Marlowe stared at his irrevocable clock. His interphone light flickered,
and he touched the switch absently.
"Yes, Mary?"
"Will there be anything else, Mr. Secretary?"
"No, thank you, Mary. Good night."
"Good night, sir."
There was no appeal. The day was over, and he had to go home.
He stared helplessly at his empty office, his mind automatically
counting the pairs of departing footsteps that sounded momentarily as
clerks and stenographers crossed the walk below his partly-open window.
Finally he rolled his chair back and pushed himself to his feet.
Disconsolate, he moved irresolutely to the window and watched the people
leave.
Washington--aging, crowded Washington, mazed by narrow streets, carrying
the burden of the severe, unimaginative past on its grimy
architecture--respired heavily under the sinking sun.
The capital ought to be moved, he thought as he'd thought every night at
this time. Nearer the heart of the empire. Out of this steamy bog. Out
of this warren.
His heavy lips moved into an ironical comment on his own thoughts. No
one was ever going to move the empire's traditional seat. There was too
much nostalgia concentrated here, along with the humidity. Some day,
when the Union was contiguous with the entire galaxy, men would still
call Washington, on old, out-of-the-way Earth, their capital. Man was
not a rigorously logical race, as a race.
The thought of going home broke out afresh, insidiously avoiding the
barriers of bemusement which he had tried to erect, and he turned
abruptly away from the window, moving decisively so as to be able to
move at all. He yanked open a desk drawer and stuffed his jacket pockets
with candy bars, ripping the film from one and chewing on its end while
he put papers in his brief case.
Finally, he could not delay any longer. Everyone else was out of the
building, and the robots were taking over. Metal treads spun along the
corridors, bearing brooms, and the robot switchboards guarded the
communications of the Ministry. Soon the char-robots would be bustling
into this very office. He sighed and walked slowly out, down the empty
halls where no human eye could see him waddling.
* * * * *
He stepped into his car, and as he opened the door the automatic
recording said "Home, please," in his own voice. The car waited until he
was settled and then accelerated gently, pointing for his apartment.
The recording had been an unavoidable but vicious measure of his own.
He'd had to resort to it, for the temptation to drive to a terminal, to
an airport, or rocket field, or railroad station--_anywhere_--had become
excruciating.
The car stopped for a pedestrian light, and a sports model bounced
jauntily to a stop beside it. The driver cocked an eyebrow at Marlowe
and chuckled. "Say, Fatso, which one of you's the Buick?" Then the light
changed, the car spurted away, and left Marlowe cringing.
He would not get an official car and protect himself with its license
number. He would not be a coward. He _would_ not!
His fingers shaking, he tore the film from another candy bar.
* * * * *
Marlowe huddled in his chair, the notebook clamped on one broad thigh by
his heavy hand, his lips mumbling nervously while his pencil-point
checked off meter.
"Dwell in aching discontent," he muttered. "No. Not that." He stared
down at the floor, his eyes distant.
"Bitter discontent," he whispered. He grunted softly with breath that
had to force its way past the constricting weight of his hunched chest.
"Bitter dwell." He crossed out the third line, substituted the new one,
and began to read the first two verses to himself.
"_We are born of Humankind--
This our destiny:
To bitter dwell in discontent
Wherever we may be._
"_To strangle with the burden
Of that which heels us on.
To stake our fresh beginnings
When frailer breeds have done._"
He smiled briefly, content. It still wasn't perfect, but it was getting
closer. He continued:
"_To pile upon the ashes
Of races in decease
Such citadels of our kind's own
As fortify no--_"
"What are you doing, David?" his wife asked over his shoulder.
Flinching, he pulled the notebook closer into his lap, bending forward
in an instinctive effort to protect it.
The warm, loving, sawing voice went on. "Are you writing another poem,
David? Why, I thought you'd given that up!"
"It's ... it's nothing, really, uh ... Leonora. Nothing much. Just a ...
a thing I've had running around my head. Wanted to get rid of it."
His wife leaned over and kissed his cheek clumsily. "Why, you old big
dear! I'll bet it's for me. Isn't it, David? Isn't it for me?"
He shook his head in almost desperate regret. "I'm ... I'm afraid not,
uh--" Snorer. "It's about something else, Leonora."
"Oh." She came around the chair, and he furtively wiped his cheek with
a hasty hand. She sat down facing him, smiling with entreaty. "Would you
read it to me anyway, David? Please, dear?"
"Well, it's not ... not finished yet--not right."
"You don't have to, David. It's not important. Not really." She sighed
deeply.
He picked up the notebook, his breath cold in his constricted throat.
"All right," he said, the words coming out huskily, "I'll read it. But
it's not finished yet."
"If you don't want to--"
* * * * *
He began to read hurriedly, his eyes locked on the notebook, his voice a
suppressed hoarse, spasmodic whisper.
"_Such citadels of our kind's own
As fortify no peace._
"_No wall can offer shelter,
No roof can shield from pain.
We cannot rest; we are the damned;
We must go forth again._
"_Unnumbered we must--_"
"David, are you sure about those last lines?" She smiled apologetically.
"I know I'm old-fashioned, but couldn't you change that? It seems so ...
so harsh. And I think you may have unconsciously borrowed it from
someone else. I can't help thinking I've heard it before, somewhere?
Don't you think so?"
"I don't know, dear. You may be right about that word, but it doesn't
really matter, does it? I mean, I'm not going to try to get it
published, or anything."
"_I_ know, dear, but still--"
He was looking at her desperately.
"I'm sorry, dear!" she said contritely. "Please go on. Don't pay any
attention to my stupid comments."
"They're not stupid--"
"Please, dear. Go on."
His fingers clamped on the edge of the notebook.
"_Unnumbered we must wander,
Break, and bleed, and die.
Implacable as ocean,
Our tide must drown the sky._
"_What is our expiation,
For what primeval crime,
That we must go on marching
Until the crash of time?_
"_What hand has shaped so cruelly?
What whim has cast such fate?
Where is, in our creation,
The botch that makes us great?_"
"Oh, that's good, darling! That's very good. I'm proud of you, David."
"I think it stinks," he said evenly, "but, anyway, there are two more
verses."
"_David!_"
Grimly, he spat out the last eight lines.
"_Why are we ever gimleted
By empire's irony?
Is discontent the cancered price
Of Earthman's galaxy?_"
Leonora, recoiling from his cold fury, was a shaking pair of shoulders
and a mass of lank hair supported by her hands on her face while she
sobbed.
"_Are our souls so much perverted?
Can we not relent?
Or are the stars the madman's cost
For his inborn discontent?_
"Good night, Leonora."