"No! I want to talk to someone _sane_! You and Petey and I--we're all
insane, you know. Three years now, playing God, waiting for some land,
any land, to become habitable. And knowing everything, and surrounded
by people who are sane only because I made sure they would know
nothing." He stepped forward, glaring at Harry. "Now do you understand?
I went across the country, picking up a few of the few left alive. Most
were farmers, and even where some weren't I picked the farmers anyway.
Because farmers are what we'll need, and all the rest can evolve later.
I put you and the others, eighty-six all told, from every section of
the country, on my world, the only uncontaminated land left. I gave
you back your old lives. I couldn't give you big crops because we
don't need big crops. We would only exhaust our limited soil with big
crops. But I gave you vegetable gardens and livestock and, best of all,
_sanity_! I wiped the insane moments from your minds. I gave you peace
and consigned myself, my sons, my own wife...."
He choked and stopped.
Stan ran across the room to the switch. Harry watched him, and his
brain struggled with an impossible concept. He heard the engines and
remembered the ocean on two sides; on four sides had he bothered to
check south and east; on _all_ sides if that fence continued to curve
inward. Ocean, and there was no ocean in Iowa.
And this wasn't Iowa.
_The explosions had ripped the world, and he'd tried to get to town to
save Davie, and there'd been no town and there'd been no people and
there'd been only death and poison in the air and even those few people
left had begun to die, and then the truck with the huge trailer had
come, the gleaming trailer with the little man and his trembling wife
and his two sons...._
* * * * *
Suddenly, he understood. And understanding brought not peace but the
greatest terror he'd ever known. He screamed, "We're on...." but the
switch was thrown and there was no more speech. For an hour. Then he
got out of the chair and said, "Sure glad I took my wife's advice and
came to see you, Doctor Hamming. I feel better already, and after only
one.... What do you call these treatments?"
"Diathermy," the little doctor muttered.
Harry gave him a five-dollar bill. The doctor gave him two singles in
change. "That's certainly reasonable enough," Harry said.
The doctor nodded. "There's a police officer in the hall. He'll drive
you home so there won't be any trouble with the travel regulations."
Harry said, "Thanks. Think we'll ever see the end of travel regulations
and rationing and all the rest of the emergency?"
"You will, Mr. Burr."
Harry walked to the door.
"We're on an ark," the doctor said.