and ready for trouble. Its commander apparently wanted elbow room against a
possible trap.
At the second truck helmeted figures gathered around its rear end, which
was jacked up. As the Leader watched he saw one wheel removed.
“Trouble?”
“I think not. Just a breakdown. They’ll be gone soon.” He wondered what was
in the trucks. Food, probably. His mouth watered. A few weeks ago an
opportunity like this would have meant generous rations for all, but the
conquerors had smartened up.
He put useless thoughts away. “It’s not that that worries me, Dad,” he
added, returning to the subject. “We’ll be able to tell quislings from
loyal Americans. But how do you tell men from boys?”
“Thinking of Joe Benz?”
“Maybe. I’d give a lot to know how far we can trust Joe. But I could have
been thinking of young Morrie.”
“You can trust him.”
“Certainly. At thirteen he doesn’t drink — and he wouldn’t crack if they
burned his feet off. Same with Cathleen. It’s not age or sex — but how can
you tell? And you’ve got to be able to tell.”
There was a flurry below. Guards had slipped down from the trucks and
withdrawn from the road when the convoy had stopped, in accordance with an
orderly plan for such emergencies. Now two of them returned to the convoy,
hustling between them a figure not in uniform.
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 acknowledgment. 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 break-down
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 the 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 target 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