Arthur Clarke - Childhood’s End

There was a long silence while George wrestled with these astounding thoughts. The pattern was beginning to take shape. It was an unbelievable pattern, but it had its own inherent logic. And it explained — if the word could be used for anything so incomprehensible — all that had happened since that evening at Rupert Boyce’s home. It also accounted, he realized now, for Jean’s own curiosity about the supernormal.

“What has started this thing?” asked George. “And where is it going to lead?”

“That is something we cannot answer. But there are many races in the universe, and some of them discovered these powers long before your species — or mine — appeared on the scene. They have been waiting for you to join them, and now the time has come.”

“Then where do you come into the picture?”

“Probably, like most men, you have always regarded us as your masters. That is not true. We have never been more than guardians, doing a duty imposed upon us from — above. That duty is hard to define: perhaps you can best think of us as midwives attending a difficult birth. We are helping to bring something new and wonderful into the world.”

Rashaverak hesitated: for a moment it almost seemed as if he was at a loss for words.

“Yes, we are the midwives. But we ourselves are barren.”

In that instant, George knew he was in the presence of a tragedy transcending his own. It was incredible — and yet somehow just. Despite all their powers and their brilliance, the Overlords were trapped in some evolutionary cul-de-sac. Here was a great and noble race, in almost every way superior to mankind; yet it had no future, and it was aware of it. In the face of this, George’s own problems seemed suddenly trivial.

“Now I know,” he said, “why you have been watching Jeffrey. He was the guinea pig in this experiment.”

“Exactly — though the experiment was beyond our control. We did not start it — we were merely trying to observe. We did not interfere except when we had to.”

Yes, thought George — the tidal wave. It would never do to let a valuable specimen be destroyed. Then he felt ashamed of himself: such bitterness was unworthy.

“I’ve only one more question,” he said. “What shall we do about our children?”

“Enjoy them while you may,” answered Rashaverak gently. “They will not be yours for long.”

It was advice that might have been given to any parent in any age: but now it contained a threat and a terror it had never held before.

There came the time when the world of Jeffrey’s dreams was no longer sharply divided from his everyday existence. He no longer went to school, and for Jean and George also the routine of life was completely broken, as it was soon to break down throughout the world.

They avoided all their friends, as if already conscious that soon no one would have sympathy to spare for them. Sometimes, in the quietness of the night when there were few people about, they would go for long walks together. They were closer now than they had been since the first days of their marriage, united again in the face of the still unknown tragedy that soon would overwhelm them. At first it had given them a feeling of guilt to leave the sleeping children alone in the house, but now they realized that Jeff and Jenny could look after themselves in ways beyond the knowledge of their parents. And, of course, the Overlords would be watching too. That thought was reassuring: they felt that they were not alone with their problem, but that wise and sympathetic eyes shared their vigil.

Jennifer slept: there was no other word to describe the state she had entered. To all outward appearances, she was still a baby, but round her now was a sense of latent power so terrifying that Jean could no longer bear to enter the nursery.

There was no need to do so. The entity that had been Jennifer Anne Greggson was not yet fully developed, but even in its sleeping chrysalis state it already had enough control of its environment to take care of all its needs. Jean had only once attempted to feed it, without success. It chose to take nourishment in its own time, and in its own manner. For food vanished from the freezer in a slow, steady stream: yet Jennifer Anne never moved from her cot.

The rattling had ceased, and the discarded toy lay on the nursery floor where no one dared to touch it, lest Jennifer Anne might need it again. Sometimes she caused the furniture to stir itself into peculiar patterns, and it seemed to George that the fluoro-paint on the wall was glowing more brilliantly than it had ever done before.

She gave no trouble; she was beyond their assistance, and beyond their love. It could not last much longer, and in the time that was left they clung desperately to Jeff.

He was changing too, but he still knew them. The boy whose growth they had watched from the formless mists of babyhood was losing his personality, dissolving hour by hour before their very eyes. Yet sometimes he still spoke to them as he had always done, and talked of his toys and friends as if unconscious of what lay ahead. But much of the time he did not see them, or show any awareness of their presence. He no longer slept, as they were forced to do, despite their overwhelming need to waste as few as possible of these last remaining hours.

Unlike Jenny, he seemed to possess no abnormal powers over physical objects — perhaps because, being already partly grown, he had less need for them. His strangeness was entirely in his mental life, of which the dreams were now only a small part. He would stay quite still for hours on end, his eyes tightly closed, as if listening to sounds which no one else could hear. Into his mind was flooding knowledge — from somewhere or somewhen — which soon would overwhelm and destroy the half-formed creature who had been Jeffrey Angus Greggson.

And Fey would sit watching, looking up at him with tragic, puzzled eyes, wondering where her master had gone and when he would return to her. Jeff and Jenny had been the first in all the world, but soon they were no longer alone. Like an epidemic spreading swiftly from land to land, the metamorphosis infected the entire human race. It touched practically no one above the age of ten, and practically no one below that age escaped.

It was the end of civilization, the end of all that men had striven for since the beginning of time. In the space of a few days, humanity had lost its future, for the heart of any race is destroyed, and its will to survive is utterly broken, when its children are taken from it.

There was no panic, as there would have been a century before. The world was numbed, the great cities stilled and silent. Only the vital industries continued to function. It was as though the planet was in mourning, lamenting all that now could never be.

And then, as he had done once before in a now-forgotten age, Karellen spoke for the last time to mankind.

“My work here is nearly ended,” said Karellen’s voice from a million radios.

“At last, after a hundred years, I can tell you what it was.

“There are many things we have had to hide from you, as we hid ourselves for half our stay on Earth. Some of you, I know, thought that concealment unnecessary. You are accustomed to our presence: you can no longer imagine how your ancestors would have reacted to us. But at least you can understand the purpose of our concealment, and know that we had a reason for what we did.

“The supreme secret we kept from you was our purpose in coming to Earth — that purpose about which you have speculated so endlessly. We could not tell you until now, for the secret was not ours to reveal.

“A century ago we came to your world and saved you from self-destruction. I do not believe that anyone would deny that fact — but what that self-destruction was, you never guessed.