Greybeard

“I imagine you are not a very speculative man, Mr. Timberlane. Has it ever crossed your mind that we are not alone in this universe? I don’t mean just the Creator; it’s difficult to imagine he would make any human company except Adam. I mean the other races who live on the planets of other stars. They may one day visit Earth, as we have visited the Moon and Mars. They will seek an explanation for our ‘lost civilization’, just as we wonder about the Martian lost civilization of which Leatherby’s expedition found traces. DOUCH will leave them an explanation. If the explanation also packs a moral they can use, so much the better.”

“There’s a third hypothetical group,” Pilbeam said, leaning forward. “That’s the one that sends the prickles down my spine. Maybe I read too much of my father’s science fiction at too early an age. But if man is going to tumble off his ecological niche, maybe some creature lurking around right now will climb up and take his place in a couple of hundred years — when the place is properly aired.”

He laughed. With quiet humour, Dyson said, “Could be, Jack. Statistics on how the Big Accident affected the larger primates is hard to come by. Maybe the grizzlies or the gorillas have already started along a favourable mutational line.”

Timberlane was silent. He did not know how to join in this sort of conversation. The whole thing was still unreal to him. When he said good-bye to Charley Samuels, the look of dismay on his friend’s face had shaken him almost as much as the C.O.’s instant co-operation with Childsweep. He peered down through the window. Far below, cumulus made a tumbled bed of the Earth. He was in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

Down below in that tenebrific world, a million years’ doubtful dynasty was coming to an end, with the self-immolation of the reigning house. He was not sure how he would relish recording its death throes.

There were mild autumnal sunshine and a military escort to greet them at Bolling Field. Half an hour — to Pilbeam’s sore irritation — passed in the Inspection Block before Health and Security checks cleared them. They were driven with their kit by electric truck to a little grey private bus which awaited them outside. On its side were painted the letters DOUCH.

“Looks good,” Timberlane exclaimed. “Now for the first time I believe I’m not the victim of some elaborate hoax.”

“Didn’t think you’d find yourself putting down in Peking, did you?” Dyson said, grinning his comfortable grin.

“And be sure never to climb into a bus labelled OICH or DUCA, however canned you are,” warned their military escort, helping Timberlane with his bags. “They stand for Oriental Integration and Cultural Habitation or something like it, and DUCA is a flamboyant organization run by the Post and standing for Department of Unified Child Assistance. They keep awful busy, even without any actual children to assist. Washington is a rash of initials and organizations — and disorganization — right now. It’s like living up to here in alphabet soup. Jump in, fellows, and we’ll go see a traffic jam or two.”

But somewhat to Timberlane’s disappointment, they kept to the east of the grey river he had glimpsed as they came in to land, and crawled into the part of town Pilbeam informed him was Anacostia. They pulled up in a trim street of new white houses before a block he was told was home. It proved to be swarming with decorators and echoing with the sound of carpenters.

“New premises,” Pilbeam explained. “Up until a month ago, this was a home for mentally deranged juvenile delinquents. But that’s one problem this so-called Accident has abolished entirely. We’ve run clean out of delinquents! It’ll make us a good HQ, and when you see the swimming pool, you’ll realize why delinquency in this country was almost a profession!”

He flung open the door of a spacious room. “You’ve got bedroom and toilet off through that door there. You share shower facilities with the guy next door, who happens to be me. Right down the corridor is the bar, and by God if they don’t have that to rights by now, and with a pretty girl at the alert behind it, there’s going to be hell raised. See you across a martini in ten minutes, eh?”

The DOUCH training course was planned to last for six weeks. Although it was in a high degree of organization, the system remained chaotic, owing to the disorder of the times.

Internally, all big cities were in the toils of labour problems; the conscription of strikers into the armed forces had served only to spread trouble to those bodies. The war was not a popular one, and not only because the enthusiasm of youth was missing.