“Not all of us,” said the Engineer. “My people made only a few of us. A few to man each ship. We ourselves have made others, copies of ourselves. But in each creation we have tried to inculcate some of the factors which we find missing in ourselves. Imagination, for one thing, and greater initiative, and a greater scope of emotional perception.”
“You, yourself,” said Caroline, “are one of the original robots made back on Pluto?”
“That is right,” said the Engineer. “I have lived more than three billion years.”
“You are eternal and immortal,” suggested Kingsley.
“No,” declared the Engineer, “not eternal nor immortal. But with proper care, replacement of worn-out parts, and barring accidents, I will continue to exist and function for many more billions of years to come.”
Gary’s mind whirled. Billions of years. It was something that was hard to imagine. A man’s mind couldn’t visualize a billion years or a thousand years or even a hundred years. Man, in general, could visualize not much beyond the figure four.
But if the Engineers had lived for three billion years, how was it that they had not learned the secret of creating hyperspheres or probed out beyond the universe to learn the laws of inter-space? Why must this work wait for a girl—a human being, it was true, who had thought uninterruptedly for a thousand years—but whose thousand years of thought could not even be compared to three billion years of existence.
“I have answered that before,” said the Engineer, “and I will answer it again. It is because of imagination and vision—the ability to see beyond facts, to probe into probabilities, to visualize what might be and then attempt to make it so. That is something we cannot do. We are chained to mechanistic action and mechanistic thought. We do not advance beyond the proven facts. When two facts create another fact, we accept the third fact, but we do not reach out in speculation, collect half a dozen tentative facts and then try to crystallize them. That is the answer to your question.”
Gary looked startled. He hadn’t realized that the Engineer could read his undirected thoughts. Caroline was looking at him, a queer smile twitching the corner of her lips.
“Did you ask him something?” she asked.
“I guess I did,” said Gary.
“DID YOU ever hear from these other Engineers?” asked Kingsley. “The ones who were in the other ships?”
“No,” said the Engineer, “we never did. Presumably they have by now found other planets where they are doing the same work as we. We have tried to get in touch with them, but we never have.”
“What is your work?” asked Gary.
“Why,” said Caroline, “you should know that, Gary. It is to prepare a place for the Engineers’ people to live. Isn’t that right?” she asked the Engineer.
“It is. You understand so well.”
“But,” protested Gary, “those people are dead. There is no sign of them in the Solar System and they certainly didn’t start out looking for some other planet. They died off on Pluto.”
He remembered the chiseled masonry that Ted Smith had found and told him about. The hands of the Engineers’ creators had cut those stones, billions of years ago—and today they still were on Pluto’s surface, mute testimony to the greatness of a race that had died while the Solar System’s planets were still cooling off.
“They are not dead,” said the Engineer, and his thoughts seemed to have a peculiar warmth in them.
“Not dead,” said Gary. “Do you know where they are?”
“Yes,” said the Engineer. “I do.
Some of them are in this room!”
“In this room—” began Caroline, and then she stopped and stared as the significance of what the Engineer had said struck her.
“In this room,” said Herb. “Hell, the only people who are in this room is us. And we aren’t your people.”
“But you are,” declared the Engineer. “There are differences, to be sure. But you are much like them, so like them in many ways. You are protoplasmic and they were protoplasmic. Your general form is the same and, I have no doubt, your metabolism. And the way your mind works.”
“That,” said Caroline, “was why we could understand you and you could understand us. Why you kept us here when you sent the other entities back to their homes.”
“Do you mean,” Kingsley rumbled, “that we are the direct descendants of your people—that your people finally took over the planets? That seems hardly possible, for we know we started from very humble beginnings. We have no legends pointing to such a genesis.”
“Not that,” said the Engineer, “not exactly that. But I suppose you have wondered how life got its start on your planet. There are so many planetary systems, you know, where life is entirely unknown. Planets fully as old as yours that are barren of all life.”
“There is the spore theory,” rumbled Kingsley, and as he said the words he pounded the table with his massive fists.
“By Lord, that’s it,” he shouted. “The spore theory! The people out on Pluto, only a few of them left, with the planets still unfit for habitation, knowing that they faced the end—couldn’t they have insured life on those planets by the development and planting of life spores?”
“That,” said the Engineer, “is what I thought. That is the theory that I hold.”
“But if that was the case,” objected Caroline, “why should we have developed? Why should a life form resembling, almost a duplicate of the Engineers’ people have developed? Surely they couldn’t have planted determinants in the spore—they couldn’t have seen or planned that far ahead. They couldn’t possibly have planned the eventual evolution of a race re-creating their own!”
“They were very clever,” said the Engineer. “Such clever people. They had lived so long and knew so much. So much more than we know. I do not doubt that they could have planned it as you say.”
“Interesting,” said Herb, “but what does it make us?”
“It makes you the heir of my people,” said the Engineer. “It means that what we have done here, all we have, all we know is yours. We will rebuild this city, we will condition it in such a manner that your people can live here. Also that whatever those other Engineers may have found and done is yours. We want nothing for ourselves except the joy of knowing we have served, that we have done well with the trust that was handed to us.”
THEY sat stunned, scarcely believing what they heard.
“You mean,” asked Kingsley, “that you will rebuild this city and hand it over to the people of our Solar System?”
“That is what I mean,” said the Engineer. “It is yours. I have no doubt that you descended in some manner from my people. Since you came I have studied you closely. Time and again I have seen little actions and mannerisms, little mental quirks that mark you as being in some way connected with the people who created us.”
“But it isn’t ours,” said Tommy. “We have done nothing to earn it.”
“You saved the universe,” said the Engineer.
“With your help,” said Tommy. “And don’t give us the credit. It all goes to Caroline.”
Gary tried to think. The Engineers were handing the human race a heritage from an ancient people, handing them a city and a civilization already built, a city and a civilization such as the race itself would not attain for the next many thousand years. He tried to puzzle it out. But there was something wrong, something that didn’t click.
He remembered Herb’s comment that the city looked like a city that was waiting for someone who never came. Herb had hit upon the exact situation. This city had been built for a greater race, for a race that probably had died long before the first stone was laid in place. A race that must have been far advanced—a race that would make the human race look savage in comparison.
He tried to imagine what the effect of such a city, such a civilization would have upon the human race. He tried to picture the greed and hate, the political maneuverings, the fierce trade competition, the social inequality and
its resultant class struggle—all of it inherent in humanity—in this white city under the three suns. Somehow the two didn’t go together.
“We can’t do it,” he said. “We aren’t ready yet. We’d just make a mess of things. We’d have too much power, too much leisure, too many possessions. It would smash our civilization. We haven’t placed our civilization as yet upon a basis that could coincide with what is here.”
Kingsley stared at him.
“But think of the scientific knowledge! Think of the cultural advantages!” he shouted.
“Gary is right,” said Caroline. “We aren’t ready yet.”
“Sometime,” said Gary. “Sometime in the future. When we have wiped out some of the primal passions. When we have solved the great social and economic problems that plague us now. When we have learned to observe the Golden Rule—when we have lost some of the lustiness of our youth. Sometime we will be ready for this city.”
He remembered the old man back on old Earth. He had said something about the rest of the race going away—to a far star, to a place that had been prepared for them.
He started. That place he had spoken of had been this city. The old Earth they had visited had been the real Earth then, the actuality existing in the future. And the old man had spoken as if they had gone to the city but a short while before. He had said he refused to go, that he couldn’t leave the Earth.
He rapped the table impatiently with his fingertips.
The time would be long then. Longer than he thought. A long and bitter wait for the day when the race might safely enter into a better world—into a heritage left them by a race that died when the Solar System was born.
“You understand?” he asked the Engineer.
“I understand,” the Engineer replied. “You speak words of wisdom. I had not realized before that all of your race would not be like you who came here. But it means that we must wait . . . that we must wait for the masters who are to rule us . . . that it will be long before they come to us.”
“You waited three billion years,” Gary reminded him. “Wait a few million for us. It won’t take us long. There’s a lot of good in we humans, but we aren’t ready yet.”
“I think you’re crazy,” said Kingsley bitterly.
“You’re wrong,” Caroline told Kingsley. “Can you see what the human race today would do to this city?”
“But atomic power,” said Kingsley, “and all these other things. Think of how they would help us. We need power and tools and all the knowledge we can get.”
“You may take certain information with you,” said the Engineer. “Whatever you think is wise. We will watch you and talk with you throughout the years, and it may be there will be times you will want our help.”
GARY rose from the table. His hand fell on the Engineer’s broad metal shoulder.
“And in the meantime there is work for you,” he said. “A city to rebuild. The development of power stations to use the fifth-dimensional energy. Learning how to control and use that energy. Using it to control the universe. The day will come, unless we do something about it, that our universe will run down, will die the heat death. But with the eternal power of inter-space we can shape and control the universe, hold it to our needs.”
It seemed that the metal man drew himself even more erect.
“It will be done,” he said.
“We must work, not for Man alone, but for the entire universe,” said Gary.
“That is right,” said the Engineer.
Kingsley heaved himself to his feet.
“We should be leaving for Pluto,” he said. “Our work here is done.”
He stepped up to the Engineer. “Before we go,” he said, “I would like to shake your hand.”
“I do not understand,” said the Engineer.
“It is a mark of respect,” said Caroline. “Assurance that we are friends. A sort of way to seal a pact.”
“That is fine,” said the Engineer. He thrust out his hand.
And then his thoughts broke. For the first time since they had met him in this same room, there was emotion in his voice.
“We are so glad,” he said. “We can talk to you and not feel so alone. Perhaps some day I can come and visit you.”
“Be sure to do that,” bellowed Herb. “I’ll show you all the sights. Boy, there’s some things back there in the Solar System that will make your eyes bulge out.”
Caroline tugged at Gary’s sleeve, but Gary didn’t notice. Thoughts were swirling in his brain.
Some day Man would come home—home to this wondrous city of white stone, to marvel at its breath-taking height, at its vastness of design, at its far-flung symbol of achievement reared against the sky. Home to a planet where every power and every luxury and every achievement would be his. Home to a place that had grown out of a dream—the great dream of a greater people who had died, but in dying had passed along the heritage of life to a new-spawned Solar System. And more than that, had left another heritage in the hands and brains of good stewards who, in time, would give it up, in fulfillment of their charge.
But this city and this proud achievement were not for him, nor for Caroline, nor Kingsley, nor Herb, nor Tommy. Nor for the many generations that would come after them. Not so long as Man carried the old dead weight of-primal savagery and hate, not so long as he was mean and vicious and petty, not so long as he held to greed and fostered chicanery, could he set foot here.
Before he reached this city, Man would travel long trails of bitter dust, would know the sheer triumphs of the star-flung road. Galaxies would write new alphabets in the sky, and the print of many happenings would be etched upon the tape of time. New things would come and hold their sway and die. Great leaders would stand up and have their day and then would shuffle into oblivion and silence. Creeds would rise and flourish and be sifting dust in the winds that blow between the worlds. The night watch of stars would see great deeds, applaud great happenings, witness great defeats.
There would be many crusades— many bugles would be blowing in the sky and leading Man along the way. Cosmic crusades for cosmic ideals with signs of cosmic faith written large against the black of space.
“Just think,” said Caroline, “we’re going home!”
“Home?” said Gary. “Yes, I suppose we are going home.”
THE END.
TIME QUARRY
Part 1 of a 3 part serial.
One life should be enough to give for humanity . . . but humanity wanted Asher Sutton to keep making the sacrifice indefinitely!
THE mail came out of the twilight when the greenish-yellow of the sun’s last glow still lingered in the west. He paused at the edge of the patio and called. “Mr. Adams, is that you?”
The chair creaked as Christopher Adams shifted his weight, startled by the voice. Then he remembered.
A new neighbor had moved in across the meadow a day or two ago. Jonathon had told him . . . and Jonathon knew all the gossip within a hundred miles. Human gossip as well as android and robot gossip.
“Come on in,” said Adams. “Glad you dropped around.”
He hoped his voice sounded as hearty and neighborly as he had tried to make it. For he wasn’t glad. He was a little nettled, upset by this sudden shadow that came out of the twilight and walked across the patio.
This is my hour, he thought angrily. The one hour I give myself. The hour that I forget . . . forget the thousand problems that have to do with other star systems. Forget them and turn back to the green-blackness and the hush and the subtle sunset shadow-show that belong to my own planet. For here, on this patio, there are no mentophone reports, no robot files, no galactic co-ordination conferences . . . no psychological intrigue, no alien reaction charts. Nothing complicated or mysterious.
With half his mind, he knew the stranger had come across the patio and was reaching out a hand for a chair to sit in; and with the other half, once again, he wondered about the blackened bodies lying on the river bank on far-off Aldebaran XII, and the twis
ted machine that was wrapped around the tree.
Three humans had died there . . . three humans and two androids, and androids were almost human, different only in that they were manufactured instead of born. And humans must not die by violence unless it be by the violence of another human. Even then it must be on the field of honor, with all the formality and technicality of the code duello, or in the less polished affairs of revenge or execution.
For human life was sacrosanct. It had to be or there’d be no human life. Man was so pitifully outnumbered.
Violence or accident?
And accident was ridiculous.
There were few accidents, almost none at all. The near-perfection of mechanical performance, the almost human intelligence and reactions of machines to any known danger, long ago had cut accidents to an almost non-existent figure.
No modern machine would be crude enough to crash into a tree. A more subtle, less apparent danger, maybe. But never a tree.
So it must be violence.
And it could not be human violence, for human violence would have advertised the fact. Human violence had nothing to fear . . . there was no recourse to law, scarcely a moral code to which a human killer would be answerable.
THREE humans dead, fifty light years distant, and it became a thing of great importance to a man sitting on his patio on Earth. A thing of prime importance, for no human must die by other hands than human without a terrible vengeance. Human life must not be taken without a monstrous price anywhere in the galaxy, or the human race would end forever, and the great galactic brotherhood of intelligence would plummet down into the darkness and the distance that had scattered it before.
Adams slumped lower in his chair, forcing himself to relax, furious at himself for thinking . . . for it was his rule that in this time of twilight he thought of nothing . . . or as close to nothing as his restless mind could manage.
The stranger’s voice seemed to come from far away and yet Adams knew he was sitting at his side.
The Complete Serials Page 15
