stories told how guerrilla bands had formed a resistance, how unthinkable weapons were unleashed, and how the environment was poisoned. Communications broke down; the government ceased to have power. The Four Horsemen — war, conquest, pestilence, and famine — seemed to ride across the land. There was no law but the law of violence and reprisal. Thousands died, and thousands more fled to the north, to old Canada. But the newcomers engulfed that country with their own miseries, until it, too, collapsed under the pressure of violence, plague, refugees, and subversion.
Soon after that the mutations began. No one was sure how they started. Perhaps the massive pollution had caused them, or dangerous chemicals that had been foisted upon the public, or stolen and misused by the desperate. Whatever the cause, children were born, seemingly human but very different in body shape and in mental processes from ordinary folk, and after many of them had been murdered, the mutants banded together. They hid themselves from the majority and began to plot against the others, for they began to think of themselves as superior. They called themselves the special ones, the Elect — and indeed, they had rare gifts. They formed a secret commonwealth within the crumbling state. They practised their own form of worship, but outsiders charged them with evil practices and told tales of black magic, of human sacrifice and satanic rites.
Toby’s eyes widened as he read this, for he had heard many rumours about the mutants, of whom he had seen but a few, and those harmless. Now he learned, too, about the origin of the bikers. They had started as mere outlaws in the long-ago world, but after the troubles, they were supplemented by ex-soldiers and by many from the disbanded militias, and so the gangs became very powerful, and broke free from all restraints. Theirs was the law of the strong, and sometimes they hunted down the mutants, and sometimes they made alliance with them against the righteous, the Old Believers.
On and on Toby read, but his mind swelled with images of horror, he felt sickened at the failures of the past, and at last he threw the papers aside in sheer despair.
“What is it, Son?” his father asked. “The truth is very bitter, I know, but you must preserve it for those to come — for your own children.”
“Yes, Father.”
Toby sat silent at the table, his head bowed and cradled in his hands. A terrible weight had descended on him. He knew what kind of land he inhabited, what kind of people he might expect to find in the world beyond his father’s homestead.
“What’s the use, Father?” he spoke out at last. “What’s the good of resisting? You and I, the Old Believers, we’re just powerless. The bikers and the mutants have the weapons. We’re finished before we even start, and that’s the truth of it.”
His father groaned in seeming despair, then, with an effort pushed himself upright on his bunk and cried out.
“No! No! There’s always hope. We have to trust in God’s providence. Too many of the others did not believe. They fell away; they lapsed into shamefulness. But we returned to the old laws, we embraced the Book. We swore the oath of Christian brotherhood; we refused all violence. We buried the dead and prayed for the guidance of the Lord. We waited, we prayed for deliverance, we kept our commission.”
“But, Father —”
“I know, I know. It all seems hopeless.” The old man fell back on the bunk, his words became reflective. “Now I can’t see, I can’t do my duty to the dead. I have to lie here, crippled by my affliction, and wait until the bikers come and kill me. Like Job, I’m cast down. I cry out to the Lord, but despair has a grip on my heart.”
Toby listened helpless, close to tears. He knew that the Old Believers were fast disappearing from the land. Who would fulfil the law and bury the bodies of their kinfolk? Who would solace the poor and the abandoned? Who would condemn the rituals of the mutants, the violence of the bikers? It was neither in his heart nor in his power to take on such tasks. He could care for his father, but he could not embrace the Book in the same way, with the same conviction. He knew this, but said nothing, and after a while, when the fire had died down to embers, he bade good night to old Talby, carefully put away the all the sad papers from the past, crawled into his own bunk, and went to sleep.
CHAPTER FIVE
He awoke to the smell of fresh pancakes; sunlight flooded the room. Toby rolled over, yawned, stretched his arms. Then suddenly, darkly, he remembered and threw back the covers.
“Father!” he cried out. His hopes leapt, then died as he saw the old man grope and fumble, prying up the pancakes from the overheated skillet.
“Here, let me help you.”
The boy sprang from the bed. Within minutes they were sitting down to breakfast together. But his first impression had not been entirely wrong, Toby decided, for his father seemed lively and happy, not at all sunk in the gloom of the previous night.
“I’ve had a good dream,” the old man explained as they sipped tea and dipped the last of the pancakes in honey. “I have to tell you about it, because it concerns you.”
Puzzled, the boy leaned across the rough table.
“In my dream an angel came to me,” Talby explained quietly, a kind of glow in his voice, as he carefully sipped his tea. “He took me by the hand and showed me my cousin, John Wilson, another Old Believer, who lives some ways east and south of Apple Valley. As soon as I saw John’s face I remembered the five hundred dollars in gold coins I lent him some years back — money that will come due this spring. Your mother made me save that money and bury it, but when Cousin John needed it for his daughter’s dowry, I sent it to him. The angel told me I might get a treasure still. With that money, maybe I can get a cure for my eyes. There must be —,” and here the old man swallowed hard, “there must be a good surgeon left somewhere. There’s just got to be! And if that fails, maybe I can hire someone to help us in our work.”
Talby was silent for a moment. In the face of his father’s new hope, Toby could not understand why he himself felt so sad.
“What did the angel look like?” was all he could think to ask.
Talby pressed his hands to his eyes, then said, almost as if he was ignoring the boy’s question. “I’d forgotten that nothing, except death itself, can take away the sights of my dreams. It was wonderful there, all the things I saw!”
“But you can’t remember what the angel looked like?”
“Of course I remember what the angel looked like, boy. He was dressed all in white, with a great sword bound round his waist. He had shining blue eyes and blond hair. He was a beautiful creature, that angel. And he mentioned your name, Toby, that he did! He said you were to go over to the country beyond Apple Valley to fetch the money from John Wilson and bring it back here, safe and sound!”
The boy felt a kind of excitement tingle his scalp and his fingertips.
“Me?”
His father groped, shook his head in frustration, and finally took hold of the boy’s shoulders.
“You must go right away, Son. There’s not a moment to lose. I know you won’t fail me.” He paused, hearing Ranger barking at something outside. “Why is that dog making all that noise?”
“But how can I go off and leave you, Dad?” asked Toby, ignoring Ranger’s calls. “The Reardons might come back. And how will you feed yourself? Anything could happen. I just can’t pick up and leave you.”
In his heart, Toby knew that the journey frightened him. In all his years he had never been far from the homestead. To go out into the world — to leave his father all alone and blind — was more than he had courage for. He wanted to run and hide in the back of the shed, in the darkness, where he had sometimes concealed himself when the sounds from the woods grew too painful.
Toby felt his father’s fingers tighten on his shoulders. Twisting away, he turned, knocking over a stacked pyramid of bottles. A wild clatter followed. He burst through the door and stopped short.
“Toby!”