Isaac Asimov - The Early Asimov. Volume 3

His speech was high-pitched and careful, 'I find it damp, but not unbearably so at this low temperature.'

Antyok smiled, 'It was nice of you to come. I had planned to visit you. but a trial run in yoUr atmosphere out there-' The smile had become rueful.

'It doesn't matter. You other worldlings have done more for us than ever we were able to do for ourselves. It is an obligation that is but imperfectly returned by the endurance on my part of a trifling discomfort.' His speech seemed always indirect, as if he approached his thoughts sidelong, or as if it were against all etiquette to be blunt.

Gustiv Bannerd, seated in an angle of the room, with one long leg crossing the other, scrawled nimbly and said, 'You don't mind if I record all this?'

The Cepheid non-Human glanced briefly at the journalist, 'I have no objection.'

Antyok's apologetics persisted. This is not a purely social affair, sir. I would not have forced discomfort on you for that. There are important questions to be considered, and you are the leader of your people.'

The Cepheid nodded, 'I am satisfied your purposes are kindly. Please proceed.'

The administrator almost wriggled in his difficulty in putting thoughts into words. 'It is a subject,' he said, 'of delicacy, and one I wou'd never bring up if it weren't for the overwhelming importance of the… uh… question. I am only the spokesman of my government-'

'My people consider the otherworld government a kindly one.'

'Well, yes, they are kindly. For that reason, they are disturbed over the fact that your people no longer breed.'

Antyok paused, and waited with worry for a reaction that did not come. The Cepheid's face was motionless except for the soft, trembling motion of the wrinkled area that was Ms deflated drinking tube.

Antyok continued, 'It is a question we have hesitated to bring up because of its extremely personal angles. Noninterference is my government's prime aim, and we have done our best to investigate the problem quietly and without disturbing your people. But, frankly, we -'

'Have failed?' finished the Cepheid, at the other's pause.

'Yes. Or at least, we have not discovered a concrete failure to reproduce the exact environment of your original world; with, of course, the necessary modification to make it more livable. Naturally, it is thought there is some chemical shortcoming. And so I ask your voluntary help in the matter. Your people are advanced in the study of your own biochemistry. If you do not choose, or would rather not -'

'No, no, I can help.' The Cepheid seemed cheerful about it. The smooth flat planes of his loose-skinned, hairless skull wrinkled in an alien response to an uncertain emotion. 'It is not a matter that any of us would have thought would have disturbed you other-worldlings. That it does is but another indication of your well-meaning kindness. This wor'd we find congenial, a paradise in comparison to our o!d. It lacks in nothing. Conditions such as now prevail belong in our legends of the Golden Age.'

'Well-'

'But there is a something; a something you may not understand. We cannot expect different intelligences to think alike.'

'I shall try to understand.'

The Cepheid's voice had grown soft, its liquid undertones more pronounced, 'We were dying on our native world; but we were fighting. Our science, developed through a history older than yours, was losing; but it had not yet lost. Perhans it was because our science was fundamentally biological. rather than physical as yours is. Your people discovered new forms of energy and reached the stars. Our people d :scovered new truths of psychology and psychiatry and built up a working society free of disease and crime.

'There is no need to question which of the two angles of approach was the more laudable, but there is no uncertainty as to which proved more successful in the end. In our dying world, without the means of life or sources of power, our biological science could but make the dying easier.

'And yet we fought. For centuries past, we had been groping toward the elements of atomic power, and slowly the spark of hope had glimmered that we might break through the two-dimensional limits of our planetary surface and reach the stars. There were no other planets in our system to serve as stepping stones. Nothing but some twenty light-years to the nearest star, without the knowledge of the possibility of the existence of other planetary systems, but rather of the contrary.

'But there is something in all life that insists on striving; even on useless striving. There were only five thousand of us left in the last days. Only five thousand. And our first ship was ready. It was experimental. It would probably have been a failure. But already we had all the principles of propulsion and navigation correctly worked out.'

There was a long pause, and the Cepheid's small black eyes seemed glazed in retrospect.

The newspaperman put in suddenly, from his corner, 'And then we came?'

'And then you came,' the Cepheid agreed simply. 'It changed everything. Energy was ours for the asking. A new world, congenial and, indeed, ideal, was ours even without asking. If our problems of society had long been solved by ourselves, our more difficult problems of environment were suddenly solved for us, no less completely.'

'Well?' urged Antyok.

'Well - it was somehow not well. For centuries, our ancestors had fought toward the stars, and now the stars suddenly proved to be the property of others. We had fought for life, and it had become a present handed to us by others. There is no longer any reason to fight. There is no longer anything to attain. All the universe is the property of your race.'

'This world is yours,' said Antyok, gently.

'By sufferance. It is a gift. It is not ours by right'

'You have earned it, in my opinion.'

And now the Cepheid's eyes were sharply fixed on the other's countenance, 'You mean well, but I doubt that you understand. We have nowhere to go, save this gift of a world. We are in a blind alley. The function of life is striving, and that is taken from us. Life can no longer interest us. We have no offspring - voluntarily. It is our way of removing ourselves from your way.'

Absent-mindedly, Antyok had removed the fluoro-globe from the window seat, and spun it on its base. Its gaudy surface reflected light as it spun, and its three-foot-high bulk floated with incongruous grace and lightness in the air.

Antyok said, 'Is that your only solution? Sterility?'

'We might escape still,' whispered the Cepheid, 'but where in the Galaxy is there place for us? It is all yours.'

'Yes, there is no place for you nearer than the Magellame Clouds if you wished independence. The Magellanic Clouds -'

'And you would not let us go of yourselves. You mean kindly, I know.'

'Yes, we mean kindly - but we could not let you go.'

'It is a mistaken kindness.'

'Perhaps, but could you not reconcile yourselves? You have a world.'

'It is something past complete explanations. Your mind is different. We could not reconcile ourselves. I believe, administrator, that you have thought of all this before. The concept of the blind alley we find ourselves trapped in is not new to you.'

Antyok looked up, startled, and one hand steadied the fluoro-globe, 'Can you read my mind?'

'It is just a guess. A good one, I think.'

'Yes - but can you read my mind? The minds of humans in general, I mean. It is an interesting point. The scientists say you cannot, but sometimes I wonder if it is that you simply will not. Could you answer that? I am detaining you, unduly, perhaps.'

'No… no -' But the little Cepheid drew his enveloping robe closer, and buried his face in the electrically-heated pad at the collar for a moment. 'You other-worldlings speak of reading minds. It is not so at all, but it is assuredly hopeless to explain.'