Red Star

by Loren R. Graham

  Nella spent the whole night in thought.

  When Netti went to pick up his assignments the following morning, Menni announced to him:

  “Officially I am turning over my responsibilities for a month. But bear in mind that I may be gone even longer. I want to have a real vacation.”

  The work took several hours. As Netti was leaving, Menni detained him for a moment and said:

  “Tomorrow we will probably not be seeing each other. According to law, criminals who have served their sentences are released at dawn, and I have decided to set off on a trip immediately. Well, then, good luck.”

  He embraced and kissed Netti, the first time ever, and added:

  “Give my best to Nella.”

  Nella was waiting impatiently for her son. When he had described the meeting in detail she turned very pale. Summing up his impressions Netti said:

  “Still, there is something strange about him, but I can’t put my finger on it. I’m afraid that he is not as healthy as he appears. What do you think—would it be meddlesome of me if I were to drop in on him uninvited this evening?”

  “You don’t have to, Netti,” she replied. “I shall go myself.”

  2. The Faces of Death

  Several hours passed. Menni had fallen asleep in Nella’s arms. She carefully freed herself from his embrace and sat up next to him on the bed so that she could look at his face. Perhaps he sensed in his sleep that she had moved away from him. He was overpowered by oppressive visions.

  Cold within; darkness all around; stone everywhere—below, on all sides, above. So tiring to walk down the narrow, stuffy corridor. But must go. So very long!

  Ah! Faint, almost phosphorescent light flickering ahead . . . Closer, clearer . . . Walls and an arch begin to emerge dully from the gloom. Corridor narrower and narrower.

  Of course! Can’t go any farther. Blank wall like the others, end of the corridor. White figure leaning motionless against it. Incomprehensible feeling of alarm deep within. Have to, must see it . . .

  The sheet slides off and falls to the floor. The face of a corpse . . . strangely familiar features. The clouded eyes are immobile, but from its gray lips escapes a noiseless whisper: “I am you!”

  Greenish patches appear on the dead face, grow larger, merge together. The eyes sink in their sockets and ooze a dirty liquid; decaying chunks of flesh slide from the bones . . . Now it has all fallen off, leaving only a bony mask with its stereotyped grin.

  Phosphorescent fires dance all around, flare up brighter and die out. The empty grin changes in the flickering light, the dusty yellow features of the mask become animated. It seems to Menni that he can clearly read their strange, mute speech.

  “This is you, and this is everything,” says the sneering mask. “And even this is still too much. Man thinks to himself: it is so sad and dreary to be rotting away like this among will-o’-the-wisps in a dark pit. But no! It is actually much worse. The sad thing is not even that these little bubbles of false light produced by the decaying remnants of your own body will also soon disappear. Darkness would not be so bad. But there is not even that!

  “Yes, if there were darkness, dreariness, dull yearning . . . Darkness which you once had seen, dreariness which you felt, yearning which you cursed. You loved the bright sun and the countless forms that bask in its rays; the solid inky darkness, of course, is not the same thing—but still, it is something like a reminder of them. Here you are even robbed of that. The changing impressions of an intense life were your joy; but even the most hopeless dreariness contains a dull reflection of them, a vague faith in them. Here there is not a trace of that. Struggle and victory were the meaning of your existence. When they were insufficient the venomous voice of yearning reminded you of them. Now even it has fallen silent forever . . . Understand this final reckoning as your thought enters its death throes . . . understand and accept it!

  “I am you. Even my appearance and my speech are flashes of your life, the life that is now departing. Well, that is something anyway, and it is infinitely better than what is left from now on, better than that unfathomable something called nothing.”

  By an agonizing effort Menni overcomes the pain clutching at his heart.

  “I do not believe you,” he says. “I know who you are, there is no use in trying to disguise yourself. You are a lie through and through, and only lies can come from you.”

  But the smile of the skull becomes sad. “Let’s see you disprove them!” it seems to say. “Alas, it is impossible . . .”

  The lights die out, the contours fade. The darkness thickens. Cold deep within.

  But what’s this? A soft breeze, like someone’s gentle breathing, brushed his face. How strange! In it there is a dim ray of hope that warms the heart. And now the darkness is also beginning to lift. The air is gradually suffused with a wan, pale light. His eyes drink it in greedily . . . Where are the walls?

  An endless rocky plain. Above it, the dark leaden vault of the sky. No sign of life. Only a gray valley ahead.

  Menni turns around and shudders. Before him stands a motionless black figure muffled up from head to toe; not even its face is visible. The twilight seems to gather around it, and in this halo the severe lines of a silhouette stand out as in an engraving. Menni senses in them something familiar . . . close . . . dear . . . He tries to remember but cannot. He cautiously stretches out his hands and shudders again as he touches the cold, very cold cloth. He pulls it off in anxious expectation . . . Nella!

  It is she, and yet not she . . . What is it about her that has changed so strangely? Yes—her eyes are not the same. They are just as huge, but now they are not blue green like the waves of the southern seas, but black, completely black, deep, bottomless. There is a solemn and gentle expression on her lusterless pale face; her breathing is so quiet that her breast does not rise or fall beneath the still folds of her clothing. Everything about her is suffused with a serenity that is inaccessible to a mortal man.

  She spoke softly, so softly that it seemed to Menni that he was listening to thoughts rather than sounds.

  “It is I, Menni, the one who has always been your destiny. You know that it will all come to an end for you in my caresses. You are a man and you are in pain—unnecessary pain.

  “What are you losing? The radiance of the sun, the joy of struggle, Nella’s love? You are wrong, my friend. You are not losing them, they are losing you. How can someone who does not exist lose anything? For you will be no more, but they will remain. The sun will go on shining for millions of years; the struggle of life will continue forever. The soul of Nella will be repeated an infinite number of times and become ever more beautiful and harmonious in the women of the future.

  “No, you will be no more. Your name and your body and your chain of memories will all disappear. But look here. Suppose you were offered eternity, and with it light, joy, love, but on the condition that they existed for you alone and no one else. Suppose it were all as vivid and palpable as reality even though it was only your dream. With what contempt would you not reject this false happiness, this wretched eternity! You would say that it is better to have lived the shortest and most difficult life, if only it was a real life . . . And you can see that all real life remains and goes on. All that is dying is the single gleam and particle of it that is you.

  “In the infinity of mighty, living Being, what you loved more than yourself—your work—will survive. It will lose you, and that is indeed a loss. But the idea lives on after the man disappears, and you have come to understand the main thing: the creativity that found one of its incarnations in you has no end.”

  She fell silent. Still was her figure amid the stillness of the desert, and still were the tranquil features of her lusterless wan face.

  Menni took a step toward her, and seizing her in his powerful embrace he pressed his lips to her cold lips. His gaze plunged into her bottomless dark eyes; a joyous pain pierced his heart—and everything was lost in confusion.

  “Is that you, Nel
la? The other one, or as you used to be?” murmured Menni, who had not yet fully emerged from his delirium. “Ah, yes! Perhaps you do not know . . . I have just seen death, Nella . . . There were two of them. One was repulsive and empty; there is no use even talking about it. The other one was beautiful and kind. It was you, Nella . . . I kissed her, like this . . .”

  3. The Legacy

  Again caresses in the night . . . and once again reality dissolves and recedes from consciousness . . . and new visions overwhelm Menni’s soul.

  A bloody red sphere high in the dark sky. It is not the sun—it is not painful to look at it, and its brilliance is not strong enough to blot out the bright, quietly twinkling stars. A third moon? No, it is too bright for that. What is it? The dying sun would look like that . . . Yes, that is what it is: the sun, and it is dying. Impossible! That is not to happen for millions of years yet. But then, what of it? To a man for whom time does not exist millions of years are but a moment.

  But in that case—it is the end of everything: humanity, life, the struggle! Everything that is born of the sun, everything that has absorbed the energy of its rays. The end of the brilliance of human thought, the end of the will, the end of joy and love! Here it is, then—the inevitable, the inescapable, after which there is nothing, nothing remains . . .

  Cold within and cold without. Menni looks around him. A smooth, level road crosses a desert plain which may once have been a field or meadow. In the distance there are strange, beautiful buildings. The air is still, all nature is still. Not a single human being, or animal, or plant. Only a deep, bottomless silence that drowns the feeble rays of the dying luminary.

  Is it really all over? Has the kingdom of silence already come to claim its due? On the other hand, what difference does it make? Even if there are some remnants of life smoldering somewhere in those buildings or beneath the earth . . . they are already in their death throes—not really alive . . .

  The final judgment and the ultimate verdict has come, and it cannot be appealed. Everything that was an end or a means to an end is being reckoned up, everything that had any meaning or significance. The skeleton was right: the sum of this reckoning is zero. Millions of years of striving and learning . . . Myriads of lives, wretched and splendid ones, insignificant and mighty . . . But what is the difference if they are longer or shorter, better or worse, when they are no more and have no other heir than the mute, eternal, indifferent ether? They were, they took from life what was due them. They were an illusion! “They were”: now that means only one thing—that they are no more. And whatever they took from life has disappeared along with them.

  But after all, life is not coming to an end everywhere in the universe. It dies out in some worlds, but thrives on in others and is being born in yet others. Humbug! Comforting words masking the bitter truth! What does life here care about life somewhere else that knows nothing about it and derives nothing from it? And if each of these manifestations of life is exhausted in the same way in a sterile cycle, what do they add, separately or together, to that inevitable sum total? What is the good of such incoherent fantasies of the universe scattered across time and space? Why did the sun weave this false fabric of life from its chimerical rays? What mockery!

  What is this? One of the giant, graceful buildings resembling a temple of the feudal era is brightly illuminated. Have to go and see. It is not far, and the going is easy on the level road. A door opens.

  An enormous hall with a high ceiling, flooded in light; thousands of people. But are they people? How casual their poses, how serene and bright their faces, how their bodies breathe strength. And these are the doomed?

  What has brought them here? What idea, what feeling has united them here in this universal silence? A man enters the hall and ascends a raised platform in the middle of the room. This is evidently the one they have been waiting for. The gazes of the crowd are fixed on him. Is it Netti? Yes, Netti, but he is different. He looks like a god, he is surrounded by an aura of superhuman beauty. His voice breaks the deep, solemn silence:

  “Brothers, on behalf of those who have attempted to solve the last problem, I hereby announce that our mission is accomplished.

  “You know that the fate of our world became fully clear to us thousands of years ago. The rays of the dying sun have long been unable to nourish the growth of our life, our great common labor. We have kept its flame burning as long as possible. We have exploded and cast into the sun all of our planets in turn, except the one upon which we stand at this moment. The energy released by these collisions gave us an additional hundred thousand years. We have spent most of that time trying to find the means to resettle in other solar systems. Here we have failed utterly. We could not completely conquer time and space. Because of the enormous distances between the stars, we would be forced to travel for tens of thousands of years through the hostile ether. It would be impossible to preserve the life of a single living being to the end of such a journey. It became necessary to reformulate the problem. We have incontrovertible proof that there are intelligent beings in other stellar systems. We shall base our new plan on this fact.

  “What we want to save from the inevitable destruction of our world is not at all our own lives, the life of our humanity. The death of the last generation is in itself no more significant than the death of the preceding ones, if only our cause can remain and be continued. What is dear to us instead is all that has been accomplished by our united efforts through thousands of centuries: our power over the elements, our understanding of nature, the beauty of life that we have created. This is what we must preserve in the universe at any price, this is what we must pass on to other intelligent beings as our legacy. Then our life will be reincarnated in their work, and our creation will transform other worlds.

  “How are we to accomplish this task? The problem was difficult, but we already know how to solve it. The cold vacuum of the ethereal wastes, while it is fatal to life, is powerless against inert matter. Thus we can commit to such matter the signs and symbols expressing the meaning and content of our history, our labor, our entire struggle and all our victories. Cast into space with sufficient force, it will passively and obediently transport our cherished idea, our last act of will, across immeasurable distances.

  “What could be more natural than this thought? Was it not the ether itself that created our first bond with those worlds, bringing us the rays of their suns like vague tidings from a distant life?

  “I can announce to you that our efforts have been successful. Out of the most durable material provided by nature we have prepared millions of giant projectiles. Each is a faithful copy of our testament, consisting of thin, rolled sheets covered with artistic images and simple signs that can easily be deciphered by any intelligent being. These projectiles have been positioned at different places on our planet, and for each of them we have calculated the direction and velocity that it will be given by the initial detonation. These calculations are very rigorous and have been checked hundreds of times. The missiles are bound to reach their destinations.

  “As for the initial thrust, brothers, it will come in a few minutes. In the bowels of our planet we have collected an enormous mass of unstable matter whose atoms are destroyed in a split second as they explode, generating the most powerful of all natural forces. In a few minutes our planet will be no more, and its fragments will be cast out into infinite space along with our dead bodies and our living cause.

  “Brothers, let us joyfully welcome this moment, when the greatness of death will fuse with the greatest act of creation, the moment which will conclude our life only to pass its soul on to our brothers, whoever they may be!”

  The cry incarnating the single thought and feeling of all echoed through the hall:

  “To our brothers, whoever they may be!”

  A moment later Menni’s vision was sucked after everything else into a hurricane of fire and light, leaving only this same thought resounding within him:

  “To our brothers, whoever they ma
y be!”

  4. Sunrise

  When Menni awoke less than an hour remained until sunrise.

  “Haven’t you slept at all, Nella? Now I must get dressed and write a few more words to the President and the government . . .”

  The dawn was burning in the sky, and its rays shone through the bars on the window. Menni had dressed and lay again on the bed. Nella sat beside him, looking at him attentively, greedily. She had been able to see him so little.

  “Sing me a song, Nella dearest.”

  “This will be a song for you alone. It is also about you, Menni.”

  The walls of the prison had heard many songs of anguish and hope through the years, but it is doubtful whether they had ever echoed such a pure, beautiful voice full of such emotion . . .

  While yet a youth of lusty passion,

  You gave your love all to the cause;

  Where fate once ruled and blindly fashioned,

  Your will and thought now wrote the laws.

  Creator, leader, man of honor,

  You found new worlds yet unexplored;

  Through toil and strife you led us onward

  O’er paths no man had tread before.

  But triumph cost you untold anguish,

  For with your freedom forced to part

  You lay alone for years and languished,

  And pain and sorrow pierced your heart.

  You waited; and though still his captive,

  The craven foe shrank back in fear.

  The New Life dawned, in joy and rapture