Ross Rocklynne - People of the Darkness

He did not want to play, and he never wanted to see his friends again. He did not hate them, but he was intolerant of the characteristics, which bade them to disport amongst the stars for eternity.

He was not mature in size, but he felt he had become an adult, while they were still children — tossing suns the length of a galaxy, and then hurling small bits of materialized energy around them to form planets; then just as likely to hurl huger masses to disrupt the planetary systems they so painstakingly made.

He had felt it all along, this superiority. He had manifested it by besting them in every form of play they conceived. They generally bungled everything, more apt to explode a star into small fragments than to whirl it until centrifugal force threw off planets.

I have become an adult in mind, if not in body; I am at the point where I must accumulate wisdom, and perhaps sorrow, he thought whimsically. I will see Oldster , and ask him my questions — the questions I have thus far kept in the background of my thoughts. But, he added thoughtfully, I have a feeling that even his wisdom will fail to enlighten me. Nevertheless, there must be answers. What is life? Why is it? And there must be another universe beyond the darkness that hems this one in.

Darkness reluctantly turned and made a slow trail across that galaxy and into the next, where he discovered those young energy creatures with whom it would be impossible to enjoy himself again.

He drew up, and absently translated his time standard to one corresponding with theirs, a rate of consciousness at which they could observe the six planets whirling around a small, white-hot sun as separate bodies and not mere rings of light.

They were gathered in numbers of some hundreds around this sun; and Darkness hovered on the outskirts of the crowd, watching them moodily.

One of the young purple lights, Cosmic by name, threw a mass of matter a short distance into space, reached out with a tractor ray and drew it in. He swung it ‘round and ‘round on the tip of that ray, gradually forming ever-decreasing circles. To endow the planet with a velocity that would hurl it unerringly between the two outermost planetary orbits required a delicate sense of compensatory adjustment between the factors of mass, velocity, and solar attraction.

When Cosmic had got the lump of matter down to an angular velocity that was uniform, Darkness knew an irritation he had never succeeded in suppressing, An intuition, which had unfailingly proved itself accurate, told him that anything but creating an orbit for that planet was likely to ensue.

“Cosmic.” He contacted the planet-maker’s thought rays. “Cosmic, the velocity you have generated is too great. The whole system will break up.”

“Oh, Darkness.” Cosmic threw a vision on him. “Come on, join us. You say the speed is wrong? Never — you are! I’ve calculated everything to a fine point.”

“To the wrong point,” insisted Darkness stubbornly. “Undoubtedly, your estimation of the planet’s mass is the factor which makes your equation incorrect. Lower the velocity. You’ll see.”

Cosmic continued to swing his lump of matter, but stared curiously at Darkness.

“What’s the matter with you?” he inquired. “You don’t sound just right. What does it matter if I do calculate wrong, and disturb the system’s equilibrium? We’ll very probably break up the whole thing later, anyway.”

A flash of passion came over Darkness. “That’s the trouble,” he said fiercely. “It doesn’t matter to any of you. You will always be children. You will always be playing. Careful construction, joyous destruction — that is the creed on which you base your lives. Don’t you feel as if you’d like, sometime, to quit playing, and do something… worthwhile?”

As if they had discovered a strangely different set of laws governing an alien galaxy, the hundreds of youths, greens and purples, stared at Darkness.

Cosmic continued swinging the planet he had made through space, but he was plainly puzzled. “What’s wrong with you, Darkness? What else is there to do except to roam the galaxies and make suns? I can’t think of a single living thing that might be called more worthwhile.”

“What good is playing?” answered Darkness. “What good is making a solar system? If you made one, and then, perhaps, vitalized it with life, that would be worthwhile! Or think, think! About yourself, about life, why it is, and what it means in the scheme of things! Or,” and he trembled a little, “try discovering what lies beyond the veil of lightlessness which surrounds the universe.”

The hundreds of youths looked at the darkness: Cosmic stared anxiously at him. “Are you crazy? We all know there’s nothing beyond. Everything that is is right here in the universe. That blackness is just empty, and it stretches away from here forever.”

“Where did you get that information?” Darkness inquired scornfully. “You don’t know that. Nobody does. But I am going to know! I awoke from sleep a short while ago, and I couldn’t bear the thought of play. I wanted to do something substantial. So I am going into the darkness.”

He turned his gaze hungrily on the deep abyss hemming in the stars. There were thousands of years, even under its lower time standard, in which awe dominated the gathering. In his astonishment at such an unheard-of intention, Cosmic entirely forgot his circling planet. It lessened in velocity, and then tore loose from the tractor ray that had become weak, in a tangent to the circle it had been performing.

It sped toward that solar system, and entered between the orbits of the outermost planets. Solar gravitation seized it, the lone planet took up an erratic orbit, and then the whole system had settled into complete stability, with seven planets where there had been six.

“You see,” said Darkness, with a note of unsteady mirth, “if you had used your intended speed, the system would have coalesced. The speed of the planet dropped, and then escaped you. Some blind chance sent it in the right direction. It was purely an accident. Now throw in a second sun, and watch the system break up. That has always amused you.” His aura quivered. “Goodbye, friends.”

He was gone from their sight forever. He had snapped into the sixth band. He ranged back to the spot where Oldster should have been. He was not.

Probably in some other band, thought Darkness, and went through all the others, excepting the fifteenth, where resided a complete lack of light. With a feeling akin to awe, since Oldster was apparently in none of them, he went into the fifteenth and called out.

There was a period of silence. Then Oldster answered, in his thoughts a cadence of infinite weariness.

“Yes, my son; who calls me?”

“It is I, Darkness, whom Sparkle presented to you nearly fifty million years ago.” Hesitating, an unexplainable feeling as of sadness unquenchable came to him.

“I looked for you in the sixth,” he went on in a rush of words, but did not expect to find you here, isolated, with no light to see by.”

“I am tired of seeing, my son. I have lived too long. I have tired of thinking and of seeing. I am sad.”

Darkness hung motionless, hardly daring to interrupt the strange thought of this incredible ancient. He ventured timidly, “It is just that I am tired of playing, Oldster, tired of doing nothing. I should like to accomplish something of some use. Therefore, I have come to you, to ask you three questions, the answers to which I must know.”

Oldster stirred restlessly, “Ask your questions.”

“I am curious about life.” Oldster’s visitor hesitated nervously, and then went on, “It has a purpose, I know, and I want to know that purpose. That is my first question.”