“I told you,” said A, “that the term was not precise. But consider this: Within the galaxy there are few intelligences that have the potential promise of you humans. Yet, unless something can be done about it, you are headed for extinction — all of you. Even so great a civilization as once existed on this alternate world went down to nothing. Folly brought it down — economic folly, political folly. You, Lansing, must know that if someone presses a button, your world is gone as well. You, Miss Owen, lived on a world that is heading for a great disaster. Someday soon the empires will fall and from the wreckage it will take thousands of years for a new civilization to arise, if it ever does. Even if it does, it may be a worse civilization than the one you know. On all the alternate worlds, disasters loom in one guise or another. The human race got off to a bad start and has not improved. It was doomed from the first beginning. The solution, as we see it, is to recruit a cadre of selected humans from all the many worlds, using them to give the race a new beginning and a second chance.”
“Recruit, you say,” said Lansing. “I don’t call this recruitment. You snatch us from our worlds. You impress us. You bring us here and, telling us nothing, turn us loose, on our own, in this silly testing area of yours, to see how we make out, watching all the time to see how we make out, making judgment on us.”
“Would you have come if we’d asked you? Would you have enlisted?”
“No, I would not have,” said Lansing. “Neither, I think, would Mary.”
“On all the many worlds,” said B, “we have our agents and recruiters. We handpick the humans that we want — the ones we think may have a chance to pass the tests. We don’t take just anyone. We are very choosy. Through the years we have collected some thousands of the humans who have passed the test, the kind of humans we think are best equipped to build the sort of society that such a race should build. We do this because it seems to us that it would be a waste for the galaxy to lose the kind of people that you are. In time, working with other intelligences, you will help to form a galactic society — a society beyond any present imagination. We feel that intelligence may be the crowning glory of fumbling evolution, that nothing better can be found. But if intelligence falls of its own weight, as it is falling, not only here but elsewhere, then evolution will turn, blindly, to some other set of survival factors and the concept of intelligence may be lost forever.”
“Edward,” said Mary, “there may be validity in what he says, in what they’ve done.”
“That well may be,” said Lansing, “but I don’t like the way they go about it.”
“It may be the only way,” said Mary. “As they say, no one would enlist. Those few who possibly might probably would be the very ones for whom they’d have no use.”
“I am glad to see,” said A, “that you are approaching some acceptance of our view.”
“What else,” asked Lansing, sourly, “is left for us to do?”
“Not much,” said B. “If you wish, you still are free to walk out the door into the world you left.”
“That I wouldn’t want,” said Lansing, thinking of the camp of refugees in the river valley. “How about our own—”
He cut off what he had meant to say. If they went back to their own worlds, it would mean that he and Mary could not be together. Groping, he found her hand and clasped it tightly.
“You meant to ask if you could go back to your own worlds,” said D. “I’m sorry, but you can’t.”
“Where we go,” said Mary, “does not matter, so long as Edward and I remain together.”
“Well, then,” said A, “that’s settled. We’re very glad to have you. Whenever you are ready to go, you can walk through the door in the corner to the left. It does not open on the world you just left, but into a brand-new world.”
“Another alternate world?” asked Mary.
“No. It opens on an Earthlike planet very far from here. Looking up at night, you’ll see strange stars and constellations that are unfamiliar. A second chance, we said — a brand-new planet to go with that second chance. There is one city only — actually not a city, but a university town made up almost entirely of the university. There you’ll teach the things you know and sit in classes to study the things you do not know. Perhaps a number of matters you have never heard or thought about. This will go on for many years, probably your entire lifetimes. Finally, perhaps a century or more from now, a highly intellectual and educated group, equipped with more and better tools than any Earth society has had before, quite naturally will begin to formulate a world society. It’s too soon to do so now. There still are many things to learn, many attitudes to absorb and study, many viewpoints to ponder, before that can be done. You’ll be under no economic stress during the training period, although in time it will be necessary for the community to develop an economic system. For the moment everything will be taken care of. All we ask is that you study and give yourself the time to become fully human.”
“In other words,” said Lansing, “you will still be taking care of us.”
“You resent that?”
“I think he does,” said Mary, “but he’ll get over it. Given time, he’ll get over it.”
Lansing rose from his chair, Mary rising with him.
“Which door did you say?” asked Mary.
“That one over there,” A said, pointing.
“One question before we go,” said Lansing. “Tell me, if you will, what Chaos is.”
“On your world,” said D, “you have a Chinese wall.”
“Yes, I would suspect on both Mary’s world and mine.”
“Chaos is a sophisticated Chinese wall,” said D. “An utterly stupid thing to build. It was the last and greatest folly performed by the former people of this planet. It contributed to their downfall. The full story is far too long to tell.”
“I see,” said Lansing, turning toward the door.
“Would you take it badly,” asked A, “if we said you go with all our blessings?”
“Not at all,” said Mary. “We thank you for your kindness and for the second chance.”
They walked to the door, but before they opened it turned to look back. The four still were sitting in a row upon the couch, the white, blind, skull-like faces watching after them.
Then Lansing opened the door and the two of them passed through.
They stood upon a meadow, and in the distance saw the spires and towers of the university, where evening bells were tolling.
Hand in hand they walked toward mankind’s second chance.
About the Author
Clifford D. Simak is a newspaperman, only recently retired. Over the years he has written more than twenty-five books and has some two hundred short stories to his credit. In 1977 he received the Nebula Grand Master award of the Science Fiction Writers of America and has won several other awards for his writing.
He was born and raised in southwestern Wisconsin, a land of wooded hills and deep ravines, and often uses this locale for his stories. A number of critics have cited him as the pastoralist of science fiction.
Perhaps the best known of his work is City, which has become a science-fiction classic.
He and his wife, Kay, have been happily married for more than fifty years. They have two children — a daughter, Shelley Ellen, a magazine editor, and Richard Scott, a chemical engineer.
