The Return | Page 9

a cook book.
In the afternoon, he and Loudons separated. The latter attached himself to the Tenant, the Reader, and an old woman, Irene Klein, who was almost a hundred years old and was the repository and arbiter of most of the community's oral legends. Altamont, on the other hand, started, with Alex Barrett, the gunsmith, and Mordecai Ricci, the miller, to inspect the gunshop and grist mill. Joined by half a dozen more of the village craftsmen, they visited the forge and foundry, the sawmill, the wagon shop. Altamont looked at the flume, a rough structure of logs lined with sheet aluminum, and at the nitriary, a shed-roofed pit in which potassium nitrate was extracted from the community's animal refuse. Then, loading his guides into the helicopter, they took off for a visit to the powder mill on the island and a trip up the river.
They were a badly scared lot, for the first few minutes, as they watched the ground receding under them through the transparent plastic nose. Then, when nothing disastrous seemed to be happening, exhilaration took the place of fear, and by the time they set down on the tip of the island, the eight men were confirmed aviation enthusiasts. The trip up-river was an even bigger success; the high point came when Altamont set his controls for Hover, pointed out a snarl of driftwood in the stream, and allowed his passengers to fire one of the machine guns at it. The lead balls of their own black-powder rifles would have plunked into the waterlogged wood without visible effect; the copper-jacketed machine-gun bullets ripped it to splinters. They returned for a final visit to the distillery awed by what they had seen.
* * * * *
"Monty, I don't know what the devil to make of this crowd," Loudons said, that evening, after the feast, when they had entered the helicopter and prepared to retire. "We've run into some weird communities--that lot down in Old Mexico who live in the church and claim they have a divine mission to redeem the world by prayer, fasting and flagellation, or those yogis in Los Angeles--"
"Or the Blackout Boys in Detroit," Altamont added.
"That's understandable," Loudons said, "after what their ancestors went through in the Last War. But this crowd, here! The descendants of an old United States Army infantry platoon, with a fully developed religion centered on a slain and resurrected god--Normally, it would take thousands of years for a slain-god religion to develop, and then only from the field-fertility magic of primitive agriculturists. Well, you saw these people's fields from the air. Some of the members of that old platoon were men who knew the latest methods of scientific farming; they didn't need naive fairy tales about the planting and germination of seed."
"Sure this religion isn't just a variant of Christianity?"
"Absolutely not. In the first place, these Sacred Books can't be the Bible--you heard Tenant Jones say that they mentioned firearms that used cartridges. That means that they can't be older than 1860 at the very earliest. And in the second place, this slain god wasn't crucified or put to death by any form of execution; he perished, together with his enemy, in combat, and both god and devil were later resurrected. The Enemy is supposed to be the master mind back of these cannibal savages in the woods and also in the ruins."
"Did you get a look at these Sacred Books, or find out what they might be?"
Loudons shook his head disgustedly. "Every time I brought up the question, they evaded. The Tenant sent the Reader out to bring in this old lady, Irene Klein--she was a perfect gold mine of information about the history and traditions of the Toon, by the way--and then he sent him out on some other errand, undoubtedly to pass the word not to talk to us about their religion."
"I don't get that," Altamont said. "They showed me everything they had--their gunshop, their powder mill, their defenses, everything." He smoked in silence for a moment. "Say, this slain god couldn't be the original platoon commander, could he?"
"No. They have the greatest respect for his memory--decorate his grave regularly, drink toasts to him--but he hasn't been deified. They got the idea for this deity of theirs out of the Sacred Books." Loudons gnawed the end of his cigar and frowned. "Monty, this has me worried like the devil, because I believe that they suspect that you are the Slain and Risen One."
"Could be, at that. I know the Tenant came up to me, very respectfully, and said, 'I hope you don't think, sir, that I was presumptuous in trying to display my humble deductive abilities to you.'"
"What did you say?" Loudons demanded rather sharply.
"Told him certainly not; that he'd used a good quick method of