Tom Godwin - The Greater Thing

“Maybe so… maybe not,” he answered. “We can only try, and take what comes.”

“I know,” she said. “I’m not crying or feeling sorry for myself. I knew, when I joined the Underground, that it might end like this. But this feeling keeps getting stronger and there’s this promise I want you to make. I’m not afraid to die; not yet, anyway, and I don’t think I’ll be afraid when the end comes.”

In the face of her seriousness Thorne found he did not have the heart to belittle her fears with the hollow bluff of false optimism. And, despite her words, it seemed to him she was just a little frightened. A verse from Omar came to his mind, unbidden, from where it had lain forgotten so long:

“We won’t be the first, nor the last, to die for what we think is right,” she went on, “and I don’t regret the kind of life I chose. I don’t wan’t to die, but I’m not afraid. And I know that others will carry on our work—I know my faith in people is true, that the good in people can never be destroyed. Only”—she paused as though searching for the right words—“there are different ways to die, and I don’t want to die the police way. And there’s an alternative to the alternative.”

“I know.”

“It would be better, wouldn’t it?” she asked, her eyes on his. “You would rather take it, yourself, wouldn’t you?”

“I suppose so. It would be better than the other.”

“Then I want you to promise me, when you see it’s really the end, that you won’t let them get me.”

He could take his own life as the least, unpleasant of two unpleasant choices. It would be cruel and illogical to not do the same for her, but the thought of deliberately taking her life was painfully disturbing to contemplate.

“Will you promise?” she asked again.

“Of course,” he said, keeping his voice flat and impersonal. “But they haven’t got us yet.”

“Of course not!” She smiled up at his bleakness. “I only wanted your promise because I have that feeling. It’s a bridge we haven’t reached yet—maybe it won’t be there.”

“Bridges should never be crossed until you get to them,” he said. “One of the best ways to keep that bridge from being there is for you to rest while you can.”

She obeyed meekly, drawing her knees up close and pillowing her forehead on her crossed forearms. He watched her a moment, knowing that she was only pretending to be almost asleep but satisfied that she was relaxed with the burden of the way of her dying lifted from her mind.

He searched the road once more, and found it empty. He looked again into the city but it was as still as ever, with the moonlight whitewashing its deserted streets. A two-story building stood across the street from him, with a yawning blackness where the show window of the first floor had been. The glass remained in the two windows of the second floor, giving them the appearance of two eyes staring blankly above a gaping mouth. Part of the sign over the show window was visible: …GR…… T………

It was not enough to give a clue as to the name of the city, and he doubted that knowing the name would help any. This was a section of country far removed from the centers of population, and unknown to him. And it was only a dead city, with nothing to offer them, despite his words to Lorrine. They could hide in the city, but for how long? Even if, by some miracle, they eluded the police until morning it would gain them no more than another day’s respite, then the helicopter patrol would appear on the scene. In this land of open plains they could not escape both the bloodhound behind and the eyes watching from the air above. There could be only one way for it to end—

His thought broke as he saw something gray and shapeless move in the darkness behind the empty show window. It was there for a moment, long enough for the carbine to come to his shoulder and the sights to catch it, then it was gone. He held his breath and waited, his finger on the trigger, but there was nothing more to see other than the empty blackness under the staring, glassy eyes of the windows; nothing to hear but the soft sound of his own heart, the breathing of Lorrine and, from a long way off, the sleepy chirping of a bird.

He lowered the rifle and glanced at Lorrine. She was in the same position as before and had not seen him move. Nerves, he thought. Nerves and imagination. Or a puff of wind had stirred the dust in the old building—but there was no wind.

He watched the blackness again, listening. Nothing moved there but, as he listened, he heard another sound. It was the sound he had known he would hear too soon, coming from far back along the road and carrying faintly through the night air—the sound of human voices.

It was content to remain unseen and merely observe; it had no reason to interfere and it had no desire to serve as the catalysis that might deflect the human reactions from their norm. Its curiosity was as great as its intelligence and it found, in the thoughts and behavior of the humans, a problem more intricate than any it had ever encountered. It read their minds and tried to analyze what it found there, correlating the data with all its vast intelligence. It found that correlation was impossible, that the two humans were motivated by incomprehensible nonphysical things; many different things which seemed to stem from one basic human characteristic.

Into its analysis of the problem went all its tremendous wisdom, but it could find no solution. Something motivated the humans, driving them on to do illogical things that would result in their deaths, but the motivating force was nonphysical. It was a human characteristic, intangible and nonmaterial, and the thing in the city could not define it. It was a factor vital to its solution of the problem, but it was as impalpable as smoke.

So it continued to observe as the two humans resumed their flight into the city, waiting for their further actions to reveal the missing factor of the analysis. And it would, before long, observe another reaction it had never observed before—it had never watched a living thing die.

Thorne turned to the girl, reluctant to arouse her and lead her again in the futile flight, but there was no choice.

“Lorrine.”

She raised her head with the alertness of the hunted animal. “They’re coming,” she said, not making it a question.

“Too far away to see them in the moonlight, but I heard their voices. Keep to the shadows until we get farther in the city.”

The street curved, hiding the road behind them, and they walked down the center of it, away from the broken masonry that littered the walks. Their course was erratic, zigzagging at random but drawing nearer the heart of the city. At times they walked down streets almost untouched, their footsteps echoing loudly from the walls, while other sections were littered with heaps of rubble which they climbed over. Occasionally a section was so completely destroyed that they were forced to detour whole blocks.

They came to another section almost untouched, where the street ran east as far as they could see. It would do as well as any, Thorne decided, and Lorrine wouldn’t be able to take much more of the climbing over the bombed areas. There was still no plan, other than the aimless fleeing, and this clean street would have as much to offer them in the way of a miracle as any other. He had hoped that they might find something, anything, which might offer them a chance for survival, but there was nothing but the empty, dead streets and the cold, blank stare of the dark doorways.