No One Goes There Now, page 24
“Dan isn’t…real?”
A second ambivalence. It is a place both reed and unreal, O Morrow; a bright dream of sham and shadow, yet a world of substance.
The deserted cities you found are but remnants previous tenants have left behind them, filled with their writings, their sculpture, their growth pangs, as it were. In one-fourth of one galactic epicycle, or less, this city now rising so fair around us will be one with them.
Holt Morrow sagged into a chair, his mind reeling. “Then, that’s why…I remember! Nothing quite added up: streams running too full, too many languages in the ruins, seas less saline than normal! But, that black statue?”
Ah, yes! An extremely artistic race which resembles your own much more than superficially. Your descendants may perhaps encounter theirs in some future era.
Now, attend me! Our time together is all hut over.
Genus Homo sapiens is emerging from generic infancy, O Morrow. Your kind will he coming into contact with the myriad civilizations of this, our galaxy, and in these encounters is there great and lasting danger.
Adolescence is a most critical period in the growth cycle of any culture. Unless your immediate future course is plotted with meticulous forethought and care, your human species faces predictable extinction.
“Let me get this straight,” muttered the pale Morrow. “All this hooraw was nothing but a comeuppance, an object lesson?”
The elder’s thoughts were jovial. As one may predict, you seize at once upon the very heart of the matter at hand, O Morrow. Higher Ones feel deep, inherent responsibility toward all emergent species. Each young race must have its chance—
“Before the wolves close in,” guessed Holt.
Precisely. It is not, however, Their policy to interfere beyond a certain, reasonable point. You have had Their warning. Their parting message to you may be stated quite succinctly: They will not interfere again.
Holt Morrow stared open-mouthed at the elder. “I’ll be dipped in…! So we’re on our own,” he breathed, shaking his head. “Believe it or not, that’s good news. But what do we do about the wolves?”
The wolves—there are wolves, and far worse—are entirely your problem, O Morrow.
You will forge weapons, never fear. When next you see the one known as Roberts on the other side, humanity will have a new faith, and Roberts will become its prophet. It will not preach devotion to “gods” either false or true, but rather the deepest appreciation and knowledge of self, for any being must very thoroughly know himself before true knowledge of, or communication with, another being is possible.
You must and shall go forward, treading softly but firmly, becoming ever more technically and mentally sophisticated, ever more emotionally integrated—or perish!
One senses a great race rising from the so-obvious seeds.
But that is of no consequence to us here and now. A node has been reached, O Morrow. That which our poor intellects perceive as space and time will not wait, and so parting is upon us. May one ask a simple favor?
“Huh? Oh, I don’t, uh, see why not,” granted the dazed Holt.
Your weapon; might one hold it a moment?
Holt numbly performed a reverse moulimet and passed his battered rapier to the elder. “My pleasure, er…It’s kind of sentimental, but maybe you’d, uh, like to hang on to it.”
Keep it for mine own? One is overwhelmed by your generosity. It is merely a spike of naked metal, yet very beautiful in its fashion. I should greatly treasure such a memento of our meeting if parting with it does not cause too much pain.
“Well, I’ve carried that blade a long, long while…Go on; it’s yours.”
Sincerest thanks, O Morrow. Parting is now, and so farewell. Live as you have always lived—to fullness!
Holt flinched as the twisting, falling sensation gripped him.
Dan faded before him. A vast rushing sound accompanied his endless fall through dim shades of light and shadow toward an all-encompassing darkness.
XV
No one goes there now;
For what is left to fetch away—?
William Morris. Ante Bellum British
poet. Circa a.d. 1860 (old style).
He was cold. He made vague, swimming motions, supposing a power failure had allowed the fluid in his hydraulic mattress to chill.
He rolled over, grunting as something hard dug into his hip, and opened his eyes, finding himself stretched on cold, barren rock. Lying beside him, covered by a dark cape, was the crumpled figure of Minor.
Elan sat up stiffly, touching her shoulder.
“Best let her sleep, lad,” cautioned a voice behind him. “Holt!”
Morrow grinned. “Welcome aboard, wherever’n hell we may be.”
“Where…are we?”
“Your guess is as good as mine,” shrugged Holt. “Maybe better. Damned lucky to be anywhere, if you want my opinion.”
Elan stretched and yawned, rubbing his shoulders and arms to warm himself. He looked around at the bare knob of granite. ‘What the…!”
“Kinda surprises you, doesn’t it?” smiled Morrow. “Peek over the edge into the valley if you really want to see something. Come along.”
Grey rose, joints creaking, and followed Holt to the rimrock, carefully picking his way around the recumbent forms of Ennis Ladeen, four Imperial Marines, and perhaps six dozen others who lay sleeping in awkward positions.
The red sun was either just rising or setting over craggy mountains in the near distance. Scattered across the treeless, desolate valley were countless thousands of Human figures. Here and there a few dazed wanderers sifted through the jumble as if searching for loved ones.
“I don’t understand,” protested Elan, staring.
“Who does?” emphasized Holt. “It appears they just picked us up and dumped us here like so much trash.”
“But, where is…here?”
“Think about it,” said Morrow. “Let’s see if you come up with the same answer I did.”
Elan analyzed the scene, trying to remember if the landscape resembled anything he’d seen before. “It looks a little like that high desert country we flew over last week,” he said un-surely, “but there are no trees, not even brush.”
“Uh-huh, I know. I wanted to build a fire when it got light enough to find wood. There was no wood.”
Elan looked from one end of the valley to the other. “We’re not on Dan, are we?”
“No, we’re not,” Morrow told him quietly. “If you walk around, do much of anything strenuous, you’ll find yourself short of breath in no time. Not much oxygen in the air. Enough, hut not very much.”
“The fourth planet—I’ve forgotten the name?”
Holt nodded. “Carthia. That’s how I sized it up.”
They picked their way back to Minor, who was still sleeping, and sat down silently, each engrossed in his own thoughts. “What happened, Holt?”
“Happened?” Morrow half-smiled. “School’s out,” he said. “The play’s over, the sets’ve been dismantled, the scripts filed away until next time.”
“What?”
“But only the players have gone home,” mused Holt. “The audience has been sent packing to bed without its supper.”
Elan looked sharply at Holt. “What are you talking about?” Morrow chuckled. “Don’t get nervous, sonny. I haven’t slipped my cams. Blessed if I know what I’m talking about, really. It’s got to be the biggest, longest, hairiest shaggy-dog yarn of all time. I’m still trying to digest it”
“You know something,” accused Elan. “Something the rest of us have no inkling of.”
“Guilty. I’ve got the message.”
“Message? What message?”
“Short, sweet, and to the point,” said Holt. “Shape up or ship out! Fish or cut bait! Get in step with the rest of the galaxy—or die!”
Elan Grey looked concerned.
“Wait a while,” requested Holt evenly. ‘Wait until Roberts and the others find us. Roberts is the key. He’ll know a lot more about it than I do.”
“Roberts! But, Holt—”
“All I can tell you,” said Morrow, “is that when all these folks wake up, we’re going to have one helluva time on our hands. They’ll be hungry, and there’s nothing to eat—”
Morrow stiffened, then leaped to his feet. “Listen, Elan!” Grey strained to hear the faint voice floating on the still air, turning to attempt to locate its source. “It’s coming from over—”
“Shh-h-h!” hushed Morrow. “Getting louder.”
‘Why, it’s calling your name,” shouted Elan.
Holt grinned broadly and whooped as an airbus thrashed up the valley. “Roberts,” he yelled, “over here!”
He ripped the cloak from Minor’s stirring form and swirled it back and forth in a frantic arc. “That’s Roberts in that bus! I’d know his voice in a million!”
Holt bellowed like a crazy man until the airbus turned toward them.
The pilot had trouble finding a place to put down, what with bodies scattered all over the rocky landscape. Elan ran after Holt, then remembered Minor and hurried back to her. She was sitting up, hugging herself against the chill.
“No time to explain,” he said, helping her up. “Come on!”
“Elan!”
“Later, Minor. Come on!” Half-running, half-dragging the girl, he made a rather sorry attempt to avoid outstretched arms and legs as he led her, panting, up the incline toward the summit of the granite knoll. The airbus had landed. He could see Holt Morrow jumping up and down, buffeting a slender figure wearing Blacks with friendly blows. Standing beside them was—
Elan stopped. Minor crashed into him, almost knocking him down. It was a familiar figure, slightly stooped, with dark hair graying in a distinguished way.
Elan stood, chest heaving, until he was certain.
“Pierce!” he bellowed as the figure waved.
Then he was running upward, tugging the girl behind him, shouting his delight.
* * *
Weldon Lovelock waited, hunched and immobile, outwardly attentive to a desultory debate going on before the jointly assembled Congress of Man and Star Council.
Actually, he was preoccupied and vaguely worried. Deep in the innermost recesses of his intuitive and highly perceptive mind there grew a seed of apprehension. The expected message acknowledging the task force strike upon Dan was almost two periods overdue. Ser Weldon’s legendary aplomb was wearing thin.
The Director of Earth made it a point of honor never to miss a major joint session, the result of discipline he had enforced upon himself long centuries before, believing it essential to the continuing and more perfect fulfillment of his office. Personal attendance was, of course, impractical, but reciprocal stereo systems in the Congressional Seat and here in his sanctum made the illusion of his presence quite convincing. Many covert glances played over his dais, nor did they escape his notice for, although ser Gladwyn Noes droned on endlessly in answer to the Endorian Plenipotentiary’s never-to-be-discouraged plea for autonomy within Endoria’s sphere of influence, few members of either body gave Noes so much as token attention.
The assembled government was also thinking of Dan—and waiting.
When a communications flimsy flashed into facsimile representation within the small tank before ser Weldon, Congress and Council knew it immediately. A faint buzz of speculative comment rustled through the vast chamber, causing ser Noes, the speaker, to turn toward the Old One’s image. Noes managed another halting sentence or two before he stopped and simply stood expectantly.
Lovelock skimmed it When he lifted his head, his dark eyes were hollow. He inspected the packed chamber for perhaps twenty heartbeats before addressing the rostrum.
“Ser Director, we beg indulgence. To interrupt the distinguished ser Noes would seem unthinkable. However, we have something here worthy of immediate attention.”
‘Will ser Noes yield the floor?” inquired the chairman.
“Gladly will I defer to Director Lovelock,” declaimed Noes ingratiatingly.
“The chair recognizes the Director of Earth.”
We thank you, ser Director,” said Lovelock hoarsely. ‘We shall read a transmittal from the planet…from the Danite system.”
He cleared his throat with grim determination. “The transmittal is from Pierce Grey, former Director of Dan…”
Lovelock paused, unmoving, waiting until the murmur of protest had swelled and slowly died away.
“…to ser Weldon Lovelock, et ah,” he continued. “Gentle Planners:
“With awe and remorse, I must undertake to report that the planet known as Dan has vanished from among the bodies of this stellar system.”
A discordant ground swell of disbelief welled up from the floor of the Congressional Seat. Lovelock sat unblinking, holding aloft one fragile hand until it began to abate.
“So far as is known,” he went on grimly, “few if any Humans were harmed by the apparently instantaneous transfer of over two million persons to Carthia, the system’s fourth body. How this extraordinary feat was accomplished is totally unknown.”
Stony silence reigned in the assembled government of the Terrestrial Imperium.
“Eleven vessels orbiting Dan when the event took place found themselves inexplicably orbiting Carthia,” Lovelock read. “The celestial mechanics of the six—formerly seven—major bodies of this system have undergone subtle changes which are equally unexplainable. All movable foodstuffs, power generation equipment, ground and air vehicles, and the like, have appeared here with us.
“We must presume, should you allow such presumption, that we are in no way masters of the situation. We survivors,’ if that term is appropriate, feel deepest humility in the face of such vastly unknown and unknowable forces.
“We have been as children, groping out here in the great dark, and our fingers have closed for one brief instant upon…what?”
Ser Weldon’s narrow shoulders sagged. His stentorian voice weakened and eventually broke, but he read doggedly to the end, then sat staring at the empty, mocking words sculpted round the great silver Congressional medallion mounted high above the rostrum.
“Ecce Homo lnvictus …*
Weldon Lovelock muttered the imperishable words, forgetting that he faced an open communicator. The phrase whispered through the vast chamber like some ghostly echo of former greatness.
The Director of Earth suddenly looked his age.
EPILOGUE
Spiny and hulking, he crouched upon a timeless plain where existed neither light nor darkness, heat nor cold, gingerly clutching a scarred and pitted rapier in the armored claw of his fifth mandible, while the conglomerate mind of the galaxy’s elders—the Higher Ones—beat in his brain as a single, rolling thought.
Art thy labors with this species then ended, O Tanis?
They are ended, O my Peers.
Hast thou integrated all facets? Art thou prepared for thy examination?
Tanis searched the seven major segments of his conscious and subconscious minds, steeling himself against the expected onslaught. 1 stand prepared, O my Peers.
Bravely spoken! Reject thy natural barriers, one by one. It is well, it is well.-
The first sensitive tendrils surrounded and invaded his mind, became a trickle, a torrent, a flood, compressing his ego into smaller and ever smaller parameters until his essence watched, as a bystander might, while the hyperconscious mentality sifted and assimilated the data so carefully stored against this moment.
It was a swift unreeling of impressions. He caught only bare essentials—the lighthearted “aliveness” of Morrow, a fragment of conversation with the one known as Roberts, the gem-hard personality of Earth’s intractable elder, countless excerpts from the human literature and music he’d sampled.
It went on for an indeterminate, kaleidoscopic period which might have been either long or short. At last it was done. Tanis returned unto himself.
A mature thesis, complimented the conglomerate mentality. Thy apprenticeship appeareth near ending, O Tanis. Thou shalt dwell with us one day.
One strives to he deserving, O my Peers.
Thou art deserving, approved the Higher Ones. We perceive thou dost consider these creatures potential guardians, even as thou wert once considered. Hath those worthy ones among them paid heed?
They have heeded, thought Tanis. They are contrite.
Aye, though humility passeth, as pass it must. The endless variety of species doth titillate one’s sense of wonder. This so-called human being, pallid, short-lived, and physically weak, how shall it fare in coming struggles? Hast thou a sight, O Tanis?
Humans will endure, stated Tanis unequivocally. While humbled for the moment, they are neither demeaned nor broken in spirit.
Then, it is well. Their period of easy dominance neareth its ending. In less than nine-hundredths of one galactic epicycle, predictable human expansion along the Sagittarius radius shall bring them face to face with the Llanasa.
Were one to wager, offered Tanis eagerly, it would be with humans.
Excellent! applauded the Higher Ones. Let it be so recorded. It shall be pleasurable to check thy prediction.
Now, art thou prepared for further duties? An interesting species hath arisen—
Sated with a warm sense of fulfillment and well-being, Tanis attuned his mind for sympathetic alignment with the restless race of groping creatures who would shortly become his charge.
William Walling, No One Goes There Now
