Way Station

by Clifford D. Simak

As if this were a special place, one of those special places that each man must seek out for himself, and count himself as lucky if he ever found it, for there were those who sought and never found it. And worst of all, there were even those who never hunted for it.

It was a hopeless thing, he thought, this obsession of his to present the people of the Earth as good and reasonable. For in many ways they were neither good nor reasonable; perhaps because they had not as yet entirely grown up. They were smart and quick and at times compassionate and even understanding, but they failed lamentably in many other ways.

50 years on and this is still true.

With creation went responsibility and he was not equipped to assume more than the moral responsibility for the wrong that he had done, and moral responsibility, unless it might be coupled with the ability to bring about some mitigation, was an entirely useless thing.

Man, he told himself, was not ready for that. He had not as yet become so totally a creature of his own created environment that he could divorce entirely the physical characteristics of his native planet. He needed sun and soil and wind to remain a man.

Studies find that being in nature reduces stress for humans. We do in fact need to go outdoors into wilderness.

“But even if the project should be wrecked,” Enoch pointed out, “there is no surety that any group would gain. It would only throw the question of where the time and energy should be used into an open debate. You say that there are many special interest factions banding together to carry on the fight against us. Suppose that they do win. Then they must turn around and start fighting among themselves.” “Of course that’s the case,” Ulysses admitted, “but then each of them has a chance to get what they want, or think they have a chance. The way it is they have no chance at all. Before any of them has a chance this project must go down the drain.

Humans and aliens alike would rather scuttle an ongoing project achieving results than wait their turn to use resources.

Was it because, in truth, as he had said, she could see beyond the outward guise, could somehow sense the basic humanity (God help me, I cannot think, even now, except in human terms!) that was in these creatures? And if that were true, was it because she herself was not entirely human? A human, certainly, in form and origin, but not formed and molded into the human culture—being perhaps, what a human would be if he were not hemmed about so closely by the rules of behavior and outlook that through the years had hardened into law to comprise a common human attitude.

Even when this bok was written there ws a sense that laws do not reflect humanity and may even turn our humanity aside .

“We’re in bad shape,” he said. “Not like in the old days. It has Galactic Central worried. All this squabbling and haggling among the races, all the pushing and the shoving.” He looked at Enoch. “You thought it was all nice and cozy.” “No,” said Enoch, “not that. I knew that there were conflicting viewpoints and I knew there was some trouble. But I’m afraid I thought of it as being on a fairly lofty plane—gentlemanly, you know, and good-mannered.” “That was the way it was at one time. There always has been differing opinions, but they were based on principles and ethics, not on special interests.

There were differences, naturally, but these differences were bridged, sometimes rather artificially and not too satisfactorily, but with both sides striving to maintain the artificial bridging and generally succeeding. Because they wanted to, you see. There was a common purpose, the forging of a great cofraternity of all intelligences. We realized that among us, among all the races, we had a staggering fund of knowledge and of techniques—that working together, by putting together all this knowledge and capability, we could arrive at something that would be far greater and more significant than any race, alone, could hope of accomplishing. We had our troubles, certainly, and as I have said, our differences, but we were progressing. We brushed the small animosities and the petty differences underneath the rug and worked only on the big ones. We felt that if we could get the big ones settled, the small ones would become so small they would disappear. But it is becoming different now. There is a tendency to pull the pettiness from underneath the rug and blow it beyond its size, meanwhile letting the major and the important issues fall away.”

Soon or late, the war would come to him, if not in a flash of monstrous energy, then in the snow of death falling from the skies.

Interesting look into the mond of someone living under a nuclear threat.