Our Children's Children

39

In New York, in Chicago, in Atlanta mobs hurled themselves against police lines. The signs read: WE DIDN'T ASK THEM TO COME. They read: WE HAVE LITTLE ENOUGH AS IT is. They read: WE REFUSE TO STARVE. The crowds threw objects, stones, bricks, tin cans battered into tin-shinny pucks so they had cutting edges, plastic bags filled with human excrement. The ghetto areas were filled with shouting and with violence. Some died; many were injured. Bonfires were kindled. Houses burned and when fire rigs tried to reach the blazes, they were stopped by barricades. Great areas were given over to looting.

In little towns throughout the country grim-faced men talked sitting on benches in front of general stores, filling stations, feed stores, stopping at street corners, gathering for coffee in the corner drugstore, waiting their turns in barbershops. They said to one another, among themselves, bewildered: It don't seem right, somehow. It don't seem possible. It ain't like the old days, when one knew what was going on. There ain't no telling, these days, what is about to happen, what will happen next. There is too much new-fangled now. The old days are going fast. There is nothing left for a man to hang to… They said judiciously: Of course, if it is the way they say, we got to do our best for them. You heard the President say it last night. Children of our children. That is what he said. Although I don't know how we are going to do it. Not with taxes what they are. We can't pay no more taxes than we are and them tunnels are about to cost a mint. Taxes on everything you buy. On everything you do. On everything you own. Seems no matter how hard a man may scratch he can't keep ahead of taxes…

They said sanctimoniously: That preacher down in Nashville hit it on the head. If a man loses his religion he has lost everything worthwhile. He has nothing left to live for. You lose the Good Book and you have lost it all. It don't seem possible that even in five hundred years men would have given up their God. It's the evil in the world today, right now, that made it possible. It's big-city living. The meanness of big-city living. Out here you could never lose your God. No, sir. He's with you all the time. You feel Him in the wind. You see Him in the color of the eastern sky just before the break of dawn. You sense Him in the hush of evening. I feel sorry for these people from the future. I do feel purely sorry for them. They don't know what they lost…

They said angrily of the riots: They ought to shoot them down. I wouldn't fool around with stuff like that. Not for a minute would I. Those people, some of them ain't never done a lick of work in all their entire lives. They just stand there with their hands out. You can't tell me, if a man really wants to work, or a woman either, they can't find a job. Out here we scratch and dig and sweat and we get next to nothing, but we don't riot, we don't burn9 we don't stand with hands out…

They said of the young people with the signs in Lafayette Park: If they want to go to the Miocene or whatever this place is, why don't we let them go? We won't never miss them. We would be better off without them…

The village banker said, with ponderous judiciousness: Mark my word, we'll be lucky if these future folks don't ruin the entire country. Yes, sir, the entire country; maybe the entire world. The dollar will be worth nothing and prices will go up… And inevitably they got around to it, whispering the blackest of their thoughts: You just wait and see. It's a Commie plot, I tell you. A dirty Commie plot. I don't know how they worked it, but when the wash comes out, we'll find these Russians at the bottom of it…

There was marching in the land, a surge toward Washington — by hitchhiking, by bus, by old beat-up clunkers of cars. An inward streaming of the countercultural young. Some of them reached the city before the fall of night and marched with banners saying: Back To The Miocene; Bring On The Sabretooths! Others continued through the night or rested in the night to continue with first light, sleeping in haystacks or on park benches, wolfing hamburgers, seeking out alliances, talking in hushed tones around campfires.

Other bands marched as well in the streets of Washington, bands in the center of which were young men staggering under the weight of heavy crosses, stumbling and falling, then staggering up again to continue on their way. Some wore crowns of thorns, with blood trickling down their foreheads. Late in the afternoon a furious fight broke out in Lafayette Park when an indignant crowd, among them many of the hopefully Miocene-bound youngsters, moved to stop a crucifixion, with the victim already lashed to the cross and the hole half dug for its planting. Police charged in and after a bloody fifteen minutes cleared the park. When all were gone, four crudely fashioned crosses were gathered up and carted off. "These kids are crazy," said one panting officer. "I wouldn't give you a dime for the entire lot of them."

Senator Andrew Oakes phoned Grant Wellington. "Now is the time," he said in a conspiratorial voice, "to lie extremely low. Don't say a word. Don't even look as if you were interested. The situation, you might say, is fluid. There is nothing set. No one knows which way the cat will jump. There is something going on. The Russian was at the White House this morning and that bodes no good for anyone. Something we don't understand is very much afoot."

Clinton Chapman phoned Reilly Douglas. "You know anything, Reilly?"

"Nothing except that there really is time travel and we have the blueprints for it."

"You have seen the blueprints?"

"No, I haven't. It all is under wraps. No one is saying anything. The scientists who talked with the future people aren't talking."

"But you…"

"I know, Clint. I'm the Attorney General, but, hell, in a thing like this that doesn't count for anything. This is top secret. A few of the Academy crowd and that is all. Not even the military, and even if the military wanted it, I have my doubts…"

"But they have to let someone know. You can't build a thing until you know."

"Sure, how to build it, but that is all. Not how it works. Not why it works. Not the principle."

"What the hell difference does that make?"

"I should think it would," said Douglas. "I, personally, would be distrustful of building something I didn't understand."

"You say it is time travel. No doubt of that, it is really time travel."

"No doubt at all," said Douglas.

"Then there's a mint in it," said Chapman, "and I mean to…"

"But if it only works one way —»

"It has to work both ways," said Chapman. "That's what my people tell me."

"It will take a lot of financing," said Douglas. "I've talked to a lot of people," said Chapman. "People I can trust. Some of them are interested. Enough of them. Definitely interested. They see the possibilities. There'll be no lack of funds if we can put it through."

Judy Gray got on the plane and found her seat. She looked out the window, saw the scurrying trucks — saw them mistily and quickly put up a hand to wipe her eyes. She said to herself, almost lovingly, through clenched teeth: "The son of a bitch. The dirty son of a bitch!"