Isaac Asimov: The Early Asimov. Volume 3

'So they have nothing to give us but the space they occupy in our thought. They have nothing to free us from but themselves. They cannot benefit us in any way other than in their absence.

'It is for that reason that the peace terms have been defined as they have been. We wish them no harm, so let them have their own solar system. Let them live there in peace. Let them mold their own destiny in their own way, and we will not disturb them there by even the least hint of our presence. But we in turn want peace. We in turn would guide our own future in our own way. So we do not want their presence. And with that end in view, an Outer World fleet will patrol the boundaries of their system, Outer World bases will be established on their outermost asteroids, so that we may make sure they do not intrude on our territory.

'There will be no trade, no diplomatic relationships, no travel, no communications. They are fenced off, locked out, hermetically sealed away. Out here we have a new universe, a second creation of Man, a higher Man -

They ask us: What will become of Earth? We answer: That is Earth's problem. Population growth can be controlled. Resources can be efficiently exploited. Economic systems can be revised. We know, for we have done so. If they cannot, let them go the way of the dinosaur, and make room.

'Let them make room, instead of forever demanding room!'

And so an impenetrable curtain swung slowly shut about the Solar System. The stars in Earth's sky became only stars again, as in the long-dead days before the first ship had penetrated the barrier of light's speed.

The government that had made war and peace resigned, but there was no one, really, to take their place. The legislature elected Luiz Moreno - ex-Ambassador to Aurora, ex-Secretary without Portfolio - as President pro tem, and the Earth as a whole was too numbed to agree or disagree. There was only a widespread relief that someone existed who would be willing to take the job of trying to guide the destinies of a world in prison.

Very few realized how well-planned an ending this was, or with what calculation Moreno found himself in the president's chair.

Ernest Keilin said hopelessly from the video screen: 'We are only ourselves now. For us, there is no universe and no past - only Earth, and the future.'

That night he heard from Luiz Moreno once again, and before morning he left for the capital.

Moreno 's presence seemed incongruent within the stiffly formal president's mansion. He was suffering from a cold again, and snuffled when he talked.

Keilin regarded him with a self-terrifying hostility; an almost singeing hatred in which he could feel his fingers begin to twitch in the first gestures of choking. Perhaps he shouldn't have come- Well, what was the difference; the orders had been plain. If he had not come, he would have been brought.

The new president looked at him sharply: 'You have to alter your attitude toward me, Keilin, I know you regard me as one of the Gravediggers of Earth - isn't that the phrase you used last night? - but you must listen to me quietly for a while. In your present state of suppressed rage, I doubt if you could hear me.'

'I will hear whatever you have to say, Mr. President.'

'Well - the external amenities, at least. That's hopeful. Or do you think a video-tracer is attached to the room?'

Keilin merely lifted his eyebrows.

Moreno said: 'It isn't. We are quite alone. We must be alone; otherwise, how could I tell you safely that it is being arranged for you to be elected president under a constitution now being devised? Eh, what's the matter?'

Then he grinned at the look of bloodless amazement in Kei-lin's face. 'Oh, you don't believe it. Well, it's past your stopping. And before an hour is up, you'll understand.'

'I'm to be president?' Keilia struggled with a strange, hoarse voice. Then, more firmly: 'You are mad.'

'No. Not I. Those out there, rather. Out there in the Outer Worlds.' There was a sudden vicious intensity in Moreno 's eyes, and face, and voice, so that you forgot he was a little monkey of a man with a perpetual cold. You didn't notice the wrinkled, sloping forehead. You forgot the baldish head and ill-fitting clothes. There was only the bright and luminous look in his eyes, and the hard incision in his voice. That you noticed.

Keilin reached blindly backward for a chair, as Moreno came closer and spoke with increasing intensity.

'Yes,' said Moreno. 'Those out among the Stars. The godlike ones. The stately supermen. The strong, handsome master-race. They are mad. But only we on Earth know it.

'Come, you have heard of the Pacific Project. I know you have. You denounced it to Cellioni once, and called it a fake. But it isn't a fake. And almost none of it is a secret. In fact, the only secret about it was that almost none of it was a secret.

'You're no fool, Keilin. You just never stopped to work it all out. And yet you were on the track. You had the feel of it. What was it you said that time you were interviewing me on the program? Something about the attitude of the Outer Worldling toward the Earthman being the only flaw in the former's stability. That was it, wasn't it? Or something like that? Very well, then; good! You had the first third of the Pacific Project in your mind at the time, and it was no secret after all, was it?

'Ask yourself, Keilin - what was the attitude of the typical Auroran to a typical Earthman? A feeling of superiority? That's the first thought, I suppose. But, tell me, Keih'n, if he really felt superior, really superior, would it be so necessary for him to call such continuous attention to it? What kind of superiority is it that must be continuously bolstered by the constant repetition of phrases such as "apemen," "submen," "half-animals of Earth," and so on? That is not the calm internal assurance of superiority. Do you waste epithets on earthworms? No, there is something else there.

'Or let us approach it from another tack. Why do Outer World tourists stay in special hotels, travel in inclosed ground-cars, and have rigid, if unwritten, rules against social intermingling? Are they afraid of pollution? Strange, then, that they are not afraid to eat our food and drink our wine and smoke our tobacco.

'You see, Keilin, there are no psychiatrists on the Outer Worlds. The supermen are, so they say, too well adjusted. But here on Earth, as the proverb goes, there are more psychiatrists than plumbers, and they get lots of practice. So it is we, and not they, who know the truth about this Outer World superiority-complex, who know it to be simply a wild reaction against an overwhelming feeling of guilt.

'Don't you think that can be so? You shake your head as though you disagree. You don't see that a handful of men who clutch a Galaxy while billions starve for lack of room must feel a subconscious guilt, no matter what? And, since they won't share the loot, don't you see that the only way they can justify themselves is to try to convince themselves that Earth-men, after all, are inferior, that they do not deserve the Galaxy, that a new race of men have been created out there and that we here are only the diseased remnants of an old race that should die out like the dinosaur, through the working of inexorable natural laws?

'Ah, if they could only convince themselves of that, they would no longer be guilty, but merely superior. Only, it doesn't work; it never does. It requires constant bolstering; constant repetition, constant reinforcement. And still it doesn't quite convince.

'Best of all, if only they could pretend that Earth and its population do not exist at all. When you visit Earth, therefore, avoid Earthmen; or they might make you uncomfortable by not looking inferior enough. Sometimes they might look miserable instead, and nothing more. Or worse still, they might even seem intelligent - as I did, for instance, on Aurora.