Philip Dick: The Last Of The Masters

Men swarmed out. Uniformed men who started from the road, down the side of the gully, bodies crouched warily as they approached the wrecked car. They lugged heavy rifles. They looked grim and experienced, as they tore the car doors open and scrambled in.

"One’s gone,” a voice drifted to him.

"Must be around somjwhere."

"Look, this one’s alive! This woman. Started to crawl out. The rest all dead.”

Furious cursing. "Damn Laura! She should have leaped! The fanatic little fool!"

"Maybe she didn’t have time. God’s sake, the thing’s all the way through her." Horror and shocked dismay. "We won’t hardly be able to get her loose.”

"Leave her.” The officer directing things waved the men back out of the car. "Leave them all.”

"How about this wounded one?” The leader hesitated. "Kill her,” he said finally. He snatched a rifle and raised the butt. "The rest of you fan out and try to get the other one. He’s probably—”

Tolby fired, and the leader’s body broke in half. The lower part sank down slowly; the upper dissolved in ashy fragments. Tolby turned and began to move in a slow circle, firing as he crawled. He got two more of them before the rest retreated in panic to their jet-powered insect and slammed the lock.

He had the element of surprise. Now that was gone. They had strength and numbers. He was doomed. Already, the insect was rising. They’d be able to spot him easily from above. But he had saved Silvia. That was something.

He stumbled down a dried-up creek bed. He ran aimlessly; he had no place to go. He didn’t know the countryside, and he was on foot. He slipped on a stone and fell headlong. Pain and billowing darkness beat at him as he got unsteadily to his knees. His gun was gone, lost in the shrubbed He spat broken teeth and blood. He peered wildly up at the blazing afternoon sky.

The insect was leaving. It hummed off toward the distant hills. It dwindled, became a black ball, a fly-speck, then disappeared. Tolby waited a moment. Then he struggled up the side of the ravine to the wrecked car. They had gone to get help. They'd be back. Now was his only chance. If he could get Silvia out and down the road, into hiding. Maybe to a farmhouse. Back to town.

He reached the car and stood, dazed and stupefied. Three bodies remained, the two in the front seat, Penn in the back. But Silvia was gone.

They had taken her with them. Back where they came from. She had been dragged to the jet-driven insect; a trail of blood led from the car up the side of the gully to the highway.

With a violent shudder Tolby pulled himself together. He climbed into the car and pried loose Penn's gun from his belt. Silvia's ironite staff rested on the seat; he took that, too. Then he started off down the road, walking without haste, carefully, slowly.

An ironic thought plucked at his mind. He had found what they were after. The men in uniform. They were organized, responsible to a central authority. In a newly-assembled jet.

Beyond the hills was a government.

"Sir,” Green said. He smoothed his short blond hair anxiously, his young face twisting.

Technicians and experts and ordinary people in droves were everywhere. The offices buzzed and echoed with the business of the day. Green pushed through the crowd and to the desk where Bors sat, propped up by two magnetic frames.

"Sir," Green said. "Something’s happened."

Bors looked up. He pushed a met- al-foil slate away and laid down his stylus. His eye cells clicked and flickered; deep inside his battered trunk motor gears whined. "What is it?"

Green came close. There was something in his face, an expression Bors had never seen before. A look of fear and glassy determination. A glazed, fanatic cast, as if his flesh had hardened to rock. "Sir, scouts contacted a League team moving North. They met the team outside Fairfax. The incident took place directly beyond the first road block.”

Bors said nothing. On all sides, officials, experts, farmers, workmen, industrial managers, soldiers, people of all kinds buzzed and murmured and pushed forward impatiently. Tijring to get to Bors' desk. Loaded down with problems to be solved, situations to be explained. The pressing business of the day. Roads, factories, disease controL Repairs. Construction. Manufacture. Design. Planning. Urgent problems for Bors to consider and deal with. Problems that couldn't wait.

"Was the League team destroyed?” Bors asked.

"One was killed. One was wounded and brought here.” Green hesitated. "One escaped."

For a long time Bors was silent. Around him the people murmured and shuffled; he ignored them. All at once he pulled the vidscanner to him and snapped the circuit open. "One escaped? I don't like the sound of that.”

"He shot three members of our scout unit. Including the leader. The others got frightened. They grabbed the injured girl and returned here.” Bors' massive head lifted. "They made a mistake. They should have located the one who escaped.”

"This was the first time the situation—”

"I know,” Bors said. "But it was an error. Better not to have touched them at all, than to have taken two and allowed the third to get away.” He turned to the vidscanner. "Sound an emergency alert. Close down the factories. Arm the work crews and any male farmers capable of using weapons. Close every road. Remove the women and children to the undersurface shelters. Bring up the heavy guns and supplies. Suspend all non-military production and—” He considered. "Arrest everyone we’re not sure of. On the C sheet. Have them shot.” He snapped the scanner off.

"What’ll happen?” Green demanded, shaken.

"The thing we’ve prepared for. Total war.”

"We have weapons!” Grefn shouted excitedly. "In an hour there’ll be ten thousand men ready to fight. We have jet-driven ships. Heavy artillery. Bombs. Bacteria pellets. What’s the League? A lot of people with packs on their backs! ’’ "Yes,” Bors said. "A lot of people with packs on their backs.”

"How can they do anything? How can a bunch of anarchists organize? They have no structure, no control, no central power.”

"They have the whole world. A billion people.”

"Individuals! A club, not subject, to law. Voluntary membership. We have a disciplined organization. Every aspect of our economic life operates at maximum efficiency. We —you—have your thumb on everything. All you have to do is give the order. Set the machine in motion.” Bors nodded slowly. "It’s true the anarchist can’t coordinate. The League can't organize in an efficient structure. It's a paradox. Government by anarchists . Anti-government, actually. Instead of governing the world they tramp around to make sure no one else does.”

"Dog in the manger.”

"As you say, they’re actually a voluntary club of totally unorganized individuals. Without law or central authority. They maintain no society —they can’t govern. All they can do is interfere with anyone else who tries. Troublemakers. But—”

"But what?"

"It was this way before. Two centuries ago. They were unorganized. Unarmed. Vast mobs, without discipline or authority. Yet they pulled down all the governments. All over the world.”

"We’ve got a whole army. All the roads are mined. Heavy guns. Bombs. Pellets. Every one of us is a soldier. We're an armed camp!"

Bors was deep in thought. "You say one of them is here? One of the League agents?"

"A young woman.”

Bors signalled the nearby maintenance crew. "Take me to her. I want to talk to her in the time remaining.”

Silvia watched silently, as the uniformed men pushed and grunted their way into the room. They staggered over to the bed, pulled two chairs together, and carefully laid down their massive armload.

Quickly they snapped protective struts into place, locked the chairs together, threw magnetic grapples into operation, and then warily retreated.