The Second Murray Leinster Megapack (60 page)

Her mother pressed her lips together.

“Kenie—”

“He’s a deepie,” said Kenie scornfully. “Oh, I know, Mother! Deepies are just displaced persons, and some of them are quite nice. They are people who’ve never settled down or who are afraid to settle down even if people would let them. They think if they keep moving, they’ll be safe. ’Fraidy-cats! But some deepies are snoopers, too, and you know it!”

“Kenie!” said her mother. “Mr. Wedderson wants to marry your Aunt Sarah! He’s quite a good blacksmith, he says, and with a family connection so he’d be allowed to settle down here—”

Kenie started to stuff her mouth full, and remembered that she was growing up, and took a dainty mouthful instead. She said with a vast calmness:

“Darling Mother, you don’t fool me. You don’t like him any more than I do. You’re just as afraid he’s a snooper. And with Roland—”

Her mother went white. Kenie’s heart turned one complete somersault. Then it was true! Roland was back, and hiding out! Her mother knew it, as well as Cissie! Kenie’s hand shook with the thrill as she gulped her milk in outward composure.

“Don’t worry, Mother,” she said calmly. “I won’t say that to anyone else. But I notice things. I’m thirteen, now.”

“I don’t know where you get silly ideas about Roland,” her mother began. But there were footsteps in the hall and she stopped short. She went on in an even, unhurried tone, “I think that if you took over the new calf this morning, since your father is so busy—Good morning, Sarah!”

Kenie’s Aunt Sarah came into the kitchen. Kenie spoke to her politely. Aunt Sarah looked thrilled and haggard and defiant and sorrowful all at once, with a hint of tragedy queen thrown in. Kenie used to feel sorry for her because she’d never gotten married—Kenie intended to marry Bub when they both grew up—but Mr. Wedderson had ended her sympathy. He couldn’t be anybody’s ideal! He was untidy with a hint of greasiness. He wore thick eyeglasses and a smug air which wasn’t suitable to a deepie, and he petted Kenie. With the pretense of treating her, as a child, he patted her: Kenie frankly despised him—with an uneasy feeling underneath.

“Good morning, Martha,” said Aunt Sarah. “Where is John? I simply must have a talk with him! Mr. Wedderson is coming—”

Kenie’s mother said vaguely, “He’s running the tractor, Sarah. I think he’s been asking the neighbors if they object—”

“What have they to do with it?” demanded Aunt Sarah sharply. “My brother John is a leading citizen! If I choose to marry, why should the neighbors have anything to say?”

“You know how it is,” said Kenie’s mother soothingly. “People resent newcomers settling—”

“Would John send his own sister wandering?” demanded Aunt Sarah fiercely. “Must I wander through the woods and forests to be with the man I love, when he is a good blacksmith and one is needed here?”

Kenie choked on her milk. Aunt Sarah always managed to mess things up when she tried to be dramatic. Her mother said:

“Kenie! The calf—”

“Yes, Mother,” said Kenie.

She drained the mug and managed not to giggle until she got out of doors. Then she went down to the barn. It was a good barn, very old and with the wires for electric lights still in place. There were iron stalls for the cows and there had been an electric milking machine. It would be nice to have electricity to do things for you, Kenie reflected.

She milked an anxious cow who was bitterly indignant because her calf was muzzled. She led the calf into another stall and set to work to teach him to drink. It was rather fun, but she felt all churned up inside herself.

Roland was nice. He’d been gone for two years, now, because of course, when he practically said he was a scientist he couldn’t stay around. It wouldn’t have mattered before things happened and the big cities were either abandoned or destroyed, and before the railroads stopped running, and all that. But since the world had got to be as it was, scientists weren’t good neighbors. Everybody knew that. When scientists set to work to find out things, sooner or later a bomb fell from the sky. Then there was an empty place three or four miles across where people had lived, and things wouldn’t grow there for a long time because the ground was all baked to a bricky, glassy kind of stuff that Kenie had never seen but had heard about. Only eight years ago a bomb had fallen on a locality only fifty miles away. And people said it was because there was a scientist there.

It wasn’t his fault directly, though. It was because of the deepies. There were always deepies coming around—brighteyed, usually skinny people who worked awhile and got a store of food and moved on. Lots of deepies were very respectable and nice, but there were some snoopers among them, and if a snooper found out that there was a scientist around, somehow or other they got word to whoever had planes and bombs—and then a bomb fell. So one must always be careful not to say anything nice about science. Bub was especially bitter because one mustn’t even have electricity, and he was making a generator down in a secret cellar he’d dug. He was going to have electricity and keep it a secret.

The trouble with Roland was that he talked. As long as he just kept machinery in repair and made funny stuff that made welding easier, he was all right. He was crazy about Cissie, too, and she about him. But one day somebody said that people were better off nowadays than back when cities had millions of people in them, and Roland got mad. Right in front of everybody he said that people lived like pigs, now, compared to the old days. Running tractors on wood-gas and burning tallow lamps wasn’t his idea of living, he said.

Science had made a world fit to live in, and fools had smashed it, Roland said. And then he declared defiantly that some day science would come back and the world would be better than ever, with electricity and airplanes and great cities and universities and books and television everywhere. And he said it where everybody could hear him!

Deepies were listening, so the neighbors had to act at once. They tried him right on the spot for advocating science, after what it had done to the world, and they ordered him to leave the locality and said they’d hang him if he came back. And they made sure all the deepies knew it. Kenie’s own father was the sternest of Roland’s judges, though he liked Roland a lot. Cissie’d cried for weeks, too, because she’d been going to marry him. But of course being ordered away from home made Roland a deepie, and nobody would let a deepie settle anywhere. Everybody was afraid that almost any deepie might be a snooper, reporting to whoever had bombs and planes. So naturally Cissie couldn’t marry Roland.

Teaching the calf to drink, Kenie’s anticipations rose. Roland’s return was exciting. And Mr. Wedderson wanting to marry Aunt Sarah. He was a deepie who pretended to be enormously smitten with Aunt Sarah’s charms. Now she was hounding Kenie’s father to stand sponsor for him and get him permission to settle down here. Otherwise, of course, she’d have to go off and be a deepie, too, if she married him. But Kenie was scornfully sure that Mr. Wedderson was a snooper, and if he found out that Roland was back…

That was something to shiver about! Cissie’d seen Roland. Kenie knew it. She used to be in love with him and still must be or she wouldn’t have risked seeing him.

There was a trampling of many hoofs in front of the house. The far-away tractor stopped. Kenie looked out of the barn and saw her father walking across the fields. She heard Tom’s television set still squawking. When he got it to work, it only brought silly things like talks on farming and how to keep well; but her father said that whoever was visicasting was very brave. They might be safe if they talked only about crop rotation and sanitation, but he warned Tom to tell him if they ever started to ’cast about science. Tom probably wouldn’t tell him, though. Tom was always mooning around, trying out things and trying to find old books with science in them, but not talking.

Kenie watched, wide-eyed, as the neighbors rode up to the house. They were going to remind father that there were nearly five thousand people in this locality, and they couldn’t have their lives jeopardized by a boy working on science. Tom could either give up his experiments or leave. They didn’t want any bombs falling from a seemingly empty sky.

There was a rustling in the barn. There was Cissie; she put her arm around Kenie and hugged her a little. That wasn’t unheard of, but it was unusual. Kenie wriggled.

“They’ve come to talk to father about Tom, Cissie!” Kenie was thrilled. “It’s going to be awful! Maybe he’ll get mad—”

“He won’t,” said Cissie. “He promised me he wouldn’t.”

They heard their father’s voice inside the house. He was calling Tom. Then a great stillness settled on everything. The neighbors were gathered in the front parlor. They’d be grim. Just as grim as when they told Roland to leave or be hanged. Tom would be white and stricken. But their father would do what he could. He’d probably tell how Tom helped him in metal recovery—smelting down iron rust for fresh metal to make things that had to be made new. He’d been the first one to do that, with charcoal from the woods for fuel. The neighbors respected Kenie’s father, and they wouldn’t be mean. Just firm. Anyhow, they knew how Kenie’s father felt about science. He’d been the first one to say that Roland had to go away, even though Roland and Cissie were planning to get married.

“Darling,” said Cissie, and she hugged Kenie. “You like me, don’t you? I want to tell you something.”

“About Roland?” asked Kenie quickly. Cissie seemed not to realize what she meant.

“Partly,” she said softly. “But not altogether. I’m not sorry about Roland, you know. There used to be a wonderful world, and it got spoiled. But there’s going to be a wonderful world again, and Roland will help to make it. That’s worth while, isn’t it?”

“The world’s all right now,” said Kenie blithely. “It’s fun. But it might be nice to have electricity. Bub says so.”

Cissie laughed a little.

“That’s what I want to tell you. Not about electricity, but about Bub. I used to watch you tagging after him, and now he tags after you, Kenie. And as your older sister—”

Kenie said matter-of-factly, “Bub’s going to marry me when we grow up. He doesn’t know it yet, but I can make him do almost anything I want to.”

Cissie’s arm tightened about her.

“I—just want to say something serious, for once,” she said quite gravely. “It’s nice, loving someone, Kenie. And if you—grow up and marry Bub—you won’t want to regret it. If he wants to be like everybody else, he’ll be safe and so will you. But if he doesn’t, Kenie—let him be different! Like Roland. Make him be careful, of course! Make him be terribly careful! But it will be worth it if he—risks his life and yours, too, to try to build back to a better world, than the one that got smashed. Even for a little thing like electricity! Remember it, Kenie! Please!”

Kenie almost started to tell her that Bub was already building an electric generator in his secret cellar—Cissie could be trusted—but just then Mr. Wedderson came in view, lie was marching toward the house, and he was fat and smug and revolting.

“That,” said Kenie scornfully, “is Aunt Sarah’s ideal! She-wants us to call him Uncle! He’ll want me to sit on his lap! I despise him!”

Cissie drew a quick breath. She looked oddly at Kenie, as if what she’d just said was a very special admonition that she might not be able to give again, but Kenie was sticking out her tongue at the waddling, stocky figure. Then she turned.

“We’d better go to the house,” she said resentfully. “Mother’s going to serve refreshments. I’d like to put a bug in Mr. Wedderson’s mug. Or something worse!”

* * * *

Cissie followed silently. Their mother was moving about the kitchen. She nodded when they came in.

“Just in time,” she told them. “You take in the coffee, Cissie, and Kenie, you carry the cakes.”

Cissie was grown-up and calm, and Kenie envied her a little. Her own elbows seemed to get in the way going through doors. But she got-to the parlor without mishap. Then she thrilled.

It was dreadful in there. Her brother Tom stood ashen-faced at one side of the room. The neighbors were unsmiling and grim. Not unkindly, of course. That made it worse. Kenie saw twin wet streaks on Tom’s cheeks. He was seventeen, but the tears had come when he met the unalterable ultimatum of the neighbors and found that his own father backed it.

“It ain’t,” said a heavy voice doggedly, “that we’re against anybody doin’ what they want to, Tom. You got a life to live. If you want to go off and study science, you got a right to an’ we ain’t stoppin’ you. But we got our families to think of. Where there’s science and people know of it, bombs fall. You can go, an’ you’ll have no spite go with you. But you can’t come back. You’ll do a lot better by your family and friends if you stay amongst us an’ be a good neighbor—”

Tom’s hands were clenched tightly. He was the very picture of stunned grief. But suddenly he said in a choked voice:

“I’ll bet it was Mr. Wedderson who told you! He started talking about sciene! He s-seemed to know a lot and I g-got interested and t-told him too much—”

The faces in the parlor hardened. There were thumpings outside. Kenie’s mother went to the door. Cissie moved among the neighbors, offering them dandelion root coffee. Kenie’s mother said:

“Why, yes, Mr. Wedderson! Quite a gathering! Come in!”

Eyes turned to the door. Mr. Wedderson entered. His eyes glittered behind their thick lenses. He swaggered a little.