“I suppose I should get pretty mad about this whole business,” McNeil continued conversationally, holding the bottle between thumb and forefinger. “But somehow I’m not. Maybe it’s because I never had many illusions about human nature. And, of course, I saw it coming a long time ago.”
Only the last phrase really reached Grant’s consciousness.
“You—saw it coming?”
“Heavens, yes! You’re too transparent to make a good criminal, I’m afraid. And now that your little plot’s failed it leaves us both in an embarrassing position, doesn’t it?”
To this masterly understatement there seemed no possible reply.
“By rights,” continued the engineer thoughtfully, “I should now work myself into a good temper, call Venus Central, and denounce you to the authorities. But it would be a rather pointless thing to do, and I’ve never been much good at losing my temper anyway. Of course, you’ll say that’s because I’m too lazy—but I don’t think so.”
He gave Grant a twisted smile.
“Oh, I know what you think about me—you’ve got me neatly classified in that orderly mind of yours, haven’t you? I’m soft and self-indulgent, I haven’t any moral courage—or any morals for that matter—and I don’t give a damn for anyone but myself. Well, I’m not denying it. Maybe it’s ninety per cent true. But the odd ten per cent is mighty important, Grant!”
Grant felt in no condition to indulge in psychological analysis, and this seemed hardly the time for anything of the sort. Besides, he was still obsessed with the problem of his failure and the mystery of McNeil’s continued existence. McNeil, who knew this perfectly well, seemed in no hurry to satisfy his curiosity.
“Well, what do you intend to do now?” Grant asked, anxious to get it over.
“I would like,” said McNeil calmly, “to carry on our discussion where it was interrupted by the coffee.”
“You don’t mean—”
“But I do. Just as if nothing had happened.”
“That doesn’t make sense. You’ve got something up your sleeve!” cried Grant.
McNeil sighed. He put down the poison bottle and looked firmly at Grant.
“You’re in no position to accuse me of plotting anything. To repeat my earlier remarks, I am suggesting that we decide which one of us shall take poison—only we don’t want any more unilateral decisions. Also”—he picked up the bottle again—“it will be the real thing this time. The stuff in here merely leaves a bad taste in the mouth.”
A light was beginning to dawn in Grant’s mind. “You changed the poison!”
“Naturally. You may think you’re a good actor, Grant, but frankly—from the balcony—I thought the performance stank. I could tell you were plotting something, probably before you knew it yourself. In the last few days I’ve deloused the ship pretty thoroughly. Thinking of all the ways you might have done me in was quite amusing and helped to pass the time. The poison was so obvious that it was the first thing I fixed. But I rather overdid the danger signals and nearly gave myself away when I took the first sip. Salt doesn’t go at all well with coffee.”
He gave that wry grin again. “Also, I’d hoped for something more subtle. So far I’ve found fifteen infallible ways of murdering anyone aboard a spaceship. But I don’t propose to describe them now.”
This was fantastic, Grant thought. He was being treated, not like a criminal, but like a rather stupid schoolboy who hadn’t done his homework properly.
“Yet you’re still willing,” said Grant unbelievingly, “to start all over again? And you’d take the poison yourself if you lost?”
McNeil was silent for a long time. Then he began, slowly, “I can see that you still don’t believe me. It doesn’t fit at all nicely into your tidy little picture, does it? But perhaps I can make you understand. It’s really quite simple.
“I’ve enjoyed life, Grant, without many scruples or regrets—but the better part of it’s over now and I don’t cling to what’s left as desperately as you might imagine. Yet while I am alive I’m rather particular about some things.
“It may surprise you to know that I’ve got any ideals at all. But I have, Grant—I’ve always tried to act like a civilized, rational being. I’ve not always succeeded. When I’ve failed I’ve tried to redeem myself.”
He paused, and when he resumed it was as though he, and not Grant, was on the defensive. “I’ve never exactly liked you Grant, but I’ve often admired you and that’s why I’m sorry it’s come to this. I admired you most of all the day the ship was holed.”
For the first time, McNeil seemed to have some difficulty in choosing his words. When he spoke again he avoided Grant’s eyes.
“I didn’t behave very well then. Something happened that I thought was impossible. I’ve always been quite sure that I’d never lose my nerve but—well—it was so sudden it knocked me over.”
He attempted to hide his embarrassment by humor. “The same sort of thing happened on my very first trip. I was sure I’d never be spacesick—and as a result I was much worse than if I had not been over-confident. But I got over it then—and again this time. It was one of the biggest surprises of my life, Grant, when I saw that you of all people were beginning to crack.
“Oh, yes—the business of the wines! I can see you’re thinking about that. Well, that’s one thing I don’t regret. I said I’d always tried to act like a civilized man—and a civilized man should always know when to get drunk. But perhaps you wouldn’t understand.”
Oddly enough, that was just what Grant was beginning to do. He had caught his first real glimpse of McNeil’s intricate and tortuous personality and realized how utterly he had misjudged him. No—misjudged was not the right word. In many ways his judgment had been correct. But it had only touched the surface—he had never suspected the depths that lay beneath.
In a moment of insight that had never come before, and from the nature of things could never come again, Grant understood the reasons behind McNeil’s action. This was nothing so simple as a coward trying to reinstate himself in the eyes of the world, for no one need ever know what happened aboard the Star Queen.
In any case, McNeil probably cared nothing for the world’s opinion, thanks to the sleek self-sufficiency that had so often annoyed Grant. But that very self-sufficiency meant that at all costs he must preserve his own good opinion of himself. Without it life would not be worth living—and McNeil had never accepted life save on his own terms.
The engineer was watching him intently and must have guessed that Grant was coming near the truth, for he suddenly changed his tone as though he was sorry he had revealed so much of his character.
“Don’t think I get a quixotic pleasure from turning the other cheek,” he said. “Just consider it from the point of view of pure logic. After all, we’ve got to come to some agreement.
“Has it occurred to you that if only one of us survives without a covering message from the other, he’ll have a very uncomfortable time explaining just what happened?”
In his blind fury, Grant had completely forgotten this. But he did not believe it bulked at all important in McNeil’s own thoughts.
“Yes,” he said, “I suppose you’re right.”
He felt far better now. All the hate had drained out of him and he was at peace. The truth was known and he accepted it. That it was so different from what he had imagined did not seem to matter now.
“Well, let’s get it over,” he said unemotionally. “There’s a new pack of cards lying around somewhere.”
“I think we’d better speak to Venus first—both of us,” replied McNeil, with peculiar emphasis. “We want a complete agreement on record in case anyone asks awkward questions later.”
Grant nodded absently. He did not mind very much now one way or the other. He even smiled, ten minutes later, as he drew his card from the pack and laid it, face upward, beside McNeil’s.
“So that’s the whole story, is it?” said the first mate, wondering how soon he could decently get
to the transmitter.
“Yes,” said McNeil evenly, “that’s all there was to it.”
The mate bit his pencil, trying to frame the next question. “And I suppose Grant took it all quite calmly?”
The captain gave him a glare, which he avoided, and McNeil looked at him coldly as if he could see through to the sensation-mongering headlines ranged behind. He got to his feet and moved over to the observation port.
“You heard his broadcast, didn’t you? Wasn’t that calm enough?”
The mate sighed. It still seemed hard to believe that in such circumstances two men could have behaved in so reasonable, so unemotional a manner. He could have pictured all sorts of dramatic possibilities—sudden outbursts of insanity, even attempts at murder. Yet according to McNeil nothing at all had happened. It was too bad.
McNeil was speaking again, as if to himself. “Yes, Grant behaved very well—very well indeed. It was a great pity—”
Then he seemed to lose himself in the ever-fresh, incomparable glory of the approaching planet. Not far beneath, and coming closer by kilometers every second, the snow-white crescent arms of Venus spanned more than half the sky. Down there were life and warmth and civilization—and air.
The future, which not long ago had seemed contracted to a point, had opened out again into all its unknown possibilities and wonders. But behind him McNeil could sense the eyes of his rescuers, probing, questioning—yes, and condemning too.
All his life he would hear whispers. Voices would be saying behind his back, “Isn’t that the man who—?”
He did not care. For once in his life at least, he had done something of which he could feel unashamed. Perhaps one day his own pitiless self-analysis would strip bare the motives behind his actions, would whisper in his ear. “Altruism? Don’t be a fool! You did it to bolster up your own good opinion of yourself—so much more important than anyone else’s!”
But the perverse maddening voices, which all his life had made nothing seem worthwhile, were silent for the moment and he felt content. He had reached the calm at the center of the hurricane. While it lasted he would enjoy it to the full.
History Lesson
No one could remember when the tribe had begun its long journey. The land of great rolling plains that had been its first home was now no more than a half-forgotten dream.
For many years Shann and his people had been fleeing through a country of low hills and sparkling lakes, and now the mountains lay ahead. This summer they must cross them to the southern lands. There was little time to lose. The white terror that had come down from the Poles, grinding continents to dust and freezing the very air before it, was less than a day’s march behind.
Shann wondered if the glaciers could climb the mountains ahead, and within his heart he dared to kindle a little flame of hope. This might prove a barrier against which even the remorseless ice would batter in vain. In the southern lands of which the legends spoke, his people might find refuge at last.
It took weeks to discover a pass through which the tribe and the animals could travel. When midsummer came, they had camped in a lonely valley where the air was thin and the stars shone with a brilliance no one had ever seen before.
The summer was waning when Shann took his two sons and went ahead to explore the way. For three days they climbed, and for three nights slept as best they could on the freezing rocks, and on the fourth morning there was nothing ahead but a gentle rise to a cairn of gray stones built by other travelers, centuries ago.
Shann felt himself trembling, and not with cold, as they walked toward the little pyramid of stones. His sons had fallen behind. No one spoke, for too much was at stake. In a little while they would know if all their hopes had been betrayed.
To east and west, the wall of mountains curved away as if embracing the land beneath. Below lay endless miles of undulating plain, with a great river swinging across it in tremendous loops. It was a fertile land; one in which the tribe could raise crops knowing that there would be no need to flee before the harvest came.
Then Shann lifted his eyes to the south, and saw the doom of all his hopes. For there at the edge of the world glimmered that deadly light he had seen so often to the north—the glint of ice below the horizon.
There was no way forward. Through all the years of flight, the glaciers from the south had been advancing to meet them. Soon they would be crushed beneath the moving walls of ice…
Southern glaciers did not reach the mountains until a generation later. In that last summer the sons of Shann carried the sacred treasures of the tribe to the lonely cairn overlooking the plain. The ice that had once gleamed below the horizon was now almost at their feet. By spring it would be splintering against the mountain walls.
No one understood the treasures now. They were from a past too distant for the understanding of any man alive. Their origins were lost in the mists that surrounded the Golden Age, and how they had come at last into the possession of this wandering tribe was a story that now would never be told. For it was the story of a civilization that had passed beyond recall.
Once, all these pitiful relics had been treasured for some good reason, and now they had become sacred though their meaning had long been lost. The print in the old books had faded centuries ago though much of the lettering was still visible—if there had been any to read it. But many generations had passed since anyone had had a use for a set of seven-figure logarithms, an atlas of the world, and the score of Sibelius’ Seventh Symphony printed, according to the flyleaf, by H. K. Chu and Sons, at the City of Pekin in the year 2371 A.D.
The old books were placed reverently in the little crypt that had been made to receive them. There followed a motley collection of fragments—gold and platinum coins, a broken telephoto lens, a watch, a cold-light lamp, a microphone, the cutter from an electric razor, some midget radio tubes, the flotsam that had been left behind when the great tide of civilization had ebbed forever.
All these treasures were carefully stowed away in their resting place. Then came three more relics, the most sacred of all because the least understood.
The first was a strangely shaped piece of metal, showing the coloration of intense heat. It was, in its way, the most pathetic of all these symbols from the past, for it told of man’s greatest achievement and of the future he might have known. The mahogany stand on which it was mounted bore a silver plate with the inscription.
Auxiliary Igniter from Starboard Jet
Spaceship “Morning Star”
Earth-Moon, A.D. 1985
Next followed another miracle of the ancient science—a sphere of transparent plastic with strangely shaped pieces of metal imbedded in it. At its center was a tiny capsule of synthetic radio-element, surrounded by the converting screens that shifted its radiation far down the spectrum. As long as the material remained active, the sphere would be a tiny radio transmitter, broadcasting power in all directions. Only a few of these spheres had ever been made. They had been designed as perpetual beacons to mark the orbits of the asteroids. But man had never reached the asteroids and the beacons had never been used.
Last of all was a flat, circular tin, wide in comparison with its depth. It was heavily sealed, and rattled when shaken. The tribal lore predicted that disaster would follow if it was ever opened, and no one knew that it held one of the great works of art of nearly a thousand years before.
The work was finished. The two men rolled the stones back into place and slowly began to descend the mountainside. Even to the last, man had given some thought to the future and had tried to preserve something for posterity.
That winter the great waves of ice began their first assault on the mountains, attacking from north and south. The foothills were overwhelmed in the first onslaught, and the glaciers ground them into dust. But the mountains stood firm, and when the summer came the ice retreated for a while.
So, winter after winter, the battle continued, and the roar of the avalanches, the grinding of rock and the explosions of splint
ering ice filled the air with tumult. No war of man’s had been fiercer than this, and even man’s battles had not quite engulfed the globe as this had done.
At last the tidal waves of ice began to subside and to creep slowly down the flanks of the mountains they had never quite subdued. The valleys and passes were still firmly in their grip. It was stalemate. The glaciers had met their match, but their defeat was too late to be of any use to man.
So the centuries passed, and presently there happened something that must occur once at least in the history of every world in the universe, no matter how remote and lonely it may be.
The ship from Venus came five thousand years too late, but its crew knew nothing of this. While still many millions of miles away, the telescopes had seen the great shroud of ice that made Earth the most brilliant object in the sky next to the sun itself.
Here and there the dazzling sheet was marred by black specks that revealed the presence of almost buried mountains. That was all. The rolling oceans, the plains and forests, the deserts and lakes—all that had been the world of man was sealed beneath the ice, perhaps forever.
The ship closed in to Earth and established an orbit less than a thousand miles away. For five days it circled the planet, while cameras recorded all that was left to see and a hundred instruments gathered information that would give the Venusian scientists many years of work.
An actual landing was not intended. There seemed little purpose in it. But on the sixth day the picture changed. A panoramic monitor, driven to the limit of its amplification, detected the dying radiation of the five-thousand-year-old beacon. Through all the centuries, it had been sending out its signals with ever-failing strength as its radioactive heart steadily weakened.
The monitor locked on the beacon frequency. In the control room, a bell clamored for attention. A little later, the Venusian ship broke free from its orbit and slanted down toward Earth, toward a range of mountains that still towered proudly above the ice, and to a cairn of gray stones that the years had scarcely touched….
Expedition to Earth (Arthur C. Clarke Collection: Short Stories) Page 8
