Algis Budrys - Some Will Not Die

Jim looked incredulously at Holland. “What do you think’s happened?”

Holland, his face grave, shook his head. “I’m not sure—but I think I know why Ted wanted Eisner with him. I’m pretty sure John’s last orders were to point his cars west.”

“You think Ted’s with him?”

Holland’s face held a queer expression for a moment. “Not in the flesh.”

To all units, interim military command, SFAR: Be advised that the renegade military units under the command of former AU officers Eisner, Willets, and Ryder have fled out of the borders of the SFAR under determined pursuit by units of the New York Popular Militia. The rebels suffered heavy losses. Our units returned intact.

Holland and Garvin laughed savagely.

Be further advised that any evidences of Berendtsenism among the populace or in the ranks of military units are to be dealt with summarily.

The operator who read the message had a nervous voice.

Holland raised an eyebrow. “Berendtsenism?”

For a moment, a savage light gleamed in his and Jim’s eyes, washing out the dull resignation that had begun to settle there.

“Do you suppose Ted wasn’t as dumb as New York thought he’d be?” Jim asked. “It sounds just a little bit like things are going to pieces up there. Suppose he realized that he might want somebody to break out, and hung on to Eisner for that purpose? And maybe he threw us in here to hole up until New York worked itself into the ground?”

Holland shook his head in bafflement. “I don’t know. You could never tell with Ted. You could only wonder.”

Robert Garvin spun around as Mayor Hammersby came through the door.

“Well?” he snapped.

Hammersby shrugged. “Not yet.”

“What’s the matter with them!”

Hammersby gave him a sidelong look. “Easy, Garvin. It’ll happen.”

Robert Garvin stared at him through a film of over. powering rage. It almost seemed as though even Hammersby were drawing a sort of insolence out of the impossible situation.

“We can’t wait any longer. The old Army men have already delayed us with their talking. If we hold off much more, we’ll have a revolution on our hands.”

“Isn’t that the theory?” Hammersby asked dryly. “Armed freemen, choosing their own leaders? Why should you object?”

The words dashed themselves against Robert Garvin like cold surf. Hammersby was right, of course. The people had a perfect right to choose for themselves, to kill or not to kill.

“Berendtsen’s got to die!” he suddenly shouted. “Send out one of Hollis’s patented mobs.”

“The people will rule, eh? With an occasional nudge.”

“Damn it, Hammersby!”

“Oh, I’ll do it, all right. I’m just as worried about my neck as you are.” The Mayor turned and left, with Garvin staring angrily at his back.

He couldn’t shoot a man in the back, of course.

The last message from New York came metallically into the radio shack:

“To be re-broadcast to the general population at your discretion”:

This is what Theodore Berendtsen said to his judges. It is the only public speech he ever made, and he made it surrounded by men who had been his friends. He did not look at anyone when he said this. His eyes were on something none of us, in that room with him, could see. But I am sure he saw it, as I am sure that, when someone reads these words, a hundred years from now, he will know that a man living in our time was great enough to plan beyond his own life.

The voice was a completely unknown one, and trembled with feeling. It might be false, or it might be real. Almost certainly, the man speaking was in the grip of an overpowering emotion, and would grin sheepishly at himself when he remembered it later. But some obscure one of Berendtsen’s judges had performed that judgment better than had been expected of him. Jim felt a cold chill run along his hackles as he listened, and, when he touched a switch, heard the speakers echoing mournfully outside.

He got to his feet and swung himself carefully over to the window, leaning heavily on his crutches and watching the faces of the people as they listened. And then the tape-recorded voice cut in, and Garvin saw the people gasp.

“I am not here to defend myself,” Berendtsen said. “For I am indefensible. I have burned, killed, and looted, and my men have done worse, at times.

“I killed because some men would rather destroy than build—because their individual power was sweeter to them than the mutual liberty of all men. I killed, too, because I was born to a society, and men would not accept that society. For that, I am doubly guilty—but I could do nothing else. Some issues are not clear- cut. Whatever the evils of our society might be, I can only say that it was my firm conviction that it would have been intolerable to us had some outside way of life sup planted it. In the last analysis, I made few judgments. I am not a superhuman hero. I am a man.

“I burned as a weapon of war—a war not against individuals, but against what seemed to me to be darkness. I looted because I needed the equipment with which to kill and burn.

“I did these things in order to bring union to what had been scattered tribes and uncoordinated city-states. We stood on the bare brink of the jungle we had newly emerged from, and, left alone, it would have been centuries before the scattered principalities fought out such a bloody peace as would, at last, have given us civilization again—after it was too late, after the books had rotted and the machinery rusted.

“What binds an organization of people is unimportant. Political ideologies change. Purposes change. The rule of one man comes to an end. But the fact of organization continues, no matter what changes occur within that organization.

“I have committed my last crime against today. I leave you an organization to do with as you will. I have set my hand on today, but I have not presumed upon tomorrow.”

There was a moment’s crackling silence, and then the New York broadcaster cut off, but the name he signed to the message was completely devoid of title or military rank, and there was no mention of Hollis or the SFAR, or of Robert Garvin. Whatever had brewed in New York was over, and this, not the blank, deadly silence, was the proper end to Theodore Berendtsen’s time.

“What the hell is that thing?” Jim said, squinting up into the sun.

“Helicopter, I guess. Looks like the picture,” Holland answered. “You notice the cabin’s got a blue-red stripe on it?”

Garvin nodded. “Yeah, I saw it.” He leaned more heavily on his crutches.

There was a crowd of villagers around them, straining against the militiamen who were uncertain enough of their present authority to let the line bulge out raggedly.

“You notice that?” Holland said, pointing.

Jim looked at the ugly pockmarks of bullet scars on the cabin and nodded. Then the aircraft stormed over them, gargling its way downward until the landing skids touched the ground and the engine died. The cabin door opened.

“So that’s what happened to Bob,” Jim said softly. He smiled crookedly and began swinging toward the craft, Holland keeping pace with him. They were almost beside it when Holland suddenly touched Jim’s arm.

Another man had gotten out with Bob, and now both of them were turning around to help the other passenger out. The breath caught in Jim’s throat as he recognized his mother. Then he stopped and braced himself. When his mother looked at him, the shock of recognition in her eyes followed instantly by pain and indecision, he was ready.

“Hello, Mom,” he said. “Nothing big—I’ll be all right in a couple of weeks.” She looked at him uncertainly, and finally put her arm through Bob’s.