Ben Bova - Test of Fire

“Chilly night,” Alec said to them.

“Sure is.”

Inside Douglas’ house two more men were drowsing in the living room. They snapped to their feet when Alec let the front door bang shut.

“Everything quiet in here?” he asked.

“Yessir.” They were both embarrassed, even a touch fearful.

Without another word, Alec tiptoed up the steps and pushed at the door to Douglas’ room. The old man was sitting on the bed in almost exactly the same position that Alec had left him earlier. He was wearing glasses now, and reading a battered, well-thumbed book. Alec squinted at the cover but it was too worn to make out the title.

“Come on in,” Douglas said softly, barely looking up from the book. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

Alec stepped into the room and took the chair, feeling oddly nervous, edgy. As he sat down, he realized that Douglas’ voice was no longer the booming, demanding, self-assured roar it had once been. He was quieter, his voice subdued. From defeat? Alec found that hard to believe.

Douglas waggled the book. “Found this in a city library, years ago. Hemingway. The Fifth Column and the First Forty-Nine , Forty-nine short stories, that is. Magnificent. You ought to read them.”

Alec shrugged.

“So.” Douglas put the book down on the table beside his bed. The radio equipment had been cleared away; nothing was left except the torn end of the cable still hanging from the room’s one window. “You’ve come to see if I’m comfortable and enjoyed my meal?”

“No.”

“Come to read me my death sentence?” He actually looked amused.

“Not that either,” Alec said. “I’ve come to find out what you meant when you said that your work’s nearly finished, but mine is just beginning. Will said something very much like it a couple of hours ago…”

“You’ve seen Will?” Douglas asked, suddenly eager. “He’s all right?”

“He’s fine. Hungry as a bear…”

“And thirsty, I’ll bet.”

Alec felt a grin bend his lips. “Yes, that too.”

“But you’ve finally started to tumble to the fact that there’s more to life than beating your old man, eh?”

Alec hunched forward in the chair. “I want to know what all these mysterious hints are about.”

“It’s not too complicated,” Douglas said.

“Everything’s worked out pretty much as I had planned it. I admit that I expected to beat you today, rather than the other way around. But the plan can work either way.”

“What plan?” Alec demanded, suddenly irritated.

Douglas smiled at him. A genuinely benign, paternal smile in that grizzled, lined face. “The plan to reunite the human race. The plan to rebuild civilization.”

“That!”

“Yes, that. It happens to be the reason behind everything I’ve done over the past twenty years and more. But now it’s going to be up to you to put the plan into action.”

Alec shook his head.

“Listen to me!” Douglas snapped, with some of the old fire. Jabbing a thick finger at him, he said, “It’s finally been accomplished. Don’t you understand that? Look around you, what do you see? And I don’t mean just this room. What’s happened out there today?”

“We beat you.”

“Who beat me?”

“We did—the army that Kobol put together and I led.”

“And who’s in that army?”

Puzzled, Alec answered, “Who’s in it? Men from all over: as far south as Florida, as close as some of the villages just over the hills from here.”

“And who else?” Douglas’ eyes were gleaming.

Alec thought a moment. “Us,” he finally realized.

“Men from the settlement.”

Douglas leaned back on the pillows, satisfied.

“Excellent. You got the right answer with only a few prods. You might make a real leader yet. An army made up of bands of men who’ve been fighting each other for the past twenty-some years —raiders and farmers, city barbarians and fishermen from the warm country—plus you lunar people with your high technology. For the first time since the sky burned and organization of Earth and Moon people has worked together.”

Alec blinked at him. “What’s so marvelous about that?”

“I’ll tell you.” Douglas was obviously enjoying this; his voice had regained some of its former strength. “When the sky burned civilization on Earth ended. But on the Moon we were all right — for the time being. Then the leaders in the settlement got the notion that there was nothing they could do to help what was left of Earth’s people.”

“They were right,” Alec said. “They were barely able to survive themselves, those first years.”

“They were right, at that time ,” Douglas corrected. “But that doesn’t mean the decision was right for all time. From that first decision, it was a short step to decide that the settlement could survive on its own, and all they needed from Earth was an occasional re-supply of the things that couldn’t be produced on the Moon.”

“The fissionables.”

“And medicinal plants, a few other things. So while the lunar people were looking down their noses at the so-called barbarians of Earth, it was they who were really behaving like barbarians — raiding Earth for what they wanted but could not or would not produce for themselves. That’s barbarism!”

“Now wait…”

But Douglas plowed on. “The truth is, the settlement cannot survive on its own and never could. Genetically it’s a dead end. Already the cancer rate and birth defects are skyrocketing.”

Alec said, “We’ve been through all this before.”

“Indeed we have. But now we have the opportunity to set things straight. You’re in command of a joint Earth-Moon army. You’re sitting on the fissionables that the settlement wants. You can force them to start working with the people here on Earth, to start rebuilding civilization in earnest. What I’ve done is to set the stage. Now you can make it actually happen.”

Alec felt the strength leach out of him. His jaw fell open. When he realized he was gaping, he straightened up in the chair and asked, “Me? You want me…” He ran out of words.

“Yes, you,” Douglas said gently. “I’ve been waiting for you for twenty years, son.”

“But you tried to kill me!”

“No, I didn’t. I tried to see what you were made of. I set up conditions that would test you, so we could both find out what you were made of. You came through in fine shape. You survived. What’s more, you learned. You understand now exactly what I’m saying, and you know that I’m right. I can see it.”

“No…”

“Yes!” Douglas was beaming now. “You’re the leader of this entire ramshackle alliance. You’re the one man with the power to force those hothouse lovelies up there to rejoin their brothers and sisters here on Earth. Alone, separated from the knowledge and technology of the Moon, Earth’s civilization will need another five centuries to be rekindled. Nobody knows that better than I do! I’ve spent twenty years bringing a miniscule number of people back from absolute barbarism as far as a feudal society.”

Douglas’s fists clenched. “But the lunar settlement— alone, separated from Earth, cut off from the lifeblood of the human race, the genetic pool — the settlement will die. There’s no other word for it. They’ll be dead within another two generations. Three, at most.”

Alec heard Kobol’s voice in his mind, his response to the question about what would happen when the fissionables ran out. “ Fifty years is a long time, we won’t be around to worry about it.”

“You’re worrying about my children,” Alec said to his father.

“Your grandchildren.”