The Earth Quarter
Date: 2019-02-18T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: Science fiction; Life on other planets -- Fiction; Refugees -- Fiction

The Project Gutenberg eBook of The Earth Quarter

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Title: The Earth Quarter

Author: Damon Knight

Illustrator: Ed Emshwiller

Release date: February 18, 2019 [eBook #58912]

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Greg Weeks, Mary Meehan and the Online
Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE EARTH QUARTER ***

THE EARTH QUARTER

BY DAMON KNIGHT

The Niori permitted refugees from Earth to
live in their cramped little ghetto conditionally:
that they do so peacefully. But there will always
be patriotic fanatics, like Harkway and Rack,
who must disturb the peace....

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Worlds of If Science Fiction, January 1955.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

The sun had set half an hour before. Now, from the window of Laszlo Cudyk's garret, he could see how the alien city shone frost-blue against the black sky; the tall hive-shapes that no man would have built, glowing with their own light.

Nearer, the slender drunken shafts of lamp posts marched toward him down the street, each with its prosaic yellow globe. Between them and all around, the darkness had gathered; darkness in angular shapes, the geometry of squalor.

Cudyk liked this view, for at night the blackness of the Earth Quarter seemed to merge with the black sky, as if one were a minor extension of the other—a fist of space held down to the surface of the planet. He could feel, then, that he was not alone, not isolated and forgotten; that some connection still existed across all the light-years of the galaxy between him and what he had lost.

And, again, the view depressed him; for at night the City seemed to press in upon the Quarter like the walls of a prison. The Quarter: sixteen square blocks, about the size of those of an Earth city, two thousand three hundred human beings of three races, four religions, eighteen nationalities; the only remnant of the human race nearer than Capella.

Cudyk felt the night breeze freshening. He glanced upward once at the frosty blaze of stars, then pulled his head back inside the window. He closed the shutters, turning to the lamp-lit table with its hopeless clutter of books, pipes and dusty miscellany.

Cudyk was a man of middle height, heavy in the shoulders and chest, blunt-featured, with a shock of greying black hair. He was fifty-five years old; he remembered Earth.

A drunk stumbled by in the street below, cursing monotonously to himself, paused to spit explosively into the gutter, and faded into the night.

Cudyk heard him without attention. He stood with his back to the window, looking at nothing, his square fingers fumbling automatically for pipe and tobacco. Why do I torture myself with that look out the window every night? he asked himself. It's a juvenile sentimentalism.

But he knew he would go on doing it.

Other noises drifted up to his window, faint with distance. They grew louder. Cudyk cocked his head suddenly, turned and threw open the shutters again. That had been a scream.

He could see nothing down the street; the trouble must be farther over, he thought, on Kwang-Chow-fu or Washington. The noise swelled as he listened: the unintelligible wailing of a mob.

Footsteps clicked hurriedly up the stairs. Cudyk went to the door, made sure it was latched, and waited. There was a light tapping on the door.

"Who is it?" he said.

"Lee Far."

He unlatched the door and opened it. The little Chinese blinked at him, his upper lip drawn up over incisors like a rodent's. "Mr. Seu say please, you come." Without waiting for an answer, he turned and rapped his way down into darkness.

Cudyk picked up a jacket from a wall hook, and paused for a moment to glance at the locked drawer in which he kept an ancient .32 automatic and two full clips. He shook his head impatiently and went out.

Lee was waiting for him downstairs. When he saw Cudyk open the outer door, he set off down the street at a dog-trot.

Cudyk caught up with him at the corner of Athenai and Brasil. They turned right for two blocks to Washington, then left again. A block away, at Rossiya and Washington, there was a small crowd of men struggling in the middle of the street. They didn't seem to be very active; as Cudyk and Lee approached, they saw that only a few were still fighting, and those without a great deal of spirit. The rest were moving aimlessly, some wiping their eyes, others bent almost double in paroxysms of sneezing. A few were motionless on the pavement.

Three slender Chinese were moving through the crowd. Each had a white surgeon's mask tied over his nose and mouth, and carried a plastic bag full of some dark substance, from which he took handfuls and flung them with a motion like a sower's. Cudyk could see now that the air around them was heavy with floating particles. As he watched, the last two fighters in the crowd each took a halfhearted swing at the other and then, coughing and sneezing, moved away in separate directions.

Lee took his sleeve for a moment. "Here, Mr. Cudyk."

Seu was standing in the doorway of Town Hall, his round-bellied bulk almost filling it. He saluted Cudyk with a lazy, humorous gesture of one fat hand.

"Hello, Min," Cudyk said. "You're efficient, as always. Pepper again?"

"Yes," said Mayor Seu Min. "I hate to waste it, but I don't think the water buckets would have been enough this time. This could have been a bad one."

"How did it start?"

"A couple of Russkies caught Jim Loong sneaking into Madame May's," the fat man said laconically. His shrewd eyes twinkled. "I'm glad you came down, Laszlo. I want you to meet an important visitor who arrived on the Kt-I'ith ship this afternoon." He turned slightly, and Cudyk saw that there was a man behind him in the doorway. "Mr. Harkway, may I present Mr. Laszlo Cudyk, one of our leading citizens? Mr. Cudyk, James Harkway, who is here on a mission from the Minority People's League."

Cudyk shook hands with the man, who had a pale, scholarly face, not bad-looking, with dark intense eyes. He was young, about thirty. Cudyk automatically classified him as second generation.

"Perhaps," said Seu, as if the notion had just occurred to him, "you would not mind taking over my duties as host for a short time, Laszlo? If Mr. Harkway would not object? This regrettable occurrence—"

"Of course," Cudyk said. Harkway nodded and smiled.

"Excellent." Seu edged past Cudyk, then turned and put a hand on his friend's arm, drawing him closer. "Take care of this fool," he said under his breath, "and for God's sake keep him away from the saloons. Rack is in town, too. I've got to make sure they don't meet." He smiled cheerfully at both of them and walked away. Lee Far, appearing from somewhere, trailed after him.

A young Chinese, with blood streaming brightly from a gash in his cheek, was stumbling past. Cudyk stepped away from the doorway, turned him around and pointed him down the street, to where Seu's young men were laying out the victims on the sidewalk and administering first aid.

Cudyk went back to Harkway. "I suppose Seu has found you a place to stay," he said.

"Yes," said Harkway. "He's putting me up in his home. Perhaps I'd better go there now—I don't want to be in the way."

"You won't be in the way," Cudyk told him. "What would you like to do?"

"Well, I'd like to meet a few people, if it isn't too late. Perhaps we could have a drink somewhere, where people meet—?" He glanced interrogatively down the street to an illuminated sign that announced in English and Russian: "THE LITTLE BEAR. Wines and Liquors."

"Not there," said Cudyk. "That's Russky headquarters, and I'm afraid they may be a little short-tempered right now. The best place would be Chong Yin's tea room, I think. That's just two blocks up, near Washington and Ceskoslovensko."

"All right," said Harkway. He was still looking down the street. "Who is that girl?" he asked abruptly.

Cudyk glanced that way. The two M. D.'s, Moskowitz and Estrada, were on the scene, sorting out the most serious cases to be carted off to hospital, and so was a slender, dark-haired girl in nurse's uniform.

"That's Kathy Burgess," he said. "I'd introduce you, but now isn't the time. You'll probably meet her tomorrow."

"She's very pretty," said Harkway, and suffered himself to be led off up the street. "Married?"

"No. She was engaged to one of our young men, but her father broke it off."

"Oh?" said Harkway. After a moment: "Political differences?"

"Yes. The young man joined the activists. The father is a conservative."

"That's very interesting," said Harkway. After a moment he asked, "Do you have many of those here?"

"Activists or conservatives? Or pretty girls?"

"I meant conservatives," said Harkway, coloring slightly. "I know the activist movement is strong here—that's why I was sent. We consider them dangerous in the extreme."

"So do I," said Cudyk. "No, there aren't many conservatives. Burgess is the only real fanatic. If you meet him, by the way, you must make certain allowances."

Harkway nodded thoughtfully. "Cracked on the subject?"

"You could put it that way," Cudyk told him. "He has convinced himself, in his conscious mind at least, that we are the dominant species on this planet; that the Niori are our social and economic inferiors. He won't tolerate any suggestion that it isn't so."

Harkway nodded again, looking very solemn. "A tragedy," he said. "But understandable, of course. Some of the older people simply can't adjust to the reality of our position in the galaxy."

"Not many people actually like it," said Cudyk.

Harkway looked at him thoughtfully. He said, "Mr. Cudyk, I don't want you to take this as a complaint, but I've gathered the impression that you're not in sympathy with the Minority People's League."

"No," said Cudyk.

"May I ask what your political viewpoint is?"

"I'm neutral," said Cudyk. "Apolitical."

Harkway said politely, "I hope you won't take offense if I ask why? It's evident, even to me, that you're a man of intelligence and ability."

Everything is evident to you, Cudyk thought wearily, except what you don't want to see. He said, "I don't believe our particular Humpty Dumpty can be put back together again, Mr. Harkway."

Harkway looked at him intently, but said nothing. He glanced at the signboard over the lighted windows they were approaching. "Is this the place?"

"Yes."

Harkway continued to look at the sign. Above the English "CHONG YIN'S TEA ROOM", and the Chinese characters, was a legend that read:

"That's a curious alphabet," he said.

"It's a very efficient one," Cudyk told him. "It's based on the design of an X in a rectangle—like this." He traced it with his finger on the wall. "Counting each arm of the cross as one stroke, there are eight strokes in the figure. Using only two strokes to a letter, there are twenty-eight possible combinations. They use the sixteen most graceful ones, and add twenty-seven three-stroke letters to bring it up to forty-three, one for each sound in their language. The written language is completely phonetic, therefore. But there are only eight keys on a Niori typewriter."

He looked at Harkway. "It's also perfectly legible: no letter looks too much like any other letter. And it has a certain beauty, don't you think?" He paused. "Hasn't it struck you, Mr. Harkway, that anything our hosts do is likely to be a little more sensible and more sensitive than the human equivalent?"

"I come from Reg Otay," said Harkway. "They don't have any visual arts or any written language there. But I see what you mean. What does the sign say—the same thing as the English?"

"No. It says, 'Yungiwo Ren Trakru Rith.' 'Trakru rith' is Niori for 'hospitality house'—it's what they call anything that we would call tea room, or restaurant, or beer garden."

"And 'Yungiwo Ren'?"

"That's their version of 'Chung kuo jen'[A]—the Chinese for 'Chinese.' At first they called us all that, because most of the original immigrants were from China; but they've got over it now—they found out some of us didn't like it."

Cudyk opened the door.

A few aliens were sitting at the round tables in the big outer room. Cudyk watched Harkway's face, and saw his eyes widen with shock. The Niori were something to see, the first time.

They were tall and erect, and their anatomy was not even remotely like man's. They had six limbs each, two for walking, four for manipulation. Their bodies were covered by a pale, horny integument which grew in irregular sections, so that you could tell the age of a Niori by the width of the growth-areas between the plates of his armor. But you saw none of those things at first. You saw the two glowing violet eyes, set wide apart in a helmet-shaped head, and the startlingly beautiful markings on the smooth shell of the face—blue on pale cream, like an ancient porcelain tile. And you saw the crest—a curved, lucent shape that even in a lighted room glowed with its own frost-blue. No Niori ever walked in darkness.

Cudyk guided Harkway toward the door at the far end of the room. "We'll see who's in the back room," he said. "There is usually a small gathering at this hour."

The inner room was more brightly lit than the other. Down the center, in front of a row of empty booths, was a long table. Three men sat at one end of it, with teacups and a bowl of lichee nuts between them. They looked up as Cudyk and Harkway came in.

"Gentlemen," said Cudyk, "may I present Mr. Harkway, who is here on a mission from the Minority People's League? Mr. Burgess, Father Exarkos, Mr. Ferguson."

The three shook hands with Harkway, Father Exarkos smiling pleasantly, the other two with more guarded expressions. The priest was in his fifties, grey-haired, hollow-templed, with high orbital ridges and a square, mobile mouth. He said, in English oddly accented by a mixture of French and Greek, "Please sit down, both of you ... I understand that your first evening here has been not too pleasant, Mr. Harkway. I hope the rest of your stay will be more so."

Burgess snorted, not quite loudly enough to be deliberately rude. His face had a pleasant, even a handsome cast except for the expression of petulance he was now wearing. He was a few years younger than the priest: a big-boned, big-featured man whose slightly curved back and hollowed cheeks showed that he had lost bulk since his prime.

Ferguson's pale face was expressive but completely controlled. The gambler's eyes were narrow and unreadable, the lips and the long muscles of the jaw showing nothing more than surface emotion. He asked politely, "Planning to stay long, Mr. Harkway?"

"That all depends, Mr. Ferguson, on—to be blunt, on what sort of a reception I get. I won't try to conceal from you the fact that my role here is that of a political propagandist. I want to convince as many people as I can that the Minority People's movement is the best hope of the human race. If I can find that there's some chance of succeeding, I'll stay as long as necessary. If not—"

"I'm afraid we won't be seeing much of you, in that case, Mr. Harkway," said Burgess. His tone was scrupulously correct, but his nostrils were quivering with repressed indignation.

"What makes you say that, Mr. Burgess?" Harkway asked, turning his intent, serious gaze on the older man.

"Your program, as I understand it," said Burgess, "aims at putting humanity on an equal basis with various assorted races of lizards, beetles and other vermin. I don't think you will find much sympathy for that program here, sir."

"I'm glad to say that, through no fault of your own, you're mistaken," said Harkway, smiling slightly. "I think you're referring to the program of the right wing of the League, which was dominant for the last several years. It's true that for that period, the M.P.L.'s line was to work for the gradual integration of human beings—and other repressed races—into the society of the planets on which they live. But that's all done with now. The left wing, to which I belong, has won a decisive victory at the League elections.

"Our program," Harkway continued earnestly, "rejects the doctrine of assimilation as a biological and cultural absurdity. What we propose to do, and with sufficient help will do, is to return humanity to its homeland—to reconstitute Earth as an autonomous, civilized member of the galactic entity. We realize, of course, that this is a gigantic undertaking, and that much aid will be required from the other races of the galaxy.... Were you about to say something, Mr. Burgess?"

Burgess said bitterly, "What you mean, in plain words, Mr. Harkway, is that you think we all ought to go home—dissolve Earth's galactic empire—give it all back to the natives. I don't think you'll find much support for that, either."

Harkway bit his lip, and cast a glance at Cudyk that seemed to say, You warned me, but I forgot. He turned to Ferguson, who was smiling around his cigar as blandly as if nothing out of the way had been said. "What is your view, Mr. Ferguson?"

Ferguson waved his cigar amiably. "You'll have to count me out, Mr. Harkway. I'm doing okay as things are—I have no reason to want any changes."

Harkway turned to the little priest. "And you, Father Exarkos?"

The Greek shrugged and smiled. "I wish you all the luck in the universe, sincerely," he said. "But I am afraid I believe that no material methods can rescue man from his dilemma."

"If I've given any offense," said Burgess suddenly, "I can leave."

Harkway stared at him for a moment, gears almost visibly slipping in his head. Then he said, "Of course not, Mr. Burgess, please don't think that for a moment. I respect your views—"

Burgess looked around him with a wounded expression. "I know," he said with difficulty, "that I am in a minority—here—"

Father Exarkos put a hand on his arm and murmured something. Harkway leaned forward impulsively across the table and said, "Mr. Burgess, I've traveled a long way in the hope of discussing these problems with men of intelligence and standing in their community, like yourself. I hope you'll stay and give me the benefit of your experience. I shall be very much the loser if you don't."

Burgess was visibly struggling with his emotions. He stood up and said, "No—no—not tonight. I'm upset. Please excuse me." Head bowed, he walked out of the room.

There was a short silence. "Did I do the wrong thing?" asked Harkway.

"No, no," said Father Exarkos. "It was not your fault—there was nothing you could do. You must excuse him. He is a good man, but he has suffered too much. Since his wife died—of a disease contracted during one of the Famines, you understand—he has not been himself."

Harkway nodded, looking both older and more human than he had a moment before. "If we can only turn back the clock," he said. "Put Humpty Dumpty together again, as you expressed it, Mr. Cudyk." He smiled apologetically at them. "I won't harangue you any more tonight—I'll save that for the meeting tomorrow. But I hope that some of you will come to see it my way."

Father Exarkos' eyebrows lifted. "You are planning to hold a public meeting tomorrow?"

"Yes. There's some difficulty about space—Mayor Seu tells me that the town hall is already booked for the next three days—but I'm confident that I can find some suitable place. If necessary, I'll make it an open-air meeting."

Rack, thought Cudyk. Rack usually stays in town for only two or three days at a time. Seu is trying to keep Harkway under cover until he leaves. It won't work.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw a dark shape in the doorway, and his first thought was that Burgess had come back. But it was not Burgess. It was a squat, bandy-legged man with huge shoulders and arms, wearing a leather jacket and a limp military cap. Cudyk sat perfectly still, warning Exarkos with his eyes.

The squat man walked casually up the table, nodding almost imperceptibly to Ferguson. He ignored the others, except the M.P.L. man. "Your name Harkway?" he asked. He pronounced it with the flat Boston "a": "Haakway".

"That's right," said Harkway.

"Got a message for you," said the squat man. "From Captain Lawrence Rack, United Uth Space Navy."

"The Earth Space Navy was dissolved twenty years ago," said Harkway.

The squat man sighed. "You wanna heah the message or don't you?" he asked.

"Go ahead," said Harkway. His nostrils were pale, and a muscle stood out at the side of his jaw.

"Heah it is. You're plannin' to hold a meetin' of the vehmin lovehs society, right?"

As Harkway began to reply, the squat man leaned across the table and backhanded him across the mouth, knocking him sideways out of his chair.

"Don't," said the squat man. He turned and strolled out.

Cudyk and Ferguson helped Harkway up. The man's eyes were staring wildly out of his pale face, and a thin trickle of blood was running from a pulped lip. "Who was that man?" he asked in a whisper.

"His name is Monk," said Cudyk. "At least that is the only name he has been known to answer to. He is one of Rack's lieutenants—Rack, as you probably know, is the leader of the activists in this sector. Mr. Harkway, I'm sorry this happened. But I advise you to wait for a week or so before you hold your meeting. There is no question of courage involved. It would be suicide."

Harkway looked at him blindly. "The meeting will be held as planned," he said, and walked out, stiff-legged.

Ferguson shook his head, laughed, and shook his head again. Cudyk exchanged a hopeless glance with Father Exarkos, and then followed Harkway out of the room.

The shop was empty except for young Nick Pappageorge, dozing behind the long counter, and the pale morning sunlight that streamed through the plastic window. Most of the counter was in shadow, but stray fingers of light picked out gem trays here and there, turning them into minuscule galaxies of frosty brilliance.

Two Niori, walking arm in arm, paused in front of the window display, then went on. Two human youngsters raced by, shouting. Cudyk caught only a glimpse of them through the pierced screen that closed off the back of his shop, but he recognized them by their voices: Red Gorciak and Stan Eleftheris.

There were few children now, and they were growing up wild. Cudyk wondered briefly what it must be like to be a child born into this microcosm, knowing no other. He dismissed the thought; it was simply one more thing about which there was no use to worry.

Cudyk had not spoken to anyone that morning, but he knew approximately what was happening. Seu would have been busy most of the night, covering up the traces of last evening's riot. Now, probably, he was explaining it away to Zydh Oran, the Niori Outgroup Commissioner. Harkway was making preparations for his meeting—another thing for Seu to worry about when he got through cleaning up the last mess.

Barring miracles, today was going to be very bad.

Seu came in, moving quickly. He walked directly to the rear of the shop. His normally bland face looked worried, and there were beads of sweat on his wide forehead, although the morning was cool.

"Sit down," said Cudyk. "You've seen Zydh Oran?"

Seu made a dismissing gesture. "Nothing. Not pleasant, but nothing. The same as usual—he tells me what happened, I deny it. He knows, but under their laws he can't do anything."

"Someday it will be bad," said Cudyk.

"Yes. Someday. Laszlo—you've got to do something about Harkway. Otherwise he's going to be killed tonight, and there will be a stink from here to Sirius. I had to tell him he could use Town Hall—he was all ready to hold a torch-light meeting in the streets."

"I tried," said Cudyk.

"Try again. Please. Your ethnic background is closer to his than mine. He respects you, I think. Perhaps he's even read some of your books. If anyone can persuade him, you can."

"What did he say when you talked to him?"

"An ox. A brain made of soap and granite. He says it is a matter of principle. I knew then that I could do nothing. When an Anglo-Saxon talks about his principles, you may as well go home. He won't accept a weapon, he won't postpone the meeting. I think he wants to be a martyr."

Cudyk frowned. "Maybe he does. Have you seen Rack?"

"No. Ferguson pretends not to know where he is."

"That's rather odd. What is his motive, do you think?"

Seu said, "Basically, he is afraid of Rack. He cooperates with him—they use each other—but you know that it's not a marriage of minds. He knows that Rack is stronger than he is, because he is only an amoral egotist, and Rack is a fanatic. I think he believes this business may be Rack's downfall, and he would like that."

He stood up. "I have to go. Will you do it?"

"Yes."

"Good. Let me know." Seu walked out, as hastily as he had entered.

Nick Pappageorge had roused himself and was polishing a tall, fluted silver vase. Cudyk said, "Nick, go and find out where Mr. Harkway is. If he isn't busy, ask him if he'll do me the favor of dropping around to see me. Otherwise, just come back and tell me where he is; I'll go to him."

Nick said, "Sure, Mr. Cudyk," and went out.

Cudyk stared at the tray of unsorted gems on the desk before him. He stirred them with his forefinger, separating out an emerald, two aquamarines, a large turquoise and a star sapphire. That was all he had had to begin with—his dead wife's jewels, carried half across Europe when a loaf of bread was worth more than all the gem stones in the world. The sapphire had bought his passage on the alien ship; the others had been his original stock-in-trade, first at the refugee center on Alfhal, then here on Palumbar. Now he was a prosperous importer, with a business that netted him the equivalent of ten thousand pounds a year.

But the wealth was ashes; he would have traded all of it for one loaf of bread, eaten in peace, on an Earth that had not sunk back to barbarism.

Momentum, he told himself. Momentum, and a remnant of curiosity. Those are the only reasons I can think of why I do not blow out my brains. I wonder what keeps the others from it? Seu? Chong Yin? I don't know. Burgess has his fantasy, though it cracks now and then. Ferguson has the sensibility of a jackal. Rack, as Seu said, is a fanatic. But why do the rest of them keep on? For what?

The doorway darkened again as Harkway came in, followed by Nick. Nick gestured toward the rear of the shop, and Harkway advanced, smiling. His lower lip was stained by a purple substance with a glossy surface.

Cudyk greeted him and offered him a chair. "It was good of you to come over," he said. "I hope I didn't interrupt your work."

Harkway grinned stiffly. "No. I was just finishing lunch when your boy found me. I have nothing more to do until this evening."

Cudyk looked at him. "You got to the hospital after all, I see."

"Yes. Dr. Moskowitz fixed me up nicely."

Cudyk had been asking himself why the M.P.L. man looked so cheerful. Now he thought he understood.

"And Miss Burgess?" he asked.

"Yes," said Harkway, looking embarrassed. He paused. "She's—an exquisite person, Mr. Cudyk."

Cudyk clasped his square hands together, elbows on the arms of his chair. He said, "Forgive me, I'm going to be personal. Am I right in saying that you now feel more than casually interested in Miss Burgess?"

He added, "Please. I have a reason for asking."

Harkway's expression was guarded. "Yes; that's true."

"Do you think she may feel similarly towards you?"

Harkway paused. "I think so. I hope so. Why, Mr. Cudyk?"

"Mr. Harkway, I will be very blunt. Miss Burgess has already lost one lover through no fault of her own, and the experience has not been good for her. She is, as you say, exquisite—she has a beautiful, but not a strong personality. Do you think it is fair for you to give her another such experience, even if the attachment is not fully formed, by allowing yourself to be killed this evening?"

Harkway leaned back in his chair. "Oh," he said, "that's it." He grinned. "I thought you were going to point out that her father broke off the last affair because of the man's politics. If you had, I was going to tell you that Mr. Burgess looked me up this morning and apologized for his attitude yesterday, and breaking down and so on. He's very decent, you know. We're getting along very well."

He paused. "About this other matter," he said seriously, "I'm grateful for your interest, but—I'm afraid I can't concede the validity of your argument." He made an impatient gesture. "I'm not trying to sound noble, but this business is more important than my personal life. That's all, I'm afraid. I'm sorry."

Another fanatic, Cudyk thought. A liberal fanatic. I have seen all kinds, now. He said, "I have one more argument to try. Has Seu explained to you how precarious our position is here on Palumbar?"

"He spoke of it."

"The Niori accepted this one small colony with grave misgivings. Every act of violence that occurs here weakens our position, because it furnishes ammunition for a group which already wants to expel us. Do you understand?"

There was pain in Harkway's eyes. "Mr. Cudyk, it's the same all over the galaxy, wherever these pitifully tiny outgroups exist. My group is trying to attack that problem on a galaxy-wide scale. I don't say we'll succeed, and I grant you the right to doubt that our program is the right one. But we've got to try. Among other things, we've got to clean out the activists, for just the reason you mention. And—pardon me for stressing the obvious—but it's Captain Rack who will be responsible for this particular act of violence if it occurs, not myself."

"And you think that your death at his hands would be a stronger argument than a peaceful meeting, is that it?"

Harkway shook his head ruefully. "I don't know that I have that much courage, Mr. Cudyk. I'm hoping that nothing will happen to me. But I know that the League's prestige here would be enormously hurt if I let Rack bluff me down." He stood up. "You'll be at the meeting?"

"I'm afraid so." Cudyk stood and offered his hand. "The best of luck."

He watched the young man go, feeling very old and tired. He had known it would be this way; he had only tried for Seu's sake. Now he was involved; he had allowed himself to feel the tug of love and pity toward still another lost soul. Such bonds were destructive—they turned the heart brittle and weathered it away, bit by bit.

The assembly hall was well filled, although Harkway had made no special effort to advertise the meeting. He had known, Cudyk thought, that Rack's threat would be more than sufficient. The youngster was not stupid.

There were no women or children. Ferguson was there, and a large contingent of his employees—gamblers, pimps, waiters and strong-arm men—as well as most of the Russian population. All but a few of the Chinese had stayed away, as had Burgess. But a number of men whom Cudyk knew to have M.P.L. leanings, and an even larger number of neutrals, were there. The audience was about evenly divided, for and against Harkway. If he somehow came through this alive, it was just possible that he could swing the Quarter his way. A futile victory; but of course Harkway did not believe that.

There was a murmur and a shuffle of feet as Rack entered with three other men—Monk, the one called Spider, and young Tom De Grasse, who had once been engaged to Kathy Burgess. The sound dropped almost to stillness for a few moments after the four men took seats at the side of the hall, then rose again to a steady rumble. Harkway and Seu had not yet appeared.

Cudyk saw the man to his right getting up, moving away; he turned in time to see Seu wedge himself through a gap in the line of chairs and sit down in the vacated place.

The fat man's face was blandly expressionless, but Cudyk knew that something had happened. "What is it?" he asked.

Seu's lips barely moved. He looked past Cudyk, inspecting the crowd with polite interest. "I had him kidnapped," he said happily. "He's tied up, in a safe place. There won't be any meeting today."

Seu had been seen. Someone a few rows ahead called, "Where's Harkway, Mayor?"

"I don't know," Seu said blandly. "He told me he would meet me here—said he had an errand to do. Probably he's on his way now."

Under cover of the ensuing murmur, he turned to Cudyk again. "I didn't want to do it," he said. "It will mean trouble, sooner or later; maybe almost as much trouble as if Harkway had been killed. But I had to make a choice. Do you think I did the right thing, Laszlo?"

"Yes," said Cudyk, "except that I wish you had told me earlier."

Seu smiled, his heavy face becoming for that instant open and confiding. "If I had, you wouldn't have been so sincere when you talked to Harkway."

Cudyk smiled in spite of himself. He relaxed in his chair, savoring the relief that had come when he'd learned that Harkway was not going to die. The tension built up, day by day, almost imperceptibly, and it was a rare, fleeting pleasure when something happened to lower it.

He saw the mayor looking at his watch. The crowd was growing restless: in a few more minutes Seu would get up and announce that the meeting was cancelled. Then it would be all over.

Seu was rising when a new wave of sound traveled over the audience. Out of the corner of his eye Cudyk saw men turning, standing up to see over the heads of their neighbors. Seu spoke a single, sharp word, and his hand tightened on the back of his chair.

Cudyk stood. Someone was coming down the center aisle of the room, but he couldn't see who it was.

Those who had stood earlier were sitting down now. Down the aisle, looking straight ahead, with a bruised jaw and a bloody scratch running from cheekbone to chin, came James Harkway.

He mounted the platform, rested both hands on the low speaker's stand, and turned his glance across the audience, once, from side to side. There was a collective scraping of chairs and clearing of throats, then complete stillness. Harkway said:

"My friends—and enemies."

Subdued laughter rippled across the room.

"A few of my enemies didn't want me to hold this meeting," said Harkway. "Some of my friends felt the same way. In fact, it seemed that nobody wanted this meeting to take place. But here you all are, just the same. And here I am."

He straightened. "Why is that, I wonder? Perhaps because regardless of our differences, we're all in the same boat—in a lifeboat." He nodded gravely. "Yes, we're all in a lifeboat—all of us together, to live or die, and we don't know which way to turn for the nearest land that will give us harbor.

"Which way shall we turn to find a safe landing? To find peace and honor for ourselves and our children? To find safety, to find happiness?"

He spread his arms. "There are a million directions we could follow. There are all the planets in the galaxy! But everywhere we turn, we find alien soil, alien cultures, alien people. Everywhere except in one direction only.

"Our ship—our own planet, Earth—is foundering, is sinking, that's true. But it hasn't—yet—sunk. There's still a chance that we can turn back, make Earth what it was, and then, from there—go on! Go on, until we've made a greater Earth, a stronger, happier, more peaceful Earth—till we can take our place with pride in the galaxy, and hold up our heads with any other race that lives."

He had captured only half their attention, and he knew it. They were watching him, listening to what he said, but the heads of the audience were turned slightly, like the heads of plants under a solar tropism, toward the side of the chamber where Rack and his men sat.

Harkway said, "We all know that the Earth's technical civilization is smashed—broken like an eggshell. By ourselves, we could never put it back together. And if we do nothing, no one else is going to put it back together for us. But suppose we went to the other races in the galaxy, and said—"

A baritone voice broke in quietly, "'We'll sell our souls to you, if you'll kindly give us a few machines!'"

Rack stood up—tall, muscular, lean, with deep hollows under his cheekbones, red-grey hair falling over his forehead under the visor of his cap. His short leather jacket was thrown over his shoulders like a cloak. His narrow features were grey and cold, the mouth a straight, hard line. He said, "That's what you want us to tell the vermin, isn't it, Mr. Harkway?"

Harkway seemed to settle himself like a boxer. He said clearly, "The intelligent races of the galaxy are not devils and do not want our souls, Mr. Rack."

Rack ignored the "Mr." He said, "But they'd want certain assurances from us, in return for their help, wouldn't they, Mr. Harkway?"

"Certainly," said Harkway. "Assurances that no sane man would refuse them. Assurances, for example, that there would be no repetition of the Altair Incident—when a handful of maniacs in two ships murdered thousands of peaceful galactic citizens without the slightest provocation. Perhaps you remember that, Mr. Rack; perhaps you were there."

"I was there," said Rack casually. "About five hundred thousand vermin were squashed. We would have done a better job, but we ran out of supplies. Some day we'll exterminate them all, and then there'll be a universe fit for men to live in. Meanwhile—" he glanced at the audience—"we're going to build. We're building now. Not with the vermin's permission, under the vermin's eye. In secret. On a planet they'll never find until our ships spurt out from it like milt from a fish. And when that day comes, we'll squash them down to the last tentacle and the last claw."

"Are you finished?" asked Harkway. He was quivering with controlled rage.

"Yes, I'm finished," said Rack wearily. "So are you. You're a traitor, Harkway, the most miserable kind of a crawling, dirt-eating traitor the human race ever produced. Get down off the platform."

Harkway said to the audience, "I came here to try to persuade you to my way of thinking—to ask you to consider the arguments and decide for yourselves. This man wants to settle the question by prejudice and force. Which of us is best entitled to the name 'human?' If you listen to him, can you blame the Niori if they decide to end even this tiny foothold they've given you on their planet? Would you live in a universe drenched with blood?"

Rack said quietly, "Monk."

The squat man stood up, smiling. He took a clasp knife out of his pocket, opened it, and started up the side of the room.

In the dead stillness, another voice said, "No!"

It was, Cudyk saw with shock, Tom De Grasse. The youngster was up, moving past Rack—who made no move to stop him, did not even change expression—past the squat man, turning a yard beyond, almost at the front of the room. His square, almost childish face was tight with strain. There was a pistol in one big hand.

Cudyk felt something awaken in him which blossomed only at moments like this, when one of his fellow men did something particularly puzzling: the root, slain but still quasi-living, of the thing that had once been his central drive and his trademark in the world—his insatiable, probing, warmly intelligent curiosity about the motives of men.

On the surface, this action of De Grasse's was baldly impossible. He was committed to Rack's cause twice over, by conviction and by the shearing away of every other tie; and still more important, he worshipped Rack himself with the devotion that only fanatics can inspire. It was as if Peter had defied Christ.

The three men stood motionless for what seemed a long time. Monk, halted with his weight on one foot, faced De Grasse with his knife hand slightly extended, thumb on the blade. He was visibly tense, waiting for a word from Rack. But Rack stood as if he had forgotten time and space, staring bemused over Monk's shoulder at De Grasse. The fourth man, Spider—bones and gristle, with a corpse-growth of grey-white hair—stood up slowly. Rack put a hand on his shoulder and pressed him down again.

Cudyk thought: Kathy Burgess.

It was the only answer. De Grasse knew, of course, everything that had passed between Harkway and the girl. There was no privacy worth mentioning in the Quarter. Pressed in this narrow ghetto, every man swam in the effluvium of every other man's emotions. And De Grasse was willing, apparently, to give up everything that mattered to him, to save Kathy Burgess pain.

It said something for the breed, Cudyk thought—not enough, never enough, for you saw it only in pinpoint flashes, the noble individual who was a part of the bestial mob—but a light in the darkness, nevertheless.

Finally Rack spoke. "You, Tom?"

The youngster's eyes showed sudden pain. But he said, "I mean it, Captain."

There was a slow movement out from that side of the room, men inching away, crowding against their neighbors.

Rack was still looking past Monk's shoulder, into De Grasse's face. He said:

"All right."

He turned, still wearing the same frozen expression, and walked down the side of the room, toward the exit. Monk threw a glance of pure incredulity over his shoulder, glanced back at De Grasse, and then followed. Spider scrambled after.

De Grasse relaxed slowly, as if by conscious effort. He put away his gun, hesitated a moment, and walked slowly out after the others. His wide shoulders were slumped.

Then there was the scraping of chairs and boot-soles and a rising bee-hive hum as the audience stood up and began to move out. Harkway made no effort to call them back.

Cudyk, moving toward the exit with the rest, had much to think about. He had seen not only De Grasse's will, but Rack's, part against the knife of human sympathy. And that was a thing he had never expected to see.

"Times like this," said Ferguson, narrowing his grey snake's eyes in a smile, "I almost believe in God."

Father Exarkos smiled courteously and said nothing. He and Cudyk had been sitting in the back room of Chong Yin's since a half-hour after the meeting. Seu had been with them earlier, but had left. A little after twelve, Ferguson had strolled in and joined them.

"I mean it," said Ferguson, laughing a little. "There was Harkway, sticking his neck out, and there was little De Grasse standing in the way. And Rack backed down." He shook his head, still smiling. "Rack backed down. Now how would you explain that, gentlemen?"

It was necessary to put up with the gambler, who wielded more power in the Quarter than anyone else, even Seu; but sometimes Cudyk found himself dropping his usual attitude of detached interest in favor of speculations about the specific variety of horrible fate which Ferguson would most probably meet.

He was particularly irritating tonight, because Cudyk was forced to agree with him. Cudyk had still not solved the riddle of Rack's failure to finish what he had started.

It was conceivable that De Grasse should have acted as he did for reasons of sentiment; but to apply the same motive to Rack was simply not possible. The man had emotions, certainly, but they were all channeled into one direction: the destiny of the human race and of Lawrence Rack. De Grasse was at an age when the strongest emotions were volatile, when conversions were made, when a man could plan an assassination one day and enter a monastery the next. But Rack was fixed and aimed, like a cannon.

Ferguson was saying, "He must be going soft. Going soft—old Rack. Unless it's the hand of God. What's your opinion, Father?"

The priest said blandly, "Mr. Ferguson, since I have come to live upon this planet, my opinions have changed about many things. I no longer believe that either God, or man, is quite so simple as I once thought. We were too small in our thoughts, before—our understanding of temporal things was bounded by the frontiers of Earth, and of eternal things by the little sky we could see from our windows.

"Before, I think I would have tried to answer your question. I would have said that I think Captain Rack was moved by—a sudden access of human feeling—or I would have said that I think Captain Rack was touched by the finger of God. Perhaps I would have hesitated to say that, because even then I did not believe that God interferes with the small sins of men like Captain Rack. Or the small sins of anybody, for that matter."

Ferguson grinned. "Well, Father, that's the best excuse for an answer I ever heard, anyway." He dragged on his cigar, narrowing his eyes and pursing his lips, as if the cigar were a tube through which his brains were being sucked. "In other words," he said, "you don't think the big blowup back home was a judgment on us for our sins. You think it was a good thing, only more people should have got out the way we did. That right?"

"Oh, no," said Father Exarkos. "I believe that the Famines and the Collapse were a judgment of God. I have heard many theories about the causes of the Collapse, but I have not heard one which does not come back, in the end, to a condemnation of man's folly, cruelty, and blindness."

"Well," said Ferguson, "excuse me, Father, but if you believe that way, what are you doing here? Back there—" he jerked his head, as if Earth were some little distance behind his right shoulder—"people are living like animals. Chicago, where I come from, is just a stone jungle, with a few beast-like scavengers prowling around in it. If the dirt and disease don't get you, some bandit will split your head open, or you'll run into a wolf or some other hungry animal. If none of those things happen, you can expect to live to the ripe old age of forty, and then you'll be glad to die."

He had stopped smiling. Ferguson, Cudyk realized, was describing his own personal hell. He went on, "Now, if you want to call that a judgment, I won't argue with you. But if that's what you believe, why aren't you back there taking it with the rest of them?"

He really wanted to know, Cudyk thought. He had begun by trying to bait the priest, but now he was serious. It was odd to think of Ferguson having trouble with his conscience, but Cudyk was not really surprised. The most moralistic men he had ever known had been gangsters of Ferguson's type; whereas the few really good men he had known, Father Exarkos among them, had seemed as blithely unaware of their consciences as of their healthy livers.

The priest said, soberly, "Mr. Ferguson, I believe that we also are being punished. Perhaps we more than others. The Mexican peon, the Indian fellah, the peasant of China or Greece, lives very much as his father did before him; he scarcely has reason to know that judgment has fallen upon Earth. But I think that no inhabitant of the Quarter can forget it for so much as an hour."

Ferguson stared at him, then grunted and squashed out his cigar. He stood up. "I'll be getting along home," he said. "Good night." He walked out.

Cudyk and Exarkos sat for a while longer, talking quietly, and then left together. The streets were empty. Behind them and to their left as they walked to the corner, the ghostly blue of the Niori beehives shone above the dark human buildings.

The priest lived in a small second-floor apartment near the corner of Brasil and Athenai, alone since his wife had died ten years before. Cudyk had only to go straight across Ceskoslovensko, but he walked down toward Brasil with his friend.

Near the corner, Cudyk saw a dark form sprawled in a doorway. "One of your congregation, Astereos?" he asked.

"It is probable," said the priest resignedly. "Steve Chrisudis has been drinking heavily again this past week; also the two Moulios brothers."

He stepped over and turned the man's face up to the light.

The face was bloody and broken, the eyes sightless. It was Harkway. He had been dead long enough to grow cold.

One question of Harkway's kept coming back to Cudyk. "Would you live in a universe drenched with blood?"

Rack would, of course; for others there was a tragic dilemma. For them, the race had come to the end of a road that had its beginning in prehistory. Every step of progress on that way had been accomplished by bloodshed, and yet the goal had always been a world at peace. It had been possible to live with the paradox when the road still seemed endless: before the first Earth starships discovered that humanity was not alone in the universe.

Human beings were like a fragile crystalline structure, enduring until the first touch of air; or like a cyst that withers when it is cut open. The winds of the universe blew around them now, and there was no way to escape from their own nature.

The way forward was the way back; the way back was the way forward.

There was no peace except the peace of surrender and death. There was no victory except the victory of chaos.

As the priest had remarked, there were many theories about the Collapse. It was said that the economy of Earth had been wrecked by interstellar imports; it was said that the rusts and blights that had devastated Earth's fields were of alien origin; it was said that the disbanding of the Space Navy, after the Altair Incident, had broken Earth's spirit. It was said that the emigrations, both before and after the Famines, had bled away too much of the trained manpower that was Earth's life-blood.

The clear fact was that the human race was finished: dying like Neanderthal faced by Cro-Magnon; dying like the hairy Ainu among the Japanese. It was true that hundreds of millions of people lived on Earth much as they had done before, tilling their fields, digging stones from the ground, laboring over the handicrafts which sustained the men of the Quarter in their exile.

Humanity had passed through such dark ages before.

But now there was no way to go except downward.

If the exiles in their ghettoes, on a hundred planets of the galaxy, were the lopped-off head of the race, then the ferment of theories, plans, and policies that swirled through them stood for the last fitful fantasies in the brain of a guillotined man.

And on Earth, the prelates, the robber barons, the petty princes were ganglia: performing their mechanical functions in a counterfeit of intelligence, slowing, degenerating imperceptibly until the last spark should go out.

Cudyk fingered the manuscript which lay on the desk before him. It was the last thing he had written, and it would never be finished. He had hunted it up, this morning, out of nostalgia, or perhaps through some obscure working of that impulse that made him look out at the stars each night.

There were twenty pages, the first chapter of a book that was to have been his major work. It ended with the words:

"The only avenue of escape for humanity is...."

He had stopped there, because he had realized suddenly that he had been deliberately deceiving himself; that there was no avenue. The scheme he had meant to propose and develop in the rest of the book had one thing in common with those he had demolished in the first pages. It would not work.

Cudyk thought of those phantom chapters now, and was grateful that he had not written them. He had meant to propose that the exiles should band together on some unpeopled planet, and rear a new generation which would be given all the knowledge of the old, save for two categories: military science and astronomy. They would never be told, never guess that the bright lights of their sky were suns, that the suns had planets and the planets people. They would grow up free of that numbing pressure; they would have a fresh start.

It had been the grossest self-deception. You cannot put the human mind in chains. Every culture had tried it, and every culture had failed....

He pulled open a drawer of his desk and put the manuscript into it. A folded note dropped to the floor as he did so. Cudyk picked it up and read again:

You are requested to attend a meeting which will be held at 8 Washington Avenue at 10 hours today. Matters of public policy will be discussed.

It was not signed; no signature was needed, nor any threatened alternative to complying with the "request". Cudyk glanced at his wristwatch, made on Oladi by spidery, many-limbed creatures to whom an ordinary watch movement was a gross mechanism. The dial showed the Galactic Standard numerals which corresponded to ten o'clock.

Cudyk stood up wearily and walked out past the carved screen. He said to Nick, "I'll be back in an hour or so."

Eight Washington Avenue was The Little Bear, half a block from the corner where he had first met Harkway, a block and a half from the spot where Harkway's corpse had been left in a doorway. Two more associations, Cudyk thought. After twenty-five years, there were so many that he could not move a foot in the Quarter, glance at a window or a wall, without encountering one of them. And this was another thing to remember about a ghetto: you were crowded not only in space but in time. The living were the most transient inhabitants of the Quarter.

Cudyk stepped through the open door of The Little Bear, saw the tables empty and the floor bare. The bartender, Piljurovich, jerked his thumb toward the stairs. "You're late," he said in Russian. "Better hurry."

Cudyk climbed the stairs to the huge second-floor dining hall, where the Russians and Poles held their periodic revels. The room was packed tight with a silent mass of men. At the far end, Rack sat on a chair placed on a table. He stopped in mid-sentence, stared coldly at Cudyk, and then went on.

"—or against me. From now on, there won't be any more neutrals. I want you to understand this clearly. For one thing, your lives may depend on it."

He paused, glancing around the room. "By now you all know that James Harkway was executed last night. His crime was treason against the human race. There are some of you here who have been, or will be, guilty of the same crime. To them I have nothing more to say. To the others, those who have considered themselves neutral, I say this: First, New Earth needs all of you and has earned your allegiance. Second, those of you who remain on an enemy planet in spite of this warning will not live to regret it if that planet is selected for attack.

"You have two months to make up your minds and to close your affairs. At the end of that time, a New Earth transport will call here to take off those who decide to go. It will be the last New Earth ship, and I warn you that you had better not count on Galactic transportation after that date."

He stood up. "That's all."

The audience was over. Rack waited, standing on the table, thumbs hooked into his belt, jacket over his shoulders, like a statue of himself, while the crowd moved slowly out of the room. It was ludicrous, but you could not laugh.

Two months. For almost twenty years Rack had been a minor disturbance in the Quarter, no more important or dangerous or mad than a dozen others; appearing suddenly, at night, staying for a few days, disappearing again for a month, or two, or six. He brought stolen goods to Ferguson—furs from Drux Uta, perhaps, or jewels from Thon—and Ferguson paid him in Galactic currency, reselling the merchandise later, some on Palumbar, some on a dozen other worlds, for twenty times the price he paid. Rack had a following among the younger men of the Quarter; two or three a year joined him. Occasionally there were rumors in the Quarter of Rack's close calls with the Galactic Guard. It had never been a secret that he was building military installations on some far-off planet. But now, for the first time, Cudyk realized that Rack was actually going to make war on the universe.

Whatever the result, the least it meant was the end of the Quarter.

The stairs were choked. Cudyk worked his way down, to find the barroom filled with little knots of men, talking in low voices. Only a few were drinking.

Someone called his name, and then a hand grasped his sleeve. It was Speros Moulios, the grey little tobacco dealer, whose two sons drank too much. "Mr. Cudyk, please, what do you think? Should we go, like he says?"

The others of the group followed him; in a moment Cudyk was surrounded. He felt helpless. "I can't advise you, Mr. Moulios," he said. "To be truthful, I don't know what I am going to do myself."

Nobilio Villaneuva, the druggist, said, "I have worked fifteen years, saved all my money. What am I going to do with it if I go to this New Earth? And what about my daughter?"

Someone came elbowing his way through the crowd. He signaled to Cudyk. "Laszlo!" It was bald, cheerful Mike Moskowitz, one of the Quarter's two doctors. He said, "Some of the fellows want to form a delegation, to go back and ask Rack some questions. They asked me to serve, but I've got to get back to the hospital. Same thing with Seu, he's got six things on his hands already. Father Exarkos isn't here. Will you take over? Good. I'll see you later."

Cudyk sighed. The men around him were watching him expectantly. He stepped over to the bar, picked up an empty glass and rapped with it on the counter until the room quieted.

"It's been suggested," he said, "that a delegation be formed to ask Captain Rack for more information. Do you all want that?"

There was an affirmative murmur.

"All right," said Cudyk. "Nominations?"

They ended up with a committee of five: Cudyk as spokesman, Moulios, Chong Yin, the painter Prokop Vekshin, and the town clerk, Martin Paz. Cudyk had slips of paper passed out, and collected a hundred-odd questions, most of them duplicates and some of them incoherent. Paz made a neat list of those that remained, and the delegation moved toward the stairs.

At the foot of the stairway Cudyk saw Burgess standing, blinking uncertainly around him. He dropped back and put his hand on the man's arm. "Hello, Louis. I'm glad to see you. How is Kathy?"

Burgess straightened a trifle. "Oh—Laszlo. She's all right, thank you. Feeling a little low, just now, of course...." His voice trailed off.

"Of course," said Cudyk sympathetically. "I wish there were something I could do."

"No—no, there's nothing. Time will cure her, I suppose. Where are you going now?"

Cudyk explained. "Were you at the meeting, earlier?" he asked.

"No. I was not invited. I only heard—ten minutes ago. Perhaps it would be all right if I came upstairs with you? In that way—But if I would be a nuisance—" His features worked.

Cudyk felt obscurely uneasy. He recalled suddenly that it was a long time since he had seen Burgess looking perfectly normal. He said reluctantly, "I think it will be all right. Why not? Come along."

Rack was sitting at the end of the long table on the far side of the room, talking to Ferguson. Ferguson's hatchet-man, Vic Smalley, was leaning watchfully against the far wall. Monk and Spider sat at Rack's left. De Grasse, pale and red-eyed, sat halfway down the table, away from the others. He stared at the table in front of him, paying no attention to the rest.

Cudyk had heard that De Grasse was still with Rack, and had wondered what he had done to expiate his sin. The obvious answer was one that he had not wanted to believe: that De Grasse had been given the task of murdering Harkway.

He had done it, probably, with a tormented soul and under Rack's eye, but he had done it. So much, Cudyk thought wearily, for the selfless nobility of man.

Rack looked up expressionlessly as the five men approached. "Yes?"

Cudyk said, "We have been chosen to ask you some questions about your previous statement."

"Ask away," said Rack, leaning back in his chair. Before him was a glass of the dark, smoky liquor Ferguson imported for his special use. He was smoking a tremendously long, black Russian cigarette.

Cudyk took the list from Paz and read the first question. "What is the status of New Earth as to housing, utilities and so on?"

"Housing and utilities are adequate for the present population," said Rack indifferently. "More units will be built as needed."

Paz scribbled in his notebook. Cudyk read, "Will every new colonist be expected to serve as a member of New Earth's fighting forces?"

Rack said, "Every man will work where he's needed. Common sense ought to tell you that middle-aged men with pot bellies and no military training won't be asked to man battleships."

"What is the size of New Earth's navy?"

"Next question."

"Will new colonists be allowed to retain their personal fortunes?"

Rack stared at him coldly. "The man who asked that," he said, "had better stay in the Quarter. If by his personal fortune he means Galactic currency, he can use it to stuff rat-holes. Any personal property of value to the community, and in excess of the owner's minimum needs, will be commandeered and dispensed for the good of the community."

"Will new colonists be under military dis—"

"Look out!" said De Grasse suddenly. He lurched to his feet, upsetting his chair.

Someone stumbled against Paz, who fell heavily across Cudyk's legs, bringing him down. Someone else shouted. From the floor, Cudyk saw Burgess standing quietly with a tiny nickeled revolver in his hand.

"Please don't move, Mr. Ferguson," said Burgess. "I don't trust you. All of you, stand still, please."

Cudyk carefully got his legs under him and slowly stood up. The men on the other side of the table were still sitting or standing where they had been a moment before. De Grasse stood in an attitude of frozen protest, one big hand flat against his trousers pocket. He looked comically like a man who has left the house without his keys.

They must have taken his gun away, Cudyk thought, after that affair yesterday.

Monk and the aged Spider were sitting tensely, trying to watch Rack and Burgess at the same time. Rack, as always, was inhumanly calm. Ferguson looked frightened. The gunman, Vic Smalley, had straightened away from the wall; he looked alert and unworried.

"Captain Rack," said Burgess, "you killed that man Harkway."

Rack said nothing.

"I did it," De Grasse said hoarsely. "If you have to shoot somebody, shoot me."

Burgess turned slightly. Rack, without seeming to hurry, picked up the glass in front of him and half rose to fling the black liquor at Burgess' face.

The gun went off. Burgess stumbled back a step and then toppled over, with a knife-handle sprouting magically between neck and shoulder. De Grasse came hurtling across the table top, dived onto Burgess' prostrate body and came up with the gun. Not more than two seconds had gone by since Rack lifted the glass.

The delegates were moving away, leaving a clear space around De Grasse and Burgess. Cudyk heard some of them clattering down the stairs.

Rack was leaning over the table, supporting himself with one hand, while the other rested at his waist. His attitude, together with his frozen expression, suggested that he was merely bending over to examine Burgess' body. But in the next moment he turned slightly, lifted the hand that was pressed to his side, and looked at the dark stain that was spreading over his shirt.

De Grasse stood up. Cudyk went to Burgess and knelt beside him. The man was conscious and moving feebly. "Lie still," said Cudyk. Someone pushed his shoulder roughly, and he looked up to see De Grasse transferring the revolver from his left hand to his right. The youngster's lips were compressed. "Get out of the way," he said harshly.

"No," said Rack. "Leave him alone." He sat down carefully. After a moment De Grasse went around the table and joined him.

Cudyk lifted Burgess' jacket carefully. There was not much bleeding, and he did not think the wound was dangerous. Burgess said weakly, "Did I kill him, Laszlo?"

"No," said Cudyk. "No one was killed."

Burgess turned his head away.

There were footsteps on the stairs, and Moskowitz came into the room, followed by Lee Far and two men with a stretcher. Moskowitz glanced at Burgess and at Rack, then knelt beside Burgess without a word. He pulled out the knife expertly, pressing a wad of bandage around the wound.

"I'll take that," said Spider, bending over with his grey hand outstretched.

Moskowitz dropped the knife on the floor and went on bandaging Burgess. Spider picked it up, glared at the doctor and went back around the table.

Cudyk waited until Moskowitz had finished with Burgess and started probing for the bullet in Rack's side. Following the stretcher bearers down the stairs, he went out into the clear morning sunlight.

There was never any end to it. The Quarter was like a tight gravitational system, with many small bodies swinging around each other in eccentric orbits, and the whole shrinking in upon itself as time went on, so that it grew more and more certain that one collision would engender half a dozen more.

And in the mind, too, each event went on forever. Cudyk remembered Burgess, in the stretcher as he was being carried home, weeping silently because he had failed to kill the man who had murdered his daughter's lover. And he remembered Rack, sitting silent and weary as he waited for Moskowitz to attend to him: sitting without anger for the man who had shot him, sitting with patience, filled with his own inner strength.

And De Grasse, tortured soul, who had once more shown himself willing to sacrifice himself to any loyalty he felt.

Even Monk, even Spider, lived not for himself but for Rack.

There were all the traditional virtues, dripping their traditional gore: nobility, self-sacrifice, patience, even generosity. By any test except the test of results, Rack was a great man and Burgess another.

And the test of results was a two-edged razor: for by that test, Cudyk himself was a total failure, a nonentity.

He thought, We are the hollow men, we are the stuffed men....

When every action led to disaster, those who did nothing were damned equally with those who acted.

Someone touched Cudyk's arm as he left Chong Yin's. He turned and saw that it was Ferguson.

"I've got something to say to you, Cudyk. I saw you were busy talking to Father Exarkos in there, so I didn't bother you. Besides, it's private. Come on down to my place."

The man was doing him an honor, Cudyk realized, in approaching him personally instead of sending an underling. And now, as Ferguson stood waiting for him to reply, Cudyk saw that there was something curiously like appeal in his eyes.

"All right, if you wish," he said. "But I will have to go back to the shop within an hour—Nick has not had his lunch."

"I won't keep you that long," Ferguson said.

They turned at the corner and walked down Washington, past Town Hall to The Little Bear. Beyond this point, everything was Ferguson's: the dance hall, the casino, the bawdy house, the two cafes and three bars, and the two huge warehouses at the end of the avenue. But it was the casino that Ferguson meant when he said "my place".

A white-aproned boy got up hurriedly and opened the heavy doors when they approached. Ferguson strode past without looking at him, and Cudyk followed across the long, empty room. Dust covers shrouded the roulette table, the chuck-a-luck layout, faro, chemin-de-fer, dice and poker tables. The bar was deserted, bottles and glasses neatly stacked.

Ferguson led the way up a short flight of stairs to the overhanging balcony at the end of the room. He opened the door with a key—a rarity in the Quarter, since cylinder locks were available only by scavenging on Earth, and had to be imported, whereas a mechanism used by the Niori as a mathematical toy could be readily adapted into an efficient combination lock.

The low-ceilinged room was furnished with a blond-wood desk and swivel chair, a long, pale green couch and two chairs upholstered in the same fabric: all Earth imports, scavenged from stocks manufactured before the Collapse. The carpet was a deeper green. There were three framed pictures on the walls: a blue-period Picasso, a muted oyster-white and grey Utrillo and a small Roualt clown.

Ferguson was watching him. "Just like my place in Chicago," he said. "You never saw it before, did you?"

"No," Cudyk said. "I have never been in the Casino until now."

"Sit down," said Ferguson, pointing to one of the upholstered chairs. He pulled out the swivel chair and leaned back in it. He nodded toward the glass which formed the entire front wall of the room. "Sittin' up here, I can see everything that goes on downstairs. I got a phone—" he laid his hand on it—"that communicates with the cashier's booth in every room. I can handle the whole place from here, and I don't have to be bothered by the goofs if I don't want to. Also, that glass is bullet proof. It's Niori stuff, ten times better than anything we had back home. They tell me you couldn't get through it with a bazooka."

Cudyk said nothing.

"What I wanted to talk to you about—" said Ferguson, leaning forward with his elbows on his knees. "You understand, Cudyk, this is confidential. Strictly between us."

"I don't want any confidence that will be difficult to keep," said Cudyk.

"What do you mean?"

"If it is something that touches the safety of the Quarter—"

Ferguson waved his hand impatiently. "No, it's nothing like that. I just don't want it to get around too early. All right, use your own judgment. Here it is.

"Rack's coming back in about three weeks with his transport, to pick up anybody that wants to go to New Earth. I'm not going, and neither are any of my boys. On the other hand, I'm not going to stay here either. It isn't healthy any more.

"I don't know what Rack's got, but I've got a pretty good idea he's got enough to raise a lot of hell. Now you can figure the angles for yourself: maybe he won't bomb this planet because he thinks he can still make some use of the Quarter—but that's a big maybe. Even if he doesn't, it's a dead cinch there's going to be trouble. The Niori know he comes here, even if they can't prove it, and when the war starts they're going to be sore."

"Tell me something," said Cudyk after a moment. "If you knew all this long ago—and you must have, since you have been so closely associated with Rack—why did you help Rack, and so force yourself to leave Palumbar?"

Ferguson grinned and shrugged. "I'm not complaining," he said. "Rack never fooled me. I got mine, and he got his—it was a business arrangement. When you figure everything in, I can clear out now and I'm still ahead. See, you got to figure that nothing lasts forever. If I hadn't played along with Rack, he would have taken his business somewhere else. Maybe I could have stayed here a little longer, but then again, maybe I would have stayed too long. This way, I got my information in advance, and I got my profit from dealing with Rack.

"As a matter of fact, he thinks I and all my outfit are going to be on that transport when it goes back to his base. He knows I wouldn't take a chance on staying here when the shooting starts. What he doesn't know is that I got someplace else to go, and a way to get there."

He sat back in his chair again. "I got a Niori-built freighter hidden back in the hills. Had it for eight years now. It'll carry five hundred people, and fuel and provisions for a year, on top of the cargo. And I got a planet picked out where nobody will bother me—not Rack, and not the Galactics."

He took a cigar box from the desk and offered it to Cudyk. Cudyk shook his head, showing his pipe.

Ferguson took a cigar, twirled it in his lips slowly, and lit it. "You know," he said, bending forward, "there's plenty of planets in the galaxy that aren't inhabited. Some have never even been explored. They're off the shipping routes, no intelligent race on them, nothing special in the way of organic products, so nobody wants them. Rack's got one—I've got another."

He gestured with the cigar. "But I'm not using mine to build up any war base. What for?" His long face contorted with violent disgust. "That Rack is crazy. You know it and I know it. If it wasn't for him, I could have stayed here, who knows how long? Or I could have moved to one of the other colonies if I saw a good chance. I like it here. This is civilization—all that's left of it.

"But—" he leaned back again—"you got to take what you can get. If the odds are too heavy, cash in and walk out. That's what I'm doing: I'm retiring. On this planet I told you about, there's a big island. A tropical island. Fruit—all you can eat. Little animals something like wild pigs. Fish in the ocean. Gravity just a little under Earth normal, atmosphere perfect. And I'm taking along everything else we'll need. Generators, all kinds of electrical equipment, stoves, everything. It'll last your lifetime and mine."

He looked at Cudyk. "What more would you want?"

Cudyk said slowly, "You're asking me to go with you?"

Ferguson nodded. "Sure. I'll treat you right, Cudyk. My boys will go on working for me, you understand, and so will most of the others I'm going to take. I'll be the boss. But you, and three or four others, you won't have to do any work. Just lie in that sand, or go fishing, or whatever you feel like. How does it sound?"

"I don't think I quite understand," said Cudyk. "Why do you choose me?"

Ferguson put down his cigar. He looked uncomfortable. He said irritably, "Because I've got to have somebody to talk to." He stared at Cudyk. "Look at me. Here I am, I'm fifty years old, and I been fighting the world ever since I was a kid. You think I can just cut loose from everything now, and lie under a tree? I'd go nuts in a month. I'm not kidding myself, I know what I am. It takes practice to learn how to relax and enjoy yourself. I never learned, never had the time.

"When I get on that island, and I get all the houses built and the wires strung up, and everything's organized and I've got nothing else to do, I can see myself lying there thinking about this place, and all the other places I ever owned, and thinking to myself, 'What for?' And there's no answer, I know that. But just the same, I'm going to be wanting to start in again, making a deal, opening a joint, figuring the angles, handling people.

"So there I'll be, with all these mugs around me. What do they know to talk about? The same things I do. Things that happened to them in the rackets, here or back on Earth. You got to talk to somebody, or you go crazy. But if I've got nobody but them to talk to, how'm I ever going to get my mind off that kind of stuff?"

He gestured toward the Roualt, on the wall to Cudyk's left. "Look at that," he said. "I bought that thing in 1991. I've been looking at it for, let's see, twenty-three years. For the first five or so I couldn't figure out whether the guy was kidding or not. Then, gradually, I got to like it. But I still don't know why the hell I like it. It's the same thing with everything. I have a Corot that I'm nuts about—I look at it every night before I go to sleep. It's just a landscape, like you used to see on calendars in the old days, except the calendars were junk and this is art. I know that, I can feel it. But what's the difference between the two? Don't ask me.

"See what I mean? That's the kind of stuff I got to learn about. Art. Literature. Music. Philosophy. I always wanted to, before, but I never had the patience for it. Now I've got to do it. My kind of life is finished, I've got to learn a new kind."

He frowned at his cigar. "It isn't going to be easy. Maybe there'll be times when you'll wish you had anybody else in the world around but me. But I won't take it out on you, Cudyk."

He meant it, Cudyk knew. For a moment he wondered, Why don't I accept? He could see Ferguson's island paradise clearly enough: the tropical trees, the log huts—with electric light, induction stoves for cooking, and hot and cold water—the sand, the sunshine, the long, lazy afternoons spent in talking quietly on the beach. There would be no strain and no tension, if everything went as Ferguson planned—only a long, slow twilight, with nothing left to fear or to hope for: forgetfulness, lethargy; lotos and Lethe; a pleasant exile, a scented prison.

"You won't have to worry about the others, the guys that work for me," Ferguson said. "After they get through building the settlement, they can do what they want as long as they don't make any trouble. There'll be enough women to go around—they can settle down and raise kids. There won't be any liquor, and I'm going to keep the weapons locked up. About the ship—I'll wreck that as soon as we land. Once we're there, we're there."

If it were not for Ferguson himself, Cudyk thought, I believe I might do it. But Ferguson, inside a year, is going to be a pitiable and terrible object. This is his own punishment, his lesser evil—he chooses it himself. But he is not going to like it.

"I think I understand," he said. "Believe me, Mr. Ferguson, I'm deeply grateful for this offer, and I am tempted to accept. But—I think I will stay and take my chances with the Quarter."

Ferguson stared at him, then shrugged. "Don't make up your mind in too much of a hurry," he said. "Think it over—I'm not leaving for a couple of weeks. And listen, Cudyk, do me a favor. Don't spread this around."

"Very well," said Cudyk.

Ferguson did not get up to see him to the door.

There was a curious feeling of suspension in the Quarter. Trade was slow; only a few Niori and still fewer members of other Galactic races strolled down the narrow streets, and for more than a week Cudyk sold nothing.

Human faces were missing, too. Almost two hundred of the ghetto's inhabitants had left quietly, during the night, when word had gone around that the "New Earth" transport was waiting. Villaneuva had gone, with his family; so had Martin Paz; and Ferguson had gone earlier with all his crew. Today, two weeks later, Cudyk had spent the morning wandering the City. It was a thing he had done often in his first years on the planet, before the restless drive of his youth had seeped away, leaving nothing but momentum, and memory, and a few vestiges that reminded him of the man he had been.

He had spent whole days in the City, then, looking into this building and that, talking to the natives, asking questions, observing. He had seen the City as part of a colossal jigsaw puzzle from which, if you were patient and perceptive, you might extract the nexus, the inner pattern that made the essential difference between Niori and men.

For the Niori, like nearly all the intelligent races of the galaxy, had one survival factor that men had always lacked. There was no word for it in any human language; you could only talk around it in negatives. The Niori did not kill; they did not lie; they did not steal, intrigue, exploit each other, hate, make war.

For men, "the fittest" had always been the man, or nation, or race, that survived by exterminating its rivals. Somehow, the Niori had found another way. There was no word for it. But perhaps you could find it, if you looked long enough.

He had studied their architecture, and pondered long on the arrangement of the City's great hive-buildings: a peculiar, staggered arrangement which was neither concentric nor radial; which created no endless vistas, only islands of buildings or lakes of parkland. He had tried to see into that arrangement and through it to the soul of the race, as other scholars had peered into the city-plans of Athens and New York, reading inwardness into one and outwardness into the other.

The method was sterile. The Niori had no "world-view" in the Spenglerian sense. Their cities expressed only function and a sense of beauty and order.

In those early days, he had said to himself: These people have no cinemas, theaters, churches, art galleries, concert halls, football fields. Let me see what they have instead, and perhaps I will begin to understand them.

He had seen the Niori, sitting in a circle of six or eight, solemnly capping one word with another, around and around. To him, the sequences of words were sense-free and followed no discernable pattern. To the Niori, evidently, they fulfilled some function analagous to those of poetry and group singing.

He had watched them debating in the governing council. There was no rhetoric and no heat, even when the issue was important and the opinions widely divergent. He had seen their shops, in which each article was labeled with its cost to the merchant, and the buyer gave as much more as he could afford. It was incredible; but it worked.

He had followed their culture through a thousand other avenues until he wearied of it, having learned nothing more than he knew at the beginning. Afterwards, for twenty years he had not left the Quarter except to transact business, or to oversee the unloading of merchandise at the spaceport.

Today he had gone once more, feeling an obscure compulsion: perhaps because he knew the day was coming when he would see the City for the last time; perhaps hoping, in that small spark of himself that still allowed itself to hope for anything, that one more visit would show him the miraculous key to all that he had misunderstood.

He had learned nothing new, but the morning had not been altogether wasted. It was a clear autumn day, good for walking in so green a city. And paradoxically enough, being the only Earthman on the streets had made him feel less alien than before. He attracted no attention, in a spaceport city: he walked side by side with squat Dritik and spidery Oladsa, beings of a hundred different races from as many stars. When he returned to the Quarter, he felt oddly refreshed and calmed.

We have very little left, he thought, except one or two minor virtues that have no bloodstains on them. Kindliness, humor, a sense of brotherhood ... perhaps if we had stuck to those, and never learned the martial virtues, never aspired to be noble or glorious, we would have come out all right. Was there ever a turning point? When Carthage was sown with salt, or when Paul founded the Church—or when the first caveman sharpened the end of a stick and used it for murder? If so, it was a long way back, dead and buried, dust and ashes.

We took all that was best in thousands of years of yearning and striving for the right, he thought, and we made it into the Inquisition and the Star Chamber and the NKVD. We fattened our own children for each generation's slaughter. And yet we are not all evil. Astereos is right: if the other races had been like ourselves, it would have been bearable; or if we ourselves had been creatures of pure darkness, conscienceless, glorying in cruelty—then we could have made war on the Galaxy joyfully, and if we failed at least there would have been an element of grandeur in our failure.

Olaf Stapledon had said this once, he remembered—that there was an artistry in pure, uncontaminated evil, that it was in its own way as real an expression of worship as pure good.

The tragedy of human beings, then, was that they were not wholly tragic. Jumbled, piebald parcels of contradictions, angels with asses' ears.... What was that quotation from Bierce? The best thing is not to be born....

Someone brushed by him, and Cudyk looked up. He was at the intersection of Ceskoslovensko and Washington; he had come three blocks past his apartment without noticing where he was going.

Chong Yin's was only a few doors to his left; perhaps he had been heading there automatically. But the doors were closed, he saw; seven or eight Chinese were standing in the street outside, and as Cudyk watched, Seu Min came down the stairs from the living quarters over the tea room. The other Chinese clustered around him for a moment, and then Seu appeared again. The others slowly began to disperse.

Cudyk went to meet him. The mayor's face looked strained; there were new, deep folds of skin around his eyes. "What is it, Min?" said Cudyk.

Seu fell in beside him and they walked back up the street. "Chong killed himself about an hour ago," said the Chinese.

How many does that make? Cudyk thought, frozen. Six, I think, in the last two months.

He had not known Chong well—the old man had been a north-country Chinese, not Westernized in the least, who spoke only his own language. Now that he thought of it, Cudyk realized that he did not know who Chong's close friends had been, if he had had any. He had always been the same spare, stooped figure in skull-cap and robe, courteous, unobtrusive, self-contained. He had a family; a wife, rarely seen, and six children.

Somehow Cudyk felt that he would have been less surprised to hear that Moulios had committed suicide, or Moskowitz, or even Seu himself. My mistake, he told himself. I allowed myself to think of Chong as an institution, not as a man.

"Have you some whisky?" asked Seu abruptly.

"Yes," said Cudyk, "of course."

"Let us go and drink it," Seu said. "I'm very tired."

It occurred to Cudyk that he had never heard Seu say that before. They turned the corner at Athenai and climbed the stairs to his apartment. Seu sighed, and dropped heavily into a chair while Cudyk went to get the bottle and glasses.

"Straight, or with water?" he asked.

"Straight, please." Seu tilted his glass, swallowed and shuddered. Cudyk watched him in silence.

Seu, alone in the Quarter, owned a Niori communicator—an elaborate mechanism which reproduced sound, vision in three dimensions, odors, modulated temperature changes and several other things perceptible only to Niori. There was no restriction on their sale, and they were cheap enough, but the Niori broadcasts were as dull or as incomprehensible to men as a Terrestial breakfast program would have been to Niori. Seu used his as a source of Galactic news. Today, Cudyk guessed, the news had been very bad.

"It's Rack, isn't it?" he said finally.

Seu glanced at him and nodded. "Yes, it's Rack. I haven't told anyone else about it yet. The Quarter's in a half-hysterical state as it is. But if you don't mind my talking it out to you—"

"Go ahead," said Cudyk.

"It's worse than anything we expected." Seu took another swallow of the whisky, and made a face. He said, "They've got a hydrogen-lithium bomb."

" ... I was afraid of that."

Seu went on as if he had not heard. "But they're not using it on planets. They're bombing suns, Laszlo."

For a moment, Cudyk did not understand, then he felt his abdominal muscles contract like a fist. "They couldn't," he said hoarsely. "It would explode before it got past the outer layers."

"Under faster-than-light drive?" Seu asked. "I did some figuring. At 1000 C, it would take the bomb about two point six thousandths of a second to travel from the surface to the center of an average G-class star. I think that is a short enough interval, but maybe it isn't. Maybe they have also found some way to increase the efficiency of the standard galactic drive for short periods. Anyway, does it matter?" He looked at Cudyk again. "I have seen the pictures. I saw it happen."

Cudyk's throat was dry. "Which stars?" he said.

"Törkas. Rud-Uri. That's the Oladi sun. And Gerzión. Those three, so far."

Cudyk's fingers were nervously caressing the smooth metal of his wristwatch. He looked down at it suddenly, remembering that the Oladsa had made it. And now they were gone, all but their colonies and travelers on other worlds, and those who had been in space at the time. All those spidery, meticulous people, with their million-year-old culture and their cities of carved opal, wiped out as a man would swat a fly.

Seu took another drink. His face flushed, and drops of sweat stood out on his forehead and cheeks.

He said, "They'll have to learn to kill, now. There isn't any alternative. They intercepted one of the New Earth ships and sprayed it with the stasis field. It didn't work; the ship got away. They'll have to learn to kill. Do you know what that means?"

"Yes."

Seu drank again. His face was fiery red, now, and he was gasping for breath. "I can't get drunk," he said bitterly. "Toxic reaction. I thought I'd try once more, but it's no good. Laszlo, look out, I'm going to be sick."

Cudyk led him to the lavatory. When he came out, the Chinese was weak and waxen-pale. Cudyk tried to persuade him to rest on the bed, but he refused. "I've got to get back to my office," he said. "Been gone too long already. Help me down the stairs, will you, Laszlo?"

Cudyk walked him as far as Brasil and Washington, where two of Seu's young men took over with voluble expressions of gratitude. Cudyk watched the group until it disappeared into the town hall.

He could feel nothing but an arid depression. Even the horror at Rack's mass-murders, even his pity for Seu was blunted, sealed off at the back of his mind. The lives of saints, Cudyk remembered, spoke of "boundless compassion", "infinite pity"; but an ordinary man had a limited supply. When it was used up, you were empty and impotent, a canceled sign in the human equation.

Half instinctively, half by choice, Cudyk had chosen his friends among the strongest and most patient, the wise and cynical: the survivors. But he had leaned too much on their strength, he realized now. He had seen Seu crumble; and he felt as if a crutch had broken under his weight.

That evening he opened his shutters and looked out at the sky. The familiar constellations were there, unchanged. The light of the nearest star took more than three years to reach Palumbar. But in his mind's eye one glittering pinpoint exploded suddenly into a dreadful blossom of radiance; then another; then a third. And he saw the blackened corpses of planets swinging around each, murdered by that single flash of incredible heat.

During the night he dreamed of a black wasteland, and of Rack standing motionless in the center of it, brooding, with his cold grey face turned to the stars.

It was Cudyk's birthday. He had never told anyone in the Quarter the date, and had all but forgotten it himself. This morning, feeling an idle desire to know what the season was on Earth, he had hunted up a calendar he had last used twenty years ago; it translated the Niori system into Gregorian years, months and days. The result, when he had worked it out with some little trouble, was February 18th. He was fifty-six.

Now he was constrained to wonder whether the action had been as random as it seemed. Was it possible that subconsciously he had no need of the calendar—that he had kept track, all these years, and had known when his birthday came? If so, why had he felt it necessary to remind himself in this oblique way?

A return to the womb? A hunger for the comforts of the family circle, the birthday cake, candles, the solace of yearly repetition?

Cudyk was fifty-six. When he had been fifty-five, he had thought of himself as a man in his middle years, still strong, still able. Now he was old. The same thing had happened to Seu: he had recovered from his first shock when the news had come about Rack, and for more than three weeks now he had moved about the Quarter, as quiet and as competent as before; but there was a difference. His swift, furtive humor was gone except for rare flashes; his voice and his step were heavy.

It was the same with all of them, all the old settlers. Cudyk had met Burgess on the street the day before, for the first time in several weeks, and had been genuinely shocked. The man's hair was white, his skin papery, his gait stumbling.

Even Exarkos showed the change. More and more of his grey, woolly hair was vanishing. The umber crescents under his eyes were a deeper shade, almost black.

The Quarter's graveyard was five acres of ground, surrounded by trees, on the outskirts of the City; there the dead reclined in a more ample space than the living enjoyed. The Niori had allotted the ground, though the outline of the City was thereby disfigured, and had contributed slabs of a synthetic stone which carved easily when it was fresh, later hardening until it would resist any edged tool. The plot was ill tended, but the standing stones, translucent pearl or rose, had a certain beauty. To the Niori, the purpose of the graveyard was only that; they were not equipped to understand mankind's morbid clinging to its own carrion.

Cudyk had gone to Chong's funeral, presided over by Lee Yuk, the asthmatic little Buddhist priest; and the image of those ranked headstones, neatly separated into the Orthodox, the Protestants, the Buddhists, the Taoists and the unbelievers, had returned to him many times since. It was another sign of the change that was taking place in him: the images which formerly had dominated his mind had been pictographs of abstractions—the great globe of infinity, the tiny spark that was creative intellect. Now they were the pale headstone and the dark curtain of death.

He had felt nothing, standing over Chong's grave and watching the sod fall. What is there to say about a man when he is dead? The priest's words were false, as all such words are false; they had no relevance; the man was dead. Nothing was left of him now but the dissolving molecules of his flesh, and the fragmentary, ego-distorted memories he had planted in the minds of others. He was a name written in water.

It was not Chong who obsessed Cudyk, nor the many other half-remembered men and women whose names were clumsily carved on those stones. It was the cemetery as a symbol: the fascination of the yawning void.

Cudyk had one other preoccupation: he thought often of Earth, a dark globe turning, black continents dim against the grey ocean, pricked by a few faint gleams that were cities. Or, if he thought of the cities, he saw them too drowned in shadow: the shapes of tower and arch melting into night-patterns; moonlight falling faintly, dissolving what it touched, so that shadows became as solid stone, stone as insubstantial mist.

For Earth, also, was a symbol of death.

There had been no more suicides since Chong had died, and no riots. It seemed to Cudyk that the whole Quarter moved, like himself, through a fluid heavier than air. All motion had slowed, and sounds came muted and without resonance. People spoke to him, and he answered, but without attention, as if they were not really there.

Even the recent news about Rack's defeat had stirred him only momentarily, and he had seen in Seu's face that the Chinese felt himself somehow inadequate to the tale even as he told it. The Galactic fleet, vastly expanded, had met Rack's activist forces with a new weapon—one, indeed, which did not kill, but which was shameful enough to a citizen of the Galaxy. The weapon projected a field which scrambled the synapse patterns in the brain, leaving its victim incapable of any of the processes of coherent thought: incapable of adding two figures, of lighting a cigarette, or of aiming a torpedo. Eleven New Earth ships had been captured, and it was thought that these were all the activists' armed vessels; there had been no further attacks since then.

He did not believe that anything which could now possibly happen could rouse him from his apathy. But he had forgotten one possibility. Seu came to him in Chong Yin's, where Yin's eldest son Fu now moved in his father's place, and said, "Rack wasn't taken. He's here."

Cudyk sat with his teacup raised halfway between the table and his lips. After a long moment, he saw that his hand was trembling violently. He set the cup down. He said, "Where?"

"The Little Bear. Half the town has gone there already. Do you want to go?"

Cudyk stood up slowly. "Yes," he said, "I suppose so." But he felt the tension that pulled his body together, the tautened muscles in back and shoulders and arms.

As they reached the corner of Ceskoslovensko and Washington, they saw scattered groups of men moving ahead of them, all hurrying, some frankly running. The crowd was thick around the doorway of The Little Bear when they reached it, and they had difficulty forcing a passage. Men moved aside for Seu willingly enough, but there was little space to move.

Inside, it was worse. The stairway was solidly packed; it was obviously impossible to get through.

"There is a back stair," Seu said. He worked his way toward the rear of the room, Cudyk following, until he caught sight of the bartender. The press was not so thick here, and he was able to reach the man and lead him into a corner away from the others. "Can you get us up the back way?"

The Russian nodded, scowled, and put his finger to his lips. Following him, they went through the swinging doors at the back of the room, through the dark kitchen and up the narrow service stairs at the rear. The bartender unlocked the door and helped them force it open against the pressure of the packed bodies inside.

The long room was heavy with the odors of sweat, tobacco smoke and stale air. Faces shone greasily under the glare of the ceiling lights. The only clear space was the table-top against the wall to Cudyk's right, where Rack stood.

Cudyk could see him clearly over the heads of those in front of him. He stood with legs planted firmly, hands at his sides. As always, the leather jacket was draped over his shoulders like a cloak.

He was alone. Spider was not there, nor Monk, nor Tom De Grasse.

Rack was talking in a low, clear voice. Cudyk listened to the end of a sentence which conveyed nothing to him, and then heard: "After that, we got it. They gave it to us." Rack's hands clenched once, and then opened again.

"They intercepted us three minutes after we came out of overdrive in the orbit of New Earth. Twelve fighting ships, the whole fleet. We were in a line, just closing in after we broke C on the way down—the Thermopolae, the Tours, the Waterloo, the Chateau Thierry, the Dunkirk, the Leningrad, the Acre, the Valley Forge, the Hiroshima, the San Francisco, the Seoul, and the flagship last, the Armageddon.

"We didn't know they were there—they were out of our detector range. They had us like sitting ducks. The first thing we knew about it was when a teletype report from the leading ship, the Thermopolae, broke off in the middle of a word. Five seconds later the same thing happened to a report coming in from the next ship. Three seconds more, and the Waterloo was gone.

"I gave the order to reverse acceleration and scatter. But the field—whatever it was—came after us. It would have taken us at least two minutes to build up the overdrive potential again, and we all knew we wouldn't make it. They were getting us one ship every six or eight seconds.

"The men were looking to me for orders. I didn't have any to give them. Suddenly De Grasse turned around and looked at Monk and Spider, and they all nodded. They jumped me. I don't know what happened. I struck my head against the deck when I went down, or one of them hit me with a gun-butt."

His fists clenched and opened once more. "When I came to, I was strapped into a one-man lifeboat, on overdrive, doing ten C's. They must have emptied the ship's accumulators into that lifeboat, charged it up to C potential and got me off just before the field hit them.

"I took my bearings, reversed, and went back. Eventually I found the fleet again. The Galactics had matched course and velocity with them and they were just beginning to tow them off, one ship to one with plenty of theirs left over, in the general direction of Altair.

"They hadn't got into overdrive yet. I slipped in—there were a hundred of their little scouts nosing around, about the same mass as my lifeboat—and berthed in the same port I'd come out of. I got out and walked into the control room.

"The crew was still there, still alive. But not men. They were lying on the deck, looking at nothing. Their mouths were open, and they were drooling."

Rack's head moved stiffly, and his sharp profile turned from one side of the crowd to the other. "Mindless idiots," he said. "They couldn't feed themselves, or stand up, or sit. But they had saved me.

"I built up the charge and took my time about it. When the Galactics went into overdrive, I took off in another direction. I was a good seventy light years away before they knew I was gone.

"I had a ship, an undamaged ship. But I had no crew to man her. I can astrogate, and when I have to, I can man the engines on top of that. But I can't fight her as well.

"I came here, put the Armageddon into a one-day orbit and came down in a lifeboat. I want to go back and find out what those slime-eaters did to us, and give them a taste of the same. I want twenty men."

There was a silence.

Rack said, in the same even, low voice, "Will you fight for the human race?"

Someone called, "What did you do with your other crew?"

Rack said, "I gave them military burial, in space."

For the first time, the crowd as a whole broke its silence. A low murmur rose. Rack said sharply, "I would have given my life for those men, as they did for me, gladly. But they were already dead. If there's a way to restore a man's mind after that has been done to it, only the vermin know how. I would rather be buried in space, and so would they."

A deep voice called, "Are you God, Rack?"

"I'm not God," he said promptly. "Are you a man?"

There was another murmur, dying as a pulsing movement began near the back of the room: someone was forcing his way toward Rack. In the stillness, another voice said thinly, "My Demetrios ... my Alexander ..." It was Moulios, wailing for his two lost sons.

Red-faced, with a lock of black hair hanging over his forehead, the painter Vekshin squeezed through to the edge of the table on which Rack stood. He shouted, "I'm a man, all right. What do you call yourself, you assassin? You come here with blood dripping from your jaws like a weasel fresh from a poultry yard, and we're supposed to feel sorry for you because they wouldn't let you go on killing! The great god Rack! Ptui!"

Rack did not move. He said quietly, "I killed your enemies, while you sat at home and drank tea."

"Enemies!" Vekshin roared. "You're the enemy, Rack." He put his big hands on the table-top and heaved himself up.

Rack let him come. He waited until the Russian was standing on the table; then he stepped forward with a motion so smooth it seemed casual. There was a flurry of blows, none of which landed except two: one in Vekshin's midriff, the other on the point of his jaw. Five men went down as Vekshin's body hurtled into them.

Rack stepped back. "I have very little patience left," he said, "but if there is anyone else here with a personal grudge, let him step up."

Two men at the table's edge moved as if to climb up. Rack put his hand to the gun at his belt. The two men stayed where they were.

Rack stared out over the crowd. He looked suddenly very weary. It occurred to Cudyk that he must have gone without sleep for a long time.

Rack said: "This is the last call. I am not trying to deceive you. I promise you nothing, not glory, not your lives, not even that you will be able to spend your lives usefully. But if there is any man here who will serve aboard the Armageddon, in the last fight for mankind—raise your hand!"

There was a long moment's silence. Rack turned abruptly, with his hand still on his gun, and said to the men in front of Cudyk: "Stand back!"

The silence held for an instant, while the men at the table's end moved uncertainly away; then sound broke like an avalanche. As Rack jumped down, the crowd surged toward him, no longer an audience but a mob. Cudyk felt the pressure at his back, caught a glimpse of Rack's face, then heard the deafening report of the gun as he went hurtling forward into the melee.

The gun did not fire again. Cudyk was squeezed tightly in the center of the struggling mass. He saw Seu, a few feet away. The mayor's mouth was open; he was shouting something, but the words were lost.

Suddenly Rack came into view again, charging straight toward Cudyk, hurling bodies to either side. The lower half of his face was a smear of blood; his cap and jacket were gone, his shirt torn half away.

Cudyk was half-aware of the constriction in his throat, the pounding of blood at his temples. He wrenched one arm free and, as Rack came near, struck him full in the face.

He had one more glimpse of Rack's white features, the pale eyes staring at him with a curiously detached expression: the eyes of a Caesar or a Christ, reproachful and sad. Then the crowd surged once more, the door to the back stairway slammed open, and Rack was gone.

Cudyk found himself running through the doorway with half a dozen others. He caught sight of Rack leaping down the stairs, just short of the landing where the narrow stairway doubled back on itself.

With a regretful sigh, feeling no surprise at what he was about to do, Cudyk put both hands on the railing and swung himself over into vacancy. Then there was an instant of wild, soaring flight, Rack's foreshortened body drifting beneath him, and the shock.

Dazed and numb, Cudyk felt the universe moving under him like a gigantic pendulum. He saw faces appear and vanish, felt someone push him aside, heard voices faintly.

After a long time his head cleared, and there was silence. He was lying at the foot of the stairs, one arm flung over the first step. Rack was not there; no one was there but himself.

He moved cautiously and was rewarded by an astonishing number and variety of pains. But apparently he had broken no bones. He felt weak and hollow; he was afraid he might vomit. He hoisted his torso up slowly, sat on the lowest step and then put his head between his trembling knees.

He heard a foot scuff on the concrete floor, and looked up. It was Seu.

The Chinese looked at him anxiously. "You're all right?"

"Yes. I think so. I have felt better in my life."

"Do you want to get up? Did you jump or fall?"

Cudyk leaned forward, trying the strength of his thighs to raise him, and Seu put a hand under his arm to help. "I jumped," Cudyk said. "What happened, afterward?"

"The mob came down, me in the middle, and I couldn't stop to see if you were all right. They took Rack with them. He was unconscious then; he may have been dead."

"And?"

"They tore him apart," said Seu.

They moved toward the exit from the kitchen, Seu holding Cudyk's arm firmly.

"I don't know if you felt this," the mayor said stiffly, "but the way it seemed to me was that Rack suddenly represented all of it—not only the bombings, but the Quarter, the Galaxy, Earth—everything we hated. It was a feeling of release, a kind of ecstasy. Watch out for the sill."

"Scapegoat," Cudyk said, indistinctly.

"Yes.... Zydh Oran saw it, you know. He was there when the mob came out. He saw it all. This finishes the Quarter, Laszlo. After this there won't be any more reprieves."

Cudyk glanced down at Seu's plump fingers. There was a thin film of blood on the skin, and a dark line of it around each finger-nail.

Cudyk stood at the top of the gentle rise opposite the Washington Avenue bridge, and looked down at the Quarter. It was just after sunset, and the ranked street-lights cast a lonesome gleam. The streets were empty. There was no one left in the Quarter except one man in the powerhouse. When the time was up, he would pull the switches on the master board and come out; then the Quarter would be dead.

The Niori edict had come on the Wednesday morning after Rack's death. They had been given four days to pack their belongings, arrange for assignment of cargo space, and wind up their several affairs. Cudyk's stock was small and his personal belongings few; he had been ready two days ago.

The evening breeze, freshening, pressed Cudyk's trousers against his calves and stirred the hair at the back of his head. Looking into the east, he saw a few pallid stars in the sky.

Several hundred people had already been collected by the air-cars which served the spaceport. Cudyk, Seu, Exarkos and a few others, by unspoken assent, had taken places at the rear of the crowd, to be the last to go.

He glanced at Seu. The little man was standing with his hands in his pockets, shoulders slumped, staring dully at the Quarter. He looked up after a moment, smiled unhappily, and shrugged.

"It's absurd to feel homesick for it, isn't it?" he said. "It was a ghetto; we had no roots there. It was cramped, and it stank, and we fought among ourselves more viciously than we ever fought on Earth. But twenty years ..."

"We could pretend that we had roots, at least," Cudyk answered. "We don't belong anywhere. Perhaps we'll be happier, in the long run, once we face that and accept it."

"I doubt it."

"So do I."

To Cudyk's right, Father Exarkos was sitting on his suitcase, hands relaxed on his thighs. Cudyk said, "If I were a believer, Astereos, I think it would do me a great deal of good to confess to you and be absolved."

The priest's dry, friendly voice said, "Why, have you sinned so terribly, Laszlo?"

"I killed a man," said Cudyk, "but that's not what I mean. I jumped over a stairway railing and stopped Rack. If it hadn't been for me, he might have got away. There would have been nothing wrong with that. He couldn't have done any more harm, one man by himself. The Guards would have captured him sooner or later, anyhow. And if he had gotten away, we wouldn't have given the Niori the one more straw they needed. In that sense, it is my fault that we were expelled."

"No, Laszlo," said Seu.

Exarkos said, "You have nothing for which to reproach yourself, on that score. You were only the instrument of history, my friend, and a minor instrument at that. And, speaking for myself, not for the Church, Rack deserved to die."

Cudyk thought, at least it was quite suitably ironic. Cudyk, the man of inaction, hurls himself through the air to kill a murderer. And the citizens of the Quarter are deported, not because one of their race murdered a billion billion Galactics, but because that same killer was killed by them.

That was one thin mark on the credit side. There was one more: the tension was gone, for some of them at least. Now the worst thing that could happen had happened; the Damocletian thread had snapped. The problems which had caused the tension no longer existed.

Earth was two months away. Cudyk expected nothing and hoped for nothing. But the Niori had agreed to set each passenger down wherever on the globe he chose to go; each man, at least, could choose his own hell. The crews of the captured battleships, and the captured staff of the base on New Earth, were also being sent back. The weapon that had been used on them had done no permanent damage; they would simply have to be retrained, to learn all over again, as if they were reborn.

Seu was going to North America, where he hoped survival for a fat cosmopolite would be a little less difficult than in Europe or Asia. Moskowitz had been born in New York, and was going back there. Exarkos was going to Istanbul first, for orders; he had no idea where he might be sent after that. Cudyk had not yet made up his mind. He thought that perhaps he would go with the priest; if he should change his mind after landing it would be no great loss; one wilderness, as Exarkos had once said, was as good as another.

It will all be anticlimax, he thought, and perhaps that is the definition of Hell: unending anticlimax.

He wondered how it would feel to be Earthbound again. The repatriation ship was to be the last Galactic vessel which would ever call at Earth. And there would be a constant guard. The Niori had learned, belatedly but well. If humanity ever climbed high enough again to reach the stars with its bloody fingers, the citizens of the galaxy would be ready.

Cudyk looked at his watch. The man in the powerhouse must be a sentimentalist; he was waiting until the last possible moment.

He heard the soft hum of the air-car behind him, turned and saw it settling lightly to the clipped lawn. The remaining passengers were moving toward it. Exarkos stood up and lifted his suitcase. Cudyk turned back for one last look at the Quarter. It was full dark now, and all he could see of it was the blocky, ambiguous outline of its darkness against the glowing buildings beyond, and the cross-hatched pattern of yellow street lights.

The lights went out.

[A] Pronounced "jung guo ren".

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Table of Contents

- THE EARTH QUARTER

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE