Dark Benediction

They came to a planet. The natives called it “Earth.” They departed again in cold fright, and a space commander blew out his brains to banish the memory. Then they found another planet that called itself “Earth”—and another and another. They smiled again, knowing that they would never know which was the true home of Man.

They sensed the nearness of the end.

They no longer sang the old songs of a forgotten paradise. And there were no priests among them. They looked back at the Milky Way, and it had been their royal road. They looked ahead, where only scattered stars separated them from the intergalactic wasteland—an ocean of emptiness and death. They could not consign themselves to its ultimate embrace. They had fought too long, labored too hard to surrender willingly to extinction.

But the cup of their life was broken.

And to the land’s last limit they came.

They found a planet with a single moon, with green forests, with thin clouds draping her gold and blue body in the sunlight. The breath of the snowking was white on her ice caps, and her seas were placid green. They landed. They smiled when the natives called the planet “Earth.” Lots of planets claimed the distinction of being Man’s birthplace.

Among the natives there was a dumpy little professor—still human, though slightly evolved. On the night following the nomad’s landing, he sat huddled in an easy-chair, staring at the gaunt nomadic giant whose bald head nearly touched the ceiling of the professor’s library. The professor slowly shook his head and sighed.

“I can’t understand you people.”

“Nor I you,” rumbled the nomad.

“Here is Earth—yet you won’t believe it!”

The giant snorted contemptuously. “Who cares? Is this crumb in space the fulfillment of a dream?”

“You dreamed of a lost Earth paradise.”

“So we thought. But who knows the real longing of a dream? Where is its end? Its goal?”

“We found ours here on Earth.”

The giant made a wry mouth. “You’ve found nothing but your own smug existence. You’re a snake swallowing its tail.”

“Are you sure you’re not the same?” purred the scholar. The giant put his fists on his hips and glowered at him. The professor whitened.

“That’s untrue,” boomed the giant. “We’ve found nothing. And we’re through. At least we went searching. Now we’re finished.”

“Not you. Its the job that’s finished. You can live here. And he proud of a job well done.”

The giant frowned. “Job? What job?”

“Why, fencing in the stars. Populating the galaxy.” The big man stared at him in horrified amazement. “Well,” the scholar insisted, “you did it, you know. Who populates the galaxy now?”

“People like you.”

The impact of the scaring words brought a sick gasp from the small professor. He was a long moment in realizing their full significance. He wilted. He sank lower in the chair.

The nomad’s laughter suddenly rocked the room. He turned away from his victim and helped himself to a tumbler of liqueur. He downed it at a gulp and grinned at the professor. He tucked the professor’s liqueur under his arm, waved a jaunty farewell, and lumbered out into the night.

“My decanter,” protested the professor in a whisper.

He went to bed and lay whimpering slightly in drowsiness. He was afraid of the tomorrows that lay ahead.

The nomads settled on the planet for lack of fuel. They complained of the climate and steadfastly refused to believe that it was Earth. They were a troublesome, boisterous lot, and frequently needed psychoanalysis for their various crimes. A provisional government was set up to deal with the problem. The natives had forgotten about governments, and they called it a “welfare commission.”

The nomads who were single kidnapped native wives. Sometimes they kidnapped several, being a prolific lot. They begot many children, and a third-generation hybrid became the first dictator of a northern continent.

I am rusting in the rain. I shall never serve my priest here on Earth again. Nuclear fuels are scarce. They are needed for the atomic warheads now zipping back and forth across the North Pole. A poet—one of the hybrids—has written immortal lines deploring war; and the lines were inscribed on the post-humour medal they gave his widow.

Three dumpy idealists built a spaceship, but they were caught and hung for treason. The eight-foot lawyer who defended them was also hung.

The world wears a long face; and the stars twinkle invitingly. But few men look upward now. Things are probably just as bad on the next inhabited planet.

I am the spider who walked around space. I, Harpist for a pale proud Master, have seen the big hunger, have tasted its red glow reflected in my circuits. Still I cannot understand.

But I feel there are some who understand. I have seen the pride in their faces. They walk like kings.

Conditionally Human