Childhood's End (27 page)

time for him.

It was of no importanct now, for Earth was there ahead.

He had seen it thus a hundred times before, but always

through the remote, mechanical eye of the television camera.

Now at last he himself was out here in space, as the final act

of his dream unfolded itself; and Earth spun beneath on its eternal orbit.

The great blue-green crescent was in its first quarter: more

than half the visible disc was still in darkness. There was little cloud-a few bands scattered along the line of the trade winds.

The arctic cap glittered brilliantly, but was far outshone by the dazzling reflection of the sun in the north Pacific.

One might have thought it was a world of water: this hemisphere was almost devoid of land. The only continent visible was Australia, a darker mist in the atmospehric haze along the limb of the planet.

The ship was driving into Earth's great cone of shadow: the gleaming crescent dwindled, shrank to a burning bow of fire, and winked out of existence. Below was darkness and night.

The world was sleeping.

It was thea that Jan realized what was wrong. There was land down there-but where were the gleaming necklaces of

light, where were the glittering coruscations that had been the cities of man? In all that shadowy hemisphere, there was no

single spark to drive back the night. Gone without a trace were the millions, of kilowatts that once had been splashed carelessly towards the stars. He might have been looking down on Earth as it had been before the coming of man.

This was not the homecoming he had expected. There was

nothing he could do but watch, while the fear of the unknown grew within him. Something had happened-something tinims~ginabIe. And yet the ship was descending purposefully in a

long curve that was taking it again over the sunlit hemisphere. He saw nothing of the actual landing, for the picture of

Earth suddenly winked out and was replaced by that meaning-

174

less pattern of lines and lights. When vision was restored, they were on the ground. There were great buildings in the distance, machines moving about, and a group of Overlords watching them..

Somewhere there was the muffled roar of air as the ship equalized pressure, then the sound of great doors opening. He did not wait: the silent giants watched him with tolerance or indifference as he ran from the control room.

He was home, seeing once more by the sparkling light of his own familiar sun, breathing the air that had first washed through his lungs. The gangway was already down, but he had to wait for a moment until the glare outside no longer blinded him.

Karellen was standing, a little apart from his companions, beside a great transport vehicle loaded with crates. Jan did not stop to wonder how he recognized the Supervisor, nor was he surprised to see him completely unchanged. That was almost the only thing that had turned out as he had expected.

"I have been waiting for you," said Karellen..

     
-
    
23

"1w the early days," said Karellen, "it was safe for us to go among them. But they no longer needed us: our work was done when we had gathered them together and given them a continent of their own. Watch."

The wall in front of Jan disappeared. Instead he was looking down from a height of a few hundred metres on to a pleasantly wooded country. The illusion was so perfect that he fought a momentary giddiness.

"This is five years later, when the second phase had begun." There were figures moving below, and the camera swooped down upon them like a bird of prey.

"This will distress you," said Karellen. "But remember that your standards no longer apply. You are not watching human children."

Yet that was the immediate impression that came to Jan's mind, and no amount of logic could dispel it. They might have been savages, engaged in some complex ritual dance. They were naked and filthy, with matted hair obscuring their

175

eyes. As faras Jan could tell, they were of all ages from five to fifteen, yet they all moved with the same speed, precision, and complete indifference to their surroundings.

Then Jan saw their faces. He swallowed hard, and forced

himself not to turn away. They were emptier than the faces of the dead, for even a corpse has some record carved by Time's

chisel upon its features, to speak when the lips themselves are dumb. There was no more emotion or feeling here than in the face of a snake or an insect. The Overlords themselves were more human than this.

"You are searching for something that is no longer there,"

said Karellen. "Remember-they have no more identity than the cells in your own body. But linked together, they are something much greater than you."

'Why do they keep moving like this ?"

"We called it the Long Dance," replied Karellen. "They never sleep, you know, and this lasted almost a year. Three hundred million of them, moving in a controlled pattern over a whole continent. We've analysed that pattern endlessly, but it means nothing, perhaps because we can see only the physical part of it-the small portion that's here on Earth. Possibly what we have called the Overmind is still training them, moulding them into one unit before it can wholly absorb them into its being."

"But how did they manage about food? And what happened if they hit obstructions, like trees, or cliffs, or water?"

"Water made no difference: they could not drown. When they encountered obstacles, they sometimes damaged themselves, but they never noticed it. As for food-well, there was all the fruit and game they required. But now they have left that need behind, like so many others. For food is largely a source of energy, and they have learned to tap greater sources."

The scene flickered as if a heat haze had passed over it. When it cleared, the movement below had ceased.

"Watch again," said Karellen. "It is three years later."

The little figures, so helpless and pathetic if one did no, know the truth, stood motionless in forest and glade and plaint The camera roamed restlessly from one to the other: already.

thought Jan, their faces were merging into a common mould. He had once seen some photographs made by the superposition of dozens of prints to give one "average" face. The result had been as empty, as void of character as this.

176

4

They seemed to be sleeping or entranced. Then eyes were

tightly closed, and they showed no more awareness of their

surroundings than did the trees under which they stood. What thoughts, Jan wolidered, were echoing through the intricate network in which their minds were now no more-and yet no less-than the separate threads of some great tapestry? And a tapestry, he now realized, that covered many worlds and many races-and was growing still.

It happened with a swiftness that dazzled the eye and stunned the brain. At one moment Jan was looking down upon a beautiful, fertile country with nothing strange about it save the countless small statues scattered-yet not randomly- over its length and breadth. And then in an instant all the trees and grass, all the living creatures that had inhabited this land, flickered out of existence and were gone. There were left only the still lakes, the winding rivers, the rolling brown hills, now stripped of their green carpet-and the silent, indifferent figures who had wrought all this destruction.

"Why did they do it?" gasped Jan.

"Perhaps the presence of other minds disturbed them- even the rudimentary minds of plants and animals. One day, we believe, they may find the material world equally distracting. And then, who knows what will happen? Now you understand why we withdrew when we had done our duty. We are still trying to study them, but we never enter their land or even send our instruments there. All we dare do is to observe from space."

"That was many years ago," said Jan. "What has happened since?"

"Very little. They have never moved in all that time, and take no notice of day or night, summer or winter. They are still testing their powers; some rivers have changed their courses, and there is one that flows uphill. But they have done nothing that seems to have any purpose."

"And they have ignored you completely?"

"Yes, though that is not surprising. The-entity-of which they are part knows all about us. It does not seem to care if we attempt to study it. When it wishes us to leave, or has a new task fbr us elsewhere, it will make its desires very obvious. Until then, we will remain here so that our scientists can gather what knowledge they may."

So this, thought Jan, with a resignation that lay beyond all

177

sadness, was the end of man. It was an end that no prophet had ever foreseen-an end that repudiated optimism and pessimism alike.

Yet it was fitting: it had the sublime inevitability of a great work of art. Jan had glimpsed the universe in all its awful immensity, and knew now that it was no place for man. He realized at last how vain, in the ultimate analysis, had been the dream that had lured him to the stars.

For the road to the stars was a road that forked in two directions, and neither led to a goal that took any account of human hopes or fears.

At the end of one path were the Overlords. They had preserved their individually, their independent egos; they possessed self-awareness and the pronoun "I" had a meaning in their language. They had emotions, some at least of which were shared by humanity. But they were trapped, Jan realized now, in a cul-de-sac from which they could never escape. Their minds were ten-perhaps a hundred-times as powerful as men's. It made no difference in the final reckoning. They were equally helpless, equally overwhelmed by the unimaginable complexity of a galaxy of a hundred thousand million suns, and a cosmos of a hundred thousand million galaxies.

And at the end of the other path? There lay the Overmind, whatever it might be, bearing the same relation to man as man bore to amcr.ba. Potentially infinite, beyond mortality, how long had it been absorbing race after race as it spread across the stars? Did it too have desires, did it have goals it sensed dimly yet might never attain? Now it had drawn into its being all that the human race had ever achieved. This was not tragedy, but fulfilment. The billions of transient sparks of consciousness that had made up humanity would flicker no more like flreffies against the night. But they had not lived utterly in vain.

The last act, Jan knew, had still to come. It might occur tomorrow, or it might be centuries hence. Even the Overlords could not be certain.

He understood their purpose now, what they had done with Man and why they still lingered upon Earth. Towards them he felt a grcat humility, as well as admiration for the inflexible patience that had kept them waiting here so long.

He never learned the full story of the strange symbiosis between the Overmind and its servants. According to Rasha

178

verak, there had never been a time in lus rac&s history when the Overmind was not there, though it had made no use of them until they had achieved a scientific civilization and could range through space to do its bidding.

"But why does it need you?" queried Jan. "With all its tremendous powers, surely it could do anything it pleased."

"No," said Rashaverak, "it has limits. In the past, we know, it has attempted to act directly upon the minds of other races, and to influence their cultural development. It's always failed, perhaps because the pull is too great. We are the interpreters-the guardians. Or, to use one of your own metaphors, we till the field until the crop is ripe. The Overmind collects the harvest-and we move on to another task. This is the fifth race whose apotheosis we have watched. Each time we learn a little more."

"And do you not resent being used as a tool by the Over-mind?"

"The arrangement has some advantages: besides, no-one of intelligence resents the inevitable."

That proposition, Jan reflected wryly, had never been fully accepted by mankind. There were things beyond logic that the Overlords had never understood.

"It seems strange," said Jan, "that the Overmind chose you to do its work, if you have no trace of the paraphysical powers latent in mankind. How does it communicate with you and make its wishes known?"

"That is one question I cannot answer-and I cannot tell you the reason why I must keep the facts from you. One day, perhaps, you will know some of the truth."

Jan puzzled over this for a moment, but knew it was useless to follow this line of inquiry. He would have to change the subject and hope to pick up clues later.

"Tell me this, then," he said, "this is something else you've never explained. When your race first came to Earth, back in the distant past, what went wrong? Why had you become the symbol of fear and evil to us?"

Rashaverak smiled. He did not do this as well as Karellen could, but it was a fair imitation.

"No-one ever guessed, and you see now why we could never ;ell you. There was only one event that could have made such an impact upon humanity. And that event was not at the dawn of history, but at its very end."

179

"What do you mean?" asked Jan.

'When our ships entered your skies a centmy and a half ago, that was the first meeting of our two races, though of course we had studied you from a distance. And yet you feared

and recognized us, as we knew that you would. It was not

precisely a memory. You have already had proof that time is

more complex than your science ever imagined. For that memory was not of the past, but of thefuture-of those dosing years when your race knew that everything was finished. We did what we could, but it was not an easy end. And because we were there, we became identified with your race's death.

Yes, even while it was still ten thousand years in the future!

It was as if a distorted echo had reverberated round the closed cirde of time, from the future to the past. Call it not a memory, but a premonition."

The idea was hard to grasp, and for a moment Jan wrestled with it in silence. Y~t he should have been prepared; he had already received proof enough that cause and event could reverse their normal sequence.