_The age-old battle of the sexes
may yet be the deadliest of all!_
[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from
Infinity Science Fiction, June 1956.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that
the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]
George Washington was the father of his country.
I am not George Washington. My name is Andrew Jones, and it is because
of me there will be no more Joneses in the world. There will be, in
fact, no more anybody.
This is the end of the world.
It did not come through fire or ice, with a bang or a whimper, from
solar catastrophe or man's suicidal mis-use of atomic power or any
of the other fearful possibilities with which the Sunday-supplement
writers once terrified us. It came through the exposure of an age-old
conspiracy.
I did it. My excuse is the eternal excuse of the scientist: I sought
the truth. How it was used was not my concern.
But that it should have led to the depopulation of the Earth concerns
me, as it must concern every man, and I have an unshakable feeling of
guilt.
Perhaps I write this now in the hope that I may somehow purge myself. I
know that it will never be read.
The linen wick gutters in the saucer of melted tallow. It casts strange
shadows on the cellar wall. Sometimes I think that they are the ghosts
of children come to haunt me, the ghosts of all the little children who
will never be born.
But this is not what I sat down to write while I waited for Lindsay to
return. What is keeping Lindsay? He should be back by now.