"Do you mean you think it is good for men to live a life that is
unchanging, that is just the same from century to century--no new
dreams, no new triumphs, always the same grubbing rounds of days? I
cannot agree."
* * * * *
Jorun's mind flickered over history, trying to evaluate the basic
motivations of his opponent. Partly cultural, partly biological, that
must be it. Once Terra had been the center of the civilized universe.
But the long migration starward, especially after the fall of the First
Empire, drained off the most venturesome elements of the population.
That drain went on for thousands of years. Sol was backward, ruined and
impoverished by the remorseless price of empire, helpless before the
storms of barbarian conquest that swept back and forth between the
stars. Even after peace was restored, there was nothing to hold a young
man or woman of vitality and imagination here--not when you could go
toward Galactic center and join the new civilization building out there.
Space-traffic came ever less frequently to Sol; old machines rusted away
and were not replaced; best to get out while there was still time.
Eventually there was a fixed psychosomatic type, one which lived close
to the land, in primitive changeless communities and isolated
farmsteads--a type content to gain its simple needs by the labor of
hand, horse, or an occasional battered engine. A culture grew up which
increased that rigidity. So few had visited Earth in the last several
thousand years--perhaps one outsider a century, stopping briefly off on
his way to somewhere else--that there was no challenge or encouragement
to alter. The Terrans didn't _want_ more people, more machines, more
anything; they wished only to remain as they were.
You couldn't call them stagnant. Their life was too healthy, their
civilization too rich in its own way--folk art, folk music, ceremony,
religion, the intimacy of family life which the Galactics had lost--for
that term. But to one who flew between the streaming suns, it was a
small existence.
Kormt's voice broke in on his reverie. "Dreams, triumphs, work, deeds,
love and life and finally death and the long sleep in the earth," he
said. "Why should we want to change them? They never grow old; they are
new for each child that is born."
"Well," said Jorun, and stopped. You couldn't really answer that kind of
logic. It wasn't logic at all, but something deeper.
"Well," he started over, after a while, "as you know, this evacuation
was forced on us, too. We don't want to move you, but we must."
"Oh, yes," said Kormt. "You have been very nice about it. It would have
been easier, in a way, if you'd come with fire and gun and chains for
us, like the barbarians did long ago. We could have understood you
better then."
"At best, it will be hard for your people," said Jorun. "It will be a
shock, and they'll need leaders to guide them through it. You have a
duty to help them out there, good sir."
"Maybe." Kormt blew a series of smoke rings at his youngest descendant,
three years old, who crowed with laughter and climbed up on his knee.
"But they'll manage."
"You can't seem to realize," said Jorun, "that you are the _last man on
Earth_ who refuses to go. You will be _alone_. For the rest of your
life! We couldn't come back for you later under any circumstances,
because there'll be Hulduvian colonies between Sol and Sagittarius which
we would disturb in passage. You'll be alone, I say!"
Kormt shrugged. "I'm too old to change my ways; there can't be many
years left me, anyway. I can live well, just off the food-stores that'll
be left here." He ruffled the child's hair, but his face drew into a
scowl. "Now, no more of that, good sir, if you please; I'm tired of this
argument."
* * * * *
Jorun nodded and fell into the silence that held the rest. Terrans would
sometimes sit for hours without talking, content to be in each other's
nearness. He thought of Kormt, Gerlaug's son, last man on Earth,
altogether alone, living alone and dying alone; and yet, he reflected,
was that solitude any greater than the one in which all men dwelt all
their days?
Presently the Speaker set the child down, knocked out his pipe, and
rose. "Come, good sir," he said, reaching for his staff. "Let us go."
They walked side by side down the street, under the dim lamps and past
the yellow windows. The cobbles gave back their footfalls in a dull
clatter. Once in a while they passed someone else, a vague figure which
bowed to Kormt. Only one did not notice them, an old woman who walked
crying between the high walls.
"They say it is never night on your worlds," said Kormt.
Jorun threw him a sidelong glance. His face was a strong jutting of
highlights from sliding shadow. "Some planets have been given luminous
skies," said the technician, "and a few still have cities, too, where it
is always light. But when every man can control the cosmic energies,
there is no real reason for us to live together; most of us dwell far
apart. There are very dark nights on my own world, and I cannot see any
other home from my own--just the moors."
"It must be a strange life," said Kormt. "Belonging to no one."
They came out on the market-square, a broad paved space walled in by
houses. There was a fountain in its middle, and a statue dug out of the
ruins had been placed there. It was broken, one arm gone--but still the
white slim figure of the dancing girl stood with youth and laughter,
forever under the sky of Earth. Jorun knew that lovers were wont to meet
here, and briefly, irrationally, he wondered how lonely the girl would
be in all the millions of years to come.
The City Hall lay at the farther end of the square, big and dark, its
eaves carved with dragons, and the gables topped with wing-spreading
birds. It was an old building; nobody knew how many generations of men
had gathered here. A long, patient line of folk stood outside it,
shuffling in one by one to the registry desk; emerging, they went off
quietly into the darkness, toward the temporary shelters erected for
them.
Walking by the line, Jorun picked faces out of the shadows. There was a
young mother holding a crying child, her head bent over it in a timeless
pose, murmuring to soothe it. There was a mechanic, still sooty from his
work, smiling wearily at some tired joke of the man behind him. There
was a scowling, black-browed peasant who muttered a curse as Jorun went
by; the rest seemed to accept their fate meekly enough. There was a
priest, his head bowed, alone with his God. There was a younger man, his
hands clenching and unclenching, big helpless hands, and Jorun heard him
saying to someone else: "--if they could have waited till after harvest.
I hate to let good grain stand in the field."
* * * * *
Jorun went into the main room, toward the desk at the head of the line.
Hulking hairless Zarek was patiently questioning each of the hundreds
who came hat in hand before him: name, age, sex, occupation, dependents,
special needs or desires. He punches the answers out on the recorder
machine, half a million lives were held in its electronic memory.
"Oh, there you are," his bass rumbled. "Where've you been?"
"I had to do some concy work," said Jorun. That was a private code term,
among others: concy, conciliation, anything to make the evacuation go
smoothly. "Sorry to be so late. I'll take over now."
"All right. I think we can wind the whole thing up by midnight." Zarek
smiled at Kormt. "Glad you came, good sir. There are a few people I'd
like you to talk to." He gestured at half a dozen seated in the rear of
the room. Certain complaints were best handled by native leaders.
Kormt nodded and strode over to the folk. Jorun heard a man begin some
long-winded explanation: he wanted to take his own plow along, he'd made
it himself and there was no better plow in the universe, but the
star-man said there wouldn't be room.
"They'll furnish us with all the stuff we need, son," said Kormt.
"But it's _my_ plow!" said the man. His fingers twisted his cap.
Kormt sat down and began soothing him.
The head of the line waited a few meters off while Jorun took Zarek's
place. "Been a long grind," said the latter. "About done now, though.
And will I be glad to see the last of this planet!"
"I don't know," said Jorun. "It's a lovely world. I don't think I've
ever seen a more beautiful one."
Zarek snorted. "Me for Thonnvar! I can't wait to sit on the terrace by
the Scarlet Sea, fern-trees and red grass all around, a glass of oehl in
my hand and the crystal geysers in front of me. You're a funny one,
Jorun."
The Fulkhisian shrugged slender shoulders. Zarek clapped him on the back
and went out for supper and sleep. Jorun beckoned to the next Terran and
settled down to the long, almost mindless routine of registration. He
was interrupted once by Kormt, who yawned mightily and bade him
goodnight; otherwise it was a steady, half-conscious interval in which
one anonymous face after another passed by. He was dimly surprised when
the last one came up. This was a plump, cheerful, middle-aged fellow
with small shrewd eyes, a little more colorfully dressed than the
others. He gave his occupation as merchant--a minor tradesman, he
explained, dealing in the little things it was more convenient for the
peasants to buy than to manufacture themselves.
"I hope you haven't been waiting too long," said Jorun. Concy statement.
"Oh, no." The merchant grinned. "I knew those dumb farmers would be here
for hours, so I just went to bed and got up half an hour ago, when it
was about over."
"Clever." Jorun rose, sighed, and stretched. The big room was
cavernously empty, its lights a harsh glare. It was very quiet here.
"Well, sir, I'm a middling smart chap, if I say it as shouldn't. And you
know, I'd like to express my appreciation of all you're doing for us."
"Can't say we're doing much." Jorun locked the machine.
"Oh, the apple-knockers may not like it, but really, good sir, this
hasn't been any place for a man of enterprise. It's dead. I'd have got
out long ago if there'd been any transportation. Now, when we're getting
back into civilization, there'll be some real opportunities. I'll make
my pile inside of five years, you bet."
Jorun smiled, but there was a bleakness in him. What chance would this
barbarian have even to get near the gigantic work of civilization--let
alone comprehend it or take part in it. He hoped the little fellow
wouldn't break his heart trying.
"Well," he said, "goodnight, and good luck to you."
"Goodnight, sir. We'll meet again, I trust."
Jorun switched off the lights and went out into the square. It was
completely deserted. The moon was up now, almost full, and its cold
radiance dimmed the lamps. He heard a dog howling far off. The dogs of
Earth--such as weren't taken along--would be lonely, too.
_Well_, he thought, _the job's over. Tomorrow, or the next day, the
ships come._
4
He felt very tired, but didn't want to sleep, and willed himself back to
alertness. There hadn't been much chance to inspect the ruins, and he
felt it would be appropriate to see them by moonlight.
Rising into the air, he ghosted above roofs and trees until he came to
the dead city. For a while he hovered in a sky like dark velvet, a
faint breeze murmured around him, and he heard the remote noise of
crickets and the sea. But stillness enveloped it all, there was no real
sound.
Sol City, capital of the legendary First Empire, had been enormous. It
must have sprawled over forty or fifty thousand square kilometers when
it was in its prime, when it was the gay and wicked heart of human
civilization and swollen with the lifeblood of the stars. And yet those
who built it had been men of taste, they had sought out genius to create
for them. The city was not a collection of buildings; it was a balanced
whole, radiating from the mighty peaks of the central palace, through
colonnades and parks and leaping skyways, out to the temple-like villas
of the rulers. For all its monstrous size, it had been a fairy sight, a
woven lace of polished metal and white, black, red stone, colored
plastic, music and light--everywhere light.
Bombarded from space; sacked again and again by the barbarian hordes who
swarmed maggot-like through the bones of the slain Empire; weathered,
shaken by the slow sliding of Earth's crust; pried apart by patient,
delicate roots; dug over by hundreds of generations of archaeologists,
treasure-seekers, the idly curious; made a quarry of metal and stone for
the ignorant peasants who finally huddled about it--still its empty
walls and blind windows, crumbling arches and toppled pillars held a
ghost of beauty and magnificence which was like a half-remembered dream.
A dream the whole race had once had.
_And now we're waking up._
Jorun moved silently over the ruins. Trees growing between tumbled
blocks dappled them with moonlight and shadow; the marble was very white
and fair against darkness. He hovered by a broken caryatid, marveling at
its exquisite leaping litheness; that girl had borne tons of stone like
a flower in her hair. Further on, across a street that was a lane of
woods, beyond a park that was thick with forest, lay the nearly complete
outline of a house. Only its rain-blurred walls stood, but he could
trace the separate rooms: here a noble had entertained his friends,
robes that were fluid rainbows, jewels dripping fire, swift cynical
interplay of wits like sharpened swords rising above music and the clear
sweet laughter of dancing-girls; here people whose flesh was now dust
had slept and made love and lain side-by-side in darkness to watch the
moving pageant of the city; here the slaves had lived and worked and
sometimes wept; here the children had played their ageless games under
willows, between banks of roses. Oh, it had been a hard and cruel time;
it was well gone but it had lived. It had embodied man, all that was
noble and splendid and evil and merely wistful in the race, and now its
late children had forgotten.
A cat sprang up on one of the walls and flowed noiselessly along it,
hunting. Jorun shook himself and flew toward the center of the city, the
imperial palace. An owl hooted somewhere, and a bat fluttered out of his
way like a small damned soul blackened by hellfire. He didn't raise a
wind-screen, but let the air blow around him, the air of Earth.
* * * * *
The palace was almost completely wrecked, a mountain of heaped rocks,
bare bones of "eternal" metal gnawed thin by steady ages of wind and
rain and frost, but once it must have been gigantic. Men rarely built
that big nowadays, they didn't need to; and the whole human spirit had
changed, become ever more abstract, finding its treasures within itself.
But there had been an elemental magnificence about early man and the
works he raised to challenge the sky.
One tower still stood--a gutted shell, white under the stars, rising in
a filigree of columns and arches which seemed impossibly airy, as if it
were built of moonlight. Jorun settled on its broken upper balcony,
dizzily high above the black-and-white fantasy of the ruins. A hawk flew
shrieking from its nest, then there was silence.
No--wait--another yell, ringing down the star ways, a dark streak across
the moon's face. "Hai-ah!" Jorun recognized the joyful shout of young
Cluthe, rushing through heaven like a demon on a broomstick, and scowled
in annoyance. He didn't want to be bothered now.
Well, they had as much right here as he. He repressed the emotion, and
even managed a smile. After all, he would have liked to feel gay and
reckless at times, but he had never been able to. Jorun was little older
than Cluthe--a few centuries at most--but he came of a melancholy folk;
he had been born old.
Another form pursued the first. As they neared, Jorun recognized
Taliuvenna's supple outline. Those two had been teamed up for one of the
African districts, but--
They sensed him and came wildly out of the sky to perch on the balcony
railing and swing their legs above the heights. "How're you?" asked
Cluthe. His lean face laughed in the moonlight. "Whoo-oo, what a
flight!"
"I'm all right," said Jorun. "You through in your sector?"
"Uh-huh. So we thought we'd just duck over and look in here. Last chance
anyone'll ever have to do some sight-seeing on Earth."
Taliuvenna's full lips drooped a bit as she looked over the ruins. She
came from Yunith, one of the few planets where they still kept cities,
and was as much a child of their soaring arrogance as Jorun of his hills
and tundras and great empty seas. "I thought it would be bigger," she
said.
"Well, they were building this fifty or sixty thousand years ago," said
Cluthe. "Can't expect too much."
"There is good art left here," said Jorun. "Pieces which for one reason
or another weren't carried off. But you have to look around for it."
"I've seen a lot of it already, in museums," said Taliuvenna. "Not bad."
"C'mon, Tally," cried Cluthe. He touched her shoulder and sprang into
the air. "Tag! You're it!"
She screamed with laughter and shot off after him. They rushed across
the wilderness, weaving in and out of empty windows and broken
colonnades, and their shouts woke a clamor of echoes.