A For Anything

3

Ewing opened the back screen door and stepped out into the yard. It was a still, cloudless morning; the smog was all down in the valley. The tall dry grass was uncomfortable to walk in, and he moved automatically down the shallow slope to stand under the pepper tree. In the cool cavern behind the hanging curtain of branches, the ground was bare except for the carpet of red leaves and the hard little berries. The kids had been building a hut in here with old lumber from the fence, and their toys were scattered around. Ewing's ear registered the sudden outburst of shrill voices inside the house, and he frowned unhappily. That was not so good: you could hear them half a mile away, and they were all over the mountain in the daytime. But you couldn't keep children locked up like criminals.

Anyhow, they had found a good place. The cottage stood on its own half-acre terrace more than halfway up the mountainside. Above it there was only the scrubby slope of the mountain itself, bone-dry and littered with boulders, and a row of desiccated palm trees along the irrigation canal. The one neighboring house, between the cottage and the hill road, was empty and fire-gutted. Below the house there was another terrace, where evidently previous tenants had had a kitchen garden; then the land sloped abruptly down and became an orchard of tiny orange trees. Ewing had seen the owner's name on a mailbox, down at the bottom of the mountain: Lo Vecchio, something like that. What was going to happen to him and his orchard now?

Down below, the valley lay spread out, rolling down and receding into an improbable blueness. Ewing could see the road, diminishing to a tiny yellowish thread, and the cross-hatched patterns of tilled fields. The horizon curved around him on three sides. Eucalyptus trees masked the highways; except for an occasional airplane, or a car going or coming in the residential area just below, the world around him might have been deserted.

The rattle of a laboring engine came echoing up in the clear air.

Ewing started, and peered fruitlessly off to his right, where trees screened the road. That sounded like somebody coming up the hill.

Trouble. It might be somebody from the Adventist colony down below, paying a neighborly call, but from what Ewing had seen, they all drove late-model cars. This sounded like a wreck. With his heart pumping in his throat, Ewing ran into the house, past a startled Fay and two round girl-faces at the breakfast table, and got the shotgun out of the closet. He made a second grab for the box of shells; two more jumps took him to the front porch. He was in time to see the car pull up on the road above the house.

It was a battered, dusty Lincoln coupe with its trunk bulging open. All the chrome trim was missing from the body and fenders, and the denuded strips were measled with rust. A fine spume of steam rose from the radiator.

"Dave boy!" shouted the driver, popping up on the far side of the car like a marionette. He was a dusty gray man in a faded jacket and sweater; Ewing lowered the gun and stared at him. That cracked, cheerful voice -

"Platt!" he said, in mingled relief and exasperation.

"None other! The very same! In the flesh!" Platt came stork-legged down the driveway, moving with a jerky, nervous energy, elbows pumping, his long face split in a yellow grin. He grabbed Ewing's hand and shook it hard; his water-gray eyes were bright and sparkling. "Gotcha! You can't hide from me, boy! Ends of the earth! Well, hell, it's good to see you, Dave -- hello, Fay, hello kids -- but for God's sake" -- Ewing turned to see that his family was clustered in the doorway; he turned back as Platt's stream of talk went on uninterrupted -"ask a man in and give him a drink of water if you haven't got anything better. I'm so parched I'm spitting sand. What are you up here, eagles? Hell, is this Elaine? My God, you're big! Pretty as your old lady, too. And who's this?"

Kathy, looking suspicious, retired behind her mother's skirts. Elaine, who was twelve, was blushing like a debutante. Somehow they were all moving into the living room, and Platt threw himself into the only upholstered chair with a shout of comfort. He was leading forward the next instant, still talking, fumbling a pack of cigarettes out of his jacket, striking a shaky light, dropping the match, pulling Elaine into a one-armed embrace and winking at Kathy.

Platt was a man of galloping enthusiasms; a good experimental physicist, but a theorist whom nobody took seriously. He had a new theory every year, and believed in every one with a frantic, whole-souled earnestness. His greatest love was rocketry, but he had never succeeded in getting a clearance to work on classified projects. Platt's frustration was acute, but only seemed to wind his spring tighter. He changed jobs frequently, and popped in and out of Ewing's life: the last time they had met was in 1967.

Elaine, who was still blushing, drew away and went toward the kitchen. "I'll get the water for you, Mr. Platt."

"Call me Leroy. And not too much water, honey."

"There isn't any liquor in the house," Fay said. "We just moved in yesterday, but I can get some coffee ... "

"No, that's OK, I've got a bottle in the car -- the bottomless bottle, thanks to your boy here -- I'll bring it in later and we'll have a ball, but listen, Dave -- " the cigarette spilled ash down his frayed sweater -- "I want to tell you, you're the biggest genius of them all. My chapeau is off to you, boy, I mean it! I wish I'd invented that! But you did it, son -- you're the greatest. I mean it. Well" -- he took the brimming glass of water from Elaine and raised it -- "here's to you, Dave Ewing, and long may you Gismo!" He sipped and made a mock-wry face, then gulped the water down.

Ewing said, "What makes you think I -- "

"Who was working with Schellhammers?" Platt cried. "You think I didn't see your John Henry all over that thing? Going to tell me you didn't do it?"

"No, but -- "

"Sure, you did! The second I saw that, I could tell. I said to myself, I got to find old Dave, and I'll do it, too, if I have to track 'm down like a bloodhound!"

Fay put in, "Leroy, how did you find us?"

"I'll tell you, honey. See, Dave and yours truly were old army buddies, and back at Fort Benning he always used to tell me how he wanted to go live in the mountains some day -wanted to be a goddamn eagle and sneer down at all the flatland foreigners. So I figured, where would Dave go if he wanted to get out of sight in a hurry? Not down to L.A., because there's going to be hell popping down there. Not up the coast, because that'd take too long and he might get stuck anywhere along the way. I figured, he'd head out on route ninety-one and stop the first time he came to a high place. So I followed my hunch, and when I saw this little pimple with a house on it, I came on up. See?"

The Ewings looked at each other in dismay. Fay's hand was on the little portable radio; she must have switched it on, because a power hum came out of the speaker. But there were no voices: the last of the local stations had gone off the air yesterday evening. She turned it off, still looking stricken.

"Well, hell, you don't have to stay here, do you?" Platt demanded. "Not that anybody else would find you this easy, but listen, old buddy, you too, Fay, what are you going to do with yourselves, now you don't have to work for a living?"

Ewing cleared his throat. "We haven't really had time to talk about it. I'd like to build a lab somewhere, when things settle down ... "

"Sure you would. You will, too, boy. Hell, the sky's the limit, and that brings me to the moral of my tale. Listen, thanks to you, we can all do what we want now -- and Dave, listen, you know what I want to do?"

Ewing said the first fantastic thing that came into his head. "Fly to the moon, I guess."

"Right. Good boy -- smart as a razor, no flies on you."

"Oh, no," said Ewing, clutching his head.

"Sure! Dave, listen, come on with me, bring the family -- I've got the place picked out, and I know ten, twenty other people that'll come in with us, but you're the boy I wanted to see first. It's big, boy, it's the biggest thing in the world!"

"You really want to build a spaceship?"

"Going to build one, boy. Up in the Santa Rosas -- the Kennedy labs, they're made to order. All the room you want, and heavy equipment -- two months to get organized, and then watch us go."

"Why not White Sands?"

Platt shook his head impatiently. "I don't want it, Davey. One thing, every space-happy nut in the country will be there by now -- you'll have to elbow 'em out of the way to spit. Then, what have they got that we need? Hardware, yes, missile frames, yes, but most of it is the wrong scale. We're going to start fresh, Davey, and do it right. You can't make an interplanetary vehicle out of a Viking, boy -- might as well put rockets on an outhouse. Think about this, now. Really see it." He hitched closer, spreading his ungainly arms. "Build your ship -- any size. Make it as big as an apartment house if you want -- and all payload, Davey! Put 'everything in. Bedrooms, bowling alleys, kitchens -- wup, no kitchens; don't need 'em. But libraries, movie theaters, laboratories -- "

Ewing started. "Leroy, have you been drinking liquor copied by the Gismo? You said something before -- "

"Sure," said Platt impatiently. "Eating the food, too: Why not? Just put it through twice, make sure you don't get any reversed peptide chains. Now listen, boy, pay attention -- you build all that, whatever you want, get the picture? Now: put your rocket motors underneath. All you want. With the Gismo, you can have ten or a million. Now what about fuel -- all those big tanks that used to kill us dead before we got off the ground? Davey, two little tanks, hydrazine and oxygen, and two Gismos. We make our fuel as we need it. Forget about your goddamn mass-energy ratios! I can jack up the goddamn Mormon Temple and take it to the moon! The moon, hell!"

He took a breath. "Dave, think about it! We can go any goddamn where in the universe! This time next year, we'll be on Mars. Mars." He stood up, arms out, and became a space-suited Martian explorer, staring keenly into the distance. "What's that I see? Strange pyramids? Little men with six noses? We'll find out, but let's make it quick, because we got a date on Venus. But we'll leave behind a bunch of big Gismos as an atmosphere plant -- fifty years, a hundred years, there'll be enough air on Mars to breathe without these helmets. Then Venus -- same thing there. If there's no oxygen, we'll make it. Davey, a lousy hundred years from now, mankind'll own the universe. I'm telling you! We can have Mars, and Venus, and the Jovian system, just for the asking! Then what about the stars? Listen, Davey, why not? In that ship we can live indefinitely -- we can have kids there, and they'll keep going when we kick off. Do you see it now? Doesn't it send you?"

He paused and glared incredulously at Ewing. "No?"

"No. Now look, Leroy, just to take one point -- this atmosphere scheme of yours. You're going to be adding mass -- billions of tons of it. It isn't like releasing free oxygen chemically, from oxides in the soil or something like that -- you're going to perturb the orbits of the planets."

"Not to bother about," said Platt energetically. "Look, look -- say the mass of a small planet like Mars ... " Still talking, he hauled out a small celluloid slide rule and began flipping the cursor back dad forth.

"Wait a minute," Ewing said, "you're going off half-cocked again." He produced his own slide rule from his back pocket, and they bent closer to each other, both trying to talk at once.

When she saw this, Fay got up and went into the kitchen, taking her resigned children with her.

Half an hour later, when she came back with coffee and sandwiches, Platt was just getting to his feet in an ecstasy of despair at human stupidity. "Well, hell," he said. "Well, hell. Well, hell, boy. I'll get the bottle and we'll have a snort to celebrate, anyway. Maybe that'll loosen you up," he added in a stage aside. The screen door banged behind him.

Ewing grinned ruefully and put his arm around his wife as she sat down beside nun. "Better get the spare room ready," he said.

"Dave, no, it's just that hot little room with the water heater in it. And we haven't even got a mattress for him."

"He'll sleep on the floor -- he'll insist on it," Ewing said. He shook his head, feeling a sentimental warmth for Platt -- so entirely himself, so unchanged after all these years.

"Good old Leroy!" he said. "Venus!"

Shortly before noon the house was in full sunlight. The sky was clear; the heat poured down in a breathless torrent, and the dry earth bounced it back. The air over the mountainside shimmered with heat, and the palms were dusty and brittle. Ewing picked up a clod of dirt in his hand; it crumbled into brown powder. "Hot," said Leroy Platt, fanning himself with a shapeless fedora, "sure is hot." The sunlight made his pale eyes look naked and mad, surprised like oysters in the white shell of his face. He put the hat back on.

Ewing enjoyed the heat. The sun beat down on his head and shoulders as if it wanted to cook him; but his limbs moved freely, well-oiled, and tiny drops of sweat, like a golden mist, sprang out all over his arms and body. He liked his sharp-edged shadow moving crisply underfoot in the strong light. He liked thinking about the cool shade inside the house, after the heat. "We're almost there," he said, scrambling up.

From the top of the little mountain they could look down on the residential area, the Adventist college and food factory, all laid out like a tabletop village. The streets were neatly drawn, the trees bright green, the housetops blue or red.

They turned. Down the opposite slope, it was another world: naked, burned-out mountain valleys, rolling away one behind another, looking as if a drop of water would hiss into steam anywhere it touched them. Straight to the horizon, there was no sign of man.

"Now there," said Platt breathlessly. "That's it. There you have it. Thousands of square miles, Dave, mostly up and down, but right next to our own back yards, and most of the time we forget it's here. Huh. You walk down a street with houses on both sides, and you say to yourself, look how we've civilized this continent in a lousy three hundred years. But, hell! We haven't scratched the surface! Dave, just think -- if you can make your own water supply, wherever you want it, what's to keep you from going out there, and planting grass all over those goddamn mountains, if you feel like it? Why, hell, there's room enough to make every man a king!"

"Uh-huh," said Ewing, abstractedly.

"Of course, people being the sons of bitches they are -- What's the matter?"

Ewing was staring off into the northern sky, shading his eyes. "I hear it, but I don't see it," he said.

"What?" Platt listened and stared. "A chopper," he said. A faint, distant rumble blurred over his words.

"What?" said Ewing. "Shut up a minute, Leroy."

The rumbling came rolling distantly down out of the sky. It was a voice speaking, but they could not make out the words, only a vast blurred echo.

"There it is," said Ewing, after a moment. The tiny speck was hanging over the valley floor to northward, slowly drift-nig closer. The rumbling words grew almost clear enough to be understood.

"Army copter," said Platt. He fell silent, and they both listened.

"Rrrr rrr rtnrm," said the brassy voice in the sky. It paused and began again: "Your attention please. (ease.) Your attention please, (ease.) This area has been placed under martial law. (law.) All citizens are ordered to remain in their homes, (omes) and refrain from causing disturbances, (urbances.) Stay in your homes, (in your homes.) Normal services will be restored shortly, (pred shortly.) Law-breakers will be severely punished, (verely punished.)" The voice grew to an ear-offending shout as the copter drifted leisurely closer. Now it was almost overhead, and Ewing could see the blades whirling shiny in the sunlight, and the transparent bubble with two dark figures in it. The drab-painted machine turned as it drifted, the long curved body like an insect's abdomen. The huge voice stopped and began again. "YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. (EASE.) YOUR ATTENTION PLEASE. (EASE.) -- "

Ewing had his hands over his ears. Platt's jaws were working. He took his hands away for a moment and said, "What?"

Platt shouted, "Martial law!" He said something else, about "desertions", but Ewing couldn't make it out. The copter overhead, still shouting, drifted down toward the highway. Following it with his eyes, Ewing saw something strange. He saw what looked like a line of cars and trucks, spaced almost bumper to bumper, climbing the mountain road. There was a wrecker, followed by a red convertible, two moving vans with dusty red sides, three panel trucks, two late-model sedans with glossy aluminum trailers, and a small gasoline tank truck.

He grabbed Platt by the arm, pointed. Then he was buck-jumping down the mountainside, with his heart in his mouth, catching a glimpse of the lead car turning in at the top of the road.

A round man stood up in the back seat of the convertible and aimed a gun at him. "Hold it!"

Ewing skidded, arms flailing. The irrigation canal was coming up like a fast elevator; he could see the hard white cement border, and the half-transparent minnows darting in the shadow. He couldn't stop himself, he was going in. He plunged back with a violent effort, and the mountain hit him hard. His ears rang. Dust rose around him. He sneezed and struggled to his feet.

The man in the convertible looked up at him without speaking. The gun was a double-barreled shotgun, sawed off short. He held it with the stock tucked under his arm. His dusty blue polo shirt was dark with sweat; his face and his heavy arms were burnt brick-color, but he wore only a shabby polo cap against the sun. A deer rifle was propped against the seat near his hand, and the butts of two revolvers stuck out of his waistband. His round face, eyes slitted against the glare, was placid and expressionless. He was chewing the ... ragged cold stump of a cigar.

"Stay right where ya are," he said finally. Ewing glanced to

Ms left, and saw Platt standing there, hatless, with a bloody nose. "What was you guys running for?" the round man asked them.

Ewing said nothing. "The young Negro in the front seat of the convertible was staring straight ahead, not looking up or appearing to listen. He was manacled to the wheel. So were the drivers of the wrecker and the first moving van. All three of them had the same vacant, faintly surprised expression.

The round man blinked and shifted his cigar. He nodded at the battered Lincoln up ahead. "That your heap?"

"It's mine," said Platt, starting forward. "I'll get it out -- "

The shotgun came up sharply, and Platt stopped. "Just stand still," the round man said. "Okay, Percy."

The young Negro punched the drive button with his free hand, and the convertible inched ahead. Ahead of it, the links of a heavy chain rattled on the ground, while behind it a similar chain tightened with a clank and groan. After a moment, the other vehicles began to move. There were crashings and roaring engines as the motion transmitted itself down the line.

The wrecker crawled ahead. Its broad wooden bumper butted up against the rear of the Lincoln, and began to shove. The Lincoln budged, trembled and bucked nearer the side of the road. Its right front wheel ran off the edge. The wrecker pushed, grinding in low gear. The Lincoln tipped downward, toward the narrow canyon between the road and the house. It hung, swayed reluctantly, and then went over with a grand smash against the side of the house. There was a startled shriek from inside. A tile fell off the roof and slid down the exposed side of the Lincoln. The dust cloud rose. The wheels spun quietly to a halt.

The cavalcade stopped, a little at a time. The round man turned his full attention back to Ewing and Platt. He did it deliberately, as if massive gears were turning somewhere inside him. He blinked, shifted the cigar butt in his mouth, and spoke. "Why did ya park ya car inna road?"

Ewing thought he had seen a face at the bedroom window. He said unwillingly, "Nobody uses this road. It doesn't go anywhere, except a ranch around the other side. They don't use it any more, there's a barrier."

The round man digested this in silence. He shifted the cigar again. "Yaa?" He chewed the cigar with an expression of distaste, removed it, spat, and put it back. "How big of a place would ya say that is?"

"The ranch? I have no idea," Ewing said stiffly. Platt was looking mournfully down at the way his car was wedged in between the slope and the house.

The round man stared at Ewing. "Ya seen it?"

"From a distance -- I mean the house. I told you. I don't know anything about the ranch itself."

The round man thought about this. "Just one house?"

"That's all I saw."

After another pause, the round man nodded. He balanced the shotgun on his knee, took a soiled piece of paper and a - stub of pencil out of his shirt pocket, and carefully drew a heavy line across the paper. "Okay," he said. "The heck with it." He put the paper and pencil away with the same deliberation, picked up the shotgun again, and stared at Ewing. "You live here?"

Ewing nodded.

"Who else?"

"Nobody else," said Ewing, tightly. "Just my friend and me."

"Don't tell me no fairy tales. Whatja do for a living?"

Ewing said, biting the words, "I'm an experimental physicist."

Instead of grunting and looking baffled, as Ewing had expected, the round man merely nodded. "Him too?"

"Yes."

The round man breathed quietly through his nose for a while, staring at the ground somewhere near Ewing's feet, shifting the cigar from time to time. Eventually he said, "Come on down here -- climb the chain and cross over." When they had done so, he got out of the car and stood beside them in the road. "March." They started down the driveway. "Your wife know how to shoot a gun?" he asked Ewing as they went.

"No," said Ewing heavily. It was the truth.

They walked in silence down to the shaded front porch and opened the door. In the living room, Fay and the children were waiting.

"My name is Krasnow," said the round man. "Herb Krasnow. I was a shipfitter in San Diego for seven years. I was in the Marines, too, before that, so don't make the mistake of thinking I'll be afraid to use this thing."

Krasnow's face was round and unemphatic, the nose short and wide, mouth and chin blending into his full cheeks. His eyes seemed to belong to someone else; steady, under untidy black brows. He showed his teeth rarely when he spoke; when he did, momentarily, Ewing saw that they were yellow-brown stumps, widely separated. The black hair on his arms and hands was luxuriant; his fingers were the thick, spatulate fingers, with black-rimmed nails cut back almost to the quick, of a man used to working with his hands. In his shabby polo cap and stained shirt, heavy-bellied, he might have been any workman on a street repair job, or loading a truck, or driving one. Ewing realized that he had seen thousands of men like this one in his life, but had never looked closely at one before.

Krasnow pushed his cap back, and immediately looked older; wet strands of hair straggled over his brown, bald scalp. Sitting in the straight chair beside the window, he faced the Ewings and Platt, all crowded together in a row on the couch. He held the shotgun balanced on one thigh, in a way that suggested he could aim and fire it from that position, one-handed. "See, my wife died a coupla years ago," he said. "I'm all alone inna world, so I figure, what the hell? Why shouldn' I get mine?"

Ewing swallowed and said angrily, "That's a hell of a philosophy. What about those people up there on the road -- why shouldn't they get theirs?"

"You have an awful nerve," Fay said. "Who do you think you are, God? You can't do a thing like that to people!"

Krasnow shook his head. "They'd do the same to me. I take my chances, just like they took theirs. You might even knock me over and take the whole works. I'm just one guy."

Platt leaned forward over his crossed knees; he was folded up like a jackknife on the couch, all joints and bony hands. The cigarette in his fingers trembled and spilled ash. "When are you going to sleep, Krasnow?" he asked.

Krasnow pantomimed a bark of laughter. "Yaa," he said. "You hit it there. We been on the road a day and a half already, and all I got was cat-naps. That colored boy, Percy, he'd as soon kill me as look at me. I figure I got to get through two more nights, maybe three before I can sleep. I'm getting old; ten years ago I coulda done it easy."

"You must be out of your mind," Ewing said. "What you're talking about just isn't possible. You can't keep all those people under control forever -- you have to sleep sometime."

Krasnow shook his head. "Ya gotta have slaves now," he said. He used the word matter-of-factly. "Nothing else is worth anything. Ya can't get people to work for ya any other way. How's the work gonna get done?"

"What work?" Ewing demanded. "Don't you understand, everything's free now -- power, machinery, anything a Gismo will carry. Later on there'll be bigger Gismos, for things like automobiles and prefab houses. What are you going to do, build a pyramid or something? Take your Gismo, why don't you, and let those people go."

"Naa. You're talking fairy tales. Every guy goes off with his own Gismo, and that's it? Not on your sweet life, mister. There's just two ways, and you'll find that out -- ya gotta own slaves, or ya gotta be a slave."

"Power hates a vacuum," said Platt. His voice was curiously subdued; he was looking with close attention at the burning tip of his cigarette. "Trouble is, though, how you going to keep them down on the farm? First chance they get, they'll cut your throat and go over the wall. Then what?"

Krasnow looked at him directly and, it seemed, curiously. "That's something I gotta work out," he said. "Like now, I got them cars chained together, and I got demolition bombs I can set off by short wave. Live bombs, one in every car. That could be better, but it works. But later on I gotta think of something else. You're supposed to be smart, you got any ideas?"

"I might," said Platt, thin-lipped. His gaze and Krasnow's met. -

"Yeah. Well, meantime, I gotta find a place like you said. With a wall." Krasnow sighed. "I heard something about this place around the bend here, so I thought I'd take a look -- a long shot. But I can tell from the way you talk, it's no good. I'll head up the coast, like I thought at first. There's plenty of rich guys' places up north, outa the way. Haifa them big, shots are away all year. Either there'll be just a caretaker, some old geezer, or else some punks that've moved in lately. Either way, I know how to handle it."

He stood up. "Ewing, you love ya wife and kids?"

Ewing's jaw knotted with anger and fear. He said, "What's that to you?"

Krasnow nodded slowly. "Sure ya do. Okay, buster, now you listen. If ya don't want to see them killed right here, you do like I tell ya. Understand?" Ewing's throat went dry, and he could not answer. "You're coming along with me," Krasnow went on after a moment. "I like the look of ya, and I like ya family, and I can use a scientist like you. So get used to the idea. Now come on outside -- yaa, you too, everybody. I got something to show ya."

He herded them through the door. Out in the yard, blinking in the white glare, Krasnow and Platt looked sorrowfully at each other. The shadow of Krasnow's gun was a short black line on the baited ground between them. "I can't use ya, and I can't trust ya," said Krasnow. "So start runnin'."

Ewing looked on unbelievingly. He saw Platt, staring into Krasnow's eyes, shudder and stiffen. Then the tall man was whirling, all knees and elbows, diving down the slope to the terrace below -- zigzagging as he made for the shelter of the nearest pepper tree -

The gun went off with a noise like the end of the world. Deafened, uncomprehending, Ewing saw his friend's body hurl itself thrashing into the weeds. The children screamed. The bitter scent of powder filled the air. Through the leaves Ewing could see what was left of Platt's head, a gray and red tatter. The legs went on kicking, and kicking ...

Fay's skin had turned paper-gray. She looked at him, and the pupils of her eyes began to slide up out of sight. Ewing caught her as her knees buckled.

"Soon as she comes to," said Krasnow quietly, "you and her can start loading whatever ya want on ya trailer. I'll give ya half an hour. And meantime, you can be thinking about why I done that." He jerked his head toward the body in the weeds below.

Up on the road, in the cabs and front seats of all the parked vehicles, the faces of the drivers had turned to look down on them. Their expressions had not changed, but was as if a common string had pulled them all around, like so many puppets.

At nightfall, the caravan was winding northward along the ridge highway toward Tejon Pass. The air was cool. Off to Ewing's left the sun went down behind the mountains in great tattered scarlet and orange streamers; the riding lights of the van ahead glowed in the deepening twilight.

Fay and the girls were in one of the house trailers, sharing it with some other poor devil's family. Ewing was alone with the oncoming night, in the steady drone of the engine, with his wrist manacled to the steering wheel.

A slave ...

And the father of slaves.

He'd had more than enough time to think about what Krasnow had meant back there at the mountain house. Krasnow had murdered Platt for an object lesson, and because he knew Platt would never make a good slave ... too reckless and unstable. Besides, Platt was unmarried. Platt was not the slave type.

The slave type ...

Funny to think that there were physicist types even among the natives of the Congo, who had never heard of physics ... and slave types, even among the physicists of America, who had forgotten there was such a thing as slavery.

And it was curious, how easy it was to accept the truth about himself. Tomorrow, after he had slept and the sun was high, he might fill up with anger again -- the brittle anger, so easily broken -- and swear to himself, futilely, that he would escape, kill Krasnow, rescue his family ... But now, alone, he knew he never would. Krasnow was wise enough to be "a good master." Ewing's lips moved: the phrase was bitter.

What about fifty, a hundred years from now? Wouldn't the slave society break down -wouldn't the Gismo become at last what Ewing had thought it would be, an emancipator? Wouldn't men learn to respect each other and live in peace?

Would it be worth all the misery and death, then? Ewing felt the earth breathe under him, the long slow swell of the sleeping giant ... On that scale, had he done good or evil?

He did not know. The car droned onward, following the tail lights of the van ahead. From the west, slowly, darkness scythed out across the land.