Hut two threep foa!

Left!

Left!

He-had-a-good-wife-but-he

Left!

Left!

Left!

Right!

Left!

Wir, as they say in the old country, marschieren weiter wenn alles in Scherben fällt.

We have your eoliths and your mesoliths and your neoliths. We have your Babylons and your Pompeiis, your Caesars and your chromium-plated (vital-ingredient-impregnated) artifacts.

We have your bloody hatchets and your Hiroshimas. We march in spite of Hell, we do —

Atrophy, Entropy, and Proteus vulgaris,

telling bawdy jokes about a farm girl name of Eve

and a traveling salesman called Lucifer.

We bury your dead and their reputations.

We bury you. We are the centuries.

Be born then, gasp wind, screech at the surgeon’s slap, seek manhood, taste a little of godhood, feel pain, give birth, struggle a little while, succumb:

(Dying, leave quietly by the rear exit, please.)

Generation, regeneration, again, again, as in a ritual, with blood-stained vestments and nail-torn hands, children of Merlin, chasing a gleam. Children, too, of Eve, forever building Edens — and kicking them apart in berserk fury because somehow it isn’t the same. (AGH! AGH! AGH! — an idiot screams his mindless anguish amid the rubble. But quickly! let it be inundated by the choir, chanting Alleluias at ninety decibels.)

Hear then, the last Canticle of the Brethren of the Order of Leibowitz, as sung by the century that swallowed its name:

LUCIFER IS FALLEN; the code words, flashed electrically across the continent, were whispered in conference rooms, were circulated in the form of crisp memoranda stamped SUPREME SECRETISSIMO, were prudently withheld from the press. The words rose in a threatening tide behind a dike of official secrecy. There were several holes in the dike, but the holes were fearlessly plugged by bureaucratic Dutch boys whose forefingers became exceedingly swollen while they dodged verbal spitballs fired by the press.

FIRST REPORTER: What is Your Lordship’s comment on Sir Rische Thon Berker’s statement that the radiation count on the Northwest Coast is ten times the normal level?

DEFENSE MINISTER: I have not read the statement.

FIRST REPORTER: Assuming it to be true, what could be responsible for such an increase?

DEFENSE MINISTER: The question calls for conjecture. Perhaps Sir Rische discovered a rich uranium deposit. No, strike that out. I have no comment.

SECOND REPORTER: Does Your Lordship regard Sir Rische as a competent and responsible scientist?

DEFENSE MINISTER: He has never been employed by my department.

SECOND REPORTS: That is not a responsive answer.

DEFENSE MINISTER: It is quite responsive. Since he has never been employed by my department, I have no way of knowing his competence or responsibility. I am not a scientist.

LADY REPORTER: Is it true that a nuclear explosion occurred recently somewhere across the Pacific?

DEFENSE MINISTER: As Madam well knows, the testing of atomic weapons of any kind is a high crime and an act of war under present international law. We are not at war. Does that answer your question?

LADY REPORTER: No, Your Lordship, it does not. I did not ask if a test had occurred. I asked whether an explosion had occurred.

DEFENSE MINISTER: We set off no such explosion. If they set one off, does Madam suppose that this government would be informed of it by them?

( Polite laughter. )

LADY REPORTER: That does not answer my —

FIRST REPORTER: Your Lordship, Delegate Jerulian has charged the Asian Coalition with the assembly of hydrogen weapons in deep space, and he says our Executive Council knows it and does nothing about it. Is that true?

DEFENSE MINISTER: I believe it is true that the Opposition’s Tribune made some such ridiculous charge, yes.

FIRST REPORTER: Why is the charge ridiculous? Because they are not making space-to-earth missiles in space? Or because we are doing something about it?

DEFENSE MINISTER: Ridiculous either way. I should like to point out, however, that the manufacture of nuclear weapons has been prohibited by treaty ever since they were redeveloped. Prohibited everywhere — in space or on Earth.

SECOND REPORTER: REPORTER: But there’s no treaty to proscribe the orbiting of fissionable materials, is there?

DEFENSE MINISTER: Of course not. The space-to-space vehicles are all nuclear powered. They have to be fueled.

SECOND REPORTER: And there’s no treaty to prohibit orbiting of other materials from which nuclear weapons might be manufactured?

DEFENSE MINISTER (irritably): To my knowledge, the existence of matter outside our atmosphere has not been outlawed by any treaty or act of parliament. It is my understanding that space is chock-full of things like the moon and the asteroids, which are not made of green cheese.

LADY REPORTER: Is Your Lordship suggesting that nuclear weapons could be manufactured without raw materials from Earth?

DEFENSE MINISTER: I was not suggesting that, no. Of course it’s theoretically possible. I was saying that no treaty or law prohibits the orbiting of any special raw materials — only nuclear weapons.

LADY REPORTER: If there was a recent test shot in the Orient, which do you think more probable: a subterranean explosion that broke surface, or a space-to-earth missile with a defective warhead?

DEFENSE MINISTER: Madam, your question is so conjectural that you force me to say: “No comment.”

LADY REPORTER: I was only echoing Sir Rische and Delegate Jerulian.

DEFENSE MINISTER: They are free to indulge in wild speculation. I am not.

SECOND REPORTER: At the risk of seeming wry — What is Your Lordship’s opinion of the weather?

DEFENSE MINISTER: Rather warm in Texarkana, isn’t it? I understand they’re having some bad dust storms in the Southwest. We may catch some of it hereabouts.

LADY REPORTER: Are you in favor of Motherhood, Lord Ragelle?

DEFENSE MINISTER: I am sternly opposed to it, Madam. It exerts a malign influence on youth, particularly upon young recruits. The military services would have superior soldiers if our fighting men had not been corrupted by Motherhood.

LADY REPORTER: May we quote you on that?

DEFENSE MINISTER: Certainly, Madam — but only in my obituary, not sooner.

LADY REPORTER: Thank you. I’ll prepare it in advance.

Like other abbots before him, the Dom Jethrah Zerchi was by nature not an especially contemplative man, although as spiritual ruler of his community he was vowed to foster the development of certain aspects of the contemplative life in this flock, and, as a monk, to attempt the cultivation of a contemplative disposition in himself. Dom Zerchi was not very good at either of these. His nature impelled him toward action even in thought; his mind refused to sit still and contemplate. There was a quality of restlessness about him which had driven him to the leadership of the flock; it made him a bolder ruler, occasionally even a more successful ruler, than some of his predecessors, but that same restlessness could easily become a liability, or even a vice.

Zerchi was vaguely aware, most of the time, of his own inclination toward hasty or impulsive action when confronted by unslayable dragons. Just now, however, the awareness was not vague but acute. It operated in unfortunate retrospect. The dragon had already bitten St. George.