THE NEW THING

 

 

To walk across the great hall of the Record Registry was to feel one plodded through deep dust, although the floor was spotless, clean and firm underfoot. A hard heel could make it ring but so vast was the hall that echoes died on the way to the walls and roof which might have reflected them.

That which lay here deep and made the going heavy was despair.

At certain points on the wall, at about the height of a man, red figures shone: a one, a zero, a three, a nine and a four. Last year the group had ended in a three. Next year it would most likely end in a five. Below, above, on every side was a feeling of pressure, a sense that the air was being made to shimmer—from this shimmering sifted down the intangible motes of hopelessness that settled not on the bodies but on the minds of those who came here.

The weight of those particles which were without weight was graphed by apathy: less laughing, more anger; less anger, more sighing; less sighing, more silence.

This was the Record Registry in which had been stored date about the achievements of every intelligent race known to have inhabited this galaxy; the Frotuglize, the Zyphrians, the Homoclawk, the Madgerive—facts garnered from more than a million worlds to serve as a yardstick for the current precariously dominant species, the oxygen-breathing biped known as Man.

This was the place to which proud spokesmen from thousands of the planets that Man now occupied had come, anxious to have their accomplishments also marked in the imperishable pattern of the computer memories as Records: the FIRST time such-and-such was done THESE were they who did it.

This was the Ultimate Arbiter; the passionless machine that ate the energy of the stars for food and stored the knowledge of the galaxy for—satisfaction?

Here, now, hoping against hope that the long, long time they waited for a verdict on the offerings they had brought—the pan-sensory tapes, the certified time marks, the attestations and documentary evidence and other things by the shipload—indicated that they would finally secure a place in the Record list and cause the figures on the wall to revert to zero, were four isolated individuals, two women and two men. By turns, each watching for one-third of a standard day, they monitored display panels set into the wall upon which the verdicts must eventually appear.

By custom those who had been here longest waited farthest from the entrance. By custom, also, one did not speak of the hoped-for record-breaking accomplishment that had caused the people of a whole faraway planet to send its delegates to the Registry. All too easily two delegations might have come here to post an identical claim. That suspicion was haunting, inescapable; drawn apart, the four no longer spoke excitedly to one another but remained quiet and revolved in their minds the terrifying possibility of null achievements.

As the red-glowing figures showed, it was ten thousand three hundred and ninety-four years since a new Record had been entered on the list.

 

When the fifth arrival appeared in the enormous doorway the soft, directionless voice of the automatic enunciator caused those who were already waiting to turn incuriously and look that way, but only the newest of the former arrivals retained enough spirit to raise a glass and inspect him at a distance. The others were content to wait—he would, by custom, come to them. More than likely he would bring a breath of intolerable excitement with him and be bewildered by their dullness. And it would be too great an effort to explain the reason.

The glass showed, in fine long-range detail, a very old man indeed, his brown skin networked with lines, his scalp showing through the scattered white hairs that crossed it, his back bent, his scrawny arm requiring the support not of an automated walker but of a simple staff. His only visible garment was a long gray robe that brushed the insteps of feet aged nearly to translucency.

Breathing with some effort, he leaned on his staff and gazed across the hall for a long moment, his eyes at least suggesting alertness and vivacity. During that time the voice of the machine that enclosed them all stated some simple facts about him.

“The newcomer wishes to be known as Alexander. He is a human male of the genetic strain qBA. He is aged one thousand one hundred and sixty-four and his planet of origin is Earth. Of the Records in the current list held by human beings twenty-two per cent were established on—or by citizens of—Earth, more than any other single planet. But the last one hundred applications for new Records by citizens of Earth have all been adjudged unacceptable.”

At the starting figure of twenty-two per cent the four who were already present turned in unison to stare at Alexander. At the conclusion of the machine’s remarks, they uttered simultaneous sighs of relief. Nothing—nothing in the universe—could conceivably be more galling than to assist at the Registration of someone else’s Record, while having one’s own rejected.

There was a moment of renewed silence. At the end of it Alexander gathered his failing strength and began to walk.

 

By custom he went first to speak with the man who waited farthest from the door. This was a hulking fellow in a tight garb of dark green. His beard hung untrimmed to his. waist and his fingernails were overgrown and chipped.

In a thin voice and a polite manner the old man said, “As you have been told, I am Alexander and I come from Earth.”

The hulking man moved only his eyes. The slumped weight of his body remained inert on the folding metal chair that supported him. It was not until it became clear that the intrusive stranger was patient and did not plan to go away of his own immediate accord that he summoned enough energy to grunt a harsh response.

“I’m Cridge, from Balkistan. Anything else you want to know or will you leave me in peace?”

“Thank you,” said Alexander sadly and moved to speak to the next in line.

This was a woman, a very stout one, whose gross body matched the inflatable armchair under her, and who leaned one elbow on the side of the chair so that her fingers were conveniently located to pluck at her underlip—brrup, brrup, brrup. She wore no clothing at all but nudity was customary on many worlds.

Alexander addressed her in the same words and after a long-drawn-out sigh she consented to reply.

“I’m Gailalu and I come from Ludgerworld. Welcome to the Registry. And now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to go on watching my panel. I’m expecting a verdict any moment.”

Alexander inclined his head and moved on toward the third of those waiting—again a man but this time one of middle age and medium build, with the contrast of dark skin, pale hair and a body-harness of flexible gold that located his ancestry to within a few hundred parsecs. While on the verge of approaching this man’s nullgravity couch and a third time uttering his introduction, Alexander checked, glancing toward the door. A man had appeared there, young and vigorous of stride, in gaudy yellow and blue, and at the sight of him the fourth person waiting—a girl with a bright smile and a sweep of clear red hair—had jumped up in delight and gone running to meet him.

His eyes following the girl, Alexander spoke to the dark-skinned, pale-haired man and received much the answer he had been expecting.

“I’m Phraticor and I come from Loghious. You’re from Earth, are you? Well, I wish you as much luck with your application as I’m having with mine—I’ve been here three months already. Obviously it’s taking a lot of time to process our Loghian data. But the chances are that when the breakthrough comes it’ll be sudden—so I’d better not waste time chatting right now. Later, maybe.”

And with that his mask of civility gave way to the same expression his companions wore.

 

Alexander made to move on. But before he had covered the distance that separated him from the stool on which the girl had been keeping her watch, she had brought the newcomer to meet him, her arm linked with his.

“Hugo, this is Alexander and he’s from Earth—can you imagine it?” she exclaimed. “The world we all started on thousands of centuries ago! I’m Dolia, by the way,” she added to Alexander. “And Hugo, of course, is my relief. He came for me early so we could have time together.”

She gave the arm she held an affectionate squeeze.

Alexander looked at them for a long time. At last a smile crossed his face, so that one might have imagined his dry old skin cracking like ancient parchment.

He said, “I see you are very happy with one another.”

Hugo nodded and gave an answering smile that turned his features from regular to handsome.

“And you are from what world?” Alexander pursued.

“Oh, from Coraline.” Dolia shrugged. She gave her words an embarrassed inflection. “A very new world—you probably won’t have heard of it. This is our first application to the Registry and we’re terribly excited. Everyone seems to think we have a very good chance because it’s taking so long to process our evidence. Usually the first time a new world sends a delegation here it’s turned down right away. But we’ve been here over a month and they’re still processing.”

“You mean it’s still processing,” Hugo corrected her gently. “This place isn’t run by people—it’s all machines.”

“Slip of the tongue,” Dolia said with a grimace. “Oh, we’re holding up Alexander from posting his evidence, aren’t we? I’m sure you must be very eager to get on with it.” She checked and a tiny frown drew her brows together. Uncertainly she added: “Are you the entire delegation from Earth, by the way? Or are there others to follow?”

“Good point.” Hugo nodded. “There are only five of us from Coraline but we’re still very underpopulated. I know the Loghians sent sixty—and I don’t think I’ve managed to count the delegations from Ludgerworld and Balkistan.”

“I’m by myself,” Alexander said.

Dolia gasped.

“But aren’t you going to find it terribly tiring—having to watch the screens all the time on your own? Or have you brought enough equipment to let you stay here all the time? Even so—”

She broke off doubtfully.

“You were perhaps going to say,” Alexander supplemented, “that it will be a long and tiring wait nonetheless? Ah, there you’re wrong, though I appreciate your concern for my well-being. You see, I shall not have to wait. I know that I’m going to set an incontestable Record.”

The ensuing silence was not surprised but stunned. It was broken by the sound of movement from behind Alexander. He turned to see that his three other listeners had stirred from their dull postures of waiting and were gazing at him with dismay. Phraticor, the nearest, responded first, jumping to his feet with a display of bluster.

“You say you know you’ll set a Record? Then you’re mad. You need medication, sedation, psychotherapy. Yours is a delusion of grandeur.”

Hauling her ponderous mass to the floor, waddling toward Alexander with a furious scowl, the woman Gailalu chimed in to support Phraticor.

“Yes—yes. You have to submit your evidence to the machines. They compare your claim with all the billions and trillions of bits of data they have in store. No one can claim to predict a Record.”

And, disturbed at last from his apathy, the hulking Cridge also strode over shouting, “You’re mad! You have to be mad! If any man can say what’s a Record—and what’s not—there’s no point in coming here, no point in waiting all these months and years for a verdict.”

“Do you want your verdict, then?” Alexander said and drew his scrawny body up with the help of his staff, so that sudden authority rang in his voice like a brazen bell.

“What?” Taken aback, Cridge stumbletongued. Then he retorted, “Of course I want my verdict. Why else should I have sat here day by day for all these unendurable months?”

“Because you found the waiting more endurable than the verdict,” Alexander answered. “The circuits of the Registry work at the speed of light. The verdict on any application may be had between one heartbeat and the next.”

“What?” Hugo stepped forward. “You mean we didn’t have to come here and waste all this time—you mean we could have just come and gone home again?”

“Would you rather be home again?” Alexander countered.

“Of course! Do you think it’s any fun for Dolia and me to be cooped here on this sterile artificial planet with the dreary company we have to keep—always being told to go sit here in this horrible hall for hours of every day—when we could be at home swimming and dancing and being happy together?”

Beside him, in answer to an unspoken question from Alexander, Dolia gave a firm nod.

“It is as I feared,” Alexander said and the whole weight of his years seemed to settle on his shoulders in a moment, so that he had to take a grip on his staff with both hands.

But the others had exchanged glances in the meantime and, with acid formality, Cridge had decided to live up to his declared pretensions.

He said, “I defy you to prove your assertion, sir. I think you’re lying—and when I’ve shown that you are I think I shall have you expelled trom the Registry. This place is the repository of the known achievements of intelligent life in this galaxy and as such it might well be termed sacred. It is not to be mocked.”

“Oh, for—” Alexander ended his exclamation with a sound epitomizing disgust. “Have your verdict, then, before you rot into the floor.”

 

He brushed Cridge aside and raised his staff to tap on the nearest of the uncountable wall-panels that displayed verdicts concerning applications for a new Record.

“What do the people of Balkistan think they’ve done that’s new?” he demanded—and his voice faded into a wheeze on the last word as though to suggest that the very concept of newness must be dead by now.

“The people of Balkistan have reorganized their society so that novelty is illegal,” said the automatic voice from the air. The wall-panel simultaneously displayed the words. “They claim that this is in itself unprecedented.”

“Have we gone that far?” Alexander whispered, while noting that all the other listeners—even Dolia and Hugo—had relaxed perceptibly.

Evidently they were claiming a different Record or Records.

“And?”

“This had already been done by the following species: the Zyphrians, the Homoclawk, the Madgerive, the—”

“Stop,” Alexander said. And with reluctance added: “Dead species?”

“All of them,” replied the machine.

He saw that Dolia was turning pale and wondered whether she had insight into the terrible suspicion he had just heard made a certainty. But he had no time for speculation. Now the die was cast and he had to hurry.

“Balkistan has its verdict,” he told Cridge, “and could have had it within an hour of your arrival. Are you pleased with what you’ve heard?”

“It must be a lie,” Cridge said uncertainly and was interrupted by Gailalu.

“Of course it’s not a lie! Something as stupid and obvious as that was bound to have been done already. I’m prepared to hear the verdict on our achievement right away, if you can honestly make it come out of the machine.”

“You doubt me?” Alexander said. “No, not me but those who were faint of heart before you. Little by little, ten thousand years ago, people grew discouraged by the negative verdicts that kept coming out of the machine, one, ten, a hundred, a thousand. There is something missing from the air of this place—without which no human being can survive.”

“You’re crazy. We were told the place was—”

“I don’t mean oxygen,” said Alexander. “What I’m talking about is hope.”

And, not giving Gailalu time for a reply, he asked the machine to utter its verdict on the application from Ludger-world.

“The population of that planet have turned it inside out,” reported the machine. “Now they live on its interior and the hot core is a tiny artificial sun.”

Hearing the words, Gailalu drew herself up proudly and sneered at the others.

“There’s an unprecedented feat for you!” she cried.

“The Record in this respect is held by the Frotuglize,” said the impersonal machine. “They turned the second planet of 198C-Avgrid/H inside out approximately thirty thousand years ago.”

“They, too, shut out the universe,” said Alexander. “And went their private way to death. Well, Phraticor?”

The dark man, with a glance at Gailalu, whose face had taken on the emotionless expression of someone who has survived an earthquake but lost in it both family and friends, said challengingly, “There’s no need to ask the machines what we have done. We made a star—yes! From the separate atoms of hydrogen drifting in nothingness we pulled together mass enough to make it glow, a new light in the pattern of the heavens!”

Dolia and Hugo, as one, drew in their breath in wonder, but Alexander shook his aged head.

“Poor Phraticor,” he said. “Poor people on an isolated world. Machine, tell them the truth and end their misery.”

“What misery?” barked Phraticor.

But the machine had already begun to speak.

“The majority of the Population I stars in the galaxy are now known to be the products of an unnamed race of approximately nine hundred and fifty million years ago, whose factory was responsible for clearing the volume between our galaxy and the Greater Magellanic Cloud of all hydrogen, totaling approximately—”

“Stop,” Alexander directed and the machine fell silent. The face of Phraticor had turned gray.

“But—” Dolia spoke after a terrible struggle with herself. “But I thought the Zyphrians—”

“Were the first race we have any knowledge of?” Alexander sighed. “No, alas, my dear. Only the first race whose achievements we have so far matched—or rather, had matched. To outdo the Starmakers we should have to build a galaxy—and the raw materials for that do not exist anywhere in the plenum.” With a wry moue he added, “Anyway, where would you put it?”

Recovering slowly from his shock, Hugo said, “In that case—I think it best not to even mention our own petty little application. If the creation of a star turns out to be the pointless reenactment of some previous Record we might as well quit and go home.”

Dolia nodded and they turned toward the door.

“Wait.” The order came from Cridge, whose despair had given way to rage on digesting the fact that his own world’s boasted achievement was likewise the mere shadow of something long ago. “Not so fast. Are we to be cowed by this—this intruder, this lunatic? Didn’t you hear him say that he was certain of establishing a new Record? I want to know what the people of Earth can do that’s so superior, so novel and so fantastic that it’ll be accepted here.”

“Yes!” Gailalu cried.

“Yes!” Phraticor agreed, marching threateningly close to the old man.

 

Dolia was tugging Hugo away but he resisted and spoke over the girl’s bright red casque of hair.

“Sir, I think you owe us that, at least. If you do not prove what you claim we shall have no grounds to believe you on any score. I always understood that to secure a verdict from the Registry the applicant might have to wait for weeks, months, even years.”

“Fair,” conceded Alexander. He repeated more softly, “Fair—”

He grew brisk. “Well, then, since doubtless it will be you who by chance are elected to convey news of this event to the rest of the galaxy—and to do so you’ll need all the data you can get—I suggest that we begin in inquiring what the last Record was that was set by the people of Earth. Machine, enlighten my friends on that score, please.”

“The largest information-processing system in the galaxy,” said the mechanical voice, “the Record Registry, was set up by the people of Earth approximately thirteen thousand two hundred years ago. No known previous and no subsequent installation of the kind outdoes it for (a) storage capacity, (b) speed of response, (c)—”

“Stop,” said Alexander. And, turning to Dolia, added: “You have a question?”

“Yes!” She was almost weeping and her nails were dug deep into her palms. “If it’s supposed to be so fast, why have people had to come here and sit around, wait months for a verdict, come here day after day after day?”

“Not because of the machine.” Alexander sighed. “But because of their own reluctance to face the kind of truth that led us, the people of Earth, to create the Registry in the first place. You see, Earth is—uh—was a very old world. There had been men on it, naturally, who spoke and used tools and fire and were after a fashion intelligent, for perhaps as long as two million years before the dawn of the age of Space and the colonization of all your other planets. We had time to relax, sit back, meditate, hear the news, while you on Loghious and Balkistan and Coraline and all the other planets of other stars were busy getting on with your lives, taming strange environments, adapting to new foods, learning to love new mountains and new oceans. You do love your worlds, don’t you?”

He glanced at the others, who had grouped before him in a semi-circle. Dolia finally answered him with a nod and a smile.

“As I expected,” Alexander muttered. “You from the youngest world find it easiest to reply. So I must ask your forgiveness for our disastrous mistake because there is no one else to ask it of and no one else to do the asking.

“It seemed to us—as we saw the people of Earth grow less enterprising, ambitious, adventurous; more complacent, contented, repetitious in their lives—that something had to be done to jolt the species out of such a rut. This is what we did—we created this Registry, where the achievements of every species that to our knowledge preceded us are recorded. It was intended to act as a perennial spur, as a creative force to pose new goals and new ambitions for Mankind. We did not know of the Starmakers when we designed and built the Registry—had we known, perhaps our decision would have been otherwise.

 

“Well, for a little time it worked. As we had anticipated, men came from all over the galaxy to inform the machines of new accomplishments and the tidings spread rapidly when some great breakthrough was accomplished. To spur men on still further, we made sure that anything that was a copy of the work of other species was dismissed as such. But this was a terrible error—and, I confess, it stemmed from arrogance. What business had we—who a mere two million-odd years ago were grunting in caves and killing our fellows to suck the marrow from their bones—to match attainments with races who lasted as many years in space alone, who—as we belatedly discovered—were capable of shaping the very galaxy we inhabit to suit their tastes?

“You, friend from Loghious who built a star! Your feat was marvelous, fantastic, incredible. I salute you—were it not that these old bones are stiff and slow, I’d go down on my knees to kiss your sandal strap! And you from Ludgerworld who turned it inside out, who made your own small sun to suit your needs—you, too, I admire and salute, for you saw a peak of accomplishment and with single-minded determination scaled it!”

Now the old man’s voice was ringing so loudly it could almost call echoes from the far-distant walls of the great hall. He had forgotten his age and the prop of his staff in his excess of pride at the successes of the species he belonged to.

“From you and your people, Cridge, I can, however, do no more than beg forgiveness. We unwittingly sent you down the blind alley in which you became lost—and not only you but everyone who has visited this hall for the past ten millennia.”

Alexander’s staff made a contemptuous jab at the red-glowing figures on the wall.

“We turned what should have been a challenge into a foregone conclusion. It has been believed for thousands of years that anyone who came here to apply for the listing of a Record was bound to have it rejected—and so the custom has grown up of not asking for the verdict until all patience has run out, until the weight of boredom and desperation becomes intolerable. Once hundreds of planets every year sent eager delegations to the Registry—and now, in this hall that could hold a thousand, I find only you people waiting. Oh, it’s sad, it’s sad …

“So, as a result, on thousands of human worlds life grows drab, pointless, monotonous. For everything that one can think of to do has already been done and the unquestionable authority of the Record Registry says it’s been done. And in the end …” He drew a deep breath and clutched his staff tightly to him. “Yes! In the end.

“Friends, I know you hate me. Why should you not? I come here, I tell you why your hoped-for Records are a waste of time. I claim to be about to register a Record of my own—certainly you must hate me. I see you shake your head, Dolia, and I’m grateful. But that’s because you’re young, and you have your man beside you—and you’ve not yet been disappointed often enough to become cynical about those good things which are, after all, the real prizes of life. I understand and respect, I even accept, your detestation. I shall make it worse. I shall say that I am about to post two Records—and that in itself will be a third. Machine! Has any delegation from any planet registered two Records on a single visit?”

“No,” said the voice from the air.

“I thought not. Well, then, let me deal with the first. Machine, what is the planet which has been longest inhabited by mankind and is now uninhabited?”

“The planet Earth,” said the machine.

 

The silence this time was terrible—a silence like the implacable noiselessness between the galaxies.

At last Hugo said faintly, “Earth is—”

“Earth is empty,” said Alexander. “The reason for that is what you’ve witnessed here. You, Cridge. Tell us what went on in your mind while you were sitting here waiting for the verdict.”

“I—” The hulking man had to swallow. “I suppose I thought about what we would do to exceed our own Record—if one were granted to us—and I couldn’t think of anything.”

“And to postpone your confrontation with that terrifying knowledge, the realization that you had nothing left to work for, no ambition, no plans, hopes, schemes, you waited here. You sat and stared at a blank wall panel and put off the moment of truth. Am I not right?”

Cridge nodded.

“You, too, Dolia, and your man Hugo—you’d have suffered that fate,” Alexander sighed. “Already, by accepting the idea that one must wait for the machines instead of coming right out and asking for their verdict, you’d taken the first step toward catastrophe. I wouldn’t wish that doom on you, young, lively, vital—it was dreadful enough seeing it overtake the tired, bone-weary folk of Earth. First one wondered: why have children since their lives will be a mere repetition of other lives? Then it was: why marry, why choose a lover, if a billion others have already done the same? And at last it was: why live?

“I alone survive to register my Records. You already know the third one. Before naming my first, I must give you instructions. I must tell you to go and rouse your companions. Order them to go back aboard their ships and to leave the Registry. And tell them not to go home at once—but to orbit a million miles out in order to warn other ships not to approach closer than that.”

“What?” Cridge’s normal hectoring manner seemed to be returning by the second now that he was free of the weight of hopelessness that pervaded the Registry. “Why must we keep everyone else away? For all we know a new Record could be established by the next visitors!”

“Your thinking belongs to the past,” Alexander said sadly, raising his staff before his face. He gave the ends a twist and lowered it again. “My first Record has been set. The machines here are very perceptive—why don’t you ask them just what that Record is? You know, don’t you?” he asked the air.

“The person who wishes to be known as Alexander,” said the machine, “is the first visitor who ever brought to the Registry without being detected a bomb of sufficient power to destroy it.”

Cridge, Gailalu and Phraticor exclaimed in horror and instantly took to their heels. Hugo would have done the same but Dolia clung to him and made him wait.

She asked, “Is it true?”

Her voice trembled.

“Quite true.” Alexander sat down on her stool and with one thin hand caressed the staff absently. “I should hurry if I were you. You have only an hour to get away.”

“But you—”

“I have nothing to get away for,” Alexander shrugged. “A thousand years has been enough for me.”

“Dolia, come on,” Hugo cried. “He’s crazy—dangerous, too.”

“No, he’s not crazy,” Dolia said. “Just sad. Will there be another Registry?”

“In a million years, perhaps,” Alexander promised. “By then we should have enough Records of our own. For the time being, though, isn’t it better to do what one wants to do—without worrying about whether or not it’s already been done?”

“I’m young enough to remember what it was like the first time I—” Dolia checked, glanced at Hugo and colored. “Well, the first time, anyway.”

“In that case,” Alexander said, “you are unusually wise. Remember that to be wise is a very precious thing.”

“I’ll try,” she whispered. She put out her hand uncertainly, found his and kissed it. Raising her head again, not letting go his old thin fingers, she said, “And—do we not even know your name? I just realized—the machine said not that you are Alexander—only that you wish to be known as Alexander!”

“This, too has been done before,” the old man said. “There was once a knot so complicated no one could untie it. A man called Alexander rose up, cut it with a sword. To loose the bonds we heedlessly used to hobble the human race—it seems I, too, must be crude. It is not something I would wish my own name to be remembered for. My second Record.”

He smiled and gave her hand a final squeeze.

“Go, then, my friends—and remember. Always do the best you can.”

 

When they looked back from the door of the great hall, he was sitting calmly with his staff in his hand. And when the hour was up there were no staff or Registry or Alexander—only a little hot dust drifting on the light of the stars.

 

From Worlds of If, December 1969, copyright © 1969 by Universal Publishing and Distributing Corporation.

 

THE ATOM BOMB IS TWENTY-FIVE THIS YEAR

 

The atom bomb is twenty-five this year

And I am watching an old woman die,

 

Her cancers ulcerating through the skin.

“Please kill me—please! I won’t tell anyone!”

 

The doctor is a loyal Christian.

He says he can’t have murder on his soul.

 

I think about the motto on the shield

That boldly lettered says, “In God We Trust.”

 

I shut my eyes and I see Christian burns,

Lost hands, stump legs and ugly keloid scars.

 

The Christian pilot turns his metal back

And lands his plane and goes on church parade

 

To thank his God because the children’s eyes

Are melting in their heads, their hair on fire.

 

Of course it wasn’t Christians and Jews

Who built the Bomb and itched to try it out,

 

Who cheered to learn the number of the dead

And said God must be answering their prayers.

 

Of course it wasn’t the God-fearing West

That taught the world the art of total war.

 

It wasn’t Christians who thought of gas

And concentration camps and fighter planes,

 

Electrodes to apply to genitals,

Rifles, revolvers, shotguns, hand-grenades …

 

Helpless she lies ashamed of her wet bed.

The doctor says a Christian doesn’t kill.

 

Helpless she lies while all her ulcers weep.

The law says it’s against the law to die.

 

The chaplains bless the bombs and submarines,

The soldiers march and everybody cheers.

 

They punish her who never harmed a fly

With long-drawn-out and futile agony.

 

Ignore her, or they’ll jail you. Medals are

For those who kill when told to by the State.

 

From Sanity, the journal of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. Hiroshima Day issue 1970. It was Marjorie’s mother who was dying.

 

Epigrammata LXV: De Laide dicante Veneri speculum suum (by Decimus Magnus Ausonius, circa AD 310-395)

 

Lais anus Veneri speculum dico: dignum habeat se

aeterna aeternum forma ministerium.

at mihi nullus in hoc usus, quia cernere talem,

qualis sum, nolo, qualis eram, nequeo.

 

Venus, old Lais gives her glass to thee

who, fair forever, art forever so.

What I am now I cannot bear to see

and what I was … a mirror cannot show.

 

Along with Lament for the Makers and The Unquiet Grave this is one of the three most terrifying poems that I know.

 

SOLUTION TO CROSSWORD

 

CROSSWORD