This was always one of my favorite Damon Knight short stories. (Despite the reference to the fictional Palestine.)
It’s called Not With a Bang – the story of the last man and woman on earth after a nuclear holocaust. The man convinces the prudish woman that they most repopulate, but she has her principles.
I’ve been thinking of this story because of #NeverTrump.
Sometimes a person’s principles can guide a person to the wrong decision.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Ten months after the last plane passed over, Rolf Smith knew beyond doubt that only one other human being had survived. Her name was Louise Oliver, and he was sitting opposite her in a department-store cafe in Salt Lake City. They were eating canned Vienna sausages and drinking coffee.
.
Sunlight struck through a broken pane like a judgment. Inside and outside, there was no sound; only a stifling rumor of absence. The clatter of dishware in the kitchen, the heavy rumble of streetcars: never again. There was sunlight; and silence; and the watery, astonished eyes of Louise Oliver. He leaned forward, trying to capture the attention of those fishlike eyes for a second. “Darling,” he said, “I respect your views, naturally. But I’ve got to make you see that they’re impractical.”
She looked at him with faint surprise, then away again. Her head shook slightly. No. No, Rolf, I will not live with you in sin.
.
Smith thought of the women of France, of Russia, of Mexico, of the South Seas. He had spent three months in the ruined studios of a radio station in Rochester, listening to the voices until they stopped. There had been a large colony in Sweden, including an English cabinet minister. They reported that Europe was gone. Simply gone; there was not an acre that had not been swept clean by radioactive dust.
They had two planes and enough fuel to take them anywhere on the Continent; but there was nowhere to go. Three of them had the plague; then eleven; then all. There was a bomber pilot who had fallen near a government radio station in Palestine. He did not last long, because he had broken some bones in the crash; but he had seen the vacant waters where the Pacific Islands should have been. It was his guess that the Arctic ice fields had been bombed. There were no reports from Washington, from New York, from London, Paris, Moscow, Chungking, Sydney. You could not tell who had been destroyed by disease, who by the dust, who by bombs.
.
Smith himself had been a laboratory assistant in a team that was trying to find an antibiotic for the plague. His superiors had found one that worked sometimes, but it was a little too late. When he left, Smith took along with him all there was of it forty ampoules, enough to last him for years. Louise had been a nurse in a genteel hospital near Denver. According to her, something rather odd had happened to the hospital as she was approaching it the morning of the attack. She was quite calm when she said this, but a vague look came into her eyes and her shattered expression seemed to slip a little more. Smith did not press her for an explanation.
Like himself, she had found a radio station which still functioned, and when Smith discovered that she had not contracted the plague, he agreed to meet her. She was, apparently, naturally immune. There must have been others, a few at least; but the bombs and the dust had not spared them.
.
It seemed very awkward to Louise that not one Protestant minister was left alive.
The trouble was, she really meant it. It had taken Smith a long time to believe it, but it was true. She would not sleep in the same hotel with him, either; she expected, and received, the utmost courtesy and decorum. Smith had learned his lesson. He walked on the outside of the rubble-heaped sidewalks; he opened doors for her, when there were still doors; he held her chair; he reframed from swearing.
He courted her.
.
Louise was forty or thereabouts, at least five years older
than Smith. He often wondered how old she thought she
was. The shock of seeing whatever it was that had happened to the hospital, the patients she had cared for, had sent her mind scuttling back to her childhood. She tacitly admitted that everyone else in the world was dead, but she
seemed to regard it as something one did not mention.
.
A hundred times in the last three weeks, Smith had felt
an almost irresistible impulse to break her thin neck and
go his own way. But there was no help for it; she was the
only woman in the world, and he needed her. If she died, or
left him, he died. Old bitch he thought to himself furiously,
and carefully kept the thought from showing on his face.
“Louise, honey,” he told her gently, “I want to spare your
feelings as much as I can. You know that.”
“Yes, Rolf,” she said, staring at him with the face of a
hypnotized chicken.
.
Smith forced himself to go on. “We’ve got to face the
facts, unpleasant as they may be. Honey, we’re the only
man and the only woman there are. We’re like Adam and
Eve in the Garden of Eden.”
Louise’s face took on a slightly disgusted expression. She
was obviously thinking of fig leaves.
.
“Think of the generations unborn,” Smith told her, with a
tremor in his voice. Think about me for once. Maybe you’re
good for another ten years, maybe not. Shuddering, he
thought of the second stage of the disease the helpless
rigidity, striking without warning. He’d had one such attack
already, and Louise had helped him out of it. Without her,
he would have stayed like that till he died, the hypodermic
that would save him within inches of his rigid hand. He
thought desperately, If 1m lucky, I’ll get at least two kids
out of you before you croak. Then I’ll be safe.
.
He went on, “God didn’t mean for the human race to end
like this. He spared us, you and me, to” he paused; how
could he say it without offending her? “parents” wouldn’t do
too suggestive “to carry on the torch of life,” he ended.
There. That was sticky enough.
.
Louise was staring vaguely over his shoulder. Her eyelids
biinked regularly, and her mouth made little rabbitlike mo-
tions in the same rhythm. Smith looked down at his wasted
thighs under the table-top. I’m not strong enough to force her,
he thought. Christ, if I were strong enough!
.
He felt the futile rage again, and stifled it. He had to keep
his head, because this might be his last chance. Louise had
been talking lately, in the cloudy language she used about
everything, of going up in the mountains to pray for guidance.
She had not said “alone,” but it was easy enough to
see that she pictured it that way. He had to argue her
around before her resolve stiffened. He concentrated furiously and tried once more.
.
The pattern of words went by like a distant rumbling.
Louise heard a phrase here and there; each of them fathered
chains of thought, binding her reverie tighter. “Our
duty to humanity . . .” Mama had often said that was in
the old house on Waterbury Street, of course, before Mama
had taken sick she had said, “Child, your duty is to be
clean, polite, and God-fearing. Pretty doesn’t matter.
There’s plenty of plain women that have got themselves
good, Christian husbands.”
.
Husbands . , . To have and to hold . . . Orange blossoms, and the bridesmaids; the organ music. Through the
haze, she saw Rolf’s lean, wolfish face. Of course, he was
“T” the only one she’d ever get; she knew that well enough.
Gracious, when a girl was past twenty-five, she had to take
what she could get.
But I sometimes wonder if he’s really a nice man, she
thought.
.
“. . . in the eyes of God . . .” She remembered the
stained-glass windows in the old First Episcopalian Church,
and how she always thought God was looking down at her
through that brilliant transparency. Perhaps He was still
looking at her, though it seemed sometimes that He had
forgotten. Well, of course she realized that marriage customs changed,
and if you couldn’t have a regular minister . . . But it was really a shame, an outrage almost, that if she were actually going to marry this man, she couldn’t
have all those nice things. . . . There wouldn’t even be any
wedding presents. Not even that.
.
But of course Rolf would
give her anything she wanted. She saw his face again, noticed the narrow black eyes staring at her with ferocious purpose, the thin mouth that jerked in a slow, regular tic, the hairy lobes of the ears below the tangle of black hair.
He oughtn’t to let his hair grow so long, she thought. It
isn’t quite decent. Well, she could change all that. If she
did marry him, she’d certainly make him change his ways.
It was no more than her duty.
.
He was talking now about a farm he’d seen outside
town a good big house and a barn. There was no stock,
he said, but they could get some later. And they’d plant
things, and have their own food to eat, not go to restaurants all the time.
She felt a touch on her hand, lying pale before her on
the table. Rolf’s brown, stubby fingers, black-haired above
and below the knuckles, were touching hers. He had
stopped talking for a moment, but now he was speaking
again, still more urgently. She drew her hand away.
.
He was saying, “. . . and you’ll have the finest wedding
dress you ever saw, with a bouquet. Everything you want,
Louise, everything . . .”
.
A wedding dress! And flowers, even if there couldn’t be
any minister! Well, why hadn’t the fool said so before?
Rolf stopped halfway through a sentence, aware that
Louise had said quite clearly, “Yes, Rolf, I will marry you
if you wish.”
.
Stunned, he wanted her to repeat it but dared not ask,
“What did you say?” for fear of getting some fantastic
answer, or none at all. He breathed deeply. He said, “To-
day, Louise?”
She said, “Well, today . . . I don’t know quite . . . Of
course, if you think you can make all the arrangements in
time, but it does seem . . .”
.
Triumph surged through Smith’s body. He had the ad-
vantage now, and he’d ride it. “Say you will, dear,” he
urged her. “Say yes, and make me the happiest man . . .”
Even then, his tongue balked at the rest of it; but it didn’t
matter. She nodded submissively. “Whatever you think
best, Rolf.”
.
He rose, and she allowed him to kiss her pale, sapless
cheek. “We’ll leave right away,” he said. “If you’ll excuse
me for just a minute, dear?”
.
He waited for her “Of course” and then left, making foot-
prints in the furred carpet of dust down toward the end
of the room. Just a few more hours he’d have to speak to
her like that, and then, in her eyes, she’d be committed to
him forever. Afterward, he could do with her as he liked
beat her when he pleased, submit her to any proof of his
scorn and revulsion, use her. Then it would not be too bad,
being the last man on earth not bad at all. She might even
have a daughter. . . .
.
He found the washroom door and entered. He took a
step inside, and froze, balanced by a trick of motion, up-
right but helpless. Panic struck at his throat as he tried to
turn his head and failed; tried to scream, and failed. Be-
hind him, he was aware of a tiny click as the door, cushioned by the hydraulic check, shut forever. It was not locked; but its other side bore the warning MEN.
!snip!
.
And there you have the essence of the principled NeverTrump.
Like the woman who would never enter the men’s room, even though there are only 2 people left on the planet, NeverTrump, and their precious principles, will kill off America, dooming it to progressive activist judges, from SCOTUS to circuit courts, which will turn America into a European style socialist country, devoid of our constitution and without borders.
I wouldn’t piss on a NeverTrump person if they were on fire, and I was a Cruz supporter.
I would love to see a report on these types of people from a psychiatrist.
How do you get your brain to think the way they do.
Are they self righteous?
Do they believe only they can see the future?
Are they on crack?
Who in there right mind would not want to stop HRC?
At first I thought this @ never Trump was a gag perpetrated by people on the left.
It had to be. It’s so fucking wacky.
I write off the #NTers as the truly irredemable ones.
I concern myself moreso with the constant barrage of
dispiriting “all hope is lost! it’s rigged! hillary will win! no point in voting!” psyops.
Some of it comes in the form of the fake polls.
Some comes in fatallistic, cynical right wing posts (not limited to SHTF sites).
Some comes in Leftist trolls on rightwing sites telling folks to “vote out all those RINO Republicans” (NOTE: 1) the time for that was the Primaries, 2) Trump will be blocked should Congress go Dem, 3) the spineless RINO pussies will fall in line quickly or get voted out in the next cycle).
What I see and sense points to a Trump victory (w/mandate).
PASS. IT. ON.
It’s like the NTs have been bit by toxic queer bed bugs that have venom which rots out the logic section of the brain.
Episcopalians are a good example of that too. Rolf was in for a shitty life either way.
Oh for the love of Pete, knock the crazy bitch out Rolf and get on with it.
Find some roofies, she won’t remember, maybe you can sell her on immaculate conception.
I’m not a #NTer, and I read this story long ago. Just curious how you think this is this a good analogy for the political race tho.
I mean…
Louise wins.
Louise doesn’t win. Mankind loses.
Note the incredible increase in an already fevered attack on Trump since he said he would appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary.
She’s not just running for president, she’s running to stay out of prison. I’m telling you, even if it takes the most obvious, overt voter fraud to pull her POS carcass over the finish line, she & the left dominated media will do it.
All of this #neverTrump bullshit just gives them more rationale for doing whatever it takes to get her the presidency. It’s so far past stupid that I wonder about the real reason for people like Kristol or Erickson.
I have a feeling that what is going to transpire after Nov 8 will make the post election nightmare of 2000 look like a Sunday school get together.
Perhaps “Special Delivery” would have served as a better allegory. With Leo playing the part of the #NeverTrumpers.
The final tally of the votes wont matter, the media will proclaim the bitch as the winner and then smear anyone who challenges their word.
The #NeverTrumpers have fabricated a dungeon of misery out of lies and prevarications to which they have consigned themselves for all eternity. They refuse to see the light of day, the modicum of sanity that still exists in the world, because they have become enamored of their dungeon and believe that they are sufferring for some elusive, mystical truth. Louise is ready to obliterate the human race because of her misunderstanding, as are the #NeverTrumpers. The misplaced belief in some murky principle absolves them of rational thought.
izlamo delenda est …
There’s a saying that prideful obstinate people “would rather be right than happy.”
Yup.
I think a more appropriate short story for current times would be All the Last Wars At Once, by George Alec Effinger.
Mudbug
NTers, it has become all about them, their egos and the attention they get.
Although Louise pretended to have principles, her principles revolved around the methods to achieve her goal – she wanted marriage and a family, but on her terms and according to her fantasies. In the end, she obtained neither and was a bigger loser than Rolf.
And so it will be for the NeverTrump crowd. They claim to be for conservative principles, but only on their terms and according to their fantasies. By backing Clinton, which they are, they will neither advance conservative principles nor ever be welcome in conservative circles. Nor will the NeverTrumpers be welcome in progressive circles because progressives will never really welcome them either. So, like Louise, they are the biggest losers.
Wyatt, great analogy. +1000 internets.
Jane-
You don’t see Louise as NeverTrump, standing outside the men’s room door, unwilling to do what is necessary given the situation, instead, standing on the principle of not entering a men’s room and in the process killing herself and all of mankind (America)?
I’ll even agree to say the loutish Rolf is Trump-like.
Principles win… now it’s over.
Good job, real man of principles.
I thought most of these Never Trumper types were supposed Christians…
I seem to remember verse from Proverbs that went “Pride forth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall…”
Or, am I reading too much into this? 😉
These dumb asses can’t see the totalitarian forest through the trees. They’ll be the first to be reeducated.
Hypothetical….
Suppose Trump gets elected, and suppose Trump does what he’s been promising, surrounds himself with good advisors, listens to their advice, and makes sound CEO decisions. Would the NT group ever admit that they were wrong about Trump or are they dug in so deep, trapped by pride, that they’ll continue the tantrum through 4 years?
@ TN Tuxedo “Special Delivery” ?
The NT’ers are thinking more of Deliverence
I’ve been running lots of scenarios in my head.
-Trump loses so big it’s clear that NT wouldn’t have mattered. NT says I told you so. They start their new party and vow to build a wall around it and make Trump pay for it.
– Trump loses in a squeaker. I get my Jeepers Creepers truck out of the barn garage and seek out famous NTers.
– Trump wins huge. I get my Jeepers Creepers truck out of the barn garage and seek out famous NTers who begin to whine and vow to destroy Trump before he’s inaugurated.
– Trump wins in a squeaker. I get my Jeepers Creepers truck out of the barn garage and seek out famous NTers who begin to whine that we could have had Cruz.
Most scenarios have me in my Jeepers Creepers Truck.
I liked Cruz too, but I never hated Trump. Levin always liked to point out that if the Conservative case were made to the American people the Conservative would win. Well why has this case never been made? And I sincerely doubt that Cruz or any one of the other GOP primary contenders could have withstood and fought back the way Trump does.
@ Perspective:
“Special Delivery” is another popular Damon Knight story. Here’s a synopsis:
Len and Moira Connington are expecting a baby. Moira begins to act strangely. The couple realize the baby is communicating with her and through her. The baby has named itself Leo (after Leonardo da Vinci), and demands that his mother read German so he can learn it. By the eighth month, Leo has her reading through texts on biology, astrophysics, modern literature, etc. Leo decides he wants to write a novel; he dictates the first chapter – an historical novel, which Moira titles “The Virgin of Persepolis” – and Moira sends it to a publisher under a pen name. After two weeks the publisher sends a book contract and an advance for nine hundred dollars. Leo continues dictating, until several chapters are completed. Then he loses interest. Len asks the reason:
Moira: “He’s got two. One is that he doesn’t want to finish the book till he’s certain he’ll have complete control of the money it earns.”
Len: “Well, that makes a certain amount of sense. It’s his book. If he wants guarantees…”
Moira: “You haven’t heard the other one.”
Len: “All right, let’s have it.”
Moira: “He wants to teach us, so we’ll never forget, who the boss is in this family.”
At least the ending is happy: Moira goes into labor. Leo fights to stay in utero, but is eventually born–a normal baby. Leo is gone. After the doctor gives the baby a swat on the behind, Moira tells the doctor, “Give him one for me.”
http://politopinion.com/2016/10/warning-nevertrumpers-mr_pinko-video/
“I have my principles!”
“See what that gets you down at Safeway.”
(Safeway is a grocery chain)
Tim – or say this to a Never Trumper:
“Wish for Trump losing in one hand and shit in the other hand and see which one weighs more”
or an old expression you’d hear from WWII and Korea vets – “go take a flying fuck at a rolling donut”