of them—God's purpose will be achieved. The human race will have finished what it was created to do, and there won't be any point in carrying on. Indeed, the very idea is something like blasphemy.'
'Then what do they expect us to do? Commit suicide?'
'There's no need for that. When the list's completed, God steps in and simply winds things up . . . bingo!'
'Oh, I get it. When we finish our job, it will be the end of the world.'
Chuck gave a nervous little laugh.
'That's just what I said to Sam. And do you know what happened? He looked at me in a very queer way, like I'd been stupid in class, and said, 'It's nothing as trivial as
George thought this over for a moment.
'That's what I call taking the Wide View,' he said presently. 'But what d'you suppose we should do about it? I don't see that it makes the slightest difference to us.
After all, we already knew that they were crazy.'
'Yes—but don't you see what may happen? When the list's complete and the Last Trump doesn't blow—or whatever it is they expect—
'I see,' said George slowly. 'You've got a point there. But this sort of thing's happened before, you know. When I was a kid down in Louisiana we had a crackpot preacher who once said the world was going to end next Sunday. Hundreds of people believed him—even sold their homes. Yet when nothing happened, they didn't turn nasty, as you'd expect. They just decided that he'd made a mistake in his calculations and went right on believing. I guess some of them still do.'
'Well, this isn't Louisiana, in case you hadn't noticed. There are just two of us and hundreds of these monks. I like them, and I'll be sorry for old Sam when his lifework backfires on him. But all the same, I wish I was somewhere else.'
'I've been wishing that for weeks. But there's nothing we can do until the contract's finished and the transport arrives to fly us out.'
'Of course,' said Chuck thoughtfully, 'we could always try a bit of sabotage.'
'Like hell we could! That would make things worse.'
'Not the way I meant. Look at it like this. The machine will finish its run four days from now, on the present twenty-hours-a-day basis. The transport calls in a week. OK—then all we need to do is to find something that needs replacing during one of the overhaul periods—something that will hold up the works for a couple of days. We'll fix it, of course, but not too quickly. If we time matters properly, we can be down at the airfield when the last name pops out of the register. They won't be able to catch us then.'
'I don't like it,' said George. 'It will be the first time I ever walked out on a job.
Besides, it would make them suspicious. No, I'll sit tight and take what comes.'
'I
'It's funny,' replied Chuck, 'but when I said good-by I got the idea he knew we were walking out on him—and that he didn't care because he knew the machine was running smoothly and that the job would soon be finished. After that —well, of course, for him there just isn't any After That.
George turned in his saddle and stared back up the mountain road. This was the last place from which one could get a clear view of the lamasery. The squat, angular buildings were silhouetted against the afterglow of the sunset: here and there, lights gleamed like portholes in the side of an ocean liner. Electric lights, of course, sharing the same circuit as the Mark V. How much longer would they share it? wondered George. Would the monks smash up the computer in their rage and disappointment?
Or would they just sit down quietly and begin their calculations all over again?
He knew exactly what was happening up on the mountain at this very moment.
The high lama and his assistants would be sitting in their silk robes, inspecting the sheets as the junior monks carried them away from the typewriters and pasted them into the great volumes. No one would be saying anything. The only sound would be the incessant patter, the never-ending rainstorm of the keys hitting the paper, for the Mark V itself was utterly silent as it flashed through its thousands of calculations a second. Three months of this, thought George, was enough to start anyone climbing up the wall.
'There she is!' called Chuck, pointing down into the valley. 'Ain't she beautiful!'
She certainly was, thought George. The battered old DC3 lay at the end of the runway like a tiny silver cross. In two hours she would be bearing them away to freedom and sanity. It was a thought worth savoring like a fine liqueur. George let it roll round his mind as the pony trudged patiently down the slope.
The swift night of the high Himalayas was now almost upon them. Fortunately, the road was very good, as roads went in that region, and they were both carrying torches. There was not the slightest danger, only a certain discomfort from the bitter cold. The sky overhead was perfectly clear, and ablaze with the familiar, friendly stars. At least there would be no risk, thought George, of the pilot being unable to take off because of weather conditions. That had been his only remaining worry.
He began to sing, but gave it up after a while. This vast arena of mountains, gleaming like whitely hooded ghosts on every side, did not encourage such ebullience. Presently George glanced at his watch.
'Should be there in an hour,' he called back over his shoulder to Chuck. Then he added, in an afterthought: 'Wonder if the computer's finished its run. It was due about now.'
Chuck didn't reply, so George swung round in his saddle.
He could just see Chuck's face, a white oval turned toward the sky.
'Look,' whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is always a last time for everything.)
Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.
Aunt Amy was out on the front porch, rocking back and forth in the high-backed chair and fanning herself, when Bill Soames rode his bicycle up the road and stopped in front of the house.
Perspiring under the afternoon “sun,” Bill lifted the box of groceries out of the big basket over the front wheel of the bike and came up the front walk.
Little Anthony was sitting on the lawn, playing with a rat. He had caught the rat down in the basement—he had made it think that it smelled cheese, the most rich-smelling and crumbly-delicious cheese a rat had ever thought it smelled, and it had come out of its hole, and now Anthony had hold of it with his mind and was making it do tricks.
When the rat saw Bill Soames coming, it tried to run, but Anthony thought at it, and it turned a flip-flop on the grass and lay trembling, its eyes gleaming in small black terror.
Bill Soames hurried past Anthony and reached the front steps, mumbling. He always mumbled when he came to the Fremont house, or passed by it, or even thought of it. Everybody did. They thought about silly things, things that didn’t mean very much, like two-and-two-is-four-and-twice-is-eight and so on; they tried to jumble up their thoughts and keep them skipping back and forth, so Anthony couldn’t read their minds. The mumbling helped. Because if Anthony got anything strong out of your thoughts, he might take a notion to do something about it—like curing your wife’s sick headaches or your kid’s mumps, or getting your old milk cow back on schedule, or fixing the privy. And while Anthony mightn’t actually mean any harm, he couldn’t be expected to have much notion of what was the right thing to do in such cases.
That was if he liked you. He might try to help you, in his way. And that could be pretty horrible.
If he didn’t like you—well, that could be worse.
Bill Soames set the box of groceries on the porch railing and stopped his mumbling long enough to say, “Everythin’ you wanted, Miss Amy.”
“Oh, fine, William,” Amy Fremont said lightly. “My, ain’t it terrible hot today?”
