Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke [10]
There was a faint click from the facsimile machine in the adjoining room as it ejected the hourly, summary sent out by Central News. Stormgren wandered indoors and ruffled halfheartedly through the sheets. On the other side of the world, the Freedom League had inspired a not-very-original headline. "IS MAN RULED BY MONSTERS?" asked the paper, and went on to quote; "Addressing a meeting in Madras today, Dr. C. V. Krishnan, President of the Eastern Division of the Freedom League, said; 'The explanation of the Overlords' behaviour is quiet simple; Their physical form is so alien and repulsive that they dare not show themselves to humanity. I challenge the Supervisor to deny this.' "
Stormgren threw down the sheet in disgust. Even if the charge were true, did it really matter? The idea was an old one, but it had never worried him. He did not believe that there was any biological form, however strange, which he could not accept in time and, perhaps, even find beautiful. The mind, not the body, was all that mattered. If only he could convince Karellen of this, the Overlords might change their policy. It was certain that they could not be half as hideous as the imaginative drawings that had filled the papers soon after their coming to Earth!
Yet it was not, Stormgren knew, entirely consideration for his successor that made him anxious to see the end of this state of affairs. He was honest enough to admit that, in the final analysis, his, main motive was simple human curiosity. He had grown to know Karellen as a person, and he would never be satisfied until he had also discovered what kind of creature he might be.
***
When Stormgren failed to arrive at his usual time next morning, Pieter Van Ryberg was surprised and a little annoyed. Though the Secretary-General often made a number of calls before reaching his own office, he invariably left word that he was doing so. This morning, to make matters worse, there had been several urgent messages for Stormgren. Van Ryberg rang half a dozen departments trying to locate him, then gave it up in disgust.
By noon he had become alarmed and sent a car to Stormgren's house. Ten minutes later he was startled by the scream of a siren, and a police patrol came racing up Roosevelt Drive. The news agencies must have had friends in that vehicle, for even as Van Ryberg watched it approach, the radio was telling the world that he was no longer merely Assistant, but Acting-Secretary-General of the United Nations.
***
Had Van Ryberg fewer troubles on his hands, he would have found it entertaining to study the Press reactions to Stormgren's disappearance. For the past month, the world's papers had divided themselves into two sharply defined groups. The Western press, on the whole, approved of Karellen's plan to make all men citizens of the world. The Eastern countries, on the other hand, were undergoing violent but largely synthetic spasms of national pride. Some of them had been independent for little more than a generation, and felt that they had been cheated out of their gains. Criticism of the Overlords was widespread and energetic; after an initial period of extreme caution, the Press had quickly found that it could be as rude to Karellen as it liked and nothing would happen. Now it was excelling itself.
Most of these attacks, though very vocal, were not representative of the great mass of the people. Along the frontiers that would soon be gone forever the guards had been doubled, but the soldiers eyed each other with a still inarticulate friendliness. The politicians and the generals might storm and rave, but the silently waiting millions felt that, none too soon, a long and bloody chapter of history was coming to an end.
And now Stormgren had gone, no one knew where. The tumult suddenly subsided as the world realized that it had lost the only man through