Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke (153 page)

‘Certainly.’

Now he could tell that Stanyukovitch was a long way off. There was an appreciable time lag before his reply arrived; the station must be above the far side of the Earth.

‘When I was at Astrograd, I noticed many other patients at the clinic. I was wondering – on what basis do you select those for treatment?’

This time the pause was much greater than the delay due to the sluggish speed of radio waves. Then Stanyukovitch answered: ‘Why, those with the best chance of responding.’

‘But your accommodation must be very limited. You must have many other candidates besides myself.’

‘I don’t quite see the point—’ interrupted Dr Harkness, a little too anxiously.

Steelman swung his eyes to the right-hand screen. It was quite difficult to recognise, in the man staring back at him, the witness who had squirmed beneath his needling only a few years ago. That experience had tempered Harkness, had given him his baptism in the art of politics. Steelman had taught him much, and he had applied his hard-won knowledge.

His motives had been obvious from the first. Harkness would have been less than human if he did not relish this sweetest of revenges, this triumphant vindication of his faith. And as Space Administration Director, he was well aware that half his budget battles would be over when all the world knew that a potential President of the United States was in a Russian space hospital … because his own country did not possess one.

‘Dr Harkness,’ said Steelman gently, ‘this is
my
affair. I’m still waiting for your answer, Professor.’

Despite the issues involved, he was quite enjoying this. The two scientists, of course, were playing for identical stakes. Stanyukovitch had his problems too; Steelman could guess the discussions that had taken place at Astrograd and Moscow, and the eagerness with which the Soviet astronauts had grasped this opportunity – which, it must be admitted, they had richly earned.

It was an ironic situation, unimaginable only a dozen years before. Here were NASA and the USSR Commission of Astronautics working hand in hand, using him as a pawn for their mutual advantage. He did not resent this, for in their place he would have done the same. But he had no wish to be a pawn; he was an individual who still had some control of his own destiny.

‘It’s quite true,’ said Stanyukovitch, very reluctantly, ‘that we can only take a limited number of patients here in Mechnikov. In any case, the station’s a research laboratory, not a hospital.’

‘How many?’ asked Steelman relentlessly.

‘Well – fewer than ten,’ admitted Stanyukovitch, still more unwillingly.

It was an old problem, of course, though he had never imagined that it would apply to him. From the depths of memory there flashed a newspaper item he had come across long ago. When penicillin had been first discovered, it was so rare that if both Churchill and Roosevelt had been dying for lack of it, only one could have been treated …

Fewer than ten
. He had seen a dozen waiting at Astrograd, and how many were there in the whole world? Once again, as it had done so often in the last few days, the memory of those desolate lovers in the reception room came back to haunt him. Perhaps they were beyond his aid; he would never know.

But one thing he did know. He bore a responsibility that he could not escape. It was true that no man could foresee the future, and the endless consequences of his actions. Yet if it had not been for him, by this time his own country might have had a space hospital circling beyond the atmosphere. How many American lives were upon his conscience? Could he accept the help he had denied to others? Once he might have done so – but not now.

‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘I can speak frankly with you both, for I know your interests are identical.’ (His mild irony, he saw, did not escape them.) ‘I appreciate your help and the trouble you have taken; I am sorry it has been wasted. No – don’t protest; this isn’t a sudden, quixotic decision on my part. If I was ten years younger, it might be different. Now I feel that this opportunity should be given to someone else – especially in view of my record.’ He glanced at Dr Harkness, who gave an embarrassed smile. ‘I also have other, personal reasons, and there’s no chance that I will change my mind. Please don’t think me rude or ungrateful, but I don’t wish to discuss the matter any further. Thank you again, and goodbye.’

He broke the circuit; and as the image of the two astonished scientists faded, peace came flooding back into his soul.

Imperceptibly, spring merged into summer. The eagerly awaited Bicentenary celebrations came and went; for the first time in years, he was able to enjoy Independence Day as a private citizen. Now he could sit back and watch the others perform – or he could ignore them if he wished.

Because the ties of a lifetime were too strong to break, and it would be his last opportunity to see many old friends, he spent hours looking in on both conventions and listening to the commentators. Now that he saw the whole world beneath the light of Eternity, his emotions were no longer involved; he understood the issues, and appreciated the arguments, but already he was as detached as an observer from another planet. The tiny, shouting figures on the screen were amusing marionettes, acting out roles in a play that was entertaining, but no longer important – at least, to him.

But it was important to his grandchildren, who would one day move out onto this same stage. He had not forgotten that; they were his share of the future, whatever strange form it might take. And to understand the future, it was necessary to know the past.

He was taking them into that past, as the car swept along Memorial Drive. Diana was at the wheel, with Irene beside her, while he sat with the children, pointing out the familiar sights along the highway. Familiar to him, but not to them; even if they were not old enough to understand all that they were seeing, he hoped they would remember.

Past the marble stillness of Arlington (he thought again of Martin, sleeping on the other side of the world) and up into the hills the car wound its effortless way. Behind them, like a city seen through a mirage, Washington danced and trembled in the summer haze, until the curve of the road hid it from view.

It was quiet at Mount Vernon; there were few visitors so early in the week. As they left the car and walked toward the house, Steelman wondered what the first President of the United States would have thought could he have seen his home as it was today. He could never have dreamed that it would enter its second century still perfectly preserved, a changeless island in the hurrying river of time.

They walked slowly through the beautifully proportioned rooms, doing their best to answer the children’s endless questions, trying to assimilate the flavour of an infinitely simpler, infinitely more leisurely mode of life. (But had it seemed simple or leisurely to those who lived it?) It was so hard to imagine a world without electricity, without radio, without any power save that of muscle, wind, and water. A world where nothing moved faster than a running horse, and most men died within a few miles of the place where they were born.

The heat, the walking and the incessant questions proved more tiring than Steelman had expected. When they had reached the Music Room, he decided to rest. There were some attractive benches out on the porch, where he could sit in the fresh air and feast his eyes upon the green grass of the lawn.

‘Meet me outside,’ he explained to Diana, ‘when you’ve done the kitchen and the stables. I’d like to sit down for a while.’

‘You’re sure you’re quite all right?’ she said anxiously.

‘I never felt better, but I don’t want to overdo it. Besides, the kids have drained me dry – I can’t think of any more answers. You’ll have to invent some; the kitchen’s your department, anyway.’

Diana smiled.

‘I was never much good in it, was I? But I’ll do my best – I don’t suppose we’ll be more than thirty minutes.’

When they had left him, he walked slowly out onto the lawn. Here Washington must have stood, two centuries ago, watching the Potomac wind its way to the sea, thinking of past wars and future problems. And here Martin Steelman, thirty-eighth President of the United States, might have stood a few months hence, had the fates ruled otherwise.

He coud not pretend that he had no regrets, but they were very few. Some men could achieve both power and happiness, but that gift was not for him. Sooner or later, his ambition would have consumed him. In the last few weeks he had known contentment, and for that no price was too great.

He was still marvelling at the narrowness of his escape when his time ran out and Death fell softly from the summer sky.

Before Eden

First published in
Amazing
, June 1961

Collected in
Tales of Ten Worlds

‘I guess,’ said Jerry Garfield, cutting the engines, ‘that this is the end of the line.’ With a gentle sigh, the underjets faded out; deprived of its air cushion, the scout car
Rambling Wreck
settled down upon the twisted rocks of the Hesperian Plateau.

There was no way forward; neither on its jets nor its tractors could S.5 – to give the
Wreck
its official name – scale the escarpment that lay ahead. The South Pole of Venus was only thirty miles away, but it might have been on another planet. They would have to turn back, and retrace their four-hundred-mile journey through this nightmare landscape.

The weather was fantastically clear, with visibiliy of almost a thousand yards. There was no need of radar to show the cliffs ahead; for once, the naked eye was good enough. The green auroral light, filtering down through clouds that had rolled unbroken for a million years, gave the scene an underwater appearance, and the way in which all distant objects blurred into the haze added to the impression. Sometimes it was easy to believe that they were driving across a shallow sea bed, and more than once Jerry had imagined that he had seen fish floating overhead.

‘Shall I call the ship, and say we’re turning back?’ he asked.

‘Not yet,’ said Dr Hutchins. ‘I want to think.’

Jerry shot an appealing glance at the third member of the crew, but found no moral support there. Coleman was just as bad; although the two men argued furiously half the time, they were both scientists and therefore, in the opinion of a hardheaded engineer-navigator, not wholly responsible citizens. If Cole and Hutch had bright ideas about going forward, there was nothing he could do except register a protest.

Hutchins was pacing back and forth in the tiny cabin, studying charts and instruments. Presently he swung the car’s searchlight toward the cliffs, and began to examine them carefully with binoculars. Surely, thought Jerry, he doesn’t expect me to drive up there! S.5 was a hover-track, not a mountain goat …

Abruptly, Hutchins found something. He released his breath in a sudden explosive gasp, then turned to Coleman.

‘Look!’ he said, his voice full of excitement. ‘Just to the left of that black mark! Tell me what you see.’

He handed over the glasses, and it was Coleman’s turn to stare.

‘Well, I’m damned,’ he said at length. ‘You were right. There
are
rivers on Venus. That’s a dried-up waterfall.’

‘So you owe me one dinner at the Bel Gourmet when we get back to Cambridge. With champagne.’

‘No need to remind me. Anyway, it’s cheap at the price. But this still leaves your other theories strictly on the crackpot level.’

‘Just a minute,’ interjected Jerry. ‘What’s all this about rivers and waterfalls? Everyone knows they can’t exist on Venus. It never gets cold enough on this steam bath of a planet for the clouds to condense.’

‘Have you looked at the thermometer lately?’ asked Hutchins with deceptive mildness.

‘I’ve been slightly too busy driving.’

‘Then I’ve news for you. It’s down to two hundred and thirty, and still falling. Don’t forget – we’re almost at the Pole, it’s wintertime, and we’re sixty thousand feet above the lowlands. All this adds up to a distinct nip in the air. If the temperature drops a few more degrees, we’ll have rain. The water will be boiling, of course – but it will be water. And though George won’t admit it yet, this puts Venus in a completely different light.’

‘Why?’ asked Jerry, though he had already guessed.

‘Where there’s water, there may be life. We’ve been in too much of a hurry to assume that Venus is sterile, merely because the average temperature’s over five hundred degrees. It’s a lot colder here, and that’s why I’ve been so anxious to get to the Pole. There are lakes up here in the highlands, and I want to look at them.’

‘But
boiling
water!’ protested Coleman. ‘Nothing could live in that!’

‘There are algae that manage it on Earth. And if we’ve learned one thing since we started exploring the planets, it’s this: wherever life has the slightest chance of surviving, you’ll find it. This is the only chance it’s ever had on Venus.’

‘I wish we could test your theory. But you can see for yourself – we can’t go up that cliff.’

‘Perhaps not in the car. But it won’t be too difficult to climb those rocks, even wearing thermosuits. All we need do is walk a few miles toward the Pole; according to the radar maps, it’s fairly level once you’re over the rim. We could manage in – oh, twelve hours at the most. Each of us has been out for longer than that, in much worse conditions.’