Perhaps some of them found suitable planets, said Ship, shortly after they had left. In such cases they could safely have returned to Earth.
“But you went on and on.”
Ship said, We performed our mandate.
“You mean, you hunted planets.”
We hunted for one particular planet. The kind of planet where man could live.
“And took almost a thousand years to find it.”
There was no limit on the search, said Ship.
“I suppose not,” said Horton, “although it was something we never thought about. There were a lot of things we never thought about. A lot of things, I suppose, we were never told. Then tell me this: Suppose you’d not found this planet. What would you have done?”
We’d have kept on searching.
“A million years, perhaps?”
If need be, a million years, said Ship.
“And now, having found it, we cannot go back.”
That is correct, said Ship.
“So what’s the good of finding it?” asked Horton. “We find it, and Earth will never know we found it. The truth of the matter is, I think, that you have no interest in returning. There is nothing back there for you.”
Ship made no answer.
“Tell me,” Horton cried. “Admit it.”
Nicodemus said, “You’ll get no answer now. Ship stands on silent dignity. You have offended it.”
“To hell with Ship,” said Horton. “I’ve heard enough from them. I want some answers from you. Ship said the other three are dead …”
“There was a malfunction,” said Nicodemus. “About a hundred years out. One of the pumps ceased functioning, and the cubicles heated up. I managed to save you.”
“Why me? Why not one of the others?”
“It was very simple,” said Nicodemus, reasonably. “You were number one in line. You were in cubicle number one.”
“If I had been in cubicle number two, you would have let me die.”
“I let no one die. I was able to save one sleeper. Having done that, it was too late for the others.”
“You did it by the numbers?”
“Yes,” said Nicodemus, “I did it by the numbers. Is there a better way?”
“No,” said Horton. “No, I guess there’s not. But when three of us were dead, was there no thought of aborting the mission and going back to Earth?”
“There was no thought of it.”
“Who made the decision? I imagine Ship.”
“There was no decision. Neither of us ever mentioned it.”
It had all gone wrong, thought Horton. If someone had sat down and worked at it, with wholehearted concentration and a devotion that fringed on fanaticism, they couldn’t have done a better job of screwing it all up.
A ship, one man, one flat-footed stupid robot—Christ, what an expedition! And, furthermore, a pointless one-way expedition. We might just as well not have started out, he thought. Except that if they hadn’t started out, he reminded himself, he’d now be dead for many centuries.
He tried to remember the others, but could not remember them. He could see them only dimly, as if he were seeing them through fog. They were indistinct and blurred. He tried to make out their faces and they seemed to have no faces. Later on, he knew, he’d mourn them, but he could not mourn them now. There was not enough of them to mourn. There was no time now for mourning them; there was too much to do and to think about. A thousand years, he thought, and we won’t be going back. For Ship was the only one that could take them back, and if Ship said it wasn’t going back, that was the end of it.
“The other three?” he asked. “Burial in space?”
“No,” said Nicodemus. “We found a planet where they’ll rest through all eternity. Do you want to know?”
“If you please,” said Horton.
4
From the platform of the high plateau where Ship had landed, the planetary surface stretched out to distant, sharp horizons, a land with great blue glaciers of frozen hydrogen creeping down the slopes of black and barren rock. The planet’s sun was so distant that it seemed only a slightly larger, brighter star—a star so dimmed by distance and by dying that it did not have a name or number. On the charts of Earth there was not even a pinprick marking its location. Its feeble light never had been registered on a photographic plate by a terrestrial telescope.
Ship, asked Nicodemus, is this all that we can do?
Ship said, We can do no further.
It seems cruel to leave them here, in this place of desolation.
We sought a place of solitude for them, said Ship, a place of dignity and aloneness, where nothing will find them and disturb them for study or display. We owe them this much, robot, but when this is done, it is all that we can give them.
Nicodemus stood beside the triple casket, trying to fix the place forever in his mind, although, as he looked out across the planet, he realized there was little he could fix. There was a deadly sameness here; wherever one might look at it all seemed to look the same. Perhaps, he thought, it is just as well—they can lie here in their anonymity, masked by the unknownness of their final resting place.
There was no sky. Where there should have been a sky was only the black nakedness of space, lighted by a heavy sprinkle of unfamiliar stars. When he and Ship were gone, he thought, for millennia these steely and unblinking stars would be eyes staring down at the three who lay within the casket—not guarding them, but watching them—staring with the frosty glare of ancient, moldering aristocrats regarding, with frigid disapproval, intruders from beyond the pale of their social circle. But the disapproval would not matter, Nicodemus told himself, for there now was nothing that could harm them. They were beyond all harm or help.
He should say a prayer for them, he thought, although he’d never said a prayer before nor ever thought of praying. He suspected, however, that prayer by such as he might not be acceptable, either to the humans lying there or whatever deity might bend his ear to hear it. But it was a gesture—a slender and uncertain hope that somewhere there might still be an agency of intercession.
And if he did pray, what could he say? Lord, we leave these creatures in your care—
And once he had said that? Once he had made a good beginning?
You might lecture him, said Ship. You might impress upon him the importance of these creatures with whom you are concerned. Or you might plead and argue for them, who need no pleading and are beyond all argument.
You mock me, said Nicodemus.
We do not mock, said Ship. We are beyond all mockery.
I should say some words, said Nicodemus. They would expect it of me. Earth would expect it of me. You were human once. I would think there’d be, on an occasion such as this, some humanity in you.
We grieve, said Ship. We weep. We feel a sadness in us. But we grieve at death, not at the leaving of the dead in such a place. It matters not to them wherever we may leave them.
Something should be said, Nicodemus insisted to himself. Something solemnly formal, some intonation of studied ritual, all spoken well and properly, for they’ll be here forever, the dust of Earth transplanted. Despite all our logic in seeking out a loneliness for them, we should not leave them here. We should have sought a green and pleasant planet.
There are, said Ship, no green and pleasant planets.
Since I can find no proper words to say, said the robot to the Ship, do you mind if I stay awhile? We should at least do them the courtesy of not hurrying away.
Stay, said Ship. We have all eternity.
“And do you know,” Nicodemus said to Horton, “I never did get around to saying anything.”
Ship spoke. We have a visitor. He came out of the hills and is waiting just beyond the ramp. You should go out to meet him. But be alert and cautious and strap on your sidearms. He appears an ugly customer.
5
The visitor had halted some twenty feet beyond the end of the ramp and was waiting for them when Horton and Nicode
mus came out to meet him. He was human-tall and stood upon two legs. His arms, hanging limply at his side, did not end in hands, but in a nest of tentacles. He wore no clothing. His body was covered by a skimpy, molting coat of fur. That he was a male was aggressively apparent. His head appeared to be a bare skull. It was innocent of hair or fur, and the skin was tightly stretched over the structure of the bones. The jaws were heavy and elongated into a massive snout. Stabbing teeth, set in the upper jaw, protruded downward, somewhat like the fangs of the primitive saber-tooth of ancient Earth. Long, pointed ears, pasted against the skull, stood rigid, overtopping the bald, domed cranium. Each of the ears was tipped with a bright red tassle.
As they reached the bottom of the ramp, the creature spoke to them in a booming voice. “I welcome you,” he said, “to this asshole of a planet.”
“How the hell,” blurted Horton, startled, “do you know our language?”
“I learned it all from Shakespeare,” said the creature. “Shakespeare taught it to me. But Shakespeare now is dead, and I miss him greatly. I am desolate without him.”
“But Shakespeare is a very ancient man and I do not understand …”
“Not an ancient one at all,” the creature said, “although not really young, and he had a sickness in him. He described himself as human. He looked very much like you. I take it you are human, too, but the other is not human, although it has human aspects.”
“You are right,” said Nicodemus. “I am not a human. I am the next best thing to human. I am a human’s friend.”
“Then that is fine,” said the creature, happily. “That is fine indeed. For I was that to Shakespeare. The best friend he ever had, he said. I surely miss the Shakespeare. I admire him very greatly. He could do many things. One thing he could not do was to learn my language. So perforce I must learn his. He told me about great carriers that go noisily through space. So when I hear you coming, I hurry very fast, hoping that it be some of Shakespeare’s people coming.”
Horton said to Nicodemus. “There is something very wrong here. Man could not be this far out in space. Ship fooled around, of course, slowing down for planets and it took a lot of time. But we’re close to a thousand light-years out …”
“Earth by now,” said Nicodemus, “may have faster ships, going many times the speed of light. Many of such ships may have overleaped us as we crawled along. So, peculiar as it may seem …”
“You talk of ships,” the creature said. “Shakespeare talk of them as well but he need no ship. Shakespeare come by tunnel.”
“Now, look here,” said Horton, a trifle exasperated, “try to talk some sense. What is this tunnel business?”
“You mean you do not know of tunnel that runs among the stars?”
“I’ve never heard of it,” said Horton.
“Let’s back up,” said Nicodemus, “and try to get another start. I take it you are a native of this planet.”
“Native?”
“Yes, native. You belong here. This is your home planet. You were born here.”
“Never,” said the creature, most emphatically. “I would not urinate upon this planet could I avoid it. I would not stay a small time-unit could I get away. I came hurriedly to bargain outward passage with you when you leave.”
“You came as Shakespeare did? By tunnel?”
“Of course, by tunnel. How otherwise I get here?”
“Then leaving should be simple. Go to the tunnel and depart by it.”
“I cannot,” the creature wailed. “The damn tunnel does not work. It has gone haywire. It works only one way. It brings you here, but does not take you back.”
“But you said a tunnel to the stars. I gained the impression it goes to many stars.”
“To more than the mind can count, but here it need repair. Shakespeare try and I try, but we cannot fix it. Shakespeare pound upon it with his fists, he kick it with his feet, he yell at it, calling terrible names. Still it does not work.”
“If you are not of this planet,” said Horton, “perhaps you’ll tell us what you are.”
“That is simply said. I am a carnivore. You know carnivore?”
“Yes. The eater of other forms of life.”
“I am a carnivore,” the creature said, “and satisfied to be one. Proud of being one. There be among the stars those who look with disdain and horror upon carnivore. They say, mistakenly, it is not right to eat one’s fellow beings. They say it be cruel to do so, but I tell you there is no cruelty. Quick death. Clean death. No suffering at all. Better than sickness and old age.”
“All right, then” said Nicodemus. “No need to carry on. We hold nothing against a carnivore.”
“Shakespeare say humans also carnivores. But not as much as me. Shakespeare shared the meat I killed. Would have killed himself, but not as good as me. I glad to kill for Shakespeare.”
“I bet you were,” said Horton.
“You are alone here?” asked Nicodemus. “You are the only one of your kind upon the planet?”
“The only one,” said Carnivore. “I arrive on sneaky trip. I tell no one of it.”
“This Shakespeare of yours,” said Horton. “He was on a sneaky trip as well?”
“There were unprincipled creatures who would have liked to find him, claiming he had done them imaginary harm. He had no wish for them to find him.”
“But Shakespeare now is dead?”
“Oh, he’s dead, all right. I ate him.”
“You what?”
“The flesh only,” said Carnivore. “Careful not to eat the bones. And I don’t mind telling you he was tough and stringy and not of a flavor that I relished. He had a strange taste to him.”
Nicodemus spoke hastily to change the subject. “We would be glad,” he said, “to come to the tunnel with you and see about the fixing of it.”
“Would you, in all friendship, do that?” Carnivore asked gratefully. “I was hoping that you would. You can fix the goddamn tunnel?”
“I don’t know,” said Horton. “We can have a look at it. I’m not an engineer …”
“I,” said Nicodemus, “can become an engineer.”
“The hell you can,” said Horton.
“We will have a look at it,” said this madman of a robot.
“Then it is all settled?”
“You can count on it,” said Nicodemus.
“That is good,” said Carnivore. “I show you ancient city and …”
“There is an ancient city?”
“I speak too hugely,” said Carnivore. “I let my enthusiasm at the fixing of the tunnel to run off with me. Perhaps not an actual city. Perhaps an outpost only. Very old and very ruined, but interesting, perhaps. But now I must be going. The star is riding low. Best to be undercover when darkness is come upon this place. I am glad to meet you. Glad Shakespeare’s people come. Hail and farewell! I see you in the morning and the tunnel fixed.”
He turned abruptly and trotted swiftly into the hills, without pausing to look back.
Nicodemus shook his head. “There are many mysteries here,” he said. “Much to ponder on. Many questions to be asked. But first I must get dinner for you. You’ve been out of cold-sleep long enough for it to be safe to eat. Good, substantial food, but not too much at first. You must curb your greediness. You must take it slow.”
“Now just a goddamn minute,” Horton said. “You have some explaining to be done. Why did you head me off when you knew I wanted to ask about the eating of this Shakespeare, whoever he might be? What do you mean, you can become an engineer? You know damn well you can’t.”
“All in good time,” said Nicodemus. “There is, as you say, explaining to be done. But first you must eat, and the sun is almost set. You heard what the creature said about being undercover when the sun is gone.”
Horton snorted. “Superstition. Old wives’ tales.”
“Old wives’ tales or not,” said Nicodemus, “it is best to be ruled by local custom until one is sure.”
Looking out across
the sea of billowing grass, Horton saw that the level horizon had bisected the sun. The sweep of grass seemed to be a sheet of shimmering gold. As he watched, the sun sank deeper into the golden shimmer and as it sank, the western sky changed to a sickly lemon-yellow.
“Strange light effect,” he said.
“Come on, let’s get back aboard,” urged Nicodemus. “What do you want to eat? Vichyssoise, perhaps—how does that sound to you? Prime ribs, a baked potato?”
“You set a good table,” Horton told him.
“I am an accomplished chef,” the robot said.
“Is there anything you aren’t? Engineer and cook. What else?”
“Oh, many things,” said Nicodemus. “I can do many things.”
The sun was gone and a purple haze seemed to be sifting down out of the sky. The haze hung over the yellow of the grass, which now had changed to the color of old, polished brass. The horizon was jet-black except for a glow of greenish light, the color of young leaves, where the sun had set.
“It is,” said Nicodemus, watching, “most pleasing to the eye.”
The color was fading rapidly, and as it faded, a chill crept across the land. Horton turned to go up the ramp. As he turned, something swooped down upon him, seizing him and holding him. Not really seizing him, for there was nothing there to seize him, but a force that fastened on him and engulfed him so he could not move. He tried to fight against it, but he could not move a muscle. He attempted to cry out, but his throat and tongue were frozen. Suddenly he was naked—or felt that he was naked, not so much deprived of clothes as of all defenses, laid open so that the deepest corner of his being was exposed for all to see. There was a sense of being watched, of being examined, probed, and analyzed. Stripped and flayed and laid open so that the watcher could dig down to his last desire and his final hope. It was, said a fleeting thought inside his mind, as if God had come and was assessing him, perhaps passing judgment on him.
He wanted to run and hide, to jerk the flayed skin back around his body and to hold it there, covering the gaping, spread-eagled thing that he had become, hiding himself again behind the tattered shreds of his humanity. But he couldn’t run and there was no place to hide, so he continued, standing rigid, being watched.
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