Tom Godwin - The Greater Thing

“Almost all the way.”

“So we walk and Harker takes it easy until a helicopter shows up for him! ”

“You mean we won’t get to see the show?” There was scowling disappointment on the first one’s face. “It ought to be good—Harker’s madder than I ever saw him. It ought to really be good!”

“When Harker makes ’em holler, he makes ’em holler good and loud,” another one observed, staring at. Thorne curiously. “Yes sir, good and loud!”

Thorne’s lip curled with his contempt for them and the first one stood up, to smile and very deliberately smash his fist into Thorne’s mouth.

“I wouldn’t do that,” advised one. “You know Harker wants ’em in good shape when he starts in on ’em.”

Thorne spat the blood from his mouth and the striker stepped sullenly back. Another of them appeared with an armload of broken boards. He piled them a few feet in front of Thorne and laid a blackened knife beside them.

“No use gettin’ in a hurry, Jack,” one said. “If Squint is right, we won’t be here to see it—we’ll be pluggin’ back the way we come.”

“You mean that we have to walk it again?” the one called Jack demanded. “We walk, and that—”

“Here he comes now!” another interjected tensely.

Thorne watched the approaching Harker as he crossed the street. The police stood respectfully aside and he strode through with arrogant disdain. He stopped before Thorne, thick and stocky, his feet wide apart and the small eyes glittering in his heavy face.

“So you’re John Thorne?” he said. “And the woman was Lorrine Calvert?”

Thorne said nothing and Harker smiled. “I’m not asking you, I’m telling you. When I get ready to ask some questions I have—you’ll answer. And it might help you to know that none of the others escaped. You would be surprised at what we learned from them. But every little bit of information helps, and you might be able to add something. I’m sure you’ll try.”

He laughed softly at his joke and the police joined in, eager to show their appreciation of it. He turned to them, his tone curtly authoritative. “I can take care of this without any help. Get on back the way we came, and don’t stop to pick any daisies on the way. I want you all at that lone mountain by daylight. I’ll be there then in a helicopter to tell you where to go. Get going!”

They hurried away, all their resentment hidden by their fear of him, and he turned back to Thorne.

“You gave us quite a chase, Thorne,” he said. “And I understand you killed the woman, yourself. That was a touching bit of melodrama.”

Melodrama—waiting for the bullet with all her faith and courage burning the brighter—Don’t be sorry, Johnny—Dying alone on the cold, gray floor—Don’t be sorry—

Harker’s hand struck him viciously across the face.

“When I talk, rats listen!” he snarled, his face flushed with sudden anger. “Did you hear what I said?”

“No.” Thome made his answer insolent in its disinterest.

“You—” Harker struck him again, harder, and stepped back, breathing heavily. He swallowed, and the hate stood out in livid outline on his face. He swallowed again, but when he spoke his voice was normal in pitch but for a thick undernote of fury.

“Your noble little wench is dead. Don’t let it grieve you too much—I think I can take your mind off your sorrow. And, while you were playing the hero, you should have thought of yourself, too. Or did you lose your nerve?”

“Your dogs were too fast for me, Harker.”

“A rat never stands a chance against a dog,” Harker returned.

“I’m sorry I called them dogs,” Thorne said evenly. “I apologize to all dogs for that.”

Harker’s hand lifted, then fell to his side. “This is a pleasant little exchange, I’m sure, but not quite informative enough.” He smiled almost sweetly. “Shall we remedy that?”

He dropped to one knee and touched a match to the pile of kindling. It began to burn, snapping and crackling, and he thrust the long, black blade of the knife into the lire.

“Yes,” he went on amiably as he straightened again, “this will be a chummy little party. Just the two of us, standing by the warm fire and talking. There seems to be something about the cheery warmth of a fire that induces conversation The friendly flicker of the flames, the ruddy glow of the hot steel—they seem to destroy a man’s reticence.”

Thorne pressed his back hard against the pillar and felt a slight loosening of the rope that bound his hands together behind it. Harker was in front of him, and could not see the movements of his hands. He began the slow, painful effort to work his right hand free, the rough rope cutting into the skin as he strained against it.

It might take an hour, with his movements kept hidden from Harker, and he would have minutes. But he would have to try—

“I’m a man with ambition, Thorne,” Harker said. “I’ve come up a long way in the State, but. I have my eye on the top—on the very top step of the ladder. I know where I want to go, and I know how to get there. It won’t be too many years from now until Leader Stettnor is going to find himself toppled from his perch—by me. To do that, I have to have more than ambition; I have to have a record of loyally to the State and a record of efficient accomplishment. You’re going to help me in that, Thorne—you’re going to help me add to my record as an irresistible destroyer of the Underground. You’re going to talk, and what you are going to tell me, added to what the others told me, will give me enough to make a clean sweep of the Underground in my section. And that will cause the State to promote me another step up the ladder.”

Harker kicked more wood on the fire and it blazed up, reddening his face and paling the moonlight. Thorne felt the rope cut deeper as it reached the largest part of his hand, but it was still moving.

“I want to know all you know about the Underground,” Harker said. “I want names, places, dates, plans. I want to know all you’ve ever done, and all that you intended to do. I want to know everything that you know. Everything —do you understand?”

The rope was cutting like the grip of a vice, but it was almost off. He strained at it with all the strength of his forearms.

“I know what you want, Harker,” he said. “But sometimes a man gets disappointed. Do you remember that old proverb: He who lives by the sword—? You’ve climbed a long way on the bodies of men and women, and even children, who had the guts to try to stand up against your State. How many have you cut and burned with that knife until they were mindless?”

Harker laughed and took the knife from the fire, smiling at the glowing point of it. “It’s nothing for you to worry about; you’ll only be one more, and there will be others after you. Call this my sword if you want to, and say that I live by it. I have—I’ve lived, where the likes of you existed from day to day. And I’ll live all the merrier when it cuts a way for me to the top step.”

Harker stepped forward and Thorne felt the heat of the blade. “A red hot blade is a powerful thing—for the hand that holds it,” Harker said. “And it’s my hand that holds it. You’re going to start talking now, and you’re going to see how efficient a hot blade can be, for the hand who holds it. And it will hurt, Thorne—it will hurt like hell.”

The glowing point touched him as he jerked free of the rope, with the burn of torn skin. His hands whipped forward and caught the knife from Harker’s hand, bending down his wrist with a cracking of bone. Harker screamed a curse and snatched at his holstered revolver, awkwardly, with his left hand. Thorne slashed down with the still glowing blade, through the leather of the gun belt, through cloth and flesh, driving the knife deep in and through the thick paunch.