his hands folded in front of him, waiting. Erdmann fidgeted. There was sweat on his face and he kept wiping it off and running his hand over his mouth and looking at Gutierrez with an expression of utter agony.
“I think there were some circuits we missed on the overhaul, Julio. She hasn’t been fully checked. She might still—”
“You sound like my wife,” said Gutierrez. “Don’t worry, it’ll come out.”
The output printer chattered. Erdmann started forward. Gutierrez knocked him out of the way. He snatched the paper out of the printer and looked at it. His face darkened, and then the color left it and it was gray and sick, and his hands trembled.
“What did you do?” he said to Erdmann. “What did you do to my equations?”
“Nothing, Julio.”
“Look what she says. No solution, recheck your data for errors. No solution. No solution—”
“Julio. Julio, please. Listen to me. You’ve been working too long on this, you’re tired. I put the equations just as they were, but they—”
“They what? Go on and say it, Frank. Go on.”
“Julio, please,” said Erdmann, with a terrible helplessness, and put out his hand to Gutierrez as one does to a child, asking him to come.
Gutierrez hit him. He hit him so suddenly and so hard that there was no way and no time to dodge the blow. Erdmann stepped back three or four paces and fell down, and Gutierrez said quietly, “You are against me, both of you. You had it arranged between you, so that no matter what I did she would never give me the right answer. I’ve thought of you all winter, Frank, in here talking with her, laughing, because she knows the answer and she won’t tell. But I’m going to make her tell, Frank.”
He had stones in his pockets. That was why he had kept his coat on, in the warmth of Bartorstown. He had a lot of stones, and he took them out and threw them one by one at Clementine, shouting with a wild joy, “I’ll make you tell, you bitch, you lying bitch, deceitful bitch, I’ll make you tell.”
Glass on the panel board crashed and tinkled. Circuit wires twanged. One of the big glass tanks that held a part of Clementine’s memory burst open. Frank Erdmann scrambled up unsteadily from the floor, yelling for Gutierrez to stop, yelling for help. And Gutierrez ran out of stones and began to beat on the panel with his fists and kick it with his boots, screaming, “Bitch, bitch, bitch, I’ll make you tell, you’ve got my life, my mind, my work stored up in you, I’ll make you tell!”
Erdmann was grappling with him. “Len. Esau, for God’s sake, help me. Help me hold him.”
Len went forward slowly, as a sleepwalker moves. He put his hands out and took hold of Gutierrez. Gutierrez was very strong, incredibly strong. It was hard to hold onto him, hard to drag him away from the ravaged panel, and now there were new lights winking and flashing on it, red lights saying I am wounded, help me. Len looked at them, and he looked into Gutierrez’ eyes. Erdmann panted. There was blood coming out of the side of his mouth. “Julio, please. Take it easy. That’s it, Len, back a little farther, now—It’s all right, Julio, please be quiet.”
And Julio was quiet, all at once. There was no transition. One second his wiry muscles were straining like steel bars against Len’s grasp, and the next he was all gone, limp, sagging, a frail and hollow thing. He turned his face to Erdmann and he said with infinite resignation, “Somebody is against me, Frank. Somebody is against us all.”
Tears ran down his cheeks. He hung like a dying man between Len and Erdmann, weeping, and Len looked at Clementine, blinking her bloody eyes for help.
Find your limit, Judge Taylor said. Find your limit before it is too late.
I have found my limit, Len thought. And it is already too late.
Men came and relieved him of his burden. He went down with Esau into the belly of the rock, and he worked all day with a face as blank as the concrete wall, and as deceitful, because behind it there was violence and terror, and astonishment of the heart.
In the afternoon the whisper came along the line of the great machines. They took him back home, did you hear, and the doctor says he’s clear gone. They say he’ll have to stay there locked up, with someone to watch him.
As we are all locked up here in this canyon, Len thought, serving this Moloch with the head of brass and the bowels of fire. This Moloch who has just destroyed a man.
But he knew the truth at last, and he spoke it to himself.
There will be no answer.
And Lord, deliver me from the bondage of mine enemies, for I repent. I have followed after false gods, and they have betrayed me. I have eaten of the fruit, and my soul is sickened.
The fiery heart beat on behind the wall, and overhead the brain was already being healed.
That night Len floundered through the deep new-fallen snow to Wepplo’s. He said to Joan, quietly so that no one else should hear, “I want what you want. Show me the way.”
Her eyes blazed. She kissed him on the lips and whispered, “Yes! But can you keep it secret, Len? It’s a long time yet till spring.”
“I can.”
“Even from Hostetter?”
“Even from him.”
Even from him. For a lamp is set to guide the footsteps of repentance.
28
February, March, April.
Time. A tight passivity, a waiting.
He worked. Every day he did what was expected of him, under the very shadow of that concrete wall. He did his work well. That was the ironic part of it. He could become interested now in the whole chain of great machines that harnessed and transmitted the Power, and he could admit the fascination, the sense of importance it gave a man to hold those mighty brutes in check and guidance as you held a team of horses. He could do this because now he recognized the fascination for what it was, and the fangs of the serpent were drawn. He could think what power like that would do for places like Refuge and Piper’s Run, how it would bring back the bright and comfortable things of Gran’s childhood, but he understood now why people were savagely determined to do without them. Because once you set your feet on the path you went on and on until you couldn’t go back again, and suddenly there was a rain of fire from the sky. You had to get back to where it was safe and stay there.
Back to Piper’s Run, to the woods and the fields, to the end of doubt, the end of fear. Back to the time before the preaching, before Soames, before you ever heard of Bartorstown. Back to peace. He used to pray at night that nothing should happen to Pa before he came, because part of the salvation would be in telling him that he was right
Things happened in that time. Esau’s son was bora, and christened David Taylor Colter in some obscure gesture of defiance or affection to both grandfathers. Joan made careful, scheming arrangements for a separate house and planned a marriage date. And these things were important. But they were shadowed over and made small by the one great drive, the getting away.
Nothing else mattered now to him and Joan, not even marriage. They were already bonded as close as two people could be by their hunger to escape the canyon.
“I’ve planned this way for years,” she would whisper. “Night after night, lying awake and feeling the mountains around holding me in, dreaming about it and never letting my folks know. And now I’m afraid. I’m afraid I haven’t planned it right, or somebody will read my mind and make me give it all away.”
She would cling to him, and he would say, “Don’t worry. They’re only men, they can’t read minds. They can’t keep us in.”
“No,” she would answer then. “It’s a good plan. All it needed was you.”
The snow began to soften and thunder in great avalanches down the high slopes. In another week the pass would be open. And Joan said it was time. They were married three days later, by the same little teetering
