"But I must! You can't separate us!" She whirled toward Hendley,
seizing his arm with desperate fingers. "Don't let them! Hendley,
please, I have to be with you!"
"Bailiff!" the judge stormed. There was turmoil in the gallery as the
judge pounded his bench with a gavel.
"Stop it!" Hendley spoke to Ann sharply. "They'll make your punishment
easy!"
"I don't care about punishment!" she cried. "I don't care about the
Organization! I care about us! What kind of life would I have without
you now?"
The bailiff reached them. Shoving Hendley aside, he grabbed Ann's arms.
Hendley spun the bailiff around, breaking his hold. The courtroom
guards converged on the scene. In the brief struggle one of the guards
clipped Hendley a glancing blow with a club. Ann was pushed into her
chair.
As suddenly as it had begun the scuffle was over. With an effort
Hendley brought his anger under control. The bailiff glared at him
threateningly, but Hendley ignored him as he resumed his seat and
looked anxiously at Ann. Her hand reached out to him in mute appeal.
Her cheeks were damp with tears.
He looked up bitterly as the judge began to speak. The eyes that met
his showed neither compassion nor understanding. These would be out of
place, Hendley thought angrily, in such a court, just as they could not
really exist in a world governed by machines.
"It is the judgment of this court," the judge said harshly, "that
the names TRH-247 and ABC-331 be erased from all the records of the
Organization, that their identity discs be destroyed, and that the
accused formerly known by said numbered designations be taken from the
city and banished forever into the outer light...."
14
At night, in the second week, they slept wrapped in each other's arms
for warmth. The last matches were gone, and a battery had burned out in
the electric fire starter. Try as he might, hampered by the stiffness
remaining in his left hand as well as by inexperience, Hendley could
not create enough spark with stones or dry sticks to fan a flame into
life. By then they were both hungry, a deep continuous hunger which
seemed to add to the cold's penetration, as if the blanket of flesh
covering their bones, already worn thinner, could no longer keep out
the chill which spread over the land after the sun went down.
Each day he had tried to put more miles between them and the city. The
copter had left them some distance away, but still in sight of the
tall, faceless cylinders of the major centers. Viewed across the barren
plain, the towers appeared more like dead, naked trees than buildings
swarming with human life. Moving always west, away from the hated
towers, Hendley kept expecting to see them sink below the horizon, but
they remained persistently in view, seeming no further away.
He slept fitfully. Waking in the cold darkness before dawn, he could
see the beams of light shooting up from the circular cores of the great
cylindrical towers, as if they were giant torches held up to illuminate
the sky. Ann shivered in her sleep and tried to hug him more tightly,
seeking to warm her body with his. Pity washed through him. Holding
her, he felt a growing, spreading ache that was like the cold but
deeper, that would not yield to warm rays of the morning sun.
He had brought her to this, and he was failing her.
Once, in the first week, he had trapped a small animal, one of the few
species that seemed to be alive on the plain. He had had matches then,
had built a fire, and it seemed they had never tasted anything more
delicious than the fresh meat they shared in that festive meal. "I
think," Ann had said, "Hendley, I think now we are really free. For the
first time."
Later that night, lying before the warm glow of the fire, they had made
love, and it had been like that first day of discovering each other.
Now they no longer made love. They were both dull with fatigue at the
end of each day, even though they rested during the period of brutal
midday heat. They were weakened by having had little to eat for days.
They had tried various wild plants and even grasses that looked edible.
Some were acceptable to their stomachs, some were impossibly bitter,
one had made both of them sick. Hunger and thirst had jealously driven
out other appetites.
The need for water, Hendley knew, would soon be more urgent even than
food. In all this brown, empty land they had found no stream, no
spring, no sign of water. They had started out with a two-week supply
in the canteens provided them, but in the first days, unused to the
weight of the desert sun, they had drunk too generously. It was only
near the end of the first week that the necessity for strict rationing
became painfully clear. There were mountains to the west, creeping
infinitesimally higher each day, and Hendley reasoned that there must
be water flowing down from the mountains, but he wondered, the strange
new ache piercing to his heart as he held Ann more closely, if they
would find it in time.
Really free, he thought. It was true. But this freedom was demanding.
They were unprepared for it. Nothing in their lives before had equipped
them to cope with it. Everything had always been provided--all the
needs of mind and body. The social machine had taken care of its moving
parts. Could they manage even to exist cut off from the benevolent
machine?
There must have been others banished from the cities. Hendley could not
guess how many. Had any of them learned to survive? Where would they
have gone? Instinctively toward the mountains, as he had, in search of
shelter from the sun and life-giving water? Had they begun to regret
their transgressions against the Organization, to wish themselves back
in the familiar routine of work and reward, the accepted pursuit of an
artificial freedom? Had any of them crawled back to the cities, begging
to be taken in?
The last question made Hendley start. A new chill crawled up his spine.
Was that part of the punishment--reducing the criminal to abject
surrender? Did they expect Hendley and Ann to return to the towers as
beggars, shaken by cold and tormented by hunger, ready to accept any
terms of rehabilitation?
Angrily he shook his head. There was an insidious weakness in the
direction of his thoughts, a half-wish concealed behind the resentment.
But the wish was for her, the woman whose body he covered with his own,
feeling the bones more sharply outlined, seeing the pinched look of
hunger around her mouth....
He waited until the sun's first rays lanced through the concrete
fingers projecting along the eastern horizon. Very carefully he eased
out of Ann's tight grasp, trying not to wake her. She stirred once,
then fell back into the drugged sleep of exhaustion.
For an hour Hendley labored--doggedly, frustrated and tormented by his
repeated failures--until at last a puff of smoke drifted from the small
pile of powdery leaves and wood pulp he had fashioned. Perspiring in
spite of the early morning chill, his face flushed with anxiety, he
fanned the first sparks into a steady glow. At length, adding fresh
twigs and seeing firm tongues of flame lick around them, he sat back on
his heels and luxuriated in a sense of triumph. He had made his first
fire.
There was powdered coffee remaining from their meager rations. When he
had heated water he carried a cup of the steaming beverage to where Ann
lay. He woke her gently.
"We may not have a feast," he said. "But there's hot coffee, and a fire
to take away the chill. Come on over closer to it."
Her happy exclamations of surprise and praise amply rewarded all his
effort. He felt a slow surge of pride as he watched her crouch close
to the fire, warming her hands and face and thin, shivering body. She
drank too deeply of the coffee, scalding her tongue, but when she
looked up at him, choking and smiling, her drawn face was flushed with
color.
There were some things he could do, he thought with renewed
determination. There would be other small animals he could trap,
perhaps more of them nearer the mountains. There would be a fire each
night to give them warmth and to cook their food. He would have to
learn to strip the hides of any usefully covered animals so that the
hides could be saved and warmer clothes eventually made from them. He
would have to learn a lot of things. It would not be easy--but he had
made a beginning.
"That was marvelous of you," Ann said, reaching for him with one
slender hand, pulling him down beside her.
When he let the fire die later, the sun was well above the horizon and
the air was warming.
* * * * *
He felt, at the last, a sense of being cheated.
They had reached the foothills ascending in steps to the great purple
vastness of the mountains when Ann collapsed for the first time.
Hendley was sure that water could not be far away. The last drop had
been squeezed from their canteens two days before. Yet even this
conviction of being so close to the desperately needed water did not
affect him as much as the tracks on which they had stumbled.
They were human tracks--feet soled in what seemed to suggest smooth
leather. The tracks had crossed their path a day before they reached
the foothills. They had eagerly followed the apparently purposeful line
of the footprints--not a single set of prints, but many, indicating
that the trail was frequently used. Their own progress was slow all
that day, held back by Ann's weakness. In his excitement over the
discovery of the freshly made tracks Hendley had found an untapped core
of strength and stamina, and not until Ann stumbled twice late in the
afternoon did he become sharply aware of how weak and sick she was.
He had insisted on stopping immediately. Hurriedly he built a fire,
before which he made her rest while he scoured the area for fresh
roots. From these and the juice squeezed from green plants he made a
kind of thick, stringy soup. During the night, in spite of his own deep
fatigue, he slept little, watching over Ann anxiously. She kept waking,
and what sleep she had was disturbed and restless. He waited several
hours after dawn, putting down her objections, before they sat off
again.
Early in the afternoon she collapsed. "I'm sorry, Hendley," she kept
repeating as he lifted her and carried her into the shade of an
outcropping of rock. "I'm sorry."
He brushed her words aside almost brusquely. "What have you to be
sorry for? I've been pushing you too hard--I should have realized. I
haven't let you rest."
"It's not that. If only I had some water...."
Hating to leave her for long, he made quick forays through the
remainder of the afternoon searching for some sign of water. The
foothills were greener than the main desert plain--there had to be
water not too far away. It must be there!
But, though he ranged farther each time, he found nothing, returning
after each trip with a sharper fear.
Night again found him watching over her worriedly, listening to her
dry, hacking cough. Her lips were cracked and swollen. He was vaguely
surprised to find his own lips split so that one was bleeding.
And on his last scouting trip he had stumbled badly. A low grade had
exhausted him. His strength was waning.
They could not live long without water. The human trail they had
followed for two days must surely lead to help, to a source of food and
water. But time was running out on them. Should he keep following the
tracks, or strike out across the foothills, searching for a stream? He
didn't know, and the uncertainty plagued him through the long night.
Falling into fitful sleep, he dreamed of a rushing mountain stream,
clear and cold, frothing as it boiled over beds of rock, cold and sweet
and nourishing...
In the morning Ann seemed stronger. They set off at an easy, careful
pace. Hendley helped her when the way was steep, carrying her over the
most difficult stretches. They climbed steadily, following the fresh
trail. When she could go no farther, he lifted her across his shoulders
and went on, laboring.
They made little progress. At noon he had to rest. Because the day was
cloudy and cool, with a stiff cutting wind whining through the gullies
and bending the grasses that covered the foothills. Hendley searched
carefully for a sheltered cove. He knew they had gone almost as far
as they could go. Alone he might have struggled on for another day,
perhaps more. But he would not leave her to save himself.
After a brief rest he made one more fruitless search for water.
Exploring a ravine which looked promising, a slash across the hills
once carved by a river but now dry, he was gone longer than he had
intended. When he returned, he found Ann sprawled on the ground, only
half-conscious.
They were absolutely alone in the vast, empty land. To the east now
there was only an endless reach of denuded prairie. The towers of
the city were no longer visible. The only sign of human existence
other than themselves was the tauntingly recent trail they had been
following. What men were these? Where did the tracks lead? How far?
He felt again the sense of being cheated, of a promise made, a hope
nurtured, which could not be fulfilled.
Shortly after dusk he heard the buzz of an aircraft overhead, but he
could not find it. This remote sign of life quickened no hope. The
blind copters droning across the sky carried no one who could, or
would, save them.
Ann came out of her delirium to stare at him. Her eyes were large, wide
open, unexpectedly lucid. "You must go on without me," she said calmly.
"You can make it without me."