The Long Twilight (49 page)

Somehow, there seemed to be a certain indifference right from the beginning. I asked a beautiful young couple strolling through a lovely park beside a placid lake if they weren't having a good time.

"I guess so," he said.

"There's nothing to do," she said.

"Think I'll take a nap," he said.

"You don't love me anymore," she said.

"Don't bug me," he said.

"I'll kill myself," she said.

"That'll be the day," he said, and yawned.

"You son of a bitch," she said.

I moved on. A child with golden curls a lot like mine was playing by the lake. It was drowning a kitten. It was just as well; it had already poked its eyes out. I resisted an impulse to tumble the tot in after the cat and approached an old gentleman with cherubic white locks who was standing on a stone bench, peering bemusedly at a large shrub. At close range I saw that he was peering
through
the shrub at two nubile maidens disporting themselves naked on the grass. He spun when he heard me coming.

"Scandalous," he quavered. "They've been doing that to each other for the better part of two hours, right out in public where a body can't help seeing them. Makes a body wonder if there aren't enough males to go around."

I had a moment of panic; had I overlooked that detail? But no, of course not. Male and female created i Them. It was something else that was wrong.

"I know," i cried. "i've been doing too much for Them; They're spoiled. What They need is a noble enterprise that They can tackle together, a brave crusade against the forces of evil, with the banners of Right floating overhead!"

We were arrayed in ranks, myself at the head, my loyal soldiery behind me. I rose in my stirrups and pointed to the walls of the embattled town ahead.

"There they are, lads," i cried. "The enemy—the killers, looters, rapists, vandals. Now's the time to get them! Forward once more into the breach, dear friends, for Harry, England and St. George!"

We charged, battered our way through the defenses; they surrendered; we rode triumphant into the city's streets. My lads leaped from their horses, began hacking at civilians, smashing windows and grabbing handfuls of costume jewelry, TV sets, and liquor. They raped all the females, sometimes killing them afterward and sometimes before. They set fire to what they couldn't eat, drink, or screw.

"God has won a glorious victory," my priests cried.

It annoyed me to have my name taken in vain; i caused a giant meteorite to crash down in the midst of the revelry. The survivors cited their survival as evidence of god's approval. I sent a plague of stinging flies, and half the people burned the other half at the stake to appease me. I sent a flood; they floated around, clinging to fragments of church pews, old TV chassis, and the swollen carcasses of dead cows, horses, and evangelists, yelling for help and making promises to me as to how they would behave if they only got out of this one.

I rescued a few and to my delight they set to work at once to save others, whom they immediately formed into platoons, congregations, labor unions, mobs, crowds, lobbies and political parties. Each group at once attacked another group, usually the one most similar to themselves. I gave a terrible yell and swept them all away under a tidal wave. The foaming of the waters around the ruins of temples, legislatures, court houses, clip joints, chemical factories, and the headquarters of large corporations amused me; I made bigger and better tidal waves, and washed away slums, eroded farmland, burned-off forest areas, silted-up river, and polluted seas. Adrenalin flooded my system; my lust to destroy was aroused. I pulverized the continents, shattered the crust, splashed around in the magma that boiled forth.

The moon caught my eye, riding aloof above my wrath. The bland smoothness of it annoyed me; I threw a handful of gravel at it, pocking the surface nicely. I grabbed the planet Oedipus and threw it at Saturn; it missed, but the close passage broke it up. Major chunks of rock went into orbit around Saturn and the dust formed rings; a few scraps were captured by Mars, and the rest trailed off around the sun.

I found that a satisfying spectacle, and turned to invite others to admire it, but of course there was no one there.

"This is the trouble with being god," i groaned. "I could set up a bunch of nincompoops to praise me, but what good is that? A fellow wants a response from an equal, dammit!"

Suddenly i was sick and tired of the whole thing. It should have been easy, when you have all the power there is, to make things the way you want them; but it wasn't. Part of the trouble was that i did-n't really know what i wanted, and another part was that i didn't know how to achieve what i wanted when i did know what it was, and another part was that when i got what i thought i wanted it turned out not to be what i wanted. It was too hard, too complicated, being god. It was a lot easier just being a Man. There was a limit on a Man's abilities, but there was also a limit on His responsibilities.

"What i mean is," I told myself, "I'm only a Human Being, no matter what kind of thunderbolts I can throw. I need a few hundred thousand years more evolution, and then maybe I can handle being god."

I stood—or floated, or drifted—in the midst of the Ylem that was all that was left of all my efforts, and remembered Van Wouk and Lard Face and their big plans for me. They weren't sinister anymore, only pathetic. I remembered Diss, the lizard man, and how frightened he had been just at the last. I thought of the Senator, his cowardice and his excuses, and suddenly he seemed merely human. And then I thought about me, and what a shabby figure I had cut, not just as god, but as a Man.

"You looked pretty good in there," i told Me, "up to a point. You're all right as a loser, but you're a lousy winner. Having it all your way is the real problem. Success is the challenge nobody's ever met. Because no matter how many you win, there's always a bigger and harder and more complicated problem ahead, and there always will be, and the secret isn't Victory Forever but to keep on doing the best you can one day at a time and remember you're a Man, not just god, and for you there aren't and never will be any easy answers, only questions, and no reasons, only causes, and no meaning, only intelligence, and no destination and no kindly magic smiling down from above, and no fires to goad you from below, only Yourself and the Universe and what You make out of the interface between the two equals."

And I rested from all my work which i had made.

I opened my eyes and she was sitting across the table from me.

"Are you all right?" she said. "You looked so strange, sitting here all alone, I thought perhaps you were sick."

"I feel like I've just made and destroyed the Universe," I said. "Or it's made and destroyed me. Or possibly both. Don't go away. There's one more detail I have to see to."

I got up and went across to the door and stepped through it into the Senator's study. He looked at me and gave me the smile that was as real as a billboard and as sincere.

"You've come," he said in a noble voice.

"I'm turning down the job," I said. "I just wanted you to know."

He looked dismayed. "You can't. I've counted on you."

"Not anymore," I said. "Come here; I want to show you something." I went over to the full-length mirror and he came reluctantly to stand beside me and I looked at the reflection: the square jaw, the well-tailored shoulders, the level gaze.

"What do you see?" I asked.

"A four-flusher," I answered. "All they ever asked you to do was live one little old life. And did you do it? No. You copped out—or tried to. But it didn't work. You're in, like it or not. So you'd better like it."

I turned to object, but I was alone in the room

I went to the door and opened it. Councilor Van Wouk looked up from the long table under the spiral chandelier.

"See here, Bardell," he started, but I unfolded the newspaper in my hand to the Sunday funnies, and dropped it in front of him with the
Florin—the Man of Steel
strip on top.

"He almost went for it," I said. "But he changed his mind."

"Then—that means . . .?"

"It means forget the whole thing. It never happened."

"Well, in that case," Van Wouk said, and began to shrink. He dwindled down to the size of a monkey, a mouse, a
musca domestica
, and wasn't there anymore. Lard Face was gone too, and the Bird Man, and the rest.

In the corridor I ran into Trait and Eridani.

"You're fired," I told them. They tipped their hats and silently faded away.

"That leaves you," I said. "What are we going to do with you?"

The question seemed to echo along the gray-walled corridor, as if it hadn't been me that asked it. I tried to follow it to its source, but the walls turned to gray mist that swirled around me as palpable as gray draperies. Suddenly I was tired, too tired to stand. I sat down. My head was heavy. I held it tight in both hands and gave it a half-turn and lifted it off—

I was sitting behind my desk, holding the curious spiral artifact in my hands.

"Well," the Undersecretary for Science said. "Anything?"

"I thought for a moment you looked a bit odd," the Chief of Staff said stiffly, and almost let a smile mar the rigidity of his little round face.

"As I expected," my Science Adviser said, and curved the corners of his mouth down. It looked like a line drawn on a saucer of lard.

I got up and went over to the window and looked out at Pennsylvania Avenue and the cherry blossoms and the Washington Monument. I thought about turning it into a big cement doughnut, but nothing happened. It was a humid afternoon and the town looked hot and dirty and full of trouble, like I felt. I turned and looked at the men waiting expectantly, important men all, full of the affairs of the world and their roles therein.

"Let me get this straight," I said. "You people brought this gadget to me, claiming it was removed from the wreckage of an apparently alien space vessel which crash-landed and burned in Minnesota last night."

Half a dozen faces registered confirmation.

"You recovered the body of a small lizard-like animal, and this. No pilot was in evidence."

"I assure you, sir," the Director of the FBI said, "he won't get far—or
it
won't get far." He smiled grimly.

"Drop the search," I ordered. I put the spiral gadget on the desk. "Bury this thing at sea," I commanded.

"But—Mr. President—"

I silenced that with a look and glanced at the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs.

"Was there something you wanted to tell me, General Trait?"

He looked startled. "Why, as a matter of fact, sir . . ." He cleared his throat. "It's no doubt a hoax—but I've had a report of a radio transmission from space—not from any of our installations, I'm assured. It seems to originate from just beyond the orbit of Mars." He smiled a sickly smile.

"Go on," I said.

"The, er, caller represents himself as a native of a planet he calls Grayfell. He states that we have, ah, passed preliminary inspection. He wants to open negotiations for a treaty of peace between the Lastrian Concord and Earth."

"Tell them we're willing," I said. "If they don't get too tricky."

There were other matters they wanted to present to me, each of vast importance, requiring my immediate attention. I waved it all away. They looked aghast when I stood and told them the cabinet meeting was over.

She was waiting for me in our apartment.

It was twilight. We were walking together in the park. We sat on a bench in the cool of evening and watched the pigeons on the grass. "How do we know this isn't a dream?" she asked. "Perhaps it is," I said. "Perhaps nothing in life is real. But it doesn't matter. We have to live it as if it were."