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+*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 58912 ***
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+                           THE EARTH QUARTER
+
+                            BY DAMON KNIGHT
+
+              _The Niori permitted refugees from Earth to
+          live in their cramped little ghetto conditionally:
+           that they do so peacefully. But there will always
+             be patriotic fanatics, like Harkway and Rack,
+                    who must disturb the peace...._
+
+           [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
+              Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1955.
+         Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
+         the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
+
+
+The sun had set half an hour before. Now, from the window of Laszlo
+Cudyk's garret, he could see how the alien city shone frost-blue
+against the black sky; the tall hive-shapes that no man would have
+built, glowing with their own light.
+
+Nearer, the slender drunken shafts of lamp posts marched toward him
+down the street, each with its prosaic yellow globe. Between them and
+all around, the darkness had gathered; darkness in angular shapes, the
+geometry of squalor.
+
+Cudyk liked this view, for at night the blackness of the Earth Quarter
+seemed to merge with the black sky, as if one were a minor extension of
+the other--a fist of space held down to the surface of the planet. He
+could feel, then, that he was not alone, not isolated and forgotten;
+that some connection still existed across all the light-years of the
+galaxy between him and what he had lost.
+
+And, again, the view depressed him; for at night the City seemed to
+press in upon the Quarter like the walls of a prison. The Quarter:
+sixteen square blocks, about the size of those of an Earth city, two
+thousand three hundred human beings of three races, four religions,
+eighteen nationalities; the only remnant of the human race nearer than
+Capella.
+
+Cudyk felt the night breeze freshening. He glanced upward once at the
+frosty blaze of stars, then pulled his head back inside the window. He
+closed the shutters, turning to the lamp-lit table with its hopeless
+clutter of books, pipes and dusty miscellany.
+
+Cudyk was a man of middle height, heavy in the shoulders and chest,
+blunt-featured, with a shock of greying black hair. He was fifty-five
+years old; he remembered Earth.
+
+A drunk stumbled by in the street below, cursing monotonously to
+himself, paused to spit explosively into the gutter, and faded into the
+night.
+
+Cudyk heard him without attention. He stood with his back to the
+window, looking at nothing, his square fingers fumbling automatically
+for pipe and tobacco. Why do I torture myself with that look out the
+window every night? he asked himself. It's a juvenile sentimentalism.
+
+But he knew he would go on doing it.
+
+Other noises drifted up to his window, faint with distance. They grew
+louder. Cudyk cocked his head suddenly, turned and threw open the
+shutters again. That had been a scream.
+
+He could see nothing down the street; the trouble must be farther over,
+he thought, on Kwang-Chow-fu or Washington. The noise swelled as he
+listened: the unintelligible wailing of a mob.
+
+Footsteps clicked hurriedly up the stairs. Cudyk went to the door, made
+sure it was latched, and waited. There was a light tapping on the door.
+
+"Who is it?" he said.
+
+"Lee Far."
+
+He unlatched the door and opened it. The little Chinese blinked at him,
+his upper lip drawn up over incisors like a rodent's. "Mr. Seu say
+please, you come." Without waiting for an answer, he turned and rapped
+his way down into darkness.
+
+Cudyk picked up a jacket from a wall hook, and paused for a moment to
+glance at the locked drawer in which he kept an ancient .32 automatic
+and two full clips. He shook his head impatiently and went out.
+
+Lee was waiting for him downstairs. When he saw Cudyk open the outer
+door, he set off down the street at a dog-trot.
+
+Cudyk caught up with him at the corner of Athenai and Brasil. They
+turned right for two blocks to Washington, then left again. A block
+away, at Rossiya and Washington, there was a small crowd of men
+struggling in the middle of the street. They didn't seem to be very
+active; as Cudyk and Lee approached, they saw that only a few were
+still fighting, and those without a great deal of spirit. The rest were
+moving aimlessly, some wiping their eyes, others bent almost double in
+paroxysms of sneezing. A few were motionless on the pavement.
+
+Three slender Chinese were moving through the crowd. Each had a white
+surgeon's mask tied over his nose and mouth, and carried a plastic bag
+full of some dark substance, from which he took handfuls and flung them
+with a motion like a sower's. Cudyk could see now that the air around
+them was heavy with floating particles. As he watched, the last two
+fighters in the crowd each took a halfhearted swing at the other and
+then, coughing and sneezing, moved away in separate directions.
+
+Lee took his sleeve for a moment. "Here, Mr. Cudyk."
+
+Seu was standing in the doorway of Town Hall, his round-bellied bulk
+almost filling it. He saluted Cudyk with a lazy, humorous gesture of
+one fat hand.
+
+"Hello, Min," Cudyk said. "You're efficient, as always. Pepper again?"
+
+"Yes," said Mayor Seu Min. "I hate to waste it, but I don't think the
+water buckets would have been enough this time. This could have been a
+bad one."
+
+"How did it start?"
+
+"A couple of Russkies caught Jim Loong sneaking into Madame May's," the
+fat man said laconically. His shrewd eyes twinkled. "I'm glad you came
+down, Laszlo. I want you to meet an important visitor who arrived on
+the Kt-I'ith ship this afternoon." He turned slightly, and Cudyk saw
+that there was a man behind him in the doorway. "Mr. Harkway, may I
+present Mr. Laszlo Cudyk, one of our leading citizens? Mr. Cudyk, James
+Harkway, who is here on a mission from the Minority People's League."
+
+Cudyk shook hands with the man, who had a pale, scholarly face, not
+bad-looking, with dark intense eyes. He was young, about thirty. Cudyk
+automatically classified him as second generation.
+
+"Perhaps," said Seu, as if the notion had just occurred to him, "you
+would not mind taking over my duties as host for a short time, Laszlo?
+If Mr. Harkway would not object? This regrettable occurrence--"
+
+"Of course," Cudyk said. Harkway nodded and smiled.
+
+"Excellent." Seu edged past Cudyk, then turned and put a hand on his
+friend's arm, drawing him closer. "Take care of this fool," he said
+under his breath, "and for God's sake keep him away from the saloons.
+Rack is in town, too. I've got to make sure they don't meet." He smiled
+cheerfully at both of them and walked away. Lee Far, appearing from
+somewhere, trailed after him.
+
+A young Chinese, with blood streaming brightly from a gash in his
+cheek, was stumbling past. Cudyk stepped away from the doorway, turned
+him around and pointed him down the street, to where Seu's young men
+were laying out the victims on the sidewalk and administering first aid.
+
+Cudyk went back to Harkway. "I suppose Seu has found you a place to
+stay," he said.
+
+"Yes," said Harkway. "He's putting me up in his home. Perhaps I'd
+better go there now--I don't want to be in the way."
+
+"You won't be in the way," Cudyk told him. "What would you like to do?"
+
+"Well, I'd like to meet a few people, if it isn't too late. Perhaps
+we could have a drink somewhere, where people meet--?" He glanced
+interrogatively down the street to an illuminated sign that announced
+in English and Russian: "THE LITTLE BEAR. Wines and Liquors."
+
+"Not there," said Cudyk. "That's Russky headquarters, and I'm afraid
+they may be a little short-tempered right now. The best place would
+be Chong Yin's tea room, I think. That's just two blocks up, near
+Washington and Ceskoslovensko."
+
+"All right," said Harkway. He was still looking down the street. "Who
+is that girl?" he asked abruptly.
+
+Cudyk glanced that way. The two M. D.'s, Moskowitz and Estrada, were
+on the scene, sorting out the most serious cases to be carted off to
+hospital, and so was a slender, dark-haired girl in nurse's uniform.
+
+"That's Kathy Burgess," he said. "I'd introduce you, but now isn't the
+time. You'll probably meet her tomorrow."
+
+"She's very pretty," said Harkway, and suffered himself to be led off
+up the street. "Married?"
+
+"No. She was engaged to one of our young men, but her father broke it
+off."
+
+"Oh?" said Harkway. After a moment: "Political differences?"
+
+"Yes. The young man joined the activists. The father is a conservative."
+
+"That's very interesting," said Harkway. After a moment he asked, "Do
+you have many of those here?"
+
+"Activists or conservatives? Or pretty girls?"
+
+"I meant conservatives," said Harkway, coloring slightly. "I know the
+activist movement is strong here--that's why I was sent. We consider
+them dangerous in the extreme."
+
+"So do I," said Cudyk. "No, there aren't many conservatives. Burgess
+is the only real fanatic. If you meet him, by the way, you must make
+certain allowances."
+
+Harkway nodded thoughtfully. "Cracked on the subject?"
+
+"You could put it that way," Cudyk told him. "He has convinced himself,
+in his conscious mind at least, that we are the dominant species on
+this planet; that the Niori are our social and economic inferiors. He
+won't tolerate any suggestion that it isn't so."
+
+Harkway nodded again, looking very solemn. "A tragedy," he said. "But
+understandable, of course. Some of the older people simply can't adjust
+to the reality of our position in the galaxy."
+
+"Not many people actually like it," said Cudyk.
+
+Harkway looked at him thoughtfully. He said, "Mr. Cudyk, I don't want
+you to take this as a complaint, but I've gathered the impression that
+you're not in sympathy with the Minority People's League."
+
+"No," said Cudyk.
+
+"May I ask what your political viewpoint is?"
+
+"I'm neutral," said Cudyk. "Apolitical."
+
+Harkway said politely, "I hope you won't take offense if I ask why?
+It's evident, even to me, that you're a man of intelligence and
+ability."
+
+Everything is evident to you, Cudyk thought wearily, except what you
+don't want to see. He said, "I don't believe our particular Humpty
+Dumpty can be put back together again, Mr. Harkway."
+
+Harkway looked at him intently, but said nothing. He glanced at the
+signboard over the lighted windows they were approaching. "Is this the
+place?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Harkway continued to look at the sign. Above the English "CHONG YIN'S
+TEA ROOM", and the Chinese characters, was a legend that read:
+
+[Illustration: sign in other language]
+
+"That's a curious alphabet," he said.
+
+"It's a very efficient one," Cudyk told him. "It's based on the design
+of an X in a rectangle--like this." He traced it with his finger on the
+wall. "Counting each arm of the cross as one stroke, there are eight
+strokes in the figure. Using only two strokes to a letter, there are
+twenty-eight possible combinations. They use the sixteen most graceful
+ones, and add twenty-seven three-stroke letters to bring it up to
+forty-three, one for each sound in their language. The written language
+is completely phonetic, therefore. But there are only eight keys on a
+Niori typewriter."
+
+He looked at Harkway. "It's also perfectly legible: no letter looks
+too much like any other letter. And it has a certain beauty, don't you
+think?" He paused. "Hasn't it struck you, Mr. Harkway, that anything
+our hosts do is likely to be a little more sensible and more sensitive
+than the human equivalent?"
+
+"I come from Reg Otay," said Harkway. "They don't have any visual arts
+or any written language there. But I see what you mean. What does the
+sign say--the same thing as the English?"
+
+"No. It says, 'Yungiwo Ren Trakru Rith.' 'Trakru rith' is Niori for
+'hospitality house'--it's what they call anything that we would call
+tea room, or restaurant, or beer garden."
+
+"And 'Yungiwo Ren'?"
+
+"That's their version of 'Chung kuo jen'[A]--the Chinese for 'Chinese.'
+At first they called us all that, because most of the original
+immigrants were from China; but they've got over it now--they found out
+some of us didn't like it."
+
+[Footnote A: _Pronounced "jung guo ren"._]
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cudyk opened the door.
+
+A few aliens were sitting at the round tables in the big outer room.
+Cudyk watched Harkway's face, and saw his eyes widen with shock. The
+Niori were something to see, the first time.
+
+They were tall and erect, and their anatomy was not even remotely like
+man's. They had six limbs each, two for walking, four for manipulation.
+Their bodies were covered by a pale, horny integument which grew in
+irregular sections, so that you could tell the age of a Niori by the
+width of the growth-areas between the plates of his armor. But you saw
+none of those things at first. You saw the two glowing violet eyes,
+set wide apart in a helmet-shaped head, and the startlingly beautiful
+markings on the smooth shell of the face--blue on pale cream, like an
+ancient porcelain tile. And you saw the crest--a curved, lucent shape
+that even in a lighted room glowed with its own frost-blue. No Niori
+ever walked in darkness.
+
+Cudyk guided Harkway toward the door at the far end of the room.
+"We'll see who's in the back room," he said. "There is usually a small
+gathering at this hour."
+
+The inner room was more brightly lit than the other. Down the center,
+in front of a row of empty booths, was a long table. Three men sat at
+one end of it, with teacups and a bowl of lichee nuts between them.
+They looked up as Cudyk and Harkway came in.
+
+"Gentlemen," said Cudyk, "may I present Mr. Harkway, who is here on a
+mission from the Minority People's League? Mr. Burgess, Father Exarkos,
+Mr. Ferguson."
+
+The three shook hands with Harkway, Father Exarkos smiling pleasantly,
+the other two with more guarded expressions. The priest was in his
+fifties, grey-haired, hollow-templed, with high orbital ridges and a
+square, mobile mouth. He said, in English oddly accented by a mixture
+of French and Greek, "Please sit down, both of you ... I understand
+that your first evening here has been not too pleasant, Mr. Harkway. I
+hope the rest of your stay will be more so."
+
+Burgess snorted, not quite loudly enough to be deliberately rude. His
+face had a pleasant, even a handsome cast except for the expression
+of petulance he was now wearing. He was a few years younger than the
+priest: a big-boned, big-featured man whose slightly curved back and
+hollowed cheeks showed that he had lost bulk since his prime.
+
+Ferguson's pale face was expressive but completely controlled. The
+gambler's eyes were narrow and unreadable, the lips and the long
+muscles of the jaw showing nothing more than surface emotion. He asked
+politely, "Planning to stay long, Mr. Harkway?"
+
+"That all depends, Mr. Ferguson, on--to be blunt, on what sort of a
+reception I get. I won't try to conceal from you the fact that my role
+here is that of a political propagandist. I want to convince as many
+people as I can that the Minority People's movement is the best hope of
+the human race. If I can find that there's some chance of succeeding,
+I'll stay as long as necessary. If not--"
+
+"I'm afraid we won't be seeing much of you, in that case, Mr. Harkway,"
+said Burgess. His tone was scrupulously correct, but his nostrils were
+quivering with repressed indignation.
+
+"What makes you say that, Mr. Burgess?" Harkway asked, turning his
+intent, serious gaze on the older man.
+
+"Your program, as I understand it," said Burgess, "aims at putting
+humanity on an equal basis with various assorted races of lizards,
+beetles and other vermin. I don't think you will find much sympathy for
+that program here, sir."
+
+"I'm glad to say that, through no fault of your own, you're mistaken,"
+said Harkway, smiling slightly. "I think you're referring to the
+program of the right wing of the League, which was dominant for the
+last several years. It's true that for that period, the M.P.L.'s line
+was to work for the gradual integration of human beings--and other
+repressed races--into the society of the planets on which they live.
+But that's all done with now. The left wing, to which I belong, has
+won a decisive victory at the League elections.
+
+"Our program," Harkway continued earnestly, "rejects the doctrine of
+assimilation as a biological and cultural absurdity. What we propose
+to do, and with sufficient help will do, is to return humanity to its
+homeland--to reconstitute Earth as an autonomous, civilized member of
+the galactic entity. We realize, of course, that this is a gigantic
+undertaking, and that much aid will be required from the other races of
+the galaxy.... Were you about to say something, Mr. Burgess?"
+
+Burgess said bitterly, "What you mean, in plain words, Mr. Harkway,
+is that you think we all ought to go home--dissolve Earth's galactic
+empire--give it all back to the natives. I don't think you'll find much
+support for _that_, either."
+
+Harkway bit his lip, and cast a glance at Cudyk that seemed to say, You
+warned me, but I forgot. He turned to Ferguson, who was smiling around
+his cigar as blandly as if nothing out of the way had been said. "What
+is your view, Mr. Ferguson?"
+
+Ferguson waved his cigar amiably. "You'll have to count me out, Mr.
+Harkway. I'm doing okay as things are--I have no reason to want any
+changes."
+
+Harkway turned to the little priest. "And you, Father Exarkos?"
+
+The Greek shrugged and smiled. "I wish you all the luck in the
+universe, sincerely," he said. "But I am afraid I believe that no
+material methods can rescue man from his dilemma."
+
+"If I've given any offense," said Burgess suddenly, "I can leave."
+
+Harkway stared at him for a moment, gears almost visibly slipping in
+his head. Then he said, "Of course not, Mr. Burgess, please don't think
+that for a moment. I respect your views--"
+
+Burgess looked around him with a wounded expression. "I know," he said
+with difficulty, "that I am in a minority--here--"
+
+Father Exarkos put a hand on his arm and murmured something. Harkway
+leaned forward impulsively across the table and said, "Mr. Burgess,
+I've traveled a long way in the hope of discussing these problems with
+men of intelligence and standing in their community, like yourself. I
+hope you'll stay and give me the benefit of your experience. I shall be
+very much the loser if you don't."
+
+Burgess was visibly struggling with his emotions. He stood up and said,
+"No--no--not tonight. I'm upset. Please excuse me." Head bowed, he
+walked out of the room.
+
+There was a short silence. "Did I do the wrong thing?" asked Harkway.
+
+"No, no," said Father Exarkos. "It was not your fault--there was
+nothing you could do. You must excuse him. He is a good man, but he has
+suffered too much. Since his wife died--of a disease contracted during
+one of the Famines, you understand--he has not been himself."
+
+Harkway nodded, looking both older and more human than he had a moment
+before. "If we can only turn back the clock," he said. "Put Humpty
+Dumpty together again, as you expressed it, Mr. Cudyk." He smiled
+apologetically at them. "I won't harangue you any more tonight--I'll
+save that for the meeting tomorrow. But I hope that some of you will
+come to see it my way."
+
+Father Exarkos' eyebrows lifted. "You are planning to hold a public
+meeting tomorrow?"
+
+"Yes. There's some difficulty about space--Mayor Seu tells me that the
+town hall is already booked for the next three days--but I'm confident
+that I can find some suitable place. If necessary, I'll make it an
+open-air meeting."
+
+Rack, thought Cudyk. Rack usually stays in town for only two or three
+days at a time. Seu is trying to keep Harkway under cover until he
+leaves. It won't work.
+
+Out of the corner of his eye he saw a dark shape in the doorway, and
+his first thought was that Burgess had come back. But it was not
+Burgess. It was a squat, bandy-legged man with huge shoulders and arms,
+wearing a leather jacket and a limp military cap. Cudyk sat perfectly
+still, warning Exarkos with his eyes.
+
+The squat man walked casually up the table, nodding almost
+imperceptibly to Ferguson. He ignored the others, except the M.P.L.
+man. "Your name Harkway?" he asked. He pronounced it with the flat
+Boston "a": "Haakway".
+
+"That's right," said Harkway.
+
+"Got a message for you," said the squat man. "From Captain Lawrence
+Rack, United Uth Space Navy."
+
+"The Earth Space Navy was dissolved twenty years ago," said Harkway.
+
+The squat man sighed. "You wanna heah the message or don't you?" he
+asked.
+
+"Go ahead," said Harkway. His nostrils were pale, and a muscle stood
+out at the side of his jaw.
+
+"Heah it is. You're plannin' to hold a meetin' of the vehmin lovehs
+society, right?"
+
+As Harkway began to reply, the squat man leaned across the table and
+backhanded him across the mouth, knocking him sideways out of his chair.
+
+"Don't," said the squat man. He turned and strolled out.
+
+Cudyk and Ferguson helped Harkway up. The man's eyes were staring
+wildly out of his pale face, and a thin trickle of blood was running
+from a pulped lip. "Who was that man?" he asked in a whisper.
+
+"His name is Monk," said Cudyk. "At least that is the only name he has
+been known to answer to. He is one of Rack's lieutenants--Rack, as
+you probably know, is the leader of the activists in this sector. Mr.
+Harkway, I'm sorry this happened. But I advise you to wait for a week
+or so before you hold your meeting. There is no question of courage
+involved. It would be suicide."
+
+Harkway looked at him blindly. "The meeting will be held as planned,"
+he said, and walked out, stiff-legged.
+
+Ferguson shook his head, laughed, and shook his head again. Cudyk
+exchanged a hopeless glance with Father Exarkos, and then followed
+Harkway out of the room.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The shop was empty except for young Nick Pappageorge, dozing behind
+the long counter, and the pale morning sunlight that streamed through
+the plastic window. Most of the counter was in shadow, but stray
+fingers of light picked out gem trays here and there, turning them into
+minuscule galaxies of frosty brilliance.
+
+Two Niori, walking arm in arm, paused in front of the window display,
+then went on. Two human youngsters raced by, shouting. Cudyk caught
+only a glimpse of them through the pierced screen that closed off the
+back of his shop, but he recognized them by their voices: Red Gorciak
+and Stan Eleftheris.
+
+There were few children now, and they were growing up wild. Cudyk
+wondered briefly what it must be like to be a child born into this
+microcosm, knowing no other. He dismissed the thought; it was simply
+one more thing about which there was no use to worry.
+
+Cudyk had not spoken to anyone that morning, but he knew approximately
+what was happening. Seu would have been busy most of the night,
+covering up the traces of last evening's riot. Now, probably, he was
+explaining it away to Zydh Oran, the Niori Outgroup Commissioner.
+Harkway was making preparations for his meeting--another thing for Seu
+to worry about when he got through cleaning up the last mess.
+
+Barring miracles, today was going to be very bad.
+
+Seu came in, moving quickly. He walked directly to the rear of the
+shop. His normally bland face looked worried, and there were beads of
+sweat on his wide forehead, although the morning was cool.
+
+"Sit down," said Cudyk. "You've seen Zydh Oran?"
+
+Seu made a dismissing gesture. "Nothing. Not pleasant, but nothing.
+The same as usual--he tells me what happened, I deny it. He knows, but
+under their laws he can't do anything."
+
+"Someday it will be bad," said Cudyk.
+
+"Yes. Someday. Laszlo--you've got to do something about Harkway.
+Otherwise he's going to be killed tonight, and there will be a stink
+from here to Sirius. I had to tell him he could use Town Hall--he was
+all ready to hold a torch-light meeting in the streets."
+
+"I tried," said Cudyk.
+
+"Try again. Please. Your ethnic background is closer to his than mine.
+He respects you, I think. Perhaps he's even read some of your books. If
+anyone can persuade him, you can."
+
+"What did he say when you talked to him?"
+
+"An ox. A brain made of soap and granite. He says it is a matter of
+principle. I knew then that I could do nothing. When an Anglo-Saxon
+talks about his principles, you may as well go home. He won't accept a
+weapon, he won't postpone the meeting. I think he wants to be a martyr."
+
+Cudyk frowned. "Maybe he does. Have you seen Rack?"
+
+"No. Ferguson pretends not to know where he is."
+
+"That's rather odd. What is his motive, do you think?"
+
+Seu said, "Basically, he is afraid of Rack. He cooperates with
+him--they use each other--but you know that it's not a marriage of
+minds. He knows that Rack is stronger than he is, because he is only
+an amoral egotist, and Rack is a fanatic. I think he believes this
+business may be Rack's downfall, and he would like that."
+
+He stood up. "I have to go. Will you do it?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Good. Let me know." Seu walked out, as hastily as he had entered.
+
+Nick Pappageorge had roused himself and was polishing a tall, fluted
+silver vase. Cudyk said, "Nick, go and find out where Mr. Harkway is.
+If he isn't busy, ask him if he'll do me the favor of dropping around
+to see me. Otherwise, just come back and tell me where he is; I'll go
+to him."
+
+Nick said, "Sure, Mr. Cudyk," and went out.
+
+Cudyk stared at the tray of unsorted gems on the desk before him.
+He stirred them with his forefinger, separating out an emerald, two
+aquamarines, a large turquoise and a star sapphire. That was all he
+had had to begin with--his dead wife's jewels, carried half across
+Europe when a loaf of bread was worth more than all the gem stones
+in the world. The sapphire had bought his passage on the alien ship;
+the others had been his original stock-in-trade, first at the refugee
+center on Alfhal, then here on Palumbar. Now he was a prosperous
+importer, with a business that netted him the equivalent of ten
+thousand pounds a year.
+
+But the wealth was ashes; he would have traded all of it for one
+loaf of bread, eaten in peace, on an Earth that had not sunk back to
+barbarism.
+
+Momentum, he told himself. Momentum, and a remnant of curiosity. Those
+are the only reasons I can think of why I do not blow out my brains.
+I wonder what keeps the others from it? Seu? Chong Yin? I don't know.
+Burgess has his fantasy, though it cracks now and then. Ferguson has
+the sensibility of a jackal. Rack, as Seu said, is a fanatic. But why
+do the rest of them keep on? For what?
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The doorway darkened again as Harkway came in, followed by Nick. Nick
+gestured toward the rear of the shop, and Harkway advanced, smiling.
+His lower lip was stained by a purple substance with a glossy surface.
+
+Cudyk greeted him and offered him a chair. "It was good of you to come
+over," he said. "I hope I didn't interrupt your work."
+
+Harkway grinned stiffly. "No. I was just finishing lunch when your boy
+found me. I have nothing more to do until this evening."
+
+Cudyk looked at him. "You got to the hospital after all, I see."
+
+"Yes. Dr. Moskowitz fixed me up nicely."
+
+Cudyk had been asking himself why the M.P.L. man looked so cheerful.
+Now he thought he understood.
+
+"And Miss Burgess?" he asked.
+
+"Yes," said Harkway, looking embarrassed. He paused. "She's--an
+exquisite person, Mr. Cudyk."
+
+Cudyk clasped his square hands together, elbows on the arms of his
+chair. He said, "Forgive me, I'm going to be personal. Am I right in
+saying that you now feel more than casually interested in Miss Burgess?"
+
+He added, "Please. I have a reason for asking."
+
+Harkway's expression was guarded. "Yes; that's true."
+
+"Do you think she may feel similarly towards you?"
+
+Harkway paused. "I think so. I hope so. Why, Mr. Cudyk?"
+
+"Mr. Harkway, I will be very blunt. Miss Burgess has already lost one
+lover through no fault of her own, and the experience has not been
+good for her. She is, as you say, exquisite--she has a beautiful, but
+not a strong personality. Do you think it is fair for you to give her
+another such experience, even if the attachment is not fully formed, by
+allowing yourself to be killed this evening?"
+
+Harkway leaned back in his chair. "Oh," he said, "that's it." He
+grinned. "I thought you were going to point out that her father broke
+off the last affair because of the man's politics. If you had, I was
+going to tell you that Mr. Burgess looked me up this morning and
+apologized for his attitude yesterday, and breaking down and so on.
+He's very decent, you know. We're getting along very well."
+
+He paused. "About this other matter," he said seriously, "I'm grateful
+for your interest, but--I'm afraid I can't concede the validity of
+your argument." He made an impatient gesture. "I'm not trying to sound
+noble, but this business is more important than my personal life.
+That's all, I'm afraid. I'm sorry."
+
+Another fanatic, Cudyk thought. A liberal fanatic. I have seen all
+kinds, now. He said, "I have one more argument to try. Has Seu
+explained to you how precarious our position is here on Palumbar?"
+
+"He spoke of it."
+
+"The Niori accepted this one small colony with grave misgivings. Every
+act of violence that occurs here weakens our position, because it
+furnishes ammunition for a group which already wants to expel us. Do
+you understand?"
+
+There was pain in Harkway's eyes. "Mr. Cudyk, it's the same all over
+the galaxy, wherever these pitifully tiny outgroups exist. My group is
+trying to attack that problem on a galaxy-wide scale. I don't say we'll
+succeed, and I grant you the right to doubt that our program is the
+right one. But we've got to try. Among other things, we've got to clean
+out the activists, for just the reason you mention. And--pardon me for
+stressing the obvious--but it's Captain Rack who will be responsible
+for this particular act of violence if it occurs, not myself."
+
+"And you think that your death at his hands would be a stronger
+argument than a peaceful meeting, is that it?"
+
+Harkway shook his head ruefully. "I don't know that I have that much
+courage, Mr. Cudyk. I'm hoping that nothing will happen to me. But I
+know that the League's prestige here would be enormously hurt if I let
+Rack bluff me down." He stood up. "You'll be at the meeting?"
+
+"I'm afraid so." Cudyk stood and offered his hand. "The best of luck."
+
+He watched the young man go, feeling very old and tired. He had known
+it would be this way; he had only tried for Seu's sake. Now he was
+involved; he had allowed himself to feel the tug of love and pity
+toward still another lost soul. Such bonds were destructive--they
+turned the heart brittle and weathered it away, bit by bit.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+The assembly hall was well filled, although Harkway had made no special
+effort to advertise the meeting. He had known, Cudyk thought, that
+Rack's threat would be more than sufficient. The youngster was not
+stupid.
+
+There were no women or children. Ferguson was there, and a large
+contingent of his employees--gamblers, pimps, waiters and strong-arm
+men--as well as most of the Russian population. All but a few of the
+Chinese had stayed away, as had Burgess. But a number of men whom Cudyk
+knew to have M.P.L. leanings, and an even larger number of neutrals,
+were there. The audience was about evenly divided, for and against
+Harkway. If he somehow came through this alive, it was just possible
+that he could swing the Quarter his way. A futile victory; but of
+course Harkway did not believe that.
+
+There was a murmur and a shuffle of feet as Rack entered with three
+other men--Monk, the one called Spider, and young Tom De Grasse, who
+had once been engaged to Kathy Burgess. The sound dropped almost to
+stillness for a few moments after the four men took seats at the side
+of the hall, then rose again to a steady rumble. Harkway and Seu had
+not yet appeared.
+
+Cudyk saw the man to his right getting up, moving away; he turned in
+time to see Seu wedge himself through a gap in the line of chairs and
+sit down in the vacated place.
+
+The fat man's face was blandly expressionless, but Cudyk knew that
+something had happened. "What is it?" he asked.
+
+Seu's lips barely moved. He looked past Cudyk, inspecting the crowd
+with polite interest. "I had him kidnapped," he said happily. "He's
+tied up, in a safe place. There won't be any meeting today."
+
+Seu had been seen. Someone a few rows ahead called, "Where's Harkway,
+Mayor?"
+
+"I don't know," Seu said blandly. "He told me he would meet me
+here--said he had an errand to do. Probably he's on his way now."
+
+Under cover of the ensuing murmur, he turned to Cudyk again. "I didn't
+want to do it," he said. "It will mean trouble, sooner or later; maybe
+almost as much trouble as if Harkway had been killed. But I had to make
+a choice. Do you think I did the right thing, Laszlo?"
+
+"Yes," said Cudyk, "except that I wish you had told me earlier."
+
+Seu smiled, his heavy face becoming for that instant open and
+confiding. "If I had, you wouldn't have been so sincere when you talked
+to Harkway."
+
+Cudyk smiled in spite of himself. He relaxed in his chair, savoring the
+relief that had come when he'd learned that Harkway was not going to
+die. The tension built up, day by day, almost imperceptibly, and it was
+a rare, fleeting pleasure when something happened to lower it.
+
+He saw the mayor looking at his watch. The crowd was growing restless:
+in a few more minutes Seu would get up and announce that the meeting
+was cancelled. Then it would be all over.
+
+Seu was rising when a new wave of sound traveled over the audience. Out
+of the corner of his eye Cudyk saw men turning, standing up to see
+over the heads of their neighbors. Seu spoke a single, sharp word, and
+his hand tightened on the back of his chair.
+
+Cudyk stood. Someone was coming down the center aisle of the room, but
+he couldn't see who it was.
+
+Those who had stood earlier were sitting down now. Down the aisle,
+looking straight ahead, with a bruised jaw and a bloody scratch running
+from cheekbone to chin, came James Harkway.
+
+He mounted the platform, rested both hands on the low speaker's stand,
+and turned his glance across the audience, once, from side to side.
+There was a collective scraping of chairs and clearing of throats, then
+complete stillness. Harkway said:
+
+"My friends--and enemies."
+
+Subdued laughter rippled across the room.
+
+"A few of my enemies didn't want me to hold this meeting," said
+Harkway. "Some of my friends felt the same way. In fact, it seemed that
+_nobody_ wanted this meeting to take place. But here you all are, just
+the same. And here I am."
+
+He straightened. "Why is that, I wonder? Perhaps because regardless of
+our differences, we're all in the same boat--in a lifeboat." He nodded
+gravely. "Yes, we're all in a lifeboat--all of us together, to live or
+die, and we don't know which way to turn for the nearest land that will
+give us harbor.
+
+"Which way shall we turn to find a safe landing? To find peace
+and honor for ourselves and our children? To find safety, to find
+happiness?"
+
+He spread his arms. "There are a million directions we could follow.
+There are all the planets in the galaxy! But everywhere we turn, we
+find alien soil, alien cultures, alien people. Everywhere except in one
+direction only.
+
+"Our ship--our own planet, Earth--is foundering, is sinking, that's
+true. But _it hasn't--yet--sunk_. There's still a chance that we can
+turn back, make Earth what it was, and then, from there--go on! Go on,
+until we've made a greater Earth, a stronger, happier, more peaceful
+Earth--till we can take our place with pride in the galaxy, and hold up
+our heads with any other race that lives."
+
+He had captured only half their attention, and he knew it. They were
+watching him, listening to what he said, but the heads of the audience
+were turned slightly, like the heads of plants under a solar tropism,
+toward the side of the chamber where Rack and his men sat.
+
+Harkway said, "We all know that the Earth's technical civilization is
+smashed--broken like an eggshell. By ourselves, we could never put it
+back together. And if we do nothing, no one else is going to put it
+back together for us. But suppose we went to the other races in the
+galaxy, and said--"
+
+A baritone voice broke in quietly, "'_We'll sell our souls to you, if
+you'll kindly give us a few machines!_'"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Rack stood up--tall, muscular, lean, with deep hollows under his
+cheekbones, red-grey hair falling over his forehead under the visor of
+his cap. His short leather jacket was thrown over his shoulders like
+a cloak. His narrow features were grey and cold, the mouth a straight,
+hard line. He said, "That's what you want us to tell the vermin, isn't
+it, Mr. Harkway?"
+
+Harkway seemed to settle himself like a boxer. He said clearly, "The
+intelligent races of the galaxy are not devils and do not want our
+souls, Mr. Rack."
+
+Rack ignored the "Mr." He said, "But they'd want certain assurances
+from us, in return for their help, wouldn't they, Mr. Harkway?"
+
+"Certainly," said Harkway. "Assurances that no sane man would refuse
+them. Assurances, for example, that there would be no repetition of
+the Altair Incident--when a handful of maniacs in two ships murdered
+thousands of peaceful galactic citizens without the slightest
+provocation. Perhaps you remember that, Mr. Rack; perhaps you were
+there."
+
+"I was there," said Rack casually. "About five hundred thousand vermin
+were squashed. We would have done a better job, but we ran out of
+supplies. Some day we'll exterminate them all, and then there'll be
+a universe fit for men to live in. Meanwhile--" he glanced at the
+audience--"we're going to build. We're building now. Not with the
+vermin's permission, under the vermin's eye. In secret. On a planet
+they'll never find until our ships spurt out from it like milt from
+a fish. And when that day comes, we'll squash them down to the last
+tentacle and the last claw."
+
+"Are you finished?" asked Harkway. He was quivering with controlled
+rage.
+
+"Yes, I'm finished," said Rack wearily. "So are you. You're a traitor,
+Harkway, the most miserable kind of a crawling, dirt-eating traitor the
+human race ever produced. Get down off the platform."
+
+Harkway said to the audience, "I came here to try to persuade you to
+my way of thinking--to ask you to consider the arguments and decide
+for yourselves. This man wants to settle the question by prejudice
+and force. Which of us is best entitled to the name 'human?' If you
+listen to him, can you blame the Niori if they decide to end even this
+tiny foothold they've given you on their planet? Would you live in a
+universe drenched with blood?"
+
+Rack said quietly, "Monk."
+
+The squat man stood up, smiling. He took a clasp knife out of his
+pocket, opened it, and started up the side of the room.
+
+In the dead stillness, another voice said, "No!"
+
+It was, Cudyk saw with shock, Tom De Grasse. The youngster was up,
+moving past Rack--who made no move to stop him, did not even change
+expression--past the squat man, turning a yard beyond, almost at the
+front of the room. His square, almost childish face was tight with
+strain. There was a pistol in one big hand.
+
+Cudyk felt something awaken in him which blossomed only at moments like
+this, when one of his fellow men did something particularly puzzling:
+the root, slain but still quasi-living, of the thing that had once
+been his central drive and his trademark in the world--his insatiable,
+probing, warmly intelligent curiosity about the motives of men.
+
+On the surface, this action of De Grasse's was baldly impossible.
+He was committed to Rack's cause twice over, by conviction and by
+the shearing away of every other tie; and still more important, he
+worshipped Rack himself with the devotion that only fanatics can
+inspire. It was as if Peter had defied Christ.
+
+The three men stood motionless for what seemed a long time. Monk,
+halted with his weight on one foot, faced De Grasse with his knife hand
+slightly extended, thumb on the blade. He was visibly tense, waiting
+for a word from Rack. But Rack stood as if he had forgotten time and
+space, staring bemused over Monk's shoulder at De Grasse. The fourth
+man, Spider--bones and gristle, with a corpse-growth of grey-white
+hair--stood up slowly. Rack put a hand on his shoulder and pressed him
+down again.
+
+Cudyk thought: Kathy Burgess.
+
+It was the only answer. De Grasse knew, of course, everything that
+had passed between Harkway and the girl. There was no privacy worth
+mentioning in the Quarter. Pressed in this narrow ghetto, every man
+swam in the effluvium of every other man's emotions. And De Grasse was
+willing, apparently, to give up everything that mattered to him, to
+save Kathy Burgess pain.
+
+It said something for the breed, Cudyk thought--not enough, never
+enough, for you saw it only in pinpoint flashes, the noble individual
+who was a part of the bestial mob--but a light in the darkness,
+nevertheless.
+
+Finally Rack spoke. "You, Tom?"
+
+The youngster's eyes showed sudden pain. But he said, "I mean it,
+Captain."
+
+There was a slow movement out from that side of the room, men inching
+away, crowding against their neighbors.
+
+Rack was still looking past Monk's shoulder, into De Grasse's face. He
+said:
+
+"All right."
+
+He turned, still wearing the same frozen expression, and walked down
+the side of the room, toward the exit. Monk threw a glance of pure
+incredulity over his shoulder, glanced back at De Grasse, and then
+followed. Spider scrambled after.
+
+De Grasse relaxed slowly, as if by conscious effort. He put away his
+gun, hesitated a moment, and walked slowly out after the others. His
+wide shoulders were slumped.
+
+Then there was the scraping of chairs and boot-soles and a rising
+bee-hive hum as the audience stood up and began to move out. Harkway
+made no effort to call them back.
+
+Cudyk, moving toward the exit with the rest, had much to think about.
+He had seen not only De Grasse's will, but Rack's, part against the
+knife of human sympathy. And that was a thing he had never expected to
+see.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Times like this," said Ferguson, narrowing his grey snake's eyes in a
+smile, "I almost believe in God."
+
+Father Exarkos smiled courteously and said nothing. He and Cudyk had
+been sitting in the back room of Chong Yin's since a half-hour after
+the meeting. Seu had been with them earlier, but had left. A little
+after twelve, Ferguson had strolled in and joined them.
+
+"I mean it," said Ferguson, laughing a little. "There was Harkway,
+sticking his neck out, and there was little De Grasse standing in the
+way. And Rack backed down." He shook his head, still smiling. "Rack
+backed down. Now how would you explain that, gentlemen?"
+
+It was necessary to put up with the gambler, who wielded more power
+in the Quarter than anyone else, even Seu; but sometimes Cudyk found
+himself dropping his usual attitude of detached interest in favor of
+speculations about the specific variety of horrible fate which Ferguson
+would most probably meet.
+
+He was particularly irritating tonight, because Cudyk was forced
+to agree with him. Cudyk had still not solved the riddle of Rack's
+failure to finish what he had started.
+
+It was conceivable that De Grasse should have acted as he did for
+reasons of sentiment; but to apply the same motive to Rack was simply
+not possible. The man had emotions, certainly, but they were all
+channeled into one direction: the destiny of the human race and of
+Lawrence Rack. De Grasse was at an age when the strongest emotions
+were volatile, when conversions were made, when a man could plan an
+assassination one day and enter a monastery the next. But Rack was
+fixed and aimed, like a cannon.
+
+Ferguson was saying, "He must be going soft. Going soft--old Rack.
+Unless it's the hand of God. What's your opinion, Father?"
+
+The priest said blandly, "Mr. Ferguson, since I have come to live upon
+this planet, my opinions have changed about many things. I no longer
+believe that either God, or man, is quite so simple as I once thought.
+We were too small in our thoughts, before--our understanding of
+temporal things was bounded by the frontiers of Earth, and of eternal
+things by the little sky we could see from our windows.
+
+"Before, I think I would have tried to answer your question. I would
+have said that I think Captain Rack was moved by--a sudden access of
+human feeling--or I would have said that I think Captain Rack was
+touched by the finger of God. Perhaps I would have hesitated to say
+that, because even then I did not believe that God interferes with the
+small sins of men like Captain Rack. Or the small sins of anybody, for
+that matter."
+
+Ferguson grinned. "Well, Father, that's the best excuse for an answer
+I ever heard, anyway." He dragged on his cigar, narrowing his eyes and
+pursing his lips, as if the cigar were a tube through which his brains
+were being sucked. "In other words," he said, "you don't think the big
+blowup back home was a judgment on us for our sins. You think it was a
+good thing, only more people should have got out the way we did. That
+right?"
+
+"Oh, no," said Father Exarkos. "I believe that the Famines and the
+Collapse were a judgment of God. I have heard many theories about
+the causes of the Collapse, but I have not heard one which does not
+come back, in the end, to a condemnation of man's folly, cruelty, and
+blindness."
+
+"Well," said Ferguson, "excuse me, Father, but if you believe that
+way, what are you doing here? Back there--" he jerked his head, as if
+Earth were some little distance behind his right shoulder--"people
+are living like animals. Chicago, where I come from, is just a stone
+jungle, with a few beast-like scavengers prowling around in it. If the
+dirt and disease don't get you, some bandit will split your head open,
+or you'll run into a wolf or some other hungry animal. If none of those
+things happen, you can expect to live to the ripe old age of forty, and
+then you'll be glad to die."
+
+He had stopped smiling. Ferguson, Cudyk realized, was describing
+his own personal hell. He went on, "Now, if you want to call that a
+judgment, I won't argue with you. But if that's what you believe, why
+aren't you back there taking it with the rest of them?"
+
+He really wanted to know, Cudyk thought. He had begun by trying to bait
+the priest, but now he was serious. It was odd to think of Ferguson
+having trouble with his conscience, but Cudyk was not really surprised.
+The most moralistic men he had ever known had been gangsters of
+Ferguson's type; whereas the few really good men he had known, Father
+Exarkos among them, had seemed as blithely unaware of their consciences
+as of their healthy livers.
+
+The priest said, soberly, "Mr. Ferguson, I believe that we also are
+being punished. Perhaps we more than others. The Mexican peon, the
+Indian fellah, the peasant of China or Greece, lives very much as his
+father did before him; he scarcely has reason to know that judgment has
+fallen upon Earth. But I think that no inhabitant of the Quarter can
+forget it for so much as an hour."
+
+Ferguson stared at him, then grunted and squashed out his cigar. He
+stood up. "I'll be getting along home," he said. "Good night." He
+walked out.
+
+Cudyk and Exarkos sat for a while longer, talking quietly, and then
+left together. The streets were empty. Behind them and to their left as
+they walked to the corner, the ghostly blue of the Niori beehives shone
+above the dark human buildings.
+
+The priest lived in a small second-floor apartment near the corner of
+Brasil and Athenai, alone since his wife had died ten years before.
+Cudyk had only to go straight across Ceskoslovensko, but he walked
+down toward Brasil with his friend.
+
+Near the corner, Cudyk saw a dark form sprawled in a doorway. "One of
+your congregation, Astereos?" he asked.
+
+"It is probable," said the priest resignedly. "Steve Chrisudis has been
+drinking heavily again this past week; also the two Moulios brothers."
+
+He stepped over and turned the man's face up to the light.
+
+The face was bloody and broken, the eyes sightless. It was Harkway. He
+had been dead long enough to grow cold.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+One question of Harkway's kept coming back to Cudyk. "Would you live in
+a universe drenched with blood?"
+
+Rack would, of course; for others there was a tragic dilemma. For them,
+the race had come to the end of a road that had its beginning in
+prehistory. Every step of progress on that way had been accomplished
+by bloodshed, and yet the goal had always been a world at peace. It
+had been possible to live with the paradox when the road still seemed
+endless: before the first Earth starships discovered that humanity was
+not alone in the universe.
+
+Human beings were like a fragile crystalline structure, enduring until
+the first touch of air; or like a cyst that withers when it is cut
+open. The winds of the universe blew around them now, and there was no
+way to escape from their own nature.
+
+The way forward was the way back; the way back was the way forward.
+
+There was no peace except the peace of surrender and death. There was
+no victory except the victory of chaos.
+
+As the priest had remarked, there were many theories about the
+Collapse. It was said that the economy of Earth had been wrecked by
+interstellar imports; it was said that the rusts and blights that had
+devastated Earth's fields were of alien origin; it was said that the
+disbanding of the Space Navy, after the Altair Incident, had broken
+Earth's spirit. It was said that the emigrations, both before and after
+the Famines, had bled away too much of the trained manpower that was
+Earth's life-blood.
+
+The clear fact was that the human race was finished: dying like
+Neanderthal faced by Cro-Magnon; dying like the hairy Ainu among the
+Japanese. It was true that hundreds of millions of people lived on
+Earth much as they had done before, tilling their fields, digging
+stones from the ground, laboring over the handicrafts which sustained
+the men of the Quarter in their exile.
+
+Humanity had passed through such dark ages before.
+
+But now there was no way to go except downward.
+
+If the exiles in their ghettoes, on a hundred planets of the galaxy,
+were the lopped-off head of the race, then the ferment of theories,
+plans, and policies that swirled through them stood for the last fitful
+fantasies in the brain of a guillotined man.
+
+And on Earth, the prelates, the robber barons, the petty princes were
+ganglia: performing their mechanical functions in a counterfeit of
+intelligence, slowing, degenerating imperceptibly until the last spark
+should go out.
+
+Cudyk fingered the manuscript which lay on the desk before him. It was
+the last thing he had written, and it would never be finished. He had
+hunted it up, this morning, out of nostalgia, or perhaps through some
+obscure working of that impulse that made him look out at the stars
+each night.
+
+There were twenty pages, the first chapter of a book that was to have
+been his major work. It ended with the words:
+
+"The only avenue of escape for humanity is...."
+
+He had stopped there, because he had realized suddenly that he had been
+deliberately deceiving himself; that there was no avenue. The scheme he
+had meant to propose and develop in the rest of the book had one thing
+in common with those he had demolished in the first pages. It would not
+work.
+
+Cudyk thought of those phantom chapters now, and was grateful that he
+had not written them. He had meant to propose that the exiles should
+band together on some unpeopled planet, and rear a new generation which
+would be given all the knowledge of the old, save for two categories:
+military science and astronomy. They would never be told, never guess
+that the bright lights of their sky were suns, that the suns had
+planets and the planets people. They would grow up free of that numbing
+pressure; they would have a fresh start.
+
+It had been the grossest self-deception. You cannot put the human mind
+in chains. Every culture had tried it, and every culture had failed....
+
+He pulled open a drawer of his desk and put the manuscript into it. A
+folded note dropped to the floor as he did so. Cudyk picked it up and
+read again:
+
+_You are requested to attend a meeting which will be held at 8
+Washington Avenue at 10 hours today. Matters of public policy will be
+discussed._
+
+It was not signed; no signature was needed, nor any threatened
+alternative to complying with the "request". Cudyk glanced at his
+wristwatch, made on Oladi by spidery, many-limbed creatures to whom
+an ordinary watch movement was a gross mechanism. The dial showed the
+Galactic Standard numerals which corresponded to ten o'clock.
+
+Cudyk stood up wearily and walked out past the carved screen. He said
+to Nick, "I'll be back in an hour or so."
+
+Eight Washington Avenue was The Little Bear, half a block from the
+corner where he had first met Harkway, a block and a half from the
+spot where Harkway's corpse had been left in a doorway. Two more
+associations, Cudyk thought. After twenty-five years, there were so
+many that he could not move a foot in the Quarter, glance at a window
+or a wall, without encountering one of them. And this was another thing
+to remember about a ghetto: you were crowded not only in space but in
+time. The living were the most transient inhabitants of the Quarter.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cudyk stepped through the open door of The Little Bear, saw the tables
+empty and the floor bare. The bartender, Piljurovich, jerked his thumb
+toward the stairs. "You're late," he said in Russian. "Better hurry."
+
+Cudyk climbed the stairs to the huge second-floor dining hall, where
+the Russians and Poles held their periodic revels. The room was packed
+tight with a silent mass of men. At the far end, Rack sat on a chair
+placed on a table. He stopped in mid-sentence, stared coldly at Cudyk,
+and then went on.
+
+"--or against me. From now on, there won't be any more neutrals. I want
+you to understand this clearly. For one thing, your lives may depend on
+it."
+
+He paused, glancing around the room. "By now you all know that James
+Harkway was executed last night. His crime was treason against the
+human race. There are some of you here who have been, or will be,
+guilty of the same crime. To them I have nothing more to say. To the
+others, those who have considered themselves neutral, I say this:
+First, New Earth needs all of you and has earned your allegiance.
+Second, those of you who remain on an enemy planet in spite of this
+warning will not live to regret it if that planet is selected for
+attack.
+
+"You have two months to make up your minds and to close your affairs.
+At the end of that time, a New Earth transport will call here to take
+off those who decide to go. It will be the last New Earth ship, and I
+warn you that you had better not count on Galactic transportation after
+that date."
+
+He stood up. "That's all."
+
+The audience was over. Rack waited, standing on the table, thumbs
+hooked into his belt, jacket over his shoulders, like a statue
+of himself, while the crowd moved slowly out of the room. It was
+ludicrous, but you could not laugh.
+
+Two months. For almost twenty years Rack had been a minor disturbance
+in the Quarter, no more important or dangerous or mad than a dozen
+others; appearing suddenly, at night, staying for a few days,
+disappearing again for a month, or two, or six. He brought stolen goods
+to Ferguson--furs from Drux Uta, perhaps, or jewels from Thon--and
+Ferguson paid him in Galactic currency, reselling the merchandise
+later, some on Palumbar, some on a dozen other worlds, for twenty times
+the price he paid. Rack had a following among the younger men of the
+Quarter; two or three a year joined him. Occasionally there were rumors
+in the Quarter of Rack's close calls with the Galactic Guard. It had
+never been a secret that he was building military installations on
+some far-off planet. But now, for the first time, Cudyk realized that
+Rack was actually going to make war on the universe.
+
+Whatever the result, the least it meant was the end of the Quarter.
+
+The stairs were choked. Cudyk worked his way down, to find the barroom
+filled with little knots of men, talking in low voices. Only a few were
+drinking.
+
+Someone called his name, and then a hand grasped his sleeve. It was
+Speros Moulios, the grey little tobacco dealer, whose two sons drank
+too much. "Mr. Cudyk, please, what do you think? Should we go, like he
+says?"
+
+The others of the group followed him; in a moment Cudyk was surrounded.
+He felt helpless. "I can't advise you, Mr. Moulios," he said. "To be
+truthful, I don't know what I am going to do myself."
+
+Nobilio Villaneuva, the druggist, said, "I have worked fifteen years,
+saved all my money. What am I going to do with it if I go to this New
+Earth? And what about my daughter?"
+
+Someone came elbowing his way through the crowd. He signaled to Cudyk.
+"Laszlo!" It was bald, cheerful Mike Moskowitz, one of the Quarter's
+two doctors. He said, "Some of the fellows want to form a delegation,
+to go back and ask Rack some questions. They asked me to serve, but
+I've got to get back to the hospital. Same thing with Seu, he's got six
+things on his hands already. Father Exarkos isn't here. Will you take
+over? Good. I'll see you later."
+
+Cudyk sighed. The men around him were watching him expectantly. He
+stepped over to the bar, picked up an empty glass and rapped with it
+on the counter until the room quieted.
+
+"It's been suggested," he said, "that a delegation be formed to ask
+Captain Rack for more information. Do you all want that?"
+
+There was an affirmative murmur.
+
+"All right," said Cudyk. "Nominations?"
+
+They ended up with a committee of five: Cudyk as spokesman, Moulios,
+Chong Yin, the painter Prokop Vekshin, and the town clerk, Martin
+Paz. Cudyk had slips of paper passed out, and collected a hundred-odd
+questions, most of them duplicates and some of them incoherent. Paz
+made a neat list of those that remained, and the delegation moved
+toward the stairs.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+At the foot of the stairway Cudyk saw Burgess standing, blinking
+uncertainly around him. He dropped back and put his hand on the man's
+arm. "Hello, Louis. I'm glad to see you. How is Kathy?"
+
+Burgess straightened a trifle. "Oh--Laszlo. She's all right, thank you.
+Feeling a little low, just now, of course...." His voice trailed off.
+
+"Of course," said Cudyk sympathetically. "I wish there were something I
+could do."
+
+"No--no, there's nothing. Time will cure her, I suppose. Where are you
+going now?"
+
+Cudyk explained. "Were you at the meeting, earlier?" he asked.
+
+"No. I was not invited. I only heard--ten minutes ago. Perhaps it would
+be all right if I came upstairs with you? In that way--But if I would
+be a nuisance--" His features worked.
+
+Cudyk felt obscurely uneasy. He recalled suddenly that it was a long
+time since he had seen Burgess looking perfectly normal. He said
+reluctantly, "I think it will be all right. Why not? Come along."
+
+Rack was sitting at the end of the long table on the far side of the
+room, talking to Ferguson. Ferguson's hatchet-man, Vic Smalley, was
+leaning watchfully against the far wall. Monk and Spider sat at Rack's
+left. De Grasse, pale and red-eyed, sat halfway down the table, away
+from the others. He stared at the table in front of him, paying no
+attention to the rest.
+
+Cudyk had heard that De Grasse was still with Rack, and had wondered
+what he had done to expiate his sin. The obvious answer was one that he
+had not wanted to believe: that De Grasse had been given the task of
+murdering Harkway.
+
+He had done it, probably, with a tormented soul and under Rack's eye,
+but he had done it. So much, Cudyk thought wearily, for the selfless
+nobility of man.
+
+Rack looked up expressionlessly as the five men approached. "Yes?"
+
+Cudyk said, "We have been chosen to ask you some questions about your
+previous statement."
+
+"Ask away," said Rack, leaning back in his chair. Before him was a
+glass of the dark, smoky liquor Ferguson imported for his special use.
+He was smoking a tremendously long, black Russian cigarette.
+
+Cudyk took the list from Paz and read the first question. "What is the
+status of New Earth as to housing, utilities and so on?"
+
+"Housing and utilities are adequate for the present population," said
+Rack indifferently. "More units will be built as needed."
+
+Paz scribbled in his notebook. Cudyk read, "Will every new colonist be
+expected to serve as a member of New Earth's fighting forces?"
+
+Rack said, "Every man will work where he's needed. Common sense ought
+to tell you that middle-aged men with pot bellies and no military
+training won't be asked to man battleships."
+
+"What is the size of New Earth's navy?"
+
+"Next question."
+
+"Will new colonists be allowed to retain their personal fortunes?"
+
+Rack stared at him coldly. "The man who asked that," he said, "had
+better stay in the Quarter. If by his personal fortune he means
+Galactic currency, he can use it to stuff rat-holes. Any personal
+property of value to the community, and in excess of the owner's
+minimum needs, will be commandeered and dispensed for the good of the
+community."
+
+"Will new colonists be under military dis--"
+
+"Look out!" said De Grasse suddenly. He lurched to his feet, upsetting
+his chair.
+
+Someone stumbled against Paz, who fell heavily across Cudyk's legs,
+bringing him down. Someone else shouted. From the floor, Cudyk saw
+Burgess standing quietly with a tiny nickeled revolver in his hand.
+
+"Please don't move, Mr. Ferguson," said Burgess. "I don't trust you.
+All of you, stand still, please."
+
+Cudyk carefully got his legs under him and slowly stood up. The men on
+the other side of the table were still sitting or standing where they
+had been a moment before. De Grasse stood in an attitude of frozen
+protest, one big hand flat against his trousers pocket. He looked
+comically like a man who has left the house without his keys.
+
+They must have taken his gun away, Cudyk thought, after that affair
+yesterday.
+
+Monk and the aged Spider were sitting tensely, trying to watch Rack and
+Burgess at the same time. Rack, as always, was inhumanly calm. Ferguson
+looked frightened. The gunman, Vic Smalley, had straightened away from
+the wall; he looked alert and unworried.
+
+"Captain Rack," said Burgess, "you killed that man Harkway."
+
+Rack said nothing.
+
+"I did it," De Grasse said hoarsely. "If you have to shoot somebody,
+shoot me."
+
+Burgess turned slightly. Rack, without seeming to hurry, picked up
+the glass in front of him and half rose to fling the black liquor at
+Burgess' face.
+
+The gun went off. Burgess stumbled back a step and then toppled over,
+with a knife-handle sprouting magically between neck and shoulder.
+De Grasse came hurtling across the table top, dived onto Burgess'
+prostrate body and came up with the gun. Not more than two seconds had
+gone by since Rack lifted the glass.
+
+The delegates were moving away, leaving a clear space around De Grasse
+and Burgess. Cudyk heard some of them clattering down the stairs.
+
+Rack was leaning over the table, supporting himself with one hand,
+while the other rested at his waist. His attitude, together with his
+frozen expression, suggested that he was merely bending over to
+examine Burgess' body. But in the next moment he turned slightly,
+lifted the hand that was pressed to his side, and looked at the dark
+stain that was spreading over his shirt.
+
+De Grasse stood up. Cudyk went to Burgess and knelt beside him.
+The man was conscious and moving feebly. "Lie still," said Cudyk.
+Someone pushed his shoulder roughly, and he looked up to see De
+Grasse transferring the revolver from his left hand to his right. The
+youngster's lips were compressed. "Get out of the way," he said harshly.
+
+"No," said Rack. "Leave him alone." He sat down carefully. After a
+moment De Grasse went around the table and joined him.
+
+Cudyk lifted Burgess' jacket carefully. There was not much bleeding,
+and he did not think the wound was dangerous. Burgess said weakly, "Did
+I kill him, Laszlo?"
+
+"No," said Cudyk. "No one was killed."
+
+Burgess turned his head away.
+
+There were footsteps on the stairs, and Moskowitz came into the room,
+followed by Lee Far and two men with a stretcher. Moskowitz glanced
+at Burgess and at Rack, then knelt beside Burgess without a word. He
+pulled out the knife expertly, pressing a wad of bandage around the
+wound.
+
+"I'll take that," said Spider, bending over with his grey hand
+outstretched.
+
+Moskowitz dropped the knife on the floor and went on bandaging Burgess.
+Spider picked it up, glared at the doctor and went back around the
+table.
+
+Cudyk waited until Moskowitz had finished with Burgess and started
+probing for the bullet in Rack's side. Following the stretcher bearers
+down the stairs, he went out into the clear morning sunlight.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was never any end to it. The Quarter was like a tight
+gravitational system, with many small bodies swinging around each other
+in eccentric orbits, and the whole shrinking in upon itself as time
+went on, so that it grew more and more certain that one collision would
+engender half a dozen more.
+
+And in the mind, too, each event went on forever. Cudyk remembered
+Burgess, in the stretcher as he was being carried home, weeping
+silently because he had failed to kill the man who had murdered his
+daughter's lover. And he remembered Rack, sitting silent and weary as
+he waited for Moskowitz to attend to him: sitting without anger for the
+man who had shot him, sitting with patience, filled with his own inner
+strength.
+
+And De Grasse, tortured soul, who had once more shown himself willing
+to sacrifice himself to any loyalty he felt.
+
+Even Monk, even Spider, lived not for himself but for Rack.
+
+There were all the traditional virtues, dripping their traditional
+gore: nobility, self-sacrifice, patience, even generosity. By any test
+except the test of results, Rack was a great man and Burgess another.
+
+And the test of results was a two-edged razor: for by that test, Cudyk
+himself was a total failure, a nonentity.
+
+He thought, _We are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men...._
+
+When every action led to disaster, those who did nothing were damned
+equally with those who acted.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Someone touched Cudyk's arm as he left Chong Yin's. He turned and saw
+that it was Ferguson.
+
+"I've got something to say to you, Cudyk. I saw you were busy talking
+to Father Exarkos in there, so I didn't bother you. Besides, it's
+private. Come on down to my place."
+
+The man was doing him an honor, Cudyk realized, in approaching him
+personally instead of sending an underling. And now, as Ferguson stood
+waiting for him to reply, Cudyk saw that there was something curiously
+like appeal in his eyes.
+
+"All right, if you wish," he said. "But I will have to go back to the
+shop within an hour--Nick has not had his lunch."
+
+"I won't keep you that long," Ferguson said.
+
+They turned at the corner and walked down Washington, past Town Hall
+to The Little Bear. Beyond this point, everything was Ferguson's: the
+dance hall, the casino, the bawdy house, the two cafes and three bars,
+and the two huge warehouses at the end of the avenue. But it was the
+casino that Ferguson meant when he said "my place".
+
+A white-aproned boy got up hurriedly and opened the heavy doors when
+they approached. Ferguson strode past without looking at him, and Cudyk
+followed across the long, empty room. Dust covers shrouded the roulette
+table, the chuck-a-luck layout, faro, chemin-de-fer, dice and poker
+tables. The bar was deserted, bottles and glasses neatly stacked.
+
+Ferguson led the way up a short flight of stairs to the overhanging
+balcony at the end of the room. He opened the door with a key--a rarity
+in the Quarter, since cylinder locks were available only by scavenging
+on Earth, and had to be imported, whereas a mechanism used by the
+Niori as a mathematical toy could be readily adapted into an efficient
+combination lock.
+
+The low-ceilinged room was furnished with a blond-wood desk and swivel
+chair, a long, pale green couch and two chairs upholstered in the same
+fabric: all Earth imports, scavenged from stocks manufactured before
+the Collapse. The carpet was a deeper green. There were three framed
+pictures on the walls: a blue-period Picasso, a muted oyster-white and
+grey Utrillo and a small Roualt clown.
+
+Ferguson was watching him. "Just like my place in Chicago," he said.
+"You never saw it before, did you?"
+
+"No," Cudyk said. "I have never been in the Casino until now."
+
+"Sit down," said Ferguson, pointing to one of the upholstered chairs.
+He pulled out the swivel chair and leaned back in it. He nodded toward
+the glass which formed the entire front wall of the room. "Sittin' up
+here, I can see everything that goes on downstairs. I got a phone--"
+he laid his hand on it--"that communicates with the cashier's booth in
+every room. I can handle the whole place from here, and I don't have to
+be bothered by the goofs if I don't want to. Also, that glass is bullet
+proof. It's Niori stuff, ten times better than anything we had back
+home. They tell me you couldn't get through it with a bazooka."
+
+Cudyk said nothing.
+
+"What I wanted to talk to you about--" said Ferguson, leaning forward
+with his elbows on his knees. "You understand, Cudyk, this is
+confidential. Strictly between us."
+
+"I don't want any confidence that will be difficult to keep," said
+Cudyk.
+
+"What do you mean?"
+
+"If it is something that touches the safety of the Quarter--"
+
+Ferguson waved his hand impatiently. "No, it's nothing like that. I
+just don't want it to get around too early. All right, use your own
+judgment. Here it is.
+
+"Rack's coming back in about three weeks with his transport, to pick up
+anybody that wants to go to New Earth. I'm not going, and neither are
+any of my boys. On the other hand, I'm not going to stay here either.
+It isn't healthy any more.
+
+"I don't know what Rack's got, but I've got a pretty good idea he's
+got enough to raise a lot of hell. Now you can figure the angles for
+yourself: maybe he won't bomb this planet because he thinks he can
+still make some use of the Quarter--but that's a big maybe. Even if he
+doesn't, it's a dead cinch there's going to be trouble. The Niori know
+he comes here, even if they can't prove it, and when the war starts
+they're going to be sore."
+
+"Tell me something," said Cudyk after a moment. "If you knew all this
+long ago--and you must have, since you have been so closely associated
+with Rack--why did you help Rack, and so force yourself to leave
+Palumbar?"
+
+Ferguson grinned and shrugged. "I'm not complaining," he said. "Rack
+never fooled me. I got mine, and he got his--it was a business
+arrangement. When you figure everything in, I can clear out now and
+I'm still ahead. See, you got to figure that nothing lasts forever.
+If I hadn't played along with Rack, he would have taken his business
+somewhere else. Maybe I could have stayed here a little longer, but
+then again, maybe I would have stayed too long. This way, I got my
+information in advance, and I got my profit from dealing with Rack.
+
+"As a matter of fact, he thinks I and all my outfit are going to be on
+that transport when it goes back to his base. He knows I wouldn't take
+a chance on staying here when the shooting starts. What he doesn't know
+is that I got someplace else to go, and a way to get there."
+
+He sat back in his chair again. "I got a Niori-built freighter hidden
+back in the hills. Had it for eight years now. It'll carry five hundred
+people, and fuel and provisions for a year, on top of the cargo. And I
+got a planet picked out where nobody will bother me--not Rack, and not
+the Galactics."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+He took a cigar box from the desk and offered it to Cudyk. Cudyk shook
+his head, showing his pipe.
+
+Ferguson took a cigar, twirled it in his lips slowly, and lit it.
+"You know," he said, bending forward, "there's plenty of planets in
+the galaxy that aren't inhabited. Some have never even been explored.
+They're off the shipping routes, no intelligent race on them, nothing
+special in the way of organic products, so nobody wants them. Rack's
+got one--I've got another."
+
+He gestured with the cigar. "But I'm not using mine to build up any war
+base. What for?" His long face contorted with violent disgust. "That
+Rack is crazy. You know it and I know it. If it wasn't for him, I could
+have stayed here, who knows how long? Or I could have moved to one of
+the other colonies if I saw a good chance. I like it here. This is
+civilization--all that's left of it.
+
+"But--" he leaned back again--"you got to take what you can get. If
+the odds are too heavy, cash in and walk out. That's what I'm doing:
+I'm retiring. On this planet I told you about, there's a big island.
+A tropical island. Fruit--all you can eat. Little animals something
+like wild pigs. Fish in the ocean. Gravity just a little under Earth
+normal, atmosphere perfect. And I'm taking along everything else
+we'll need. Generators, all kinds of electrical equipment, stoves,
+everything. It'll last your lifetime and mine."
+
+He looked at Cudyk. "What more would you want?"
+
+Cudyk said slowly, "You're asking me to go with you?"
+
+Ferguson nodded. "Sure. I'll treat you right, Cudyk. My boys will go
+on working for me, you understand, and so will most of the others I'm
+going to take. I'll be the boss. But you, and three or four others, you
+won't have to do any work. Just lie in that sand, or go fishing, or
+whatever you feel like. How does it sound?"
+
+"I don't think I quite understand," said Cudyk. "Why do you choose me?"
+
+Ferguson put down his cigar. He looked uncomfortable. He said
+irritably, "Because I've got to have somebody to talk to." He stared at
+Cudyk. "Look at me. Here I am, I'm fifty years old, and I been fighting
+the world ever since I was a kid. You think I can just cut loose from
+everything now, and lie under a tree? I'd go nuts in a month. I'm not
+kidding myself, I know what I am. It takes practice to learn how to
+relax and enjoy yourself. I never learned, never had the time.
+
+"When I get on that island, and I get all the houses built and the
+wires strung up, and everything's organized and I've got nothing else
+to do, I can see myself lying there thinking about this place, and all
+the other places I ever owned, and thinking to myself, 'What for?' And
+there's no answer, I know that. But just the same, I'm going to be
+wanting to start in again, making a deal, opening a joint, figuring the
+angles, handling people.
+
+"So there I'll be, with all these mugs around me. What do they know to
+talk about? The same things I do. Things that happened to them in the
+rackets, here or back on Earth. You got to talk to somebody, or you go
+crazy. But if I've got nobody but them to talk to, how'm I ever going
+to get my mind off that kind of stuff?"
+
+He gestured toward the Roualt, on the wall to Cudyk's left. "Look at
+that," he said. "I bought that thing in 1991. I've been looking at it
+for, let's see, twenty-three years. For the first five or so I couldn't
+figure out whether the guy was kidding or not. Then, gradually, I got
+to like it. But I still don't know _why_ the hell I like it. It's the
+same thing with everything. I have a Corot that I'm nuts about--I look
+at it every night before I go to sleep. It's just a landscape, like
+you used to see on calendars in the old days, except the calendars
+were junk and this is art. I know that, I can feel it. But what's the
+difference between the two? Don't ask me.
+
+"See what I mean? That's the kind of stuff I got to learn about. Art.
+Literature. Music. Philosophy. I always wanted to, before, but I never
+had the patience for it. Now I've _got_ to do it. My kind of life is
+finished, I've got to learn a new kind."
+
+He frowned at his cigar. "It isn't going to be easy. Maybe there'll be
+times when you'll wish you had anybody else in the world around but me.
+But I won't take it out on you, Cudyk."
+
+He meant it, Cudyk knew. For a moment he wondered, Why don't I
+accept? He could see Ferguson's island paradise clearly enough: the
+tropical trees, the log huts--with electric light, induction stoves
+for cooking, and hot and cold water--the sand, the sunshine, the long,
+lazy afternoons spent in talking quietly on the beach. There would be
+no strain and no tension, if everything went as Ferguson planned--only
+a long, slow twilight, with nothing left to fear or to hope for:
+forgetfulness, lethargy; lotos and Lethe; a pleasant exile, a scented
+prison.
+
+"You won't have to worry about the others, the guys that work for me,"
+Ferguson said. "After they get through building the settlement, they
+can do what they want as long as they don't make any trouble. There'll
+be enough women to go around--they can settle down and raise kids.
+There won't be any liquor, and I'm going to keep the weapons locked up.
+About the ship--I'll wreck that as soon as we land. Once we're there,
+we're there."
+
+If it were not for Ferguson himself, Cudyk thought, I believe I might
+do it. But Ferguson, inside a year, is going to be a pitiable and
+terrible object. This is his own punishment, his lesser evil--he
+chooses it himself. But he is not going to like it.
+
+"I think I understand," he said. "Believe me, Mr. Ferguson, I'm deeply
+grateful for this offer, and I am tempted to accept. But--I think I
+will stay and take my chances with the Quarter."
+
+Ferguson stared at him, then shrugged. "Don't make up your mind in
+too much of a hurry," he said. "Think it over--I'm not leaving for a
+couple of weeks. And listen, Cudyk, do me a favor. Don't spread this
+around."
+
+"Very well," said Cudyk.
+
+Ferguson did not get up to see him to the door.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was a curious feeling of suspension in the Quarter. Trade was
+slow; only a few Niori and still fewer members of other Galactic races
+strolled down the narrow streets, and for more than a week Cudyk sold
+nothing.
+
+Human faces were missing, too. Almost two hundred of the ghetto's
+inhabitants had left quietly, during the night, when word had gone
+around that the "New Earth" transport was waiting. Villaneuva had gone,
+with his family; so had Martin Paz; and Ferguson had gone earlier with
+all his crew. Today, two weeks later, Cudyk had spent the morning
+wandering the City. It was a thing he had done often in his first years
+on the planet, before the restless drive of his youth had seeped away,
+leaving nothing but momentum, and memory, and a few vestiges that
+reminded him of the man he had been.
+
+He had spent whole days in the City, then, looking into this building
+and that, talking to the natives, asking questions, observing. He had
+seen the City as part of a colossal jigsaw puzzle from which, if you
+were patient and perceptive, you might extract the nexus, the inner
+pattern that made the essential difference between Niori and men.
+
+For the Niori, like nearly all the intelligent races of the galaxy, had
+one survival factor that men had always lacked. There was no word for
+it in any human language; you could only talk around it in negatives.
+The Niori did not kill; they did not lie; they did not steal, intrigue,
+exploit each other, hate, make war.
+
+For men, "the fittest" had always been the man, or nation, or race,
+that survived by exterminating its rivals. Somehow, the Niori had found
+another way. There was no word for it. But perhaps you could find it,
+if you looked long enough.
+
+He had studied their architecture, and pondered long on the arrangement
+of the City's great hive-buildings: a peculiar, staggered arrangement
+which was neither concentric nor radial; which created no endless
+vistas, only islands of buildings or lakes of parkland. He had tried to
+see into that arrangement and through it to the soul of the race, as
+other scholars had peered into the city-plans of Athens and New York,
+reading inwardness into one and outwardness into the other.
+
+The method was sterile. The Niori had no "world-view" in the
+Spenglerian sense. Their cities expressed only function and a sense of
+beauty and order.
+
+In those early days, he had said to himself: These people have no
+cinemas, theaters, churches, art galleries, concert halls, football
+fields. Let me see what they have instead, and perhaps I will begin to
+understand them.
+
+He had seen the Niori, sitting in a circle of six or eight, solemnly
+capping one word with another, around and around. To him, the sequences
+of words were sense-free and followed no discernable pattern. To the
+Niori, evidently, they fulfilled some function analagous to those of
+poetry and group singing.
+
+He had watched them debating in the governing council. There was
+no rhetoric and no heat, even when the issue was important and the
+opinions widely divergent. He had seen their shops, in which each
+article was labeled with its cost to the merchant, and the buyer gave
+as much more as he could afford. It was incredible; but it worked.
+
+He had followed their culture through a thousand other avenues until
+he wearied of it, having learned nothing more than he knew at the
+beginning. Afterwards, for twenty years he had not left the Quarter
+except to transact business, or to oversee the unloading of merchandise
+at the spaceport.
+
+Today he had gone once more, feeling an obscure compulsion: perhaps
+because he knew the day was coming when he would see the City for the
+last time; perhaps hoping, in that small spark of himself that still
+allowed itself to hope for anything, that one more visit would show him
+the miraculous key to all that he had misunderstood.
+
+He had learned nothing new, but the morning had not been altogether
+wasted. It was a clear autumn day, good for walking in so green a city.
+And paradoxically enough, being the only Earthman on the streets had
+made him feel less alien than before. He attracted no attention, in a
+spaceport city: he walked side by side with squat Dritik and spidery
+Oladsa, beings of a hundred different races from as many stars. When he
+returned to the Quarter, he felt oddly refreshed and calmed.
+
+We have very little left, he thought, except one or two minor virtues
+that have no bloodstains on them. Kindliness, humor, a sense of
+brotherhood ... perhaps if we had stuck to those, and never learned
+the martial virtues, never aspired to be noble or glorious, we would
+have come out all right. Was there ever a turning point? When Carthage
+was sown with salt, or when Paul founded the Church--or when the first
+caveman sharpened the end of a stick and used it for murder? If so, it
+was a long way back, dead and buried, dust and ashes.
+
+We took all that was best in thousands of years of yearning and
+striving for the right, he thought, and we made it into the Inquisition
+and the Star Chamber and the NKVD. We fattened our own children for
+each generation's slaughter. And yet we are not all evil. Astereos
+is right: if the other races had been like ourselves, it would have
+been bearable; or if we ourselves had been creatures of pure darkness,
+conscienceless, glorying in cruelty--then we could have made war on the
+Galaxy joyfully, and if we failed at least there would have been an
+element of grandeur in our failure.
+
+Olaf Stapledon had said this once, he remembered--that there was an
+artistry in pure, uncontaminated evil, that it was in its own way as
+real an expression of worship as pure good.
+
+The tragedy of human beings, then, was that they were not wholly
+tragic. Jumbled, piebald parcels of contradictions, angels with asses'
+ears.... What was that quotation from Bierce? _The best thing is not to
+be born...._
+
+Someone brushed by him, and Cudyk looked up. He was at the intersection
+of Ceskoslovensko and Washington; he had come three blocks past his
+apartment without noticing where he was going.
+
+Chong Yin's was only a few doors to his left; perhaps he had been
+heading there automatically. But the doors were closed, he saw; seven
+or eight Chinese were standing in the street outside, and as Cudyk
+watched, Seu Min came down the stairs from the living quarters over the
+tea room. The other Chinese clustered around him for a moment, and then
+Seu appeared again. The others slowly began to disperse.
+
+Cudyk went to meet him. The mayor's face looked strained; there were
+new, deep folds of skin around his eyes. "What is it, Min?" said Cudyk.
+
+Seu fell in beside him and they walked back up the street. "Chong
+killed himself about an hour ago," said the Chinese.
+
+How many does that make? Cudyk thought, frozen. Six, I think, in the
+last two months.
+
+He had not known Chong well--the old man had been a north-country
+Chinese, not Westernized in the least, who spoke only his own language.
+Now that he thought of it, Cudyk realized that he did not know who
+Chong's close friends had been, if he had had any. He had always been
+the same spare, stooped figure in skull-cap and robe, courteous,
+unobtrusive, self-contained. He had a family; a wife, rarely seen, and
+six children.
+
+Somehow Cudyk felt that he would have been less surprised to hear that
+Moulios had committed suicide, or Moskowitz, or even Seu himself. My
+mistake, he told himself. I allowed myself to think of Chong as an
+institution, not as a man.
+
+"Have you some whisky?" asked Seu abruptly.
+
+"Yes," said Cudyk, "of course."
+
+"Let us go and drink it," Seu said. "I'm very tired."
+
+It occurred to Cudyk that he had never heard Seu say that before. They
+turned the corner at Athenai and climbed the stairs to his apartment.
+Seu sighed, and dropped heavily into a chair while Cudyk went to get
+the bottle and glasses.
+
+"Straight, or with water?" he asked.
+
+"Straight, please." Seu tilted his glass, swallowed and shuddered.
+Cudyk watched him in silence.
+
+Seu, alone in the Quarter, owned a Niori communicator--an elaborate
+mechanism which reproduced sound, vision in three dimensions, odors,
+modulated temperature changes and several other things perceptible only
+to Niori. There was no restriction on their sale, and they were cheap
+enough, but the Niori broadcasts were as dull or as incomprehensible
+to men as a Terrestial breakfast program would have been to Niori. Seu
+used his as a source of Galactic news. Today, Cudyk guessed, the news
+had been very bad.
+
+"It's Rack, isn't it?" he said finally.
+
+Seu glanced at him and nodded. "Yes, it's Rack. I haven't told anyone
+else about it yet. The Quarter's in a half-hysterical state as it is.
+But if you don't mind my talking it out to you--"
+
+"Go ahead," said Cudyk.
+
+"It's worse than anything we expected." Seu took another swallow of the
+whisky, and made a face. He said, "They've got a hydrogen-lithium bomb."
+
+" ... I was afraid of that."
+
+Seu went on as if he had not heard. "But they're not using it on
+planets. They're bombing suns, Laszlo."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+For a moment, Cudyk did not understand, then he felt his abdominal
+muscles contract like a fist. "They couldn't," he said hoarsely. "It
+would explode before it got past the outer layers."
+
+"Under faster-than-light drive?" Seu asked. "I did some figuring. At
+1000 _C_, it would take the bomb about two point six thousandths of a
+second to travel from the surface to the center of an average G-class
+star. I think that is a short enough interval, but maybe it isn't.
+Maybe they have also found some way to increase the efficiency of the
+standard galactic drive for short periods. Anyway, does it matter?" He
+looked at Cudyk again. "I have seen the pictures. I _saw_ it happen."
+
+Cudyk's throat was dry. "Which stars?" he said.
+
+"Törkas. Rud-Uri. That's the Oladi sun. And Gerzión. Those three, so
+far."
+
+Cudyk's fingers were nervously caressing the smooth metal of his
+wristwatch. He looked down at it suddenly, remembering that the
+Oladsa had made it. And now they were gone, all but their colonies
+and travelers on other worlds, and those who had been in space at the
+time. All those spidery, meticulous people, with their million-year-old
+culture and their cities of carved opal, wiped out as a man would swat
+a fly.
+
+Seu took another drink. His face flushed, and drops of sweat stood out
+on his forehead and cheeks.
+
+He said, "They'll have to learn to kill, now. There isn't any
+alternative. They intercepted one of the New Earth ships and sprayed it
+with the stasis field. It didn't work; the ship got away. They'll have
+to learn to kill. Do you know what that means?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+Seu drank again. His face was fiery red, now, and he was gasping for
+breath. "I can't get drunk," he said bitterly. "Toxic reaction. I
+thought I'd try once more, but it's no good. Laszlo, look out, I'm
+going to be sick."
+
+Cudyk led him to the lavatory. When he came out, the Chinese was weak
+and waxen-pale. Cudyk tried to persuade him to rest on the bed, but he
+refused. "I've got to get back to my office," he said. "Been gone too
+long already. Help me down the stairs, will you, Laszlo?"
+
+Cudyk walked him as far as Brasil and Washington, where two of Seu's
+young men took over with voluble expressions of gratitude. Cudyk
+watched the group until it disappeared into the town hall.
+
+He could feel nothing but an arid depression. Even the horror at Rack's
+mass-murders, even his pity for Seu was blunted, sealed off at the back
+of his mind. The lives of saints, Cudyk remembered, spoke of "boundless
+compassion", "infinite pity"; but an ordinary man had a limited supply.
+When it was used up, you were empty and impotent, a canceled sign in
+the human equation.
+
+Half instinctively, half by choice, Cudyk had chosen his friends among
+the strongest and most patient, the wise and cynical: the survivors.
+But he had leaned too much on their strength, he realized now. He had
+seen Seu crumble; and he felt as if a crutch had broken under his
+weight.
+
+That evening he opened his shutters and looked out at the sky. The
+familiar constellations were there, unchanged. The light of the nearest
+star took more than three years to reach Palumbar. But in his mind's
+eye one glittering pinpoint exploded suddenly into a dreadful blossom
+of radiance; then another; then a third. And he saw the blackened
+corpses of planets swinging around each, murdered by that single flash
+of incredible heat.
+
+During the night he dreamed of a black wasteland, and of Rack standing
+motionless in the center of it, brooding, with his cold grey face
+turned to the stars.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+It was Cudyk's birthday. He had never told anyone in the Quarter the
+date, and had all but forgotten it himself. This morning, feeling an
+idle desire to know what the season was on Earth, he had hunted up a
+calendar he had last used twenty years ago; it translated the Niori
+system into Gregorian years, months and days. The result, when he had
+worked it out with some little trouble, was February 18th. He was
+fifty-six.
+
+Now he was constrained to wonder whether the action had been as random
+as it seemed. Was it possible that subconsciously he had no need of
+the calendar--that he had kept track, all these years, and had known
+when his birthday came? If so, why had he felt it necessary to remind
+himself in this oblique way?
+
+A return to the womb? A hunger for the comforts of the family circle,
+the birthday cake, candles, the solace of yearly repetition?
+
+Cudyk was fifty-six. When he had been fifty-five, he had thought of
+himself as a man in his middle years, still strong, still able. Now he
+was old. The same thing had happened to Seu: he had recovered from his
+first shock when the news had come about Rack, and for more than three
+weeks now he had moved about the Quarter, as quiet and as competent as
+before; but there was a difference. His swift, furtive humor was gone
+except for rare flashes; his voice and his step were heavy.
+
+It was the same with all of them, all the old settlers. Cudyk had met
+Burgess on the street the day before, for the first time in several
+weeks, and had been genuinely shocked. The man's hair was white, his
+skin papery, his gait stumbling.
+
+Even Exarkos showed the change. More and more of his grey, woolly hair
+was vanishing. The umber crescents under his eyes were a deeper shade,
+almost black.
+
+The Quarter's graveyard was five acres of ground, surrounded by
+trees, on the outskirts of the City; there the dead reclined in a
+more ample space than the living enjoyed. The Niori had allotted the
+ground, though the outline of the City was thereby disfigured, and had
+contributed slabs of a synthetic stone which carved easily when it was
+fresh, later hardening until it would resist any edged tool. The plot
+was ill tended, but the standing stones, translucent pearl or rose, had
+a certain beauty. To the Niori, the purpose of the graveyard was only
+that; they were not equipped to understand mankind's morbid clinging to
+its own carrion.
+
+Cudyk had gone to Chong's funeral, presided over by Lee Yuk, the
+asthmatic little Buddhist priest; and the image of those ranked
+headstones, neatly separated into the Orthodox, the Protestants, the
+Buddhists, the Taoists and the unbelievers, had returned to him many
+times since. It was another sign of the change that was taking place
+in him: the images which formerly had dominated his mind had been
+pictographs of abstractions--the great globe of infinity, the tiny
+spark that was creative intellect. Now they were the pale headstone and
+the dark curtain of death.
+
+He had felt nothing, standing over Chong's grave and watching the sod
+fall. What is there to say about a man when he is dead? The priest's
+words were false, as all such words are false; they had no relevance;
+the man was dead. Nothing was left of him now but the dissolving
+molecules of his flesh, and the fragmentary, ego-distorted memories he
+had planted in the minds of others. He was a name written in water.
+
+It was not Chong who obsessed Cudyk, nor the many other half-remembered
+men and women whose names were clumsily carved on those stones. It was
+the cemetery as a symbol: the fascination of the yawning void.
+
+Cudyk had one other preoccupation: he thought often of Earth, a dark
+globe turning, black continents dim against the grey ocean, pricked by
+a few faint gleams that were cities. Or, if he thought of the cities,
+he saw them too drowned in shadow: the shapes of tower and arch melting
+into night-patterns; moonlight falling faintly, dissolving what it
+touched, so that shadows became as solid stone, stone as insubstantial
+mist.
+
+For Earth, also, was a symbol of death.
+
+There had been no more suicides since Chong had died, and no riots. It
+seemed to Cudyk that the whole Quarter moved, like himself, through a
+fluid heavier than air. All motion had slowed, and sounds came muted
+and without resonance. People spoke to him, and he answered, but
+without attention, as if they were not really there.
+
+Even the recent news about Rack's defeat had stirred him only
+momentarily, and he had seen in Seu's face that the Chinese felt
+himself somehow inadequate to the tale even as he told it. The
+Galactic fleet, vastly expanded, had met Rack's activist forces with
+a new weapon--one, indeed, which did not kill, but which was shameful
+enough to a citizen of the Galaxy. The weapon projected a field which
+scrambled the synapse patterns in the brain, leaving its victim
+incapable of any of the processes of coherent thought: incapable of
+adding two figures, of lighting a cigarette, or of aiming a torpedo.
+Eleven New Earth ships had been captured, and it was thought that
+these were all the activists' armed vessels; there had been no further
+attacks since then.
+
+He did not believe that anything which could now possibly happen could
+rouse him from his apathy. But he had forgotten one possibility. Seu
+came to him in Chong Yin's, where Yin's eldest son Fu now moved in his
+father's place, and said, "Rack wasn't taken. He's here."
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cudyk sat with his teacup raised halfway between the table and
+his lips. After a long moment, he saw that his hand was trembling
+violently. He set the cup down. He said, "Where?"
+
+"The Little Bear. Half the town has gone there already. Do you want to
+go?"
+
+Cudyk stood up slowly. "Yes," he said, "I suppose so." But he felt the
+tension that pulled his body together, the tautened muscles in back and
+shoulders and arms.
+
+As they reached the corner of Ceskoslovensko and Washington, they
+saw scattered groups of men moving ahead of them, all hurrying, some
+frankly running. The crowd was thick around the doorway of The Little
+Bear when they reached it, and they had difficulty forcing a passage.
+Men moved aside for Seu willingly enough, but there was little space to
+move.
+
+Inside, it was worse. The stairway was solidly packed; it was obviously
+impossible to get through.
+
+"There is a back stair," Seu said. He worked his way toward the rear of
+the room, Cudyk following, until he caught sight of the bartender. The
+press was not so thick here, and he was able to reach the man and lead
+him into a corner away from the others. "Can you get us up the back
+way?"
+
+The Russian nodded, scowled, and put his finger to his lips. Following
+him, they went through the swinging doors at the back of the room,
+through the dark kitchen and up the narrow service stairs at the rear.
+The bartender unlocked the door and helped them force it open against
+the pressure of the packed bodies inside.
+
+The long room was heavy with the odors of sweat, tobacco smoke and
+stale air. Faces shone greasily under the glare of the ceiling lights.
+The only clear space was the table-top against the wall to Cudyk's
+right, where Rack stood.
+
+Cudyk could see him clearly over the heads of those in front of him.
+He stood with legs planted firmly, hands at his sides. As always, the
+leather jacket was draped over his shoulders like a cloak.
+
+He was alone. Spider was not there, nor Monk, nor Tom De Grasse.
+
+Rack was talking in a low, clear voice. Cudyk listened to the end of a
+sentence which conveyed nothing to him, and then heard: "After that,
+we got it. They gave it to us." Rack's hands clenched once, and then
+opened again.
+
+"They intercepted us three minutes after we came out of overdrive in
+the orbit of New Earth. Twelve fighting ships, the whole fleet. We
+were in a line, just closing in after we broke C on the way down--the
+_Thermopolae_, the _Tours_, the _Waterloo_, the _Chateau Thierry_,
+the _Dunkirk_, the _Leningrad_, the _Acre_, the _Valley Forge_, the
+_Hiroshima_, the _San Francisco_, the _Seoul_, and the flagship last,
+the _Armageddon_.
+
+"We didn't know they were there--they were out of our detector range.
+They had us like sitting ducks. The first thing we knew about it was
+when a teletype report from the leading ship, the _Thermopolae_, broke
+off in the middle of a word. Five seconds later the same thing happened
+to a report coming in from the next ship. Three seconds more, and the
+_Waterloo_ was gone.
+
+"I gave the order to reverse acceleration and scatter. But the
+field--whatever it was--came after us. It would have taken us at least
+two minutes to build up the overdrive potential again, and we all knew
+we wouldn't make it. They were getting us one ship every six or eight
+seconds.
+
+"The men were looking to me for orders. I didn't have any to give them.
+Suddenly De Grasse turned around and looked at Monk and Spider, and
+they all nodded. They jumped me. I don't know what happened. I struck
+my head against the deck when I went down, or one of them hit me with a
+gun-butt."
+
+His fists clenched and opened once more. "When I came to, I was
+strapped into a one-man lifeboat, on overdrive, doing ten C's. They
+must have emptied the ship's accumulators into that lifeboat, charged
+it up to C potential and got me off just before the field hit them.
+
+"I took my bearings, reversed, and went back. Eventually I found the
+fleet again. The Galactics had matched course and velocity with them
+and they were just beginning to tow them off, one ship to one with
+plenty of theirs left over, in the general direction of Altair.
+
+"They hadn't got into overdrive yet. I slipped in--there were a hundred
+of their little scouts nosing around, about the same mass as my
+lifeboat--and berthed in the same port I'd come out of. I got out and
+walked into the control room.
+
+"The crew was still there, still alive. But not men. They were lying
+on the deck, looking at nothing. Their mouths were open, and they were
+drooling."
+
+Rack's head moved stiffly, and his sharp profile turned from one side
+of the crowd to the other. "Mindless idiots," he said. "They couldn't
+feed themselves, or stand up, or sit. But they had saved me.
+
+"I built up the charge and took my time about it. When the Galactics
+went into overdrive, I took off in another direction. I was a good
+seventy light years away before they knew I was gone.
+
+"I had a ship, an undamaged ship. But I had no crew to man her. I can
+astrogate, and when I have to, I can man the engines on top of that.
+But I can't fight her as well.
+
+"I came here, put the _Armageddon_ into a one-day orbit and came down
+in a lifeboat. I want to go back and find out what those slime-eaters
+did to us, and give them a taste of the same. _I want twenty men._"
+
+There was a silence.
+
+Rack said, in the same even, low voice, "Will you fight for the human
+race?"
+
+Someone called, "What did you do with your other crew?"
+
+Rack said, "I gave them military burial, in space."
+
+For the first time, the crowd as a whole broke its silence. A low
+murmur rose. Rack said sharply, "I would have given my life for those
+men, as they did for me, gladly. But they were already dead. If there's
+a way to restore a man's mind after that has been done to it, only the
+vermin know how. I would rather be buried in space, and so would they."
+
+A deep voice called, "Are you God, Rack?"
+
+"I'm not God," he said promptly. "Are you a man?"
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+There was another murmur, dying as a pulsing movement began near the
+back of the room: someone was forcing his way toward Rack. In the
+stillness, another voice said thinly, "My Demetrios ... my
+Alexander ..." It was Moulios, wailing for his two lost sons.
+
+Red-faced, with a lock of black hair hanging over his forehead, the
+painter Vekshin squeezed through to the edge of the table on which Rack
+stood. He shouted, "I'm a man, all right. What do you call yourself,
+you assassin? You come here with blood dripping from your jaws like a
+weasel fresh from a poultry yard, and we're supposed to feel sorry for
+you because they wouldn't let you go on killing! The great god Rack!
+_Ptui!_"
+
+Rack did not move. He said quietly, "I killed your enemies, while you
+sat at home and drank tea."
+
+"Enemies!" Vekshin roared. "You're the enemy, Rack." He put his big
+hands on the table-top and heaved himself up.
+
+Rack let him come. He waited until the Russian was standing on the
+table; then he stepped forward with a motion so smooth it seemed
+casual. There was a flurry of blows, none of which landed except two:
+one in Vekshin's midriff, the other on the point of his jaw. Five men
+went down as Vekshin's body hurtled into them.
+
+Rack stepped back. "I have very little patience left," he said, "but if
+there is anyone else here with a personal grudge, let him step up."
+
+Two men at the table's edge moved as if to climb up. Rack put his hand
+to the gun at his belt. The two men stayed where they were.
+
+Rack stared out over the crowd. He looked suddenly very weary. It
+occurred to Cudyk that he must have gone without sleep for a long time.
+
+Rack said: "This is the last call. I am not trying to deceive you.
+I promise you nothing, not glory, not your lives, not even that you
+will be able to spend your lives usefully. But if there is any man
+here who will serve aboard the _Armageddon_, in the last fight for
+mankind--raise your hand!"
+
+There was a long moment's silence. Rack turned abruptly, with his hand
+still on his gun, and said to the men in front of Cudyk: "Stand back!"
+
+The silence held for an instant, while the men at the table's end moved
+uncertainly away; then sound broke like an avalanche. As Rack jumped
+down, the crowd surged toward him, no longer an audience but a mob.
+Cudyk felt the pressure at his back, caught a glimpse of Rack's face,
+then heard the deafening report of the gun as he went hurtling forward
+into the melee.
+
+The gun did not fire again. Cudyk was squeezed tightly in the center of
+the struggling mass. He saw Seu, a few feet away. The mayor's mouth was
+open; he was shouting something, but the words were lost.
+
+Suddenly Rack came into view again, charging straight toward Cudyk,
+hurling bodies to either side. The lower half of his face was a smear
+of blood; his cap and jacket were gone, his shirt torn half away.
+
+Cudyk was half-aware of the constriction in his throat, the pounding of
+blood at his temples. He wrenched one arm free and, as Rack came near,
+struck him full in the face.
+
+He had one more glimpse of Rack's white features, the pale eyes staring
+at him with a curiously detached expression: the eyes of a Caesar or a
+Christ, reproachful and sad. Then the crowd surged once more, the door
+to the back stairway slammed open, and Rack was gone.
+
+Cudyk found himself running through the doorway with half a dozen
+others. He caught sight of Rack leaping down the stairs, just short of
+the landing where the narrow stairway doubled back on itself.
+
+With a regretful sigh, feeling no surprise at what he was about to
+do, Cudyk put both hands on the railing and swung himself over into
+vacancy. Then there was an instant of wild, soaring flight, Rack's
+foreshortened body drifting beneath him, and the shock.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Dazed and numb, Cudyk felt the universe moving under him like a
+gigantic pendulum. He saw faces appear and vanish, felt someone push
+him aside, heard voices faintly.
+
+After a long time his head cleared, and there was silence. He was lying
+at the foot of the stairs, one arm flung over the first step. Rack was
+not there; no one was there but himself.
+
+He moved cautiously and was rewarded by an astonishing number and
+variety of pains. But apparently he had broken no bones. He felt
+weak and hollow; he was afraid he might vomit. He hoisted his torso
+up slowly, sat on the lowest step and then put his head between his
+trembling knees.
+
+He heard a foot scuff on the concrete floor, and looked up. It was Seu.
+
+The Chinese looked at him anxiously. "You're all right?"
+
+"Yes. I think so. I have felt better in my life."
+
+"Do you want to get up? Did you jump or fall?"
+
+Cudyk leaned forward, trying the strength of his thighs to raise him,
+and Seu put a hand under his arm to help. "I jumped," Cudyk said. "What
+happened, afterward?"
+
+"The mob came down, me in the middle, and I couldn't stop to see if you
+were all right. They took Rack with them. He was unconscious then; he
+may have been dead."
+
+"And?"
+
+"They tore him apart," said Seu.
+
+They moved toward the exit from the kitchen, Seu holding Cudyk's arm
+firmly.
+
+"I don't know if you felt this," the mayor said stiffly, "but the way
+it seemed to me was that Rack suddenly represented all of it--not only
+the bombings, but the Quarter, the Galaxy, Earth--everything we hated.
+It was a feeling of release, a kind of ecstasy. Watch out for the sill."
+
+"Scapegoat," Cudyk said, indistinctly.
+
+"Yes.... Zydh Oran saw it, you know. He was there when the mob came
+out. He saw it all. This finishes the Quarter, Laszlo. After this there
+won't be any more reprieves."
+
+Cudyk glanced down at Seu's plump fingers. There was a thin film of
+blood on the skin, and a dark line of it around each finger-nail.
+
+       *       *       *       *       *
+
+Cudyk stood at the top of the gentle rise opposite the Washington
+Avenue bridge, and looked down at the Quarter. It was just after
+sunset, and the ranked street-lights cast a lonesome gleam. The streets
+were empty. There was no one left in the Quarter except one man in the
+powerhouse. When the time was up, he would pull the switches on the
+master board and come out; then the Quarter would be dead.
+
+The Niori edict had come on the Wednesday morning after Rack's death.
+They had been given four days to pack their belongings, arrange for
+assignment of cargo space, and wind up their several affairs. Cudyk's
+stock was small and his personal belongings few; he had been ready two
+days ago.
+
+The evening breeze, freshening, pressed Cudyk's trousers against his
+calves and stirred the hair at the back of his head. Looking into the
+east, he saw a few pallid stars in the sky.
+
+Several hundred people had already been collected by the air-cars which
+served the spaceport. Cudyk, Seu, Exarkos and a few others, by unspoken
+assent, had taken places at the rear of the crowd, to be the last to go.
+
+He glanced at Seu. The little man was standing with his hands in his
+pockets, shoulders slumped, staring dully at the Quarter. He looked up
+after a moment, smiled unhappily, and shrugged.
+
+"It's absurd to feel homesick for it, isn't it?" he said. "It was a
+ghetto; we had no roots there. It was cramped, and it stank, and we
+fought among ourselves more viciously than we ever fought on Earth. But
+twenty years ..."
+
+"We could pretend that we had roots, at least," Cudyk answered. "We
+don't belong anywhere. Perhaps we'll be happier, in the long run, once
+we face that and accept it."
+
+"I doubt it."
+
+"So do I."
+
+To Cudyk's right, Father Exarkos was sitting on his suitcase, hands
+relaxed on his thighs. Cudyk said, "If I were a believer, Astereos,
+I think it would do me a great deal of good to confess to you and be
+absolved."
+
+The priest's dry, friendly voice said, "Why, have you sinned so
+terribly, Laszlo?"
+
+"I killed a man," said Cudyk, "but that's not what I mean. I jumped
+over a stairway railing and stopped Rack. If it hadn't been for me, he
+might have got away. There would have been nothing wrong with that. He
+couldn't have done any more harm, one man by himself. The Guards would
+have captured him sooner or later, anyhow. And if he had gotten away,
+we wouldn't have given the Niori the one more straw they needed. In
+that sense, it is my fault that we were expelled."
+
+"No, Laszlo," said Seu.
+
+Exarkos said, "You have nothing for which to reproach yourself, on
+that score. You were only the instrument of history, my friend, and a
+minor instrument at that. And, speaking for myself, not for the Church,
+Rack deserved to die."
+
+Cudyk thought, at least it was quite suitably ironic. Cudyk, the man
+of inaction, hurls himself through the air to kill a murderer. And the
+citizens of the Quarter are deported, not because one of their race
+murdered a billion billion Galactics, but because that same killer was
+killed by them.
+
+That was one thin mark on the credit side. There was one more: the
+tension was gone, for some of them at least. Now the worst thing that
+could happen had happened; the Damocletian thread had snapped. The
+problems which had caused the tension no longer existed.
+
+Earth was two months away. Cudyk expected nothing and hoped for
+nothing. But the Niori had agreed to set each passenger down wherever
+on the globe he chose to go; each man, at least, could choose his own
+hell. The crews of the captured battleships, and the captured staff of
+the base on New Earth, were also being sent back. The weapon that had
+been used on them had done no permanent damage; they would simply have
+to be retrained, to learn all over again, as if they were reborn.
+
+Seu was going to North America, where he hoped survival for a fat
+cosmopolite would be a little less difficult than in Europe or Asia.
+Moskowitz had been born in New York, and was going back there. Exarkos
+was going to Istanbul first, for orders; he had no idea where he might
+be sent after that. Cudyk had not yet made up his mind. He thought that
+perhaps he would go with the priest; if he should change his mind after
+landing it would be no great loss; one wilderness, as Exarkos had once
+said, was as good as another.
+
+It will all be anticlimax, he thought, and perhaps that is the
+definition of Hell: unending anticlimax.
+
+He wondered how it would feel to be Earthbound again. The repatriation
+ship was to be the last Galactic vessel which would ever call at Earth.
+And there would be a constant guard. The Niori had learned, belatedly
+but well. If humanity ever climbed high enough again to reach the
+stars with its bloody fingers, the citizens of the galaxy would be
+ready.
+
+Cudyk looked at his watch. The man in the powerhouse must be a
+sentimentalist; he was waiting until the last possible moment.
+
+He heard the soft hum of the air-car behind him, turned and saw it
+settling lightly to the clipped lawn. The remaining passengers were
+moving toward it. Exarkos stood up and lifted his suitcase. Cudyk
+turned back for one last look at the Quarter. It was full dark now,
+and all he could see of it was the blocky, ambiguous outline of its
+darkness against the glowing buildings beyond, and the cross-hatched
+pattern of yellow street lights.
+
+The lights went out.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Earth Quarter, by Damon Knight
+
+*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK 58912 ***