Short Fiction by Robert Sheckley (interesting novels in english txt) 📕

don’t want it on my⁠—hands. I really don’t. Won’t you accept a portion of it?”

I recognized him. He was an actor, and a well-known one. I had always enjoyed watching him, so I took a pile of bills off his hands, leaving it on the desk of the hotel. The young man who had been reading Schopenhauer was no longer there.

Jane and I ate, and listened to some more music. We listened to it the rest of the day, and didn’t talk much. Towards evening Jane’s eyes were soft. I knew she was thinking back over our life. I thought back too. It didn’t seem so bad. Not really. I had made a few mistakes, but still not so bad.

Night came, and we made supper out of leftovers. We didn’t want to go out for anything, and we didn’t want to go to sleep.

“It’ll come just at dawn,” Jane said. I tried to tell her you can’t predict the ways of the Almighty, but she wasn’t going to sell out her woman’s intuition for anything. She was sure.

That was a long night, and not a very good one. I felt as though I were a prisoner at the bar. It wasn’t a very good way to feel, but I was frightened. I suppose everybody was.

Standing at the window I saw the first light of the false dawn. It was going to be a beautiful day over New York. There were no visible stars, but every light in the city was on, making stars of its own. It was as though the city was burning candles to the unknown.

“Goodbye, Jane,” I said. I knew she was right. The announcement would come just at dawn. I hoped Minnie was in her husband’s arms; and Frank⁠—I felt he was probably on a horse, standing up in the unfamiliar saddle and looking toward the East. I hoped he was.

“Goodbye, dear,” Jane said, and kissed me. There was a cool breeze from the open window, and darkness in the sky. It was beautiful, at that moment. It should have ended just like that.

“There will be a slight delay,” the voice said from behind my shoulder, as pleasant as ever, and as distant, “in settling the affairs of the inhabitants of the planet Earth. The final examination and departure will be held ten years from this date.”

I stood at the window, my arm around Jane. We couldn’t say anything for perhaps ten minutes.

“Well,” I said to her finally. “Well, well.”

“Well,” she said. We were silent for a few more minutes. Then she said, “Well,” again.

There was nothing else to say.

I looked out the window. Below me the city was sparkling with lights; the sun was coming up, and everything was deadly quiet. The only sound I could hear was the buzzing of an electric sign. It sounded like a broken alarm clock, or like a time bomb, perhaps.

“You’ll have to go back to work,” Jane said. She started to cry. “Although I suppose ten years is only a second in eternity. Only a second to Her.”

“Less,” I said. “A fraction of a second. Less.”

“But not to us,” Jane said.

It certainly should have ended there. Judgment day should have come, bringing with it whatever it brought. We were ready. All the worldly goods were disposed of, in New York and I suppose, in the rest of the world. But ten years was too long, too much a strain on goodness.

We should have been able to carry on. There was no reason why not. We could have gone back to our jobs. The farmers were still on the farms, the grocers and clerks were still around.

We could have done such a bang-up job of it. We could have pointed to that ten years with pride, and said, “You see! Our recorded history of thousands of years of avarice, cruelty and hate isn’t the whole story. For ten years we were good and clean and noble. For ten years we were brothers!”

Unfortunately, it wasn’t that way.

The farmers didn’t want to go back to their farms, and the grocers didn’t want to return to their groceries. Oh, some did. Many did, for a while. But not for long. Everyone talked about high ideals, but it was just talk, just like before.

For six months Jane and I struggled along, not getting much to eat, frightened by the mobs that surged around New York. Finally, we decided to move out. We joined the exodus leaving New York, drifted through Pennsylvania, and headed North.

The country was disrupted, but it pulled itself together again, after a fashion. Thousands were starving, then millions. Some had food, but they weren’t very willing to share it. They were figuring what they’d do for ten years, if they shared their food. Money they’d still hand out in basketfuls. It wasn’t worth anything. In nine months a million dollars wouldn’t buy a rotten turnip.

As time passed, fewer and fewer stayed on the job. The money they got wouldn’t buy anything. Besides, why work when the end was so near? Why work for someone else?

In about a year there was the Bulgaria incident. An American in Sophia disappeared. He just vanished. The American Embassy complained. They were told to go home. The Bulgarians didn’t want any interference for their last nine years of existence. Besides, they added that they didn’t know where the man was. Maybe they were telling the truth. People vanish even here.

Anyhow, after our third ultimatum we bombed them. The attack coincided with a bombing launched on us by China, who decided we were interfering with her trade with Japan.

Great Britain was bombed, and bombed someone else. Everyone started bombing everyone else.

I took Jane out of the city where we were staying, and headed for the open country. We ran and stumbled over the fields, with the roar of the planes above us. We hid in ditches. Jane was cut down by machine gun bullets in one raid. Perhaps she was fortunate. She missed the atom bombs