Clifford Simak - The Shipshape Miracle - And Other Stories

“Look, Fowler,” he said, “lay off a day or two. Wait a bit. Just a day or two. Then let us talk again.”

“I’ve waited long enough already.”

“But I want you to think this over: A million years ago man first came into being—just an animal. Since that time he had inched his way up a cultural ladder. Bit by painful bit he has developed a way of life, a philosophy, a way of doing things. His progress has been geometrical. Today he does much more than he did yesterday. Tomorrow he’ll do even more than he did today. For the first time in human history, Man is really beginning to hit the ball. He’s just got a good start, the first stride, you might say. He’s going a lot farther in a lot less time than he’s come already.

“Maybe it isn’t as pleasant as Jupiter, maybe not the same at all. Maybe humankind is drab compared with the life forms of Jupiter. But it’s man’s life. It’s the thing he’s fought for. It’s the thing he’s made himself. It’s a destiny he has shaped.

“I hate to think, Fowler, that just when we’re going good we’ll swap our destiny for one we don’t know about, for one we can’t be sure about.”

“I’ll wait,” said Fowler. “Just a day or two. But I’m warning you. You can’t put me off. You can’t change my mind.”

“That’s all I ask,” said Webster. He rose and held out his hand. “Shake on it?” he asked.

But even as he shook Fowler’s hand, Webster knew it wasn’t any good. Juwain philosophy or not, mankind was heading for a showdown. A showdown that would be even worse because of the Juwain philosophy. For the mutants wouldn’t miss a bet. If this was to be their joke, if this was their way of getting rid of the human race, they wouldn’t overlook a thing. By tomorrow morning every man, woman and child somehow or other would have managed to look through a kaleidoscope. Or something else. Lord only knew how many other ways there were.

He watched until Fowler had closed the door behind him, then walked to the window and stared out. Flashing on the skyline of the city was a new advertising sign—one that had not been there before. A crazy sign that made crazy colored patterns in the night. Flashing on and off as if one were turning a kaleidoscope.

Webster stared at it, tight-lipped.

He should have expected it.

He thought of Joe with a flare of murderous fury surging through his brain. For that call had been a cackling chortle behind a covering hand, a smart-Aleck gesture designed to let man know what it was all about, to let him know after he was behind the eight-ball and couldn’t do a thing about it.

We should have killed them off, thought Webster, and was surprised at the calm coldness of the thought. We should have stamped them out like we would a dangerous disease.

But man had forsaken violence as a world and individual policy. Not for one hundred twenty-five years had one group been arrayed against another group in violence.

When Joe had called, the Juwain philosophy had lain on the desk. I had only to reach out my hand and touch it, Webster thought.

He stiffened with the realization of it. I had only to reach out my hand and touch it. And I did just that!

Something more than telepathy, something more than guessing. Joe knew he would pick up the kaleidoscope—must have known it. Foresight—an ability to roll back the future. Just an hour or so, perhaps, but that would be enough.

Joe—and the other mutants, of course—had known about Fowler. Their probing, telepathic minds could have told them all that they wished to know. But this was something else, something different.

He stood at the window, staring at the sign. Thousands of people, he knew, were seeing it. Seeing it and feeling that sudden sick impact in their mind.

Webster frowned, wondering about the shifting pattern of the lights. Some physiological impact upon a certain center of the human brain, perhaps. A portion of the brain that had not been used before—a portion of the brain that in due course of human development might naturally have come into its proper function. A function now that was being forced.

The Juwain philosophy, at last! Something for which men had sought for centuries, now finally come to pass. Given man at a time when he’d have been better off without it.

Fowler had written in his report: I cannot give a factual account because there are no words for the facts that I want to tell. He still didn’t have the words, of course, but he had something else that was even better—an audience that could understand the sincerity and the greatness which lay beneath the words he did have. An audience with a new-found sense which would enable them to grasp some of the mighty scope of the thing Fowler had to tell.

Joe had planned it that way. Had waited for this moment. Had used the Juwain philosophy as a weapon against the human race.

For with the Juwain philosophy, man would go to Jupiter. Faced by all the logic in the world, he still would go to Jupiter. For better or for worse, he would go to Jupiter.

The only chance there had ever been of winning against Fowler had been Fowler’s inability to describe what he saw, to tell what he felt, to reach the people with a clear exposition of the message that he brought. With mere human words that message would have been vague and fuzzy and while the people at first might have believed, they would have been shaky in their belief, would have listened to other argument.

But now that chance was gone, for the words would be no longer vague and fuzzy. The people would know, as clearly and as vibrantly as Fowler knew himself, what Jupiter was like.

The people would go to Jupiter, would enter upon a life other than the human life.

And the Solar System, the entire Solar System, with the exception of Jupiter, would lie open for the new race of mutants to take over, to develop any kind of culture that they might wish—a culture that would scarcely follow the civilization of the parent race.

Webster swung away from the window, strode back to the desk. He stooped and pulled out a drawer, reached inside. His hand came out clutching something that he had never dreamed of using—a relic, a museum piece he had tossed there years before.

With a handkerchief, he polished the metal of the gun, tested its mechanism with trembling fingers.

Fowler was the key. With Fowler dead—

With Fowler dead and the Jupiter stations dismantled and abandoned, the mutants would be licked. Man would have the Juwain philosophy and would retain his destiny. The Centauri expedition would blast off for the stars. The life experiments would continue on Pluto. Man would march along the course that his culture plotted.

Faster than ever before. Faster than anyone could dream.

Two great strides. The renunciation of violence as a human policy—the understanding that came with the Juwain philosophy. The two great things that would speed man along the road to wherever he was going.

The renunciation of the violence and the—

Webster stared at the gun clutched in his hand and heard the roar of winds tumbling through his head.

Two great strides—and he was about to toss away the first.

For one hundred twenty-five years no man had killed another—for more than a thousand years killing had been obsolete as a factor in the determination of human affairs.

A thousand years of peace and one death might undo the work. One shot in the night might collapse the structure, might hurl man back to the old bestial thinking.

Webster killed—why can’t I? After all, there are some men who should be killed. Webster did right, but—he shouldn’t have stopped with only one. I don’t see why they’re hanging him, he’d ought to get a medal. We ought to start on the mutants first. If it hadn’t been for them—