Our Children's Children

by Clifford Simak

  "How about all those banner-carrying kids who say they want to go back in time?" asked Cunningham. "I say let them go. It would clear the streets of them and for a long time a lot of people have been yelling about population pressure. We may have the answer here."

  "You're being facetious, of course," said the President, "but…"

  "I can assure you, sir, I'm not in the least facetious. I mean it."

  "And I agree with you," said the President. "My reasons may not be yours, but I do think we should not try to stop anyone who wants to go. Not, perhaps, back to the era where the future people plan to go. Maybe to an era a million years later than the future people. But before we allow them to go they must have the same ecological sense and convictions the future people have. We can't send people back who'll use up the resources we already have used. That would make a paradox I don't pretend to understand, but I imagine it might be fatal to our civilization."

  "Who would teach them this ecological sense and conviction?"

  "The people from the future. They don't all need to go back into the past immediately. The most of them, of course, but some can stay here until later. In fact, they have offered to leave a group of specialists with us who will teach as much of what has been — no, I guess that should be 'will be' — learned in the next five hundred years. For one, I think this offer should be accepted."

  "So do I," said Williams. "Some of what they teach us may upset a few economic and social applecarts, but in the long run we should be far ahead. In twenty years or less we could jump five hundred years ahead, without making the mistakes that our descendants on the old world line made."

  "I don't know about that," said Douglas. "There's too many factors in a thing like that. I'd have to think about it for awhile."

  "There's just one thing that we are forgetting," Sandburg said. "We can go ahead and plan, of course. And we have to do it fast. We have to be well along to a working, operating solution to the crisis that we face in a month or so or time will begin running out. But the point I want to make is this — the solution, the planning may do us little good if we aren't able to wipe out, or at least control, the monsters."

  45

  The kids out in the street might be the ones. Wilson told himself, with the right idea. There was some well-founded fascination in starting over once again, with the slate wiped clean and the record clear. Only trouble was, he thought, that even starting over, the human race might still repeat many of its past mistakes. Although, going back, it would take some time to make them and there'd be the opportunity, if the will were there, to correct them before they got too big, too entrenched and awkward.

  Alice Gale had talked about the wilderness where the White House once had stood and Dr. Osborne, on the ride from Fort Myer to the White House, had expressed his doubt that the trend which had made the White House park a wilderness could be stopped — it had gone too far, he said. You are too top-heavy, he had said; you are off your balance.

  Perhaps the trend had gone too far, Wilson admitted to himself — big government growing bigger; big business growing fatter and more arrogant; taxes steadily rising, never going down; the poor becoming ever poorer and more and more of them despite the best intentions of a welfare-conscious society; the gap between the rich and poor, the government and the public, growing wider by the year. How could it have been done differently, he wondered. Given the kind of world there was, how could circumstances have been better ordered?

  He shook his head. He had no idea. There might be men who could go back and chart the political, economic and social growth and show where the errors had been made, putting their fingers on certain actions in a certain year and saying here is where we made one error. But the men who could do this would be theorists, working on the basis of many theories which in practice would not stand the test.

  The phone on his desk rang and he picked it up.

  "Mr. Wilson?"

  "Yes."

  "This is the guard at the southwest gate. There is a gentleman here who says that he must see you on a matter of importance. Mr. Thomas Manning. Mr. Bentley Price is with him. Do you know them, sir?"

  "Yes. Please send them in."

  "I'll send an escort with them, sir. You'll be in your office?"

  "Yes. I'll wait here for them."

  Wilson put the receiver back into its cradle. What could bring Manning here, he wondered. Why should he have to come in person? A matter of importance, he had said. And Bentley — for the love of God, why Bentley?

  Was it, he wondered, something further about the UN business?

  He looked at his watch. The cabinet meeting was taking longer than he'd thought. Maybe it was over and the President had gotten busy with some other matters. Although that would be strange — Kim ordinarily would have squeezed him in.

  Manning and Bentley came into the room. The guard stopped at the door. Wilson nodded at him. "It's all right. You can wait outside."

  "This is an unexpected pleasure," he said to the two, shaking their hands. "I seldom see you, Tom. And Bentley, I almost never see you."

  "I got business elsewhere," Bentley said. "I get my legs run off. I'm running all the time."

  "Bentley just got in from West Virginia," Manning said. "That's what this visit is about."

  "There was this dog in the the road," said Bentley, "and then a tree came up and hit me."

  "Bentley took a picture of a monster standing in the road," said Manning, "just as it disappeared."

  "I got her figured now," said Bentley. "It saw the camera pointed at it and it heard it click. Them monsters don't stay around when they see something pointed at them."

  "There was another report or, two of one disappearing," Wilson said. "A defense mechanism of some sort, perhaps. It's making it tough for the boys out hunting them."

  "I don't think so," said Manning. "Forcing them to disappear may be as good as hunting them."

  He unzipped a thin briefcase he was carrying and took out a sheaf of photos. "Look at this," he said.

  He slid the top photo across the desk to Wilson.

  Wilson took a quick look, then fixed his gaze on Bentley. "What kind of trick photography is this?" he asked.

  "There ain't no tricks," said Bentley. "A camera never lies. It always tells the truth. It shows you what is there. That's what really happens when a monster disappears. I was using a fast film…"

  "But dinosaurs!" yelled Wilson.

  Bentley's hand dipped into his pocket and brought out an object. He handed it to Wilson. "A glass," he said. "Take a look with it. There are herds of them, off in the distance. You can't do tricks of that sort."

  The monster was hazed, a sort of shadow monster, but substantial enough that there could be no doubt it was a monster. Back of it, the dinosaurs, three of them, were in sharp focus.

  "Duckbills," said Manning. "If you showed that photograph to a paleontologist, I have every expectation he could give you an exact identification."

  The trees were strange. They, looked like palm trees, others like gigantic ferns.

  Wilson unfolded the magnifier, bent his head close above the photo, shifted the glass about. Bentley had been right. There were other strange creatures spread across the landscape, herds of them, singles, pairs. A small mammal of some sort cowered in hiding underneath a shrub.

  "We have some blowups," Manning said, "of the background. Want to look at them?"

  Wilson shook his head. "No, I'm satisfied."

  "We looked it up in a geology book," said Bentley. "That there is a Cretaceous landscape."

  "Yes, I know," said Wilson.

  He reached for, the phone. "Kim," he said, "is Mr. Gale in his room? Thank you. Please ask him to step down."

  Manning laid the rest of the photos on the desk. "They are yours," he said. "We'll be putting them on the wire. We wanted you to know first. You thinking the same thing that I am?"

  Wilson nodded. "I suppose I am," he said, "but no quotation, please."

  "We don't
need quotes," said Manning. "The picture tells the story. The monster, the mother monster, I would suppose you'd call it, was exposed to the time travel principle when it came through the tunnel. The principle was imprinted on its mind, its instinct, whatever you may call it. It transmitted knowledge of the principle to the young — a hereditary instinct."

  "But it took time tunnels, mechanical contraptions, by the humans to do it," Wilson objected. "It took technology and engineering…"

  Manning shrugged. "Hell, Steve, I don't know. I don't pretend to know. But the photo says the monsters are escaping to another time. Maybe they'll all escape to another time, probably to the same time. The escape time bracket may be implanted on their instinct. Maybe the Cretaceous is a better place for them. Maybe they have found this era too tough for them to crack, the odds too great."

  "I just thought of something," said Wilson. "the dinosaurs died out…"

  "Yeah, I know," said Manning. He zipped the briefcase shut. "We better go," he said. "We have work to do. Thanks for seeing us."

  "No, Tom," said Wilson. "The thanks are yours and Bentley's. Thanks for coming over. It might have taken days to get this puzzled out. If we ever did."

  He stood and watched them go, then sat down again.

  It was incredible, he thought. Yet it did make a lopsided sort of sense. Humans were too prone to think in human grooves. The monsters would be different. Again and again the people from the future had emphasized they must not be regarded as simple monsters, but rather as highly intelligent beings. And that intelligence, no doubt, would be as alien as their bodies. Their intelligence and ability would not duplicate human intelligence and ability. Hard as it might be to understand, they might be able to do by instinct a thing that a human would require a machine to accomplish.

  Maynard Gale and Alice came into the room so quietly that he did not know they were there until he looked up and saw them standing beside the desk.

  "You asked for us," said Gale.

  "I wanted you to look at these," said Wilson. "The top one first. The others are detail blowups. Tell me what you think."

  He waited while they studied the photos. Finally, Gale said, "This is the Cretaceous, Mr. Wilson. How was the photo taken? And what has the monster to do with it?"

  "The photographer was taking a picture of the monster. As he took it, at the moment he took it, the monster disappeared."

  "The monster disappeared?"

  "This is the second report of one disappearing. The second that I know of. There may have been others. I don't know."

  "Yes," said Gale, "I suppose that it is possible. They're not like us, you know. The ones that came through the tunnel experienced time travel — an experience that would have lasted for only a fraction of a second. But that may have been enough."

  He shuddered. "If that is true, if after such an exposure, they are able to travel independently in time, if their progeny are able to travel independently in time, if they can sense and learn and master such a complex thing so well, so quickly, it's a wonder that we were able to stand up against them for these twenty years. They must have been playing with us, keeping us, protecting us for their sport. A game preserve. That is what we must have been. A game preserve."

  "You can't be sure of that," said Wilson.

  "No, I suppose not. Dr. Wolfe is the man you should consult about this. He would know. At least, he could make an educated guess."

  "But you have no doubt?"

  "None," said Gale. "This could be a hoax?"

  Wilson shook his head. "Not Tom Manning. We know one another well. We worked on the Post, right here, together. We were drinking companion. We were brothers until this damn job came between us. Not that he has no sense of humor. But not in a thing like this. And Bentley. Not Bentley. The camera is his god. He would use it for no unworthy purpose. He lives and breathes his cameras. He bows down before them each night before he goes to bed."

  "So then we have evidence the monsters flee into the past. Even as we fled."

  "I think so," said Wilson. "I wanted your opinion. You know the monsters and we do not."

  "You'll still talk with Wolfe?"

  "Yes, we'll do that."

  "There is another matter, Mr. Wilson, that we have wanted to talk with you about. My daughter and I have talked it over and we are agreed."

  "What is that?" asked Wilson.

  "An invitation," said Gale. "We're not sure you will accept. Perhaps you won't. We may even offend you with it. But many other people, I think, would accept the invitation. To many it would have a great attraction. I find it rather awkward to phrase it, but it is this: When we go back into the Miocene, if you wish to do so, you would be welcome to go along with us. With our particular group. We should be glad to have you."

  Wilson did not move. He tried to find words and there were no words.

  Alice said, "You were our first friend, perhaps our only real friend. You arranged the matter of the diamonds. You have done so many things."

  She stepped quickly around the desk, bent to kiss him on the cheek.

  "We do not need an answer now," said Gale. "You will want to think about it. If you decide not to go with us, we'll not speak of it again. The invitation, I think, is issued with the knowledge that in all probability, your people will be using the time tunnels to go back into an era some millions of years in the past. Much as it might be hoped, I have the feeling you will not be able to escape the crisis that overtook our ancestors (which are you, of course) on the original time track."

  "I don't know," said Wilson. "I honestly do not know. You will let me think about it."

  "Certainly," said Gale.

  Alice bent close, her words a whisper. "I do so hope you'll decide to come with us," she said.

  Then they were gone, as silently, as unobtrusively as they had come.

  The dusk of evening was creeping into the room. In the press lounge a typewriter clicked hesitantly as the writer sought for words. Against the wall the teletypes muttered querulously. One button on Judy's phone console kept flashing. But not Judy's console anymore, he thought. Judy was gone. The plane that was taking her to Ohio was already heading westward.

  Judy, he said to himself. For the love of God, what got into you? Why did you have to do it?

  It would be lonely without her, he knew. He had not known until now, he realized, how much she had kept him from loneliness, had been a bulwark against the loneliness a man could feel even when with people he thought of as his friends. She had not needed to be with him, only the thought that she was somewhere nearby was quite enough to banish loneliness, to bring gladness to the heart.

  She still would be near, he thought. Ohio was not distant; in this day, nowhere in the world was distant. Phones still worked and letters went by mail, but there was a difference now. He thought of how he might phrase a letter if he wrote her, but he knew he'd never write.

  The phone rang. Kim said, "The meeting's over. He can see you now."

  "Thank you, Kim," said Wilson. It had slipped his mind that he'd asked to see the President. It seemed so long ago, although it hadn't been. It just had been that so much had happened.

  When he came into the office, the President said, "I'm sorry you were kept waiting, Steve. There was so much that had to be talked over. What is it that you have?"

  Wilson grinned. "Not quite so grim as when I tried to reach you. I think it's better now. There was a rumor out of the U.N."

  "This Russian business?"

  "Yes, the Russian business. Tom Manning phoned. His UN man — Max Hale, you know him."

  "I don't think I've ever met him. I read him. He is sound."

  "Hale heard that the Russians would push for the international dropping of nuclear weapons on the areas where the monsters might be."

  "I had expected something of this sort," said the President. "They'd never be able to pull it off."

  "I think it's academic now, anyhow," said Wilson. "These just came in." He laid the photos on the desk. "B
entley Price took the shot."

  "Price," said the President. "Is he the one…"

  "He's the one all the stories are about. Drunk a good part of the time, but a top-notch photographer. The best there is."

  The President studied the top photo, frowning. "Steve, I'm not sure I understand this."

  "There's a story that goes with it, sir. It goes like this…"

  The President listened closely, not interrupting. When Wilson finished, he asked. "You really think that's the explanation, Steve?"

  "I'm inclined to think so, sir. So does Gale. He said we should talk with Wolfe. But there was no question in Gale's mind. All we have to do is keep pushing them. Push enough of them into the past and the rest will go. If there were more of them, if we had as few weapons as the people of five hundred years from now had when they first reached Earth, they probably would try to stay on here. We'd offer plenty of fighting, be worthy antagonists. But I think they may know when they are licked. Going back to the Cretaceous, they'll still have worthy opponents. Formidable ones. Tyrannosaurus rex and all his relatives. The Triceratops. The coelurosaurs. The hunting dinosaurs. Hand-to-hand combat, face-to-face. They might like that better than what humans have to offer. More glory in it for them."