It should have been dark, for it was night, but it was not dark. Everywhere there were lights—lines of light—circles and blurs of light—ten thousand torches would not have been the same. The sky itself was alight—you could barely see the stars for the glow in the sky. I thought to myself “This is strong magic” and trembled. There was a roaring in my ears like the rushing of rivers. Then my eyes grew used to the light and my ears to the sound. I knew that I was seeing the city as it had been when the gods were alive.
That was a sight indeed—yes, that was a sight: I could not have seen it in the body—my body would have died. Everywhere went the gods, on foot and in chariots—there were gods beyond number and counting and their chariots blocked the streets. They had turned night to day for their pleasure-they did not sleep with the sun. The noise of their coming and going was the noise of the many waters. It was magic what they could do—it was magic what they did.
I looked out of another window—the great vines of their bridges were mended and god-roads went east and west. Restless, restless, were the gods and always in motion! They burrowed tunnels under rivers—they flew in the air. With unbelievable tools they did giant works—no part of the earth was safe from them, for, if they wished for a thing, they summoned it from the other side of the world. And always, as they labored and rested, as they feasted and made love, there was a drum in their ears—the pulse of the giant city, beating and beating like a man’s heart.
Were they happy? What is happiness to the gods? They were great, they were mighty, they were wonderful and terrible. As I looked upon them and their magic, I felt like a child—but a little more, it seemed to me, and they would pull down the moon from the sky. I saw them with wisdom beyond wisdom and knowledge beyond knowledge. And yet not all they did was well done—even I could see that – and yet their wisdom could not but grow until all was peace.
Then I saw their fate come upon them and that was terrible past speech. It came upon them as they walked the streets of their city. I have been in the fights with the Forest People—I have seen men die. But this was not like that. When gods war with gods, they use weapons we do not know. It was fire falling out of the sky and a mist that poisoned. It was the time of the Great Burning and the Destruction. They ran about like ants in the streets of their city—poor gods, poor gods! Then the towers began to fall. A few escaped—yes, a few. The legends tell it. But, even after the city had become a Dead Place, for many years the poison was still in the ground. I saw it happen, I saw the last of them die. It was darkness over the broken city and I wept.
All this, I saw. I saw it as I have told it, though not in the body. When I woke in the morning, I was hungry, but I did not think first of my hunger for my heart was perplexed and confused. I knew the reason for the Dead Places but I did not see why it had happened. It seemed to me it should not have happened, with all the magic they had. I went through the house looking for an answer. There was so much in the house I could not understand—and yet I am a priest and the son of a priest. It was like being on one side of the great river, at night, with no light to show the way.
Then I saw the dead god. He was sitting in his chair, by the window, in a room I had not entered before and, for the first moment, I thought that he was alive. Then I saw the skin on the back of his hand—it was like dry leather. The room was shut, hot and dry—no doubt that had kept him as he was. At first I was afraid to approach him—then the fear left me. He was sitting looking out over the city—he was dressed in the clothes of the gods. His age was neither young nor old—I could not tell his age. But there was wisdom in his face and great sadness. You could see that he would have not run away. He had sat at his window, watching his city die—then he himself had died. But it is better to lose one’s life than one’s spirit—and you could see from the face that his spirit had not been lost. I knew, that, if I touched him, he would fall into dust—and yet, there was something unconquered in the face.
* * * *
That is all of my story, for then I knew he was a man—I knew then that they had been men, neither gods nor demons. It is a great knowledge, hard to tell and believe. They were men—they went a dark road, but they were men. I had no fear after that—I had no fear going home, though twice I fought off the dogs and once I was hunted for two days by the Forest People. When I saw my father again, I prayed and was purified. He touched my lips and my breast, he said, “You went away a boy. You come back a man and a priest.” I said, “Father, they were men! I have been in the Place of the Gods and seen it! Now slay me, if it is the law—but still I know they were men.”
He looked at me out of both eyes. He said, “The law is not always the same shape—you have done what you have done. I could not have done it my time, but you come after me. Tell!”
I told and he listened. After that, I wished to tell all the people but he showed me otherwise. He said, “Truth is a hard deer to hunt. If you eat too much truth at once, you may die of the truth. It was not idly that our fathers forbade the Dead Places.” He was right—it is better the truth should come little by little. I have learned that, being a priest. Perhaps, in the old days, they ate knowledge too fast.
Nevertheless, we make a beginning. it is not for the metal alone we go to the Dead Places now—there are the books and the writings. They are hard to learn. And the magic tools are broken—but we can look at them and wonder. At least, we make a beginning. And, when I am chief priest we shall go beyond the great river. We shall go to the Place of the Gods—the place newyork—not one man but a company. We shall look for the images of the gods and find the god ASHING and the others—the gods Lincoln and Biltmore and Moses. But they were men who built the city, not gods or demons. They were men. I remember the dead man’s face. They were men who were here before us. We must build again.
NIGHTMARE FOR FUTURE REFERENCE, by Stephen Vincent Benét
First published in The New Yorker, April 2, 1938
That was the second year of the Third World War,
The one between Us and Them.
Well we’ve gotten used.
We don’t talk much about it, queerly enough.
There was all sorts of talk the first years after the Peace,
A million theories, a million wild suppositions,
A million hopeful explanations and plans,
But we don’t talk about it now. We don’t even ask.
We might do the wrong thing. I don’t guess you’d understand that.
But you’re eighteen, now. You can take it. You’d better know.
You see, you were born just before the war broke out.
Who started it? Oh, they said it was Us or Them
And it looked like it at the time. You don’t know what that’s like.
But anyhow, it started and there it was,
Just a little worse, of course, than the one before,
But mankind was used to that. We didn’t take notice.
They bombed our capital and we bombed theirs.
You’ve been to the Broken Towns? Yes, they take you there.
They show you the look of the tormented earth.
But they can’t show the smell or the gas or the death
Or how it felt to be there, and a part of it.
But we didn’t know. I swear that we didn’t know.
I remember the first faint hint there was something wrong,
Something beyond all wars and bigger and strange,
Something you couldn’t explain.
I was back on leave—
Strange, as you felt on leave, as you always felt—
But I went to see the Chief at the hospital
And there he was, in the same old laboratory,
A little older, with some white in his hair
But the same eyes that went through you and the same tongue.
They hadn’t been able to touch him—not the bombs
Nor the ruin of his life’s work nor anything.
He blinked at me from behind his spectacle
s
And said, “Huh. It’s you. They won’t let me have guinea pigs
Except for the war work, but I steal a few.
And they’ve made me a colonel—expect me to salute.
Damn fools. A damn-fool business. I don’t know how.
Have you heard what Erickson’s done with the ductless glands?
The journals are four months late. Sit down and smoke.”
And I did and it was like home.
He was a great man.
You might remember that—and I’d worked with him.
Well, finally he said to me, “How’s your boy?”
“Oh—healthy,” I said. “We’re lucky.”
“Yes,” he said,
And a frown went over his face. “He might even grow up,
Though the intervals between wars are getting shorter.
I wonder if it wouldn’t simplify things
To declare mankind in a permanent state of siege.
It might knock some sense in their heads.”
“You’re cheerful,” I said.
“Oh, I’m always cheerful,” he said. “Seen these, by the way?”
He tapped some charts on a table.
“Seen what?” I said.
“Oh,” he said, with that devilish, sidelong grin of his,
“Just the normal city statistics—death and birth.
You’re a soldier now. You wouldn’t be interested.
But the birth rate’s dropping—”
“Well, really, sir,” I said,
“We know that it’s always dropped, in every war.”
“Not like this,” he said. “I can show you the curve.
It looks like the side of a mountain, going down.
And faster, the last three months—yes, a good deal faster.
I showed it to Lobenheim and he was puzzled.
It makes a neat problem—yes?” He looked at me.
“They’d better make peace,” he said. “They’d better make peace.”
“Well, sir,” I said, “if we break through, in the spring—”
“Break through?” he said. “What’s that? They’d better make peace.
The stars may be tired of us. No, I’m not a mystic.
I leave that to the big scientists in bad novels.
But I never saw such a queer maternity curve.
I wish I could get to Ehrens, on their side.
He’d tell me the truth. But the fools won’t let me do it.”
His eyes looked tired as he stared at the careful charts.
“Suppose there are no more babies?” he said. “What then?
It’s one way of solving the problem.”
“But, sir—” I said.
“But, sir!” he said. “Will you tell me, please, what is life?
Why it’s given, why it’s taken away?
Oh, I know—we make a jelly inside a test tube,
We keep a cock’s heart living inside a jar.
We know a great many things and what do we know?
We think we know what finished the dinosaurs,
But do we? Maybe they were given a chance
And then it was taken back. There are other beasts
That only kill for their food. No, I’m not a mystic,
But there’s a certain pattern in nature, you know,
And we’re upsetting it daily. Eat and mate
And go back to the earth after that, and that’s all right.
But now we’re blasting and sickening earth itself.
She’s been very patient with us. I wonder how long.”
Well, I thought the Chief had gone crazy, just at first,
And then I remembered the look of no man’s land,
That bitter landscape, pockmarked like the moon,
Lifeless as the moon’s face and horrible,
The thing we’d made with the guns.
If it were earth,
It looked as though it hated.
“Well?” I said,
And my voice was a little thin. He looked hard at me.
“Oh—ask the women,” he grunted. “Don’t ask me.
Ask them what they think about it.”
I didn’t ask them,
Not even your mother—she was strange, those days—
But, two weeks later, I was back in the lines
And somebody sent me a paper—
Encouragement for the troops and all of that—
All about the fall of Their birth rate on Their side.
I guess you know, now. There was still a day when we fought
And the next day, the women knew. I don’t know how they knew,
But they smashed every government in the world
Like a heap of broken china, within two days,
And we’d stopped firing by then. And we looked at each other.
We didn’t talk much, those first weeks. You couldn’t talk.
We started in rebuilding and that was all,
And at first, nobody would even touch the guns,
Not even to melt them up. They just stood there, silent,
Pointing the way they had and nobody there.
And there was a kind of madness in the air,
A quiet, bewildered madness, strange and shy.
You’d pass a man who was muttering to himself
And you’d know what he was muttering, and why.
I remember coming home and your mother there.
She looked at me, at first didn’t speak at all,
And then she said, “Burn those clothes. Take them off and burn them
Or I’ll never touch you or speak to you again.”
And then I knew I was still in my uniform.
Well, I’ve told you, now. They tell you now at eighteen.
There’s no use telling before.
Do you understand?
That’s why we have the Ritual of the Earth,
The Day of Sorrow, the other ceremonies.
Oh yes, at first people hated the animals
Because they still bred, but we’ve gotten over that.
Perhaps they can work it better, when it’s their turn,
If it’s their turn—I don’t know. I don’t know at all.
You can call it a virus, of course, if you like the word,
But we haven’t been able to find it. Not yet. No.
It isn’t as if it had happened all at once.
There were a few children born in the last six months
Before the end of the war, so there’s still some hope.
But they’re almost grown. That’s the trouble. They’re almost grown.
Well, we had a long run. That’s something. At first they thought
There might be a nation somewhere—a savage tribe.
But we were all in it, even the Eskimos,
And we keep the toys in the stores, and the colored books,
And people marry and plan and the rest of it,
But, you see, there aren’t any children. They aren’t born.
* * * *
“By the Waters of Babylon” Copyright © July 31, 1937 by Curtis Publishing Company, in The Saturday Evening Post as “The Place of the Gods”.
“Nightmare for Future Reference” Copyright © 1938 by Stephen Vincent Benét.
FREDRIC BROWN
(1906–1972)
This may be Fredric Brown’s best-known SF story, and was adapted into episodes of Star Trek and The Outer Limits. A prolific mystery writer (and Edgar Award–winner), Brown was known for polished writing, plot twists, very short stories, and a sly sense of humor, none of which is on display in “Arena.” What is on display is an us-against-them mindset that assumes two expanding civilizations can’t avoid conflict, not a surprising viewpoint for a story written during World War II. (Brown volunteered but was rejected for health reasons.)
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