Philip Dick - Complete Stories 3 - Second Variety and Other Stories

Nothing stirred -- no sign of life. No sign anywhere.

Trent made his way down the slope. Around him the forest was silent. A dismal oppression hung over everything. Even the usual rustling of small animals was lacking. Animals, insects, men -- all were gone. Most of the runners had moved south. The small things probably had died. And the men?

He came out among the ruins. This had been a great city once. Then men had probably gone down in air-raid shelters and mines and subways. Later on they had enlarged their underground chambers. For three centuries men -- true men -- had held on, living below the surface. Wearing lead-lined suits when they came up, growing food in tanks, filtering their water, compressing particle-free air. Shielding their eyes against the glare of the bright sun.

And now -- nothing at all.

He lifted his transmitter. "Mine," he snapped. "This is Trent."

The transmitter sputtered feebly. It was a long time before it responded. The voice was faint, distant. Almost lost in the static. "Well? Did you find them?"

"They're gone."

"But ..."

"Nothing. No one. Completely abandoned." Trent sat down on a broken stump of concrete. His body was dead. Drained of life. "They were here recently. The ruins aren't covered. They must have left in the last few weeks."

"It doesn't make sense. Mason and Douglas are on their way. Douglas has the tractor car. He should be there in a couple of days. How long will your oxygen last?"

"Twenty-four hours."

"We'll tell him to make time."

"I'm sorry I don't have more to report. Something better." Bitterness welled up in his voice. "After all these years. They were here all this time. And now that we've finally got to them..."

"Any clues? Can you tell what became of them?"

"I'll look." Trent got heavily to his feet. "If I find anything I'll report."

"Good luck." The faint voice faded off into static. "We'll be waiting."

Trent returned the transmitter to his belt. He peered up at the gray sky. Evening -- almost night. The forest was bleak and ominous. A faint blanket of snow was falling silently over the brown growth, hiding it under a layer of grimy white. Snow mixed with particles. Lethal dust -- still falling, after three hundred years.

He switched on his helmet-beam. The beam cut a pale swath ahead of him through the trees, among the ruined columns of concrete, the occasional heaps of rusted slag. He entered the ruins.

among the ruined columns of concrete, the occasional heaps of rusted slag. He entered the ruins.

Where had they gone? What had happened to them? Trent wandered around dully. Human beings had lived here, worked here, survived. They had come up to the surface. He could see the bore-nosed cars parked among the towers, now gray with the night snow. They had come up and then -gone.

Where?

He sat down in the shelter of a ruined column and flicked on his heater. His suit warmed up, a slow red glow that made him feel better. He examined his counter. The area was hot. If he intended to eat and drink he'd have to move on.

He was tired. Too damn tired to move on. He sat resting, hunched over in a heap, his helmet-beam lighting up a circle of gray snow ahead of him. Over him the snow fell silently. Presently he was covered, a gray lump sitting among the ruined concrete. As silent and unmoving as the towers and scaffolding around him.

He dozed. His heater hummed gently. Around him a wind came up, swirling the snow, blowing it up against him. He slid forward a little until his metal and plastic helmet came to rest against the concrete.

Towards midnight he woke up. He straightened, suddenly alert. Something -- a noise. He listened.

Far off, a dull roaring.

Douglas in the car? No, not yet -- not for another two days. He stood up, snow pouring off him. The roar was growing, getting louder. His heart began to hammer wildly. He peered around, his beam flashing through the night.

The ground shook, vibrating through him, rattling his almost empty oxygen tank. He gazed up at the sky -- and gasped.

A glowing trail slashed over the sky, igniting the early morning darkness. A deep red, swelling each second. He watched it, open-mouthed.

Something was coming down -- landing.

A rocket.

The long metal hull glittered in the morning sun. Men were working busily, loading supplies and equipment. Tunnel cars raced up and down, hauling material from the undersurface levels to the waiting ship. The men worked carefully and efficiently, each in his metal-and-plastic suit, in his carefully sealed lead-lined protection shield.

"How many back at your Mine?" Norris asked quietly.

"About thirty." Trent's eyes were on the ship. "Thirty-three, including all those out."

"Out?"

"Looking. Like me. A couple are on their way here. They should arrive soon. Late today or tomorrow."

Norris made some notes on his chart. "We can handle about fifteen with this load. We'll catch the rest next time. They can hold out another week?"

"Yes."

Norris eyed him curiously. "How did you find us? This is a long way from Pennsylvania. We're making our last stop. If you had come a couple days later..."

"Some runners sent me this way. They said you had gone they didn't know where."

Norris laughed. "We didn't know where either."

"You must be taking all this stuff some place. This ship. It's old, isn't it? Fixed up."

"Originally it was some kind of bomb. We located it and repaired it -- worked on it from time to time. We weren't sure what we wanted to do. We're not sure yet. But we know we have to leave."

"Leave? Leave Earth?"

The men were almost finished. The last cars were half empty, bringing up the final remains from underground. Books, records, pictures, artifacts -- the remains of a culture. A multitude of representative objects, shot into the hold of the ship to be carried off, away from Earth. "Where?" Trent asked.

"To Mars for the time being. But we're not staying there. We'll probably go on out, towards the moons of Jupiter and Saturn. Ganymede may turn out to be something. If not Ganymede, one of the others. If worse comes to worst we can stay on Mars. It's pretty dry and barren but it's not radioactive."

"There's no chance here -- no possibility of reclaiming the radioactive areas? If we could cool off Earth, neutralize the hot clouds and --"

"If we did that," Norris said, "they'd all die."

"They?"

"Rollers, runners, worms, toads, bugs, all the rest. The endless varieties of life. Countless forms adapted to this Earth -- this hot Earth. These plants and animals use the radioactive metals. Essentially the new basis of life here is an assimilation of hot metallic salts. Salts which are utterly lethal to us."

"But even so --"

"Even so, it's not really our world."

"We're the true humans," Trent said.

"Not any more. Earth is alive, teeming with life. Growing wildly -- in all directions. We're one form, an old form. To live here, we'd have to restore the old conditions, the old factors, the balance as it was three hundred and fifty years ago. A colossal job. And if we succeeded, if we managed to cool Earth, none of this would remain."

Norris pointed at the great brown forest. And beyond it, towards the south, at the beginning of the steaming jungle that continued all the way to the Straits of Magellan.

"In a way it's what we deserve. We brought the War. We changed Earth. Not destroyed -changed. Made it so different we can't live here any longer."

Norris indicated the lines of helmeted men. Men sheathed in lead, in heavy protection suits, covered with layers of metal and wiring, counters, oxygen tanks, shields, food pellets, filtered water. The men worked, sweated in their heavy suits. "See them? What do they resemble?"

A worker came up, gasping and panting. For a brief second he lifted his viewplate and took a hasty breath of air. He slammed his plate and nervously locked it in place. "Ready to go, sir. All loaded."