Childhood's End

by Arthur C. Clarke

  “Meanwhile the car that had actually done the job continued elaborate evasive action towards the Canadian border. Perhaps Karellen’s caught it by now; I don’t know or care. As you’ll see — I do hope you appreciate my frankness — our whole plan depended on one thing. We’re pretty sure that Karellen can see and hear everything that happens on the surface of the Earth — but unless he uses magic, not science, he can’t see underneath it. So he won’t know about the transfer in the tunnel — at least until it’s too late. Naturally we’ve taken a risk, but there were also one or two other safeguards I won’t go into now. We may want to use them again, and it would be a pity to give them away.”

  Joe had related the whole story with such obvious gusto that Stormgren could hardly help smiling. Yet he also felt very disturbed. The plan was an ingenious one, and it was quite possible that Karellen had been deceived. Stormgren was not even certain that the Overlord kept any form of protective surveillance over him. Nor, clearly, was Joe. Perhaps that was why he had been so frank — he wanted to test Stormgren’s reactions. Well, he would try to appear confident, whatever his real feelings might be.

  “You must be a lot of fools,” said Stormgren scornfully, “if you think you can trick the Overlords as easily as this. In any case, what conceivable good will it do?”

  Joe offered him a cigarette, which Stormgren refused, then lit one himself and sat on the edge of the table. There was an ominous creaking and he jumped off hastily.

  “Our motives,” he began, “should be pretty obvious. We’ve found arguments useless, so we have to take other measures. There have been underground movements before, and even Karellen, whatever powers he’s got, won’t find it easy to deal with us. We’re out to fight for our independence. Don’t misunderstand me. There’ll be nothing violent — at first anyway — but the Overlords have to use human agents, and we can make it mighty uncomfortable for them.”

  Starting with me, I suppose, thought Stormgren. He wondered if the other had given him more than a fraction of the whole story. Did they really think that these gangster methods would influence Karellen in the slightest? On the other hand, it was quite true that a well — organised resistance movement could make life very difficult. For Joe had put his finger on the one weak spot in the Overlords’ rule. Ultimately, all their orders were carried out by human agents. If these were terrorised into disobedience, the whole system might collapse. It was only a faint possibility, for Stormgren felt confident that Karellen would soon find some solution.

  “What do you intend to do with me?” asked Stormgren at length. “Am I a hostage, or what?”

  “Don’t worry — we’ll look after you. We expect some visitors in a few days, and until then we’ll entertain you as well as we can.”

  He added some words in his own language, and one of the others produced a brand-new pack of cards.

  “We got these especially for you,” explained Joe. “I read in Time the other day that you were a good poker player.” His voice suddenly became grave. “I hope there’s plenty of cash in your wallet,” he said anxiously. “We never thought of looking. After all, we can hardly accept cheques.”

  Quite overcome, Stormgren stared blankly at his captors.

  Then, as the true humour of the situation sank into his mind, it suddenly seemed to him that all the cares and worries of office had lifted from his shoulders. From now on, it was Van Ryberg’s show. Whatever happened, there was absolutely nothing he could do about it — and now these fantastic criminals were anxiously waiting to play poker with him.

  Abruptly, he threw back his head and laughed as he had not done for years.

  * * *

  There was no doubt, thought Van Ryberg morosely, that Wainwright was telling the truth. He might have his suspicions, but he did not know who had kidnapped Stormgren. Nor did he approve of the kidnapping itself; Van Ryberg had a shrewd idea that for some time extremists in the Freedom League had been putting pressure on Wainwright to make him adopt a more active policy. Now they were taking matters into their own hands.

  The kidnapping had been beautifully organised, there was no doubt of that. Stormgren might be anywhere on Earth, and there seemed little hope of tracing him. Yet something must be done, Van Ryberg decided, and done quickly. Despite the jest, he had so often made, his real feeling towards Karellen was one of overwhelming awe. The thought of approaching the Supervisor directly filled him with dismay, but there seemed no alternative.

  The Communications Section occupied the entire top floor of the great building. Lines of facsimile machines, some silent, some clicking busily, stretched away into the distance. Through them poured endless streams of statistics — production figures, census returns, and all the book-keeping of a world economic system. Somewhere up in Karellen’s ship must lie the equivalent of this great room — and Van Ryberg wondered, with a tingling of the spine, what shapes moved to and fro collecting the messages that Earth was sending to the Overlords.

  But today he was not interested in these machines and the routine business they handled. He walked to the little private room that only Stormgren was supposed to enter. At his instructions, the lock had been forced and the Chief Communications Officer was waiting there for him.

  “It’s an ordinary teleprinter — standard typewriter keyboard,” he was told. “There’s a facsimile machine as well if you want to send any pictures or tabular information, but you said you wouldn’t be needing that.”

  Van Ryberg nodded absently. “That’s all. Thanks,” he said. “I don’t expect to be here very long. Then get the place locked up again and give me all the keys.”

  He waited until the Communications Officer had left, and then sat down at the machine. It was, he knew, very seldom used, since nearly all business between Karellen and Stormgren was dealt with at their weekly meetings. Since this was something of an emergency circuit, he expected a fairly quick reply.

  After a moment’s hesitation, he began to tap out his message with unpractised fingers. The machine purred away quietly and the words gleamed for a few seconds on the darkened screen.

  Then he leaned back and waited for the answer.

  Scarcely a minute later the machine started to whirr again. Not for the first time, Van Ryberg wondered if the Supervisor ever slept.

  The message was as brief as it was unhelpful.

  NO INFORMATION. LEAVE MATTERS ENTIRELY TO YOUR DISCRETION. K.

  Rather bitterly, and without any satisfaction at all, Van Ryberg realised how much greatness had been thrust upon him.

  * * *

  During the past three days Stormgren had analysed his captors with some thoroughness. Joe was the only one of any importance; the others were nonentities — the riff-raff one would expect any illegal movement to gather round itself the ideals of the Freedom League meant nothing to them; their only concern was earning a living with the minimum of work.

  Joe was an altogether more complex individual, though sometimes he reminded Stormgren of an overgrown baby. Their interminable poker games were punctuated with violent political arguments, and it soon became obvious to Stormgren that the big Pole had never thought seriously about the causes for which he was fighting. Emotion and extreme conservatism clouded all his judgements. His country’s long struggle for Independence had conditioned him so completely that he still lived in the past. He was a picturesque survival, one of those who had no use for an ordered way of life. When his type vanished, if it ever did, the world would be a safer but less interesting place.

  There was now little doubt, as far as Stormgren was concerned, that Karellen had failed to locate him. He had tried to bluff, but his captors were unconvinced. He was fairly certain that they had been holding him here to see if Karellen would act, and now that nothing had happened they could proceed with their plans.

  Stormgren was not surprised when, four days after his capture, Joe told him to expect visitors. For some time the little group had shown increasing nervousness, and the prisoner guessed that the leaders
of the movement, having seen that the coast was clear, were at last coming to collect him.

  They were already waiting, gathered round the rickety table, when Joe waved him politely into the living room. Stormgren was amused to note that his jailer was now wearing, very ostentatiously, a huge pistol that had never been in evidence before. The two thugs had vanished, and even Joe seemed somewhat restrained. Stormgren could see at once that he was now confronted by men of a much higher calibre, and the group opposite him reminded him strongly of a picture he had once seen of Lenin and his associates in the first days of the Russian Revolution. There was the same intellectual force, iron determination, and ruthlessness in these six men. Joe and his kind were harmless; here were the real brains behind the organisation.

  With a curt nod, Stormgren moved over to the only vacant seat and tried to look self-possessed. As he approached, the elderly, thick-set man on the far side of the table leaned forward and stared at him with piercing grey eyes. They made Stormgren so uncomfortable that he spoke first — something he had not intended to do.

  “I suppose you’ve come to discuss terms. What’s my ransom?”

  He noticed that in the background someone was taking down his words in a shorthand notebook. It was all very business-like.

  The leader replied in a musical Welsh accent.

  “You could put it that way, Mr Secretary-General. But we’re interested in information, not cash.”

  So that was it, thought Stormgren. He was a prisoner of war, and this was his interrogation.

  “You know what our motives are,” continued the other in his softly lilting voice. “Call us a resistance movement, if you like. We believe that sooner or later Earth will have to fight for its independence — but we realise that the struggle can only be by indirect methods such as sabotage and disobedience. We kidnapped you partly to show Karellen that we mean business and are well organised, but largely because you are the only man who can tell us anything of the Overlords. You’re a reasonable man, Mr Stormgren. Give us your co-operation, and you can have your freedom.”

  “Exactly what do you wish to know?” asked Stormgren cautiously.

  Those extraordinary eyes seemed to search his mind to its depths; they were unlike any that Stormgren had ever seen in his life. Then the sing-song voice replied:

  “Do you know who, or what, the Overlords really are?”

  Stormgren almost smiled.

  “Believe me,” he said, “I’m quite as anxious as you to discover that.”

  “Then you’ll answer our questions?”

  “I make no promises. But I may.”

  There was a slight sigh of relief from Joe, and a rustle of anticipation ran round the room.

  “We have a general idea,” continued the other, “of the circumstances in which you meet Karellen. But perhaps you would describe them carefully, leaving out nothing of importance.”

  That was harmless enough, thought Stormgren. He had done it many times before, and it would give the appearance of co-operation. There were acute minds here, and perhaps they could uncover something new. They were welcome to any fresh information they could extract from him — so long as they shared it. That it could harm Karellen in any way he did not for a moment believe.

  Stormgren felt in his pockets and produced a pencil and an old envelope. Sketching rapidly while he spoke, he began:

  “You know, of course, that a small flying machine, with no obvious means of propulsion, calls for me at regular intervals and takes me up to Karellen’s ship. It enters the hull — and you’ve doubtless seen the telescopic films that have been taken of that operation. The door opens again — if you can call it a door — and I go into a small room with a table, a chair, and a vision screen. The layout is something like this.”

  He pushed the plan across to the old Welshman, but the strange eyes never turned towards it. They were still fixed on Stormgren’s face, and as he watched them something seemed to change in their depths. The room had become completely silent, but behind him he heard Joe take a sudden indrawn breath.

  Puzzled and annoyed, Stormgren stared back at the other, and as he did so, understanding slowly dawned. In his confusion he crumpled the envelope into a ball of paper and ground it underfoot.

  He knew now why those grey eyes had affected him so strangely. The man opposite him was blind.

  * * *

  Van Ryberg had made no further attempts to contact Karellen. Much of his department’s work — the forwarding of statistical information, the abstracting of the world’s press, and the like — had continued automatically. In Paris the lawyers were still wrangling over the proposed World Constitution, but that was none of his business for the moment. It was a fortnight before the Supervisor wanted the final draft; if it was not ready by then, no doubt Karellen would take what action he thought fit.

  And there was still no news of Stormgren.

  Van Ryberg was dictating when the “Emergency Only” telephone started to ring. He grabbed the receiver and listened with mounting astonishment, then threw it down and rushed to the open window. In the distance, cries of amazement were rising from the streets, and traffic was slowing to a halt.

  It was true; Karellen’s ship, that never-changing symbol of the Overlords, was no longer in the sky. He searched the heavens as far as he could see, and found no trace of it. Then, suddenly, it seemed as if night had swiftly fallen. Coming down from the north, its shadowed underbelly black as a thundercloud, the great ship was racing low over the towers of New York. Involuntarily, Van Ryberg shrank away from the onrushing monster. He had always known how huge the ships of the Overlords really were — but it was one thing to see them far away in space, and quite another to watch them passing overhead like demon-driven clouds.

  In the darkness of that partial eclipse, he watched until the ship and its monstrous shadow had vanished into the south. There was no sound, not even the whisper of air, and Van Ryberg realised that despite its apparent nearness the ship had passed at least a kilometre above his head. Then the building shuddered once as the shock wave struck it, and from somewhere came the tinkling of broken glass as a window blew inwards.

  In the office behind him all the telephones had started to ring, but Van Ryberg did not move. He remained leaning against the window ledge, still staring into the south, paralysed by the presence of illimitable power.

  * * *

  As Stormgren talked, it seemed to him that his mind was operating on two levels simultaneously. On the one hand he was trying to defy the men who had captured him, yet on the other he was hoping that they might help him unravel Karellen’s secret. It was a dangerous game, yet to his surprise he was enjoying it.

  The blind Welshman had conducted most of the interrogation. It was fascinating to watch that agile mind trying one opening after another, testing and rejecting all the theories that Stormgren himself had abandoned long ago. Presently he leaned back with a sigh.

  “We’re getting nowhere,” he said resignedly. “We want more facts, and that means action, not argument.” The sightless eyes seemed to stare thoughtfully at Stormgren. For a moment he tapped nervously on the table — it was the first sign of uncertainty Stormgren had noticed. Then he continued;

  “I’m a little surprised, Mr Secretary, that you’ve never made any effort to learn more about the Overlords.”

  “What do you suggest?” asked Stormgren coldly, trying to disguise his interest. “I’ve told you that there’s only one way out of the room in which I have my talks with Karellen — and that leads straight back to Earth.”

  “It might be possible,” mused the other, “to devise instruments which could teach us something. I’m no scientist, but we can look into the matter. If we give you your freedom, would you be willing to assist with such a plan?”

  “Once and for all,” said Stormgren angrily, “let me make my position perfectly clear. Karellen is working for a united world, and I’ll do nothing to help his enemies. What his ultimate plans may be, I don’t know
, but I believe that they are good.”

  “What real proof have we of that?”

  “All his actions, ever since his ships appeared in our skies. I defy you to mention one act that, in the ultimate analysis, hasn’t been beneficial.” Stormgren paused for a moment, letting his mind run back through the past years. Then he smiled.

  “If you want a single proof of the essential — how shall I put it — benevolence of the Overlords, think of that cruelty-to-animals order which they made within a month of their arrival. If I had had any doubts about Karellen before, that banished them — even though that order has caused me more trouble than anything else he’s ever done!”

  That was scarcely an exaggeration, Stormgren thought. The whole incident had been an extraordinary one, the first revelation of the Overlords’ hatred of cruelty. That, and their passion for justice and order, seemed to be the dominant emotions in their lives — as far as one could judge them by their actions.

  And it was the only time Karellen had shown anger, or at least the appearance of anger. “You may kill one another if you wish,” the message had gone, “and that is a matter between you and your own laws. But if you slay, except for food or in self-defence, the beasts that share your world with you — then you may be answerable to me.”