He told himself he should have waited to see all of the picture. He should have looked at more pictures. But how could he have known that these men he knew so well would use him like this? Now he'd have to look at pictures again. He closed his eyes and forced himself to concentrate.,
The pictures flashed in front of him, one after the other, and in each of them the truck rocked forward and left Lem Dyer dangling by his neck.
Jake was back in his truck, trying to start the motor. The starter whined fretfully. Someone yelled, "Need a push, Jake?"
Lem kept watching the pictures, but finally he knew, with a sickening certainty, that pictures couldn't help him. In all of them the truck moved forward and left him hanging. It had never happened that way before-pictures without any choices.
He shook the perspiration from his eyes and looked about him. The sheriff lay on the sidewalk in front of the jail in a pool of blood. Reverend Meyers lay nearby, his arms moving feebly, one leg bent at a strange angle. Men were hurling stones at the scaffold, where the deputy had taken refuge.
Sadly he looked down at the hate-twisted faces of men he'd thought were his friends. He remembered what the Reverend had told him. Jesus had seen hate like that when they'd nailed him to the cross, and he'd said, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." Lem said the words to himself, softly. Maybe his old life wasn't worth much to anyone but himself, but it was sad.
The starter whined again, and someone called, "Speech! Can the murderer talk? Let's have a confession!"
A hundred coarse echoes sounded. "Confession! Confession!"
Lem threw his cracked voice out over the mob. "You're evil men-evil! Get down on your knees and pray that God won't punish you!"
They flung back at him wave after stinging wave of hoots of laughter. "You dirty murderer! God won't punish us!"
The Reverend had slumped forward to lie motionless. Doc Beasley had finally managed to push through the crowd and was kneeling beside the sheriff. The faces below Lem blurred and twisted and mortal anger overwhelmed him. "If God won't punish you," he screamed, "I will!"
He closed his eyes and willed the pictures into being. Larger than life, they were, but they moved so slowly, and he had so little time.
A tornado, dragging its swirling funnel along Main Street, relentlessly flattening buildings, crushing their occupants, toppling the Methodist Church steeple onto the jail.,,
"Not enough!" Lem gasped.
A prairie fire, tossed high on gale winds, roaring hungrily down on Glenn Center, driving the populace before it…
"Not enough?"
Fleets of enemy planes darkening the sky, pouring searing death onto even such an insignificant dot on the map as Glenn Center…
"Not enough!"
The summer sun, high and bright at noonday, suddenly bulging crazily, tearing the sky asunder, drenching the countryside in blinding incandescence, charring human vermin, steaming away the rivers, crumbling concrete, boiling the very dust underfoot…
Lem 'chose that one, just as Jake Arnson got his motor started.
The Custodian
by William Tenn
May 9, 2190-Well, I did it! It was close, but fortunately I have a very suspicious nature. My triumph, my fulfillment was almost stolen from me, but I was too clever for them. As a result, I am happy to note in this, my will and testament, I now begin my last year of life.
No, let me be accurate. This last year of life, the year that I will spend in an open tomb, really began at noon today. Then, in the second sub-basement of the Museum of Modern Astronautics, I charged a dial for the third successive time and got a completely negative response.
That meant that I, Piyatil, was the only human being alive on Earth. What a straggle I have had to achieve that distinction!
Well, it's all over now, I'm fairly certain. Just to be on the
Safe side, I'll come down and check the anthropometer every day or so for the next week, but I don't think there's a chance in the universe that I'll get a positive reading. I've had my last, absolutely my final and ultimate battle with the forces of righteousness-and I've won. Left in secure, undisputed possession of my coffin, there's nothing for me to do now but enjoy myself.
And that shouldn't be too hard. After all, I've been planning the pleasures for years!
Still, as I tugged off my suit of berrillit blue and climbed upstairs into the.sunlight, I couldn't help thinking of the others. Gruzeman, Prej'aut, and possibly even Mo-Diki. They'd have been here with me now if only they'd had a shade less academic fervor, a touch more of intelligent realism.
Too bad in a way. And yet it makes my vigil more solemn, more glorious. As I sat down on the marble bench between Rozinski's heroic statues of the Spaceman and Spacewoman, I shrugged and dismissed the memories of Gruzeman, Pre-jaut, and Mo-Diki.
They had failed. I hadn't.
I leaned back, relaxing for the first time in more than a month. My eyes swept over the immense bronze figures towering above me, two pieces of sculpture yearning agonizingly for the stars, and I burst into a chuckle. The absolute incongruity of my hiding place hit me for the first time-imagine, the Museum of Modern Astronautics! Multiplied by the incredible nervous tension, the knuckle-biting fear of the past five days, the chuckle bounced up and down in my throat and became a giggle, then a splutter, and finally a reverberating, chest-heaving laugh that I couldn't stop. It brought all the deer out of the museum park te stand in front of the marble bench where Fiyatil, the last man on Earth, choked and coughed and wheezed and cackled at his senile accomplishment.
I don't know how long the fit might have held me, but a cloud, merely in the course of its regular duties as a summer cloud, happened to slide in front of the sun. That did it. I stopped laughing, as if a connection had been cut, and glanced upward.
The cloud went on, and the sunlight poured down as warmly as ever, but I shivered a bit.
Two pregnant young does came a little closer and stood watching as I massaged my neck. Laughter had given it a crick, "Well, my dears," I said, tossing them a quotation from one of my favorite religions, "it would seem that in the midst of life we are at last truly in death."
They munched at me impassively.
May 11, 2190-I have spent the last two days putting myself and my supplies in order and making plans for the immediate future. Spending a lifetime in sober preparation for the duties of custodianship is one thing. Finding suddenly that you have become the custodian, the last of your sect as well as your race-and yet, peculiarly, the fulfillment of them both-that is quite another thing. I find myself burning with an insane pride. And a moment later, I turn cold with the incredible, the majestic responsibility that I face.
Food will be no problem. In the commissary of this one institution, there are enough packaged meals to keep a man like myself well fed for ten years, let alone twelve months. And wherever I go on the planet, from Museum of Buddhist Antiquities in Tibet to the Panorama of Political History in Sevastopol, I will find a similar plenty,
Of course, packaged meals are packaged meals: somebody else's idea of what my menu should be. Now that the last Affirmer has gone, taking with him his confounded austerity, there is no Idnger any need for me to be a hypocrite. I can at last indulge my taste for luxury and bathe my tongue in gustatory baubles. Unfortunately I grew to manhood under Affirmer domination and the hypocrisies I learned to practice in sixty cringing years have merged with the essential substance of my character. I doubt, therefore, that I will be preparing any meals of fresh food from the ancient recipes.