Not This August Read online

  It was October.

  In the monotony of scything, the hypnotic step—swing—slice—step—swing—slice, Justin could almost believe in the role he was playing. Of all the roles he had played, it was the queerest. Successively he had impersonated a grownup, a soldier, a business artist, a farm front fighter. Now what he had to tell himself was: “You’re a peasant. This is what it’s like to be a peasant.”

  And he was. Dirty, coarsened, tired and underfed, Justin, who had supposed himself a democrat all his life, found himself at last a member of the eternal overwhelming majority, brother at last in space and time to the stone-age grubbers of roots, the Chinese toiling with an aching back and thighs over rice shoots in the dynasty of Han or Comrade Mao, potato eaters of the Andes or the Netherlands, all those who in time past, time present, and perhaps for all time to come must dig in stubborn ground while the knees shake with fatigue. The emblem of the brotherhood was hunger and fatigue.

  Three months under the Meeneestyerstvoh Vnootrenikh Dyehl had left him a clear choice. He could be a debased animal or he could die.

  He knew of people by the dozen who had chosen to be people. They had died. There was the case of the Wehrweins of Straw Hill. The Wehrweins refused to understand that things were different now. They refused to make their quota, trusting to the farmer’s old technique of the blank stare, the Who-me-mister? and the sullen “ ‘Tain’t no business of mine.” A polite search would have shown them nothing, but the MVD searched with crowbars and found a hoard of grain.

  The Wehrweins were shot for sabotage. Their children were shot for failing to report their sabotage.

  The Elekinnens of Little Finland, one of those big close-knit European family complexes, were wiped out to the last man, woman, and child. Papa Gunder, their patriarch, cursed and struck an MVD Agro section inspector: unlawful violence against the occupying authority.

  Mr. Konreid made no more popskull brandy from his sprawling, slovenly vineyard. Mr. Konreid had been shot for failure to obey agricultural crop-acreage regulations. His fifty-year-old son and the son’s fifty-year-old wife, workers in the feed mill, town dwellers who had not seen the old man since a bitter estrangement three decades ago, died with him in the center of the athletic field: failure to report contravention of agricultural regulations.

  There was a new whispered phrase, “shipped South.” Mr. and Mrs. Lacey of Four Corners had been “shipped South.” They were back in two weeks, cringing away from questions, seemingly half insane. All their teeth had been pulled and they worked their fields with lunatic zeal. The four nearest neighbors of the Laceys were arrested shortly after by MVD teams who knew exactly where to find their hoards of grain, the eggs laid down in water glass, the secret smokehouse in the wood where hams and bacon slowly turned on strings over smoldering hickory chips. The neighbors were shot.

  There were never audible complaints any more, through two milk-norm increases and two ration reductions. Everybody had taken to frantic weeding in every spare second; leisure did not exist. The smallest children were pressed into work. A three-year-old who carelessly tore out a turnip top instead of parasitic wild mustard was beaten and did not eat that night. Possibly a generation of permissive-discipline pediatricians were whirling in their graves, but the pediatricians had not expected that American parents, comfortable in mortgaged homes, secure in union contracts, nourished at glittering supermarkets, neat in their twelve ninety-eight dresses and forty-dollar suits would soon rejoin the eternal majority of hunger and fatigue.

  Even the great American bathroom was a mockery. Nobody talked about it but everybody was squeezing the utmost from his land by manuring with human excrement, an Oriental practice from which the fortunate North Americans had been excused by virtue of the Haber process, Peruvian guano, and Mexican phosphate rock. But there was no fertilizer compounded of nitrates, guano, and phosphorus to be had at Croley’s store these days. Presumably it was being shipped directly to Russia and China.

  Justin, shorter, darker, and dirtier than he had been two months ago, stooped and swung his scythe. Gribble absolutely couldn’t get the hang of it, not after days of hand-blistering practice. The co-ordination wasn’t there. The little man and his shattered nervous system were good for nothing but gleaning with a sickle behind Justin, raking and bundling.

  Had there once been one-man balers? Had there really? Had one man, proudly astride a snorting red tractor, chugged down a field, importantly leaning far out and peering behind him as the scoop swept up mowed windrows, the plunging tamper arm compacted the hay, the binder twirled cord around and tied, and the machine bumpingly ejected bale after perfect bale?

  Justin now was a citizen of the North American People’s Democratic Republic, at last in formal existence months after its currency had gone into circulation. Everybody had been ordered to report to the Center for ceremonies and a spontaneous demonstration. Betsy Cardew was prominent in the demonstration. She had joined the Party of the People and worked at it with shrill fanaticism. Condescendingly mentioned in one speech as a tireless worker for the cause of peace and democracy, she looked, when Justin met her occasionally at the mailbox, very tired indeed. She sometimes passed him a note, because now there was a tape recorder behind the dashboard of her car.

  When one of the notes said something like, “Still heard nothing. Must hv been picked up. Prsme used bldes in time snce we’re still at lrge. Billy, Billy, how I wish—Wht’s use?” he would start to recall that he belonged to a conspiracy of the oppressed, that he was the trigger man of the bombardment satellite. And that one step outside the narrow lines would mean his death.

  It was easier to go on mowing than to stop and let his muscles knot up in the first cutting winds from the north. They had to get in the hay. They had to fell trees in the woodlot and buck them up with a Swedish saw and split them for the stove. Dry autumn was going to be followed by cold winter. There would be no coal; coal was for Russia and China these days.

  The North American People’s Democratic Republic was born, puppet of Asia, and the United States of America—obstinately the consciousness of it would not die—was a puppet’s slave. Chiunga County produced a “surplus” of food—while its inhabitants were verging on starvation—that went to New York for shipment to Russia in a steady flow with shipments from thousands of other rural counties.

  But whispered tales said the factory cities were worse! It was easy to imagine how, once self-pity admitted the possibility. Barracks. Two twelve-hour shifts. Starvation rations at a patrolled mess hall. A belt line whose speed could be pushed up imperceptibly until you dropped at your job—and were flogged or shot for dropping.

  And whispered tales said the young men and women of the North American Armies were toiling half at reclamation projects in the Soviet Arctic, the rest in the arid Chinese interior.

  Of course they would never come back.

  Even to the peasant that Billy Justin had turned into the brutal audacity of the over-all plan was slowly becoming clear. It was attrition of the U. S. population. The oldsters were to die off gradually of scanty food and pneumonia—the coming winter without coal would sweep like his scythe through the population. The youngsters who would normally make up the loss were safely in the Arctic and the Gobi.

  Within a couple of years more Russians and Chinese would begin to arrive—colonists this time instead of soldiers.

  The senator, the psychologist, and the FBI man were dust by now.

  The Postal Telegraph “dry wire,” still guarded at fantastic risk by the ticket seller in the railroad station, was silent and had been for two months.

  Rawson—but he was a general named Hollerith, wasn’t he?—could only say he knew nothing, he had heard nothing, they must wait.

  Betsy Cardew was dying by inches of fatigue and strain, impersonating a fanatical convert, waiting for the hand on her shoulder, praying there would be time for her first to open her carotid artery.

  There was nothing he could do. There was absolutely no
thing he could do. All he could do was scythe down the dry grass, stop every dozen paces, and sweep the whetstone twice along the worn steel blade. It was important to keep the blade keen; a dull scythe crushed down the grass instead of slicing it. Grass crushed to the ground was wasted and he would need every blade of it to see the small herd through the winter.

  He woke from his daze to find himself at the end of the field of redtop. Beyond was the stubble of his corn land, which had been reaped for silage a month ago. He looked around and saw Gribble far behind him, doggedly raking. And behind Gribble an approaching figure, tall and gaunt as a scarecrow.

  “Hello there, William,” called Mr. Sparhawk. “I’ve come for a bit of dinner and a pallet for the night. Don’t mind, old boy, do you?”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  It was the hour after dinner. These days that meant the hour when quarrels flared between Justin and the feeble, whining Gribble. There was something about a meal utterly without pleasure that your temper couldn’t take. No coffee, not even synthetic, no pepper or spices, no dessert, no meat. They dined on baked mashed potatoes with an unsuccessful experiment at cheesemaking sprinkled over the top. Boiled greens on the side. They lay like stones in the stomach.

  It was the hour for Justin to curse Gribble for his laziness and Gribble to cower and complain.

  Mr. Sparhawk was there that night, however. He had said a heathen grace, eaten sparingly of the potatoes—apologetically scraping off the unsuccessful cheese topping—and finally excused himself to sit on the floor cross-legged. He looked about the same as ever. His rucksack was worn, he had a new peeled branch for a staff, and he wore jeans instead of Red Army pants and shirt. He talked less than usual, perhaps judging that Justin would welcome an excuse to throw him out.

  Justin studied the old man morosely. There was something awfully peculiar about his presence, something he couldn’t put his finger on.

  “Where’ve you been lately?” he asked.

  “South to Maryland. North to Vermont. Where the Ground that is the Oversoul bade me—”

  “I didn’t ask you that, damn you!”

  Mr. Sparhawk shrugged apologetically, but he couldn’t resist preaching. “I forgive your curse,” he said. “I know that in your present incarnation you’re still Earth-and-Appetite-bound—”

  “Maryland and Vermont.” Justin slowly ruminated. “How?”

  Mr. Sparhawk looked politely baffled. “I’m sorry, William,” he said. “Your question conveys nothing to me.”

  “I mean how? How do you travel? How do you get through the check points? Why aren’t you picked up?”

  “Oh,” Mr. Sparhawk said, surprised. “But I am. Often.”

  “And what happens?”

  Modesty and pride struggled visibly on the old man’s face. At last he said: “When it’s a case of the other ranks—privates and noncoms, you’d say—I reluctantly put on an outworn garment.” He stood to attention and his mild face hardened. The jaw thrust out and the very nose seemed to turn into a predator’s beak. “Damn you,” Sparhawk rasped, “what’s the meaning of this? How dare you obstruct a loyal citizen and a minister of the gospel? By God, you popinjays stand aside or your superiors shall hear of it and so much the worse for you!”

  The windowpanes rattled. Justin and Gribble quailed before his raucous, righteous anger and authority. Mr. Sparhawk smiled apologetically and folded into a cross-legged squat again. “It usually works,” he said mildly. “When it doesn’t, I’m brought in for questioning. Officers tend to bring one in no matter what one does, so when confronted with a commission I spare myself the necessity of reverting to my evil old ways.

  “Once I’m in the local chokey I politely but firmly invoke the North American People’s Democratic Republic guarantee of freedom of worship, and quite a good guarantee it is, too. My particular way of worship, I explain politely, is to wander and preach. To make a long story short, William, I’m usually released after a couple of days, though once I was held as long as a week. Our custodians take the stand that I’m free to wander and preach as long as I wander and preach outside their particular jurisdiction. They escort me to the border, quite often kick me in the seat, and tell me not to come back.”

  Justin moistened his lips. “Haven’t you ever been on the—Conveyor?”

  “Conveyor, William? Oh yes. You mean that strange new sacrament of theirs.”

  Sacrament? Well, that was one thing you could call it with its element of penance and confession. Another was sadistic lunacy, systematic starvation, drugging and torture designed to exact a meaningless “confession” which everybody knew was worthless. Perhaps it was a dark sacrament after all, intelligible only to faith.

  Mr. Sparhawk was saying: “Yes, I’ve been on the Conveyor. But what did I have to confess? They gave up after three days.”

  “They won’t give up in MVD territory,” Justin said grimly. “You were a fool to move in here. Did you think they were gone by now?”

  “My dear fellow, of course I didn’t. It was a Test.”

  A Test. Justin went silently to the corner and pried up a floorboard. Under it was the last of the Konreid brandy, a pint in a former cleaning-fluid bottle. A Test, he thought. A Test of manhood, patriotism, sanity—

  “Do you drink?” he asked Mr. Sparhawk.

  “Only natural wine,” the old man apologized. “It is a clear contravention of the intended mission of alcohol to drink fortified wines or distilled liquors. But please don’t let my presence stop you from indulging.”

  “It won’t,” Justin said flatly. He knew Gribble’s eyes were on the bottle in his hand, hungrily hoping. He poured a glassful for the little man and shoved it at him. He himself drank from the bottle, carefully, and put it in his pocket. The raw liquor cut like a file and he felt the dizziness of intoxication almost at once. Careful, he said sharply to himself. Get brave if you have to but don’t become a drunken fool. He asked Mr. Sparhawk: “What do you mean by Test?”

  “Why, William, a Test is a Test. A trial, an assay—I don’t really know how to answer. But every once in a while one must prove that he isn’t relapsing into sloth and merely mumbling words. One must do something, deliberately and knowing it will be difficult, dangerous, disagreeable. Surely you understand. That’s why I entered territory under the direction of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. It’s quite a good Test, too. Not nasty, like Saint What’s-her-name swallowing tubercular sputum. When people do that sort of thing, there’s always the possibility that some confounded Freudian is going to call them lunatics. Oh, a good Test is hard to find, William! I flatter myself that I’ve found one in our green-clothed friends’ rigorous enforcement of the occupation statutes…”

  While the old man rambled on, it suddenly became crystal-clear to Justin that he had all along been able to re-establish communications with the bomb plot.

  All he had to do now, all he’d needed to do all along, was walk out and do it.

  First try walking to Washington, Pennsylvania, to find the Bee-Jay salesman.

  If that failed, as it might, he should walk to the senator’s home town in Michigan and inquire around.

  If that didn’t work, he should walk to Washington, D.C., and find out what was going on in the Fish and Wild Life Survey.

  If none of these worked, he would have to try some of the more tenuous clues.

  There were certain objections to the scheme, he realized. One was that he’d probably be arrested before he got a mile beyond Norton, New York. This would probably lead to his torture, confession, and execution unless he used his razor blade in time. But he smiled incredulously at himself for once having thought that this objection overruled the need to walk out and re-establish contact so that the satellite could be sent up.

  If Mr. Sparhawk could take the beatings and the uncertainty in exchange for his urge to wander and preach, what shouldn’t he be able to accept and risk with nothing less at stake than the nation?

  It was as simple as that. If you have to walk
out and do it, the way to do it is to walk out and do it.

  And the first thing to do was disobey his first command: not to be taken alive.

  “Mr. Sparhawk,” he said abruptly, “your time on the Conveyor—is there anything you did so you kept from breaking down? Have you got sedatives or anything like that?”

  The old man said: “I must confess I used Yoga—abused it, rather, for to use it is to abuse it. Yoga is, of course, a set of philosophical systems intended to put one beyond identity and desire, but the Conveyor is peculiarly persuasive that one has an identity and desires to retain it.” He chuckled complacently. “Asana postures are effective while confined in a cell waiting. It is part of their scheme to break one down by waiting. The soul which does not seek release from the Wheel is prey to terrors and fancies during such an interlude. However, I would assume the siddhasana, thus—” Mr. Sparhawk squirmed into a Buddha-like posture which outraged Justin’s training as an artist in that it went far beyond the bounds of what his anatomy textbooks regarded as possible to a human being.

  “And I would vary it with the padmasana, thus—” Mr. Sparhawk squirmed again, and this time settled down into a position which looked possible but exquisitely uncomfortable. “The postures,” said Mr. Sparhawk, “have carried me through a bit of solitary confinement. They use dark cells, you know, and that’s the sort of thing that drives most chaps absolutely crackers. And there’s pranayama, of course.” He seemed to have finished.

  “Pranayama?” Justin urged gently.

  “Oh, you don’t know about it, do you?” asked the old man disapprovingly. “It’s the yoga of breathing, and quite important. I used it when they were beating me a bit. You see, one breathes in through the left nostril seven and a half seconds and holds it for thirty and a half seconds. One then expels through the right nostril in fifteen and a half seconds, then inhales through the same nostril for the same period, then one—”

  “And this—helped?”