Time and the Riddle: Thirty-One Zen Stories (45 page)

“That seals it,” Mr. Erdig sighed.

“How long must we wait?” Cato cried. “Must all that we have made of our lovely planet be an atomic wasteland before we act? Are we to do nothing until the first Earth invaders land on Mars? Or do we destroy this blight as firmly and surely as we would wipe out some new and dreadful disease?

“I say that Earth must be destroyed! Not next month or next year, but now! Earth must be destroyed!”

Cato sat down, not as formerly to a small ripple of applause or to disapproving silence, but now to a storm of assent and approval.

“Silly of me to think of myself as a philosopher,” Mr. Erdig reflected as he rose to speak, “but I suppose I am, in a very small way.” And then he told the assembled Council members that he would not take too much of their time.

“I am one of those individuals,” Mrs. Erdig said, “who, even when they cannot hope to win an argument, get some small satisfaction out of placing their thoughts upon the record. That I do not agree with Cato, you know. I have said so emphatically and on many occasions; but this is the conclusion of a long debate, not the beginning of one.

“I never believed that I should live to see the day when this Council would agree that Earth should be destroyed. But that you are in agreement with Cato seems obvious. Let me only remind you of some of the things you propose to destroy.”

“We Martians never paused to consider how fortunate we are in our longevity until we began to listen, as one might say, to Earth—and to watch Earth. We are all old enough to recall the years before the people of Earth discovered the secret of radio and television transmission. Were our lives as rich then as they are now?”

“How much has changed in the mere two-score of Earth years that we have listened to them and watched them. Our ancient and beautiful Martian language has become all the richer for the inclusion of hundreds of Earth words. The languages of Earth have become the pastime and delight of millions of Martians. The games of Earth divert us and amuse us—to a point where baseball and tennis and golf seem native and proper among us. You all recall how dead and stagnant our art had become; the art of Earth brought it to life and gave us new forms, ideas and directions. Our libraries are filled with thousands of books on the subject of Earth, manners and customs and history, and due to their habit on Earth of reading books and verse over the radio, we now have available to us the literary treasures of Earth.”

“Where in our lives is the influence of Earth not felt? Our architects have incorporated Earth buildings. Our doctors have found techniques and methods on Earth that have saved lives here. The symphonies of Earth are heard in our concert halls and the, songs of Earth fill the Martian air.”

“I have suggested only some of an almost endless list of treasures. Earth has given us. And this Earth you propose to destroy. Oh, I cannot refute Cato. He speaks the truth. Earth is still a mystery to us. We have never breathed the air of Earth or trod on the soil of Earth, or seen her mighty cities and green forests at first hand. We see only a shadow of the reality, and this shadow confuses us and frightens us. By Martian terms, Earth people are short-lived. From birth to death is only a moment. How have they done so much in such fragile moments of existence? We really don't know—we don't understand. We see them divided and filled with hate and fear and resentment; we watch them murder and destroy; and we are puzzled and confused. How can the same people who create so splendidly destroy so casually?”

“But is destruction the answer to this problem? There are two and a half thousand million people on Earth, three times the number who inhabit Mars. Can we ever again sleep in peace, dream in peace, if we destroy them?”

Cato's answer to Mr. Erdig was very brief. “Can we ever again sleep in peace, dream in peace if we don't?”

Then Mr. Erdig sat down and knew that it was over.

“It's not as if we were actually doing it ourselves,” Mrs. Erdig said to her husband at home that evening.

“The same thing, my dear.”

“But as you explain it, here are these two countries, as they call them, the Soviet Union and the United States of America—the two most powerful countries on Earth, armed to the teeth with heaven knows how many atom bombs and just waiting to leap at each other's throats. I know enough Earth history to realize that sooner or later they're bound to touch off a war—even if only through some accident.”

“Perhaps.”

“And all we will do,” Mrs. Erdig said soothingly, “is to hasten that inevitable accident.”

“Yes, we have come to that,” Mr. Erdig nodded somberly.
“War
and
cruelty
and
injustice
are Earth words that we have learned!—foreign words, nasty words. It would be utterly immoral for us to arm ourselves for war or even to contemplate war. But an accident is something else indeed. We will build a rocket and arm it with an atomic warhead and put it into space so that it will orbit Earth over their poles and come down and explode in the Arizona desert of the United States. At the worst, we destroy a few snakes and cows, so our hands are clean. Minutes after that atom bomb explodes, Earth will begin to destroy itself. Yet we have absolved ourselves—”

“I don't like to hear you talk like that, my dear,” Mrs. Erdig protested. “I never heard any other Martian talk like that.”

“I am not proud of being a Martian.”

“Really!”

“It turns my stomach,” said Mr. Erdig.

There was a trace of asperity in Mrs. Erdig's voice. “I don't see how you can be so sure that you are right and everyone else is wrong. Sometimes I feel that you disagree just for the pleasure of disagreeing—or of being disagreeable, if I must say it. It seems to me that every Martian should treasure our security and way of life above all else. And I can't see what is so terribly wrong about hastening something that is bound to happen sooner or later in any case. If Earth folk were deserving, it would be another matter entirely—”

Mr. Erdig was not listening. Long years of association had taught him that when his wife began this kind of tidal wave of argument and proof, it could go on for a very long time indeed. He closed off her sound and his thoughts ranged, as they did so often, across the green meadows and the white-capped blue seas of Earth. How often he had dreamed of that wilderness of tossing and restless water! How wonderful and terrible it must be! There were no seas on Mars, so even to visualize the oceans of Earth was not easy. But he could not think about the oceans of Earth and not think of the people of Earth, the mighty cities of Earth.

Suddenly, his heart constricted with a pang of knife-like grief. In the old, unspoken language of Earth, which he had come to cherish so much, he whispered,

“Magna civitas, magna solitudo—”

The rocket was built and fitted with an atomic warhead—no difficult task for the technology of Mars. In the churches (their equivalent, that is) of Mars, a prayer was said for the souls of the people of Earth, and then the rocket was launched.

The astronomers watched it and the mathematicians tracked it. In spite of its somber purpose and awful destiny, the Martians could not refrain from a flush of pride in the skill and efficiency of their scientists, for the rocket crossed over the North Pole of Earth and landed smack in the Arizona desert, not more than five miles away from the chosen target spot.

The air of Mars is thin and clear and millions of Martians have fine telescopes. Millions of them watched the atomic warhead burst and millions of them kept their telescopes trained to Earth, waiting to witness the holocaust of radiation and flame that would signal atomic war among the nations of Earth.

They waited, but what they expected did not come. They were civilized beings, not at all bloodthirsty, but by now they were very much afraid; so some of them waited and watched until the Martian morning made the Martian skies blaze with burning red and violet.

Yet there was no war on Earth.

“I do wonder what could have gone wrong?” Mrs. Erdig said, looking up from the copy of
Vanity Fair
, which she was reading for the second time. She did not actually expect an answer, for her husband had become less and less communicative of late. She was rather surprised when he answered, “Can't you guess?”

“I don't see why you should sound so superior. No one else can guess. Can you?”

Instead of answering her, he said, “I envy you your knowledge of English—if only to read novelists like Thackeray.”

“It is amusing,” Mrs. Erdig admitted, “but I never can quite get used to the nightmare of life on Earth.”

“I didn't know you regarded it as a nightmare.”

“How else could one regard it?”

“I suppose so,” Mr. Erdig sighed. “Still—I would have liked to read Caesar's
Conquest of Gaul
. They have never broadcast it.”

“Perhaps they will.”

“No. No, they never will. No more broadcasts from Earth. No more television.”

“Oh, well—if they don't start that war and wipe themselves out, they're bound to be broadcasting again.”

“I wonder,” Mr. Erdig said.

The second rocket from Mars exploded its warhead in the wastelands of Siberia. Once again, Martians watched for hours through their telescopes and waited. But Mr. Erdig did not watch. He seemed to have lost interest in the current obsession of Mars, and he devoted most of his time to the study of English, burying himself in his wife's novels and dictionaries and thesaurus. His progress, as his wife told her neighbors, was absolutely amazing. He already knew the language well enough to carry on a passable conversation.

When the Planetary Council of Mars met and took the decision to aim a rocket at London, Mr. Erdig was not even present. He remained at home and read a book—one of his wife's English transcripts.

As with so many of her husband's recent habits, his truancy was shocking to Mrs. Erdig, and she took it upon herself to lecture him concerning his duties to Mars and Martians—and in particular, his deplorable lack of patriotism. The word was very much in use upon Mars these days.

“I have more important things to do,” Mr. Erdig finally replied to her insistence.

“Such as?”

“Reading this book, for instance.”

“What book
are
you reading?”

“It's called
Huckleberry Finn
. Written by an American—Mark Twain.”

“It's a silly book. I couldn't make head or tail of it.”

“Well—”

“And I don't see why it's important.”

Mr. Erdig shook his head and went on reading.

And that night, when she turned on the Intertator, the Erdigs learned, along with the rest of Mars, that a rocket had been launched against the City of London….

After that, a whole month passed before the first atomic warhead, launched from the Earth, exploded upon the surface of Mars. Other warheads followed. And still, there was no war on the Planet Earth.

The Erdigs were fortunate, for they lived in a part of Mars that had still not felt the monstrous, searing impact of a hydrogen bomb. Thus, they were able to maintain at least a semblance of normal life, and within this, Mr. Erdig clung to his habit of reading for an hour or so before bedtime. As Mrs. Erdig had the Intertator on almost constantly these days, he had retreated to the Martian equivalent of a man's den. He was sitting there on this particular evening when Mrs. Erdig burst in and informed him that the first fleet of manned space-rockets from Earth had just landed on Mars—the soldiers from Earth were proceeding to conquer Mars, and that there was no opposition possible.

“Very interesting,” Mr. Erdig agreed.

“Didn't you hear me?”

“I heard you, my dear,” Mr. Erdig said.

“Soldiers—armed soldiers from Earth!”

“Yes, my dear.” He went back to his book and when Mrs. Erdig saw that for the third time he was reading the nonsense called
Huckleberry Finn
, she turned out of the room in despair. She was preparing to slam the door behind her, when Mr. Erdig said,

“Oh, my dear.”

She turned back into the room. “Well—”

“You remember,” Mr. Erdig said, just as if soldiers from Earth were not landing on Mars that very moment, “that a while back you were complaining that you couldn't make any sense out of an English word—
righteous?”

“For heaven's sake!”

“Well, it seemed to puzzle you so—”

“Did you hear a word I said?”

“About the ships from Earth? Oh, yes—yes, of course. But here I was reading this book for the third time—it is a most remarkable book—and I came across that word, and it's not obscure at all. Not in the least. A righteous man is pure and wise and good and holy and just—above all, just. And equitable, you might say. Cato the Censor was such a man. Yes—and Cato the Martian, I do believe. Poor Cato—he was fried by one of those hydrogen bombs, wasn't he? A very righteous man—”

Sobbing hysterically, Mrs. Erdig fled from the room. Mr. Erdig sighed and returned to his novel.

19
Not with a Bang

O
n the evening of the third of April, standing at the window of his pleasant three-bedroom, split-level house and admiring the sunset, Alfred Collins saw a hand rise above the horizon, spread thumb and forefinger, and snuff out the sun. It was the moment of soft twilight, and it ended as abruptly as if someone had flicked an electric switch.

Which is precisely what his wife did. She put on lights all over the house. “My goodness, Al,” she said, “it did get dark quickly, didn't it?”

“That's because someone snuffed out the sun.”

“What on earth are you talking about?” she asked. “And by the way, the Bensons are coming for dinner and bridge tonight, so you'd better get dressed.”

“All right. You weren't watching the sunset, were you?”