VI. Long Roads
The Cosmic Ironies
The Cosmic Ironies sat on a bright island in the midst of the Galaxy, holding a caucus over the universe’s affairs. Boötes flamed, Orion glowed, Scorpio glittered, Ursa Major sulked, Eridanus sprawled and yawned, Canis Major and Canis Minor eyed each other distrustfully, Centaurus and Pegasus huddled close and whispered at intervals. Boötes, it appeared, had just been speaking, and there were still reverberations of his great voice in the ether, while the glare of difference or assent with which he had been greeted by his fellows played upon him from every quarter and illuminated the enormous scene, now red with fire, now blue with space, now opaline with shifting moods of the Ironies.
Into this circle, before one of those present had had time to break the meditative silence, came a brisk invader in burning yellow who walked round the seated group and was obviously chagrined to find that no place had been kept for him.
“I say, brothers of the universe,” he began, “it seems to me this committee has been closed long enough. It needs new blood. One of you move over and let me in.”
If any heard him, at least there was no sign. The reverberations of Boötes’s words travelled farther away and the light from his listeners gradually ceased playing upon him; but the charmed occasion was not apparently disturbed.
“Well, it doesn’t seem very hospitable. I sent word I was coming, and look how you receive me. And, as they say on the Earth, I think it isn’t representative. The Solar System has a right to be here and a right to be heard. Perhaps we are a little younger than some of you, but that excuse won’t hold for ever. Youth, as they say on Jupiter, is no crime.”
Somewhere a star exploded and threw a momentary brilliance over the caucus, so that the gems on the brows of the Ironies sparkled as if they were actually Betelgeux and Aldebaran and Spica and Arcturus and Capella and Sirius and Altair. None of the brooding figures started at the explosion, however, much less at the accusations of the Solar Irony.
“Have I got to repeat all I told you before about the ironic work I and my helpers have done in the Solar System? I must say I am tired of telling it. You ought not to close your minds the way you do to new inventions and discoveries. The first thing you know you’ll all be so out of date that this radical doctrine about the moral government of the world will spread and ruin all your schemes. If you don’t wake up pretty soon it won’t matter whether you ever wake.”
From one of the Ironies a red glow and from another a blue flame and from yet another a white radiance swept around the circle as if looking to see who would speak next, but, settling upon no one, they mingled in the centre and there rested quietly, splashing the pavement with gorgeous colours.
“Take what’s going on in Mars today if you want to test my right to sit in this conclave. I have bilked the Martians into thinking that their everlasting messages to Earth are understood. So those philanthropists have wasted a mountain of treasure making instruments to carry their pompous flashes, and they babble wisdom into the void—as if their wisdom actually mattered or as if Earth would or could pay any attention to it if it ever reached there! You strike me as glum enough, but if you could only see the prophets and poets crowding around that transmitter and pouring all they have and are into it, and then going back to their business with the thick smirk of a duty performed—if you could see that you would laugh a month. That’s what I’ve done in the Solar System: I’ve trained the higher beings to prattle wisdom till they are hoarse and then not to practise it any more than if they were deaf and had never heard of it.”
It may have been some vibration of sympathy which ran through the Ironies or it may have been merely deeper thoughts stirring them to resume the huge discourse.
“For that matter, take Earth alone as evidence of what I can do when I try. The scrawny race of bipeds who think they manage Earth have come up from the slime by the exercise of their wits, trampling the slower races under their heels for thousands of years to make a bare living, and yet, now they have explored all the paths of Earth and dug up its riches and learned to cultivate its fruits, they are acting as if they couldn’t imagine any better future than to take the path back again into the slime. But do they listen to even the petty wisdom a few of them have got at? No, they strut about as they always have, blown up with pride that they are human and not like the other beasts which they have driven into the wilds or else made into slaves. Man, proud man! You should see him. And I have taught him both to be all this and to admire himself. Now why can’t I come into the caucus?”
Surely something was stirring in the moods of the Ironies. Ursa Major, who had been almost grey in his sullenness, darted awakened glances around the circle, coruscating, it seemed, with thought. Orion sent out an iridescent gleam, fanned by quicker and quicker breath. The whole place grew so bright that each ironic countenance shone in comparison with the waves of the Galaxy which beat upon the island.
“But I have done more than all that to win my seat. Those same bipeds, who have been clever enough to map and weigh the stars, have made them gods in their own scrawny image and have laid out heavens on the plan of their desires. And I have taught them to lay the blame of their follies on their gods and to call the consequences their just punishment; I have taught them, moreover, to endure whatever comes, no matter how much the fault of men, in the confidence that they will shortly die and be born again into a world which will make good their wrongs and agonies; I have, in fact, persuaded that tiny race, on its mortal star, that it is the heart and heir and purpose and crown of the universe.”
Now for the first time the great silence was broken by bursts of laughter which shook the zenith and perturbed the Galaxy. From each of the giant faces leaped rays of fearful brilliance, revolving like wheels, interlacing in an ineffable net of light. The Cosmic Ironies rocked in their seats with mirth, smote one another on knee and shoulder, tossed their giant arms in paroxysms of delight, and shouted genial invitations to the candidate.
The Solar Irony stepped forward and sat down between Canis Major and Canis Minor, who unhesitantly made room for him.