It could have been a city in New England, or maybe Wisconsin. Main
Street stretched for half a mile from Town Hall to the small
department store. Neon tubing brightened every store front, busy
proprietors could be seen at work through the large plate glass
windows. There was the bustle you might expect on any Main Street in
New England or Wisconsin, but you could not draw the parallel
indefinitely.
There were only men. No women.
The hills in which the town nestled were too purple--not purple with
distance but the natural color of the grass.
A somber red sun hung in the pale mauve sky.
This was Earth City, Nowhere.
Arkalion had deposited Temple in the nearby hills, promised they would
see one another again. "It may not be so soon," Arkalion had said,
"but what's the difference? You'll spend the rest of your life here.
You realize you are lucky, Kit. If, you hadn't come, you would have
been dead these five thousand years. Well, good luck."
Dead--five thousand years. The Earth as he knew it, dust. Stephanie, a
fifty generation corpse. Nowhere was right. End of the universe.
Temple shuffled his feet, trudged on into town. A man passed him on
the street, stooped, gray-haired. The man nodded, did a mild
double-take. _I'm an unfamiliar face_, Temple thought.
"Howdy," he said. "I'm new here."
"That's what I thought, stranger. Know just about everyone in these
here parts, I do, and I said to myself, now there's a newcomer. Funny
you didn't come in the regular way."
"I'm here," said Temple.
"Yeah. Funny thing, you get to know everyone. Eh, what you say your
name was?"
"Christopher Temple."
"Make it my business to know everyone. The neighborly way, I always
say. Temple, eh? We have one here."
"One what?"
"Another fellow name of Temple. Jase Temple, son."
"I'll be damned!" Temple cried, smiling suddenly. "I will be damned.
Tell me, old timer, where can I find him?"
"Might be anyplace. Town's bigger'n it looks. I tell you, though, Jase
Temple's our co-ordinator. You'll find him there, the co-ordinator's
office. Town Hall, down the end of the street."
"I already passed it," Temple told the old man. "And thanks."
Temple's legs carried him at a brisk pace, past the row of store
fronts and down to the Town Hall. He read a directory, climbed a
flight of stairs, found a door marked:
JASON TEMPLE
Earth City Co-ordinator
Heart pounding, Temple knocked, heard someone call, "Come in."
He pushed the door in and stared at his brother, just rising to face
him.
* * * * *
"Kit! Kit! What are you doing ... so you took the journey too!"
Jason ran to him, clasped his shoulders, pounded them. "You sure are
looking fit. Kit, you could have knocked me over with half a feather,
coming in like that."
"You're looking great too, Jase," Temple lied. He hadn't seen his
brother in five years, had never expected to see him again. But he
remembered a full-faced, smiling man somewhat taller than himself,
somewhat broader across the shoulders. The Jason he saw looked
forty-five or fifty but was hardly out of his twenties. He had fierce,
smouldering eyes, gaunt cheeks, graying hair. He seemed a bundle of
restless, nervous energy.
"Sit down, Kit. Start talking, kid brother. Start talking and don't
stop till next week. Tell me everything. Everything! Tell me about the
blue sky and the moon at night and the way the ocean looks on a windy
day and...."
"Five years," said Temple. "Five years."
"Five thousand, you mean," Jason reminded him. "It hardly seems
possible. How are the folks, Kit?"
"Mom's fine. Pop too. He's sporting a new Chambers Converto. You
should see him, Jase. Sharp."
"And Ann?" Jason looked at him hopefully. Ann had been Jason's
Stephanie--but for the Nowhere Journey they would have married.
"Ann's married," Temple said.
"Oh. Oh. That's swell, Kit. Really swell. I mean, what the hell, a
girl shouldn't wait forever. I told her not to, anyway."
"She waited four years, then met a guy and--"
"A nice guy?"
"The best," said Temple. "You'd like him."
Temple saw the vague hurt come to Jason's smouldering eyes. Then it
was the same. One part of Jason wanted her to remain his over an
unthinkable gap, another part wanted her to live a good, full life.
"I'm glad," said Jason. "Can't expect a girl to wait without hope...."
"Then there's no hope we'll ever get back?"
Jason laughed harshly. "You tell me. Earth isn't merely sixty thousand
light years away. Kit, do you know what a light year is?"
Temple said he thought he did.
"Sixty thousand of them. A dozen eternities. But the Earth we know is
also dead. Dead five thousand years. The folks, Center City, Ann, her
husband--all dust. Five thousand years old.... Don't mind me, Kit."
"Sure. Sure, I understand." But Temple didn't, not really. You
couldn't take five thousand years and chuck them out the window in
what seemed the space of a heart beat and then realize they were gone
permanently, forever. Not a period of time as long as all of recorded
civilization--you couldn't take it, tack it on after 1992 and accept
it. Somehow, Temple realized, the five thousand years were harder to
swallow than the sixty thousand light years.
"Well," with a visible effort, Jason snapped out of his reverie.
Temple accepted a cigarette gratefully, his first in a long time. _In
fifty centuries_, he thought bitterly, burrowing deeper into a funk.
"Well," said Jason, "I'm acting like a prize boob. How selfish can I
get? There must be an awful lot you'd like to know, Kit."
"That's all right. I was told I'd be indoctrinated."
"Ordinarily, you would. But there's no shipment now, none for another
three months. Say, how the devil _did_ you get here?"
"That's a long story. Nowhere Journey, same as you, with a little
assist to speed things up on Mars. Jase, tell me this: what are we
doing here? What is everyone doing here? What's the Nowhere Journey
all about? What kind of a glorified foot-race did I see a while ago,
with a bunch of creatures out of the telio science-fiction shows?"
* * * * *
Jason put his own cigarette out, changed his mind, lit another one.
"Sort of like the old joke, where does an alien go to register?"
"Sort of."
"It's a big universe," said Jason, evidently starting at the beginning
of something.
"I'm just beginning to learn _how_ big!"
"It would be pretty unimaginative of mankind to consider itself the
only sentient form of life, Earth the only home of intelligence, both
from a scientific and a religious point of view. We kind of expected
to find--neighbors out in space. Kit, the sky is full of stars, most
stars have planets. The universe crawls with life, all sorts of life,
all sorts of intelligent life. In short, we are not alone. It would be
sort of like taking the jet-shuttle from Washington to New York during
the evening rush and expecting to be the only one aboard. In reality,
you're lucky to get breathing space.
"There are biped intelligences, like humans. There are radial
intelligences, one-legged species, tall, gangling creatures, squat
ones, pancake ones, giants, dwarfs. There are green skins and pink
skins and coal black--and yes, no skins. There are ... but you get the
idea."
"Uh-huh."
"Strangely enough, most of these intelligences are on about the same
developmental level. It's as if the Creator turned everything on at
once, like a race, and said 'okay, guys get started.' Maybe it's
because, as scientists figure, the whole universe got wound up and
started working as a unit. I don't know. Anyway, that's the way it is.
All the intelligences worth talking about are on about the same
cultural level. Atomics, crude spaceflight, wars they can't handle.
"And this is interesting, Kit. Most of 'em are bipedal. Not really
human, not fully human. You can see the difference. But seventy-five
percent of the races I've encountered have had basic similarities. A
case of the Creator trying to figure out the best of all possible
life-patterns and coming up with this one. Offers a wide range for
action, for adaptation, stuff like that. Anyway, I'm losing track of
things."
"Take it easy. From what you tell me I have all the time in the
world."
"Well, I said all the races are developmentally parallel. That's
almost true. One of them is not. One of them is so far ahead that the
rest of us have hardly reached the crawling stage by comparison. One
of them is the Super Race, Kit.
"Their culture is old, incredibly old. So old, in fact, that some of
us figure it's been hanging around since before the Universe took
shape. Maybe that's why all the others are on one level, a few
thousand million years behind the Super Race.
"So, take this Super Race. For some reason we can't understand, it
seems to be on the skids. That's just figurative. Maybe it's dying
out, maybe it wants to pack up and leave the galaxy altogether, maybe
it's got other undreamed of business other undreamed of places.
Anyway, it wants out. But it's got an eon-old storehouse of culture
and maybe it figures someone ought to have access to that and keep the
galaxy in running order. But who? That's the problem. Who gets all
this information, a million million generations of scientific
problems, all carefully worked out? Who, among all the parallel races
on all the worlds of the Universe? That's quite a problem, even for
our Super Race boys.
"You'd think they'd have ways to solve it, though. With calculating
machines or whatever will follow calculating machines after Earthmen
and all the others find the next faltering step after a few thousand
years. Or with plain horse sense and logic, developed to a
point--after millions of years at it--where it never fails. Or solve
the problem with something we've never heard of, but solve it anyway."
"What's all this got to do with--? I mean, it's an interesting story
and when I get a chance to digest it I'll probably start gasping, but
what about Nowhere and...."
"I'm coming to that. Kit, what would you say if I told you that the
most intelligent race the Universe has ever produced solves the
biggest problem ever handed anyone--by playing games?"
* * * * *
"I'd say you better continue."
"That's the purpose of Nowhere, Kit. Every planet, every race has its
Nowhere. We all come here and we play games. Planet with the highest
score at the end of God knows how long wins the Universe, with all the
science and the wisdom needed to fashion that universe into a dozen
different kinds of heaven. And to decide all this, we play games.
"Don't get the wrong idea. I'm not complaining. If the Superboys say
we play, then we play. I'd take their word for it if they told me I
had fifteen heads. But it's the sort of thing which doesn't let you
get much sleep. Oh, Earth has a right to be proud of its record.
United North America is in second place on a competition that's as
wide as the Universe. But we're not first. Second. And I have a hunch
from what's been going on around here that the games are drawing to a
close.
"Fantastic, isn't it? Out of thousands of entrants, we're good enough
to place second. But some planet out near the star Deneb has us
hopelessly outclassed. We might as well get the booby prize. They'll
win and own the Universe--us included."
Jason had leaned forward as he spoke, and was sitting on the edge of
his chair now. The room was comfortably cool, but sweat beaded his
forehead, dripped from his chin.
Temple lit another cigarette, inhaling deeply. "You said the United
States--North America--was second. I thought this was a planet-wide
competition, planet against planet."
"Earth is the one exception I've been able to find. The Deneb planet
heads the list, then comes North America. After that, the planet of a
star I never heard of. In fourth place is the Soviet Union."
"I'll be damned," said Temple. "Well, okay. Mind if I store that away
for future reference? I've got another question. What kind of--uh,
games do we play?"
"You name it. Mental contests. Scientific problems to be worked out
with laboratories built to our specifications. Emotional problems with
scores of men driven neurotic or worse every year. Problems of
adaptability. Responses to environmental challenge. Stamina contests.
Tests of strength, of endurance. Tests to determine depths of emotion.
Tests to determine objectivity in what should be an objective
situation. But the way everything is organized it's almost like a
giant-sized, never ending Olympic Games, complete with some cockeyed
sports events too, by the way."
"With all the pageantry, too?"
"No. But that's another story."
"Anyway, what I saw _was_ a foot-race! And sorry, Jase, but I have
another question."
Jason shrugged, spread his hands wide.
"How come all this talk about rotation? It isn't possible, not with a
fifty century gap."
"I know. They just let us in on that little deal a couple of years
ago. Till then, we didn't know. We thought it was distance only. In
time, after all this was over, we could go home. That's what we
thought," Jason said bitterly. "Actually, it's twice five thousand
years. Five to come here, five to return. Ten thousand years separate
us from the Earth we know, and even if we could go home, that wouldn't
be going home at all--to Earth ten thousand years in the future.
"Oh, they had us hoodwinked. Afraid we might say no or something. They
never mentioned the length or duration of the trip. I don't understand
it, none of us do and we have some top scientists here. Something to
do with suspended animation, with contra-terrene matter, with
teleportation, something about latent extra-sensory powers in
everyone, about the ability to break down an object--or a creature or
a man--to its component atoms, to reverse--that's the word,
reverse--those atoms and send them spinning off into space as
contra-terrene matter.
"It all boils down to putting a man in a machine on Mars, pulling a
lever, materializing him here five thousand years later." Jason smiled
with only a trace of humor, "Any questions?"
"About a thousand," said Temple. "I--"
* * * * *
Something buzzed on Jason's desk and Temple watched him pick up a
microphone, say: "Co-ordinator speaking. What's up?"
The voice which answered, clear enough to be in the room with them and
without the faintest trace of mechanical or electrical transfer, spoke
in a strange, liquid-syllabled language Temple had never heard. Jason
responded in the same language, with an apparent ease which surprised
Temple--until he remembered that his brother had always had a knack of
picking up foreign languages. Maybe that was why he held the
Co-ordinator's job--whatever it was he co-ordinated.
There was fluency in the way Jason spoke, and alarm. The trouble-lines
etched deeply on his face stood out sharply, his eyes, if possible,
grew more intense. "Well," he said, putting the mike down and staring
at Temple without seeing him, "I'm afraid that does it."
"What's the trouble?"
"Everything."
"Anything I can do?"
"Item. The Superboys have discovered that Earth has two contingents
here--us and the Soviets. They're mad. Item. Something will be done
about it. Item. Soviet Russia has made a suggestion, or that is, its
people here. They will put forth a champion to match one of our own
choosing in the toughest grind of all, something to do with responding
to environmental challenge, which doesn't mean a hell of a lot unless
you happen to know something about it. Shall I go on?"
And, when Temple nodded avidly. "We automatically lose by default. One
of the rules of that particular game is that the contestant must be a
newcomer. It's the sort of game you have to know nothing about, and
incidentally, it's also the sort of game a man can get killed at.
Well, the Soviets have a whole contingent of newcomers to pick from.
We don't have any. As the Superboys see it, that's our own tough luck.
We lose by default."
"It seems to me--"
"How can anything 'seem to you?' You're new here.... I'm sorry Kit.
What were you saying?"
"No. Go ahead."
"That's only the half of it. Right after Russia takes our place and
we're scratched off the list, the games go into their final phase.
That was the rumor all along, and it's just been confirmed.
Interesting to see what they do with all the contestants _after_ the
games are over, after there's no more Nowhere Journey."
"We could go back where we came from."
"Ten thousand years in the future?"
"I'm not afraid."
"Well, anyway, the Soviets put up a man, we can't match him. So it
looks like the U. S. S. R. represents Earth officially. Not that it
matters. We hardly have the chance of a very slushy snowball in a very
hot hell. But still--"
"Our contestant, this guy who meets the Russian's challenge, has to be
a newcomer?"
"That's what I said. Well, we can close up shop, I guess."
"You made a mistake. You said no newcomers have arrived. I'm here,
Jase. I'm your man. Bring on your Russian Bear." Temple smiled grimly.