The COMPLEAT Collected SFF Works 1911-1987

by C. L. Moore

There is one behind you, padre. It is very bright. It watches me across your shoulder, and its eyes are wise and sad. No, daemon, this is no time for sadness. Be sorry for the ninfas, daemon, and for men like him who burned upon this beach. But not for me. I am well content.

  I will go now.

  The End

  TIME ENOUGH

  Astounding Science Fiction - December 1946

  with Henry Kuttner

  (as by Lewis Padgett)

  The Old 'Uns lived in secret—not quite immortal, but for five hundred years or more they'd lived. But nevertheless they'd all died at about one century!

  -

  Sam Dyson found the secret of immortality five hundred years after the Blowup. Since research along such lines was strictly forbidden, he felt a panicky shock when the man from Administration walked into his office and almost casually told Dyson that immortality was nothing new.

  "This is top secret," the Administrator said, slapping a parcel of manifold sheets on Dyson's desk. "Not these papers, of course,—but what I'm telling you and what you're going to see. We hardly ever let anybody in on the secret. In your case we're making an exception, because you're probably the only guy who can correlate the necessary fieldwork and know what the answers to the questions mean. There are plenty of intangibles in your work, and that's why you've got to handle it personally."

  Dyson's current assignment, which had originally interested him in the problem of immortality, dealt with artificial intellectual mutation. He sat back, trying not to show any particular emotion, and blinked at the Administrator.

  "I thought the Archives—"

  "The Archives are a legend, fostered by propaganda. There ain't no Archives. A few scattered artifacts, that's all. Hardly anything survived the Blowup except the human race."

  And yet the government-controlled Archives were supposed to be the source of all modern knowledge!

  "This is all secret, Dyson. You won't talk. Sometimes we have to use mnemonic-erasure on blabbermouths, but blabbermouths aren't often let in on such private affairs. You know how to keep your mouth shut. The truth is, we get our scraps of pre-Blowup science from human brains—certain people who were alive when the radiations began to run wild. We keep the Old 'Uns segregated; it'd be dangerous if the world knew immortals existed. There'd be a lot of dissatisfaction."

  Sweat chilled Dyson's flanks. He said, "Of course I've heard the rumors of immortals—"

  "All sorts of legends came out of the Blowup and the Lost Years. We've issued counterpropaganda to neutralize the original legend. A straight denial would have had no effect at all. We started a whispering campaign that sure, there were immortals, but they lived only a few hundred years, and they were such screwy mutants they were all insane. That part of the public that believes rumors won't envy the immortals. As for legends, ever heard of the Invisible Snake that was supposed to punish carnal sin? It wasn't till after we rediscovered the microscope that we identified the Snake with the spirochete. You'll often find truth in myths, but sometimes it isn't wise to reveal the truth."

  Dyson wondered if Administration could possibly have found out about his forbidden research. He hadn't known there were immortals; he'd investigated the legends, and his own work in controlled radiation and mental mutation had pointed the way.

  The Administrator talked some more. Then he advised Dyson to televise his uncle, Roger Peaslee. "Peaslee's been to a Home and seen the Old 'Uns. Don't look surprised; of course he was sworn to silence. But he'll talk about it to you now; he knows you're going to the—Archives!"

  But Dyson felt uneasy until his visitor had left. Then he called his uncle, who held a high post with Radioactives, and asked questions.

  "It'll surprise you, I think," Peaslee said, with a sympathetic grin. "You may need psych conditioning when you get back, too. It's rather depressing. Still, until we get time travel, there's no other way of reaching back to Blowup days."

  "I never knew—"

  "Naturally. Well, you'll see what a Home's like. There'll be an interpreter assigned to give you the dope. And, as a matter of fact, it's good conditioning. You're going to Cozy Nook, aren't you?"

  "I think ... yes, that's it. There are several?"

  Peaslee nodded.

  "You may run into some of your ancestors there. I know one of your great-greats is in Cozy Nook. It's a funny feeling, to look at and talk to somebody who five hundred years ago was responsible for your birth. But you mustn't let her know who you are."

  "Why not?"

  "It's a special setup. The interpreter will give you the angles. All sorts of precautions have to be taken. There's a corps of psychologists who work on nothing but the Homes. You'll find out. And I'm busy, Sam. See you when you get back. I hear you're getting married."

  "That's right," Dyson said. "We're both government-certified, too." His smile was slightly crooked.

  "Rebel," Peaslee said, and broke the circuit. The image slowly faded, leaving only a play of pastel colors driving softly across the screen's surface. Dyson sat back and considered.

  -

  Presumably neo-radar had not discovered his hidden laboratory, or there would have been trouble. Not serious trouble, in this paternalistic administration. Discussions, the semantics of logicians, and, in the end, Dyson knew that he would be argued around to the other side. They could twist logic damnably. And, very likely, they were right. If research in certain radio-genetic fields had been forbidden, the reasons for that step would hold even heavy water.

  Immortality.

  Within limits, of course. There were principles of half-life—of entropy—nothing lasts forever. But there were different yardsticks. It would be immortality by normal standards.

  So, it had been achieved once before, quite by accident. That particular accident had left the planet in insane chaos for hundreds of years, providing a peculiarly unstable foundation for the new culture that had arisen since. It was rather like a building constructed, without plans, from the alloys and masonry of an earlier one. There were gaps and missing peristyles.

  Dyson thumbed through the manifold sheets on his desk. They contained guides, problems in his current research—not the secret research in the hidden laboratory, but the government-approved work on intellectual mutation. To a layman some of the terms wouldn't have meant anything, but Dyson was a capable technician. Item 24: Check psychopathology of genius-types in pre-Blowup era, continuing line of investigation toward current times ...

  He left a transference call for the interpreter, pulled on a cloak, and took a glider to Marta Hallam's apartment. She was drinking maté on the terrace, a small, fragile, attractive girl who efficiently put a silver tube in another maté gourd as soon as she had kissed Dyson. He sat beside her and rubbed his forehead with thumb and forefinger.

  "We'll furlough in a few weeks," Marta said. "You work too hard. I'll see that you don't."

  He looked at her and saw her against a misty background of a thousand years in the future—older, of course, but superficial attractiveness wasn't imported. He'd grow older, too. But neither of them would die. And the treatment did not cause sterility. Overcrowding of the planet could be handled by migration to other worlds; the old rocket fuels had already been rediscovered. Through research in a Home, perhaps, Dyson guessed.

  Marta said, "What are you so glum about? Do you want to marry somebody else?"

  There was only one way to answer that. After a brief while, Dyson grumbled that he hated to be certified like a bottle of milk.

  "You'll be glad of it after we have children," Marta said. "If our genes had been haywire, we might have had a string of freaks."

  "I know. I just don't like—"

  "Look," she said, staring at him. "At worst, we'd have been treated, to compensate for negative RH or anything like that. Or our kids would have had to be put in an incubation clinic. A year or two of separation from them at most. And worth it, when you figure that they'd have come out healthy specimens."

  Dyson said cry
ptically, "Things would have been a lot easier if we'd never had the Blowup."

  "Things would have been a lot easier if we'd stayed unicellular blobs," Marta amplified. "You can't eat your cake and keep the soda bicarb on the shelf."

  "A philosopher, eh? Never mind. I've got something up my sleeve—"

  But he didn't finish that, and stayed where he was for a while, drinking maté and noticing how lovely Marta's profile was against the skyline and the immense, darkening blue above. After a while the interpreter announced himself, having got Dyson's transference notice, and the two men went out together into the chilly night.

  -

  Five hundred years before, an atom was split and the balance of power blew up. Prior to that time, a number of people had been playing tug of war with a number of ropes. Nuclear fission, in effect, handed those people knives. They learned how to cut the ropes, and, too late, discovered that the little game had been played on the summit of a crag whose precipitous sides dropped away to abysmal depths beneath.

  The knife was a key as well. It opened fantastic new doors. Thus the Blowup. Had the Blowup been due only to the atomic blast, man might have rebuilt more easily, granting that the planet remained habitable. However, one of the doors the key opened led into a curious, perilous place where physical laws were unstable. Truth is a variable. But no one knew how to vary it until after unlimited atomic power had been thrown on the market.

  Within limits, anything could happen, and plenty of things did. Call it a war. Call it chaos. Call it the Blowup. Call it a shifting of a kaleidoscope in which the patterns rearranged themselves constantly. In the end, the status quo re-established itself. Man chewed rat bones, but he was an intelligent animal. When the ground became solid under his feet again, he began to rebuild.

  Not easily. Hundreds of years had passed. And very little of the earlier culture had survived.

  When you consider how much of human knowledge is due to pyramiding, that's easier to understand. Penicillin was discovered because somebody invented a microscope because somebody learned how to grind lenses because somebody found out how to make glass because somebody could make fire. There were gaps in the chain. An atomic war would have blown up the planet or ravaged it, but the catastrophe would have been quick—or complete—and if the planet survived, there would have been artifacts and records and the memories of mankind. But the Blowup lasted for a long time—time itself was used as a variable once during that homicidal, suicidal, fratricidal struggle—and there were no records.

  Not many, at least. And they weren't selective. Eventually cities rose again, but there were odd gaps in the science of the new civilization. Some of those holes filled themselves in automatically, and a few useful records were dug up from time to time, but not many, and the only real clue men had to the scientific culture of pre-Blowup days was something that had remained stable through the variable-truth-atomic cataclysm.

  The colloid of the human brain.

  Eyewitnesses.

  The Old 'Uns in the secret, segregated Homes, who had lived for five centuries and longer.

  -

  Will Mackenzie, the interpreter, was a thin, rangy, freckled man of forty, with the slow, easy motions one automatically associated with a sturdier, plumper physique. His blue eyes were lazy, his voice was soothing, and when Dyson fumbled at the unaccustomed uniform, his helpful motions were lazily efficient.

  "A necktie?" Dyson said. "A which?"

  "Necktie," Mackenzie explained. "That's right. Don't ask me why. Some of the Old 'Uns don't bother with it, but they're inclined to be fussy. They get conservative after the first hundred years, you know."

  Dyson had submerged that mild uneasiness and was determined to play this role at its face value. Administration might suspect his sub rosa research, but, at worst, there would be no punishment. Merely terribly convincing argument. And probably they did not suspect. Anyway, Dyson realized suddenly, there were two sides to an argument, and it was possible that he might convince the logicians—though that had never been done before. His current job was to dig out the information he needed from the Old 'Uns and—that ended it. He stared into the enormous closet with its rows of unlikely costumes.

  "You mean they go around in those clothes all the time?" he asked Mackenzie.

  "Yeah," Mackenzie said. He peeled off his functionally aesthetic garments and donned a duplicate of Dyson's apparel. "You get used to these things. Well, there are a few things I've got to tell you. We've plenty of time. The Old 'Uns go to bed early, so you can't do anything till tomorrow, and probably not much then. They're suspicious at first."

  "Then why do I have to wear this now?"

  "So you can get used to it. Sit down. Hike up your pants at the knee, like this—see? Now sit."

  He pawed at the rough, unfamiliar cloth, settled himself, and picked up a smoke from the table. Mackenzie sat with an accomplished ease Dyson envied, and pressed buttons that resulted in drinks sliding slowly out from an aperture in the wall.

  "We're not in Cozy Nook yet," the interpreter said. "This is the conditioning and control station. None of the Old 'Uns know what goes on outside. They think there's still a war."

  "But—"

  Mackenzie said, "You've never been in a Home before. Well, remember that the Old 'Uns are abnormal. A little—" He shrugged. "You'll see. I've got to give you a lecture. O.K. At the time of the Blowup, the radioactivity caused a cycle of mutations. One type was a group of immortals. They won't live forever—"

  Dyson had already done his own research on that point. Radium eventually turns to lead. After a long, long time the energy-quotients of the immortals would sink below the level necessary to sustain life. A short time as the life of a solar system goes—a long time measured against the normal human span. A hundred thousand years, perhaps. There was no certain way to ascertain, except the empirical one.

  Mackenzie said, "A lot of the Old 'Uns were killed during the Blowup. They're vulnerable to accidents, though they've a tremendously high resistance to disease. It wasn't till after the Blowup, after reconstruction had started, that anybody knew the Old 'Uns were—what they were. There'd been tribal legends—the local shaman had lived forever, you know the typical stuff. We correlated those legends, found a grain of truth in them, and investigated. The Old 'Uns were tested in the labs. I don't know the technical part. But I do know they were exposed to certain radiations, and their body-structures were altered."

  Dyson said, "How old do they average?"

  "Roughly, five hundred years. During the radioactive days. It isn't hereditary, immortality, and there haven't been any such radioactives since, except in a few delayed-reaction areas." Mackenzie had been thrown off his routine speech by the interruption. He took a drink.

  He said, "You'll have to see the Old 'Uns before you'll understand the entire picture. We have to keep them segregated here. They have information we need. It's like an unclassified, huge library. The only link we have with pre-Blowup times. And, of course, we have to keep the Old 'Uns happy. That isn't easy. Supersenility—" He took another drink and pushed a button.

  Dyson said, "They're human, aren't they?"

  "Physically, sure. Ugly as sin, though. Mentally, they've gone off at some queer tangents."

  "One of my ancestors is here."

  Mackenzie looked at him queerly. "Don't meet her. There's a guy named Fell who was a technician during the Blowup, and a woman named Hobson who was a witness of some of the incidents you're investigating. Maybe you can get enough out of those two. Don't let curiosity get the better of you."

  "Why not?" Dyson asked. "I'm interested."

  Mackenzie's glass had suddenly emptied.

  "It takes special training to be an interpreter here. As for being a caretaker ... one of the group that keeps the Old 'Uns happy ... they're hand-picked."

  He told Dyson more.

  -

  The next morning Mackenzie showed his guest a compact gadget that fitted into the ear. It was a sonor, arr
anged so that the two men could talk, unheard by others, simply by forming words inaudibly. The natural body-noises provided the volume, and it was efficient, once Dyson had got used to the rhythmic rise and fall of his heartbeat.

  "They hate people to use 'Speranto in front of them," Mackenzie said. "Stick to English. If you've got something private to say, use the sonor, or they'll think you're talking about them. Ready?"

  "Sure." Dyson readjusted his necktie uncomfortably. He followed the interpreter through a valve, down a ramp, and through another barrier. Filtered, warm sunlight hit him. He was standing at the top of an escalator that flowed smoothly down to the village below—Cozy Nook.

  A high wall rimmed the Home. Camouflage nets were spread above, irregularly colored brown and green. Dyson remembered that the Old 'Uns had been told this was still war time. A pattern of winding streets, parks, and houses was below.

  Dyson said, "That many? There must be a hundred houses here, Mackenzie."

  "Some of 'em are for interpreters, psychologists, nurses, and guests. Only forty or fifty Old 'Uns, but they're a handful."

  "They seem pretty active," Dyson said, watching figures move about the streets. "I don't see any surface cars."

  "Or air-floaters, either," Mackenzie said. "We depend on sliding ways and pneumo tubes for transportation here. There's not much territory to cover. The idea is to keep the Old 'Uns happy, and a lot of them would want to drive cars if there were any around. Their reactions are too slow. Even with safeties, there'd be accidents. Let's go down. Do you want to see Fell first, or Hobson?"

  "Well ... Fell's the technician? Let's try him."

  "Over." Mackenzie nodded, and they went down the escalator. As they descended, Dyson noticed that among the modern houses were some that seemed anachronistic: a wooden cottage, a redbrick monstrosity, an ugly glass-and-concrete structure with distorted planes and bulges. But he was more interested in the inhabitants of the Home.

  Trees rose up, blocking their vision, as they descended. They were ejected gently on a paved square, lined with padded benches. A man was standing there, staring at them, and Dyson looked at him curiously.