Peace in the Wilderness Read online

  “But why” Kerry asked, “would anyone deliberately set out to hoax a whole world ?"

  “Isn't it obvious?” Ben Thrusher stirred against Ruthie's embroidered pillowcases. “Power. The seeds were planted far back in the Third World War, when they first began giving the President special emergency powers. The Three Days’ War put the whole continent under martial law, and now their non-existent Pharig invasion has done the same for the whole world!"

  Kerry was almost beyond speech. He got up and paced the room in silence. Finally he said, “It makes a kind of sense. Only maybe there was an emergency you don't know anything about. Would you rather have the Free Americas and the Asian Alliance dropping bombs on each other? Remember the Three Days’ War—"

  “But we won it!” Ben said fiercely, “We were a great nation then! We could knock out half the world at the push of a button, and now—"

  Fallon chimed in, “And now we have a non-existent war where nobody gets killed except on paper, where the Asian Alliance no longer threatens our very existence—"

  “—and where scientists spend their valuable time and resources fiddling with solar power and free food and birth control when we could have freed the world and set our course for the stars.” Ben's voice shook with the intensity of his emotion. “Kerry, what have we got?"

  Beyond the window, the curfew lights winked out.

  “If you're right,” Kerry said thoughtfully, “We've got what men have been looking for since history began. We've got peace."

  Ben Thrusher shook his head.

  “Solitudinem faciunt: pacem appellant,” he quoted with heavy bitterness. “They made a wilderness and call it peace!"

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  * * *

  IV

  Sunlight was streaming in through the window of Kerry's private office. He stared at the sheet of paper which he'd just removed from his typewriter, and said—more to himself than to Lew Fallon—Someone once said that you can't fool all of the people all of the time."

  “The hell you can't!” Fallon's voice was bitter. “It's been done time and time again! Hoaxes, even clumsy and silly ones, have thrown whole states into panic until somebody in an ‘official’ position denied them. This time, there were no denials, that's all. What do people believe? On a world as big as this one, by and large, they believe what they're told."

  Fallon leaned across Kerry's desk. “Listen. I was a rookie in the Night Police. I never saw a Pharig, but it never occurred to me to doubt their existence. My training manuals told me how to fight them. I had a special gun to kill them. My whole job was to keep people off the streets to protect them against the Pharigs! If a crime was committed, and we failed to actually catch somebody in the act, everyone assumed that the Pharigs had done it. Humans weren't supposed to be capable of such things! I'm just learning what humans are capable of! A thousand—even five hundred—people could know and share the secret, and a whole world could be hoaxed!"

  Kerry handed Fallon his editorial. “If we can get this into print we can start people asking questions,” he said.

  He was remembering all he had heard from Ben, and from young Fallon after he had finally persuaded Ben to take a sedative and try to sleep. Kerry himself had not slept at all. During his years as head of the Times-Telegram he had been content to print the news as he received it. He had been content to be just another dupe in the human herd!

  Now Ben Thrusher was giving his life so that the truth could come out. The fact could not be disputed. If Ben had given himself up for immediate medical attention, they might have been able to save him. By the ghosts of all newsman, here was a crusade worth taking on!

  The youngster was musing over the editorial. “'It has long been the policy of this paper to print all the news without bias and without questioning the sources, when we had reasonable assurance of the integrity of those sources,'” he read aloud. “I like this part down here better, though. ‘The people of the sabotaged former Government of the Free Americas have been made the victim of the most audacious coup in modern history—’”

  Someone knocked at the door. When Kerry drew back the bolt and looked out the morning sunlight glinted brightly on a metal service belt and the somber color of a uniform.

  “Mr. Donalson?” the policeman asked.

  Kerry nodded, and stepped back from the doorway.

  The man showed credentials. “I believe you once knew a government scientist by the name of Benedict Thrusher?” he said. “Is that correct?"

  Kerry frowned. “Why, yes. We were very good friends at one time. When he died eight years ago—” Kerry paused in consternation.

  Lew Fallon's muscles had gone rigid. He tried to telegraph to the youth, with a casual nod, that what he was witnessing was just the routine inquiry which he had been expecting all along. But it was no use. He knew he had to get Lew Fallon out of the room before he did something unwise.

  Kerry said to the policeman, “Excuse me just a minute.” Then he pointed to the editorial in Fallon's hand. “Joe, take that down to the press room and tell them to give it a box on the front page."

  He prayed that Fallon would see through the little comedy and would obey him without question. He had a bad moment—fortunately the policeman's back was turned—when Fallon looked startled and indignant. But he need not have been alarmed. Fallon glanced down at the editorial and almost instantly departed.

  “Check, Mr. Donalson,” Fallon said.

  Kerry tried not to let his relief betray him. He turned abruptly and gave his attention to the policeman again. “You were saying?"

  The officer put his credentials away. “Please come with me, Mr. Donalson,” he said.

  Kerry's solar plexus knotted. “Do you mind telling me why?” he demanded.

  “I'd rather not say here,” the officer replied.

  Kerry stood up and reached for his coat. It still might be the routine inquiry. More as a test than as a real question; “May I call my wife?” he asked.

  The policeman motioned Kerry to precede him through the door. “There's no need for that,” he said. “You'll be coming right back."

  Kerry framed a silent “Oh yeah?” but he did not say it aloud. He sagged despondently in the seat of the prowlie, while the siren screamed through the jammed streets.

  After a few minutes, he decided that a too-stubborn silence could be as dangerously revealing as unguarded talk.

  “Why am I being taken in a police car?” he asked, in a dignified way. “Where am I going?"

  The officer answered at once. “Your friend didn't die, Mr. Donalson. He's up in the police-precinct hospital. I guess he asked for you."

  “Ben Thrusher?” Kerry felt trapped. He had been so sure that Ben would be safe at his house. But if they had taken him from there, what might have happened to Ruthie and the children? He found himself wishing that Ben had chosen a man without wife or children to confide in.

  The precinct station of the Night Police was an immense remodeled factory. Inside, the halls were dusty, and full of odd unfamiliar smells. Only on the top floor was the corridor sanitary, and pungent with the flavor of disinfectants. Still shepherded by the policeman, Kerry found himself being hustled along behind the white-smocked back of a capped nurse.

  The policeman said in a whisper, outside a door, “Your friend's in there. I better warn you, he's a mess. I guess the Pharigs had him prisoner all these years. He looks like it, anyway."

  Kerry went in. The walls and the bed and pillows were a pale frosty green. Ben's face, against that cool background was shocking, horribly disintegrated even in the few hours since Kerry had last seen him. A needle dripped fluid into an ‘immobilized’ arm. The hands, tightly re-bandaged, showed brownish stains through the white folds.

  Across the bed Kerry faced a tall darkly handsome man, uniformed—not in the somber color of the Night Police—but in the blazing blue of the Army of Earth United. A commander's stars sparkled on his sleeve.

  Kerry said softly, “Be
n—"

  Ben's eyes forced themselves open. A pallid flicker of recognition stirred in them, and the hideous cavern of the mouth moved. From somewhere back of it a deep despairing sound came, that might, or might not, have been a word. Even that much effort twisted the ruined face into spasms, and the tall man on the other side bent forward.

  “Don't try to talk,” he said gently. “Everything's all right."

  Questions were screaming inside Kerry's brain—questions Ben could never answer and the police probably would turn aside. He stared in fierce interrogation at the stranger, who bowed very slightly.

  “Mr. Donalson?” the tall officer said, “I am Commander Shakhara Lal, stationed in Delhi.” He offered his hand, but Kerry ignored it. The commander walked around the bed. “I assure you, Mr. Donalson,” he said, “we knew Ben Thrusher's whereabouts long before he tried to contact you. We had not the slightest desire to make him prisoner, although if he had surrendered himself sooner—” he broke off, looking at Ben's inert body.

  “Dr. Chapman is recovering nicely,” he added. He spoke perfect English, but a certain extra precision and sibilance betrayed that it was not his native language.

  Kerry started to speak, but, just then the face on the pillow suddenly loosened and seemed to come apart. The nurse started forward, then tightened her lips and said reproachfully, “He's gone! If we'd had him here a week ago—"

  While the nurse drew the sheet over what had been Ben Thrusher, Kerry stood motionless, unnerved by tension and grief and a sense of futile wrath. He looked up suddenly and realized that Commander Lal seemed equally unnerved.

  The Indian was looking down at the shrouded form, and his fists were tightly clenched. He said aloud, and not to Kerry, “If he could have waited only three more years he would have seen the end of it. He could have had the glory he deserved."

  He raised his head, and now he was speaking to Kerry. “There's nothing more that anyone can do now for him here. Mr. Donalson, will you join me in the office downstairs?"

  He left the room without a backward glance, walking with an air of authority as if it never occurred to him that anyone could question his orders. Kerry's brain, cold with anger, began working again as soon as he stepped out into the corridor. He knew that downstairs were precinct headquarters, offices, the barracks of the city's enormous force of Night Police, and the detention cells where he supposed they'd hold him incommunicado—like Ben's colleague. But if he could get away—

  They'd expect him to hide, naturally. What else does a fugitive do? But all he wanted was to make sure that his editorial got printed and the Times-Telegram reached the streets.

  After that he couldn't disappear, or be listed as—he understood it better now—another Pharig casualty. He could do that much for Ben's memory, and he would do it, or die in the attempt.

  At the end of the corridor, past the elevators, a small and narrow stairway led down to what was evidently a back alley. Kerry waited until the commander had stepped into the elevator, followed by the policeman who had brought Kerry here. Then he abruptly stepped back, dodged, and made a break for the stairs.

  Someone behind him gave a startled shout. There was the sound of a door slamming shut, running feet, and then, just as Kerry reached the tops step, someone yelled, “Stop that crazy fool!"

  A blinding light stabbed at Kerry's eyes, and a paralyzing cold hit him over the heart. The every nerve and muscle contracted in agony, and he collapsed in a bundle of jerking reflexes. Conscious, but powerless to control his body, he felt himself rolling, twisting and bumping, down the stairs. His head struck marble, and he blacked out.

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  * * *

  V

  Kerry became aware again of his surroundings very slowly. First there was light and air and the jab of a needle in his biceps. Then his eyes blinked open, and sunlight pierced them like another needle. There was a painful prickling in every part of his body and he groaned when he tried to move his feet. He was lying, without his coat and shoes, on a hospital bed, and a young man in a white jacket was standing beside him.

  “You wake up again? Good.” He looked down at Kerry, chuckling. “What happened, to you? A touch of the sun? Well, we're all more or less crazy these days. I'm afraid you'll be stiff and sore for a few days; those neuron-guns are no joke."

  He beckoned to a nurse, who brought a sterile tray. The intern rolled back Kerry's sleeve, dabbed at it and jabbed him again with a needle.

  Kerry's lips were still stiff. He put up his hand and rubbed at them and managed to mumble, “What's that?"

  “Neurotone,” the intern said. “If you have much muscular pain, see your own doctor and get another shot.” He turned to someone just outside the door. “He's all right now. He must have caught it right in the chest. Good thing you have a strong heart, Mr. Donalson. A man your age doesn't want to take too many shocks like that."

  A policeman stood hesitant in the doorway. “Listen, Mister,” he said, “I'm sorry I had to shoot you, only don't you never run away when a policeman yells at you. You know we can't take chances with the Pharigs!"

  “You needn't apologize, Sergeant,” said another voice behind him.

  Kerry, stooping to lace his shoes, straightened and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. He looked up at Commander Lal, who made a dismissing motion at the policeman.

  “A guilty conscience is a very bad thing to have around a police station, Mr. Donalson,” said Commander Lal. “If you had waited for a minute you would have known there was no charge against you. And just to relieve you mind I may add that you will be perfectly free to leave here in half an hour. However, I must first request the favor of an interview."

  Downstairs in a small, windowless office, the commander took a seat behind, a battered desk, obviously not his own, and gestured Kerry to a chair.

  “Before we begin,” he said quietly, “I want to make one thing clear. Ben Thrusher was brought here at his own request—a statement which the members of your family can verify. At the last moment, I believe he didn't want to make trouble for you by dying in your house."

  His eyes, dark and level and severe, met those of Kerry across the desk. “I assure you that you are in no personal danger,” he said. “On the other hand, it is absolutely imperative that we keep you from making—shall we say—irresponsible statements."

  The door to an inner office opened, and Lew Fallon, escorted by Night Police, came in. He looked a trifle rumpled and sinister, with a torn collar and the traces of a bloody nose, and he was accompanied by a man whose face Kerry dimly recognized before memory could put a name to him. He was Paul Chapman, the Australian rocketry expert who had dropped out of sight at the same time as Ben Thrusher. He was bandaged like Ben and battered and toothless. But he was recognizable.

  Commander Lal dropped a crumpled piece of paper on the desk. “I believe that you'll want to reconsider before printing this,” he said.

  Kerry did not need to look at it to know that it was the editorial and rough draft of the news story he had written. He crushed it in his hand.

  Lew Fallon said bitterly, “I did the best I could, Mr. Donalson. Ben's dead now. Like my Dad. And for what?"

  “Be quiet, Lew,” said Doctor Chapman in a resonant voice which had a little of the same blurred quality as Ben's, but was made sharper by an accent of authority. “We appreciate what you did for Ben. Only—"

  “Only it was the wrong thing,” the commander interrupted. “We all appreciate it, and I, perhaps, most of all. But your mistaken kindness killed him, Fallon."

  He leaned forward slightly, and said, “I shall be perfectly frank with you, Mr. Donalson. If you were a farmer, or a plumber, or the manager of a cigar store, we would let you talk all you pleased, for we could be quite sure that no one would listen. We could always have you confined—briefly of course—in a mental institution, as a precaution against anyone believing you. Or at the worst—” he paused. “At the worst we could have you listed as—
another Pharig casualty."

  Fallon burst out, “And they call this a free world!"

  The commander ignored him. “There are laws against inciting to riot,” he said slowly, as if searching for the right words. “And you are in the peculiar position of having a large communications medium at your command. I assure you we would have no compunctions about invoking those laws against you. However, we hope such drastic action may not be necessary."

  At present, there are four other newspapers in your exact position. One in Buenos Aires, one in Dallas, Texas, one in Bombay and one in Sheffield, England. To the owners and editors of these newspapers, we have made the identical revelation we are making to you. Ben Thrusher was right. There are no Pharigs. There never were any."

  “So Ben was right,” Dr. Chapman repeated, looking hard at Kerry. “We've actually got a military dictatorship."

  Commander Lal said, “We had a military dictatorship after the Three Days’ War—or rather, we had two of them. The Asian Alliance—we freely admit it—were planning to use plague germs in the next war, and I don't believe even your most rabid nationalists would deny that the Free Americas were making rocket-bombs with radiocobalt warheads. Atomic war is a lemming urge, and it would at least have remedied our worst problem—overpopulation. Natural resources were going fast. Coal and oil were virtually gone, and we had to save the heavy isotopes for space flight, or we'd never get off the earth, and we'd die on a worn-out planet."

  He shrugged heavily. “The Pharig invasion was a desperate expedient. The so-called military decision not to use H-bombs on the invaders was another. Actually, all the thermonuclear weapons had been dismantled to replace dwindling power resources until we could get workable solar power—and to conserve something for space flight."