Дэймон Найт - Orbit 13

How these seven had been selected for a mission that they understood hardly at all is a puzzle. But they had gathered here from all over the world without a word of instruction or suggestion from anyone. It was only a sort of psycho-biological urge that had told them to come exactly here, exactly now.

“We are met here and we hardly know why,” said Jorge Segundo. “We know each other not at all personally and only slightly by reputation. We are called here, but who is the caller? We come like lemmings.”

“The lemmings came today,” said Toy Tonk, “but only seven of them, and they not at all in a panic. Nor are we, though perhaps we should be. This is perhaps the ‘Childhood’s End’ as foretold by the Clarke in the century past. Will this now be ‘The Second Age of Man’? And will ourselves seem children in comparison to the man (so far he is reported as singular in all ways) who comes?”

“This is perhaps the new morning, the epiphany of one more of the ‘Nine Billion Names of God’ as phrased by the same Clarke, and we will either be ourselves magnified, or we will be reduced to something less than children,” Lisa Baron said lightly. “But we do not know that anything is happening.”

“I stood and talked to a camel this afternoon,” said Charley Mikakeh, “and you say that nothing is happening? ‘What do you make of all the new and strange animals passing through?’ the camel asked me. ‘It’s a puzzler, is it not? And what do you make of myself talking? I and the very few others of my species have not done that for a very long time, not since the mushrooms still had prepuces as a normal thing, and yourself began to walk upright. It’s an odd thing, ape, is it not?’ ‘I am man and not ape,’ I told the camel, somewhat stiffly, I’m afraid. But the very fact that there was this conversation with a camel indicates that something is happening.”

“Perhaps only inside your own head, Charley,” Antole jibed. “I have had conversation with a variety of animal species myself today. All say that it is unusual with them; not at all common for their species to be able to talk. Yet I find it less strange than that we seven, previously unknown to each other, should be gathered here and talking together.”

“Oh, we are the seven magic people,” Hatari said rationally, though he now had a not quite rational look in his eyes. “Every age of the world (and I believe that our own has been the penultimate age) has its seven magic people who came together by psychic magnet at a hinge time. We are the spokesmen for the rest. But if we are the spokesmen, what will we say, and to whom?”

“If we be people indeed (and we never doubted it till this day) then we will speak it to our own variant (this mysterious shining man), and it will be given to us in that moment what we should say,” Helen Rubric was murmuring with her eyes half-closed. “But I am very edgy about all this, and I believe that we are really coming to the edge. There is something wrong with the setting and the set.”

“What do you say, Helen?” Jorge asked. “What is wrong with the set?”

“The set is off; it is gone wrong. Both the picture and the sound seem doubled, Jorge.”

“Cannot it be fixed? But what am I talking about? I do feel for a moment that we are no more than animated cartoons on a screen. But this isn’t a TV set; it is something larger.”

“This set is the whole-world set, Jorge,” Helen Rubric muttered. “And it has gone too far wrong to be fixed by ourselves. It may be fixed by this new fixer who comes. But I feel that we ourselves are diminished and demoted, that we are put into a shadowy box now and confined to a narrow corner.

“I gazed upon my own double today and talked with her. She said that her name was Mary Rainwood. She seemed to take a saddened and sisterly view of me. She is an animal of the species orangutan; and if we are sisters under the skin, then hers is much the thicker and hairier skin; I might say that hers is the harder skin to get under. I know her species, but of what species am I an animal?

“It was odd that she was able to speak. She says that it only happens in the last seven days of an age. It seems equally odd that I am able to speak, and I really wonder whether I have been doing it for more than seven days. I believe that our own era has been a very short one and a deponent one.”

It was something like a ski lodge there in that private club room of the International Hotel of Mosul. Very cozy there by the open fire at night after a strenuous day on the snow slopes. What open fire? What snow slopes? That was all illusion.

It was more like a cave they were in. Open fire or not, there was a flickering and a shadowing on the cave walls. And’ the talk among them became more and more shadowy on that last night of the age.

It was morning then. It hadn’t been such a long evening and night, only a few hours. It hadn’t been such a long age, no more than thirty or forty thousand years. They went out in that morning to a place a little bit beyond Mosul. Seven magic persons on either the last or the first morning of their magic.

The shining man hadn’t arrived from anywhere. All ways of coming had been watched by some or other of the creatures. And yet he was there now on the crown of the animated hill. He was very much as all the creatures had supposed he would be, before they had seen him at all: not really shining, not of imposing stature, with an inexperienced and almost foolish look on his face, not complex, not at all magic; competent, though, and filled with an uneasy sort of grace.

He was not nervous. Nervousness, of course, was not possible for such an excellent one as he was. But he was in some pain, for he was already in light travail.

The animated hill was merely a wide low hill (higher, though, than the high hills around it) covered with creatures. They were in tiers and files and arrays; they were in congregations and assemblies and constellations. Creatures almost beyond counting, enough seemingly to cover the earth, and they did very nearly cover the wide hill.

The man appointed and named them, speaking to them with an easy dominance, and then sending them away again, species after species, speechless again for another era, yet having their assigned places and tasks for a new age of the world.

Earthworms, beetles, damselflies, honeybees, locusts, cicadas, came and went. They had slightly new assignments now in a world which would be at least slightly different. Shrikes and eagles and doves and storks came through the crowded air. The spoke; sometimes they argued; they were convinced, or they accepted their assignments without being convinced. But they winged away again, speechless now once more, but far from soundless.

Time became diffused and multiplex, for the man imposed and directed thousands of species while the sun hardly moved. Space also was extradimensional, for the wide low hill could not have served as staging space for so many species in the normal order of things.

“We will be the last ones,” Lisa Baron said to her magical companions. “As we are the highest species, the lords of the world, so we will have the final instruction and appreciation. Ourselves, the first age of mankind, will receive confirmation and approval from this aberrant creature who (however unlikely he seems) ushers in the second age of mankind. I beg you all, confer with him straightfaced and in all seriousness. Consider that his office is more important than himself. We are the giants and he is the dwarf, but he is higher than ourselves, for he is appointed to stand on our shoulders.”