«Uh-huh. You know Worth got hurt today? I’m taking his watch.»
«What? But I thought—»
«Policy,» said Herries.
The incantation seemed to suffice. The other man shuffled forth and laid his rifle in the engineer’s hands. «And here’s the glim,» he added. «Nobody came by while I was on duty.»
«What would you have done if somebody’d tried to get in?»
«Why, stopped them, of course.»
«And if they didn’t stop?»
The dim face under the dripping hat turned puzzledly toward Herries. The engineer sighed. «I’m sorry, Thornton. It’s too late to raise philosophical questions. Run along to bed.»
He stood in front of the door, smoking a damp cigarette, and watched the man trudge away. All the lights were out now, except overhead lamps here and there. They were brilliant, but remote; he stood in a pit of shadow and wondered what the phase of the Moon was and what kind of constellations the stars made nowadays.
He waited. There was time enough for his rebellion. Too much time, really. A man stood in rain, fog about his feet and a reptile smell in his nose, and he remembered anemones in springtime, strewn under trees still cold and leafless, with here and there a little snow between the roots. Or he remembered drinking beer in a New England country inn one fall day when the door stood open to red sumac and yellow beech and a far blue wandering sky. Or he remembered a man snatched under black Jurassic quagmires, a man stepped into red ruin, a man sitting in a jeep and bleeding brains down onto the picture of the girl he had planned to marry. And then he started wondering what the point of it all was, and decided that it was either without any point whatsoever or else had the purpose of obliterating anemones and quiet country inns, and he was forced to dissent somehow.
When Thornton’s wet footsteps were lost in the dark, Herries unlocked the shed door and went through. It was smotheringly hot inside. Sweat sprang forth under his raincoat as he closed the door again and turned on his flashlight. Rain tapped loudly on the roof. The crates loomed over him, box upon box, many of them large enough to hold a dinosaur. It had taken a lot of power to ship all that tonnage into the past. No wonder taxes were high. And what might the stuff be? A herd of tanks, possibly… some knocked-down bombers… Lord knew what concept the men who lived in offices, insulated from the sky, would come up with. And Symonds had implied it was just a beginning; there would be more shipments when this had been stored out of the way, and more, and more.
Herries found a workbench and helped himself to tools. He would have to be careful; no sense in going to jail. He laid the flashlight on a handy barrel and stooped down by one of the crates. It was of strong wood, securely screwed together. But while that would make it harder to dismantle, it could be reassembled without leaving a trace. Maybe. Of course, it might be booby trapped. No telling how far the religion of secrecy could lead the office men.
Oh, well, if I’m blown up I haven’t lost much. Herries peeled off his slicker. His shirt clung to his body. He squatted and began to work.
It went slowly. After taking off several boards, he saw a regular manufacturer’s crate, open-slatted. Something within was wrapped in burlap. A single curved metal surface projected slightly. What the devil? Herries got a crowbar and pried one slat loose. The nails shrieked. He stooped rigid for a while, listening, but there was only the rain, grown more noisy. He reached in and fumbled with the padding… God, it was hot!
Only when he had freed the entire blade did he recognize what it was. And then his mind would not quite function; he gaped a long while before the word registered.
A plowshare.
«But they don’t know what to do with the farm surpluses at home,» he said aloud, inanely.
Like a stranger’s, his hands began to repair what he had torn apart. He couldn’t understand it. Nothing seemed altogether real any more. Of course, he thought in a dim way, theoretically anything might be in the other boxes, but he suspected more plows, tractors, discs, combines… why not bags of seeds…? What were they planning to do?
«Ah.»
Herries whirled. The flashlight beam caught him like a spear.
He grabbed blindly for his rifle. A dry little voice behind the blaze said: «I would not recommend violence.» Herries let the rifle fall. It thudded.
Symonds closed the shed door behind him and stepped forward in his mincing fashion, another shadow among bobbing misshapen shadows. He had simply flung on shirt and pants, but bands of night across them suggested necktie, vest, and coat.
«You see,» he explained without passion, «all the guards were instructed sub rosa to notify me if there was anything unusual, even when it did not seem to warrant action on their part.» He gestured at the crate. «Please continue reassembling it.»
Herries crouched down again. There was a hollowness in him, his only wonder was how best to die. For if he were sent back to the twentieth century, surely, surely they would lock him up and lose the key, and the sunlessness of death was better than that. It was strange, he thought, how his fingers used the tools with untrembling skill.
Symonds stood behind him and held his light on the work. After a long while he asked primly, «Why did you break in like this?»
I could kill him, thought Herries. He’s unarmed. I could wring his scrawny neck between these two hands, and take a gun, and go into the swamp to live a few days… But it might be easier all around just to turn the rifle on myself.
He sought words with care, for he must decide what to do, even though it seemed remote and scarcely important. «That’s not an easy question to answer,» he said.
«The significant ones never are.»
Astonished, Herries jerked a glance upward and back. (And was the more surprised that he could still know surprise.) But the little man’s face was in darkness. Herries saw only a wan blank glitter off the glasses.
He said, «Let’s put it this way. There are limits even to the right of self-defense. If a killer attacks me, I can fight back with anything I’ve got. But I wouldn’t be justified in grabbing some passing child for a shield.»
«So you wished to make sure that nothing you would consider illegitimate was in those boxes?» asked Symonds academically.
«I don’t know. What is illegitimate, these days? I was… I was disgusted. I liked Greenstein, and he died because Washington had decided we couldn’t have bombs or atomic shells. I just didn’t know how much more I could consent to. I had to find out.»
«I see.» The clerk nodded. «For your information, it is all agricultural equipment. Later shipments will include industrial and scientific material, a large reserve of canned food, and as much of the world’s culture as it proves possible to microfilm.»
Herries stopped working, turned around and rose. His knees would not hold him. He leaned against the crate and it was a minute before he could get out: «Why?»
Symonds did not respond at once. He reached forth a precise hand and took up the flashlight Herries had left on the barrel. Then he sat down there himself, with the two glowing tubes in his lap. The light from below ridged his face in shadows, and his glasses made blind circles. He said, as if ticking off the points of an agenda:
«You would have been informed of the facts in due course, when the next five hundred people arrive. Now you have brought on yourself the burden of knowing what you would otherwise have been ignorant of for months yet. I think it may safely be assumed that you will keep the secret and not be broken by it. At least, the assumption is necessary.»