Clarke, Arthur C - Fall of Night 02 (25 page)

 
          
 
Rorden was speaking again in a quiet, more
subdued voice as he described the last days of the Empire. This was the age,
Alvin had decided, in which he would have liked to live. There had been
adventure then, and a superb and dauntless courage—the courage that can snatch
victory from the teeth of disaster.

 
          
 
"Though the Galaxy had been laid waste by
the Mad Mind, the resources of the Empire were still enormous, and its spirit
was unbroken. With a courage at which we can only marvel, the great experiment
was resumed and a search made for the flaw that had caused the catastrophe.
There were now, of course, many who opposed the work and predicted further
disasters, but they were overruled. The project went ahead and, with the
knowledge so bitterly gained, this time it succeeded.

 
          
 
"The new race that was born had a
potential intellect that could not even be measured. But it was completely
infantile: we do not know if this was expected by its creators, but it seems
likely that they knew it to be inevitable. Millions of years would be needed
before it reached maturity, and nothing could be done to hasten the process.
Vanamonde was the first of these minds: there must be others elsewhere in the
Galaxy, but we believe that only a very few were created, for Vanamonde has
never encountered any of his fellows.

 
          
 
"The creation of the pure mentalities was
the greatest achievement of Galactic civilization: in it Man played a major and
perhaps a dominant part. I have made no reference to Earth itself, for its story
is too small a thread to be traced in the great tapestry. Since it had always
been drained of its most adventurous spirits our planet had inevitably become
somewhat conservative, and in the end it opposed the scientists who created
Vanamonde. Certainly it played no part at all in the final act.

 
          
 
"The work of the Empire was now finished:
the men of that age looked round at the stars they had ravaged in their
desperate peril, and they made the decision that might have been expected. They
would leave the Universe to Vanamonde.

 
          
 
"The choice was not hard to make, for the
Empire had now made the first contacts with a very great and very strange
civilization far around the curve of the Cosmos. This civilization, if the
hints we can gather are correct, had evolved on the purely physical plane
further than had been believed possible. There were, it seemed, more solutions
than one to the problem of ultimate intelligence. But this we can only guess:
all we know for certain is that within a very short period of time our
ancestors and their fellow races have gone upon a journey which we cannot
follow. Vanamonde's thoughts seem bounded by the confines of the Galaxy, but
through his mind we have watched the beginning of that great adventure—"

 
          
 
A pale wraith of its former glory, the slowly
turning wheel of the Galaxy hangs in nothingness. Throughout its length are the
great empty rents which the Mad Mind has torn — wounds that in ages to come the
drifting stars will fill. But they will never restore the splendor that has
gone.

 
          
 
Man is about to leave his Universe, as once he
left his world. And not only Man, hut the thousand other races that have worked
with him to make the Empire. They have gathered together, here at the edge of
the Galaxy, with its whole thickness between them and the goal they will not
reach for ages.

 
          
 
The long line of fire strikes across the
Universe, leaping from star to star. In a moment of time a thousand suns have
died, feeding their energies to the dim and monstrous shape that has torn along
the axis of the Galaxy and is now receding into the abyss. . . .

 
          
 
"The Empire had now left the Universe, to
meet its destiny elsewhere. When its heirs, the pure mentalities, have reached
their full stature we believe it will return again. But that day must still lie
far ahead.

 
          
 
"This, in its outlines, is the story of
Galactic civilization. Our own history, which we thought so important, is no
more than a belated episode which we have not yet examined in detail. But it
seems that many of the older, less adventurous races refused to leave their
homes. Our direct ancestors were among them. Most of these races fell into
decadence and are now extinct: our own world barely escaped the same fate. In
the Transition Centuries—which really lasted for millions of years—the
knowledge of the past was lost or else deliberately destroyed. The latter seems
more probable: we believe that Man sank into a superstitious barbarism during
which he distorted history to remove his sense of impotence and failure. The
legend of the Invaders is certainly false, and the Battle of Shalmirane is a
myth. True, Shalmirane exists, and was one of the greatest weapons ever
forged—but it was used against no intelligent enemy.
Once the
Earth had a single giant satellite, the Moon.
When it began to fall,
Shalmirane was built to destroy it. Around that destruction have been woven the
legends you all know, and there are many such."

 
          
 
Rorden paused, and smiled a little ruefully.

 
          
 
"There are other paradoxes that have not
yet been resolved, but the problem is one for the psychologist rather than the
historian. Even my records cannot be wholly trusted, and bear clear evidence of
tampering in the very remote past.

 
          
 
"Only Diaspar and
Lys
survived the period of decadence—Diaspar
thanks to the perfection of its machines,
Lys
owing to its partial isolation and the
unusual intellectual powers of its people. But both cultures, even when they
had struggled back to their former level, were distorted by the fears and myths
they had inherited.

 
          
 
"Those fears need haunt us no longer. All
down the ages, we have now discovered, there were men who rebelled against them
and maintained a tenuous link between Diaspar and Lys. Now the last barriers
can be swept aside and our two races can move together into the future—whatever
it may bring."

 
          
 
"I wonder what Yarlan Zey would think of
this?" said Rorden thoughtfully. "I doubt if he would approve."

 
          
 
The Park had changed considerably, so far very
much for the worse. But when the rubble had been cleared away, the road to Lys
would be open for all to follow.

 
          
 
"I don't know," Alvin replied.
"Though he closed the moving ways, he didn't destroy them as he might very
well have done. One day we must discover the whole story behind the Park—and
behind Alaine of Lyndar."

 
          
 
"I'm afraid these things will have to
wait," said Rorden, "until more important problems have been settled.
In any case, I can picture Alaine's mind rather well: once we must have had a
good deal in common."

 
          
 
They walked in silence for a few hundred
yards, following the edge of the great excavation. The Tomb of Yarlan Zey was
now poised on the brink of a chasm, at the bottom of which scores of robots
were working furiously.

 
          
 
"By the way," said Alvin abruptly,
"did you know that Jeserac is staying in Lys? Jeserac, of all people! He
likes it there and won't come back. Of course, that will leave a vacancy on the
Council."

 
          
 
"So it will," replied Rorden, as if
he had never given the matter any thought. A short time ago he could have
imagined very few things more unlikely than a seat on the Council; now it was
probably only a matter of time. There would, he reflected, be a good many other
resignations in the near future. Several of the older councillors had found
themselves unable to face the new problems pouring upon them.

 
          
 
They were now moving up the slope to the Tomb,
through the long avenue of eternal trees. At its end, the avenue was blocked by
Alvin's ship, looking strangely out of place in these familiar surroundings.

 
          
 
"There," said Rorden suddenly,
"is the greatest mystery of all. Who was the Master? Where did he get this
ship and the three robots?"

 
          
 
"I've been thinking about that,"
answered Theon. "We know that he came from the Seven Suns, and there might
have been a fairly high culture there when civilization on Earth was at its
lowest. The ship itself is obviously the work of the Empire.

 
          
 
"I believe that the Master was escaping
from his own people. Perhaps he had ideas with which they didn't agree: he was
a philosopher, and a rather remarkable one. He found our ancestors friendly but
superstitious and tried to educate them, but they misunderstood and distorted
his teachings. The Great Ones were no more than the men of the Empire—only it
wasn't Earth they had left, but the Universe itself. The Master's disciples
didn't understand or didn't believe this, and all their mythology and ritual
was founded on that false premise. One day I intend to go into the Master's
history and find why he tried to conceal his past. I think it will be a very
interesting story."

 
          
 
"We've a good deal to thank him
for," said Rorden as they entered the ship. "Without him we would
never have learned the truth about the past."

 
          
 
"I'm not so sure," said Alvin.
"Sooner or later Vanamonde would have discovered us. And I believe there
may be other ships hidden on Earth: one day I mean to find them."

 
          
 
The city was now too distant to be recognized
as the work of Man, and the curve of the planet was becoming visible. In a
little while they could see the line of twilight, thousands of miles away on
its never-ending march across the desert. Above and around were the stars,
still brilliant for all the glory they had lost.

 
          
 
For a long time Rorden stared at the desolate
panorama he had never seen before. He felt a sudden contemptuous anger for the
men of the past who had let Earth's beauty die through their own neglect. If
one of Alvin's dreams came true, and the great transmutation plants still
existed, it would not be many centuries before the oceans rolled again.

 
          
 
There was so much to do in the years ahead.
Rorden knew that he stood between two ages: around him he could feel the pulse
of mankind beginning to quicken again. There were great problems to be faced,
and Diaspar would face them. The recharting of the past would take centuries,
but when it was finished Man would have recovered all that he had lost. And
always now in the background would be the great enigma of Vanamonde—

 
          
 
If Calitrax was right, Vanamonde had already
evolved more swiftly than his creators had expected, and the philosophers of
Lys had great hopes of future cooperation which they would confide to no one.
They had become very attached to the childlike supermind, and perhaps they
believed that they could foreshorten the eons which his natural evolution would
require. But Rorden knew that the ultimate destiny of Vanamonde was something
in which Man would play no part. He had dreamed, and he believed the dream was
true, that at the end of the Universe Vanamonde and the Mad Mind must meet each
other among the corpses of the stars.

 
          
 
Alvin broke into his reverie and Rorden turned
from the screen.

 
          
 
"I wanted you to see this," said
Alvin quietly. "It may be many centuries before you have another
chance."

 
          
 
"You're not leaving Earth?"

 
          
 
"No: even if there are other
civilizations in this Galaxy, I doubt if they'd be worth the trouble of
finding. And there is so much to do here—"

 
          
 
Alvin looked down at the great deserts, but
his eyes saw instead the waters that would be sweeping over them a thousand
years from now. Man had rediscovered his world, and he would make it beautiful
while he remained upon it. And after that—