Collected Stories Of Arthur C. Clarke (57 page)

Heedless of his scepticism, the girl prattled on. Brant gave only half his mind to her words, interjecting a polite ‘Yes’ or ‘Fancy that’ as occasion demanded. Suddenly, silence fell.

He looked up and found that his companion was staring with much annoyance toward the avenue of trees that overlooked the view.

‘Goodbye,’ she said abruptly. ‘I’ve got to hide somewhere else – here comes my sister.’

She was gone as suddenly as she had arrived. Her family must have a busy time looking after her, Brant decided: but she had done him a good turn by dispelling his melancholy mood.

Within a few hours, he realised that she had done very much more than that.

*

Simon was leaning against his doorpost watching the world go by when Brant came in search of him. The world usually accelerated slightly when it had to pass Simon’s door, for he was an interminable talker and once he had trapped a victim there was no escape for an hour or more. It was most unusual for anyone to walk voluntarily into his clutches, as Brant was doing now.

The trouble with Simon was that he had a first-class mind, and was too lazy to use it. Perhaps he might have been luckier had he been born in a more energetic age; all he had ever been able to do in Chaldis was to sharpen his wits at other people’s expense, thereby gaining more fame than popularity. But he was quite indispensable, for he was a storehouse of knowledge, the greater part of it perfectly accurate.

‘Simon,’ began Brant without any preamble. ‘I want to learn something about this country. The maps don’t tell me much – they’re too new. What was here, back in the old days?’

Simon scratched his wiry beard.

‘I don’t suppose it was very different. How long ago do you mean?’

‘Oh, back in the time of the cities.’

‘There weren’t so many trees, of course. This was probably agricultural land, used for food production. Did you see that farming machine they dug up when the amphitheatre was being built? It must have been old; it wasn’t even electric.’

‘Yes,’ said Brant impatiently. ‘I saw it. But tell me about the cities around here. According to the map, there was a place called Shastar a few hundred miles west of us along the coast. Do you know anything about it?’

‘Ah, Shastar,’ murmured Simon, stalling for time. ‘A very interesting place; I think I’ve even got a picture of it around somewhere. Just a moment while I go and see.’

He disappeared into the house and was gone for nearly five minutes. In that time he made a very extensive library search, though a man from the age of books would hardly have guessed this from his actions. All the records Chaldis possessed were in a metal case a metre on a side; it contained, locked perpetually in subatomic patterns, the equivalent of a billion volumes of print. Almost all the knowledge of mankind, and the whole of its surviving literature, lay here concealed.

It was not merely a passive storehouse of wisdom, for it possessed a librarian. As Simon signalled his request to the tireless machine, the search went down, layer by layer, through the almost infinite network of circuits. It took only a fraction of a second to locate the information he needed, for he had given the name and the approximate date. Then he relaxed as the mental images came flooding into his brain, under the lightest of self-hypnosis. The knowledge would remain in his possession for a few hours only – long enough for his purpose – and would then fade away. Simon had no desire to clutter up his well-organised mind with irrelevancies, and to him the whole story of the rise and fall of the great cities was a historical digression of no particular importance. It was an interesting, if a regrettable, episode, and it belonged to a past that had irretrievably vanished.

Brant was still waiting patiently when he emerged, looking very wise.

‘I couldn’t find any pictures,’ he said. ‘My wife has been tidying up again. But I’ll tell you what I can remember about Shastar.’

Brant settled himself down as comfortably as he could; he was likely to be here for some time.

‘Shastar was one of the very last cities that man ever built. You know, of course, that cities arose quite late in human culture – only about twelve thousand years ago. They grew in number and importance for several thousand years, until at last there were some containing millions of people. It is very hard for us to imagine what it must have been like to live in such places – deserts of steel and stone with not even a blade of grass for miles. But they were necessary, before transport and communication had been perfected, and people had to live near each other to carry out all the intricate operations of trade and manufacture upon which their lives depended.

‘The really great cities began to disappear when air transport became universal. The threat of attack in those far-off, barbarous days also helped to disperse them. But for a long time …’

‘I’ve studied the history of that period,’ interjected Brant, not very truthfully. ‘I know all about …’

‘… for a long time there were still many small cities which were held together by cultural rather than commercial links. They had populations of a few score thousand and lasted for centuries after the passing of the giants. That’s why Oxford and Princeton and Heidelberg still mean something to us, while far larger cities are no more than names. But even these were doomed when the invention of the integrator made it possible for any community, however small, to manufacture without effort everything it needed for civilised living.

‘Shastar was built when there was no longer any need, technically, for cities, but before people realised that the culture of cities was coming to its end. It seems to have been a conscious work of art, conceived and designed as a whole, and those who lived there were mostly artists of some kind. But it didn’t last very long; what finally killed it was the exodus.’

Simon became suddenly quiet, as if brooding on those tumultuous centuries when the road to the stars had been opened up and the world was torn in twain. Along that road the flower of the race had gone, leaving the rest behind; and thereafter it seemed that history had come to an end on Earth. For a thousand years or more the exiles had returned fleetingly to the solar system, wistfully eager to tell of strange suns and far planets and the great empire that would one day span the galaxy. But there are gulfs that even the swiftest ships can never cross; and such a gulf was opening now between Earth and her wandering children. They had less and less in common; the returning ships became ever more infrequent, until at last generations passed between the visits from outside. Simon had not heard of any such for almost three hundred years.

It was unusual when one had to prod Simon into speech, but presently Brant remarked: ‘Anyway, I’m more interested in the place itself than its history. Do you think it’s still standing?’

‘I was coming to that,’ said Simon, emerging from his reverie with a start. ‘Of course it is; they built well in those days. But why are you so interested, may I ask? Have you suddenly developed an overwhelming passion for archaeology? Oh, I think I understand!’

Brant knew perfectly well the uselessness of trying to conceal anything from a professional busybody like Simon.

‘I was hoping,’ he said defensively, ‘that there might still be things there worth going to find, even after all this time.’

‘Perhaps,’ said Simon doubtfully. ‘I must visit it one day. It’s almost on our doorstep, as it were. But how are
you
going to manage? The village will hardly let you borrow a flyer! And you can’t walk. It would take you at least a week to get there.’

But that was exactly what Brant intended to do. As, during the next few days, he was careful to point out to almost everyone in the village, a thing wasn’t worth doing unless one did it the hard way. There was nothing like making a virtue out of a necessity.

Brant’s preparations were carried out in an unprecedented blaze of secrecy. He did not wish to be too specific about his plans, such as they were, in case any of the dozen or so people in Chaldis who had the right to use a flyer decided to look at Shastar first. It was, of course, only a matter of time before this happened, but the feverish activity of the past months had prevented such explorations. Nothing would be more humiliating than to stagger into Shastar after a week’s journey, only to be coolly greeted by a neighbour who had made the trip in ten minutes.

On the other hand, it was equally important that the village in general, and Yradne in particular, should realise that he was making some exceptional effort. Only Simon knew the truth, and he had grudgingly agreed to keep quiet for the present. Brant hoped that he had managed to divert attention from his true objective by showing a great interest in the country to the east of Chaldis, which also contained several archaeological relics of some importance.

The amount of food and equipment one needed for a two or three weeks’ absence was really astonishing, and his first calculations had thrown Brant into a state of considerable gloom. For a while he had even thought of trying to beg or borrow a flyer, but the request would certainly not be granted – and would indeed defeat the whole object of his enterprise. Yet it was quite impossible for him to carry everything he needed for the journey.

The solution would have been perfectly obvious to anyone from a less-mechanised age, but it took Brant some little time to think of it. The flying machine had killed all forms of land transport save one, the oldest and most versatile of all – the only one that was self-perpetuating and could manage very well, as it had done before, with no assistance at all from man.

Chaldis possessed six horses, rather a small number for a community of its size. In some villages the horses outnumbered the humans, but Brant’s people, living in a wild and mountainous region, had so far had little opportunity for equitation. Brant himself had ridden a horse only two or three times in his life, and then for exceedingly short periods.

The stallion and five mares were in the charge of Treggor, a gnarled little man who had no discernible interest in life except animals. His was not one of the outstanding intellects of Chaldis, but he seemed perfectly happy running his private menagerie, which included dogs of many shapes and sizes, a couple of beavers, several monkeys, a lion cub, two bears, a young crocodile, and other beasts more usually admired from a distance. The only sorrow that had ever clouded his placid life arose from the fact that he had so far failed to obtain an elephant.

Brant found Treggor, as he expected, leaning on the gate of the paddock. There was a stranger with him, who was introduced to Brant as a horse fancier from a neighbouring village. The curious similarity between the two men, extending from the way they dressed even to their facial expressions, made this explanation quite unnecessary.

One always feels a certain nervousness in the presence of undoubted experts, and Brant outlined his problem with some diffidence. Treggor listened gravely and paused for a long time before replying.

‘Yes,’ he said slowly, jerking his thumb toward the mares, ‘any of them would do – if you knew how to handle ’em.’ He looked rather doubtfully at Brant.

‘They’re like human beings, you know; if they don’t like you, you can’t do a thing with them.’

‘Not a thing,’ echoed the stranger, with evident relish.

‘But surely you could teach me how to handle them?’

‘Maybe yes, maybe no. I remember a young fellow just like you, wanted to learn to ride. Horses just wouldn’t let him get near them. Took a dislike to him – and that was that.’

‘Horses can
tell
,’ interjected the other darkly.

‘That’s right,’ agreed Treggor. ‘You’ve got to be sympathetic. Then you’ve nothing to worry about.’

There was, Brant decided, quite a lot to be said for the less-temperamental machine after all.

‘I don’t want to ride,’ he answered with some feeling. ‘I only want a horse to carry my gear. Or would it be likely to object to that?’

His mild sarcasm was quite wasted. Treggor nodded solemnly.

‘That wouldn’t be any trouble,’ he said. ‘They’ll all let you lead them with a halter – all except Daisy, that is. You’d never catch
her
.’

‘Then do you think I could borrow one of the – er, more amenable ones – for a while?’

Treggor shuffled around uncertainly, torn between two conflicting desires. He was pleased that someone wanted to use his beloved beasts, but nervous lest they come to harm. Any damage that might befall Brant was of secondary importance.

‘Well,’ he began doubtfully, ‘it’s a bit awkward at the moment….’

Brant looked at the mares more closely, and realised why. Only one of them was accompanied by a foal, but it was obvious that this deficiency would soon be rectified. Here was another complication he had overlooked.

‘How long will you be away?’ asked Treggor.

‘Three weeks, at the most: perhaps only two.’

Treggor did some rapid gynaecological calculations.

‘Then you can have Sunbeam,’ he concluded. ‘She won’t give you any trouble at all – best-natured animal I’ve ever had.’

‘Thank you very much,’ said Brant. ‘I promise I’ll look after her. Now would you mind introducing us?’

‘I don’t see why I should do this,’ grumbled Jon good-naturedly, as he adjusted the panniers on Sunbeam’s sleek sides, ‘especially since you won’t even tell me where you’re going or what you expect to find.’