Дэймон Найт - Orbit 5

Morris thought of the glimpse of Paul’s head he had seen earlier. “He’s up there. He just won’t answer.” He thought of the times he had taken the pictures his mother had given him, pictures showing his own childhood, from their drawer and studied them to try and discover some similarity between himself and Paul. “He doesn’t want to argue,” he finished weakly.

“Say.” Russell was looking at the tree again. “Why don’t we chop it?” He dropped his voice to a whisper.

Morris was horrified. “He’d be killed.”

The radio’s metallic jingling stopped. “We interrupt this program for a bulletin.” Both men froze.

“Word has reached our newsroom that the demonstration organized by Citizens For Peace has been disrupted by about five hundred storm troopers of the American Nazi Party. It appears that members of a motorcycle club have also entered the disturbance; it is not known on which side.”

Russell switched the radio off. Morris sighed. “Every time they have one of those bulletins I think it’s going to be the big one.”

His neighbor nodded sympathetically. “But listen, we don’t have to cut the tree clear down. Anyway, it must be nearly three feet thick and it would take us a couple of days, probably. All we have to do is chop at it a little. He’ll think we’re going to cut it with him in it, and climb down. You have an ax?”

Morris shook his head.

“I do. I’ll go over and get it.”

Morris waited under the tree until he had left, then called Paul’s name softly several times. There was no reply. Raising his voice, he said, “We don’t want to hurt you, Paul.” He tried to think of a bribe. Paul already had a bicycle. “I’ll build you a swimming pool, Paul. In the back yard where your mother has her flowers. I’ll have men come in with a bulldozer and dig them out and make us a swimming pool there.” There was no answer. He wanted to tell Paul that they weren’t really going to chop down the tree, but something prevented him. Then he could hear Russell opening the gate on the other side of the house.

The ax was old, dull and rusted, and the head was loose on the handle so that after every few strokes it was necessary to drive it back on by butting it against the trunk of the tree; each blow hurt Morris’s already scraped hands. By the time he had made a small notch—most of his swings missed the point of aim and fell uselessly on either side of it—his arms and wrists were aching. Paul had not come down or even looked out one of the windows.

“I’m going to try climbing again.” He laid down the ax, looking at Russell. “Do you have a longer ladder than this one?”

Russell nodded. “You’ll have to come over and help me carry it.”

Russell’s wife stopped them as they crossed Russell’s patio and made them come inside for lemonade. “My goodness, Morris, you look as if you’re about to have heat prostration. Is it that warm out?” Russell’s house was airconditioned too.

They sat in the family room, with lemonade in copper mugs meant for Moscow Mules. The television flickered with scenes, but Russell’s wife had twisted the sound down until Morris could hear only a faint hum. The screen showed a sprawling building billowing smoke. Firemen and soldiers milled about it. Then the camera raced down suburban streets and he saw two houses very like his own and Russell’s; he almost felt he could see through the walls, see the two of them sitting and watching their own houses—which were gone now as police fired up at the windows of a tall tenement. Russell, winking and gesturing for silence, was pouring gin into his mug to mix with the lemonade now that his wife had gone back to the kitchen.

He felt sick when he stood up, and wondered dully if Sheila were not looking for him, angry because his breakfast was getting cold. He steadied himself on the doorway as he followed Russell out, conscious that his face was flushed. The heat outside was savage now.

They moved cans of paint and broken storm windows aside to uncover Russell’s extension ladder. It was as old as the ax, dirtied with white and yellow splashes, and heavy as metal when they got it on their shoulders to carry outside.

“This’ll get you up the first twenty feet,” Russell said. “Think you can climb from there?”

Morris nodded, knowing he could not.

They hooked the two sections together and leaned them against the tree, Russell talking learnedly of the proper distance between the bottom of the ladder and the base of the object to be climbed. Russell had been an engineer at one time; Morris had never been quite sure of the reason he no longer was.

The ladder shook. It seemed strange to find himself surrounded by leaves instead of looking up at them, having to look down to see Russell on the ground. At the very top of the ladder a large limb had been broken off some years before and he could look straight out over the roof of his own home and all the neighboring houses. “I see smoke,” he called down. “Over that way. Something big’s burning.”

“Can you get up to the boy?” Russell called back.

Morris tried to leave the ladder, lifting one leg gingerly over the stub of the broken limb. Giddiness seized him. He climbed down again.

“What’s the matter?”

“If I had a rope,” Morris gestured with his hands, “I could put it around my waist and around the trunk of the tree. You know, like the men who climb telephone poles.” Sirens sounded in the distance.

“I’ve got some.” Russell snapped his fingers. “Wait a minute.”

Morris waited. The noise of the sirens died away, leaving only the talk of the leaves, but Russell did not return. Morris was about to go into the house when the truck pulled up at the curb. It was a stake-bed truck, and the men were riding on it, almost covering it. They were white and brown and black; most of them wore khaki shirts and khaki trousers with broad black leather belts, but they had no insignia and their weapons were clubs and bottles and iron bars. The first of them were crossing his lawn almost before the truck had come to a full stop, and a tall man with a baseball bat began smashing his picture window.

“What do you want?” Morris said. “What is it?”

The leader took him by the front of his shirt and shook him as the others circled around. A stone, and then another, struck the ground and he realized that Paul was throwing them from his treehouse trying to defend him, but the range was too great. Someone hit him from behind with a chain.

The green Chevrolet was stalled at the comer of Washington and Pine Streets. Behind it, the truck driver felt his patience drain away until, with a curse, he shifted gears and rolled his huge truck backward. The protruding sheets of steel sliced through the Volkswagen behind him and through the head of the driver, John Phillpott Tanker.

The ambulance drivers who brought him in had little hope. The nurses in the Emergency Room had less. The residents struggled on, patching tom blood vessels, giving transfusions, wrapping his head in a new plastic bag, and trying every other trick any one of them could think of before they too admitted it was hopeless.

Walter Sturbridge heard about it Sunday evening when an old friend, an elevator operator at University Hospital, called him on the phone. Sturbridge set a record for the trip in. Trotting down the basement corridors toward the north side of the hospital, he saw old Loomis waiting for him.

“How is he?” Sturbridge said.

“He’s messed up pretty bad.” Loomis steered him toward his elevator. “Let’s take this thing up to three where we can sit and talk a bit.” They settled, lit cigarettes. Sturbridge waited.