The Skull (4 page)

"All curious as hell," French said. "Well, I guess I'm going back to
town. I don't want my truck shot full of holes. Come on, Lora."

She was looking up at Conger, wide-eyed.

"Come on," French said again. "Let's go. You sure as hell can't stay
here, you know."

"Why?"

"There may be shooting. That's what they all came to see. You know that
don't you, Conger?"

"Yes."

"You have a gun? Or don't you care?" French smiled a little. "They've
picked up a lot of people in their time, you know. You won't be lonely."

He cared, all right! He had to stay here, on the field. He couldn't
afford to let them take him away. Any minute the Founder would appear,
would step onto the field. Would he be one of the townsmen, standing
silently at the foot of the field, waiting, watching?

Or maybe he was Joe French. Or maybe one of the cops. Anyone of them
might find himself moved to speak. And the few words spoken this day
were going to be important for a long time.

And Conger had to be there, ready when the first word was uttered!

"I care," he said. "You go on back to town. Take the girl with you."

Lora got stiffly in beside Joe French. The plumber started up the motor.
"Look at them, standing there," he said. "Like vultures. Waiting to see
someone get killed."

The truck drove away, Lora sitting stiff and silent, frightened now.
Conger watched for a moment. Then he dashed back into the woods, between
the trees, toward the ridge.

He could get away, of course. Anytime he wanted to he could get away.
All he had to do was to leap into the crystal cage and turn the handles.
But he had a job, an important job. He had to be here, here at this
place, at this time.

He reached the cage and opened the door. He went inside and picked up
the gun from the shelf. The Slem-gun would take care of them. He notched
it up to full count. The chain reaction from it would flatten them all,
the police, the curious, sadistic people—

They wouldn't take him! Before they got him, all of them would be dead.
He
would get away. He would escape. By the end of the day they would
all be dead, if that was what they wanted, and he—

He saw the skull.

Suddenly he put the gun down. He picked up the skull. He turned the
skull over. He looked at the teeth. Then he went to the mirror.

He held the skull up, looking in the mirror. He pressed the skull
against his cheek. Beside his own face the grinning skull leered back at
him, beside
his
skull, against his living flesh.

He bared his teeth. And he knew.

It was his own skull that he held. He was the one who would die. He was
the Founder.

After a time he put the skull down. For a few minutes he stood at the
controls, playing with them idly. He could hear the sound of motors
outside, the muffled noise of men. Should he go back to the present,
where the Speaker waited? He could escape, of course—

Escape?

He turned toward the skull. There it was, his skull, yellow with age.
Escape? Escape, when he had held it in his own hands?

What did it matter if he put it off a month, a year, ten years, even
fifty? Time was nothing. He had sipped chocolate with a girl born a
hundred and fifty years before his time. Escape? For a little while,
perhaps.

But he could not
really
escape, no more so than anyone else had ever
escaped, or ever would.

Only, he had held it in his hands, his own bones, his own death's-head.

They
had not.

He went out the door and across the field, empty handed. There were a
lot of them standing around, gathered together, waiting. They expected a
good fight; they knew he had something. They had heard about the
incident at the fountain.

And there were plenty of police—police with guns and tear gas, creeping
across the hills and ridges, between the trees, closer and closer. It
was an old story, in this century.

One of the men tossed something at him. It fell in the snow by his
feet, and he looked down. It was a rock. He smiled.

"Come on!" one of them called. "Don't you have any bombs?"

"Throw a bomb! You with the beard! Throw a bomb!"

"Let 'em have it!"

"Toss a few A Bombs!"

They began to laugh. He smiled. He put his hands to his hips. They
suddenly turned silent, seeing that he was going to speak.

"I'm sorry," he said simply. "I don't have any bombs. You're mistaken."

There was a flurry of murmuring.

"I have a gun," he went on. "A very good one. Made by science even more
advanced than your own. But I'm not going to use that, either."

They were puzzled.

"Why not?" someone called. At the edge of the group an older woman was
watching. He felt a sudden shock. He had seen her before. Where?

He remembered. The day at the library. As he had turned the corner he
had seen her. She had noticed him and been astounded. At the time, he
did not understand why.

Conger grinned. So he
would
escape death, the man who right now was
voluntarily accepting it. They were laughing, laughing at a man who had
a gun but didn't use it. But by a strange twist of science he would
appear again, a few months later, after his bones had been buried under
the floor of a jail.

And so, in a fashion, he would escape death. He would die, but then,
after a period of months, he would live again, briefly, for an
afternoon.

An afternoon. Yet long enough for them to see him, to understand that he
was still alive. To know that somehow he had returned to life.

And then, finally, he would appear once more, after two hundred years
had passed. Two centuries later.

He would be born again, born, as a matter of fact, in a small trading
village on Mars. He would grow up, learning to hunt and trade—

A police car came on the edge of the field and stopped. The people
retreated a little. Conger raised his hands.

"I have an odd paradox for you," he said. "Those who take lives will
lose their own. Those who kill, will die. But he who gives his own life
away will live again!"

They laughed, faintly, nervously. The police were coming out, walking
toward him. He smiled. He had said everything he intended to say. It was
a good little paradox he had coined. They would puzzle over it, remember
it.

Smiling, Conger awaited a death foreordained.