Doomsday Eve by Robert Moore Williams (ebook pc reader .TXT) 📗

your life?"

"Colonel, I'd like you to meet a friend of mine," the nurse said quickly. "Colonel Zen, Sam West. We'll talk while we walk down to the first aid station."

"A pleasure to meet you, sir," West said, extending his hand. His handclasp was firm but there was a suggestion of additional power in his fingers.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. West. Do you live around here?"

"Over that way," the craggy man said, nodding vaguely over his shoulder.

Again the nurse tugged at Zen's arm. He set his feet solidly on the mountain trail. "We'll talk right here."

"But you are taking an unfair advantage of Nedra," the craggy man protested. "This area is heavy with radiation and this is neither the time nor the place to be swapping horses."

"Then why are you two here?"

"I was getting out of the area as fast as I could when I met Nedra," West said. "I would still be getting out of it, but fast, if you were not stopping me."

"I'm not stopping you," Zen said. "There's the trail. Hit it. Nor you either," he said to Nedra.

"Don't be silly, Kurt," the nurse said. She was pleading with him now.

"All right. But on one condition. Why did you come up here in the first place? You knew the area was hot."

"I—I lost my head," the nurse said promptly. "My emotions ran away with me. I'm a nurse and wounded men needed my attention. I went to them. You will come down the trail with us, won't you?" The violet eyes begged him to believe in her.

"What made you lose your head?"

"Why—shock, I suppose. This is the first time I was bombed. Also, the screaming of the wounded. Really, sir, I am a nurse." The way she said the word, being a nurse meant something. The violet eyes had grown tired of begging and were on the verge of spitting anger at him.

"I don't believe a damned word you have said," Zen said. "You didn't lose your head back there in the prospect hole."

"Please, Kurt." Again she rugged at his arm. "I'll talk to you all you want down below. But don't try to force me to stay here."

Reluctantly, Zen yielded to the pressure on his arm. Relief appeared in the violet eyes and the face of the craggy man showed a sudden release from some inner strain. Dimly, he thought he had seen that craggy face somewhere before but the picture that flicked through his mind was gone before he could fit a time and place tag on it. Going down the trail, he steered the nurse toward a truck where the medics had set up equipment to test the amount of exposure to radiation. In doing this, he discovered that she was steering him in the same direction.

"I don't need the medics," he protested. "I'm all right. I wasn't exposed long enough to do any damage."

"Of course you're all right," she answered. Her tone was similar to that of an indulgent mother reassuring a hurt child.

"You're the one who needs help," he said. He was certain she had remained too long.

"I'm going to get it if I need it," she said, soothingly.

Zen could hear the occasional crunch of boots behind them. West was keeping silent. He did not seem to be in a hurry.

Zen started to speak to Nedra. The thought of what he wanted to say was dim in his mind and he could not quite find words for it but he knew that it had something to do with a wish that the world were different and that the human race were not trying to destroy itself. Why should he be wishing this? The reason for his thinking became a little clearer. He was wishing the world were different so that he might make love to this nurse under conditions that would permit this love to bear other fruit than frustration, despair, and death.

He found himself wishing that a vine-covered cottage existed somewhere, a place where a man and a woman might live in peace and reasonable security, raising some kids who could play on a mountain slope that was not saturated with atomic radiation.

"Here is the first aid station," the nurse said. "And—"

"And what?" he asked her when she did not continue.

She gave his arm a squeeze. "And thank you for the dream," she whispered.

As Kurt Zen turned startled eyes toward her, wondering how she had known what he had been dreaming, her face seemed to dissolve in a gray mist.

He plunged, unconscious, to the ground at her feet.

IV

The jar of striking the ground seemed to bring the intelligence agent back to consciousness instantly. As Nedra started to kneel beside him, he was already getting to his feet. She tried to help him rise. He shrugged her hand away.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Nothing," he said. This didn't seem quite right. "I—I—" He tried to think what had happened. "I fainted. That's all. I just fainted." To him, this seemed a reasonable explanation for everything that needed explaining.

Nedra seemed to think otherwise. "But men like you don't just faint," she protested.

"I did."

"They don't faint unless something is wrong with them," Nedra continued. "Are you sure you're not suffering from delayed shock following the bomb explosion? Or—" Her voice slid away into silence as if she were afraid to voice the thought that was in her mind. Behind her, West said nothing.

"I just did it," Zen said, becoming more indignant. "I fainted. Who says it can't be done?" Confusion existed somewhere. He was sure it was the nurse who was confused. He shook his head in an effort to clear up her difficulty.

"I saw you do it. All I am trying to say is that perhaps there may be a reason for it."

"Nope," Zen said. "I'm not going to the aid station. No reason for it. I'm all right. It's the world out there that is wrong." This made sense to him.

"I know you are all right," Nedra answered. Her face showed strain. "But it might be a good idea to have the doctors check, just to make sure."

Zen, busy shaking his head again, hardly heard her. He had the impression that her confusion would clear up in a minute. Somehow it reminded him of the confusion that he had suffered after inhaling a whiff of nerve gas, once. When had this happened? He was not sure, now. Perhaps it had taken place in the remote past, perhaps on some other planet ... he realized his mind was wandering. Again he shook his head.

"But I really think, colonel—"

"I wasn't shaking my head at you," Zen corrected.

"Good. Then we will go see the doctors."

"I didn't mean that either. I was shaking my head to clear it. There's a fog in it."

"A fog in your head?" Unease appeared in her voice.

"Yes. What's wrong with that? Lots of men have fogs in their heads." To him, this seemed a reasonable statement. "Lots of men have to go to the docs every couple of weeks to have the fogs blown out of their heads." Thinking he had made a joke, he laughed.

Nedra did not think he had said anything funny. Resolutely, she took his arm. "Come with me, colonel." As she led him toward the truck which the medics were using for a first aid station, something happened.

He saw clearly.

He saw everything.

The ability to see came suddenly, out of nowhere. One second it was not there. Then it was there. It was like seeing with eyes, except it was better than ocular perception had ever been. With it, he was not only able to see surfaces, he could also see into the interior of things. An acute understanding of what he saw went with the perception.

He saw that the Universe was as tall as a man, and no taller. He saw that it was as wide as a man, and no wider. He saw that it was as broad as a man, and no broader.

He saw the human race in its entirety, one man and all men, all men in one man. Simultaneously, he saw the whole history of the race, he saw the long journey it had made from so-called inanimate matter to the point where it was now a creature that looked outward to the stars. He saw that the destiny of the race lay in those stars, and in all that vast expanse of space between them, if it did not destroy itself in the process of growing to star stature. He saw that the race could do exactly this, that it could blow itself back to the component atoms that composed it, in which case the long and toilsome, heart-breaking struggle upward from the atomic level would have to begin all over again.

He also knew what he was doing with this clear seeing.

He was touching the race mind.

He was in contact with the race field.

His consciousness had been lifted to the level of that vast, all-pervading, but very subtle force field that comprised the race mind.

The knowledge was sudden agony in him, a pain that was needle sharp in the region of his heart. The pain was strange because, while he could feel it and knew it was happening in his body, it had no meaning to him. He was detached from it, it hurt his body, but it did not hurt or harm him.

His body was alarmed by the pain, his breathing quickened, and a faint trace of sweat appeared on his skin. But he was not alarmed. Even if his body fell dead, he would not be concerned.

"What is it, Kurt?" his ears heard Nedra say. She had detected his heavy breathing and she was alarmed. "Are you about to faint again?"

"No," his lips answered. His body laughed at the question. He heard the sound of his laughter as being both his and not his. His body knew it was not going to faint. His laughter sounded hollow and out of place but he did not care about that either.

Ahead, soldiers were lined up at the back end of the truck, waiting their turn in line.

"Your rank entitles you to priority," Nedra said hesitantly.

"In the place where I am now, my rank doesn't exist," he answered. "I join the end of the line, I take my turn." He was quite stubborn about this.

The nurse looked pleased. He wondered if he had said something important. To him, what he had said seemed obvious. Behind him, West was a silent shadow wrapped in an enigma. Even with his sudden new perception, his contact with a higher form of consciousness, he could not perceive West clearly. Something about the craggy man defied penetration and analysis.

The men in the line ahead of him waited for their turn, shuffling forward each time the medics finished with their examination. There was no talk in the line. Not a man grumbled, not a man complained. Knowing men, Zen knew that this was ominous.

These men had had it. They knew they had had it. In the face of that knowledge, nothing else mattered. Outwardly, they looked fit. Inwardly, something had happened to them. It seemed to Zen that he could see glows coming from their bodies. One was swaying. Zen seemed to glimpse a blob of light moving suddenly upward from the man. The soldier fell. He did not move a muscle after he hit.

Nedra started toward him. Zen shook his head. "No use," he said.

"Why not?"

Zen pointed skyward. "He went that way."

Her face whitened as she caught his meaning. "I'll make sure."

She moved forward and inspected the fallen man, felt for a pulse, and felt again, then got to her feet. As she returned, her back seemed to have acquired a new sag.

An officer shouted from the truck, his voice gravel rough from tension. In response, a stretcher-bearing detail moved forward. They inspected the body of the fallen man, then lifted it and tossed it to the side of the trail. One clipped a dog tag from it, then ran a counter over it. He grunted to his companion, who tied a red tag on the dead man's wrist.

"Up that way, boys, you can find some more," Zen called to them, jerking his thumb up the slope.

"We're not a burial detail," was the answer.

The soldiers in the line shuffled forward.

"Hey! It's gone!" Zen said suddenly.

"What's gone?"

"I'm back," Zen said.

"You never went anywhere," the nurse said.

"It's gone and I'm back both mean the same thing," he tried to explain. "The thing that is gone is my contact with the race field. I'm back means that all of a sudden, I'm normal. I'm back here. I'm looking out of my eyes. I'm hearing with my ears. I don't know everything any longer."

Daze was in him. Worse than the