"Why?"
"Because their bodies have been undergoing tremendous changes. Tremendous and rapid. They needed a lot of fuel for all that cell activity." He put his hand on Mandy's stomach. "I'd say she was very close to delivery."
"That's impossible," Leo blurted. "It's only been three months."
"No more impossible than the rest of it," Doc answered calmly. "But it's logical when you consider the acceleration of everything else, I imagine the baby would have been even more developed than Meri's. Probably able to take care of itself in a few weeks—maybe less."
"Then," Leo said dazed, "there'll be hundreds of them in a couple of years. In three months we've only managed to kill four. They've killed . . . What? Fifty or sixty of us?"
"I think that number can be increased considerably," Doc said, turning away from the bodies. "A bunch of us went by the Hollow this morning. There wasn't a soul around, nor any stock. Looked as if it had been deserted over a month. And the bluffs around the Hollow were riddled with burrows. We got outta there in a hurry."
"Do you think it's hopeless, Doc?"
"I can give you a better answer in seven and a half months."
"What?"
"Frances Pritchard is pregnant. She's the first I know of to conceive after that day."
"But Frances isn't married. Who . . .?"
"She moved in with Robbie after Meri died. There was no one to marry them and, I don't know, it didn't seem to matter."
Not far from Asheville, North Carolina, a road leaves the state highway and wanders upward into the Blue Ridge. It's paved now and has been since the middle fifties. It still follows the path of least resistance although the square turns have been rounded off and the more treacherous twists have been straightened. The many bridges across Indian Creek are new —made of steel and concrete rather than splintering timbers.
There has been much change in forty years. The logging camps are gone. Camp grounds and motels with cable television have sprung up with increasing frequency. The road enjoys a great deal of traffic because it eventually ends up in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
The villages along the way have revived with surprising vigor after the near death of the Depression. They were quick to discover that tourists pay much better than cows, pigs, crops or logs. They found, rather astonishingly, the very things they were eager to cast off after the coming of electricity, television and stereophonic sound, were just as eagerly sought by the tourists.
With dumbfounded gladness they would accept money for their old polished oak iceboxes; enough money to buy new frost-free refrigerators with automatic icemakers. Money for black cast-iron washpots bought new automatic washing machines. Homemade quilts were too valuable to put on beds. Tourists bought the quilts and the villagers happily slept under electric blankets from J.C. Penney.
The city people called it Folk Art. The villagers called it Free Enterprise.
At Utley the highway makes an unexpected turn to the south-west, going nowhere near Morgan's Cleft. The old unpaved road still goes toward the pass, following Indian Creek, to a few summer cabins and outlying farms. If you tried to follow it to Morgan's Cleft, you would find yourself in the lane to the Crenshaw farm. If you backed up and tried again, you might find it—if you looked closely. The bushes are not quite as thick, the trees are shorter, the ground is more level and an occasional grading is still visible.
Some of the older people in Utley still remember those who fled the high valley nearly forty years ago. There weren't many—only a dozen or so—coming down the mountain in wagons and some on foot, scattered over several months. Some were hurt and died quickly from infected wounds. Those who lived moved on hastily without explanation, but the folk beyond the Cleft always were a strange lot.
Hollis Middleton had been to the bank that day discussing a loan. He owned a piece of very choice property that stretched from the highway to Indian Creek just in the edge of Utley. A motel there should do very nicely. But it wouldn't be just another motel. He would build a fishing veranda over the creek; the guests could fish and the motel kitchen would do the cleaning and cooking. He smiled at the idea and turned on the television set.
He yelled up the stairs for his youngest girl to turn her stereo down so he could hear the TV. He thought he detected a barely perceptible drop in the volume. He adjusted the color so Raymond Burr wouldn't look dipped in purple dye, and sat down to relax.
He groaned when he heard the dishwasher go on in the kitchen and little silver speckles began dancing across the screen. He bore his affluence with stoicism.
He heard a scream and a clatter of pots and pans from the kitchen. He arose with a sigh and went out there without too much hurry. His wife was a great screamer. She was rolling on the floor amid several pieces of her new waterless cook-ware. Their four-year-old grandson was wrestling with her.
Hollis shook his head and laughed. "You two sure do play rough." His grandson looked up quickly at the sound of his voice. The boy had a mouthful of flesh. Blood dribbled off his chin.
It grew.
Slowly and carefully, without haste or impetuosity, it grew. It had all the time in the world.
JEFF DUNTEMANN
Our Lady of the Endless Sky
An editor should not exercise his personal prejudices. At least not all of the time. I am about as religious as Alfred Bester and clasp the small kernel of fame for having sold the first SF story with an Atheist as a hero. Therefore I should bounce any story with a trace of religious orientation. But I cannot when the story is as excellent as is this one.
Under a glassy dome made invisible by the lunar night, the Mother of Cod stretched out her arms to embrace the stone horizon. Beyond the tips of her marble fingers rock and steel lay ash-gray under a waxing Earth. Above her peaceful white brow the stars stood guard to all eternity in a sky so deep it had no bottom.
In front of the native granite pedestal in the nearly finished church, Father Bensmiller knelt and prayed.
Let them see what I see now, Mother, and they would run to you.
A faint crunching vibration entered his knees from the dusty floor, newly inlaid with pastel blue tile. Bensmiller looked up. Bright light-flashes off metal dazzled his eyes. The polished aluminum boom of a crane hove into view and wobbled slowly out of sight beyond the wall which supported the transparent dome. They were driving it to the construction site, where a third of the station personnel were planting new machines in the lunar soil.
Bensmiller went back to his personal miseries at the feet of the statue. Not an hour before Monsignor Carif had spoken to him on the S-band from Houston. As twice in the past, the news was of the rising number of American churches closing their doors permanently. Not due to lack of funds; the Inter-faith Council assured each pastor a living and attempted to keep the buildings standing. It seemed pointless, however, to preach the Gospel to empty pews.
They have lost their horizons. They can't tell the sky from the concrete.
Unlimited energy had put synthetic food into even the poorest of mouths on the United Continent. Physical suffering through disease and hunger were becoming rare. Where, then, were the multitudes who should have been giving thanks?
Earth hovered permanently over Mary's white shoulder. Help them look up, Mother.
He felt another vibration through the floor. It was slower than before, and wavered in frequency. No crane boom showed itself above the walls. Bensmiller rose from his knees, curious, and climbed the first four steps of a light metal ladder which the electricians had left behind.