Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke (96 page)

‘I wish you could understand me, Yaan. I wish you knew what I was saying. I’m leaving you these tools: some of them you will discover how to use, though as likely as not in a generation they’ll be lost or forgotten. See how this blade cuts: it will be ages before your world can make its like. And guard this well: when you press the button – look! If you use it sparingly, it will give you light for years, though sooner or later it will die. As for these other things – find what use for them you can.

‘Here come the first stars, up there in the east. Do you ever look at the stars, Yaan? I wonder how long it will be before you have discovered what they are, and I wonder what will have happened to us by then. Those stars are our homes, Yaan, and we cannot save them. Many have died already, in explosions so vast that I can imagine them no more than you. In a hundred thousand of your years, the light of those funeral pyres will reach your world and set its peoples wondering. By then, perhaps, your race will be reaching for the stars. I wish I could warn you against the mistakes we made, and which now will cost us all that we have won.

‘It is well for your people, Yaan, that your world is here at the frontier of the Universe. You may escape the doom that waits for us. One day, perhaps, your ships will go searching among the stars as we have done, and they may come upon the ruins of our worlds and wonder who we were. But they will never know that we met here by this river when your race was young.

‘Here come my friends; they would give me no more time. Goodbye, Yaan – use well the things I have left you. They are your world’s greatest treasures.’

Something huge, something that glittered in the starlight, was sliding down from the sky. It did not reach the ground, but came to rest a little way above the surface, and in utter silence a rectangle of light opened in its side. The shining giant appeared out of the night and stepped through the golden door. Bertrond followed, pausing for a moment at the threshold to wave back at Yaan. Then the darkness closed behind him.

No more swiftly than smoke drifts upward from a fire, the ship lifted away. When it was so small that Yaan felt he could hold it in his hands, it seemed to blur into a long line of light slanting upward into the stars. From the empty sky a peal of thunder echoed over the sleeping land: and Yaan knew at last that the gods were gone and would never come again.

For a long time he stood by the gently moving waters, and into his soul there came a sense of loss he was never to forget and never to understand. Then, carefully and reverently, he collected together the gifts that Bertrond had left.

Under the stars, the lonely figure walked homeward across the nameless land. Behind him the river flowed softly to the sea, winding through the fertile plains on which, more than a thousand centuries ahead, Yaan’s descendants would build the great city they were to call Babylon.

The Other Tiger

First published in
Fantastic Universe
, June/July 1953

Collected in
Tales From Planet Earth

Originally entitled ‘Refutation’, this story was retitled by Sam Merwin, editor of
Fantastic Universe
, as a nod to Frank Stockton’s classic but now forgotten ‘The Lady or the Tiger’.

‘It’s an interesting theory,’ said Arnold, ‘but I don’t see how you can ever prove it.’ They had come to the steepest part of the hill and for a moment Webb was too breathless to reply.

‘I’m not trying to,’ he said when he had gained his second wind. ‘I’m only exploring its consequences.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, let’s be perfectly logical and see where it gets us. Our only assumption, remember, is that the universe is infinite.’

‘Right. Personally I don’t see what else it
can
be.’

‘Very well. That means there must be an infinite number of stars and planets. Therefore, by the laws of chance, every possible event must occur not merely once but an infinite number of times. Correct?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Then there must be an infinite number of worlds
exactly like Earth
, each with an Arnold and Webb on it, walking up this hill just as we are doing now, saying these same words.’

‘That’s pretty hard to swallow.’

‘I know it’s a staggering thought – but so is infinity. The thing that interests me, though, is the idea of all those other Earths that aren’t exactly the same as this one. The Earths where Hitler won the War and the Swastika flies over Buckingham Palace – the Earths where Columbus never discovered America – the Earths where the Roman Empire has lasted to this day. In fact the Earths where all the great
if
’s of history had different answers.’

‘Going right back to the beginning, I suppose, to the one in which the ape-man who would have been the daddy of us all, broke his neck before he could have any children?’

‘That’s the idea. But let’s stick to the worlds we know – the worlds containing
us
climbing this hill on this spring afternoon. Think of all our reflections on those millions of other planets. Some of them are exactly the same but every possible variation that doesn’t violate the laws of logic must also exist.

‘We could – we
must
– be wearing every conceivable sort of clothes – and no clothes at all. The Sun’s shining here but on countless billions of those other Earths it’s not. On many it’s winter or summer here instead of spring. But let’s consider more fundamental changes too.

‘We intend to walk up this hill and down the other side. Yet think of all the things that might possibly happen to us in the next few minutes. However improbable they may be, as long as they are
possible
, then somewhere they’ve got to happen.’

‘I see,’ said Arnold slowly, absorbing the idea with obvious reluctance. An expression of mild discomfort crossed his features. ‘Then somewhere, I suppose, you will fall dead with heart failure when you’ve taken your next step.’

‘Not in
this
world.’ Webb laughed. ‘I’ve already refuted it. Perhaps
you’re
going to be the unlucky one.’

‘Or perhaps,’ said Arnold, ‘I’ll get fed up with the whole conversation, pull out a gun and shoot you.’

‘Quite possibly,’ admitted Webb, ‘except that I’m pretty sure you, on this Earth, haven’t got one. Don’t forget, though, that in millions of those alternative worlds I’ll beat you on the draw.’

The path was now winding up a wooded slope, the trees thick on either side. The air was fresh and sweet. It was very quiet as though all Nature’s energies were concentrated, with silent intentness, on rebuilding the world after the ruin of winter.

‘I wonder,’ continued Webb, ‘how improbable a thing can get before it becomes impossible. We’ve mentioned some unlikely events but they’re not completely fantastic. Here we are in an English country lane, walking along a path we know perfectly well.

‘Yet in some universe those – what shall I call them –
twins
of ours will walk around that corner and meet anything, absolutely anything that imagination can conceive. For as I said at the beginning, if the cosmos is infinite, then all possibilities must arise.’

‘So it’s possible,’ said Arnold, with a laugh that was not quite as light as he had intended, ‘that we may walk into a tiger or something equally unpleasant.’

‘Of course,’ replied Webb cheerfully, warming to his subject. ‘If it’s possible, then it’s got to happen to someone, somewhere in the universe. So why not to us?’

Arnold gave a snort of disgust. ‘This is getting quite futile,’ he protested. ‘Let’s talk about something sensible. If we don’t meet a tiger round this corner I’ll regard your theory as refuted and changed the subject.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ said Webb gleefully. ‘That won’t refute anything. There’s no way you can—’

They were the last words he ever spoke. On an infinite number of Earths an infinite numbers of Webbs and Arnolds met tigers friendly, hostile or indifferent. But this was not one of those Earths – it lay far closer to the point where improbability urged on the impossile.

Yet of course it was not totally inconceivable that during the night the rain-sodden hillside had caved inward to reveal an ominous cleft leading down into the subterranean world. As for
what
had laboriously climbed up that cleft, drawn toward the unknown light of day – well, it was really no more unlikely than the giant squid, the boa constrictor or the feral lizards of the Jurassic jungle. It had strained the laws of zoological probability but not to the breaking-point.

Webb had spoken the truth. In an infinite cosmos everything must happen somewhere – including their singularly bad luck. For
it
was hungry – very hungry – and a tiger or a man would have been a small yet acceptable morsel to any one of its half dozen gaping mouths.

* * *

The concept that
every possible
Universe may exist is certainly not an original one, but it has recently been revised in a sophisticated form by today’s theoretical physicists (insofar as I understand anything that they are talking about). It is also linked with the so-called Anthropic Principle, which now has the cosmologists in a considerable tizzy. (See Tipler and Barrow’s
The Anthropic Cosmological Principle
. Even if you have to skip many pages of music, the bits of text between them are fascinating and mind-stretching.)

The anthroposists have pointed out what appear to be some peculiarities of our Universe. Many of the fundamental physical constants – which as far as one could see, God could have given any value He liked – are in fact very precisely adjusted, or fine-tuned, to produce the
only
kind of Universe that makes our existence possible. A few per cent either way, and we wouldn’t be here.

One explanation of this mystery is that in fact all the other possible Universes do exist (somewhere!) but of course, the vast majority are lifeless. Only in an infinitesimally small fraction of the total Creation are the parameters such that matter can exist, stars can form – and, ultimately, life can arise. We’re here because we couldn’t be anywhere else.

But all those elsewhere are
somewhere
, so my story may be uncomfortably close to the truth. Luckily, there’s no way that we’ll ever to be able prove it.

I think …

Publicity Campaign

First published in
London Evening News
, 1953

Collected in
The Other Side of the Sky

For the first few decades after the Martians lowered New Jersey real estate values [referrring to Orson Welles’ famous
War of the Worlds
broadcast], benevolent aliens were few and far between, perhaps the most notable example being Klaatu in
The Day The Earth Stood Still
. Yet nowadays, largely thanks to
E.T
., friendly and even cuddly aliens are taken almost for granted. Where does the truth lie? …

Of course, hostile and malevolent aliens make for much more exciting stories than benevolent ones. Moreover, the Things You Wouldn’t Like to Meet of the 1950s and 1960s, as has often been pointed out, were reflections of the paranoia of that time, particularly in the United States. Now the Cold War has, hopefully, given way to the Tepid Truce, we may look at the skies with less apprehensions.

For we have already met Darth Vader – and he is us.

The concussion of the last atom bomb still seemed to linger as the lights came on again. For a long time, no one moved. Then the assistant producer said innocently: ‘Well, R.B., what do you think of it?’

R.B. heaved himself out of his seat while his acolytes waited to see which way the cat would jump. It was then that they noticed that R.B.’s cigar had gone out. Why, that hadn’t happened even at the preview of ‘G.W.T.W.’!

‘Boys,’ he said ecstatically, ‘we’ve got something here! How much did you say it cost, Mike?’

‘Six and a half million, R.B.’

‘It was cheap at the price. Let me tell you, I’ll eat every foot of it if the gross doesn’t beat “Quo Vadis”.’ He wheeled, as swiftly as could be expected for one of his bulk, upon a small man still crouched in his seat at the back of the projection room. ‘Snap out of it, Joe! The Earth’s saved! You’ve seen all these space films. How does this line up with the earlier ones?’

Joe came to with an obvious effort.

‘There’s no comparison,’ he said. ‘It’s got all the suspense of “The Thing”, without that awful let down at the end when you saw the monster was human. The only picture that comes within miles of it is “War of the Worlds”. Some of the effects in that were nearly as good as ours, but of course George Pal didn’t have 3D. And that sure makes a difference! When the Golden Gate Bridge went down, I thought that pier was going to hit me!’