"Yes," said the Father patiently, "I must take you away for a while,
for there is much that you must learn. Go into the corridor at once,
for I am sending an anesthetic into that little room, as I once
sent it mercifully to you when Nedra bore her child. Keep walking,
O'Hara--further--and further--and you must close your eyes, for this
will be very swift--"
O'Hara clenched his fists against a sudden rush of pressure. His knees
were buckling and his mouth stretched wide and in the blackness that
swirled over him his senses reeled.
"You may approach my bed," the Father whispered.
And it had been done. O'Hara was again inside the great hall of the
Father, just below the dais. The Father's feeble hand was beckoning.
"Just so far, O'Hara, and watch my hand upon this board--don't think
that if I relax my touch upon this key you could save Nedra and the
child. I do not like to threaten you, but you have permitted Anstruther
to convert you, O'Hara. The absurdity of defying death for a mistaken
altruism does impress a man your age. But do you really believe,
O'Hara, that I am as wicked as he thinks?"
"I saw the masses dying in Emporia. I saw my wife and baby sinking in
that translucent room."
"Cruelty is comparative, O'Hara. And not all of it, anywhere, is
personal. Do you suppose that I alone shaped this hemisphere and
am alone responsible for the evils in it? You must go now into the
library behind this dais, O'Hara--you must read how these things really
happened. I did not alone erect the Curtain. I did not build the atomic
reactors that made the Curtain possible. I did not make the initial
choice. All these things were done, after the Third World War, by men
who were mature when I was still a child. I inherited the conduct of
these continents as you have found them. I have built nothing, achieved
nothing, save to stay alive for two hundred and seventy years while
all my peers were perishing.
"Two hundred and seventy years," he whispered. "Surely that would amaze
the doctors of your world--surely one at least of them would wish to
return with you through the Curtain solely to learn how I have lived
this long. And it is so simple--I prolong my life the way your doctors
empty bowels. I take little pills, O'Hara, that any chemist of your
world can easily compound. Yet were your doctor to come through the
Curtain for this secret, I would not talk with him of how to prolong
life, but of euthanasia. I am tired, O'Hara.
"And now you too think I am a tyrant. Let me tell you this,
O'Hara--were I to cast aside this keyboard and forget the masses that
you think I tyrannize, what has happened at Emporia would be multiplied
in deadliness a thousand times. No, not by the Deluge but by the
scourges it prevents, pestilence and hunger.
"Who do you condemn for pestilence and hunger in your hemisphere? The
truth is, isn't it, that you consider them unavoidable--yet by the
Deluge I avoid them here. And by preserving life within my brain, long
after I have lost the joy of life, I do maintain these continents as
they came to me.
"Anstruther calls this tyranny. I happen to call it my duty. But
perhaps you think Anstruther is right about it. Perhaps I should summon
him here and explain to him the working of the integrocalculators
through this keyboard. He could destroy me then, and assume my
functions. And he could continue, for the two years that remain to him,
to try to awaken in the dead brains of the Sons the spark of their
bred-out intelligence.
"Do you know his possibilities of success? If all atomic pollution of
this Hemisphere were suddenly to end and decontamination were in time
achieved, then in this pollution-free hemisphere Anstruther could breed
a race of thinking men, starting with the Sons and the women of the
masses--in time he could do it. If he could live five hundred thousand
years he might accomplish it. But he has just two years.
"But let us suppose he had his five hundred thousand years. What do
you think would happen to his youthful altruism in that time, when I,
within a modest three centuries, have become such a callous tyrant?
"Now you must go into the library, O'Hara, and later I shall show you
how the integrocalculators think for you, and still later you must see
the City of New York, the restored city, duplicating to the last dirty
tenement that city of the twentieth century that was ravaged in the
Third World War. And I think then that you will begin to understand the
broader aspects of a tyranny like mine. You will perhaps discover that
from evil sometimes comes a little good.
"For I am granting now that the Atomic Curtain is an evil thing. It has
brought this hemisphere the security we sought, both against aggression
and want, but what has happened here is infinitely more tragic than
war. Grant it--the Curtain is evil. But what do you think it is that
keeps the peace for Europe and Asia and Africa? What unifies them,
O'Hara? It is only the terror of what exists behind this Curtain. And
if they of your hemisphere thought tomorrow that the Curtain could be
pierced, what do you think would happen to that peace and unity? And if
indeed this hemisphere were helpless, what do you think your continents
would do to us?
"So in that respect, at least, the Curtain is not altogether evil. For
all those that it has destroyed within this hemisphere, it has saved
equally as many on your side of it.
"But as you observe the integrocalculators, notice that we are not
really helpless. I can still enforce this peace. If I touch this little
key, I release toward the major population areas of your hemisphere
a barrage of rockets that would make the holocausts of the Third
World War seem trivial. When you return home, O'Hara, if you must
tell them that the Curtain can be pierced, also remind them that the
piercing works both ways, and that what seems to be the possibility of
conquering this hemisphere--breaching these centuries of peace--is in
fact a terrible delusion.
"And observe, O'Hara, as you study the integrocalculators, that
the charted position of the Atomic Curtain depends solely upon the
adjustment of regulators for latitude and longitude. And were I now
to touch this key--this one!--the Curtain would everywhere advance,
crossing the seas, pushing through your helpless continents, but
leaving in its wake as it progressed only the wastelands of radioactive
pollution. Remember this, O'Hara, when you speak to your comrades of
the International Patrol. With the quiver of my finger I can wipe their
aircraft from the skies.
"And also observe, O'Hara, that the scintillometers of Washington are
working perfectly. And were the scientists of your Eastern Hemisphere
to set in action any new atomic ovens, I would know it instantly. I
could release my rockets. I could advance the Curtain. They would have
to move very swiftly to forestall me, O'Hara. And I do not believe they
could do it soon enough.
"Yet even if you had such excellently trained scientists, and could set
up your reactors and place your warheads in your rockets and launch
them before my rockets or my Curtain were to reach you, your rockets
would thunder down only upon the wastelands that compose the surface
of these western continents. You would destroy our photosynthetrons,
the source of our food, but that is all. You would not reach our
subterranean cities, or the vast reservoirs of food and water beneath
the surface or the intricate tunnels of the Tube. You would hurt us,
yes--but you would not destroy us, O'Hara. And within minutes, then, we
would as surely wipe your continents clean of life as with this shaking
hand I wipe the perspiration from my forehead.
"Such is the actual power this keyboard--or what it stands for--gives
me. Anstruther thinks I am the tyrant of a degraded race, and the
degrader of it. I could as easily become the master of the entire
earth, were I to wish it. But I don't, O'Hara. My burdens here are
sufficient. Is this the thinking of an evil tyrant?"