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Title: The smart ones
Author: Jack Sharkey
Illustrator: George Schelling
Release date: December 17, 2023 [eBook #72440]
Language: English
Original publication: United States: Ziff-Davis Publishing Company, 1963
Credits: Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SMART ONES ***
_Who knows the secret of survival after
the day of the big Blast? Who really are ..._
THE SMART ONES
By JACK SHARKEY
Illustrated by SCHELLING
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Amazing Stories February 1963.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The first inkling came in a news bulletin that interrupted all
regularly scheduled programming on the networks. Russia had uttered
a flat or-else at the UN assembly, and the U.S. had countered with a
steely just-try-it. That was all. It might be bad, it might not be
so bad. Par-for-the-course or This-is-it. The bulletin lasted forty
seconds, then regular programming was resumed. No warnings, no repeats
of the Conelrad band-numbers, no stay-tuned urgings. Just the bulletin,
then resumption of routine telecasts.
Pete Crolin turned to his wife, Beth. "What do you think?" he said, not
having to specify his meaning further. A faint frown deepened the soft
lines of her forehead.
"I don't know," she said, thoughtfully. "I think I'll call Lucille, see
what she and Corey think."
Her husband nodded, then lifted his beer and sipped it slowly, savoring
the taste as though he might not have the chance again, his eyes
returning to--but no longer witnessing--the western which the bulletin
had interrupted. Beth rose from her chair, smoothed her dress, then
made her way to the phone. Lucille's was a number Beth called at least
once every day, but she had to look it up after dialling two wrong
numbers.
"Corey thinks so, too," her friend said, when Beth had told the reason
for her call. "He's out checking the shelter. We've got plenty of water
and food, but he thinks we need more books, just in case."
"I wonder why we think this is it," Beth mused. "We both felt it, and I
guess you and Corey did, too. It's like that last straw on the camel's
back. That kind of feeling."
Lucille, however, was in no mood for philosophizing. "Corey's coming
in, honey. I've got to help him with the books. I'll call back later--"
She gave a funny, short laugh. "If there is a later." Lucille hung up.
* * * * *
Pete had finished his beer, and was standing beside the silent TV,
staring at the wall, when she returned. Beth took him by the arm, and
he turned to face in her direction without resistance. "Pete," she
said, then louder, "Pete!" Some of the far-awayness cleared from his
eyes, and he saw her.
"Oh. What'd Lucille have to say?"
Beth gave a funny kind of smile and a half-shrug.
Pete nodded. "Them, too. I guess I knew they'd feel it. Everybody will.
I wonder how long we've got."
His wife gripped his upper arms, hard. "Listen," she said. "It's not
too late, yet. Lucille and Corey have told us a dozen times to come in
with them if things started blowing up. There's room. I have plenty
of food, so we won't infringe on theirs. Let's go over there, now.
Just--Just in case."
Pete wrenched away from her and shook his head violently. "_No!_ I've
told you, over and over. I'm not going to prolong things. If the world
blows itself up, I don't want to hang around for a few extra weeks to
die in the wreckage of thirst or starvation. I'd as soon go when the
world goes." Then his manner softened, and he took her gently by the
shoulders. "But, honey--If _you_ want to go with them, it's okay. I'll
understand. Let me help you pack the car, and--"
Beth's hand came up in a blurred arc and cracked stingingly against the
side of Pete's face. "_Stop it!_" she cried. "Stop talking that way!
You know I won't go without you. What's left if you're gone!?" Pete had
to grip her wrists to stop the frantic tiny fists that pummeled his
chest in angry affection.
"Okay, okay, honey. I won't say it again. We'll stay here, together."
He started to take her in his arms, then suddenly grinned and started
turning her around to face the other way. "In fact, we'll have a
party!" he said, shoving her kitchenward. "Open that bottle of wine
we've been saving for Thanksgiving dinner. We'll have it, tonight,
along with maybe some of that anchovy paste we bought and never tried,
and--"
"There's some cold chicken in the refrigerator," said his wife,
catching his infectious enthusiasm. "And I think some onion dip, and
corn crisps--"
The peal of the front doorbell stopped them in the hall. "Lucille?"
Pete asked his wife. Blankly, she shrugged, then crossed the short
foyer and opened the door. A young man in uniform burst in, his cap
pushed crazily back on his short-cropped hair. "Pete--Beth--Listen!" he
said. "Did you hear the news bulletin?"
"Martin ..." Pete said, shaken. "Why aren't you at the base?" Martin
Fenelly was a neighbor, a Space Reservist.
"Dorothea's out in the car. We're headed there now. Come with us,
please!" begged the young officer.
"Something _is_ going to happen, then!" said Beth.
"You bet your boots," said Martin. "Riots are starting all over the
world. London, Chicago, Cairo.... Anyplace with public shelters. People
are trampling one another to get in."
"But the newscasters didn't say--" started Pete, simultaneously with
Beth's halting, "Conelrad isn't on the air...."
"Conelrad!" spat young Fenelly. "They don't dare use it. If they did,
the panics would grow. Right now, there's still a chance of keeping
some order. One warning to the populace, and the country becomes a mob,
two hundred million strong!"
"Pete--!" Beth turned to stare up into his face. "What should we do?"
Pete licked dry lips, then looked shrewdly at Fenelly. "What's at the
base? Shelters?"
"A ship," said Martin. "A spaceship. Never been tried, or fully tested,
but it's about the only real chance anyone has. I'm going, so's
Dorothea, and three of my crewmen. The others are swiping jets to fly
to their homes. They want to be with their families when hell breaks
loose."
"But where's it flying to? Where can you go?"
"Moonbase," said Martin. "There's plenty of room, all the synthetic
foods a person needs, oxygen-generators, water-recapturing systems.
It's the nearest safe spot, as of that blowup at the UN today."
* * * * *
Beth turned a hopeful gaze to Pete. "_Should_ we, darling? It's not
like a shelter, like you were worried about. We don't have to come out
and look for food in the rubble. We can live indefinitely on Moonbase.
Please, darling! Please?"
"I've got to think," said Pete, blinking. "It never occurred to me I'd
have a third choice. I was resigned to sitting and waiting for the
blast. Now--I'm all mixed up."
"It's _life_ Martin's offering us!" pleaded Beth. "You can't turn down
an offer of life, real survival!"
"But--But _is_ it?!" asked Pete, uncertainly. "We can't leave Moonbase
any more than we could leave Corey's shelter. What difference if we're
buried alive to avoid radiation or freezing vacuum?"
"Pete, _please_!" said Beth, almost screaming.
"Damn it, Pete, make up your mind!" snapped Martin. "I can't wait
another minute. My wife's out in the car; she's trusting me to take her
to safety!"
"I--I won't go! Maybe I'm wrong, but I just don't want to leave. If I
had time to think--"
"All _right_!" said Martin, starting for the door, angrily. "Try to do
a favor, risk your own life, and--" Then he relented and rushed back to
his neighbor. "Good luck, Pete," he said, gripping the older man's hand
tightly. "Goodbye, Beth."
"No! No, wait!" said Beth Crolin, not daring to look at her husband's
face as she rushed after the young man. "_I'll_ come with you!"
Pete just stood like carven stone, watching, as Beth hurried down
the front path into the night toward the waiting car. Martin, sick
with embarrassment, turned a wryly apologetic grin Pete's way before
following after her.
When the sound of the engine faded in the distance, Pete finally
managed to move, and closed the door on the cold night outside. He went
to the kitchen, stared hard at the bottle of wine in its corner of the
pantry shelf, then yanked it down and smashed it to glittering bits in
the sink.
* * * * *
"Corey," complained Lucille, "you _know_ you're not going to read
_Vanity Fair_ or _Coningsby_. You've started them a hundred times,
and always lost interest. We could use the space for a hundred better
things."
Corey shoved the books doggedly back into the slot from which his wife
had taken them on the bookshelf, and set his back stubbornly against
them, glaring at her. "Those are records," he said, fighting an urge to
shout. "The society of Thackeray's time, the British school system of
Disraeli's. Some day our children will want to know what the world was
like before the disaster."
"Why?" said his wife. "What they don't know won't hurt them. They'll
never wonder about it if you don't prod them to. And why should they
know about _Vanity Fair_ and _Coningsby_ anyhow? _You've_ survived this
long without knowing!"
"All right, all right!" snarled Corey, whirling to the shelf, and
pulling books out by the handful. "Fill the space with Wheaties, or
movie magazines! Or home permanents and lipstick! To hell with our
children's minds!"
"Corey, stop it!" hollered Lucille, trying to pick the books from the
shelter floor as he hurled them there, then giving up and simply trying
to pin his flailing arms. His elbow struck her in the chest, and she
fell back with a startled grunt. Corey, his face white, started toward
her with words of remorse on his lips, then tripped ingloriously upon
the heaped volumes and sprawled on his face at her feet.
Lucille sank into a chair as he rose groggily on hands and knees, and
began to laugh. Corey, after a second, began to match her laughter with
his own. Then he frowned and stopped. Her laughter was all wrong. He
took her by the shoulders and shook her, but she kept on laughing while
the tears ran down her contorted face.
* * * * *
"You should have _told_ me!" moaned Martin, on his knees beside the
metal-and-nylon cot. Dorothea just groaned and tossed her head from
side to side on the sweat-soaked pillow, fighting the restraining
straps.
"S--Surprise," she mumbled, her features white with agony. "I w-wanted
it to be a surprise."
"But--" her husband sobbed, beating his fists futilely against the
steel bulkhead, "didn't you know the takeoff would be like that?
Haven't I told you how many grown men had died of internal hemorrhages
from the gravities they had to resist during takeoff? Didn't you
suspect that you--!?"
He stopped, and sagged, his head resting against the frame of her bunk,
and just sobbed softly, uselessly, while his wife murmured, over and
over, like a fragment of intolerably sad music, "My baby, my little
baby, my poor baby...."
* * * * *
Pete sat in a thick, muddling fog, his fingers fumbling with paper
and glue, sniffling softly in his misery. He didn't hear the light
footsteps on the porch, nor the familiar voice, until his name was
called for the third time. Then he started, guiltily, and began to try
and hide what he held clumsily on his lap.
Beth came into their bedroom and saw him, and what he was trying to
do. The empty beer cans, the shattered glass upon the carpeted floor,
and the ragged tear in the wallpaper between bureau and closet told her
what he'd done. "I don't blame you," she said softly, cupping her hand
gently about the back of his neck. Pete suddenly choked on his tears
and flung his arms about her thighs, burying his face hard against her
abdomen.
"I was so mad--so mad at you," he said between spasms of relieved
weeping. "I came up here, drinking, saw the wedding picture on the
wall--s-smashed the glass, and--"
Beth looked at the wedding photo where it had fallen in two curling
halves upon the floor, and smiled. "But you tried to fix it again," she
said softly.
"Of _course_ I tried to fix it!" he muttered, keeping his face close
against the warm softness of her belly. "I got mad, but I got over it."
"Me, too," said Beth. "A mile from the house, I screamed for Martin to
let me out of the car. I had to walk back. No one's bothering to run
the busses anymore, I--I saw the wine, in the sink. Is there any beer
left?"
He nodded, mutely, still holding her tightly.
"Then we can still have our party," she said decisively. "Maybe not so
fancy as we'd planned, but--"
Then her husband was surging to his feet and stilling her lips with the
hungry pressure of his own.
* * * * *
Hours before the spaceship reached Moonbase, the men stationed
there saw the horror begin. The orb of Earth, silver and blue
against the black void of space, began to erupt with tiny bubbles of
orange-and-white, faster and faster, until the shapes of the continents
were limned against the steady blue glow of the oceans. Then the fringe
of the oceans began to billow white rolling clouds of steam, and the
planet shrouded itself in impenetrable heaving seas of angry white
vapor.
Some common tacit urging made the men continue with their jobs there,
go through the routine of scanning the universe, radioing reports
to stations long since molten piles of slag, metering the water and
precious oxygen that kept them alive. No one wanted to talk of what
they'd seen; life went on for many hours as though nothing untoward had
happened. Then, when the last strained thread of control was fraying
madly--
The spaceship landed, with its five-person complement.
"More mouths to feed," said the Moonbase commander, looking out
through the port at the spacesuited figures moving clumsily toward
the airlock. "I don't know if we should let them in. Even if it's the
President, I don't know."
"Sir," said an aide, "Look there, in the lead. The small one, leaning
on the arm of another one. I think it's a woman."
The commander's eyes hooded for a moment, then he turned to his aide
and said, "Let her in."
"Before the others, you mean, sir?" asked the man.
"Let _her_ in. Period."
"S-sir ..." said the aide, his voice shaking. "You're not thinking of--"
"We've been here for three months without a woman, Captain," said the
commander. "This may be the last one alive in the cosmos. I'm not sure
the man with her would agree to sharing her."
"But the others--They can't live out there for more than a few hours in
their spacesuits...."
But the commander had picked up a book of crossword puzzles, and
was concentrating fiercely on a cryptogram. The other man swallowed
noisily, once, then went to carry out the orders.
* * * * *
"It's over," said Corey to his wife. Lucille nodded dully. "Don't you
understand, honey? The bombing's stopped, and we're still alive. Enough
food for months. The radiation-count will be down by then, and--"
"And what?" asked Lucille, staring from her husband's face to the two
children sleeping on the military cot before the crowded bookshelf.
"When it's down, what happens next?"
"Why--We go out. We rebuild."
"Rebuild? Rebuild what? How?" said Lucille. "Can you build a radio? If
you could, who would we talk to, listen to?"
"I mean, rebuild houses, start farming, raise animals...."
"Will the land grow food any more? Are there animals left out there,
or did they forget to burrow underground when the fires began?" said
Lucille.
"Be reasonable, honey!" said Corey.
"That's what I'm being, for the first time in years," she said. "I wish
we'd stayed with Pete and Beth."
"They've turned to ashes by now," said Corey.
Lucille shrugged. "Maybe they're better off." The baby began to cry,
and kick its round pink legs.
"I think the baby needs a change, or something," said Corey, looking
down at his infant son.
"Read him _Coningsby_," said Lucille. Then she started laughing again,
until Corey was forced to slap her face crimson to quiet her.
* * * * *
Just a few weeks short of two years after the holocaust, the great
spaceship settled on faltering fires to the charred surface of the
Earth. The Moonbase commander, gaunt from long starvation, reeled out
into the glaring white sunlight, fell face downward upon the sharp
black rocks, and just lay there, trying to catch his breath. Behind
him, a pale shadow formed in the blackness of the open airlock, and a
woman crept out, her hair tangled and white-streaked, her face raddled
with disease. She shuddered, and sank to a squatting position on the
ground, covering her face with her hands to block out the horrible
vista that ran for mile upon scorched mile.
"It's dead, the world's dead," she mewled, quaking. "We're at a wake, a
hideous, horrible wake!"
The commander groaned and lifted himself up painfully on his elbows.
"There's got to be something, somewhere, or we've had it."
"It's your fault," said the woman. "What did you expect the men to do
when you kept me to yourself! You shared me with them nearly two years.
You shouldn't have locked the men out of your quarters."
"I was drunk!" the commander said bitterly. "I didn't think they'd go
berserk--wreck the synthesizers--fight among themselves--"
"I had a husband, once," said the woman. "You let him freeze to death,
suffocate, all because he would have wanted to keep me for himself.
You turned around and did the same thing." Musingly, she eyed a
large jagged stone, lifted it in her hand, and approached the weary,
sprawling form on the ground. "If he deserved to die, why not you?"
"That was different," said the commander. "I'd have shared you when I
sobered up. He'd never--" He hadn't time for even a gasp as the woman
brought the stone down with both hands upon the nape of his neck,
shattering the bone beneath the thin flesh there. He fell forward,
drooling blood on the sun-baked black rock.
"No," said the woman, brushing her hands firmly against her thighs to
cleanse them of the feel of the rock. "Martin would never. That's why I
loved him."
Tiredly, she began to walk, away from the ship and the memories of
degradation it held for her, out across the hot, blazing plains of arid
rock, humming a lilting waltz that had been played at her highschool
prom.
When she could walk no further, she lay down on the rock, rolled onto
her back, and smiled emptily at the stark blue skies overhead until
unconsciousness stole over her.
* * * * *
A hundred miles away, a naked boy knelt before a cairn of rock,
frowning in concentration, his tongue tucked against the corner
of his mouth as he carefully arranged smooth red pebbles before
the cairn until their design pleased him. Under the cairn lay a
steel-and-concrete door, and within the chamber beyond it lay the
mummified bodies of his parents and siblings, as he'd found them
when he was old enough to crawl. He was walking now, pretty well for
his fifteen months of life. He could only judge his progress by the
progress of others like him, children conceived amid the radiation and
gene-mutating chaos of those first months in the shelters.
He'd determined to be a leader. He didn't know the word "leader", of
course, but he would soon coin a sound that conveyed that meaning to
himself and the others. He didn't know why his parents were dead, or
the parents of the others like himself. Perhaps one always died when
one reached a certain age. Still, why had his brother and sister died,
then, since they had so much growing to do before they matched that of
his parents?
He shrugged away the problem, finished his arrangement of colored
stones, and stood up to consider them. They would do nicely, he
decided. They would prettify the spot where his ancestry lay buried,
here amid the rocky splendors of such a lovely, incredibly beautiful
planet.
He scowled, suddenly, deciding that the pattern of stones held one red
rock too many. Carefully, he removed it.
He sent a short series of affectionate thoughts toward the departed
souls of his family, then turned away from the cairn and began to
toddle across the burning black rock toward the area housing the
shelters of the other children. He was tired of mourning for the day.
Besides, the other kids were considering building a structure to keep
off the infrequent hot rains, and he thought he knew a way to support
the roof which no one else had yet considered.
Thinking hard as he moved toward the community area, he tossed the
colored pebble up and down absently in one hand, then popped it into
his mouth and chewed it up with relish. It was only an appetizer. For
dinner, at sunset, he had his eye on a rainbow outcropping of quartz.
It should be delicious.
THE END
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE SMART ONES ***
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