'Maybe I just want to live - but the world could be worse. In twenty million different ways, it could be worse. A fellow named Wilder once wrote a play called The Skin of Our Teeth. Maybe you've read it. It's thesis was that Mankind survived by just that skin of their teeth. No, I'm not going to give you a speech about the Ice Age nearly wiping us out. I don't know enough. I'm not even going to talk about the Greeks winning at Marathon; the Arabs being defeated at Tours; the Mongols turning back at the last minute without even being defeated -because I'm no historian.
'But take the Twentieth Century. The Germans were stopped at the Marne twice in World War I. Dunkirk happened in World War II, and somehow the Germans were stopped at Moscow and Stalingrad. We could have used the atom bomb in the last war and we didn't, and just when it looked as if both sides would have to, the Great Compromise happened - just because General Bruce was delayed in taking off from the Ceylon airfield long enough to receive the message directly. One after the other, just like that, all through history - lucky breaks. For every "if" that didn't come true that would have made wonder-men of all of us if it had, there were twenty "ifs" that didn't come true that would have brought disaster to all of us if they had.
'You're gambling on that one-in-twenty chance - gambling every life on Earth. And you've succeeded, too, because Ty-wood did send that text back.'
He ground out that last sentence, and opened his fist, so that Boulder could fall out and back into his chair.
And Boulder laughed.
'You fool,' he gasped, bitterly, 'How close you can be and yet how widely you can miss the mark. Tywood did send his book back, then? You are sure of that?'
'No chemical textbook in Greek was found on the scene,' said the Boss, grimly, 'and millions of calories of energy had disappeared. Which doesn't change the fact, however, that we have two and a half weeks in which to - make things interesting for you.'
'Oh, nonsense. No foolish dramatics, please. Just listen to me, and try to understand. There were Greek philosophers once, named Leucippus and Democritus, who evolved an atomic theory. All matter, they said, was composed of atoms. Varieties of atoms were distinct and changeless and by their different combinations with each other formed the various substances found in nature. That theory was not the result of experiment or observation. It came into being, somehow, full-grown.
'The didactic Roman poet Lucretius, in his "De Rerum Natura," - "On the Nature of Things" - elaborated on that theory and throughout manages to sound startlingly modern.
'In Hellenistic times, Hero built a steam engine and weapons of war became almost mechanized. The period has been referred to as an abortive mechanical age, which came to nothing because, somehow, it neither grew out of nor fitted into its social and economic milieu. Alexandrian science was a queer and rather inexplicable phenomenon.
'Then one might mention the old Roman legend about the books of the Sibyl that contained mysterious information direct from the gods -
'In other words, gentlemen, while you are right that any change in the course of past events, however trifling, would have incalculable consequences, and while I also believe that you are right in supposing that any random change is much more likely to be for the worse than for the better, I must point out that you are nevertheless wrong in your final conclusions.
'Because this is the world in which the Greek chemistry text was sent back.
'This has been a Red Queen's race, if you remember your "Through the Looking Glass." In the Red, Queen's country, one had to run as fast as one could merely to stay in the same place. And so it was in this case! Tywood may have thought he was creating a new world, but it was I who prepared the translations, and I took care that only such passages as would account for the queer scraps of knowledge the ancients apparently got from nowhere would be included.
'And my only intention, for all my racing, was to stay in the same place.'
Three weeks passed; three months; three years. Nothing happened. When nothing happens, you have no proof. We gave up trying to explain, and we ended, the Boss and I, by doubting it ourselves.
The case never ended. Boulder could not be considered a criminal without being considered a world savior as well, and vice versa. He was ignored. And in the end, the case was neither solved, nor closed out; merely put in a file all by itself, under the designation '?' and buried in the deepest vault in Washington.
The Boss is in Washington now; a big wheel. And I'm Regional Head of the Bureau.
Boulder is still assistant professor, though. Promotions are slow at the University.
The Red Queen's Race,' my fifty-eighth story, was the first to be written by Dr. Asimov.
In September I began another story, 'Mother Earth,' and submitted it to Campbell on October 12, 1948. After a comparatively small revision of the ending, he took that one, too.
Mother Earth [10]
'But can you be certain? Are you sure that even a professional historian can always distinguish between victory and defeat?'
Gustav Stein, who delivered himself of that mocking question with a whiskered smile and a gentle wipe at the gray moustache from the neighborhood of which he had just removed an empty glass, was not an historian. He was a physiologist.
But his companion was an historian, and he accepted the gentle thrust with a smile of his own.
Stein's apartment was, for Earth, quite luxurious. It lacked the empty privacy of the Outer Worlds, of course, since from its window there stretched outward a phenomenon that belonged only to the home planet - a city. A large city, full of people, rubbing shoulders, mingling sweat -
Nor was Stein's apartment fitted with its own power and its own utility supply. It lacked even the most elementary quota of positronic robots. In short, it lacked the dignity of self-sufficiency, and like all things on Earth, it was merely part of a community, a pendant unit of a cluster, a portion of a mob.
But Stein was an Earthman by birth and used to it. And after all, by Earth standards the apartment was still luxurious.
It was just that looking outward through the same windows before which lay the city, one could see the stars and among them the Outer Worlds, where there were no cities but only gardens; where the lawns were streaks of emerald, where all human beings were kings, and where all good Earthmen earnestly and vainly hoped to go some day.
Except for a few who knew better - like Gustav Stein.
The Friday evenings with Edward Field belonged to that class of ritual which comes with age and quiet life. It broke the week pleasantly for two elderly bachelors, and gave them an innocuous reason to linger over the sherry and the stars. It took them away from the crudities of life, and, most of all, it let them talk.
Field, especially, as a lecturer, scholar and man of modest means quoted chapter and verse from his still uncompleted history of Terrestrian Empire,…,
'I wait for the last act,' he explained. Then I can call it the "Decline and Fall of Empire" and publish it.'
'You must expect the last act to come soon, then.'
'In a sense, it has come already. It is just that it is best to wait for all to recognize that fact. You see, there are three times when an Empire or an Economic System or a Social Institution falls, you skeptic -'
Field paused for effect and waited patiently for Stein to say, 'And those times are?'
'First,' Field ticked off a right forefinger, 'there is the time when just a little nub shows up that points an inexorable way to finality. It can't be seen or recognized until the finality arrives, when the original nub becomes visible to hindsight.'