The Son glanced hastily toward the great screen in the hall. He
straightened his back. "I destroyed her at once. She was consigned to
the Pits of Yellowstone."
"And did the Father know that?"
"The Father," replied the Son, "knows everything."
"Yes," said the Father's voice, while a blazing light came suddenly
upon the screen, "Even what you are thinking now, O'Hara. But I did not
know that he remembered--I did not think it possible. I suppose I must
consider it as dangerous. If you will come this way, O'Hara, toward the
screen, I shall give you another little lesson in morality--"
And O'Hara did as he was told, leaving the Son who now was kneeling
with his eyes downcast. Another Son came forward, aimed his tubelike
weapon at the kneeling, hairless apelike hulk, and fired. The Son who
had remembered vanished in the flame.
"You have seen enough of the subterranean city," said the Father
presently. "You must go now to the island where the ancient city stood,
O'Hara. And then to the Monument."
The Tube beneath the river took O'Hara and his new escort to the island
where a shaft ascended. O'Hara emerged again for the first time since
he had descended into the earth at Emporia. His eyes involuntarily
swept in every direction, seeing the swift, free-flowing waters of the
mighty river, the strangely wonderful irregular contours of the earth,
and above all the sky--the limitless pale sky that seemed, as it had
never seemed before, celestial--the heavens, freedom, not of man. His
lungs were gulping deeply of an air he had forgotten.
"This sight amazes you?" the Son beside him said.
"It awakens me."
"You have been sleeping?"
"Dreaming."
"I understand dreams," the Son said sympathetically. "In Washington
they taught us what they meant. They are a memory of things we should
forget--and do forget when we awake."
"You dream?" O'Hara asked.
"Oh, yes--all of us dream sometimes. Even the masses. We dream of
cities such as this before us, great heaps of rubble, and fire is
raining down upon us and we die in heaps untidily, or live untidily,
and our bellies are empty, and we must fight with one another. These
things were actuality before the early days, before the destruction of
this city that you see ruined before us. Here," said the Son, "a tower
once stood. Now, as you see, it is only some bits of metal and crumbled
stone. Our ancestors lived in whole corridors of such towers."
"I know," O'Hara said. "I have seen photographs of it within the
library at Washington."
"But there was no resemblance to the photographs, only miles and miles
of heaped-up earth and flame-seared rubble with rusting beams and steel
protruding from the surface. Small stunted shrubs had sprouted in the
ruins, and a strange yellow leafless vine that matted itself thickly
close against the ground. A jagged fragment of stone blocks was thrust
far up.
"The greatest tower of all," the Son explained. "Hundreds of feet
it soared above the earth, yet when the rockets came, it crashed as
quickly as the least of them. They say that some of those who dwelt
here managed to escape, being shielded from atomic fire by those whose
bodies lay above them, and so they fled across the river, living for a
while upon the surface above where we have built our subterranean city.
But most of them died of diseases that some of the rockets brought. A
few at last went north, toward what was then called Canada--"
"I know," O'Hara said. "I've read of it."
"And more died there. Only the strongest then were able to escape
toward the west, perhaps into the mountains where they say a strange
new race now dwells, huge red-haired creatures, as large as yourself,
with short arms and stiff spines, unprepossessing creatures and enemies
of the Father."
"Unprepossessing?"
"Yes. But do not take offense. Since you have come from Washington we
do not mind you. I have heard it said," he whispered, "that even the
Father himself--is not like us. Nor should he be, of course," the Son
said hastily, and resumed his speech: "There were in this ancient city
some ten or more millions of inhabitants before the Third World War,
but they were situated very stupidly, grouped together densely, and we
have avoided that mistake in rebuilding our new subterranean New York.
Also as an object lesson of how foolishly our race once planned, the
Monument was built--a replica of the ancient city as it was before its
destruction. We go there now."
For four days O'Hara wandered through the empty Monument.
The fifth day, he stood before the great screen in the Guild of the
subterranean city across the river and listened to the Father's voice.
"Have you seen it, O'Hara?"
"I have been there, Father."
"Is there more you wish to see?"
"Nothing."
"What did you think of it?"
O'Hara said, "I thought this, Father: that kind of city could not
possibly have grown up behind your Curtain. There is too much of the
greatness and the cheapness of the human soul in it. There is too much
of free and human aspiration, unsafe for you perhaps, maudlin I feel
certain, yet almost by the fact of these defects fare more glorious
in its total achievement than all the glittering corridors and vast
chambers of your geometrical metropolises."
The Father's voice seemed melancholy. "That is true, O'Hara. What you
say is true. Yet only my Curtain could have saved that city. Such is
the paradox that I have faced alone through all these years, until this
hour. You must return to me now. I have solved my dilemma. And possibly
I can solve yours."