We’d have been better off, she thought, if we’d all died on E Day; we wouldn’t have lived to see the freaks and the funnies and the radiation-darkies and the brilliant animals—the people who began the war weren’t thorough enough. I’m tired and I want to rest; I want to get out of this and go lie down somewhere, off where it’s dark and no one speaks. Forever.
And then she thought, more practically, Maybe what’s the matter with me is simply that I haven’t found the right man yet. And it isn’t too late; I’m still young and I’m not fat, and as everyone says, I’ve got perfect teeth. It could still happen, and I must keep watching.
Ahead lay the Foresters’ Hall, the old-fashioned white wooden building with its windows boarded up—the glass had never been replaced and never would be. Maybe Dangerfield, if he hasn’t died of a bleeding ulcer yet, ‘could run a classified ad for me, she conjectured. How would that go over with this community, I wonder? Or I could advertise in News & Views, let the worn-out drunk Paul Dietz run a little notice on my behalf for the next six months or so.
Opening the door of the Foresters’ Hall she heard the friendly, familiar voice of Walt Dangerfield in his recorded reading; she saw the rows of faces, the people listening, some with anxiety, some with relaxed pleasure … she saw, seated inconspicuously in the corner, two men, Andrew Gill and with him a slender, good-looking young Negro. It was the man who had caved in the roof of Bruno Bluthgeld’s fragile structure of maladaptation, and Bonny stood there in the doorway not knowing what to do.
Behind her came Barnes and Stockstill and with them Bruno; the three men started past her, Stockstill and Barnes automatically searching for empty seats in the crowded hail. Bruno, who had never shown up before to hear the satellite, stood in confusion, as if he did not comprehend what the people were doing, as if he could make nothing out of the words emanating from the small battery-powered radio.
Puzzled, Bruno stood beside Bonny, rubbing his forehead and surveying the people in the room; he glanced at her questioningly, with a numbed look, and then he started to follow Barnes and Stockstill. And then he saw the Negro. He stopped. He turned back toward her, and now the expression on his face had changed; she saw there the eroding, dreadful suspicion—the conviction that he understood the meaning of all that he saw.
“Bonny,” he mumbled, “you have to get him out of here.”
“I can’t,” she said, simply.
“If you don’t get him out of here,” Bruno said, “I’ll make the bombs fall again.”
She stared at him and then she heard herself say in a brittle, dry voice, “Will you? Is that what you want to do, Bruno?”
“I have to,” he mumbled in his toneless way, staring at her sightlessly; he was completely preoccupied with his own thoughts, the various changes taking place within him. “I’m sorry, but first I’ll make the high-altitude test bombs go off again; that’s how I started before, and if that doesn’t do it then I’ll bring them down here, they’ll fall on everyone. Please forgive me, Bonny, but my God, I have to protect myself.” He tried to smile, but his toothless mouth did not respond beyond a distorted quiver.
Bonny said, “Can you really do that, Bruno? Are you sure?”
“Yes,” he said, nodding. And he was sure; he had always been sure of his power. He had brought the war once and he could do it again if they pushed him too far: in his eyes she saw no doubt, no hesitation.
“That’s an awful lot of power for one man to have,” she said to him. “Isn’t that strange, that one man would have so much?”
“Yes,” he said, “it’s all the power in the world rolled together; I am the center. God willed it to be that way.”
“What a mistake God made,” she said.
Bruno gazed at her bleakly. “You, too,” he said. “I thought you never would turn against me, Bonny.”
She said nothing; she went to an empty chair and seated herself. She paid no more attention to Bruno. She could not; she had worn herself out, over the years, and now she had nothing left to give him.
Stockstill, seated not far away, leaned toward her and said, “The Negro is here in the room, you know.”
“Yes.” She nodded. “I know.” Seated bolt-upright, she concentrated on the words coming from the radio; she listened to Dangerfield and tried to forget everyone and everything around her.
It’s out of my hands now, she said to herself. Whatever he does, whatever becomes of him, it’s not my fault. Whatever happens—to all of us. I can’t take any more responsibility; it’s gone on too long, as it is, and I am glad, at last, to get out from under it.
What a relief, she thought. Thank God.
Now it must begin again, Bruno Bluthgeld thought to himself. The war. Because there is no choice; it is forced on me. I am sorry for the people. All of them will have to suffer, but perhaps out of it they will be redeemed. Perhaps in the long run it is a good thing.
He seated himself, folded his hands, shut his eyes and concentrated on the task of assembling his powers. Grow, he said to them, the forces at his command everywhere in the world. Join and become potent, as you were in former times. There is need for you again, all ye agencies.
The voice issuing from the loudspeaker of the radio, however, disturbed him and made it difficult for him to concentrate. Breaking off, he thought, I must not be distracted; that is contrary to the Plan. Who is this that’s talking? They are all listening … are they getting their instructions from him, is that it?
To the man seated beside him he said, “Who is this we’re listening to?”
The man, elderly, turned irritably to regard him. “Why, it’s Walt Dangerfield,” he said, in tones of utter disbelief.
“I have never heard of him,” Bruno said. Because he bad not wanted to hear of him. “Where is he talking from?”
“The satellite,” the elderly man said witheringly, and resumed his listening.
I remember now, Bruno said to himself. That’s why we came here; to listen to the satellite. To the man speaking from overhead.
Be destroyed, he thought in the direction of the sky above. Cease, because you are deliberately tormenting me, impeding my work. Bruno waited, but the voice went on.
“Why doesn’t he stop?” he asked the man on the other side of him. “How can he continue?”
The man, a little taken aback, said, “You mean his illness? He recorded this a long time ago, before he was sick.”
“Sick,” Bruno echoed. “I see.” He had made the man in the satellite sick, and that was something, but not enough. It was a beginning. Be dead, he thought toward the sky and the satellite above. The voice, however, continued uninterrupted.
Do you have a screen of defense erected against me? Bruno wondered. Have they provided you with it? I will crush it; obviously you have been long prepared to withstand attack, but it will do you no real good.
Let there be a hydrogen instrument, he said to himself. Let it explode near enough to this man’s satellite to demolish his ability to resist. Then have him die in complete awareness of who it is that he is up against. Bruno Bluthgeld concentrated, gripping his hands together, squeezing out the power from deep inside his mind.
And yet the reading continued.
You are very strong, Bruno acknowledged. He had to admire the man. In fact, he smiled a little, thinking about it. Let a whole series of hydrogen instruments explode now, he willed. Let his satellite be bounced around; let him discover the truth.
The voice from the loudspeaker ceased.
Well, it is high time, Bruno said to himself. And he let up on his concentration of powers; he sighed, crossed his legs, smoothed his hair, glanced at the man to his left.
“It’s over,” Bruno observed.
“Yeah,” the man said. “Well, now he’ll give the news—if he feels well enough.”
Astonished, Bruno said, “But he’s dead now.”
The man, startled, protested, “He can’t be dead; I don’t believe it. Go on—you’re nuts.”
“It’s true,” Bruno said. “His satellite has been totally destroyed and there is nothing remaining.” Didn’t the man know that? Hadn’t it penetrated to the world, yet?
“Doggone it,” the man said, “I don’t know who you are or why you say something like that, but you sure are a gloomy gus. Wait a second and you’ll hear him; I’ll even bet you five U.S. Government metal cents.”
The radio was silent. In the room, people stirred, murmured with concern and apprehension.