Triumph (35 page)

"Damn it!" Ben bellowed.
"Sure!
Last spring, apparently,
some
migratory birds somehow realized their old flyway wasn't usable and
stayed far south! This
year a few species, in small numbers, are trying it again. Instinct! They've come up over the
Atlantic,
but they won't last a week here!"

Kit replied, "Phooie! Know what
I
think? I think you and your scientist pals have a conspiracy! To keep us buried till we die! Jew, Chinese woman, Jap kid. You're taking a revenge on the white race. I'm fed up with those caves and Angelica and I yearn to go on a moonlight stroll! So I'm going, as a test! When I get back, and when the gang sees how you've betrayed all of us, you'll be slaughtered, Mr. Jew Doctor Benvenuto Cellini Bernman and young George Hyama! Then we white poeple will all come out, and your crazy plot will be futile!" He laughed and began to move away, yelling over his shoulder

"Foiled! . . . Foiled! . . . Foiled!" and running like a deer.

George lunged toward Kit. Ben grabbed George. "Keep your senses, fellow! Look at the speed he's making! Could you catch up? And suppose you did, a mile or two down the valley, your shielding clothes all ripped from falls and skids, leaking?"

"We gotta try for him, Ben!"

The scientist stared into the lucent murk where Kit's figure was merging with shadows below the pale-lit rocks. Ben stared, and held the struggling George tightly.

"You heard what Kit said," he murmured. "That was not the real Kit talking, but a man gone mad. For cause, too! Guilt. Frustration. Passion spent, or misspent. Rotten manners. Claustrophobia. You name it! If there was one chance in a million of getting him, I'd be gone, with you. But could we even lick him? Together,
maybe.
But catch him?

Racing away like that, into that shambles of blasted rock, thornbush, creepers? And suppose he's armed?
No,
George! I can recognize insanity when it's that violent! And I won't allow a good man, or even, myself, to get killed on a hopeless try."

By then George, although tense, was calming down. "I know," he answered slowly. "You're right! But--!"

"Sometimes," Ben panted, his voice sympathetic in spite of that, "it takes more guts
not
to play Good Samaritan, when the effort's absolutely hopeless, than to make a damn-fool try! You learn that, learning to be Navy, I suppose."

George then said, "Thanks!"

"Okay." Ben loosed his hold on the young Japanese.

George, still breathing hard, suggested, "Shouldn't we switch on the searchlight--

pointed up?"

"Won't hurt!" They climbed the tower and sent a piercing beam of light vertically upward in stabbing opposition to the moonglow. With that sudden, thrusting finger of light, from very far in the distance they heard sounds of mocking laughter.

After calling repeatedly they at last descended, unlatched the elevator, went down to a decontamination chamber built above the middle set of psi doors, meticulously followed the wash-off drill, dressed, and took the elevator again to break the terrible news to the people below.

It was received in silence by all save Angelica, who ran, sobbing hysterically, toward her room. Presently, Valerie followed her. Neither returned. Faith merely sat quietly in a chair, pale, without expression, making no comment. Somebody served coffee.

Several fresh sets of lightweight shielding garments were brought out. A watch was posted on the tower--George first, then Vance, Pete next, and Ben for the daybreak period.

Just after the sun had risen above the bleak, flattened landscape and the far-off, blue Sound, Ben saw, in the powerful telescope mounted for a different purpose on the tower, the figure of a human being coming slowly, from a place about two miles distant, near the rubble acreage that had been Fenwich.

Kit was plainly exhausted. And doubtless, Ben surmised, pretty ill already. Once or twice Kit stumbled, almost fell.

Meantime, through the 'scope, Ben surveyed a path toward the reeling man that he had already monitored for some distance. He considered the resistance of the garment he was wearing, added up theoretical roentgens, multiplied assumed minutes, and presently rang the phone.

In the Hall, dozing, Vance answered.

"He's coming back!" Ben said rapidly. "Get two men in the heaviest suits we have, and bring them up! Prepare to flush off the elevator after we take him to decontamination. It's going to be nasty!"

Farr said, "Right," three times. Now he snapped, "And you
stay where you are!"

Ben said, "Check!" making it sound sincere.

Then he went lithely down the ladder and started out over the sloping ledges, and on into the tangled greenery, until at last he came up to Kit.

The man's eyes were glazed. Tremors racked him. He recognized Ben, however, and grinned sheepishly. "Apologize, my friend," he said.

"Sure!" Ben wrapped a supporting arm around Kit. Waited, while Kit vomited.

Half-carried the heavy man back toward the bare, less-radioactive rock where, presently, others emerged to help.

All that day, behind a lead-brick screen in his room, Kit lay unconscious, his fever rising. Paroxysms occasionally seized his muscles. His feet, then his lower legs, hands, and arms, slowly turned black. Purple blotches appeared on his torso as blood vessels burst there.

The women, in heavy shielding suits, took turns sitting outside the lead-block wall, against the chance Kit might become conscious enough to ask for a drink of water, or speak a name, or need some other attention.

That never happened.

Limp, barely breathing, shriveled-seeming, and black, he died before the outdoors darkened again.

Ben became sick three hours after his rash, if gallant, effort.

He, too, was feverish, weak, nauseated, and marked with the splotchy hemorrhages beneath his skin.

It had been possible, however, to wash from Ben such radioactive material as had entered the few rips in his shielding clothes. No protective wall was therefore needed, and no special costumes for the women, who, round the clock, then tried the best they could to care for the often-delirious man.

After some days his symptoms grew less severe. One morning, a week later, he opened his large, blue eyes and they met the anxious and immediate attention of other eyes--Faith's.

Ben smiled weakly. Was kissed.

"You wonderful, crazy person!" Faith said. It seemed insufficient. Even silly.

"You--!"

Ben held up a hand, weakly. "Moron," he finished for her. "What's the diagnosis?"

"We've done everything we could manage. Typed everybody's blood. Given you six transfusions! You'll be okay."

Ben stared with feeble amazement. "How come?"

Faith laughed happily. "Dad played doctor. Did it from books. And also, as we only just learned, from
watching.
Half the nights Mother
thought
he spent with Angelica-

-maybe
more
--Dad was down at the Fenwich hospital learning all he could."

Ben frowned, "Didn't tell
me
--!"

"Nobody's been sick! Till now!"

"Oh?" He drifted off. Opened his eyes again. "Allowed--allowed--any water?"

She held the glass, put the sipper between his cracked lips, raised his body. He drank thirstily. . . .

In two weeks, insisting he was "good as new," Ben was able to resume his work, though on short shifts, as he still tired easily. He had a few, less-dramatic relapses. But such studies as they could make of his blood and general condition indicated no permanent damage had been done to him by his considerable dose of radiation.

When June came, he was entirely well.

With the first day of June, however, the long sense of doom that had overshadowed the adults noticeably increased. In less than two months they could

"celebrate" the second anniversary of their immolation. Because the labyrinths had been prepared by Vance Farr for two years and fifteen people, and they were now thirteen, and because that preparation had been lavish, they could and would continue to exist for an uncertain number of months after the second year below ground.

But their hopeful reliance upon rescue had become pessimism. Nobody had ever replied to their continuing signals.

At night now, quite often, when all the rest had retired with no more than sad, silent nods, Vance and Ben would sit till late, turning over in their minds, chiefly, the reason for the refusal of the world unharmed, or relatively unharmed, even to send them messages.

On one such mid-June evening, reviewing the possibilities, Ben's summary gave him a new idea. He said, that night:

"There's a reason we're ignored.
Hatred.
I'd imagine the remaining world despises every human being whose nation participated in this thing. It may also be that in the surviving nations, the Communists known to be there at the war's start have taken over."

"The world?" Vance objected. "Even
Australia?
South Africa, where the 'white-supremacy' and 'far-right' folly prevailed? Every Latin Nation?" Vance shrugged. "Hard to agree, and I'm sure, from all the radio messages we've intercepted, the Commies outside the U.S.S.R. had no notion of what was coming. Still, with the inevitable chaos following the razing of a hemisphere, it's
possible.
The Reds everywhere were always well organized, secretly armed, ready to step in when public uproar gave their all-set and willing minority a chance. Remember Castro, and Cuba? Or were you too busy studying-

-?"

"I remember. And other countries, since. There's just one objection to that theory.

All else fits--the silence in places like Australia, where a lot of game guys live. But which was socialist, anyway, and had a lot of Red citizens. A point. Even the refusal of white, far-right Capetown and the Union of South Africa to recognize us.
There,
I suspect, from the mixed-up months of yells for help, something pretty serious happened. Though Capetown comes in loud, clear, and sensible nowadays. But suppose--?"

He ceased his repetitive words.

Farr said, gently, "Suppose
what,
Ben?"

"Remember last fall--November 11, it was--when the Soviet survivors apparently committed united suicide?"

"Naturally." Vance's voice was dry.

"Suppose, since all that went up in nuclear blast, and in several areas, widely separated--Urals, Caucasus, Baikal, Arctic Sea, Okhotsk--suppose it
wasn't
suicide?

Suppose the U.S.S.R. big shots had decided on this thesis: that in any all-out war with the United States, the Soviet homeland, Siberia included, would be wiped out. Suppose they
then
decided there was only a
single way
to make Marxism become the world religion--or tyranny. You name it! Actually, there
was
only one way!" Ben stopped, gazed pensively at the brightly-painted and handsomely-decorated interior of the immense Hall.

"And that way would be?"

"This kind of place," Ben replied.
"Only
on a
tremendous
scale. And with thousands of people--specialists of all essential sorts--hidden ahead of the first strike in places like this, Vance, but hundreds or thousands of times larger. With nuclear-weapons stocks. And with the intent of remaining, like ourselves, till exodus was possible. Then even a few hundred nuclear-armed Reds, let alone thousands, could easily dominate the remainder of the world."

"How? Oh! I get you! Nuclear blackmail of the remaining nations, not one having an atomic weapon, or the means of making 'em, short of spending three-four years, maybe more, on the task. All right! Go on with that 'supposing.' Though it's hard to believe even the Russian Politbureau would sacrifice the entire population of the U.S.S.R.

to gain the residual half of mankind. Still, a man like Grovsky--!"

"Exactly! A
truly
'believing' Soviet group, a group actually all-out Marxist-Leninist, does take the theoretical viewpoint that the world
has
to become all-Red, in order to complete the Red dream of earthly heaven. Nothing that advanced communism, anywhere, was deemed 'wrong' or 'evil.' Anything that hindered the spread of Marxist tyranny was 'sin.' Ethics and morals, in short, turned upside down. Perverted, totally! A people believing
that
could do anything! Hitler killed his millions. Stalin, his tens of millions. Grovsky might easily decide to destroy a
billion and more
people, including
all
but a
few thousand or tens of thousands of his own,
to gain the real and basic Red goal:
world dominion!
After all, the Soviets thought in terms of generations, even centuries.

While we--" Ben shrugged. "And, after a few generations, you could safely repopulate the Temperate Zone.

Vance said bitterly, "Whereas we thought in terms of
next year's
balance sheets."

"More or less. Even as physicists we thought only as far ahead as the end of the twentieth century. Establishing a permanent colony on Mars before A.D. 2000. Nothing further, in science.
American
science."

"But how could the Red scientists even have
gotten ready
for such a thing without our knowing-intelligence agents, spy satellites, all that?"

"Not easy." Ben pondered. "But making great supershelters under mountains--

Urals, Caucasus, near Lake Baikal--could pass as 'mining.' And if the immense amount of gear they'd need was hauled into such giant strongholds
at night
and the heat dispersion of the hauling vehicles was kept low, or maybe if they used inside winches to pull gear into their initial diggings, our infrared satellites wouldn't have recorded that as anything special. The oceanside places are harder to account for." He paused and then said, startled, "Hey! Suppose they were
under water!"

Vance had stared, astonished. "I'm no engineer--"

"The hell you aren't!"

"--but how could that be done, successfully?"

Ben had then risen. He paced the chamber, meditated, and finally said, "Caissons!

In units. Sunk deep. Linked up. The work all done at night, and they have months of night up where they were! A submarine city--two, apparently--so far under the sea that land blasts, even nearby, wouldn't damage 'em!"