Julia shrank back, trying to cover her nakedness with her arms. Taigue
became a statue, a statue staring with horrified eyes at a shining
goddess who had abruptly deteriorated into a mere woman. I tore the
gun from his grasp before he could recover himself and bludgeoned him
beneath the heart. But his eyes were glazed even before the charge
struck him. I looked at him disgustedly as he sank gasping to the
floor. The self-righteous idealism with which he had clothed Julia had
been even thinner than the earthly clothes I had ripped away.
I turned to Julia. She had retrieved the prison dress, had slipped into
it, and was improvising a catch to hold it together. Her face was white
but her eyes were dry. I searched those eyes anxiously. I don't know
why I should have been relieved to find understanding rather than anger
in them, but I was relieved--more relieved than I would have cared to
admit.
"Can you pilot a 'copter?" I asked.
She nodded. "I've been piloting them since I was twelve."
"There's a 'copter port on the roof. If we can reach it, we've got a
chance. I don't know where we'll go, but we'll go somewhere--"
"We'll go to Mars, Roger. If you're willing." She had finished
repairing her dress and stood calm and poised before me.
"This is no time for jokes," I said.
"And I'm not joking. There's a ramp not far from here that will take us
to the roof. Come on, Roger!"
We peered up and down the corridor. It was empty. I followed Julia down
the grim passage. In the distance, the arena entrance was bright with
afternoon sunlight. At the first intersection, she turned right. The
new passage was narrow, dimly lighted. At its far end a ponderous stone
door opened reluctantly to the pressure of our shoulders and we found
ourselves at the base of a sharply slanting ramp.
"You seem to know this place like a book," I said. "Were you ever in
the cell block before?"
She nodded. "I visited my mother often before she was stoned."
"Your mother! _Stoned?_"
"Yes. Stoned. That's why I'm a ghoul. Hurry, Roger!"
We started up the ramp. After a dozen yards, it turned abruptly, became
a steep spiral. Breathing was difficult, conversation impossible. Now
and then, a slit of a window looked out into the crowded amphitheater.
The port boasted one derelict 'copter and one guard. The guard had his
back to us when we crept cautiously onto the roof. He must have sensed
our presence, for he turned. But I doubt if he ever saw us. The charge
from my gun struck him in the side before he even completed his turn,
and he crumpled to the sun-drenched concrete.
We were aboard the 'copter in an instant. Julia's experienced fingers
made deft maneuvers on the control panel and then we were aloft,
soaring over the amphitheater, the sky blue above us, the stoning
platform a chiaroscuro of gray- and black-garbed men and women below
us. The arena proper was a bleak expanse of packed dirt, unrelieved by
a single blade of grass. I could hear the obscene murmur of the crowd
above the whirring of the blades.
There was a telescreen above the control panel. I turned it on to see
if our escape had been discovered. Apparently it had not been, for the
scene coming over the single channel was the same I had just witnessed,
viewed from a different angle. The telecamera had been set up opposite
the arena entrance so that the upper echelon members of the hierarchy,
who could afford such luxuries as TV sets, would have an excellent view
of the expected chastisement.
The announcer was intoning the sixth commandment over and over in a
deep resonant voice. I lowered the volume and turned to Julia. We were
over the parsonage apartments now, headed in a northerly direction.
"Don't you think it's time you told me where we're going?" I said.
"I told you before but you wouldn't believe me. We're going to Mars,
provided you're willing, of course. And I'm afraid you haven't much
choice."
"Stop being ridiculous, Julia. This is a serious situation!"
"I know, darling. I know. And if the ship has already blasted, it will
be a far more serious situation."
"What ship are you talking about?"
"The Cadillac-ship; the Ford-ship; the Plymouth-ship. Call it what you
will. Cars are made of metal, so are spaceships. By applying the right
temperatures, and the right techniques, dedicated people can transform
Cadillacs and Fords and Plymouths into highways to the stars."
I was staring at her. "The ghouls--"
"Are people like myself--the new Pilgrims, if you like. Pilgrims sick
of a society that evades population control by consigning its marriages
to a computer deliberately designed to produce incompatible unions that
will result in few, if any, children. Pilgrims who want no more of a
civilization victimized by an outdated biblical exhortation, exploited
by false prophets hiding behind misinterpretations of Freudian
terminology."
The hives were flickering beneath us, gaunt precipices flanking narrow
canyons. The verdure of the Cadillac Cemetery showed in the distance,
and beyond it, eroded hills rolled away.
"I'm glad you did alter our data cards," I said after a while. "But I
wish you'd done it for a different reason. I wish you could have loved
me, Julia."
"I do love you," Julia said. "You see, darling, I couldn't accompany
the colonists without a husband and I didn't want the kind of a husband
the integrator would have given me. So I computed my own marriage. That
was why I was so rude to you at the Cathedral. I--I was ashamed. Not
that it was the first marriage I'd computed, but all the others--like
Betz's and Kester's--involved people who were working on the ship,
people who were already in love. There--there wasn't anyone in the
group whom I cared for myself, so I had to look elsewhere. You and I
are ideally suited, Roger. I didn't need the data cards to tell me
that--all I needed was my eyes."
We were high above the Cadillac Cemetery and she was looking anxiously
ahead at the rolling, dun-colored hills. "If only they haven't left
yet," she said. "The last Cadillac we exhumed provided enough metal to
finish the ship. But perhaps they waited for us."
A sudden crescendo in the murmur of the waiting crowd in the Coliseum
brought the TV unit back to life. Slowly, the murmur rose into a great
vindictive roar. Glancing at the screen, I saw the reason why.
The charcoal-uniformed figure that had just stepped through the arena
entrance was unmistakable. The distance was considerable, and the eyes
appeared only as dark shadows on the thin, haunted face. But I could
visualize the terrible guilt burning in their depths; the consuming,
the unbearable guilt--
I watched the first stone with horror. It missed, rolled to a stop in
the dirt. The next one missed, too. But the one after it didn't, nor
the one that followed. Taigue sank to his knees, and the stones became
a murderous hail. And then, abruptly, it was all over, and Taigue lay
dead and bleeding on the stone-littered ground, the scarlet letter he
had pinned to his breast vivid in the merciless sunlight.
_Thou shalt not look at a woman and lust_--
Taigue had kept faith with himself to the end.
* * * * *
We were drifting over the hills. "There," Julia said suddenly. "There's
the one, Roger!"
It looked like all the others to me--drab, scarred by innumerable
gullies, lifeless. But when Julia opened the door of the cockpit and
leaned out and waved, the gullies rivened, and the whole hill opened up
like an enormous metallic flower.
I saw the ship then, the tall burnished ship poised on its concrete
launching platform. I saw its name--the _Mayflower II_.
We drifted down past the tapered prow, the gleaming flanks. The
other Pilgrims were already aboard. Betz and Kester waved to us as
we passed the open lock. We stepped out upon the launching platform.
The ship towered above us. The lathes and presses and furnaces of the
subterranean factory stood silent in the gloom around us.
I looked at Julia. Her eyes were iridescent with relieved tears, her
smile tremulous with happiness. "Mars, Roger," she whispered. "The ship
can make it. But perhaps the old colony has perished and we'll have to
start a new one. It won't be easy, darling. But will you come?"
I felt the way Samuel Fuller and Christopher Martin must have felt
five centuries ago, standing on a lonely wharf in Southampton. The way
William White and John Alden must have felt--
No, not quite the way John Alden had felt. I already had _my_ Priscilla
Mullins. I bent and kissed her. Then, hand in hand, we ascended the
spiral gang-plank of the _Mayflower II_ to begin our journey to the New
World.