“You seem to be going against the vast majority of world opinion.”

There was in his lightning-shot eyes the look of a vulture with its remorseless ill will against all creation. “If a hundred million people embrace a stupid concept,” he said, “it’s still a stupid concept. Look at our American electorate.”

“Are you allied with any of the anti-nuke organizations? The grassroots movements?”

He sniffed contentiously. “They’re all on the wrong tack. We need stronger initiatives to keep the peace. We need instant alternatives.”

He was becoming unbearable again, with his indignant and grandiose generalities, his handful of dottering communards trying to impose a sense of order on a resistant and chaotic world.

“What are they, precisely, these initiatives of yours?”

“Let me remind you that all wars, essentially, are economic. We spout ideology, but we pillage the earth for real estate, for fossil fuels, for markets. We fight for power, I tell you, although we call it principle. We kill to hold on to what we’ve got, or to gain what we haven’t. To the lesser nations we give money to assure their support, but we don’t share the technical know-how that would make them self-sufficient. Our benevolence is predatory; to paraphrase the poet what’s-his-name—Housman—we give megabucks and rubles, but not our hearts away.”

“But what do I tell Abdul?”

“Now, suppose there was a way of dispensing to everybody in the world an equal share of the planet’s wealth, and the means of developing it at no cost, absolutely free? To produce all the good things in abundance? Free access to energy for agriculture, transportation, industry, communications, for leisure. An end to starvation, the beginning of physical well-being, mental health, even happiness. Under those circumstances, war would become obsolete—what purpose could it serve?—and wouldn’t that be a hell of a thing?”

“Sure it would,” I agreed, “but how would you accomplish it?”

His eyes held a dry, soft shine. “I know how,” he said. His somber face seemed to glow with evangelical rapture, as if he were the anointed herald of some glorious annunciation.

I know how. What the hell was he? A savior or just another charlatan, panting for immortality? A sage consumed by the splendor of a Cause, or your average neighborhood wacko with a mind full of scrimshaw?

He flapped his flat feet to the far corner of his cave, where the black safe crouched like some sullen, overgrown toad. He twirled the knob clockwise and counter, then back again. He gripped the nickel-plated bar and managed, miraculously, to swing the thick door open. Within its cavernous iron belly there was nothing (I half expected a cache of peanuts) but a few pages of white foolscap. Chatterton gathered them up.