The Final Circle of Paradise

… Peck registered a hit on the armored carrier with the Fulminator. It spun on a single tread, hopping in the piles of broken bricks, and two fascists immediately jumped out in their unbuttoned camouflage shirts, flung a grenade apiece in our direction, and sped off into the darkness. They moved knowingly and adeptly, and it was obvious that these were not youngsters from the Royal Academy or lifers from the Golden Brigade, but genuine full-blown tank corps officers. Robert cut them down point-blank with a burst from his machine gun. The carrier was bulging with cases of beer. It struck us that we had been constantly thirsty for the last two days. Iowa Smith clambered into the carrier and began handing out the cans. Peck opened them with a knife. Robert, putting the machine gun against the carrier, punched holes into the cans with a sharp point on the armor. And the Teacher, adjusting his pince-nez, tripped on the Fulminator straps and muttered, "Wait a minute, Smith; can't you see I've got my hands full?" A five-story building burned briskly at the end of the street, there was a thick smell of smoke and hot metal, and we avidly downed the warm beer, and were drenched through and through, and it was very hot and the dead officers lay on the broken and crushed bricks, with their legs identically flung out in their black pants, and the camouflage shirts bunched at their necks, and the skin still glistening with perspiration on their backs.

"They are officers," said the Teacher. "Thank God. I can't bear the sight of any more dead kids. Accursed politics! People forget God on account of it."

"What god is that?" inquired Iowa Smith out of the carrier. "I've never heard of him."

"Don't jest about that, Smith," said the Teacher. "This will all end soon, and from then on no one nowhere will be permitted to poison the souls of men with vanity."

"And how then shall they multiply?" asked Iowa Smith. He bent over the beer again, and we could see the burn holes in his pants.

"I am talking about politics," said the Teacher modestly.

"The fascists must be destroyed. They are beasts. But that is not enough. There are many other political parties, and there is no place for them and all their propaganda in our land." The Teacher came from this town and lived within two blocks of our post. "Social anarchists, technocrats, communists, are of course – "

"I am a communist," announced Iowa Smith, "at least by conviction. I am for the commune."

The Teacher looked at him in bewilderment.

"Also I am a godless man," added Iowa Smith. "There is no god, Teacher, and there's nothing you can do about it."

At which point we all began to say that we were all atheists, and Peck said that on top of that he was for technocracy, while Robert announced that his father was a social anarchist and his grandfather was a social anarchist and he, Robert, probably could not escape being a social anarchist, although he didn't know what it was all about.

"Well now, if the beer would get ice-cold, said Peck pensively, "I would at once believe in God with great delight."

Teacher smiled embarrassedly and kept wiping his glasses.

He was a good man and we always kidded him, but he never took offense. From the very first night I observed that his courage was not great, but he never retreated without being commanded.

We were still chattering and joking when there was a thunderous crash, the burning building wall collapsed, and straight out of the swirling flames and clouds of smoke and sparks swam a Mammoth attack tank, floating a yard above the pavement. This was a new horror, the likes of which we hadn't seen yet.

Floating out in the middle of the street, it rotated its thrower as though looking around, and then, hovering on its air cushion, began to move in our direction, screeching and clanking metallically. I regained my wits only by the time I was behind a gate post. The tank was now considerably closer, and at first I couldn't see anyone at all, but then Iowa Smith stood up in full view out of the carrier, and propping the butt of the Fulminator against his stomach, took aim. I could see the recoil double him up. I saw a bright flash against the black brow of the tank. And then the street was filled with roar and flame, and when I raised my burned eyelids with great effort, the street was empty and contained only the tank. There was no carrier, no mounds of broken brick, no leaning kiosk by the neighboring house – there was only the tank. It was as though the monster had come awake and was spewing waterfalls of flame and the street ceased being a street and became a square.

Peck slapped me hard on the neck and I could see his glassy eyes right in front of my face, but there was no time to run toward the trench and break out the launcher.