THE YOKEL
By WALTER M. MILLER, JR.
The time: 1987. The place: Florida. America is struggling back from the effects of World War III. It is a divided country now, with the big cities held by scientists and technicians, and with all rural sections overrun by ruthless gangs seeking plunder and the eventual conquest of the cities themselves.
Into this maelstrom comes Sam Wuncie, cynical, hard-bitten and with but one ambition: to stay alive. Circumstance puts him deep in the hands of the deadly Colonel MacMahon and the unfathomable Zella Richmond. It is from this strange pair that Sam eventually learns there is far more to life than keeping death at a distance.
No good science-fiction magazine should go to press without at least one exciting novelette crammed with action. Here's a pip!
HE STOOD in front of the dimly lighted saloon idly rolling a half dollar across the back of his knuckles, a dark young man in dirty overalls, unshaven and unkempt. He gazed with dull eyes at the gloomy street, debris-littered, with clogged sewers and rusting, flat-tired automobiles, with shabby loiterers and tallow lamps burning atop the electric streetlight standards. The small city, once of 15,000 population, had only recently gotten the tallow lamps. Progress, real progress.
A dame wandered past and he glanced at her indifferently—a frowsy tomato with glint-eyes and rag-hair. She saw the half dollar dancing across his skilled knuckles. She stopped.
"Got a light, Mister?" Her purring tone offered a proposition.
"Climb a light-pole, Sister. It's on the city."
She eyed the coin. "I've got change."
"Then use it to call a taxi. Scram."
She laughed; evidently it was a good joke. She gazed hungrily into the saloon and moistened her lips.
"Buy me a glass of swill, huh?"
"I wouldn't blow you the foam off my beer. Beat it, Gertie. Your time's used up. I'm a busy man."
She hissed an insult, spat at him, and darted away. He grumbled irritably and wiped the spittle out of his eyes. He dropped the half dollar in his pocket and shuffled into the bar. Customers were scarce. A rag-bag with a gray head was asleep on the floor; nobody bothered to pick it up. A gaunt young man with a festered neck and a blind eye was talking to himself at the bar. The sleazy wheezer who committed the drinks shuffled to meet the newcomer.
"Hi, Wuncie. Got dough?"
"Yeah, gimme a —"
"Show me."
Sam Wuncie cursed and jingled his pocket. "Wanna bite one to make sure?"
"Nah, I trust ya. Who'd you roll for it?"
"Picked beans for Gardland, Nosey. Gimme a drink."
"What'll you have?"
Wuncie glowered at him. "Frozen Daiquiri!" he snapped.
The bartender shrugged. "Just thought I'd ask. Wait'll I get the siphon."
There was a galvanized washtub set up on a box on the bar. Nosey dropped one end of a rubber hose in it and sucked on the other end. Then he pinched it off and stuck it in a glass. The glass filled slowly with a murky brown liquid.
"What's in this batch, Nosey? Bird nests?"
Nosey grinned reflectively. "Can't remember. Old Lady keeps six tubs working. Whatever she can get goes in."
Wuncie took the glass with a shudder and tossed Nosey a dime. He peered at the murky fluid distastefully. "You suck the hose and still live. Guess I'll chance it." He gulped the drink and made a face.
"Prunes. Damn rotten prunes."
"Don't like it, don't drink it," Nosey muttered irritably.
"I like it. It's a club."
"Have another?"
"Yeah."
"You're a real patriot, Wuncie," the bartender said as he came back with the glass. "A smart boy like you could cross over and be drinking good liquor, eating good food, wearing decent clothes."
"Yeah, everybody's a real patriot," he answered sourly. "Everybody that can't pass the test and be a traitor."
"Nuts, you could pass, Wuncie. What'd you used to do before the war?"
"Dropped earthworms down little girls' backs."
"Just a kid, huh? Well — you could pass."
"The only place left to pass is out. Gimme another."
A man slipped quietly in the-door, looked around quickly, then sidled onto a seat at the end of the bar. He was panting slightly, and his eyes were nervous. One cheek was covered with a patch bandage. Nosey approached him with a deepening frown. The customer showed him a handful of coins. Nosey shook his head.
"Lemme see under that patch first," he grunted. 'It's on a bad spot, Joe."
The man looked stricken. "I — it's only a cut. Cut myself shaving."
"Take it off. Let me look."
The man licked his lips. "You got me wrong, Mister."
"Doc said not to lift it."
" Doc? For a shaving cut?"
The man slipped off the stool. Nosey reached for a butcher knife. The man backed toward the door.
"You got me wrong. I'm no crosser."
Nosey grasped the blade of the knife as if to throw it. The man yelped and fled. Nosey came back cursing.
"Cheek was branded, bigawd! The sneaky bastard!"
Wuncie's laugh was icy. "What were you saying about being tested?"
"I said you could pass. I didn't say you should."
"If I got tested and failed, would you run me off with a butcher knife?"
"Yer damned right I'd get after you!"
"That's what I meant. Everybody's a real patriot. Nobody wants to be tested. Patriotic reasons, of course."
"If you're going to tell me what's wrong with the world," Nosey growled, "it'll cost you a dime a minute."
"It'll only take a second. Brains — that's what's wrong with the world."
"Huh? Whose — the committee' s?" Nosey frowned and scratched his uncombed thatch.
"Nope, ours. We're freak animals, Nosey. We're like the goldfish with butterfly fins, or a saber-tooth tiger with fangs so long he can't open his mouth wide enough, or a deer with antlers so long they tangle in the brush. Nature overdid us, Nosey. A brain is a tool for survival, but she overdid it and we got all bogged down in our own gray matter."
"You're getting tight, Wuncie."
"Yeah. And that's why. I've got about as much use for an active cortex as a baboon has for a blue behind." He shoved his glass across the bar. "Here, gimme the deactivator."
The bartender shrugged and reached for the siphon hose. He paused suddenly and glanced toward the door. There was a brief silence.
"Come in," he offered gruffly.
Three men stepped inside and stood peering around suspiciously in the dim lamplight. One of them carried a length of rope at his belt, and the rope was knotted into a noose. Another wore a long sheath-knife. The third carried a short joint of iron pipe.
One man went to look behind the bar. A second made a slow circuit of the saloon, opening every door for a glance inside. The third rolled the rag-bag over with his foot for a glance at his face. The rag-bag groaned.
"Go back to sleep, Pop."
The inspection was finished in silence. The man with the rope approached Nosey. "You seen a man with a bandage on his cheek lately?"
Nosey moistened his lips and glanced at Wuncie. Wuncie's smile was bitter, but cynically indifferent. The man with the rope frowned impatiently and glanced at his aides.
"Reckon we should allow a blind barkeep to stay in business?"
They grinned and shook their heads.
"I think I saw him," Nosey sputtered hastily.
"You think? The hustler that works this street saw him come in here."
"Yeah, I saw him. I think it's the guy. Bandage on his cheek."
"Clever lad!" the ropeman said sarcastically. "What did he say? What did he do?"
"Tried to buy a drink. I saw the bandage and ran him off."
The ropeman nodded at his colleagues. "Doesn't know we've spotted him yet," he muttered.
They started outside, but the ropeman paused to look back at Wuncie. "Care to join us, Citizen?"
Wuncie gave the man a fishy stare, then turned to inspecting his nails.
"Citizen, I spoke to you."
"Yeah? Damn polite of you, bud. Noblesse oblige, I guess."
The ropeman hooked his thumbs in his belt and took two slow steps forward. "You sure are a smart boy! Maybe you're from the other side."
"Go buy your brain back, Mister!" Wuncie snarled. "If your butt's for sale, you'll need it."
The ropeman darkened. He glanced over his shoulder. "Hold it a minute, boys. I got a live one."
The other men wandered back inside. They stood with hands on hips, watching with cold eyes. The ropeman leaned on the bar, staring hostilely at Sam. "What's your name, fellow?"
"Thaddeus Twench!" Sam snapped.
"Where you born?"
"I wasn't born. The judge gave me this sentence."
"You talk like an urban."
"What if I am?"
"Lots of urbans turn tech, go across."
"You see a brand on my cheek?"
"You might have passed the test and got in. You might be a double-crosser."
"There's no such thing. Anybody bright enough to pass stays in."
"Maybe you'd like to be bright enough."
"Maybe."
The man had been fiddling with the rope. His hand lashed out viciously, and the heavy knot clubbed Sam across the temple. The stool toppled and Wuncie crashed to the floor.
"Teach him."
Heavy boots stamped across the floor. Then they stamped on Wuncie. He howled until a hard heel jammed against his windpipe. Then his skull exploded. A moment later, he was being slapped awake; he roared and struck out blindly. He grabbed a handful of shirtfront.
"Down, Rover! It's me!" barked Nosey's voice.
He peered around at a foggy room. It was empty.
"Where —?"
"You been asleep awhile."
"How long?"
"Long enough to draw flies. Go home."
Wuncie picked himself up weakly and staggered to lean on the bar. "Need a drink," he hissed, shaking his groggy head and exploring his bruises.
"Show me your dough?"
" Hell, you know — you saw . . ." He paused and felt in his pockets. He looked glum.
"I told you — you been asleep."
Wuncie called him an obscenity.
"I didn't roll you."
He stood waking up slowly.
"Go home," said Nosey. "I want to close. And don't come back for a while. You picked that fight."
"What fight?" Wuncie groaned, nursing his skull. "You call it a fight?"
"You had it coming. I don't want my customers picking trouble with Border Guards. Just beat it."
"Where'd those thugs go?"
"Wherever the crosser went. Now, get out of here."
As Wuncie's vision cleared, his rage returned. He reached across the bar, grabbed a fistful of Nosey, and battered it with his other hand. Nosey flailed back, cursing and screaming for his wife. Wuncie hauled him across the bar and dumped him on the floor.
"I'm mad, Nosey. You gonna tell me where they went, or do I take my mad out on you?"
"West End," muttered the cowed bartender. "Said they'd look for Bandage-face out there."
"Thanks, friend." Wuncie let him up.
"If I was your friend I wouldn't have told you," Nosey snapped. "Thanks anyway."
Nosey laughed harshly. "Now they won't have to tie the rope to the tree. You're both about the same size."
"Who?"
"You and the crosser. Tie one on each end and throw it over a limb. You'll balance."
"Pray for me," Wuncie snarled, and went out into the street.
It was late, and the lamplighter had extinguished all but one tallow flame in each block. The street was empty; even the girl had gone home or found a customer. Black shadows fluttered, and stars were dimly visible through a mist-shroud. He stood listening to the wind for a moment, then walked west.
The city was nearly depopulated. Cities, even small ones, were phenomena of technology or commerce, and with industry gone people sought a plot of land and a few chickens. This had been a railroad town, but the rails were rusty on top, and men were ripping them up to get iron for plows.
A poster was nailed to a wall opposite a streetlamp, and he paused briefly to gaze at it: a sketch of Colonel MacMahon's grandly stern visage, with the inscription: "Men of Ruralland! Rally to me! The arrogant foes of mankind who call themselves the 'Restoration Committee' have excluded our people from the heritage that is rightfully ours. Their heresy is as old as Man, and the false classes they create on the pretense of testing aptitudes are devices of growing tyranny. Join my legions, and I shall sweep them from their usurper's throne, that all men may once again enjoy the fruits of decent civilization."
Sam Wuncie spat thoughtfully on the poster and walked on. The three men who pursued the crosser were members in a division of MacMahon's legions — the Border Guard — who made certain that people in the rural areas stayed away from the testing booths that were set up at the barbed-wire enclosures around the industrial and urban sectors of the country.
He wandered among the dark alleyways, pausing occasionally to listen. There was only the wind in the live oaks, and the rattle of loose tin on a garage roof. He moved on.
Why bother? he wondered briefly. He didn't particularly care what they did to the crosser. He would live longer if he just forgot about it.
But he had a red mad burning deep in his belly. The boys had kicked him around. In a world like this it was boot for boot, and double damages. When nobody could enforce the peace, each man had to enforce his own—but there weren't any sixguns to make all men equal. There were wits and lead pipes and the fast-burning fuse of hate. If you broke the legs of the man who kicked you, you accomplished social justice. If you failed to do so, you neglected your duty to the next man he might decide to kick. A hard code, but it worked — and workability was the yardstick of rightness.
He prowled through garages as he moved along, searching for a suitable weapon. Most of them had been cleaned out, but he found an archery target in the third place he searched. The house was deserted. He broke in through the back door and came out a few minutes later with a fifty-pound bow, a dozen target arrows, and a small meat cleaver.
A muttering cry came to his ears from the north. It was brief and feeble. He paused to peer along the streets and saw the faint aura of a bonfire several blocks away. He turned toward it and broke into a quiet trot. Men were talking and laughing in low tones. Another feeble scream, then a brief snatch of song:
"He floats through the air with the greatest of ease,
0 the daring young man on the flying trapeze.
His movements are graceful,
all the girls he does please,
And my love he has stolen away."
Another low scream.
Sam stole to the end of the block and peered around the corner of the house. A huge oak tree overhung the street. They had built a bonfire on the pavement. The crosser's feet were caught in the noose, and he hung head down from a high limb. The men were singing and laughing while one of them swung him back and forth across the flames. He was naked to the waist, and his scrawny back was criss-crossed by red stripes.
One of the men was silhouetted. Eyes glittering in the firelight, Wuncie quietly fitted an arrow to the bow. He was no expert archer, but the man was only ten yards away and standing still.
Their singing drowned the twang of the bow. The man screamed and clawed at the feathered shaft protruding from his back. He staggered and fell across the flames. Not realizing what had happened, the others darted to drag him out. The bow sang again. A man howled and fell across the curb. He rolled in the weeds and jerked a bloody arrow out of his rump. He stood up, but his hip gave way and he fell again.
The third man scurried for the shadows. Sam unleashed two shafts after him, but he was gone.
Wuncie advanced cautiously. The crosser was whimpering and trying to keep himself swinging. His hair caught fire.
The man who had fallen in the weeds was the ropeman, and he tried to crawl away. Sam got in front of him.
"Look up at me, Bub."
The man looked up.
Sam kicked his teeth out. He rested quietly.
"Help . . . help . . ." It was the man with the arrow in his back.
Sam went to the bonfire and caught the swinger's arms. The fellow was only half conscious.
"Grab me around the neck. I'll get you down."
The crosser seized him frantically, and Wuncie loosened the noose. He fell to his hands and knees.
"Your back's in bad shape."
The crosser looked unspoken gratitude at Sam, then glanced at the wounded man trying to drag himself out of the street. The crosser growled in his throat and crawled after him. Sam let them settle it between themselves. It was about an even match until the crosser jerked the arrow out and used it again. The Border Guard lay in the gutter, and the crosser sat panting on the curb.
"Thanks, fellow," he grunted.
"I didn't do you any favor, crossy. You're better off dead."
"Then why — ?"
"Thank your little playmates. They made an error. They tried to change my attitude."
The crosser swayed dizzily and moaned. His hair was burned away, and his face was blackened.
"Maybe you'll be better off now."
"Why?"
"If you're burned bad enough, you can't tell the brand from the scars."
"Ugh —"
Sam pitched the cleaver in the weeds beside him. "Go hack yourself off some oak bark. Boil it, let it cool, soak your head in it. Tannic acid."
"Thanks."
Sam started away, then paused. "Tell me something, Bud."
"Huh?"
"What made you try to cross? You're old enough to remember the war. You know what happened to one industrial age. You want to make another?"
The crosser shook his head mournfully. "Three of us wanted to get inside. Sabotage. Let the rurals in."
"But you flunked the tests?"
"We figured we could pass. We were engineers before the war. Passed the I.Q.s and aptitudes okay. They gave us a Rorschach though. And they put us under pentothal hypnosis. Questioning. They figured what we wanted."
"That was dumb of you. You should have known."
"It might have worked. Zella had it planned."
"Who's Zella?"
"Psychologist. A tech. They gave her a bum deal in Jacksonville, and she double-crossed. She worked us over first before we tried it. Thought post-hypnotic suggestion might get us through. It didn't work. Now she knows how to do it. But they've got us spotted."
Sam hesitated frowning "Where is this Zella?"
The crosser shook his head. "The fire's still burning," Sam muttered darkly. "And the rope's still up."
The crosser shuddered. "I can't squeal on her —"
"Look, Bud. I did you a favor. Now do me one."
"Why do you want to know?"
"Maybe I'm interested in trying it myself."
"Maybe you'd sic the B.G.s on her."
"Your brain's scorched. There's your answer in the gutter. Try another maybe."
The man paused. "South Jacksonville," he grunted. "About a mile south of the barrier. Find an old telephone directory and look up Zella Richmond."
"Her own place, huh? Good hideout. I'll buy that. Take care of your head."
He left the crosser sitting on the curb and went to find an empty bed. Up to now, life was picking beans and hoeing corn for a buck a day and a meal. An ambitious man could do better than that, he thought, and if he could get inside one of the industrial areas for awhile, he could collect enough stuff to buy a dozen MacMahons and half of Ruralland.
It was a five-day northward hike to Jacksonville along the deserted, vine-covered highway. The roads and towns were unmarked by war, for the northern city was the only Florida town that had been neutralized by the enemy fleets, and the only one that had been seized by the Restoration Committee.
Small farms along the way offered the hospitality of their tables by daylight, but no sane man would accommodate a stranger after dark. He slept on beaches and in deserted buildings of small towns. He had become a skilled nomad, for Sam Wuncie could never confine himself to a few acres of land and a plow.
He had been fifteen when the Hemispheric Conflict began, and he had graduated from high school into the arms of selective service. He was sent to the air force, rushed through flight training, routed to jet-pilot school, then grounded for high susceptibility to aeroembolism. They made him a yes-man to a colonel, but he said "no." So they made him a mess officer. But another colonel was chiseling on the mess fund, and Lieutenant Wuncie tried to dull the chisel. He spent the rest of the war in an Arctic weather station, sending up balloons and watching the guided missiles thunder both ways across the polar regions. When the guided missiles stopped coming, there was no way to get home except to walk, for the technology that supported transportation lay quiet in radioactive loneliness. The long trek south from Alaska had taken him a year and a half, and it satisfied him that he was fit to survive. That was six years ago.
He might have tried to enter one of the Committee-controlled regions, but he resented the system that excluded the "technologically unfit" — judged according to the committee's standards. Before the committee allowed a yokel to take the tests, it made him agree to submit to the small "R" brand on his right cheek in the event that he failed — to make him recognizable as a "basically rural" personality if he tried to crash the gate again. Sam saw the branding as brutal irresponsibility, for the committee was surely aware of what the excluded population was likely to do to a man who had plainly tried to surpass them.
The wind stiffened during the days of his journey, and low flying scud darted inland beneath dark overcast. The gulls followed the scud, and he noticed legions of ants migrating to higher ground. It was September, and the air smelled of hurricane. Somewhere in the Atlantic was a storm, but there was no weather bureau to predict its course.
On the morning of the fifth day he heard aircraft engines droning from somewhere above the clouds — the first such sound he had heard since the end of the war. He stood frozen on the empty highway, listening until the plane was out of earshot. The Committee was making progress. But he was angry because of the nostalgic knot the sound tied in his stomach.
When he came within grapevine distance of Jacksonville, he noticed that the farmers were boarding up their house windows. Evidently the city had a weather station, and the plane had been a hurricane reconnaissance ship. The farmers had probably seen the techs preparing for a storm, and had passed the word along the line. The daylight was gloomy-gray as he entered the south suburbs of the city.
He chose side streets and alleyways, for he was nearing the barbed-wire barriers set up by the Committee, and getting closer to the half-mile quarantine zone declared by MacMahon and patrolled by his vicious Border Guard.
He found an ancient telephone directory after searching through several old commercial buildings, and he looked for Zella Richmond. The name was listed, and the address was only a dozen blocks away. He was surprised that the crosser had been telling the truth.
The wind was reaching gale force. He leaned against it as he moved along, watching the house numbers in passing.
"Hey, you!"
Sam stopped. A few steps away a man in a leather jacket stood in the entrance of an old drugstore. He carried what appeared to be a home-made crossbow, loaded with a sharp-tipped length of welding rod. Sam frowned bewilderment and started away.
"I meant you, Curly."
"Me?" He stopped again.
The man came forward, holding his weapon casually aimed at Sam. "Where you think you're going?"
"Down the street about two blocks."
"This street."
"Yeah. G'bye."
...
allforjesus2001