"Are you from Utah?" the gunsmith interrupted, suspiciously.
"Why, no, we're from Arizona. A place called Fort Ridgeway,"
Loudons said.
The others nodded, in the manner of people who wish to conceal
ignorance. It was obvious that none of them had ever heard of
Fort Ridgeway, or Arizona either.
"You say you come from a fort? Then the wars aren't over yet?"
Sarge Hughes asked.
"The wars have been over for a long time. You know how terrible
they were. You know how few in all the countries were left
alive," Loudons said.
"None that we know of, beside ourselves and the Scowrers, until
you came," the Toon Leader said.
"We have found only a few small groups, in the whole country, who
have managed to save anything of the Old Times. Most of them
lived in little villages and cultivated land. A few had horses or
cows. None, that we have ever found before, made guns and powder
for themselves. But they remembered that they were men, and did
not eat one another.
"Whenever we find a group of people like this, we try to persuade
them to let us help them."
"Why?" the Toon Leader asked. "Why do you do this for people that
you have never met before? What do you want from them--from
us--in return for your help?"
He was speaking to Altamont, rather than to Loudons. It seemed
obvious that he believed Altamont to be the leader and Loudons
the subordinate.
"Because we are trying to bring back the best of the Old Times,"
Altamont told him. "Look, you have had troubles, here. So have
we, many times. Years when the crops didn't ... didn't...." He
looked at Loudons, aware that his partner should be talking now,
and also suddenly aware that Loudons had recognized the situation
and left the leadership up to him....
"... years that the crops failed. Years of storms, or floods.
Troubles with those beast-men in the woods.
"And you were alone, as we were, with no one to help.
"We want to put all men who are still men in touch with one
another, so that they can help each other in trouble, and work
together.
"If this isn't done, everything that makes men different from
beasts will soon be no more."
"He's right. One of us, alone, is helpless," the Reader said. "It
is only in the Toon that there is strength. He wants to organize
a Toon of all Toons."
"That's about it. We are beginning to make helicopters, like the
one Loudons and I came in. We'll furnish your community with one
or more of them. We can give you a radio, so that you can
communicate with other communities. We can give you rifles and
machine guns and ammunition, to fight the--the Scowrers, did you
call them? And we can give you atomic engines, so that you can
build machines for yourselves."
"Some of our people,--Alex Barrett here, the gunsmith, and Stan
Markovitch, the distiller, and Harrison Grant, the iron-worker--get
their living by making things. How'd they make out, after your machines
came in here?" Verner Hughes asked.
"We've thought of that. We had that problem with other groups
we've helped," Loudons said. "In some communities, everybody owns
everything in common and so we don't have much of a problem. Is
that the way you do it, here?"
"Well, no. If a man makes a thing, or digs it out of the ruins,
or catches it in the woods, it's his."
"Then we'll work out some way. Give the machines to the people
who are already in a trade, or something like that. We'll have to
talk it over with you and with the people concerned."
"How is it you took so long finding us?" Alex Barrett asked.
"It's been two hundred or so years since the Wars."
"Alex! You see but you do not observe!" The Toon Leader rebuked.
"These people have their flying machines, which are highly
complicated mechanisms. They would have to make tools and
machines to make them, and tools and machines to make those tools
and machines. They would have to find materials, often going in
search of them. The marvel is not that they took so long, but
that they did it so quickly."
"That's right," Altamont said. "Originally, Fort Ridgeway was a
military research and development center. As the country became
disorganized, the Government set this project up to develop ways
of improvising power and transportation and communication methods
and extracting raw materials. If they'd had a little more time,
they might have saved the country.
"As it was, they were able to keep themselves alive, and keep
something like civilization going at the Fort, while the whole
country was breaking apart around them.
"Then, when the rockets stopped falling, they started to rebuild.
Fortunately, more than half the technicians at the Fort were
women, so there was no question of them dying out.
"But it's only been in the last twenty years that we've been able
to make nuclear-electric engines, and this is the first time any
of us have gotten east of the Mississippi."
"How did your group manage to survive?" Loudons asked. "You call
it the Toon. I suppose that's what the word platoon has become,
with time. You were, originally, a military platoon?"
"Pla-toon!" the white-bearded man said. "Of all the unpardonable
stupidities! Of course that's what it was. And the title, Tenant,
was originally lieu-tenant. I know that, though we have dropped
all use of the first part of the word. But that should have led
me, if I had used my wits, to deduce platoon from toon."
The Tenant shook his head in dismay at his stupidity and Loudons
found himself forced to say, "One syllable like that could have
come from many words."