The Second Murray Leinster Megapack (78 page)

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THE NIGHT BEFORE THE END OF THE WORLD

(Originally Published in 1948)

That night the sky was dark and very full of stars, which seemed to shine benevolently upon the roofs and cobbled streets of the old, old town. Mr. Czagy drew in deep breaths of the air of his native place—to which he had returned by devious ways—and knew forlornly that he had only a little while in which to ease the homesickness that filled him. War would begin tomorrow, and then everything would end. This country’s nearest and greatest neighbor—which picked the government of Mr. Czagy’s native land—would become America’s enemy, and Mr. Czagy was an American, now.

But tonight there was a poignant, unhappy satisfaction merely in walking the streets he had known as a young man, even though his mission here was foredoomed to failure and it was quite the most important one that anybody had ever undertaken. For a while, though, he could savor all that was well-remembered of the city that had been his home, with its houses dark about him and its ways echoing resonantly to his steps.

A girl spoke to him from the shadowed doorway of an old half-timbered house. She smiled invitingly from the darkness, and Mr. Czagy stopped. The girl moved brightly to lay her hand on his arm, but he thrust money into it, instead. Some of it was American money, which here was beyond avarice.

“My dear,” said Mr. Czagy severely, “this money will be of no use to me after tonight, or to you either. Go and spend it.”

The girl stared at him. Mr. Czagy frowned at her.

“No,” he said. “I am neither mad nor charitable. I am Andrei Czagy, of whom you have never heard. I am a nuclear physicist, which is an occupation of which you know nothing. And I have been in America preparing the end of the world—in which, just like more highly placed persons, you will not believe. But do not puzzle your stupid little head, my dear. You have money, now. Go make what you can of it.”

He turned abruptly and went on. He had not gone twenty yards when he heard the clatter of her heels in flight. She was running away. She might hide the money and report the encounter to the police. That was Mr. Czagy’s hope—but he expected nothing.

The narrow, cobbled street turned and turned, and opened upon the great square where the twin spires of the cathedral loomed against the stars. To Mr. Czagy, even in the darkness, the cathedral looked shabby. But the square was notoriously a place for many lovers, and they would not notice such things. He saw many of them, sitting close together or walking slowly and conversing in breathless absorption. He envied them bitterly.

But, according to arrangement, he sat on a certain bench near the fountain—which no longer ran—and presently a pair who seemed to be sweethearts made an agreed-on signal. He got up and moved across the square. Here he stood for a long minute before the neglected statue of a national hero, so that if anyone followed him they would have to loiter too, and so become conspicuous. Then he left the square by another narrow street, chosen as if at random. But he had not gone thirty paces into it when a voice said urgently:

“Here, friend! Quickly!”

Mr. Czagy stepped down four steps and into the doorway of a cellar shop. Someone took his arm. He suffered himself to be led through blackness, down more steps, and up others. He arrived at a dingy room containing a dozen men who looked like shopkeepers or minor government clerks or perhaps dustmen or greengrocers. This was a part of the Underground, which still fought hair-raisingly for the things that Mr. Czagy had found and approved of in America. But he found himself depressed rather than excited. He shook hands as he was presented, and when they looked at him expectantly, he swallowed before he spoke.

“My friends,” he said, “I have come from America to bring you the worst possible news. All we have striven for is futile. All we have done is useless. All we have hoped for is lost.”

The men stared at him. Mr. Czagy swallowed again.

“War will begin tomorrow. It will be the end of the world.”

Someone said, in the precise accents of education:

“Of course war begins! We know it! But this country will not be directly involved, and we have hopes that perhaps we can strike a blow or two—”

“It will be,” said Mr. Czagy, “the end of the world.”

A young man with intense eyes said sharply, “Because it will be an atomic war? That is not possible, sir! A chain-reaction destroying the earth cannot take place! It is mathematically impossible!”

“I agree,” said Mr. Czagy. “An atomic explosion destroying the earth is not to be feared.”

“For the only other possibility,” said the young man belligerently, “there is no evidence! Some have claimed that the explosion of enough atomic bombs would make the atmosphere fatally radioactive. I cannot believe all earth’s air could be poisoned!”

Mr. Czagy shrugged.

“I am afraid that it could,” he admitted.

“Much, of course, would depend on the type of bomb and the soil where each exploded. But five hundred Hiroshima-type bombs could not end all life on Earth, no matter where they exploded. One thousand might. Two thousand would. There can be no doubt. But I do not expect it.”

He said resolutely, “Rather than lecture on such a subject, I prefer that you think me simply a fool or a lunatic. But—” He fumbled in his inside coat pocket. “But—I have to tell you that we who have tried to help you from America have lost all hope. We did expect a hard fight for freedom here, and a long one. We accumulated funds to help sustain it for years, if necessary. But now we know it is useless. So—here is our treasury.”

He dumped thick sheafs of banknotes on the table. American banknotes. A single one of them would exchange, tonight, for more of the local currency than any man present could normally hope to see in a lifetime.

“I suggest,” said Mr. Czagy, “that you divide this and cease to think of patriotism. Do what seems good to you in the expectation of the end of the world. I offer it in apology for my share in what is to happen.”

A voice said, “Your work in America? You—”

“I helped,” said Mr. Czagy, “to develop the loads for the war-heads of guided missiles.”

There was silence. Mr. Czagy’s listeners did not really believe what he had said. But the money on the table was wealth incalculable. In this country the scale of exchange was fantastic. A lifetime’s savings might purchase a pair of patched shoes. Solid silver platters could be exchanged for potatoes to add to the official ration, or a diamond ring might buy a few kilos of meat, or a fur coat some hundreds of grams of butter. But American dollars could buy anything!

A man with a lined face said in a shamed whisper, “I could buy a ham.…”

Silence. An old man wept. A young man said, “I can bribe a man I know and get explosives—”

Mr. Czagy said tiredly, “What you do is your affair, my friends. We will not be alive to criticize, surely! Now…I have another errand.”

He turned to the man who had led him in. A momentary hesitation, and that man led him out by the same dark, uneven passageway. He reached the door and area-way with the four steps up to street level. There Mr. Czagy said:

“Pardon. But—could there have been a spy present?”

His guide said, “One. We discovered him a week ago, but we had your instructions, so he was not killed. He learned nothing of importance.”

Mr. Czagy said, “Nothing is important any longer, my friend. Good-by.”

He moved away in the soft darkness. Presently he straightened his shoulders and breathed more deeply. The smells were heartbreakingly familiar and heartbreakingly changed. He tried to take comfort from the fact that he was home again, for a while, because though the first part of his mission was done, he had no hope for the rest. But he had a new destination. In the old days this city had been the seat of one of the world’s great universities. Mr. Czagy had been a graduate, before one’s academic standing depended solely on one’s political convictions. The university was great no longer, but Mr. Czagy moved toward the halls in which he had studied.

A lean cat darted across the way before him. When the cats of a town grow lean, then times are hard indeed. The sun still shone, and rains fell and breezes blew and the earth was fertile as always but—it was mankind which had changed, Mr. Czagy reflected drearily as he went on his way. Mankind had fought one disease of the mind in a world-wide war, and had conquered it. But now it would die of a secondary infection.

There was rubbish on the sidewalk before the house of the head of the University, and Mr. Czagy almost bowed to it. Learning and rubbish so close together—chance sometimes achieves irony. He knocked at a now-shabby door. An old, old porter answered, and at Mr. Czagy’s quiet command obediently opened the door and fussily closed it behind him. And presently Mr. Czagy entered, unannounced, the study of the University’s head. Now, it was only a littered, dusty place with a threadbare carpet and a single feeble electric bulb. But a government which prepares the millenium has to reserve luxuries for its spies and police. Education has to wait. And the man in the frayed dressing-gown surely waited for his reward! He was changed indeed from the stately figure which once strode in academic processions. He blinked at Mr. Czagy, startled at his entry.

“Good evening,” said Mr. Czagy. “I am Andrei Czagy. The physicist, you may recall. I drew up the first manifesto calling you coward and fool for making terms with the present regime. You remember?”

The head of the University looked pitiably scared.

“Oh, come!” said Mr. Czagy comfortingly, “I haven’t come to kill you! That’s been otherwise arranged. The world ends tomorrow. I came to console you!”

He sat on the arm of a chair, at ease. He felt almost pity for the man in the ragged dressing-gown. He had sold so much for so little! Now he protested:

“You are proscribed! Your degrees are cancelled! The police—”

“The police,” said Mr. Czagy, “will know of my presence as soon as you can tell them. I know! But the police do not matter. That is the consolation I offer you. Nothing matters. Not even what you have done!”

The man in the dressing-gown trembled.

“You are a criminal! What do you want?”

“To comfort you,” said Mr. Czagy in a fine ironic reasonableness. “Do you remember when this University was a place of learning? Now there is no science you have not twisted nor any knowledge you have not warped, to serve your new masters. But I came to tell you that it does not matter, since the world ends.”

Terrible uneasiness possessed the whiskery man in the dressing-gown. Once he had been head of a place where men revered learning and imbibed high purposes. Now—

“It does not matter at all,” repeated Mr. Czagy. “All the things you have hated yourself for are of no importance whatever. In the end, you have done no harm to anyone. We have despised you and—our principles are as futile as your cowardice!”

The whiskered mouth of the other man twitched.

“But this is preposterous!” it whimpered. “You are a criminal! What do you want? What is your purpose?”

“I am not so absurd as to want anything,” said Mr. Czagy, almost light-hearted before such fear. “I came to comfort you, that is all. Now I have no other purpose than to go and drink a few steins of beer in the Pengo before the end comes. But I wished to be charitable first. It seems appropriate, on the night before the end of the world.”

He stood up, smiling sardonically, and went out of the room. His mission was still impossibility itself, but the second part of it was adequately done. Only the rest was foredoomed to failure by the nature of mankind itself.

* * * *

He walked at random for almost an hour, drinking in the feel of the city he once had loved. But it was not a comforting draught. The buildings of the city stood, still, and its people remained, but it was no longer the city that had been his home. But he took what satisfaction he could, while it was possible.

When he reached the Pengo, he hardened himself again to hopelessness. And the ancient tavern had changed to confirm his depression. Time was when it had been a students’ rendezvous, but now it was filled with greasy politicians and black-marketeers. No others could afford even the diluted beer that presently was served Mr. Czagy. He drank distastefully and imagined the place with its smoke-stained paneling and age-chipped steins and the initials of fifty student-generations carved on its tables, as it had been. And then he thought of the young men he had known and drunk with here. So many dead—uselessly—and so many exiled, and so many—too many!—broken to the fatuous imbecilities of a regime which took all its orders from a great neighbor.…

Then there was a little flurry at the doors and the police were everywhere, at every exit. Rifles and bayonets were much in evidence, and the bitterness in Mr. Czagy’s expression deepened. When the police came straight for him and hustled him out, he did not even trouble to look surprised.

When his guards herded him out of the car in which he had been hurried away, he was in a courtyard with shrubs and an atmosphere of brisk military occupation. There were sentries everywhere. When he was marched into a doorway and up long flights of stairs, he was quite sure where he had been brought. So that he was in no wise surprised when he was taken over by other guards and carried to a high-ceilinged room whose gilded cornices were mildewed only in spots.