Homepage
Login
Profile
BookClubs
dmBox
Read Ebook: The Mighty Dead by Gault William Campbell
Font size:
Background color:
Text color:
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page
Ebook has 375 lines and 12878 words, and 8 pages
"You do that well," the cashier said and reached up to turn off the light overhead.
It was hot outside. The sun seemed to be imprisoned in the white corridor that stretched for miles between the government buildings and the ashment of the parking lot glittered like broken glass.
From the mines of Mars the ashment came, the best paving surface known to man. And what was Mars but mines? With all their grand talk, who wanted to leave Mother Earth? What was Venus but a sanctuary, a vacation spot, and what was Mars but mines? When a big cog like the Chief could send a lonely man all the way to Dubbinville because of a neighbor's summons, how could they expect little cogs to grow up to galactic thinking?
Dubbinville and the heat of a Wisconsin summer--and June waiting in the apartment on Connecticut . Doak swore quietly and thoroughly and stepped into the oven that was his Chev.
The cooling system started with the motor and the interior was comfortable by the time he pulled into the stream of home-bound traffic. It was a fourteen-lane highway and jammed to the curbs.
There were only two signals in eight miles but traffic moved in fits and starts at this time of day. He could see the first light when he was a hundred yards from it and was sure he could make it.
But it turned amber when he was still fifteen yards from the corner and the force-field actuated his traffic-servant and he heard the brake control click. Well, it avoided accidents but it sure as hell was rough on brake linings. He skidded to a stop.
Cars, cars, cars for miles. And the glittering ashment and all the boys and gals going home to plot the week-end. No magazines, no books, no papers with their social columns, so the girls would be out and looking around.
And the men would be out and looking around and what more did you need?
The light changed and his brake was released and he moved out at the head of his line, thinking about Dubbinville, trying to imagine it, some hamlet tucked away in a Wisconsin hill, dreaming of yesterday. Great, fine, dandy!
In his apartment all his video sets yammered at him and he stopped in the doorway, staring. They should have turned off when he'd thrown the master switch this morning.
In his chrome and plastic kitchen he dialed June's number.
Her hair wasn't in the curlers. It was golden and braided and high on her classic head. She said, "Your picture isn't coming through. Who is this, please?"
Doak said in a falsetto, "Guess."
The screen went blank.
"A priority to Dubbinville, Wisconsin, first trip possible," Doak said and gave her Security's code number.
"Dubbinville?" she said and frowned. She consulted a station box out of his view and looked up again. "You'll have to take surface transportation from Milwaukee. It's only about twenty miles from there in Waukesha County."
"Good enough. And when's the first to Milwaukee?"
"At nineteen hundred, ramp eighty-seven. Kindly pick up your ticket at Booth sixty-two." The screen went blank.
The ticket wasn't really though the name had persisted. The 'ticket' was a coin. Doak looked in his refrigerator and there was nothing worthwhile in there. He'd eat at the airport.
He looked at the phone and decided against it. He went into the bedroom and threw some shirts and socks and a pair of clean pajamas into his durapelt bag.
Dubbinville--and June out looking around. What a lousy deal!
The great ship lay sleekly quiet under the slanting sun, the passengers like ants measured against its giant hull. Clink, clink, clink went the coins into the counting box, the light over each seat going on with the clink of the coin.
Then they were seated, the lights all on, and the tractor was pulling the giant to the channelled runway, guarded by the blast walls.
The whirr of the rolling wheels, the reverberations from the blast walls, a crescendo of sound, and they were free of earth. An accelerating, effortless flight, a faint tremor as they passed the sonic barrier, then no sensory impressions at all.
Flight as free as the wind's passage but more silent. Through the visacrys windows a blur of blue-green. Speed without strain, power without tumult.
Doak relaxed and for the first time since the Chief's summons he wasn't thinking of June. He was thinking of Man, from the cave to Venus, from the wheel to free flight. And something out of his childhood memory came to mind.
So the ad men took over the duties of the semi-writers who had prepared the radio programs. Ad men offended nobody, even those with denture breath. That could be cured and so could acne, B.O., straight hair and seam squirrels.
A government man, a Security Officer, he straightened in his seat as the stewardess came along the aisle.
She smiled at him, "Everything all right, Mr. Parker?"
"Dandy," Doak said. "Great, fine! Why?"
She paused, disconcerted "I beg your pardon?"
"Why shouldn't everything be all right? Lateral-American, the skyway to the stars, right?"
She smiled "Absolutely correct."
"Until next year," she said. "I'm new."
"I'm old," Doak said. "Is there anything to drink on board?"
"Water, Mr. Parker."
She glanced at her watch. "We'll be in Milwaukee in six minutes. And that's the beer town."
But he had no time for a glass of beer. The limousine took him to the elevated station and the last car for Dubbinville was leaving in three minutes.
It was a nine-minute trip. He'd picked up an hour, coming west, and used but thirty-three minutes. It was still only seven o'clock when the huge elevated car hissed to a stop in front of the Dubbinville station.
There was a smell to the place, a smell of sun-warmed grass and fruit blossoms, of lilacs and quiet rains. Doak stood on the platform, surveying the winding main street leading up into the gentle hills. People on porches and teenagers in front of the drugstore. A reddish-brown setter padded past on some secret business of his own.
There was no whiz, no whir, no clank, no squeal, no grind. This was Dubbinville, U.S.A.
The station agent was picking up a pair of film boxes, as Doak walked over. He smiled at Doak. "Beautiful evening, isn't it?"
"It certainly is. Is there--a place to stay in town, a hotel?"
The station agent shook his head. "No hotel. But you could stay at Mrs. Klein's. She takes in boarders." He pointed with a bony forefinger. "That grey house with the blue shutters, right on the curve there."
"Thank you," Doak said. "What's the population here?"
"Around eight hundred, last census, though we had a couple families move in since then. Hasn't changed much the last hundred years."
"Retired farmers, mostly?" Doak asked.
"Mmmm, I guess. Just--people."
People.... Which meant nothing and everything. Doak had turned away before he remembered. Then he turned back. "Oh, yes, and Senator Arnold? Where does he live?"
Add to tbrJar First Page Next Page Prev Page