The Long Tomorrow

The old man shook his head. “They’re knife-and-claw killers, when they kill. I guess they can get closer to their work that way. Besides, they only get enough powder to barely keep them going.” He nodded toward the two men, who were going back again carrying a small keg. A thin sound, half wailing and half waspish, penetrated from the second wagon down, and Esau said, “Oh Lord, there’s Amity calling me. She’s probably scared to death.” He turned and went immediately. Len watched the New Ishmaelites.

“Where did they come from?” he asked, trying to remember what he had heard about them. They were one of the very earliest extreme sects, but he didn’t know much more than that.

“Some of them were here to begin with,” Hostetter said. “Under other names, of course, and not nearly so crazy because the pressure of society sort of held them down, but a fertile seed bed. Others came here of their own accord when the New Ishmaelite movement took shape and really got going. A lot more were driven here out of the East, being natural-born troublemakers that other people wanted to be rid of.”

The small keg of powder changed hands. Len said, “What do they trade you for it?”

“Nothing. Buying and selling are no part of holiness, and anyway, they don’t have anything. When you come right down to it, I don’t know why we do give it to them. I guess,” said Wepplo, “probably it’s on account of the kids. You know, once in a while you find one of ’em like a coyote pup, lost in the sagebrush. If they’re young enough, and brought up right, they turn out just as smart and nice as anyone.”

The woman lifted her arms up high, whether for a curse or a blessing Len couldn’t tell. The wind tossed the lank hair back from her face, and he saw with a shock that she was young, and might have been handsome if her cheeks were full and her eyes less hunger-bright and staring. Then she and the two men climbed back to the top of the bluff, and in five minutes they were all gone, hidden by the cut-up hills. But that night the Bartorstown men doubled the watch.

Two days later they filled every cask, bottle, and bucket with water and left the river, striking south and west into a waste and very empty land, sun-scorched, wind-scourged, and dry as an old skull. They were climbing now, toward distant bastions of red rock with tumbled masses of peaks rising blue and far away behind them. The mules and the men labored together, toiling slowly, and Len learned to hate the sun. And he looked up at the blank, cruel peaks, and wondered. Then, when the water was almost gone, a red scarp swung away to the west and showed an opening about as wide as two wagons, and Hostetter said, “This is the first gate.”

They filed into it. It was smooth like a made road, but it was steep, and everybody was walking now to ease the mules, except Amity. After a little while, without any order that Len could hear, or for any reason that he could see, they stopped.

He asked why.

“Routine,” Hostetter said. “We’re not exactly overrun with people, as you might guess from the country, but not even a rabbit can get through here without being seen, and it’s customary to stop and be looked over. If somebody doesn’t, we know right away it’s a stranger.”

Len craned his neck, but he could not see anything but red rock. Esau was walking with them, and Wepplo. Wepplo laughed and said, “Boy, they’re looking at you right now in Bartorstown. Yes, they are. Studying you real close, and if they don’t like your looks, all they have to do is push one little button and !” He made a sweeping gesture with his hand, and Len and Esau both ducked. Wepplo laughed again.

“What do you mean, ?” said Esau angrily, glaring around. “You mean somebody in Bartorstown could kill us here? That’s crazy.”

“It’s true,” said Hostetter. “But I wouldn’t get excited. They know we’re coming.”

Len felt the skin between his shoulders turn cold and crawl. “How can they see us?”

“Scanners,” said Hostetter, pointing vaguely at the rock. “Hidden in the cracks, where you can’t see ’em. A scanner is kind of like an eye, way off from the body. Whoever comes through here, they know it in Bartorstown, and it’s still a day’s journey away.”

“And all they have to do is push something?” said Esau, wetting his lips.

Wepplo swung his hand again, and repeated, “!”

“They must have really had something almighty secret here,” said Esau, “to go to all that trouble.”

Wepplo opened his mouth, and Hostetter said, “Give a hand with the wagon here, will you?” Wepplo shut his mouth again and leaned onto the tail gate of a wagon that seemed already to be rolling smoothly. Len looked sharply at Hostetter, but his head was bent and his whole attention appeared to be on the pushing. Len smiled. He did not say anything.