the

most

sentimental

man

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 been getting
hotter; now, even though it
was not yet June, the day was
uncomfortably warm. The
sun's rays glinting off the
bright metal flanks of 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 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 older
man's complication of what
should have been a simple departure
showing through the
pellicule of politeness. He was
young for, since this 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 many left to
go. We could take you easily
enough, you know."

Johnson made a negative
sign again. The rays of the
sun beating full upon his
head made apparent the grey
that usually blended into the
still-thick blond 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 just too
proud to change your mind,"
the young commander said,
less certainly, "I'm sure everyone
will understand if ...
if ..."

Johnson smiled. "No, it's
just that I want 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 that
duty—not duty to the service
but to humanity—required.
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 your loved
ones are buried here and perhaps
you feel it's your duty
to stay with them...?"

At this Johnson almost forgot
that anger no longer had
any validity. By "loved ones"
Clifford undoubtedly had
meant 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
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 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'll
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 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 planet, a little worn-out
but still in pretty good shape.
Pity you can't trade in an old
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 a tremendously
expensive one. Keeping up
this place solely out of sentiment
would be 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
fool enough—if only there
were others with you.... But,
even if anybody else'd 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, you
know—hardly any coal or oil
left, and that's not worth digging
for when there are better
and cheaper fuels in the
system."

He was virtually quoting
from 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 the vegetation
would begin to grow thick.
Already it had released itself
from the restraint of cultivation;
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 send them tumbling
down. And then the
trees 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
heat 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 likely Earth will replenish
herself," the 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 airlock
shuffled their feet and
allowed their muttering to become
a few decibels louder.
Clifford looked at his wrist
chronometer. Obviously he
was no less anxious than the
crew to be off, but, for the
sake of his conscience, 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
your platitudes."

The commander suddenly
stopped paraphrasing the
Manual. "Camping 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 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 suns surrounded
by three planets, Thalia, 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 so marked as to 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 have read the
Colonial Office handouts.... I
wonder what the people who
wrote them'll do now that
there's no longer any necessity
for attracting colonists—everybody's
already up in Alpha
Centauri. Oh, well;
there'll be other systems to
conquer and colonize."

"The word conquer is hardly
correct," the commander
said stiffly, "since not one of
the three planets had any indigenous
life forms that was
intelligent."

"Or life forms that you recognized
as intelligent," Johnson
suggested gently. Although
why should there be
such a premium placed 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 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 burned
to a crisp after all this. Bon
voyage!"

There was no reply.

Johnson watched the silver
vessel shoot up into the sky
and thought, "Now is the
time for me to feel a pang, or
even a twinge, but I don't at
all. I feel relieved, in fact, but
that's probably the result of
getting rid of that fool Clifford."

He crossed the field briskly,
pulling off his jacket and discarding
his tie as he went. His
ground car remained where he
had parked it—in 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, allowing
him a good car would have
been simply an example of
conspicuous waste, and the
government had always preferred
its waste 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 was the capital
of the world and most of the
interstellar ships—particularly
the last few—had taken off
from its spaceports, 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-built apartment
houses that lined the streets
were already crumbling, 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 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 grey and
white and tawny—accepting
their citizenship with equanimity.
They paid no attention
to Johnson—they had long
since dissociated themselves
from a 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
such before, and to kittens the
very fact of existence is the
ultimate surprise.

The Queensborough Bridge
was deadly silent. It was completely
empty except for a
calico cat moving 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 outlast
him—there would be no
heavy traffic to weaken them.
Just in case of unforeseeable
catastrophe, however—he
didn't want to be trapped on
an island, even Manhattan Island—he
had remembered to
provide himself with a rowboat;
a motorboat would have
been preferable, but then the
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 fumes and
smoke into it for many years.
There were few gulls, for
nothing was left for the scavenger;
those remaining were
forced to make an honest living
by catching fish.

In Manhattan, where the
buildings had been more
soundly constructed, the
signs of abandonment were
less evident ... empty streets,
an occasional cracked window.
Not even an unusual
amount of dirt 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 had
burst its boundaries. Fifty-ninth
Street was already half
jungle, and the 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
roads. 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
grey squirrels were gathered
around it, shrilly disputing
possession with some starlings.

Except for the occasional
cry of a cat in 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 stridor of a human
voice piercing with anger;
the cacophony of 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 probably
last as many more. The
shop windows were empty,
except for tangles of dust ... an
occasional broken, discarded
mannequin.... 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 shelves
fuzzed high with the dust of
the years since a customer
had approached them.

Cats sedately walked up
and down the avenue or sat
genteelly with tails tucked in
on the steps of the cathedral—as
if the place had been
theirs all along.

Dusk was falling. Tonight,
for the first time in centuries,
the street lamps would not go
on. Undoubtedly 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
and 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 pigeons
fluttered thickly
around the public library, fat
as ever, their numbers greater,
their appetites grosser. The
ancient library, he knew, had
changed little inside: stacks
and shelves would still be
packed thick with reading
matter. Books are bulky, so
only the rare editions had
been taken beyond the stars;
the rest had been microfilmed
and their originals left to
Johnson 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 himself to some
modest dwelling. Now he fancied
it might be a good idea
to move right into the library.
Very few places in Manhattan
could boast a garden of their
own.

He stopped the car to stare
thoughtfully at the little park
behind the grimy monument
to Neoclassicism. Like Central
Park, Bryant had already
slipped its boundaries and encroached
upon Sixth Avenue—Avenue
of the World, the
street signs said now, and before
that it had been Avenue
of the Nations and Avenue of
the Americas, but to the public
it had always been Sixth
Avenue and to Johnson, the
last man on Earth, it was
Sixth Avenue.

He'd live 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 surface car would probably
never last the 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 piece himself and so
as worth preserving as the
bicycles; moreover, bicycles
are difficult to pack for an
interstellar trip. With reasonable
care, these might last
him his lifetime....

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
begged and—since money
would do him no good any
more—bought, were here. And
there were by far too many of
them to be transported to any
really distant location. He
loved to own things.

He was by no means an advocate
of Rousseau's 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—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—of course, were he
to get 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
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. Nonetheless,
there was the possibility that
the craving for fresh meat
might 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 form might
become a threat now that its
development would be left unchecked?

A cat sitting atop one of
the stately stone lions outside
the library met his eye with
such a steady gaze of understanding,
though not of sympathy,
that he found himself
needing to repeat the by-now
almost magic phrase to himself:
"Not in my lifetime anyway."
Would some intelligent
life form develop to supplant
man? Or would the planet revert
to a primeval state of
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
anyone—to stop his vehicle
in the middle of Forty-second
Street and Fifth Avenue
purely 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 the street, he
could (but they were his
streets now, not to be sullied)
... cross the roads without
waiting for the lights to
change (it would be a long,
long wait if he did) ... go to
sleep when 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, deface public
buildings (except that they
were private buildings now,
his buildings), idle without
the guilty feeling 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 that
couldn't be a fawn in Bryant
Park? So soon?... He'd
thought it would be another
ten years at least before the
wild animals came sniffing
timidly along the Hudson,
venturing a little further 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
elevators wouldn't be working
... silly of him to forget
that. There were a lot of
steps outside the library too—it
would be a chore 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 had it so good
as he, Johnson, 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 grow young
again.

No, the stars were for 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.

Transcriber's Note:

This etext was produced from Fantastic Universe August 1957.
Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S.
copyright on this publication was renewed. Minor spelling and
typographical errors have been corrected without note.