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  “The Anti-Com?” I asked.

  “So you know about that.”

  “Nye told me. Not much.”

  “We don’t know much. We just know it gave the rebels so much confidence we’ve got to take it seriously. When Comus first got wind of it they clamped down hard on California, trying to find the thing before it got big enough to hurt us. And that’s when the whole area blew sky-high.” He shook his head thoughtfully. “You know how the social controls usually work?”

  I nodded. I knew it well. I thought of it happening in California in an area already on the brink of explosion. Normally Prowlers like big red blood-drops patrol the roads twenty-four hours a day. At random, at any time, one of them may draw up to your door. Somebody in a well-tailored red uniform invites you politely inside. Nobody refuses. Why refuse? It’s just an opinion poll to find out what you want so Comus can get it for you. You sit down in the big chair with the elaborate armrests and you react to key words thrown at you, and the polygraph records everything.

  Out of a hundred people sampled at random probably ninety will have similar reactions. Comus feeds the records into headquarters to the constantly thoughtful calculators. They brood electronically over your pulse and respiration. They consider the psychological and sociological meaning of a sweating palm in South Dakota, a rapid heartbeat in Georgia. Out of the hundred sampled, ten who vary from the average reactions are a safe percentage. But if twenty vary, that’s too many. And Comus knows before you do that discontent is stirring subliminally in your area.

  Say the curve on the graph has risen steadily for two months and Georgia is observed to feel unrest. Isolate Georgia. Communications feed Georgia a different fare. News releases tell about happenings that aren’t seen elsewhere in the nation. Movie films are slnted just a little differently. Even the food isn’t quite the same. Biochemistry can change the functioning of mind and body to a lower level of efficiency. And Georgia becomes a closed system. Georgia can be manipulated.

  Any organism can probably work out its problems if you let it alone. So don’t let it alone. The more choices it has to make, the more disruption it feels. Multiply its choices. Keep it stirred up. Destroy Georgia’s confidence. Make Georgia realize it depends on Comus for survival. Reaction time slows, efficiency drops, the slowly forming new groups of potential rebels dissolve under the stress. And when the danger has passed, integrate Georgia again with the nation. That’s the practical way to hold the union together. It’s always worked—until now.

  And now? I looked out over the peaceful valley. Probably I knew more than most people did about how the social controls really work. But enough people in California apparently knew it too. Enought to set off an explosion when Comus began seining for sedition in this area.

  “What happened?” I asked.

  “All hell popped. We got a lot of resistance even in the cities, but the back country was where the rebels were strongest. We were up against open rebellion there. This a big area. Comus is spread fairly thin in the nation, as you probably know. Short of pulling troops out of other areas to blanket California, we couldn’t do much. And there were——” Guthrie paused. “There were reasons why we didn’t do that,” he said. A flash of wild wonder went through my mind. Were there rebellions elsewhere too?

  “As I understand it,” Guthrie went on, “there was quite an uproar in the House about all this. The California Governor and Mr. Raleigh got together, and I know Mr. Nye put up a big argument for martial law. But the upshot was we withdrew Comus entirely. Raleigh’s argument was that when people found out what life without Comus was like they’d come to their senses. He’s old, Mr. Rohan. He doesn’t like trouble. He doesn’t want to think he’s saddled the country with a dictatorship. He said withdraw.”

  “And Nye?” I asked.

  Guthrie shrugged. “He had to agree, of course. I think he was willing to partly because of the Anti-Com. Too much pressure on the rebels and they’d move heaven and earth to get their weapon finished fast. Too fast for us to stop them. As it is, what Mr. Nye probably hopes for is just status quo—while we search the area for whatever we can find. It’s a race between Comus and the Anti-Com now. Whether the rebels finish first or Comus finds the hidden factory before they touch off—whatever it is they’ve got.”

  “And Raleigh,” I said slowly, “is a sick man. He can’t live long. When he dies …”

  I let it fade. Guthrie nodded. Nobody knew what would happen when Raleigh died. An era would end. The world would change. History was moving toward a turn as we sat here wondering.

  After a little pause Guthrie said, “Th town here is one of the trouble spots. We think it’s headquarters for a whole group of Freedom Committees. Last week we pulled a flash raid. We dropped a quick helicopter-squad and tried to flood the central part of the town with sleep gas. It didn’t come off the way it was planned and the town fought back. Now the whole countryside is in a turmoil.”

  “In other words,” I said, “if they find out we’re Comus, we’re done for.”

  Guthrie bit his pipestem. “About six months ago when the trouble was really bad,” he said, “whole Comus units would just disappear when a raid failed and the people struck back. That’s one reason Raleigh insisted on pulling Comus out of the area. Now—well, these are just people, Mr. Rohan. Not wild-eyed revolutionaries. They don’t kill for fun. At least, not the normal people. They don’t even kill in anger, except by accident, or under direct attack. If they aren’t pushed they won’t hit back too hard. But I’ll admit I’d hate to have it known we’re connected with Comus.”

  “What happened to Paul Swann?” I asked.

  “He ran into a bunch of drunks, according to what I heard.” Guthrie grinned wryly. “I had an informant in San Andreas, up to yesterday.” He nodded toward a thin upward waver of smoke rising above the trees on the north edge of the town. “That was his house. They rode my man out of town on a rail. I guess he was lucky at that.”

  I swallowed hard. “And this is the town,” I said, “where I’m supposed to put on a Comus show.” Guthrie sucked noisily on his pipe and gazed at me. “I guess I’ll go back to the Croppers,” I said.

  He grinned. “You mean that?”

  I didn’t know if I meant it or not. I looked down the valley at the toiling shapes in the field. I could feel a familiar aching in the muscles as I watched. A tremor of the ghostly itching ran over me again. I felt a sudden, scalding hatred of Ted Nye breaching the walls of my refuge and forcing me willy-nilly into a spot like this. And then through the remembered aching, and the ghostly itch, and the anger against Nye, a little flicker like summer lightning twitched in the background of my mind. The memory of fiery letters spelling out a message in a dream.

  I didn’t know what they said. But deep in my mind a small voice made sounds of reassurance. “There is more here than you know,” the voice said rather smugly. “Things may be better than you think. Go on, take the chance. Go ahead.”

  I looked down at San Andreas, bright and peaceful-looking in the morning sun. I was scared. My throat felt dry and my hands felt wet and my heart was pumping too fast.

  “Well, Mr. Rohan?” Guthrie asked.

  I shrugged. “Let’s go,” I said.

  CHTER VIII

  THE COMUS CHECK station at the foot of the road stood red and empty, with broken panes. No signal flashed, no red-coated figure stepped to the door. Somebody had scrawled the padlocked-head drawing in chalk across its side. As we rolled by, a breath of wind lifted a long, ragged blue streamer tied to the broken flagstaff. It turned lazily in the air and dropped again. Blue for revolution, I thought. This cell of Comus was dead. It gave me a strangely empty feeling in the pit of the stomach. All I’d heard until now was abstract compared to this sharp impact of reality, this sight of the empty station.

  About a hundred feet farther on the wild mustard growing high and yellow by the road parted and two men jumped to their feet and shouted at us. Guthrie’s foot touched the accelerator and t
he car gave a brief, abortive jump forward. Then we both saw the double-barreled shotgun in the first man’s hand, the over-under barrels looking up at us like eyes turned sidewise. Guthrie stopped.

  “Where you going?” asked the man with the gun. He was young and thin-faced.

  The answer seemed self-evident, but Guthrie told him.

  “What’s your business?”

  Guthrie looked at me. He waited.

  “We’re putting on a traveling show,” I said “I want a permit.”

  The man with the shotgun gave me a long, cool look. “The last guy tried that got the hell kicked out of him. You take my advice, you’ll go right back where you came from. Town’s kind of jumpy these days.”

  “We’ve got to eat,” I said. “I’ll take my chances. Who do I see about a permit?”

  The cool look moved to Guthrie and then back to me. “We got a duly elected mayor and town council,” he told us. “Certified legal by Comus.” He leaned over and spat carefully into the dust.

  I said, “Sure. And who issues permits?”

  He shrugged. “Mister, I wouldn’t know.” His gaze shifted to the truck. “What’s inside?”

  “Look and see,” I suggested. We were driving the sound truck, and I hadn’t seen inside myself. Guthrie sat there placidly, not seeming worried. The man with the gun grunted to his companion, who stepped to the back. I heard the door open, felt the floor give a little as he stepped inside. After a while he came out and muttered to our friend with the gun.

  I had been noticing idly how the lines of their weather-beaten faces looked incised, as if by stage make-up. I supposed I was studying them unconsciously for pointers as to how I’d play a rebel if I ever had such a role, how I’d speak and stand and look. Now it hit me ith a sudden shock what had happened to their faces. This was more than ordinary dirt. They had been heavily blacked, and the blacking rubbed off casually. So they must have been among the fighters when the Comus detail swooped down. Or later, in troubles I didn’t know about. The blacked face is a good and quick disguise. It hit me suddenly that these were really rebels, fighters against Comus. I thought of them as men from another world.

  “Okay,” the man with the gun said, stepping back. “Go on if you want to. You don’t mind getting beat up, go on.”

  * * *

  San Andreas didn’t look so peaceful close up. A lot of shop windows were broken, and everywhere in the center of town the street and walls were tinged with the faint purplish stain that sleep-gas spray leaves on all it touches. The fresh white marks of bullets scored the store fronts, and every window around the square had big blue swags of bunting conspicuous in it. Over all these evidences of strife the Raleigh Monument lifted the big white shaft and the big white marble-jawed head of the President serenely aloft. Raleigh was looking east above the rooftops, seeing nothing.

  We pulled up in front of the Irish Rose Bar and Grill, and Guthrie sat there looking at me. I gazed at the street, the people, my own face in the rearview mirror. Would anybody here recognize Howard Rohan? I was scared. But I had to do something. I wondered what Paul Swann had done at this point, how he had felt.

  A man with a bar towel around his waist was sweeping out the Irish Rose. The double doors were propped back with bricks, and a chair sat in the opening to indicate no admission. The man doused the sidewalk with water from a bucket and swept the water into the street. The air smelled pleasantly of wet concrete and stale beer, a smell I have always rather liked. The sweeper gave us an unfriendly look. He was fat, and he wore a four-cornered canvas cap with LOS ANGELES WORLD’S FAIR on it, and stuck in the brim a paper triangle with a blue star on it, and inside the star a scribbled red “93.” Charlie Starr. The San Diego Massacre.

  I stole a side glance at Guthrie, wondering how all this made him feel. For me, seeing these evidences of rebellion, smelling the bright, cool air of the mountain valley, feeling the strange stirring in the air that I couldn’t define, I felt like a man wakening out a very long, very confused dream. Scared, uncertain, but mysteriously fresh and good.

  I called to the bartender, “Morning. Nice day.”

  He looked sour and said nothing. I said, “Which way is the Mayor’s office?” He swept a wave of a dirty water at me and answered grudgingly, “Across the square.”

  I nodded to Guthrie, and we rolled forward, watching the store fronts for a sign that might say “Mayor’s Office.” Behind us a slow, piercing whistle began to shrill out a tune. I placed it after a moment—“Yankee Doodle,” but with a difference. Not quite the same song. It quickened and rose as we moved along. People on the street glanced toward the source of the sound and then looked quickly around, many of them straight at us. I distrke it much.

  A two-story white building came into view with CITY HALL across its façade. Guthrie parked. “You’d better stay with the truck,” I said. “I’ll be back—I hope.”

  A small boy sitting on the curb got up as I passed and sauntered after me, taking up the whistle. The City Hall had a small lobby that opened into a flowery patio in back. The Mayor’s office was up a flight of narrow stairs. I started up. The small group followed me as far as the lobby, mysteriously augmented by two or three other small boys, all whistling. I ignored them. When I was halfway up the stairs a shrill soprano voice in the lobby began to sing the words that went with “Yankee Doodle.”

  “Charlie Starr took off his badge

  In Nineteen Ninety-three.

  He blowed old Comus off the map

  And set Diego free. …”

  His badge? I wondered. What badge? Well, the song wasn’t very accurate. Old Comus was far from blowed off the map and San Diego was as much, or as little, enslaved as ever. Still, the song made its point.

  The Mayor’s office had two benches and a counter, behind which an old man shuffled papers disinterestedly.

  “I want an entertainment permit,” I told him. “Who do I see?”

  He shook his head. “Can’t help you, son. Guess there just isn’t anybody you could rightly see on Mondays.”

  “Today’s Tuesday,” I pointed out.

  “Is it?” He shook his head again. “Well, Tuesday’s a bad day for permits too. Sorry, son.” He looked me in the eye and said no more. He just waited.

  I stood there a minute, opening and shutting my hands on the counter. I felt the muscles tighten all up my arms and little explosions of violence kept starting and then drying out in my mind. I wanted to hit something, batter somebody, work off a mounting feeling of hot frustration. But there wasn’t anyone to hit. It wouldn’t even be a satisfaction to hit the old man. After the minute was over I turned and went out fast, shutting the door very quietly behind me.

  The little boys were still in the lobby, looking up at me round-eyed as I came down the stairs. But they were perfectly silent now. I thought to myself, Something’s coming. Something’s going to pop. The silence was a scared anticipation. And when they saw me the boy nearest the door jumped for the sidewalk and began waving with excited beckoning gestures to somebody out of sight. I heard running feet on the pavement and saw the jostling shadows of men coming fast.

  I drew a deep, happy breath and rolled my shoulder muscles experimentally, loosening up my arms, making sure my shirt didn’t bind me anywhere. I felt good. I felt wonderful. I felt like laughing. I swung my arm at the little staring boys, “Outside, kids, outside!” I said harshly. They jumped and then scattered like quail, eruput the door in a sudden flurry of small forms just as the first of the oncoming men reached it. There was brief, noisy confusion on the sidewalk. And then the men came in.

  Three or four men. Most of them ragged and unwashed. The lobby filled up with the smell of sweat and whiskey. This early in the morning? Then I remembered the bartender and knew what had happened as clearly as if I’d been on the spot. The recruiting of the strong-arm squad from the town’s down-and-outs, the serving out all round of a few stiff shots to get the mood going. And I knew just what had happened to Paul Swann. But this t
ime they had another man. I was no Paul Swann.

  They came at me head on, businesslike and in silence. Outside I heard Guthrie yell and there was a noise of scuffling and a boom of blows on metal, as if something were happening to the truck. I paid no attention. I was busy. I could tell by their grinning faces they thought this would be easy. I knew what was coming, and it came. But not just what they expected.

  The wave broke over me all at once, the whole group of them jostling to get at me in the narrow lobby. I got the first one with a chopping blow from the side of my hand across his forearm, and I felt the bone fracture under the chop. Somebody hit me across the head and everything went starry and blurred, and after that for a while I only know that for a long time I hit and was hit, stumbling and grunting in the narrow room. I remember little things, the jolt of someone’s chin against the heel of my hand, and the feel as his head snapped back. The feel of my shoe scraping heavily down someone’s shin and the crackle of the small bones of his foot under the stamping finish. The springing give of muscle and bone over the solar plexus when I drove my fist in hard. I was fighting to cripple, as Croppers fight. And I’d learned the hard way. I knew how.

  It seemed to go on a long while, and for no time at all. There was a point where I realized the walls no longer shut us in and there was grass underfoot. We had somehow surged out into the little patio and the morning sun bathed us with serene indifference as we fought. Once I caught a dizzy glimpse of Andrew Raleigh’s white marble face above the rooftops, also serenely indifferent, gazing east into the sun.

  Once I found myself face down among flowers, their petals sweet and moist against my cheek. And once, on my hands and knees and tasting blood in my mouth, I saw three ants in an infinitesimal huddle, antennae lying across each other’s shoulders, heads together, conferring about some important deal on the microscopic level while the battle raged over their unheeding heads. Then a drop of blood fell from my nose onto the pavement, and when I saw them last they were probing it cautiously with interested antennae.