The Forest Gangs
She gave me a brief outline of the very peculiar social and economic
system under which her people lived. At least it seemed very peculiar
from my 20th Century viewpoint.
I learned with amazement that exactly 492 years had passed over my head
as I lay unconscious in the mine.
Wilma, for that was her name, did not profess to be a historian, and so
could give me only a sketchy outline of the wars that had been fought,
and the manner in which such radical changes had come about. It seemed
that another war had followed the First World War, in which nearly all
the European nations had banded together to break the financial and
industrial power of America. They succeeded in their purpose, though
they were beaten, for the war was a terrific one, and left America, like
themselves, gasping, bleeding and disorganized, with only the hollow
shell of a victory.
This opportunity had been seized by the Russian Soviets, who had made a
coalition with the Chinese, to sweep over all Europe and reduce it to a
state of chaos.
America, industrially geared to world production and the world trade,
collapsed economically, and there ensued a long period of stagnation and
desperate attempts at economic reconstruction. But it was impossible to
stave off war with the Mongolians, who by now had subjugated the
Russians, and were aiming at a world empire.
In about 2109, it seems, the conflict was finally precipitated. The
Mongolians, with overwhelming fleets of great airships, and a science
that far outstripped that of crippled America, swept in over the Pacific
and Atlantic Coasts, and down from Canada, annihilating American
aircraft, armies and cities with their terrific _disintegrator_ rays.
These rays were projected from a machine not unlike a searchlight in
appearance, the reflector of which, however, was not material substance,
but a complicated balance of interacting electronic forces. This
resulted in a terribly destructive beam. Under its influence, material
substance melted into "nothingness"; i. e., into electronic vibrations.
It destroyed all then known substances, from air to the most dense
metals and stone.
They settled down to the establishment of what became known as the Han
dynasty in America, as a sort of province in their World Empire.
Those were terrible days for the Americans. They were hunted like wild
beasts. Only those survived who finally found refuge in mountains,
canyons and forests. Government was at an end among them. Anarchy
prevailed for several generations. Most would have been eager to submit
to the Hans, even if it meant slavery. But the Hans did not want them,
for they themselves had marvelous machinery and scientific process by
which all difficult labor was accomplished.
Ultimately they stopped their active search for, and annihilation of,
the widely scattered groups of now savage Americans. So long as they
remained hidden in their forests, and did not venture near the great
cities the Hans had built, little attention was paid to them.
Then began the building of the new American civilization. Families and
individuals gathered together in clans or "gangs" for mutual protection.
For nearly a century they lived a nomadic and primitive life, moving
from place to place, in desperate fear of the casual and occasional Han
air raids, and the terrible disintegrator ray. As the frequency of these
raids decreased, they began to stay permanently in given localities,
organizing upon lines which in many respects were similar to those of
the military households of the Norman feudal barons, except that instead
of gathering together in castles, their defense tactics necessitated a
certain scattering of living quarters for families and individuals. They
lived virtually in the open air, in the forests, in green tents,
resorting to camouflage tactics that would conceal their presence from
air observers. They dug underground factories and laboratories, that
they might better be shielded from the electrical detectors of the
Hans. They tapped the radio communication lines of the Hans, with crude
instruments at first; better ones later on. They bent every effort
toward the redevelopment of science. For many generations they labored
as unseen, unknown scholars of the Hans, picking up their knowledge
piecemeal, as fast as they were able to.
During the earlier part of this period, there were many deadly wars
fought between the various gangs, and occasional courageous but
childishly futile attacks upon the Hans, followed by terribly punitive
raids.
But as knowledge progressed, the sense of American brotherhood
redeveloped. Reciprocal arrangements were made among the gangs over
constantly increasing areas. Trade developed to a certain extent, as
between one gang and another. But the interchange of knowledge became
more important than that of goods, as skill in the handling of synthetic
processes developed.
Within the gang, an economy was developed that was a compromise between
individual liberty and a military socialism. The right of private
property was limited practically to personal possessions, but private
privileges were many, and sacredly regarded. Stimulation to achievement
lay chiefly in the winning of various kinds of leadership and
prerogatives, and only in a very limited degree in the hope of owning
anything that might be classified as "wealth," and nothing that might be
classified as "resources." Resources of every description, for military
safety and efficiency, belonged as a matter of public interest to the
community as a whole.
In the meantime, through these many generations, the Hans had developed
a luxury economy, and with it the perfection of gilded vice and
degradation. The Americans were regarded as "wild men of the woods." And
since they neither needed nor wanted the woods or the wild men, they
treated them as beasts, and were conscious of no human brotherhood with
them. As time went on, and synthetic processes of producing foods and
materials were further developed, less and less ground was needed by the
Hans for the purposes of agriculture, and finally, even the working of
mines was abandoned when it became cheaper to build up metal from
electronic vibrations than to dig them out of the ground.
The Han race, devitalized by its vices and luxuries, with machinery and
scientific processes to satisfy its every want, with virtually no
necessity of labor, began to assume a defensive attitude toward the
Americans.
And quite naturally, the Americans regarded the Hans with a deep, grim
hatred. Conscious of individual superiority as men, knowing that
latterly they were outstripping the Hans in science and civilization,
they longed desperately for the day when they should be powerful enough
to rise and annihilate the Yellow Blight that lay over the continent.
At the time of my awakening, the gangs were rather loosely organized,
but were considering the establishment of a special military force,
whose special business it would be to harry the Hans and bring down
their air ships whenever possible without causing general alarm among
the Mongolians. This force was destined to become the nucleus of the
national force, when the Day of Retribution arrived. But that, however,
did not happen for ten years, and is another story.
[Illustration: On the left of the illustration is a Han girl, and on the
right is an American girl, who, like all of her race, is equipped with
an inertron belt and a rocket gun.]
Wilma told me she was a member of the Wyoming Gang, which claimed the
entire Wyoming Valley as its territory, under the leadership of Boss
Hart. Her mother and father were dead, and she was unmarried, so she was
not a "family member." She lived in a little group of tents known as
Camp 17, under a woman Camp Boss, with seven other girls.
Her duties alternated between military or police scouting and factory
work. For the two-week period which would end the next day, she had been
on "air patrol." This did not mean, as I first imagined, that she was
flying, but rather that she was on the lookout for Han ships over this
outlying section of the Wyoming territory, and had spent most of her
time perched in the tree tops scanning the skies. Had she seen one she
would have fired a "drop flare" several miles off to one side, which
would ignite when it was floating vertically toward the earth, so that
the direction or point from which it had been fired might not be guessed
by the airship and bring a blasting play of the disintegrator ray in her
vicinity. Other members of the air patrol would send up rockets on
seeing hers, until finally a scout equipped with an ultrophone, which,
unlike the ancient radio, operated on the ultronic ethereal vibrations,
would pass the warning simultaneously to the headquarters of the Wyoming
Gang and other communities within a radius of several hundred miles, not
to mention the few American rocket ships that might be in the air, and
which instantly would duck to cover either through forest clearings or
by flattening down to earth in green fields where their coloring would
probably protect them from observation. The favorite American method of
propulsion was known as "_rocketing_." The _rocket_ is what I would
describe, from my 20th Century comprehension of the matter, as an
extremely powerful gas blast, atomically produced through the
stimulation of chemical action. Scientists of today regard it as a
childishly simple reaction, but by that very virtue, most economical and
efficient.
But tomorrow, she explained, she would go back to work in the cloth
plant, where she would take charge of one of the synthetic processes by
which those wonderful substitutes for woven fabrics of wool, cotton and
silk are produced. At the end of another two weeks, she would be back on
military duty again, perhaps at the same work, or maybe as a "contact
guard," on duty where the territory of the Wyomings merged with that of
the Delawares, or the "Susquannas" (Susquehannas) or one of the half
dozen other "gangs" in that section of the country which I knew as
Pennsylvania and New York States.
Wilma cleared up for me the mystery of those flying leaps which she and
her assailants had made, and explained in the following manner, how the
inertron belt balances weight:
"_Jumpers_" were in common use at the time I "awoke," though they were
costly, for at that time _inertron_ had not been produced in very great
quantity. They were very useful in the forest. They were belts,
strapped high under the arms, containing an amount of inertron adjusted
to the wearer's weight and purposes. In effect they made a man weigh as
little as he desired; two pounds if he liked.
"_Floaters_" are a later development of "_jumpers_"--rocket motors
encased in _inertron_ blocks and strapped to the back in such a way that
the wearer floats, when drifting, facing slightly downward. With his
motor in operation, he moves like a diver, headforemost, controlling his
direction by twisting his body and by movements of his outstretched arms
and hands. Ballast weights locked in the front of the belt adjust weight
and lift. Some men prefer a few ounces of weight in floating, using a
slight motor thrust to overcome this. Others prefer a buoyance balance
of a few ounces. The inadvertent dropping of weight is not a serious
matter. The motor thrust always can be used to descend. But as an extra
precaution, in case the motor should fail, for any reason, there are
built into every belt a number of detachable sections, one or more of
which can be discarded to balance off any loss in weight.
"But who were your assailants," I asked, "and why were you attacked?"
Her assailants, she told me, were members of an outlaw gang, referred to
as "Bad Bloods," a group which for several generations had been under
the domination of conscienceless leaders who tried to advance the
interests of their clan by tactics which their neighbors had come to
regard as unfair, and who in consequence had been virtually boycotted.
Their purpose had been to slay her near the Delaware frontier, making it
appear that the crime had been committed by Delaware scouts and thus
embroil the Delawares and Wyomings in acts of reprisal against each
other, or at least cause suspicions.
Fortunately they had not succeeded in surprising her, and she had been
successful in dodging them for some two hours before the shooting began,
at the moment when I arrived on the scene.
"But we must not stay here talking," Wilma concluded. "I have to take
you in, and besides I must report this attack right away. I think we had
better slip over to the other side of the mountain. Whoever is on that
post will have a phone, and I can make a direct report. But you'll have
to have a belt. Mine alone won't help much against our combined weights,
and there's little to be gained by jumping heavy. It's almost as bad as
walking."
After a little search, we found one of the men I had killed, who had
floated down among the trees some distance away and whose belt was not
badly damaged. In detaching it from his body, it nearly got away from me
and shot up in the air. Wilma caught it, however, and though it
reinforced the lift of her own belt so that she had to hook her knee
around a branch to hold herself down, she saved it. I climbed the tree
and, with my weight added to hers, we floated down easily.