."
Craig was thoughtful for a minute. The boy was obviously on his guard
now.
"Those empty buildings?" Craig asked tentatively.
"They built them too close," said the boy. It seemed to be a safe
subject. "They built them up as close as they thought was safe. Space
is very valuable here. But they built them too close."
"Yet the 'we' you speak of live even closer?"
The boy bit his lip and eyed him suspiciously in silence.
"Look, kid," Craig said very deliberately, "I'm not a controller and
I'm not interested in a bunch of petty thieves."
The effect was just what he had intended. "We're _not_ thieves! And
we're not traitors, either! We're...."
The boy was almost in tears. Craig waited a moment, then continued in
a soft voice. "Phil, I'm just beginning to realize what a rotten place
Terra is. From just what I've seen--it isn't very much--I can imagine
such a system producing a great many 'we' groups like yours. I don't
know who you are or what you are, but you can't be any worse than what
I've already seen of Terran officials. Tell me, kid, what's it all
about? And is there any way out of here? I mean--_way_ out!"
"You may tell him, Philip," said a quiet voice from the window
entrance. "Like us, Philip, Mr. Craig is an enemy of tyranny, though he
doesn't realize it yet."
Craig instinctively jumped back to get out of range of the window,
meanwhile feeling around for something that could be used as a weapon.
But the boy ran to the silhouetted figure in the window.
"Mr. Sam!" he cried eagerly.
Craig relaxed his hold on a strip of heavy metal. When the man had
entered, the boy pulled a ragged black cloth across the window once
more. He then ignited a small oil burning lamp in a carved-out nook in
the wall.
"It's all right, Philip, nobody is following me," the newcomer said.
Craig studied his face. It was an old face covered by a stained gray
beard. With a shock Craig recognized the man as a tramp he had seen
earlier on the street, napping, sprawled in a doorway. Now for the
first time he saw the eyes. Sharp and clear, they caught up the yellow
light of the oil lamp and glowed warmly as they turned to Craig.
"I am 'Mr. Sam,' Mr. Craig. You might know me by the full name,
Samuel Cocteau, but I doubt it. Even the names of the infamous do not
penetrate space."
"I guess not," Craig agreed. "But you said something about my being an
enemy of tyranny."
"Whether you like it at once or not, you are temporarily one of us--one
of the 'we' Philip has been speaking of. But all of that in due time.
Right now it is necessary for us to leave here."
"They're going to try to find us _tonight_?" asked Phil, startled.
"Yes, a tribute to Mr. Craig," said the old man. "A Geiger team is
being readied at the station."
Craig started to protest as the boy began hurriedly to pick up his few
possessions in the room.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Craig," the man said. "I must ask you to decide now
whether to trust us and our judgment. There is grave danger for you
if you are caught by the Civil Control. The report I have received is
that you are largely unaware of the 'crimes against the state' you have
committed. The Civil Control hoped to capture you before you find them
out. But that, of course, is my word only. There is no time to give you
proof, even if I had it."
Craig's mind whirled under the sudden onslaught of new facts. He
had followed a peddler without knowing why he did it. He had bought
polyester he had no use for. He had followed a boy who beckoned to
him. Now--how much longer was he to move haphazardly through Terra like
a cork on a wind-blown sea? Who were these strange fugitives who said
he was one of them and who lived in the heart of a radioactive city?
"Well, Mr. Craig?" asked Cocteau quietly.
Craig glanced at the boy. The child's eyes were wide and pleading in
the dim light of the oil lamp.
"Let's go," Craig said.
* * * * *
Darkness was swiftly falling on the wilderness of heaping ruin. The
three made their way toward what Craig at first thought was an unbroken
wall of rubble. The near-horizontal rays of the sun tipped the white
mass of broken stone with brilliance, and gave the entire scene an
unearthly quality. Below the towering rubble mountains, long black
shadows were reaching toward what Craig knew to be the living city.
Cocteau took the lead and set a fast pace for a man of his age. He took
a highly devious path through the "mountain," or what began to seem to
Craig needlessly difficult and that outlined them against the bright
western sky. At one point Craig left the invisible path of the older
man to avoid an exhaustingly steep rise.
"Follow me exactly," warned Cocteau in a sharp voice. "There is only
one relatively safe path through here."
"They'll see us against the sky!"
"It cannot be helped."
But there was no indication that they were followed. They pushed
onward, scurrying over heaps of weathered plaster and brick. The old
man seemed to avoid with great care places where metal girders were
visible.
The exertion together with walking directly into the setting sun made
Craig begin to feel the old nausea return. He resisted it for a time,
but it would not be repressed, particularly as he strove to maintain
his balance on difficult climbs. Once he stumbled on a splintered
building stone and fell. It was a long minute before he could regain
his feet and mutter a feeble, "Sorry."
"We must push on, Mr. Craig," was Cocteau's only comment.
"It's safe here for a _minute_, isn't it?" Craig panted, dizzy and
breathless.
"There is no safe place here, Mr. Craig."
They continued their winding way through the growing darkness. For
Craig it became a nightmare of stumbling over the endless piles of
sharp stones. His mind spun sickeningly and he retched as he half ran
along the path Cocteau set for them.
"Please, mister," breathed the voice of Phil behind him. "It isn't so
far now."
Doggedness carried Craig onward long after awareness left him.
* * * * *
He became conscious suddenly, as though by an injection of stimulant.
He found himself surrounded by a number of figures, including Cocteau
and a white garbed man, evidently a doctor.
"You are quite safe now, Mr. Craig," said Cocteau warmly. "Welcome to
the _City of We_."
"Where are we?"
"Deep in the old city, in a place where the radioactivity is
negligible," the man answered as the doctor took his pulse. "This is
Dr. Grant and these others are members of the _Liberty party_."
"Liberty!"
"You've heard of it?"
"Yeah, you're pretty unpopular, aren't you?"
"Unpopular? Let us say that all of Terran _officialdom_ is dedicated to
exterminating us."
"The committee on something-or-other asked me about my attitudes toward
the Liberty party," said Craig, rising to a sitting position on the cot.
"And at the time you had a lack of attitude, which most likely was
unacceptable to them," supplied Cocteau, smiling. "Well, you may be
interested to know that you are considered one of us by most of Terra
just now."
"_What?_"
"That is correct," said another of the group. "It seems you were in a
bar in--ah--in a somewhat less than fully conscious state...."
"But I didn't know anything about the Liberty party."
"No, nor is it alleged that you actually mentioned the party in so many
words," continued the white-haired man, smiling. "But it seems that you
did make certain statements in the presence of certain persons that did
indicate a definite predilection...."
"That's crazy," said Craig angrily.
"Of course," Cocteau agreed.
"Furthermore," the other man said, "you are charged with wilful
abandonment of duty and 'acts indicative of your desire to shun the
best utilization of your talents in behalf of the state of Terra.'"
"In other words," explained Cocteau, "you applied for a job on a
private space freighter. Without permission to do so."
Craig was silent. He lay back down on the cot and tried to absorb the
data he had just received.
"So I'm accused of belonging to something I don't know anything about?"
"Then I'll tell you briefly about us. You have a right to know the
magnitude of the crime with which you are charged." Cocteau took a seat
by Craig's cot. The others also found chairs.
"But first a brief bit of history--a history that you have never
heard before. Not your fault. It is not allowed to penetrate Terra's
atmosphere."
"I don't know much about Terra," Craig interjected. "I'm just finding
out how much I don't know."
"God, I wish the rest of the Universe could find out with you!" said
one of the group.
"Yes, the history of Terra is almost lost now. That is, the part of it
that followed the Great Wars of seventy-five years ago. You know of
those wars; you have just walked through one of the physical results of
them. No nation or alliance of nations can be said to have won them,
but the wars had a most profound effect upon Terra. More than anything
else, they made men reach to the stars, if only to escape the deadly
conflicts of Terra.
"Ideological issues were involved, naturally, but the underlying cause
of the Great Wars was the struggle for power. The world was disunited.
Peoples were divided from peoples by an almost inconceivable number
of unimportant distinctions. These were ethnical, national, racial,
cultural--name any brand of prejudice and you'll find it existed then.
"Incredibly enough, the destructiveness of the Great Wars accomplished
a kind of unity. Gone were the once proud aggressive nations.
Gone into oblivion. Gone, too, were the systems of economics and
sociology of which men were once so sure. There was a kind of
'plague-on-both-your-houses' attitude among the peoples of the world.
There was a large measure of anarchy following the Great Wars. Not
a violent, active anarchy of hate and terror, but of apathy and
weariness. Apathy at the outcome of false conflicts, and weariness of
the self-defeating strife of man against man.
"At first men produced by the full extent of their labors barely
enough on which to survive. Only gradually did they regain their
ability to produce surpluses once more. Of course, surpluses mean
exchanges--trade. And trade requires order and system.
"The first ten years following the Great Wars was a period of
gradualism in all things. Peoples united in small groups. There were
no political or racial divisions. The units were built upon functional
lines. They were natural and free. Above all, they were cooperative.
"It was not communism. Men knew all too well the mental and physical
slavery of that brutally rigid system. It was not rugged individualism
either. Rugged individuals during this period either starved or were
driven out by the starving.
"This natural, cooperative unity spread and became more complex. There
came into being natural associations of units. Not exclusive but
inclusive associations that linked all who would join and could produce
surpluses. Productivity increased thereby. Men were intelligent enough
to avoid many of the old abuses.
"Ways were found to harness the productivity of each man and woman.
Genuine efforts were made to avoid misfits, to make those who produced
fit. It was realized, Mr. Craig, that the unhappy man will infect
others with his misery, and the trouble he will cause is much more
difficult to undo than to prevent in the first place.
"There were, of course, mistakes, false starts. But the new-found
system of world-wide unity proved flexible. It was multiple-based. To
a very large degree, all men fitted into it logically and naturally.
It was the first truly 'grass-roots' economic and social system in the
history of man. And it was a great tribute to his ability to work out
his destiny, particularly since it came after a tragedy that was so
enormous and devastating.
"The list of its successes is incredible. For in a decade the
age-old problem of poverty seemed to have disappeared. There were no
significant outbreaks of disorder and lawlessness--indeed, there was
comparatively little need for a written law. The principle of mutuality
and cooperation was too strongly conditioned into the people.
"Scientifically, the first half of the new century, a scant twenty-five
years after the last bomb was dropped, was the greatest in man's
history. Man reached the stars. He began to know the molecule, the
atom, the electron. He pushed the frontier of his knowledge deep into
both microcosm and macrocosm.
"But a fatal flaw had long before developed in the structure, wonderful
as it was. It was an age-old flaw. It was one that was disguised by the
very nature of the new system. When it was recognized, that flaw had
so weakened the system that its spread was all but inevitable. It is a
flaw that will always plague man to a certain extent, but one that must
keep us eternally vigilant.
"It is this: the greatest human good comes not in how well you learn to
control man and keep him from harming himself. What determines it is
how completely you learn to free him.
"Conversely, the law provides that no control system, however devised,
will succeed in bringing happiness and security to man to any greater
extent than it permits the fullest expression of his nature.
"Man is _inherently_ good. He will _always_ choose a moral path when
free to do so. He strives for justice and truth both as an individual
and in mass.
"Mr. Craig, democracy is man's greatest _a priori_. Yet based upon a
law of restraint, it cannot escape the hopeless contradiction that
leads to its own destruction. Man can democratically do the irrational
and the insane. He can democratically limit and coerce the absolute
highest nature of himself. Bad laws are forever passed to achieve good
ends. But each new law produces new criminals while the cause of the
new crime remains unsolved.
"Ergo, the world you have just seen. Ergo, the Liberty party. Mr.
Craig, our world is ruled by a vast and horrible bureaucracy whose
terrible weapon is conformity. You would find few laws even today
written in books. Our assemblies pass few statutes. They determine
dogma instead. They 'resolve' and 'move.' They fix a new 'position,'
define a 'stand.' Our equivalent of judge and attorney is no student
of law. He is a kind of moralist. He is sensitive to the 'trend' and
appreciative of the 'proper.'
"Terra fits uncomfortably in the Intergalactic System. Like many of the
undemocratic systems of the dark past, the Terran state must expand.
It is based upon a self-limiting philosophy unless it can spread fast
enough. You are charged with being 'unTerran,' Mr. Craig. A system that
forever seeks 'unTerrans' must inevitably exile or kill itself!"
It had been a long speech. Craig had listened in awe, for it was a
completely new story to him.
"And you propose to destroy this bureaucracy?" he said.
"In so far as it is a philosophical entity, yes."
"And you say I am one of you now?"
"You are considered one of us. Your employer and his secretary are also
suspected."
"But I'm entitled to a trial, or at least a hearing."
"Not now, Mr. Craig. It would do you little good, anyway. The
'position' of the Assembly on subversion is that it 'rightly behooves
every loyal Terran so to conduct his behavior that a suspicion of
membership in the Liberty party is unthinkable.'"