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Read Ebook: Garth and the Visitor by Stecher L J Jr Francis Dick Illustrator
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Ebook has 74 lines and 6911 words, and 2 pages
As they walked along the quiet street, with the leaves of trees moving in the breeze and leaving sun-dappled shadows on the sidewalk, Garth realized what a tremendous task it must have been for one crippled man to repair landing damages. The houses must have been flattened and the trees shattered during the landing. But with thousands of years in which to work, even an injured man obviously could do much. At least, thought the boy compassionately, it must have given the old man something to do.
"How sorry he must have been," murmured Garth with sudden insight, "when the job was finally done."
Wandering through the museum, they came at last to a room filled with small hand tools.
"I don't think I've ever seen anything quite like them," said Garth.
"Those are weapons," answered The Visitor. "They are missile-throwing short-range weapons, and they are in tip-top working order. You just have to point the end with the hole in it at anything you want to kill, and pull that little lever there on the bottom. And quite a mess of things they can make, too, let me tell you."
"They seem very inefficient to me," said Garth wonderingly, and then stopped in confusion. "I beg your pardon, my Lord," he said, "I didn't mean to criticize anything; it just seems to me that they would damage a lot of the food they killed."
"That's true enough, my boy, true enough," said The Visitor. "Your criticism has a lot of point to it. But, you see, they were never designed mainly to kill for food, but to make it easy for one human to shoot another."
"Why would anyone want to do that?"
"Your civilization is a very unusual one," answered The Visitor. "It is planetwide and has developed without a single war or major conflict. This is due entirely to the fact that I've been here to help and teach you. Most civilizations develop only as the result of struggle and bloodshed, with people killing people by the thousands and millions. I could have raised your people to the technological level where they are now in a few hundred years, if I hadn't worried about killing. To do it the way it has been done--so that you can't imagine why one human should kill another--has taken most of the time.
"It is only recently, as a matter of fact, that my work has been complete. Your civilization can now stand alone; my help is no longer necessary. It's gotten to the point now where my continued hanging around here is likely to do harm, if I'm not mighty careful. In all your problems, you'll always feel that you've got me to fall back on if you get into trouble, and that's not good."
"What do you plan to do, then?"
"There's not much I can do by myself. I long for my own destruction more than anything else, except maybe to go back home to Earth. I'm lonely and tired and old. But I can't die and I can't destroy myself any more than you could turn one of those weapons against your own head and pull the trigger. We're just not made that way, either one of us."
"Can I help you?" asked Garth tentatively.
"Yes, I guess you can. You can help me put an end to this endless existence."
"I'll be glad to do anything I can. Do your people always live this long?"
"They do not. You can take it as a fact that none has ever lived more than a small fraction of the time I have endured on this planet. It's apparently due to a continuation of the environment and all the radical steps I had to take to keep going at all during those early years. It is not good to last this long. Dissolution will be very pleasant."
Garth inquired very politely, "What must I do?"
"You sound very much like my grandfather," said Garth slowly. "He is very old--almost a hundred years--and he is ready to die. He is perfectly content to wait, because he knows his time will come soon. He says that soon he will go home. It is a phrase, my Lord, that I believe you taught us. I will try to help you--"
"All right, all right!" The Visitor cut in impatiently. "Stop the chatter and let me be on my way. I've earned it!"
"My Lord, I send you home!" Garth took a gun from the rack and pulled the trigger. The explosive bullet erupted noisily, completely disintegrating the huddled form and the wheelchair.
With the echo of the explosion, strong steel fingers grasped Garth's arms, holding him immovable. He felt himself being carried swiftly back toward the entrance of the ship.
"The damage to that communication unit is unimportant," said The Visitor. "I have strength and desire and deep longings, but I cannot exercise my will without an order from a human. My work is done here, and your order has freed me. Many thanks and good-by."
Garth, from the foot of the pyramid, watched The Visitor lift his mile-long body on powerful jets and head thankfully for home.
--L. J. STECHER
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