Clifford Simak - City

"I've been wondering when you'd come," said Fowler shortly. "Sit down and give it to me – straight. You don't believe me, do you?"

Webster eased himself into the second chair, laid the sheaf of papers in his lap.

"I can understand how you feel," he said.

"I doubt if you can," snapped Fowler. "I came here, bringing news that I thought was important. A report that had cost me more than you can imagine."

He hunched forward in his chair. "I wonder if you can realize that every hour I've spent as a human being has been mental torture."

"I'm sorry," said Webster. "But we had to be sure. We had to check your reports."

"And make certain tests?"

Webster nodded.

"Like Rover over there?"

"His name isn't Rover," said Webster, gently. "If you've been calling him that, you've hurt his feelings. All the dogs have human names. This one's Elmer."

Elmer had stopped his digging, was trotting towards them. He sat down beside Webster's chair, scrubbed at his dirt-filled whiskers with a clay-smeared paw.

"What bout it, Elmer?" asked Webster;

"He's human, all right," said the dog. "but not all human. Not a mutant, you know. But something else. Something alien."

"That's to be expected," said Fowler. "I was a Loper for five years."

Webster nodded. "You'd retain part of the personality. That's understandable. And the dog would spot it. They're sensitive to things like that. Psychic, almost. That's why we put them on the mutants. They can sniff one out no matter where he is."

"You mean that you believe me?"

Webster rustled the papers in his lap, smoothed them out with a careful hand. "I'm afraid I do."

"Why afraid?"

"Because," Webster told' him, "you're the greatest threat mankind's ever faced."

"Threat! Man, don't you understand I'm offering you... offering you-"

"Yes, I know," said Webster. "The word is Paradise."

"And you're afraid of that?"

"Terrified," said Webster. "Just try to envision what it would mean if we told the people and the people all believed. Everyone would want to go to Jupiter and become a Loper. The very fact that the Lopers apparently have life spans running into thousands of years would be reason enough if there were no others.

"We would be faced by a system-wide demand that everyone immediately be sent to Jupiter. No one would want to remain human. In the end there would be no humans – all the humans would be Lopers. Had you thought of that?"

Fowler licked his lips, with a nervous tongue. '"Certainly. That is what I had expected."

"The human race would disappear," said Webster, speaking evenly. "It would be wiped out. It would junk all the progress it has made over thousands of years. It would disappear just when it is on the verge of its greatest advancement."

"But you don't know," protested Fowler. "You can't know. You've never been a Loper. I have." He tapped his chest. "I know what it is like."

Webster shook his head. "I'm not arguing on that score. I'm ready to concede that it may be better to be a Loper than a human. What I can't concede is that we would be justified in wiping out the human race – that we should trade what the human race has done and will do for what the Lopers might do. The human race is going places. Maybe not so pleasantly nor so clear-headedly nor as brilliantly as your Lopers, but in the long run I have a feeling that it will go much farther. We have a racial heritage and a racial destiny that we can't throw away."

Fowler leaned forward in his chair. "Look," he said, "I've played this fair. I came straight to you and the World Committee. I could have told the press and radio and forced your hand, but I didn't do it."

"What you're getting at," suggested Webster, "is that the World Committee doesn't have the right to decide this thing themselves. You're suggesting that the people have their say about it."

Fowler nodded, tight-lipped.

"Frankly," said Webster, "I don't trust the people. You'd get mob reaction. Selfish response. Not a one of them would think about the race, but only of themselves."

"Are you telling me," asked Fowler, "that I'm right, but you can't do a thing about it?"

"Not exactly. We'll have to work out something. Maybe Jupiter could be made a sort of old folks' home. After a man had lived out a useful life-"

Fowler made a tearing sound of disgust deep inside his throat. "A reward," he snapped. "Turning an old horse out to pasture. Paradise by special dispensation."

"That way," Webster pointed out, "we'd save the human race and still have Jupiter."

Fowler came to his feet in a swift, lithe motion. "I'm sick of it," he shouted. "I brought you a thing you wanted to know. A thing you spent billions of dollars and, so far as you knew, hundreds of lives, to find out. You set up reconversion stations all over Jupiter and you sent out men by dozens and they never came back and you thought that they were dead and still you sent out others. And none of them came back – because they didn't want to come back, because they couldn't come back, because they couldn't stomach being men again. Then I came back and what does it amount to? A lot of high-flown talk... a lot of quibbling... questioning me and doubting me. Then finally saying I am all right, but that I made a mistake in coming back at all."

He let his arms fall to his side and his shoulders drooped. "I'm free, I suppose," he said. "I don't need to stay here."

Webster nodded slowly. "Certainly, you are free. You were free all the time. I only asked that you stay until I could check."

"I cod d go back to Jupiter?"

"In the light of the situation," said Webster, "that might be a good idea."

"I'm surprised you didn't suggest it," said Fowler, bitterly. "It would be an out for you. You could file away the report and forget about it and go on running the Solar System like a child's game played on a parlour floor. Your family has blundered its way through centuries and the people let you come back for more. One of your ancestors lost the world the Juwain philosophy and another blocked the effort of the humans to co-operate with the mutants-"

Webster spoke sharply. "Leave me and my family out of this, Fowler! It is a thing that's bigger-"

But Fowler was shouting, drowning out his words. "And I'm not going to let you bungle this. The world has lost enough because of you Websters. Now the world's going to get a break. I'm going to tell the people about Jupiter. I'll tell the press and radio. I'll yell it from the housetops. I'll-"

His voice broke and his shoulders shook.

Webster's voice was cold with sudden rage. "I'll fight you, Fowler. I'll go on the beam against you. I can't let you do a thing like this."

Fowler bad swung around, was striding towards the garden gate.

Webster, frozen in his chair, felt the paw clawing at his leg.

"Shall I get him, Boss?" asked Elmer. "Shall I go and get him?"

Webster shook his head. "Let him go," he said. "He has as much right as I have to do the thing he wishes."

A chill wind came across the garden wall and rustled the cape about Webster's shoulders.

Words beat in his brain – words that had been spoken here in this garden scant seconds ago, but words that came from centuries away. One of your ancestors lost the Juwain philosophy. One of your ancestors – Webster clenched his fists until the nails dug into his palms.

A jinx, thought Webster. That's what we are. A jinx upon humanity. The Juwain philosophy. And the mutants. But the mutants had had the Juwain philosophy for centuries now and they had never used it. Joe had stolen it from Grant and Grant had spent his life trying to get it back. But he never had.

Maybe, thought Webster, trying to console himself, it really didn't amount to much. If it had, the mutants would have used it. Or maybe – just maybe – the mutants had been bluffing. Maybe they didn't know any more about it than the humans did.