‘Hurry, get out, you infernal idiot! Anyone, anyone might come over and see you.’

  ‘They wouldn’t get unnoticed past an efficient detection system, and you still have that,’ said Drummond, sliding his booted legs over the cockpit edge. ‘And anyway, there won’t be any more raids. The war’s over.’

  ‘Wish I could believe that, but who’re you to say? Get a move on!’

  The mechs hustled the jet down the street. Drummond watched it go with an odd feeling of loneliness. After all, it had been his home for – how long?

  The machine was stopped before a false house whose entire front swung aside. A concrete ramp led downward, and Drummond could see a cavernous immensity below. Light within it gleamed off silvery rows of aircraft.

  ‘Pretty neat,’ he admitted. ‘Not that it matters any more. Probably it never did. Most of the hell came over on robot rockets. Oh, well.’ He fished his pipe from his jacket. Colonel’s insignia glittered briefly as the garment flipped back.

  ‘Oh … sorry, sir!’ exclaimed the captain. ‘I didn’t know—’

  ‘ ’S’ okay. I’ve gotten out of the habit of wearing a regular uniform. A lot of places I’ve been, an American wouldn’t be very popular.’ Drummond stuffed tobacco into his briar, scowling. He hated to think how often he’d had to use the Colt at his hip, or even the machine guns in his jet, to save himself. He inhaled smoke gratefully. It seemed to drown out some of the bitter taste.

  ‘General Robinson said to bring you to him when you arrived, sir,’ said the captain. ‘This way, please.’

  They went down the street, their boots scuffing up little acrid clouds of dust. Drummond looked sharply about him. He’d left soon after the fighting – the two-month Ragnarok which had tapered off when the organization of both sides broke down too far to keep on making and sending the bombs and maintaining order with famine and pestilence starting their gallop across the homeland. At that time, the United States was a cityless, anarchic tumult, and he’d had only the briefest of radio exchanges since then, whenever he could get at a long-range set still in working order. They’d made remarkable progress meanwhile. How much, he didn’t know, but the very existence of something like a capital was sufficient proof. General Robinson— Drummond’s lined face twisted into a frown. He didn’t know the man. He’d been expecting to be received by the President, who had sent him and some others out. Unless the others had— No, he was the only one who’d been in eastern Europe and western Asia. He was sure of that.

  Two sentries guarded the entrance to what was obviously a converted general store. But there were no more stores. There was nothing to put in them. Drummond entered the cool dimness of an antechamber. The clatter of a typewriter, the Wac operating it— He blinked. It hardly seemed possible. Typewriters and secretaries – hadn’t they gone out with the whole world, two years ago? If the Dark Ages had returned to Earth, it didn’t seem – right – that there should still be typewriters. It didn’t fit.

  He saw that the captain had opened the inner door for him. As he stepped through, he grew aware how tired he was. When he saluted the man behind the desk, his arm weighed a ton.

  ‘At ease, at ease.’ Robinson’s voice was genial. Despite the five stars on his shoulders, he wore no tie or coat, and his round face was smiling. Still, he looked tough and competent underneath. To run things nowadays, he’d have to be.

  ‘Sit down, Colonel Drummond.’ Robinson gestured to a chair near his own and the aviator collapsed into it, shivering. His haunted eyes roved the office. It was almost well enough outfitted to be prewar.

  Prewar! A word like a sword, cutting across history and hazing the past until it was a vague gold glow through drifting, red-shot smoke. And only two years. Only two years! Surely sanity was meaningless in a world of such nightmare inversions. Why, he could hardly remember Barbara and the kids. Their faces were drowned in a tide of others – starved faces, dead faces, human faces become beast-formed with want and pain and grinding hate. His grief was lost in the sorrow of a world, and in some ways he had become a machine himself.

  ‘You look plenty tired,’ said Robinson.

  ‘Yeah … Yes, sir.’

  ‘Skip the formality. I don’t go in for it. We’ll be working pretty close together, can’t take time to be diplomatic.’

  ‘Uh-huh. I came over the North Pole, you know, and turned west. Haven’t slept since— Rough time. But, if I may ask you—’ Drummond hesitated.

  ‘I? I suppose I’m President. Ex-officio, pro tem, or something. Here, you need a drink.’ Robinson got bottle and glasses from a drawer. The liquor gurgled out pungently. ‘Ten-year-old Scotch. Till it gives out, I’m laying off my adjutant’s bathtub brew. Gambai.’ Drummond thought Robinson must have flown the Hump in World War Two to learn that toast. That would have been long ago, when he was young and it was still possible to win a war.

  The fiery, smoky stuff jolted Drummond back toward wakefulness. Its glow was pleasant in his empty stomach. He heard Robinson’s voice with a surrealistic sharpness:

  ‘Yes, I’m at the head now. My predecessors made the mistake of sticking together, and of traveling a good deal in trying to pull the country back into shape. So I think the sickness got the President and the Cabinet, and I know it got several others. Of course, there was no way to hold an election. The armed forces had almost the only organization left, so we had to run things. Berger was in charge, but he shot himself when he learned he’d breathed radiodust. Then the command fell to me. I’ve been lucky so far.’

  ‘I see.’ It didn’t make much difference. A few dozen more deaths weren’t much, out of all the nameless millions. ‘Do you expect to – continue lucky?’ A brutally blunt question, maybe, but words weren’t bombs.

  ‘I do.’ Robinson was firm about that. ‘We’ve learned by experience, learned a lot. We’ve scattered the army, broken it into small outposts at key points throughout the country. For quite a while, we stopped travel altogether except for absolute emergencies, and then only with elaborate precautions. That smothered the epidemics. The microbes were bred to work in crowded areas, you know. They were almost immune to known medical techniques, but without hosts and carriers they died. I guess natural bacteria ate up most of them. We still take care in traveling, but we’re pretty safe now.’

  ‘Did any of the others come back? There were a lot like me, sent out to see what really had happened to the world.’

  ‘One did, from South America. Their situation is similar to ours, though they lacked our tight organization and have gone further toward anarchy. Nobody else returned but you.’

  It wasn’t surprising. In fact, it was cause for astonishment that anyone had come back. Drummond had volunteered after the bomb erasing St. Louis had taken his family, not expecting to survive and not caring much whether he did. Maybe that was why he had.

  ‘You can take your time about writing a detailed report,’ said Robinson, ‘but in general, how are things over there?’

  Drummond shrugged. ‘The war’s over. Burned out. Europe has gone back to savagery. They were caught between America and Asia, and the bombs came both ways; after distribution systems went, and blight took the crops, their overpopulation did the rest. Not many survivors, and they’re starving animals. Russia, from what I saw, has managed something like you’ve done here, in about four different independent regions, though they’re worse off than we. Naturally, I couldn’t find out much there. I didn’t get to India or China, but in Russia I heard rumors. No, the world’s disintegrated too far to continue the war.’

  ‘Then we can come out in the open,’ said Robinson softly. ‘We can really start rebuilding. I don’t think there’ll ever be another war, Drummond. I think the memory of this one is carved too deep for us ever to forget.’

  ‘Can you shrug it off that easily?’

  ‘No, no, of course not. Our culture hasn’t lost its continuity, but it’s had a terrific setback. We’ll never wholly get over it. But – we’re on our way up again.’

  The general rose, glancing at his watch. ‘1800 hours. Come on, Drummond, let’s get home.’

  ‘Home?’

  ‘Yes, you’ll stay with me. Man, you look like the original zombie. You’ll need a month or more of sleeping between clean sheets, home cooking and home atmosphere. My wife’ll be glad to have you, we see almost no new faces. And as long as we work together, I’d like to keep you handy. The shortage of competent men is terrific.’

  They went down the street, an aide following. Drummond was again conscious of the weariness aching in him. A home – after two years of ghost towns, of shattered chimneys above blood-dappled snow, of flimsy lean-tos housing starvation and death.

  ‘Your jet’ll be mighty useful too,’ said Robinson. ‘Those atomic-powered craft are scarcer than hens’ teeth used to be.’ He chuckled with a metallic note, as at a rather grim joke. ‘Got you through all that time of flying without needing fuel. Any trouble, by the way?’

  ‘Some, but there were enough spare parts to be found.’ No need to tell of those frantic hours and days of slaving, desperate improvisation, hunger and plague stalking him who stayed overlong. He’d had his troubles getting food too, despite the plentiful supplies he started out with. He’d fought for scraps in the winters, beaten off maniacs who would have killed him for a bird he’d shot or a dead horse he’d scavenged or the meat on his own bones. He hated that plundering, and would not have cared personally if they managed to destroy him. But he had a mission, and the mission was all he had had left as a focal point in his life, so he had clung to it at any price.

  And now the job was over, and he realized he could rest. He didn’t dare. Rest would give him time to remember. Maybe he could find surcease in the gigantic work of reconstruction. Maybe.

  ‘Here we are,’ said Robinson.

  Drummond blinked in new amazement. There was a car, camouflaged under trees, with a military chauffeur – a car! And in pretty fair shape, too.

  ‘We’ve got a few oil wells going again, and a small patched-up refinery,’ explained the general. ‘It furnished enough gas and oil for what official traffic we have.’

  They got in the rear seat. The aide sat in front, a rifle across his knees. The car started down the mountain road.

  Where to?’ asked Drummond a little dazedly.

  Robinson smiled. ‘Personally,’ he said, ‘I’m almost the only lucky man on Earth. We had a summer cottage on Lake Taylor, a few miles from here. My wife was there when the war came, and stayed, and nobody else came along till I brought the head offices here with me. Now I’ve got a house all to myself.’

  ‘Yeah. Yeah, you’re lucky,’ said Drummond. He looked out the window, not seeing the sun-spattered woods. Presently he asked, his voice a little harsh: ‘How is this country doing now? Really doing?’

  ‘For a while it was rough,’ said the general. ‘Damn rough. When the cities went, our transportation, communication, and distribution systems broke down. In fact, our whole economy fell apart, though not all at once. Then there was the dust and the plagues. People fled, and there was open fighting when overcrowded safe places refused to take in any more refugees. Police went with the cities, and the army couldn’t do much patrolling. We were busy fighting the enemy troops that’d flown over the Pole to invade. We still haven’t gotten them all. Bands are roaming the country, hungry and desperate outlaws, and there are plenty of Americans who turned to banditry when everything else failed. That’s why we have this guard with us, though so far none has come this way.

  ‘The insect and blight weapons just about wiped out our crops, and that winter everybody starved. We checked the pests with modern methods, though it was touch and go for a while, and next year got some food. Of course, with no distribution as yet, we’ve failed to save a lot of people. And farming is still a tough proposition. We won’t really have the bugs licked for a long time. I wish we had a research center as well-equipped as those which produced the things. But we’re gaining. We’re gaining.’

  ‘Distribution—’ Drummond rubbed his chin. ‘How about railways? Horse-drawn vehicles?’

  ‘We have some railroads going, but the enemy was as careful to hit most of ours as we were to hit theirs. As for horses, there weren’t many to start with, and they were nearly all eaten that first winter. I know personally of only a dozen. They’re on my place; I’m trying to breed enough to be of use,’ Robinson smiled wryly, ‘but by the time we’ve raised that many, the factories should have been going quite a spell.’

  ‘And so now?’

  ‘We’re over the worst. Except for outlaws, we have the population fairly well controlled. The civilized people are eating, more or less, and have some kind of housing. We have machine shops, smalltown factories, and the like, enough to maintain our economy. Presently we’ll be able to expand these, begin actually increasing what we have. In another five years or so, I guess, we’ll be integrated enough to drop martial law and hold a general election. A big job ahead, but a good one.’

  The car halted to let a cow lumber over the road, a calf trotting at her heels. She was gaunt and shaggy, and skittered nervously into the brush.

  ‘Wild,’ explained Robinson. ‘Most of the real wild life was killed off for food in the last two years, but a lot of farm animals escaped when their owners died or fled, and have run free ever since.’ He noticed Drummond’s fixed gaze. The pilot was looking at the calf. Its legs were half the normal length.

  ‘Mutant,’ said the general. ‘You find a lot of such animals. Radiation from bombed or dusted areas. There are even a lot of abnormal human births.’ He scowled, worry clouding his eyes. ‘In fact, that’s just about our worst problem.’

  The car emerged from the woods onto the shore of a small lake. It was a peaceful scene, the quiet waters like molten gold in the slanting sunlight, trees ringing them and the mountains all around. Under one huge pine stood a cottage and a woman on the porch.

  It was like one summer with Barbara— Drummond cursed under his breath and followed Robinson toward the little building. It wasn’t, it wasn’t, it could never be. Not ever again. There were soldiers guarding this place from chance marauders, and an odd-looking flower at his feet, a daisy, but huge and red and irregularly formed.

  A squirrel chittered from a tree. Drummond saw that its face was so blunt as to be almost human.

  Then he was on the porch, and Robinson was introducing him to ‘my wife, Elaine.’ She was a nice-looking young woman with eyes that were sympathetic on Drummond’s exhausted face. He noticed she was pregnant, and there was a dull marveling in him at the hope which was life.

  He was led inside, and reveled in a hot bath. Afterward there was supper, but he was numb with sleep by then, and hardly noticed it when Robinson put him to bed.

  II

  Reaction set in, and for a week or so Drummond went about in a haze, not much good to himself, or anyone else. But it was surprising what plenty of food and sleep could do, and one evening Robinson came home to find him scribbling on sheets of paper.

  ‘Arranging my notes and so on,’ he explained. ‘I’ll write out the complete report in a month, I guess.’

  ‘Good. But no hurry.’ Robinson settled tiredly into an armchair. ‘The rest of the world will keep. I’d rather you’d just work at this off and on, and join my staff for your main job.’

  ‘Okay. Only what’ll do?’

  ‘Everything. Specialization is gone: too few surviving specialists and equipment. I think your chief task will be to head the census bureau.’

  ‘Eh?’

  Robinson grinned lopsidedly. ‘You’ll be the census bureau, except for what few assistants I can spare you.’ He leaned forward and said earnestly. ‘And it’s one of the most important jobs there is. You’ll do for this country what you did for central Eurasia, only in much greater detail. Drummond, we have to know.’

  He took a map from a desk drawer and spread it out. ‘Look, here’s the United States. I’ve marked regions known to be uninhabitable in red.’ His fingers traced out the ugly splotches. ‘Too many of ‘em, and doubtless there are others we haven’t found yet. Now, the blue X’s are army posts.’ They were sparsely scattered over the land, near the centers of population groupings.

  ‘Not enough of those. It’s all we can do to control the more or less well-off, orderly people. Bandits, enemy troops, homeless refugees – they’re still running wild, skulking in the backwoods and barrens, and raiding whenever they can. And they spread the plague. We won’t really have it licked till everybody’s settled down, and that’d be hard to enforce. Drummond, we don’t even have enough soldiers to start up a feudal system. The plague spread like a prairie fire in those concentrations of men.

  ‘We have to know. We have to know how many people survived – half the population, a third, a quarter, whatever it is. We have to know where they go, and how they’re fixed for supplies, so we can arrange a fair distribution system. We have to find all the smalltown shops and labs and libraries still standing, and rescue their priceless contents before looters or the weather beat us to it. We have to locate doctors and engineers and other professional men, and put them to work rebuilding. We have to find the outlaws and round them up. We— Hell, I could go on forever. Once we have all that information, we can set up a master plan for redistributing population, agriculture, industry, and the rest most efficiently, for getting the country back under civil authority, for opening regular transportation and communication channels – for getting the nation back on its feet.’

  ‘I see,’ nodded Drummond. ‘Hitherto, just surviving and hanging on to what was left has taken precedence. Now you’re in a position to start expanding, if you know where and how much to expand.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Robinson rolled a cigaret, grimacing. ‘Not much tobacco left. What I have is pretty foul. Lord, that war was crazy!’

  ‘All wars are,’ said Drummond dispassionately, ‘but technology advanced to the point of giving us a knife to cut out throats with. Before that, we were just beating our heads against the wall. Robinson, we can’t go back to the old ways. We’ve got to start on a new track – a track of sanity.’