Or the World Will Die

Epilogue

It is September and I am at the foot of the garden dictating the last few pages of this into the black bakelite mouthpiece. The black cord stretches across the autumn grass, up toward the house. The leaves are brilliant on the trees.

This report will go into my safe, along with the rest of the confidential case histories which may one day be published. On that day the world will know how much is owed to Karl Zetwicz, and others like him... men who valued their lives less than they valued their country.

But I mustn’t be maudlin. Alice says that those are my two greatest faults, syrupy sentimentality and appalling smugness. Nowadays I try to avoid both.

It is convenient, not having to send the dictated records down to New York for typing. Alice types them in the library.

I think she is mending. Of course, she will never be completely whole again. But she is better. She smiles more often and the sadness is on her face only when she sits alone.

James had a difficult period of adjustment, but now he seems to take a morbid satisfaction in having a woman around the house — as though he enjoys seeing the little restrictions on my freedom.

During the evenings we often sit in the darkness of the garden and talk. But we never talk about Guizot and his plans.

You see, we don’t know yet whether we were too late. Alice had found out that Lessault has about completed the Device which will scan the world.

Maybe it is too late.

Maybe on one of these warm full evenings, as we sit together in the garden, we may see, in the distant night sky, the gigantic blooming flower spelling the destruction of the world we know. We are fifty miles from New Haven, and, if they waste a bomb in that sleepy city, we will see it.

We don’t talk about it, but, in the darkness of evening, the glowing end of her cigarette traces jerky and erratic lines on the night. And I know she is waiting — just as I am waiting.

It is as though the entire world is holding its breath.