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jerked spasmodically, and his mouth opened wildly again and again. He died with mouth open, eyes
staring at the ceiling.
Qarlo looked at the body disinterestedly for a moment; death . . . what did one death matter . . . every
day during the War, ten thousand died . . . more horribly than this . . . this was as nothing to him.
The sudden universe-filling scream of an incoming express train broke his attention. The black tunnel that
his War-filled world had become, was filled with the rusty wail of an unseen monster, bearing down on
him out of the darkness.
The fighting man in him made his body arch, sent it into a crouch. He poised on the balls of his feet, his
rifle levering horizontal instantly, pointed at the sound.
From the crowds packed on the platform, a voice rose over the thunder of the incoming train:
Him!It washim ! He shot that old man . . . he s crazy! Heads turned; eyes stared; a little man with a
dirty vest, his bald head reflecting the glow of the overhead lights, was pointing a shaking finger at Qarlo.
It was as if two currents had been set up simultaneously. The crowd both drew away and advanced on
him. Then the train barreled around the curve, drove past, blasting sound into the very fibers of the
soldier s body. Qarlo s mouth opened wide in a soundless scream, and more from reflex than intent, the
Brandelmeier erupted in his hands.
A triple-thread of cold blue beams sizzled from the small bell mouth of the weapon, streaked across the
tunnel, and blasted full into the front of the train.
The front of the train melted down quickly, and the vehicle ground to a stop. The metal had been melted
like a coarse grade of plastic on a burner. Where it had fused into a soggy lump, the metal was bright and
smeary more like the gleam of oxidized silver than anything else.
Qarlo regretted having fired the moment he felt the Brandelmeier buck. He was not where he should be
where he was, that was still another, more pressing problem and he knew he was in danger. Every
movement had to be watched as carefully as possible . . . and perhaps he had gotten off to a bad start
already. But that noise . . .
He had suffered the screams of the battlefield, but the reverberations of the train, thundering back and
forth in that enclosed space, were a nightmare of indescribable horror.
As he stared dumbly at his handiwork, from behind him, the crowd made a concerted rush.
Three burly, charcoal-suited executives each carrying an attaché case which he dropped as he made
the lunge, looking like unhealthy carbon-copies of each other grabbed Qarlo above the elbows,
around the waist, about the neck.
The soldier roared something unintelligible and flung them from him. One slid across the platform on the
seat of his pants, bringing up short, his stomach and face smashing into a tiled wall. The second spun
away, arms flailing, into the crowd. The third tried to hang onto Qarlo s neck. The soldier lifted him
bodily, arched him over his head breaking the man s insecure grip and pitched him against a
stanchion. The executive hit the girder, slid down, and lay quite still, his back oddly twisted.
The crowd emitted scream after scream, drew away once more. Terror rippled back through its ranks.
Several women, near the front, suddenly became aware of the blood pouring from the face of one of the
executives, and keeled onto the dirty platform unnoticed. The screams continued, seeming echoes of the
now-dead express train s squealing.
But as an entity, the crowd backed the soldier down the platform. For a moment Qarlo forgot he still
held the Brandelmeier. He lifted the gun to a threatening position, and the entity that was the crowd
pulsed back.
Nightmare! It was all some sort of vague, formless nightmare to Qarlo. This was not the War,
where anyone he saw, he blasted. This was something else, some other situation, in which he was
lost, disoriented. What was happening?
Qarlo moved toward the wall, his back prickly with fear sweat. He had expected to die in the War, but
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Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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