Sixth Column (5 page)

He talked while Thomas watched him work. "It's only the registration number

that we really have to worry about, son. Practically none of the Asiatics you

will run into can read English, so it really doesn't matter a lot we say about

you. `Mary had a little lamb-' would probably do.

Same for the photograph. To them, all white men look alike." He picked

up a handful of assorted photographs from his kit and peered at them

nearsightedly through thick spectacles. "Here -pick out one of these that looks

not unlike you and we will use it. Now for the number-"

The old man's hands were shaky, almost palsied, yet they steadied down

to a deft sureness as he transferred India ink to cardboard in amazing

simulation of machine printing. And this he did without proper equipment,

without precision tools, under primitive conditions. Thomas understood why

the old artist's masterpieces caused headaches for bank clerks. "There!" he

announced. "I've given you a serial number which states that you were

registered shortly after the change, and a classification number which permits

you to travel. It also says that you are physically unfit for manual labor, and

are permitted to peddle or beg. It's the same thing to their minds."

"Thanks, awfully," said Thomas. "Now. . . uh . . . what do I owe you for

this?"

Finny's reaction made him feel as if he had uttered some indecency.

"Don't mention payment, my son! Money is wrong-it's the means whereby

man enslaves his brother."

"I beg your pardon, sir," Thomas apologized sincerely. "Nevertheless, I

wish there were some way for me to do something for you."

"That is another matter. Help your brother when you can, and help will

come to you when you need it. "

Thomas found the old anarchist's philosophy confused, confusing, and

impractical, but he spent considerable time drawing him out, as he seemed to

know more about the PanAsians than anyone else he had met. Finny

seemed unafraid of them and completely confident of his own ability to cope

with them when necessary. Of all the persons Thomas had met since the

change, Finny seemed the least disturbed by it in fact, disturbed not at all,

and completely lacking in any emotion of hate or bitterness. This was hard for

him to understand at first in a person as obviously warm-hearted as Finny,

but he came to realize that, since. the anarchist believed that all government

was wrong and that all men were to him in fact brothers, the difference to him

was one of degree only. Looking at the PanAsians through Finny's eyes there

was nothing to hate; they were simply more misguided souls whose

excesses were deplorable.

Thomas did not see it from such Olympian detachment. The PanAsians

were murdering and oppressing a once-free people. A good PanAsian was a

dead PanAsian, he told himself, until the last one was driven back across the

Pacific. If Asia was overpopulated, let them limit their birth rate.

Nevertheless, Finny's detachment and freedom from animus enabled

Thomas more nearly to appreciate the nature of the problem. "Don't make the

mistake of thinking of the PanAsians as bad -they're not, but they are

different. Behind their arrogance is a racial inferiority complex, a mass

paranoia, that makes it necessary for them to prove to themselves by proving

to us that a yellow man is just as good as a white man, and a damned sight

better. Remember that, son, they want the outward signs of respect more

than they want anything else in the world."

"But why should they have an inferiority complex about us? We've been

completely out of touch with them for more than two generations-ever since

the Nonintercourse Act."

"Do you think racial memory is that short-lived? The seeds of this are

way back in the nineteenth century. Do you recall that two high Japanese

officials had to commit honorable suicide to wipe out a slight that was done

Commodore Perry when he opened up Japan? Now those two deaths are

being paid for by the deaths of thousands of American officials."

"But the PanAsians aren't Japanese."

"No, and they are not Chinese. They are a mixed race, strong, proud,

and prolific. From the American standpoint they have the vices of both and

the virtues.. of neither. But from my standpoint they are simply human

beings, who have been duped into the old fallacy of the State as a superentity. Ich habe einen Kameraden.' Once you understand the nature of-" He

went off into a long dissertation, a mixture of Rousseau, Rocker, Thoreau,

and others. Thomas found it inspirational, but unconvincing.

But the discussion with Finny was of real use to Thomas in

comprehending what they were up against. The Nonintercourse Act had kept

the American people from knowing anything important about their enemy.

Thomas wrinkled his brow, trying to recall what he knew about the history of

it.

At the time it had been passed, the Act had been no more than a de jure

recognition of a de facto condition. The sovietizing of Asia had excluded

westerners, particularly Americans, from Asia more effectively than could any

Act of Congress. The obscure reasons that had led the Congress of that

period to think that the United States gained in dignity by passing a law

confirming what the commissars had already done to us baled Thomas; it

smacked of Sergeant Dogberry's policy toward thieves. He supposed that it

had simply seemed cheaper to wish Red Asia out of existence than to fight a

war.

The policy behind the Act had certainly seemed to justify itself for better

than half a century; there had been no war. The proponents of the measure

had maintained that China was a big bite even for Soviet Russia to digest

and that the United States need fear no war while the digesting was taking

place. They had been correct as far as they went but as a result of the

Nonintercourse Act we had our backs turned when China digested Russia . .

leaving America to face a system even stranger to western ways of thinking

than had been the Soviet system it displaced.

On the strength of the forged registration card and Finny's coaching as to

the etiquette of being a serf, Thomas ventured into a medium-sized city. The

cleverness of Finny's work was put to test almost immediately.

He had stopped at a street corner to read a posted notice. It was a

general order to all Americans to be present at a television receiver at eight

each evening in order to note any instructions that their rulers might have for

them. It was not news; the order had been in effect for some days and he

had heard of it. He was about to turn away when he felt a sharp, stinging

blow across his shoulder blades. He whirled around and found himself facing

a PanAsian wearing the green uniform of a civil administrator and carrying a

swagger cane.

"Keep out of the way, boy!" He spoke in English, but in a light, singing

tone which lacked the customary American accentuation.

Thomas jumped into the gutter-"They like to look down, not up"-and

clasped his hands together in the form required. He ducked his head and

replied, "The master speaks; the servant obeys."

"That's better," acknowledged the Asiatic, apparently somewhat mollified.

"Your ticket."

The man's accent was not bad, but Thomas did not comprehend

immediately, possibly because the emotional impact of his experience in the

role of slave was all out of proportion to what he had expected. To say that

he raged inwardly is meaninglessly inadequate.

The swagger cane cut across his face. "Your ticket!"

Thomas produced his registration card. The time the Oriental spent in

examining it gave Thomas an opportunity to pull himself together to some

extent. At the moment he did not care greatly whether the card passed

muster or not; if it came to trouble, he would take this one apart with his bare

hands.

But it passed. The Asiatic grudgingly handed it back and strutted away,

unaware that death had brushed his elbow.

It turned out that there was little to be picked up in town that he had not

already acquired secondhand in the hobo jungles. He had a chance to

estimate for himself the proportion of rulers to ruled, and saw for himself that

the schools were closed and the newspapers had vanished. He noted with

interest that church services were still held, although any other gathering

together of white men in assembly was strictly forbidden.

But it was the dead, wooden faces of the people, the quiet children, that

got under his skin and made him decide to sleep in the jungles rather than in

town.

Thomas ran across an old friend at one of the hobo hideouts. Frank

Roosevelt Mitsui was as American as Will Rogers, and much more American

than that English aristocrat, George Washington. His grandfather had

brought his grandmother, half Chinese and half wahini, from Honolulu to Los

Angeles, where he opened a nursery and raised flowers, plants, and little

yellow children, children that knew neither Chinese nor Japanese, nor cared.

Frank's father met his mother, Thelma Wang, part Chinese but mostly

Caucasian, at the International Club at the University of Southern California.

He took her to the Imperial Valley and installed her on a nice ranch with a

nice mortgage. By the time Frank was raised, so was the mortgage.

Jet Thomas had cropped lettuce and honeydew melon for Frank Mitsui

three seasons and knew him as a good boss. He had become almost

intimate with his employer because of his liking for the swarm of brown kids

that were Frank's most important crop. But the sight of a flat, yellow face in a

hobo jungle made Thomas' hackles rise and almost interfered with his

recognizing his old acquaintance.

It was an awkward meeting. Well as he knew Frank, Thomas was in no

mood to trust an Oriental. It was Frank's eyes that convinced him; they held a

tortured look that was even more intense than that found in the eyes of white

men, a look that did not lessen even while he smiled and shook hands.

"Well, Frank," Jeff improvised inanely, "who'd expect to find you here? I

should think you'd find it easy to get along with the new regime."

Frank Mitsui looked still more unhappy and seemed to be fumbling for

words. One of the other hobos cut in. "Don't be a fool, Jeff. Don't you know

what they've done to people like Frank?"

"No, I don't."

"Well, you're on the dodge. If they catch you, it's the labor camp. So is

Frank. But if they catch him, it's curtains-right now. They'll shoot him on sight."

"So? What did you do, Frank?"

Mitsui shook his head miserably.

"He didn't do anything," the other continued. "The empire has no use for

American Asiatics. They're liquidating them."

It was quite simple. The Pacific coast Japanese, Chinese, and the like

did not fit into the pattern of serfs and overlords-particularly the half-breeds.

They were a danger to the stability of the pattern. With cold logic they were

being hunted down and killed.

Thomas listened to Frank's story. "When I got home they were dead-all

of them. My little Shirley, Junior, Jimmy, the baby-and Alice." He put his face

in his hands and wept. Alice was his wife. Thomas remembered her as a

brown, stocky woman in overalls and straw hat, who talked very little but

smiled a lot.

"At first I thought I would kill myself," Mitsui went on when he had

sufficient control of himself, "then I knew better. I hid in an irrigation ditch for

two days, and then I got away over the mountains. Then some whites almost

killed me before I could convince them I was on their side."

Thomas could understand how that would happen, and could think of

nothing to say. Frank was damned two ways; there was no hope for him.

"What do you intend to do now, Frank?"

He saw a sudden return of the will to live in the man's face. "That is why I

will not let myself die! Ten for each one"-he counted them off on his brown

fingers-"ten of those devils for each one of my babies-and twenty for Alice.

Then maybe ten more for myself, and I can die."

"Hm-m-m. Any luck?"

"Thirteen, so far. It is slow, for I have to be very sure, so that they won't

kill me before I finish."

Thomas pondered it in his mind, trying to fit this new knowledge into his

own purpose. Such fixed determination should be useful, if directed. But it

was some hours later before he approached Mitsui again.

"How would you," he asked gently, "like to raise your quota from ten to a

thousand each-two thousand for Alice?"

CHAPTER THREE

The exterior alarms brought Ardmore to the portal long before Thomas

whistled the tune that activated the door. Ardmore watched the door by

televisor from the guard room, his thumb resting on a control, ready to burn

out of existence any unexpected visitor. When he saw Thomas enter his

thumb relaxed, but at the sight of his companion it tightened again. A

PanAsiani He almost blasted them in sheer reflex before he checked himself.

It was possible, barely possible, that Thomas had brought a prisoner to

question..

"Major! Major Ardmore! It's Thomas."