One Robert James Dahl, described as the owner and publisher of a Middle Western newspaper, was being sought by the Defense Department and the FBI in connection with the disappearance of certain classified documents.
The next day, the fifth, was Saturday. At two in the morning on a Sabbath, Tel Aviv seemed as dead as Angkor. We had four hours there, between planes; we could have spent them in the airport waiting room, but I was wakeful and I wanted to talk to Aza-Kra. There was one ancient taxi at the airport; I had the driver take us into the town and leave us there, down in the harbor section, until plane time.
We sat on a bench behind the sea wall and watched the moonlight on the Mediterranean. Parallel banks of faintly-silvered clouds arched over us to northward; the air was fresh and cool.
After a while I said, “You know that I’m only playing this your way for one reason. As far as the rest of it goes, the more I think about it the less I like it.”
“Why?”
“A dozen reasons. The biological angle, for one. I don’t like violence, I don’t like war, but it doesn’t matter what I like. They’re biologically necessary, they eliminate the unfit.”
“Do you say that only the unfit are killed in wars?”
“That isn’t what I mean. In modem war the contest isn’t between individuals, it’s between whole populations. Nations, and groups of nations. It’s a cruel, senseless, wasteful business, and when you’re in the middle of it it’s hard to see any good at all in it, but it works—the survivors survive, and that’s the only test there is.”
“Our biologists do not take this view.” He added, “Neither do yours.”
I said, “How’s that?”
“Your biologists agree with ours that war is not biological. It is social. When so many are killed, no stock improves. All suffer. It is as you yourself say, the contest is between nations. But their wars kill men.”
I said, “All right, I concede that one. But we’re not the only kind of animal on this planet, and we didn’t get to be the dominant species without fighting. What are we supposed to do if we run into a hungry lion—argue with him?”
“In a few weeks there will be no more lions.”
I stared at him. “This affects Hons, too? Tigers, elephants, everything?”
“Everything of sufficient brain. Roughly, everything above the level of your insects.”
“But I understood you to say that the catalyst—that it took a different catalyst for each species.”
“No. All those with spines and warm blood have the same ancestors. Your snakes may perhaps need a different catalyst, and I believe you have some primitive sea creatures which kill, but they are not important.”
I said, “My God.” I thought of lions, wolves, coyotes, house-cats, lying dead beside their prey. Eagles, hawks and owls tumbling out of the sky. Ferrets, stoats, weasels ...
The world a big garden, for protected children.
My fists clenched. “But this is a million times worse than I had any idea. It’s insane. You’re upsetting the whole natural balance, you’re mocking it cross-ways. Just for a start, what the hell are we going to do about rats and mice? That’s—” I choked on my tongue. There were too many images in my mind to put any of them into words. Rats like a tidal wave, filling a street from wall to wall. Deer swarming out of the forests. The sky blackening with crows, sparrows, jays.
“It will be difficult for some years,” Aza-Kra said. “Perhaps even as difficult as you now think. But you say that to fight for survival is good. Is it not better to fight against other species than among yourselves?”
“Fight!” I said. “What have you left us to fight with? How many rats can a man kill before he drops dead from shock?”
“It is possible to kill without causing pain or shock....
You would have thought of this, although it is a new idea for you. Even your killing of animals for food can continue. We do not ask you to become as old as we are in a day. Only to put behind you your cruelty which has no purpose.”
He had answered me, as always; and as always, the answer was two-edged. It was possible to kill painlessly, yes. And the only weapon Aza-Kra had brought to Earth, apparently, was an anesthetic gas....
We landed at Srinager, in the Vale of Kashmir, at high noon: a sea of white light under a molten-metal sky.
Crossing the field, I saw a group of white-turbaned figures standing at the gate. I squinted at them through the glare; heat-waves made them jump and waver, but in a moment I was sure. They were bush-bearded Sikh policemen, and there were eight of them.
I pressed Aza-Kra’s arm sharply and held my breath.
A moment later we picked our way through the sprawled line of passengers to the huddle of bodies at the gate. The passport examiner, a slender Hindu, lay a yard from the Sikhs. I plucked a sheet of paper out of his hand.
Sure enough, it was a list of the serial numbers of the passports we had stolen from the Paris consulate.
Bad luck. It was only six-thirty in Paris now, and on a Saturday morning at that; we should have had at least six hours more. But something could have gone wrong at any one of the seven consulates—an after-hours appointment, or a worried wife, say. After that the whole thing would have unraveled.
“How much did you give them this time?” I asked.
“As before. Twenty hours.”
“All right, good. Let’s go.”
He had overshot his range a little: all four of the hackdrivers waiting outside the airport building were snoring over their wheels. I dumped the skinniest one in the back seat with Aza-Kra and took over.
Not for the first time, it occurred to me that without me or somebody just like me Aza-Kra would be helpless. It wasn’t just a matter of getting out of Chillicothe; he couldn’t drive a car or fly a plane, he couldn’t pass for human by himself; he couldn’t speak without giving himself away. Free, with no broken bones, he could probably escape recapture indefinitely; but if he wanted to go anywhere he would have to walk.
And not for the first time, I tried to see into a history book that hadn’t been written yet. My name was there, that much was certain, providing there was going to be any history to write. But was it a name like Blondel... or did it sound more like Vidkun Quisling?
We had to go south; there was nothing in any other direction but the highest mountains in the world. We didn’t have Pakistan visas, so Lahore and Amritsar, the obvious first choices, were out. The best we could do was Chamba, about two hundred rail miles southeast on the Srinager-New Delhi line. It wasn’t on the principal air routes, but we could get a plane’ there to Saharanpur, which was.
There was an express leaving in half an hour, and we took it. I bought an English-language newspaper at the station and read it backward and forward for four hours; Aza-Kra spent the time apparently asleep, with his cone, hidden by the black hat, tilted out the window.
The “epidemic” had spread to five Western states, plus Quebec, Ontario and Manitoba, and parts of Mexico and Cuba ... plus England and France, I knew, but there was nothing about that in my Indian paper; too early.
In Chamba I bought the most powerful battery-operated portable radio I could find; I wished I had thought of it sooner. I checked with the airport: there was a flight leaving Saharanpur for Port Blair at eight o’clock.
Port Blair, in the Andamans, is Indian territory; we wouldn’t need to show our passports. What we were going to do after that was another question.
I could have raided another set of consulates, but I knew it would be asking for trouble. Once was bad enough; twice, and when we tried it a third time—as we would have to, unless I found some other answer—I was willing to bet we would find them laying for us, with gas masks and riot guns.