A Memory And More

     The truly great stories are few in number. Not all are well known. Yet those who encounter them are almost unanimous in wonder and praise. We go looking for other works by their author… often to our disappointment. Not only does greatness touch few, it seldom lingers at any address.

     One example is Daniel Keyes, the author of Flowers For Algernon. Keyes did write other tales, but nothing to compare with his masterwork. He expressed jocular bewilderment over Algernon to no less than Isaac Asimov. “Listen, when you find out how I did it,” he said to Asimov, “let me know, will you? I want to do it again.”

     Keyes’s high achievement was recognized by millions. Others are not so fortunate, at least within their lifetimes. One that’s on my mind this morning is Floyd L. Wallace.

     Wallace wrote largely for the “pulps,” especially Galaxy Science Fiction. Several of his stories are available at Project Gutenberg. He was consistently competent and entertaining, but one of his stories, “Student Body,” stands high above the others, especially in its climax. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the tale:

     Humanity is spreading rapidly through the galaxy, and a planet known as Glade has been identified as suitable for colonization as it has a near-Earth climate (and presumably near-Earth gravity and atmosphere). A colonisation expedition lands on Glade; one rocket contains the potential colonists and their equipment, whilst a second rocket returns to Earth to confirm the suitability of the planet and bring more settlers.
     Under the energetic leadership of Executive Hafner, the colonists start to assemble agricultural equipment and prepare for planting fast-growing crops that they will need to survive. But biologist Dano Marin is already concerned that all is not as it should be. Biological controls have previously surveyed the planet, without actually landing, and cleared it as being benign, but very soon mice appear and attack the crops and food stocks. Attempts are made to control them, but they then appear in plague proportions.
     Marin thinks he knows what has happened. The apparently harmless native lifeform, which he dubs the ‘omnimal’, has the ability to adapt to threats as they appear. They can mutate and reproduce with amazing speed. As the mice are brought under control by robot cats, they are replaced with rats who attack one of the cats en masse and manage to destroy it. The humans bring in terriers to fight the rats, but this only stops them temporarily. They are then further replaced by tiger-like creatures.
     Marin now knows what the next mutation will be and is proved right when food again goes missing from the fields. With Hafner only partially convinced, he seeks out the new creature. Hafner wants to shoot it, but Marin convinces him not to, knowing that a further mutated creature will be unstoppable. They come face-to-face with the creature and the story ends with the line: “It looked very much like a man.”

     That plot summary, while accurate, fails to capture the power of the story’s ending. Up to the omnimal’s evolution of the humanoid creature, its products had been naked threats: predators aimed at destroying the human colony. Then comes the final stage:

     Two nights later, just before dawn, the alarm rang.
     Marin met Hafner at the edge of the settlement. Both carried rifles. They walked; the noise of any vehicle was likely to frighten the animal. They circled around and approached the field from the rear. The men in the camp had been alerted. If they needed help, it was ready.
     They crept silently through the underbrush. It was feeding in the field, not noisily, yet they could hear it. The dogs hadn’t barked.
     They inched nearer. The blue sun of Glade came up and shone full on their quarry. The gun dropped in Hafner’s hand. He clenched his teeth and raised it again.
     Marin put out a restraining arm. “Don’t shoot,” he whispered.
     “I’m the exec here. I say it’s dangerous.”
     “Dangerous,” agreed Marin, still in a whisper. “That’s why you can’t shoot. It’s more dangerous than you know.”
     Hafner hesitated and Marin went on. “The omnimal couldn’t compete in the changed environment and so it evolved mice. We stopped the mice and it countered with rats. We turned back the rat and it provided the tiger.
     “The tiger was easiest of all for us and so it was apparently stopped for a while. But it didn’t really stop. Another animal was being formed, the one you see there. It took the omnimal two years to create it—how, I don’t know. A million years were required to evolve it on Earth.”
     Hafner hadn’t lowered the rifle and he showed no signs of doing so. He looked lovingly into the sights.
     “Can’t you see?” urged Marin. “We can’t destroy the omnimal. It’s on Earth now, and on the other planets, down in the storage areas of our big cities, masquerading as rats. And we’ve never been able to root out even our own terrestrial rats, so how can we exterminate the omnimal?”
     “All the more reason to start now.” Hafner’s voice was flat.
     Marin struck the rifle down. “Are their rats better than ours?” he asked wearily. “Will their pests win or ours be stronger? Or will the two make peace, unite and interbreed, make war on us? It’s not impossible; the omnimal could do it if interbreeding had a high survival factor.
     “Don’t you still see? There is a progression. After the tiger, it bred this. If this evolution fails, if we shoot it down, what will it create next? This creature I think we can compete with. It’s the one after this that I do not want to face.”
     It heard them. It raised its head and looked around. Slowly it edged away and backed toward a nearby grove.
     The biologist stood up and called softly. The creature scurried to the trees and stopped just inside the shadows among them.
     The two men laid down their rifles. Together they approached the grove, hands spread open to show they carried no weapons.
     It came out to meet them. Naked, it had had no time to learn about clothing. Neither did it have weapons. It plucked a large white flower from the tree and extended this mutely as a sign of peace.
     “I wonder what it’s like,” said Marin. “It seems adult, but can it be, all the way through? What’s inside that body?”
     “I wonder what’s in his head,” Hafner said worriedly.
     It looked very much like a man.

     No one who reads that story will forget how it ends. Savor it for a moment. Then we turn to politics.

     Don Surber provides a penetrating look at what the Left fears today:

     Trending Politics reported, “A number of House Democrats are livid with Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) for bringing several articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, according to a report from Axios.
     “The House Democrat filed multiple articles of impeachment against the president over the deportation of Kilmar Ábrego García, a suspected MS-13 gang member with ties to a convicted human trafficker earlier this week.”

     Now, the Democrats have repeatedly tried to oust President Trump, so from that angle this isn’t big news. But Surber provides another perspective:

     As nifty and as fun impeaching Trump was the first couple of times, the impeachments set in motion a quest to destroy him that failed time and time again. That which did not kill him only made him stronger.
     Raiding his home in Mar-a-Lago failed. Suing him for borrowing money and paying it back on time with interest failed. Indicting him for paying off a hooker failed. Getting a mugshot top gloat failed. Setting him up for an assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, failed.

     Donald Trump’s 2015-2016 campaign for president was ridiculed from end to end of the media spectrum. More scorn was poured on his candidacy than any politician suffered before him. Have another memory:

     Yet he won. He governed successfully despite the constant attacks on him, including the two impeachments. Remember all the “walls are closing in” pronouncements?

     The 2020 election had to be stolen to displace Trump from the White House. He came back with a vengeance in 2023 and 2024 – again to a chorus of howls that he wouldn’t be elected:

     Add the lawfare and the two assassination attempts to all that. Trump still triumphed. Today he’s at his strongest and most determined. You’d almost think the man is one of Nietszche’s ubermenschen!

     That, not the likelihood of divine intervention, is what has the Democrats upset with the impeachment attempt by Congressman Shri Thanedar. They “shot at the king” many times, in many different ways. Each failure to bring Trump down brought a new, stronger and more determined Trump. His support eclipses that of any previous president.

     The Democrats learned slowly, but they learned. They can’t risk another attempt on Trump. Their previous ones have produced a furious, energized Trump with 77 million equally energized supporters cheering him on. They’re having trouble coping with that. It’s what would come after another attempt to depose him – successful or not – that they don’t dare face.

     Maybe divine intervention, too.

     In closing: A great story is being acted out in real life, as we speak. It will surely be remembered. But we want the ending to be as positive as that of Wallace’s “Student Body.” For that, we must support the president in his efforts to heal our ailing Republic. Whether or not his priorities and his timing mesh with ours, we must keep faith and stand with him.

     Stay tuned.