Part 22 (1/2)

The rotors stopped.

They waited in stillness so complete that they heard the creak of hinges as the hatch opened. A metal ladder fell from its side and two men climbed down. Plastic helmets covered their heads and they were encased in silver, translucent plastic suits, oxygen tanks strapped to their backs. Like divers, Randy thought, or maybe s.p.a.cemen. Peyton and Ben Franklin had run out on the lawn. Now they shrank back. One of the men, laughing silently inside his helmet, held up his hand in a gesture, ”Wait!”

The two men carried machines that looked like miniature vacuum cleaners, a cylindrical nozzle in one hand, an oblong black box in the other. They allowed these nozzles to sniff at gra.s.s and earth. ”Geiger counters,” Sam Hazzard said. ”Maybe we're hot.”

One of the men approached them, hesitated, and selected Randy. He bent over and allowed the nozzle to sniff Randy's last pair of boat shoes, big toe protruding through the canvas, soles reinforced with possum hide. The nozzle investigated the tattered shorts, the belt, and finally Randy's hair. At each point, the head in the helmet glanced at a dial in the box. It was very efficient.

The man swept off his helmet, slammed his hand on Randy's shoulder as if in congratulations, and called back to the helicopter, ”Okay, Colonel. The terrain's clear and they're clear. You can come down.”

His back toward them, a man climbed down. He wore a blue, zippered Air Force flight suit with the eagles of a full colonel on his shoulders.

When he turned and stepped forward, Randy did not immediately recognize him, he was so changed.

It was not until the man held out his hand, and spoke, that Randy saw it was Paul Hart, who had been a light colonel, sandy haired instead of gray, his face cheery and freckled instead of lined and aged, when he saw him last. Randy could think of nothing to say except, ”Come on in, Paul, and bring your people. We're just about to sit down for lunch.”

Lib cried, ”The quail!” and dashed into the house, letting the screen door bang.

”My wife,” Randy said. ”It's her lunch day.”

”Your wife? Congratulations. My wife-I'll save it for later.” Randy saw that the men with the Geiger counters had stripped off their plastic suits. ”You'll all have a drink before lunch?” he suggested, thinking that this had been the proper thing to say, long ago, and would still be proper and expected.

”Why, I'd be delighted!” Paul said. ”I haven't had a drink since-” he asked a question: ”You people haven't saved your liquor all this time, have you?”

”Oh, no. This stuff is new. Well, it's aged a bit. In a charcoal keg. We think it's very good.”

He led them up to his apartment and mixed sours with the corn whiskey and fat, ripe limes. Then there were the introductions. There was a Captain Bayliss, the pilot, a Lieutenant Smith, chief radiologist, and the two sergeant technicians. They all considered the sour very good and Paul said, ”It's impossible to find anything to drink, even in Denver. Not even beer. Shortage of grains, you know. n.o.body would dare make his own whiskey in the clear zones. He'd go to jail. The older people say it's worse than prohibition.”

There were a thousand questions Randy wanted to ask but at that moment he only had time for one because Lib called from downstairs. Lunch was ready. The men all wore bra.s.sards with the letters D.C. on the right arms. ”What's that?” Randy asked, touching Paul's bra.s.sard. ”District of Columbia?”

”Oh, no,” Paul said. ”there isn't any District of Columbia. Denver's the capital. That stands for Decontamination Command. It's the biggest command, nowadays, and really the only one that counts. I was seconded to the D.C. last spring. I put in for a C.Z. right away and asked for Florida and Florida was the C.Z. I got.”

Paul Hart thought the soup was wonderful and said he had never tasted anything exactly like it before and Randy replied that he wasn't surprised. They always kept the big soup pot simmering on the fire and everything went into it. ”This particular soup,” he explained, ”is sort of a combination. Armadillo, gopher, and turkey carca.s.s.”

Lib brought a dozen quail, and more were broiling, and placed pitchers of orange juice in front of them and they all drank it greedily. Captain Bayliss kept mumbling that he felt they were imposing, and that there were K-rations in the helicopter and that he actually expected to find C.Z. people all starving, because certainly most of them were in other parts of the country. He also kept on eating.

”How does it happen,” Randy asked Hart, ”that you found us?”

Hart said, ”You haven't heard anything from my wife, Martha, have you?”

Randy shook his head, no, apprehending Paul's tragedy. ”Of course that's why I asked for duty in this C.Z. I wanted to find out what happened to Martha and the children.” He looked up. ”It was just a year ago, wasn't it, that I met you at McCoy Operations? Wasn't it on the day before H-Day?” ”H-Day? We just call it The Day.”

”h.e.l.l day or Hydrogen Day or The Day, it's all the same thing.”

”Yes. That was the last time I saw you.”

”It was also the last day I saw Martha except to kiss her goodbye the next morning. Post-strike we went on to Kenya, in Africa. When I got back to this country I learned right away, of course, that McCoy received one. But it wasn't until I flew over Orlando last week that I gave up hope. I suppose you know what happened to Orlando.”

Randy said, ”Oh, no! n.o.body's been that far off!”

”It's as if no man was ever there. Even the shapes of the lakes have changed and there are a couple of lakes that weren't there before. Find my wife? I couldn't even tell where my house stood.

I think they must've dropped a five-megaton missile on McCoy and another on Orlando munic.i.p.al. Nothing stands. Everything is burned and still hot. It's the d.a.m.n C-14 that does it.” ”C-I4?”

”Radioactive carbon. It's half-life is more than five thousand years. That and U-238 and cobalt and strontium is what makes rebuilding impractical in the T.D.-the totally destroyed--cities. You have to start somewhere else, here for instance. Did you know that you are living in the center of the largest clear area in the whole C.Z.?”

”No, I didn't, but I'm glad to find out.”