Public-domain ebook
The vengeance of Toffee
Language: en409 downloads on Project Gutenberg
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In: Science-Fiction & Fantasy·Humour·Novels
Public-domain ebook sourced from Project Gutenberg #65113.
The opening · free to read
By Charles F. Myers
The world was on the brink of atomic war and nothing, it seemed, could prevent it. But Toffee had a plan--and a little magic to boot!
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Imagination Stories of Science and Fantasy February 1951 Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
The bombs ticked--in remote places--behind locked and guarded doors. The bombs ticked, and the terrible sound was distinct in the farthest corners of the world--wherever a man picked up a newspaper, turned on a radio--or paused to listen to the beating of his own heart. A Bomb ... H Bomb ... X Bomb--the bombs ticked louder and louder with the growing hours--and each man dwelt alone now with the dark spectre of his own trembling fear.
"_Yesterday we perfected a new kind of totalitarian death...._" (It was difficult to remember the pleasant, relaxed voice which had once given the announcer his popularity, for now it seemed that his breath passed over taut nerves rather than vocal cords. But no one noticed; it was only what he said that mattered now, not how he said it. Fear fed on fear with an avid, indiscriminate appetite--and flourished from the diet.)
"_Today we can only be certain that the foreign powers will have caught up with us within the next few hours._
"_Can you remember the Atomic Age, ladies and gentlemen? How long ago that was! And yet how swiftly we have progressed from that to the Age of Human Terror._
"_The X Bomb--the incomprehensible unit of power and destruction which dwarfs the human soul and reduces it to a negligible fraction of quivering fright--just one small fraction contributing to the monstrous organism of terror which has lately become our modern civilization. How wretched we are to be living in a civilization in which the word 'city' has been rendered obsolete by the word 'target.' The New York Target ... the Chicago Target ... the Salt Lake and San Francisco Targets. How wretched we are._
"_And is it strange that these targets which were once cities are being deserted? Is it strange that men have begun to run from the bombs even before they have begun to fall? That is the nature of terror._
"_For the first time in its history the nation looks upon a nomadic society--largely that group of the working people who have ceased working to wander aimlessly, seeking safety within our own borders--living by thievery and lawlessness. Crime has increased so rapidly of late that a comparative estimate is impossible. That, too, is the nature of terror._
"_Today the government would force these erstwhile workers back to the hearts of the targets--force them by law back to the factories to engage again in the production of death and destruction._
"_'Necessary,' the statesmen say. 'Necessary to national safety.' But with the statesmen's words comes the obvious question: Is there still any national safety left for any nation? Does it exist anywhere, to be preserved? Haven't the fleeing nomads asked themselves this question already, turning their frightened eyes to the unprotecting skies?_
"_But the statesman must speak--and he must speak logic, even now when logic has deserted us, and words can no longer save us. Every man--statesman or otherwise--knows that it is no longer a question of whether the bombs will drop--but when they will drop--and who will drop them--we or they?_
"_It is true that no nation has declared war, but terror declares its own war. Can we wait another day to take the initiative? Can they? The undeclared enemy may destroy us tomorrow--or tonight--even within the next few minutes. I may not live to finish this broadcast--and you may not live to hear it...._"
Suddenly there was a sharp click, and the voice stopped, silenced as effectively as though a wire had been knotted about the speaker's throat. Marc Pillsworth, startled at the sudden silence, snapped forward in his chair and looked up. Julie, the lamp light slanting sharply across her face, glared down at him with tense irritation. She removed her hand significantly from the radio switch.
"I'm telling you, Marcus Pillsworth," she said menacingly, "I can't stand any more of it. If you turn on that bloody instrument again--if you so much as twitch your bony finger in its direction--one of us is going to die of unnatural causes, and you may have read that the female is notoriously more long-lived than the male."
Marc stared at her incredulously through the chill dimness of the living room. Then he sighed heavily. This also was the nature of human terror: every man was married to a shrew these days. Women simply weren't up to it.
But Julie had been better than most--until now. He looked at the tightly drawn lips, the circled eyes and tried to remember his wife's cool blonde beauty as it had been only a month ago. The contrast was disquieting. Well, these were harrowing times for her.
But they were just as harrowing for everyone else--for him. She ought to realize that. Suddenly, unaccountably, Marc felt his self-control slipping away from him with all the sleazy inevitability of a pair of silk shorts with rotten elastic. Suddenly the distorted face across the room was not at all the face of his wife, but the face of a vindictive stranger who had invaded his rights and his privacy with definite malice in mind. Reason left him, and, with a black sucking feeling in the pit of his stomach, he felt the last measure of his reserve trickle down the drain. Gripping the arms of his chair, he jutted his face out into the light and deliberately leered.
"With the world coming down around our ears," he snarled, "I suppose you expect me to sit here complacently simpering and snickering and snapping my gum like an addled adolescent? Don't you care that we may all go to blazes in the next few minutes?"
"No!" Julie screamed, fitting a direct answer to a direct question. "No, I don't care. I'm tired of caring. I'm tired through with caring. And I'm tired of you sitting there with those great elephantine ears of yours hinged to that radio. You've been at it day in, day out, day in, day out, day in...!"
"Stop repeating yourself like some idiot tropical bird," Marc snapped.
"Why don't you ever go down to the office any more?" Julie asked with womanly logic. "Why don't you get out of here and leave me alone?"
In heavy martyrdom Marc lifted his eyes to the ceiling. What was the use? Why go through it all again? He'd explained to her a million times that he no longer had any reason to go to the office. The advertising business had been one of the first to suffer. Who cared what the advertising industry had to say at a time like this? Who wanted to be beautiful or healthy or envied when there wasn't any future in it?
"Turn the radio on," he said steadily.
Julie's eyes actually sparked flame. "_What?_ Do you really have the grassy green gall to ask me to turn that thing on again? I don't believe my ears!"
"I'm not asking," Marc said slowly, "I'm instructing you to."
"Hah!" Julie snorted to some invisible spectator. "Listen to him!" She eyed him nastily. "Ask me to shinny up the doorsill and do a swan dive into my cocktail. I'll do that sooner."
Marc met her gaze for a moment and momentarily declined the challenge. "I suppose you just want to sit here and never know what hit you?"
"Exactly," Julie said. "For heaven's sake what does it matter what hits us after we're dead? At least I don't want to sit here chewing my nails while some morbid-minded deficient drives me into a state of complete nervous collapse."
Marc disengaged himself from his chair. She had a point there, though he'd rot before he admitted it. With considerable unconcern he moseyed across the room and glanced out the window. Then he stopped and leaned closer to the pane. Across the street the world was already ablaze. The night sky glowed red with flame.
"My God!" he cried. "The Fredericks are on fire!"
Julie moved to his side and stared out the window.
"Who are those people?" she asked. "The ones sitting on the lawn there?"
Marc directed his gaze to the right. He should have seen them sooner, except that one's sense of logic, when one is witnessing a fire, does not readily encompass a group of people lounging on blankets in the glowing radiance--especially when those people are concerned more with food, drink and cards than with the fire--and more especially when the owners of the flaming dwelling are prominent among those present....
"Aren't those the Fredericks?" Julie asked.
"Do you suppose they've noticed the house?" Marc asked. "But I suppose they must."
"Maybe not," Julie said. "They've been drunk for days. It started out as a house warming party. Do you suppose this is their idea of a joke?"
Marc turned away. "The papers are full of this sort of thing. The anxiety has driven people mad." Then suddenly he stiffened. "Maybe they've heard something! Maybe they've decided to burn their home rather than let the enemy do it for them." He ran to the radio and snapped the switch.
"_Beside every man stalks the black shadow of doom...!_" the announcer groaned.
At the window Julie instantly snapped to a position of rigid erectness. With cold fury she turned and regarded Marc's lank figure bent attentively to the radio speaker. Her eyes rested on her husband's impassive posterior, and glittering, unbridled madness flickered in their depths.
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