Damon Knight - Orbit 21

And an officer of some high station addressed the crowd briefly: “Ours is a world to be lived in. It is a complete world. It is the way we like it.”

They had the semifinals of the regional pig-sticking tournament then, and some of the best riders and lancers in the nation took part. They had three hundred marching bands, but they often had more than that at their weekly festivals. They had thirty speakers, loaded with wit and wisdom, and limited to thirty seconds each. They had the second half of the football game then.

All of these things were carefully balanced and interspersed. And again and again they cut back to the Last Man for his remarks:

“Heh, heh,” the Last Man Who Remembered cackled. “They thought that we couldn’t get along without them. We showed them. There used to be the saying ‘You can’t live with them and you can’t live without them.’ And then there came along a taller saying, ‘The hell we can’t live without them!’ “

“This Last Man Who Remembers will soon be on his way out of the world,” an official announced. “He will be accompanied by a boy, and by the pet pig of the boy.”

The select dozen horn-boys blew with such trumpeting power that there were, here and there in the assembly, burst ears and blood running down jowls. The boys blew superbly, but one of them, so it was bruited about by those who understood high trumpeting, blew incompletely. This incomplete trumpeter would have to be killed, the rumor said. But one always hates to see a boy chopped down before he even becomes a man.

There was a heavyweight prize fight, very good, and it ended in a knockout in four rounds.

“Heh, heh, they were always more trouble than they were worth,” the Last Man Who Remembered was cackling to the assembly. “Well, we did give up something when we gave them up, heh, heh, but I’m the only one who remembers what it was, so it won’t matter to the rest of you.”

“There are still some few persons who are incomplete and unsatisfied,” another high official announced. “There’s about one of them in a million. They believe that they’re missing something. Some of them even believe that the missing element lingers on the other side of the hills. But all of us who have our sanity and balance know that there is nothing worthwhile over the hills, that we’re not missing anything. What could there possibly be that we don’t already have?”

The twelve loud trumpets spoke again, and then one of them predominated. It didn’t win a prize for loudness, or for excellence either. It won a temporary first place by the trickiness of its tune. There was shocking joy in that tune, but there was more joy in the knowledge that there would be extra bonus blood spilled that night.

“Hey, hey, ‘tis said that some of them are still left in ohafa valleys,” the Last Man Who Remembered crowed. “I never believed it.”

And now the action picked up pace and moved to the climax. Twelve trumpets shouted together. And then eleven of them fell silent, and a single one kept on with its strange tune that seemed to be requiring an answer or at least a counterpoint. “It’s the only tune that he can play,” people with special trumpet knowledge told their neighbors. Then the lone trumpeter with his conch-shell trumpet still roaring and soaring came to the very center of the arena. His pet pig was at his heels; and the finest riders and lancers came to that same center which was really the coursing area.

The Last Man Who Remembered, wired for sound so that none of his observations might be lost, was brought to that central area.

“Heh, heh, we got rid of them,” he cackled. “Good riddance. They kept the whole world in a turmoil. How is it that the trumpet-boy knows about them, though? Well, no matter. He’ll be going with me.”

Tom Halfshell, the trumpet-boy, still played. The expert pig lancers were in the mule saddles to make their kills and send the three creatures on their way.

“Heh, heh, they’re well forgotten,” the Last Man crowed. “They were one kind of fun, but there were so many other kinds of fun that you couldn’t have when they were in the world. Why, you couldn’t even have a pig-sticking pageant with them around.”

A lancer got the old Last Man then. He was down, dead on the turf, with a self-satisfied grin on his face. And an era was over.

Tom the trumpeter blew powerfully and disturbingly again, A lancer killed the pet pig, a very tricky small target. The little pig was stretched out on the turf at the head of the dead Last Man.

Tom blew his powerful half-tune again. Then it was cut off sharply by a lance. He was down dead, and he was placed on the turf at the feet of the dead Last Man. That was the end of the pig and the boy and the man, and of any secret that they might know.

But an answer to the tune of Tom Halfshell arrived then, distantly, but clear and carrying, from “Over the Hills and Far Away,” played on the unplayable trumpet-shell of the Butterfly Moon Snail.

This really was an answer to Tom’s tune, a convincing answer, and it thunderstruck a million men and boys—while seven notes of it sounded—and then it was cut off sharply—by a murdering lance.

There is no faking a lancing.

I haven’t wanted to write in my journal for a long time. Not since our town was attacked. When the fighting got close Momma decided we should run away and join the refugees hiding in the woods. We lived there for five weeks until Momma thought it would be safe to go home again. But when we came back to town the Citizen Protection Force had taken over. They said we couldn’t live in our house or even in our town anymore. Momma says we have to do what they tell us because they are our protectors so we left our town.

We took the train to the relocation center in the city but we didn’t ride in the passenger cars, we had to ride in box cars with a lot of other people. I hated riding the train like that. The toilet was a bucket in the corner hidden behind a blanket somebody hung from the ceiling. It was dark and smelly in the box car and the little ones cried all the time because they were scared. Sometimes Momma would sing to them to make them stop crying. And when she did all the people would listen and some of them would sing, too.

The relocation center was a big gymnasium. We stayed there almost a month. At first there were some people we knew from our town but new people came and the others left and after a while everybody around us was strangers. Every time somebody we knew left Momma would cry.

A few days ago it was our turn to leave. The protectors at the relocation center made us get on the train again. We have finally stopped but I am not sure where we are and we have come so far I wonder if Papa will ever find us. There are no telephones, there is no electricity. The train we came on has left and no one knows when it will return. But the protectors say we are safe here. They say they have been ordered to take care of us until peace comes and we can go home again. I hope it will be soon.

We are in the mountains in what is left of a town and after two days of waiting we’ve been assigned a living place. Momma says at least we have a home again. The protectors have given us an apartment on the top floor of an old brownstone house. There is a kitchen and a living room but the best part is the bathroom because the plumbing still works. We can use the toilet and Momma says even if we don’t have soap anymore we can wash clothes and take baths. The protectors say we can drink the water, too, but it has to be boiled for a long time first. In the living room there is a sort of stove made from a big metal drum that sits on bricks laid on the floor. Ned, Carrie and I have a mattress and there is another for Momma, Jane and Baby Anna. There is an old blue armchair with a high curved back and cushioned seat. Carrie decided the chair will be Momma’s throne and we will all sit on the floor at her feet like loyal subjects adoring a queen. Momma laughed and said she was glad Carrie remembered fairy tales but the chair was not a throne and she was definitely not a queen.