Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang (29 page)

       Below him the Ella sisters came into view, ten of them, each a physical carbon copy of his mother. For a moment the vision of Molly peeking out from behind a bush, laughing with him, came to mind. It vanished, and he watched the girls walk toward the dormitory. Three of the Miriam sisters came out, and the two groups stopped and talked.

       Mark remembered how Molly had made people come to life on paper, a touch here, another there, an eyebrow raised too much, a dimple drawn too deep, always something not just right, but which made the sketch take on life. They couldn't do that, he knew. Not Miriam, not her little Ella sisters, none of them. That was gone, lost forever maybe. Each generation lost something; sometimes it couldn't be regained, sometimes it couldn't be identified immediately. Everett's little brothers couldn't cope with a new emergency with the computer terminal; they couldn't improvise long enough to save the growing fetuses in the tanks if the electricity failed for several days. As long as the elders could foresee the probable troubles that might arise and train the young clones in how to handle them, they were safe enough, but accidents had a way of not being foreseen, catastrophes had a way of not being predictable, and a major accident might destroy everything in the valley simply because none of them had been trained to deal with that specific situation.

       He remembered a conversation he had had with Barry. "We're living on the top of a pyramid," he had said, "supported by the massive base, rising above it, above everything that has made it possible. We're responsible for nothing, not the structure itself, not anything above us. We owe nothing to the pyramid, and are totally dependent on it. If the pyramid crumbles and returns to dust, there is nothing we can do to prevent it, or even to save ourselves. When the base goes, the top goes with it, no matter how elaborate the life is that has developed there. The top will return to dust along with the base when the collapse comes. If a new structure is to rise, it must start at the ground, not on top of what has been built during the centuries past."

       "You'd drag everyone back into savagery!"

       "I would help them down from the point of the pyramid. It's rotting away. The snow and ice from one direction, weather and age from the others. It will collapse, and when it does, the only ones who can survive will be those who are free from it, in no way dependent on it."

       The cities are dead; Molly had told him, and it was true. Ironically, the technology that made life in the valley possible might be able to sustain that life only long enough to doom any chance of recovery after the pyramid started to tilt. The top would slide down one of the sides and sink into the debris at the bottom, along with all the other technologies that had seemed perfect and infinite.

       No one understood the computer, Mark thought, just as no one but the Lawrence brothers understood the paddle-wheel boat and the steam engine that drove it. The younger brothers could repair it, restore it to its original condition, as long as the materials were at hand, but they didn't know how either one worked, the computer or the boat, and if a screw was missing, none of them would be able to fashion a substitute. In that fact lay the inevitable destruction of the valley and everyone in it.

       But they were happy, he reminded himself, as lights began to come on in the valley. Even the breeders were content; they were well cared for, pampered compared to the women who foraged each summer and those who worked long hours in the fields and gardens. And if they became too lonely, there was the comfort of drugs.

       They were happy because they didn't have enough imagination to look ahead, he thought, and anyone who tried to tell them there were dangers was by definition an enemy of the community. In disrupting their perfect existence, he had become an enemy.

       His restless gaze moved over the valley, and finally stopped on the mill, and like his ancestor before him he understood that was the weak spot, the place where the valley was vulnerable.

       Wait until you're a man, Molly had said. But she hadn't realized that each day he was in more danger, that each time Andrew and his brothers discussed his future they were less inclined to grant him a future. He studied the mill broodingly. It was weathered almost silver, surrounded by russets and browns and golds, and the permanent green of the pines and spruces. He would like to paint it; the thought came suddenly, and he laughed and stood up. No time for that. Time had become the goal; he had to have more time, and they might decide any day that allowing him time was endangering them all. Abruptly he sat down once more, and now when he studied the mill and the surrounding area his eyes were narrowed in thought, and there was no smile on his face.

       The council meeting had gone on most of the day, and when it ended Miriam asked Barry to walk with her. He looked at her questioningly, but she shook her head. They walked by the river, and when they were out of sight of the others she said, "I would like you to do me a favor, if you will. I would like to visit the old farmhouse. Can you get inside?"

       Barry stopped in surprise. "Why?"

       "I don't know why. I keep thinking I want to see Molly's paintings. I never did see them, you know."

       "But why?"

"Can you get in?"

       He nodded, and they started to walk again. When do you want to go?"

       "Is it too late now?"

       The rear door of the farmhouse was loosely boarded. They didn't even need a crowbar to open it. Barry led the way up the stairs, carrying the oil lamp high, casting strange shadows on the wall beside him. The house felt very empty, as if Mark had not been there for a long time.

       Miriam looked at the paintings quietly, not touching them, holding her hands tightly clasped before her as she went from one to another. "They should be moved," she said finally. "They will rot away to nothing in here."

       When she came to the carving of Molly that Mark had made, she touched it, almost reverently. "It is she," she said softly. "He has her gift, doesn't he?"

       "He has the gift," Barry said.

       Miriam rested her hand on the head. "Andrew plans to kill him."

       "I know."

       "He has served his purpose, and now he is a threat and must go." She ran her finger down the cheek of walnut. "Look, it's too high and sharp, but that makes it more like her instead of less. I don't understand why that is, do you?"

       Barry shook his head.

       "Will he try to save himself?" Miriam asked, not looking at him, her voice tightly controlled.

       "I don't know. How can he? He can't survive alone in the woods. Andrew won't allow him to remain in the community many more months."

       Miriam sighed and withdrew her hand from the carved head. "I'm sorry," she whispered, and it was not clear whether she spoke to him or to Molly.

       Barry went to the window overlooking the valley and looked through the peephole Mark had made in the boards. How pretty it was, he thought, the gathering dusk, with pale lights glowing in the distance and the black hills encircling it all. "Miriam," he asked, "if you knew a way to help him, would you?"

       For a long time she was silent, and he thought she would not answer. Then she said, "No. Andrew is right. He is not a physical threat now, but his presence is painful. It is as if he is a reminder of something that is too elusive to grasp, something that is hurtful, even deadly, and in his presence we try to regain it and fail over and over. We will stop feeling this pain when he is gone, not before then." She joined him at the window. "In a year or two he will threaten us in other ways. That is what is important," she said, nodding toward the valley. "Not any individual, even if his death kills us both."

       Barry put his arm about her shoulder then, and they stood looking out together. Suddenly Miriam stiffened and said, "Look, a fire!"

       There was a faint line of brightness that grew as they watched, spreading in both directions, becoming two lines, moving downward and upward. Something erupted, blazed brightly, then subsided, and the lines moved onward.

       "It will burn down the mill!" Miriam cried, and ran from the window to the stairs. "Come on, Barry! It's just above the mill!"

       Barry stood by the window as if transfixed by the moving lines of fire. He had done it, Barry thought. Mark was trying to burn down the mill.

       Hundreds of people spread out over the hillside putting out the brush fire. Others patrolled the grounds surrounding the generating plant to make certain no sparks were blown in by the wind. Hoses were put into service to wet down the bushes and trees, to soak the roof of the large wooden building. Only when the water pressure failed did anyone realize they had a second serious problem on their hands.

       The flow of water in the swift stream that ran the plant had dwindled to a trickle. All over the valley the lights blinked out as the system compensated for the sudden loss and diverted the electricity to the laboratory. The auxiliary system took over and the lab continued to function, but on reduced power. Everything was turned off except the circuits directly tied into the tanks containing the clones.

       Throughout the night the scientists, doctors, and technicians worked to meet the crisis. They had drilled often enough to know exactly what to do in this emergency, and no clones were lost, but the system had been damaged by the uncontrolled stoppage.

       Other men began to wade upstream to find the cause of the diminished flow of water. In the first light of morning they stumbled upon a landslide that had almost dammed the small river, and work was started immediately to clear it.

"Did you try to burn down the mill?" Barry demanded.

       "No. If I wanted to burn it down, I would have lighted a fire at the mill, not in the woods. If I wanted to burn it down, I would burn it down." Mark stood before Barry's desk, not defiant, not frightened. He waited.

       "Where were you all night?"

       "In the old house. I was reading about Norfolk, studying maps . . ."

       "Never mind about that." Barry drummed his fingers on his desk, pushed back the charts he had been studying, and stood up. "Listen to me, Mark. Some of them think you're responsible for the fire, the dam, everything. I made the point you just made: if you had tried to burn down the mill, you could have done it easily enough without going through all that. The question is still open. The mill is off limits to you. So is the laboratory, and the boat works. Do you understand?"

       Mark nodded. Explosives for river clearing were kept in the boat-works building.

       "I was at the old house when the fire started," Barry said suddenly, and his voice was very cold and hard. "I saw a curious thing. It looked like an eruption of some sort. I've thought a lot about it. It could have been an explosion, enough to start the landslide. Of course, no one could have seen it from the valley, and whatever noise it made would have been masked if it were underground even a little bit, and by the noise everyone was making fighting the fire."

       "Barry," Mark said, interrupting him. "A few years ago you said something to me that was very important, and I believed you then and still believe you. You said you wouldn't hurt me. Do you remember?" Barry nodded, still cold and watchful. "I say that to you now, Barry. These people are my people too, you know. I promise you I won't ever try to hurt them. I have never done anything purposely to harm any of them, and I never will. I promise that."

       Barry watched him distrustfully, and Mark smiled softly. "I've never lied to you, you know. No matter what I had done, I admitted it if you asked. I'm not lying now."

       Abruptly Barry sat down again. "Why were you looking up Norfolk? What is Norfolk?"

       "There was a naval base there, one of the biggest on the East Coast. When the end was coming, they must have put hundreds of ships into dry dock. The ocean levels have been dropping. Chesapeake Bay, Delaware Bay, it will be low there too, and those ships are high and dry—they called it mothballing them. I began to think of the metal in the ships. Stainless steel, copper, brass . . . Some of those ships held crews of a thousand men, with supplies for that many, medicines, test tubes, everything."

       Barry felt the doubts fading, and the nagging feeling of something not cleared up vanished as they talked of the possibilities of manning an expedition to Norfolk early in the spring. Only much later did he realize he had not asked the crucial questions: Had Mark started the fire, for whatever reason, and had he blasted loose the rocks that had slid down into the stream, for whatever reason?

       And if he had, why had he? They had lost time; it would take several months to clean up the mess completely, but they had planned to discontinue the cloning anyway until they were ready to start the mass production later in the spring. Nothing had been changed in their plans, except that now they would work on the stream, make it failproof, set up a new auxiliary system of generating power and improve everything generally.

       Only the human implantations would be delayed beyond the target date already set for them. The preliminary work of cloning the cells, all done in the laboratory, would have to wait until spring when the lab was cleaned, the computer programmed anew . . . Why, then, had Mark been so selfsatisfied? Barry couldn't answer that question, nor could his brothers when they discussed it.

       Throughout the winter Mark made his plans for the

expedition to the coast. He would not be allowed to take any of the experienced foragers, who were needed to finish clearing out the warehouses in Philadelphia. He began training his group of thirty fourteen-year-olds while snow was still on the ground, and by March he said they would be ready to start as soon as the snow melted. He presented his provisions list to Barry for his approval; Barry didn't even glance at it. The children would carry oversized packs, so that if they found salvageable items they could bring back as much as they could carry. Meanwhile, the other, more important forces who were going to Philadelphia were also being readied, and more attention was being paid to their needs than to Mark.