The Collection (23 page)

The woman seemed calm; he was glad to notice that. She said,
"My name is Grace Evans, Mr. Phelan. What's this all about? Why did they
bring me here?"

Walter was studying her as she talked. She was tall, fully
as tall as he, and well-proportioned. She looked to be somewhere in her early
thirties, about the age Martha had been. She had the same calm confidence about
her that he'd always liked about Martha, even though it had contrasted with his
own easygoing informality. In fact, he thought she looked quite a bit like
Martha.

"I think I know why they brought you here but let's go
back a bit," he said. "Do you know just what has happened
otherwise?"

"You mean that they've killed everyone?"

"Yes. Please sit down. You know how they accomplished
it?" She sank into a comfortable chair nearby.

"No," she said, "I don't know just how. Not
that it matters does it?"

"Not a lot. But here's the story - what I know of it from
getting one of them to talk, and from piecing things together. There isn't a
great number of them - here, anyway. I don't know how numerous a race they are
where they came from and I don't know where that is, but I'd guess it's outside
the Solar System. You've seen the space ship they came in?"

"Yes It's as big as a mountain."

"Almost. Well it has equipment for emitting some sort
of a vibration - they call it that, in our language, but I imagine it's more
like a radio wave than a sound vibration - that destroys all animal life. It -
the ship itself - is insulated against the vibration. I don't know whether its
range is big enough to kill off the whole planet at once, or whether they flew
in circles around the earth, sending out the vibratory waves. But it killed
everybody and everything instantly and, I hope, painlessly. The only reason we,
and the other two-hundred-odd animals in this zoo, weren't killed was because
we were inside the ship. We'd been picked up as specimens. You do know this is
a zoo, don't you?"

"I - I suspected it."

"The front walls are transparent from the outside The
Zan were pretty clever at fixing up the inside of each cubicle to match the
natural habitat of the creature it contains. These cubicles, such as the one
we're in, are of plastic, and they've got a machine that makes one in about ten
minutes, If Earth had had a machine and a process like that, there wouldn't
have been any housing shortage. Well, there isn't any housing shortage now,
anyway. And I imagine that the human race - specifically you and I - can stop
worrying about the A-bomb and the next war. The Zan certainly solved a lot of
problems for us."

Grace Evans smiled faintly. "Another case where the
operation was successful, but the patient died. Things were in an awful mess.
Do you remember being captured? I don't. I went to sleep one night and woke up
in a cage on the space ship."

"I don't remember either” Walter said. "My hunch
is that they used the vibratory waves at low intensity first, just enough to
knock us all out. Then they cruised around, picking up samples more or less at
random for their zoo. After they had as many as they wanted, or as many as they
had space in the ship to hold, they turned on the juice all the way. And that
was that. It wasn't until yesterday they knew they'd made a mistake and had
underestimated us. They thought we were immortal, as they are."

"That we were - what?"

"They can be killed but they don't know what natural
death is. They didn't anyway, until yesterday. Two of us died yesterday."

"Two of - Oh!"

"Yes, two of us animals in their zoo. One was a snake
and one was a duck. Two species gone irrevocably. And by the Zan's way of
figuring time, the remaining member of each species is going to live only a few
minutes, anyway. They figured they had permanent specimens."

"You mean they didn't realize what short-lived
creatures we are?"

"That's right," Walter said. "One of them is
young at seven thousand years, he told me. They're bi-sexual themselves,
incidentally, but they probably breed once every ten thousand years or
thereabouts. When they learned yesterday how ridiculously short a life
expectancy we terrestrial animals have, they were probably shocked to the core
- if they have cores. At any rate they decided to reorganize their zoo - two by
two instead of one by one. They figure we'll last longer collectively if not
individually."

"Oh!" Grace Evans stood up and there was a taint
flush on her face. "If you think - If they think -" She turned toward
the door.

"It'll be locked," Walter Phelan said calmly
"But don't worry. Maybe they think, but I don't think. You needn't even
tell me you wouldn't have me if I was the last man on Earth; it would be corny
under the circumstances."

"But are they going to keep us locked up together in
this one little room?"

"It isn't so little; we'll get by. I can sleep quite
comfortably in one of these overstuffed chairs. And don't think I don't agree
with you perfectly, my dear. All personal considerations aside, the least favor
we can do the human race is to let it end with us and not he perpetuated for
exhibition in a zoo."

She said "Thank you," almost inaudibly, and the
flush receded from her checks. There was anger in her eyes, but Walter knew
that is wasn't anger at him. With her eyes sparkling like that, she looked a
lot like Martha, he thought.

He smiled at her and said, "Otherwise -'

She started out of her chair, and for an instant he thought
she was going to come over and slap him. Then she sank back wearily. "If
you were a man, you'd be thinking of some way to - They can be killed, you
said?" Her voice was bitter.

"The Zan? Oh, certainly. I've been studying them. They
look horribly different from us, but I think they have about the same
metabolism we have, the same type of circulatory system, and probably the same
type of digestive system. I think that anything that would kill one of us would
kill one of them."

"But you said -"

"Oh, there are differences, of course. Whatever factor
it is in man that ages him, they don't have. Or else they have some gland that
man doesn't have, something that renews cells."

***

She had forgotten her anger now. She leaned forward eagerly.
She said, "I think that's right. And I don't think they feel pain."

"I was hoping that. But what makes you think so, my
dear?"

"I stretched a piece of wire that I found in the desk
of my cubicle across the door so my Zan would fall over it. He did, and the
wire cut his leg."

"Did he bleed red?"

"Yes but it didn't seem to annoy him. He didn't get mad
about it; didn't even mention it. When he came back the next time, a few hours
later, the cut was one. Well, almost gone. I could see just enough of a trace
of it to be sure it was the same Zan."

Walter Phelan nodded slowly.

"He wouldn't get angry, of course," he said.
"They're emotionless. Maybe, if we killed one, they wouldn’t even punish
us. But it wouldn't do any good. They'd just give us our food through a trap
door and treat us as men would have treated a zoo animal that had killed a
keeper. They'd just see that he didn't have a crack at any more keepers.

"How many of them are there?" she asked.

"About two hundred, I think, in this particular space
ship. But undoubtedly there are many more where they came from. I have a hunch
this is just an advance guard, sent to clear off this planet and make it safe
for Zan occupancy,"

"They did a good-"

There was a knock at the door, and Walter Phelan called out,
"Come in."

A Zan stood in the doorway.

"Hello George," said Walter.

"Hel-lo Wal-ter," said the Zan.

It may or may not have been the same Zan, but it was always
the same ritual.

"What's on your mind?" Walter asked.

"An-oth-er crea-ture sleeps and will not wake. A small
fur-ry one called a wea-sel."

Walter shrugged.

"It happens, George. Old Man Death. I told you about
him."

"And worse. A Zan has died. This morning."

"Is that worse?" Walter looked at him blandly.
"Well, George, you'll have to get used to it, if you're going to stay
around here."

The Zan said nothing. It stood there.

Finally Walter said, "Well?"

"A-bout weasel. You ad-vise same?"

Walter shrugged again. "Probably won't do any good. But
sure, why not?"

The Zan left.

Walter could hear his footsteps dying away outside. He
grinned. "It might work, Martha," he said.

"Mar - My name is Grace, Mr Phelan. What might
work?"

"My name is Walter, Grace. You might as well get used
to it. You know, Grace, you do remind me a lot of Martha. She was my wife. She
died a couple of years ago."

"I'm sorry," said Grace "But what might work?
What were you talking about to the Zan?"

"We'll know tomorrow," Walter said. And she
couldn't get another word out of him.

That was the fourth day of the stay of the Zan.

The next was the last.

It was nearly noon when one of the Zan came. After the ritual,
he stood in the doorway, looking more alien than ever. It would be interesting
to describe him for you, but there aren't words.

He said, "We go. Our council met and decided,"

"Another of you died?"

"Last night This is planet of death "

Walter nodded. "You did your share. You're leaving two
hundred and thirteen creatures alive, out of quite a few billion. Don't hurry
back."

"Is there an-y-thing we can do?"

"Yes. You can hurry. And you can leave our door unlocked,
but not the others. We'll take care of the others."

Something clicked on the door; the Zan left.

Grace Evans was standing, her eyes shining.

She asked, "What ? How?"

"Wait," cautioned Walter. "Let's hear them
blast off. It's a sound I want to remember."

The sound came within minutes, and Walter Phelan, realizing
how rigidly he'd been holding himself, relaxed in his chair.

"There was a snake in the Garden of Eden, too, Grace,
and it got us in trouble," he said musingly. "But this one made up
for it. I mean the mate of the snake that died day before yesterday. It was a
rattlesnake."

"You mean it killed the two Zan who died? But -"

Walter nodded, "They were babes in the woods here. When
they took me to look at the first creatures who 'were asleep and wouldn't wake
up,' and I saw that one of them was a rattler, I had an idea, Grace. Just
maybe, I thought, poison creatures were a development peculiar to Earth and the
Zan wouldn't know about them. And, too, maybe their metabolism was enough like
ours so that the poison would kill them. Anyway, I had nothing to lose trying.
And both maybes turned out to be right."

"How did you get the snake to -?"

Walter Phelan grinned. He said, "I told them what
affection was. They didn't know. They were interested, I found, in preserving
the remaining one of each species as long as possible, to study the picture and
record it before it died. I told them it would die immediately because of the
loss of its mate, unless it had affection and petting - constantly. I showed them
how with the duck. Luckily it was a tame one, and I held it against my chest
and petted it a while to show them. Then I let them take over with it - and the
rattlesnake."

***

He stood up and stretched, and then sat down again more
comfortably.

"Well, we've got a world to plan," he said.
"We'll have to let the animals out of the ark, and that will take some
thinking and deciding. The herbivorous wild ones we can let go right away. The
domestic ones, we'll do better to keep and take charge of; we'll need them. But
the carnivore, well, we'll have to decide. But I'm afraid it's got to be thumbs
down."

He looked at her. "And the human race. We've got to
make a decision about that. A pretty important one."

Her face was getting a little pink again, as it had yesterday;
she sat rigidly in her chair.

"No!" she said.

He didn't seem to have heard her. "It's been a nice
race, even if nobody won it," he said. "It'll be starting over again
now, and it may go backward for a while until it gets its breath, but we can
gather books for it and keep most of its knowledge intact, the important things
anyway. We can-"

He broke off as she got up and started for the door. Just
the way his Martha would have acted, he thought, back in the days when he was
courting her, before they were married.

He said, "Think it over, my dear, and take your time.
But come back."

The door slammed. He sat waiting, thinking out all the
things there were to do, once he started, but is no hurry to start them; and
after a while he heard her hesitant footsteps coming back.

He smiled a little. See? It wasn't horrible, really.

The last man on Earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock
on the door...

The power came to Larry Snell suddenly and unexpectedly, out
of nowhere. How and why it came to him, he never learned. It just came; that's
all.

It could have happened to a nicer guy. Snell was a
small-time crook when he thought he could get away with stealing, but the bulk
of his income, such as it was, came from selling numbers racket tickets and
peddling marijuana to adolescents. He was fattish and sloppy, with little
close-set eyes that made him look almost as mean as he really was. His only
redeeming virtue was cowardice; it had kept him from committing crimes of
violence.

He was, that night, talking to a bookie from a tavern telephone
booth, arguing whether a bet he'd placed by phone that afternoon had been on
the nose or across the board. Finally, giving up, he growled "Drop dead,
^"
and slammed down the receiver. He thought nothing of it until the next day
when he learned that the bookie
had
dropped dead, while talking on the
telephone and at just about the time of their conversation.