Triumph (38 page)

"What?"

"Why not? Without the telly, without radio, our people have depended on newspapers. They followed your doings minutely. So did Parliament."

"Parliament
?"

"Why not, Mr. Farr? There's been a constant debate in our Parliament as to whether we should take a chance before we knew how we were coming out in the world situation, and could come up to get you. People raised hob. But we waited." Another pause and the voice became reflective. "What has happened since the Third War began tends to create an extra bit of caution. And that's about the summary. You'll find a new spirit, around and below the equator. A whole world--that is to say, the residual half a world--is determined to establish peace forever and forever to stop war. And in our world the means to enforce that ideal are at hand . . . not just on order or in the making. You'll be entering a federation of racially, nationally free and equal people. Clear?"

"Magnificent!"

"Now. About your rescue."

Again a moment of silence. The people in the room walled with electronic gear, and the people gathered in the passageway, shifted positions. Farr, sweating, yet strangely relaxed, spoke into that silence. "We can hold out, sir, for many weeks."

The response came:
laughter!
"My name's Jenkins. Oliver. Sorry I'd not said. Bit excited myself. See here. No wait necessary, to speak of, Mr. Farr. You haven't taken a bearing on the point of origin of this station, I gather?"

Farr gasped. "We assumed Australia."

"I'm on the
Capricorn Queen,"
the suddenly-identified Oliver Jenkins responded.

"We wanted you to have a general picture of things before we went into the rescue details. They may be a bit surprising and you may want to end this talk when you hear the rescue plan."

"I don't quite understand." Farr said what the rest felt.

"You will."

A second voice was briefly audible, though its words were not discernible. Oliver Jenkins soon went on. "A last detail I was to mention. If you do have those stocks of refined, rare metals, and if you don't mind our carting them back to Australia, we'll do it, gratefully. The material you spoke of is mighty precious down under at this time. But if you were just offering an imaginary booty to try to get help, no matter. Taking you people from your shelter to our homeland is going to be a proud thing for Australia, and for the surviving world. We're not
asking
for a reward from you. Just for things we can use that your hemisphere won't produce for decades, and till mining's safe. If you see what I mean?"

Vance smiled now. "We have the refined metals in exactly the amounts and purity-states we've broadcast. And you are more than welcome to them. More than welcome! Don't you realize they mean nothing to us here?"

"Oh, yes, righto, of course. Fine! Our scientists, metallurgical works, and so on, will be very pleased. Now, the last bit of information. The
Capricorn Queen
is in the Atlantic, some three hundred miles south of Long Island. She will anchor, offshore, before morning. We'll leave her in shielded helicopters with the first light, tomorrow.

Weather outlook is splendid. The
Queen's
a big ship and she's specially shielded with lead, all about. I'm afraid you'll have to remain, as we've all done coming north, below decks, till we get beyond your West Indies. After that it'll be fair sailing. A jet will pick you up, and some of us, in Panama, and take the party straight on to Melbourne. The
Queen
will return for the metal you have, and, if you don't mind, for some of the instruments. We've envied you quite a few things up there, along with our nationwide, day-to-day sympathy. Your radiation levels required shielding on our 'copters and that makes it desirable for you to travel light when you leave. Personal luggage only, and a few changes of clothing. Our Parliament, acting for the forming world government, will see to it that you have everything you need in the days that follow."

Vance tried to interrupt, to express deep-felt gratitude.

The Australian did not allow it. "That's the packet. We'll be landing on top of Sachem's Watch around 0800--8 A.M.--tomorrow. If you're packed and all set in your elevator, we'll whisk you to the
Queen
within the hour and head straight south. All clear?"

"Isn't there a way to say
some
word of thanks?"

Again a chuckle. Oliver Jenkins, who would prove on the morrow to be Sir Oliver, said, "Very well, Farr. That word, then. You've said it. Perhaps, too, you should know this conversation's being relayed to all the surviving peoples around and below the equator. They wanted to be in on the first contact. Maybe two or three hundred million human beings are listening in. Our circuit's wide open." A moment passed. The clipped voice asked, anxiously, "Something the matter? Hello there, Sachem's Watch!"

What he heard and what the
Capricorn Queen
relayed to the transfixed, surviving half of the world, was a different voice:

"This is Ben Bernman," it said. "Vance Farr has been overcome by emotion and cannot speak for the moment. Any more we could say beyond our bare 'thanks' would hardly have meaning right now."

"I see." The Australian voice was more emotional, now, than voices of Britons are expected to be ever. "I quite see. All of you are welcome, Dr. Bernman. And if there aren't any further questions? . . . Right?
Roger.
See you in the morning! . . . Over and out."

In twos and threes they moved to the Hall. Some stood; most sat down. Ben found himself thinking that Faith, whose hand he still held, deserved an offer of release from her just-made commitment. He looked down into her wet, transfigured eyes, and she read his thought. "Don't say it!" she whispered. "Don't
ever
say it! My husband is going to be sure of my love!"

"Yes," he whispered. And added, "He will be."

Lodi and George stood face to face and merely looked at one another, smiling softly, not even touching hands--a strange but moving thing. Ben momentarily thought: Oriental, maybe. Then he upbraided himself for his habit of analysis and classification; he and Faith were doing about the same.

He saw Valerie sitting shiny-eyed beside Vance Farr and saw that Vance, his purpose fulfilled, his brave, imaginative mission completed, looked gray and drained and aged. Ben reflected on the selflessness that had led the man to build the refuge that had saved them, when Farr had realized, the whole while, his own chances of being sheltered from sudden holocaust were never very good.

Except for a few sobs, the quietude grew oppressive. We should be gay, Ben thought. Even hysterically gay. But who could? Who, here and now, could rejoice? The relief was too incalculable, and that from which they were to be saved had been too titanic in its terrible extinctions, for swift or selfish jubilance.

A murmur came--oddly, Ben first felt--from Paulus Davey. Then the murmured words became distinct, and were not odd. The white-grizzled ex-butler spoke softly but with resonance.

"'. . . is my shepherd. I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures. He restoreth my soul . . . My cup runneth over. Yea, though I walk through the valley and shadow of death . . ." Paulus choked up.

The silence deepened and sobs were more urgently strangled.

Vance, looking at his daughter and then at the man he now surely knew would be his son-in-law, felt the return of his custom of command. Then it ebbed and he felt older, content, and in stark need of rest. He cleared his throat. "Say a few words for us, will you, Ben?"

The scientist nodded. Heads turned. Streaked faces lifted. Ben spoke.

"No use to say much. No likelihood I'll say it well. An hour ago we thought we would perish here together. Now we shall be saved together." He faced Farr. "Thanks to the selfless courage, the refusal to conform, the vision and energy and poured-out wealth of Vance, we survived. But our survival, however great an example of the spirit of mankind, of his determination to endure and live and continue, depended, actually, on still another factor. I have often thought of that other factor lately.

"The name of it is love. Love that does not consider
being loved
as its necessary adjunct. Love, merely, that is offered, tendered, inexhaustibly given, without any asking price. Love of people. Love, that built the glimmering halls and galleries which saved us.

It was Alberto's love, again, that riskily bored our way to the outdoors, long ago. Valerie's love that forgave, and also enabled her to conquer her own self." He did not mention his own version of such "love," or that it had saved four of the present survivors, in one hot foray, and repeatedly saved them all, through the use of ingenuity, and even tried to save the self-centered and finally mad Kit Barlow.

He gave some few added illustrations and touched, particularly, on the love between Connie Davey and Pete Williams, which had "grown so great that they had relinquished one another, to avoid the possibility of hurting" and not, Ben said,
"being
hurt."

"Now, perhaps," he continued, "Pete and Connie can suitably resume their love in the world where we shall live. It seems at least possible. We, and they, shall see.

"What I mean here, however, is called 'spiritual.' And that quality, learned by the few of us in such fearful and dreary times, is what we must attempt to carry with us. We will be feted like heroes, obviously. But however thunderous the crowd ovations, however moving the celebrations, let us never forget
who we are.

"Who
are we?

"You know. We are the pitiful, insufficient, mixed, fortunate remnant of more than a billion human beings. They're dead. We live. We cannot hope to represent them.

We must not try to atone for their self-induced extermination. What caused it? In the long nights and days of existence here, I think we have learned their error. It was simple. . . .

"They came to love
things
more than one another. They were, on one side, godly by assertion. On the other, atheist. But above and beyond that, on
both
sides, they were materialists. Marx established his materialism as a substitute worship. Our own was established by ourselves and its voice was not Marx but a nonexistent slot in rubble once called Madison Avenue, where we wrote a new theology of things also. We can remember that, and help the world, perhaps, to remember it forever. The
use
of things can lead to man's salvation, as it has led, in our small, pitiful cases. But things as man's
end
become--became--the end of man. Such is my confession, as a physicist. And such is the small insight I can add to the confession: merely a word I cannot define but that I do
know
and hope to
embody
always.
Love."

Ben looked at Faith. Her head had been inclined, but as he ceased to speak she lifted it and straightened, offered her lips, and they embraced. Vance stared a moment, sharing with Valerie the satisfaction of responsibility abdicated for a yet more able successor. Then, knowing there was much to do in a night that would be their last and seem short, knowing the time had come to stop this condition of stricken bliss before it became conscious and sentimental, and even attitudinizing, Vance leaped forward with twinkling eyes and outthrust hands to congratulate Ben Bernman and next to hug Faith.

The leading helicopter of the rescue party swung over Long Island Sound. Its pilot, a much-traveled man, let his imagination follow his eyes and soon, run beyond the visible perimeters.

Long Island was out of shape, with bays and bights the bombs had made, long ago. Greater New York was a black-and-gray tumble of indecipherable ruins, at the edges of which the greens of encroaching vegetation could be seen. The Hudson had a slightly altered course where a vast reach of the Palisades had pitched into its waters.

His mind went westward on a once-familiar journey, now envisioning what he had learned was there. . . .

The blackness of burned forests over the Appalachians. The malformations of shore line in the still-blue, quiet Great Lakes, where not even flotsam moved with the wind any more. The naked ash of prairie that here and there was being reclaimed by weeds and grasses, of which some, botanists had said, after studying high-altitude photographs, were new species, adapted after mutation and by the remorseless process of selection for survival in the still-toxic emptiness. Beyond, the Rockies rose and then the Sierras, nude as the glaciers had left them, smoked-up in empty chaoses, snow-bearing, and without life that could chirrup, call, sing to the warmest sunrise, or howl at the strange urges of rising moons. Only that bizarre, new, insidious vegetation in patches, here and there. Farther beyond, the trampled, burned, jagged insanity of cities, of San Francisco, Los Angeles, and the rest, first buried in the death of isotopes, then sea-buried, and now awaiting reburial by time's descending dusts.

The man at his side brought back his attention by pointing. The pilot saw a smoke signal rising on a slight slant and, soon, the upturned faces of thirteen people standing in the morning light on their elevator, with little packages and cases at their feet.

He was used to upturned faces, as 'copters came down. These seemed at first no different--these thirteen. Yet they did differ in some way. The Aussie puzzled over it as he manipulated the controls, while his colleague called out the slight but bearable rise of radiation. Before he touched down, he understood the difference. These thirteen didn't wave very much. A hand now and then, lifted and drawn back quickly, almost selfconsciously. Why? People always waved at 'copters, and the Yanks weren't known for reticence. This was their great moment.

And there lay the clue.

They
were
Yanks. Americans. Specifically, North Americans. Citizens of the United States. All who remained alive in that enormous nation.

The Australian then understood a solemnity which, perhaps, the nearing survivors did not quite understand themselves.

He, and his following companions, would very soon take all thirteen away. They would leave the United States of America forever.