THE SEMANTIC WAR

By BILL CLOTHIER

Illustrated by WES

[Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Galaxy Science Fiction November 1955. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.]

Perhaps there have been causes for slaughter just as silly as this was—but try to find one!

The rain pours down chill out of a sullen sky. My pace quickens as I try to regain the relative warmth and shelter of the cavern before I become thoroughly drenched. I cannot afford to catch a cold. All alone as I am and with no medicine, I would stand too great a chance of a quick death. These lowering Oregon skies still hold traces of nameless disease in their writhing cloud tendrils. I am not just afraid of a cold. That would only be the key for some other malady to use and strike me down forever.

I see the cave up ahead and feel a sense of contentment as I draw near and then duck inside its stony mouth. The rain hisses without, but inside it is dry. There is a heavy cow-hide hanging on a peg in the wall and I take it down and wrap it around me. Soon I will be warm. Once more I may stave off my ultimate end.

Sometimes I wonder why I wish to put it off. Certainly, according to my old standards, there is no point in living. But somehow I feel that the mere fact of living is justification in itself. Even for such a life as mine.

I didn't always feel this way. But then circumstances change and people change with them. I changed my circumstances more than myself, but I had no alternative. So now I exist.

I suppose I should be content. After all, I am alive and, in my own simple way, I enjoy life. I can remember people who asked nothing more than to be allowed to live—to exist. Ironically enough, I always considered them sub-normal. I felt that a man should strive to do something that would not only perpetuate the happiness of his own life but that of his fellow-men. Something that would make life more beautiful, and easier, and more kind.

It was with this feeling that I applied myself as a student of philosophy at Stanford University. And the strengthening of this same belief led me to take up teaching and embrace it as the only way of 

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