City at World's End

by Edmond Moore Hamilton

  The little historian was afire for a look at the old town. He fidgeted until he and Hubble and Kenniston, in a jeep; were driving across the cold ocher wasteland.

  “I shall see, with my own eyes, a town of the pre-atomic age!” he exulted.

  It was strange to come upon old Middletown, standing so silent in the midst of desolation. The houses were as he had last seen them, the doors locked, the empty porch swings rocking in the cold wind. The streets were drifted thick with dust. The trees were bare, and the last small blade of grass had died.

  Kenniston saw that Hubble’s eyes were misted, and his own heart con-tracted with a terrible pang of longing. He wished that he had not come.

  Back in that other city, absorbed in the effort to survive, one could almost forget that there had been a life before.

  He drove the jeep through those deathly streets, and memory spoke to him strongly of lost summers—girls in bright frocks, catalpa trees heavy with blossom, the quarreling of wrens, and the lights and sounds of human voices in the drowsy evening. Piers Eglin was speechless with joy, lost in a historian’s dream as he walked the streets and looked into shops and houses.

  “It must be preserved,” Eglin whispered. “It is too precious. I will have them build a dome and seal it all—the signs, the artifacts, the beautiful scraps of paper!”

  Hubble said abruptly, “There’s someone here ahead of us.” Kenniston saw the small bullet-shaped car that stood outside the old Lab. Out of the building came Norden Lund and Varn Allan.

  She spoke to Eglin, and he translated, “They have been gathering data for her report to Government Center.”

  Kenniston saw the distaste in the woman’s clear-cut face as her blue eyes rested on the panorama of grimy mills, the towering stacks black with forgotten smokes, the rustling rails of the sidings, the drab little houses huddled along the narrow streets. He resented it, and said defiantly. “Ask her what she thinks of our little city?”

  Eglin did, and Varn Allan answered incisively. The little historian looked uneasy when Kenniston asked him to interpret.

  “Varn Allan says that it is unbelievable people could live in a place so pitiful and sordid.”

  Lund laughed. Kenniston flushed hot, and for a moment he detested this woman for her cool, imperious superiority. She looked at old Middletown as one might look at an unclean apes’ den.

  Hubble saw his face, and laid a hand on his arm. “Come on, Ken. We have work to do.”

  He followed the older man into the Lab, Piers Eglin trailing along. He said, “Why the hell would they put a haughty blonde in authority?”

  Hubble said, “Presumably because she is competent to fill the job.

  Don’t tell me old-fashioned masculine vanity is bothering you?”

  Piers Eglin had understood what they were saying, for he chuckled.

  “That’s not such an old-fashioned feeling. Norden Lund doesn’t much like being Sub for a girl.”

  When they came out of the building with the materials Gorr Holl had requested, Varn Allan and Lund were gone.

  They found, upon their return to New Middletown, that Gorr Holl and his crew were already at work disassembling the generators. Bellowing orders, thundering deep-chested Capellan profanity, attacking each generator as though it were a personal enemy, Gorr Holl drove his hard-handed spacemen into performing miracles of effort.

  Kenniston, in the days that followed, forgot all sense of strangeness in the intense technical interest of the work. Laboring as he could, eating and sleeping with these star-worlders though the long days and nights, he began to pick up the language with amazing speed. Piers Eglin was eager to help him, and after Kenniston discovered that the basic structure of the tongue was that of his own English, things went more easily.

  He discovered one day that he was working beside the humanoids as naturally as though he had always done it. It no longer seemed strange that Magro, the handsome white-furred Spican, was an electronics expert whose easy unerring work left Kenniston staring.

  The brothers, Ban and Bal, were masters at refitting. Kenniston envied their deftness with outworn parts, the swift ease with which their wiry bodies flitted batlike among the upper levels of the towering machines, where it was hard for men to go.

  And Lal’lor, the old grey stodgy one of the massive body, who spoke little but saw much from wise little eyes, had an amazing mathematical genius. Kenniston discovered it when Lal’lor went with him and Hubble and Piers Eglin to look at the big heat shaft that seemed to go down to the bowels of Earth.

  The historian nodded comprehendingly as he looked at the great shaft and its conduits. It descended, he said, to Earth’s inmost core.

  “It was a great work. It and others like it, in these domed cities, kept Earth habitable ages longer than would otherwise have been the case.

  But there is no more heat in Earth’s core to tap, now.” He sighed. “The doom of all planets, sooner or later. Even after their Sun has waned they can live while their interior heat keeps them warm. But when that interior planetary heat dies the planet must be abandoned.”

  Lal’lor spoke in his throaty, husky voice. “But Jon Arnol, as you know, claims that a dead, cold planet can be revived. And his equations seem unassailable.”

  And the bulk gray Miran—for that star had bred him, Kenniston had learned—repeated a staggering series of equations that Kenniston could not even begin to follow.

  Piers Eglin, for some reason, looked oddly uncomfortable. He seemed to avoid Lal’lor’s gaze as he said hastily, “Jon Arnol is an enthusiast, a fanatic theorist. You know what happened when he tried a test.”

  As soon as Kenniston could make himself understood in the new tongue, Piers Eglin considered that his duty was done and he departed for Old Middletown, to shiver and freeze and root joyfully among the archaic treasures that abounded in every block. Left alone with the star-worlders, Kenniston found himself more and more forgetting differences of time and culture and race as he worked with them to force life back in-to the veins of the city.

  They had New Middletown’s water system in full operation again, and the luxury of opening one of the curious taps and seeing water gush forth in endless quantities was a wonderful thing. Many of the great atomic generators were functioning now, including a tremendous auxili-ary heating system which made the air inside the dome several degrees warmer. And Gorr Holl and Margo had been working hard on the last miracle of all.

  There came a night when the big Capellan called Kenniston into one of the main generator rooms. Magro and a number of the crewmen were there, smeared with dust and grease but grinning the happy grins of men who have just seen the last of a hard job. Gorr Holl pointed to a window.

  “Stand over there,” he said to Kenniston, “and watch.” Kenniston looked out, over the dark city. There was no moon, and the towers were cloaked in shadow, the black canyons of the streets below them pricked here and there with the feeble glints of candles and the few electric bulbs that shone around the City Hall. Gorr Holl strode across the room behind him, to a huge control panel half the height of the wall. He grunted.

  There was a click and a snap as the master switch went home, and suddenly, over that nighted city under the dome, there burst a brilliant flood of light.

  The shadowy towers lit to a soaring glow. The streets became rivers of white radiance, soft and clear, and above it all there was an new night sky—the wondrous luminescence of the dome, like a vast bowl fashioned out of moonbeams and many-colored clouds, crowning the gleaming towers with a glory of its own. It was so strange and beautiful, after the long darkness and the shadows, that Kenniston stood without moving, looking at the miracle of light, and was aware only later that there were tears in his eyes.

  The sleeping city woke. The people poured out into the shining streets, and the sound of their voices rose and became one long shout of joy.

  Kenniston turned to Gorr Holl and Magro and the others. He wanted to say something, but he could not find any words. Final
ly he laughed, and they laughed with him, and they went out together into the streets.

  Mayor Garris met them almost at once, having run all the way from City Hall. Hubble was with him, and most of the men from the old Lab, and a crowd of Middletowners. There was no making any sense out of anything that was said, but the people hoisted Gorr Holl and Magro and the crewmen to their shoulders and rode them in a triumphal procession around the plaza, and the shouts and cheers were deafening. More than water, more than heat, the people treasured this gift of light. And on that night they accepted the humanoids as brothers.

  A little later, a breathless and jubilant group gathered in City Hall—Gorr Holl and Magro, Kenniston, Hubble, and the Mayor. Bertram Garris wrung the big Capellan’s mighty paw and beamed at Magro, trying to express his thanks for all that they and the others had done, and Gorr Holl listened, grinning.

  “What’s he saying?” he asked Kenniston, who now occupied the position of interpreter.

  Kenniston laughed. “He wants to know what he can do to show his appreciation—like giving you the city or his daughter in marriage, or a few pints of his blood. Seriously, Gorr, we are all mighty grateful. You people have made the city live again, and—well, is there anything we can do to show you we mean it?”

  Gorr Holl considered. He looked at Magro, and Magro nodded solemnly. Gorr Holl said, “Well, being primitives—we could use a drink!”

  Hubble, who had picked up a smattering of the language, began to laugh. Kenniston translated for the Mayor, who immediately proclaimed a medical emergency and hastened to produce bottles from the hoard. It was a cheerful celebration, and Kenniston found himself actively missing Bal and Ban and the grey Lal’lor, who had returned to the ship with part of the crew a day or so before.

  An unhappy thought occurred to him, and he said, “I suppose you people will be going away pretty soon, now that the work’s done.”

  Margo shrugged his supple shoulders. “That will depend on a number of things.” He glanced lazily at Gorr Holl.

  Gorr Holl was a little drunk by now—not much, but loud and cheerful. The Mayor was feeling good too, and was affectionately patting the Capellan’s great furry shoulder.

  “I want you to understand,” Garris was saying earnestly, “that I’m sorry about that stupid bull of mine when I first saw you. We’re all sorry, seeing how much you’ve done for us.”

  “Listen, we haven’t done much,” said Gorr Holl, when Kenniston had translated. “But the lights and all will make you more comfortable here, while you’re waiting.”

  Kenniston stared at him. “What do you mean—while we’re waiting?”

  “Why, while you’re waiting to be evacuated, of course,” said Gorr.

  There was a little silence. Kenniston felt a queer tension seize him, and he knew suddenly that this was something he’d been unconsciously expecting, something that he’d felt wasn’t quite right, all along.

  He said carefully, “Gorr, we don’t understand this. What is this talk of evacuation?”

  The big Capellan stared at him, with surprise in his large dark eyes and bearlike face. But, of a sudden, Kenniston felt that that surprise was completely assumed, that in this offhand, casual way Gorr Holl was springing something on them and watching for their reaction.

  “Didn’t Piers tell you?” said Gorr Holl. “No, I suppose he’d have instructions not to. They’d figure you people were emotional primitives like Magro and me, and that the less time you have to think about it, the better.”

  Kenniston said tightly again, “What do you mean by evacuation?”

  The Capellan looked at him levelly now. “I simply mean that, by order of the Governors, all you people are to be evacuated from Earth to some other star-world.”

  Chapter 12

  CRISIS

  Three men of Earth stared at the big Capellan, and for a long, long moment no one spoke. Gorr Holl became absorbed in the glass he held between his hands. Magro watched them with his bright cat eyes. The beautiful streaming light poured over them, and the men were like three images of stone.

  Bertram Garris found his tongue at last. But it was only to repeat Gorr Holl’s words, as Kenniston had translated them.

  “Evacuation?” he said. And again,"Evacuation?”

  “To the world of another star,” said Kenniston slowly. His mouth twitched, and he leaned close to Gorr Holl, and cried, “What do you think we’re made of?”

  Gorr Holl looked around their faces, and then said ruefully, “I guess I’ve talked too much.” His ruefulness was no more convincing than his earlier surprise.

  Mayor Garris had begun to tremble. A fury was building up in him, a genuine fury that had nothing to do with display. He glared at Magro and at Gorr Holl.

  “They knew this all along, that woman and the others,” he said. “They came in here, pretending to be our friends, and all the time behind our backs…” He stopped. His wrath and fear were all but choking him, coming so swiftly after joy. His voice went up and octave. “You tell them, Kenniston, tell them from me—if they think we’re going to move clear off the Earth to some—some—” he stammered over the sheer impossibil-ity of what he was saying, “—some damn fool place out in the sky—well, they’re crazy!”

  Hubble said to Kenniston, “Ask him if this is a thing they do, these Governors? I mean, this moving of whole populations from one world to another?”

  Gorr Holl nodded to that. “Oh, yes. Whenever life on some planet becomes economically unsound, or the margin of survival is too small, the Governors evacuate the people to a better world. There are lots of them, good warm fertile planets that are uninhabited or nearly so. They did it to some of my own people, moved them from Capella Five to Aldebaran.”

  Kenniston cried out of his anger, “And people let that be done to them? They didn’t even resist it?”

  Gorr Holl said, “People—human people, I mean—have got millions of years of civilization behind them. They’re used to peaceful government, used to obedience, and they’ve been moving from world to world ever since they left Earth ages ago, so that one planet doesn’t mean much more than another to them. But the primitive humanoid folk, lately civilized, like my own and Magro’s, aren’t so reasonable. There’s been a good bit of resentment among them about this evacuation business. In fact, they hate it—just as much as you do.”

  “Here!” said Hubble sharply. “Where are you going?” He was talking to the Mayor, who was striding suddenly toward the door. He caught Garris by the coat and pulled him back. The Mayor struggled sullenly to free himself.

  “I’m going to tell them,” he said, jerking his head toward the sounds of revelry that came from the crowd of Middletowners in the plaza. “Move off the Earth? They’ll have something to say about that!”

  “What do you want to do?” snapped Hubble. “Start a riot? Don’t be a fool, that’s no way to handle this. No, it’s that ice-water blonde we’ve got to talk to, and that fellow Lund.” He shook Garris. “Stop it, I say! Going off half-cocked will only make it harder for everyone.”

  Garris stopped struggling. He looked from Hubble to Kenniston and back again. “All right,” he said, “we’ll talk to them. But they’d better get it through their heads that they’re not dealing with any flock of tame sheep.” He stamped back into the room. “Ordering us off our own world..! Get those two freaks out of here, Kenniston. I was right the first time. They’re not to be trusted, they’re…”

  “Oh, shut up,” said Kenniston impatiently. “Gorr and Margo don’t make the laws. They’re simply being decent enough to give us fair warning of something we wouldn’t have known about until it was too late.”

  He knew there was more in it than that, but he was too hurried and upset to search for deeper motives now. He turned to Gorr and the Spican.

  “Listen,” he said. “You’ve seen how the Mayor reacted. Well, I can assure you that all our people will react just that way, only more so. Tell that to Varn Allan, and tell her that she’d better come here a
nd talk about this evacuation before she gets in too deep. Tell her we don’t like having things done behind our backs. Tell her—” He caught himself, surprised by his own fury. “No, I guess you couldn’t tell her that,” he said, and Gorr Holl grinned.

  “As one primitive to another, I get your meaning.”

  “Well, all right. And Gorr—you and Magro and the others better stay out of the city. When this thing breaks, I wouldn’t guarantee anybody’s safety.”

  “Oh,” said Gorr Holl, and grinned very widely so that even his grinders glistened, “we’ll be quite safe, confined to quarters in the ship.

  We, or rather I, have done an evil thing. We have spoken out of turn, and upset the Policy.”

  The three of them, humanoids and human, looked at each other, and there was understanding between them. Kenniston put his hand on Gorr Holl’s furry shoulder, and gripped the iron muscles of it, and Magro said, “One more thing, Kenniston. If there’s trouble—and I seem to smell trouble very strongly in the air—watch out for Lund. Varn Allan may be much too sure of herself, but she’s honest. Lund—well, he wants Varn’s job, and he will cheerfully cut anyone’s throat to get it.”

  “That is so,” said Gorr Holl. “Remember, Kenniston.”

  “I’ll remember. And—thanks.”

  They went away, to take the message of defiance to the ship. Kenniston watched them go, and the Mayor watched them, and they listened to the cheering that followed them all the way to the portal.

  “I’m sorry I called them freaks,” the Mayor said suddenly. “By God, they’re more like us than the people in that ship!”

  Hubble nodded. “Their culture level is closer to ours. They haven’t lost their old aboriginal roots. Our own people have gone too far beyond us.

  The whole pattern of their thinking is different. We—well, we’re strangers now, to our own kind.”

  To Kenniston, the cheering and the happiness of the Middletowners out there was an ironically bitter thing, now. If they knew what was being planned for them…