Alas, Babylon

Ben Franklin said, “Wait until I get the shotgun, Randy. I’ll go with you. It’s my night to stand guard.” He raced upstairs. Helen said, “Do you really think you ought to let him do it, Randy>“

“It’d break his heart if I didn’t. I think he’ll be okay. Caleb is going to stay up with him and Malachai will be right there. Malachai will sleep with one eye open.”

“Why are you letting him have your shotgun?”

“Because if something comes around the Henrys’ yard I want him to hit it, not just pop away at it in the dark with a twenty-two. I’ve taught him how to handle the shotty. It’ll be loaded with number two buck. He’ll do all right.”

Ben came out on the porch carrying the gun. Lib said, “Am I invited?”

Randy said, “Certainly.” He turned to Bill McGovern. “If Dan shows up, give me three bells, will you?” Three strokes of the ship’s bell meant come home, but it was not an emergency signal. Five bells was the panic button. The bell could be heard for a mile along the shore and across water.

Pale yellow lamplight showed in the Henrys’ windows. Randy knocked and Missouri, looking almost svelte in a newly acquired waistline, opened the door. “Mister Randy. I guessed ‘twas you. I want to thank you for the honey. Tasted mighty good. Will you come in and have some tea?”

“Tea!” Randy saw a kettle steaming on a brick oven in the fireplace.

“We calls it tea. I grow mints under the house and dry ‘em until they powders. So we has mint tea.”

“We’ll skip it tonight, Mizzoo. I just came to put Ben Franklin on his stand. Caleb ready?”

Missouri’s son stepped out of the shadows, teeth and eyes gleaming. Incredibly, he carried a six-foot spear.

“Let me see that,” Randy said. He hefted it. It had been fashioned, he saw, from a broken garden edger, the blade ground to a narrow triangle. It was heavy, well balanced, and lethal. “Uncle Malachai made it for me,” Caleb said proudly.

“It’s a wicked weapon, all right,” Randy said, and returned it to the boy.

Malachai, carrying a lantern, joined them. Malachai said, “I figured that if Ben Franklin missed with the shotgun Caleb best have it for close-in defense, if it’s truly a wolf, like Preacher says.”

Randy was certain that whatever had stolen the Henrys’ hens, and the pig, it wasn’t a wolf, but he wanted to impress Ben Franklin with the seriousness of his watch. “Probably not a wolf,” he said, “but it could be a cougar-a panther. My father used to hunt ‘em when he was young. Plenty of panther in Timucuan County until the first boom brought so many people down. Now there aren’t so many people, so there will be more panther.”

They walked toward Balaam’s tired barn. The mule snorted and rattled the boards in his stall. “It’s only me, Balaam,” Malachai said. “Balaam, quiet down!” Balaam quieted.

Randy pointed to the bench alongside the barn. “That’s your stand, Ben.” Bill McGovern had sat on the bench the previous night and seen nothing.

“Stand?” Ben Franklin said.

“That’s what you call it in a deer hunt. When I was your age my father used to take me hunting and put me on a stand. There are a couple of things I want you to remember, Ben. Everything depends on you-and you, Caleb-keeping absolutely still. Whatever it is out there, is better equipped than you are. It can see better and hear better and smell better. All you’ve got on it is brains. Your only chance of getting it is to hear it before it hears or sees you.” Randy looked at the sky. There were only stars. Later, there would be a quarter moon. “Chances are you’ll hear it before you see it. But if you talk, or make any sound, you’ll never see it at all because it’ll hear you first and leave. Do you understand?”

“Yes, sir,” Ben said.

“You’ll get cramped and you’ll get tired. So when you sit on the stand you move around all you want at first and find out just how far you can move without making any noise. You got shells in the chambers?”

“Yes, sir, and four extra in my pocket.”

“You’ll only need what’s in the gun. If you don’t get him with two you’ll never get him at all. And Ben-”

“Yes, sir.”

“Hold steady on it and don’t miss. We want to get rid of this thing or somebody will have to sit up all night every night.” Ben said, “Randy, suppose it’s a man?”

This possibility had been restless in Randy’s mind from the first and he had not wanted to mention it, but since it was mentioned he gave the unavoidable answer. “Whatever it is, Ben, shoot it. And Caleb, if he misses I depend on you to stick it.” He turned to Malachai. “Thanks for lighting us out. We’re going on to Admiral Hazzard’s house now. Good night, Malachai.”

“Good night,” Malachai said. “I sleep light, Mister Randy.” Lib took his hand and they walked to the river bank and down the path that led toward the single square of light a

“What do you mean?”

“North American civilization’s return to the Neolithic Age.” “I don’t think it’s fu

“In the Neolithic,” Randy said, “a boy either grows up fast or he doesn’t grow up at all.”

Sam Hazzard’s den was compact and crowded, like a shipmaster’s cabin stocked for a long and lonely voyage. It was filled with mementos of his service, ceremonial and Samurai swords, nautical instruments, charts, maps, books on shelves and stacked in corners, bound files of the Proceedings, The foreign Affairs Quarterly, and the A

Sam Hazzard was not as tall as Lib and his weathered skin was drawn tautly over fine bones. In slippers and dragon blazoned shantung robe-his implacable gray eyes shadowed and softened by the indistinct lighting and horn-rimmed glasses, cottony hair like a halo-he appeared fragile; a deception. He was tough as an antique ivory figurine which has withstood the vicissitudes of centuries, and can accept more. He said, “A place for the lady to sit.” He sailed a plastic model of the carrier Wasp—the old Wasp cited by Churchill for stinging twice in the Mediterranean and then herself stung to death by torpedoes-to the far corner of the desk. “Up there,” he ordered Lib, “where you can be properly admired. And you, Randy, lift those books out of that chair. Gently, if you please. Welcome aboard to both of you.”

Randy said, “You haven’t seen Dan Gu

“He hasn’t come home.”

“Missing, eh? That sounds ungood, Randy.”

“If he comes home while we’re out Helen or Bill will ring the bell. Can we hear it in here?”

“Yes indeed, so long as the window’s open. It always startles me.”

Randy saw that the Admiral had been working. The Admiral was writing something he called, without elaboration, “A Footnote to History.” A portable typewriter squatted in the center of a ring of books. Research, Randy supposed. He recognized Durant’s Caesar and Christ, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, and Von Kriege by Clausewitz, indicating a footnote to ancient history. Randy said, “Any poop this evening?”

“I suppose you heard the Civil Defense broadcast.”

“I caught part of it. Then my batteries quietly expired.” The Admiral gave his attention to the radio. He turned the knob changing frequencies. “I’ve been listening for a station in the thirty-one meter band. Claims to be in Peru. I heard it for the first time last night. It put out some pretty outlandish stuff It doesn’t seem to be on yet, so we’ll try for it again later. I’ve just switched to five point seven megacycles. That’s an Air Force frequency I can tap sometimes. You’ve never heard it, Randy. Interesting, but cryptic.”