Leigh Brackett - The Long Tomorrow

Len went forward slowly, as a sleepwalker moves. He put his hands out and took hold of Gutierrez. Gutierrez was very strong, incredibly strong. It was hard to hold onto him, hard to drag him away from the ravaged panel, and now there were new lights winking and flashing on it, red lights saying I am wounded, help me. Len looked at them, and he looked into Gutierrez’ eyes. Erdmann panted. There was blood coming out of the side of his mouth. “Julio, please. Take it easy. That’s it, Len, back a little farther, now—It’s all right, Julio, please be quiet.”

And Julio was quiet, all at once. There was no transition. One second his wiry muscles were straining like steel bars against Len’s grasp, and the next he was all gone, limp, sagging, a frail and hollow thing. He turned his face to Erdmann and he said with infinite resignation, “Somebody is against me, Frank. Somebody is against us all.”

Tears ran down his cheeks. He hung like a dying man between Len and Erdmann, weeping, and Len looked at Clementine, blinking her bloody eyes for help.

Find your limit, Judge Taylor said. Find your limit before it is too late.

I have found my limit, Len thought. And it is already too late.

Men came and relieved him of his burden. He went down with Esau into the belly of the rock, and he worked all day with a face as blank as the concrete wall, and as deceitful, because behind it there was violence and terror, and astonishment of the heart.

In the afternoon the whisper came along the line of the great machines. They took him back home, did you hear, and the doctor says he’s clear gone. They say he’ll have to stay there locked up, with someone to watch him.

As we are all locked up here in this canyon, Len thought, serving this Moloch with the head of brass and the bowels of fire. This Moloch who has just destroyed a man.

But he knew the truth at last, and he spoke it to himself.

There will be no answer.

And Lord, deliver me from the bondage of mine enemies, for I repent. I have followed after false gods, and they have betrayed me. I have eaten of the fruit, and my soul is sickened.

The fiery heart beat on behind the wall, and overhead the brain was already being healed.

That night Len floundered through the deep new-fallen snow to Wepplo’s. He said to Joan, quietly so that no one else should hear, “I want what you want. Show me the way.”

Her eyes blazed. She kissed him on the lips and whispered, “Yes! But can you keep it secret, Len? It’s a long time yet till spring.”

“I can.”

“Even from Hostetter?”

“Even from him.”

Even from him. For a lamp is set to guide the footsteps of repentance.

February, March, April.

Time. A tight passivity, a waiting.

He worked. Every day he did what was expected of him, under the very shadow of that concrete wall. He did his work well. That was the ironic part of it. He could become interested now in the whole chain of great machines that harnessed and transmitted the Power, and he could admit the fascination, the sense of importance it gave a man to hold those mighty brutes in check and guidance as you held a team of horses. He could do this because now he recognized the fascination for what it was, and the fangs of the serpent were drawn. He could think what power like that would do for places like Refuge and Piper’s Run, how it would bring back the bright and comfortable things of Gran’s childhood, but he understood now why people were savagely determined to do without them. Because once you set your feet on the path you went on and on until you couldn’t go back again, and suddenly there was a rain of fire from the sky. You had to get back to where it was safe and stay there.

Back to Piper’s Run, to the woods and the fields, to the end of doubt, the end of fear. Back to the time before the preaching, before Soames, before you ever heard of Bartorstown. Back to peace. He used to pray at night that nothing should happen to Pa before he came, because part of the salvation would be in telling him that he was right

Things happened in that time. Esau’s son was bora, and christened David Taylor Colter in some obscure gesture of defiance or affection to both grandfathers. Joan made careful, scheming arrangements for a separate house and planned a marriage date. And these things were important. But they were shadowed over and made small by the one great drive, the getting away.

Nothing else mattered now to him and Joan, not even marriage. They were already bonded as close as two people could be by their hunger to escape the canyon.

“I’ve planned this way for years,” she would whisper. “Night after night, lying awake and feeling the mountains around holding me in, dreaming about it and never letting my folks know. And now I’m afraid. I’m afraid I haven’t planned it right, or somebody will read my mind and make me give it all away.”

She would cling to him, and he would say, “Don’t worry. They’re only men, they can’t read minds. They can’t keep us in.”

“No,” she would answer then. “It’s a good plan. All it needed was you.”

The snow began to soften and thunder in great avalanches down the high slopes. In another week the pass would be open. And Joan said it was time. They were married three days later, by the same little teetering minister who had married Esau and Amity, but in the Fall Creek church with the spring sun brightening the dust on the flagstones, and Hostetter to stand up with Len and Joan’s father to give the bride away. There was a party afterward. Esau shook Len’s hand and Amity gave Joan a kiss and a spiteful look, and the old man got out the jug and passed it around and told Len, “Boy, you’ve got the finest girl in the world. You treat her right, or I’ll have to take her back again.” He laughed and thumped Len on the back until his spine ached, and then a little bit after Hostetter found him alone on the back stoop, getting a breath of air.

He didn’t say anything for a time, except that it looked like an early spring. Then he said, “I’m going to miss you, Len. But I’m glad. This was the right thing to do.”

“I know it was.”

“Well, sure. But I didn’t mean that. I mean that you’re really settled here now, really a part of it. I’m glad. Sherman’s glad. We all are.”

Then Len knew it had been the right thing to do, just like Joan said. But he could not quite look Hostetter in the face.

“Sherman wasn’t sure of you,” said Hostetter. “I wasn’t either, for a while. I’m glad you’ve made peace with your conscience. I know better than any of them what a tough thing it must have been to do.” He held out his hand. “Good luck.”

Len took his hand and said, “Thanks.” He smiled. But he thought, I am deceiving him just as I deceived Pa, and I don’t want to, any more than I did then. But that was wrong, and this is right, this I have to do—

He was glad that he would not have to face Hostetter any more.

The new house was strange. It was little and old, on the edge of Fall Creek, swept and scrubbed and filled with woman-things provided by Joan’s mother and her well-wishing friends, curtains and quilts and tablecloths and bits of rag carpeting. So much work and good will, all for the use of a few days. He had been given two weeks for his honeymoon. And now they were all ready. Now they could cling together and wait together with no one to watch them, with all suspicion set at rest and the path clear before them.

“Pray for Ishmaelites,” she told him. “They always come as soon as the pass is open, begging. Pray they come now.”

“They’ll come,” said Len. There was a calmness on him, a conviction that he would be delivered even as the children of Israel were delivered out of Egypt.