The Most Sentimental Man - Evelyn E Smith

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
The most sentimental man by Evelyn E. Smith. Johnson went
to see the others off at Idlewild. He knew they'd
expect him to, and since it would be the last
conventional gesture he'd have to make, he might as well
conform to their notions of what was right and proper
for the past few centuries. The climate had beginning hotter now,

(00:21):
even though it was not yet June, the day was
uncomfortably warm. The sun's rays glinting off the bright metal
flanks the ship dazzled his eyes, and perspiration made his
shirt stick to his shoulder blades beneath the jacket that
the formality of the occasion had required. He wished Clifford
would hurry up and get the leave taking over with.
But even though Clifford was undoubtedly even more anxious than

(00:45):
he to finish with all this ceremony and take off,
he wasn't the kind of man to let inclination influence
his actions. Sure you won't change your mind and come
with us, Johnson shook his head. The young man looked
at him, hatred for the old man's complication and of
what should have been a simple departure. Showing through the
pell cool of politeness he was young, for, since this

(01:06):
trip had only slight historical importance and none of any
other kind, the authorities had felt a junior officer entirely sufficient.
It was clear, however, that Clifford attributed his commandership to
his merits, and he was very conscious of his great responsibility.
We have plenty of room on the ship, he persisted.
There weren't any left to go. We could take you

(01:29):
easily enough, you know. Johnson made a negative signing. In
the rays of the sun beating full upon his head
made apparent the gray that usually blended into the still
thick blonde hair. Yet, though past youth, he was far
from being an old man. I've made my decision, he said,
remembering that anger now was pointless. If it's if you're

(01:51):
just too proud to change your mind, the young commander
said less certainly, I'm sure every one will understand if
if Johnson smiled, no, it's just that I went to stay,
that's all. But the commander's clear blue eyes were still baffled, uneasy,
as though he felt he had not done the utmost
a duty, not duty to the service, but to humanity required.

(02:14):
That was the trouble with people Johnson thought when they
were most well meaning, they became most troublesome. Clifford lowered
his voice to an appropriately funeral hush as a fresh
thought obviously struck him. I know, of course, that you
loved ones are buried here, and perhaps you feel it's
your duty to stay with them. At this, Johnson almost

(02:36):
forgot that anger no longer had any validity by loved ones.
Clifford undoubtedly had met Elinor and Paul. It was true
that Johnson had had a certain affection for his wife
and son when they were alive. Now that they were dead,
they represented an episode in his life that had not
perhaps been unpleasant, but was certainly over and done with.

(02:57):
Now did Clifford think that was his reason for remaining?
Why he must believe Johnson to be the most sentimental
man on earth? And, come to think of it, Johnson
said to himself, amused, I am, or soon will be,
just that the Commander was still unconsciously pursuing the same
train of thought. It does seem incredible, he said, in

(03:20):
a burst of boyish candor that did not become him,
for he was not that young that you'd want to
stay alone on a whole planet. I mean to say
entirely alone. There will never be another ship, you know,
at least not in your lifetime. Johnson knew what the
other man was thinking. If there'd been a woman with
Johnson now, Clifford might have been able to understand a

(03:43):
little better how the other could stick by his decision.
Johnson wriggled as sweat oozed stickily down his back. For
God's sake, he said, silently, take your silly ship and
get the hell off my planet. Aloud, he said, it's
a good place, a little worn out, but still in
pretty good shape. Pity you can't trade in an old

(04:05):
world like an old car, isn't it If it weren't
so damned far from the center of things, the young
man replied, defensively, assuming the burden of all civilization, we
wouldn't abandon it, after all, we hate leaving the world
on which we originated. But it's a long haul to
Alpha Centauri, you know that, and the tremendously expensive one.
Keeping up this place solely out of sentiment would be

(04:28):
a sheer waste. The people would never stand for the
tax burden. A costly museum, yes, Johnson agreed. How much
longer were these dismal farewells going to continue. How much
longer would the young man still feel the need to
justify himself If only there were others, full enough, if
only there were others with you. But even if anybody

(04:49):
else would be willing to cut himself off entirely from
the rest of the civilized universe. The Earth won't support
enough of a population to keep it running, not according
to our present living standards. Anyway, Most of its resources
are gone now, you know, hardly any coal or oil left,
and that's not worth digging for when there are better
and cheaper fuels into system. He was virtually quoting from

(05:10):
the colonial officer's manual. Were there any people left able
to think for themselves? Johnson wondered, Had there ever been?
Had he thought for himself in making his decision? Or
was he merely clinging to a childish dream that all
men had had and lost? With man gone? Earth will
replenish herself, he said aloud. First, a vegetation would begin

(05:33):
to grow thick already it had released itself from the
restraint of civilization. Soon it would be spreading out over
the continent, overrunning the cities with delicately persistent green tendrils.
Some the harsh winters would kill, but others would live
on and would multiply. Vines would twist themselves about the
tall buildings and tenderly, passionately squeeze them to death, eventually

(05:57):
sending them tumbling down, And then the tree would rear
themselves in their places. The swamps that man had filled
in would begin to reappear one by one as the
land sank back to a pristine state. The sea would
go on, changing her boundaries, with no dikes to stop her.
Volcanoes would heave up the land into different configurations. The

(06:19):
heap would increase until it grew unbearable, only there would
be no one, no human anyway to bear it. Year
after year, the leaves would wither and fall and decay.
Rock would cover them, and some day, billions of years
thence there would be coal and oil and nobody to
want them. Very like the earth will replish herself, the

(06:39):
commander agreed. But not in your time or your children's time.
That is not in my children's time, he added hastily.
The handful of men lined up in a row before
the air locks shuffled their feet and allowed their muttering
to become a few decimal slaughter. Clifford looked at his
risk chronometer. Obviously, he was no less anxious than a
crude be off, but for the sake of his conscience,

(07:02):
he must make a last try. Damn your conscience, Johnson thought,
I hope that for this you feel guilty as hell,
that you wake up nights in a cold sweat, remembering
that you left one man alone on the planet you
and your kind discarded. Not that I don't want to stay,
mind you, but that I want you to suffer the
way you're making me suffer. Now having to listen to

(07:25):
your platitudes, the commander suddenly stopped paraphrasing the manual, capping
Out's fun for a week or two, you know, but
it's different when it's for a lifetime. Johnson's fingers curled
in his palms. He was even angrier now that the
commander had struck so close to home camping out. Was
that all he was doing, fulfilling childhood desires, nothing more. Fortunately,

(07:47):
Clifford didn't realize that he had scored and scuttled back
to the shelter of the manual. Perhaps you don't know
enough about the new system in Alpha Centauri, he said,
a trifle wildly. It has two sons surrounded by three planets,
Aglaia and Euphrosyne. Each of these planets is slightly smaller
than Earth, so that the decrease in gravity is just
great enough to be pleasant without being s marked to

(08:08):
be inconvenient. The atmosphere is almost exactly like that of Earth's,
except that it contains several beneficial elements which are absent here,
and the climate is more temperate owing to the fact
that the planets are partially shielded from the suns by
cloud layers. The temperature, except immediately at the poles and
the equators, where it is slightly more extreme, is always equable,
resembling that of southern California. Sounds charming, said Johnson, I too,

(08:32):
have read the Colonial Office hand outs. I wonder what
the people who wrote them will do now that there
is no longer any necessity for attracting colonists. Everybody's already
up in Alphicentauri. Oh well, there will be other systems
to conquer and colonize. The word conquers hardly correct, the
commander said stiffly. Since not one of the three planets
had any indigenous life forms, that was intelligent or life

(08:56):
forms that you recognize as intelligent, Johnson suggested gently. Although
why should there be such a premium place on intelligence,
he wondered. Was intelligence the sole criterion on which the
right to life and to freedom should be based? The
commander frowned and looked at his chronometer again. Well, he
finally said, since you feel that way, and you're sure

(09:16):
you've quite made up your mind. My men are anxious
to go. Of course they are, Johnson said, managing to
convey just the right amount of reproach. Clifford flushed and
started to walk away. I'll stand out of the way
of your jets, Johnson called after him. It would be
so anticlimactic to have me burnt to a crisp after
all this bon voyage. There was no reply. Johnson watched

(09:41):
the silver vessel shoot up into the sky and thought,
now is the time for me to fill a pang
or even a twinge. But I don't at all. I
feel relieved. In fact, that's probably the result of getting
rid of that fool Clifford. He crossed a field briskly,
pulling off his jacket and discarding his tie as he went.
His ground carro Maine, where he had parked it in

(10:01):
an area clearly marked no parking. They'd left him an
old car that wasn't worth shipping to the stars. How
long it would last was anybody's guess. The government hadn't
been deliberately illiberal in leaving him such a shabby vehicle.
If there had been any way to ensure a continuing
supply of fuel, they would probably have left him a
reasonably good one. But since only a little could be left,

(10:24):
allowing him a good car would have been simply an
example of conspicuous waste, and the government had always preferred
its waist to be inconspicuous. He drove slowly through the
broad boulevards of Long Island, savoring the loneliness. New York
as a residential area had been a ghost town for years,
since the greater part of its citizens had been among
the first to emigrate to the stars. However, since it

(10:47):
was the capital of the world and most of the
interstellar ships, particularly the last few, had taken off from
its space ports, it had been kept up as an
official embarkation center. Thus, paradoxically, it was the last city
to be completely evacuated, and so although the massive but
jerry billt apartment houses that lined the streets were already crumbling.

(11:09):
The roads had been kept in fairly good shape and
were hardly cracked at all. Still, here and there, the
green was pushing its way up in unlikely places. A
few more of New York's tropical summers, and Long Island
would soon become a wilderness. The streets were empty except
for the cats, sunning themselves on long abandoned doorsteps or

(11:29):
padding about on obscure errands of their own. Perhaps their
numbers had not increased since humanity had left the city
to them, but there certainly seemed to be more striped
and solid black and gray and white and tawney. Accepting
their citizenship with equanimity, they paid no attention to Johnson.
They had long since disassociated them, the cells, from a

(11:50):
humanity that had not concerned itself greatly over their welfare.
On the other hand, neither he nor the surface car
appeared to startle them. The old ones had seen so
much before, and to kittens the very fact of existence
as the ultimate surprise. The Queensboro Bridge was deadly silent.
It was completely empty, except for a calico cat moving

(12:11):
purposefully toward Manhattan. The structure needed a coat of paint,
Johnson thought vaguely, but of course it would never get
one still, even uncared for the bridges should at last him,
there would be no heavy traffic to weaken them, just
in case of unforseeable catastrophe. However, he didn't want to
be trapped on an island, even Manhattan Island. He had

(12:32):
remembered to provide himself with a rowboat. A motor boat
would have been preferable, but then a fuel difficulty would
arise again. How empty the East River looked without any
craft on it. It was rather a charming little waterway
in its own right, though nothing to compare with the
stately Hudson. The water scintillated in the sunshine, and the
air was clear and fresh, for no factories had spewed

(12:53):
fumes and smoke into it. For many years, there were
few gulls, for nothing was left for the scavenger, though
those remaining were forced to make an honest living by
catching fish. In Manhattan, where the buildings had been soundly constructed,
the signs of abandonment were less evident. Empty streets, an
occasional cracked window, not even an unusual amount of dirt

(13:14):
because in the past the normal activities of an industrial
and ruggedly individual city had provided more grime than years
of neglect could ever hope to equal. No, it would
take Manhattan longer to go back than Long Island. Perhaps
that too, would not happen during his lifetime. Yet, after all,
when he reached Fifth Avenue, he found that Central Park

(13:35):
had burst its boundaries. Fifty ninth Street was already half jungle,
and a lush growth spilled down the avenues and spread
raggedly out into the side streets, pushing its way up
through the cracks it had made in the surface of
the road. Although the Plaza fountain had not flowed for centuries,
water had collected in the leaf choked basin from the
last rain, and a group of gray squirrels were gathered

(13:57):
around it, shrilly, disputing possession with some starlings. Except for
the occasional cry of a cat at the distance, these
voices were all that he heard, the only sound, not
even the sudden blast of a jet regaining power. He
would never hear that again, never hear the strider or
of a human voice piercing with anger. The cacophony of

(14:18):
a hundred television sets each playing a different program, the
hoot of a horn off key, singing the thin, uncertain
notes of an amateur musician. These would never be heard
on earth again. He sent the car gliding slowly, no
more traffic rules, down fifth Avenue. The buildings here also
were well built. They were many centuries old and would

(14:40):
probably last as many more. The shop windows were empty
except for tangles of dust, an occasional unbroken discarded mannikin,
and in some instances the glass had already cracked or
fallen out, since there were no children to throw stones. However,
others might last indefinitely, carefully glassing in nothingness. Doors stood open,
and he could see rows of empty counters and barren shells,

(15:03):
fuzzed high with the dust of the years since customer
had approached them. Cats sedately walked up and down the
avenue were set genteely, with tails tucked in on the
steps of the cathedral, as if the place had been
theirs all along. Dusk was falling to night for the
first time in centuries. The street lamps would not go on. Undoubtedly,

(15:23):
when it grew dark he would see ghosts, but they
would be the ghosts of the past, and he had
made his peace with the past long since it was
the present in the future with which he had not
come to terms. And now there would be no present,
no past, no future, but all merged into one, and
he was the only one at forty second Street. Pageants

(15:44):
fluttered thickly around the public library, fat as ever, their
numbers greater, the ra appetites grosser. The ancient library, he knew,
had changed little. Inside, stacks and shells would still be
packed thick with reading matter. Books are bulky, so only
the rare dash had been taken beyond the stars. The
rest had been microfilmed, and their originals left to Johnson

(16:05):
and decay. It was his library now, and he had
all the time in the world to read all the
books in the world, for there were more than he
could possibly read in the years that, even at the
most generous estimate, were left to him. He had been
wondering where to make his permanent residence, for with the
whole world his, he would be a fool to confine

(16:26):
himself to some modest dwelling. Now we fancied it might
be a good idea to move right into the library.
He stopped the car to stare thoughtfully at the little
park behind the grimy monument to neo Classism. Like Central Park,
Bryant had already slipped its boundaries and encroached upon sixth Avenue.
Avenue of the World, the street signs said now and

(16:47):
before it had been Avenue of the Nations and Avenue
of the Americas. But to the public it had always
been sixth Avenue. Into Johnson, the last man on Earth,
it was sixth Avenue. He'd lived in the library while
he stayed in New York. That was, he'd thought that
in a few weeks, when it got really hot, he
might strike north. He had always meant to spend a
summer in Canada. His service car would probably never last

(17:10):
a trip, but the Museum of Ancient Vehicles had been
glad to bestow half a dozen of the bicycles from
their exhibits upon him. After all, he was in effect
a museum pieced himself, and so as worth preserving as
to bicycles. Moreover, bicycles are difficult to pack for an
interstellar trip. With reasonable care, these might last him his lifetime.

(17:31):
But he had to have a permanent residence somewhere, and
the library was an elegant and commodious dwelling centrally located
New York would have to be his headquarters. For all
the possessions he had carefully amassed and collected and bagged,
and since money would do him no good any more
bought were here, and there were by far too many

(17:51):
of them to be transported to any really distant location.
He loved to own things. He was, by no means
an advocate of rousseau complete return to nature. Whatever civilization
had left that he could use without compromise he would,
And thankfully there would be no electricity, of course, but
he had provided himself with flashlights and bulbs and batteries,

(18:14):
not too many of the last, of course, because they'd
grow stale. However, he'd also laid in plenty of candles,
and a vast supply of matches, tins of food and concentrates,
and synthetics, packages of seed. Should he grow tired of
all these and want to try growing his own fruit,
he knew would be growing wild soon enough. Vitamins and medicines.

(18:35):
Of course, were he to be really ill or get
hurt in some way, it might be the end. But
that was something he wouldn't think of, something that couldn't
possibly happen to him for his relaxation. He had an
antique hand wound phonograph, together with thousands of old fashioned records,
and then, of course he had the whole planet, the
whole world to amuse him. He even had provided himself

(18:59):
with a heat ray gun and a substantial supply of ammunition.
Although he couldn't imagine himself ever killing an animal for food,
it was squeamishness that stood in his way rather than
any ethical considerations. Although he did indeed believe that every
creature had the right to live, none the less there
was the possibility that the craving for fresh meat might

(19:20):
change his mind for him. Besides, although hostile animals had
long been gone from this part of the world, the
only animals would be birds and squirrels, and farther up
the Hudson rabbits and chipmunks and deer. Perhaps an occasional
bear in the mountains who knew what harmless life for
might become a threat now that its development would be
left unchecked. A cat sitting atop one of the stately

(19:44):
stone lions outside in the library met his eye with
such a steady gaze of understanding, though not of sympathy,
that he found himself, needing to repeat that the buying
now almost magic phrase to himself. Not in mine lifetime anyway,
with some intelligence life form developed as a plant man,
or would the planet revert to a primeval state of

(20:04):
mindless innocence. He would never know, and he didn't really care.
No point in speculating over unanswerable questions. He settled back
luxuriously on the worn cushions of his car. Even so
little as twenty years before, it would have been impossible
for him for any one to stop his vehicle in
the middle of forty second Street and Fifth Avenue purely

(20:25):
to meditate. But it was his domain now. He could
go in the wrong direction on one way streets, stop
wherever he pleased, drive as fast or as slowly as
he would and could. Of course, if he wanted to
do anything as vulgar as spit in this street, he could.
But they were his streets now. Not to be sullied

(20:45):
cross the roads without waiting for the lights to change.
It would be a long, long wait. If he did
go to sleep where he wanted, eat as many meals
as he wanted, whenever he chose. He could go naked
in hot weather and there'd be no one to raise
an eyebrow to face public buildings, except that they were
private buildings. Now his buildings idle without the guilty feeling

(21:06):
that there was always something better he could and should
be doing. Even if there were not, there would be
no more guilty feelings. Without people and their knowledge, there
was no more guilt. A flash of movement in the
bushes behind the library caught his eye. Surely they couldn't
be a Fawn and Bryant park so soon. He'd thought
it would be another ten years at least before the

(21:27):
wild animals came sniffing timidly along the Hudson, venturing a
little farther each time. They saw no sign of their
age old enemy. But probably the deer was only his imagination.
He would investigate further after he had moved into the library.
Perhaps a higher building than the library, But then he
would have to climb too many flights of stairs. The

(21:49):
elevators wouldn't be working. Silly of him to forget that
there were a lot of steps outside the library too.
It would be ashore to get his bicycles up those steps. Then,
he smiled to himself. Robinson Crusoe would have been glad
to have had bicycles and steps, and such relatively harmless
animals as bears to worry about. No, Robinson Crusoe never

(22:10):
had it so good as he Johnston would have. And
what more could he want? For whoever before in history
had had his dreams? And what was wrong with dreams?
After all? So completely gratified? What child, envisioning a desert
island all his own could imagine that his island would
be the whole world together? Johnson and the earth would

(22:31):
grow young again. No, the stars were poor others. Johnson
was not the first man in history who had wanted
the earth, but he had been the first man, and
probably the last, who had actually been given it, and
he was well content with his bargain. There was plenty
of room for the bears too, and of the most
sentimental man. By Evelyn E. Smith