The Genocides

The Monster had an axe.

“Return soon,” she begged.

“I will, I promise.” Buddy bent down to his wife, missing her lips in the darkness (the lamp, by Neil’s authority, was to remain with the corpse) and kissing her nose instead. She giggled girlishly. Then, with an excess of caution, he touched one finger to the tiny arm of his son. “I love you,” be said, not bothering to define whether he was addressing her or the infant or perhaps both. He did not know himself. He only knew that despite the terrible events of the last months, and especially of the past hour, his life seemed meaningful in a way that it had not for years. The somberest considerations could not diminish the fullness of his hopes nor dampen the glow of his satisfaction.

In even the worst disaster, in the largest defeats, the machinery of joy keeps on grinding for a lucky few.

Maryann seemed more aware than he that their charmed circle was of very small circumference, for she murmured, “Such a terrible thing.”

“What?” Buddy asked. His attention was taken up with Buddy Junior’s teeny-tiny toe.

“Alice. I can’t understand why hc

“He’s crazy,” Buddy said, moving reluctantly outside the circle. “Maybe she called him a name. She has—she had a sharp tongue, you know. When he gets back, I’ll see that something’s done. There’s no teffing what rotten thing he’ll do next. Orville will help, and there are others, too, who’ve let a word drop. But in the meantime he has a gun and we don’t. And the important thing now is to find Blossom.”

“Of course. That must come first. It’s just that it’s such a terrible thing.”

“It’s a terrible thing,” he agreed. He could hear Neil calling to him again. “I have to go now.” He began to move away.

“I wish the lamp were here, so I could see you one more time.”

“You sound like you don’t think I’ll return.”

“No! Don’t say that—even as a joke. You will come back. I know you will. But, Buddy—?”

“Maryann?”

“Say it one more time.”

“I love you.”

“And I love you.” When she was quite sure he was gone, she added: “I’ve always loved you.”

The several members of the descending search party threaded their way through the labyrinth of divergent roots on a single slim rope, braided by Maryann from the fiber of the vines. When any member of the party separated from the main body, he attached the end of his own reel of rope to the communal rope that led back to the tuber where Anderson was lying in state beside the vigilant lamp.

Neil and Buddy descended the farthest along the communal rope. When it gave out, they were at a new intersection of roots. Buddy knotted one end of his rope to the end of the main line and went off to the left. Neil, having done likewise, went to the right, but only for a short distance. Then he sat down and thought, as hard as he could think.

Neil did not trust Buddy. Never had. Now, with their father passed on, wouldn’t he have to trust him still less? He thought he was so smart, Buddy did, with that brat of his. Like he was the only man in the world ever had a son. Neil hated his guts for other reasons too-which his mind shied from. It would not do for him to be too consciously aware that the presumable Neil Junior, if he existed at all, existed most probably as a result of other seed than his own. That was a thought that he had best not think at all.

Neil was worried. He sensed in several of the men who’d gone out on the search a resistance to his authority, and this resistance seemed strongest in Buddy. A leader can’t afford to let his leadership be challenged. Their father had always harped on that. It didn’t seem to make any difference to Buddy that Anderson had wanted Neil to take over for him. Buddy had always been a wild one, a rebel, an atheist.

That’s what he is! Neil thought, astonished at how perfectly the word defined everything dangerous in his brother. An atheist! Why hadn’t he realized that before?

One way or another, atheists had to be stomped out. Because atheism was like poison in the town reservoir; it was like…. But Neil couldn’t remember how the rest of it went. It had been a long time since his father had given a good sermon against atheism and the Supreme Court.

On the heels of this perception another new idea came to Neil. It was, for him, a true inspiration, a revelation—almost as though his father’s spirit had come down from heaven and whispered it in his ear.

He would tie Buddy’s line in a circle!

Then, when Buddy tried to get back, he’d just keep following the rope around and around the circle. Once you grasped the basic concept, it was a very simple idea.

There was one hitch, however, when you thought about it carefully. One part of the circle would be here at this intersection, and Buddy could feel around, maybe, and discover the end of the main line where it was still knotted to Neil’s.

But he wouldn’t if the circle didn’t touch this intersection!

Chuckling to himself, Neil unknotted Buddy’s rope and began following Buddy, winding the rope up as he went along. When he figured he’d taken up enough of it, he turned off along a minor branch of the root, unwinding the rope as he crawled along. This small root connected to another equally small, and this to yet another. The roots of the Plant were always circling around on themselves, and if you just kept turning the same direction, you usually came back to the point you started from. And sure enough, Neil soon was back in the larger root, where he caught hold of Buddy’s line, stretched taut, a foot off the floor. Buddy was probably not far away.

Neil’s trick was working splendidly. Having nearly reached the end of the length of rope, he knotted it to the other end and formed a perfect circle.

Now, Neil thought, with satisfaction, let him try and find his way back. Let him try and make trouble now! The lousy atheist!

Neil began to crawl back the way he had come, using Buddy’s rope as a guide, laughing all the way. Only then did he notice that there was some kind of funny slime all over his hands and all over his clothing, too.

THIRTEEN Cuckoo, Jug-jug, Pu-we, To-witta-wo!

There are people who cannot scream even when the occasion calls emphatically for screaming. Any drill sergeant can tell you of men, good soldiers every other way, who, when they must run forward to plant a bayonet in the guts of a sawdust dummy, cannot let loose with any sort of battle cry—or at best can manage some bloodless imitation, a half-hearted Kill Kill Kill! It is not that these men lack the primordial emotions of hatred and bloodlust; they have just become too civilized, too bound in, to experience a pure berserker rage. Perhaps a real battle will bring it out of them; perhaps nothing will.

There are emotions more primordial, more basic to survival, than hatred and bloodlust; but it is the same with them too-they can be stilled, covered over with civilized form and secondary modes of feeling. Only extreme circumstances can release them.

Jeremiah Orville was a very civilized man. The last seven years had liberated him in many ways, but they had not effaced his civilization until very lately, when events had taught him to desire the consummation of his revenge above his own happiness and safety. It was a beginning.

But as he stood beside Blossom, the axe in his hand unseen, himself unseen, hearing these heartrending cries that fear wrenched from her throat, now the more primordial emotion of love overcame him, shattered the civilized Jeremiah, and, dropping the weapon, he fell to his knees and began kissing the young body that was now the most important and beautiful thing in the world.

“Blossom!” he cried with joy. “O Blossom! Blossom!” and continued senselessly to repeat her name.

“Jeremiah! You! My God, I thought it was him!”

And he, in the same instance: “How could I have loved her, a ghost, bodiless,