Algis Budrys - Some Will Not Die

“And, it is also in the nature of the beast that some people, seeing their neighbor with his window screens, will not want to make the effort of building screens of their own. Some of them will try to bring their neighbor back to the old level—by killing him, by destroying his improvements.

“But that doesn’t work. If you kill one man, you may kill another. And the other people around you will band together in fear and kill you. And someday, after it’s been demonstrated that the easiest way, in the long run, is to build rather than to attempt to destroy—after everyone has window screens—some bright young man will invent DDT and a whole new cycle will begin.”

Cottrell laughed shortly. “Oh, what a nervous day for the window-screen-makers that will be! But the people who know how to make sprayguns will be very busy.

“The plague was a disaster, Matt,” he said suddenly, veering off on a new track. “But disasters are not new to the race of Man. To every Act of God, Man has an answer, drawn from the repertoire of answers he has hammered out in the face of the disasters that have come before. It’s in his nature to build dams against the flood—to rebuild after the earthquake. To put up window screens. Because, apparently, he’s uncomfortable with what this planet gives him, and has to change it—to improve on it, to make himself just a little more comfortable. Maybe, just for the irritated hope that his wife will shut up and leave him alone for a few minutes.

“Who knows? Man hunted his way upward with a club in his hand, once. You’re starting with a rifle. Perhaps, before your sons die, the world will once again support the kind of civilization in which a young man can sit in a cave, drawing pictures, and depend on others to clothe and shelter him.

“But not now,” Cottrell said. “Now, I wouldn’t entrust my daughter to anyone but a hunter.

“And I’m making you a hunter, Matt. I’m leaving you this dowry: responsibility, in the form of what my daughter will need to make her happy. In addition, I leave you the apartment as a base of operations, together with the stove, the water still, and the fuel oil. The First Avenue entrances to the Canarsie Line subway are on the corner. That tunnel connects with all the others under the city. They’ll be a relatively safe trail through the jungle this city has become. You’ll be able to get water from the seepage, too. Distilled water is easily restored to its natural taste by aeration with an eggbeater.

“Last of all, Matt, you’ll find my rifle beside the door. It’s a mankiller. There’s ammunition in the hall closet.

“That’s your environment, Matt. Change it.”

He stopped and sighed. “That’s all.”

Garvin sat silently, watching the old man’s breathing.

What would Cottrell have done if his daughter hadn’t brought a man home? Probably, he would have found comfort in the thought that, across the world, there were thousands of young men and women. His personal tragedy would have been trivial, on that scale.

Yes, doubtless. But would it have made the personal failure any less painful? Cottrell’s philosophy was logical enough—but, once again, in the face of actual practice, logic seemed not enough. Just as now, with all the philosophy expounded, there was still the problem of Margaret’s reaction.

Sweat trickled coldly down Garvin’s chest.

“By the way, Matt,” Cottrell said dryly, “For a young man who doubtless thinks of himself as not being a cave dweller, you’re apparently having a good deal of trouble recognizing the symptoms of shy young love, American girl style.”

Garvin stared at the old man, who went on speaking as though he did not see his flush, smiling broadly as he savored the secret joke he had discovered in his first glances at Margaret and Matt.

“And now, if you’ll call Margaret in here, I think we ought to bring her up to date.” He coughed violently again, grimacing at this reminder, but when he flung the bloody tissue into the wastebasket, it was a gesture of victory.

Five months later, Matt Garvin padded silently through the dark of Macy’s, his magnum rifle held diagonally across his body. He moved easily, for his knapsack was lightly loaded, even when stuffed full of the clothing he’d picked up for Margaret.

Though he made no sound, he chuckled ruefully in his mind. First it had been one thing Margaret needed, and then another, until finally he was going farther and farther afield. Well, it was the way things were, and nothing could be done about it.

A shadow flitted across the lighter area near a door, and he stopped in his tracks, wishing his breath were not so sibilant. Damn, he’d have to work out some kind of breathing technique! Then the other man crossed the light again, and Garvin moved forward. There was a cartridge in the magnum’s chamber, of course, and he was ready to fire instantly. But he could almost be sure there was someone else down here, prowling the counters, and he didn’t want to fire if it could be avoided.

On the other hand, if he waited much longer, he might lose the man in front of him.

With a mental shrug, he threw the rifle up to his shoulder and shot the man down, dropping instantly to the floor as he did so. The echoes shattered through the darkness.

Another man fired from behind a display and charged him, grunting. Matt sprang to his feet, the magnum swinging butt-first, and broke his neck. He stopped to listen, ready to fire in any direction, but there was no sound. He grinned coldly.

He stopped to strip the packs from both corpses before he vanished into the darkness. He thought to himself, not for the first time, that a rifle was too clumsy for close-in combat—that if the man had been able to block the magnum’s swing, things might easily have worked out another way. What you needed for this sort of situation was a pistol.

But he was still reluctant to think of himself as a man with much occasion for one.

Three years went by.

His boots full of frigid water, and his rifle securely strapped to his pack, Matt Garvin was picking his way through the trash in the drainage channel between the subway rails. A hundred feet ahead of him, dim light from a roof grating patched out the darkness, and he ran his thumb over the safety catch of the Glock he had looted out of a littered pawnshop drawer on Eighth Avenue. He stopped for a moment, opened his mouth to quiet the sound of his breath, and listened.

Water dripped from a girder to the concrete of the station platform ahead of him. Behind him in the tunnel—at about the Third Avenue entrance, he judged—someone else was moving. That was all right. There were two long blocks between them, and he’d be out of the tunnel by the time the other man was within dangerous distance.

He listened again, disregarding the faint splash of water on the platform, the different but equally unimportant slosh up the tunnel.

He heard nothing, and his eyes, probing as much of the First Avenue station platforms as he could see, found nothing but dim gray, bounded by the converging lines of platform and roof, broken by the vertical thrust of girders.

Moving forward cautiously, he reached a point near the beginning of the north side platform, and stopped to listen again. Nothing moved.

He pulled himself up on the platform and lay flat, the Glock ready, but there was no scrape of motion, either on this platform or on the one across the tracks, and none of the indistinct shadows changed their shapes as he watched them. Nevertheless, as a final if somewhat inconclusive check, he listened to the water droplets as they fell steadily from the girder to the platform. Sometimes a man got careless and let such a drop hit him, interrupting the beat.