Trojan Horse Laugh

IX

Joe Morgan stood in the barren hallway of the temporary building which housed the hospital and said, uneasily, to the young doctor: “Is there anything I shouldn’t bring up? I mean, she had such a rough time that maybe—”

The young doctor smiled. “A week ago I would have restricted the conversation. But that was the day she found out that you were safe. A powerful medicine, Mr. Morgan.”

“Can I—”

“Go right in. She’s expecting you.”

Alice was pale against the pillow, and, as she stretched her hands toward him her eyes filled with tears.

Joe held her close for long minutes, then said: “Tell me about it if it’ll help. If it won’t help, I’m not going to insist.”

“You know about the camp?”

“Yes. Montclair’s body was still on the charred porch.”

“A young officer took me in a staff car to their central headquarters. They had taken one of your men, one that was wounded when you took the plane from the field near Daylon. They... they made him talk, but he didn’t know enough. They thought I would know more.”

Joe’s fists lightened.

“Lewsto was there. When they were taking me down a long hall I met him face to face. He went to someone in authority and got permission to interview me, I didn’t want to be... hurt. So I told him a few things. Almost right, but not quite right. He believed me.

“The day the fires started he came to the room where I was held. He knew I had tricked him. He sent the matron out of the room. I had stolen the matron’s scissors. I... I slabbed him in the side of the throat with them. It didn’t kill him quickly enough. He shot me as I left the room.”

He stroked her hair back from her forehead. She smiled, “Don’t look so grim, darling. It’s all right now. Honestly. I was in their hospital when the people came from the city. It was madness. Worse... much worse than the time when you saved me in Daylon. That seems a thousand years ago.”

“It was a thousand years ago.”

“We... we’re winning now, aren’t we?”

Joe smiled. “We’ve won. That is, if it’s possible to win a war.”

“What will we do now, Joe? They’ll let me up in a few days.”

There was a window in the hospital room. From it he could see the distant blackened skyscrapers of what had once been a city.

He said slowly: “They’ve isolated all the ‘adjusted’ ones. There’s a pitifully small number left, you know. The medics are making progress on undoing the adjustment, on fitting the people back into their original, individual pattern. Isolated, the peaks aren’t as high or the depths as low. So that work is going well, and now all we have to look out for are the fools.”

“Fools?” she asked.

He gave her a tired smile. “A lot of people want to rebuild the cities. They’re stuck in the past. The city is an extinct beast, like the dodo. We burned beautiful and irreplacable things, but we also burned mile after mile of squalid streets and dirty slums.

“No man should live crammed into a dark room near his neighbors. We have room to expand, and to grow. This has to be a nation of small towns and villages. In no other way could we have got rid of those vast, ugly, nerve-jangling cities of ours. To regain our strength we will have to live closer to the land. Our transportation is efficient. Factories can be placed among wooded hills.”

He turned back and looked quickly at her as he heard her warm laugh.

“What cooks, angel?”

“Oh, Joe,” she said, “and I asked you what we would do. There’s a lot to be done, isn’t there?”

“An awful lot.”

“Would it be all right to have just one thing rebuilt? Just one place?”

He walked back to her and took her hand. “Angel, if you mean that miserable little cabin, you might be interested to know that reconstruction starts next week. It’ll be finished when you’re ready to leave this outfit.”