James White - Second Ending

An expanse of rich, dark earth streaked with ash in which nothing grew, not because it was incapable of supporting growth but because all growing things were dead. On the day before he was to go into Deep Sleep it had not been like this, however; Ross felt that he could remember every unpruned bush and knee-high blade of grass. The park never had been well tended.

He had been trying to act as though nothing very important was going to happen, as if Deep Sleep was a simple appendectomy. When Alice came off duty he had asked her to go swimming with him, the way he had always done. Ross wanted to have a last swim and to say good-bye to her on the beach. But Alice had insisted that the sea wind was too cold — it was late September — and she wanted to go for a walk instead. She had held his hand tightly even before they left the hospital building, and Alice had previously been too shy for such public demonstrations of affection, and they had gone into the park. He had tried to keep the conversation gay and inconsequential for as long as he could, but eventually he had to begin to say goodbye…

While the idea of Deep Sleep had frightened Ross, it had been nowhere near as strong as a fear of death. He knew that he would awaken someday and so far as he was concerned there would be no interval of time. But he had not realized that to Alice he was going to die tomorrow, going to disappear from the world and from her life. He had not been prepared for this Alice, who clung so fiercely to him that he could hardly breathe, and wet his cheeks with her tears and whose eyes, when they looked into his, held so much love and sheer compassion that…

She had been a quiet, thoughtful girl — pleasant, but practical. They were to be married when Ross qualified, but even with him she had maintained a certain reserve. He remembered her telling him laughingly that she preferred to neck on the beach, because there the ocean was handy for him to cool off in.

Standing on that muddy hillside with its eternal smell of damp smoke, Ross knew that Alice was his most precious memory. He thought that at this moment, with the memory of that slow walk back through warm-smelling grass which caught at their feet sharp and clear in his mind, he was prepared to die.

And then suddenly his newly achieved mood of calm and solemn acceptance of his fate was shattered, by that same memory. He began to tremble violently as the realization grew in him that he might, just possibly, not have to die at all. On that September day he had been given more than he knew: He had been given his life. Oh, Alice … he thought.

Behind him Sister was expressing concern over his shivering and making determined efforts to take his temperature. This struck him as being excruciatingly funny and he began to laugh. Sister became even more concerned. “I’m all right,” he said, sobering. In a voice which was still far from steady he gave his orders. All search robots were to be recalled for a special project. He gave minutely detailed instructions regarding it to Sister, and made her repeat them back, because he would not be available himself when they arrived. Finally, immediate preparations must be made to put him into Deep Sleep…

Four hours later he was lying in the padded, coffinlike container with the section above his face hinged back to reveal the glittering lenses of Sister staring down at him. The cold had passed the uncomfortable stage and was becoming almost pleasant.

“Now remember,” he said for about the fourth time, “if the idea doesn’t work out I don’t want to be awakened. You’d be wakening me only to let me die of starvation…”

“I understand, sir,” said Sister. “Have you any other instructions?”

“Yes…” began Ross, but lost track of what he said after that. The chill was accelerating through his body and he must have been in a kind of cold delirium . Soon the entire room and its contents would be similarly refrigerated as a precaution against a breakdown of his container, a point which he had forgotten until a few hours ago. He kept seeing the ludicrous picture of three Path Sisters dissecting the cuffs of his old tweed trousers. Swim or walk, sea or park, death or life. He wanted Alice. “I’m sorry, sir.”

The flap closed with a gentle click and the cold was like an explosion within him that engulfed his mind in icy darkness. But deep inside him there was a spot of warmth which had no business being there, and a light which grew until it pained his eyes. Faulty equipment, he thought disgustedly, or they’ve muffed it. When his vision cleared he glared up at Sister, too angry and disappointed to speak.

“Do not try to move, Mr. Ross,” the Sister said sharply. “You are to undergo a half-hour massage, after which you should be able to walk unassisted. Are you ready…?”

It might be massage to Sister, Ross thought as he gritted his teeth in agony, but to him it felt like the treatment received in the worst of the old-time concentration camps rather than something of therapeutic value. At the end of the longest half-hour of his life Sister lifted him to a sitting position, and he succeeded in gathering enough breath to speak.

“What happened? Why did you wake me up…?”

“Can you stand up, Mr. Ross, and move around?” asked Sister, ignoring him. Ross could, and did. The robot said, “I suggest we go to the surface, sir.”

Noting the “sir,” Ross snarled. “So I’m not your patient anymore, somebody you could order about and beat half to death? Now I’m the boss again, and I want some straight answers. What went wrong, why did you halt the cool-down? Have you found an edible food cache…?”

“You have been in Deep Sleep,” said Sister quietly, “for forty-three thousand years.”

The reply left Ross mentally stunned. He was unable to speak, much less ask further questions during the trip to the surface, and there he received a greater shock.

The sun shone clear and yellow and incandescent out of a pale blue sky, and from his feet a rippling sea of green stretched to the horizon. Five miles away the hills which he had not been able to see since his first Deep Sleep had a misty look, but it was the pale shimmer of a heat haze rather than windblown smoke. The air tasted like nothing he had remembered, so clean and fresh and sparkling that he seemed to be drinking rather than breathing it. Ross closed his eyes and with heart pounding madly in his throat turned a half circle; then he opened them.

Pale blue sky and deep blue sea were separated at the horizon by a distant range of white cumulus. The bay was filled with whitecaps and the biggest rollers that Ross had ever seen burst like liquid snow onto a beach that was clean yellow sand for as far as the eye could see.

Suddenly visibility was reduced to nil by a mist in his eyes, although Ross never felt less like crying in all his life.

“It took much longer than you had estimated,” the Sister’s voice came from behind him, “for the grass grown from your seedlings to make the change from interior cultivation in artificial UV to surface beds covered by transparent plastic, and even longer before they would grow unprotected on the surface. This was due to finely divided ash in the atmosphere having a masking effect on those sections of the solar spectrum necessary for the growth of plant life. However, time and natural mutational changes had produced a strain capable of surviving surface conditions.”

Without pausing. Sister went on, “While this strain was developing the ash was gradually being absorbed by the sea and land surface, causing an increase in sunlight. This accelerated the spread of the grass, which in turn hastened the fixing of ash into the soil. And as the grass had no natural enemies or competing life forms, its spread across the planet was, relatively, quite rapid. But it required an additional several millennia for it to evolve, and for us to isolate, edible grains suitable for processing into food.