Edward Llewellyn - Prelude to Chaos

That memory had touched some nerve. I returned to Barbara. “How could she have had a boat allotted to her at seventeen?”

“By being good and proving It, I suppose!”

“She seems to be good at everything.”

“She’s also damned pretty and has every boy in the Settlement after her ass!” Judith could be as crude as any other educated woman when she wanted to be. “I’ve heard quite enough about that girl for tonight Don’t get ideas! She’s out of your age group! More important, what are your plan$ 9now you’ve deposited me safely here?”

“I’d like to stay awhile. Perhaps do the same job I was doing at Sherando.”

“No!” Her green eyes flashed in the firelight. “For God’s sake, don’t mention Sherando. Or any other violent job you’ve done. They’ll try to throw you out if you do. Yackle and the Council abhor violence. They’re peaceable folk here. I haven’t told them where we’ve been or what we’ve done. And they won’t ask.” Her voice grew calmer. “As far as the Council is concerned you’re an electronics tech. And a good one. They need an electronics tech. You’ve seen the amount of electronics they have around. And the techs they’ve got are outdated.”

“Do you think they’ll let me stop over? Yackle was really spooked when he found I wasn’t a Believer.”

“Do you want to stay?”

“Only if you do.”

She studied me with her clinical stare. Then her eyes became warm and her smile female. “I’ll make sure they let you.” She put her arms around me, kissed me with a mouth that was no longer hard and firm but passionate and soft. “Let’s go to bed! I’ve been trying to get you there all the evening.”

1 woke once during the night to lie close against Judith’s smooth curves; comforted by her nearness, by the scent of her hair, by her gentle breathing. Breathing as regular as the rhythm of the seas running into the Cove.

The thunder of rollers breaking onto the beach, the rumble of shingle sucked back by retreating waves. Sea sounds from my boyhood. As I drifted into sleep I drifted back in time. Back to my father’s manse on Nantucket, back to my old fantasies. But the face which floated into my first dream was a new face. A girl with golden hair and cool gray eyes. The face of Enoch’s daughter—Barbara.

“He’s not a heretic. He’s an unbeliever,” Judith insisted, facing the Settlement Council. “That’s quite different. A heretic believes the wrong thing. An unbeliever doesn’t believe anything!”

Chairman Yackle looked nonplused, the other Councilors confused. We had been in Sutton Cove for a week and Yackle had suggested that I, as a heretic, could not be allowed to stay much longer. Judith had countered with a theological argument. But the Council were not interested in theology; they were only interested in avoiding discord. They had created a snug haven for themselves and their children in a world where the storms were rising and the number of children was falling. I was an intruder, a source of disruptive ideas who had arrived with two guns and a murky background.

“If you want to keep me, then you’ve got to take my husband!” Judith fell back from theological argument to open threat.

I sat up, opened my mouth to protest, then shut it again. For Judith the fact of marriage seemed derived from the act of love; our consummation in the hay had established our married state to her satisfaction, and I was in no position to deny it. Later, perhaps, I could claim annulment.

The Councilors went in a huddle. They didn’t want me but they did want her. Enoch took the pipe from his mouth and remarked, “Mister Gavin’s a good electronics tech. He fixed my radar.”

“We need an electronics man,” added Jehu, another elderly fisherman with a taste for rum. “Old Shipley don’t see so well now, and young Rustin ain’t learned enough yet.”

Yackle got the message. “I did not realize that you and Mister Gavin were married, Doctor. That, of course, altera the situation. We would offend the Light were we to be responsible for putting asunder two people who are joined in matrimony.” He looked around the table. “Perhaps we can employ Mister Gavin on a temporary basis. Providing he does not parade his unbelief before our children.”

“I’ve learned never to parade my views on politics or religion.”

Yackle rubbed his hands together. “Good! Good! I am confident that you will become Brother Gavin after you have lived among us for a while.” The same hope that Anslinger had expressed. “That the Light will illuminate you as it illuminates us.”

I could match him pietism for pietism. “The Light is the true Light which lighteth every man who cometh into the world.” However doubtful the validity of the first chapter of the Gospel according to Saint John, the King James translation is among the glories of the English language.

The fact that only Yackle, Enoch, and Judith seemed to recognize the source of the quotation told me a good deal about the general education of the Sutton Settlement Believers. After the Council had accepted me as a temporary stranger within their gates and we were outside on the steps of the Hall, Judith snapped, “For an agnostic gunman, you’re a fast man with a pious phrase!”

“My father was a Presbyterian minister and force fed me the Bible. I can quote scripture to suit any occasion!”

“Your father a minister—and he let you join the Army?” “Dad said at seventeen I should make up my own mind. So when he sent me off to college I took Gramps’ advice and went to the SSF for my education.”

“You jumped from one authority to another.”

I swung on her, suddenly furious. “What the hell do you mean?”

She faced me. “You’ve made a career of being a faithful follower. You’re feudal. A samurai always looking for a Lord. Your father—your grandfather—Colonel Jewett—Arnold Grainer. And whoever told you to kill Futrell. In the Pen you were adrift—”

“Until you took over, I suppose!”

She shrugged. “You needed a push. Remember? At Sherando you latched onto Anslinger—”

“Judy, you’re no psychologist! So lay off analyzing me.”

“I’m only trying to tell you that here you’ll have to be your own man.”

“A few minutes back I found I’d been married without being asked!”

“Well? Do you want to split?”

I looked into her green eyes. “Do you?”

“No!” She stared back, defiant.

“Then I’m still a masterless man! But I’ve got a damned pretty mistress!” I grabbed her and kissed her long and hard, despite her initial protests and the embarrassment of Chuck Yackle, who emerged from the Council Chamber just as Judy was starting to respond.

Enoch had told me the story of the Sutton Cove Settlement when we had sat drinking in his boat. It had been founded by a group of Believers some twenty years before after they had heard their Teacher advise them to pick some remote place and start living the simple life. A slightly bemused look had come over Enoch’s face, and I had again been astonished at the effect the man had had on so many diverse people. Enoch, for example, was a jovial, good-hearted, and pragmatic person, yet a word from the Teacher had been enough for him and his wife to uproot themselves and move into this deserted fishing village to start a new life.

He had been one of the few fishermen among the original group of Believers; in fact one of the few displaced Fundy fishermen who returned to inshore fishing. But he would have gone to establish a Settlement in the middle of Texas if the Teacher had told him. The group had picked Sutton Cove principally because the land and buildings had cost them almost nothing, and it was as remote as anywhere on the eastern seaboard.