Childhood's End

by Arthur C. Clarke

  “Now, you said you’d some news for me,” Stormgren continued, with scarcely concealed eagerness. “Is it about —”

  “Yes,” said Karellen. “I received a decision a few hours ago.”

  What did he mean by that? wondered Stormgren. Surely it was not possible for the Supervisor to have communicated with his distant home, across the unknown numbers of light years that separated him from his base. Or perhaps — this was Van Ryberg’s theory — he had merely been consulting some vast computing machine which could predict the outcome of any political action.

  “I don’t think,” continued Karellen, “that the Freedom League and its associates will be very satisfied, but it should help to reduce the tension. We won’t record this, by the way.”

  “You’ve often told me, Rikki, that no matter how unlike you we are physically, the human race would soon grow accustomed to us. That shows a lack of imagination on your part. It would probably be true in your case, but you must remember that most of the world is still uneducated by any reasonable standards, and is riddled with prejudices and superstitions that may take decades to eradicate.

  “You will grant that we know something of human psychology. We know rather accurately what would happen if we revealed ourselves to the world in its present state of development. I can’t go into details, even with you, so you must accept my analysis on trust. We can, however, make this definite promise, which should give you some satisfaction. In fifty years — two generations from now — we will come down from our ships and humanity will at last see us as we are.”

  Stormgren was silent for a while, absorbing the Supervisor’s words. He felt little of the satisfaction that Karellen’s statement would once have given him. Indeed, he was somewhat confused by his partial success, and for a moment his resolution faltered. The truth would come with the passage of time; all his plotting was unnecessary and perhaps unwise. If he still went ahead, it would be only for the selfish reason that he would not be alive in fifty years.

  Karellen must have seen his irresolution, for he continued:

  “I’m sorry if this disappoints you, but at least the political problems of the near future won’t be your responsibility. Perhaps you still think that our fears are unfounded, but believe me we’ve had convincing proofs of the danger of any other course.”

  Stormgren leaned forward, breathing heavily.

  “So you have been seen by Man!”

  “I didn’t say that,” Karellen answered promptly. “Your world isn’t the only planet we’ve supervised.”

  Stormgren was not to be shaken off so easily.

  “There have been many legends suggesting that Earth has been visited in the past by other races.”

  “I know; I’ve read the Historical Research Section’s report. It makes Earth look like the crossroads of the Universe.”

  “There may have been visits about which you know nothing,” said Stormgren, still angling hopefully. “Though since you must have been observing us for thousands of years, I suppose that’s rather unlikely.”

  “I suppose it is,” replied Karellen, in his most unhelpful manner. And at that moment Stormgren made up his mind.

  “Karellen,” he said abruptly, “I’ll draft out the statement and send it up to you for approval. But I reserve the right to continue pestering you, and if I see any opportunity, I’ll do my best to learn your secret.”

  “I’m perfectly well aware of that,” replied the Supervisor, with a slight chuckle.

  “And you don’t mind?”

  “Not in the least — though I draw the line at nuclear weapons, poison gas, or anything else that might strain our friendship.”

  Stormgren wondered what, if anything, Karellen had guessed. Behind the Supervisor’s banter he had recognised the note of understanding, perhaps — who could tell? — even of encouragement.

  “I’m glad to know it,” Stormgren replied in as level a voice as he could manage. He rose to his feet, bringing down the cover on his case as he did so. His thumb slid along the catch.

  “I’ll draft that statement at once,” he repeated, “and send it up on the teletype later today.”

  While he was speaking, he pressed the button — and knew that all his fears had been groundless. Karellen’s senses were no subtler than Man’s. The Supervisor could have detected nothing, for there was no change in his voice as he said goodbye and spoke the familiar code-words that opened the door of the chamber.

  Yet Stormgren still felt like a shoplifter leaving a department store under the eyes of the store-detective, and breathed a sigh of relief when the smooth wall had sealed itself behind him.

  * * *

  “I admit,” said Van Ryberg, “that some of my theories haven’t been very successful. But tell me what you think of this one.”

  “Must I?” sighed Stormgren.

  Pieter didn’t seem to notice.

  “It isn’t really my idea,” he said modestly. “I got it from a story of Chesterton’s. Suppose the Overlords are hiding the fact that they’ve got nothing to hide?”

  “That sounds just a little complicated to me,” said Stormgren, beginning to take slight interest.

  “What I mean is this,” Van Ryberg continued eagerly. “I think that physically they’re human beings like us. They realise that we’ll tolerate being ruled by creatures we imagine to be — well, alien and super-intelligent. But the human race being what it is, it just won’t be bossed around by creatures of the same species.”

  “Very ingenious, like all your theories,” said Stormgren. “I wish you’d give them opus numbers so that I could keep up with them. The objections to this one —” But at that moment Alexander Wainwright was shown in.

  Stormgren wondered what he was thinking. He wondered too, if Wainwright had made any contact with the men who had kidnapped him. He doubted it, for he believed Wainwright’s disapproval of violence to be perfectly genuine. The extremists in his movement had discredited themselves thoroughly, and it would be a long time before the world heard of them again.

  The head of the Freedom League listened carefully while the draft was read to him. Stormgren hoped he appreciated this gesture, which had been Karellen’s idea. Not for another twelve hours would the rest of the world know of the promise that had been made to its grandchildren.

  “Fifty years,” said Wainwright thoughtfully. “That is a long time to wait.”

  “For mankind, perhaps, but not for Karellen,” Stormgren answered. Only now was he beginning to realise the neatness of the Overlords’ solution. It had given them the breathing space they believed they needed, and it had cut the ground from beneath the Freedom League’s feet. He did not imagine that the League would capitulate, but its position would be seriously weakened. Certainly Wainwright realised this as well.

  “In fifty years,” he said bitterly, “the damage will be done. Those who remembered our independence will be dead; humanity will have forgotten its heritage.”

  Words — empty words, thought Stormgren. The words for which men had once fought and died, and for which they would never die or fight again. And the world would be better for it.

  As he watched Wainwright leave, Stormgren wondered how much trouble the Freedom League would still cause in the years that lay ahead. Yet that, he thought with a lifting of his spirits, was a problem for his successor.

  There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed, but nothing could be done with good men who were deluded.

  “Here’s your case,” said Duval. “It’s as good as new.”

  “Thanks,” Stormgren answered, inspecting it carefully none the less. “Now perhaps you’ll tell me what it was all about, and what we are going to do next.”

  The physicist seemed more interested in his own thoughts.

  “What I can’t understand,” he said, “is the ease with which we’ve got away with it. Now if I’d been Kar —”

  “But you’re not. Get to the point, man. What did we discover?”

>   “Ah me, these excitable, highly-strung Nordic races!” sighed Duval. “What we did was to make a type of low-powered radar set. Besides radio waves of very high frequency, it used far infrared — all waves, in fact, which we were sure no creature could possibly see, however weird an eye it had.”

  “How could you be sure of that?” asked Stormgren, becoming intrigued by the technical problem in spite of himself.

  “Well — we couldn’t be quite sure,” admitted Duval reluctantly. “But Karellen views you under normal lighting, doesn’t he? So his eyes must be approximately similar to ours in spectral range. Anyway, it worked. We’ve proved that there is a large room behind that screen of yours. The screen is about three centimetres thick, and the space behind it is at least ten metres across. We couldn’t detect any echo from the far wall, but we hardly expected to with the low power which was all we dared use. However, we did get this.”

  He pushed across a piece of photographic paper on which was a single wavy line. In one spot was a kink like the autograph of a mild earthquake.

  “See that little kink?”

  “Yes; what is it?”

  “Only Karellen.”

  “Good Lord! Are you sure?”

  “It’s a pretty safe guess. He’s sitting, or standing, or whatever it is he does, about two metres on the other side of the screen. If the resolution had been a bit better, we might even have calculated his size.”

  Stormgren’s feelings were very mixed as he stared at that scarcely visible inflexion of the trace. Until now, there had been no proof that Karellen even had a material body. The evidence was still indirect, but he accepted it without question.

  “The other thing we had to do,” said Duval, “was to calculate the transmission of the screen to ordinary light. We think we’ve got a reasonable idea of that — anyway it doesn’t matter if we’re out even by a factor of ten. You’ll realise, of course, that there’s no such thing as a truly one-way glass. It’s simply a matter of arranging the lights. Karellen sits in a darkened room; you are illuminated — that’s all.” Duval chuckled. “Well, we’re going to change that!”

  With the air of a conjurer producing a whole litter of white rabbits, he reached into his desk and pulled out an overgrown flashlight. The end flared out into a wide nozzle, so that the whole device looked rather like a blunderbuss.

  Duval grinned.

  “It’s not as dangerous as it looks. All you have to do is to ram the nozzle against the screen and press the trigger. It gives out a very powerful beam lasting ten seconds, and in that time you’ll be able to swing it round the room and get a good view. All the light will go through the screen and it will floodlight your friend beautifully.”

  “It won’t hurt Karellen?”

  “Not if you aim low and sweep upwards. That will give his eyes time to adapt — I suppose he has reflexes like ours, and we don’t want to blind him.”

  Stormgren looked at the weapon doubtfully and hefted it in his hand. For the last few weeks his conscience had been pricking him. Karellen had always treated him with unmistakable affection, despite his occasional devastating frankness, and now that their time together was drawing to its close he did not wish to do anything that might spoil that relationship. But the Supervisor had received due warning, and Stormgren had the conviction that if the choice had been his, Karellen would long ago have shown himself. Now the decision would be made for him; when their last meeting came to its end, Stormgren would gaze upon Karellen’s face.

  If, of course, Karellen had a face.

  * * *

  The nervousness that Stormgren had first felt had long since passed away. Karellen was doing almost all the talking, weaving the intricate sentences which he was occasionally prone to use. Once this had seemed to Stormgren the most wonderful and certainly the most unexpected of all Karellen’s gifts. Now it no longer appeared quite so marvellous, for he knew that like most of the Supervisor’s abilities it was the result of sheer intellectual power and not of any special talent.

  Karellen had time for any amount of literary compositions when he slowed his thoughts down to the pace of human speech.

  “There is no need for you or your successor to worry unduly about the Freedom League, even when it has recovered from its present despondency. It has been very quiet for the past month, and though it will revive again it will not be a danger for some years. Indeed, since it is always valuable to know what your opponents are doing, the League is a very useful institution. Should it ever get into financial difficulties I might even have to subsidise it.”

  Stormgren had often found it difficult to tell when Karellen was joking. He kept his face impassive and continued to listen.

  “Very soon the League will lose another of its arguments. There has been a good deal of criticism, all somewhat childish, of the special position you have held for the past few years. I found it very valuable in the early days of my administration, but now that the world is moving along the lines that I planned, it can cease. In future, all my dealings with Earth will be indirect and the office of Secretary-General can revert to something resembling its original form.

  “During the next fifty years there will be many crises, but they will pass. The pattern of the future is clear enough, and one day all these difficulties will be forgotten — even to a race with memories as long as yours.”

  The last words were spoken with such peculiar emphasis that Stormgren immediately froze in his seat. Karellen, he was sure, never made accidental slips; even his indiscretions were calculated to many decimal places. But there was no time to ask questions — which certainly would not be answered — before the Supervisor had changed the subject again.

  “You have often asked me about our long-term plans,” he continued. “The foundation of the World State is, of course, only the first step. You will live to see its completion — but the change will be so imperceptible that few will notice it when it comes. After that there will be a period of slow consolidation while your race becomes prepared for us. And then will come the day which we have promised. I am sorry you will not be there.”

  Stormgren’s eyes were open, but his gaze was fixed far beyond the dark barrier of the screen. He was looking into the future, imagining the day that he would never see, when the great ships of the Overlords came down at last to Earth and were thrown open to the waiting world.

  “On that day,” continued Karellen, “the human race will experience what can only be called a psychological discontinuity. But no permanent harm will be done; the men of that age will be more stable than their grandfathers. We will always have been part of their lives, and when they meet us we will not seem so — strange — as we would do to you.”

  Stormgren had never known Karellen in so contemplative a mood, but this gave him no surprise. He did not believe that he had ever seen more than a few facets of the Supervisor’s personality; the real Karellen was unknown and perhaps unknowable to human beings. And once again Stormgren had the feeling that the Supervisor’s real interests were elsewhere, and that he ruled Earth with only a fraction of his mind, as effortlessly as a master of three-dimensional chess might play a game of checkers.

  “And after that?” asked Stormgren softly.

  “Then we can begin our real work.”

  “I have often wondered what that might be. Tidying up our world and civilizing the human race is only a means — you must have an end as well. Will we ever be able to come out into space and see your universe — perhaps even help you in your tasks?”

  “You can put it that way,” said Karellen — and now his voice held a clear yet inexplicable note of sadness that left Stormgren strangely perturbed.

  “But suppose, after all, your experiment fails with Man? We have known such things in our own dealings with primitive human races. Surely you have your failures too?”

  “Yes,” said Karellen, so softly that Stormgren could scarcely hear him. “We have had our failures.”

  “And what do you do then?”
/>   “We wait — and try again.”

  There was a pause lasting perhaps five seconds. When Karellen spoke again, his words were so unexpected that for a moment Stormgren did not react.

  “Good-bye, Rikki!”

  Karellen had tricked him — probably it was already too late. Stormgren’s paralysis lasted only a moment. Then, with a single swift, well-practised movement, he whipped out the flash gun and jammed it against the glass.

  * * *

  The pine trees came almost to the edge of the lake, leaving along its border only a narrow strip of grass a few metres wide.

  Every evening when it was warm enough Stormgren, despite his ninety years, would walk along this strip to the landing-stage, watch the sunlight die upon the water, and then return to the house before the chill night wind came up from the forest. The simple ritual gave him much contentment, and he would continue it as long as he had the strength.

  Far away over the lake something was coming in from the west, flying low and fast. Aircraft were uncommon in these parts, unless one counted the trans-polar liners which must be passing overhead every hour of the day and night. But there was never any sign of their presence, save an occasional vapour trail high against the blue of the stratosphere. This machine was a small helicopter, and it was coming towards him with obvious determination. Stormgren glanced along the beach and saw that there was no chance of escape. Then he shrugged his shoulders and sat down on the wooden bench at the head of the jetty.

  The reporter was so deferential that Stormgren found it surprising. He had almost forgotten that he was not only an elder statesman but, outside his own country, almost a mythical figure.