The Genocides

Neil was worried. He sensed in several of the men who’d gone out on the search a resistance to his authority, and this resistance seemed strongest in Buddy. A leader can’t afford to let his leadership be challenged. Their father had always harped on that. It didn’t seem to make any difference to Buddy that Anderson had wanted Neil to take over for him. Buddy had always been a wild one, a rebel, an atheist.

That’s what he is! Neil thought, astonished at how perfectly the word defined everything dangerous in his brother. An atheist! Why hadn’t he realized that before?

One way or another, atheists had to be stomped out. Because atheism was like poison in the town reservoir; it was like…. But Neil couldn’t remember how the rest of it went. It had been a long time since his father had given a good sermon against atheism and the Supreme Court.

On the heels of this perception another new idea came to Neil. It was, for him, a true inspiration, a revelation—almost as though his father’s spirit had come down from heaven and whispered it in his ear.

He would tie Buddy’s line in a circle!

Then, when Buddy tried to get back, he’d just keep following the rope around and around the circle. Once you grasped the basic concept, it was a very simple idea.

There was one hitch, however, when you thought about it carefully. One part of the circle would be here at this intersection, and Buddy could feel around, maybe, and discover the end of the main line where it was still knotted to Neil’s.

But he wouldn’t if the circle didn’t touch this intersection!

Chuckling to himself, Neil unknotted Buddy’s rope and began following Buddy, winding the rope up as he went along. When he figured he’d taken up enough of it, he turned off along a minor branch of the root, unwinding the rope as he crawled along. This small root connected to another equally small, and this to yet another. The roots of the Plant were always circling around on themselves, and if you just kept turning the same direction, you usually came back to the point you started from. And sure enough, Neil soon was back in the larger root, where he caught hold of Buddy’s line, stretched taut, a foot off the floor. Buddy was probably not far away.

Neil’s trick was working splendidly. Having nearly reached the end of the length of rope, he knotted it to the other end and formed a perfect circle.

Now, Neil thought, with satisfaction, let him try and find his way back. Let him try and make trouble now! The lousy atheist!

Neil began to crawl back the way he had come, using Buddy’s rope as a guide, laughing all the way. Only then did he notice that there was some kind of funny slime all over his hands and all over his clothing, too.

THIRTEEN Cuckoo, Jug-jug, Pu-we, To-witta-wo!

There are people who cannot scream even when the occasion calls emphatically for screaming. Any drill sergeant can tell you of men, good soldiers every other way, who, when they must run forward to plant a bayonet in the guts of a sawdust dummy, cannot let loose with any sort of battle cry—or at best can manage some bloodless imitation, a half-hearted Kill Kill Kill! It is not that these men lack the primordial emotions of hatred and bloodlust; they have just become too civilized, too bound in, to experience a pure berserker rage. Perhaps a real battle will bring it out of them; perhaps nothing will.

There are emotions more primordial, more basic to survival, than hatred and bloodlust; but it is the same with them too-they can be stilled, covered over with civilized form and secondary modes of feeling. Only extreme circumstances can release them.

Jeremiah Orville was a very civilized man. The last seven years had liberated him in many ways, but they had not effaced his civilization until very lately, when events had taught him to desire the consummation of his revenge above his own happiness and safety. It was a beginning.

But as he stood beside Blossom, the axe in his hand unseen, himself unseen, hearing these heartrending cries that fear wrenched from her throat, now the more primordial emotion of love overcame him, shattered the civilized Jeremiah, and, dropping the weapon, he fell to his knees and began kissing the young body that was now the most important and beautiful thing in the world.

“Blossom!” he cried with joy. “O Blossom! Blossom!” and continued senselessly to repeat her name.

“Jeremiah! You! My God, I thought it was him!”

And he, in the same instance: “How could I have loved her, a ghost, bodiless, when all this while—Forgive me! Can you ever forgive me?”