Children of the Void

by William Dexter

  All these things, though, we have had to learn for ourselves, for not even the Nagani computers could predict the effect of these cataclysmic changes on animal and vegetable life.

  Well, we now know some of the answers to these questions, for we have lived through the beginnings of our new Era. We have seen our English climate become sub-tropical. We have seen our gardens produce two crops in each year—and fine, abundant crops, too, with fruits that never before grew in this country. We have seen the year become a year of nearly six hundred days. We have seen the coming of shorter days and nights, with Earth turning on her axis once in every fourteen hours.

  We see, now, too, the incredible sight of the Moon turning on a new axis. We are becoming accustomed to seeing the vast new panorama of that side of the Moon that was for aeons hidden from Earth. But the Moon is rivalled by an enormously greater satellite, if it is permissible to call our opposition planet a satellite. Now, the Moon shines silver against a pinkish glow that is Varang-Varang. The changing phases of the two globes hanging there in our sky, one behind the other, we have not yet been able to calculate with any accuracy. But then, we have been busy on more mundane matters, and have left these things to the Nagani.

  Our lives have been full, and we have had much work to do. Now, for the rest of our lives, we are settled to an agricultural existence. Here on the Southern fringe of London, we have established our farms, and we expect that for many generations our colony will not leave this district.

  To the north of us, London lies spread like a great sleeping monster of stone. We like to think that we are near her, but we have no delusions that we shall ever be able to live there again. Not for many hundreds of years will our infant civilisation be able to undertake life in such an awesome wilderness. For now London is a wilderness. Grass and weeds have forced up the pavements, trees sprout through windows where blustering winds have sown the seeds, and dust is everywhere.

  But still she sleeps on, this not-forgotten London. Perhaps some future generation may find her habitable again before the last of her great buildings have decayed and fallen in.

  It will be realised that these later chapters of my narrative have been added after the lapse of time—time enough to enable us to look back and place events in their correct perspective. I have spoken of years in this chapter. Years have, indeed, passed since this chronicle was started, and in that time we have learned afresh how to live.

  It was an eerie life at first, under the vast shadow of Varang-Varang. But humanity is an adaptable growth, and we are now accustomed to what were at first truly appalling phenomena. There have come the shorter days, the longer years, but chiefly there has been the dizzy prospect of Varang-Varang crossing our sky daily. We have noted no further changes in its relative position for many, many months. We believe its course is run and that now at last it has come to rest in this weird spinning counter-orbit as our neighbour round the Sun.

  So accustomed are we now to these things that I have all but overlooked referring to one major change.

  Future generations will no doubt stand on the seashore here in south-east England and wonder at the prospect before them. They will see, far out at low tide, spires and towers rising from the waves. They will see near the horizon a mighty edifice that challenges identification. They will learn that the noble building was once situated miles inland, and that its name was Canterbury Cathedral. They will read in our records that all to the east of this shore was once dry land right out to where Margate once stood.

  For when the polar axis shifted, great tides swept north and south, inundating vast areas of the country. There was a terrible fear among us that we should die by water, after escaping death by crushing, but in twenty days the tides abated, still leaving us on dry land. Now, though, the sea washes round a line from Greenwich through Bexleyheath to Maidstone, and then westward far away to what was Plymouth.

  If the voice that spoke to us in our laboratory in the tower had wished to convince of its veracity, it could have selected no better proof than that which we saw fulfilled. We were shocked into dumb fright at the time, when first we saw Varang-Varang turning towards our own world, but now we have confidence. The two globes—shattered and scarred Varang-Varang and the newly burgeoning Earth—will dwell side by side for many ages yet to come.

  Now, we have reason for our confidence in the future and for our reliance on the words that purported to come to us through the dim corridors of Time.

  The voice came to us again, as I must now relate.

  XXII

  It was when Varang-Varang had at last come to rest in its final circum-lunar orbit in opposition to the Earth that we next heard the voice.

  The radio operator in the tower flashed his signal to us— “Voices coming through; questioning team report NOW.” Within minutes the usual observers had rallied there in the radio laboratory.

  This time, we were amazed to find that the voice was able to communicate with us without the need for our making contact with the two mineral electrodes. Clear and strong it came from our loudspeakers without any of us having to grip the electrodes of our apparatus. Amazed, did I say? We were all the more so because the radio circuit being used was now of the very simplest design.

  The complex hook-ups, with many stages, that we had at first used, were now cut out, and the set being used was one that any kitchen-table mechanic could have made in an afternoon. We learned the reason almost at once. It was a logical reason, and one that we—even the non-technicians among us —could readily appreciate.

  Now that Varang-Varang, with its strangely consistent mineral formation, was in a position of comparative rest at a constant distance from Earth, it took the place of one of our electrodes, and our own world represented the other. The gravitational hold of one upon the other by some means served as the physical contact we ourselves had hitherto made between the two mineral terminals.

  We thought that this ought to mean more and clearer communications from the voices. We were at once told that this would not be the case. The prospects of future synchronising periods on the Space-Time curve were not hopeful, said the voice. But although the men of the Eighth Race would not be able to communicate with us, they would, to a certain extent, be able to observe us.

  The wire-recordings we made of the later sessions with the voices are familiar things today, of course. They are being preserved for the future, with suitable commentaries. But, with the thought in my mind that our descendants may not have as ready access to the recordings as we have, I now append the last of the voices’ communications to us. The last, that is, up to the time when I write this. There may be others in the future—we shall always maintain a listening watch for them—but there have been no more since that I am about to report.

  After explaining, as I have summarised above, the reason for easier exchange with us, the voice that spoke gave its final message to us. I present it, word for word, below.

  THE LAST COMMUNICATION

  Now we of the Eighth Race see your world and that of the bat-men in the positions they occupy in our time. Now we know that the Third Race has begun its day. Now we know that the path to the future is open before you.

  And now we may reveal to you some of the landmarks on that road to the future. These are the things that are fixed and unchangeable; therefore we may disclose them to you. There are many other things that are not revealed, even to us, things that can only be influenced by Man himself as he travels that road, things that we would not reveal even if we could.

  There is a thread of continuity that links you with us. It is a thread carried by those of you whose mental powers survive and are passed on. Do: you understand me? I see that you do not.

  I speak now to one; of you by name. Leo Arabin: I call upon you to bear witness to this that I shall say.

  (Here, Leo looked Quickly round at us, and then stared fixedly before him, almost as though, I thought, he knew what was to come.)

  Leo Arabin—old friend! Now, as you listen to u
s, you are Leo Arabin. But you know (do you not?) that you have heard our voices before this.; To you, in the past, more than once we have spoken and Revealed secrets that have placed you ahead of your time. You may have suspected this, even though you have never been fully aware of it. You may have been awed by the thought that in your mind you carry the thread that leads to the future and, back through you, into the past.

  (As we looked at Leo, amazed, he drew a deep breath and lowered his head into his hands. “I wondered,” he sighed, “but I did not know. I thought sometimes that it was madness; I was afraid of it, this chain of thought I carried from—I didn’t know where.” The voice continued:—)

  Yes, Leo Arabin, we know you. We have watched you through many lives. We know that you carry the name of that other Leonardo and we know that you have wondered.

  We know that you planned your first contact with the ships of Vulcan. We saw you as you worked and studied to occupy that pilot’s seat that was to carry you up to be seized by the Vulcan ship.

  We saw you, too, in other lifetimes—lives that even you may know nothing about. Tibet—do you remember Tibet?

  (Arabin shook his head, baffled.)

  You do not remember. Some day, in some other life, you will remember Tibet as now you remember Vinci and Milano.

  You, Leo Arabin, are the thread-carrier among your people at this moment. There are others, who have temporarily dropped the thread. But they will appear again and take it up, they will appear. We know, for we hold the other end of that thread of the mind. It has been delivered to us by you and by those others who carry it through the history of Man.

  And you, Leo Arabin, know us as we are, do you not? Others have known us and been afraid. But you have no fear. Neither have these others with you now, for they know that we are but men as you are.

  (Here Arabin, with wrinkled forehead, seemed to shake his head slowly. Did he, I asked myself, know the entities as they really are? Later on being questioned, Arabin told me: “I dare not think about it, Denis. Don’t ask me. If I did know—if I’m right—it’s too tremendous to be talked of. But I can’t accept that I’m right . . . yet.” The voice continued:—)

  And you and they have now no fear for your own future. That is as it should be. Now you may be certain indeed of a place for your Race in the System, and places for those who will follow you.

  If you could see what lies ahead for your Race, many thousands of your years ahead, you might doubt what I tell you now. If you could see the end of some of those future Races, you might doubt that their successors could ever again find the road to the future. But your foothold on that road is now secure, and however desperate may be the plight of future Races, the survivors will carry forward the story of Man.

  There will be battles ahead—battles such as the Second Race never dreamed of, battles not always with men like yourselves, but with entities and creatures from outside your System. Already, you of the Third Race have taken part in one such battle, but it was a mere skirmish. You have eliminated the creatures you call Vulcanids from your System, although they still exist elsewhere in Space and Time.

  You are not sure? You are thinking of those Vulcanids who fled from Earth years ago, helped by some of your own people? You wonder whether these survived?

  I can tell you. The ship that carried them away from you took them not to Varang-Varang, their destination, but to another world, and a world, too, that you have seen. A world with not sufficient sun to enable those vegetable monsters to survive. Yes, the Vulcanids died. But the men and women who went away with them still live. They live among creatures they cannot harm—kind, gentle creatures, but creatures so alien that the man Baggott and the others can have no-impact upon them, except a visual impact, and some slight exchange of elementary ideas.

  Yes, those men and women still survive—upon the little moon of the world you call Jupiter. You were very near to them once, if you had only known it. They knew it. But the creatures of that world would not let them join you. Those creatures—you think of them as “wallabies,” I perceive— commune with us, and had been advised that the man Baggott could destroy the young Third Race of Man with his insane ideology. There is no room for such madness in a young Race —or, for the matter of that, in a mature Race. If you will think about it, the Second Race owes its destruction to the fear created by such men as Baggott.

  The Third Race, according to the charts we have constructed over the ages, will live long as a Race. Its people, too, will live long. Their spans of life will be far, far greater than any in the Second Race’s history. The First Race were a long-lived kind, and the Third will rival them in years.

  Your world will change—has already changed—because of the stresses set up by the attachment of Varang-Varang. But it will be a world of infinitely greater use to Man. Already you see the change in climate, do you not? Already you harvest two crops in each year. So it will be for many aeons.

  The place where you now are will be the centre of human life for many, many years. In time to come, though, your people will leave that spot, and travel northwards. Later ages will see them return—and so long will be the time that has passed, that the later men will find records of your existence and will wonder at them. Those will be the men of the last days of the Third Race, and the journey that brings them back to where you now are will be the last migration the Third Race will make. It will be caused by the onset of the cataclysm that will destroy the Third Race, far, far ahead in your future.

  You will not need to know anything of the men of the Fourth Race of mankind. If you could see the men of the Fourth Race, as we have seen them, you would scarcely recognise them as men. But in their time they will advance to a stage far beyond anything you will know or could guess at. Their knowledge will be incomparably wider than that of your people. But that advance will take time—more time than has already passed with you since the first coming of Man.

  And so you of the Third Race will live your own lives on your own world until one of your people finds the secret we now hold—the secret of communing with the past. He will commune with those who have gone before by living among them, in person. But his contemporaries will not believe him when, he talks of this. And so he will return to the past. He will live briefly and die violently. It will always be dangerous to hold strange ideas, and even more dangerous to try to convince one’s fellows.

  So the secret of communication through Time will be lost to Man—until the day of the Eighth Race dawns.

  Likewise the secret of travelling in Space will be lost to Man, until a future Race rediscovers it. In your time, and for many ages to follow, neither Man nor the creatures of other worlds are ready to communicate with each other. The Nagani, who now hold the secret of space travel, will turn their efforts to other things, and even now, if you ask them, they will tell you that they have forgotten. They will forget, too, for many ages. But the secret of space travel will live on in their minds as a reserve of knowledge. Such a reserve is essential, in case ... in case Man does not rediscover this secret. Even yet something may happen to prevent him from doing so—something that may warp the structure of history and thus throw our charts out of balance.

  And you who now hear the voice speaking to you from the Eighth Race—you will have to mind for science for many ages, except as it affects your daily life. Already you have seen the terrible possibilities accruing from a misdirection of mind-power. You are the ones who will exist from century to century as peaceful cultivators. Then, slowly, will come the day when once more your descendants yearn for the secrets of the ages, and once more destruction will come upon them as it came upon the men of the Second Race.

  But I sense a confusion in your minds. You cannot visualise the picture of a future so remote. You are concerned—because your minds are made that way—with the nearer present and the immediate past. It would not be a true wisdom for us of the Eighth Race to leave you with confusion in your minds, for it may be that we shall never speak again with those who now
hear us.

  I shall tell you something of the past—the nearer past— your near past. I shall tell you of the world of the bat-men and of the bat-men themselves.

  For many thousands of years they have been marked down as a race due for extinction by their own hand. They have dwelt for long in darkness, though they were once creatures of the Sun, as you are.

  We dwelt among them, and we know them. Their world is nearer to us on the Space-Time curve, and we have been able to project into it more of ourselves than our voices. Matter, in the world of the bat-men, vibrates on a different series of wave-lengths from matter in your world. That fact enabled us to dwell among the bat-men almost, but not quite, in the physical sense. The bat-men knew we were among them, though they never saw us. We tried to teach them. At times, we thought that their race might survive, but at other times it was plain that they were irredeemable. Their lust for slaughter slowly killed off even their own kind, until their world was populated by a mere few thousand. It was when these few stumbled blindly on the ultimate secret of the Universe—the secret of the conversion of matter by what you know as atomic fission—that they doomed their race.

  We warned them. We threatened them. We made them believe that if they persisted we would tear away their curtain of darkness.

  They did not know—they had no means of knowing—that this darkness was none of our bringing. They could not know that it was a dense shroud of cosmic dust into which their planet had drifted, and which clung to Varang-Varang by gravitational attraction. But we knew. And we knew that the veil of darkness would be dissipated by the cataclysm they sought to bring on themselves.

  Perhaps we should not have warned them. Perhaps we should have let them go their own way; their existence or their extinction could not affect the Eighth Race, for the batmen are not of the stock from which mankind springs. They are akin to the reptilian species of your own world, but have advanced along a road parallel to that taken by Man. Nevertheless, they were—as we all are—Children of the Void, and as such were to be assisted by others when such was possible.