Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (104 page)

He turned to the door and Winters heard him in the next room talking excitedly over the radio-telephone. The two young attendants led him along the hall. As he passed he could observe that the Forester was speaking to a fat redheaded, red-faced man, whose features showed in the televisor—and who evidently was proving difficult to convince. Winters stared a minute, for this was the first man he had seen whose face was anything except swarthy and slender.

Winters was led down the hall and permitted to put on his clothing. He was in an exalted mood. So his arrival in this new world was creating a stir after all! In the morning the airwheel would perhaps bring dozens of scientists to examine his case. He was beginning to feel weak and fatigued after his exciting day, but this latest thrill gave a last flip to his nerves and gave him strength just long enough to prove his own undoing.

One of the attendants hurried out of sight as they left the house. The other guided him along the edge of the village.

“We young members of the village have a gathering tonight, sir. It is called the Council of Youth and at it we discuss matters of importance to our generation. Would it be too much to ask that you address our meeting and tell us something of your experiences?”

His vanity was stirred and he weakly agreed, tired and sleepy though he was. The meeting place was just a little distance away, explained his guide.

In the meantime the youth who had hastened on ahead had entered a small room off the assembly hall. The room contained only three persons, all of whom looked up when the newcomer entered.

“It is as we thought, comrades; the Oldsters have brought him here for some purpose of their own. He pretends to have slept for three thousand years and to be a human relic of the Age of Waste!”

The others laughed. “What will they try on us next?” drawled one lazily.

“Stronghold is bringing him here,” continued the latest arrival, “and will persuade him to speak to us in the meeting, if he can. You understand the intent?”

There was a wise nodding of heads. “Does he know the law of the Council?”

“Probably, but even so it is worth the attempt—you know, I’m not certain myself but that he may be from the old days—at least he is a startling good imitation. The man has hair on his body!”

There was a chorus of shocked disbelief, finally silenced by a sober and emphatic assurance. Then a moment of silence.

“Comrades, it is some trick of the Oldsters, depend upon it! Let the man speak to the Council. If he makes a slip, even a slight one, we may be able to work on the meeting and arouse it to a sense of our danger. Any means is fair if we can only prevent our inheritance being spent! I hear that the order to fell the half-matured pith-trees will go out tomorrow unless we can stop it. We must see what we can do tonight—make every effort.”

* * * *

When Winters arrived at the hall, the three young men stood on the platform to welcome him. The room was low-raftered and about fifty feet square. It was filled with swarthy young men and women. The thing that most impressed Winters was the luxury of the seating arrangements. Each person sat in a roomy upholstered arm-chair! He thought of the contrast that a similar meeting hall in his own times would have afforded—with its small stiff seats uncomfortably crowded together.

The lighting was by electricity concealed in the walls and gave at the moment a rosy tint to the room, though this color changed continually to others—now red or purple or blue—and was strangely soothing. There was a lull in the general conversation. One of the young leaders stepped forward.

“Comrades! This stranger is of another generation than ours. He has come especially to tell us of conditions in the ancient days—he speaks from persona! experience of the Age of Waste, comrades, from which time he has survived in artificial sleep! The Forester of our orig, who is
old
enough to know the truth, has so informed us!” Winters missed the sarcasm. He was tired now and beginning to regret that he had consented to come.

There was a stir of astonishment in the audience and a low growling laughter which should have been a warning. But Winters, full of fatigue, was thinking only of what he should say to these young people. He cleared his throat.

“I am not sure that I have anything to say that would interest you: Historians or doctors would make me a better audience. Still, you might wish to know how the changes of three thousand years impress me. Your life is an altogether simpler thing than in my day. Men starved then for lack of food and youth had no assurance of even a bare living—but had to fight for it.” At this there were a few angry cheers, much to Winters’ puzzlement. “This comfortable assurance that you will never lack food or clothing is, to my mind, the most striking change the years have brought.”

He paused a moment uncertainly, and one of the young leaders asked him something about “if we were perhaps trying to accomplish this assurance too quickly.”

“I am not sure that I know what you mean. Your Chief Forester mentioned something today of a question of economics. I am not familiar with the facts. However, I understand you have a very poor opinion of my own times, due to our possibly unwise consumption of natural resources. Even then we had men who warned us against our course of action, but we acted in the belief that when oil and coal were gone mankind would produce some new fuel to take their place. I observe that in this we were correct, for you now use wood alcohol—an excellent substitute.”

A young man leaped to his feet excitedly. “For that reason, comrades,” he said in a loud voice, “this stranger of course believes his age was justified in using up all the oil and fuel in the world!”

There was a slow growling which ended in a few full-throated cries and an uneasy stirring about in the audience. Winters was growing dazed with his need for rest, and he could not understand what was going on here.

“What you say interests us very much,” said another of the men on the platform beside him. “Was it very common to burn coal for its mere heat?”

“Yes. It burned in every man’s house—in my house as well.”

There was an ugly moving about in the audience, as if the audience was being transformed into a mob. The mob, like some slow lumbering beast, was becoming finally aroused by these continual pinpricks from the sharp tongues of its leaders.

“And did you also use petroleum for fuel?”

“Of course. We all used it in our automobiles.”

“And was it usual to cut down trees just for the sake of having the ground clear of them?”

“Well…yes. On my own land I planted trees, but I must say 1 had a large stretch of open lawn as well.”

Here Winters felt faint and giddy. He spoke quietly to the young man who had brought him. “I must lie down, I’m afraid. I feel ill.”

“Just one more question,” was the whispered reply. Then aloud: “Do you think we of the Youth Council should permit our inheritance to be used up—even in part—for the sake of present comfort?”

“If it is not done to excess I can see nothing wrong in principle—you can always plant more trees…but I must say good night for I am…”

CHAPTER 4

Revolt of the Youth

He never finished his sentence. A fury of sound came from the hall of the Council. One of the leaders shouted for silence.

“You have heard, comrades! You observe what sort of man has been sent to address us! We of Youth have a lesson to learn from the Age of Waste, it appears! At least the Oldsters think so! The crisis that has arisen is a small matter, but if we should once give in when will the thing stop? What must they think of our intelligence if they expect us te believe this three-thousand-year sleep story? To send him here was sheer effrontery! And to send him here with
that
piece of advice passes beyond all bounds of toleration. Timber-fall! There can be only one answer. We must make such an example of this person as shall forever stamp our principles deep in the minds of the whole world!”

There were loud shouts and several young people rushed up on the platform and seized Winters.

“He has confessed to breaking the basic laws of Economics!” shouted the leader. “What is the punishment?”

There were cries of “Kill him! Exile! Send him to the plains for life!” And over and over one group was chanting savagely “Kill him! Kill him!”

“I hear the sentence of death proposed by many of you,” cried the leader. “It is true that to kill is to waste a life—but what could be more fitting for one who has wasted things all his life?” (Loud cries of furious approval) “To your houses, every one of you! We will confine this creature who claims to be three thousand years old in the cellar of this hall. In the morning we will gather here again and give these Oldsters our public answer! And comrades! A piece of news for your ears alone—Comrade Stronghold has heard that in the morning the Oldsters will issue a felling order on the immature pith-trees!”

This announcement was greeted with such rage and violence that the walls shook. Winters was dragged away with dizzy brain and failing feet, and he was thrust upon a couch in a stone-walled room beneath the hall. He fell instantly in utter exhaustion and did not hear the tramp of departing feet overhead. His horror and fright had combined with his fatigue to render him incapable of further emotion. He lay unconscious, rather than asleep.

Above in the small room off the now empty hall three young men congratulated each other. They chatted a few minutes in great joy that they had protected the rights of their generation, regardless of the means which had been used to reach this desirable end. They parted for the night with that peculiar circling movement of the hand that seemed to have taken the place of the ancient handshaking.

But while they talked (so swift does Treason run) a young man crouched in the shadows back of the Forester’s house and fumbled with the latch of a small door on the forest side. As the young men were bidding each other good night, a voice was whispering swiftly in the ear of the Chief Forester, whose rugged face and bristling eyebrows betrayed in turn astonishment, indignation, anger and fierce determination.

Winters woke to watch a shaft of dawn-light lying upon the stone floor. His body was bruised from the rough handling he had received, and his wasted muscles felt dull and deadened. But his brain was clear once again and he recalled the events of the meeting. What a fool he had been! How he had been led on to his own undoing! His eyes followed the shaft of light up to a grating set in the stone wall above his couch, and he could see a little piece of sky softly blue there with a plump little cloud sailing in it, like a duck in a pond. There came upon him a wave of nostalgia. Oh, to see a friendly face—or one homely thing, even a torn piece of newspaper lying on the cellar floor! But what use were such wishes? Thirty centuries lay between those things and himself—lay like an ocean between a shipwrecked sailor and his homeland.

And then came other thoughts, his natural fund of curiosity arising in him once again. After all, this age was a reaction against his own. There had been two extremes, that was all history would say of it. Truth lay in neither, but in some middle gentler path. Mankind would find the road in time—say another thousand years or more. But what difference to him now? In a few more hours he would be dead. Presently the young men would come for him and he would be their sacrifice for some fancied wrong. In his weakened condition the whole thing struck him as unutterably pathetic, and tears welled into his eyes until they were brushed away as the bitter bracing humor of the situation dawned upon him. As he mused, he was startled to notice a shadow pass across the window grating. He thought he heard low voices.

Now in an instant he was full of lively fears. He would not be taken to his death so tamely as this! He turned over on the couch to get upon his feet and felt a hard object beneath him. He felt and brought forth his revolver which he fell at once to examining—ears and senses attuned to hints of danger, though nothing further came. The weapon was an air-pistol firing .22 caliber lead slugs. It was deadly only at very close ranges—thirty feet or less, perhaps—and the extending lever compressed enough air for ten shots. It was something, at all events. Hastily he worked the lever, loaded and pulled the trigger to hear a satisfying
“smack”
of the lead against the stone wall.

Now his mind was working full tilt and he brought the file from his belt and turned to the grating above his couch. If he could sever the bars he could manage to squeeze through the window! To his amazement these bars proved to be made of wood—and his heart lifted in hope. The saw was out of his belt and he was at work in an instant. By dint of much arm ache, he severed four of the bars in as many minutes. Day was now dawning apace and a panic of haste seized him. Then he brought the hand-axe into play and with three blows smashed the remaining wood in the window. As he did so a shadow approached and a face was thrust forward, blocking out the light. Winters crouched below with pistol pointed, finger on trigger.

“Here he is!” said the person in shadow. Winters recognized the voice of the Chief Forester and held his fire.

“Take my hand, stranger, and climb up out of there. We have been looking for you half an hour. Oh, have no fear, we will not permit you to come to harm!”

But Winters was cautious. “Who will protect me?”

“Hurry, stranger! You have fallen afoul of our young hotheads in the orig—I blame myself for not taking greater thought—but there are a hundred Oldsters here with me. You will be safe with us.”

And now Winters permitted himself to be helped through the window and up into the full light of morning. He was surrounded by men who gazed at him with interest and respect. Their attitude calmed his last suspicions.

“We must hurry,” said the Forester. “The younger men will resist us, I am afraid. Let us reach my own house as soon as possible.”

The party started across the clearing. Two young men appeared suddenly in the doorway of a building near by. At the sight of Winters in the midst of the Oldsters they turned and raced off in separate directions, shouting some indistinguishable cry as they ran.