Not This August (Christmas Eve). Cyril M. Kornbluth

owned the ground on which almost every store in Chiunga County stood.

      "Betsy," he said tentatively, "we haven't known each other very long, but I have come to regard you with reverent affection. I feel toward you as a brother. Don't you think it would be nice if Mr. T. C. Cardew adopted me to make it legal?"

      She laughed sharply. "It's nice to hear a joke again," she said. "But frankly you wouldn't like it. To be blunt, Mr. T. C. Cardew is a skunk. I had a nice mother once, but he divorced her."

      He was considerably embarrassed. After a pause he asked: "You been in any of the big cities lately? New York, Boston?"

      "Boston last month. My plane from Ithaca got forced into the northbound traffic pattern and the pilot didn't dare turn. We would've gone down on the CAD screen as a bogey, and wham. The ladies don't ask questions first any more. Not since Chicago and Pittsburgh."

      "How was Boston?"

      "I just saw the airport. The usual thing—beggars, wounded, garbage in the streets. No flies—too early in the year."

      "I have a feeling that we in the country don't know what's going on outside our own little milk routes. I also have a feeling that the folks in Boston don't know about the folks in New York and vice versa."

      "Mr. Justin, your feeling is well grounded," she said emphatically. "The big cities are hellholes because conditions have become absolutely unbearable and still people have to bear them. Did you know New York's under martial law?"

      "No!"

      "Yes. The 104th Division and the 33rd Armored Division are in town. They're needed in El Paso, but they were yanked North to keep New York from going through with a secession election."

      He almost said something stupid ("I didn't read about it in the Times") but caught himself. She went on: "Of course, I shouldn't be telling you state secrets, but I've noticed at home that a state secret is something known to everybody who makes more than fifty thousand a year and to nobody who makes less. Don't you feel rich now, Mr. Justin?"

      "Filthy rich. Don't worry, by the way. I won't pass anything on to anybody."

      "Bless you, I know that! Your mail's read, your phone's monitored, and your neighbors are probably itching to collect a bounty on you for turning you in as a D-or-S." A "D-or-S" was a "disaffected or seditious person"—not quite a criminal and certainly not a full-fledged citizen. He usually found himself making camouflage nets behind barbed wire in Nevada, never fully realizing what had hit him.

      "You're a little rough on my neighbors. Nobody gets turned in around here for shooting off his mouth. It's still a small corner of America."

      Insanely dangerous to be talking like that to a stranger—insanely dangerous and wildly exhilarating. Sometimes he hiked over to the truck farm of his friends the Bradens, also city exiles, and they had sessions into the small hours that cleared their minds of gripes intolerably accumulated like pus in a boil. Amy Braden's powerful home brew helped. . . .

      Rumble-rumble, they rolled over the Lehigh's tracks at the Norton grade crossing; Croley's store was dead ahead at the end of the short main street. Norton, New York, had a population of about sixty old people and no young ones. Since a few brief years of glory a century and a half ago as a major riverboat town on the Susquehanna it had been running down. But somehow Croley made a store there pay.

      She parked neatly and handed him a big sheaf of mail. "Give these to the Great Stone Face," she said. "I don't like to look at him."

      "Thanks for the ride," he said. "And the talk."

      She flashed a smile. "We must do it more often," and drove away.

      Immediately, thinking of his return trip, he canvassed the cars and wagons lined up before Croley's. When he recognized Gus Feinblatt's stake wagon drawn by Tony and Phony, the two big geldings, he knew he had it made. Gus was that fantastic rarity, a Jewish farmer, and he lived up the road from Justin.

      The store was crowded down to the tip of its ell. Everybody in Norton was there, standing packed in utter silence. Croley's grim face swiveled toward him as he entered; then the storekeeper nodded at a freezer compartment where he could sit.

      Justin wanted to yell: "What is this, a gag?"

      Then the radio, high on a shelf, spoke. As it spoke, Justin realized that it had been saying the same thing for possibly half an hour, over and over again, but that people stayed and listened to it over and over again, numbly waiting for somebody to cry "Hoax" or "Get away from that mike you dirty Red" or anything but what it would say.

      The radio said: "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States." Then the inimitable voice, but weary, deathly weary. "My fellow Americans. Our armed forces have met with terrible defeat on land and at sea. I have just been advised by General Fraley that he has unconditionally surrendered the Army of the Southwest to Generals Novikov and Feng. General Fraley said the only choice before him was surrender or the annihilation of his troops to the last man by overwhelmingly superior forces. History must judge the wisdom of his choice; here and now I can only say that his capitulation removes the last barrier to the northward advance of the armies of the Soviet Union and the Chinese People's Republic.

      "My fellow citizens, I must now tell you that for three months the United States has not possessed a fleet in being. It was destroyed in a great air-sea battle off the Azores, a battle whose results it was thought wisest to conceal temporarily.

      "We are disarmed. We are defeated.

      "I have by now formally communicated the capitulation of the United States of America to the U.S.S.R. and the C.P.R. to our embassy in Switzerland, where it will be handed to the Russian and Chinese embassies.

      "As Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States I now order all officers and enlisted men and women to cease fire. Maintain discipline, hold your ranks, but offer no opposition to the advance of the invading armies, for resistance would be a futile waste of lives—and an offense for which the invading armies might retaliate tenfold. You will soon be returned to your homes and families in an orderly demobilization. Until then maintain discipline. You were a great fighting force, but you were outnumbered.

      "To the civilians of the United States I also say 'Maintain discipline.' Your task is the harder, for it must be self-discipline. Keep order. Obey the laws of the land. Respect authority. Make no foolish demonstrations. Comport yourselves so that our conquerors will respect us.

      "Beyond that I have no advice to give. The terms of surrender will reach me in due course and will be immediately communicated to you. Until then may God bless you all and stay you in this hour of trial."

      There was a long pause, and the radio said: "Ladies and gentlemen, the President of the United States."

      "My fellow Americans. Our armed forces have met with . . ."

      Justin looked around him incredulously and saw that most of them were silently crying.

      CHAPTER TWO

       Table of Contents

      Along about one o'clock people began to drift dazedly from the store—to their homes in Norton to talk in stunned whispers on the board sidewalk fronting the grocery. Old man Croley turned the radio off when a girl's voice said between replays of the surrender statement that there would be a new announcement broadcast at 9:00 P.M. for which electric-current restrictions would be temporarily relaxed.

      "That'll be the surrender terms," Gus Feinblatt said to Justin.

      "I guess so. Gus—what do you think?"

      There were four thousand years of dark history in Feinblatt's eyes. "I think the worst is yet to come, Billy."

      "You'll get your kids back."

      "At such a price. I don't know whether it's worth it . . . Well, life goes on. Mr. Croley?"

      The