Edmond Hamilton: City at World's End

The cold voice ended with the brief, hard phrases,

“We recommend, for Administrator Allan: Demotion one grade. For Sub-Administrator Lund: Demotion one grade. This hearing is concluded.”

Kenniston looked across the big room at Varn Allan. Her face had not changed, and silently she turned to go.

Gorr Holl was slapping him mightily on the back, Magro was saying something excitedly, but he wrenched away from them and went after her. She saw him coming, and waited. But Norden Lund was between them.

Lund’s face was white with controlled rage, and his voice was thick as he told Kenniston, “So you primitives have ruined my career?”

Varn Allan cut in contemptuously. “You ruined it yourself, Norden, with your ambitious plotting.”

He turned and strode away from them. Varn Allan, looking after him, sighed and said, “You have made a deadly enemy.”

He was not thinking of that. He waited until she turned back toward him, and he asked, “Are you my enemy too, for what I’ve done to you?”

She shook her head gravely. “No. That was not your doing. In a new and confused situation, I failed. That is all.”

“The hell it is!” he burst out. “They were unfair to you! You did your best, and—”

“And it wasn’t quite good enough,” she finished. And then she smiled a little at him. “It’s not a tragedy. An Administrator’s burden is not easy.

I shall not be entirely sorry.”

He had never admired her courage so much as now. He wanted to say so, he wanted so say many things, but she turned away from him a little, and said, “This is a great day for you, Kenniston. For this is the day when they are allowing those of your people who wish to, to return to your old town.”

“Yes, I heard that it was today.”

“And you will be going back there, with your Carol. She will be very happy.”

He said, “Varn—”

But she would not face him. She said, “This is not goodbye. You’ll come back before we leave Earth.”

He stood, oppressed by emotions he could not define, and finally he said, “Yes. Yes, I’ll come back before then.”

She left, and he looked after her until she was gone. Then, slowly, he went back through the big, empty hall and out through the building into the street.

A tremendous, brassy clamor and uproar hit him in the face. The plaza was crowded, but a wide lane was open through the crowd to the boulevard that led to the portal. And the Middletown High School Band, brave for the occasion in its retrieved scarlet uniforms, with its drum majorettes prancing and horns blatting, and cymbals banging and big drums booming, was marching through the lane toward the portal.

Behind it came a glistening, open green convertible, with Mayor Garris standing up on the back seat, hatless, his plump face beaming sunlike, waving his hat joyfully to the cheering throngs. And behind his car rolled a long line of other cars—the ancient jalopies, the shining station wagons, the family sedans, crowded with excited men and sobbing women, the first of the long caravan forming up to go back to old Middletown.

Kenniston saw the cheering people who surrounded Jon Arnol, and Hubble, and Gorr Holl and Magro, nearby. He knew that he would be drawn into that group, and he went back and circled around the plaza, going by temporarily abandoned streets to the quarters of Carol and her aunt.

Carol leaped up with a glad cry when he entered. “Oh, Ken, then you’re free! They said it would be today, and I was waiting and hoping—”

“Yes, it’s all done with,” he said. He stood, not knowing quite what to say to her, until Mrs. Adams came up.

“Then we can leave here now, like the others?” Mrs. Adams said anxiously. “We can go back to Middletown now?”

“Just as soon as you can pack up and I can get the jeep,” he said.

“I’ve been packed for days,” she told him. “I wouldn’t stay in this unearthly place for one minute longer than I have to! Just imagine, they tell me a lot of the young people are going to stay here from choice! They say they like it better than Middletown, now!”

Kenniston felt a curious sense of unreality as he got the jeep, and packed their things into it, and then joined the slow, bottlenecked traffic that was now steadily rolling out of the domed city.

Could it all be ending like this? Could it be true that he was going back to the old town, the old life, after all that he had done and seen?

Down the wide boulevard, between the lofty white towers, through the portal, out from underneath the dome—The red Sun still shone dully, but a softer wind than Earth had felt for a million years was blowing across the plain, stirring the timid little shoots of new grass, bringing a breath of warm new life.

Cars ahead of them and cars behind them, rolling toward the ridge, eager for sight of the old city. And now they were passing Jon Arnol’s small cruiser, and then the titan black bulks of the great starships, brooding upon the plain, wrapped in the majesty of giants who knew the secrets of infinity. He looked back at the great ships, and he thought of the vast, star-shot spaces whither they would go, and then he looked on ahead.

And at last the eager cars topped the ridge and went hurrying joyously down into old Middletown.

All along the familiar streets, houses were already beginning to come to life. Shutters flung open, storm windows raised, doors standing wide to the soft wind, women busy with brooms on dust-drifted porches. The shrill voices of children and barking of dogs mingled with the noisy impatience of the auto horns.

Down Mill Street to Main Street, and on. And finally, the old grey house, just as they had left it.

Kenniston stopped the jeep at the curb. Mrs. Adams got out. She went slowly up the steps and unlocked the door. She stood for a moment, looking in.

“Nothing is changed,” she whispered. But all this dust. I’ll have to clean—”

Suddenly she sat down in her chair by the window and began to cry.

Carol did not go in at once. Feeling an odd sense of strain, Kenniston asked, “Are you happy too, Carol?”

She nodded, half smiling, looking out along the awakening street.

“Yes, Ken.”

He said, “Well—I want to return to New Middletown to see Gorr and the others before they leave. But I’ll be back soon.”

She looked at him now, and she said, “No, Ken. Don’t come back to me.”

He stared at her, astonished. “Carol, what do you mean?”

Her soft face was quite steady. “I mean that you don’t altogether belong here now, Ken. You changed when you went out there. You’ll change more in the days ahead—will turn more and more toward the strange new life.” She added, “And I can’t change. Not like that. You’d be miserable with me, clinging to the old things.”

He knew she spoke truth, and yet he must protest. “But the plans we made together, Carol—”

She shook her head. “I made those plans with another man, a man who isn’t quite here any more, and won’t ever be here again.”

She reached up and kissed him, and then she went inside and closed the door.

Kenniston stood a moment, hesitating. Then, slowly, he climbed back into the jeep and drove out of Middletown.

From the ridge he could see again the starships that rested on the plain by the domed city. And the city itself still lived. It was the younger folk of Middletown who had chosen to stay in it—the young in mind who could still look forward to the new.

The starships would continue to come, now the Earth was habitable again. The people of far stars would mingle with the people of Middletown, and the young men here would go out to other Suns, and gradually the whole strange story of Middletown would be absorbed in-to the stream of history.