Infinity's Child

With the realization came the certainty that he would not die. The force he felt within him--he was not certain whether it was a part of himself, or the evidence of an outside control--was too powerful.

The inner spontaneity gathered strength until it became a striving, persistent vital force, a will of imperious purpose. It moved him and he moved his tongue and spoke. "I will not die!" he shouted.

Some time later he grew aware that his sense of hearing had returned. He heard a voice say, "He was in the last stages about an hour ago, before he spoke. I thought I'd better call you."

"You did right," a second voice answered. "What's his name?"

"Clifford Buckmaster."

They're talking about me, he thought. Like a burst of glory, sight returned. He looked up and saw two men standing beside his bed. The older man wore a plain black suit. The younger was dressed in the white uniform of a doctor.

"He can see now," the older man said. His was a voice Buckmaster disliked.

"It looks as if he's going to recover," the doctor said. "That's never happened before. Do you want me to leave him here with the dying ones?"

"No. Wheel him into your office. And leave us alone there. My name is James Wagner. You have, of course, heard of me. I am the Director of Security."

Buckmaster still rested in his hospital bed. They had screwed up the back until he sat almost straight. In his mouth there was a slight tang and knew the sense of taste returned. When he was able to feel again he would be entirely well. Yes, he'd heard of Wagner before. He nodded.

"And I know who you are," Wagner said. "You are one of the Underground that is trying to overthrow the General. That is correct, is it not?"

Almost with surprise Buckmaster felt Wagner's words register in his mind. His implanted memories were still strange to him. But he recalled them quickly.

Twenty years before, in 1979, the great Atomic War had ended. In the beginning the two giants faced each other across the separating oceans. No one was certain who sent the first bomb across in its controlled rocket; each side blamed the other.

The methods of each were terrible in their efficiency. The great manufacturing cities were the first to go. After them went the vital transportation centers.

Striving mightily for an early advantage each country forced landing armies on the enemy's shores. The armies invaded with their hundreds of thousands of men--and the bombings continued.

The colossus of the western hemisphere had set up autonomous launching stations, so that if and when their major cities had all been bombed, their ruling bodies decimated and scattered--even if there were no longer any vestiges of a central authority--the launchings would continue.

The autonomous units had been a stroke of master planning, so ingenious that it was logical the giant of Eurasia had devised a similar plan.

By the time the bombs had all been used, or their stations rendered incapable of functioning, the major cities were blackened, gutted, inoperative masses of destruction. Soon the invading armies no longer received orders, or supplies of rations and arms. When this happened they knew governments they represented had ceased to exist. They were forced to live by the ingenuity of their commanders and their ability to forage. They could not even capitulate; there was no one to whom they could surrender.

Those armies with weak commanders fell apart and one by one their men died at the hands of hostile natives, or hunger.

The armies under strong commanders, like General Andrei Koski, of the Eurasian command, carved themselves a place in their new environment.

Koski had landed with a force of seventy thousand on the east coast of old Mexico. His army was different from the other invaders only in a secret weapon which they brought with them. The weapon's appearance was simple but it carried the potentiality of destruction for a world.

Acting under previous orders from his government, Koski began moving northward, and was soon cutting a swath a hundred miles wide up the west bank of the Mississippi. By the time he reached the southern border of Minnesota he realized from what he saw on all sides, that for all practical purposes the war was over. His only choice now was to find a means of survival for himself and his men.

When Koski reached Duluth he circled the city. Almost miraculously it had escaped the bombs. Its population was only a little over two hundred thousand, and Koski still retained nearly fifty thousand hardened fighting men.