Dictatorship -- Fiction; Science fiction; Short stories; Time travel -- Fiction
Barlow focused his eyes on the face of the man who came forward, and
saw that it was the chief of Laurine's group. Then there was a flurry
of movement among the captives and a girl ran to his arms. Her face was
tear-streaked and her voice unsteady.
"Joel! I hoped that they wouldn't get you." She was crying again,
softly, face hidden against his chest.
He stroked her hair slowly. "Don't cry, Laurine," he said dully as he
looked around. There were many whom he didn't recognize, but among the
half hundred in the cell he recognized all those of Laurine's group
that he had met. He looked at the leader questioningly.
"A clean sweep," said the leader. "And not only of our group, but of
every one in the country. The prisons are full, overcrowded. We know
that nearly every man of our group was captured, and the others report
the same for their groups. The Organization is through."
"They must have got lists of members," Barlow mumbled.
"How could they?" the leader demanded. "Nothing like that exists. We
never kept any records. No! It was spies. They may even have got into
the organization. Laurine tells me of something strange that made her
return to headquarters to get help for you. What was it?"
Laurine had ceased her weeping, but she still clung to him. And Barlow
felt an inner happiness for her closeness. He held her in his arms
while he told the leader all that had happened to him. When he was
through he expected them to feel as he did, that the disaster had
struck them at the very moment when success seemed within their grasp.
But instead they were staring at him pityingly.
"What's the matter?" he asked hesitantly.
Laurine lifted her head from his chest and freed herself of his arms.
In her eyes too, there was pity. But there was also anger.
"You fool!" she cried. "That must have been the spy."
Barlow was stricken dumb for a minute. Then he shook his doubts from
his mind. "No! Valnar wanted to help us."
The leader pressed his shoulder with a smile, "No, son," he said,
shaking his head slowly. "He must have been a spy. That story
of time-traveling--" He left the sentence uncompleted and the
incompleteness only showed more starkly the absurdity of Valnar's tale.
Barlow felt the strength flow from his body. He felt old, tired. All
that they had fought for was gone. This was the world's last chance
at freedom. All the Unamenables were gathered together for death and
there would be no more differences of opinion. The only opinions in the
Americas would be those of Director Dodson. And soon his will would be
the only power in the world. In his mind's eye he seemed to see man
marching through time in a long hopeless column, never progressing,
always regressing, without the yeast of the fighting minority. He
turned away from those eyes of his companions, those eyes that told him
that he had had the chance to avenge this betrayal and had failed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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