a fleeing and a desperation in the face of a situation that no one could
comprehend.
How long, Enoch wondered, would it take a city to use the last of the
food stacked in its warehouses and then begin to starve? What would happen
when electricity stopped flowing through the wires? How long, under a
situation such as this, would a silly symbolic piece of paper or a minted
coin still retain its value?
Distribution would break down; commerce and industry would die;
government would become a shadow, with neither the means nor the
intelligence to keep it functioning; communications would cease; law and
order would disintegrate; the world would sink into a new barbaric framework
and would begin to slowly readjust. That readjustment would go on for years
and in the process of it there would be death and pestilence and untold
misery and despair. In time it would work out and the world would settle
down to its new way of life, but in the process of shaking down there’d be
many who would die and many others who would lose everything that had
spelled out life for them and the purpose of that life.
But would it, bad as it might be, be as bad as war?
Many would die of cold and hunger and disease (for medicine would go
the way of all the rest), but millions would not be annihilated in the fiery
breath of nuclear reaction. There would be no poison dust raining from the
skies and the waters still would be as pure and fresh as ever and the soil
remain as fertile. There still would be a chance, once the initial phases of
the change had passed, for the human race to go on living and rebuild
society.
If one were certain, Enoch told himself, that there would be a war,
that war was inescapable, then the choice might not be hard to make. But
there was always the possibility that the world could avoid war, that
somehow a frail, thin peace could be preserved, and in such a case the
desperate need of the galactic cure for war would be unnecessary. Before one
could decide, he told himself, one must be sure; and how could one be sure?
The chart lying in the desk drawer said there would be a war; many of the
diplomats and observers felt that the upcoming peace conference might serve
no other purpose than to trigger war. Yet there was no surety.
And even if there were, Enoch asked himself, how could one man-one man,
alone-take it upon himself to play the role of God for the entire race? By
what right did one man make a decision that affected all the rest, all the
billions of others? Could he, if he did, ever be able, in the years to come,
to justify his choice?
How could a man decide how bad war might be and, in comparison, how bad
stupidity? The answer seemed to be he couldn’t. There was no way to measure
possible disaster in either circumstance.
After a time, perhaps, a choice either way could be rationalized. Given
time, a conviction might develop that would enable a man to arrive at some
sort of decision which, while it might not be entirely right, he
nevertheless could square with his conscience.
Enoch got to his feet and walked to the window. The sound of his
footsteps echoed hollowly in the station. He looked at his watch and it was
after midnight.
There were races in the galaxy, he thought, who could reach a quick and
right decision on almost any question, cutting straight across all the
tangled lines of thought, guided by rules of logic that were more specific
than anything the human race might have. That would be good, of course, in
the sense that it made decision possible, but in arriving at decision would
it not tend to minimize, perhaps ignore entirely, some of those very facets
of the situation that might mean more to the human race than the decision
would itself?
Enoch stood at the window and stared out across the moonlit fields that
ran down to the dark line of the woods. The clouds had blown away and the
night was peaceful. This particular spot, he thought, always would be
peaceful, for it was off the beaten track, distant from any possible target
in atomic war. Except for the remote possibility of some ancient and
non-recorded, long forgotten minor conflict in prehistoric days, no battle
ever had been fought here or ever would be fought. And yet it would not
escape the common fate of poisoned soil and water if the world should
supenly, in a fateful hour of fury, unleash the might of its awesome
weapons. Then the skies would be filled with atomic ash, which would come
sifting down, and it would make little difference where a man might be. Soon
or late, the war would come to him, if not in a flash of monstrous energy,
then in the snow of death falling from the skies.
He walked from the window to the desk and gathered up the newspapers
that had come in the morning mail and put them in a pile, noticing as he did
so that Ulysses had forgotten to take with him the stack of papers which had
been saved for him. Ulysses was upset, he told himself, or he’d not have
forgotten the papers. God save us both, he thought; for we have our
troubles.
It had been a busy day. He had done no more, he realized, than read two
or three of the stories in the Times, all touching on the calling of the
conference. The day had been too full, too full of direful things.
For a hundred years, he thought, things had gone all right. There had
been the good moments and the bad, but by and large his life had gone on
serenely and without alarming incident. Then today had dawned and all the
serene years had come tumbling down all about his ears.
There once had been a hope that Earth could be accepted as a member of
the galactic family, that he might serve as the emissary to gain that
recognition. But now that hope was shattered, not only by the fact that the
station might be closed, but that its very closing would be based upon the
barbarism of the human race. Earth was being used as a whipping boy, of
course, in galactic politics, but the brand, once placed, could not soon be
lifted. And in any event, even if it could be lifted, now the planet stood
revealed as one against which Galactic Central, in the hope of saving it,
might be willing to apply a drastic and degrading action.
There was something he could salvage out of all of it, he knew. He
could remain an Earthman and turn over to the people of the Earth the
information that he had gathered through the years and written down, in
meticulous detail, along with personal happenings and impressions and much
other trivia, in the long rows of record books which stood on the shelves
against the wall. That and the alien literature he had obtained and read and
hoarded. And the gadgets and the artifacts which came from other worlds.
From all of this the people of the Earth might gain something which could
help them along the road that eventually would take them to the stars and to
that further knowledge and that greater understanding which would be their
heritage-perhaps the heritage and right of all intelligence. But the wait
for that day would be long-longer now, because of what had happened on this
day, than it had ever been before. And the information that he held,
gathered painfully over the course of almost a century, was so inadequate
compared with that more complete knowledge which he could have gathered in
another century (or a thousand years) that it seemed a pitiful thing to
offer to his people.
If there could only be more time, he thought. But, of course, there
never was. There was not the time right now and there would never be. No
matter how many centuries he might be able to devote, there’d always be so
much more knowledge than he’d gathered at the moment that the little he had
gathered would always seem a pittance.
He sat down heavily in the chair before the desk and now, for the first
time, he wondered how he’d do it- how he could leave Galactic Central, how
he could trade the galaxy for a single planet, even if that planet still
remained his own.
He drove his haggard mind to find the answer and the mind could find no
answer.
One man alone, he thought.
One man alone could not stand against both Earth and galaxy.
24
The sun streaming through the window woke him and he stayed where he