"You're from the Boston area, I suppose. You could have stayed there."
"And been blown off the map!"
"It hasn't happened yet," said Culquhoun mildly. "It's not likely to
happen, either. They have organized relief back there, you didn't have
to starve. But no, you panicked and then you turned mean."
"It's easy enough for yuh to say so. _Yuh're_ safe. We're here after
our proper share, that's all."
"Your proper share is waiting in Boston," said Culquhoun with a sudden
chill. "Now, if you want to proceed through our town, we'll let you;
but we don't want you to stay. Not after what you've been doing lately."
O'Farrell snarled and brought up his gun. Arch fired from behind
Culquhoun. The leader spun on his heel, crumpled, and sagged with a
shriek. Arch felt sick.
His nausea didn't last. It couldn't, with the sudden storm of lead
which sleeted against the house. Culquhoun sprang back, closing the
door. "Out the rear!" he snapped. "We'll have to fight!"
They retreated up the hill, crouching, zigzagging, shooting at the
disorderly mass which milled in slow pursuit. Culquhoun grinned
savagely. "Keep drawing 'em on, boys," he said as he knelt in the slush
and snapped a shot. "If they spread through town, we'll have hell's own
time routing 'em all out--but this way--"
Arch didn't know if he was hitting anything. He didn't hear the bullets
which must be whining around him--another cliché that just wasn't true,
he thought somewhere in the back of his head. A fight wasn't something
you could oversee and understand. It was cold feet, clinging mud,
whirling roaring confusion, it was a nightmare that you couldn't wake
up from.
Then the rest of the Westfield troop were there, circling around to
flank the enemy and pumping death. It was a rout--in minutes, the gang
had stampeded.
Arch leaned on his rifle and felt vomit rising in his throat. Culquhoun
clapped his shoulder. "Ye did richt well, laddie," he rumbled. "No bad
at all."
"What's happening?" groaned Arch. "What's become of the world?"
Culquhoun took out his pipe and began tamping it. "Why, a simple shift
of the military balance of power," he answered. "Once again we have
cheap, easily operated weapons which everyone can own and which are the
equal of anything it's practical for a government to use. Last time it
was the flintlock musket, right? And we got the American and French
Revolutions. This time it's capacitite.
"So the Soviet dictatorship is doomed. But we've got a rough time ahead
of us, because there are enough unstable elements in our own society
to make trouble. Our traditional organizations just aren't prepared to
handle them when they're suddenly armed.
"We'll learn how fast enough, I imagine. There's going to be order
again, if only because the majority of people are decent, hard-working
fellows who won't put up with much more of this sort of thing. But
there has to be a transition period, and what counts is surviving that."
"If I hadn't--Colin, it's enough to make a man believe in demoniac
possession."
"Nonsense!" snorted the other. "I told you before, if you hadn't
invented this stuff, somebody else would have. It wasn't you that made
it by the ton, all over the country. It wasn't you that thought up this
notion of finishing the Iron Curtain governments--a brilliant scheme, I
might add, well worth whatever price we have to pay at home.
"But it _is_ you, my boy, who's going to have to get us tooled up to
last the transition. Can you do it?"
* * * * *
Fundamental changes are seldom made consciously. Doubtless the man
in the fifth-century Roman street grumbled about all these barbarian
immigrants, but he did not visualize the end of an empire. The
Lancashire industrialist who fired his craftsmen and installed
mechanical looms was simply making a profitable investment. And
Westfield, Massachusetts, was only adopting temporary survival measures.
They didn't even look overwhelmingly urgent. Government had not
broken down: if anything, it was working abnormally hard. News came
through--ferocious air battles over the Canadian tundras; the Soviet
armies rolling westward into Europe and southward into Asia, then
pushed back with surprising ease and surrendering en masse as their
own states collapsed behind them--it was turning out to be a war as
remote and half-forgotten as Korea, and a much easier one, which lasted
a few months and then faded into a multi-cornered struggle between
communists, neo-czarists, and a dozen other elements. By Christmas
time, a shaky democratic confederation in Moscow was negotiating with
Ukrainia, the Siberian Convict Republic, and the Tartar Alliance. China
was in chaos and eastern Europe was free.
And while the great powers were realizing that they were no longer
great, now that a vast capital investment in armament had stopped
paying off; and while they sought to forestall world upheaval by
setting up a genuine international army with strength to enforce the
peace--life went on. People still had to eat.
Arch stood by Hinkel's watermill in the early spring. The ground
glistened and steamed with wetness underfoot, sunlit clouds raced
through a pale windy sky, and a mist of green was on the trees. Near
him the swollen millstream roared and brawled, the wheel flashed with
its own swiftness, and a stack of capacitors lay awaiting their charges.
"All right," he said. "We've got your generator going. But it isn't
enough, you know. It can't supply the whole country; and power lines to
the outside are down."
"So what do we do?" asked Hinkel. He felt too proud of his new
enterprise to care much about larger issues at the moment.
"We find other sources to supplement," said Arch. "Sunlight, now.
Approximately one horse-power per square yard, if you could only get
at it." He raised a face grown thin with overwork and with the guilt
that always haunted him these days, up to the sky. The sun felt warm
and live on his skin. "Trouble is, the potential's so low. You've got
to find a way to get a high voltage out of it before you can charge a
capacitor decently. Now let me think--"
He spent most of his waking hours thinking. It helped hold off the
memory of men lying dead on a muddy hillside.
When power was short, you couldn't go back to oxcarts and kerosene
lamps. There weren't enough of either. The local machine shop made and
sold quantities of home charging units, small primitive generators
which could be turned by any mechanical source, and treadmills were
built to drive them. But this was only an unsatisfactory expedient.
Accompanied by several armed guards, Arch made a trip to Boston.
The city looked much quieter than he remembered, some of the streets
deserted even at midday, but a subdued business went on. Food was still
coming in to the towns, and manufactured goods flowing out; there was
still trade, mail, transportation. They were merely irregular and
slightly dangerous.
Stopping at M.I.T. Arch gave certain of his problems to the big
computer, and then proceeded to an industrial supply house. The amount
of selenium he ordered brought a gasp and a hurried conference.
"It will take some time to get all this together," said a
vice-president. "Especially with conditions as they are."
"I know," said Arch. "We're prepared to make up truck convoys and
furnish guards; what we want you for is negotiation."
The vice-president blinked. "But ... good heavens, man! Is your whole
community in on this?"
"Just about. We have to be. There's little help coming in from outside,
so our area is thrown back on itself."
"Ah--the cost of this operation--"
"Oh, we can meet that. Special assessment, voted at the last town
meeting. They don't care very much, because money has little value when
you can't buy more than the rationed necessities. And they're getting
tired of going on short rations of power."
"I shouldn't say this, because your proposal is a fine deal for us, but
have you stopped to think? Both the REA and the private power concerns
will be restoring service eventually, just as soon as civil order has
been recreated."
Arch nodded. "I know. But there are two answers to that. In the first
place, we don't know when that'll be, and if we don't have adequate
energy sources by winter we'll be up the creek. Also, we're building a
sun-power plant which will cost almost nothing to operate. In the long
run, and not so terribly long at that, it'll pay off."
Bob Culquhoun, who went on the selenium convoy, reported an adventurous
journey through hundreds of miles where gangs of extremists still
ruled. "But they seem to be settling down," he added. "Nobody likes to
be a bandit, and anyhow the state militias are gradually subduing 'em.
Most of the rural communities, though, are striking out on their own
like us. There's going to be a big demand for selenium." Wistfulness
flickered in his eyes. "Wonder if I can raise enough money to buy some
stock?"
"It'll take time," said Elizabeth. "I know the sun-power generator is
simple, but you still can't design and build one overnight."
As a matter of fact, fall had come again before Westfield's plant was
in full operation. It didn't look impressive: great flat screens on
top of hastily constructed buildings, and inside these the apparatus
to raise voltage and charge capacitors. But in conjunction with the
watermill, it furnished more than enough electricity to run the
county's machines.
Arch was kept busy all that summer, directing, advising, helping. It
seemed that everybody had some scheme of his own for using capacitite.
Energy cost nothing, and machinery could be built from junkyard scrap
if nothing else. Westfield was suddenly acquiring her own looms, mills,
even a small foundry. Bob led a gang of young hellions who made an
airplane and kept it aloft for days at a time. His father promptly
confiscated it for the use of the civic guard, and after that there
were no more surprise brushes with roving outlaws.
An eyewitness report was brought in from the air--a clash between
state troops and one of the robber bands which still existed to the
north. The gangmen had their own trucks and jeeps, their own guns, all
operating off accumulators which could be charged at any of a thousand
watermills. A rifleman could stop a tank, and aircraft were of limited
value against guerrillas who crouched in brush and weeds. The battle
was a draw, with both sides finally retreating.
Arch shuddered, alone with Elizabeth, and crept into her arms. "Did I
do that?" he asked through his tears. "Did I do it?"
"No, darling," she said. One hand ruffled his disordered hair. "Can't
you forget that side of it? Think of what you have done, with your own
hands--built this town up again, given its people more than they ever
had before."
He set his teeth. "I'll try," he said.
Somewhat later, the government offered amnesty to those outlaws who
would lay down their arms and come home. It had the desired effect;
they had had enough of warring and insecurity. But Culquhoun scowled.
"'Tis a vurra bad precedent," he said. "Only a weak government makes
such a move."
Oddly, Arch felt a lightening within himself. "Maybe a weak government
is what we need," he answered.
* * * * *
News: Several southern states threaten secession unless court decisions
concerning racial equality are withdrawn.
News: Uprisings in these same states. The Negro has had enough.
News: Capitulation of state governments. Constitutional conventions,
transfer of power from state to local authorities.
News: The depression is not ending, but transforming itself:
out-of-work men are starting to produce things for themselves with the
help of capacitite-driven machinery often made at home, trading their
surplus for whatever else they need. A mobile reclamation unit appears,
costing little to operate, and families begin to irrigate and colonize
desert areas. Big business, big labor, big government talk much and do
nothing effective--their day is past, but they simply cannot understand
the new forces at work.
News: More and more city areas are becoming empty as their inhabitants
take advantage of cheap, fast transportation and move into the rapidly
expanding suburbs and even into the country. This migration is
possible because with present energy sources, plastic board for home
construction can be manufactured at very low cost.
News: There is a great deal of debate in Washington about redistricting
to meet the new population pattern. It doesn't seem too important,
though, because a land of nearly self-sufficient communities, such as
this is becoming, is much less dependent on central government.
News: Experiment and innovation in dress, work habits, manners and
morals, grows ever more common. The basic cause of this is that few men
need now be afraid of what the neighbors or the boss thinks. If you
don't like it where you are, you can easily go elsewhere and start over.
None of this happened at once. It would take a century or more for the
change to complete itself. But even in the second year, the trend was
obvious.
* * * * *
Snow whirled against the house, blindingly, as if the world drew into
itself and nothing lay beyond these walls. The muted skirl of wind came
through, lonesome and shivering. But inside, there was warmth and a
calm light.
Arch sat with a whiskey and soda in his hand, looking across the floor
at his wife. He felt tired, but there was a relaxation in him, a sense
of labor finished.
Not fully--there would be much to do yet. But power was there,
machinery was there, food stored away; they would last the winter, and
there would be another springtime.
"It's settling down," Elizabeth told him, putting her news magazine
aside. "For once, I agree with the editor of this rag. The crisis is
over, and now it's a matter of readjustment. The world is never going
to be the same, but it'll be a better one ... cleaner."
"Perhaps," said Arch. He didn't feel so sharply the horror of guilt,
not any more.
"Look around you," she invited. "Look what you've done. I'm afraid,
dear, that you're going to be rediscovered. It won't take long before
people suddenly wake up to the fact that your invention did all this
for them. Brace yourself--you're going to be famous for life."
Arch winced. "But I didn't!" he protested. "They did it for themselves.
One man never could--"
"I quite agree," she smiled. "One man can neither make nor destroy a
society. So why not give that conscience of yours a rest?"
"There's been suffering," he said, enough alcohol in him to break down
his reserve. "People have died."
"A lot of them needed killing," she said earnestly. "Look what we've
got. An end to dictatorship. Removal of the atomic-war threat. Cheap
energy for a million new projects. A four-hour work day in prospect.
Government, which was getting too big and officious in all countries,
cut down to size again. The plain man standing on his own feet and
working for himself. Natural resources conserved. If you must take
either credit or blame, Si, then balance your books!"
"I know," he said. "I know all that, up in my conscious mind. But
down underneath--I'll always see those houses burning, and those men
shooting at each other."
"You--" She hesitated. "I know what you need. Your trouble, my boy, is
that underneath that Yankee conservatism, you're a hopeless romantic.
Your mind dwells on the sudden and dramatic. Now the positive benefits
of capacitite aren't anywhere near as quick and spectacular as the
temporary evils were. What you have to do, to satisfy those Puritan
chromosomes, is to produce something really big and fancy, something of
immediate, large value."
He chuckled, lifted out of his dark mood in spite of himself. "I
imagine you're right, Dr. Freud," he said. "But what?"
"I don't know." She frowned with worry for him. "But think, man.
We have leisure now--in another year or so, well, we won't be the
millionaires we once dreamed of, but like everybody else we'll have
real security and real time to ourselves. You could use that time to
work on _something_."
"Hm--" Automatically, his brain turned to practicalities. "Let's see,
now. Capacitite offers a way of concentrating energy enormously ... a
very small packet will hold a hell of a lot--_My God!_" His yell shook
the windows as he leaped to his feet.
"What the devil--something wrong?" Elizabeth got up too.
"No!" He was running toward the phone. "Got to get hold of
Colin--M.I.T.--don't you see, darling?" His hands trembled as he
dialed, but there was laughter in his voice. "Don't you see it?
Spaceships!"