The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (59 page)

At last Brant turned toward the men gathered behind him. They were waiting, he knew, for his reactions; and the reason for their curiously aloof yet not unfriendly behaviour became suddenly clear. To these men, rejoicing in the powers of gods, he was little more than a savage who happened to speak the same language—a survival from their own half-forgotten past, reminding them of the days when their ancestors had shared the Earth with his.

‘Do you understand, now, who we are?’ asked Kondar.

Brant nodded. ‘You have been gone a long time,’ he said. ‘We had almost forgotten you.’

He looked up again at the great metal arch spanning the sky, and thought how strange it was that the first contact after so many centuries should be here, in this lost city of mankind. But it seemed that Shastar was well remembered among the stars, for certainly Trescon and his friends had appeared perfectly familiar with it.

And then, far to the north, Brant’s eye was caught by a sudden flash of reflected sunlight. Moving purposefully across the band of sky framed beneath the ship was another metal giant that might have been its twin, dwarfed though it was by distance. It passed swiftly across the horizon and within seconds was gone from sight.

So this was not the only ship; and how many more might there be? Somehow the thought reminded Brant of the great painting he had just left, and of the invading fleet moving with such deadly purpose toward the doomed city. And with that thought there came into his soul, creeping out from the hidden caves of racial memory, the fear of strangers that once had been the curse of all mankind. He turned to Kondar and cried accusingly:

‘You’re invading Earth!’

For a moment no one spoke. Then Trescon said, with a slight touch of malice in his voice:

‘Go ahead, Commander—you’ve got to explain it sooner or later. Now’s a good time to practise.’

Commander Kondar gave a worried little smile that first reassured Brant, then filled him with yet deeper forebodings.

‘You do us an injustice, young man,’ he said gravely. ‘We’re not invading Earth. We’re evacuating it.’

‘I hope,’ said Trescon, who had taken a patronising interest in Brant, ‘that this time the scientists have learned a lesson—though I doubt it. They just say, “Accidents will happen”, and when they’ve cleaned up one mess, they go on to make another. The Sigma Field is certainly their most spectacular failure so far, but progress never ceases.’

‘And if it does hit Earth—what will happen?’

‘The same thing that happened to the control apparatus when the Field got loose—it will be scattered uniformly throughout the cosmos. And so will you be, unless we get you out in time.’

‘Why?’ asked Brant.

‘You don’t really expect a technical answer, do you? It’s something to do with Uncertainty. The Ancient Greeks—or perhaps it was the Egyptians—discovered that you can’t define the position of any atom with absolute accuracy; it has a small but finite probability of being anywhere in the universe. The people who set up the Field hoped to use it for propulsion. It would change the atomic odds, as it were, so that a spaceship orbiting Vega would suddenly decide that it really ought to be circling Betelgeuse.

‘Well, it seems that the Sigma Field does only half the job. It merely
multiplies
probabilities—it doesn’t organise them. And now it’s wandering at random through the stars, feeding on interstellar dust and the occasional sun. No one’s been able to devise a way of neutralising it—though there’s a horrible suggestion that a twin should be created and a collision arranged. If they try that, I know just what will happen.’

‘I don’t see why we should worry,’ said Brant. ‘It’s still ten light-years away.’

‘Ten light-years is much too close for a thing like the Sigma Field. It’s zigzagging at random, in what the mathematicians call the Drunkard’s Walk. If we’re unlucky, it’ll be here tomorrow. But the chances are twenty to one that the Earth will be untouched; in a few years, you’ll be able to go home again, just as if nothing had ever happened.’

‘As if nothing had ever happened!’ Whatever the future brought, the old way of life was gone forever. What was taking place in Shastar must now be occurring in one form or another, over all the world. Brant watched wide-eyed as strange machines rolled down the splendid streets, clearing away the rubble of ages and making the city fit for habitation again. As an almost extinct star may suddenly blaze up in one last hour of glory, so for a few months Shastar would be one of the capitals of the world, housing the army of scientists, technicians, and administrators that had descended upon it from space.

Brant was growing to know the invaders very well. Their vigour, the lavishness of everything they did, and the almost childlike delight they took in their superhuman powers never ceased to astonish him. These, his cousins, were the heirs to all the universe; and they had not yet begun to exhaust its wonders or to tire of its mystery. For all their knowledge, there was still a feeling of experimentation, even of cheerful irresponsibility, about many of the things they did. The Sigma Field itself was an example of this; they had made a mistake, they did not seem to mind in the least, and they were quite sure that sooner or later they would put things right.

Despite the tumult that had been loosed upon Shastar, as indeed upon the entire planet, Brant had remained stubbornly at his task. It gave him something fixed and stable in a world of shifting values, and as such he clung to it desperately. From time to time Trescon or his colleagues would visit him and proffer advice—usually excellent advice, though he did not always take it. And occasionally, when he was tired and wished to rest his eyes or brain, he would leave the great empty galleries and go out into the transformed streets of the city. It was typical of its new inhabitants that, though they would be here for no more than a few months, they had spared no efforts to make Shastar clean and efficient, and to impose upon it a certain stark beauty that would have surprised its first builders.

At the end of four days—the longest time he had ever devoted to a single work—Brant slowed to a halt. He could go on tinkering indefinitely, but if he did he would only make things worse. Not at all displeased with his efforts, he went in search of Trescon.

He found the critic, as usual, arguing with his colleagues over what should be saved from the accumulated art of mankind. Latvar and Erlyn had threatened violence if one more Picasso was taken aboard, or another Fra Angelico thrown out. Not having heard of either, Brant had no compunction in pressing his own claim.

Trescon stood in silence before the painting, glancing at the original from time to time. His first remark was quite unexpected.

‘Who’s the girl?’ he said.

‘You told me she was called Helen—’ Brant started to answer.

‘I mean the one you’ve
really
painted.’

Brant looked at his canvas, then back at the original. It was odd that he hadn’t noticed those differences before, but there were undoubtedly traces of Yradne in the woman he had shown on the fortress walls. This was not the straightforward copy he had set out to make. His own mind and heart had spoken through his fingers.

‘I see what you mean,’ he said slowly. ‘There’s a girl back in my village; I really came here to find a present for her—something that would impress her.’

‘Then you’ve been wasting your time,’ Trescon answered bluntly. ‘If she really loves you, she’ll tell you soon enough. If she doesn’t, you can’t make her. It’s as simple as that.’

Brant did not consider that at all simple, but decided not to argue the point.

‘You haven’t told me what you think about it,’ he complained.

‘It shows promise,’ Trescon answered cautiously. ‘In another thirty—well, twenty—years you may get somewhere, if you keep at it. Of course the brushwork is pretty crude, and that hand looks like a bunch of bananas. But you have a nice bold line, and I think more of you for not making a carbon copy. Any fool can do that—this shows you’ve some originality. What you need now is more practice—and above all, more experience. Well, I think we can provide you with that.’

‘If you mean going away from Earth,’ said Brant, ‘that’s not the sort of experience I want.’

‘It will do you good. Doesn’t the thought of travelling out to the stars arouse any feelings of excitement in your mind?’

‘No; only dismay. But I can’t take it seriously, because I don’t believe you’ll be able to make us go.’

Trescon smiled, a little grimly.

‘You’ll move quickly enough when the Sigma Field sucks the starlight from the sky. And it may be a good thing when it comes: I have a feeling we were just in time. Though I’ve often made fun of the scientists, they’ve freed us forever from the stagnation that was overtaking your race.

‘You have to get away from Earth, Brant; no man who has lived all his life on the surface of a planet has ever seen the stars, only their feeble ghosts. Can you imagine what it means to hang in space amid one of the great multiple systems, with coloured suns blazing all around you? I’ve done that; and I’ve seen stars floating in rings of crimson fire, like your planet Saturn, but a thousand times greater. And can you imagine night on a world near the heart of the Galaxy, where the whole sky is luminous with star mist that has not yet given birth to suns? Your Milky Way is only a scattered handful of third-rate suns; wait until you see the Central Nebula!

‘These are the great things, but the small ones are just as wonderful. Drink your fill of all that the universe can offer; and if you wish, return to Earth with your memories. Then you can begin to work; then, and no sooner, you’ll know if you are an artist.’

Brant was impressed, but not convinced.

‘According to
that
argument,’ he said, ‘real art couldn’t have existed before space travel.’

‘There’s a whole school of criticism based on that thesis; certainly space travel was one of the best things that ever happened to art. Travel, exploration, contact with other cultures—that’s the great stimulus for all intellectual activity.’ Trescon waved at the mural blazing on the wall behind them. ‘The people who created that legend were seafarers, and the traffic of half a world came through their ports. But after a few thousand years, the sea was too small for inspiration or adventure, and it was time to go into space. Well, the time’s come for you, whether you like it or not.’

‘I don’t like it. I want to settle down with Yradne.’

‘The things that people want and the things that are good for them are very different. I wish you luck with your painting; I don’t know whether to wish you luck in your other endeavour. Great art and domestic bliss are mutually incompatible. Sooner or later, you’ll have to make your choice.’

Sooner or later, you’ll have to make your choice
. Those words still echoed in Brant’s mind as he trudged toward the brow of the hill, and the wind came down the great road to meet him. Sunbeam resented the termination of her holiday, so they moved even more slowly than the gradient demanded. But gradually the landscape widened around them, the horizon moved farther out to sea, and the city began to look more and more like a toy built from coloured bricks—a toy dominated by the ship that hung effortlessly, motionlessly above it.

For the first time Brant was able to see it as a whole, for it was now floating almost level with his eyes and he could encompass it at a glance. It was roughly cylindrical in shape, but ended in complex polyhedral structures whose functions were beyond conjecture. The great curving back bristled with equally mysterious bulges, flutings, and cupolas. There was power and purpose here, but nothing of beauty, and Brant looked upon it with distaste.

This brooding monster usurping the sky—if only it would vanish, like the clouds that drifted past its flanks! But it would not disappear because he willed it; against the forces that were gathering now, Brant knew that he and his problems were of no importance. This was the pause when history held its breath, the hushed moment between the lightning flash and the advent of the first concussion. Soon the thunder would be rolling round the world; and soon there might be no world at all, while he and his people would be homeless exiles among the stars. That was the future he did not care to face—the future he feared more deeply than Trescon and his fellows, to whom the universe had been a plaything for five thousand years, could ever understand.

It seemed unfair that this should have happened in his time, after all these centuries of rest. But men cannot bargain with Fate, and choose peace or adventure as they wish. Adventure and Change had come to the world again, and he must make the best of it—as his ancestors had done when the age of space had opened, and their first frail ships had stormed the stars.

For the last time he saluted Shastar, then turned his back upon the sea. The sun was shining in his eyes, and the road before him seemed veiled with a bright, shimmering mist, so that it quivered like a mirage, or the track of the Moon upon troubled waters. For a moment Brant wondered if his eyes had been deceiving him; then he saw that it was no illusion.

As far as the eye could see, the road and the land on either side of it were draped with countless strands of gossamer, so frail and fine that only the glancing sunlight revealed their presence. For the last quarter-mile he had been walking through them, and they had resisted his passage no more than coils of smoke.

Throughout the morning, the wind-borne spiders must have been falling in millions from the sky; and as he stared up into the blue, Brant could still catch momentary glimpses of sunlight upon drifting silk as belated voyagers went sailing by. Not knowing whither they would travel, these tiny creatures had ventured forth into an abyss more friendless and more fathomless than any he would face when the time came to say farewell to Earth. It was a lesson he would remember in the weeks and months ahead.

Slowly the Sphinx sank into the sky line as it joined Shastar beyond the eclipsing crescent of the hills. Only once did Brant look back at the crouching monster, whose agelong vigil was now drawing to its close. Then he walked slowly forward into the sun, while ever and again impalpable fingers brushed his face, as the strands of silk came drifting down the wind that blew from home.