Flesh (7 page)

He was a short stocky man with a thick neck, thick arms, and thick legs. His face was babyish but at the same time strong. He had thick curly red hair and a reddish complexion with a light sprinkling of freckles. His eyes were round and clear blue as a baby’s; his nose was short and round. Yet, if he had at first glance all a baby’s helplessness, he also had a baby’s ability to command those around him. His voice, completely at variance with his appearance, boomed out richly.

“You may be a busy man, Mr. Tobacco, but you are not so busy you can’t at least tell us what is going on. We’ve been prisoners. We’ve not been allowed to communicate with our captain or with Dr. Calthorp. We have reason to suspect they may have met with foul play. Yet, when we ask about them, we’re told that
what will be will be.
Very fine! Very comforting!

“Now, Mr. Tobacco, I demand that we get answers to our questions. And don’t think that just because you’ve guards stationed outside the door, we couldn’t tear you apart right now. We want answers, and we want them now!”

“Have a cigar and cool off,” said Tom Tobacco. “Certainly, you’re mystified and infuriated. But don’t talk of rights. You are not citizens of Deecee, and you are in a very precarious situation.

“However, I will give you some answers; that’s why I came here. First, you will be released. Second, you will be given a month to fit into the life of Deecee. Third, if, at the end of the month, you show no promise of becoming a good citizen, you will be killed. Not exiled, but killed. If we escorted you across the borders to another country, we would be increasing the population of our enemy states. And we’ve no intention of doing that.”

“Well, at least we know where we stand,” Churchill said. “That is, in a vague way. Do we get access to the
Terra
? The results of ten years of unique study are in that ship.”

“No, you do not. However, your personal property will be returned to you.”

“Thanks,” Churchill said. “Do you realize that except for a few books, we
had
no personal property? What will we do for money while we’re looking for jobs? Jobs we may not be able to get in this rather primitive society.”

“I really can’t say,” replied Tom Tobacco. “After all, we’ve allowed you to keep your lives. There were those who didn’t want to give you even that.”

He stuck two fingers in his mouth and whistled. A man with a small bag in his hand appeared.

“I must go now, gentlemen. Official business. However, in order that you may not break the laws of this blessed nation through ignorance, and also to remove any temptation to steal, this man will enlighten you about our laws and loan you enough coin to buy food for a week. You will repay it after you have jobs—if you have jobs. Columbia bless you.”

An hour later, the eight men stood in front of the building out of which they had just been escorted.

Far from being elated, they felt a trifle dazed and more than a little helpless.

Churchill looked at them, and, though he felt as they did, he said, “For God’s sake, buck up! What’s the matter with you? We’ve been through worse than this. Remember when we were on Wolf 69 III, crossing that big Jurassic-type swamp on a raft? And the balloon-creature upset us and we lost our weapons in the water and had to make our way back to the ship unarmed? We were far worse off then, and we didn’t look nearly so woebegone. What’s happened? Aren’t you the men you used to be?”

“I’m afraid not,” Steinborg said. “It’s not that we’ve lost our courage. It’s just that we expected too much. When we were landing on a newly discovered planet, we expected the unexpected and the disastrous. We even looked forward to it. But here, well, we anticipated too much—plus the fact that we are helpless. We’re unarmed, and if we run into a bad situation, we can’t just shoot our way out and make our way back to the ship.”

“So you’re going to stand around and hope everything’s turned out all right?” Churchill said. “For God’s sake! You men were the cream of the crop of Earth, chosen out of tens of thousands of candidates because of your I.Q., your education, your ingenuity, your physical hardihood. And now you’re marooned among a people who haven’t the knowledge you have in your little finger! You men should be gods—and you’re mice!”

“Knock it off,” Lin said. “We’re still suffering from shock. We don’t know what to do, and that’s what is scaring us.”

“Well, I’m not going to stand around until some kind soul comes along and takes me in hand,” Churchill said. “I am going to act—now!”

“And just what are you going to do?” Yastzhembski asked.

“I’m going to walk around Washington until I see something that calls for action. If you men want to come with me, you can. But if you want to go your own ways, that’s all right, too. I’ll be your leader, but I won’t be your shepherd.”

“You don’t understand,” Yastzhembski said. “Six of us don’t even belong on this continent. I would like to return to Holy Siberia. Gbwe-hun wants to go back to Dahomey. Chandra, to India. Al-Masyuni, to Mecca. Lin, to Shanghai. But that seems impossible. Steinborg could conceivably get back to Brazil, yet, if he did, he’d find nothing but desert and jungle and howling savages. So...”

“So you have to stay here and do as Tobacco suggested—fit in. Well, that’s what I’m going to do. Anybody coming along?”

Churchill didn’t wait for more argument. He began walking down the street and did not look back once. When he had turned a corner, however, he stopped to watch a bunch of naked little girls and boys playing ball in the street.

After perhaps five minutes, he sighed. Apparently no one was following him.

He was wrong. Just as he turned to go on, he heard someone calling to him. “Hold on a minute, Churchill.”

It was Sarvant.

“Where are the others?” Churchill said.

“The Asiatics have decided to try to get back to their homelands. When I left they were still arguing about whether they should steal a boat and cross the Atlantic, or steal deer and ride up to the Bering Strait, where they’ll cross on boat to Siberia.”

“I’ll give them credit for the greatest guts in the world—or the most stupid brains. Do they really think they can make it? Or that they’ll find any better conditions there than here?”

“They don’t know what they’ll find, but they’re desperate.”

“I’d like to go back and wish them good luck,” Churchill said. “But I’d just end up trying to argue them out of the idea. They are brave men. I knew it when I called them mice, but I was just trying to arouse them. Maybe I succeeded too well.”

“I gave them my blessing, even if most of them are agnostics,” Sarvant said. “But I fear their bones will bleach on this continent.”

“What about you? Are you going to try for Arizona?”

“From what I saw of Arizona while we were still circling Earth, I’d say there’s not only no organized government there, there are almost no people. I would try for Utah, but it doesn’t look much better. Even the Salt Lake is dried up. There’s nothing to go back to. It doesn’t matter. There is a lifetime of work here.”

“Work? You don’t mean preaching?”

Churchill looked incredulously at Sarvant as if seeing his true character for the first time.

Nephi Sarvant was a short, dark, and bony man of about forty. His chin jutted out so far it gave the impression of curving upwards at its end. His mouth was so thin-lipped it was only a thread. His nose, like his chin, was overdeveloped. It hooked downwards as if trying to meet the chin. His crewmates said that in profile he looked like a human nutcracker.

His large brown eyes were very expressive and just now seemed to glow with inner light. They had glowed often during the star-trip when he had extolled the merits of his church as the only true one left on Earth. He belonged to a sect known as the Last Standers, the strictly orthodox core of a church that had undergone the suburbanization most churches had experienced. Once thought a peculiar people, the members of this sect now could be distinguished from other Christians only by the fact that they still attended their church. But the spiritual fires had died out.

Not so the group to which the Sarvant belonged. The Last Standers had refused to adopt the so-called vices of their neighbors. They had collected in a body at the city of Fourth of July, Arizona, and from there had sent out missionaries to an indifferent or amused world.

Sarvant had been chosen to be a crew member of the
Terra
because he was the foremost authority in his field of geology. He had been accepted only after he had promised not to proselytize. He had never explicitly made an attempt to convert. But he had offered to others the Book of his church, asking only that they read. And he had argued with the others about the authenticity of the Book.

“Of course I mean to preach!” he said. “This country is as wide open to the Gospel as it was when Columbus landed. I’ll tell you, Rud, that when I saw the desolation of the Southwest I was filled with despair. It seemed that my church had vanished from the face of the Earth. And if that were true, then my church was false, for it was supposed to be eternal. But I prayed, and at once the truth came to me. That is—I still exist! And through me the church can grow again—grow as it never did, for these pagan minds, once convinced of the Truth, will become as the First Disciples. The Book will spread like a flame. You see, we Last Standers could make little headway among Christians because they thought they already had the true church. But the true church meant little more to them than a social club. It wasn’t a way of truth and life, the only way. It...”

“I get your point,” Churchill said. “The only thing I have to say is, don’t implicate me. Things are going to be tough enough. Well, let’s go.”

“Go where?”

“Someplace where we can trade these monkey suits in for native clothes.”

They were on a street called Conch. It ran north and south, so Churchill felt that if they followed it south it would bring them eventually to the port area. Here, unless things changed very much, there would be more than one shop where they could trade their clothes and perhaps make a little profit in the bargain. In this neighborhood, Conch Street was a mixture of well-to-do residences and large government buildings. The residences were set far back on well-tended yards and were of brick or cement. Single-storied, they presented a broad front, and most of them had two wings at right angles to the front buildings. They were painted in many colors and various designs. Every one had a large totem pole in front of it. These were, for the most part, of carved stone, since wood was reserved for shipbuilding, wagons, weapons, and stove fuel.

The government buildings were set close to the street and were of brick or marble. They had curving walls and were surrounded by roofless porches with tall pillars. On top of each dome roof was a statue.

Churchill and Sarvant walked on the asphalt pavement— there was no sidewalk—for ten blocks. Occasionally, they had to step close to the buildings to avoid being run over by men furiously riding deer or driving carriages. The riders were richly dressed and obviously expected the pedestrians to jump out of the way or get trampled. The carriage drivers seemed to be couriers of one type or another.

Abruptly, the street became shabby.

The buildings presented a solid front except for alleys here and there. They were evidently government buildings that had been sold to private agents and had become little shops or tenements. Naked children played in front of them.

These were not nearly as clean as those they had just passed.

Churchill found the shop he was looking for. With Sarvant at his heels, he entered. The inside of the shop was a small room crowded with clothes of every kind. The store window and the cement floor were dirty; the odor of dog excrement filled the shop. Two dogs of indeterminate breed tried to put their paws on the two men.

The owner was a short big-paunched double-chinned bald man with two enormous earrings of brass. He looked much like any shopkeeper of his breed of any century, except that he had the cervine stamp of the times on his features.

“We want to sell our clothes,” Churchill said.

“Are they worth anything?” said the owner.

“As clothes, not much,” Churchill replied. “As curios, they may be worth a great deal. We are men from the starship.”

The owner’s little eyes widened. “Ah, brothers to the Sunhero!”

Churchill didn’t know all the implications of the exclamation. He knew only that Tom Tobacco had casually mentioned that Captain Stagg had become a Sunhero.

“I’m sure that you could sell each article of our clothing for quite a sum. These clothes have been to the stars, to places so distant that if you were to walk there without stopping to eat or rest it would take you halfway through eternity. The light of alien suns and the air of exotic worlds are caught in the fibers of these suits. And the shoes still bear the traces of earth where monsters bigger than this building have walked like earthquakes.”

The shopkeeper was unimpressed. “But has the Sunhero touched these garments?”

“Many times. Once, he wore this jacket.”

“Ahhh!”

The owner must have realized that he was betraying his eagerness. He lowered his eyelids and stiffened his face.

“This is all very well, but I am a poor man. The sailors who come to this shop do not have much money. By the time they get past the taverns, they are ready to sell their own clothes.”

“Probably true. But I’m sure you have contacts who can sell these to wealthier patrons.”

The owner took some coins from the pocket on his kilt.

“I’ll give you four columbias for the lot.”

Churchill motioned to Sarvant and started to walk out. Before he reached the door, he found the owner blocking his way.

“Perhaps I could offer you five columbias.”

Churchill pointed to a kilt and sandals. “How much are those worth? Or I should say, how much are you charging for them?”

“Three fish.”

Churchill considered. A Columbia was roughly equal to a five-dollar bill of his time. A fish was equal to a quarter.

“You know as well as I do that you’ll be making a thousand-percent-profit off us. I want twenty columbias for these.”