Tunnel in the Sky (29 page)

   
“I guess so. Carol, what's the situation?”

   
“Six on the sick list. About twice that many walking wounded. Those not hurt are gathering wood and cutting thorn. We fixed the ax.”

   
“Yes, but. . . we're not having to fight them off?”

   
“Didn't Sue tell you? A few buck walking around as if they were dazed. That's all.”

   
“They may start again.”

   
“If they do, we'll be ready.”

   
“Good.” He tried to raise up. “Where's Grant? How bad was he hurt?”

   
She shook her head. “Grant didn't make it, Roddie.”

   
“Huh?”

   
“Bob took off both legs at the knee and would have taken off one arm, but he died while he was operating.” She made a very final gesture. “In the creek.”

   
Rod started to speak, turned his head and buried his face. Caroline put a hand on him. “Don't take it hard, Roddie. Bob shouldn't have tried to save him. Grant is better off.”

   
Rod decided that Carol was right- no frozen limb banks on this planet. But it did not make him feel better. “We didn't appreciate him,” he muttered.

   
“Stow it!” Caroline whispered fiercely. “He was a fool.”

   
“Huh? Carol, I'm ashamed of you.”

   
He was surprised to see tears rolling down her cheeks. “You know he was a fool, Roddie Walker. Most of us knew. . . but we loved him anyhow. I would 'uv married him, but he never asked me.” She wiped at tears. “Have you seen the baby?”

   
“No.”

   
Her face lit up. “I'll fetch her. She's beautiful.”

   
“Sue said she was asleep.”

   
“Well . . . all right. But what I came up for is this: what do you want us to do?”

   
“Huh?” He tried to think. Grant was dead. “Bill was his deputy. Is Bill laid up?”

   
“Didn't Sue tell you?”

   
“Tell me what?”

   
“You're the mayor. We elected you this morning. Bill and Roy and I are just trying to hold things together.”

   
Rod felt dizzy. Caroline's face kept drawing back, then swooping in; he wondered if he were going to faint..

   
“-plenty of wood,” she was saying, “and we'll have the kraal built by sundown. We don't need meat; Margery is butchering that big fellow that fell off the bluff and busted his neck. We can't trek out until you and Carmen and the others can walk, so we're trying to get the place back into shape temporarily. Is there anything you want us to do now?”

   
He considered it. “No. Not now.

   
“Okay. You're supposed to rest.” She backed out, stood up. “I'll look in later.” Rod eased his leg and turned over. After a while he quieted and went to sleep.

   
Sue brought broth in a bowl, held his head while he drank, then fetched Hope Baxter and held her for him to see. Rod said the usual inanities, wondering if all new babies looked that way.

   
Then he thought for a long time.

   
Caroline showed up with Roy. “How's it going, Chief?” Roy said.

   
“Ready to bite a rattlesnake.”

   
“That's a nasty foot, but it ought to heal. We boiled the leaves and Bob used sulfa.”

   
“Feels all right. I don't seem feverish.”

   
“Jimmy always said you were too mean to die,” added Caroline. “Want anything, Roddie? Or to tell us anything?”

   
“Yes.”

   
“What?”

   
“Get me out of here. Help me down the path.” Roy said hastily, “Hey, you can't do that. You're not in shape.”

   
“Can't I? Either help, or get out of my way. And get everybody together. We're going to have a town meeting.”

   
They looked at each other and walked out on him. He had made it to the squeeze at the top when Baxter showed up. “Now, Rod! Get back and lie down.”

   
“Out of my way.”

   
“Listen, boy, I don't like to get rough with a sick man. But I will if you make me.”

   
“Bob. . . how bad is my ankle?”

   
“It's going to be all right . . . if you behave. If you don't- well, have you ever seen gangrene? When it turns black and has that sweetish odor?”

   
“Quit trying to scare me. Is there any reason not to put a line under my arms and lower me?”

   
“Well. . .”

   
They used two lines and a third to keep his injured leg free, with Baxter supervising. They caught him at the bottom and carried him to the cooking space, laid him down. “Thanks,” he grunted. “Everybody here who can get here?”

   
“I think so, Roddie. Shall I count?”

   
“Never mind. I understand you folks elected me cap- I mean 'mayor'- this morning?”

   
“That's right,” agreed Kennedy.

   
“Uh, who else was up? How many votes did I get?”

   
“Huh? It was unanimous.

   
Rod sighed. “Thanks. I'm not sure I would have held still for it if I'd been here. I gathered something else. Do I understand that you expect me to take you down to the caves Roy and I found? Caroline said something. . .”

   
Roy looked surprised. “We didn't vote it, Rod, but that was the idea. After last night everybody knows we can't stay here.”

   
Rod nodded. “I see. Are you all where I can see you? I've got something to say. I hear you adopted a constitution and things while Roy and I were away. I've never read them, so I don't know whether this is legal or not. But if I'm stuck with the job, I expect to run things. If somebody doesn't like what I do and we're both stubborn enough for a showdown, then you will vote. You back me up, or you turn me down and elect somebody else. Will that work? How about it, Goldie? You were on the law committee, weren't you?”

   
Howard Goldstein frowned. “You don't express it very well, Rod.”

   
“Probably not. Well?”

   
“But what you have described is the parliamentary vote-of-confidence. That's the backbone of our constitution. We did it that way to keep it simple and still democratic. It was Grant's notion.”

   
“I'm glad,” Rod said soberly. “I'd hate to think that I had torn up Grant's laws after he worked so hard on them. I'll study them, I promise, first chance I get. But about moving to the caves- we'll have a vote of confidence right now.”

   
Goldstein smiled. “I can tell you how it will come out. We're convinced.”

   
Rod slapped the ground. “You don't understand! If you want to move, move . . . but get somebody else to lead you. Roy can do it. Or Cliff, or Bill. But if you leave it to me, no dirty little beasts, all teeth and no brains, are going to drive us out. We're men.. . and men don't have to be driven out, not by the likes of those. Grant paid for this land- and I say stay here and keep it for him!”

   
The Honorable Roderick L. Walker, Mayor of Cowpertown, Chief of State of the sovereign planet GO-7390 1-Il (Lima Catalog), Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, Chief Justice, and Defender of Freedoms, was taking his ease in front of the Mayor's Palace. He was also scratching and wondering if he should ask somebody to cut his hair again-he suspected lice only this planet did not have lice.

   
His Chief of Government, Miss Caroline Beatrice Mshiyeni, squatted in front of him. “Roddie, I've told them and told them and told them . . . and it does no good. That family makes more filth than everybody else put together. You should have seen it this morning. Garbage in front of their door . . . flies!”

  
 
“I saw it.”

   
“Well, what do I do? If you would let me rough him up a little. But you're too soft”

   
“I guess I am.” Rod looked thoughtfully at a slab of slate erected in the village square. It read:

   
To the Memory Of

   
ULYSSES GRANT COWPER,

   
First Mayor

   
- who died for his city

   
The carving was not good; Rod had done it.

   
“Grant told me once,” he added, “that government was the art of getting along with people you don't like.”

   
“Well, I sure don't like Bruce and Theo!”

 
  
“Neither do I. But Grant would have figured out a way to keep them in line without getting rough.”

   
“You figure it out, I can't. Roddie, you should never have let Bruce come back. That was bad enough. But when he married that little . . . well!”

   
“They were made for each other,” Rod answered. “Nobody else would have married either of them.”

   
“It's no joke. It's almost- Hope! Quit teasing Grantie!” She bounced up.

   
Miss Hope Roberta Baxter, sixteen months, and Master Grant Roderick Throxton, thirteen months, stopped what they were doing, which was, respectively, slapping and crying. Both were naked and very dirty. It was “clean” dirt; each child had been bathed by Caroline an hour earlier, and both were fat and healthy.

   
Hope turned up a beaming face. “'Ood babee!” she asserted.

   
“I saw you.” Caroline upended her, gave her a spat that would not squash a fly, then picked up Grant Throxton.

   
“Give her to me,” Rod said.

   
“You're welcome to her,” Caroline said. She sat down with the boy in her lap and rocked him. “Poor baby! Show Auntie Carol where it hurts.”

   
“You shouldn't talk like that. You'll make a sissy of him.”

   
“Look who's talking! Wishy-Washy Walker.”

   
Hope threw her arms around Rod, part way, and cooed, “Woddie!” adding a muddy kiss. He returned it. He considered her deplorably spoiled; nevertheless he contributed more than his share of spoiling.

   
“Sure,” agreed Carol. “Everybody loves Uncle Roddie. He hands out the medals and Aunt Carol does the dirty work.”

   
“Carol, I've been thinking.”

   
“Warm day. Don't strain any delicate parts.”

   
“About Bruce and Theo. I'll talk to them.”

   
“Talk!”

   
“The only real punishment is one we never use- and I hope we never have to. Kicking people out, I mean. The McGowans do as they please because they don't think we would. But I would love to give them the old heave-ho. . . and if it comes to it, I'll make an issue of it before the town- either kick them out or I quit.”

   
“They'd back you. Why, I bet he hasn't taken a bath this week!”

   
“I don't care whether they back me or not. I've ridden out seven confidence votes; someday I'll be lucky and retire. But the problem is to convince Bruce that I am willing to face the issue, for then I won't have to. Nobody is going to chance being turned out in the woods, not when they've got it soft here. But he's got to be convinced.”

   
“Uh, maybe if he thought you were carrying a grudge about that slice in the ribs he gave you?”

   
“And maybe I am. But I can't let it be personal, Carol; I'm too stinkin' proud.”

   
“Uh . . . Turn it around. Convince him that the town is chompin' at the bit- which isn't far wrong- and you are trying to restrain them.”

   
“Um, that's closer. Yes, I think Grant would have gone for that. I'll think it over.”

   
“Do that.” She stood up. “I'm going to give these children another bath. I declare I don't know where they find so much dirt.”

   
She swung away with a child on each hip, heading for the shower sheds. Rod watched her lazily. She was wearing a leather bandeau and a Maori grass skirt, long leaves scraped in a pattern, curled, and dried. It was a style much favored and Caroline wore it around town, although when she treated herself to a day's hunting she wore a leather breechclout such as the men wore.