Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke (25 page)

There are many such today, with good reason. To them I dedicate these words, written before they were born.

CHAPTER ONE

Revolt

Toward the close of the twenty-sixth century the great tide of Science had at last begun to ebb. The long series of inventions that had shaped and moulded the world for nearly a thousand years was coming to its end. Everything had been discovered. One by one, all the great dreams of the past had become reality.

Civilisation was completely mechanised – yet machinery had almost vanished. Hidden in the walls of the cities or buried far underground, the perfect machines bore the burden of the world. Silently, unobtrusively, the robots attended to their masters’ needs, doing their work so well that their presence seemed as natural as the dawn.

There was still much to learn in the realm of pure science, and the astronomers, now that they were no longer bound to Earth, had work enough for a thousand years to come. But the physical sciences and the arts they nourished had ceased to be the chief preoccupation of the race. By the year 2600 the finest human minds were no longer to be found in the laboratories.

The men whose names meant most to the world were the artists and philosophers, the lawgivers and statesmen. The engineers and the great inventors belonged to the past. Like the men who had once ministered to long-vanished diseases, they had done their work so well that they were no longer required.

Five hundred years were to pass before the pendulum swung back again.

The view from the studio was breath-taking, for the long, curving room was over two miles from the base of Central Tower. The five other giant buildings of the city clustered below, their metal walls gleaming with all the colours of the spectrum as they caught the rays of the morning sun. Lower still, the checkerboard fields of the automatic farms stretched away until they were lost in the mists of the horizon. But for once, the beauty of the scene was wasted on Richard Peyton II as he paced angrily among the great blocks of synthetic marble that were the raw materials of his art.

The huge, gorgeously coloured masses of artificial rock completely dominated the studio. Most of them were roughly hewn cubes, but some were beginning to assume the shapes of animals, human beings, and abstract solids that no geometrician would have dared to give a name. Sitting awkwardly on a ten-ton block of diamond – the largest ever synthesised – the artist’s son was regarding his famous parent with an unfriendly expression.

‘I don’t think I’d mind so much,’ Richard Peyton II remarked peevishly, ‘if you were content to do nothing, so long as you did it gracefully. Certain people excel at that, and on the whole they make the world more interesting. But why you should want to make a life study of engineering is more than I can imagine.

‘Yes, I know we let you take technology as your main subject, but we never thought you were so serious about it. When I was your age I had a passion for botany – but I never made it my main interest in life. Has Professor Chandras Ling been giving you ideas?’

Richard Peyton III blushed.

‘Why shouldn’t he? I know what my vocation is, and he agrees with me. You’ve read his report.’

The artist waved several sheets of paper in the air, holding them between thumb and forefinger like some unpleasant insect.

‘I have,’ he said grimly. ‘“Shows very unusual mechanical ability – has done original work in subelectronic research,” et cetera, et cetera. Good heavens, I thought the human race had outgrown those toys centuries ago! Do you want to be a mechanic, first class, and go around attending to disabled robots? That’s hardly a job for a boy of mine, not to mention the grandson of a World Councillor.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t keep bringing Grandfather into this,’ said Richard Peyton III with mounting annoyance. ‘The fact that he was a statesman didn’t prevent your becoming an artist. So why should you expect me to be either?’

The older man’s spectacular golden beard began to bristle ominously.

‘I don’t care what you do as long as it’s something we can be proud of. But why this craze for gadgets? We’ve got all the machines we need. The robot was perfected five hundred years ago: spaceships haven’t changed for at least that time; I believe our present communications system is nearly eight hundred years old. So why change what’s already perfect?’

‘That’s special pleading with a vengeance!’ the young man replied. ‘Fancy an artist saying that anything’s perfect! Father, I’m ashamed of you!’

‘Don’t split hairs. You know perfectly well what I mean. Our ancestors designed machines that provide us with everything we need. No doubt some of them might be a few per cent more efficient. But why worry? Can you mention a single important invention that the world lacks today?’

Richard Peyton III sighed.

‘Listen, Father,’ he said patiently. ‘I’ve been studying history as well as engineering. About twelve centuries ago there were people who said that everything had been invented – and
that
was before the coming of electricity, let alone flying and astronautics. They just didn’t look far enough ahead – their minds were rooted in the present.

‘The same thing’s happening today. For five hundred years the world’s been living on the brains of the past. I’m prepared to admit that some lines of development have come to an end, but there are dozens of others that haven’t even begun.

‘Technically the world has stagnated. It’s not a dark age, because we haven’t forgotten anything. But we’re marking time. Look at space travel. Nine hundred years ago we reached Pluto, and where are we now? Still at Pluto! When are we going to cross interstellar space?’

‘Who wants to go to the stars, anyway?’

The boy made an exclamation of annoyance and jumped off the diamond block in his excitement.

‘What a question to ask in this age! A thousand years ago people were saying, “Who wants to go to the Moon?” Yes, I know it’s unbelievable, but it’s all there in the old books. Nowadays the Moon’s only forty-five minutes away, and people like Harn Jansen work on Earth and live in Plato City.

‘We take interplanetary travel for granted. One day we’re going to do the same with
real
space travel. I could mention scores of other subjects that have come to a full stop simply because people think as you do and are content with what they’ve got.’

‘And why not?’

Peyton waved his arm around in the studio.

‘Be serious, Father. Have you ever been satisfied with anything you’ve made? Only animals are contented.’

The artist laughed ruefully.

‘Maybe you’re right. But that doesn’t affect my argument. I still think you’ll be wasting your life, and so does Grandfather.’ He looked a little embarrassed. ‘In fact, he’s coming down to Earth especially to see you.’

Peyton looked alarmed.

‘Listen, Father, I’ve already told you what I think. I don’t want to have to go through it all again. Because neither Grandfather nor the whole of the World Council will make me alter my mind.’

It was a bombastic statement, and Peyton wondered if he really meant it. His father was just about to reply when a low musical note vibrated through the studio. A second later a mechanical voice spoke from the air.

‘Your father to see you, Mr Peyton.’

He glanced at his son triumphantly.

‘I should have added,’ he said, ‘that Grandfather was coming now. But I know your habit of disappearing when you’re wanted.’

The boy did not answer. He watched his father walk toward the door. Then his lips curved in a smile.

The single pane of glassite that fronted the studio was open, and he stepped out on to the balcony. Two miles below, the great concrete apron of the parking ground gleamed whitely in the sun, except where it was dotted with the teardrop shadows of grounded ships.

Peyton glanced back into the room. It was still empty, though he could hear his father’s voice drifting through the door. He waited no longer. Placing his hand on the balustrade, he vaulted over into space.

Thirty seconds later two figures entered the studio and gazed around in surprise.
The
Richard Peyton, with no qualifying number, was a man who might have been taken for sixty, though that was less than a third of his actual age.

He was dressed in the purple robe worn by only twenty men on Earth and by fewer than a hundred in the entire Solar System. Authority seemed to radiate from him; by comparison, even his famous and self-assured son seemed fussy and inconsequential.

‘Well, where is he?’

‘Confound him! He’s gone out the window. At least we can still say what we think of him.’

Viciously, Richard Peyton II jerked up his wrist and dialled an eight-figure number on his personal communicator. The reply came almost instantly. In clear, impersonal tones an automatic voice repeated endlessly:

‘My master is asleep. Please do not disturb. My master is asleep. Please do not disturb….’

With an exclamation of annoyance Richard Peyton II switched off the instrument and turned to his father. The old man chuckled.

‘Well, he thinks fast. He’s beaten us there. We can’t get hold of him until he chooses to press the clearing button. I certainly don’t intend to chase him at my age.’

There was silence for a moment as the two men gazed at each other with mixed expression. Then, almost simultaneously, they began to laugh.

CHAPTER TWO

The Legend of Comarre

Peyton fell like a stone for a mile and a quarter before he switched on the neutraliser. The rush of air past him, though it made breathing difficult, was exhilarating. He was falling at less than a hundred and fifty miles an hour, but the impression of speed was enhanced by the smooth upward rush of the great building only a few yards away.

The gentle tug of the decelerator field slowed him some three hundred yards from the ground. He fell gently toward the lines of parked flyers ranged at the foot of the tower.

His own speedster was a small single-seat fully-automatic machine. At least, it had been fully automatic when it was built three centuries ago, but its current owner had made so many illegal modifications to it that no one else in the world could have flown it and lived to tell the tale.

Peyton switched off the neutraliser belt – an amusing device which, although technically obsolete, still had interesting possibilities – and stepped into the airlock of his machine. Two minutes later the towers of the city were sinking below the rim of the world and the uninhabited Wild Lands were speeding beneath at four thousand miles an hour.

Peyton set his course westward and almost immediately was over the ocean. He could do nothing but wait; the ship would reach its goal automatically. He leaned back in the pilot’s seat, thinking bitter thoughts and feeling sorry for himself.

He was more disturbed than he cared to admit. The fact that his family failed to share his technical interests had ceased to worry Peyton years ago. But this steadily growing opposition, which had now come to a head, was something quite new. He was completely unable to understand it.

Ten minutes later a single white pylon began to climb out of the ocean like the sword Excalibur rising from the lake. The city known to the world as Scientia, and to its more cynical inhabitants as Bat’s Belfry, had been built eight centuries ago on an island far from the major land masses. The gesture had been one of independence, for the last traces of nationalism had still lingered in that far-off age.

Peyton grounded his ship on the landing apron and walked to the nearest entrance. The boom of the great waves, breaking on the rocks a hundred yards away, was a sound that never failed to impress him.

He paused for a moment at the opening, inhaling the salt air and watching the gulls and migrant birds circling the tower. They had used this speck of land as a resting place when man was still watching the dawn with puzzled eyes and wondering if it was a god.

The Bureau of Genetics occupied a hundred floors near the centre of the tower. It had taken Peyton ten minutes to reach the City of Science. It required almost as long again to locate the man he wanted in the cubic miles of offices and laboratories.

Alan Henson II was still one of Peyton’s closest friends, although he had left the University of Antarctica two years earlier and had been studying biogenetics rather than engineering. When Peyton was in trouble, which was not infrequently, he found his friend’s calm common sense very reassuring. It was natural for him to fly to Scientia now, especially since Henson had sent him an urgent call only the day before.

The biologist was pleased and relieved to see Peyton, yet his welcome had an undercurrent of nervousness.

‘I’m glad you’ve come; I’ve got some news that will interest you. But you look glum – what’s the matter?’

Peyton told him, not without exaggeration. Henson was silent for a moment.

‘So they’ve started already!’ he said. ‘We might have expected it!’

‘What do you mean?’ asked Peyton in surprise.

The biologist opened a drawer and pulled out a sealed envelope. From it he extracted two plastic sheets in which were cut several hundred parallel slots of varying lengths. He handed one to his friend.