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For with the Juwain philosophy, man would go to Jupiter. Faced by all the logic in the world, he still would go to Jupiter. For better or for worse, he would go to Jupiter.
The only chance there had ever been of wi
But now that chance was gone, for the words would be no longer vague and fuzzy. The people would know, as clearly and as vibrantly as Fowler knew himself what Jupiter was like.
The people would go to Jupiter, would enter upon a life other than the human life.
And the Solar System, the entire Solar System, with the exception of Jupiter, would lie open for the new race of mutants to take over, to develop any kind of culture that they might wish – a culture that would scarcely follow the civilization of the parent race.
Webster swung away from the window, strode back to the desk. He stooped and pulled out a drawer, reached inside. His hand came out clutching something that he had never dreamed of using – a relic, a museum piece he had tossed there years before.
With a handkerchief, he polished the metal of the gun, tested its mechanism with trembling fingers.
Fowler was the key. With Fowler dead With Fowler dead and the Jupiter stations dismantled and abandoned, the mutants would be licked. Man would have the Juwain philosophy and would retain his destiny. The Centauri expedition would blast off for the stars. The life experiments would continue on Pluto. Man would march along the course that his culture plotted.
Faster than ever before. Faster than anyone could dream. Two great strides. The renunciation of violence as a human policy – the understanding that came with the Juwain philosophy. The two great things that would speed man along the road to wherever he was going.
The renunciation of the violence and the Webster stared at the gun clutched in his hand and heard the roar of winds tumbling through his head.
Two great strides – and he was about to toss away the first.
For one hundred and twenty-five years no man had killed another – for more than a thousand years killing had been obsolete as a factor in the determination of human affairs.
A thousand years of peace and one death might undo the work. One shot in the night might collapse the structure, might hurl man back to the old bestial thinking.
Webster killed – why can't I? After all, there are some men who should be killed. Webster did right, but he shouldn't have stopped with only one. I don't see why they're hanging him; he'd ought to get a medal. We ought to start on the mutants first. If it hadn't been for them That was the way they'd talk.
That, thought Webster, is the wind that's roaring in my brain.
The flashing of the crazy coloured sign made a ghostly flicker along the walls and floor.
Fowler is seeing that, thought Webster. He is looking at it and, even if he isn't, I still have the kaleidoscope.
He'll be coming in and we'll sit down and talk. We'll sit down and talk
He tossed the gun back into the drawer, walked towards the door.
NOTES ON THE SIXTH TALE
If there has been any doubt concerning the origin of the other tales in the legend, there can be no doubt in this. Here, in the sixth tale, we have unmistakably the hallmarks of Doggish story telling. It has the deeper emotional value, the close attention to ethical matters which are stressed in all other Doggish myths.
And yet, strangely enough, it is in this particular tale that Tige finds his weightiest evidence of the actuality of the human race. Here, he points out, we have evidence that the Dogs told these self-same tales before – the blazing fire when they sat and talked of Man buried in Geneva or gone to Jupiter. Here, he says, we are given an account of the Dogs' first probing into the cobbly worlds, their first step towards the development of an animal brotherhood.
Here, too, he thinks, we have evidence that Man was another contemporary race which went part way down the path of culture with the Dogs. Whether or not the disaster which is portrayed in this tale is the one which actually overwhelmed Man, Tige says, we ca
Rover, who does not admit to the factual evidence seen by Tige, believes that the storyteller in this tale brings to a logical conclusion a culture such as Man developed. Without at least broad purpose, without certain implanted stability, no culture can survive, and this is the lesson, Rover believes, the tale is meant to spell.
Man, in this story, is treated with a certain tenderness which is not accorded him in any of the other tales. He is at once a lonely and pitiful creature, and yet somehow glorious. It is entirely typical of him that in the end he should make a grand gesture, that he should purchase godhood by self-immolation.
Yet the worship which is accorded him by Ebenezer has certain disturbing overtones which have become the source of particularly bitter dispute among the legend's students.
Bounce, in his book, The Myth of Man, asks this question:
If Man had taken a different path, might he not, in time to come, have been as great as Dog?
It is a question, perhaps, that many readers of the legend have stopped to ask themselves.
VI. HOBBIES
The rabbit ducked around a bush and the little black dog zipped after him, then dug in his heels and skidded. In the pathway stood a wolf, the rabbit's twitching, bloody body hanging from his jaws.
Ebenezer stood very still and panted, red rag of a tongue lolling out, a little faint and sick at the sight before him.
It had been such a nice rabbit!
Feet pattered on the trail behind him and Shadow whizzed around the bush, slid to a stop alongside Ebenezer.
The wolf flicked his glare from the dog to the pint-size robot, then back to the dog again. The yellow light of wildness slowly faded from his eyes.
"You shouldn't have done that, Wolf," said Ebenezer softly. "The rabbit knew I wouldn't hurt him and it was all in fun. But he ran straight into you and you snapped him up."
"There's no use talking to him," Shadow hissed out of the corner of his mouth. "He doesn't know a word you're saying. Next thing you know, he'll be gulping you."
"Not with you around, he won't," said Ebenezer. "And, anyhow, he knows me. He remembers last winter. He was one of the pack we fed."
The wolf paced forward slowly, step by cautious step, until less than two feet separated him from the little dog. Then, very slowly, very carefully, he laid the rabbit on the ground, nudged it forward with his nose.
Shadow made a tiny sound that was almost a gasp. "He's giving it to you!"
"I know," said Ebenezer calmly. "I told you he remembered. He's the one that had a frozen ear and Jenkins fixed it up."
The dog advanced a step, tail wagging, nose outstretched. The wolf stiffened momentarily, then lowered his ugly head and sniffed. For a second the two noses almost rubbed together, then the wolf stepped back.