They are ashamed of their fear, for because of it they broke all the kindly laws of their civilizations, restrained all the pity and gentleness I see in them, and let us destroy ourselves.
I am beginning to feel more awake and to see more clearly. And I am beginning to feel sorry for them, for I can see why they are afraid.
They are herbivores. I remember the meaning of shapes. In the paths of evolution there are grass eaters and berry eaters and root diggers. Each has its functional shape of face and neck—and its wide, startled-looking eyes to see and run away from the hunters. In all their racial history they have never killed to eat. They have been killed and eaten, or run away, and they evolved to intelligence by selection. Those lived who succeeded in running away from carnivores like lions, hawks, and men.
I look up, and they turn their eyes and heads in quick embarrassed motion, not meeting my eye. The rabbity one is nearest and I reach out to touch him, pleased because I am growing strong enough now to move my arms. He looks at me and I ask the question: “Are there any carnivores—flesh eaters—among you?”
He hesitates, moving his lips as if searching for tactful words. “We have never found any that were civilized. We have frequently found them in caves and tents fighting each other. Sometimes we find them fighting each other with the ruins of cities around them, but they are always savages.”
The bearlike one said heavily, “It might be that carnivores evolve more rapidly and tend toward intelligence more often, for we find radioactive planets without life, and places like the place you call your asteroid belt, where a planet should be—but there are only scattered fragments of planet, pieces that look as if a planet had been blown apart. We think that usually…” He looked at me uncertainly, beginning to fumble his words. “We think…”
“Yours is the only carnivorous race we have found that was—civilized, that had a science and was going to come out into space,” the doe-like one interrupted softly. “We were afraid.”
They seem to be apologizing.
The rabbity one, who seems to be chosen as the leader in speaking to me, says, “We will give you anything you want. Anything we are able to give you.”
They mean it. We survivors will be privileged people, with a key to all the cities, everything free. Their sincerity is wonderful, but puzzling. Are they trying to atone for the thing they feel was a crime; that they allowed humanity to murder itself, and lost to the Galaxy the richness of a race? Is this why they are so generous?
Perhaps then they will help the race to get started again. The records are not lost. The few survivors can eventually repopulate Earth. Under the tutelage of these peaceable races, without the stress of division into nations, we will flower as a race. No children of mine to the furthest descendant will ever make war again. This much of a lesson we have learned.
These timid beings do not realize how much humanity has wanted peace. They do not know how reluctantly we were forced and trapped by old institutions and warped tangles of politics to which we could see no answer. We are not naturally savage. We are not savage when approached as individuals. Perhaps they know this, but are afraid anyhow, instinctive fear rising up from the blood of their hunted, frightened forebears.
The human race will be a good partner to these races. Even recovering from starvation as I am, I can feel in myself an energy they do not have. The savage in me and my race is a creative thing, for in those who have been educated as I was it is a controlled savagery which attacks and destroys only problems and obstacles, never people. Any human raised outside of the political traditions that the race inherited from its bloodstained childhood would be as friendly and ready for friendship as I am toward these beings. I could never hurt these pleasant, overgrown bunnies and squirrels.
“We will do everything we can to make up for…we will try to help,” says the bunny, stumbling over the English, but civilized and cordial and kind.
I sit up suddenly, reaching out impulsively to shake his hand. Suddenly frightened he leaps back. All of them step back, glancing behind them as though making sure of the avenue of escape. Their big luminous eyes widen and glance rapidly from me to the doors, frightened.
They must think I am about to leap out of bed and pounce on them and eat them. I am about to laugh and reassure them, about to say that all I want from them is friendship, when I feel a twinge in my abdomen from the sudden motion. I touch it with one hand under the bedclothes.
There is the scar of an incision there, almost healed. An operation. The weakness I am recovering from is more than the weakness of starvation.
For only half a second I do not understand; then I see why they looked ashamed.
They voted the murder of a race.
All the human survivors found have been made sterile. There will be no more humans after we die.
I am frozen, one hand still extended to grasp the hand of the rabbity one, my eyes still searching his expression, reassuring words still half formed.
There will be time for anger or grief later, for now, in this instant, I can understand. They are probably quite right.
We were carnivores.
I know, because, at this moment of hatred, I could kill them all.
THE LARGE ANT, by Howard Fast
Originally published in Fantastic Universe, February 1960.
There have been all kinds of notions and guesses as to how it would end. One held that sooner or later there would be too many people; another that we would do each other in, and the atom bomb made that a very good likelihood. All sorts of notions, except the simple fact that we were what we were. We could find a way to feed any number of people and perhaps even a way to avoid wiping each other out with the bomb; those things we are very good at, but we have never been any good at changing ourselves or the way we behave.
I know. I am not a bad man or a cruel man; quite to the contrary, I am an ordinary, humane person, and I love my wife and my children and I get along with my neighbors. I am like a great many other men, and I do the things they would do and just as thoughtlessly. There it is in a nutshell.
I am also a writer, and I told Lieberman, the curator, and Fitzgerald, the government man, that I would like to write down the story. They shrugged their shoulders. “Go ahead,” they said, “because it won’t make one bit of difference.”
“You don’t think it would alarm people?”
“How can it alarm anyone when nobody will believe it?”
“If I could have a photograph or two.”
“Oh, no,” they said then. “No photographs.”
“What kind of sense does that make?” I asked them. “You are willing to let me write the story—why not the photographs so that people could believe me?”
“They still won’t believe you. They will just say you faked the photographs, but no one will believe you. It will make for more confusion, and if we have a chance of getting out of this, confusion won’t help.”
“What will help?”
They weren’t ready to say that, because they didn’t know. So here is what happened to me, in a very straightforward and ordinary manner.
Every summer, sometime in August, four good friends of mine and I go for a week’s fishing on the St. Regis chain of lakes in the Adirondacks. We rent the same shack each summer; we drift around in canoes, and sometimes we catch a few bass. The fishing isn’t very good, but we play cards well together, and we cook out and generally relax. This summer past, I had some things to do that couldn’t be put off. I arrived three days late, and the weather was so warm and even and beguiling that I decided to stay on by myself for a day or two after the others left. There was a small flat lawn in front of the shack, and I made up my mind to spend at least three or four hours at short putts. That was how I happened to have the putting iron next to my bed.
The first day I was alone, I opened a can of beans and a can of beer for my supper. Then I lay
down in my bed with Life on the Mississippi, a pack of cigarettes, and an eight-ounce chocolate bar. There was nothing I had to do, no telephone, no demands and no newspapers. At that moment, I was about as contented as any man can be in these nervous times.
It was still light outside, and enough light came in through the window above my head for me to read by. I was just reaching for a fresh cigarette, when I looked up and saw it on the foot of my bed. The edge of my hand was touching the golf club, and with a single motion I swept the club over and down, struck it a savage and accurate blow, and killed it. That was what I referred to before. Whatever kind of a man I am, I react as a man does. I think that any man, black, white or yellow, in China, Africa or Russia, would have done the same thing.
First I found that I was sweating all over, and then I knew I was going to be sick. I went outside to vomit, recalling that this hadn’t happened to me since 1943, on my way to Europe on a tub of a Liberty Ship. Then I felt better and was able to go back into the shack and look at it. It was quite dead, but I had already made up my mind that I was not going to sleep alone in this shack.
I couldn’t bear to touch it with my bare hands. With a piece of brown paper, I picked it up and dropped it into my fishing creel. That, I put into the trunk case of my car, along with what luggage I carried. Then I closed the door of the shack, got into my car and drove back to New York. I stopped once along the road, just before I reached the Thruway, to nap in the car for a little over an hour. It was almost dawn when I reached the city, and I had shaved, had a hot bath and changed my clothes before my wife awoke.
During breakfast, I explained that I was never much of a hand at the solitary business, and since she knew that, and since driving alone all night was by no means an extraordinary procedure for me, she didn’t press me with any questions. I had two eggs, coffee and a cigarette. Then I went into my study, lit another cigarette, and contemplated my fishing creel, which sat upon my desk.
My wife looked in, saw the creel, remarked that it had too ripe a smell, and asked me to remove it to the basement.
“I’m going to dress,” she said. The kids were still at camp. “I have a date with Ann for lunch—I had no idea you were coming back. Shall I break it?”
“No, please don’t. I can find things to do that have to be done.”
Then I sat and smoked some more, and finally I called the Museum, and asked who the curator of insects was. They told me his name was Bertram Lieberman, and I asked to talk to him. He had a pleasant voice. I told him that my name was Morgan, and that I was a writer, and he politely indicated that he had seen my name and read something that I had written. That is normal procedure when a writer introduces himself to a thoughtful person.
I asked Lieberman if I could see him, and he said that he had a busy morning ahead of him. Could it be tomorrow?
“I am afraid it has to be now,” I said firmly.
“Oh? Some information you require.”
“No. I have a specimen for you.”
“Oh?” The “oh” was a cultivated, neutral interval. It asked and answered and said nothing. You have to develop that particular “oh”.
“Yes. I think you will be interested.”
“An insect?” he asked mildly.
“I think so.”
“Oh? Large?”
“Quite large,” I told him.
“Eleven o’clock? Can you be here then? On the main floor, to the right, as you enter.”
“I’ll be there,” I said.
“One thing—dead?”
“Yes, it’s dead.”
“Oh?” again. “I’ll be happy to see you at eleven o’clock, Mr. Morgan.”
My wife was dressed now. She opened the door to my study and said firmly, “Do get rid of that fishing creel. It smells.”
“Yes, darling. I’ll get rid of it.”
“I should think you’d want to take a nap after driving all night.”
“Funny, but I’m not sleepy,” I said. “I think I’ll drop around to the museum.”
My wife said that was what she liked about me, that I never tired of places like museums, police courts and third-rate night clubs.
Anyway, aside from a racetrack, a museum is the most interesting and unexpected place in the world. It was unexpected to have two other men waiting for me, along with Mr. Lieberman, in his office. Lieberman was a skinny, sharp-faced man of about sixty. The government man, Fitzgerald, was small, dark-eyed, and wore gold-rimmed glasses. He was very alert, but he never told me what part of the government he represented. He just said “we”, and it meant the government. Hopper, the third man, was comfortable-looking, pudgy, and genial. He was a United States senator with an interest in entomology, although before this morning I would have taken better than even money that such a thing not only wasn’t, but could not be.
The room was large and square and plainly furnished, with shelves and cupboards on all walls.
We shook hands, and then Lieberman asked me, nodding at the creel, “Is that it?”
“That’s it.”
“May I?”
“Go ahead,” I told him. “It’s nothing that I want to stuff for the parlor. I’m making you a gift of it.”
“Thank you, Mr. Morgan,” he said, and then he opened the creel and looked inside. Then he straightened up, and the other two men looked at him inquiringly.
He nodded. “Yes.”
The senator closed his eyes for a long moment. Fitzgerald took off his glasses and wiped them industriously. Lieberman spread a piece of plastic on his desk, and then lifted the thing out of my creel and laid it on the plastic. The two men didn’t move. They just sat where they were and looked at it.
“What do you think it is, Mr. Morgan?” Lieberman asked me.
“I thought that was your department.”
“Yes, of course. I only wanted your impression.”
“An ant. That’s my impression. It’s the first time I saw an ant fourteen, fifteen inches long. I hope it’s the last.”
“An understandable wish,” Lieberman nodded.
Fitzgerald said to me, “May I ask how you killed it, Mr. Morgan?”
“With an iron. A golf club, I mean. I was doing a little fishing with some friends up at St. Regis in the Adirondacks, and I brought the iron for my short shots. They’re the worst part of my game, and when my friends left, I intended to stay on at our shack and do four or five hours of short putts. You see—”
“There’s no need to explain,” Hopper smiled, a trace of sadness on his face. “Some of our very best golfers have the same trouble.”
“I was lying in bed, reading, and I saw it at the foot of my bed. I had the club—”
“I understand,” Fitzgerald nodded.
“You avoid looking at it,” Hopper said.
“It pains my stomach.”
“Yes—yes, I suppose so.”
Lieberman said, “Would you mind telling us why you killed it, Mr. Morgan.”
“Why?”
“Yes—why?”
“I don’t understand you,” I said. “I don’t know what you’re driving at.”
“Sit down, please, Mr. Morgan,” Hopper said with a nod. “Try to relax. I’m sure this has been very trying.”
“I still haven’t slept. I want a chance to dream before I say how trying.”
“We are not trying to upset you, Mr. Morgan,” Lieberman said. “We do feel, however, that certain aspects of this are very important. That is why I am asking you why you killed it. You must have had a reason. Did it seem about to attack you?”
“No.”
“Or make any sudden motion towards you?”
“No. It was just there.”
“Then why?”
“This is to no purpose,” Fitzgerald put in. “We know why he killed it.”
“D
o you?”
“The answer is very simple, Mr. Morgan. You killed it because you are a human being.”
“Oh?”
“Yes. Do you understand?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Then why did you kill it?” Hopper put in.
“I was scared to death. I still am, to tell the truth.”
Lieberman said, “You are an intelligent man, Mr. Morgan. Let me show you something.” He then opened the doors of one of the wall cupboards, and there eight jars of formaldehyde and in each jar a specimen like mine—and in each case mutilated by the violence of its death. I said nothing. I just stared.
Lieberman closed the cupboard doors. “All in five days,” he shrugged.
“A new race of ants,” I whispered stupidly.
“No. They’re not ants. Come here!” He motioned me to the desk and the other two joined me. Lieberman took a set of dissecting instruments out of his drawer, used one to turn the thing over and then pointed to the underpart of what would be the thorax in an insect.
“That looks like part of him, doesn’t it, Mr. Morgan?”
“Yes, it does.”
Using two of the tools, he found a fissure and pried the bottom apart. It came open like the belly of a bomber; it was a pocket, a pouch, a receptacle that the thing wore, and in it were four beautiful little tools or instruments or weapons, each about an inch and a half long. They were beautiful the way any object of functional purpose and loving creation is beautiful—the way the creature itself would have been beautiful, had it not been an insect and myself a man. Using tweezers, Lieberman took each instrument off the brackets that held it, offering each to me. And I took each one, felt it, examined it, and then put it down.
I had to look at the ant now, and I realized that I had not truly looked at it before. We don’t look carefully at a thing that is horrible or repugnant to us. You can’t look at anything through a screen of hatred. But now the hatred and the fear was dilute, and as I looked, I realized it was not an ant although like an ant. It was nothing that I had ever seen or dreamed of.
The Alien MEGAPACK® Page 30
