So strange, so circumscribed, that old life seemed now! Most people had had ground-cars in those days, he had read, and had gone back and forth in them to the cities where they worked. Did both the man and the woman go, or just the man? Did the woman stay in the house, perhaps with their children if they had any, and in the afternoons did she do things in the little flower garden where a few bright, ragged survivors still bloomed? Did they ever dream that some fu-ture day when they were long gone, their house would lie empty and silent with no visitor except a stranger from far-off stars? He remembered a line in one of the old plays the Arcturus Players had read. Come like shadows, so depart.
No, Kelton thought, Ross and Jennie were shadows now but they had not been then. To them, and to all the other people he could visualize going and coming busily about the Earth in those days, it was he, the future, the man yet to come, who was the shadow. Alone here, sitting and trying to imagine the long ago, Kelton had an eery feeling sometimes that his vivid imaginings of people and crowded cities and movement and laughter were the reality and that he himself was only a watching wraith.
Summer days came swiftly, hot and hotter. Now the white sun was larger in the heavens and pouring down such light and heat as Earth had not received for millennia. And all the green life across it seemed to respond with an exultant surge of final growth, an act of joyous affirmation that Kellon found infinitely touching. Now even the nights were warm, and the winds blew thrilling soft, and on the distant beaches the ocean leaped up in a laughter of spray and thunder, run-ning in great solar tides.
With a shock as though awakened from dreaming, Kelton suddenly realized that only a few days were left. The spiral was closing in fast now and very quickly the heat would mount beyond all tolerance.
He would, he told himself, be very glad to leave. There would be the wait in space until it was all over, and then he could go back to his own work, his own life, and stop fussing over shadows because there was nothing else to do. Yes. He would he glad.
Then when only a few days were left, Kellon walked out again to the old house and was musing over it when a voice spoke behind him.
"Perfect," said Borrodale's voice. "A perfect relic." Kellon turned, feeling somehow startled and dismayed. Borrodale's eyes were alight with interest as he surveyed the house, and then he turned to Kellon.
"I was walking when I saw you, Captain, and thought I'd catch up to you. Is this where you've been going so often?"
Kelton, a little guiltily, evaded. "I've been here a few times."
"But why in the world didn't you tell us about this?" exclaimed Borrodale. "Why, we can do a terrific final broadcast from here. A typical ancient home of Earth. Roy can put some of the Players in the old costumes, and we'll show them living here the way people did—"
Unexpectedly to himself, a violent reaction came up in Kelton. He said roughly,
"No."
Borrodale arched his eyebrows. "No? But why not?"
Why not, indeed? What difference could it possibly make to him if they swarmed all over the old house, laughing at its ancientness and its inadequacies, posing grinning for the cameras in front of it, prancing about in old-fashioned costumes and making a show of it. What could that mean to him, who cared nothing about this forgotten planet or anything on it?
And yet something in him revolted at what they would do here, and he said, "We might have to take off very suddenly, now. Having you all out here away from the ship could involve a danger-ous delay."
"You said yourself we wouldn't take off for a few days yet!" exclaimed Borrodale. And he added firmly, "I don't know why you should want to obstruct us, Captain. But I can go over your head to higher authority." He went away, and Kellon thought unhappily, he'll mes-sage back to Survey headquarters and I'll get my ears burned off, and why the devil did I do it anyway? I must be getting real planet-happy.
He went and sat down on the terrace, and watched until the sunset deepened into dusk. The moon came up white and brilliant, but the air was not quiet tonight. A hot, dry wind had begun to blow, and the stir of all the tall grass made the slopes and plains seem vaguely alive. It was as though a queer pulse had come into the air and the ground, as the Sun called its child homeward and Earth strained to answer. The house dreamed in the silver light, and the flowers in the garden rustled. Borrodale came back, a dark pudgy figure in the moon-light. He said triumphantly,
"I got through to your headquar-ters. They've ordered your full cooperation. We'll want to make our first broadcast here tomorrow."
Kellon stood up. "No."
"You can't ignore an order—"
"We won't be here tomorrow," said Kellon. "It is my re-sponsibility to get the ship off Earth in ample time for safety. We take off in the morning." Borrodale was silent for a moment, and when he spoke his voice had a puzzled quality.
"You're advancing things just to block our broadcast, of course. I just can't understand your attitude."
Well, Kellon thought, he couldn't quite understand it himself, so how could he explain it? He remained silent, and Bor-rodale looked at him and then at the old house.
"Yet maybe I do understand," Borrodale said thoughtfully, after a moment.
"You've come here often, by yourself. A man can get too friendly with ghosts—" Kellon said roughly, "Don't talk nonsense. We'd better get back to the ship, there's plenty to do before take off."
Borrodale did not speak as they went back out of the moonlit valley. He looked back once, but Kellon did not look back.
They took the ship off twelve hours later, in a morning made dull and ominous by racing clouds. Kellon felt a sharp relief when they cleared atmosphere and were out in the depthless, starry blackness. He knew where he was, in space. It was the place where a spaceman belonged. He'd get a stiff reprimand for this later, but he was not sorry.
They put the ship into a calculated orbit, and waited. Days, many of them, must pass before the end came to Earth. It seemed quite near the white sun now, and its Moon had slid away from it on a new distorted orbit, but even so it would be a while before they could broadcast to a watching galaxy the end of its ancestral world. Kelton stayed much of that time in his cabin. The gush that was going out over the broadcasts now, as the grand finale approached, made him sick. He wished the whole thing was over. It was, he told himself, getting to be a bore An hour and twenty minutes to E-time, and he supposed he must go up to the bridge and watch it. The mobile camera had been set up there and Borrodale and as many others of them as could crowd in were there. Borrodale had been given the last hour's broadcast, and it seemed that the others re-sented this.
"Why must you have the whole last hour?" Lorri Lee was saying bitterly to Borrodale. "It's not fair."
Quayle nodded angrily. "There'll be the biggest audience in history, and we should all have a chance to speak."
Borrodale answered them, and the voices rose and bick-ered, and Kellon saw the broadcast technicians looking wor-ried. Beyond them through the filter-window he could see the dark dot of the planet closing on the white star. The Sun called, and it seemed that with quickened eagerness Earth moved on the last steps of its long road. And the clamoring, bickering voices in his ears suddenly brought rage to Kellon.
"Listen,"" he said to the broadcast men. "Shut off all sound transmission. You can keep the picture on, but no sound."
That shocked them all into silence. The Lee woman finally protested, "Captain Kelton, you can't!"
"I'm in full command when in space, and I can, and do," he said.
"But the broadcast, the commentary—"
Kelton said wearily, "Oh, for Christ's sake all of you shut up, and let the planet die in peace."
He turned his back on them. He did not hear their resent-ful voices, did not even hear when they fell silent and watched through the dark filter-windows as he was watching, as the camera and the galaxy was watching.
And what was there to see but a dark dot almost engulfed in the shining veils of the sun? He thought that al
ready the stones of the old house must be beginning to vaporize. And now the veils of light and fire almost concealed the little pla-net, as the star gathered in its own.
All the atoms of old Earth, Kelton thought, in this moment bursting free to mingle with the solar being, all that had been Ross and Jennie, all that had been Shakespeare and Schubert, gay flowers and running streams, oceans and rocks and the wind of the air, received into the brightness that had given them life. They watched in silence, but there was nothing more to see, nothing at all. Silently the camera was turned off.
Kellon gave an order, and presently the ship was pulling out of orbit, starting the long voyage back. By that time the others had gone, all but Borrodale. He said to Borrodale, without turning.
"Now go ahead and send your complaint to 'headquarters." Borrodale shook his head. "Silence can be the best requiem of all. There'll be no complaint. I'm glad now, Captain."
"Glad?"
"Yes," said Borrodale. "I'm glad that Earth had one true mourner, at the last."
WITH FOLDED HANDS
by
Jack Williamson
Underhill was walking home from the office, because his wife had the car, the afternoon he first met the new mechanicals. His feet were following his usual diagonal path across a weedy vacant block—his wife usually had the car—and his preoccupied mind was rejecting various impossible ways to meet his notes at the Two Rivers bank, when a new wall stopped him.
The wall wasn't any common brick or stone, but some-thing sleek and bright and strange. Underhill stared up at a long new building. He felt vaguely annoyed and sur-prised at this glittering obstruction—it certainly hadn't been here last week.
Then he saw the thing in the window.
The window itself wasn't any ordinary glass. The wide, dustless panel was completely transparent, so that only the glowing letters fastened to it showed that it was there at all. The letters made a severe, modernistic sign:
Two Rivers Agency HUMANOID INSTITUTE The Perfect Mechanicals "To Serve and Obey,
And Guard Men from Harm."
His dim annoyance sharpened, because Underhill was in the mechanicals business himself. Times were already hard enough, and mechanicals were a drug on the market. Androids, mechanoids, electronoids, automatoids, and or-dinary robots. Unfortunately, few of them did all the salesmen promised, and the Two Rivers market was already sadly oversaturated.
Underhill sold androids—when he could. His next con-signment was due tomorrow, and he didn't quite know how to meet the bill.
Frowning, he paused to stare at the thing behind that invisible window. He had never seen a humanoid. Like any mechanical not at work, it stood absolutely motionless. Smaller and slimmer than a man. A shining black, its sleek silicone skin had a changing sheen of bronze and metallic blue. Its graceful oval face wore a fixed look of alert and slightly surprised solicitude. Altogether, it was the most beautiful mechanical he had ever seen.
Too small, of course, for much practical utility. He murmured to himself a reassuring quotation from the Android Salesman: "Androids are big—because the makers refuse to sacrifice power, essential functions, or dependability. Androids are your biggest buy!"
The transparent door slid open as he turned toward it, and he walked into the haughty opulence of the new display room to convince himself that these streamlined items were just another flashy effort to catch the woman shopper.
He inspected the glittering layout shrewdly, and his breezy optimism faded. He
had never heard of the Hu-manoid Institute, but the invading firm obviously had big money and big-time merchandising know-how.
He looked around for a salesman, but it was another mechanical that came gliding silently to meet him. A twin of the one in the window, it moved with a quick, surpris-ing grace. Bronze and blue lights flowed over its lustrous blackness, and a yellow name plate flashed from its naked breast:
HUMANOID Serial No. 81-H-B-27 The Perfect Mechanical "To Serve and Obey,
And Guard Men from Harm."
Curiously, it had no lenses. The eyes in its bald oval head were steel-colored, blindly staring. But it stopped a few feet in front of him, as if it could see anyhow, and it spoke to him with a high, melodious voice:
"At your service, Mr. Underhill."
The use of his name startled him, for not even the androids could tell one man from another. But this was a clever merchandising stunt, of course, not too difficult in a town the size of Two Rivers. The salesman must be some local man, prompting the mechanical from behind the partition. Underhill erased his momentary astonishment, and said loudly.
"May I see your salesman, please?"
"We employ no human salesmen, sir," its soft silvery voice replied instantly. "The Humanoid Institute exists to serve mankind, and we require no human service. We ourselves can supply any information you desire, sir, and accept your order for immediate humanoid service."
Underhill peered at it dazedly. No mechanicals were competent even to recharge their own batteries and reset their own relays, much less to operate their own branch office. The blind eyes stared blankly back, and he looked uneasily around for any booth or curtain that might con-ceal the salesman.
Meanwhile, the sweet thin voice resumed persuasively.
"May we come out to your home for a free trial demonstration, sir? We are anxious to introduce our ser-vice on your planet, because we have been successful in eliminating human unhappiness on so many others. You will find us far superior to the old electronic mechanicals in use here."
Underhill stepped back uneasily. He reluctantly aban-doned his search for the hidden salesman, shaken by the idea of any mechanicals promoting themselves. That would upset the whole industry.
"At least you must take some advertising matter, sir."
Moving with a somehow appalling graceful deftness, the small black mechanical brought him an illustrated booklet from a table by the wall. To cover his confused and increasing alarm, he thumbed through the glossy pages.
In a series of richly colored before-and-after pictures, a chesty blond girl was stooping over a kitchen stove, and then relaxing in a daring negligee while a little black mechanical knelt to serve her something. She was wearily hammering a typewriter, and then lying on an ocean beach, in a revealing sun suit, while another mechanical did the typing. She was toiling at some huge industrial machine, and then dancing in the arms of a golden-haired youth, while a black humanoid ran the machine.
Underhill sighed wistfully. The android company didn't supply such fetching sales material. Women would find this booklet irresistible, and they selected eighty-six per cent of all mechanicals sold. Yes, the competition was going to be bitter.
"Take it home, sir," the sweet voice urged him. "Show it to your wife. There is a free trial demonstration order blank on the last page, and you will notice that we require no payment down."
He turned numbly, and the door slid open for him. Retreating dazedly, he discovered the booklet still in his hand. He crumpled it furiously, and flung it down. The small black thing picked it up tidily, and the insistent silver voice rang after him:
"We shall call at your office tomorrow, Mr. Underhill, and send a demonstration unit to your home. It is time to discuss the liquidation of your business, because the elec-tronic mechanicals you have been selling cannot compete with us. And we shall offer your wife a free trial demon-stration."
Underhill didn't attempt to reply, because he couldn't trust his voice. He stalked blindly down the new sidewalk to the corner, and paused there to collect himself. Out of his startled and confused impressions, one clear fact emerged—things looked black for the agency.
Bleakly, he stared back at the haughty splendor of the new building. It wasn't honest brick or stone; that invisible window wasn't glass; and he was quite sure the foundation for it hadn't even been staked out, the last time Aurora had the car.
He walked on around the block, and the new sidewalk took him near the rear entrance. A truck was back
ed up to it, and several slim black mechanicals were silently busy, unloading huge metal crates.
He paused to look at one of the crates. It was labeled for interstellar shipment. The stencils showed that it had come from the Humanoid Institute, on Wing IV. He failed to recall any planet of that designation; the outfit must be big.
Dimly, inside the gloom of the warehouse beyond the truck, he could see black mechanicals opening the crates. A lid came up, revealing dark, rigid bodies, closely packed. One by one, they came to life. They climbed out of the crate, and sprang gracefully to the floor. A shining black, glinting with bronze and blue, they were all identi-cal.
One of them came out past the truck, to the sidewalk, staring with blind steel eyes. Its high silver voice spoke to him melodiously:
"At your service, Mr. Underhill."
He fled. When his name was promptly called by a courteous mechanical, just out of the crate in which it had been imported from a remote and unknown planet, he found the experience trying.
Two blocks along, the sign of a bar caught his eye, and he took his dismay inside. He had made it a business rule not to drink before dinner, and Aurora didn't like him to drink at all; but these new mechanicals, he felt, had made the day exceptional.
Unfortunately, however, alcohol failed to brighten the brief visible future of the agency. When he emerged, after an hour, he looked wistfully back in hope that the bright new building might have vanished as abruptly as it came. It hadn't. He shook his head dejectedly, and turned uncer-tainly homeward.
Fresh air had cleared his head somewhat, before he arrived at the neat white bungalow in the outskirts of the town, but it failed to solve his business problems. He also realized, uneasily, that he would be late for dinner.
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