The Long Tomorrow

“He was a greater and a wiser man than you or I will ever be, but that didn’t save him when he ran too hard against the whole body of law and public belief.”

Lightning flashed again, and this time the interval was shorter. The wind began to blow, tossing the branches of the trees around and riffling the blank surface of the river. Distant figures labored on the wharves to make fast the moorings of the barges, or to hustle bales and sacks under cover. Landward, between the trees, the whitewashed or weathered-silver houses of Refuge glimmered in the last wan light from overhead.

“Why do you want to hasten the day?” asked Taylor quietly. “You’ll never live to see it, and neither will your children, nor your grandchildren. Why, Len?”

“Why what?” asked Len, now blankly confused, and then he gasped as Taylor answered him, “Why do you want to bring back the cities?”

Len was silent, peering into the gloom that had suddenly deepened until Taylor was no more than a shadow four feet away.

“They were dying even before the Destruction,” said Taylor. “Megalopolis, drowned in its own sewage, choked with its own waste gases, smothered and crushed by its own population. ‘City’ sounds like a musical word to your ear, but what do you really know about them?”

They had been over this ground before. “Gran used to say—”

“That she was a little girl then, and little girls would hardly see the dirt, the ugliness, the crowded poverty, the vice. The cities were sucking all the life of the country into themselves and destroying it. Men were no longer individuals, but units in a vast machine, all cut to one pattern, with the same tastes and ideas, the same mass-produced education that did not educate but only pasted a veneet of catchwords over ignorance. Why do you want to bring that back?”

An old argument, but applied in a totally unexpected way. Len stammered, “I haven’t been thinking about cities one way or the other. And I don’t see what Mr. Dulinsky’s new warehouse has to do with them.”

“Len, if you’re not honest with yourself, life will never be honest with you. A stupid man could say that he didn’t see and be honest, but not you. Unless you’re still too much of a child to think beyond the immediate fact.”

“I’m old enough to get married,” said Len hotly, “and that ought to be old enough for anything.”

“Quite,” said Taylor. “Quite. Here comes the rain, Len. Help me with the windows.” They shut them, and Taylor lit the candle. The room was now unbearably close and hot. “What a pity,” he said, “that the windows always have to be closed just when the cool wind starts to blow. Yes, you’re old enough to get married, and I think Amity has a thought or two in that direction herself. It’s a possibility I want you to consider.”

Len’s heart began to pound, the way it always did when Amity was involved. He felt wildly excited, and at the same time it was as though a trap had been set before his feet. He sat down again, and the rain thrashed on the windows like hail.

Taylor said slowly, “Refuge is a good town just the way it stands. You could have a good life here. I can take you off the docks and make a lawyer out of you, and in time you’d be an important man. You would have leisure for study, and all the wisdom of the world in there in those books. And there’s Amity. Those are the things I can give you. What does Dulinsky offer?”

Len shook his head. “I do my work, and he pays me. That’s all.”

“You know he’s breaking the law.”

“It’s a silly law. One warehouse more or less—”

“One warehouse more, in this case, violates the Thirtieth Amendment, which is the most basic law of this land. It won’t be overlooked.”

“But it isn’t fair. Nobody here in Refuge wants to see Shadwell spring up and take a lot of business away because there aren’t enough warehouses and wharves and shelters on this side to take care of all the trade.”

“One more warehouse,” said Taylor, pointedly repeating Len’s words, “and then more wharves to serve it, and more housing for the traders, and pretty soon you’ll need another warehouse still, and that is the way in which cities are born. Len, has Dulinsky ever mentioned Bartorstown to you?”

Len’s heart, which had been beating so hard for Amity, now stopped in sudden fear. He shivered and said, with perfect truthfulness, “No, sir. Never.”

“I just wondered. It seems the kind of a thing a Bartorstown man might do. But then I’ve known Mike since we were boys together, and I can’t remember any possible influence—no, I suppose not. But that may not save him, Len, and it may not save you.” Len said carefully, “I don’t think I understand.”

“You and Esau are strangers. People will accept you as long as you don’t run counter to their ways, but if you do, look out.” He leaned his elbows on the desk and looked at Len. “You haven’t been altogether truthful about yourself.”

“I haven’t told any lies.”

“That isn’t always necessary. Anyway, I can pretty well guess. You’re a country boy. I would lay odds that you were New Mennonite. And you ran away from home. Why?”