Doomsday Eve Read online

  "We have other, and more important things, to do," John answered. His words were lofty but his tone was kind.

  Zen heard the words but he filed mental reservations about accepting their meaning. Silently he wondered if these kids had all their marbles. Apparently they had not even learned about the birds and the bees.

  "Anything else I can tell you?" John asked.

  "You've already told me too much," Zen answered. "I'm afraid to ask you any more questions."

  The toilet had no flush plumbing. After use, press the button, a sign above it said. Zen did just that. No sound of running water followed but the colonel had the dim impression that intensely bright light had flared for a moment. He did not have the courage to look and see what had happened.

  In some ways, this toilet which disposed of its contents in a flash of light was more significant and possibly more productive of concern than Cuso's blooper or Cuso's lieutenant had been. If the new people found it convenient to disintegrate their sewage, rather than dispose of it by the conventional method, what else could they do?

  Zen shook his head to indicate to himself how amazed he was. John thought he wanted more information and started to ask a question, which the colonel hastily interrupted. "Don't tell me any more. There are limits to what my liver and lights will stand."

  "What have your liver and lights to do with this?"

  "Nothing at all. That was only a figure of speech."

  As they returned through the gallery, he saw that the bronze girl was still going through her rhythmic dance in time to the slow music. The sight of that perfectly formed nude body slowly swaying in the small room sent such a surge of excitement through Kurt Zen that he hastily turned his eyes away. If he was going to live in this place very long, they would have to make some new rules. How could any human being stay in bed alone when that beautiful bronze creature was going through her swaying dance?

  "What is she doing, learning to be a strip-tease dancer?" he asked.

  "Perfect muscular control. This is one of the exercises we all learn," John answered. "What's a strip-tease dancer?"

  "Nothing you ever heard of," Zen answered. "But while she is developing her muscular control, what is she doing to the endocrinal system of every male in the place?"

  "Not a thing," John said, astonished again.

  Zen had grave doubts that the tall youth knew what he was talking about.

  John selected a single book from the top of the double-decker bed, and anxiously inquired if there was anything more he could do to make the colonel comfortable for the night. Upon being told there was not, he departed with the book. Zen thought of the book benignly. If the tall youth was going to spend the night with Nedra, at least there would be a book between them.

  He slid off his heavy pack and set the lieutenant's sub-machine gun where he could reach it readily. His counter told him there was no radioactivity present.

  Books were in a niche in the stone wall behind the bed. The author of one caught his eye: Jal Jonner.

  The name was enough to hold his attention. Jonner was known to have written books, but few had survived. Even the Library of Congress did not have them, but there was no Library of Congress in any sense of the word any more. When Washington had left the planet, the Library had gone with it.

  Glancing at the introduction, Zen forgot all about his fatigue and where he was. One glance at the words and he knew he was in contact with the living waters of life itself.

  INTRODUCTION

  In the beginning, I am going to make an inaccurate statement. I am going to say that the reading of this book may open a new life for you. Now let me explain why this statement is inaccurate.

  In the first place, it is inaccurate because this is not the start of your life. That took place millions of years ago—more millions of years than I care to mention here.

  So your life did not start with the reading of these words.—Now as to the use of the word "new." This, also is inaccurate. To you, the ideas expressed here may seem novel and new. But they are not new in the sense that they have just been created, or even that I have created them. They were implicit in the formation of the first molecule of protoplasm that came into existence on this planet. They are, therefore, as old as life.

  The pattern which you may, or may not follow, was laid down in the first molecule of protoplasm which appeared on this planet, as the Law of Growth.

  However, there is no law which requires that one species on this planet, or even all combined species, the total life spectrum here, shall survive to grow to full stature. The possibility of growth is implicit in every form of life; it is latent, and capable of development, in every species. However, the species that fails to take advantage of the opportunity thus offered, if it fails to develop its potential, must inevitably give earth room to the species which is developing. In their day, the dinosaurs ruled the planet. They had their chance, but they failed to develop.

  Where, now, are the dinosaurs?

  The Law is—Grow or Die. THIS LAW ALSO APPLIES TO MAN.

  This book may be regarded as a primer, a starting point of your adventure into the coming development of man. It is the first text book that you will receive. It is the beginning of the way.

  How much progress you make upon the way, how well you master the law of growth, is, in large measure, up to you. You will receive assistance, sometimes without your knowledge, but it will not be the kind of assistance that will retard or weaken your development. The new people will not be helped—too much! Strength is required of them and strength is only achieved by overcoming obstacles.

  The next upward step that the race takes—if it survives its own self-destructive impulses—will be of such a nature as to require the utmost in strength and courage from those who participate in it.

  This step, it is fair to state, is in the direction of a higher development of consciousness.

  Good luck—and God go with you.

  Jal Jonner

  The Big Sur

  July 1971

  Written in 1971, the book was now 49 years old, Zen decided after a rapid calculation. The war had started in 2009. The time was now 2020.

  Eagerly, he turned to the first chapter. It seemed to him that his life was just beginning, that everything that had ever happened to him and all that he had ever done was in preparation for this moment, when life would begin.

  After reading two pages, he reached the conclusion that, if this was a primer, the text that was to follow must be difficult indeed. The book started with mathematics that was twice as difficult as calculus. Trying to concentrate, he found the symbols blurring before his eyes. Then, as fatigue finally overwhelmed him, the whole page blurred and was gone. He was asleep.

  But he wasn't really asleep. The body slept. But he was not the body. He was the consciousness that animated the body. This never slept.

  He awakened at the touch of a hand on his shoulder.

  IX

  Coming back to conscious awareness, Kurt Zen simultaneously realized that something which he had been experiencing, and which had been very important, faded out of his memory like a gray ghost sliding silently away into a pearl-colored mist.

  Nedra was shaking him by the shoulder and was smiling down at him. "Wake up, sleepy head. You've been snoozing for eighteen hours. That ought to be enough even for a growing boy like you."

  Her face was radiant and alive. She looked as if she had just stepped out of a cold shower and had rubbed her beautiful body with a rough towel to bring the blood close to the surface of the skin.

  "You look wonderful," Zen muttered, remembering what John had hinted. "Did you have a good night's sleep?"

  "A couple of hours."

  "No more than that?"

  "I needed no more."

  "Mm?" Zen said. He started to add another word, "Alone?" but managed to catch the question before it was out of his mouth. He examined her thoughtfully. "You look very contented," he said, without adding that in his experience women
who looked so contented had only one reason for it.

  "Why shouldn't I look contented? After spending so much time in the wilderness, I'm back on the stairway to heaven."

  "What's the wilderness?"

  "The world down below." She swept her hand in a gesture that included the unseen ranges and the plains below.

  "Ah, yes," he yawned himself to wakefulness. "I was reading the most fascinating book before I dropped off to sleep. Here. I'll show you."

  The book was not on his blanket. It was not in the wall niche. Nor was it behind the bed. "Hey, it's gone," he said. His eyes went around the room. He discovered other things that were missing. "The lieutenant's gun! And my pack!"

  "Perhaps you just dreamed you had been reading a book."

  "I didn't dream the gun and the pack. I carried both of them in here."

  "I can explain about them. They were taken."

  "Hunh? Why?"

  "Weapons are not permitted here. Your gun and your pack were both taken for this reason."

  "Hunh?" A growl came unbidden into his voice. He put these items out of his mind with the resolve to speak to someone about them at a later time. Something more important had happened. What was it? A memory of his dream flicked through his mind but was gone before he could grasp it. A frown on his face, he said, "I know—" As he tried to speak, what he had intended to say slid out of his mind.

  "You know what?" Nedra asked.

  "Everything."

  Her face showed surprise. "This is a great deal for one man to know. Are you sure?"

  "Yes."

  "Positive?"

  "Hell, yes!"

  An emotion that was like a curtain opening and closing slipped across her face. "Well, in that case, tell me things."

  "I would, except I can't remember 'em."

  Doubt came into the violet eyes. "What you need is some breakfast. Your blood sugar levels are too low. Breakfast will take care of that." Her voice was firm and sure.

  "That's one thing I need," Zen said, his voice equally firm. "But there is one thing I don't need—an examination by a head shrinker."

  "A what?"

  "A psycho," he explained. "I call 'em head shrinkers because that is what they do. Oh, maybe I need such an examination but I have no intention of submitting to it."

  Breakfast consisted of cornmeal mush, fried to a golden brown, and served with butter and honey. There was no coffee but he had long since learned to do without it. He ate ravenously. "I'm hungry right down to the marrow of my bones," he said. "Where does all this grub come from?"

  "We get it," Nedra answered evasively.

  "What do you do, raid the low country for supplies, like Cuso's men?"

  "No, colonel, hardly that. We are not thieves." Her face showed displeasure.

  "Well, where do you get it? I don't know how many of you are here, but if you have as many as a hundred, keeping this place supplied calls for some doing." He was fishing for information on the number of people hidden in this old mine.

  "Actually, very little food is needed."

  "How come, don't they eat?"

  "Are you reading my mind?" the girl demanded. "If so, you might as well learn right now that this is not considered good manners here!" Momentarily, she was angry. "And besides, if you do it again, I'll close off my thoughts to you."

  Zen, with a forkful of mush halfway to his mouth, was so surprised that he tried to speak and to swallow the mush at the same time, with the result that he choked. The inference back of her words opened up wide horizons of speculative thought. Was mind reading actually commonplace here?

  "I'm sorry you choked," Nedra said. She pounded him on the back.

  "Why don't you put me over your shoulder and burp me?" Zen complained. "Lay off with that pounding."

  "Do you feel you really need burping?"

  "Aw, shut up," Zen answered. If she thought he had read her mind, did this mean that she was actually capable of reading his thoughts? Could all of these people read his mind? Had the nude bronze girl going through the rhythmic exercises known what he was thinking about her. Zen felt himself coloring. It was one thing to have the normal libidinous impulses of the male but it was quite another thing to have every woman know what he was thinking about her.

  "Colonel, I do believe you are blushing," Nedra said, a twinkle in her eyes.

  "I am not," Zen said. "Actually I was wondering—"

  "Whether or not I could read your mind? I told you it was not good manners here."

  "Good manners or not, you seemed to know what I was thinking."

  "It isn't necessary to read your mind to know what you are thinking if a pretty woman is concerned," Nedra said, primly. "Your thoughts are written on your face."

  "Uh!" For a moment, his confusion grew. Her understanding was much too acute. Was she playing games, making fun? If so, this was a game that two could play. "In that case, since you already know about me—how about it?" he said, looking boldly at her.

  She understood his meaning. For a moment, the violet eyes showed sadness. They seemed to indicate that she was disappointed in him, that she had hoped for much better from him. Then a sparkle came into them. "I told you once before—"

  "Yeah, I know. You are going to wash out my mind with soap. But let's not do it right now. I'm still hungry."

  "You are one of the most perplexing men I have ever met," Nedra said, as she rose to fill his plate again. "Also one of the fastest—"

  "I thought we were going to stay away from that subject," he protested.

  "I intended to say fastest on his mental feet," she answered. "And if you don't stop interrupting me to make a play on words, I'm going to give you a hit on the head. After that, Sam wants to see you."

  "Sam, huh?" he said, with no real enthusiasm in his voice. Somehow this morning, he did not relish seeing the craggy man. But there was the matter of the missing pack and gun to be taken up with someone in authority. He suspected that West was that person.

  The craggy man was alone in the room to which Nedra took him when he had finished breakfast. West was standing with his back to them as they entered, staring out of a picture window that was set flush with the wall of the building. Turning, he nodded to them, then motioned to them to come and stand beside him. Kurt Zen looked out on one of the most breath-takingly beautiful scenes he had ever seen. Directly below them the cliff dropped away for hundreds of feet, a blank wall of sheer rock. To the left, climbing up into the sky, was the peak of the mountain, solid granite. They were just at the edge of timberline here. Lower, the trees began: spruce, fir, and aspen, marching downward tier on tier over a series of rolling hills that concealed more than they revealed. In the distance was the front range, a towering sweep of mountains that looked small but which Zen knew to be rugged country. He had climbed them too recently to have any doubts as to how high they were. And how rugged.

  In the far distance cumulus clouds were visible, thunder-storms beyond the mountains.

  "Thy purple mountain's majesty above the fruited plain...."

  The words of the song came unbidden into Kurt's mind. Down below him was—America. Or what was left of it. A pang came up in his throat at the thought and he felt muscles pull and knot in his stomach. He had loved this land.

  America had stood for freedom. Her sons had fought for it, on battlefields in every corner of the earth, from sun-baked equatorial Africa to the freezing bitter steppes of Central Asia. While her sons had found graves, fighting for freedom, something had happened to the freedom for which they fought.

  Nobody knew quite what had happened, but it had gone away. Possibly it had been lost as emergency followed emergency on the international scene, possibly it had been strangled in red tape as regulation followed regulation on the national scene. The time had come in America, too, as it had come to foreign lands, when all actions that were not compulsory were forbidden.

  Thus freedom had died.

  "Do you feel as bad as all that, colonel?" West said softly. The m
an's face was grave and each ridge on it seemed carved out of another and harder kind of granite.

  "It seems such a shame," Zen said. "I loved this land. It was my country. And I don't feel that I have to apologize for a gulp in my tongue as I talk about it."

  "It is not necessary to apologize for loving one's own land, colonel," West said, his voice softer still. "You are not alone."

  "Not alone?" Zen said. "From you, this talk sounds strange."

  "We have all loved this land, too, colonel, and the principles for which it stood. That is why we are here." West's voice became softer still, but the gravity in his face seemed to increase.

  "That is good talk," Zen said. "However, if I have learned one thing, it is that talk is cheap. You are outlaws hiding here yet you talk of loving the land that you have failed to serve." He felt his voice grate as he spoke.

  "Bravely spoken, colonel," West applauded. A glint that might have been appreciation and might have been the edge of hidden anger showed in his eyes. "Particularly so since you are in the power of these—ah—outlaws."

  "Very brave," Nedra agreed. "And very foolish."

  "You did not bring me here to tell me that I am in your power," Zen answered. "Nor to comment on my bravery. Nor my foolishness."

  "I think he can read minds," Nedra said.

  "I do not in the least doubt it," West answered. "If he did not possess this ability, or almost possess it, he would not be here."

  "I, in my turn, think both of you are nuts," Zen answered. "I'm not putting on a mind-reading act."

  "Not consciously, colonel, of course," West agreed. "You think your thoughts are your own. Often they are. But there are also times when they have originated with somebody else. However, before you tell me that I did not call you up here to discuss your mind-reading ability, or lack of it, I will show you one reason why I wanted you. Take the glasses, observe the ridge in the far distance, just under the pines. Tell me what you see there."

  "Horses," Zen said. "No, mules. With riders. Cuso's men going out on a raiding party looking for food, ammo, and women, if they can catch 'em."

  "Quite right, colonel. Except that they probably have the additional duty of inspecting the damage their blooper did when it exploded."