What Have I Done?

Mark Clifton

IT HAD to be I. It would be stupid to say that the burden should have fallen to a great statesman, a world leader, a renowned scientist. With all modesty, I think I am one of the few who could have caught the problem early enough to avert disaster. I have a peculiar skill. The whole thing hinged on that. I have learned to know human beings.

The first tithe I saw the fellow, I was at the drug-store counter buying cigarettes. He was standing at the magazine rack. One might have thought from the expression on his face that he had never seen magazines before. Still, quite a number of people get that rapt and vacant look when they can’t make up their minds to a choice.

The thing which bothered me in that casual glance was that I couldn’t recognize him.

There are others who can match my record in taking case histories. I happened to be the one who came in contact with this fellow. For thirty years I have been listening to, talking with, counseling people—over two hundred thousand of them. They have not been routine interviews.

I have brought intelligence, sensitivity and concern to each of them.

Mine has been a driving, burning desire to know people. Not from the western scientific point of view of devising tools and rules to measure animated robots and ignoring the man beneath.

Nor from the eastern metaphysical approach to painting a picture of the soul by blowing one’s breath upon a fog to be blurred and dispersed by the next breath.

Mine was the aim to know the man by making use of both. And there was some success.

A competent geographer can look at a crude sketch of a map and instantly orient himself to it anywhere in the world—the bend of a river, the angle of a lake, the twist of a mountain range.

And he can mystify by telling in finest detail what is to be found there.

After about fifty thousand studies where I could predict and then observe and check, with me it became the lift of a brow, the curve of a mouth, the gesture of a hand, the slope of a shoulder.

One of the universities became interested, and over a long, controlled period they rated me 92

per cent accurate. That was fifteen years ago. I may have improved some since.

Yet standing there at the cigarette counter and glancing at the young fellow at the magazine rack, I could read nothing. Nothing at all.

If this had been an ordinary face, I would have catalogued it and forgotten it automatically. I see them by the thousands. But this face would not be catalogued nor forgotten, because there was nothing in it.

I started to write that it wasn’t even a face, but of course it was. Every human being has a face—of one sort or another.

In build he was short, muscular, rather well proportioned. The hair was crew cut and blond, the eyes were blue, the skin fair. All nice and standard Teutonic—only it wasn’t.

I finished paying for my cigarettes and gave him one more glance, hoping to surprise an expression which had some meaning. There was none. I left him standing there and walked out on the street and around the corner. The street, the store fronts, the traffic cop on the corner, the warm sunshine were all so familiar I didn’t see them. I climbed the stairs to my office in the building over the drug store. My employment-agency waiting room was empty. I don’t cater to much of a crowd because it cuts down my opportunity to talk with people and further my study.

Margie, my receptionist, was busy making out some kind of a report and, merely nodded as I passed her desk to my own office. She is a good, conscientious girl who can’t understand why I spend so much time working with bums and drunks and other psychos who obviously won’t bring fees into the sometimes too small bank account.

I sat down at my desk and said aloud to myself, “The guy is a fake! As obvious as a high-school boy’s drafting of a dollar bill.”

I heard myself say that and wondered if I was going nuts, myself. What did I mean by fake? I shrugged. So I happened to see a bird I couldn’t read, that was all.

Then it struck me. But that would be unique. I hadn’t had that experience for twenty years.

Imagine the delight, after all these years, of exploring an unreadable!

I rushed out of my office and back down the stairs to the street. Hallahan, the traffic cop, saw me running up the street and looked at me curiously. I signaled to him with a wave of a hand that everything was all right. He lifted his cap and scratched his head. He shook his head slowly and settled his cap back down. He blew a whistle at a woman driver and went back to directing traffic.

I ran into the drug store. Of course the guy wasn’t there. I looked all around, hoping he was hiding behind the pots and pans counter, or something. No guy.

I walked quickly back out on the street and down to the next corner. I looked up and down the side streets. No guy.

I dragged my feet reluctantly back toward the office. I called up the face again to study it. It did no good. The first mental glimpse of it told me there was nothing to find. Logic told me there was nothing to find. If there had been, I wouldn’t be in such a stew. The face was empty—completely void of human feelings or character.

No, those weren’t the right words. Completely void of human—being!

I walked on past the drug store again and looked in curiously, hoping I would see him.

Hallahan was facing my direc-tion again, and he grinned crookedly at me. I expect around the neighborhood I am known as a character. I ask the queerest questions of people, from a layman’s point of view. Still, applicants sometimes tell me that when they asked a cop where was an employment agent they could trust they were sent to me.

I climbed the stairs again, and walked into my waiting room. Margie looked at me curiously, but she only said, “There’s an applicant. I had him wait in your office.” She looked like she wanted to say more, and then shrugged. Or maybe she shivered. I knew there was something wrong with the bird, or she would have kept him in the waiting room.

I opened the door to my office, and experienced an over-whelming sense of relief, fulfillment.

It was he. Still, it was logical that he should be there. I run an employment agency, People come to me to get help in finding work. If others, why not he?

My skill indudes the control of my outward reactions. That fellow could have no idea of the delight I felt at the opportunity to get a full history. If I had found him on the street, the best I might have done was a stock question about what time is it, or have you got a match, or where is the city hall. Here I could question him to my heart’s. content.

I took his history without comment, and stuck to routine questions. It was all exactly right.

He was an ex-G.I., just completed college, major in astronomy, no experience, no skills, no faintest idea of what he wanted to do, nothing to offer an employer—all perfectly normal for a young grad„

No feeling or expression, either. Not so normal. Usually they’re petulantly resentful that business doesn’t swoon at the chance of hiring them. I resigned myself to the old one-two of attempting to steer him toward something practical.

“Astronomy?” I asked. “That means you’re heavy in math. Frequently we can place a strong math skill in statistical work.” I was hopeful I could get a spark of something.

It turned out he wasn’t very good at math. “I haven’t yet reconciled my math to …” he stopped. For the first time he showed a reaction—hesitancy. Prior to that he had been a statue from Greece—the rounded, expressionless eyes, the too-perfect features undisturbed by thou2ht.

He caught his remark and finished, “I’m just not very good at math, that’s all.”

I sighed to myself. I’m used to that, too. They give degrees nowadays to get rid of the guys, I suppose. Sometimes I’ll go for days without uncovering any usable knowledge. So in a way, that was normal.

The only abnormal part of it was he seemed to think it didn’t sound right. Usually the lads don’t even realize they should know something. He seemed to think he’d pulled a boner by admitting that a man can take a degree in astronomy without learning math. Well, I wouldn’t be surprised to see them take their degrees without knowing how many planets there are.

He began to fidget a bit. That was strange, also. I thought I knew every possible combination of muscular contractions and expansions. This fidget had all the reality of a puppet activated by an amateur. And the eyes—still completely blank.

I led him up one mental street and down the next. And of all the false-fronted stores and cardboard houses and paper lawns, I never saw the like. I get something of that once in a while from a fellow who has spent a long term in prison and comes in with a manufactured past—but never anything as phony as this one was.

Interesting aspect to it. Most guys, when they realize you’ve spotted them for a phony, get out as soon as they can. He didn’t. I was almost as though he were—well testing, to see if his answers would stand up.

I tried talking astronomy, of which I thought I knew a little. I found I didn’t know anything, or he didn’t. This bird’s astronomy and mine had no point of reconciliation.

And then he had a slip of the tongue—yes he did. He was talking, and said, “The ten planets

…”

He caught himself, “Oh that’s right. There are only nine.”

Could be ignorance, but I didn’t think so. Could be he knew of the existence of a planet we hadn’t yet discovered.

I smiled. I opened a desk drawer and pulled out a couple science-fiction magazines. “Ever read any of these?” I asked.

“I looked through several of them at the newsstand a while ago,” he answered.

“They’ve enlarged my vision,” I said. “Even to the point where I could believe that some other star system might hold intelligence.” I lit a cigarette and waited. If I was wrong, he would merely think I was talking at random.

His blank eyes changed. They were no longer Greek-statue eyes. They were no longer blue.

They were black, deep bottom-less black, as deep and cold as space itself.

“Where did I fail in my test?” he asked. His lips formed a smile which was not a smile—a carefully painted-on-canvas sort of smile.

Well, I’d had my answer. I’d explored something unique, all right. Sitting there before me, I had no way of determining whether he was benign or evil. No way of knowing his motive. No way of judging—anything. When it takes a lifetime of learning how to judge even our own kind, what standards have we for judging an entity from another star system?

At that moment I would like to have been one.. of those space-opera heroes who, in similar circumstances, laugh casually and say, “What ho! So you’re from Arcturus. Well, well. It’s a small universe after all, isn’t it?” And then with linked arms they head for the nearest bar, bosom pals.

I had the almost hysterical thought, but carefully suppressed, that I didn’t know if this fellow would like beer or not. I will not go through the intermuscular and visceral reactions I experienced. I kept my seat and maintained a polite expression. Even with humans, I know when to walk carefully.

“I couldn’t feel anything about you,” I answered his question. “I couldn’t feel anything but blankness.”

He looked blank. His eyes were nice blue marble again. I liked them better that way.

There should be a million questions to be asked, but I must have been bothered by the feeling that I held a loaded bomb in my hands. And not knowing what might set it off, or how, or when.

I could think of only the most trivial.

“How long have you been on Earth?” I asked. Sort of a when did you get back in town, Joe, kind of triviality.

“For several of your weeks,” he was answering. “But this is my first time out among humans.”

“Where have you been in the meantime?” I asked. “Training.” His answers were getting short and his muscles began to fidget again.

“And where do you train?” I kept boring in.

As an answer he stood up and held out his hand, all quite correctly. “I must go now,” he said.

“Naturally you can cancel my application for employment. Obviously we have more to learn.”

I raised an eyebrow. “And I’m supposed to just pass over the whole thing? A thing like this?”

He smiled again. The contrived smile which was a symbol to indicate courtesy. “I believe your custom on this planet is to turn your problems over to your police. You might try that.” I could not tell whether it was ironic or logic.

At that moment I could think of nothing else to say. He walked out of my door while I stood beside my desk and watched him go.

Well, what was I supposed to do? Follow him?

I followed him.

Now I’m no private eye, but I’ve read my share of mystery stories. I knew enough to keep out of sight. I followed him about a dozen blocks into a quiet residential section of small homes. I was standing behind a palm tree, lighting a cigarette, when he went up the walk of one of these small houses. I saw him twiddle with the door, open it, and walk in. The door dosed.

I hung around a while and then went up to the door. I punched the doorbell. A motherly, gray-haired woman came to the door, drying her hands on her apron. As she opened the door she said, “I’m not buying anything today.”

Just the same, her eyes looked curious as to what I might have.

I grinned my best grin for elderly ladies. “I’m not selling anything, either,” I answered. I handed her my agency card. She looked at it curiously and then looked a question at me.

“I’d like to see Joseph Hoffman,” I said politely.

She looked puzzled. “I’m afraid you’ve got the wrong address, sir,” she answered.

I got prepared to stick my foot in the door, but it wasn’t necessary. “He was in my office just a few minutes ago,” I said. “He gave that name and this address. A job came in right after he left the office, and since I was going to be in this neighborhood anyway, I thought I’d drop by and tell him in person. It’s sort of rush,” I finished. It had happened many times before, but this time it sounded lame.

“Nobody lives here but me and my husband,” she insisted. “He’s retired.”

I didn’t care if he hung by his toes from trees. I wanted a young fellow.

“But I saw the young fellow come in here,” I argued. “I was just coming around the corner, trying to catch him. I saw him.”

She looked at me suspiciously. “I don’t know what your racket is,” she said through thin lips,

“but I’m not buying anything. I’m not signing anything. I don’t even want to talk to you.” She was stubborn about it.

I apologized and mumbled something about maybe making a mistake.

“I should say you have,” she rapped out tartly and shut the door in righteous indignation.

Sincere, too. I could tell.

An employment agent who gets the reputation of being a right guy makes all kinds of friends.

That poor old lady must have thought a plague of locusts had swept in on her for the next few days.

First the telephone repair man had to investigate an alleged complaint. Then a gas service man had to check the plumbing. An electrician complained there was a power short in the block and he had to trace their house wiring. We kept our fingers crossed hoping the old geezer had never been a construction man. There was a mistake in the last census, and a guy asked her a million questions.

That house was gone over rafter by rafter and sill by sill, attic and basement. It was precisely as she said. She and her husband lived there; nobody else.

In frustration, I waited three months. I wore out the side-walks haunting the neighborhood.

Nothing.

Then one day my office door opened and Margie ushered a young man in. Behind his back she was radiating heart throbs and fluttering her eyes.

He was the traditionally tall, dark and handsome young fellow, with a ready grin and sparkling dark eyes. His personality hit me like a sledge hammer. A guy like that never needs to go to an employment agency. Any employer will hire him at the drop of a hat, and wonder later why he did it.

His name was Einar Johnson. Extraction, Norwegian. The dark Norse strain, I judged. I took a chance on his thinking he had walked into a booby hatch.

“The last time I talked with you,” I said, “your name was Joseph Hoffman. You were Teutonic then. Not Norse.”

The sparkle went out of his eyes. His face showed exaspera-tion and there was plenty of it. It looked real, too, not painted on.

“All right. Where did I flunk this time?” he asked impa-tiently.

“It would take me too long to tell you,” I answered. “Suppose you start talking.” Strangely, I was at ease. I knew that underneath he was the same incomprehensible entity, but his surface was so good that I was lulled.

He looked at me levelly for a long moment. Then he said, “I didn’t think there was a chance in a million of being recognized. I’ll admit that other character we created was crude. We’ve learned considerable since then, and we’ve concentrated everything on this personality I’m wearing.”

He paused and flashed his teeth at me. I felt like hiring him, myself. “I’ve been all over Southern California in this one,” he said. “I’ve had a short job as a salesman. I’ve been to dances and parties. I’ve got drunk and sober again. Nobody, I say nobody, has shown even the slightest suspicion.”

“Not very observing, were they?” I taunted.

“But you are,” he answered. “That’s why I came back here for the final test. I’d like to know where I failed.” He was firm.

“We get quite a few phonies,” I answered. “The guy drawing unemployment and stalling until it is run out. The geezik whose wife drives him out and threatens to quit her job if he doesn’t go to work. The plain-clothes detail smelling around to see if maybe we aren’t a cover for a bookie joint or something. Dozens of phonies.”

He looked curious. I said in disgust, “We know in the first two minutes they’re phony. You were phony also, but not of any class I’ve seen before. And,” I finished dryly, “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“Why was I phony?” he persisted.

“Too much personality force,” I answered. “Human beings just don’t have that much force. I felt like I’d been knocked fiat on my … well … back.”

He sighed. “I’ve been afraid you would recognize me one way or another. I communicated with home. I was advised that if you spotted me, I was to instruct you to assist us.”

I lifted a brow. I wasn’t sure just how much authority they had to instruct me to do anything.

“I was to instruct you to take over the supervision of our final training, so that no one could ever spot us. If we are going to carry out our original plan that is necessary. If not, then we will have to use the alternate.” He was almost didactic in his manner, but his charm of personality still radiated like an infrared lamp.

“You’re going to have to tell me a great deal more than that,” I said.

He glanced at my dosed door.

“We won’t be interrupted,” I said. “A •personnel history is private.”

“I come from one of the planets of Arcturus,” he said.

I must have allowed a smile of amusement to show on my face, for he asked, “You find that amusing?”

“No,” I answered soberly, and my pulses leaped because the question confirmed my condusion that he could not read my thoughts. Apparently we were as alien to him as he to us. “I was amused,” I explained, “because the first time I saw you I said to myself that as far as recognizing you, you might have come from Arcturus. Now it turns out that accidentally I was correct. I’m better than I thought.”

He gave a fleeting polite smile in acknowledgment. “My home planet,” he went on, “is similar to yours. Except that we have grown overpopulated.”

I felt a twinge of fear.

“We have made a study of this planet and have decided to colonize it.” It was a fiat statement, without any doubt be-hind it.

I flashed him a look of incredulity. “And you expect me to help you with that?”

He gave me a worldly wise look—almost an ancient look. “Why not ?” he asked.

“There is the matter of loyalty to my own kind, for one thing,” I said. “Not too many generations away and we’ll be overpopulated also. There would hardly be room for both your people and ours on Earth.”

“Oh that’s all right,” he answered easily. “There’ll be plenty of room for us for quite some time. We multiply slowly.”

“We don’t,” I said shortly. I felt this conversation should be taking place between him and some great statesman—not me.

“You don’t seem to understand,” he said patiently. “Your race won’t be here. We have found no reason why your race should be preserved. You will die away as we absorb.”

“Now just a moment,” I interrupted. “I don’t want our race to die off.” The way he looked at me I felt like a spoiled brat who didn’t want to go beddie time.

“Why not?” he asked.

I was stumped. That’s a good question when it is put logically. Just try to think of a logical reason why the human race should survive. I gave him at least something.

“Mankind,” I said, “has had a hard struggle. We’ve paid a tremendous price in pain and death for our growth. Not to have a future to look forward to would be like paying for something and never getting the use of it.”

It was the best I could think of, honest. To base argument on humanity and right and justice and mercy would leave me wide open. Because it is obvious that man doesn’t practice any of these. There is no assurance he ever will.

But he was ready for me, even with that one. “But if we ark never suspected, and if we absorb and replace gradually, who is to know there is no future for humans?”

And as abruptly as the last time, he stood up suddenly. “Of course,” he said coldly, “we could use our alternative plan: Destroy the human race without further negotiation. It is not our way to cause needless pain to any life form. But we can.

“If you do not assist us, then it is obvious that we will eventu-ally be discovered. You are aware of the difficulty of even blending from one country on Earth to another. How much more difficult it is where there is no point of contact at all. And if we are discovered, destruction would be the only step left.”

He smiled and all the force of his charm hit me again. “I know you will want to think it over for a time. I’ll return.”

He walked to the door, then smiled back at me. “And don’t bother to trouble that poor little woman in that house again. Her doorway is only one of many entrances we have opened. She doesn’t see us at all, and merely wonders why her latch doesn’t work sometimes. And we can open another, anywhere, anytime. Like this …” He was gone.

I walked over and opened the door. Margie was all prettied up and looking expectant and radiant. When she didn’t see him come out she got up and peeked into my office. “But where did he go?” she asked with wide eyes.

“Get hold of yourself, girl,” I answered. “You’re so dazed you didn’t even see him walk right by you.”

“There’s something fishy going on here,” she said.

Well, I had a problem. A first-rate, genuine, dyed-in-the-wool dilemma.

What was I to do? I could have gone to the local authorities and got locked up for being a psycho. I could have gone to the college professors and got locked up for being a psycho. I could have gone to maybe the FBI and got locked up for being a psycho. That line of thinking began to get monotonous.

I did the one thing which I thought might bring help. I wrote up the happenings and sent it to my favorite science-fiction magazine. I asked for help and sage counsel from the one place I felt awareness and comprehension might be reached.

The manuscript bounced back so fast it might have had rubber bands attached to it, stretched from California to New York. I looked the little rejection slip all over, front and back, and I did not find upon it those sage words of counsel I needed. There wasn’t even a printed invitation to try again some time.

And for the first time in my life I knew what it was to be alone—genuinely and irrevocably alone.

Still, I could not blame the editor. I could see him cast the manuscript from him in disgust, saying, ‘Bah! So another evil race comes to conquer Earth. If I gave the fans one more of those, I’d be run out of my office.” And like the deacon who saw the naughty words written on the fence, saying, “And mis-spelled, too.”

The fable of the boy who cried “Wolf! Wolf!” once too often came home to me now. I was alone with my problem. The dilemma was my own. On one hand was immediate ex-termination. I did not doubt it. A race which can open doors from one star system to another, without even visible means of mechanism, would also know how to—disinfect.

On the other. hand was extinction, gradual, but equally certain, and none the less effective in that it would not be per-ceived. If I refused to assist, then, acting as one lone judge of all the race, I condemned it. If I did assist, I would be arch traitor, with an equal final result.

For days I sweltered in my miasma of indecision. Like many a man before me, uncertain of what to do, I temporized. I decided to play for time. To play the role of traitor in the hopes I might learn a way of defeating them.

Once I had made up my mind, my thoughts raced wildly through the possibilities. If I were to be their instructor on how to walk unsuspected among men, then I would have them wholly in my grasp. If I could build traits into them, common ordinary traits which they could see in men all about them, yet which would make men turn and destroy them, then I would have my solution.

And I knew human beings. Perhaps it was right, after all, that it became my problem. Mine alone.

I shuddered now to think what might have happened had this being fallen into less skilled hands and told his story. Perhaps by now there would be no man left upon Earth.

Yes, the old and worn-out plot of the one little unknown guy who saved Earth from outer evil might yet run its course in reality.

I was ready for the Arcturan when he returned. And he did return.

Einar Johnson and I walked out of my office after I had sent a tearful Margie on a long vacation with fancy pay. Einar had plenty of money, and was liberal with it. When a fellow can open some sort of fourth-dimensional door into a bank vault and help himself, money is no problem.

I had visions of the poor bank clerks trying to explain things to the examiners, but that wasn’t my worry right now.

We walked out of the office and I snapped the lock shut be-hind me. Always conscious of the cares of people looking for work, I hung a sign on the door saying I was ill and didn’t know when I would be back.

We walked down the stairs and into the parking lot. We got into my car, my own car, please note, and I found myself sitting in a sheltered patio in Beverly Hills. Just like that. No awful wrenching and turning my insides out. No worrisome nausea and emptiness of space. Nothing to dramatize it at all. Car—patio, like that.

I would like to be able to describe the Arcturans as having long snaky appendages and evil, slobbering maws, and stuff like that. But I can’t describe the Arcturans, because I didn’t see any.

I saw a gathering of people, roughly about thirty of them, wandering around the patio, swimming in the pool, going in and out of the side doors of the house. It was a perfect spot. No one bothers the big Beverly Hills home without invitation.

The natives wouldn’t be caught dead looking toward a star’s house. The tourists see the winding drive, the trees and grass, and perhaps a glimpse of a gabled roof. If they can get anythrill out of that, then bless their little spending money hearts, they’re welcome to it.

Yet if it should become known that a crowd of strange-acting people are wandering around in the grounds, no one would think a thing about it. They don’t come any more zany than the Hollywood crowd.

Only these were. These people could have made a fortune as life-size puppets. .I could see now why it was judged that the lifeless Teutonic I had first interviewed was thought adequate to mingle with human beings. By comparison with these, he was a snappy song and dance man.

But that is all I saw. Vacant bodies wandering around, going through human motions, without human emotions. The job looked bigger than I had thought. And yet, if this was their idea of how to win friends and influence people, I might be success-ful after all.

There are dozens of questions the curious might want answered—such as how did they get hold of the house and how did they get their human bodies and where did they learn to speak English, and stuff. I wasn’t too curious. I had important things to think about. I supposed they were able to do it, because here it was.

I’ll cut the following weeks short. I cannot conceive of what life and civilization on their planet might be like. Yardsticks of scientific psychology are used to measure a man, and yet they give no indication at all of the inner spirit of him, likewise, the descriptive measurements of their civilization are empty and meaningless. Knowing about a man, and knowing a man are two entirely different things.

For example, all those thalamic urges and urgencies which we call emotion were completely unknown to them, except as they saw them in antics on TV. The ideals of man were also unknown—truth, honor, justice, perfection—all unknown. They had not even a division of sexes, and the emotion we call love was beyond their understanding. The TV stories they saw must have been like watching a parade of ants.

What purpose can be gained by describing such a civilization to man? Man cannot conceive accomplishment without first having the dream. Yet it was obvious that they accomplished, for they were here.

When I finally realized there was no point of contact between man and these, I knew relief and joy once more. My job was easy. I knew how to destroy them. And I suspected they could not avoid my trap.

They could not avoid my trap because they had human bod-ies. Perhaps they conceived them out of thin air, but the veins bled, the flesh felt pain and heat and pressure, the glands secreted.

Ah yes, the glands secreted. They would learn what emotion could be. And I was a master of wielding emotion. The dream of man has been to strive toward the great and immortal ideals. His literature is filled with admonishments to that end. In comparison with the volume of work which tells us what we should be, there is very little which reveals us as we are.

As part of my training course, I chose the world’s great literature, and painting, and sculpture, and music—those mediums which best portray man lifting to the stars. I gave them first of all, the dream.

And with the dream, and with the pressure of the glands as kicker, they began to know emotion. I had respect for the superb acting of Einar when I realized that he, also, had still known no emotion.

They moved from the puppet to the newborn babe—a newborn babe in training, with an adult body, and its matured glandular equation.

I saw emotions, all right. Emotions without restraint, emotions unfettered by taboos, emotions uncontrolled by ideals. Sometimes I became frightened and all my skill in manipulating emotions was needed. At other times they became perhaps a lit-tle too Hollywood, even for Hollywood. I trained them into more ideal patterns.

I will say this for the Arcturans. They learned—fast. The crowd of puppets to the newborn babes, to the boisterous boys and girls, to the moody and unpredictable youths, to the matured and balanced men and women. I watched the metamor-phosis take place over the period of weeks.

I did more.

All that human beings had ever hoped to be, the brilliant, the idealistic, the great in heart, I made of these. My little 145 I.Q. became a moron’s level. The dreams of the greatness of man which I had known became the vaguest of wisps of fog before the reality which these achieved.

My plan was working.

Full formed, they were almost like gods. And training these things into them, I trained their own traits out. One point I found we had in common. They were activated by logic, logic carried to heights of which I had never dreamed. Yet my poor and halting logic found point of contact.

They realized at last that if they let their own life force and motivation remain active they would carry the aura of strangeness to defeat their purpose. I worried, when they accepted this.

I felt perhaps they were laying a trap for me, as I did for them. Then I realized that I had not taught them deceit.

And it was logical, to them, that they follow my training completely. Reversing the position, placing myself upon their planet, trying to become like them, I must of necessity follow my instructor without question. What else could they do?

At first they saw no strangeness that I should assist them to destroy my race. In their logic the Arcturan was most fit to survive, therefore he should survive. The human was less fit, therefore he should perish.

I taught them the emotion of compassion. And when they began to mature their human thought and emotion, and their intellect was blended and shaded by such emotion, at last they understood my dilemma.

There was irony in that. From my own kind I could expect no understanding. From the invaders I received sympathy and compassion. They understood at last my traitorous action to buy a few more years for man.

Yet their Acturan logic still prevailed. They wept with me, but there could be no change of plan. The plan was fixed, they were merely instruments by which it was to be carried out.

Yet, through their compassion, I did get the plan modified.

This was the conversation which revealed that modification.

Einar Johnson, who as the most fully developed had been my constant companion, said to me one day, “To all intents and purposes we have become human beings.” He looked at me and smiled with fondness, “You have said it is so, and it must be so. For we begin to realize what a great and glorious thing a human is.”

The light of nobility shone from him like an aura as he told me this. “Without human bodies, and without the emotion-intelligence equation which you call soul, our home planet can-not begin to grasp the growth we have achieved. We know now that we will never return to our own form, for by doing that we would lose what we have gained.

“Our people are logical, and they must of necessity accept our recommendation, as long as it does not abandon the plan entirely. We have reported what we have learned, and it is conceived that both our races can inhabit the universe side by side.

“There will be no more migration from our planet to yours. We will remain, and we will multiply, and we will live in honor, such as you have taught us, among you. In time perhaps we may achieve the greatness which all humans now have.

“And we will assist the human kind to find their destiny among the stars as we have done.”

I bowed my head and wept. For I knew that I had won.

Four months had gone. I returned to my own neighborhood. On the corner Hallahan left the traffic to shift for itself while he came over to me with the question, “Where have you been?”

“I’ve been sick,” I said.

“You look it,” he said frankly. “Take care of yourself, man. Hey … Lookit that fool messing up traffic.” He was gone, blowing his whistle in a temper.

I climbed the stairs. They still needed repairing as much as ever. From time to time I had been able to mail money to Margie, and she had kept the rent and telephone paid. The sign was still on my door. My key opened the lock.

The waiting room had that musty, they’ve-gone-away look about it. The janitor had kept the windows tightly closed and there was no freshness in the air. I half-hoped to see Margie sitting at her desk, but I knew there was no purpose to it. When a girl is being paid for her time and has nothing to do, the beach is a nice place to spend it.

There was dust on my chair, and I sank down into it without bothering about the seat of my pants. I buried my head in my arms and I looked into the human soul.

Now the whole thing hinged on that skill. I know human beings. I know them as well as anyone in the world, and far better than most.

I looked into the past and I saw a review of the great and fine and noble and divine torn and burned and crucified by man.

Yet my only hope of saving my race was to build these qualities, the fine, the noble, the splendid, into these thirty beings. To create the illusion that all men were likewise great. No less power could have gained the boon of equality for man with them.

I look into the future. I see them, one by one, destroyed. I gave them no defence. They are totally unprepared to meet man as he genuinely is—and they are incapable of understanding.

For these things which man purports to admire the most—the noble, the brilliant, the splendid—these are the very things he cannot tolerate when he finds them.

Defenseless, because they cannot comprehend, these thirty will go down beneath the ravening fury of rending and destroy-ing man always displays whenever he meets his ideal face to face.

I bury my head in my hands.

What have I done?

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