Arthur Clarke: Childhood’s End

The dream had disturbed him: he wondered if it was the first onslaught of loneliness upon his mind. Restlessly, he walked out of the villa on to the neglected lawn.

A full moon bathed the scene with a golden light so brilliant that he could see perfectly. The immense gleaming cylinder of Karellen’s ship lay beyond the buildings of the Overlord base, towering above them and reducing them to man-made proportions. Jan looked at the ship, trying to recall the emotions it had once roused in him. There was a time when it had been an unattainable goal, a symbol of all that he had never really expected to achieve. And now it meant nothing.

How quiet and still it was! The Overlords, of course would be as active as ever, but for the moment there was no sign of them. He might have been alone on Earth — as, indeed, in a very real sense he was. He glanced up at the Moon, seeking some familiar sight on which his thoughts could rest.

There were the ancient, well-remembered seas. He had been forty light-years into space, yet he had never walked on those silent, dusty plains less than two light-seconds away. For a moment he amused himself trying to locate the crater Tycho. When he did discover it, he was puzzled to find that gleaming speck further from the centre line of the disc than he had thought. And it was then that he realized that the dark oval of the Mare Crisium was missing altogether. The face that her satellite now turned towards the Earth was not the one that had looked down on the world since the dawn of life. The Moon had begun to turn upon its axis.

That could mean only one thing. On the other side of the Earth, in the land that they had stripped so suddenly of life, they were emerging from their long trance. As a waking child may stretch its arms to greet the day, they too were flexing their muscles and playing with their new-found powers…

“You have guessed correctly,” said Rashaverak. “It is no longer safe for us to stay. They may ignore us still, but we cannot take the risk. We leave as soon as our equipment can be loaded — probably in two or three hours.”

He looked up at the sky, as if afraid that some new miracle was about to blaze forth. But all was peaceful: the Moon had set, and only a few clouds rode high upon the west wind.

“It does not matter greatly if they tamper with the Moon,” Rashaverak added,

“but suppose they begin to interfere with the Sun? We shall leave instruments behind, of course, so that we can learn what happens.”

“I shall stay,” said Jan abruptly. “I have seen enough of the universe. There’s only one thing I’m curious about now — and that is the fate of my own planet.”

Very gently, the ground trembled underfoot.

“I was expecting that,” Jan continued. “If they alter the Moon’s spin, the angular momentum must go somewhere. So the Earth is slowing down. I don’t know which puzzles me more — how they are doing it, or why.”

“They are still playing,” said Rashaverak. “What logic is there in the actions of a child? And in many ways the entity that your race has become is still a child. It is not yet ready to unite with the Overmind. But very soon it will be, and then you will have the Earth to yourself.”

He did not complete the sentence, and Jan finished it for him.

“If, of course, the Earth still exists.”

“You realize that danger — and yet you will stay?”

“Yes. I have been home five — or is it six? — years now. Whatever happens, I’ll have no complaints.”

“We were hoping,” began Rashaverak slowly, “that you would wish to stay. There is something that you can do for us…”

The glare of the stardrive dwindled and died, somewhere out there beyond the orbit of Mars. Along that road, thought Jan, he alone had travelled, out of all the billions of human beings who had lived and died on Earth. And no one would ever travel it again.

The world was his. Everything he needed — all the material possessions anyone could ever desire — were his for the taking. But he was no longer interested. He feared neither the loneliness of the deserted planet, nor the presence that still rested here in the last moments before it went to seek its unknown heritage. In the inconceivable backwash of that departure, Jan did not expect that he and his problems would long survive.

That was well. He had done all that he had wished to do, and to drag out a pointless life on this empty world would hive been unbearable anticlimax. He could have left with the Overlords, but for what purpose? For he knew, as no one else had ever known, that Karellen spoke the truth when he had said:

“The stars are not for Man.”

He turned his back upon the night and walked through the vast entrance of the Overlord base. Its size affected him not in the least: sheer immensity no longer had any power over his mind. The lights were burning redly, driven by energies that could feed them for ages yet. On either side lay machines whose secrets he would never know, abandoned by the Overlords in their retreat. He went past them, and clambered awkwardly up the great steps until he had reached the control room. The spirit of the Overlords still lingered here: their machines were still alive, doing the bidding of their now far-distant masters. What could he add, wondered Jan, to the information they were already hurling into space? He climbed into the great chair and made himself as comfortable as he could. The microphone, already alive, was waiting for him: something that was the equivalent of a TV camera must be watching, but he could not locate it. Beyond the desk and its meaningless instrument panels, the wide windows looked out into the starry night, across a valley sleeping beneath a gibbous moon, and to the distant range of mountains. A river wound along the valley, glittering here and there as the moonlight struck upon some patch of troubled water. It was all so peaceful. It might have been thus at Man’s birth as it was now at his ending.

Out there across unknown millions of kilometres of space, Karellen would be waiting. It was strange to think that the ship of the Overlords was racing away from Earth almost as swiftly as his signal could speed after it. Almost — but not quite. It would be a long chase, but his words would catch the Supervisor and he would have repaid the debt he owed.

How much of this, Jan wondered, had Karellen planned, and how much was masterful improvisation? Had the Supervisor deliberately let him escape into space, almost a century ago, so that he could return to play the role he was fulfilling now? No, that seemed too fantastic. But Jan was certain now, that Karellen was involved in some vast and complicated plot. Even while he served it, he was studying the Overmind with all the instruments at his command. Jan suspected that it was not only scientific curiosity that inspired the Supervisor: perhaps the Overlords had dreams of one day escaping from their peculiar bondage, when they had learned enough about the powers they served.

That Jan could add to that knowledge by what he was now doing seemed hard to believe. “Tell us what you see,” Rashaverak had said. “The picture that reaches your eyes will be duplicated by our cameras. But the message that enters your brain may be very different, and it could tell us a great deal.” Well, he would do his best.

“Still nothing to report,” he began. “A few minute, ago I saw the trail of your ship disappear in the sky. ’The Moon is just past full, and almost half its familiar side has now turned away from Earth — but I suppose you already know that.”

Jan paused, feeling slightly foolish. There was something incongruous, even faintly absurd, about what he was doing.

Here was the climax of all history, yet he might have been a radio-commentator at a race-track or a boxing-ring. Then he shrugged his shoulders and put the thought aside. At all moments of greatness, he suspected, bathos had never been very far away — and certainly he alone could sense its presence here.