Stern

“ No solid body, no land, no earth to mark their fall and gauge it. Yet slowly, steadily, darkness was shrouding them. And Stern, breathing with great difficulty even in the shelter of his arms, could now hardly more than see as a pale blur the white face of the girl beside him.
The vast wings of the machine, swirling, swooping, plunging down, loomed hugely vague in the deepening shadows. Dizzy, sick with the monstrous caroming through space, deafened by the thunderous roaring of the up-draft, Stern was still able to retain enough of his scientific curiosity to peer upward. ”

“ An hour later, from the gnarled branches of the willow--up into which Stern had fairly flung her, and where he had himself clambered with the beasts ravening at his legs--the two sole survivors of the human race watched the glowering eyes that dotted the velvet gloom. ”

“ So the engineer desisted. And he, too, set his eye to the twisting aperture.
At sight of the narrow segment of forest visible through it, and of the several members of the Horde, a strong revulsion came upon him.
Up welled a deep-seated love for the memory of the race of men and women as they once had been--the people of the other days. Stern almost seemed to behold them again, those tall, athletic, straight-limbed men; those lithe, deep-breasted women, fair-skinned and with luxuriant hair; all alike now plunged for a thousand years in the abyss of death and of eternal oblivion. ”

“ Did Beatrice shout out to him? Did she try to make him hear? He could not tell. No human voice could have been audible in such a turmoil. Stern had no time to think even of her at such a moment of deadly peril.
As a driver with a runaway stallion jerks and saws and strains upon the leather to regain control, so now the man wrestled with his storm-buffeted machine. A less expert aeronaut must have gone down to death in that mad nexus of conflicting currents; but Stern was cool and full of craft and science. ”

“ He heard the rustle of the wind through the forest. It blent and mingled with a horrid tumult of grunts, of clicking cries, of gnashing teeth and little bestial cries.
“The--gate!” sobbed Stern, between hard-set teeth, and stumbled forward, ever forward, through the Horde.
To him, protectingly, he clasped the beautiful body in the tiger-skin.
Living? Was she living yet? A great, aching wonder filled him. Could he reach the stair with her, and bear her up it? Hurl back these devils? Save her, after all? ”

“ But the mass of them now outwardly seemed so eager to serve and care for him, so quick to obey, so grateful almost to adoration, that Stern felt ashamed of his own suspicions and of the revolver that he still always carried whenever outside the patriarch's hut.
And in his heart he buried his fears as unworthy delusions, as the imaginings of a brain still hurt. The occasional black looks of one or another of the people, or perchance some sullen, muttered word, he set down as the crude manners of a primitive and barbarous race. ”

“ Girls streamed by in the street with lovely unsettling bodies, and Stern imagined the eyes of a good one suddenly meeting his with instant understanding, the two of them going silently to her room to make love, and Stern, by the sheer violence of his thrust, passing the ulcer down through his stomach, out along his organ, and into her belly, where the girl would somehow accept it with more strength than he had been able to. ”

“ A number dropped the ropes, while others reached for the slings and spears that always lay in the bottoms of the canoes.
“What the devil now?” shouted Stern. “You all gone crazy, or what?”
He turned appealingly to the old man.
“For Heaven's sake, what's up?” he cried. “Tell me, can't you, before the idiots drop my machine and ruin the whole thing? What--”
“Misfortune, O my son!” cried the patriarch in a strange, trembling voice. “The worst that could befall! In our absence he has come back--he, Kamrou! And under pain of death he bids all men abandon every task and haste to homage. ”

“ Which way?” cried Stern. “Show me--I'll do the rest!”
“Thither!” the old man directed, pointing with one hand, while with the other he shoved the engineer forward. Blind though he was, he knew the right direction. “Thither--to the wall!”
For a second Stern had the thought of leaving Beatrice in the cell, where she might at least be safe from the keen peril of battle; but greater dangers threatened her, he knew, in his absence.
At all hazards they must keep together. And with a cry: “Come! Come--stick close to me!” once more he broke into a run toward the sea. ”

“ He hoped they would hurry and perspired as the dollars ticked away in multiples of three. The old men rested on their rakes now, poking each other and cackling obscenely at the handsome young man as he made his temperamental curlicues. Then Stern lost sight of the young man and imagined that his long-nosed, great-eyed wife had inhaled his fragrance and dragged him with a sudden frenzy into the garage, her fingers digging through his black and oily young Italian hair, loving it so much more than Stern's thinning affair, which fell out now at the touch of a comb. ”

“ We're Americans, I tell you--Americans! For God's sake, can't you understand?”
Once more the word “Merucaans” passed round from mouth to mouth; but beyond this Stern got no sign of comprehension.
“Village! Houses!” shouted he. “Shelter! Rest, eat, sleep!”
They merely shoved him forward up the slope, together with the girl; and now Stern saw a curious kind of causeway, paved with slippery, wet, black stones that gleamed in the torchlight, a causeway slanting sharply upward, its further end hidden in the dense vapor behind which the great and unknown light shone with ever-clearer glowing. ”

“ Stern's wife drove the car, and as they passed the man's house down the street Stern ducked down and made himself invisible, as though he did not want the man to know of his triumph. Stern was certain that if the man knew he had put Stern in a home, he would fly a dozen flags thrillingly from every window. ”

“ Under heavy brow-ridges, the dull, lackluster eyes blinked stupidly, bloodshot and cruel. As the mouth closed, Stern noted how the under incisors closed up over the upper lip, showing a gleam of dull yellowish ivory; a slaver dripped from the doglike corner of the mouth.
Stern shivered, and drew back.
He realized now that he was in the presence of an unknown semi-human type, different in all probability from any that had ever yet existed. It was less their bestiality that disgusted him, than their utter, hopeless, age-long degeneration from the man-standard. ”

“ Thinking, he strode along the fine, smooth, even sands, where never yet a human foot had trodden. For the first time he seemed to realize just what this world now meant--a world devoid of others of his kind. While the girl and he had been among the ruins of Manhattan, or even on the Hudson, they had felt some contact with the past; but here, Stern's eye looked out over a world as virgin as on the primal morn. ”

“ Stern's whole attention was fixed on driving, just on the manipulation of the swift machine. Exhaust and interplay, the rhythm of each whirling cam and shaft, the chatter of the cylinders, the droning diapason of the blades, all blent into one intricate yet perfect harmony of mechanism; and as a leader knows each instrument in the great orchestra and follows each, even as his eye reads the score, so Stern's keen ear analyzed each sound and action and reaction and knew all were in perfect tune and resonance. ”

“ The blow that had so shrewdly clipped Stern's skull must have inevitably killed, as an ox is dropped in the slaughter-house, a man less powerfully endowed with splendid energies and full vitality.
Even Stern's wonderful physique had a hard fight to regain its finely ripened forces. But day by day he gained--we must speak of days, though there were only sleeping-times and waking-times--until at length, upon the fifth, he was able for the first time to leave his seaweed bed and sit a while weakly on the patriarch's bench, with Beatrice beside him. ”

“ But Stern noticed, and rejoiced to see it, that none prostrated themselves. None fell to earth or groveled in his presence. Disorderly and wild the greeting was, but it was the greeting of men, not slaves.
“Thank God, I've got a race of real men to deal with here!” thought he, surveying the pressing throng. “Hard they may be to rule, and even turbulent, but they're not servile. Rude, brave, bold--what better stock could I have hoped for in this great adventuring?”
For a while even thoughts of Beatrice were crowded back by the excitement of the arrival. ”

“ And other times, Stern was glad he had a newer car. He wanted to say to the man, "Think kike things and be stupid and you'll always have an old car. Act enlightened and have a new one." One night he saw the man's wife walk to the gutter to shake a broom—a stocky, square, and graceless woman whose hair was without color. Stern imagined the pair at night, coming together for a graceless, hulking lay, and for a second he felt tender toward the man. ”

“ Stern at that time boarded off campus with a trembling old ex-bass fiddle player who sat each night wearing truss-like old-man belts and gadgets and twanged his instrument in the basement. The old man was not particularly nice to Stern. He feigned munificence by asking Stern to have glasses of milk but actually used him as a sourness tester. At night, while the old man sat in his bands and trusses, Stern would spirit the petticoated girl into his room, undressing her swiftly and then tasting and biting her, going at her with anger and closed eyes to drive away all traces of Victorian curtsies. ”

“ After leaving the home-coming train on one of these new nights, Stern, a tall, round-shouldered man with pale, spreading hips, flew happily across the estate, the dogs howling him on, reached his house, and, kissing his fragrant, long-nosed wife deep in her neck, pulled off a panty thread that had been hanging from her shorts. He asked her if anything was new and she said she had taken their son Donald about a mile down the road to see the new boy she'd heard about. ”

“ Now, as he drove home, Stern, who had spoken sharply to his wife and had felt the hot brocade tighten against the front of him, began suddenly to follow the [Pg 163] procedure of Rooney's man. He held the controls gently in his hands, tapping lightly on the foot pedals and scanning the road ahead easily, as if too vigorous a motion might topple his head from his shoulders. He began to do things in a slow and mincing way, as though he might be able to whisper and tiptoe through life, hushing his way past death itself. ”

“ Nobody bothers us, we don't bother nobody. Right, Mr. Stern? Didn't we come in here nice?"
"Yes," said Stern, smiling at the man, feeling the air charge up and wanting to stop whatever was about to happen. The brocade of tenderness appeared suddenly to girdle his stomach. He was not sure he could take any trouble, and he imagined himself collapsing and having to be carried back to the Home by his two friends, the Puerto Rican girl walking contemptuously behind, aware now that Stern had the least romantic disease of all. ”

“ In the old days Stern would not for one moment have been a match for this barbaric athlete, but the long months of life close to nature had hardened him and toughened every fiber. And now a stab of joy thrilled through him as he realized that in his muscles lay at least a force to balk the savage for a little while.
To Stern came back his wrestling lore of the very long ago, the days of Harvard, in the dim, vanished past. He freed his left arm from the gorilla-like grip of Kamrou, and, quick as lightning, got a jiu-jitsu stranglehold. ”

“ His wife and child got on, Stern becoming excited by the heat of her crotch. He went across the lawn carrying them, but there was a strained frivolity about the game. He wanted someone to see him, and when a car drove by, he smiled thinly, as if to say, "We're home-owners. See how much fun we always have and how we fit in." But when the one car had passed, there was no one left to show off for; in the distance there was a bleak, lonely, deserted estate, where once a man named Bagby had each Sunday skidded through the snow in a horse-drawn sleigh, entertaining his grandchildren. ”

“ And Stern had begun to play "Billy One-Foot" again, a game in which he pretended his leg was a diabolical criminal. "I'll get that old Billy One-Foot this time," his son Donald would say, flinging his sucking blanket to the wind and attacking Stern's heavy leg. And Stern, whose leg for months had remained immobile, would lift and twirl it about once again, saying, "Oh no, you don't. No one can ever hope to defeat the powerful Billy One-Foot." ”

“ On the highway, Stern watched his wife's knees, apart as they worked the pedals; he imagined her dropping him off at the home, then going immediately to a service station and allowing the attendant to make love to her while her feet kept working the pedals so that she could always say that she had driven all the way home without stopping. She pulled into the driveway of the Grove Rest Home in the late afternoon and Stern, saying goodbye, squeezed her flesh and kissed her through her dress, as though by getting in these last touches he could somehow ward off the gas station attendant. ”

“ He shouted a sentence or two with a volume of noise at which the engineer marveled, for so compressed was the air that Stern's best effort could hardly throw a sound fifty feet. This characteristic of the atmosphere he well recognized from work he had often done in bridge and tunnel caissons. And a wonder possessed him, despite his keen anxiety, how any race of men could live and grow and develop the evident physical force of these people under conditions so unnatural. ”