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“Not the doc,” I protested. “He might get mad, but not for long.”
“There you are,” she said triumphantly. “He changed Polivinosel into a jackass, and then he got soft-hearted and forgave him. Why not? He had Peggy.”
“But why wasn’t Polivinosel changed back to a man then?”
“All I know is that he was majoring in Agriculture, and, if I’m to believe Peggy’s letters, he was a Casanova.”
“No wonder you were a little sarcastic when I gave my lecture,” I said. “You knew more about those two than I did. But that doesn’t excuse your reference to my baldness and false teeth.”
She turned away. “I don’t know why I said that. All I do know is that I hated you because you were a civilian and were being given such authority and entrusted with such an important mission.” I wanted to ask her if she’d changed her mind. Also I was sure that wasn’t all there was to it, but I didn’t press the point. I went on to tell her all I knew about Durham. The only thing I kept back was the most important. I had to sound her out before I mentioned that.
“Yes,” I said. “He often used to lecture to us on what an opportunity the ancient gods lost. He said that if they’d taken the trouble to look at their mortal subjects, they’d have seen how to do , away with disease, poverty, unhappiness, and war. But he maintained the ancient gods were really men who had somehow or other gotten superhuman powers and didn’t know how to use them •(because they weren’t versed in philosophy, ethics, or science.
“He used to say he could do better, and he would then proceed to give us his lecture entitled How to Be a God and Like It. It used to make us laugh, because you couldn’t imagine anyone less divine than Durham.”
“I know that,” she said. “Peggy wrote me about it. She said that was what irked Polivinosel so. He didn’t understand that the doctor was just projecting his dream world into classroom terms. Probably he dreamed of such a place so he could escape from his wife’s nagging. Poor little fellow.”
“Poor little fellow, my foot!” I snorted. “He’s done just what he said he wanted to do, hasn’t he? How many others can say the same, especially on such a scale?”
“No one,” she admitted. “But tell me, what was Durham’s main thesis in The Golden Age?”
“He maintained that history showed that the so-called common man, Mr. Everyman, is a guy who wants to be left alone and is quite pleased if only his mundane life runs fairly smoothly. His ideal is an existence with no diseases, plenty of food and amusement and sex and affection, no worry about paying bills, just enough work to keep from getting bored with all play and someone to do his thinking for him. Most adults want a god of some sort to run things for them while they do just what they please.”
“Why,” exclaimed Alice, “he isn’t any better than Hitler or Stalin!”
“Not at all,” I said. “He could bring about Eden as we can see by looking around us. And he didn’t believe in any particular ideology or in using force. He…”
I stopped, mouth open. I’d been defending the Professor!
Alice giggled. “Did you change your mind?”
“No,” I said. “Not at all. Because the Professor, like my dictator, must have changed his mind. He is using force. Look at Polivinosel.”
“He’s no example. He always was an ass, and he still is. And how do we know he doesn’t like being one?”
I had no chance to reply. The eastern horizon was lit up by a great flash of fire. A second or two later, the sound of the explosion reached us.
We were both shocked. We had come to accept the idea that such chemical reactions just didn’t take place in this valley.
Alice clutched my hand and said sharply. “Do you think the attack has started ahead of schedule? Or is
stopped and murmured. “No, that’s crazy. I’ll wait until I get there before I make any more comments.” We left the gravel road and turned right onto a paved highway. I recognized it as the state route that ran
past the airfield and into Meltonville, about a mile and a half away. Another explosion lit up the eastern sky, but this time we saw it was much closer than we had first thought. We hurried forward, tense, ready to take to the woods if danger threatened. We had traveled about half
a mile when 1 stopped so suddenly that Alice bumped into me. She whispered, “What is it?”
“I don’t remember that creekbed ever being there,” I replied slowly. “In fact, I know it wasn’t there. I took a lot of hikes along here when I was a Boy Scout.” And there it was. It came up from the east, from Onaback’s general direction, and cut southwest, away
from the river. It slashed through the state highway, leaving a thirty-foot gap in the road. Somebody had
dragged two long tree trunks across the cut and laid planks between them to form a rough bridge. We crossed it and walked on down the highway, but another explosion to our left told us we were off the trail. This one, very close, came from the edge of a large meadow that I remembered had once been a parking lot for a trucking company.
Alice sniffed and said, “Smell that burning vegetation?” “Yes.” I pointed to the far side of the creek where the moon shone on the bank. “Look at those.” Those were the partly burned and shattered stalks and branches of plants about the size of pine trees.
They were scattered about forty feet apart. Some lay against the bank; some were stretched along the
bottom of the creekbed. What did it mean? The only way to find out was to investigate. So, as we came abruptly to the creeks end, which was surrounded by a ring of about a hundred people, we tried to elbow through to see what was so interesting.
We never made it, for at that moment a woman screamed, “He put in too much Brew!” A man bellowed, “Run for your lives!” The night around us was suddenly gleaming with bodies and clamorous with cries. Everybody was
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were laughing as if it was all a big joke. It was a strange mixture of panic and disdain for the panic. I grabbed Alice’s hand and started ru
He was a fantastic figure, the first person I had seen with any clothing on. He wore a red fez with a tassel
and a wide green sash wound around his waist. A scimitar was stuck through it at such an angle it looked like a ducktail-shaped rudder. The illusion was furthered by the speed at which he was traveling.
“Huh?”
Again he yelled at me and sped on.
“What’d he say?” I panted at Alice. “I’ll swear he said ‘Horatio Hornblower.’”
“Sounded more like ‘Yorassiffencornblows,’” she replied.
That was when we found out why the crowd was ru
Alice screamed and grabbed me around the neck. “Save me!”
I’d have liked to, but who was going to save me?
Abruptly, the rocks quit falling, and the yells stopped. Silence, except for the drawing of thankful breaths. Then, giggles and yelps of pure delight and calls back and forth and white bodies were shining in the moonlight as they rose like ghosts from the grass. Fear among these uninhibited people could not last long. They were already joshing each other about the way they’d run and then were walking back to the cause of their flight.