Дэймон Найт: Orbit 11

Cain suddenly gave the little twitch that signified something had occured to him. “He said ‘for the first time.’ But it might not be the first time for anyone. Suppose in the universe before this one a race put forth a Seed. Then they could exist somewhere in this universe, a race billions, maybe trillions of years old. We would be like children compared to them.”

“If they put out a Seed before, they would probably do it again, storing their knowledge in records on the Seed or Seeds. So they would always be a universe ahead of us, universe after universe, having an edge of knowledge on us. Bad if they didn’t want to see any other races surviving the contraction periods. Uh-oh.”

“Well?” That was Cain. Erika was sulking, silent. “The universe pulsates,” Cullins said, “so it will never have an end and it never had a beginning. So anything that could possibly happen will have happened, having had an infinite time to happen. So if anybody was going to put out a Seed, they would have done it. And if a Seed was going to succeed, say a Seed launched by the Oofians, it would have done so an infinite time ago. And the Oofians have had an infinite time to keep on surviving universe after universe, launching more Seeds each time, putting their entire population in Seeds, their population growing each cycle until it fills the universe. So why aren’t we armpit deep in Oofians on this planet? And, since we are not, why isn’t the Seed possible?”

Cain watched the screen. They were not showing the Seed anymore. This was harder to cover than a starship takeoff. A starship keeps on traveling into empty space, going somewhere. Fade out. The Seed came instantly into being, stayed put, did nothing; and would keep doing it for many billion years.

“If anything that can happen has happened, then somewhere along the line a race arose capable of challenging the Oofians, because of higher intelligence, say. Both races were wiped out. Or maybe every race that does this tires eventually and stops putting out Seeds.”

“Something like that, maybe,” Cullins said. “The Seed has to work.” He began to caress Erika, too gently to suit her.

Cain left, though they would have paid no attention to him anyway.

Q: This circus is the salvation of the race?

A: I refer you to my previous answer concerning the nobility-ignobility of ends versus means. Moreover, journalists and politicians have generally been the worst of the race, not the best, and this fete is of their staging. I might add that you are judging by those who have been left behind, fated to persist in their own deaths, even before the death of the universe, and not by those who have been sent into the future.

Q: But that Erika ... she is the female companion of the instigator of the Seed but behaves like a nymphomaniac, caring nothing about the Seed. Why cannot he have a Brünnhilde at his side?

A: One more question like that and I will suspect you of harboring a perverted desire to see women burned alive. Her behavior is hardly surprising, for she is a nymphomaniac, and one with an IQ of ninety. She meets Cullins’ needs, so there is no cause for worry. Perhaps he throws the energy that others use in creating a normal sexual relationship into fighting for the Seed. Perhaps he is incapable of a normal relationship and this is his adjustment. It is more of an adjustment than Cain has made. The main point is that you are judging them by their more pitiable failings and not by their nobler aspects.

Q: Speaking of nobler aspects, why weren’t we shown the crew of the Seed?

A: Because they are a very stable and dull lot.

Hearts caught in midbeat, lungs in midcycle. The blood, unmoving, fills arteries and veins as if it were stone. Life processes are caught in midstride, reactions not reacting chemical equilibrium replaced by stasis. A stable and dull lot they may be, but two of the crew, a man and his wife, have spurned the festivities and retired to their quarters, where now lurks the beast with two backs. Through experience and familiarity gained long ago, and with an eye on the chronometer, they have carefully timed the conclusion of their cooperation to coincide with the launching of the Seed. A hairsbreadth away from fluid eruptions, they are now motionless, ready to greet the new universe with the oldest challenge to death. Only an instant ago they moved with careful frenzy, but now they do not move.

Some of the things that Roy Cullins and, Elfred John Cain worried about:

1) The crew of the Seed loses heart, daunted by the new universe in which they are lost, and turns the McJunkins generator back on, preferring to try the next universe. They are daunted by that universe and use the generator again, trying their luck with still another universe. Daunted by that universe, they use the generator again. . . .

2) The universe, though oscillating, is gradually running down and each expansion is smaller than the one before and the cosmos will eventually contract and not expand again. This time, maybe. Tough luck, Seed.

3) The universe, though oscillating, explodes more violently each time and will eventually expand without limit and never contract again. This time, maybe. Sorry about that, Seed.

4) The Oofians are real and wait until each intelligent race put forth a Seed, then moves in and wipes out the race, colonizes the sterilized planets, and puts each Seed in a museum of Seeds.

5) The estimated time of contraction-expansion of the universe is incorrect and the McJunkins field will collapse in the midst of the fiery contraction or explosion. Good-bye, Seed.

6) The natural laws of the new universe will be different from this one’s and the chemical processes of human life will not be able to function. Sleep on, Seed.

7) Men of the future will discover a way to turn off a McJunkins field, decide that the Seed is a cruel and evil waste of life, and release the crew.

8) Exposure to the McJunkins field makes humans sterile.

9) The events in each universe are exactly duplicated in the one before and will be triplicated in the one after and this repetition can be extended infinitely into the past and future; and an infinite number of Cullinses and Cains have launched an infinite number of Seeds an infinite number of times before and will continue to launch them forever; and they have always failed and will always fail, for the survival of a Seed would make the next universe different from the one before, therefore a contradiction, therefore. . . .

A crewman, to smother his nervousness, was smoking a cigarette when time stopped. Now the smoke is baroquely wreathed about him, more rigid than any metal, sculpted by the air currents which were once blown by the air conditioner until time stopped. Now, in a Now which does not cease, the air currents themselves are rigid and the fans of the air conditioner are poised. The life of the ship depends on many systems which must never stop moving. But now they do not move.

The one thing that Roy Cullins and Elfred John Cain should have worried about:

The electromagnetic radiations which man can see or detect and measure and which he has learned to use to interpret the structure of reality can carry information which causes pleasure, awe, fear, pain, despair. The radiation carrying one type of information need be no different from that carrying another. For over a year a station on Pluto had been gleaning information from quanta that came hurtling in from the farthest outposts of the realm of matter. The information existed in a normative vacuum at first, but a context would soon be supplied.

When it was supplied, the crew of the Seed had been frozen in a perpetual Now for a little less than three years.