Kate Wilhelm - Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang

“They’ll have your skin if they catch you,” one of the women said. They were pleased at the prospect of a party, and already they were dragging out the mat, and one of them was winding her hair up out of the way.

“Where’s Wanda and Dorothy?” Mark asked. “They should be here, and maybe a couple of others. It’s a big bottle of wine.”

“I’ll tell them,” Loretta whispered, stifling her laughter.

“Wait until Nurse is out of sight.” She peeked out, shut the door, and pressed her finger to her lips. After waiting a moment, she looked again, then slipped out.

“After the party, maybe you and I can get out for a little while?” Brenda said, rubbing her cheek against his.

Mark nodded. “Any glasses in here?”

Someone produced glasses, and he began to pour the wine. Others joined them, and now there were eleven of the younger women on the mat drinking the golden wine, muffling giggles and laughter. When they began to yawn, they wandered off to their beds, and those who had come from the other room stretched out on the mat. Mark waited until they were all sleeping soundly, then left quietly. He went to the dock, made certain no one had remained aboard the paddle wheel, and then returned and began to carry the women out, one by one, wrapped like cocoons in their blankets. On his last trip he gathered as many clothes as he could find, closed the window of the dorm, and, panting with fatigue, made his way back to the boat.

He untied the mooring ropes and let the boat glide with the current, using a paddle to keep it close to the shore. Downriver, nearly opposite the old house, he snagged a rock and drew the boat into shore and tied it securely. One more thing, he thought, very tired now. One more thing.

He ran to the old house and slid down the chute, then hurried upstairs. He didn’t use a light, but went straight to the paintings and started to pick up the first one. Behind him a match flared, and he froze.

“Why did you come back?” Barry asked roughly. “Why didn’t you stay out there in the woods where you belong?”

“I came back for my things,” Mark said, and turned. Barry was alone. He was lighting the oil lamp. Mark made a motion toward the window, and Barry shook his head.

“It won’t do any good. They wired the stairs. If anyone comes up here, it rings an alarm in Andrew’s room. They’ll be on their way in a minute or two.”

Mark scooped up the painting, then another and another. “Why are you here?”

“To warn you.”

“Why? Why did you suspect I’d come back?”

“I don’t know why. I don’t want to know why. I’ve been sleeping downstairs, in the library. You won’t have time to get them all,” he said urgently as Mark picked up more paintings. “They’ll be here fast. They think you tried to burn down the mill, dam the stream, poison the clones in the tanks. They won’t stop to ask any questions this time.”

“I didn’t try to kill the clones,” Mark said, not looking at Barry. “I knew the computer would sound an alarm before the contaminated water was used. How did they find out?”

“They sent some of the boys down into the water, and a couple of them actually managed to swim out the other side, and after that, it wasn’t hard. Four were killed in the attempt,” he said without inflection.

“I’m sorry,” Mark said. “I didn’t want that.”

Barry shrugged. “You have to go.”

“I’m ready.”

“You’ll die out there,” Barry said, in the same dead voice. “You and those children you took with you. They won’t be able to breed, you know. Maybe one girl, maybe two, but then what?”

“I’ve taken some of the women from the breeders’ compound,” Mark said.

Now Barry registered shock and disbelief. “How?”

“It doesn’t matter how. I have them. And we’ll make it. I planned it very carefully. We’ll make it.”

“That’s what it was all for?” Barry said. “The fire, the dam, the contaminated water, the seed grains you took? That’s what it was all for?” he said again, this time not looking at Mark, but searching the remaining paintings as if they held the answer. “You even have livestock,” he said.

Mark nodded. “They’re safe. I’ll get them in a week or two.”

“They’ll track you down,” Barry said slowly. “They think you’re a menace, they won’t rest until they find you.”

“They can’t find us,” Mark said. “The ones who could are in Philadelphia. By the time they get back there won’t be any signs of us anywhere.”

“Have you thought what it will be like?” Barry cried, suddenly losing the rigid control he had achieved. “They’ll fear you and hate you! It isn’t fair to make them all suffer. And they’ll come to hate you for it. They’ll die out there! One by one, and each one will make the survivors hate more. In the end you’ll all die mean and miserable deaths.

Mark shook his head. “If we don’t make it,” he said, “there won’t be anyone at all left on earth. The pyramid is tilting. The pressure from the great white wall is bearing down on it, and it cannot stand.”

“And if you make it, you’ll sink back into savagery. It will be a thousand years, five thousand, before a man can climb out of the pit you’re digging him. They’ll be animals!”

“And you’ll be dead.” Mark glanced swiftly about the room, then hurried to the door. He paused there and looked at Barry steadily. “You won’t understand this. No one’s alive but me who could understand it. I love you, Barry. You’re strange to me, alien, not human. All of you are. But I didn’t destroy them when I could have and wanted to because I loved you. Good-bye, Barry.”

For a moment they continued to look at each other, and then Mark turned and ran lightly down the stairs. Behind him he heard the sound of something breaking, but he didn’t stop. He left by the back door, and was through the trees and into the field when Andrew and his companions drew near. Mark stopped and listened.

“He’s still up there,” someone said. “I can see him.”

Barry had broken the boards on the window so he could be seen. He was buying time for him, Mark realized, and keeping low, he began to run toward the river.

“That’s what it was all for,” Barry whispered again, and now he addressed himself to the walnut head that was Molly. He held the head between his hands and sat down at the exposed window with the lamp behind him. “That’s what it was all for,” he said one more time, and he wondered if Molly had always been smiling. He didn’t look up when flames started to crackle through the house, but he held the carved head tighter against his chest as if to protect it.

Far down the river Mark stood in the paddle wheel watching the flames, and he wept. When the boat bumped a rock, he began to fire the engine and then, under power, continued downriver. When he reached the Shenandoah he turned south and followed it until the big boat could go no farther. It was almost dawn. He sorted the clothes he had gathered together in the women’s quarters and made up packs of the boat’s provisions; they would need everything they could carry.

When the women began to stir, he would give them tea and cornbread, and get them ashore. He would take the boat out to the middle of the river and let it float downstream again. They would need it back in the valley. Then he and the women would start through the forests toward home.

Mark kept behind trees as he approached the ridge over the valley once more. Twenty years, he thought. Twenty years since he had seen it. It was possible they had set up an elaborate alarm system, but he thought not. Not up here anyway. From all appearances, the woods up here had not been entered for many years. He ran the last few feet to the ridge, concealed himself behind a tangle of wild grapes, and looked below. For a long time he didn’t move, hardly breathed, and then he slowly began to walk down the slope.