Women just hadn’t been a factor in Walter’s life since Martha had died a year and a half ago. Not that Martha hadn’t been a good wife, albeit a bit on the bossy side. Yes, he’d loved Martha, in a deep, quiet way. He was only forty now, and he’d been only thirty-eight when Martha had died, but, well, he just hadn’t thought about women since then. His life had been his books, the ones he read and the ones he wrote. Now there wasn’t any point in writing books, but he had the rest of his life to spend in reading them.
True, company would be nice, but he’d get along without it. Maybe after a while, he’d get so he’d enjoy the occasional company of one of the Zan, although that was a bit difficult to imagine. Their thinking was so alien to his that there seemed no common ground for discussion, intelligent though they were, in a way.
An ant is intelligent, in a way, but no man ever established communication with an ant. He thought of the Zan, somehow, as super-ants, although they didn’t look like ants, and he had a hunch that the Zan regarded the human race as the human race had regarded ordinary ants. Certainly what they’d done to Earth had been what men did to ant hills-and it had been done much more efficiently.
But they had given him plenty of books. They’d been nice about that, as soon as he had told them what he wanted, and he had told them that the moment he had learned that he was destined to spend the rest of his life alone in this room. The rest of his life, or as the Zan had quaintly expressed it, forever. Even a brilliant mind and the Zan obviously had brilliant minds has its idiosyncrasies. The Zan had learned to speak Terrestrial English in a manner of hours but they persisted in separating syllables. But we digress.
There was a knock on the door.
You’ve got it all now, except the three dots, the ellipsis, and I’m going to fill that in and show you that it wasn’t horrible at all.
Walter Phelan called out, “Come in,” and the door opened. It was of course, only a Zan. It looked exactly like the other Zan; if there was any way of telling one of them from another, Walter hadn’t found it. It was about four feet tall and it looked like nothing on earth, nothing, that is, that had been on Earth until the Zan came there.
Walter said, “Hello, George.” When he’d learned that none of them had names he decided to call them all George, and the Zan didn’t seem to mind.
This one said, “Hel-lo, Wal-ter.” That was ritual; the knock on the door and the greetings. Walter waited.
“Point one,” said the Zan “You will please henceforth sit with your chair turned the other way.”
Walter said, “I thought so, George. That plain wall is transparent from the other side, isn’t it?”
“It is trans-parent.”
“Just what I thought. I’m in a zoo Right?”
“That is right.”
Walter sighed. “I knew it. That plain, blank wall, without a single piece of furniture against it. And made of something different from the other walls. If I persist in sitting with my back to it, what then? You will kill me? I ask hopefully.”
“We will take a-way your books.”
“You’ve got me there George. All right I’ll face the other way when I sit and read. How many other animals besides me are in this zoo of yours?”
“Two hundred and six-teen.”
Walter shook his head. “Not complete, George. Even a bush league zoo can beat that could beat that, I mean, if there were any bush league zoos left. Did you just pick at random?”
“Random samples yes All species would have been too man-y. Male and female each of one hundred and eight kinds.”
“What do you feed them? The carnivorous ones, I mean.”
“We make food Synthetic.”
“Smart,” said Walter. “And the flora? You got a collection of that, too?”
“Flora was not hurt by vibrations. It is all still growing.”
“Nice for the flora,” said Walter. “You weren’t as hard on it, then, as you were on the fauna, Well, George, you started out with ‘point one.’ I deduced there is a point two kicking around somewhere. What is it?”
“Something we do not un-der-stand. Two of the other animals sleep and do not wake? They are cold.”
“It happens in the best regulated zoos, George,” Walter Phelan said. “Probably not a thing wrong with them except that they’re dead.”
“Dead? That means stopped. But nothing stopped them. Each was a-lone.”
Walter stared at the Zan. “Do you mean, George, you don’t know what natural death is?”
“Death is when a being is killed, stopped from living.”
Walter Phelan blinked. “How old are you, George?” he asked.
“Six-teen-you would not know the word. Your planet went a-round your sun a-bout seven thou-sand times, I am still young.”
Walter whistled softly. “A babe in arms,” he said. He thought hard a moment. “Look, George,” he said, “you’ve got something to learn about this planet you’re on. There’s a guy here who doesn’t hang around where you come from. An old man with a beard and a scythe and an hour-glass. Your vibrations didn’t kill him.”
“What is he?”
“Call him the Grim Reaper, George. Old Man Death. Our people and animals live until somebody, Old Man Death. stops them ticking.”
“He stopped the two creatures? He will stop more?”
Walter opened his mouth to answer, and then closed it again. Something in the Zan’s voice indicated that there would be a worried frown on his face, if he had had a face recognizable as such.
“How about taking me to these animals who won’t wake up?” Walter asked. “Is that against the rules?”
“Come,” said the Zan.
That had been the afternoon of the second day. It was the next morning that the Zan came back, several of them. They began to move Walter Phelan’s books and furniture. When they’d finished that, they moved him. He found himself in a much larger room a hundred yards away.
He sat and waited and this time, too, when there was a knock on the door, he knew what was coming and politely stood up. A Zan opened the door and stood aside. A woman entered.
Walter bowed slightly, “Walter Phelan,” he said, “in case George didn’t tell you my name. George tries to be polite, but he doesn’t know all of our ways.”
The woman seemed calm; he was glad to notice that. She said, “My name is Grace Evans, Mr. Phelan. What’s this all about? Why did they bring me here?”
Walter was studying her as she talked. She was tall, fully as tall as he, and well-proportioned. She looked to be somewhere in her early thirties, about the age Martha had been. She had the same calm confidence about her that he’d always liked about Martha, even though it had contrasted with his own easygoing informality. In fact, he thought she looked quite a bit like Martha.
“I think I know why they brought you here but let’s go back a bit,” he said. “Do you know just what has happened otherwise?”
“You mean that they’ve killed everyone?”
“Yes. Please sit down. You know how they accomplished it?” She sank into a comfortable chair nearby.
“No,” she said, “I don’t know just how. Not that it matters does it?”
“Not a lot. But here’s the story: what I know of it from getting one of them to talk, and from piecing things together. There isn’t a great number of them here, anyway. I don’t know how numerous a race they are where they came from and I don’t know where that is, but I’d guess it’s outside the Solar System. You’ve seen the space ship they came in?”