Gordon R. Dickson (39 page)

I do not remember the golden light
leaving and the sensitivity it had brought me. Just, after a while, it was gone
and the cardinal had vanished from the feeder. I was back to feeling with
merely the ordinary sensitivities of my body and mind; but within those I felt
alive as I never had before. Everything seemed as if seen under a very bright
light, clear and sharp. My mind was racing. I seethed with energy. I could not
wait to put what I had just found to practical use. I bolted from the chair and
went out of the summer palace by the entrance where the vehicles stood. There
was a jeep sitting in the parking area. I climbed behind its wheel and sent it
bouncing down the slope toward the town. I did not quite know where or how I
was going to take hold of the universe in the new way of doing so that had just
become clear to me; but now it seemed impossible that I could not find a place
and a means.

But oddly, as I got close to the
flat ground and the houses, a strange shyness came over me. I had been down
there only briefly before on half a dozen separate occasions, and each time I
had gone directly to City Hall to see Ellen, Marie, or someone else, then left
again in less than an hour. It came home to me that I really had never met
those who lived in the town; and I was abruptly as conscious of my stranger
status as a grade school child on a first day at a new school.

I parked the jeep in some bushes
that hid it several hundred yards from the closest of the buildings, got out
and went ahead on foot.

The first building I found myself
heading for was a temporary one with a platform floor, plank walls and a canvas
tent roof. To this was being added a more permanent structure of cement block
walls and gable roof, already shingled. There was no glazing as yet in the
window opening, and outside the door aperture, a white pickup truck was parked,
from which a man in blue jeans and sweater was carrying in various lengths of
lumber.

I reached the pickup while he was
still inside and waited by it until he came out again. He was a lean,
black-haired type in his late twenties or early thirties with a long, straight
nose.

"Hi," I said.

He glanced at me indifferently.

"Hullo," he said, went to
the truck, and began pulling off some twelve-foot lengths of two by four.

"Can I give you a hand?"

He looked at me again, not quite so
indifferently.

"All right," he said.
"Thanks."

I went over to the truck as he
backed off from it with his two by fours, picked up several of my own and
followed him through into the building.

There was no light inside except
what came through the window openings, but this was enough to see that the
building would be illuminated well enough with natural light, even on dark
days, once it was finished. The two by fours were apparently for wall studs,
for he had several partitions already framed up.

I carried my load over to where he
was piling his. A cement floor had been poured, but not professionally
finished, and the footing was both gritty and a little uneven. But it, like the
wall framing and the block laying of the outer shell was good enough for
security and use. We worked together at unloading the truck for some time
without saying anything to each other.

I found myself getting an odd
pleasure out of being useful in this ordinary way. The feeling was above and in
addition to the pleasure of the physical exertion which, once I warmed up to
it, was body-enjoyable, the way such efforts usually are. I was conscious of the
housebuilder eyeing me as we worked, but that was as much reaction as he showed
until we had finished getting all the two by fours into the building. I came
out from carrying in the last two lengths of lumber and found him standing,
considering what was left on the truck—mostly nails and odds and ends of
hardware.

"What next?" I asked him.

"I forgot to pick up conduit
for the wiring," he said, without looking at me. "Well, let's get the
rest of it in. You and I better take the nail cartons together, one by one.
They're heavy."

We pulled a nail carton to the open
tailgate, took it each on a side and carried it in. As we went toward the door
opening, he spoke.

"You're Marc Despard, aren't
you?"

"Yes," I said.

He stared hard at me for a second.

"No, you're not," he said,
as we stepped into the semigloom of the interior.

"I'm afraid I am."

"You can't be."

"I'm afraid I am."

"Look, he's got a long beard
and he's six inches taller than you are."

We laid the carton of nails down and
went out after another.

"I tell you," he said, as
we went in carrying the second carton, "you can't be. I know. I know what
Despard looks like."

I grinned. I couldn't help myself.

"So do I," I said.

"Then you admit you aren't
him."

"No," I said. "I'm
him. What makes you think I've got a beard and I'm six inches taller?"

"Everybody knows that. Besides,
you never come down from that mountain."

"I do now."

"Shit!"

We carried in the other cartons
without words. It occurred to me suddenly that he might think I had been
laughing at him and that all this was some sort of practical joke on my part. I
was distressed.

"If I don't look like Marc
Despard," I asked him, "why'd you ask me if that's who I was?"

He did not answer me immediately. It
was not until we had made one more delivery inside and were back out in the
sunlight that he spoke again, without looking directly into my face.

"I don't know why you'd want to
help me."

"You had this truck here to be
unloaded," I said. "It goes faster with two people than with
one."

"There's got to be more to it
than that." He stopped dead and faced me. "What's up? What is it?
What's going on? Is there some kind of law here or something like that I've
broken?"

"Man—" I began, and then
broke off. "Look, I don't even know your name."

"Orrin Elscher."

"Orrin—" I held out my
hand. "Marc Despard. Glad to meet you."

He stared at my hand as if it had a
mousetrap in it, then slowly put out his own hand and we shook.

"Orrin," I said, "it
was just such a fine day I thought I'd come down, and when I got here I saw you
unloading the truck, so I thought I'd offer you a hand. That's all there is to
it."

He said nothing, only took his hand
back.

We finished unloading the truck. It
was strange, but once upon a time it would have bothered me that he was
bothered. I would have geared up emotionally in response to his emotions. But
now all I could think of was what a nice day it was and the enjoyment of using
my body to some practical and useful purpose. I was getting the same sort of
pleasure from unloading that truck that I might have gotten from engaging in a
favorite sport; and I was grateful to Orrin Elscher for providing me with the
opportunity for that pleasure. As far as his puzzle about me went, I felt no
pressure to explain it. In his own time he would understand; and if that time
never came, it would not make any real difference to the world. All that really
mattered was that his truck was unloaded, he had been saved some work, and I
had enjoyed myself.

I had gotten this far in my thinking
when I remembered I had left the summer palace intending to put my new insight
to work; and here I had forgotten about it completely.

But of course I hadn't. I saw the
connection now between the insight and what I was presently doing. I had set
out to take hold of the universe; and I had done that. There was no such thing
as an unrelated action; and the act of my helping Orrin to unload his truck
connected with the necessary completion of his house, the development of the
whole town, the future of the people here, plus their effect and interrelation
with all the rest of the people in the world. In fact, it connected with the
whole future pattern in a way I could see building and stretching out until it
became part of the great spider web of interacting forces that contained the
time storm itself. As for me, in enunciating that connection by being part of
it and recognizing it, I had expanded my own awareness that I needed to stretch
before I could take the next step against the storm.

We finished unloading the truck.

"Well, take care of yourself,"
I said to Orrin and turned away.

I was perhaps five steps from him,
headed back toward where I had hidden the jeep, when I heard him call me.

"Mr. Despard—"

I turned to find him right behind
me.

"I—thank you," he said.

"Nothing to thank me for,"
I answered. "I enjoyed the workout. I suppose I'll be seeing you
around?"

"Sure," he said—and then,
more strongly, added, "Sure. You will!"

"Good."

I turned and went. I had gotten a
good echo from him, like the unblurred ring of uncracked metal when you tap a
bronze vase with a fingernail. I went back to the jeep, got behind the wheel,
and after a moment's thought headed on into City Hall.

But there was no one around when I
got there. Even the typists were not at their desks. I looked at my watch and
saw it was just after ten in the morning. Coffee break time, perhaps. I went
out, got back in the jeep and headed back up toward the summer palace, enjoying
the bright day, the sight of the buildings and people I passed, as if the whole
world was something marvelous invented yesterday that I had never seen before.

When I got to the summer palace
there were eight vehicles of various kinds parked in the parking area. As I
climbed out of the jeep, Bill came out of the door with a rush.

"There you are," he said.
"We've been looking all over for you. The Empress is on her way. We just
got word."

26

We were not surprised to see the
helicopters ignore the town and head directly toward the summer palace. There
were three of them, all the size of aircraft I had flown in between airports
like LaGuardia and Kennedy in New York. They could each hold at least thirty
people comfortably.

We stood in the parking area and
watched them come—a baker's dozen of us, including the Old Man and Porniarsk.
There was nothing much else we could do. Our advance warnings from the
communities farther west had earlier confirmed the fact that Paula Mirador, the
Empress, was indeed moving toward us with at least five hundred armed bodies
(about one-third of them women) plus three .155 millimeter howitzers. She had
apparently merely passed through these other communities, pausing just long
enough to accept their formal submissions on her way. Wisely, no one had tried
to oppose her, and we ourselves were hardly in a position to do so, even though
we were probably the strongest single social unit between our territory and the
Rockies.

According to her usual battle plan,
which our scouts had confirmed, she had the main body of her troops standing
off just over the horizon, with the VTOL transports ready and waiting. The
howitzers were with them, ready to be moved in close to pound flat any property
we owned before the troops followed to mop up any still-living defenders. It
was a strong military argument she proposed.

We had not given in to it—yet. Our
town was evacuated, except for a half-dozen fortified positions with .50
caliber machine guns, hidden among the buildings. These, if they survived the
artillery, could make it something less than a picnic for the troops advancing
on the wreckage. Whether the Empress knew about our machine guns was a
question. She apparently knew a good deal about us, but possibly not the full
extent of our weapons and supplies.

The rest of our noncombatants were
scattered, back in the hills, with a light force to guard them and weapons of
their own, as well as enough food and other basic supplies to last a year. She
could not hunt them all down, even if she wished to spend the time trying.
Aside from all this, there were three more heavy machine guns and gun crews
camouflaged and dug in to cover this parking area from the surrounding rocks
and trees—and one other machine gun nest hidden inside the palace. Even if she
were bringing as many as sixty or eighty soldiers in her helicopters, it would
not be a wise idea for her to simply try and make the thirteen of us prisoners
by head-on force.

But of course all this was beside
the point. She did not really want to waste trained people and ammunition on
us, any more than we wanted to fight a small war with her. She and we were both
lining up our resources face-to-face for a bargaining session. The helicopters
sidled in, looking very dramatic against the blue sky with its few patches of
high clouds, and settled to earth with a good deal of noise and raised dust.

The doors of the two furthest from
us opened, and uniformed men with rifles and mortars and a couple of light
machine guns jumped out and set up a sort of perimeter, facing the surrounding
country. They did not, however, move too far away from their planes and seemed
to be making the point that they were there to protect the helicopters and
themselves primarily.