OPUS 21 (39 page)

Sopho looked quickly at Learned--who glanced away.

The scientist seemed, for the first time, alarmed. Not alarmed at the statement made by the man but at its effect upon two persons whom he had considered impervious to wild suggestion. Obviously, it was up to him to break the lunatic's spell. Some fabulous stowaway--and the journalist and the soldier--drawn overfine by the magnitude of this mission--had become prey to imagination.

One humors the mad--at any rate, to begin with. "I see," said Sopho.

He now faced the stranger--who stood in their midst. "Tell me. Just why did you decide to accompany this particular raid?"

Chris, still smiling, repeated his words about his promise--and after that, the promise.

"End of the world, eh?" Sopho chuckled. "You sure?"

"Your world--perhaps."

"You want us to give it up? The mission?" Sopho pointed at the bomb bay.

"That?"

Chris looked steadily at him. "If I remember rightly, doctor, you began the preparation of--that--" he, also, pointed--"not to use against men, but to have on hand if your other enemy employed such instruments. He did not. He lies defeated."

Sopho nodded. "Right. Now we are using it to shorten the war. Save lives."

"Save
lives?"

"By shortening the war, man! Simple arithmetic--!"

"What about--the next war? And the next? The wars beyond that?"

"This weapon should--and in my opinion will--put an end to war."

Slowly, Chris shook his head. "Strange reasoning. A
weapon
will put an end to war."

"An absolute weapon, man! The world will never again risk going to war. Never again dare take the risk!"

"It will fear too much, you think?"

"Precisely."

"But isn't it fear, doctor, that has always caused men to wage war? Fear in this form today--tomorrow in that form--?"

"Can you think of a better means of ending wars--foolish wastes!--than an absolute weapon? We have changed the whole picture of war!"

"But not changed men!"

There ensued a moment without talk.

Chris presently said, "This weapon. Where it falls, the genes of men will be broken. Perhaps their children--perhaps their grandchildren--will carry the heritage.

Headless bodies. Eyeless faces. There--teeth everywhere. And yonder--no voice.

Generation after generation, for a thousand years--this great invention will go on waging your present war, doctor, against the unborn."

The colonel grabbed the scientist's arm. "Is that true?"

Sopho shrugged. "In a certain per cent of cases, where radiation is extreme but not fatal--naturally, the reproductive capacity will display unpredictable, permanent damage.

Recessive damage. When, however, two persons mate who exhibit matching gene deterioriation--then--as this man says--"

The colonel's hand dropped. "I didn't know," he murmured. "Not certainly. I didn't even know that you men were sure."

Learned spoke. "War against the generations! Good--!" He checked himself.

Chris said, "Have you that right?"

Sopho replied angrily, "That's a right implicit in any war! If you kill a soldier--

you destroy
all
his potential progeny--not simply endanger a few of them. The same fact applies to civilians."

"You do not," Chris answered, "corrupt the children of the survivors for centuries to come. No." He meditated a moment. "If the salt of the earth shall lose its savor, wherewith shall ye resavor it?"

Sopho said, "If changing man's environment will not change the evil of war--"

"Evil?" Chris repeated questioningly. "But does not man always believe his wars are just? Whatever cause--whichever side?"

Sopho ignored the inquiry. "--how do we change man?"

"Love one another," Chris said.

A slow smile came upon the physicist's face. "We should have loved the Nazis?

And love the Jap who lies ahead?"

"Of course." Chris nodded soberly. "If you had loved them, you would never have let them sink into the pit of their despair--arm--turn upon yourselves. Had you loved them, you would have assisted them--before you were compelled to restrain them by such violence."

"The rights of nations--" Sopho began.

"--exist in the minds of men. You did not love them. You loved yourselves. You saw torment born in them all, and saw it grow, and feared it--and stood, like any Pharisee, reciting your virtues but not lifting a finger to assist them."

"He's right." Learned shook his head ruefully. "How right he is!"

"Love!" Sopho said the word scornfully. "Little you know of Nature. Little of love you'll see there!"

"It's strange," Chris answered, "that I see in Nature nothing
else
but love. Pain--

yes. Sorrow--yes. Tragedy--yes. To every individual. Yet--in the sum of Nature--only love."

Sopho's eyebrows arched skeptically. "Do you really believe that the primitive phrases of a man who possibly existed--some two thousand years ago--could fix the attention of a modern scientist?"

"Evidently they do not." Chris bent and peered through the round, bowed window of the ship as if he could orient himself even among the traceless clouds. He looked at them again. "I talked in very simple words, doctor, to very simple people. The extreme simplicity of the formulations should--I thought--make the concepts increasingly understandable, as men pursued truth. I advised them, remember, to know the truth. I meant all of truth. I warned them that an excessive fascination with worldly goods--to the exclusion of inner goodness--would undo all peace of mind--"

Sopho chuckled. "Surely--we've pursued truth? What we carry today represents a great accumulation of truth!

And I'll also agree that most men who merely amass worldly goods--the rich--

aren't greatly interested in science. In truth. In anything but money. Still--"

Chris had raised his hand. "This ship--the bomb it carries--all the equipment and paraphernalia of the universities which lie behind it--the projects undertaken and achieved there--what are they, too, doctor--if not worldly goods?"

"Then you would have us put science aside? Stop seeking such truth--?"

"Seek truth in two ways, doctor. Within--and without." He drew a breath, frowned and spoke again. "Love--in man--takes various forms. Love of self. Love of woman.

Love of other men. Love of cosmos. Each is an altruism so designed that, through love, man shall preserve himself in dignity, procreate, and preserve all others even at the cost of his own life. Greater love hath no man than this last. Not one of these altruisms can be peacefully maintained unless the others also are given their proportionate due. The conscience of a man rises from the relatedness of these loves and is his power to interpret how valuable, relatively, each one is--not to him alone, but to all men, as each man is beholden to all. To reason only in the mind is to express the love of worldly goods, alone.

Have you ever reasoned in your heart, doctor?"

"Irrational emotions! Reason has no place there!"

"But it has. As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. You scientists refuse to study how your hearts think. Repent, I said. Confess, the churches say--and worldliness encompasses them! Join, they say. But I say, when you have yielded up your vanity you will contain the immortal love. My time is short, gentlemen. I thought to remind you."

"I remember--!" the colonel's lips pronounced the inaudible words.

Learned looked at the floor. "How do you tell them--now?"

Sopho said disgustedly, "Metaphysics!"

"Light was the symbol I tried to give them," Chris went on gently. "The Cross was the symbol they adopted. The pain of self-sacrifice was obvious to them. The subjective reward--incomprehensible. Thus they changed it all. I told them of many mansions. They chose this mansion or that--and scoured each other off the earth, to set one heaven in place of the heaven of those they defeated. Holy wars! Is such a thing conceivable to God as a holy war? Alas. The words--the images--the effort is still uncomprehended. I said Light. I said Truth. I said Freedom. I meant enlightenment. Yet nearly every church that uses my name is a wall against light and a rampart against enlightenment, using fear, not love, to chain the generations in terror and pain and ignorance." He pointed again. "And now--this is called civilization, and in my name, also! Enlightenment! Knowledge!" He fell silent; but at last, smiled a little. "A few knew.

A few will always know. Francis of Assisi--he guessed. Thomas à Kempis. Most who knew were church heretics in their day--as I was in mine. And what I say is still heresy."

He became silent again. He looked from face to face. "Colonel. You are a soldier.

You are ready by your profession to die for other men. It is a noble readiness. Will you turn back?"

The colonel retreated a step and leaned against the riveted bulkhead. Sweat once more broke upon his countenance, poured down; he crossed himself again and Chris sadly shook his head.

Finally the colonel could speak. "You ask me to be disloyal."

"I ask you--only to decide in your own self--what loyalty is."

"I cannot turn, then."

"Learned?"

The journalist's eyes were steady--and tragic. "Nothing would be gained. Others would merely follow in place of us."

"I but asked you to decide for yourself--not for them."

The journalist flushed. "In my profession we do not even agree to stand ready to die for other men. I am here not to determine, but merely to report."

"Sopho?"

The physicist's eyes blazed suddenly. "Yes," he said. "I'll go back! I was never certain. I am always ready to restudy a problem!"

Chris put his arm around the old man.
"You!"

But the scientist pulled away. "On one condition."

"And that?"

"Prove yourself!"

"But, doctor, it is you who must provide the testimony--!"

"Empirical evidence is my condition. Something measurable. Suspend, for one moment, one natural principle--"

Ruefully, Chris laughed. "To simple men--fishermen, farmers, tax collectors--the power of any genuine conviction seemed miraculous because of its accomplishments. I healed the neurotics of my day. By suggestion, I added to the innocent gaiety of many a gathering. But even that poor, positive procedure is inverted now; many churches find their miracles in the hysterics of their own sick-bleeding, stigmata, fits!" He sighed.

"Surely you, doctor, a miracle-maker in reality--are not naive enough to ask that the very heart of truth be magically violated so you may
accept
truth? The evidence is--
within
you.
I never said more. Find it there, man!"

"I thought so," the doctor replied in a cold voice.

Chris spoke persuasively.
"You
could work a miracle of transformation within
yourself.
But--even if I should suspend the very forces upon which that possibility depends--you would exert the last resource of your ingenuity to find out by what mechanical trick I achieved your illusion, as you'd call it! Prove, doctor, that you would not!"

"Let's see the experiment." Sopho's eyes were hard.

The stranger thought a moment and presently chuckled to himself. "The unsolved riddle of the cause--
the source--
the nature--of the energy in your atoms, doctor! Would you like to understand that next step in your science?"

"Impossible!"

Chris looked ardently at the old man.

A moment later, the scientist's eyes shut. An expression of immense concentration came upon his features. Perspiration welled and trickled on his countenance--as on the colonel's. Suddenly his eyes opened again. He grabbed the colonel's arm. "Great God, man! I've cracked the toughest problem in physics! The thing just came to me this moment! Why! With this equation--we'll be able to make bombs that will assure American domination for a century! I'll win my second Nobel Prize! Every nuclear physicist's head will swim with envy! The financial possibilities--billions!--trillions! I'll just get it on paper--!" He broke off. "Wasn't there--somebody else--standing here?" he said perplexedly. "Never mind! Lend me a pencil, Learned!"

"Somebody else?" The colonel shook his head. "Nobody but the three of us. And the gunners. Jesus, I wish this mission was ended! I've been having a terrible struggle in my conscience about it!"

Learned said, "Have you? Me--too. I kind of hate humanity today. I kept wishing-

-something would break down, and stop the whole thing. I get a choked-up feeling when I think of those people."

The scientist was crouching, now--gazing at the streaming gray desolation beyond the windows. "Funny," he said to the gunner at his side. "A minute ago--I was sure I'd got a new insight into a very complex problem. Now--I can't even remember my approach."

The gunner, who held palaver of the brass and all VIPs to be but one more nuisance of war, said, "Yeah?"

The B-29 flew on toward its as yet unspecified destination.

The City of Horror and Shame.

Back at the base, the brass was laying plans for a second run--to the City of Naked Sorrow.

9

A scorcher.

It was my father's phrase and came back to me as familiarly, when I opened my eyes, as the heard reveille of my childhood. The sun glared on the dark window-blinds, penetrating them at myriad pinpoints. I remembered summer mornings in Massachusetts, Ohio, North Dakota, Jersey, and on the cool, bright shores of Lake George.

"Rise and shine, everybody! It's a scorcher!"

The buoyant baritone of a man of God, excited by his life, frustrated in every excitement by his Faith; a man in there, as we used to say, trying.

The room was a fumarole--its atmosphere spent by my breathing and stained with the carbonic reek of yesterday's cigarettes. Nothing came through the windows; they were open to the eye--but invisibly walled by the heat. A stratum of smoke and dust lay across a sunbeam; the light pierced it, struck the corner of a mirror, broke, and rebounded to the ceiling in a prismatic dazzle: red, green, blue, yellow, purple.

The little awl had ceased pecking my throat. I swallowed--without unnatural sensation--reached for the phone, ordered coffee, and sat up naked on the bed's edge, leaving a damp plaster cast of myself in the sheet. I took a short shower and picked up the Sunday papers cautiously.