III

The stockaded village became larger, details grew plainer, as the

helicopter came slanting down and began spiraling around it.

It was a fairly big place, some forty or fifty acres in a rough

parallelogram, surrounded by a wall of varicolored stone and

brick and concrete rubble from old ruins, topped with a palisade

of pointed poles. There was a small jetty projecting into the

river, to which six or eight boats of different sorts were tied;

a gate opened onto this from the wall.

Inside the stockade, there were close to a hundred buildings,

ranging from small cabins to a structure with a belfry. It seemed

to have been a church, partly ruined in the war of two centuries

ago and later rebuilt.

A stream came down from the woods, across the cultivated land

around the fortified village. There was a rough flume which

carried the water from a dam close to the edge of the forest and

provided a fall to turn a mill wheel.

"Look, strip farming," Loudons pointed. "See the alternate strips

of grass and plowed ground. These people understand soil

conservation.

"They have horses, too."

As he spoke, three riders left the village at a gallop. They

separated, and the people in the fields, who had all started for

the village, turned and began hurrying toward the woods. Two of

the riders headed for a pasture in which cattle had been grazing

and started herding them also into the woods.

For a while, there was a scurrying of little figures in the

village below. Then, not a moving thing was in sight.

"There's good organization," Loudons said. "Everybody seems to

know what to do, and how to get it done promptly. And look how

neat the whole place is. Policed up. I'll bet anything we'll find

that they have a military organization, or a military tradition

at least.

"We'll have a lot to find out: you can't understand a people until

you understand their background and their social organization."

"Humph. Let me have a look at their artifacts: that will tell

what kind of people they are," Altamont said, swinging the

glasses back and forth over the enclosure. "Water-power mill,

water-power sawmill--building on the left side of the water

wheel, see the pile of fresh lumber beside it. Blacksmith shop,

and from that chimney, I'd say a small foundry, too.

"Wonder what that little building out on the tip of the island

is, it has a water wheel too. Undershot wheel, and it looks like

it could be raised or lowered. Now, I wonder...."

"Monty, I think we ought to land right in the middle of the

enclosure, on that open plaza thing, in front of the building

that looks like a reconditioned church. That's probably the Royal

Palace, or the Pentagon, or the Kremlin, or whatever."

Altamont started to object, paused, and then nodded. "I think

you're right, Jim. From the way they scattered, and got their

livestock into the woods, they probably expect us to bomb them.

We have to get inside and that's the quickest way to do it." He

thought for a moment. "We'd better be armed, when we go out.

Pistols, auto-carbines, and a few of those concussion-grenades in

case we have to break up a concerted attack. I'll get them."

The plaza, the houses and the cabins around it, the

two-hundred-year-old church, all were silent and apparently

lifeless as they set the helicopter down. Once Loudons caught a

movement inside the door of a house, and saw a metallic glint.

"There's a gun up there," he said. "Looks like a four-pounder.

Brass. I knew that smith-shop was also a foundry. See that little

curl of smoke? That's the gunner's slow-match.

"I'd thought maybe that thing on the island was a powder mill.

That would be where they'd put it. Probably extract their niter

from the dung of their horses and cows. Sulfur probably from

coal-mine drainage.

"Jim, this is really something!"

"I hope they don't cut loose with that thing," Loudons said,

looking apprehensively at the brass-rimmed black muzzle that was

covering them from the belfry. "I wonder if we ought to--Oh-oh,

here they come!"

Three or four young men stepped out of the wide door of the old

church. They wore fringed buckskin trousers and buckskin shirts

and odd caps of deerskin with visors to shade the eyes and

similar beaks behind to protect the neck. They had powder horns

and bullet pouches slung over their shoulders, and long rifles in

their hands. They stepped aside as soon as they were out.

Carefully avoiding any gesture of menace, they simply stood,

watching the helicopter which had landed in their village.

Three other men followed them out. They, too, wore buckskins and

the odd double-visored caps. One had a close-cropped white beard,

and on the shoulders of his buckskin shirt, he wore the single

silver bars of a first lieutenant of the vanished United States

Army. He had a pistol on his belt. The pistol had the saw-handle

grip of an automatic, but it was a flintlock, as were the rifles

of the young men who stood so watchfully on either side of the

door.

Two middle-aged men accompanied the bearded man and the trio

advanced toward the helicopter.

"All right, come on, Monty."

Loudons opened the door and let down the steps. Picking up an

auto-carbine, he slung it and stepped out of the helicopter,

Altamont behind him. They advanced to meet the party from the

church, halting when they were about twenty feet apart.

"I must apologize, lieutenant, for dropping in on you so

unceremoniously."

Loudons stopped, wondering if the man with the white beard

understood a word of what he was saying.

"The natural way to come in, when you travel in the air," the old

man replied. "At least, you came in openly. I can promise you a

better reception than that you got at the city to the west of us

a couple of days ago."

"Now how did you know that we had trouble the

day-before-yesterday?" Loudons demanded.

The old man's eyes sparkled with child-like pleasure. "That

surprises you, my dear sir? In a moment, I daresay you'll be

surprised at the simplicity of it.

"You have a nasty rip in the left leg of your trousers, and the

cloth around it is stained with blood. Through the rip, I

perceive a bandage. Obviously, you have suffered a recent wound.

I further observe that the side of your flying machine bears

recent scratches, as though from the spears or throwing hatchets

of the Scowrers. Evidently, they attacked you as you were

landing. It is fortunate that these cannibal devils are too

stupid and too anxious for human flesh to exercise patience."

"Well, that explains how you knew that we'd recently been

attacked," Loudons told him. "But how did you guess that it had

been to the west of here, in a ruined city?"

"I never guess," the oldster with the silver bar and the

keystone-shaped red patch on his left shoulder replied. "It is a

shocking habit--destructive to the logical faculties. What seems

strange to you is only so because you do not follow my train of

thought.

"For example, the wheels and their framework under your flying

machine are splashed with mud which seems to be predominantly

brick-dust, mixed with plaster. Obviously, you landed recently in

a dead city, either during or after a rain. There was a rain here

yesterday evening, the wind being from the west. Obviously, you

followed behind the rain as it came up the river. And now that I

look at your boots, I see traces of the same sort of mud, around

the soles and in front of the heels.

"But this is heartless of us, keeping you standing here on a

wounded leg, sir. Come in, and let our medic take a look at it."

"Well, thank you, lieutenant," Loudons replied. "But don't bother

your medic. I've attended to the wound myself, and it wasn't

serious to begin with."

"You are a doctor?" the white-haired man asked.

"Of sorts. A sort of general scientist. My name is Loudons. My

friend, Mr. Altamont, here, is a scientist, too."

There was an immediate reaction: all three of the elders of the

village, and the young riflemen who had accompanied them,

exchanged glances of surprise.

Loudons dropped his hand to the grip of his slung auto-carbine

and Altamont sidled away from his partner, his hand moving as if

by accident toward the butt of his pistol. The same thought was

in both men's minds, that these people might feel, as the

heritage of the war of two centuries ago, a hostility to science

and scientists.

There was no hostility, however, in their manner as the old man

came forward with outstretched hand.

"I am Tenant Mycroft Jones, the Toon Leader here," he said. "This

is Stamford Rawson, our Reader, and Verner Hughes, our Toon

Sarge. This is his son, Murray Hughes, the Toon Sarge of the

Irregulars.

"But come into the Aitch-Cue House, gentlemen. We have much to

talk about."

* * * * *

By this time, the villagers had begun to emerge from the log

cabins and rubble-walled houses around the plaza and the old

church. Some of them, mostly the young men, were carrying rifles,

but the majority were unarmed. About half of them were women, in

short deerskin skirts or homespun dresses. There were a number of

children, the younger ones almost completely naked.

"Sarge," the old man told one of the youths, "post a guard over

this flying machine. Don't let anybody meddle with it. And have

all the noncoms and techs report here, on the double." He turned

and shouted up at the truncated steeple: "Atherton, sound 'All

Clear!'"

A horn up in the belfry began blowing, apparently to advise the

people who had run from the fields into the forest that there was

no danger.

They went through the open doorway of the old stone church and

entered the big room inside. The building had evidently once been

gutted by fire, two centuries ago, but portions of the wall had

been restored. The floor had been replaced by one of rough

planks, and there was a plank ceiling at about ten feet.

The room was apparently used as a community center. There were a

number of benches and chairs, all very neatly made; and along one

wall, out of the way, ten or fifteen long tables had been

stacked, the tops in a pile and the trestles on the tops.

The walls were decorated with trophies of weapons--a number of

M-12 rifles and M-16 submachine-guns, all in good, clean

condition; a light machine rifle; two bazookas. Among them were

cruder weapons, stone-and metal-tipped spears and clubs, the work

of the wild men of the woods.

A stairway led to the second floor, and it was up this stairway

that the man who bore the title of Toon Leader conducted them, to

a small room furnished with a long table, a number of chairs, and

several big wooden chests bound with iron.

"Sit down, gentlemen," the Toon Leader invited, going to a

cupboard and producing a large bottle stoppered with a corncob

and a number of small cups.

"It's a little early in the day," he went on, "but this is a very

special occasion.

"You smoke a pipe, I take it?" he asked Altamont. "Then try some

of this, of our own growth and curing."

He extended a doeskin moccasin, which seemed to be the tobacco

container.

Altamont looked at the thing dubiously, then filled his pipe from

it.

The oldster drew his pistol, pushed a little wooden plug into the

vent, added some tow to the priming, and, aiming at the wall,

snapped it. Evidently, at time the formality of plugging the vent

had been overlooked: there were a number of holes in the wall

there.

This time, however, the pistol didn't go off. The old man shook

out the smoldering tow, blew it into flame, and lit a candle from

it, offering the light to Altamont.

Loudons got out a cigar and lit it from the candle; the others

filled and lighted pipes. The Toon Leader reprimed his pistol,

then holstered it, took off his belt and laid it aside, an

example the others followed.

They drank ceremoniously, and then seated themselves at the

table. As they did, two more men entered the room. They were

introduced as Alexander Barrett, the gunsmith and Stanley

Markovitch, the distiller.