Arthur Clarke - Childhood’s End

George heaved himself out of bed and went to join her. The Poppet had made such nocturnal excursions common enough, but then there had been no question of his remaining asleep through the uproar. This was something quite different and he wondered what had disturbed Jean.

The only light in the nursery came from the fluoro-paint patterns on the walls. By their dim glow, George could see Jean sitting beside Jeff’s bed. She turned as he came in, and whispered, “Don’t disturb the Poppet.”

“What’s the matter?”

“I knew that Jeff wanted me, and that woke me up.”

The very matter-of-fact simplicity of that statement gave George a feeling of sick apprehension. “I knew that Jeff wanted me.” How did you know? he wondered. But all he asked was:

“Has he been having nightmares?”

“I’m not sure,” said Jean, “he seems all right now. But he was frightened when I came in.”

“I wasn’t frightened, Mummy,” came a small, indignant voice. “But it was such a strange place.”

“What was?” asked George. “Tell me all about it.”

“There were mountains,” said Jeff dreamily. “They were ever so high and there was no snow on them, like on all the mountains I’ve ever seen. Some of them were burning.”

“You mean — volcanoes?”

“Not really. They were burning all over, with funny blue flames. And while I was watching, the sun came up.”

“Go on — why have you stopped?” Jeff turned puzzled eyes towards his father.

“That’s the other thing I don’t understand, Daddy. It came up so quickly, and it was much too big. And — it wasn’t the right colour. It was such a pretty blue.” There was a long, heart-freezing silence. Then George said quietly, “Is that all?”

“Yes. I began to feel kind of lonely, and that’s when Mummy came and woke me up.” George tousled his son’s untidy hair with one hand, while tightening his dressing-gown around him with the other. He felt suddenly very cold and very small. But there was no hint of this in his voice when he spoke to Jeff.

“It’s just a silly dream: you’ve eaten too much for supper. Forget all about it and go back to sleep, there’s a good boy.”

“I will, Daddy,” Jeff replied. He paused for a moment, then added thoughtfully, “I think I’ll try and go there again.”

“A blue sun?” said Karellen, not many hours later. “That must have made identification fairly easy.”

“Yes,” Rashaverak answered. “It is undoubtedly Alphanidon 2. The Sulphur Mountains confirm the fact. And it’s interesting to notice the distortion of the time scale. The planet rotates fairly slowly, so he must have observed many hours in a few minutes.”

“That’s all you can discover?”

“Yes, without questioning the child directly.”

“We dare not do that. Events must take their natural course without our interference. When his parents approach us — then, perhaps, we can question him.”

“They may never come to us. And when they do, it may be too late.”

“That, I am afraid, cannot be helped. We should never forget this fact — that in these matters our curiosity is of no importance. It is no more important, even, than the happiness of mankind.” His hand reached out to break the connection.

“Continue the surveillance, of course, and report all results to me. But do not interfere in any way.”

Yet when he was awake, Jeff still seemed just the same.

That at least, thought George, was something for which they could be thankful. But the dread was growing in his heart.

To Jeff it was only a game: it had not yet begun to frighten him. A dream was merely a dream, no matter how strange it might be. He was no longer lonely in the worlds that sleep opened up to him. Only on that first night had his mind called out to Jean across whatever unknown gulfs had sundered them. Now he went alone and fearless into the universe that was opening up before him.

In the mornings they would question him, and he would tell what he could remember. Sometimes his words stumbled and failed as he tried to describe scenes which were clearly not only beyond all his experience, but beyond the imagination of Man. They would prompt him with new words, show him pictures and colours to refresh his memory, then build up what pattern they could from his replies. Often they could make nothing of the result, though it seemed that in Jeff’s own mind his dream worlds were perfectly plain and sharp. He was simply unable to communicate them to his parents. Yet some were clear enough… Space — no planet, no surrounding landscape, no world underfoot. Only the stars in the velvet night, and hanging against them a great red sun that was beating like a heart.

Huge and tenuous at one moment, it would slowly shrink, brightening at the same time as if new fuel was being fed to its internal fires. It would climb the spectrum and hover at the edge of yellow, and the cycle would reverse itself, the, star would expand and cool, becoming once more a ragged, flame-red cloud… ("Typical pulsating variable,” said Rashaverak eagerly. “Seen, too, under tremendous time-acceleration. I can’t identify it precisely, but the nearest star that fits the description is Rhamsandron 9. Or it may be Pharanidon 12.”

“Whichever it is,” replied Karellen, “he’s getting further away from home.”

“Much further,” said Rashaverak…)

It might have been Earth. A white sun hung in a blue sky flecked with clouds, which were racing before a storm. A bill sloped gently down to an ocean torn into spray by the ravening wind. Yet nothing moved: the scene was frozen as if glimpsed in a flash of lightning. And far, far away on the horizon was something that was not of Earth — a line of misty columns, tapering slightly as they soared out of the sea and lost themselves among the clouds. They were spaced with perfect precision along the rim of the planet — too huge to be artificial, yet too regular to be natural.

("Sideneus 4 and the Pillars of the Dawn,” said Rashaverak, and there was awe in his voice. “He has reached the centre of the Universe.”

“And he has barely begun his journey,” answered Karellen.)

The planet was absolutely flat. Its enormous gravity had long ago crushed into one uniform level the mountains of its fiery youth — mountains whose mightiest peaks had never exceeded a few metres in height. Yet there was life here, for the surface was covered with a myriad geometrical patterns that crawled and moved and changed their colour. It was a world of two dimensions, inhabited by beings who could be no more than a fraction of a centimetre in thickness.

And in its sky was such a sun as no opium eater could have imagined in his wildest dreams. Too hot to be white, it was a searing ghost at the frontiers of the ultra-violet, burning its planets with radiations which would be instantly lethal to all earthly forms of life. For millions of kilometres around extended great veils of gas and dust, fluorescing in countless colours as the blasts of ultra-violet tore through them. It was a star against which Earth’s pale sun would have been as feeble as a glow-worm at noon.

("Hexanerax 2, and nowhere else in the known universe,” said Rashaverak. “Only a handful of our ships have ever reached it — and they have never risked any landings, for who would have thought that life could exist on such planets?”

“It seems,” said Karellen, “that you scientists have not been as thorough as you had believed. If those — patterns-are intelligent, the problem of communication will be interesting. I wonder if they have any knowledge of the third dimension?")

It was a world that could never know the meaning of night and day, of years or seasons. Six coloured suns shared its sky, so that there came only a change of light, never darkness.