I believed him. I was starting to wonder about a lot of things. He seemed sincere in welcoming the idea of an alliance with a civilized power. And yet, I myself had seen the carnage done by his raiders at the palace, and the atom bomb they had tried to detonate there.
"Very well," I said. "On behalf of my government, I accept your statement; but if we treaty with you now, what assurance will be given to us that there will be no repetition of the bombing raids?"
"Bombing raids!" He stared at me. There was a silence.
"Thank God you came to me by night, in secret," he said. "It is plain to me now that control of affairs has slipped from me farther even than I had feared."
"There have been seven raids, four of them accompanied by atomic bombs, in the past year," I said. "The most recent was less than one month ago."
His voice was deadly now. "By my order, every gram of fissionable material known to me to exist was dumped into the sea on the day that I established this state. That there were traitors in my service, I knew; but that there were madmen who would begin the horror again, I did not suspect."
He turned and stared across the room at a painting of sunlight shining through leaves onto a weathered wall. "I fought them when they burned the libraries, melted down the Cellini altar pieces, trampled the Mona Lisa in the ruins of the Louvre. I could save only a fragment here, a remnant there, always telling myself that it was not too late. But the years passed and they have brought no change.
"There has been an end to industry, farming, family life. Even with the plenty that lies about us for the taking, men fight over three things: gold, liquor, and women.
"I have tried to arouse a spirit of rebuilding against the day when even the broken storehouses run dry; but it's useless. Only my rigid martial rule holds them in check.
"I will confess. I had lost hope. There was too much decay all around me. In my own house, among my closest advisors, I heard nothing but talk of armament, expeditionary forces, domination, renewed war against the ruins outside our little island of order. Empty war, meaningless overlordship of dead nations. They hoped to spend our slender resources in stamping out whatever traces might remain of human achievement, unless it bowed to our supremacy."