by Philip Wylie
He listened to fragments of the conversations in progress in his vicinity:
“I tell you, Henry, it’s silly, that’s all. If anybody expects me to give up my apartment and pack up my duds and move off one Hundred and Eighty-first Street just because a few gray-headed school-teachers happen to think there’s a comet coming, then they’re crazy.…”
“It’s the end, that’s what it is; and I for one am glad to see it. When the sea starts to rise and the earth starts to split open, I’m going to stand there and laugh. I’m going to say: ‘Now what’s the good of the Farm Relief? Now who’s going to collect my income-tax? Now what does it matter whether we have Prohibition or not? Now who’s going to stop your car and bawl you out because you drove on the wrong side of the street? Good-by, world.’ That’s what I’m going to say. ‘Good-by! Good riddance!’ I hope it wipes the whole damn’ thing as clean as a billiard ball.…”
“Don’t hold my hand so tight, Daddy. You hurt me.…”
“It’s ridiculous. They’ve been fighting about their fool figures for generations. They can’t even tell whether it’s going to rain or not to-morrow. How in the hell can they say this is going to happen? Give a scientist one idea, and a lot of trick figures, and he goes hay-wire, that’s all.…”
“So I says to him, the big oaf: ‘I’m a working-girl, and I’m gonna be a working-girl all my life, and you can tell me it doesn’t matter on account of the world’s coming to an end, and you can tell me the better I know you the better I’ll like you, till you’re blue in the face; but I’m gonna get out of this car right here and now, end of the world or no end of the world.’…”
“Laugh that off. Go ahead. Let me see you laugh that off. You’ve been laughing everything off ever since we were married. You laugh off the unpaid bills. You laugh off my ratty fur coat. You laugh off not being able to buy an automobile. Now let me see if you can laugh off an earthquake.…”
“I drew it all out and bought gold. I got two revolvers. I filled the house with canned goods. I said: ‘Here you are, Sarah. You’ve been telling me all your life how well you can run things. Take the money. Take the house. Take these two guns. I’m leaving. If we’ve only got a couple of months left, I’m going to see to it that I have a little fun, anyway.’ That’s what I said to her; and, by God, here I am.…”
Tony shook his head. Every word to which he had listened surfeited him with a sense of the immobility of humanity. Each individual related a cosmic circumstance to his particular case. Each individual planned to act independently not only of the rest of his fellows but of all signs and portents in the sky. Tony’s mind conceived a picture of huge cities on the verge of inundation—cities in which thousands and even millions refused to budge and went about the infinitesimal affairs of their little lives selfishly, with nothing but resentment for the facts which wiser men were futilely attempting to impress upon them. He heard his train announced, and walked to the gate.
He rode through a long dark tunnel and then out to the station at One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street. His eyes rested uncomfortably on the close-pressed accumulation of ugly houses. It had been taken for granted too long; and upon the spawn who inhabited it, the best thoughts and dreams of the race fell unheeded. They lived and died and did not matter. A pollution ate steadily upward in every body of society from these far-reaching honeycombs of disease, dirt, stupidity, these world-wide remainders from the Middle Ages.
Tony, who had never been religious in any conventional sense, had begun to share the feeling of Eve about what was going to happen. She had not been religious; but emotionally, at least, she accepted the idea that God Himself had sickened with our selfishness, stupidity and squalor, and in disgust had tossed two pebbles through the sky on their errand which, night by night now, was becoming more apparent.
The train moved past the final outpost tenements into a verdant landscape with the river on one side—the Hudson, in which tides soon would rise to sweep high and far over the Palisades. Tony glanced back, once, toward the teeming city. The first flood would not top those tallest towers etched there; the pinnacles of man’s triumphs would, for a while, rise above the tides; but all the rest? Tony turned away and looked out at the river, trying not to think of it.
CHAPTER 9—HOW THE WORLD TOOK IT
SETTLED in a chair, Tony glanced around the comfortable furnishings of the student’s room and then gazed at the student himself. A lanky youth with red hair, good-humored blue eyes and a sprinkling of freckles that carried into his attained maturity more than a memory of the childhood he had so recently left.
“Yes,” Tony repeated, “I’m from Cole Hendron. The dean told me about your academic work. Professor Gates showed me the thesis on Light which you turned in for your Ph.D. He said it was the finest thing he had had from the Graduate School since he’d held the chair of Physics.”
Dull red came in the young man’s face. “Nothing much. I just happened to have an idea. Probably never get another in my life.”
Tony smiled. “I understand you were stroke in the varsity crew two years ago.”
“That’s right.”
“That’s the year you were rowing everybody out of the water, isn’t it?”
“There weren’t any good crews that year. We just happened to have the least bad ones.”
Tony looked at the youth’s hands, nervously clenching and unclenching. They were powerful hands, which nevertheless seemed to possess the capacity for minute adjustments. Tony smiled. “No need of being so modest, old fellow. It’s just as I said. Cole Hendron in New York is getting together a bunch of people for some work he wants done during the next few months. It’s work of a very private nature. I can’t tell you what. I can’t even assure you that he will accept you, but I’m touring around in the attempt to send him some likely people. You understand that I’m not offering you a job in the sense that jobs have been offered in the past. I don’t know that any salary is attached to it at all. You will be supplied with a place to live, and provided with food, if you accept.”
The tall youth grinned. “I suppose you know that offering a chance to associate with Cole Hendron, to a man like me, is just like offering the job of secretary to St. Peter, to a bishop.”
“M-m-m. By the way, why did you stay here at the university when most of the graduate students have left?”
“No particular reason. I didn’t have anything better to do. The university is on high ground, so it didn’t seem sensible to move for that reason, and I thought I might as well go on with my work.”
“I see,” Tony replied.
His companion hesitated to say what was obviously on his mind, but finally broke the short silence. “Look here, Mr.—Mr.—”
“Drake. Tony Drake.”
“Mr. Drake. I can’t understand why on earth Hendron would want me. If he’s planning to take a group of people to some safe spot in order to preserve scientific knowledge during the next year, he can find hundreds of people, thousands of people, that have more knowledge to save, and a better memory to save it in, than I have.”
Tony looked at the good-humored blue eyes and liked the young man. He felt instinctively that here was one person whom Cole Hendron and the committee would surely accept. The name of the man before him, he recalled, was Jack Taylor—his record for a man of twenty-five was startling. He grinned at the youth’s speculation. “You’re a physicist, Taylor. If you were in Cole Hendron’s shoes, and were trying to take a group of people to a place of safety, just where, under the circumstances we anticipate, would you take them?”
The other man was thoughtful for an instant. “That’s just what worried me. I can’t think of any place on earth that would offer a refuge essentially satisfactory.”
“Exactly. No place on earth.” Tony emphasized the last two words.
Jack Taylor frowned quickly, and suddenly the freckles on his face stood out because his color had departed.
“God Almighty! You don’t mean to suggest—”
Tony lifted his hand and dropped it. “I’m offering you a letter than will give you an interview with Cole Hendron. Do you want to go and see him?”
For a minute Taylor did not answer. Then he said disjointedly: “Marvelous! My God—Hendron’s just the man—the only man! To think that anybody would come around to give me a shot at such a thing!” Tears suddenly filled his eyes, and he stood up and walked in two mighty strides to the window.
Tony slapped his back. “See you in New York. Better get going right away. So long, old man.”
Deeply moved, proud that any race, any civilization should produce human beings of the temper and fineness of young Taylor, Tony walked out onto the university campus and hurried to keep an appointment with an obscure but talented assistant professor of chemistry whose investigations of colloids had placed his name on the long list furnished to Tony by Hendron and his associates.
Tony, having applied himself for months to acquisition of the primitive proficiencies in growing things and in the manual arts, had found himself appointed by Cole Hendron as his personnel officer. Tony possessed, decidedly, a knack with people; and so Hendron was sending him about to recruit young men for the extraordinary duties of the crew of the Space Ship.
Her father had asked Eve to suggest, provisionally, the women who must go along; and Tony had met some whom Eve had selected.
Strange to think of them standing with you—and with a few other men out of all our world’s creation—on the soil of an empty planet! What would they be to each other there?
Stranger still, to gaze at night into the sky, and see a spot of light beside a brighter orb and realize that you might—you might become a visitor to that spot in the sky!
Tony returned, three weeks later, to New York City, where Hendron now spent most of his time. He had workshops and laboratories started in several places, but the advantage of conveniences in New York was so great that he had decided not to abandon his work there until later.
Upon his arrival in the city, late on a July afternoon, Tony went at once to see Hendron and Eve. He had business with Hendron—none with Eve; he merely longed to see her and be with her, more than he dared display. Not much change was observable in the city. The station was a sea of people, as it had been on the day of his departure. The streets were more than normally crowded, and his taxicab made slow progress.
There were three policemen in the front offices of the laboratories, and he was admitted only after a wait. Eve came into the reception-room first, and shook hands with him coolly. That is, outwardly it was coolly; but inwardly, Tony felt sure, she was trembling, even as was he.
“Oh, Tony,” she said, her voice almost giving way, “I’m so glad to have you back! I’ve read all your reports.”
“I’ve read all your acknowledgments of them,” said Tony hoarsely. It was all that had passed between them. Reports and acknowledgments, in lieu of love-letters!
“Father will be right out. We’ve been working steadily ever since you left. You and Dad and I are going to have dinner together to-night.”
“Any one else?” asked Tony jealously.
“No; who would there be?”
“Your South African, I thought probably.”
“Not mine, Tony!”
“Your father’s, then. He keeps him in the laboratory—for you.”
Hendron, wearing his laboratory apron, walked briskly into the front office. “Hello, there, Drake! Delighted to see you back. Your candidates have been arriving daily, and we’ve put them all to work. Dodson and Smith and Greve are enthusiastic about them.” He looked at his watch. “Five-fifty. I’ve got a little work to do here. Then we want you to come up to the house for dinner.”
As Tony unlocked his apartment door, Kyto sprang to his feet.
“I take your presence,” Kyto said, “with extravagant gratitude.”
Tony laughed. “A bath, Kyto, a dinner jacket, something in the way of a highball—I haven’t had a drink since I left. Good Lord! It’s refreshing to see this digging again. You’ve missed me, eh?”
The little Jap ducked his head. “I have indulged my person in continual melancholy, which is now raised in the manner of a siege-gun.”
“Swell,” said Tony. “The drink, the bath, the clothes! Eat, drink and be merry, for to-morrow we die. There’s something in it, Kyto.”
“I have become apprised of the Bronson circumstances in toto, and about your statement am agreement itself.”
Tony’s eyebrows raised. “Know all about it, hey?”
“I have a nice storehouse of information on same.”
“Good. How’s my mother?”
“Excellent as to health. Telephoning daily.”
“Maybe you’d better ring her up first. On second thought, that’s the thing to do. I telegraphed her occasionally, but heaven only knows when I’ll see her. She is a darn’ good sport.”
“A person of profound esteemableness.”
Tony looked with surprise at the back of the Jap as he started toward the telephone. The approach of the Bronson bodies had made his servant more loquacious than he had ever before been. Aside from that, no change in Kyto was discernible—nor did Tony anticipate any change. He began to remove his travel-worn clothes, and was in a bathrobe when Kyto succeeded in completing a telephone-connection with his mother’s house in Connecticut.
* * *
Tony moved with a feeling of incredulity. The Hendron apartment was exactly as it had been. Leighton approached stiffly with a cocktail on a small silver tray. There was even jazz emerging softly from the radio. He smiled faintly. Funny that a girl of Eve’s extraordinary education and taste should enjoy the monotonous rhythm of jazz coming over the radio, and yet she had always liked it.
Eve appeared—a new Eve who was a little different from the old Eve. She wore a green evening dress that he remembered from an hour spent long ago on the balcony.
“Hello, Tony.” In her eyes was the same wonderment, the same surprise and unbelief that he felt. She took the cocktail which Leighton had brought, and held it up to the light. A pink hemisphere, a few drops of something that belonged to a life in a world already as good as dead. “Happy days!”
Hendron appeared immediately after his daughter. “Drake! Evening, old man. No cocktail, thanks, Leighton. Well, this is odd. Here we stand, just as we did in the old days, eh?”
“Don’t say the old days, Father. We’ll be doing it all the rest of our lives.”
Hendron’s extravagantly blue eyes twinkled. “If you expect me to furnish you with cocktail glasses and smuggled Bacardi in the years that lie ahead on Bronson Beta, Eve, you vastly overrate my paternal generosity and thoughtfulness. Let’s have dinner. I want to get back to the laboratory for a conference at midnight.”
The dining-room doors were opened. White, silver and red glittered under the indirect lights. “I point with pride,” Eve said, “to the roses. It’s something of an achievement these days.”
They sat down. Leighton served consommé, and Tony picked up his silver spoon with a dreamy feeling of unreality which psychologists have noted and only badly explained.
Hendron brought him to his senses. “Tell us the news, Tony. We’ve been living down there at the laboratory ever since you left. This is Eve’s and my first night off. Eating there, sleeping there. We have dormitories now on the floor above. What’s going on in the world? You know, we even bar newspapers now. They’re too much of a distraction, and Dodson has instructions to keep track of the news but not to give us any, unless it will have an effect on our work.”
Tony sipped the consommé. “You mean to say you haven’t kept tabs on the effect of your own society’s bitter pill?”
Hendron shook his head. “Not anything to speak of. A word here and there in reference to something else, that’s all.”
Eve said eagerly: “Go ahead, Tony! Tell us everything. What do you know about the world? What’s it like in Boston? What do people think and say? What’s the news from abroad? All
we know is that the Government has at last done a little governing, and taken over the public utilities in order to keep them running.”
Tony began to talk. He took what opportunity their questions gave, to eat.
“It hasn’t made as much difference as you’d think. The Government at Washington is now less concerned with the fact that the populace should be moved away from the Coast, than it is with immediate problems. If you really have not read about them, I can give you some idea. There was a general strike in Chicago two weeks ago that tied up everything. No electric light and no water; nothing for a day. There was a terrific riot in Birmingham. The police forces in half a dozen cities walked out. The State governments weren’t able to cope with the situation. In some cases it was just that the people decided not to work any more, and in others it was pure mob uproar. The Federal Government stepped in everywhere. They took over blanket control of the utilities, saw to it that trains were kept running, powerhouses kept going, and so on. Nominally workers are jailed for dereliction, but actually I think they have found it necessary to execute them. Trouble began when I was in Boston, but in three days all the major functions of housing, food and transportation were working fairly well.
“I think the people looked first to the President, anyway; and the President had the good sense to kick politics in the face and take full authority upon himself to do anything and everything which he thought would keep the country in operation. There was some trouble in the Army and Navy, still more in the National Guard, especially with soldiers who were fathers and wanted to remain with their families. I suppose there are nearly half a million men doing police duty right now.”
“It’s strange,” Eve said, “but I realized things were functioning, without even having the time to investigate precisely why they were going.”