Then another band of children went by, as dirty and tattered as the first, but—not human. Mutant. No two alike. A muzzled beast face. An extra finger or more, or a deficiency. Feet like toeless, horny-skinned hoofs. Twisted skeletons, grotesque limping gait. Pattering dwarfs. Acromegalic giants, seven feet tall at twelve years of age. A bearded six-year-old. Things even worse—

  Not all were obviously deformed. Most mutations were, of course, unfavorable, but none in that group were cripplingly handicapped. Several looked entirely normal, and their internal differences had been discovered more or less accidentally. Probably many of the “human” children had some such variation, unsuspected, or a latent mutation that would show up later. Nor were all the deviations deformities. Extremely long legs or an abnormally high metabolism, for instance, had advantages as well as disadvantages.

  Those were the two kinds of children in Southvale and, by report, the world. A third pitiful group hardly counted, that of hopelessly crippled mutants, born with some handicap of mind or body which usually killed them in a few years.

  At first, the tide of abnormal births following the war had brought only horror and despair. Infanticide had run rampant, but today, there were asylums for unwanted children. People knew their child had about three chances in four of being mutant to a greater or lesser degree—but, after all, there could be a human, if not this time then next—or even a genuinely favorable mutation.

  But Wayne had not seen or heard of any such, and doubted that he ever would. There were so many ways of not doing something, and even an unquestionably good characteristic seemed to involve some loss elsewhere. Like the Martin kid, with his eagle-keen eyes and total deafness.

  He waved to that boy, running along with the mutant band, and got an answer. The rest ignored him. Mutants were shy of humans, often resentful and suspicious. And one could hardly blame them. This first generation had been hounded unmercifully by the normal children as it grew up, and had had to endure a lot of abuse and discrimination on the part of adults. No wonder they drew together, and said little to anyone except their fellows. Today, with most of their persecutors grown up, the mutants were a majority among the children, but they still had nothing to do with humans of their generation beyond a few fights. The older ones generally realized that they would inherit the earth, and were content to wait. Old age and death were their allies.

  But Alaric— The old uncertain pain stirred in Wayne. He didn’t know. Certainly the boy was mutant; an X-ray, taken when the town machine had recently been put back into service, had shown his internal organs to be reversed in position. And apparently the mutation involved moronic traits, for he spoke so little and so poorly, had flunked out of elementary school, and seemed wholly remote from the world outside him. But—well, the kid read omnivorously, and at tremendous speed if he wasn’t just idly turning pages. He tinkered with apparatus Wayne had salvaged from the abandoned college labs, though there seemed to be no particular purpose to his actions. And every now and then he made some remark which might be queerly significant—unless, of course, that was only his parents’ wishful thinking.

  Well, Alaric was all they had now. Little Ike, born before the war, had died of hunger the first winter. Since Al’s birth they’d had no more children. The radioactivity seemed to have a slow sterilizing effect on many people.

  * * *

  Karen met them at the door. The mere sight of her blond vivacity lifted Wayne’s spirits. “Hello, gentlemen,” she said. “Guess what?”

  “I wouldn’t know,” answered Wayne.

  “Government jet was here today. We’re going to get regular air service.”

  “No kidding!”

  “Honest Injun, I have it straight from the pilot, a colonel no less. I was down by the port, on the way to market, about noon, when it landed, and of course forced my way into the conversation.”

  “You wouldn’t have to,” said Wayne admiringly.

  “Flatterer! Anyway, he was informing the mayor officially, and a few passers-by like myself threw in their two bits’ worth.”

  “Hm-m-m.” Wayne entered the house. “Of course, I knew the government was starting an airline, but I never thought we’d get a place on it even if we do have a cleared area euphemistically termed an airport.”

  “Anyway, think of it. We’ll get clothes, fuel, machinery, food—no, I suppose we’ll be shipping that ourselves. Apropos which, soup’s on.”

  It was a good meal, plain ingredients but imaginative preparation. Wayne attacked it vigorously, but his mind was restless. “Funny,” he mused, “how our culture overreached itself. It grew top-heavy and collapsed in a war so great we had to start almost over again. But we had some machines and enough knowledge to rebuild without too many intervening steps. Our railroads and highways, for instance, are gone, but now we’re replacing them with a national airline. We’ll likewise go later directly from foot and horseback to private planes.”

  “And we won’t be isolated any more, contacting the outside maybe four times a year. We’ll be part of the world again.”

  “Mm-m-m—what’s left of it, and that isn’t much. Europe and most of Asia, they tell me, are too far gone to make intercourse worthwhile or even possible. The southern parts of this country and the greater part of Latin America are still pretty savage. Most people who survived the war migrated there later, to escape cold and hunger. Result—overcrowding, more famine, fighting and general lawlessness. Those who stuck it out here in the north and stayed alive came out better in the end.”

  “It’ll be a curious new culture,” said Karen thoughtfully. “Scattered towns and villages, connected by airlines so fast that cities probably won’t need to grow up again. Stretches of wild country between, and—well, it’ll be strange.”

  “Certainly that. But we can hardly extrapolate at this stage of the game. Look, we here in Southvale, and a lot of similarly circumstanced places, have been able to relax for some ten years now. Blights and bugs and plagues pretty well licked, outlaws rounded up or gone into remote areas—Well, we’ve been back on our feet that long. Since then, the process of re-integrating the country has gone ahead pretty steadily. We’re no longer isolated, as you said. With the government center in Oregon as a sort of central exchange, we’ve been able to trade some of the things we have for what we need, and now this regular airline service will be the way to a national economy. Martial law was…ah…undeclared nine years ago, and the formal unification of the United States, Canada, and Alaska carried out then. You and I helped elect Drummond to President last time, when the poll plane came around.”

  “I know a little of that already, O omniscient one. What is all this leading up to?”

  “Simply that in spite of all which has been accomplished, there’s still a long ways to go… South of us is anarchic barbarism. We have precarious contact with some towns in Latin America, Russia, China, Australia, and South Africa, otherwise we’re an island of, shall I say, civilization in a planetary sea of savagery and desolation. What will come of that? Or still more important—what will come of the mutants?”

  Karen’s eyes were haggard as they searched Alaric’s unheeding face. “Perhaps at last—the superman,” she whispered.

  “Not at all probable, dear. You read the official book explaining this thing. Since most mutations are recessive, though they do tend to follow certain patterns, there must have been an incredible totality of altered genes for so many to find their mates and show up in the first generation. Even after the radioactivity is gone, there’ll be all those unmatched genes, waiting for a complement to become manifest. For several centuries, there’ll be no way to tell what sort of children any couple will have, unless the geneticists figure out some system we don’t even suspect at present. Even then, the mutated genes would still be there; we couldn’t do anything about that. God only knows what the end result will be—but it won’t be human.”

  “There may be other senses of that word.”

  “There will be, inevitably. But they won’t be today’s.”

  “Still—if all the favorable characteristics showed up in one individual, he’d be a superman.”

  “You assume no unfavorable ones, possibly linked, will appear. And the odds against it are unguessable. Anyway, what is a superman? Is he a bulletproof organism of a thousand horsepower? Is he a macrocephalic dwarf talking in calculus? I suppose you mean a godlike being, a greatly refined and improved human. I grant you, a few minor changes in human physique would be desirable though not at all necessary. But any semanticist will tell you Homo sapiens are a million miles from realizing his full mental capacities. He needs training right now, not evolution.

  “In any case,” finished Wayne grayly. “we’re arguing a dead issue. Homo sapiens have committed race suicide. The mutants will be man.”

  “Yes—I suppose so. What do you think of the steak?”

  * * *

  Wayne settled down in his easy-chair after supper. Tobacco and newspapers were not being produced, and the government was still taking all the radios made in its new or revived factories. But he had a vast library, his own books and those he had salvaged from the college, and most of them were timeless. He opened a well-thumbed little volume and glanced at lines he knew by heart.

  For a’ that an a’ that,

  It’s comin’ yet for a’ that.

  When men to men, the whole world o’er,

  Shall brothers be for a’ that.

  I wonder. How often I’ve wondered! And even if Burns was right, will the plowman’s common sense apply to non-humanness? Let’s see what another has to say—

  And we, that now make merry in the Room

  They left, and Summer dresses in new bloom,

  Ourselves must we beneath the Couch of Earth

  Descend—ourselves to make a Couch—for whom?

  His gaze descended to Alaric. The boy sprawled on the floor in a litter of open books. His eyes darted from one to another, skipping crazily, their blankness become a weird blue flicker. The books—Theory of Functions, Nuclear Mechanics, Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, Principles of Psychology, Rocket Engineering, Biochemistry. None of it could be skimmed through, or alternated that way. The greatest genius of history couldn’t do it. And a senseless jumble like that—No, Alaric was just turning pages. He must be—a moron?

  Well, I’m tired. Might as well go to bed. Tomorrow’s Sunday—good thing we can take holidays again, and sleep late.

  * * *

  There were a good fifty men in Richard Hammer’s gang, and about ten women equally gaunt and furtive and dangerous. They moved slowly along the riverbank, cursing the rocks they stumbled on, but in a ferocious whisper. Overhead a half moon gave vague light from a cloudy sky. The river sped on its way, moonlight shimmering fitfully off its darkness, and an uncertain wind ghosted through soughing trees. Somewhere a dog howled, and a wild cow bellowed alarm for her calf—descendants of domestic animals that ran free when their masters fled or died. And most savage of all the creatures moving through that night were the humans who had likewise been thrust back into wildness.

  “Dick! How much longer, Dick?”

  Hammer turned at the low call and scowled back at the uncertain shapes of his followers. “Shut up,” he growled. “No talkin’ on march.”

  ‘‘I’ll talk when I please.” The voice was louder.

  Hammer hunched his great shoulders and thrust his battered hairy face aggressively into the moonlight. “I’m still boss,” he said quietly. “Anytime you wanta fight me for the job, go ahead.”

  He had their only remaining firearm, a rifle slung over his back and a belt of a few cartridges, but with knife and club, fists and feet and teeth he was also the deadliest battler in the gang. That was all which had kept him alive, those unending dreadful years of feud and famine and hopeless drifting, for no gang-man was ever safe and a boss, with his own jealous subordinates to watch as well as outsiders, least of all.

  “O.K., O.K.,” yielded the other man sullenly. “Only I’m tired an’ hungry, we been goin’ so long—”

  “Not much farther,” promised Hammer. “I rec’nize this territory. Come on—an’ quiet!”

  They moved ahead, stumbling, half asleep with weariness and the terrible gnawing void in their bellies was all that kept them going. It had been a long journey, hundreds of miles of devastated southland, and it was hard, bitterly hard to pass these comparatively rich farms without lifting more than a few chickens or ears of corn. But Hammer was insistent on secrecy, and he had dominated them long enough for most of them to give in more or less automatically. He had not yet chosen to reveal his plans, but this far into “enemy” country they must involve fighting.

  The moon was lowering when Hammer called a halt. They had topped a high ridge overlooking a darker mass some two miles off, a town, “You can sleep now,” said the chief. “We’ll attack shortly before sunrise. We’ll take the place an’ then—food! Houses! Women! Likker! An’—more.”

  The gang was too tired then to care about anything but sleep. They stretched on the ground, lank animal figures in clumsy garments of leather and ragged homespun, carrying knives and clubs, axes, even spears and bows. Hammer squatted motionless, a great bearded gorilla of a man, his massive face turned toward the sleeping town. A pair of his lieutenants, lean young men with something hard and deadly in their impassive countenances, joined him.

  “O.K., Dick, what’s the idea?” muttered one. “We don’t just go tearin’ in; if that was all, there’re towns closer to where we came from. What’re you cookin’ now?”

  “Plenty,” said Hammer: “Now don’t get noisy, an’ I’ll explain. My notion’ll give us more’n a few days’ food an’ rest an’ celebration. It’ll give us—home.”

  “Home!” whispered the other outlaw. His cold eyes took on an odd remote look. “Home! The word tastes queer. I ain’t spoke it so long—”

  “I useta live here, before the war,” said Hammer softly and tonelessly. “When things blew up, though, I was in the army. The plagues hit my unit, an’ those who didn’t die the first week went over the hill. I headed south, figgerin’ the country’d busted up an’ I’d better go where it’d be warm. Only too many other people got the same idea.”

  “You’ve told us that much before.”

  “I know, I know, but—anybody who lived through it can’t forget it. I still see those men dyin’—the plague eatin’ ’em. Well, we fought for food. Separate gangs attacked when they met. Until at last there were few enough left an’ things picked up a little. So I j’ined the village an’ tried farmin’.”

  The dog howled again, closer. There was an eerie quavering in that cry, something never voiced before the mutations began. “That mutt,” growled one of the gang-men, “will wake the whole muckin’ town.”

  “Nah, this place has been peaceful too long,” said Hammer. “You can see that. No guards nowhere. Why, there’re sep’rate farms. We had to fight other men, an’ then when we finally settled down, it was the bugs an’ blights, an’ at last the floods washed our land from under us an’ we had to take to gang life again. Then I remembered my ol’ home town Southvale. Nice farmin’ land, not too bad weather, an’ judgin’ by reports an’ rumors about this region, settled down, a’most rich. So I thought I’d come back—” Hammer’s teeth gleamed white under the moon.

  “Well, you always did love t’hear y’rself talk. Now suppose you say what your deal is.”

  “Just this. The town’s cut off from outside by ordinary means. Once we hold it, we can easy take care o’ the outlyin’ farms an’ villages. But—you can see the gov’ments’s been here. Few bugs in the crops, so somebody must’a been sprayin’. A jet overhead yesterday. An’ so on.”

  They stirred uneasily. One muttered, “‘We don’t want no truck with the gov’ment. They’ll hang us f’r this.”

  “If they can! They’re really not so strong. They ain’t got aroun’ to the South at all, ’cept f’r one or two visits. Way I figger it there’s only one gov’ment center to speak of, this town out in Oregon we heard about. We can find out ’zac’ly from the people we catch. They’ll tell!

  “Now look. The gov’ment must deal with Southvale, one way ’r ’nother. There ain’t enough cars ’r roads, they must use planes. That means one’ll land in Southvale, sooner ’r later. The pilot steps out—an’ we’ve got us a plane. I ain’t forgot how to fly. A few o’ us ’r maybe we can ferry a lot, fly to Oregon an’ land at night near the house o’ some big shot, the President even, whoever he is. The plane’s pilot’ll tell us what we need to know. Those jets just whisper along, an’ anyway nobody expects air attack any more. We’ll be just another incomin’ plane if they do spot us.

  “We capture our big shot, an’ find out from him where the atom bombs’re kept. There must be some stockpiled near the city, an’ our man’ll make a front f’r us to get at ’em. If he ain’t scared f’r himself, he’s got a family. We set the bombs an’ clear out. The city blows. No more gov’ment worth mentionin’. With what we’ve taken from the arsenals, we’ll hold Southvale an’ all this territory. We’ll be bosses, owners—kings! Maybe later we c’n go on an’ conquer more land. There’ll be no gov’ment t’ stop us.”

  He stood up. His eyes caught the moonlight in a darkly splendid vision of power and destiny, for he was not, in his own estimate, a robber. Hardened by pain and sorrow and the long bitter fight to stay alive, he was more of a conqueror, with the grandiose dreams and at least something of the driving energy and transcendent genius of an Alexander or a Napoleon. He genuinely hoped to improve the lot of his own people, and as for others—well, “stranger” and “enemy” had been synonymous too long for him to give that side of it much thought now.

  “No more hunger,” he breathed. “No more cold an’ wet, no more hidin’ an’ runnin’ from a stronger gang, no more walkin’ an’ walkin’ an’ never gettin’ nowheres. Our kids won’t die before they’re weaned, they’ll grow up as God meant they should, free an’ happy an’ safe. We c’n build our own future, boys—I seem t’ see it now, a tall city reachin’ f’r the sun.”