[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
Fast Falls The Eventide
Astounding Science Fiction – May 1952
(1952)*
Eric Frank Russell
illustrated by van Dongen
In the long, long megayears of the future, even suns and planets grow old and eventually die. And with them, the race they nurtured—unless a different way of life can be found!
-
It was an old world, incredibly old, with a pitted moon and a dying sun and a sky too thin to hold a summer cloud. There were trees upon it but not the trees of yore, for these were the result of aeons of gradual accommodation. They inhaled and exhaled far less than did their distant forebears and they sucked more persistently at the aged soil.
So did the herbs.
And the flowers.
But the petal-lacking, rootless children of this sphere, the ones able to move around of their own volition, these could not compensate by sitting in one place and drawing from the ground. So slowly, ever so slowly they had dispensed with what once had been a basic need. They could manage quite well on the bare minimum of oxygen. Or at a pinch without any at all, experiencing no more than mild discomfort, a certain lassitude. All could do this without exception.
The children of this world were bugs.
And birds.
And bipeds.
Moth, magpie and man, all were related. All had the same mother: an ancient sphere rolling around a weakly glowing orange ball that some day would flicker and go out. Their preparation for this end had been long and arduous, partly involuntary, partly deliberate. This was their time: the age of fulfillment, shared between all, belonging to all.
Thus it was in no way odd that Melisande should talk to a small beetle. It sat attentively on the back of her pale, long-fingered hand, a tiny creature, black with crimson spots, clean and shiny as if subjected to hours of patient polishing. A ladybird. An amusingly toylike entity that seemed to lack a miniature handle in its side with which to wind it up.
Of course the ladybird could not understand a word of what was being said. It was not that intelligent. Time had run so far and the atmosphere become so thin that the insect's wings had adapted accordingly and now were twice the size of those owned by ladybirds of long ago. And with the physical alteration there had been mental alteration; its pin-sized brain was different too. By the standard of its own humble kind it had climbed several rungs up the ladder of life. Though it could not determine meanings, it knew when it was being addressed, sought human company, derived comfort from the sound of a human voice.
And so with the others.
The birds.
The latter-day bees.
All the timid things that once had run for a hiding place or sought shelter in the dark.
Those who had survived—and many species had not—were shy no more. Regardless of whether or not they could understand the mouth-noises made, they liked to be spoken to, their existence acknowledged. They could and did listen for hours, extracting strange pleasure from the intimacy of sound. Or was the pleasure strange?
Perhaps not, for there were times when the sonic relationship was reversed and men stood fascinated while, in lilting language peculiarly its own, a blackbird or nightingale poured forth its very soul.
It was the same indefinable ecstasy.
You see?
So Melisande talked as she walked and Little Redspots listened with his own insectual pleasure until finally she gently flipped her hand and laughed, "Ladybird, ladybird, fly away home."
It raised colorful wing-cases, spread gauzy wings and fluttered from sight. Melisande paused to look at the stars.
In these times they could be seen with brilliance and clarity by day as well as by night, a phenomenon that would have made her air-loving ancestors become filled with fear lest the breath of life soon depart.
No such sensation was within her as she studied the stars. There was only curiosity and speculation coming from a purely personal source. To her, the five-miles-high atmosphere, the dim sun, the sparkling stars were all normal. Often she looked at the stars, sorting them out, identifying them, asking herself the same question again and again.
"Which one?"
And the heavens answered only, "Ah, which?"
-
Ceasing her speculation she tripped lightly onward along the narrow woodland path that led into the valley. Far to her left, on the verge of the horizon, something long, slender and metallic arrowed down from the sky and vanished beyond the curve of the earth. A little later a much muted thundering came to her ears.
Neither the sight nor the sound captured her attention. They were too ordinary. The ships of space came often to this ancient world, sometimes once in a month, sometimes twice in a day. Rarely were any two alike. Rarely did the people of one vessel resemble the crew of another.
They had no common language, these visitors from the glittering dark.
They spoke a multitude of tongues. Some could talk only mentally, in powerfully projected thought-forms. Some were nonvocal and nontelepathic, could not speak at all, and communicated by means of dexterous finger-motions, ultra-rapid vibration of cilia or other gesticulatory devices.
Once, not so long ago, she had been briefly entertained by the slate-colored, armor-skinned personnel of a ship from Khva, a world unthinkable distances beyond Andromeda. They had been completely blind and totally dumb, making superfast limb-signals at each other and registering them through sensitive esp-organs. They had talked to her without voice and admired her without eyes.
All this was what made learning so hard. At seven hundred years of age she had just finished her final examinations and gained the status of an adult. Long, long ago one might have absorbed the wisdom of an era in a mere century. In the dimmer days still farther back one might have done it in ten years. But not today. Not today.
Now in these solemn times of the final centuries the knowledge to be imbibed was in quantity far too great for swift assimilation. It was an immense pile of data created by the impact of a mighty cosmos composed of worlds without end. Each new ship added a few modest grains to the mass, and the mountain already so built was as nothing to the titanic quantities yet to come—if this world lived long enough to receive them.
If!
There was the rub. Creation was conquered and made the slave of the shapes it had brought forth. The atom and the power within the atom were tools in the hands or pseudo-hands of matter forms able to think and move. Macrocosm and microcosm were equally the playthings of those whose ships roamed endlessly through the tremendous void.
But there were none who knew how to revive an expiring sun.
It could not be done in theory, much less in fact.
It was impossible.
So here and there, at great intervals, a senile sun would flare up a while, collapse into itself, flare again like a feeble thing making its last frantic snatch at life and then become extinguished for all time. A tiny spark in the dark suddenly blown out, unnoticed and unmissed from the limitless host that still blazed on.
Almost each vanishing marked tragedy, perhaps immediate in one case and delayed in another. Some life forms could resist cold longer than others but eventually succumbed just the same. By their superior techniques some could warm themselves and their worlds until the raw material sources of their heat were exhausted. Then they, too, became as if they had never been.
Any system whose primary reverted to an enormous cinder thereby became the property of a great, white, greedy idiot bearing the name of Supernal Frost. He would share his drear estates with none but the dead.
Melisande thought of all these things as she reached the valley. But the thoughts were not morbid; they held nothing of sadness or resentment. She was of her own kind and it was a life form old in experience and remarkably astute. It had faced^ the inevitable a thousand times before and had learned the futility of battering against it head-on. It knew what to do with an immovable object: one climbs over it or burrows under it or sneaks around it. One uses one's brains because they are there to be used.
Inevitability was not to be feared.
That which cannot be stayed must be avoided with skill and ingenuity.
-
A great marble palace sprawled across the end of the valley. Its farther side faced a long series of shrub-dotted and flower-carpeted terraces with narrow lawns and feathery fountains. Its nearer side was the back looking upon nothing but the valley. Melisande always approached it from the rear because the path through the woods was the short cut to home.
Mounting the steps she experienced a thrill of excitement as she entered the huge edifice. Wide, mosaic-floored corridors with walls bearing colorful murals led her to the east wing whence came a steady murmur of voices and occasionally the penetrating sound of a caller-trumpet.
Bright-eyed with anticipation, she went into a large hall whose seats rose in semicircular tiers to considerable height. It was a place originally designed to hold four thousand. The number of people now seated therein came to no more than two hundred—almost a score of empty seats for every one occupied. The place looked bare. The voices of the few floated hollowly around the emptiness, were echoed by the curved walls and reflected by the overhead cupola.
All the world was like this: facilities for thousands available to mere dozens. Cities with small-town populations; towns numbering no more citizens than a one-time village; and villages holding only three or four families. Whole streets of houses of which half a dozen were homes while the others, empty, silent and glassy-eyed, stared at the lowering sky.
There were just over one million people on this world. Once upon a time they had numbered four thousand millions. The vanished numbers had long since taken to the star-trails, not like rats leaving a sinking ship but boldly, confidently as those whose destiny has become magnified until too great for the confines of one planet.
The small remainder were to follow as soon as they were ready. And that was why the two hundred were here, waiting in the hall, fidgety, chattering, a little on edge as they listened for the fateful blare of the caller-trumpet.
"Eight-two-eight Hubert," it suddenly gave forth. "Room Six."
A blond giant came up from his seat, stalked down the aisle watched by almost two hundred pairs of eyes. Voices were temporarily silent. He went past Melisande who smiled and murmured low.
"Good luck!"
"Thanks!"
Then he was gone through the distant door. The chatterers resumed. Melisande sat herself at the end of a row next to a thin, swarthy youth of some seven and a half centuries, little older than herself.
"I'm a minute late," she whispered. "Have they been calling long?"
"No," he assured. "That last name was the fourth." He stretched out his legs, pulled them in, stretched them out again, surveyed his fingernails, shifted in his seat, registered vague discomfort. "I wish they'd hurry up with this. The strain is rather—"
"Nine-nine-one Jose-Pietro," boomed the trumpet. "Room Twenty."
He heard it with his mouth open, his eyes startled. The way he came to his feet was slow, uncertain. He licked thin lips suddenly gone dry, cast an appealing glance at Melisande.
"That's me!"
"They must have heard you," she laughed. "Well, don't you want to go?"
"Yes, of course." He edged past her, his gaze on the door through which the blond Hubert had gone. "But when it comes to the point I sort of go weak in the knees."
She made a negligent gesture. "Nobody's going to amputate your legs. They're simply waiting to give you a document—and maybe it'll be one with a gold seal."
Throwing her a look of silent gratitude, he speeded up, exited with a mite more self-assurance.
"Seven-seven Jocelyn—Room Twelve."
And immediately after, "Two-four-oh Betsibelle—Room Nineteen."
Two girls went out, one dark and plump and smiling, one tall, slender, red-haired and serious.
Came a series of names in quick succession: Lurton, Irene, George, Teresa-Maria, Robert and Elena. Then, after a short interval, the summons for which she was waiting.
"Four-four Melisande—Room Two!"
-
The man in Room Two had light gray eyes, snowy hair and smooth, unlined features. He might have been middle-aged—or old, extremely old. There was no way of telling at a time when a person can retain a seamless face and snowy locks for more than a thousand years.
Waiting for her to be seated, he said: "Well, Melisande, I am happy to say you have passed."
"Thank you, my tutor."
"I felt sure you would pass. I viewed it as almost a foregone conclusion." He smiled across at her, went on, "And now you want to know where you are weak, where you are strong. Those are the essential details, aren't they?"
"Yes, my tutor." She uttered it in low tones, her hands folded demurely in her lap.
"In general knowledge you are excellent," he informed. "That is something of which to be proud—that one should hold the immense storehouse of wisdom described by the inadequate name of general knowledge. You are also most satisfactory in sociology, mass-psychology, ancient and modern philosophies and transcosmic ethics." He leaned forward, looking at her. "But you are rather poor in general communications."
"I am sorry, my tutor." She bit her lower lip, vexed with herself.
"You are nontelepathic and seem quite unable to develop even rudimentary receptivity. When it comes to visual signaling you are somewhat better but still not good enough. Your communication-rate is sluggish, your mistakes numerous, and you appear to be handicapped by a form of tactile uncertainty."
...
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]