The Night of the Long Knives

some murder or other that perhaps

s de Q

roast rat for Christmas!" I responded,

didn't exactly dance in senile rage-he was still keeping

hing, but you had to go obedience-happy." Then her anger got the better of her gr

e just cutting loose, I guess, after being s

us." To Pop I remarked, "You may hate war, but you sure helped that one along.

motives." To Alice he said, "I'm sorry I had to slap your burnt fingers, sister, but you can't say I didn't warn you about my low-down

in Atla-Hi and Savannah?" Alice demanded

how about it

he grinned. "Hey, how'd this sound: HEAR THE WORLD-FAMOUS MURDERER POP TRUM

edness. I think we all recognized that things weren't going to be very cheer

mind," Alice admitted to me, while to Pop she s

e to think of what happened to the last

s getting dark fast, although we were chasing the sun, and there weren't an

it. After a while it got warmer again in the cabin and the air a little less dusty. Prese

s we hadn't inspected. They didn't contain n

I tried the gunnery patterns, figuring to put in a little time taking pot shots at any mountains that turned up, but the buttons that had been responding so well a few minutes ago refused to budge. Ali

ie us up this tight. Going east we at least h

have pulled us in. Pull the plane in, I mean, and picked us out of it-with a big pair of tweezers, likely as not. And contrary to your flattering opinion of my preach

n't think so. There must be more than one Edison-Einstein, it seemed to me, back of antigravity and all the wonders in this plane and the other things we'd gotten hints of. Also, Grayl had seemed bred for brains as well as size, even if us small mammals had cooked his goose. And none of the modern "countr

ser's idea of mental recreation," I s

ly of brains," Pop agreed. "Not s

e and I detest it." ("You are sort of intellectual, aren't

o (in a way, three) of the great "countries" of the modern world. (And as long as we thought o

emains of a community of scientists and technicians. Now we know the

t, don't you mean

olorado Springs," Po

it too. And being a group picked for high I. Q. to begin with, they might make startlingly fast progress. Yo

d to have a fiercer ingredient than Atla-Alamos. Before we knew it we were, musing almost romantically about the plight of Atla-Hi, besieged by superior and (it was easy to suppose) barbaric forces, and maybe distant Los Alamos in a similar

id, "for three so-called realis

your heroes kicked u

aid, "they even took Ray'

e pilot had in his fist." To tell the truth I'd forgotten all about it and it bothered me

an said about the steel cubes bei

nough to tell the truth figuring we'd think it was a lie. Maybe this is some sort of baby A-bomb with a fuse timed like a grenade." I got i

fool, Ray,

I ever got to feeling restless, that is, restless and bad, I'd just go ahead and punch the butt

so sure it's a w

him, "that they'd be so hot on ge

ell it now. What I'm getting at, Ray, is that your first thought about anyth

ind is a weapon!" Alice interj

on a long time. Cave man picks up a rock and right away asks himself, 'Who can I brain with this?

tucking the cube back in my pocket,

e said. "How ab

ans shaped to tell their contents I guess we'd have managed. It was a funny circumstance that in this w

g in back again and Alice and I lay half hitched around on the kneeling seats, which allowed us to watch each other. Pretty soon it got so dark we couldn't see anything of each other but the glowing tips of the cig

ogress. The viewport was dead black at first, then there came the faintest sort of bronze blot

ntigravity, working on the irregularities of the ground as they came along below, made the ride rhythmically bumpy, you see. I remembered how lonely and strange that old sleep

I ever killed-" Pop star

"Don't you ever talk abou

t's the only really interesting top

nd killed my father. He'd been wise, in a way, and had us living at a spot where the bombs didn't touch us or the worst fallout. But he hadn't counted on

weapons as weapons. Dad had a philosophy of cooperation, that was his name for it, that he was going to expla

y didn't lay them down. Afterwards they had themselves a meal, with me for dessert. I remember one of them u

tly, "That was the afternoon, wasn't it, that the fa

're right, it was. They killed God in the kitchen that afternoon. That's how I

can have been thinking about myself as the Daughter of God a

ll children of God. I don't put much stock in it-or else

took a fancy to me and got the idea of training me up fo

and I used it to kill him. I had to wait three months for my opportunity. I

to tell it to Bill-it was somebody killing his mother that got him started. Alice, y

trace of the old sarcasm creeping back into her voi

s. But as you must know, it's not that the first murder's always so bad in itself as that it's apt to start you on a killing spree. Your sense of values gets shifted a tiny bit and never shifts back. But

ysicist-he fixed me the Geiger counter I carry. A silly old geek-I don't know how he survived so long. Maybe an exil

s good to know y

pe would understand. I had no personal justification at all for mine, yet I killed about a million people at a modest estimate. You see, I was the boss of the crew th

ly quite a few of us, of course-that's why I get such a laugh out of st

mild-sounding interest. "In

the cigarette smoke was getting just too thick. Pop fixed the door so it was open a crack and after

hest now-and I was very young and handsome myself. We were all very young in that line of service, though a few of the men under me were a little older. You

got drunk he told me how some days it didn't bother him at all to drop the eggs on Germany; the buildings and people down

sometimes getting out a map and looking at a certain large dot on it and smiling a little and s

'd all be given jobs as museum attendants of this same bomb, deactivated at last. But naturally it didn't work out that way.

interrupted. "N

ieve," I told him

t had this horn-handle! Can you beat that?" Pop sounded startlingly h

of my Big Grief-for it was that to me, make no mistake. Here my story had finally been teased out of me, against all expectation, after decades of repression and in spite of dozens of assorted

purged it of that unnecessary weight of feeling that had made it a millstone around my neck. It seemed to me now that I could look down at Ray Baker from a considerable height (but not an angelic

ting to find out how Jo

l, Ray, to kill

e the question several seconds ba

n it all over again-the words poured out of me now. I won't put them down here-it

was against everything I knew of Deathland psychology, but it was happening just the same. Oh, our strange isolation had something to do with it, I knew, and that Pullman-car memory hypnotizing my mind, and our reactions to the voices and viol

me to doubt that Pop and Alice were feeling exactly like I was. In fact, we were all so sure of it that we didn't ev

tten too much off our chests and come to feel too tranquil for even our excitement to keep us awake. I remember the first time I dozed waking up with a

o make love to, murderers almost always are, they got the fire. I

ozing. About the fifth time I woke up, after some tighter shut-eye, the orange soup was back again

in the viewport. His face gleam

r pack of troubles,"

that tone generally does early in the morning

North America screen. The tw

ere," Alice said for me. She'

t he was doing, "but I aim to be shaved

d us?" Alice asked. "What if

ling away at his chin. "Until then, I'm not interested. There's

, with its shielding cloak and its feeling of being able to talk forever, and the naked day was here, with its demands for action. It is not so difficult to change your whole view

fee,

ttle from Alice and wondered whet

er," Pop asserted. "It ma

best butter,

Dormouse, when they

eble humor is better t

wo yakking abou

both read,"

think we should have a book about us. I say it's too soon, but they say we

he plane had started an authoritative turn to the

Alice belted on her satchel. I reached for my knapsa

s. I remembered the St. Elmo's fire th

ever have to land here in the first place? He was rushing stu

stopped here to see his girlfriend. Yep, his girlfriend. She tried to warn him off-that's my explanation of the juice that flared out of the cracking plant and interfered with hi

hts and steadied and slowed and kept slowing. The plane didn't graze the cracking plant this time, though I'd have s

icker than I remembered-bloated. But that wouldn't