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.”“Well, then, we're savages to him.Is that it?” demanded Johannison.The visitor said, “Your wife is being metaphorical.Let me finish.I can no longer try to encourage your society to cure itself.The disease has progressed too far.I am going to have to alter the temperamental makeup of the race.”“How?”“There are neither words nor concepts to explain that either.You must see that our control of physical matter is extensive.It was quite simple to stop all radioactivity.It was a little more difficult to see to it that all things, including books, now suited a world in which radioactivity did not exist.It was still more difficult, and took more time, to wipe out all thought of radioactivity from the minds of men.Right now, uranium does not exist on Earth.No one ever heard of it.”“I have,” said Johannison.“How about you, Mercy?”“I remember, too,” said Mercedes.“You two are omitted for a reason,” said the visitor, ''as are over a hundred others, men and women, all over the world.”“No radioactivity,” muttered Johannison.“Forever?”“For five of your years,” said the visitor.“It is a pause, nothing more.Merely a pause, or call it a period of anesthesia, so that I can operate on the species without the interim danger of atomic war.In five years the phenomenon of radioactivity will return, together with all the uranium and thorium that currently do not exist.The knowledge will not return, however.That is where you will come in.You and the others like you.You will re-educate the world gradually.”“That's quite a job.It took fifty years to get us to this point.Even allowing for less the second time, why not simply restore knowledge? You can do that, can't you?”“The operation,” said the visitor, “will be a serious one.It will take anywhere up to a decade to make certain there are no complications.So we want re-education slowly, on purpose.”Johannison said, “How do we know when the time comes? I mean when the operation's over.”The visitor smiled.“When the time comes, you will know.Be assured of that.”“Well, it's a hell of a thing, waiting five years for a gong to ring in your head.What if it never comes? What if your operation isn't successful?”The visitor said seriously, “Let us hope that it is.”“But if it isn't? Can't you clear our minds temporarily, too? Can't you let us live normally till it's time?”“No.I'm sorry.I need your minds untouched.If the operation is a failure, if the cure does not work out, I will need a small reservoir of normal, untouched minds out of which to bring about the growth of a new population on this planet on whom a new variety of cure may be attempted.At all costs, your species must be preserved.It is valuable to us.It is why I am spending so much time trying to explain the situation to you.If I had left you as you were an hour ago, five days, let alone five years, would have completely ruined you.”And without another word he disappeared.Mercedes went through the motions of preparing supper and they sat at the table almost as though it had been any other day.Johannison said, “Is it true? Is it all real?”“I saw it, too,” said Mercedes.“I heard it.”“I went through my own books.They're all changed.When this-pause is over, we'll be working strictly from memory, all of us who are left.We'll have to build instruments again.It will take a long time to get it across to those who won't remember.” Suddenly he was angry, “And what for, I want to know.What for?”“Alex,” Mercedes began timidly, “he may have been on Earth before and spoken to people.He's lived for thousands and thousands of years.Do you suppose he's what we've been thinking of for so long as-as-''Johannison looked at her.“As God? Is that what you're trying to say? How should I know? All I know is that his people, whatever they are, are infinitely more advanced than we, and that he's curing us of a disease.”Mercedes said, “Then I think of him as a doctor or what's equivalent to it in his society.”“A doctor? All he kept saying was that the difficulty of communication was the big problem.What kind of a doctor can't communicate with his patients? A vet! An animal doctor!”He pushed his plate away.His wife said, “Even so.If he brings an end to war-”“Why should he want to? What are we to him? We're animals.We are animals to him.Literally.He as much as said so.When I asked him where he was from, he said he didn't come from the 'yard' at all.Get it? The barnyard.Then he changed it to the 'universe.' He didn't come from the 'universe' at all.His difficulty in communication gave him away.He used the concept for what our universe was to him rather than what it was to us.So the universe is a barnyard and we're--horses, chickens, sheep.Take your choice.”Mercedes said softly, “'The Lord is my Shepherd.I shall not want.'““Stop it, Mercy.That's a metaphor; this is reality.If he's a shepherd, then we're sheep with a queer, unnatural desire, and ability, to kill one another.Why stop us?”“He said-”“I know what he said.He said we have great potentialities.We're very valuable.Right?”“Yes.”“But what are the potentialities and values of sheep to a shepherd? The sheep wouldn't have any idea.They couldn't.Maybe if they knew why they were coddled so, they'd prefer to live their own lives.They'd take their own chances with wolves or with themselves.”Mercedes looked at him helplessly.Johannison cried, “It's what I keep asking myself now.Where are we going? Where are we going? Do sheep know? Do we know? Can we know?”They sat staring at their plates, not eating.Outside, there was the noise of traffic and the calling of children at play.Night was falling and gradually it grew dark.=====One memory I have concerning THE PAUSE reinforces my constant delight that I am at the writing end of things and am not part of any other facet of the literary game [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]