by Howard Fast
“I think that is a great tribute to you,” Mrs. Erdig told him calmly. “After all, you are the foremost Latin scholar on Mars. You were the first to call him Cato the Censor—and the name stuck. Now everyone calls him Cato. I shouldn’t be surprised if they have all forgotten his real name. You can be proud of your influence.”
“That isn’t the point at all,” Mr. Erdig sighed.
“I only meant to cheer you a bit.”
“I know, my dear. I shouldn’t be annoyed with you. But the point is that each day they smile less and listen to him even more intently. I can remember quite well when he first began his campaign against Earth, the amused smiles, the clucking and shaking of heads. A good many of us were of the opinion that he was out of his mind, that he needed medical treatment. Then, bit by bit, the attitude changed. Now, they listen seriously—and they agree. Do you know that he plans to put it to a vote tomorrow?”
“Well, if he does, he does, and the council will do what is right. So the best thing for you to do is to get a good night’s sleep. Come along with me.”
Mr. Erdig rose to follow her. They were in bed, when she said, “I do wish you had chosen English, my dear. Why should righteous be so utterly confusing?”
Most of the Planetary Council of Mars were already present when Mr. Erdig arrived and took his place. As he made his way among the other representatives, he could not fail to notice a certain coolness, a certain restraint in the greetings that followed him. Mrs. Erdig would have held that he was being over-sensitive and that he always had been too sensitive for his own peace of mind; but Mr. Erdig himself labored under no illusions. He prided himself upon his psychological awareness of the Council’s mood. All things considered, he was already certain that today was Cato’s day.
As he took his place, his friend, Mr. Kyegg, nodded and confirmed his gloomy view of things. “I see you are thinking along the same lines, Erdig,” Mr. Kyegg said.
“Yes.”
“Well—que serait, serait,” Mr. Kyegg sighed. “What will be, will be. French. Language spoken by only a handful of people on the European continent, but very elegant.”
“I know that France is on the European continent,” Mr. Erdig observed stiffly.
“Of course. Well, old Fllari persuaded me to take lessons with him. Poor chap needs the money.”
Mr. Erdig realized that his irritation with Kyegg was increasing, and without cause. Kyegg was a very decent fellow whom Mr. Erdig had known for better than two hundred years. It would be childish to allow a general state of irritation to separate him from any one of the narrowing circle he could still call his friends.
At moments of stress, like this one, Mr. Erdig would lie back in his seat and gaze at the Council ceiling. It had a soothing effect. Like most Martians, Mr. Erdig had a keen and well-developed sense of aesthetics, and he never tired of the beauties of Martian buildings and landscapes. Indeed, the creation of beauty and the appreciation of beauty were preoccupations of Martian society. Even Mr. Erdig would not have denied the Martian superiority in that direction.
The ceiling of the Council Chamber reproduced the Martian skies at night. Deep, velvety blue-purple, it was as full of stars as a tree in bloom is of blossoms. The silver starlight lit the Council Chamber.
“How beautiful and wise are the things we create and live with!” Mr. Erdig reflected. “How good to be a Martian!” He could afford pity for the poor devils of the third planet. Why couldn’t others?
He awoke out of his reverie to the chimes that called the session to order. Now the seats were all filled.
“This is it,” said Mr. Erdig’s friend, Mr. Kyegg. “Not an empty seat in the house.”
The minutes of the previous meeting were read.
“He’ll recognize Cato first,” Mr. Kyegg nodded.
“That doesn’t take much foresight,” Mr. Erdig replied sourly, pointing to Cato. Already Cato’s arm (or limb or tentacle, depending on your point of view) was up.
The chairman bowed and recognized him.
Cato the Censor had concluded his speeches in the Roman Senate with the injunction that Carthage must be destroyed. Cato the Martian did him one better; he began and finished with the injunction that Earth must be destroyed.
“Earth must be destroyed,” Cato the Martian began, and then paused for the ripple of applause to die down.
“Why do I go on, year after year, with what once seemed to so many to be a heartless and blood-thirsty plea? I assure you that the first time my lips formed that phrase, my heart was sick and my bowels turned over in disgust. I am a Martian like all of you; like all of you, I view murder as the ultimate evil, force as the mark of the beast.
“Think—all of you, think of what it cost me to create that phrase and to speak it for the first time in this chamber, so many years ago! Think of how you would have felt! Was it easy then—or any time in all the years since then? Is the roll of a patriot ever easy? Yes, I use a word Earth taught us—patriot. A word most meaningful to us now.”
“Le patriotisme est le dernier refuge d’un gredin,” Mr. Kyegg observed caustically. “French. A pithy language.”
“English, as a matter of fact,” Mr. Erdig corrected him. “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Samuel Johnson, I believe. Literary dean and wit in London, two centuries ago.” Mr. Erdig felt unpleasant enough to put Mr. Kyegg in his place. “London,” he went on, “largest city in England, which is an island a few miles from the European continent.”
“Oh, yes,” Mr. Kyegg nodded weakly.
“—not only because I love Mars,” Cato was saying, “but because I love the entire essence and meaning of life. It is almost half a century since we picked up the first radio signals from the planet Earth. We on Mars had never known the meaning of war; it took Earth to teach us that. We had never known what it meant to kill, to destroy, to torture. Indeed, when we first began to analyze and understand the various languages of Earth, we doubted our own senses, our own analytical abilities. We heard, but at first we refused to believe what we heard. We refused to believe that there could be an entire race of intelligent beings whose existence was dedicated to assault, to murder and thievery and brutality beyond the imagination of Martians—”
“Never changes a word,” muttered Mr. Erdig. “Same speech over and over.”
“He’s learned to deliver it very well, don’t you think?” Mr. Kyegg said.
“—we would not believe!” Cato cried. “Who could believe such things? We were a race of love and mercy. We tried to rationalize, to explain, to excuse—but when our receivers picked up the first television signals, well, we could no longer rationalize, explain or excuse. What our ears might have doubted, our eyes proved. What our sensibilities refused, fact forced upon us. I don’t have to remind you or review what we saw in the course of fifteen Earth years of television transmission. Murder—murder—murder—and violence! Murder and violent death to a point where one could only conclude that this is the dream, the being and the vision of Earth! Man against man, nation against nation, mother against child—and always violence and death—”
“He said he wasn’t going to review it,” Mr. Erdig murmured.
“It’s rather nice to know every word of a speech,” said Mr. Kyegg. “Then you don’t have to listen with any attention.”
But the members of the council were listening with attention as Cato cried.
“And war! The word itself did not exist in our language until we heard it from Earth. War without end—large wars and small wars, until half of their world is a graveyard and their very atmosphere is soaked with hatred!”
“That’s a rather nice turn of phrase for Cato, don’t you think?” Mr. Kyegg asked his associate. Mr. Erdig did not even deign to answer.
“And then,” Cato continued, his voice low and ominous now, “we watched them explode their first atom bomb. On their television, we watched this monstrous weapon exploded again and again as they poisoned their atmosphere and girded themselves for a new w
ar. Ah, well do I remember how calm the philosophers were when this happened. ‘Leave them alone,’ said our philosophers, ‘now they will destroy themselves.’ Would they? By all that Mars means to every Martian, I will not put my faith in the philosophers!”
“He means you,” said Mr. Kyegg to Mr. Erdig.
“Philosophers!” Cato repeated in contempt. “I know one of them well indeed. In derision, he dubbed me Cato—thinking to parade his Latin scholarship before me. Well, I accept the name. As Cato, I say, Earth must be destroyed! Not because of what Earth has done and continues to do to itself—I agree that is their affair—but because of what, as every Martian now knows, Earth will inevitably do to us. We watched them send up their first satellites; we did nothing as they sent their missiles probing into space; and now—now—as our astronomers confirm—they have sent an unmanned rocket to the moon!”
“That seals it,” Mr. Erdig sighed.
“How long must we wait?” Cato cried. “Must all that we have made of our lovely planet be an atomic wasteland before we act? Are we to do nothing until the first Earth invaders land on Mars? Or do we destroy this blight as firmly and surely as we would wipe out some new and dreadful disease?
“I say that Earth must be destroyed! Not next month or next year, but now! Earth must be destroyed!”
Cato sat down, not as formerly to a small ripple of applause or to disapproving silence, but now to a storm of assent and approval.
“Silly of me to think of myself as a philosopher,” Mr. Erdig reflected as he rose to speak, “but I suppose I am, in a very small way.” And then he told the assembled Council members that he would not take too much of their time.
“I am one of those individuals,” Mr. Erdig said, “who, even when they cannot hope to win an argument, get some small satisfaction out of placing their thoughts upon the record. That I do not agree with Cato, you know. I have said so emphatically and on many occasions; but this is the conclusion of a long debate, not the beginning of one.
“I never believed that I should live to see the day when this Council would agree that Earth should be destroyed. But that you are in agreement with Cato seems obvious. Let me only remind you of some of the things you propose to destroy.
“We Martians never paused to consider how fortunate we are in our longevity until we began to listen, as one might say, to Earth—and to watch Earth. We are all old enough to recall the years before the people of Earth discovered the secret of radio and television transmission. Were our lives as rich then as they are now?
“How much has changed in the mere two-score of Earth years that we have listened to them and watched them. Our ancient and beautiful Martian language has become all the richer for the inclusion of hundreds of Earth words. The languages of Earth have become the pastime and delight of millions of Martians. The games of Earth divert us and amuse us—to a point where baseball and tennis and golf seem native and proper among us. You all recall how dead and stagnant our art had become; the art of Earth brought it to life and gave us new forms, ideas and directions. Our libraries are filled with thousands of books on the subject of Earth, manners and customs and history, and due to their habit on Earth of reading books and verse over the radio, we now have available to us the literary treasures of Earth.
“Where in our lives is the influence of Earth not felt? Our architects have incorporated Earth buildings. Our doctors have found techniques and methods on Earth that have saved lives here. The symphonies of Earth are heard in our concert halls and the songs of Earth fill the Martian air.
“I have suggested only some of an almost endless list of treasures Earth has given us. And this Earth you propose to destroy. Oh, I cannot refute Cato. He speaks the truth. Earth is still a mystery to us. We have never breathed the air of Earth or trod on the soil of Earth, or seen her mighty cities and green forests at first hand. We see only a shadow of the reality, and this shadow confuses us and frightens us. By Martian terms, Earth people are short-lived. From birth to death is only a moment. How have they done so much in such fragile moments of existence? We really don’t know—we don’t understand. We see them divided and filled with hate and fear and resentment; we watch them murder and destroy; and we are puzzled and confused. How can the same people who create so splendidly destroy so casually?
“But is destruction the answer to this problem? There are two and a half thousand million people on Earth, three times the number who inhabit Mars. Can we ever again sleep in peace, dream in peace, if we destroy them?”
Cato’s answer to Mr. Erdig was very brief. “Can we ever again sleep in peace, dream in peace if we, don’t?”
Then Mr. Erdig sat down and knew that it was over.
“It’s not as if we were actually doing it ourselves,” Mrs. Erdig said to her husband at home that evening.
“The same thing, my dear.”
“But as you explain it, here are these two countries, as they call them, the Soviet Union and the United States of America—the two most powerful countries on Earth, armed to the teeth with heaven knows how many atom bombs and just waiting to leap at each other’s throats. I know enough Earth history to realize that sooner or later they’re bound to touch off a war—even if only through some accident.”
“Perhaps.”
“And all we will do,” Mrs. Erdig said soothingly, “is to hasten that inevitable accident.”
“Yes, we have come to that,” Mr. Erdig nodded somberly. “War and cruelty and injustice are Earth words that we have learned—foreign words, nasty words. It would be utterly immoral for us to arm ourselves for war or even to contemplate war. But an accident is something else indeed. We will build a rocket and arm it with an atomic warhead and put it into space so that it will orbit Earth over their poles and come down and explode in the Arizona desert of the United States. At the worst, we destroy a few snakes and cows, so our hands are clean. Minutes after that atom bomb explodes, Earth will begin to destroy itself. Yet we have absolved ourselves—”
“I don’t like to hear you talk like that, my dear,” Mrs. Erdig protested. “I never heard any other Martian talk like that.”
“I am not proud of being a Martian.”
“Really!”
“It turns my stomach,” said Mr. Erdig.
There was a trace of asperity in Mrs. Erdig’s voice. “I don’t see how you can be so sure that you are right and everyone else is wrong. Sometimes I feel that you disagree just for the pleasure of disagreeing—or of being disagreeable, if I must say it. It seems to me that every Martian should treasure our security and way of life above all else And I can’t see what is so terribly wrong about hastening something that is bound to happen sooner or later in any case. If Earth folk were deserving, it would be another matter entirely—”
Mr. Erdig was not listening. Long years of association had taught him that when his wife began this kind of tidal wave of argument and proof, it could go on for a very long time indeed. He closed off her sound and his thoughts ranged, as they did so often, across the green meadows and the white-capped blue seas of Earth. How often he had dreamed of that wilderness of tossing and restless water! How wonderful and terrible it must be! There were no seas on Mars, so even to visualize the oceans of Earth was not easy. But he could not think about the oceans of Earth and not think of the people of Earth, the mighty cities of Earth.
Suddenly, his heart constricted with a pang of knife-like grief. In the old, unspoken language of Earth, which he had come to cherish so much, he whispered,
“Magna civitas, magna solitudo—”
The rocket was built and fitted with an atomic warhead—no difficult task for the technology of Mars. In the churches (their equivalent, that is) of Mars, a prayer was said for the souls of the people of Earth, and then the rocket was launched.
The astronomers watched it and the mathematicians tracked it. In spite of its somber purpose and awful destiny, the Martians could not refrain from a flush of pride in the skill and efficiency of their scientists, for the r
ocket crossed over the North Pole of Earth and landed smack in the Arizona desert, not more than five miles away from the chosen target spot.
The air of Mars is thin and clear and millions of Martians have fine telescopes. Millions of them watched the atomic warhead burst and millions of them kept their telescopes trained to Earth, waiting to witness the holocaust of radiation and flame that would signal atomic war among the nations of Earth.
They waited, but what they expected did not come. They were civilized beings, not at all bloodthirsty, but by now they were very much afraid; so some of them waited and watched until the Martian morning made the Martian skies blaze with burning red and violet.
Yet there was no war on Earth.
“I do wonder what could have gone wrong?” Mrs. Erdig said, looking up from the copy of Vanity Fair, which she was reading for the second time. She did not actually expect an answer, for her husband had become less and less communicative of late. She was rather surprised when he answered,
“Can’t you guess?”
“I don’t see why you should sound so superior. No one else can guess. Can you?”
Instead of answering her, he said, “I envy you your knowledge of English—if only to read novelists like Thackeray.”
“It is amusing,” Mrs. Erdig admitted, “but I never can quite get used to the nightmare of life on Earth.”
“I didn’t know you regarded it as a nightmare.”
“How else could one regard it?”
“I suppose so,” Mr. Erdig sighed. “Still—I would have liked to read Caesar’s Conquest of Gaul. They have never broadcast it.”
“Perhaps they will.”
“No. No, they never will. No more broadcasts from Earth. No more television.”
“Oh, well—if they don’t start that war and wipe themselves out, they’re bound to be broadcasting again.”
“I wonder,” Mr. Erdig said.
The second rocket from Mars exploded its warhead in the wastelands of Siberia. Once again, Martians watched for hours through their telescopes and waited. But Mr. Erdig did not watch. He seemed to have lost interest in the current obsession of Mars, and he devoted most of his time to the study of English, burying himself in his wife’s novels and dictionaries and thesaurus. His progress, as his wife told her neighbors, was absolutely amazing. He already knew the language well enough to carry on a passable conversation.
