Гарри Гаррисон - 50 in 50

Then, an unmeasurable time later, there was an end to it. The explosions became distinct, one from the other, waned, grew again, and finally ceased altogether. The roof had held and they were alive.

"Let's go," Mau Mau said, his voice sounding dim and muffled to their battered ears. "If we start digging now we should be out by dark, and we have a lot of ground to cover tonight."

The guerrillas took turns with the shovels, carrying the dirt back in buckets to dump at the far end of the chamber.

They all helped with this, except for the prisoner and one guard. The atmosphere was stifling and hot before they holed through to the outside again. They emerged, breathing deeply, savoring the indescribable sweetness of the evening air.

Bruno looked about in the twilight and gasped. The rain had stopped and the fog had thinned a good deal. The clearing was gone, as were the trees, in every direction, as far as he could see. In their place was a sea of churned craters and splintered pieces of wood. Pieces of steel casing were scattered over the ground. He bent and picked up a shining steel ball: there were many of these.

"Antipersonnel bombs," Mau Mau said. "Each bomb has a couple hundred of these balls, and they drop them by the thousands. Cut a person in two they will. Military denied dropping them in Vietnam, they deny using them now. They lied both times."

"Mau Mau — we on de radio!" Chopper called out. He had a small transistor portable held to his ear. "That raid we done on de truck. Dey say de army had three casualties and dat we had thirty-seven killed."

"Turn that damn thing off and get Whitey over here. I want some words with him."

They stood, face-to-face, black and white faces, each mirroring the other's expression of cold hatred.

"Record this, Bruno," Mau Mau said. The camera mechanism whirred as it opened the lens wide in the failing light. "Lieutenant Adkins is now going to tell us what he was doing in Ellenville. Speak up, Lieutenant."

"I have nothing to say."

"Nothing? There was a little boy back at the truck who recognized you. He was hidden in the loft of that country store, and nobody ever looked up there because the ladder had got knocked down. He said that you were in charge of the men that afternoon, that day, that's what he said."

"He's lying!"

"Now why should a little boy lie? He did say that most ofays looked alike to him, white like something dead, but he is never going to forget your face."

The lieutenant turned away contemptuously and said nothing. Mau Mau drew back his fist — then struck him in the side of the head so hard that he was hurled to the ground. He lay there, blood running down his cheek, and cursed.

"See, did you see that, you with the camera, whoever you are? He struck a prisoner, a wounded prisoner. Do you see the kind of creature he is? I'll tell you what happened in Ellenville. There was a girl riding in a car, a sweet girl, a girl I knew, who I even had the privilege of dancing with once. One minute she was alive, and the next minute she was butchered and dead. Maybe killed by this black ape here for all I know!"

"Oh, Whitey, you got a mighty big mouth," Mau Mau said, shaking his head. "Why don't you tell him that this sweet girl was an army nurse and she happened to be in a car with a colonel that had been causing a lot of trouble in these parts. And that that car was taken out by a mortar shell from over a hill and no one knew she was in the car until they heard it on the radio. Now I'm just as sorry about that sweet girl as you are. But how come you didn't tell him about the other sweet girl, the black girl, who had the bad luck to be in a store the next day when a patrol came looking for evidence and shot the man that ran the store, then gang-shagged the girl and killed her too? Go ahead now, tell the press all about that."

"You're a liar!" He spat out the words.

"Me? I'm just telling you what the little boy told me. He says you kind of knocked the old man around before he got killed. He also said that you didn't climb on that little black girl with the others, but you seemed to enjoy yourself just watching. And he said that you were the one that killed her afterwards, put your gun in her mouth and blew her brains out through the back of her head."

l^feu Mau bent over the man on the ground, lower and lower, and every muscle in his body drew taut with the intensity of his emotion. When he spoke again he almost spat the words in the other's face.

"So now I am going to give it to you, you white son of a bitch, just the way you gave it to her."

It was ugly, Bruno felt sickened, yet he got it all on tape. The man fought back, hard, in spite of his wounded arm, but they put him down and brought the lanterns so they glared on his face while Mau Mau stood over him and lowered a rifle an inch above his face. "Got some last words, Whitey? Want to try and make your peace with God?"

"Don't dirty the name of God with your thick filthy lips.” the lieutenant shouted, twisting against the hands that held him. "You black Jew Communist nigger come down here from the North and look for trouble — you'll find it, all of you — because before this is over you are going to be dead or shipped back to Africa with the rest of the apes…"

The gun muzzle pushed against his mouth cutting off the flow of words. Mau Mau nodded.

"Now that's just what I wanted to hear you say. I wouldn't have wanted to kill an innocent man."

Though Bruno closed his eyes when the shot was fired he kept the camera going.

"That. . that was horrible," he said, turning away, fighting to control his stomach while his gorge rose bitter in his mouth.

"Everything about war is horrible," Mau Mau said. "Now let's march before they catch us here." He started away, then turned back to the Italian newsman.

"Look, do you think I like doing this? Maybe I do now, but I didn't start out this way. War brutalizes everyone involved until there is no more innocence on either side. But you must remember that this is a revolt — and that people do not revolt and get killed unless there is a reason for them to do it. And, oh man, man, do we have a couple of hundred years of good reasons! So why shouldn't we fight, and kill, for what we know is right? Whitey does it all the time. Remember Vietnam? Whitey thought he was right there so he dropped napalm on schools and hospitals. Whitey taught us just how it is done. So when we run across filth like this" — he kicked at the sprawled leg of the body on the ground—"we know how to deal with it. People like this you can't talk to — except with a gun."

Bruno was shocked, his hand making little chopping motions in the air before he could choke out the words.

"Do you hear yourself? Do you know what you are saying? This is what Mussolini, the fascists said, when they took over Italy. This is what the hysterical Birchites, the Minutemen, say in your own country. You are parroting their words!"

Mau Mau smiled, but there was nothing, nothing at all humorous in the twist of his mouth.

"Am I? I guess that you are right. They always said that we needed education to change, and I guess they were right, too. They taught us. We got the message. We learned."

He turned away and led them off into the darkness.

I wrote the West of Eden trilogy about our planet Earth where the giant meteorite did not strike 65 million years ago. In these books intelligent dinosaurs develop to share the world with mankind. In history as we know it there were no intelligent dinosaurs. Or were there. .

Akotolp was deeply asleep, immersed in the dreamless and immobile sleep of the Yilane. Then the dawn came and she was instantly awake, instantly aware at the same time that something was very wrong. The light was far too bright for dawn, far brighter even than midday, burning through the gaps between the leaves that walled her sleeping chamber. Her nictitating membranes closed as she pushed aside the vines and stepped out beneath the branches of the city tree.