Mr. Paradee watched the sky. It is possible, he thought, entirely possible: a world dies of old age, peacefully, slowly, and the few who survive it cannot bear to leave. Except a handful with children who set out, not on a mad race for food and shelter, not on a search for paradise, but simply to find another home, among people. Possible. Of course, it’s possible.
Turning to look at the east, where the rim of the sea was tinged with dark, he sent his imaginary vision over the edge and around and circled the earth, so that he knew it visually for what it was — a great globe turning slowly in space, as other great globes were turning slowly in space.
How beautiful, he thought suddenly, must the earth be in approach! If you roamed the paths of satellites, you’d see it all, the whole round earth, immense — immense in haze. Oceans sprawling, rivers fingering, wandering continents, green and shadowy, clinging to the mother curve. And there, too small to see, infinitely small and tender-boned, were people. The little valiant, vulnerable people, ardent and self-aware. Strip them of their many surface differences, and you would find, he thought, a single likeness, a common majesty: their unfathomable capacity to care, to gain the point where life, as such, becomes a minor thing compared to that for which they live.
And at that point, he thought, there is no turning back. But where does it take us? Where are we going?
He sighed so deeply that everyone glanced at him and stirred. Miss Pomeroy got to her feet and brushed the sand from her clothes with a brisk motion.
“Time to pack up,” she said cheerfully. “Be dark soon. Wake up, sleepyheads.” She bent down and ruffled the drowsy children.
When they were ready to leave, baskets packed, children yawning, they all stood a moment, taking a last look out over the water. Then they saw it.
It appeared above the horizon, oblong and silent, reflecting the geranium glow of the setting sun and bathing them in its light. Speechless, they watched it approach and slow its speed. Just overhead, it veered northward, slowly circled the cove, and then returned to its point of origin, where it shot upward with such incredible swiftness that their eyes lost it and, a split second later, searching the sky could not find it again.
During the flurry of astonished exclamations which followed — pointing, comparing notes, questioning, surmising— Mr. Paradee turned his head and Miss Pomeroy caught his eye. Gazing at him, her expression slowly changed from amazement to startled inquiry. He quickly looked away.
Presently someone found the words to release them from their incredulity.
“You know what that thing was, don’t you? One of those big weather balloons.”
“Yes, but the shape—”
“Illusion. The way the light was reflecting, you see—”
“Yes, undoubtedly.”
“How about it, Mr. Paradee? It’s your sky.”
“Well, I have my secrets, you know,” he said hollowly, and they laughed a little, all but Miss Pomeroy, whose inquiring eyes were still upon him, grave now, and steady.
As they all began their way back over the dunes, Mr. Paradee walked slowly and fell behind. Miss Pomeroy glanced back at him and stopped to wait.
“We’re getting old, you and I, poking along behind like this.” Her voice was light, but her glance was keenly watchful.
Mr. Paradee’s steps became slower, and finally he stopped altogether, as if he couldn’t go on. After a moment she put her hand on his arm.
“Well?” she said.
“You told me back there on the beach that you’d help me if you could.” He looked at her directly, searching her face.
“I will.”
“How far,” he asked slowly and deliberately, “are you willing to go?”
“All the way, Mr. Paradee.”
He considered her for a long moment. “You’d better listen first.”
Up ahead the others turned and called to them. Miss Pomeroy waved them on. She and Mr. Paradee sat down on the dune. Before he began to speak, he drew a deep uneven breath.
Pomeroy’s Cove went to bed early that night. Doors closed, lights blinked out and a night of stars held forth.
As he had done so many times in the past months, during long sleepless nights, Mr. Paradee sat in a rocking chair beside his short-wave. With the receiver turned on and the volume low, he waited and rocked, listening to the tick of the clock on the mantel and the creak of the rocker. He wondered musingly if any sound on earth lulled so gently. The curving motion of rocker and pendulum — the creak-creak, tick-tock — called forth a singing of words, a scrap of poetry. “Great wide, beautiful, wonderful world, with the wonderful waters round you curled…”
“No, no,” he said, to himself; “no,” and he shook his head as the cold hard fear, like a boulder, rolled suddenly into his mind. “No, no!” But it persisted, rolling out of control. “They could take it away from us. They could. They admitted that much. They said they could.”
The radio receiver issued a sharp crackle of static, and the high-pitched musical tone beeped and ceased. The voice came through, quiet as always. “Paradee?”
He snapped on the transmitter and leaned forward.
“Listen,” he said, whispering fiercely. “You listen to me. If you think you’re going to take our world away from us, you out there, you’d better guess again! What do you think you’re doing, cutting down here in that glorified tin can of yours? Do you think for one minute that we—”
“Paradee, Paradee,” the voice interrupted, “my dear man! No one wants to take your world away from you. What an unthinkable notion! You can’t really believe that, can you?”
Mr. Paradee slumped as he let out his breath, the surprising rush of fright and anger receding as quickly as it had risen. He shook his head and said tiredly, “You said you could.”
“We probably could — we haven’t thought about it. But does it not occur to you that those who are capable of taking worlds are far, far beyond that sort of behavior? Taking is a practice for brutes and naughty children.”
It seemed to Mr. Paradee, as he sighed, that he had sighed a thousand times that day.
“I know, I know. Forgive me. But for a moment I was afraid again. You know how it is. Once you find out what matters to you, you’re willing to go all the way, and then suddenly you’re afraid of where it’s going to take you.”
Just at that moment it occurred to Mr. Paradee that he would not be afraid again. All at once he knew beyond doubt, as surely as if he had always known it.
When you know what matters, you have already arrived. That thought held him in peaceful contemplation, and he wondered absently if it had come from the quiet voice or from the quiet of his own heart.
Presently then, “You have come a long way, Paradee.”
He roused and smiled, and then he chuckled. “You’ve come a pretty long way yourselves.” He turned on a light and looked at the clock on the mantel. “Well, Miss Pomeroy is waiting for you up there at the Settler’s Cottage. She has the key.”
AMONG THE DANGS
by George P. Elliott
But that’s not science fiction…!
Even my best friends (to invert a paraphrase) keep telling me: That’s not science fiction!?
Sometimes they mean it couldn’t be s-f, because it’s good. Sometimes it couldn’t be because it’s not about spaceships or time machines. (Religion or politics or psychology isn’t science fiction — is it?) Sometimes (because some of my best friends are s-f fans) they mean it’s not really science fiction — just fantasy or satire or something like that.