Catastrophes! Isaac Asimov

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went down trying to draw his revolver and was trampled. A
deputy rushed into the jail and barred the door, and he could
be seen through the window excitedly bending over the tele-
phone. The crowd boosted a man up the side of the building
to jerk the wires loose. Stones shattered the window and
rained into the jail.
Lem was dragged back toward the scaffold, and when a
deputy ducked behind it and fired into the air, the crowd
turned the other way and dragged him toward Main Street,
"Get a rope!" someone shouted.
"Anyone got a horse? They used to use horses!"
"Don't need no horse. We can use Jake Arnson's truck,
Jake, back your truck under that elm tree!"
Jake Arnson ran down the street to his truck. The motor
coughed and sputtered and finally caught with a roar, and
the truck lurched backward. Jake parked under the elm, cut
the motor, and jumped out. A rope snaked up over a tree
limb. Lem had been too stunned and horrified to feel the kicks
and blows that rained upon him. They hoisted him onto the
truck, and he stood there, hands and feet bound, trembling
with frustration, while the rope was knotted about his neck.
He told himself he should have waited to see all of the
picture. He should have looked at more pictures. But how
could he have known that these men he knew so well would
use him like this? Now he'd have to look at pictures again.
He closed his eyes and forced himself to concentrate.,
The pictures flashed in front of him, one after the other,
and in each of them the truck rocked forward and left Lem
Dyer dangling by his neck.
Jake was back in his truck, trying to start the motor. The
starter whined fretfully. Someone yelled, "Need a push,
Jake?"
Lem kept watching the pictures, but finally he knew, with
a sickening certainty, that pictures couldn't help him. In all
of them the truck moved forward and left him hanging. It
had never happened that way before pictures without any
choices.
He shook the perspiration from his eyes and looked about
him. The sheriff lay on the sidewalk in front of the jail in a
pool of blood. Reverend Meyers lay nearby, his arms moving
feebly, one leg bent at a strange angle. Men were hurling
stones at the scaffold, where the deputy had taken refuge.
Sadly he looked down at the hate-twisted faces of men he'd
thought were his friends. He remembered what the Reverend
had told him. Jesus had seen hate like that when they'd
nailed him to the cross, and he'd said, "Father, forgive them,
for they know not what they do." Lem said the words to
himself, softly. Maybe his old life wasn't worth much to any-
one but himself, but it was sad.
The starter whined again, and someone called, "Speech!
Can the murderer talk? Let's have a confession!"
A hundred coarse echoes sounded. "Confession! Confes-
sion!"
Lem threw his cracked voice out over the mob. "You're
evil men evil! Get down on your knees and pray that God
won't punish you!"
They flung back at him wave after stinging wave of hoots
of laughter. "You dirty murderer! God won't punish us!"
The Reverend had slumped forward to lie motionless. Doc
Beasley had finally managed to push through the crowd and
was kneeling beside the sheriff. The faces below Lem blurred
and twisted and mortal anger overwhelmed him. "If God
won't punish you," he screamed, "I will!"
He closed his eyes and willed the pictures into being.
Larger than life, they were, but they moved so slowly, and
he had so little time.
A tornado, dragging its swirling funnel along Main Street,
relentlessly flattening buildings, crushing their occupants,
toppling the Methodist Church steeple onto the jail.,,
"Not enough!" Lem gasped.
A prairie fire, tossed high on gale winds, roaring hungrily
down on Glenn Center, driving the populace before it...
"Not enough?" f
Fleets of enemy planes darkening the sky, pouring searing
death onto even such an insignificant dot on the map as Glenn
Center...
"Not enough!"
The summer sun, high and bright at noonday, suddenly
bulging crazily, tearing the sky asunder, drenching the coun-
tryside in blinding incandescence, charring human vermin,
steaming away the rivers, crumbling concrete, boiling the very
dust underfoot...
Lem 'chose that one, just as Jake Arnson got his motor
started.
The Custodian
WILLIAM TENN
May 9, 2190 Well, I did it! It was close, but fortunately I
have a very suspicious nature. My triumph, my fulfillment
was almost stolen from me, but I was too clever for them.
As a result, I am happy to note in this, my will and
testament, I now begin my last year of life.
No, let me be accurate. This last year of life, the year that
I will spend in an open tomb, really began at noon today.
Then, in the second sub-basement of the Museum of Modern
Astronautics, I charged a dial for the third successive time
and got a completely negative response.
That meant that I, Piyatil, was the only human being alive
on Earth. What a straggle I have had to achieve that dis-
tinction!
Well, it's all over now, I'm fairly certain. Just to be on the
Safe side, I'll come down and check the anthropometer every
day or so for the next week, but I don't think there's a chance
in the universe that I'll get a positive reading. I've had my
last, absolutely my final and ultimate battle with the forces
of righteousness and I've won. Left in secure, undisputed
possession of my coffin, there's nothing for me to do now but
enjoy myself.
And that shouldn't be too hard. After all, I've been plan-
ning the pleasures for years!
Still, as I tugged off my suit of berrillit blue and climbed
upstairs into the .sunlight, I couldn't help thinking of the
others. Gruzeman, Prej'aut, and possibly even Mo-Diki.
They'd have been here with me now if only they'd had a shade
less academic fervor, a touch more of intelligent realism.
Too bad in a way. And yet it makes my vigil more solemn,
more glorious. As I sat down on the marble bench between
Rozinski's heroic statues of the Spaceman and Spacewoman,
I shrugged and dismissed the memories of Gruzeman, Pre-
jaut, and Mo-Diki.
They had failed. I hadn't.
I leaned back, relaxing for the first time in more than a
month. My eyes swept over the immense bronze figures tow-
ering above me, two pieces of sculpture yearning agonizingly
for the stars, and I burst into a chuckle. The absolute incon-
gruity of my hiding place hit me for the first time imagine,
the Museum of Modern Astronautics! Multiplied by the in-
credible nervous tension, the knuckle-biting fear of the past
five days, the chuckle bounced up and down in my throat and
became a giggle, then a splutter, and finally a reverberating, [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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