Collected Short Fiction, page 58
The sidewalks of New York had always seemed to Zechariah uncomfortable places for anyone who wished merely to saunter along with his thoughts and dreams. Dreamers were liable to be elbowed and shoved by the hurrying—always hurrying—pedestrians with their set, tense faces, intent on getting somewhere before someone else did. Victims hypnotized by words: Success, Efficiency, Hustle.
But today no one was in a hurry. It was almost like Hatton. Everyone strolled as if they were just taking the air. On the rare occasions when there were collisions, the participants smiled and apologized graciously and insisted that it was their fault: “I was talking to my friend, and didn’t see you.”
For Zechariah it had some of the outlandish, intangible terror of an opium dream.
Zechariah was the only person on the sidewalks who was hurrying. He wanted to get to the sanctuary of the office. He got there early, and fussed about getting the books out of the safe and setting them out, waiting impatiently for Smith.
Smith arrived late, and Zechariah seized him—it was clutching at a straw.
“Smithy, it’s getting worse. I don’t think I’ve seen one sane person this morning. Am I glad to see you!”
Smith said, casually, “What’s that? Oh, yes. I’m glad to see you, too, Zechy.”
“I can’t understand it,” said Zechariah. “There wasn’t a thing in the papers about it last evening, nor again this morning. Nothing on the video, either, nor the radio.”
“I listened to the radio last night with my friend,” said Smith. “The N.B’.C. Symphony Orchestra. My friend likes good music.”
“Your friend?” said Zechariah, slowly, and somewhere within him a soundless voice cried: “No, no! Not Smithy! He’s my last hope.”
Smith looked rather embarrassed.
“Er—you don’t know him,” he said.
“Look, Smithy, you haven’t let me down? You haven’t gone the way of the others?” He was pleading.
“Of course not, Zechy. I’ll always be your friend.”
“What about your other friend? Where is he now?”
“He’s . . . Well, it’s hard to explain . . .”
“You mean, Harvey’s here now, and I can’t see him?”
“It’s something like that . . . I’m sorry about this.”
“Oh, Smithy! You’ve thrown me over for a white rabbit!”
“I’m terribly sorry to have put you in this spot, Harvey. Zechy’s always ribbing. Don’t take too much notice of him.”
Zechariah looked at him aghast. Smith wasn’t apologizing to him, but to some vision of his fancy standing against (he tall green filing cabinet.
“You—you actually call him ‘Harvey’ ?” he stuttered.
“It’s his name,” said Smith, simply.
“It’s been copyrighted,” said Zechariah, viciously. He tried, not very successfully, to calm himself. He would only alienate Smithy altogether with such spiteful sarcasm. He said, “You’ll be coming with me to see the Giants at the Friday evening game?”
“Not this week, Zechy. You see, my friend and I—”
Zechariah cut loose again. “Your friend!” he growled, and in a mad spasm of fury he swung a left hook at what he judged to be the geographical position of Harvey. He raised quite a draft, scraped his knuckles on the edge of the steel cabinet, and almost overbalanced.
“Harvey!” cried Smith, in lively alarm. “Are you all right? Did he hurt you?”
“Bah!” exclaimed Zechariah in disgust, and stamped out of the office. He knew he had lost Smith now, and nothing much seemed to matter except getting out of this crazy city.
THE NEXT morning he was sitting in the little defile in the Alleghenies where as a child he had played alone for hours. In this retreat he used to hold up the stage-coach singlehanded, kill half a dozen redskins every time he swept the rocks with his six-shooter, and (after he’d seen Douglas Fairbanks in The Mark of Zorro) leap around carving Z marks with his rapier on the villains. Z for Zorro. Z for Zachariah.
The rocky wall opposite him still bore the faint trace of a ragged Z scratched on it well over twenty years ago by the steel spike (from Pa Young’s tool-shed) which was his rapier.
He sat there on a rock, tired after the all-night drive, heartbroken by his reception down there in Hatton, and haunted by the memory of the small boy who had played in this place all day long with his head in a cloud of make-believe. It seemed to him that he had always had to play along alone. Was it because he didn’t trust people, or because there was some element in him—his habit of mockery?—they didn’t trust? He had thought that with Livvy and Smithy the barriers were down, that they shared an outlook with him.
And when they failed him, he had fled back to Pa Young, Chick Martin, Ma Schmidt, Pinky Chandler, and the others in Hatton who’d known him since he was a child. (He had no family of his own.)
He hadn’t expected a civic reception, but he had hoped for a friendly: “Well, if it ain’t Zechy, back from the big city! How ya makin’ out, Zechy? My, you look well! Come in and see the family.”
And it hadn’t been like that at all. Pa, Chick, Ma, Pinky—they all had companions in whom they were much more interested. The delusions, it seemed, were nation-wide.
All Pa Young had said was, “ ‘Lo, Zechy—ain’t seen you lately,” and he’d passed on, talking about crops to a silent and unseen listener.
The others had just said “Howdy” absently in response to his greeting, and didn’t seem either to remember him or willing to make the effort to try to.
And as he had fled from New York, so he fled from Hatton, up into the lonely hills.
Now he had to face it: He hadn’t a friend in the world.
Why, if all this had to happen, hadn’t it happened to him too? What had he done that he should be singled out for this doubtful distinction of being the last sane man around?
Where could he go, what could he do? If he went back among people, he’d fall victim to a raving persecution mania sooner or later.
Should he pretend he had a friend? What good would that do? He couldn’t fool himself, and no one else cared whether he was friendless or not.
Become a hermit here? What a prospect! But at least he knew his bearings in this playground of his youth; every stone of it was familiar. It was something known and loved to cling to.
But he knew in his heart that he would exchange all of these cold, unresponsive stones for just one friendly greeting.
“Mind if I sit down there?” It was a quiet, slow drawl.
ZECHARIAH looked up. It was a stranger; a tall guy, with slicked back graying hair, a thin, brown leathery face, and very blue eyes crinkled at the outer corners. He looked a humorous, sympathetic, alert type. Nevertheless, Zechariah distrusted him, creeping up on him like this in this nook he’d come to regard as his own.
“Guess I can’t stop you,” said Zechariah, sourly. “But this rock isn’t wide enough for the three of us.”
“Three of us?”
“No doubt you’ve brought your friend with you.”
“No. He’s already here.”
“Where is he supposed to be?”
“He’s supposed to be sitting on that rock, and he is, and his name is Zechariah.”
Zechariah’s heart leaped.
“Me?” he said, incredulously. The man nodded, smiling.
“Oh,” said Zechariah, and suddenly something gave, and the tears welled up in his eyes. Somebody wanted him.
The man sat down beside him. “I represent a society called The Happy Circle, Zechy,” he said. “There’s a great many of us out on active service just now. You see, people everywhere have been losing faith in everything, in themselves, in other people. One finds so few people one can really trust in these times when everyone is out for himself. There aren’t many people who are as self-reliant and unselfish as you are, Zechy.”
“I wish I’d met you before,” sniffed Zechariah. “Why did you leave me until last?”
“Because you were the strongest, the most mature. The Happy Circle gave the weakest priority—it was only fair, you’ll agree. It was decided that a man of your moral fibre could outlast them all—and you did. Then I was picked to befriend you. If I don’t satisfy, you can have me changed—”
“I shouldn’t dream of it!” exclaimed Zechariah. “You don’t know what it means—or do you?—to have someone understanding to talk to. I couldn’t have lasted much longer. Perhaps I sounded tougher than I really am. You see, I’ve never been properly understood . . .”
AUROLIER MINOR, of the Earth (Human) Division of the Safety Executive, stamped the tiny red star against the last name on the last page of the last volume of the Directory labeled “America (North).”
The name was Zyzincwicz, Zechariah Zebedee. Beside it was “Polish-American, b. Hatton, Penn., 1918” and a string of references relating to the files kept by the Physiological, Psychological, and Historical subsections.
Aurolier Minor gave a little sigh. He said, “That’s the last of that lot—over a hundred and thirty million of them. Well, it’s a good start.”
Brighter, who belonged to the Canal Division of the Safety Executive, and was merely ‘visiting his friend in this Division, of which he knew little, looked at the packed shelves and read out names: “America (South), Andaman Islands, Antarctica, Arabia, Australia, Austria . . . You’ve certainly got a long way to go. So much manual work, too. I’m glad my Division is almost all automatic stuff.”
Aurolier Minor said, “Our friends across there have a saying: ‘The price of liberty is eternal vigilance.’ If we substitute ‘safety’ for ‘liberty’, it becomes most apt.”
(Far out in the red Martian desert the radar towers picked up the great meteor heading towards the planet, and gave its speed, size, and direction to the computing machines. They buzzed, and gave the answer: “Class C”—which meant that the meteor was large enough jar a considerable residue to reach the ground, and its path would bring it dangerously near a Martian city, “Class C” was flashed to the Destroying Department together with all necessary information, and within two seconds the explosive rocket leaped to meet the intruder at ten times the latter’s speed, A thousand miles above the last vestige of the thin atmosphere the meteor was blown into harmless dust.)
“They seem intelligent—why are they dangerous?” said Brighter.
“Their civilization has become too complicated, too unstable. They are frustrated, and therefore fearful and angry. In that condition they may use their H-bombs, disintegrate their planet, and harm us with the consequent radiation. They are still children. Yet, basically, they have the same needs as ourselves: To be significant and secure. But, in their childish way, they also need to be loved.”
“That’s one need we outgrew,” said Brightor. “With the result that we’ve been completely sterile for half a million years. And here we are, a handful of us, incredibly old and fragile, clinging tenuously to life—for what?”
“For satisfaction of the need to be significant and secure.”
“Exactly. We exist for our Divisions; without them we don’t mean a thing. Our Divisions exist so that we can exist—for our Divisions. Safety first! It’s a vicious circle; our lives are pointless. We might just as well let them destroy themselves, and us, with their bombs. If they survive, they’ll only come to this.”
“Maybe not,” said Aurolier Minor, “Did we outgrow the need to be loved—or grow away from it?”
“I . . . don’t know. What is love, exactly?”
“I DON’T know—exactly. But I know that a very important ingredient of it is mutual reassurance. The loved reassures the lover, and in turn is reassured by him. The trouble with our friends is that their need to be loved is as strong as ever, but it is being frustrated by the too rapid discovery—especially in science—that most of their beliefs have been false. For instance, once, they believed their Earth was the center and reason for existence of the universe. Then their astronomers showed them their actual insignificance. There’s been a whole series of such shocks to their self-esteem and to their faith in beliefs of any kind. Now they’ve become suspicious of everything and everybody. They’re always looking for the catch. They trust no one, not even themselves. The frustrated love instinct coils back on itself, changes its direction and therefore its nature, and becomes a flux of fear and hate.”
(One of the thousands of Canal Division floats which continuously and automatically patroled the canals and tested their contents, brought up a sampling bottle with an invader in it. It was a tiny, celldike growth, apparently alone in the water. It was probably quite harmless, but its pattern did not agree with any of the known harmless species. The electronic supervisor of the float did not hesitate; its instructions had been clear. It destroyed the invader. Safety First. Prevention was better than a cure.)
“And so—?” prompted Brightor.
“And so they have to express their need for significance and security through fear and hate—the angry fight for power, to get on top to show they’re important and to have a feeling of security when all rivals are vanquished.”
“Pitiful. They can still believe, but only in illusions of that kind.”
“That’s why the Director ordered an immediate change of their illusions,” said Aurolier Minor. “Before they can respect others, they must be re-educated to respect themselves—that mad over-compensation had to be stopped. They had to be given back faith. The multitudinous voices of their civilization telling them this was false, that was false, they were fools to believe this or that or anything, until they were warped with doubt and heading for general neurosis, had to be replaced by a single voice of reassurance.”
“Something of a headache, providing two thousand million single voices, isn’t it?”
“No, it’s fairly simple. What each individual craves to be said to him exists as a wishful thought in his mind already. The pattern is pretty uniform: Benign approval, sincere praise. As you know—and as the humans themselves are beginning to discover—a thought is the individual structure of a molecule. All we do is set up a selector beam and a link to the vision centers of their brains. Once started, it works quite automatically, and they supply the energy themselves. They begin talking to themselves, giving themselves a boost.”
BRIGHTOR SAID, “And is that their whole future now—talking to themselves? It seems rather heartless.”
“Oh, no. Repetition will eventually bore them—like continually looking in a mirror; you get tired of your own face. Then they will turn their attention outwards again to their fellows. It will be a much more friendly attention, because they will be much more pleased with themselves and more stable altogether. Happy, balanced people. One of their own poets once wrote ‘O, make us happy and you make us good.’ ”
Brightor smiled. “And we should say ‘O, make them happy and you make us safe!’ ”
Then he stopped smiling as the voice from the tiny capsule in his ear spoke to him, intimately.
“I’ll have to go,” he told Aurolier Minor, in a moment. “My chief says our dredgers are finding more and more unidentified organisms in the Canals. I must make a thorough examination of the things. Good-bye for now—I’ll be back in a decade or so to see how your work’s turned out.”
Aurolier Minor grunted, and reached for the first volume of “America (South)?’ It was wholly made up of the names of the people concerned with the distribution of news by any means: Video, radio, film, or print. The Director believed in putting first things first; when you’re trying to calm people, you first calm those who are able to start a widespread panic.
All of the names were in strictly alphabetical order. The Director also believed in putting last things last. It was unfortunate for people in the “Z” section, reflected Aurolier Minor.
He opened the volume.
(The depression had formed near the North Pole of Mars, and a cold wind was trying to find its way south. Golan Wimor, of the Safety Executive (Meteorological Division), manipulated the “controls of Air Current Channels so that the cold air would pass between the Cities and not over them. When people are very old, they must keep out of drafts . . .)
Aaron Aarons, Foreign Editor of one of the biggest dailies in Buenos Aires, rang for a sub-editor. But a kindly-looking man he did not know entered instead, and said, “May I see you for a few moments, Senor Aarons?”
“If you’re trying to sell anything, don’t try,” said Aarons, with a frown.
“Oh, no. It’s about your piece in yesterday’s edition. An admirable summing up of the situation, I thought. There was one point which struck me particularly.”
“Oh,” said Aarons, mollified. “What was that? Sit down.”
The stranger sat down. He spoke very intelligently about Aarons’ article. They had an interesting conversation.
Half an hour later, Aarons told the man—Pablo, his name was—confidentially, “You know, I’ve never been properly understood . . .”
THE END
Double Trouble
Everyone has at some time experienced those days when “everything goes wrong.” A little matter of a hoodoo.
On Monday morning George Gray stepped out of the bathtub. It was a large bathroom and the cake of wet soap on the floor was very small, but George’s instep alighted unerringly on the soap. He performed a complicated acrobatic trick of the sort which is usually preceded by a hush and a roll of drums, and followed by terrific applause. There was no applause this time. George sat naked on the cold floor and decided that his neck was not broken, but that all his ribs undoubtedly were.
At the breakfast table his newspaper tore as he opened it, right across his favourite comic strip. He tried to hold the two pieces together with one hand while he reached with the other for his toast. But he’d forgotten to switch the electric toaster off. As he jerked his burnt fingers back, his elbow caught his coffee cup and emptied it into his lap. In the process the newspaper tore again; he screwed it into a ball and used it for mopping-up operations.
He had to change his pants, and so he was late for work—and at Boulter & Schwartz Inc., Radio and Television Engineers, the shop manager told him so, at some length.
