The Night of the Long Knives

have very incorrect ways of thinki

de Qui

ered as One o

e and me was in the two kneeling seats and we hugged them tight, but Pop wa

as tanks, looking like dull crescents from this angle through

uit swinging too. Once again I just managed to stave off the vomits, this time the vomits from natural

he must have braced his hands against half the buttons at one time or another and I noticed that none of them w

with the ultra-queasy state of my stomach I lacked all am

r something that got misplaced in the shake-up. Eventually he found it-a small almond-shaped can. He opened it. Sure

nuts to top off with

sure you'll be able to dispose of the body. How did I know I'd be able to open the door? I remember philosophizing that Pop ought at least to have broke an arm so he'd

until a skewy spindle shape loomed up ahead and shot back over the viewport. I think it was a vulture. I don't know

nd a little and said, "Pop, Alice and me are going to try to work out how this plane navigates. This time we do

somewheres. That's all that ever matters with me." He chuckled a bit and added, "You got to

us that you couldn't push any of the buttons any more, they were all locked down-a

ike. There weren't any. Alice went back and tried the buttons on Pop's mino

I couldn't imagine the why of gimmicking a plane's controls like that, unless maybe to keep loose children or prisoners from being able t

fact, and the seemingly idiotic petulance of his pushing all the buttons have been a shrewd cover for pushing the Atla-Hi button. But if Pop had been acting he'd been acting beautifully, with a sere

on either of the screens except for the tiny green star that I had figured stood for the plane and it didn't make sense to go where we already were. And if

esake was always a little too quick a

e in Wonderland?" I asked. She nodded, and gave me a little smile, n

the intellectual past like that can make you fee

together like the double star in the handle of the Dipper. We watched it for a while. The distance between the two stars grew perceptibly greater. We watched it for a while longer, considerably longer. It became clear that the position o

the freeway by the old cracking plant was recognized as a marked locality by the screen. Why I don't know. It reminded me of the old "X Marks the Spot" of news

o Alice, grudgingly including Pop

nees and one arm and pushed

oop, not too tight to disturb the s

he green stars and after about a minute she said, "They're get

t that-was locked down of course. The Atla-Hi button was up, glowing viole

r go to Atla-Hi or we could go back where we'd

anywhere in the world you choose to go, especially any paradise, and then you find yourself wo

wail. We were up against another of those "two" problems,

ecially that Survival Kit. Trek on with some loot we'll mostly never understand and with the knowl

o live with for a little while at least that won't be nice to live with after this c

at the same time showed she was t

thy corpse. I'd rather anything than that." And she pushed the Atla-Hi button again and as the plane s

d her. "I want a new sh

othing left for me to do but go crazy. No Atla-Hi for me, just Bug-land. My mind died, though not my memory. By the time I'd got my strength back I'd started to be a new bugger. I didn't know no

casm, "you hunted up a wandering preacher, or perhaps a kindly o

f murderers, guys who were worse cases then myself but who'd wanted to quit because it wasn't getting th

in the Deathlands without killing," Alice continued

mething almost as bad-in fact, maybe going crazy is the easiest wa

Hi and there was nothing to do until we got there, unless one of us got a brainstorm ab

rply. "What do you figure on getting out of A

lice the reason. I like to talk to murderers, practicing murderers preferred. I need to-have to talk t

ng quit killing, for one thing. In my books, which happen to be the old books in this case, the accomplice is every

t said, 'Forget it.'" He hesitated a moment, studying me. Then he said, "I wa

did t

hesitated. "I'm not tellin

ain. "Buggers who pad t

to quite a few guys in my day. It's a very restful co

," I granted, "but

ew what he was thinking-that Alice still had just her pliers on a

yes off Pop I reached the knife without a handle out of her b

ay have quit killing clean decent Deathland style. But I don't believe one bit of

"I got to keep myself reminded of

's the bounty Atla-Hi gives you for every Deathlander you bring in? What would it be for two live Deathlanders? And what

dded with a sort of wicked gaiety. I squeezed

you need a lot of coincidences and happenstances to make that theory hold water, but you sure can bel

ne to begin with? That cuts a happenstance. Didn't you hop out while we were too busy with the Pilot to notice and j

t. "Could have been-according to the evidence as you saw it. It's quite a bright

g in the knife and gave Alice back her hand. "I'll repeat

fighting, Pop, but I haven't. Not fighting, nor killing, nor anything in b

get one thing straight. If anybody jumps me I'll try to disable them, I'll try to hurt them in any way short of killing, and that means hamstringing and rabbit-punching and everything else. Every least

new Pop was quick for his age and strong enough. If Alice and me jumped him now there'd be blood let six different ways. You can't jump

ling. But that's all, absolutely all. Yet you got to do it because it's the way you're built. The urge is there, it's an overpowering urge, and you got nothing to oppose it with. You feel the Big Grief and the Big Resentment, the dust is eating at your bones, you can't stand the city squares-the Porterites and Mantenors and such-because you know they're

re out of our heads. But now you're talking about practical things, as you say. What do you expect us to do if we quit our trade, as you call i

Are you expecting us to admit we're m

If a man or woman quits killing there's a lot of things he's got to straighten out-first his own mind and feelings, next he's got to do what he can to make up for the murders he's done-help the next of kin if any and so on-then he's got to carry the news to other killers who haven't heard it yet. He's

his guard), "I dig you on the city squares (I call 'em cultural queers) and what sort of screwed-up fatheads they are, but just the same for a man to qui

and folkways and all the rest? A very tight little culture, in fact. N

on murder and devoted wholly to murder. Murder is ou

Deathland culture is devoted to growing through murder away from murder. That's my thought. It's about the toughest way of growth anybody was ever asked to face up to, but it's a way of growth just the same. A lot bigger and fancier cultures never could figure out the answer to the problem of war

s. In a real culture a murderer feels guilty and confesses and then he gets hanged or imprisoned a long time and that squares things for him and everybody. You need religion and courts and hangmen

f your life making up for what you've done ... and what you will do, too! But about hanging and prisons-was it ever proved those were the right thing for murderers? As for religion now-some of us who've quit killing are religious and a lot of us (me included) aren't; and some of t

that I couldn't help warming up to him. Don't get me wrong, I didn't really fall for his line of chatter at all, but

ger that could kid religion the way Pop could got

mi-permanent meeting places where they tried to get together at pre-arranged dates, but mostly they kept on the go, by twos and threes or-more rarely-alone. They were all men so far, at least Pop hadn't heard of any women members, but-he assured Alice earnestly-he would personally guarantee that there would be no objecti

y that's a genuine murderer, that is, and says he wants to quit. Guys t

ch high times. Nobody's got a right to go glooming around or pull a long face j

ourse, a fairy tale-a crazy mixed-up fairy tale. Alice and me knew there could be no fellowship of Deathlanders like Pop

r killings when they were dressed a certain way (and the troubles they had with their murder costumes), the ones who could only kill people with certain traits or of a certain appearance (red-heads, say, or people who read books, or who couldn't carry tunes, or who used bad language), the ones who always mixed sex and murder and the ones who believed that murder was contaminated by the least breath of sex, the sticklers and the Sloppy Joes, the artists and the butchers, the ax- and stiletto-types, the

ed itself, rather. I said it must generate an antigravity field that was keyed to the body of the plane but nothing else, so that we didn't feel lighter, nor any of the objects in the cabin-it just worked on the dull silvery metal-and I proved

tic pull-it wouldn't be operating on him, only on the iron-but just the same the germ'd be carried along with the filing and feel its acceleration and all

ow we'd noticed the tubes, and I said it was maybe just a reserve system in case the antigravity failed and Pop guessed it might

here's our guns?" Alice ask

nd do you suppose," Pop asked, "that it was something from the antigravity that made electricity flare

plant and just who had done the scream if not him, but I figured he still woul

rom both, why couldn't Alamos and Atla-Hi have some sort of treaty and the plane be traveling from the one to the other. W

now getting pretty close to the violet blot of Atla-Hi. I looked out at the orange soup, which was one thing that hadn't changed a bit so far, and I got to wishing like a baby that it wasn't th

horn-handle in my boot, though he never killed with it. He claimed he'd been tortured for years by the thought of the millions and millions he'd killed with blast and radiation, but now he was finding peace at last because he was

eir side," Alice sai

skinny little runt), if that's what he had to do to join. We argued it over, I pointed out that we let ex-soldiers count the killings they'd done in service, and that we

ly the guy who pushed t

w?" Pop replied.

voice started talking in the plane. It seemed to be coming out of the violet patch on the North America screen. That is, it came from the general direction of the screen at any rate and my mind instantly tied it to the

idn't understand at all that went up

se," Pop whispered

e purest English-at least that was how I'd describe it. Practic

d at Pop and Alice. Pop grinned, maybe a mite feebly this time, I

"We've taken over for Gra

, just barely. Then, "Do a

o look at Pop and A

pause. "Is Grayl

" I

ated in some w

or the screen's tactfulne

n over for him?" t

as getting us into, things were moving too fast,

that made me feel funny-I guess it was sincerity. Then it said, "Is

"There's a box with a thousand or so one-inch underweight steel cubes in it. Lik

how, maybe because whoever was talking was try

in Atlantic Highlands at all. We're sieged in by planes and ground forces of Savannah Fortress. All our aircraft, such as haven't been destroyed, are pinned down. You're going to have to parachute the blocks to a point as ne

aid, wett

ou. Anything you see in the haze from now on