City at Worlds End | Page 9

at the same time.
"Haven't got to your car yet, Mr. Kenniston," he protested. "I said around five, remember?"
Kenniston shook his head and told Martin what he wanted. Martin shrugged. "Sure, you can hire the jeep. I'm too busy to answer road calls today, anyway." He did not seem particularly interested in what Kenniston intended to do with the jeep. The carburetor resisted and he swore at it.
A man in a floury baker's apron stuck his head into the garage. "Hey, Bud, hear the news? The mills just shut down-- all of them."
"Ah, nuts," said Martin. "I been hearing news all morning. Guys running in and out with the damnedest stories. I'm too busy to listen to 'em."
Kenniston thought that probably that was the answer to the relative calm in Middletown. The men, particularly, had been too busy. The strong habit patterns of work, a job at hand to be done, had held them steady so far.
He sighed. "Bud," he said, "I'm afraid this story is true."
Martin looked at him sharply and then groaned. "Oh, Lord, another recession! This'll ruin business-- and me with the garage only half paid for!"
What was the use of telling him, Kenniston thought, that the mills had been hastily shut down to conserve precious fuel, and that they would never open again.
He filled spare gasoline cans, stacked them in the back of the jeep, and drove northward.
Topcoats were appearing on Main Street now. There were knots of people on street corners, and people waiting for buses were looking up curiously at the red Sun and dusky sky. But the stores were open, housewives carried bulging shopping-bags, kids went by on bicycles. It wasn't too changed, yet. Not yet.
Nor was quiet Walters Avenue, where he had his rooms, though the rows of maples were an odd color in the reddish light. Kenniston was glad his landlady was out, for he didn't think he could face many more puzzled questions right now.
He loaded his hunting kit-- a .30-30 rifle and a 16-gauge repeating shotgun with boxes of shells-- into the jeep. He put on a mackinaw, brought a leather coat for Hubble, and remembered gloves. Then, before re-entering the jeep, he ran down the street half a block to Carol Lane's house.
Her aunt met him at the door. Mrs. Adams was stout, pink and worried.
"John, I'm so glad you came! Maybe you can tell me what to do. Should I cover my flowers?" She babbled on anxiously. "It seems so silly, on a June day. But it's so much colder. And the petunias and bleeding-heart are so easily frost-bitten. And the roses--"
"I'd cover them, Mrs. Adams," he told her. "The prediction is that it will be even colder."
She threw up her hands. "The weather, these days! It never used to be like this." And she hurried away to secure covering for the flowers, the flowers that had but hours to live. It hit Kenniston with another of those sickening little shocks of realization. No more roses on Earth, after today. No more roses, ever again.
"Ken-- did you find out what happened?" It was Carol's voice behind him, and he knew, even before he turned to face her, that he could not evade with her as he had with the others. She didn't know about science, and such things as time warps and shattered continuums had never entered her head. But she knew him, and she gave him no chance to temporize.
"Are they true, the stories about an atom bomb going off over Middletown?"
She had had time, since he called her, to become really alarmed. She had dark hair and dark eyes. She was slim in a sturdy fashion, and her ankles were nice, and her mouth was firm and sweet. She liked Tennyson and children and small dogs, and her ways were the ways of pleasant houses and fragrant kitchens, of quiet talk and laughter. It seemed a dreadful thing to Kenniston that she should be standing in a dying garden asking questions about atomic bombs.
"Yes," he said. "They're true." He watched the color drain out of her face, and he went on hastily, "Nobody was killed. There are no radiation effects in the city, nothing at all to be afraid of."
"There is something. I can see it in your face."
"Well, there are things we're not sure of yet. Hubble and I are going to investigate them now." He caught her hands. "I haven't time to talk, but..."
"Ken," she said. "Why you? What would you know about such terrible things?"
He saw it coming, now, the necessity he had always a little dreaded and had hoped might be forever postponed, the time when Carol had to learn about his work. With what eyes would she look on him when she knew? He was not sure, not sure at all.