It said, “Ask, ‘What is man?’”
Mechanically, he asked it.
“Man is a blind alley in evolution, who came too late to compete, who has always been controlled and played with by The Brightly Shining, which was old and wise before man walked erect.
“Man is a parasite upon a planet populated before he came, populated by a Being that is one and many, a billion cells but a single mind, a single intelligence, a single will—as is true of every other populated planet in the universe.
“Man is a joke, a clown, a parasite. He is nothing; he will be less.”
“Come and go mad.”
He was getting out of bed again; he was walking. Through the doorway of the cubicle, along the ward. To the door that led to the corridor; a thin crack of light showed under it. But this time his hand did not reach out for the knob. Instead he stood there facing the closed door, and it began to glow; slowly it became light and visible.
As though from somewhere an invisible spotlight played upon it, the door became a visible rectangle in the surrounding blackness; as brightly visible as the crack under it.
The voice said, “You see before you a cell of your ruler, a cell unintelligent in itself, yet a tiny part of a unit which is intelligent, one of a million units which make up the intelligence which rules the earth—and you. And which earth-wide intelligence is one of a million intelligences which rule the universe.”
“The door? I don’t—”
The voice spoke no more; it had withdrawn, but somehow inside his mind was the echo of silent laughter.
He leaned closer and saw what he was meant to see. An ant was crawling up the door.
His eyes followed it, and numbing horror crawled apace, up his spine. A hundred things that had been told and shown him suddenly fitted into a pattern, a pattern of sheer horror. The black, the white, the red; the black ants, the white ants, the red ants; the players with men, separate lobes of a single group brain, the intelligence that was one. Man an accident, a parasite, a pawn; a million planets in the universe inhabited each by an insect race that was a single intelligence for the planet—and all the intelligences together were the single cosmic intelligence that was—God!
The one-syllable word wouldn’t come. He went mad, instead.
He beat upon the now—dark door with his bloody hands, with his knees, his face, with himself, although already he had forgotten why, had forgotten what he wanted to crush.
He was raving mad—dementia praecox, not paranoia—when they released his body by putting it into a strait jacket, released it from frenzy to quietude.
He was quietly mad—paranoia, not dementia praecox—when they released him as sane eleven months later.
Paranoia, you see, is a peculiar affliction; it has no physical symptoms, it is merely the presence of a fixed delusion. A series of metrazol shocks had cleared up the dementia praecox and left only the fixed delusion that he was George Vine, a reporter.
The asylum authorities thought he was, too, so the delusion was not recognized as such and they released him and gave him a certificate to prove he was sane.
He married Clare; he still works at the Blade—for a man named Candler. He still plays chess with his cousin, Charlie Doerr. He still sees—for periodic checkups—both Dr. Irving and Dr. Randolph.
Which of them smiles inwardly? What good would it do you to know? Yes it was, is, one of those four.
It doesn’t matter. Don’t you understand? Nothing matters!
Sentry
He was wet and muddy and hungry and cold, and he was fifty thousand light-years from home.
A strange blue sun gave light and the gravity, twice what he was used to, made every movement difficult.
But in tens of thousands of years this part of war hadn’t changed. The flyboys were fine with their sleek spaceships and their fancy weapons. When the chips are down, though, it was still the foot soldier, the infantry, that had to take the ground and hold it, foot by bloody foot. Like this damned planet of a star he’d never heard of until they’d landed him there. And now it was sacred ground because the aliens were there too. The aliens, the only other intelligent race in the Galaxy…cruel, hideous and repulsive monsters.
Contact had been made with them near the center of the Galaxy, after the slow, difficult colonization of a dozen thousand planets; and it had been war at sight; they’d shot without even trying to negotiate, or to make peace.
Now, planet by bitter planet, it was being fought out.
He was wet and muddy and hungry and cold, and the day was raw with a high wind that hurt his eyes. But the aliens were trying to infiltrate and every sentry post was vital.
He stayed alert, gun ready. Fifty thousand light-years from home, fighting on a strange world and wondering if he’d ever live to see home again.
And then he saw one of them crawling toward him. He drew a bead and fired. The alien made that strange horrible sound they all make, then lay still.
He shuddered at the sound and sight of the alien lying there. One ought to be able to get used to them after a while, but he’d never been able to. Such repulsive creatures they were, with only two arms and two legs, ghastly white skins and no scales.
ETAOIN SHRDLU
It was rather funny for a while, the business about Ronson’s Linotype. But it began to get a bit too sticky for comfort well before the end. And despite the fact that Ronson came out ahead on the deal, I’d have never sent him the little guy with the pimple, if I’d guessed what was going to happen. Fabulous profits or not, poor Ronson got too many gray hairs out of it.
“You’re Mr. Walter Merold?” asked the little guy with the pimple. He’d called at the desk of the hotel where I live, and I’d told them to send him on up.
I admitted my identity, and he said, “Glad to know you, Mr. Merold. I’m—” and he gave me his name, but I can’t remember now what it was. I’m usually good at remembering names.
I told him I was delighted to meet him and what did he want, and he started to tell me. I interrupted him before he got very far, though.
“Somebody gave you a wrong steer,” I told him. “Yes, I’ve been a printing technician, but I’m retired. Anyway, do you know that the cost of getting special Linotype mats cut would be awfully high? If it’s only one page you want printed with those special characters, you’d do a lot better to have somebody hand-letter it for you and then get a photographic reproduction in zinc.”
“But that wouldn’t do, Mr. Merold. Not at all. You see, the thing is a secret. Those I represent— But skip that. Anyway, I daren’t let anyone see it, as they would have to, to make a zinc.”
Just another nut, I thought, and looked at him closely.
He didn’t look nutty. He was rather ordinary-looking on the whole, although he had a foreign—rather an Asiatic—look about him, somehow, despite the fact that he was blond and fair-skinned. And he had a pimple on his forehead, in dead center just above the bridge of the nose. You’ve seen ones like it on statues of Buddha, and Orientals call it the pimple of wisdom and it’s something special.
I shrugged my shoulders. “Well,” I pointed out, “you can’t have the matrices cut for Linotype work without letting somebody see the characters you want on them, can you? And whoever runs the machine will also see—”
“Oh, but I’ll do that myself,” said the little guy with the pimple. (Ronson and I later called him the L.G.W.T.P., which stands for “little guy with the pimple,” because Ronson couldn’t remember his name, either, but I’m getting ahead of my story.) “Certainly the cutter will see them, but he’ll see them as individual characters, and that won’t matter. Then the actual setting of the type on the Linotype I can do myself. Someone can show me how to run one enough for me to set up one page—just a score of lines, really. And it doesn’t have to be printed here. Just the type is all I’ll want. I don’t care what it costs me.”