Ron Merrill First serial rights

[540-54-5913]

Jora Kenyon climbed up the flatcar and hoisted himself to the top of the huge logs with which it was loaded. He made sure of his footing, then started the small chain saw he was carrying, not hurrying. The Section Leader was absent, attending some meeting. Kenyon looked east. The clouds were still coming in; looked like rain tomorrow, maybe even tonight. He turned his eyes westward, squinting into the setting sun. Sometimes, in good weather, he could make out the snow-capped peaks of the Andes. Not today.

The low thrum of a diesel locomotive reached his ear and he turned to see train number 506 coming into the yard from the south. Kenyon glanced around; nobody was paying any attention to him. As the engine moved by on a parallel track, he caught the eye of the engineer, just for an instant. It was Juarez, all right. Juarez looked ahead, where a dirty red rag was hanging half over the edge of a garbage can beside the track. He glanced again at Kenyon; then he was past.

Kenyon bent to his work. The pine logs, as always, had been trimmed sloppily by the lumberjacks. Branches still stuck out, some of them several feet long. The customers on the other side of the Line did not expect much quality from World producers, but they had their limits. The logs had to be trimmed. Kenyon had already done the dangerous part on this car, cleaning up the lower logs. Usually that resulted in a shift of the upper logs; sometimes they came crashing down to kill a worker. Now, though, he had only to finish up the ones on top.

He clambered around on the logs, slicing off projecting branches. He was tired, but the shift would soon be over. Looking for a foothold, he stepped on a branch at the side and nearly fell as it twisted under his foot. Somehow he managed to grab the log with his free hand and save himself.

He stood frozen for half a minute, his heart pounding over the noise of the saw. Then, moving slowly and carefully, he looked over the problem. The log, he now saw, was defective; it had split, probably when it was felled, at the fault line of the knot at the large branch he had stepped on. The crack had been invisible until his weight, leveraged by the branch, had forced it open, exposing about three meters of raw wood. As he moved back to the top of the log, taking his weight off the branch, the crack closed, becoming invisible again.

He shrugged, about to trim off the branch. The customers wouldn't be happy to get a cracked log, but it was no skin off his nose if the World Government had its payment reduced. It was at that moment that the idea hit him, springing full-blown into his brain, complete as if he'd spent hours working it out. The surge of temptation washed through him like a warm liquid.

The quitting whistle blew, and he got a grip on himself. He turned off the saw and jumped down, heading for the control shack. On the way he passed the garbage can and casually pushed the rag all the way into it. Nobody was looking at him.

When he got to the control shack the other workers were milling around instead of lined up at attention. "What now?" he asked.

"Aw, Gerrier's still tied up in the office. That meeting is running overtime."

"Shit," said another worker. "I'm getting hungry. If we're late getting back to the barracks again and the cooks close up--"

"Jora," said a soft voice, "how about doing a sculpture for us while we wait? I've got a nice chunk."

Jora smiled at the boy--person, he reminded himself. Always keep to your role, even in the privacy of your thoughts; that was basic tradecraft. But he was so weary . . .

It was a nice chunk, over a meter trimmed off the end of a log that had been too long for the flatcar. Jora looked at it for a moment, letting it speak to him. A bear, that's what it was. He took the smallest chainsaw and started the motor. A cut, another cut . . . chips and sawdust flew as the saw bit into the wood. The workers crowded around, watching, commenting, speculating on what the final product would be. Jora, falling into a warm creative glow, let go of his self-discipline and lost awareness of his audience.

"A sculptor, eh?" said the man. "What makes you think you'd be any use to the Resistance, lad?"

"I've had military training," said Jora.

The man dismissed it with a wave of his hand. "A high-school course." He leaned forward. "You've been viewing too many romances. Heroic Resistance members shooting it out with the Social Safety Brigades. Saboteurs blowing up military installations. Beautiful female agents seducing key bureaucrats."

Jora, blushing, tried to protest, but the man cut him off.

"Look, lad, it isn't like that at all. The Resistance is far too weak to mount anything like a real military operation. We don't even do very much with active measures. Mostly it's propaganda, trying to build support. I spent eight years on the other side of the Line and never had my hands on a weapon. You want to know what it's like? It's day after agonizing day of sheer boredom, punctuated by moments of absolute terror. Take my advice--forget about this and go home. According to these reports, you have real talent as an artist. If you want to do something useful--"

"No. Don't you see, that's what's wrong with the Confederation. Oh yes, all of us are very indignant about the World Government, we all conscientiously express our disapproval. And we sit here, fat and happy and free, and do nothing. There are twenty billion people on the other side of the Line, live human beings who have been enslaved. I know what things are like there--and not just from viewing romances, I've studied it seriously. It's unspeakable. And I can't just pursue my career, discussing my 'anti-totalitarian' sculptures in a Santiago gallery with a glass of wine in one hand, while that kind of suffering is allowed to continue. I have to do something real."

"Unlike your parents," the man said gently.

"This is not just an adolescent revolt!"

The man leaned back, sighed, and changed the subject. "You understand that this would probably be a one-way trip? It's very hard for us to smuggle people into the World domain. Getting someone back across the Line into the C.F.C. is even tougher, and we don't do it without a damned good reason. If we let you join, chances are you'll die on the other side of the Line."

He stepped back, cutting the motor on the saw, resisting the temptation to trim the rough edges of the sculpture. The challenge was to accept its crudeness, to strive for the right lines to suggest the essence of the object, with no chance to perfect it or make changes. It was totally unlike working with clay. And this time, he saw, he'd caught it, a bear sitting on its haunches . . . The silence suddenly reached his attention.

"Jora Kenyon," said a voice behind him, sarcastically. "Our great artist."

Jora turned and saw that it was not just Gerrier; the Unit Supervisor was with him. For a moment he went faint with terror. Then he got a grip on himself. It was just the two managers; if they'd been on to him, there would have been SSB proctors to take him.

"It is too bad you do not wield your saw with such enthusiasm when you are working, Citizen Kenyon," said Gerrier. Obviously he was trying to make an impression on his boss; Gerrier had been in the audience, cheering with the rest, when Jora had done previous sculptures. "No doubt the Utilization Council made a mistake in your case. They should have assigned you to the Institute of Fine Arts, right, Citizen Kenyon?"

"No, Citizen Leader," mumbled Jora, standing rigidly at attention.

"Well, unfortunately, Citizen Kenyon, they did not. They assigned you to me, and since you don't seem to feel that you have enough to do, you will report to me tomorrow at the beginning of the shift and we'll find some extra assignments for you. Meanwhile--"

He took the saw out of Jora's hands, started it, and with a single smooth cut severed the bear's head. "Now," he said, addressing the group, "you'd better line up if you want to have dinner tonight. Don't forget there's a lecture on ecological protection of our forests at 1930, and you all will be there, and on time."

They got to the mess hall before it closed, fortunately. The line crept past the long bulletin board on the outside of the building. That was intentional; nobody would read World Government propaganda for pleasure, but standing there waiting with nothing else to do, one read the same posters and notices over and over again. Jora idly scanned a placard exhorting him to eschew the old sexist pronouns and use the approved "che" and "cher." The paper was yellowing and curled at the edges.

"Silence in the line!" Jora suppressed a grin as Gerrier stalked over to a section of the line where a couple of workers had exposed themselves by a mutter and a nudge. Glemma had come through, it looked like. He kept a mask of bored indifference on his face, following the action out of the corner of his eye.

"What the hell is this?" said Gerrier, snatching a small piece of paper off the board. It was, Jora knew, a short but subversive essay, pointing out the waste and environmental destruction in local activities--the clear-cutting, the erosion, the stench from the paper mill--and asking why nobody was allowed to mention that these things were happening under a government that posed as the protector of the environment.

Gerrier's face turned red as he scanned the paper. He blew three short blasts on his whistle. A moment later, two SSB proctors came running from the guard house.

"Arrest these two wreckers," he ordered.

"But I--" protested one of the workers indicated. One of the proctors pulled his arms behind him as the other slammed a fist into his midsection. A moment later both workers were being frog-marched to the guard house in Gerrier's wake. The other workers studiously ignored the incident; catch a proctor's eye and you could join the party yourself.

Jora knew the two men were innocent, their only fault being a lack of the self-control to pretend they hadn't seen the paper. And Gerrier, of course, knew they hadn't put it up. They'd get off with a nasty beating, probably, though they might be sent to the Camps if the local SSB needed more bodies to fill their quota.

He reached the door, showed his ID card, and received a bowl of soup and a piece of bread. He took his place at the bench. There was a low murmur of conversation, almost whispered; it was permitted to talk at meals, but nobody wanted to draw attention to himself by letting his voice become too loud.

"At least it's an all-unit lecture tonight," said the man on his right. "The women will be there."

"Yeah, and if you get caught again twisting your head to look at them, you'll get extra duty," commented another man. "Be patient; the Entertainment Unit will be here week after next."

"That reminds me--Jora, you want to trade for your ticket again? Same deal, three bottles."

"OK."

"Damned if I'd trade my ticket for vodka," said the man across the table. "Ain't got no balls, huh?"

Jora did not respond, concentrating on his meal. His urges in fact were strong, but he invariably traded away his ticket to the monthly visit of the Entertainment Unit. At first he'd tried going, telling himself it was part of his cover; but the dull pain in the eyes of the women--wives, daughters, mothers of men sentenced to the Camps--had sickened him, made him incapable. So he'd adopted the pose of a binger, a man who'd do anything for a bottle of vodka.

The conversation turned to the comparison of seniority points. One man had nearly enough accumulated to apply for permission to be assigned to a female and start a family. Jora noted that none of the known stoolies was sitting at the table and took a chance on putting in a comment.

"I hear that in the C.F.C. you can get married anytime you want. Lots of guys in their twenties are married. You even get to choose who you marry."

"Disgusting. How could the Government control the population if people could get married anytime they pleased?"

"Yeah, and the lecturer said the other night that--"

Jora bent his head over his soup. These men groused all day about having to attend the constant evening lectures. But they picked up and took as their own the positions they heard. It wasn't just fear of the SSB, he'd come to realize; they really believed that they lived in a just society.

"Damned if I'd want to live on the other side of the Line. What do you do if you can't get a job?"

"Why, in the Confederation of Free Cultures, my friend, you're free--free to starve."

There was a rumble of agreement from around the table. Jora used his bread to soak up the last drops of his soup. He felt only disgust and weariness, as always these days. The surge of fear this afternoon, he mused, had been almost welcome. At least when you were afraid you were feeling something real, you were alive. He thought back to his infiltration.

"Last chance to change your mind," said the man. In his three months of training in tradecraft, Jora had never learned his name.

"I'm sticking with it," Jora replied. Outside, a storm lashed the windows. Weather was foul in the Falklands; it had rained steadily for the four days he'd been there. He could barely see the boat bobbing up and down in the cove, waiting in the dusk for its passengers.

"Very well. We've constructed your cover. Here's your ID card and internal passport. Your file will be in the World Government's district computers in Buenos Aires as of 2200 tonight."

"So we have a hacker in place there?"

"You don't need-to-know that," the man said coldly. "You're comfortable with your legend? Need any freshening?"

"I'm sure I've got it all down solid. I've viewed films till I know the Plaza district like the back of my hand--what it looked like before it burned down, that is. What worries me is meeting someone that I ought to know."

"That's always a danger, but it's minimal. Most of the people in your fabricated background died in the fire or in the plague afterwards. And we've faked your assignment to a lumberyard unit five hundred kilometers away from the city.

"OK, we'll be leaving soon. The boat will reach the landing zone at 0330. Our guide will escort you inland and help you slip into the station. Then you just get on the train when it comes at 0645, if it's on time, which I doubt. Here's your ticket."

He looked outside. Complete darkness had fallen. "Let's go."

For a moment Jora thought he would be unable to stand up. His legs seemed to revolt. It's my duty! he told himself. He forced himself to his feet and walked to the door, putting his hands in his pockets to hide their trembling.

It was chilly, standing in line outside the auditorium building. The compensation was that the women stood in the same line. There was a steady low buzz of conversation.

Jora stood next to--yes, it was a woman, he decided, noting the short stature, the delicate features, and the hint of wide hips under the loose coveralls all workers wore. She--che, he reminded himself--might even be attractive if allowed to appear as a woman.

He looked off to the west, and again was hit with a wave of temptation. If I'm going to do it, I'll have to do it tonight-- He shut it off and tried to start a conversation. "What do you think--can you see the Andes?" he asked.

"No," she said after a moment. "Would I want to?"

"Aren't you ever curious what things are like over on the other side?"

"We've been told, haven't we? Women are chattel there. Men hold all the positions of power. Here," she said proudly, "we have equality. There, women have to wear distinctive clothes so everyone will know they're inferior. Didn't you attend the lecture week before last?"

"Yes, of course," he mumbled, turning away. He wanted to tell her that the genderless uniforms they wore, and the enforced pretense that women couldn't be distinguished from men, were intended to make it less obvious that all important official positions were filled by men. But it would be as pointless as it would be dangerous. He'd pushed his luck already today, and he'd be pushing it further soon.

There was a new banner hung over the door of the auditorium. The students at the Institute of Fine Arts painted one for them every week. This one, decorated with trees and flowers, read, "The Group before the Individual."

"Gemeinnutz vor Eigennutz," muttered Jora.

"What?" asked the woman next to him.

"Nothing." She--che--didn't know, of course, that the same slogan had been used by the Nazis. Study of history was not encouraged.

The line began to move as the doors were opened. Jora, as his turn came, showed his ID and was checked off the list. He moved with the crowd toward the bleachers, looking around. He spotted the worker he was seeking and moved over to him.

"Jo. Cover for me if anyone's looking, will you?"

"OK. Taking a break, eh?"

"Yeah." He made himself grin, tapped a pocket on his coveralls. "Got a bottle to keep me company."

The other man winked. Jora walked off toward the latrines, then slipped into a dark corner where a light bulb was missing. Bulbs were always in short supply and being stolen. He slipped out the door of an emergency exit; the automatic alarm had broken long ago and had never been fixed.

The Hayek Cell met in the basement of an abandoned building at the edge of the yard. Strictly speaking, Jora had been taught, holding a cell meeting was very undesirable; it seriously increased the danger to all the participants. And having a courier at the meeting, as they would tonight, was an even greater breach of security. But--he'd also been taught--agents working year after year would crack under the stress if they didn't have frequent contact with comrades. The meetings were a psychological necessity, a necessary evil.

He was the last of the cell to arrive, except for Juarez. He embraced the other three members.

Kar Hendrik, like Jora, was a volunteer from the C.F.C., passionate, impatient; he made Jora feel old already. He worked as an engine wiper. Henry Stimm, the Cell Leader, was actually a fairly senior stoolie and had prospects of being promoted to Section Leader. Glemma Smith was, Jora knew, 55 years old; she looked 80. She was completely toothless and her nose had been broken, relics of a beating she'd received long before. Jora didn't know the whole story, but he could guess.

"Juarez should come," Jora told them. "I saw him arrive this afternoon."

"You didn't--" said Stimm.

"No, of course not. I just happened to be standing there."

At that moment they heard the code knock, and Hendrik jumped up to let Juarez in. The engine driver was a wiry old man with cynical eyes. He was the primary courier for the Austrian Net, as the local group of cells was called.

Tonight he was tense and gloomy. "Anything happen here?" he asked immediately. "I saw the OK signal, but then Jora was standing there--"

"No," said Stimm, suddenly apprehensive. "What's up?"

"They rolled up the Mises Cell yesterday."

"What!"

"The whole town was buzzing with it. One member managed to kill himself, apparently; the others are under interrogation."

"Is there any chance--"

"No," said Juarez firmly. "I've never broken tradecraft, and none of the people in the other cells know me. Everything through dead drops. And of course I was careful not to go near the drop this time."

"What about the other cells?"

"Rothbard Cell was OK when I left. Same for Schumpeter Cell."

"We'll have to get a message through to Center. This is a serious setback." Only Schumpeter Cell had a radio. The printing press had been with Mises Cell.

"But after that," Stimm went on, "I think you should lie low for a while. You're the weak point, because you know all the dead drops. If the SSB got you, they could roll up not only this cell but the whole net."

"Juarez wouldn't break," said Hendrik.

"Don't fool yourself, lad," said Juarez. "Anybody would break." Like the others, he'd received treatments from Resistance doctors that would protect him, it was thought, from chemical analysis. But no conditioning could prevent a breakdown under torture--at least, not without damaging the normal autonomy and volition of the subject.

They discussed the situation for while. Then Stimm turned the subject to their own operations. Jora described the scene that afternoon at the mess hall. Stimm nodded.

"That concurs with the reports I got from the stoolies."

"What happened to those two men?"

"They got off with beatings. One's in the hospital; the other will be back at work tomorrow."

"Was it worth it?" asked Glemma suddenly.

"What?"

"Our comrades in Mises cell printed those leaflets for us. I very skillfully managed to put that one up without being caught, as well as distributing the others in the women's barracks and other places. OK, now we've got one of our people dead and three others screaming their lungs out under torture. And two workers here beaten up. What have we accomplished? And is it worth the price?"

"We have to believe that it is."

"Sure, we have to believe it, but is it true?"

"Dozens of people must have read those leaflets, and some of them are doing some thinking because of it. And even those two who were grabbed today--the incident will have an effect. They'll be resentful, good prospects for recruiting."

"They'll be resentful--but they'll also be afraid. But suppose we do recruit them. Like you recruited me. I was resentful, wasn't I? I kicked my Section Leader in the crotch and got my face pounded in. So I've spent thirty years playing conspiracy games in revenge, and what have I got to show for it? Sometimes I think I would have been better off if I'd just let that gorilla rape me."

"Glemma, it's not true. You've made a real contribution to the Resistance."

"Bullshit. Face it, Henry, nothing we've done has been more than a pinprick. We're supposed to be organizing resistance--but the people don't want to resist. They like the way things are. That's the dirty little secret that we can't bear to mention."

"Glemma," said Hendrik urgently, "we need you. They need you."

"I don't know if they need me, but they sure as hell don't want me." She buried her face in her hands.

"It's true, you know," said Jora. "We should have known; it's always been that way. Hitler was wildly popular with the Germans. The Russians loved Stalin; if he'd wanted to hold fair elections he could have won overwhelmingly. History says that totalitarian systems end only when they are destroyed by outside pressure."

Stimm seemed unsure how to respond. Juarez cut in.

"Let's try to be more professional, OK, folks? These philosophical discussions get us nowhere. We've all made our decisions and now we're stuck with them. I think Henry had the right idea, but let's carry it further. I think we should all take a break. Back off for a while, lie low. Seems like we could use a break, anyway.

"Meanwhile," he added, tapping his watch significantly, "we'd better break up this meeting."

"Right," said Stimm, relieved. "I'll set the usual signal for the next meeting. It will probably be a longer gap than usual. Suspend activities till further notice. Center may modify our instructions anyway. Uh, Glemma, stay behind a couple of minutes, would you?"

Jora, on his way back to slip into the auditorium, stopped suddenly and stood thinking. He looked up; the sky was now completely overcast and no stars were visible. Rain for sure, and soon. That decided him.

He turned and headed for the yard. There was a place where the fence was broken that he knew. He crouched beside it cautiously, looking and listening. Nothing suspicious. Nobody was working in the yards, which ran only a single day shift, but the whine of saws came from the mills, which worked three shifts. He crawled under, waited again, then headed for the control shack.

He almost stumbled over the guards on the way; they were sitting behind a building smoking contraband tobacco and gossiping about women. Fortunately the odor and their voices alerted him in time to go around them.

He broke a window and let himself into the control shack, following the plan that had sprung into his head that afternoon. He took a crowbar from the tool rack and forced open the door of Gerrier's office. Another attack with the crowbar and Gerrier's locked desk was open. In the lower left-hand drawer Jora found, as he'd expected, four bottles of vodka. He pulled them out, went into the bathroom, and poured their contents down the toilet. He tossed one empty bottle on the floor of the office; the other three he threw in the furnace. It was banked for the night, but the plastic bottles flared briefly and were gone.

Now came the tricky part. He took the smallest chain saw, made sure it had gas in it, and picked up a small drill also. He went out into the yard and walked down the line to the flatcar he'd been on that afternoon. He stopped a moment and considered. The noise from the mill, only fifty meters away, would cover him, he decided. The flatcar was only partly in shadow, but he'd need light to work by anyway. The guards might finish their gossip session and make their rounds too soon; or somebody might step out from the mill for some reason and see him. The chance would have to be taken, there was nothing he could do about it.

He selected some scraps of wood from the extensive litter on the ground and carefully climbed up on the logs. Stepping on the projecting branch, he found it again sinking under his weight and the crack in the log opening up. Carefully he edged out on the branch to get maximum leverage. Then he put two pieces of wood into the gap to wedge the crack open.

The sound of the chain saw as he started it up seemed startlingly loud. He looked around, trying to think of an excuse for his presence in case he was challenged. But there was nobody.

Now his skill with a saw faced a real test. It was like sculpture in reverse, visualizing and making an empty space, not an object. It was hard to manipulate the saw through the narrow opening, and he had to be very careful not to make a single slip that would leave a mark on the outside of the log.

It took him twenty agonizing minutes to cut a man-sized hollow. Nobody came to ask him what he was doing. He picked up the drill and made four small air-holes. When he pulled out the props, the crack in the wood closed up immediately, driven by the springiness of the green wood. Carefully he inspected his work. The crack was disguised by the rough bark and was invisible. He couldn't find the air-holes, even knowing where they were. Of course in daylight--no sense worrying about it, there was nothing he could do about it. He opened the crack again, propped it, then cut off the projecting branch.

He had to return the tools; if they were out of place, it would arouse suspicion. He headed back to the control shack. At one point he froze into a shadow as the guards, their break ended, strolled down the track--toward the south end of the yard, fortunately.

He put the tools away carefully, then returned to the flatcar, reviewing his actions in his mind. A single raindrop hit him. Perfect timing.

He was relying on his carefully nurtured reputation as a drinker. When he didn't show up at the barracks, only a cursory search would be made. In the morning they'd find the break-in at the control shack and the empty bottle. They'd deduce he was holed up somewhere with the other three bottles. They'd search more carefully, but when they failed to find him they'd assume he was out under some bush. They'd probably search the flatcars, but not thoroughly; nobody, including the SSB, wanted to spend a lot of time out in the rain.

He checked one last time. Nobody was looking. He slipped into the cavity in the log and without hesitation kicked out the props. Immediately he was wrapped in darkness.

He had, he knew, a long wait. The train wouldn't move out to the west for another six hours or so. He didn't worry about whether he would make it across the Line. He might be detected at the border inspection, in spite of his seemingly perfect hiding place. Or he might make it across, only to be sliced in half in a C.F.C. sawmill. It didn't matter. There was nothing he could do now except wait. He had no more choices to make. He was a free man.