When They Come from Space (12 page)

Sometime during the night (perhaps in early morning hours?) the arena of battle moved toward the west. Now it was centered no longer over the city. Now it was fading over the horizon.

Now it was gone.

"We're not to know how it comes out?” Sara murmured plaintively, querulously.

"We'll know,” I said strongly. And this time caught my following, despicable remark before it left my throat. “This is the intermission."

I started to say, “Let's go out into the lobby to get some popcorn,” but had sense enough to change it into something rational.

"However it comes out, Sara, you and I will have a hard day at the Pentagon tomorrow. We may get no sleep, but we should try to find something to eat. We have to keep going."

We were lucky that the thought occurred to us before it had to many others. We stood up, stretched our aching muscles, and with stiff, unwieldy legs we threaded our way through the dazed and huddled groups of people to the community kitchen. We hadn't expected to find any attendants on duty, but the cybernetic cooking machinery was apparently unresponsive to the battle going on over our heads. Nor had there been a complete breakdown in supplying the machines with the raw produce.

Coins in the beef-stew slot produced the usual containers which would be taken home and consumed, container and all, in front of the television set; or for oddballs stranded in a strange community, as we were, consumed at some tables here in front of the kitchen television set.

A montage program was in progress to bring us up to date. Everywhere the battle was the same, everywhere it followed the same pattern. Everywhere it had moved away over the horizon to the west. What we had seen here in Washington had been witnessed over every large city on Earth. No one commented on this strange coincidence.

For all her usual sharpness, Sara seemed not to have caught it either. I held my peace. I was a cynical so-and-so. It was not the first time I had found myself out of step with the prevailing mood. I had learned my lesson long ago. I knew something of mob reaction, I'd seen it. I knew how little it took to turn an overwrought, tense collection of individuals into a ravening mob, all acting in one accord of insane fury, possessed by a superentity created through interaction and feedback of emotions, given brief life of uncalculated power, taking possession of the individuals, turning them into body cells of the entity, playing out the tragic role before the individual mind could recoil in horror from its acts, shatter the group accord and destroy the entity—after the deed had been done.

I held my peace.

But I no longer believed. I no longer believed that anything we had seen was real. I didn't know what it was. I had no idea of any power which could produce an illusion of instantaneous world-wide scope; nor, as yet, the purpose of doing it. I was convinced only that it wasn't what it seemed, that it was, indeed, an illusion. That it was some kind of universal brain-wash.

I looked sharply at Sara. I looked at the handful of people who had also thought of food and strayed into this kitchen. All of them were following, straining to follow, the words of the television commentator. All of them completely hooked. How had I escaped? Why was I immune to the bait? Was it because a long and heavy career of working with great numbers of people, handling them, manipulating them, causing them to respond in the manner I chose—and discouraged and sickened with them because they did respond, because they had too little critical judgment of manipulative patterns to prevent them from responding—had this given me an insight? Was it that? Or was it some basic flaw in me, which moved me ever so slightly out of phase with my own kind; never again to be as one with them?

How well I understood the contempt of the politician for his constituents, the advertising man for those who bought his product, the entertainment producer for those who became enrapt with his creation. And yet, were not these shaped and debased as much by those to whom they pandered, as were their masses shaped and debased by them? By striving to pander to the widest appeal, the lowest common denominator, did they succeed in anything beyond lowering and debasing even that?

I knew some of the writers and producers around Hollywood. I was not particularly critical of them for giving the public what it demanded. Anything-for-a-buck had become the national way of life. But I had been horrified that, although they maintained a superior attitude and a condescension toward the low level of the public mind, their own taste and critical judgment became debased by their output until they, themselves, began to think it was good. They, themselves, became the victims of their own illusions.

Why was I immune? I could not even join with these!

We were breaking apart the flaky, flavorsome container, designed as the finishing touch to the meal, and chewing it slowly, when a cacophony of voices from the street penetrated the open door and overwhelmed the voice of the television commentator.

"They're coming back! Ah-h-h! They're coming back."

Outside, on the street again, we saw it for ourselves. Yes, they were coming back.

In spite of the thoughts I had had, sitting there in the kitchen and watching the others while they watched the television, in spite of this I felt my pulses quicken, my heart begin to pound, a choking gladness. There was something even while my intellect held back—and the emotional responses began to erode, to wash over, to drown the critical judgment.

Yes, they were coming back. And I lifted to them, eager to meet them. All around me the people were lifting. Everyone was on his feet now, with their eyes turned toward the west, straining toward the west.

But as the battle forces drew closer, the rising hope and excitement changed again to dread and despair. The globes were pitifully few now, so pitifully few. Still outnumbered. Still outpowered. Still having only one weapon superior—their sheer, incredible, valiant courage.

Now we could see the projectiles make their move, almost as if we could enter that evil, alien mind, we could see them make their decision that now it was time to move in and crush the radiant globes—utterly. So, like an angry den of snakes, squirming and writhing, they swarmed all over the globes, inundating them.

And still a few, a pitiful few, of the globes escaped somehow. Escaped, but not to flee. Escaped, but only to turn and re-engage their enemy.

They began to win.

The faces of the people in the street were slack with awe. Their glistening eyes were sick with hope denied, hope still struggling to hope. To despair again and again, all through the night, and now, with the first breath of silver in the eastern sky to see the tide turn. Dared they hope? This time, if despair swamped it once more, the very roots of hope would die.

Yet hope they must.

And now I knew.

What I had not known before. Why the constituents voted in the politician. Why they bought the advertiser's product. Why they even supported Hollywood's shabby little travesty.

Better to have hope and faith that sometimes ... maybe...

Than none.

Now I knew the meaning.

The deed proved the virtue. The virtue proved the deed.

If your heart is pure, your cause is just, your strength is great, and your purpose firm; you can overcome the obstacles in your path to reach your heart's desire.

This was the meaning. This was the essence of all religion, all philosophy, all education, all science, all Man's striving. If Man did not believe this, then there was no meaning to anything. Without this belief, nothing mattered, Man was nothing.

There was a hunger, a craving hunger in man to be reassured of it, to be told it again and again. He could not get enough of the telling. He became the willing, the eager victim of those who traded in the hunger, sickened in knowing he was being victimized, humbly supplicating to be victimized again, because maybe ... this time...

Even the shoddy, shabby trivialities of Hollywood, the nasty little shyster tricks of writers and producers in stringing together meaningless story formula. Even these, for they, too, promised...

If your heart is pure, your cause is just, your strength is great, your purpose firm; you can overcome the obstacles in your path to reach your heart's desire.

What else is there?

There, above us, it was being played out once more. Never had the forces of Right and Evil been so obviously enjoined. Never had Evil been so near to triumph, nor Good so valiant in near vanquishment. Never had heart and strength so fought with such firm purpose in just cause.

Now the obstacles were being overcome.

For others, in other longitudes, the space-suspended Earth turning in the sun's light as it does, and yet all this happening simultaneously, the battle must have been fought from dawn to dusk in the brightness of day, from morning until evening, from noon until midnight, from afternoon until the low ebb.

For us, there in Washington and along the Eastern seaboard of the United States, it seemed to have a special meaning.

For the turning point came with the first streaks of silver up the morning sky.

And confirmed for us that this time our faith and hope was justified as the sky grew in light.

All at once we knew that, this time, the battle would not reverse itself again. With so few of the globes remaining, and the hosts of evil discs which seemed to spawn still more to take the place of those destroyed, we did not know why or how the tide of battle turned.

But turned it had.

And with the first golden ray of the rising sun, the discs streaked away from the globes in cowardly fear. Their passage through the upper atmosphere came back to us in a scream of insane, craven terror.

And after them pursued the globes.

Now we could see them no more. Only here and there were bursts of flame brighter than the sun's light, gouts of red fire like opened arteries of blood.

The sun bathed the city streets in its warmth. Now the people who had watched all through the night began to move sluggishly about, as if wakened from a dream. They looked at one another, as waking members of a family might, and for the moment the close affection of family replaced the endless, irritated, sibling bickering among them.

I looked at Sara; she looked at me with a wan smile. Her face was drawn with weariness, and I suppose she saw the same in mine. But I doubt she found the same contentment and fulfillment in my eyes as I read in hers.

There seemed nothing to say. The magnificence of what we had seen obviated all comment, all evaluation. It needed no interpretation of meaning. Not to most, whatever complex wonders and doubts I might feel.

This was not of Earth. That much was clear. No group of men, no nation could have staged this production.

They had come from space.

They had come, but not in the way I had imagined they might, someday. I had thought they would come, if they ever came, in reason and rationality, beyond selfishness, beyond passion, beyond falseness. They had come, instead, in fire and passion, in war and destruction, spewing forces at one another beyond comprehension.

And completely phony!

A staged production, specifically for our benefit. A magnificent production, beyond all the wildest hopes of our own showmen—and as phony as anything that ever came out of Hollywood, where they prefer the phony even when the real, the rational, the believable would do the better job.

Yet what kind of alien mind could so accurately assess the human response as to know it would respond favorably to the phony where it might reject the real? How long had they been studying us without our knowledge? How deeply had they dug into us? They had used the very basic drive which had brought man up out of the slime to reach for the stars—faith in the triumph of virtue. To gain?

What? What did they plan to gain?

Or had we become so disillusioned in our ideals that we could contemplate no motive beyond self-gain?

There was nothing to say beyond the trivialities of routine.

"Well, Sara,” I began, and managed a smile of sorts. “Things will be popping today around the Pentagon. And if I remember right, we are the authorities on extraterrestrial psychology."

"Supposed to be,” she agreed with reservation. “Do you really understand all this? Well enough to tell the staff what it is all about."

"Not that well,” I said. “Just well enough to say right now that we can expect visitors shortly. From the globes, not the discs. Not well enough to know what they want from us. But well enough to know that we'll give it to them, whatever they want. They've seen to that."

"Well, naturally we would,” she said reproachfully. “After what they've done for us."

"Naturally,” I agreed with a smile.

"Naturally,” she said with a certain defiance. “Who could hold out or bargain? What with? And who would want to?"

"Still,” I said, “they'll be pounding on my door; I mean Earthmen, not Starmen. I don't expect ever to get within shouting distance of the Starmen. But the Earthmen are going to want me to brief them on how the Starmen's minds work."

"You think you can do it?” she asked doubtfully.

"Hell, no,” I said frankly. “But, just the same, we ought to be getting to work. Which means digging up some kind of transportation."

"I don't know where we are,” she said doubtfully.

"I'm a stranger here myself,” I agreed.

We walked back toward the community kitchen, and as we passed we looked inside. A taxi driver—we could tell by his cap—was nesting a mug of coffee between his hands, warming them as he drank the liquid to warm himself. We went in, and I sat down at his table while Sara detoured to bring us coffee of our own. The driver looked at me with neither welcome nor hostility.

"We work at the Pentagon,” I said to him. “We're trying to get to work. You willing to drive us?"

As if unwilling to take his eyes away from the visions of remembrance, he merely stared. When Sara brought up our coffee and sat down with us, he didn't notice.

"This is Dr. Kennedy,” she said to the driver. “He is an officer in the Space Navy Bureau of Extraterrestrial Psychology."