The mockingbird set up a frenetic whistling.
“It’s the messenger,” said the Leader. “The dumb fool! Why didn’t he lie quiet? Tell Ted we’ve seen it.”
Dad pursed his lips and whistled: “Keewah, keewah, keewah, terloo.”
The other “mockingbird” answered, “Terloo,” and shut up.
“We’ll need a new post office now,” said the Leader. “Take care of it, Dad.”
“Okay.”
“There’s no real answer to the problem,” the Leader said. “You can limit size of units, so that one person can’t give away too many-but take a colony like ours.
It needs to be a dozen or more to work. That means they all have to be dependable, or they all go down together. So each one has a loaded gun at the head of each other one.”
Dad grinned, wryly. “Sounds like the United Nations before the Blow Off. Cheer up, Ed. Don’t burn your bridges before you cross them.”
“I won’t. The convoy is ready to roll.”
When the convoy had disappeared in the distance, Ed Morgan, the Leader, and his deputy Dad Carter stood up and stretched. The “mockingbird” had announced safety loudly and cheerfully. “Tell Ted to cover us into camp,” Morgan ordered.
Dad wheepled and chirruped and received acknowledgement. They started back into the hills. Their route was roundabout and included check points from which they could study their back track and receive reports from Ted. Morgan was not worried about Ted being followed-he was confident that Ted could steal baby ‘possums from mama’s pouch. But the convoy breakdown might have been a trap-there was no way to tell that all of the soldiers had got back into the trucks. The messenger might have been followed; certainly he had been trapped too easily.
Morgan wondered how much the messenger would spill. He could not spill much about Morgan’s own people, for the “post office” rendezvous was all that he knew about them.
The base of Morgan’s group was neither better nor worse than average of the several thousand other camps of recalcitrant guerrillas throughout the area that once called itself the United States. The Twenty Minute War had not surprised everyone. The mushrooms which had blossomed over Washington, Detroit, and a score of other places had been shocking but expected-by some.
Morgan had made no grand preparations. He had simply conceived it as a good period in which to stay footloose and not too close to a talget area. He had taken squatter’s rights in an abandoned mine and had stocked it with tools, food, and other useful items. He had had the simple intention to survive; it was during the weeks after Final Sunday that he discovered that there was no way for a man with foresight to avoid becoming a leader.
Morgan and Dad Carter entered the mine by a new shaft and tunnel which appeared on no map, by a dry rock route which was intended to puzzle even a bloodhound. They crawled through the tunnel, were able to raise their heads when they reached the armory, and stepped out into the common room of the colony, the largest chamber, ten by thirty feet and as high as it was wide.
Their advent surprised no one, else they might not have lived to enter. A microphone concealed in the tunnel had conveyed their shibboleths before them. The room was unoccupied save for a young woman stirring something over a tiny, hooded fire and a girl who sat at a typewriter table mounted in front of a radio. She was wearing earphones and shoved one back and turned to face them as they came in.
“Howdy, Boss!”
“Hi, Margie. What’s the good word?” Then to the other, “What’s for lunch?”
“Bark soup and a notch in your belt.”
“Cathleen, you depress me.”
“Well…mushrooms fried in rabbit fat, but darn few of them.”
“That’s better.”
“You better tell your boys to be more careful what they bring in. One more rabbit with tularemia and we won’t have to worry about what to eat.”
“Hard to avoid, Cathy. You must be sure you handle them the way Doc taught you.” He turned to the girl. “Jerry in the upper tunnel?”
“Yes.”
“Get him down here, will you?”