Collected Short Fiction, page 1119
“You are a born Traveler,” Bhengarn tells him.
They rest a time, feeding on the sparkling four-winged fruits that sprout in that garden above the ice. Bhengarn feels an immense calmness now that the climax of his peregrination is upon him. Never had he questioned the purpose of being a Traveler, nor has he had regret that destiny gave him that form, but now he is quite willing to yield it up.
“How far to Crystal Pond?” Noort asks.
“It is just over there,” says Bhengarn.
“Shall we go to it now?”
“Approach it with great care,” the Traveler warns. “It is a place of extraordinary power.”
They go forward; a path opens for them in the swaying grasses and low fleshy-leaved plants; within minutes they stand at the edge of a perfectly circular body of water of unfathomable depth and of a clarity so complete that the reflections of the sun can plainly be seen on the white sands of its infinitely distant bed. Bhengarn moves to the edge and peers in, and is pervaded by a sense of fulfillment and finality.
Noort says, “What will become of you here?”
“Observe,” says Bhengarn.
He enters Crystal Pond and swims serenely toward the farther shore, an enterprise quickly enough accomplished. But before he has reached the midpoint of the pond a tolling sound is heard in the air, as of bells of the most pure quality, striking notes without harmonic overtones. Sudden ecstasy engulfs him as he becomes aware of the beginning of his transformation: his body flows and streams in the flux of life, his limbs fuse, his soul expands. By the time he comes forth on the edge of the pond he has become something else, a great cone of passive flesh, which is able to drag itself no more than five or six times its own length from the water, and then sinks down on the sandy surface of the ground and begins the process of digging itself in. Here the Awaiter Bhengarn will settle, and here he will live for centuries of centuries, motionless, all but timeless, considering the primary truths of being. Already he is gliding into the Earth.
Noort gapes at him from the other side of the pond.
“Is this what you sought?” the Dutchman asks.
“Yes. Absolutely.”
“I wish you farewell and Godspeed, then!” Noort cries.
“And you—what will become of you?”
Noort laughs. “Have no fears for me! I see my destiny unfolding!”
Bhengarn, nestled now deep in the ground, enwombed by the earth, immobile, established already in his new life, watches as Noort strides boldly to the water’s edge. Only slowly, for an Awaiter’s mind is less agile than a Traveler’s, does Bhengarn comprehend what is to happen.
Noort says, “I’ve found my vocation again. But if I’m to travel, I must be equipped for traveling!”
He enters the pond, swimming in broad awkward splashing strokes, and once again the pure tolling sound is evoked, a delicate carillon of crystalline transparent tone, and there is sudden brilliance in the pond as Noort sprouts the shining scales of a Traveler, and the jointed limbs, and the strong thick tail. He scuttles out on the far side wholly transformed.
“Farewell!” Noort cries joyously.
“Farewell,” murmurs Bhengarn the Awaiter, peering out from the place of his long repose as Olivier van Noort, all his legs ablaze with new energy, strides away vigorously to begin his second circumnavigation of the of the globe.
The Election
When war destroys civilization, the highest priority is to rebuild the social structure which held it together. Or is it?
Lloyd Jansen came into the town by helicopter. There weren’t many helicopters left, and no new ones were being built yet, and there wasn’t a devil of a lot of decent fuel in storage. But they gave him a helicopter to use, because they knew it was important that he make a good impression on the townsmen.
The map said this was Ohio, but the old names didn’t mean much any more. Jansen had no specific assignment except to cover the old state with election notices. The Provisional Federal Government was extending its feelers, up from its Kentucky base into the hinterlands. Ohio, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee. Time to move westward later. There wasn’t too much left in the northeast.
Jansen’s assignment was Ohio. A lot of territory, and only a month to cover it all. But there weren’t many men to go around, and the job had to be done.
The town was the first he had sighted that morning. It was small, huddled-looking from the air, situated in the heart of a patch of pretty fertile-looking farmland. Jansen brought his copter down in the middle of the town, a broad square flanked with stubby old buildings. Even before the rotors had stopped moving, the townsmen were starting to collect, peering uneasily at him from across the street.
Jansen dug his thumb into the towering stack of election posters in the back of the cabin, peeled off about twenty of them, picked up the spraytite tube, and got out of the copter. About twenty people were watching him—saying nothing, just watching.
Rule One. In every way try to dispel hostility toward the Provisional Federal Government and its representatives.
Jansen smiled. No one returned the smile, though.
Shrugging, he walked toward a lamp-post, put down his stack of posters, took off the top one, positioned it at average eye level, and squeezed the handle of the spraytite tube. Handy stuff, spraytite. The poster clung.
NOTICE!
Pursuant to the articles of the Provisional Constitution of the United States of America, an election will be held on
Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2013
The candidates duty selected by nominating conventions are:
America Revival Party—
Benjamin V. Thurston for
President
Nicholas C. Ryan for Vice-President
National Progress Party—
Thomas C. Macintyre for President
Noel Parr for Vice-President
Election is to be by direct popular vote and by secret ballot. Your local Provisional Federal Government representative will explain the details of election procedure if necessary. Election of a National Congress will be scheduled at the order of the President-elect.
Given by my hand this 3rd day of August, 2013.
Benjamin V. Thurston,
Acting President
Provisional Federal Government
Scottsville, Kentucky
Jansen stepped back, surveyed the poster, nodded, and moved on. A couple of townsmen wandered over to inspect it. I hope they can read, Jansen thought.
He looked back again after he had placed a second and third poster in strategic places. He was definitely drawing a crowd. And they were reading the posters, discussing them, muttering to each other.
Then Jansen saw a boy of about twelve, wearing only a pair of ragged jeans, reach up and begin to draw with a piece of charcoal on the first poster.
“Hey!” Jansen yelled, rushing across the square. “You can’t deface a government sign!”
The boy looked up, grinning. He had drawn a shockingly obscene sketch of Jansen.
“Who says I can’t?”
Jansen nibbled his lip. “Look,” he said, “you can’t go around drawing on these posters. It isn’t right.”
“Says who?”
Scowling, Jansen glanced at the crowd. They were laughing now. Laughing at him.
Gesturing at the defaced poster, he said, “Are this boy’s parents here?” When no one spoke up, he went on, “Isn’t there anyone here who’ll explain to this boy that it’s wrong to scrawl on government signs?”
The crowd tittered. Jansen checked his anger and wiped out the sketch with his handkerchief. He stalked back across the square to continue his work.
Behind him, someone sang out, “Hey, mister, what’s an election?”
Jansen turned. “Who said that?”
“I did.” A tall young fellow stepped forward—about twenty, so he had never known any other kind of world but this one. But his eyes held intelligence, and Jansen knew he was being baited.
Frowning, Jansen said, “An election is the free choice of a government.”
“You mean I can pick between this Thurston fellow and this Macintyre fellow for who I want to be President of the United States?”
“That’s right.”
“But suppose I don’t want them.
Suppose I want Ned Ludlow here to be president.”
Jansen managed an uneasy smile. “Naturally, it would be a good thing if we could all pick our best friends to run the government. But we can’t really do that, can we? We have to be sure that the men we chose are qualified for the position.”
“And Thurston and Macintyre are qualified?”
“Yes.”
“Who says so?” There was no real truculence in the question, just a slow, unshatterable obstinacy.
Jansen held up a poster and pointed to the official seal. “The Provisional Federal Government says they’re qualified.”
His interlocuter guffawed. “Come off it, mister. That thing’s signed by Ben Thurston! You gonna stand there and tell me that Ben Thurston declares that Ben Thurston is qualified to be president, and have me swallow it?”
The crowd snickered. Jansen, reddening, realized dismally that he was losing them right at the start.
“Ben Thurston didn’t write that poster. He just issued it, because he’s temporarily in charge. The candidates for president were picked by conventions of the people, held in Kentucky last month.”
“Yeah. And who picked the convention people?”
“Why—” Jansen sputtered for an instant. “They were chosen by the whole electorate of Kentucky.”
“How come we wasn’t asked?”
“The next time, you will be. The important thing is to get the government moving again. Once we’ve rebuilt communication channels, once we’ve linked the country up again, we can hold a real nationwide nominating convention. Until then, we just had to pick the best men we had, and put them up for your approval. You’ll get your chance to hear both Thurston and Mac in tyre. They’ll be touring this way next month to explain their programs.”
That fairly lengthy statement was met with silence. Jansen rocked back and forth on his heels, waiting for some new challenge. None came. He smiled broadly at the crowd, hoping for at least one smile in return. But a solid row of sullen faces glowered back at him.
And then the crowd seemed to lose interest both in him and in his posters. They melted driftingly away, leaving him without an audience. A boy of four stood alone near him, looking up quizzically, and then he, too, slipped away.
Jansen shrugged. They had warned him yesterday, before sending him out on this job, that he was likely to meet resistance. The people of this area had been isolated for years. They might not show too much interest in getting the government started again.
The election, Jansen thought, was a wonderful thing—a sign that the decade and a half of anarchy was over, and that a rebirth of the old United States was at last under way. True, the beginning was slow. First, the nucleus in Kentucky—the surviving members of the old government and the new, postblowup leaders coming together for the Constitutional Convention. The new Constitution was a lot like the old one, except that it made provision for more gradual federalization. Graduality was the keyword. It had to be. No one this side of the Rockies had heard from the West Coast at all in fifteen years. It was impossible to go about hurrying the reconstruction when the country was still this badly splintered.
But at least we won the war, Jansen thought.
The job of rebuilding was inching along. Ben Thurston had done wonders organizing Kentucky. But he was troubled about his self-assumed mantle. He wanted an election to confirm him in office—if not a national election, then at least one held in the nearby states. Nobody seriously thought Tom Macintyre would be elected, and certainly Tom didn’t want to take the job away from Ben. But there had to be two candidates, to keep the old forms alive.
After the election, Jansen thought, the Provisional Government would have some sort of legal authority. Ben would call for the election of a Congress, would appoint judges, would send out representatives to the more distant states. Gradually the old web of tradition and custom would be spun anew. A Government of the United States would again be supreme from shore to shore, less than twenty years after the destruction.
Jansen felt a sense of pride, knowing that he was part of the rebuilding. It was a glorious thing to be alive at the same time Ben Thurston was.
But the moment of elation soured. His first contact with the citizenry beyond Kentucky hadn’t been encouraging. It would take patient toil to undo the damage of anarchy, to persuade these people that they needed to join in the effort to rebuild.
After all, he thought, they were really only peasants. He didn’t want to sound patronizing, but it was the truth. They lived close to the land here, they toiled without end, and if they lifted their eyes to the stars it was only to find out whether or not it was going to rain. The big issues of philosophy and politics didn’t matter to them. They weren’t philosophers. And they probably couldn’t see much use for a Federal Government, either.
But maybe they would, someday, Jansen told himself. And some day these people would bless the name of Ben Thurston. Maybe even bless the name of Lloyd Jansen.
He took another poster from his stack and started to stick it to the sycamore tree. As he was about to apply the spraytite, a voice said behind him, “We’d like to have a word with you, mister.”
Poised for trouble, Jansen turned and confronted three men. They looked unsavory—lean, all three, raggedly dressed, with uneasy flickering eyes and stubbly faces.
“What is it?” Jansen asked.
The man in the middle thrust out his hand. “Name’s Chuck Webster. I seen your signs put up. I come to tell you I’m with you one hundred percent. Lot of people here don’t like this election thing, but I’m with you.”
“Yeah,” one of his flankers said. “The election’s a good thing.”
Jansen relaxed. These three didn’t look too trustworthy, but at least it was a beginning. At least there were three men in this town who didn’t react with blank-faced apathy to the whole idea of a federal election. “Glad to hear I’ve got some supporters in town,” Jansen said.
Webster stuck his thumbs into his belt. “We figure the Federal Government can help us out some, that’s why we’re behind you. This town’s in a bad way, y’see. We got a dictator here who runs the place. But maybe you Feds can bust him down to size.”
“A dictator?” Jansen said.
“Name of Broderick, Sam Broderick. Set himself up as boss right after the blowup,” Webster said. “We had some decent folk running things, but Broderick just tossed them out and took over. Runs this town like he owns it.”
“Won’t let decent people speak up,” one of the other men said, scowling. “A regular dictator.”
Jansen frowned. “How come he can’t be tossed out himself?”
“He’s got the people bulldozed,” Webster said darkly. “Two-thirds of this town don’t give a damn. They’re willing to let Sam Broderick tell them what to do.”
“How about the rest?”
“Lot of us don’t like Broderick, but we ain’t organized right. He’s too strong for us. Few years back I tried to push him over, but it wouldn’t work. I got my men, though. Lots of people round here think I oughta be running this town insteada him. A lot of Broderick’s own people think that way, too. Deep down they’d rather have me in charge, but they’re too scared of Broderick to admit it.”
“This is just why we need a central government again,” Jansen said. “To prevent local government from falling into the hands of tinhorn bosses.”
“A-men,” Webster agreed. “Look—I’m gonna try to get the people back of your election. Broderick, he don’t want any elections, but I’ll see that we get one. Provided the Federal Government recognizes me and my men as the legal government of this town, that is it.”
Jansen hesitated for a moment. Then he nodded; the election idea had to be put across. Webster might not be any paragon of virtue, but at least he seemed law-abiding, which this Broderick certainly wasn’t. “I can’t give you any definite guarantee, of course,” Jansen said. “Let’s just say that once the authority of the Federal Government is reestablished in this town, we’ll conduct a thorough investigation. If the constitutional rights of the citizens are being violated, we’ll take steps to reestablish democracy and law and order here—which means throwing out Broderick. Fair enough?”
“It’s a deal,” Webster said, grinning snagtoothedly. “We’ll back up you people, and you back me up against Sam Broderick. And—”
“There ain’t gonna be any deals like that made in town,” a booming voice rumbled suddenly. “Get yourself outa here, Webster.”
