The Listener (25 page)

“Yes,” said the voice.

Atino stared at the curtains. “Did I hear you answer?” he asked. “Or did I imagine it?”

Silence.

“The great Commandment,” said Atino. “ ‘Thou shalt not kill’. ”

He put his hands over his face. “ ‘Thou shalt not kill’. Above all, you must not kill. That is my problem. I don’t know what to do! If I give — them — what we eight know — there will be more terror, more death. They will say to us: ‘But if we don’t have this, if they first have this, then we’ll die’. If I say — if we say — this must not be used for death, then we’ll be execrated. We’ll be called traitors. Traitors to what? The code of killing, for killing’s sake?

“Dear God,” said Atino, “I’m not a murderer. Help me. If You do not help me, then the world will die. They’ve already heard something of what we are doing and what we know. That is why I am on my way. If you do not help me, Your beautiful world, Your garden, will be destroyed. My associates have given me all authority. I don’t know why this is, why they gave me authority to speak for them.”

He looked at the curtains with tormented eyes.

“Do you know that between Mars and Jupiter there was once a world, a planet like ours? A planet, like ours, with life upon it? God never created anything lifeless; He could not, for He is life itself. But that planet exploded. Or did it explode? Were there men like ourselves there, with death and hatred and evil and war in their black hearts? I know that many astronomers say that life would have been too cold on any such planet between red Mars and Jupiter. It might have had an atmosphere unlike ours. But must every life be like ours? Might not the oxygen we breathe be deadly to other creatures? The methane on the moons of Saturn may be breath of life to the inhabitants of the moons and Saturn. The breath of life is not only oxygen. We are too provincial. We insist on casting life in our own meager image. What our animal lungs can absorb must, per se, be what other lungs can absorb. What heat there is on this world must necessarily be the heat other creatures must need. What folly! What stupidity! Must everything be what we need, what we demand? Must everything be tempered, fashioned, arranged, heated, and cooled — in the universe — according to man’s needs? Are there not others with other needs, ordained by God? God has established the boundaries of the worlds. Perhaps He intends, by other atmospheres, by other thermodynamics, to keep evil from spreading from one world to another — to bar man everywhere. To bar murder — everywhere. To keep it restrained, in its own prison.”

Atino leaned toward the curtains, twisting his hands together, forgetting caution, forgetting everything but that he was a man and a soul.

“The way between Mars and Jupiter is full of immense debris, enormous, fragmented. It was a world. Did the inhabitants destroy that world?”

The silence answered him.

“And so,” said Atino, “we can — we probably will — destroy our world too. Help me. I am only a man, and I am afraid. I was not born in this country and so am open to suspicion. By whom? By the provincials, by those who will not understand, or those who pretend not to understand. For their own wicked reasons.”

He looked with passion at the curtains, straining forward. “Does goodness reside only on one particular continent, in one country? Are all other countries outside the pale? Who gave any country ‘the leadership of the world’? Not God. Only the egotism, the pride, the folly, the stupidity, the meanness, the hate of any particular country. Are we all not men, the children of God? Where is there leadership — except in God? But one must not mention God these days! If you do, there are smirks and winkings and sidelong glances. There are intimations that you are mentally ill.”

He groaned. “ ‘In God we trust’. That is on our coins. We in America pretend to believe that. We do not. We trust only in weapons and bribes and treaties and admonitions — as does our adversary. The old, old history — the history of death. What man ever stood on the battlefield and cried out: ‘Thou shalt not kill!’ Never, in the history of the world. Killing is our reason for living. We are all guilty, everywhere. None save God is good.”

He clasped his hands vehemently together and extended them toward the curtains. “The United Nations. Oh, God. What have they done to prevent murder? To establish justice, freedom, love, under God? Nothing! A congress of quarrels, of self-seeking, of secret betrayals of men of good will. They have stood silent before evil. When an affair of magnitude comes before them, they count the population of cats in the world! Dear God, it is quite true. Quite true. Dear God. Dear God! They won’t even permit Your Name to be mentioned there. It might offend somebody!”

He stood up, violently trembling, broken. He went to the curtains. “Do you hear me? Will you let me see you? Will you answer me?”

He touched the button. The curtains flew aside.

He saw a great alcove, more than twelve feet high, more than six feet wide, curved like a protecting and hallowed shell, filled with light.

He saw in the alcove a tremendous crucifix of roughly carved wood, broad and wide.

On the cross was nailed the Son of God, the Son of man, true God, true man, carved of ivory, or perhaps of the finest white wood. More than life-sized it yet seemed formed of living and pulsing flesh, exquisitely tinted, majestic.

The figure was not of the dead Christ but of the living One. The head was lifted, held forward, strained to listening, suffering yet hearing, intense if agonized. The eager eyes were turned on Atino, listening. The crown of thorns stood on the heroic forehead, and drops of blood streamed from it. The hands bled, and the left side, and the twisted feet.

The ardent, anxious, self-forgetting, loving, and listening eyes, the eyes which knew everything, saw everything, understood everything! The Sacrifice, offered up of Itself. For man. For evil, plotting, whispering, malicious, blackhearted man. Man, the murderer. Man, the thief. Man, the betrayer. Man, the destroyer.

Pity and mercy beamed on the mighty features, and forgiveness. The pity and mercy and forgiveness extended not only to man but to all the worlds He had created. To all the worlds He would create.

The light glimmered on carved muscle and thigh and strained arm, on rib cage, on breast, on chin, on stretched leg, on bleeding foot, so that it was not an image there, but Life itself, suffering and flesh-forgetting and loving, and eternal.

“Yes!” cried Atino. “Yes! I should have known! The Man who Listens. You have never stopped listening. You listen through eternity. Dear God. Dear God!”

He was weak, almost fainting. He let himself down beside the cross and leaned his head against the feet. Instantly a powerful sense of ultimate protection came to him, and comfort and love and gentleness and comprehension. He knew he would not have to speak aloud. All his thoughts would be heard. The mighty cross and Figure stood over him, a Fortress, a Gate that hell itself could not force.

We have discovered something, said Atino in his mind, and pressed his cheek against the feet. During our secret experimentations in our laboratories. We have discovered how to harness the sun, its great energy, its tremendous power! We were not even looking for it, yet in a few hours we had it. We stood there, aghast, searching each other’s faces. We had the power of the sun! My associates and I.

He looked up at the great head. It appeared to have bent a little downward toward him. He could see the large and living eyes, listening and enormously bright.

We knew what this meant. Before what we had discovered, the atomic and hydrogen and cobalt bombs were nothing. Only firecrackers. We had discovered the secret of the sidereal universe! Did You give it to us?

The eyes appeared to fix themselves on him in assent.

Yes, yes, said Atino in his mind. You did. It was so simple, after all, as all that You have made is simple. Only man has complicated everything, made everything obtuse and complex, labyrinthine, devious. Out of his evil nature.

We had discovered the power of the worlds. Once again, as once man had been, we were little lesser than the angels. I cannot tell you of our exultation, and then our terror, and then our complete understanding of what this meant.

What should we do with this awful thing, this awesome knowledge? we asked each other. Dared we give it to the world? Dared we, remembering, give it? Would we not be traitors to You, to our fellows, if we divulged it? We shut our doors tightly for days, for nights, for weeks, while we hardly slept or ate and only whispered, our heads together, our eyes pleading with each other, asking, asking.

Washington knew we were working on something, but not what it was. Had we inadvertently given a hint at one time? One of us? Or perhaps our faces betrayed us to watchers. Or our shut doors had alerted somebody, and our silence.

We had discovered how to destroy the world, between one breath and another, to hurl its gigantic fragments into space, to destroy man and all his works.

Or we could control the power at will, direct it to any nation, while we ourselves were protected. We found we could throw up an invisible field to protect us. Any nation which has this secret can control all mankind. That is the terror!

He strained his face up toward the larger face bent down to him. Was there a terrible warning in the eyes now, even perhaps a divine anger?

Atino no longer thought of ‘superstition’. He did not feel that the mighty Figure on the cross was only wood or ivory. It appeared to encompass all the universes from fingertip to fingertip, guarding, holding. A Force greater than all the constellations and stars and galaxies. “Dear God,” he whispered, and bent his head to kiss the feet.

After a little he continued to speak in his mind.

One nation, with this, can rule the world, make all the rest of the world whimpering slaves, can desecrate Your world, can destroy what You have done and given. It can take from Your children the freedom You gave them, and the stature.

We do not trust anyone. Is America more virtuous than any other country? No. We cannot trust any government, for they are men and, being men, they are naturally evil.

But we do know that our discovery of Your wonder, Your great secret, could make an Eden of this earth again, joyous, without hunger, without lack of shelter, without fear, without pain, without hatred. It could abolish labor and disease. It could open Your universes to man. It could finally reveal Your face, Your most holy face.

Atino was weeping now, like a child. The light seemed to grow stronger upon him, like the sun itself. It warmed his coldness, calmed his heart.

We cannot trust man, he continued. We cannot trust any government to use this power for the benefit of all men. No. What, then, shall I tell them when I am in Washington? Tell me what to do! For You, for my fellow men.

Tell me what to do.

He sat for a long time, listening, looking up at the carved face which seemed to be true flesh, both pallid and flushed, crowned with agony, listening, yet silently speaking in sonorous accents like the sound of remembered thunder.

Then Atino cried out in himself: Yes! Yes, of course! That is what I must tell the men in Washington who have sent for me. I had thought to tell them nothing at all because of the watchers at the desperate outposts of the world.

He himself listened, catching his breath sharply at intervals, nodding, turning up his face eagerly, nodding, clasping his hands vehemently together. Listening.

Yes, yes, it will be so easy to devise with Your help! A simple thing, as You have told me and shown me. How very simple! If they do not agree they get nothing, and the whole world may call us traitors and persecute us. But it will do no good. We cannot betray You and Your world.

A very simple device. I will tell Washington that they may have the secret — only if the secret is given to every nation in the world simultaneously. Only if they will permit me to show the men in the United Nations the device also, when I tell them what we have discovered. Only if they install the device You have shown me, first. First.

So simple. I shall tell them that before I give them the secret the device must be installed in the Pacific and Atlantic oceans, at the North Pole, at the South Pole. I can work this out in a few hours, tonight!

The device, installed in all those four places, will be guarded by ships of all nations, so that no one can tamper with it. Sunk deep in the waters, it will still be very sensitive.

If the power that I then give them is misused, is placed in a warhead and then tested secretly, then the devices will detonate every arsenal in the world, every stockpile of atomic and hydrogen bombs, including this new power of harnessing the sun. No matter how hidden, the wave lengths of the devices will find them, whether on land or sea or island. They will detonate them all. The whole world will perish in one breath. There will be no victors, no vanquished. There will be nothing left at all. There will be only fragments floating between Venus and Mars where once we had our orbit and our life. There will be universal death for man. There will be no more world.

Life. Or death. Man had that choice once before, and he chose death. Will he do it again? Only You can know. Only You. Will man choose to see Your face, or will he choose, in one instant, to die? Only You can know. I trust only You.

Yes, yes! The device is entirely clear in my mind now.

What can they do to me? We have been very careful, my associates and I. Eight of us. Each one of us has memorized only one eighth of the formula, one eighth of the calculations. You see, we didn’t even trust each other if pressure were applied. There are no written records. We destroyed them after each had memorized his part.

When I leave here I will call my best friend immediately. But not from the hotel. I will tell him that all our associates must leave at once for other countries so we cannot be taken all together and forced to speak. Our passports are in readiness. We will run. Not for our sakes, but for the sake of the world, for the men at the desperate outposts.

Then only will I go to Washington. This storm! It has protected even the destroyers, for they are men too.

Atino Kadimo stood up, refreshed, strong, full of youth and resolution.

He reached up and put his hand gently on the wounded side. “You brought me to You,” he said. He bent and kissed the bleeding feet. “So man can be protected, even against himself, from the wolf at the edge of the forest.”

He looked into the deep, great eyes, and they seemed to smile at him.