"When so many have died already, why should I hesitate to join them?"
the nurse answered. She released his arm and brushed dust from the
shoulders of her uniform. She glanced up at him and it seemed that some
kind of a radiation flowed from her eyes, a wave of it that sent a
tingle over his entire skin surface. Outside, another smaller boulder
went bouncing past the entrance to the tunnel. Fumbling in his pockets
for cigarettes, Zen found a crumpled package. He offered one to the
nurse but she thanked him and refused it. He did not insist. Cigarettes
were too precious to waste on people who didn't really want them.
Outside, another man began to scream. The nurse moved automatically in
that direction. He caught her arm and held her back.
"Wait until the rocks stop rolling, Nedra."
She did not protest. Looking up at him, she said, "You think I'm one of
the new people, don't you?"
Zen coughed and swore at the cigarette, insisting that the tobacco
was moist. This was a lie and both knew it. But--what to say? Her
question was a complete stunner. "What makes you think that?" he asked,
desperate for words.
"I just think it. It's true, isn't it?"
As an intelligence officer, Zen was accustomed to asking the questions,
but this nurse had completely turned the tables on him. He took a deep
drag on the cigarette. "I don't know. Are you?" He made his voice as
casual as was possible.
Her eyes studied him. The trace of a smile came over her face and
tugged at the comers of her lips. "Do you mind if I ask you a question?"
"Go right ahead." The man had stopped screaming outside but another
boulder was going past. In the distance, the avalanche was trying to
grind to a halt but it sounded as if millions of tons of rock were on
the move to a safer location.
"Are _you_ one of the new people?" the nurse asked.
The cough was real this time. Zen could not suppress his surprise.
"What on earth makes you ask a question like that?"
"I just felt like asking it," the nurse replied. "Am I wrong?"
"Who are the new people?"
"Why, everybody has heard of them. They're the new race that is going
to provide the nucleus for new growth after all ordinary men and women
have been destroyed in this war." Surprise showed in her violet eyes.
"Do you mean you have never heard of them?"
"I've heard the usual rumors that are afloat," Zen said, shrugging.
"But all the stories have impressed me as a pack of lies. Really, I
think the enemy has started most of them, to get us to relax our war
effort."
"Do you honestly think that?" Her voice had a puzzled note in it. "I
mean, honestly and truly."
"I think what the evidence tells me to think, nothing less. In this
case, I have seen none of the so-called evidence."
Shrugging, Zen moved toward the opening of the tunnel, then drew back
as a mass of rock crashed outside. "It's raining boulders out there,"
he said. "What do you know about the so-called new people?"
"Not much," she answered.
"You're a very lovely liar, but the fact that you are lovely doesn't
make you any less a liar," Zen said. She was very beautiful with her
violet eyes and bronze hair, but an overworked intelligence officer
could not be concerned with these things.
"Thank you, colonel," she said. "But I do not relish being called a
liar." Her face showed hurt, just the right amount of it, but at the
same time her eyes laughed at him. "However, I guess there is nothing I
can do about it, is there?" Somehow she contrived to look like a small
girl who has been unjustly accused of some deed she has not committed.
In the distance the avalanche had ground to a halt. Now, no more
boulders were bounding down the hill. A vast, puzzled silence held the
mountains. In that silence, Zen fancied he could hear the thoughts of
the frightened men who had remained alive thus far, and were wondering
how to prolong their precarious existence. They were also wondering if
staying alive was worth the effort involved. Why not give up now and be
done with all tragedy, with all tears, with all trying to find the road
to the future?
Up the trail a man began to scream.
Like a homing pigeon that has finally found the right direction,
the nurse moved toward the sound. Zen caught her arm again. Looking
puzzled, she stopped. "Please, colonel. I am needed up there." She
nodded up the slope in the direction of the screaming man.
"You are probably needed by many others," he commented.
She did not seem to understand. "But I am a nurse. It is my duty to
help those who are wounded."
"I know." He was a little startled to find himself in sympathy with
this impulse. "But, not yet."
"Why not?"
"Because that slope is still too hot to be safe." He held up his left
wrist. Instead of a watch, he wore a miniature radiation counter there.
The needle was creeping up toward the red line.
"The radiation count is about forty right here at the mouth of this
prospect hole," he pointed out.
"That is interesting," the nurse said. The tone of her voice said it
was not important.
"Halfway up the slope, it will hit a hundred. At the top of the ridge,
where the explosion took place, the count may reach a thousand." In his
opinion, he had said enough.
In her opinion, he had not said anything at all. "That makes no
difference. Wounded men are up there. I am a nurse. My duty is clear to
me."
"If you try to help them under these circumstances, you will become a
casualty yourself."
"But what of the men who need help?"
"They will simply have to get out of the radiation zone themselves, or
wait until the area is clear and help can reach them."
"You are heartless!"
"Not at all," he denied. "If anything could be done to help them I
would be doing it. Don't you understand what has happened? That was an
Asian N bomb that exploded. In an N bomb the immediate effect is minor.
The real purpose of the weapon is to spray the area with high intensity
radiation, to make the ground unfit for living for months. Any living
creature caught within the direct blast of the radiation is doomed, and
neither you, nor I, nor the medics, can do anything to help them--" He
broke off as another man began screaming up the slope.
The nurse was irresolute. "But that man needs help," she pointed out.
"Certainly he needs help," Zen agreed.
"Well--"
Zen watched her carefully. She seemed to understand his words but
something else pulled at her far more strongly: the screaming of the
injured man. Each time the soldier cried out, she started in his
direction.
"Well, well, thank you, colonel." Turning, she moved with a sure stride
up the slope.
Zen swore under his breath and started after her, then caught the
motion as the question rose in him as to why she should throw her
life away. She knew the meaning of radiation in lethal quantities.
Unquestionably, she also knew what would happen to any normal human who
ventured into a hot zone.
Was she, then, a normal human being? Was he actually witnessing one of
the miracles performed by the new people? If she came off the mountain
slope alive, it would certainly prove something. Zen cursed again. She
was going where he could not safely follow. If she returned unharmed,
he had enough proof to warrant following her to the ends of the earth,
if need be.