"A Super-Memory," Deez said. "Let's call it that. At any rate, our
equipment fixed on a star of low magnitude with a nine-planet system.
Simple calculation of distances and spectroscopic readings eliminated
all but one of the worlds as suitable for exploration. It was the
third planet in relative distance from its sun. But we felt no unusual
expectation as we prepared for landfall; the closer we came, the more
we recognized the bleak, airless type of world that has become so
familiar to the exploration ships of Illyri that we call them nothing
more than cosmic debris.
"We made our landing on the ledge of a gigantic basin that might
once have been the container for a vast ocean. Gi-Linn, our ship's
scientist, was convinced by the configuration of its floor that the
planet had once been blessed with water, air, and in all probability,
some form of life. He speculated that the vanished ocean might have
once teemed with creatures as those we discovered on Vosa. He was
doubtful, however, that life forms had become more advanced than
Vosa's. Gi-Linn has a way of leaping to conclusions, a smug fellow. I
was pleased to see him proved wrong.
* * * * *
"We skedded across this dry ocean floor a distance of some two to
three thousand amfions, and found its peaks and valleys marvelous to
behold but utterly devoid of vegetation. Gi-Linn made some cursory
examinations of mineral specimens during our flight, and reported
that the planet's crust was an astonishing mixture of various layers,
ranging in geological age from millions of years to mere thousands.
It was further evidence that this world hadn't always been a barren
rock, that a cataclysmic volcanic upheaval had altered its terrain,
sifted and blended its strata, had dried its oceans and swallowed its
continents. For the first time, we began to look upon this particular
planet with more than routine interest.
"And then we saw it.
"At first, Totin, our navigator, swore it was only an optical trick,
an illusion of the sort we had encountered on other worlds. Once, on a
planet in the Casserian system, we had each of us seen a herd of cattle
grazing peacefully in a green field--this on a planet of interminable
yellow dust. But there was nothing dreamlike about the great metallic
ruin that came into our sight, this giant who seemed to lift its
shattered arm to us in greeting.
"I have seen terrors, and beasts, and horrors of the flesh, but I tell
you now that never before have I experienced such a pounding of the
heart as when that alien monument came into view. For not only was it
plainly a remnant of a forgotten civilization, the first we had ever
found, but it was also apparent that the ancients who had lived--and
died--on this world had been cut from the same evolutionary cloth as we
of Illyri.
"The figure was that of a woman."
Devia, who had been listening open-mouthed, said:
"A woman! Deez, how thrilling! It's like some marvelous old fable--"
"She stood some ninety amfs high," Deez said, "buried to the shoulder
in the arid soil of the planet. Her right arm was extended towards the
heavens, and clutched within her hand was a torch plainly meant to
symbolize the shedding of light. Her headpiece was a crown of spikes,
her features noble and filled with sadness. She was blackened with
the grime of centuries, battered by time, and yet still wonderfully
preserved in the airless atmosphere.
"We were thrilled by the sight of this ancient wonder, and speculated
about its builders. Had they been giants her size, or had they erected
her as a Colossus to celebrate some great deed or personage or ruler?
What did she mean to her builders, what did her uplifted torch signify?
What aspirations, hopes, dreams? Could we find the answer beneath that
dry soil?"
"Did you dig?" Ky-Tann said, his eyes shining with excitement. "You
weren't equipped for any major excavation work, were you?"
"No; the most we could have done was scratch the surface of the planet,
perhaps enough to free the entire figure of the Colossus. But that
wasn't enough; we burned with curiosity to know what lay under our
feet, what buried cities, people, histories.... Totin set up a signal
station, and beamed our message to the space station on Briaticus.
After a few days, we made contact, and relayed our story. There was
skepticism at first, but they finally agreed to dispatch all available
manpower and excavation equipment to the planet Earth."
"The planet what?" Devia said.
"Earth," Deez said, with a wan smile. "That was its name, eons ago,
and the builders, who were called Earthmen, lived within natural and
artificial boundaries called nations, empires, states, dominions,
protectorates, satellites, and commonwealths. That empty globe had
once housed as many as three _billion_ of these Earthmen, and their
works were prodigious. Their science was advanced, and they had already
thrust their ships into the space of their own solar system...."
Ky-Tann was plainly startled.
"Deez, you're really serious about this? It's not another hoax?"
"I've seen the ruins of their cities, I've touched their dry bones,
I've turned the pages of their books...." Deez' eyes glowed, pulsating
eerily. "We found libraries, Ky, great volumes of writing, in languages
astonishingly varied and yet many that were swiftly encodable.... We've
seen their machines and their houses, their working tools and their
play-things. We found their histories, records of their bodies and
voices, their manners and morals and sometimes mad behavior ... Ky!"
Deez said, his voice choked. "It'll take a hundred years to understand
all we've found!"
Devia rose quickly at the sound of his agitated voice, and went to his
side. "Try not to overexcite yourself," she said. "I know how you must
feel...."
"You can't. You can't possibly," Deez muttered. "To know the
overwhelming--_greediness_ I felt--turned loose in an archeological
treasure house--I began waking up at night, sweating at the thought
that I might die before I had seen all there was to see on that planet,
read all its books, learned all its secrets--"
"And what _did_ you learn?" Ky-Tann said.
Deez stood up slowly. He crossed the room to the view-glass, but they
knew his eyes looked out at nothing.
"I learned," he said bitterly, "that it was a world which deserved to
die."
* * * * *
On a balmy June evening, in the Spring of 1973, Dr. Carl Woodward
opened his front door on a new era. The man who stood on his
doorstep--Woodward never thought of Borsu as anything but a "man"--wore
a sleeveless tunic that glistened like snake-skin. He was holding
something in his hands, as if proferring it, a foot-square metallic box
with rounded corners and a diamond-shaped screen that showed a moving
tracery of spidery-thin lines.
Woodward was sixty-one. He had been a naval surgeon in two wars, and
had lost a leg during the Inchon landing. He had survived the loss, but
a treacherous heart condition forced his retirement. He chose a small
village in Eastern Pennsylvania. He lived with a dog and a thousand
books. Borsu, the alien, could not have chanced on a better host that
night.
"Yes, what is it?" Woodward said. When no answer came, the doctor
realized that his visitor expected him to watch the screen. He did.
The lines wavered, shifted, blurred in their excitation, but conveyed
nothing. Panacea, Woodward's aging beagle, finally came out of his warm
bed near the furnace and set up a furious barking.
"Pan!" Woodward snapped. "Shut up, you mutt! Look, mister, perhaps if
you came inside--"
Then his eyes became adjusted to the diamond-shaped screen; he saw
a picture. The scene was a forest; there was the gleam of crumpled
metal, and a prostrate figure lying on the leaf-strewn floor. It was
the portrait of an accident, and Woodward was intuitive enough to know
that the man in the doorway had come for help.
"You want me to come with you, is that it?" he said. "Is your friend
hurt? How did it happen?"
* * * * *
The screen refocused. Now Woodward saw the injured "man" more closely,
saw the face blue in the moonlight, saw the lacerations on his cheek
and forehead. Then the "camera" traveled downwards, towards the ribs,
almost as if it were exploring the extent of the injuries for diagnosis
(later, he learned this was true).
"Well, come on," he said gruffly. He took his coat and instrument bag
from the hall closet, and shut the door on Panacea's hysteria. When
he was outside with his visitor, he saw his face for the first time.
Then he knew that the face he had seen in the tiny screen hadn't merely
looked blue in the moonlight. It was blue. A smoky, almost lavender
blue. Those who came to hate the aliens described it as purple, but
Borsu, his dying companion, and all the aliens who followed were
blue-skinned.
Woodward was in a fever of excitement by the time he reached the scene
of the crash, in the woods some five hundred yards from his home. He
understood its significance by now, knew that the fallen vessel had
been some kind of space craft, that its dual occupants were visitors
from another world. The fact that he had been first on the scene
thrilled him; the fact that he was a doctor, and could help, gratified
him.
But there was nothing in his black bag which could aid the crash
victim. His black-pupiled eyes rolled in the handsome blue head, and
his fine-boned blue hand reached for the touch of his companion's
fingers in a gesture of farewell. Then he was dead.
"I'm sorry," Woodward said. "Your friend is gone."
There was no grief evident in the placid blue face that looked down at
the body. Once again, the alien lifted the metal box and forced the
doctor's attention on the diamond-shaped screen.
The picture was that of Woodward's house.
"You want to come home with me?" Woodward said. Then he gasped as he
saw himself on the screen, entering the house, alone. Then he realized
that the scene typified a request--or a command. The man from space
wanted the doctor to return home.
"All right," he said reluctantly. "I'll go home, my friend. But I can
tell you right now--don't expect me to keep all this a secret."
He turned, and limped through the woods.
Woodward had just entered the house when the woods burst with light,
one incredible split-second of white fire that lit the world for miles.
It was the alien's funeral pyre.
Then the alien came back. When the doctor answered the door, he strode
into the room purposefully, and placed his strange visual aid on a
table top. He looked squarely at Woodward, and then placed a finger in
the center of his smooth blue forehead.
"Borsu," he said.
The doctor hesitated. Was the alien identifying himself by name?
Indicating himself by the most vital organ, his brain?
The doctor pointed to his own forehead.
"Carl," he said.
Then he looked about, and his eyes fell on the book he had been
reading. He picked it up, and tapped its cover.
"Book," he said.
The stranger took it from his hand.
"Book," he said. "Borsu, Carl. Book."
And the alien smiled.
* * * * *
Woodward handled his request to see Ridgemont, Secretary of Science,
with extreme care. He understood the functions and fears of the
bureaucrat, the ever-present concern about wasting time on crackpots,
lobbyists, representatives of various useless or lunatic fringe groups.
He had arranged the meeting through the Secretary of the Navy, and made
certain that Ridgemont knew of his good service record, that he was
convinced that Woodward was a man of sound mind and character. Only
then did he make the appointment.
Yet despite his precautions, Ridgemont looked at Woodward exactly as
the doctor knew he would.
"A man from _where_?" he said.
"From outer space," Woodward said quietly. "Not from our own solar
system, but from another. Their world exists no longer. Borsu and the
others recall nothing about it, but that was a case of deliberate
Forgetting; I'll tell you about that later. The important thing is--"
"The important thing," Woodward said icily, "is for you to see
the right person. Frankly, this department isn't concerned
with--extra-terrestrial matters. Perhaps the Department of Defense--"
"I've thought about this for some time," Woodward persisted. "I believe
you're the one person most capable of both understanding and helping.
Please don't disappoint me."
Perhaps Ridgemont was flattered; at any rate, he calmed down and let
the doctor speak.
"Borsu and a companion came to Earth about a month ago, their descent
undetected except by the astronomical observatory at Clifton; if you
check with meteor landing. But it wasn't a meteor. It was a space
vessel, and its crash killed Borsu's friend. You won't find traces of
it, either, because Borsu followed his people's tradition of totally
annihilating the remains. No, it wasn't a secret weapon of any kind; he
merely triggered the ship's atomic reactor.
"Borsu came to me by chance. But when he discovered I was sympathetic,
he allowed me to become his mentor and teacher of language. I couldn't
have wanted a better student; he's already read and digested half the
books I own.
"I have had long conversation with Borsu, about his past and his future
hopes; indeed, the hopes of his entire race. When I learned his story,
and understood why he came to our world, I decided to act as his
emissary. Borsu has a mortal--and understandable--fear of being treated
like a freak or a guinea pig. I'm here to pave the way for him, and the
others."
* * * * *
Ridgemont must have been aware of Woodward's sincerity; he looked
astonished.
"You really mean this, don't you?" he said. "A man from another planet
is here, with you?"
"Yes," Woodward said firmly. "In my own home. But I cannot give you
the name of his world, and neither can Borsu. At the moment, their
way-station is an airless asteroid in our solar system, where they are
living in an artificial atmosphere and surviving on synthetic food.
There are fewer than ten thousand of them, refugees from a world which
suffered a fate so terrible that they have allowed themselves to forget
everything about it."
"Forget? What do you mean?"
"They have a belief, an ancient conviction, about Forgetting. I don't
know whether it's cultural, or religious, or scientific in origin; but
each generation conceals the past from the new generation, especially
those things in the past which have been unpleasant or hurtful. They
are future-minded; they believe their children are sounder mentally
if they know nothing of past evils. Whatever happened on the world of
their birth is a story only their dead ancestors knew. Their interest
is only in tomorrow."
"And just what kind of tomorrow do they have in mind?"
Woodward took a deep breath.
"They wish to migrate to Earth, Mr. Ridgemont. All of them. Their
evolutionary development was virtually identical to ours; when I
marveled at this, Borsu laughed heartily at me. It is the belief of
their science--or perhaps their theology--that the physical form both
races share is the only one possible to the intelligent beings of the
universe. So you see," Woodward said wryly, "perhaps the old prophets
were right, when they said that God made Man in his own image. Perhaps
it's the only possible image in the cosmos."
"Then they look like us? Exactly like us?"
"Not exactly, no. There are some--surface differences. I know nothing
of Borsu's interior construction, only X rays could tell us that."