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“No, no. No, no, there’s nothing you can do. I overplayed my hand. I lived as I pleased. I started wars and stopped wars. But this time I went too far, and committed suicide, yes, I did. Go to the port there and look out.” Mr. Pale was trembling, the trembling moved in his fingers and his lips. “Look out. Tell me what you see.”
“Earth. The planet Earth, behind us.”
“Wait just a moment, then,” said Mr. Pale.
The doctor waited.
“Now,” said Mr. Pale, softly. “It should happen about now.”
A blind fire filled the sky.
The doctor cried out. “My God, my God, this is terrible!”
“What do you see?”
“Earth! It’s caught fire. It’s burning!”
“Yes,” said Mr. Pale.
The fire crowded the universe with a dripping blue yellow flare. Earth blew itself into a thousand pieces and fell away into sparks and nothingness.
/> “Did you see?” said Mr. Pale.
“My God, my God.” The doctor staggered and fell against the port, clawing at his heart and his face. He began to cry like a child.
“You see,” said Mr. Pale, “what a fool I was. Too far. I went too far. I thought, What a feast. What a banquet. And now, and now, it’s over.”
The doctor slid down and sat on the floor, weeping. The ship moved in space. Down the corridors, faintly, you could hear running feet and stunned voices, and much weeping.
The sick man lay on his cot, saying nothing, shaking his head slowly back and forth, swallowing convulsively. After five minutes of trembling and weeping, the doctor gathered himself and crawled and then got to his feet and sat on the chair and looked at Mr. Pale who lay gaunt and long there, almost phosphorescent, and from the dying man came a thick smell of something very old and chilled and dead.
“Now do you see?” said Mr. Pale. “I didn’t want it this way.”
“Shut up.”
“I wanted it to go on for another billion years, the high life, the picking and choosing. Oh, I was king.”
“You’re mad!”
“Everyone feared me. And now I’m afraid. For there’s no one left to die. A handful on this ship. A few thousand left on Mars. That’s why I’m trying to get there, to Mars, where I can live, if I make it. For in order for me to live, to be talked about, to have an existence, others must be alive to die, and when all the living ones are dead and no one is left to die, then Mr. Pale himself must die, and he most assuredly does not want that. For you see, life is a rare thing in the universe. Only Earth lived, and only I lived there because of the living men. But now I’m so weak, so weak. I can’t move. You must help me.”
“Mad, mad!”
“It’s another two days to Mars,” said Mr. Pale, thinking it through, his hands collapsed at his sides. “In that time you must feed me. I can’t move or I would tend myself. Oh, an hour ago, I had great power, think of the power I took from so much and so many dying at once. But the effort of reaching this ship dispersed the power, and the power is self-limiting. For now I have no reason to live, except you, and your wife, and the twenty other passengers and crew, and those few on Mars. My incentive, you see, weakens, weakens …” His voice trailed off into a sigh. And then, after swallowing, he went on, “Have you wondered, Doctor, why the death rate on Mars in the six months since you established bases there has been nil? I can’t be everywhere. I was born on Earth on the same day as life was born. And I’ve waited all these years to move on out into the star system. I should have gone months ago, but I put it off, and now, I’m sorry. What a fool, what a greedy fool.”
The doctor stood up, stiffening and pulling back. He clawed at the wall. “You’re out of your head.”
“Am I? Look out the port again at what’s left of Earth.”
“I won’t listen to you.”
“You must help me. You must decide quickly. I want the captain. He must come to me first. A transfusion, you might call it. And then the various passengers, one by one, just to keep me on the edge, to keep me alive. And then, of course, perhaps even you, or your wife. You don’t want to live forever, do you? That’s what would happen if you let me die.”
“You’re raving.”
“Do you dare believe I am raving? Can you take that chance? If I die, all of you would be immortal. That’s what man’s always wanted, isn’t it? To live forever. But I tell you, it would be insanity, one day like another, and think of the immense burden of memory! Think! Consider.”
The doctor stood across the room with his back to the wall, in shadow.
