The Past Through Tomorrow (87 page)

“Why, you—” MacKinnon shut up and kept the rest of his anger to himself. The surly louts! Gone was the faintest trace of regret at leaving civilization. He’d show them! He could get along without them.

But it was twenty minutes and more before he stood beside his heaped up belongings and watched the ship rise. Fortunately the skipper had not been adamant about the time limit. He turned and commenced loading his steel tortoise. Under the romantic influence of the classic literature of a bygone day he had considered using a string of burros, but had been unable to find a zoo that would sell them to him. It was just as well—he was completely ignorant of the limits, foibles, habits, vices, illnesses, and care of those useful little beasts, and unaware of his own ignorance. Master and servant would have vied in making each other unhappy.

The vehicle he had chosen was not an unreasonable substitute for burros. It was extremely rugged, easy to operate, and almost fool-proof. It drew its power from six square yards of sunpower screens on its low curved roof. These drove a constant-load motor, or, when halted, replenished the storage battery against cloudy weather, or night travel. The bearings were “everlasting,” and every moving part, other than the caterpillar treads and the controls, were sealed up, secure from inexpert tinkering.

It could maintain a steady six miles per hour on smooth, level pavement. When confronted by hills, or rough terrain, it did not stop, but simply slowed until the task demanded equalled its steady power output.

The steel tortoise gave MacKinnon a feeling of Crusoe-like independence. It did not occur to him his chattel was the end product of the cumulative effort and intelligent co-operation of hundreds of thousands of men, living and dead. He had been used all his life to the unfailing service of much more intricate machinery, and honestly regarded the tortoise as a piece of equipment of the same primitive level as a woodsman’s axe, or a hunting knife. His talents had been devoted in the past to literary criticism rather than engineering, but that did not prevent him from believing that his native intelligence and the aid of a few reference books would be all that he would really need to duplicate the tortoise, if necessary.

Metal ores were necessary, he knew, but saw no obstacle in that, his knowledge of the difficulties of prospecting, mining, and metallurgy being as sketchy as his knowledge of burros.

His goods filled every compartment of the compact little freighter. He checked the last item from his inventory and ran a satisfied eye down the list. Any explorer or adventurer of the past might well be pleased with such equipment, he thought. He could imagine showing Jack London his knock-down cabin. See, Jack, he would say, it’s proof against any kind of weather—perfectly insulated walls and floor—and can’t rust. It’s so light that you can set it up in five minutes by yourself, yet it’s so strong that you can sleep sound with the biggest grizzly in the world snuffling right outside your door.

And London would scratch his head, and say, Dave, you’re a wonder. If I’d had that in the Yukon, it would have been a cinch!

He checked over the list again. Enough concentrated and desiccated food and vitamin concentrates to last six months. That would give him time enough to build hothouses for hydroponics, and get his seeds started. Medical supplies—he did not expect to need those, but foresight was always best. Reference books of all sorts. A light sporting rifle-vintage: last century. His face clouded a little at this. The War Department had positively refused to sell him a portable blaster. When he had claimed the right of common social heritage, they had grudgingly provided him with the plans and specifications, and told him to build his own. Well, he would, the first spare time he got.

Everything else was in order. MacKinnon climbed into the cockpit, grasped the two hand controls, and swung the nose of the tortoise toward the guardhouse. He had been ignored since the ship had landed; he wanted to have the gate opened and to leave.

Several soldiers were gathered around the guardhouse. He picked out a legate by the silver stripe down the side of his kilt and spoke to him. “I’m ready to leave. Will you kindly open the Gate?”

“Okay,” the officer answered him, and turned to a soldier who wore the plain grey kilt of a private’s field uniform. “Jenkins, tell the power house to dilate—about a number three opening, tell them,” he added, sizing up the dimensions of the tortoise.

He turned to MacKinnon. “It is my duty to tell you that you may return to civilization, even now, by agreeing to be hospitalized for your neurosis.”

“I have no neurosis!”

“Very well. If you change your mind at any future time, return to the place where you entered. There is an alarm there with which you may signal to the guard that you wish the gate opened.”

“I can’t imagine needing to know that.”

The legate shrugged. “Perhaps not—but we send refugees to quarantine all the time. If I were making the rules, it might be harder to get out again.” He was cut off by the ringing of an alarm. The soldiers near them moved smartly away, drawing their blasters from their belts as they ran. The ugly snout of a fixed blaster poked out over the top of the guardhouse and pointed toward the Barrier.

The legate answered the question on MacKinnon’s face. “The power house is ready to open up.” He waved smartly toward that building, then turned back. “Drive straight through the center of the opening. It takes a lot of power to suspend the stasis; if you touch the edge, we’ll have to pick up the pieces.”

A tiny, bright dot appeared in the foot of the barrier opposite where they waited. It spread into a half circle across the lampblack nothingness. Now it was large enough for MacKinnon to see the countryside beyond through the arch it had formed. He peered eagerly.

The opening grew until it was twenty feet wide, then stopped. It framed a scene of rugged, barren hills. He took this in, and turned angrily on the legate. “I’ve been tricked!” he exclaimed. “That’s not fit land to support a man.”

“Don’t be hasty,” he told MacKinnon. “There’s good land beyond. Besides—you don’t have to enter. But if you are going, go!”

MacKinnon flushed, and pulled back on both hand controls. The treads bit in and the tortoise lumbered away, straight for the Gateway to Coventry.

When he was several yards beyond the Gate, he glanced back. The Barrier loomed behind him, with nothing to show where the opening had been. There was a little sheetmetal shed adjacent to the point where he had passed through. He supposed that it contained the alarm the legate had mentioned, but he was not interested and turned his eyes back to his driving.

Stretching before him, twisting between rocky hills, was a road of sorts. It was not paved and the surface had not been repaired recently, but the grade averaged downhill and the tortoise was able to maintain a respectable speed. He continued down it, not because he fancied it, but because it was the only road which led out of surroundings obviously unsuited to his needs.

The road was untravelled. This suited him; he had no wish to encounter other human beings until he had located desirable land to settle on, and had staked out his claim. But the hills were not devoid of life; several times he caught glimpses of little dark shapes scurrying among the rocks, and occasionally bright, beady eyes stared back into his.

It did not occur to him at first that these timid little animals, streaking for cover at his coming, could replenish his larder—he was simply amused and warmed by their presence. When he did happen to consider that they might be used as food, the thought was at first repugnant to him—the custom of killing for “sport” had ceased to be customary long before his time; and inasmuch as the development of cheap synthetic proteins in the latter half of the preceding century had spelled the economic ruin of the business of breeding animals for slaughter, it is doubtful if he had ever tasted animal tissue in his life.

But once considered, it was logical to act. He expected to live off the country; although he had plenty of food on hand for the immediate future, it would be wise to conserve it by using what the country offered. He suppressed his esthetic distaste and ethical misgivings, and determined to shoot one of the little animals at the first opportunity.

Accordingly, he dug out the rifle, loaded it, and placed it handy. With the usual perversity of the world-as-it-is, no game was evident for the next half hour. He was passing a little shoulder of rocky outcropping when he saw his prey. It peeked at him from behind a small boulder, its sober eyes wary but unperturbed. He stopped the tortoise and took careful aim, resting and steadying the rifle on the side of the cockpit. His quarry accommodated him by hopping out into full view.

He pulled the trigger, involuntarily tensing his muscles and squinting his eyes as he did so. Naturally, the shot went high and to the right.

But he was much too busy just then to be aware of it. It seemed that the whole world had exploded. His right shoulder was numb, his mouth stung as if he had been kicked there, and his ears rang in a strange and unpleasant fashion. He was surprised to find the gun still intact in his hands and apparently none the worse for the incident.

He put it down, clambered out of the car, and rushed up to where the small creature had been. There was no sign of it anywhere. He searched the immediate neighborhood, but did not find it. Mystified, he returned to his conveyance, having decided that the rifle was in some way defective, and that he should inspect it carefully before attempting to fire it again.

His recent target watched his actions cautiously from a vantage point yards away, to which it had stampeded at the sound of the shot. It was equally mystified by the startling events, being no more used to firearms than was MacKinnon.

Before he started the tortoise again, MacKinnon had to see to his upper lip, which was swollen and tender and bleeding from a deep scratch. This increased his conviction that the gun was defective. Nowhere in the romantic literature of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, to which he was addicted, had there been a warning that, when firing a gun heavy enough to drop a man in his tracks, it is well not to hold the right hand in such a manner that the recoil will cause the right thumb and thumb nail to strike the mouth.

He applied an antiseptic and a dressing of sorts, and went on his way, somewhat subdued. The arroyo by which he had entered the hills had widened out, and the hills were greener. He passed around one sharp turn in the road, and found a broad fertile valley spread out before him. It stretched away until it was lost in the warm day’s haze.

Much of the valley was cultivated, and he could make out human habitations. He continued toward it with mixed feelings. People meant fewer hardships, but it did not look as if staking out a claim would be as simple as he had hoped. However—Coventry was a big place.

He had reached the point where the road gave onto the floor of the valley, when two men stepped out into his path. They were carrying weapons of some sort at the ready. One of them called out to him:

“Halt!”

MacKinnon did so, and answered him as they came abreast. “What do you want?”

“Customs inspection. Pull over there by the office.” He indicated a small building set back a few feet from the road, which MacKinnon had not previously noticed. He looked from it back to the spokesman, and felt a slow, unreasoning heat spread up from his viscera. It rendered his none too stable judgment still more unsound.

“What the deuce are you talking about?” he snapped. “Stand aside and let me pass.”

The one who had remained silent raised his weapon and aimed it at MacKinnon’s chest. The other grabbed his arm and pulled the weapon out of line. “Don’t shoot the dumb fool, Joe,” he said testily. “You’re always too anxious.” Then to MacKinnon, “You’re resisting the law. Come on—be quick about it!”

“The law?” MacKinnon gave a bitter laugh and snatched his rifle up from the seat. It never reached his shoulder—the man who had done all the talking fired casually, without apparently taking time to aim. MacKinnon’s rifle was smacked from his grasp and flew into the air, landing in the roadside ditch behind the tortoise.

The man who had remained silent followed the flight of the gun with detached interest, and remarked, “Nice shot, Blackie. Never touched him.”

“Oh, just luck,” the other demurred, but grinned his pleasure at the compliment. “Glad I didn’t nick him, though—saves writing out a report.” He reassumed an official manner, spoke again to MacKinnon, who had been sitting dumbfounded, rubbing his smarting hands. “Well, tough guy? Do you behave, or do we come up there and get you?”

MacKinnon gave in. He drove the tortoise to the designated spot, and waited sullenly for orders. “Get out and start unloading,” he was told.

He obeyed, under compulsion. As he piled his precious possessions on the ground, the one addressed as Blackie separated the things into two piles, while Joe listed them on a printed form. He noticed presently that Joe listed only the items that went into the first pile. He understood this when Blackie told him to reload the tortoise with the items from that pile, and commenced himself to carry goods from the other pile into the building. He started to protest—Joe punched him in the mouth, coolly and without rancor. MacKinnon went down, but got up again, fighting. He was in such a blind rage that he would have tackled a charging rhino.
Joe
timed his rush, and clipped him again. This time he could not get up at once.

Blackie stepped over to a washstand in one corner of the office. He came back with a wet towel and chucked it at MacKinnon. “Wipe your face on that, bud, and get back in the buggy. We got to get going.”

MacKinnon had time to do a lot of serious thinking as he drove Blackie into town. Beyond a terse answer of “Prize court” to MacKinnon’s inquiry as to their destination, Blackie did not converse, nor did MacKinnon press him, anxious as he was to have information. His mouth pained him from repeated punishment, his head ached, and he was no longer tempted to precipitate action by hasty speech.

Evidently Coventry was not quite the frontier anarchy he had expected it to be. There was a government of sorts, apparently, but it resembled nothing that he had ever been used to. He had visualized a land of noble, independent spirits who gave each other wide berth and practised mutual respect. There would be villains, of course, but they would be treated to summary, and probably lethal, justice as quickly as they demonstrated their ugly natures. He had a strong, though subconscious, assumption that virtue is necessarily triumphant.