Clarke, Arthur C - SSC 04 (2 page)

George didn't know. One of his recurring nightmares was that there would be
some change of plan, and that the high lama (whom they'd naturally called Sam
Jaffe, though he didn't look a bit like him) would suddenly announce that the
project would be extended to approximately A.D. 2060. They were quite capable
of it.

George heard the heavy wooden door slam in the wind as Chuck came out on to
the parapet beside him. As usual, Chuck was smoking one of the cigars that made
him so popular with the monks - who, it seemed, were quite willing to embrace
all the minor and most of the major pleasures of life. That was one thing hi
then: favour: they might be crazy, but they weren't bluenoses. Those frequent
trips they took down to the village, for instance…

'Listen, George,' said Chuck urgently. I've learned something that means
trouble.'

'What's wrong? Isn't the machine behaving?' That was the worst contingency
George could imagine. It might delay his return, and nothing could be more
horrible. The way he felt now, even the sight of a TV commercial would seem
like manna from heaven. At least it would be some link with home.

'No - it's nothing like that.' Chuck settled himself on the parapet, which
was unusual because normally he was scared of the drop. 'I've just found what
all this is about.'

'What d'ya mean? I thought we knew.'

'Sure - we know what the monks are trying to do. But we didn't know why.
It's the craziest thing -'

'Tell me something new,' growled George.

'- but old Sam's just come clean with me. You know the way he drops in every
afternoon to watch the sheets roll out. Well, this time he seemed rather
excited, or at least as near as he'll ever get to it. When I told him that we
were on the last cycle he asked me, in that cute English accent of his, if I'd
ever wondered what they were trying to do. I said, "Sure" -and he
told me.'

'Go on: I'll buy it.'

'Well, they believe that when they have listed all His names - and they
reckon that there are about nine billion of them - God's purpose will be
achieved. The human race will have finished what it was created to do, and
there won't be any point in carrying on. Indeed, the very idea is something
like blasphemy.'

'Then what do they expect us to do? Commit suicide?'

'There's no need for that. When the list's completed, God steps in and
simply winds things up… bingo!'

'Oh, I get it. When we finish our job, it will be the end of the world.'

Chuck gave a nervous little laugh.

'That's just what I said to Sam. And do you know what happened? He looked at
me in a very queer way, like I'd been stupid in class, and said, "It's
nothing as trivial as that."'

George thought this over for a moment.

'That's what I call taking the Wide View,' he said presently. 'But what
d'you suppose we should do about it? I don't see that it makes the slightest
difference to us. After all, we already knew that they were crazy.'

'Yes - but don't you see what may happen? When the list's complete and the
Last Trump doesn't blow - or whatever it is they expect -
we
may get
the blame. It's our machine they've been using. I don't like the situation one
little bit.'

'I see,' said George slowly. 'You've a point there. But this sort of thing's
happened before, you know. When I was a kid down in
Louisiana
we had a crackpot preacher who once said the world was going to end next
Sunday. Hundreds of people believed him - even sold then: homes. Yet when
nothing happened, they didn't turn nasty, as you'd expect. They just decided
that he'd made a mistake in his calculations and went right on believing. I
guess some of them still do.'

'Well, this isn't
Louisiana
,
in case you hadn't noticed. There are just two of us and hundreds of these
monks. I like them, and I'll be sorry for old Sam when his life backfires on
him. But all the same, I wish I was somewhere else.'

'I've been wishing that for weeks. But there's nothing we can do until the
contract's finished and the transport arrives to fly us out.'

'Of course,' said Chuck thoughtfully, 'we could always try a bit of
sabotage.'

'Like hell we could! That would make things worse.'

'Not the way I meant. Look at it like this. The machine will finish its run
four days from now, on the present twenty-hours-a-day basis. The transport
calls in a week. O.K. - then all we need to do is to find something that needs
replacing during one of the overhaul periods - something that will hold up the
works for a couple of days. We'll fix it, of course, but not too quickly. If we
time matters properly, we can be down at the airfield when the last name pops
out of the register. They won't be able to catch us then.'

'I don't like it,' said George. 'It will be the first time I ever walked out
on a job. Besides, it would make them suspicious. No, I'll sit tight and take
what comes.'

'I still don't like it,' he said, seven days later, as the tough little
mountain ponies carried them down the winding road. 'And don't you think I'm
running away because I'm afraid. I'm just sorry for those poor old guys up
there, and I don't want to be around when they find what suckers they've been.
Wonder how Sam will take it?'

'It's funny,' replied Chuck, 'but when I said good-bye I got the idea he
knew we were walking out on him - and that he didn't care because he knew the
machine was running smoothly and that the job would soon be finished. After
that - well, of course, for him there just isn't any After That…'

George turned in his saddle and stared back up the mountain road. This was
the last place from which one could get a clear view of the lamasery. The
squat, angular buildings were silhouetted against the afterglow of the sunset:
here and there, lights gleamed like portholes in the side of an ocean liner.
Electric lights, of course, sharing the same circuit as the Mark V. How much
longer would they share it? wondered George. Would the monks smash up the
computer in their rage and disappointment? Or would they just sit down quietly
and begin their calculations all over again?

He knew exactly what was happening up on the mountain at this very moment.
The high lama and his assistants would be sitting in their silk robes,
inspecting the sheets as the junior monks carried them away from the
typewriters and pasted them into the great volumes. No one would be saying
anything. The only sound would be the incessant patter, the never-ending
rainstorm of the keys hitting the paper, for the Mark V itself was utterly
silent as it flashed through its thousands of calculations a second. Three
months of this, thought George, was enough to start anyone climbing up the
wall.

"There she is!' called Chuck, pointing down into the valley. 'Ain't she
beautiful!'

She certainly was, thought George. The battered old DC3 lay at the end of
the runway like a tiny silver cross. In two hours she would be bearing them
away to freedom and sanity. It was a thought worth savouring like a fine
liqueur. George let it roll round his mind as the pony trudged patiently down
the slope.

The swift night of the high
Himalayas
was now almost
upon them. Fortunately, the road was very good, as roads went hi that region,
and they were both carrying torches. There was not the slightest danger, only a
certain discomfort from the bitter cold. The sky overhead was perfectly clear,
and ablaze with the familiar, friendly stars. At least there would be no risk,
thought George, of the pilot being unable to take off because of weather
conditions. That had been his only remaining worry.

He began to sing, but gave it up after a while. This vast arena of
mountains, gleaming like whitely hooded ghosts on every side, did not encourage
such ebullience. Presently George glanced at his watch.

'Should be there hi an hour,' he called back over his shoulder to Chuck.
Then he added, in an afterthought: 'Wonder if the computer's finished its run.
It was due about now.'

Chuck didn't reply, so George swung round in his saddle. He could just see
Chuck's face, a white oval turned towards the sky.

'Look,' whispered Chuck, and George lifted his eyes to heaven. (There is
always a last tune for everything.)

Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out.

First published in
The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction
,
July 1955, as ‘?’Collected in
The Other
Side of the Sky
‘Refugee’ was originally published by Anthony Boucher as ‘?’
because he didn’t like the title, after which he ran a competition to find a
better one, choosing ‘This Earth of Majesty’. Meanwhile, in
New Worlds
Ted Carnell called it ‘Royal
Prerogative’, adding to the confusion. I cannot pretend that no resemblance was
intended to any living character. Indeed, I have since met the prototype of
‘Prince Henry’ and we had a conversation uncannily appropriate to this meeting.
           
‘When he comes aboard,’ said Captain
Saunders, as he waited for the landing ramp to extrude itself, ‘what the devil
shall I call him?’

           
There was a thoughtful silence while
the navigation officer and the assistant pilot considered this problem in
etiquette. Then Mitchell locked the main control panel, and the ship’s
multitudinous mechanisms lapsed into unconsciousness as power was withdrawn
from them.

           
‘The correct address,’ he drawled
slowly, ‘is “Your Royal Highness”.’

           
‘Huh!’ snorted the captain. ‘I’ll be
damned if I’ll call anyone
that
!’

           
‘In these progressive days,’ put in
Chambers helpfully, ‘I believe that “Sir” is quite sufficient. But there’s no
need to worry if you forget: it’s been a long time since anyone went to the
Tower. Besides, this Henry isn’t as tough a proposition as the one who had all
the wives.’

           
‘From all accounts,’ added Mitchell,
‘he’s a very pleasant young man. Quite intelligent, too. He’s often been known
to ask people technical questions that they couldn’t answer.’

           
Captain Saunders ignored the
implications of this remark, beyond resolving that if Prince Henry wanted to
know how a field Compensation Drive Generator worked, then Mitchell could do
the explaining. He got gingerly to his feet – they’d been operating on half a
gravity during flight, and now they were on Earth, he felt like a ton of bricks
– and started to make his way along the corridors that led to the lower air
lock. With an oily purring, the great curving door side-stepped out of his way.
Adjusting his smile, he walked out to meet the television cameras and the heir
to the British throne.

           
The man who would, presumably, one
day be Henry IX of
England
was still in his early twenties. He was
slightly below average height, and had fine-drawn, regular features that really
lived up to all the genealogical clichés. Captain Saunders, who came from
Dallas and had no intention of being impressed by any prince, found himself
unexpectedly moved by the wide, sad eyes. They were eyes that had seen too many
receptions and parades, that had had to watch countless totally uninteresting
things, that had never been allowed to stray far from the carefully planned
official routes. Looking at that proud but weary face, Captain Saunders
glimpsed for the first time the ultimate loneliness of royalty. All his dislike
of that institution became suddenly trivial against its real defect: what was
wrong with the Crown was the unfairness of inflicting such a burden on any
human being….

           
The passageways of the
Centaurus
were too narrow to allow for
general sight-seeing, and it was soon clear that it suited Prince Henry very
well to leave his entourage behind. Once they had begun moving through the
ship, Saunders lost all his stiffness and reserve, and within a few minutes was
treating the prince exactly like any other visitor. He did not realise that one
of the earliest lessons royalty has to learn is that of putting people at their
ease.

           
‘You know, Captain,’ said the prince
wistfully, ‘this is a big day for us. I’ve always hoped that one day it would
be possible for spaceships to operate from
England
. But it still seems strange to have a port
of our own here, after all these years. Tell me – did you ever have much to do
with rockets?’

           
‘Well, I had some training on them,
but they were already on the way out before I graduated. I was lucky: some
older men had to go back to school and start all over again – or else abandon
space completely if they couldn’t convert to the new ships.’

           
‘It made as much difference as
that?’

           
‘Oh yes – when the rocket went, it
was as big as the change from sail to steam. That’s an analogy you’ll often
hear, by the way. There was a glamour about the old rockets, just as there was
about the old windjammers, which these modern ships haven’t got. When the
Centaurus
takes off, she goes up as
quietly as a balloon – and as slowly, if she wants to. But a rocket blastoff
shook the ground for miles, and you’d be deaf for days if you were too near the
launching apron. Still, you know all that from the old news recordings.’