This Way to the End Times: Classic Tales of the Apocalypse

by Robert Silverberg

  I could not bear to hear this fellow speak. Here was one of the old sort of men, the men that talked evil, and murmured about God. “Friends,” I said, turning to the Feasters, “we will have no skeletons like that at our feast.” So saying I seized a piece of flaming wood from the fire, and rushed at the man. He struggled fiercely, but he had no weapon, and I beat him about the head till he fell, and death rattled in his throat—rattled with what seemed to me a most familiar sound. I stood aghast; then wiped the blood from the man’s eyes and looked into them.

  “Who are you?” I exclaimed. “I have seen you before; I seem to know the sound of your voice and the color of your eyes. Can you speak a word and tell us your story, most unhappy prophet, before you die?”

  “Men of the Last Generation,” said the dying man, raising himself on his elbow—“Men of the Last Generation, I am Joshua Harris, your King.”

  As brainless frogs who have no thought or sense in them, yet shrink when they are touched, and swim when the accustomed water laves their eager limbs, so did these poor creatures feel a nerve stirring within them, and unconsciously obey the voice which had commanded them of old. As though the mere sound of his tremulous words conveyed an irresistible mandate, the whole group came shuffling nearer. All the while they preserved a silence that made me afraid, so reminiscent was it of that deadly hush that had followed the Proclamation, of the quiet army starting for London, and especially of that mysterious and sultry morning so many years ago when the roses hung their enamelled heads and the leaves were as still as leaves of tin or copper. They sat down in circles round the fire, maintaining an orderly disposition, like a stray battalion of some defeated army which is weary of fruitless journeys in foreign lands, but still remembers discipline and answers to command. Meanwhile, the dying man was gathering with a noiseless yet visible effort every shred of strength from his massive limbs, and preparing to give them his last message. As he looked round on that frightful crowd great tears, that his own pain and impending doom could never have drawn from him, filled his strange eyes.

  “Forgive me—forgive me,” he said at last, clearly enough for all to hear. “If any of you still know what mercy is, or the meaning of forgiveness, say a kind word to me. Loving you, relying on humanity and myself, despising the march of Time and the power of Heaven, I became a false redeemer, and took upon my back the burden of all sin. But how was I to know, my people, I who am only a man, whither my plans for your redemption would lead? Have none of you a word to say?

  “Is there no one here who remembers our fighting days? Where are the great lieutenants who stood at my side and cheered me with counsel? Where are Robertson, Baldwin, and Andrew Spencer? Are there none of the old set left?”

  He brushed the tears and blood from his eyes and gazed into the crowd. Pointing joyously to an old man who sat not far away he called out, “I know you, Andrew, from that great scar on your forehead. Come here, Andrew, and that quickly.”

  The old man seemed neither to hear nor understand him, but sat like all the rest, blinking and unresponsive.

  “Andrew,” he cried, “you must know me! Think of Brum and South Melton Street. Be an Englishman, Andrew—come and shake hands!”

  The man looked at him with staring, timid eyes; then shuddered all over, scrambled up from the ground, and ran away.

  “It does not matter,” murmured the King of the World. “There are no men left. I have lived in the desert, and I saw there that which I would I had seen long ago—visions that came too late to warn me. For a time my Plan has conquered; but that greater Plan shall be victorious in the end.”

  I was trying to stanch the wounds I had inflicted; and I hoped to comfort him, but he thrust me aside.

  “I know that no man of this generation could have killed me. I have nothing in common with you, bright Spirit. It was not you I loved, not for you I fought and struggled, but for these. I do not want to be reminded, by that light of reason shining in your eyes, of what we were all of us, once. It was a heroic age, when good and evil lived together, and misery bound man to man. Yet I will not regret what I have done. I ask forgiveness not of God, but of Man; and I claim the gratitude of thousands who are unknown, and unknown shall ever remain. For ages and ages God must reign over an empty kingdom, since I have brought to an end one great cycle of centuries. Tell me, Stranger, was I not great in my day?”

  He fell back, and the Wind that took his Spirit carried me also into space.

  VII. THE LAST MEN

  THE WIND BORE ME ONWARDS more than forty years, and I found seated beside a granary half-a-dozen wrinkled and very aged men, whose faces were set with a determination to go on living to the bitter end. They were delirious, and naked; they tore their white beards; they mumbled and could not speak. The great beasts came out of the forest by night softly and gazed at them with their lantern eyes, but never did them harm. All day long they ate and slept or wandered a little aimlessly about. During that year four of them died.

  Afterwards I saw the last two men. One of them was lying on the ground gasping passionately for breath, his withered limbs awry with pain. I could see that he had been a magnificent man in his youth. As his old friend died, the Last of the Race remembered his Humanity. He bent down, kissed the livid lips, carefully and tearfully closed the filmed red eyes. He even tried to scratch a grave with his long fingernails, but soon despaired. He then went away, plodding as fast as he could hobble, weeping silently, afraid of the Dead. In the afternoon he came to a vast city, where many corpses lay; and about nightfall, when the stars were shining, he came to a massive half-ruined Dome that had been used for the worship of some God. Entering, he tottered towards the altar, which still stood, half-buried in stone-dust and flakes; and reaching up to a great bronze Crucifix that stood upon it, with his dying strength he clasped to his arms the Emblem of our Sorrow.

  I saw the vast Halls and Palaces of men falling in slowly, decaying, crumbling, destroyed by nothing but the rains and the touch of Time. And looking again I saw wandering over and above the ruins, moving curiously about, myriads of brown, hairy, repulsive little apes.

  One of them was building a fire with sticks.

  FINIS

  — FRANK LILLIE POLLOCK —

  EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

  MOST OF THE MAGAZINE FICTION of the turn of the last century has vanished into oblivion, but Frank Lillie Pollock’s “Finis,” first published in the June 1906 issue of Argosy, has held its own in print for more than a hundred years, a true classic of early science fiction. What keeps it alive is the quiet conviction of its narrative—a fantastic story realistically told, as though its author is coolly reporting its extraordinary events as an eyewitness.

  Those events—the stupendous stellar catastrophe that interrupts our twentieth century before it has barely begun—are not very likely actually to befall us, according to modern theories of how the galaxy is constructed. But they seemed less implausible in Pollock’s day, and so he could hold his readers spellbound as he unfolded his tale. For us, even knowing what we do know about the universe, its effect is still powerful. One of the virtues of the best science-fictional storytelling is that it can make the fantastic and even the impossible seem real, and that is what Frank Lillie Pollock, a well-known writer a century ago but altogether forgotten today but for this one story, achieved here.

  —R. S.

  FINIS

  — FRANK LILLIE POLLOCK —

  “I’M GETTING TIRED,” COMPLAINED DAVIS, lounging in the window of the Physics Building, “and sleepy. It’s after eleven o’clock. This makes the fourth night I’ve sat up to see your new star, and it’ll be the last. Why, the thing was billed to appear three weeks ago.”

  “Are you tired, Miss Wardour?” asked Eastwood, and the girl glanced up with a quick flush and a negative murmur.

  Eastwood made the reflection anew that she certainly was painfully shy. She was almost as plain as she was shy, though her hair had an unusual beauty of its own, fine as silk and colo
red like palest flame.

  Probably she had brains; Eastwood had seen her reading some extremely “deep” books, but she seemed to have no amusements, few interests. She worked daily at the Art Students’ League, and boarded where he did, and he had thus come to ask her with the Davises to watch for the new star from the laboratory windows on the Heights.

  “Do you really think that it’s worth while to wait any longer, professor?” inquired Mrs. Davis, concealing a yawn.

  Eastwood was somewhat annoyed by the continued failure of the star to show itself and he hated to be called “professor,” being only an assistant professor of physics.

  “I don’t know,” he answered somewhat curtly. “This is the twelfth night that I have waited for it. Of course, it would have been a mathematical miracle if astronomers should have solved such a problem exactly, though they’ve been figuring on it for a quarter of a century.”

  The new Physics Building of Columbia University was about twelve stories high. The physics laboratory occupied the ninth and tenth floors, with the astronomical rooms above it, an arrangement which would have been impossible before the invention of the oil vibration cushion, which practically isolated the instrument rooms from the earth.

  Eastwood had arranged a small telescope at the window, and below them spread the illuminated map of Greater New York, sending up a faintly musical roar. All the streets were crowded, as they had been every night since the fifth of the month, when the great new star, or sun, was expected to come into view.

  SOME ERROR HAD BEEN MADE in the calculations, though, as Eastwood said, astronomers had been figuring on them for twenty-five years.

  It was, in fact, nearly forty years since Professor Adolphe Bernier first announced his theory of a limited universe at the International Congress of Sciences in Paris, where it was counted as little more than a masterpiece of imagination.

  Professor Bernier did not believe that the universe was infinite. Somewhere, he argued, the universe must have a center, which is the pivot for its revolution.

  The moon revolves around the earth, the planetary system revolves about the sun, the solar system revolves about one of the fixed stars, and this whole system in its turn undoubtedly revolves around some more distant point. But this sort of progression must definitely stop somewhere.

  Somewhere there must be a central sun, a vast incandescent body which does not move at all. And as a sun is always larger and hotter than its satellites, therefore the body at the center of the universe must be of an immensity and temperature beyond anything known or imagined.

  It was objected that this hypothetical body should then be large enough to be visible from the earth, and Professor Bernier replied that some day it undoubtedly would be visible. Its light had simply not yet had time to reach the earth.

  The passage of light from the nearest of the fixed stars is a matter of three years, and there must be many stars so distant that their rays have not yet reached us. The great central sun must be so inconceivably remote that perhaps hundreds, perhaps thousands of years would elapse before its light should burst upon the solar system.

  All this was contemptuously classed as “newspaper science” till the extraordinary mathematical revival a little after the middle of the twentieth century afforded the means of verifying it.

  Following the new theorems discovered by Professor Burnside, of Princeton, and elaborated by Dr. Taneka, of Tokyo, astronomers succeeded in calculating the arc of the sun’s movements through space, and its ratio to the orbit of its satellites. With this as a basis, it was possible to follow the widening circles, the consecutive systems of the heavenly bodies and their rotations.

  The theory of Professor Bernier was justified. It was demonstrated that there really was a gigantic mass of incandescent matter, which, whether the central point of the universe or not, appeared to be without motion.

  The weight and distance of this new sun were approximately calculated, and, the speed of light being known, it was an easy matter to reckon when its rays would reach the earth.

  It was then estimated that the approaching rays would arrive at the earth in twenty-six years, and that was twenty-six years ago. Three weeks had passed since the date when the new heavenly body was expected to become visible, and it had not yet appeared.

  Popular interest had risen to a high pitch, stimulated by innumerable newspaper and magazine articles, and the streets were nightly thronged with excited crowds armed with opera-glasses and star maps, while at every corner a telescope man had planted his tripod instrument at a nickel a look.

  Similar scenes were taking place in every civilized city on the globe.

  It was generally supposed that the new luminary would appear in size about midway between Venus and the moon. Better informed persons expected something like the sun, and a syndicate of capitalists quietly leased large areas on the coast of Greenland in anticipation of a great rise in temperature and a northward movement in population.

  Even the business situation was appreciably affected by the public uncertainty and excitement. There was a decline in stocks, and a minor religious sect boldly prophesied the end of the world.

  “I’ve had enough of this,” said Davis, looking at his watch again. “Are you ready to go, Grace? By the way, isn’t it getting warmer?”

  It had been a sharp February day, but the temperature was certainly rising. Water was dripping from the roofs, and from the icicles that fringed the window ledges, as if a warm wave had suddenly arrived.

  “What’s that light?” suddenly asked Alice Wardour, who was lingering by the open window. . . .

  “It must be moonrise,” said Eastwood, though the illumination of the horizon was almost like daybreak.

  Davis abandoned his intention of leaving, and they watched the east grow pale and flushed till at last a brilliant white disc heaved itself above the horizon.

  It resembled the full moon, but as if trebled in luster, and the streets grew almost as light as by day.

  “Good heavens, that must be the new star, after all!” said Davis in an awed voice.

  “No, it’s only the moon. This is the hour and minute for her rising,” answered Eastwood, who had grasped the cause of the phenomenon. “But the new sun must have appeared on the other side of the earth. Its light is what makes the moon so brilliant. It will rise here just as the sun does, no telling how soon. It must be brighter than was expected—and maybe hotter,” he added with a vague uneasiness.

  “Isn’t it getting very warm in here?” said Mrs. Davis, loosening her jacket. “Couldn’t you turn off some of the steam heat?”

  Eastwood turned it all off, for, in spite of the open window, the room was really growing uncomfortably close. But the warmth appeared to come from without; it was like a warm spring evening, and the icicles were breaking loose from the cornices.

  FOR HALF AN HOUR THEY leaned from the windows with but desultory conversation, and below them the streets were black with people and whitened with upturned faces. The brilliant moon rose higher, and the mildness of the night sensibly increased.

  It was after midnight when Eastwood first noticed the reddish flush tinging the clouds low in the east, and he pointed it out to his companions.

  “That must be it at last,” he exclaimed, with a thrill of vibrating excitement at what he was going to see, a cosmic event unprecedented in intensity.

  The brightness waxed rapidly.

  “By Jove, see it redden!” Davis ejaculated. “It’s getting lighter than day—and hot! Whew!”

  The whole eastern sky glowed with a deepening pink that extended half round the horizon. Sparrows chirped from the roofs, and it looked as if the disc of the unknown star might at any moment be expected to lift above the Atlantic, but it delayed long.

  The heavens continued to burn with myriad hues, gathering at last to a fiery furnace glow on the skyline.

  Mrs. Davis suddenly screamed. An American flag blowing freely from its staff on the roof of the tall building had all at onc
e burst into flame. Low in the east lay a long streak of intense fire which broadened as they squinted with watering eyes. It was as if the edge of the world had been heated to whiteness.

  The brilliant moon faded to a feathery white film in the glare. There was a confused outcry from the observatory overhead, and a crash of something being broken, and as the strange new sunlight fell through the window the onlookers leaped back as if a blast furnace had been opened before them.

  The glass cracked and fell inward. Something like the sun, but magnified fifty times in size and hotness, was rising out of the sea. An iron instrument-table by the window began to smoke with an acrid smell of varnish.

  “What the devil is this, Eastwood?” shouted Davis accusingly.

  From the streets rose a sudden, enormous wail of fright and pain, the outcry of a million throats at once, and the roar of a stampede followed. The pavements were choked with struggling, panic-stricken people in the fierce glare, and above the din arose the clanging rush of fire engines and trucks.

  Smoke began to rise from several points below Central Park, and two or three church chimes pealed crazily.

  The observers from overhead came running down the stairs with a thunderous trampling, for the elevator man had deserted his post.

  “Here, we’ve got to get out of this,” shouted Davis, seizing his wife by the arm and hustling her toward the door. “This place’ll be on fire directly.”

  “Hold on. You can’t go down into that crush on the street,” Eastwood cried, trying to prevent him.