Thomas Disch - The Genocides

The old man mumbled something. “Try and talk louder,” Neil shouted into his good ear. Then to the others standing around: “Where’s the lamp? Where’s Alice? She should be here now. What are you all standing around like that for?”

“Alice is with the baby,” Blossom whispered. “She said she’d be only another minute.”

Then Anderson spoke again, loud enough for Neil but no one else to hear. “Buddy.” That was all he said, though he said it several times.

“What’d he say?” Blossom asked.

“He said he wants to talk to me alone. The rest of you, go away and leave us together, huh? Dad’s got things he wants to tell me alone.”

There were shufflings and sighs as the few people who were not yet sleeping (the waking period having ended many hours ago) walked off into other areas of the tuber to leave father and son together. Neil strained to hear the least sound that would have meant that one of them remained nearby. In this abysmal darkness, privacy was never a sure thing.

“Buddy ain’t here,” he said at last, assured that they were alone. “He’s with Maryann and the baby. So’s Alice. There’s some kind of problem about the way it breathes.” Neil’s throat was dry, and when he tried to make saliva and swallow it, it hurt. Alice , he thought angrily, shouldn’t be off somewhere else now . All people talked about, it seemed to Neil, was the baby, the baby. He was sick of the baby. Did anybody care about his baby?

Curiously, Greta’s lie had made its most lasting impression on Neil. He believed in it with the most literal, unquestioning faith, just as Maryann believed in Christ’s virgin birth. Neil had the ability to brush aside mere, inconvenient facts and considerations of logic like cobwebs. He had even decided that his baby’s name was to be Neil Junior. That would show old Buddy-boy!

“Then get Orville, will you?” Anderson whispered vexedly. “And bring the others back. I have something to say.”

“You can tell it to me, huh? Huh, Dad?”

“Get Orville, I said!” The old man began to cough.

“Okay, okay!” Neil walked some distance from the small hollow in the fruit where his father was lying, counted to a hundred (skipping, in his haste, everything between fiftynine and seventy), and returned. “Here he is, Dad, just like you said.”

Anderson did not think it extraordinary that Orville should not greet him. Everyone, these last days, was mute in his presence, the presence of death. “I should have said this before, Jeremiah,” he began, speaking rapidly, afraid that this sudden renewal of strength would desert him before he could finish. “I’ve waited too long. Though I know you’ve been expecting it. I could tell by your eyes. So there was no need to—” He broke off, coughing. “Here,” (he gestured feebly in the darkness) “take my revolver. There’s only one bullet left, but some of them see it as a sort of symbol. It’s just as well to let them. There were so many things I wanted to tell you, but there was no time.”

Neil had grown more and more agitated during his father’s valedictory, and at last he could not contain himself: “What are you talking about, Dad?”

Anderson chuckled. “He doesn’t understand yet. Do you want to tell him, or shall I?” There was a long silence. “Orville?” Anderson asked in a changed voice.

“Tell me what, Dad? What don’t I understand?”

“That Jeremiah Orville is taking over from now on. So bring him here!”

“Dad, you don’t mean that.” Neil began to chew fretfully on his lower lip. “He ain’t an Anderson. He ain’t even one of the village. Listen, Dad, I’ll tell you what—I’ll take over, huh? I’d do a better job than him. Just give me a chance. That’s all I ask, just one chance.”

Anderson didn’t reply. Neil began all over again, in a softer, more persuasive tone. “Dad, you gotta understand—Orville ain’t one of us.”

“He will be soon enough, you little bastard. Now bring him here.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“I mean I’m marrying him to your sister. Now cut out the crap and bring him here. And your sister too. Bring every. body here.”

“Dad, you can’t mean that, Dad!”

Anderson wouldn’t say another word. Neil showed him all the reasons it was impossible for Orville to marry Blossom. Why, Blossom was only twelve years old! She was his sister—Neil’s sister! Didn’t he understand that? And who was this Orville character anyhow? He wasn’t anybody. They should have killed him long ago, along with the other marauders. Hadn’t Neil said so at the time? Neil would kill him now, if Anderson only said the word. How about it?

No matter what arguments Neil offered, the old man just lay there. Was he dead? Neil wondered. No, he was still breathing. Neil was in misery.

His keen ears picked up the sounds of others returning. “Leave us alone!” he shouted at them. They went away again, unable to hear Anderson’s orders to the contrary.

“We’ve got to talk this thing over, you and me, Dad,” Neil pleaded. Anderson wouldn’t say a word, not a word.

With tears in his eyes, Neil did what he had to do. He pinched together the old man’s nostrils and held his other hand down tightly over the old man’s mouth. He wiggled around a little at first, but he was too weak to put up much of a struggle. When the old man was very, very quiet, Neil took his hands away and felt if he was still breathing.

He wasn’t.

Then Neil took the holster and pistol off the old man arm, strapped it about his own thicker body. It was a sort of symbol.

Shortly afterward Alice came, with the lamp, and felt the dead man’s wrist. “When did he die?” she asked.

“Just a minute ago,” Neil said. It was bard to understand him, he was crying so. “And he asked me—he told me I should take his place. And he gave me his pistol.”

Alice looked at Neil suspiciously. Then she bent over the face of the corpse and studied it attentively under the lamp. There were bruises on the sides of his nose, and his lip was cut and bleeding. Neil was bending over behind her. He couldn’t understand where the blood had come from.

“You murdered him.” Neil couldn’t believe his ears: she had called him a murderer!

He hit Alice over the top of the head with the butt of the pistol. Then he wiped away the blood trickling down his father’s chin and spread fruit pulp over the cut lip.

More people came. He explained to them that his father was dead, that he, Neil Anderson, was to take over his father’s place. He also explained that Alice Nemerov had let his father die when she could have saved him. All her talk about looking after the baby was so much hogwash. It was just as bad as if she’d killed him outright. She would have to be executed, as an example. But not right away. For now they’d just tie her up. And gag her. Neil attended to the gag himself.

They obeyed him. They were accustomed to obeying Anderson, and they had been expecting Neil to take over from him for a long time—for years. Of course, they didn’t believe Alice was in any way guilty, but then neither had they believed a lot of things Anderson had told them, and they’d always obeyed him anyhow. Maybe if Buddy had been there, he would have put up more of a fuss. But he was with Maryann and his newborn son, who was still weakly. They didn’t dare bring the baby near his grandfather for fear of infection.

Besides, Neil was waving the Python around rather freely. They all knew there was a bullet left, and no one wanted to be the first to start an argument.

When Alice was securely bound, Neil asked where Orville was. Nobody, as it turned out, had seen or heard from him for several minutes.