by Robin Cook
“My god, you’re one long-winded dude,” Richard said. “Where’s the proof?”
“The cavern our submersible ended up in?” Suzanne questioned. “Was that what you call an exit port?”
“Exactly,” Arak said.
“Is it normally filled with seawater?” Suzanne asked.
“Correct again,” Arak said.
Suzanne turned to Perry. “No wonder Sea Mount Olympus was never picked up by Geosat. The seamount doesn’t have the mass to be sensed on a gravimeter.”
“Come on!” Richard complained. “Enough stalling. Let’s see the proof!”
“Okay, Richard,” Arak said patiently. “Why don’t you suggest some period in your history that you would care to observe from our reference files. The more ancient the better in order to make my point.”
Richard looked at Michael for help.
“How about gladiators,” Michael said. “Let’s see some Roman gladiators.”
“Gladiatorial combat could be seen,” Arak said reluctantly. “But such violent recordings are under strict censorship. To view them would require special dispensation by the Council of Elders. Perhaps another era would be more suitable.”
“This is goddamn ridiculous!” Richard voiced.
“Try to control yourself, sailor,” Donald snapped.
“Let me understand what you mean,” Suzanne said. “Are you suggesting that you have recordings of all of human history, and you want us to suggest some historical time so we can see some images of it?”
“Precisely,” Arak answered.
“How about the Middle Ages?” Suzanne said.
“That’s a rather large era,” Arak said. “Can you be more specific?”
“Okay,” Suzanne said. “How about fourteenth-century France.”
“That’s during the Hundred Years’ War,” Arak said without enthusiasm. “It’s curious even you, Dr. Newell, request images from such a violent time. But then again, you second-generation humans have had a violent record.”
“Show people at play, not war,” Suzanne said.
Arak touched the keypad on his console and then leaned forward to speak into a small microphone at its center. Almost immediately the room’s illumination dimmed, and the floor screen came alive with blurred images flashing by at an incredible speed. Captivated, everyone leaned over the low wall and watched.
Presently the images slowed, then stopped. The projected scene was crystal clear with natural coloring and perfect holographic three dimensions. It was of a small wheat field in the late summer from an altitude of about four or five hundred feet. A group of people had paused in their harvest activities. Their scythes were haphazardly strewn around several blankets on which a modest meal was spread. The audio was of summer cicadas buzzing intermittently.
“This is not interesting,” Arak said after a quick glance. “It’s not going to be proof of anything. Other than the peoples’ crude garments, there is no indication of the time frame. Let’s let the search recommence.”
Before anyone could respond the screen again blurred as thousands of images flashed by. It was dizzying to watch the rapid flickering, but soon it again slowed and then stopped.
“Ah, this is much better,” Arak exclaimed. Now the view was of a castle erected on a rocky prominence that was hosting a tournament of some kind. The vantage point was significantly higher than the previous scene. The coloration of the vegetation around the castle walls suggested midautumn. The courtyard was packed with boisterous people whose voices formed a muted murmur. Everyone was dressed in colorful medieval attire. Heraldic pennants snapped in the breeze. At either end of a long, low log fence running down the center of the courtyard, two knights were in the final preparations for a joust. Their colorfully caparisoned horses were facing each other, pawing with excitement.
“How are these pictures taken?” Perry asked. He was transfixed by the image.
“It’s a standard recording device,” Arak said.
“I mean from what vantage point?” Perry asked. “Some kind of helicopter?”
Arak and Sufa laughed. “Excuse our giggles,” Arak said. “A helicopter is your technology. Not ours. Besides, such a vehicle would be too intrusive. These images were taken by a small, silent, unmanned antigravity ship hovering at about twenty thousand feet.”
“Hey, Hollywood does this stuff all the time,” Richard said. “Big deal! This is not proof.”
“If this is a set it’s the most realistic one I’ve ever seen,” Suzanne said. She leaned closer. As far as she was concerned the detail was far more than Hollywood was capable of.
As they watched, the attendant pages of the armored knights stepped back, and the men-at-arms lowered their lances. With a crisp fanfare sounding, the two horses charged forward on opposites sides of the log fence. As they bore down on each other the cheering of the crowd mushroomed. Then, just before the horsemen made contact, the screen went blank. A moment later it reverted back to its initial phosphorescent blue. A message window popped up and said: “Scene censored. Apply to Council of Elders.”
“Damn!” Michael voiced. “I was getting into it. Who the hell won: the guy in green or the guy in red?”
“Richard’s right,” Donald said suddenly, ignoring Michael. “These scenes can be staged too easily.”
“Perhaps,” Arak said without taking the slightest offense. “But I can show you whatever you want. We wouldn’t be able to stage the full complement of first-generation history subject to your on-the-spot whim.”
“How about something more ancient?” Perry suggested. “How about Neolithic times in the same location where the castle was.”
“Clever idea!” Arak said. “I’ll plug in the coordinates without a specific time other than, say, prior to ten thousand years ago, and let the search engine see if there is an image in storage.”
The screen again came to life. Once again images flashed by. This time the flashing continued much longer.
Suzanne touched Perry’s arm. She leaned toward him when he turned to her. “I think we’re looking at real images,” she said.
“I do, too,” Perry said. “Can you imagine the technology involved!”
“I’m thinking less about the technology than the fact that this place is real,” Suzanne whispered. “We’re not dreaming all this.”
“Ah!” Arak commented. “I can tell the search has found something. And the time frame will be in the twenty-five-thousand-year range.” As he spoke, the images slowed and again stopped.
The scene was the same rocky prominence although there was no castle. Instead the crown of the hill was dominated by a short escarpment undercut in the center to form a shallow cave. Grouped around the entrance to the cave was an assemblage of Neanderthals clothed in fur and working on crude implements.
“It does look like the same place,” Perry commented.
As everyone watched, the image telescoped in on the domestic scene.
“And the pictures are clearer,” Perry added.
“At that time we didn’t worry about our ships being seen,” Arak explained, “so we felt comfortable dropping down to a mere hundred feet or so to study behavior.”
As they watched, one of the Neanderthal men straightened up from scraping a hide. In the process of stretching he happened to look straight up. When he did, his brutish face suddenly went blank, and his mouth dropped open in a mixture of surprise and terror. The image on the screen was close enough and clear enough to reveal his large square teeth.
“Well,” Arak commented, “here’s an example of our antigravity drone being seen. The poor devil probably thinks he’s being visited by the gods.”
“My gosh,” Suzanne said. “He’s trying to get the others to look up!”
“Their language was very limited,” Arak said. “But I know that there was another subspecies in this same time frame and in the same general area that you called the Cro-Magnon. Their language skills were far better.”
The Neanderthal grunted and
leaped up and down while pointing toward the camera. Soon the entire group was looking skyward. Several of the women with young children immediately scooped their babies into their arms and disappeared into the cave while others dashed out.
One enterprising man bent down, picked up an egg-sized stone, and hurled it skyward. The missile approached, then went out of sight to the side.
“Not a bad arm,” Michael said. “The Red Sox could use him out in center field.”
Arak touched his console and the image faded. At the same time the lights went up in the room. Everyone moved back in their seats. Arak and Sufa looked around the room. The visitors were all quiet for the moment, even Richard.
“What was the supposed date of that recording?” Perry asked finally.
Arak consulted his console. “In your calendar it would have been July fourteenth, twenty-three three forty-two B.C.”
“Didn’t it bother you people that your camera platform was seen?” Suzanne asked. The image of the Neanderthal’s face was haunting her.
“We were starting to be concerned about detection,” Arak agreed. “There was even some talk among our conservative wing at the time to eliminate cognitive beings from the surface of the earth.”
“Why would you be concerned about such primitive people?” Perry asked.
“Purely to avoid detection,” Arak said. “Obviously twenty-five thousand years ago, due to the primitivism of your civilization, it didn’t matter. But we knew it would, eventually. We know that our ships have been sighted occasionally even in your modern times, and it does concern us. Thankfully the sightings have mostly been greeted with disbelief, or if not with disbelief then with the idea that our interplanetary ships have come from someplace else in the universe, not from within the earth itself.”
“Wait a second,” Donald said suddenly. “I don’t like to rain on anyone’s parade, but I don’t think this little show you’re putting on here proves anything at all. It would be too easy to pull this off with computer-generated images. Why don’t you cut all this gibberish, and just tell us who you represent and what you want from us.”
For a moment no one spoke. Arak and Sufa leaned over and consulted with one another sotto voce. Then they conferred with Ismael and Mary. After a short, hushed conference, the hosts repositioned themselves back in their chairs. Arak looked directly at Donald.
“Mr. Fuller, your skepticism is fully understandable,” Arak said. “We’re not sure everyone else shares your suspicions. Perhaps later they can influence your opinion. Of course there will be more proof as your introduction proceeds, and I’m confident that you will be won over. Meanwhile, we’d like to beg for your patience for a while longer.”
Donald did not respond. He merely glared back at Arak.
“Let’s move on,” Arak said. “And allow me to give you a capsule history of Interterra. To do that we must begin in your domain, the earth’s surface. Life there began about five hundred million years after the earth formed and took several billion years to evolve. Your earth scientists are well aware of this. What they are not aware of is that we, the first-generation humans, evolved about five hundred and fifty million years ago during evolution’s first phase. The reason your scientists are unaware of this first phase is because almost the entire fossilized record of it disappeared during a time we call the Dark Period. More about that later. First we have some images of these early times of our civilization, but the quality is not good.”
The light dimmed progressively. In the gathering darkness Suzanne and Perry exchanged glances, but didn’t speak. Their attention was soon directed at the floor screen. After another flickering interval a scene appeared taken at eye level, depicting an environment similar to the one the visitors had seen in Interterra. The main difference was that the buildings were white instead of black although the shapes were similar. And the people appeared like normal human beings—they weren’t all gorgeous and they were engaged in a variety of everyday tasks.
“Watching these scenes makes us smile at our own primitiveness,” Sufa said.
“Indeed,” Arak agreed. “We didn’t have worker clones at that ancient time.”
Suzanne cleared her throat. She was trying to sort through everything Arak was saying. As an earth scientist, his lecture collided with everything she knew about evolution in general and human evolution in particular. “Are you suggesting that these images we’re seeing are from five hundred and fifty million years ago?”
“That’s correct,” Arak answered. He suppressed a laugh. He and Sufa were apparently amused by the antics of an individual trying to lift a block of stone. “Excuse us from finding this so funny,” he said. “We haven’t seen any of these sequences for a very long time. It was back when we had something akin to your nationalities, although they disappeared after the first fifty thousand years of our history. Wars disappeared at the same time, as you might imagine. As you can see, the surface of the earth was very different from the way it is now, and it is that appearance that we have re-created here in Interterra. Back then there was just one supercontinent and one superocean.”
“What happened?” Suzanne asked. “Why did your civilization choose to go underground?”
“Because of the Dark Period,” Arak said. “Our civilization had almost a million years of peaceful progress until we became aware of ominous developments in a galaxy close to ours. Within a relatively short time a series of cataclysmic supernova explosions occurred, effectively showering earth with enough radiation to dissipate the ozone layer. We could have dealt with that, but our scientists also recognized that these galactic events also upset the delicate balance of the solar system’s asteroid population. It became evident the earth was to be showered with planetesimal collisions, just as had happened when it was in its primordial state.”
“For crying out loud!” Richard moaned. “I can’t take much more of this.”
“Quiet, Richard!” Suzanne snapped without taking her eyes off Arak. “So Interterra was driven underground.”
“Exactly,” Arak said. “We knew the surface of the earth would become uninhabitable. It was a desperate time. We searched the solar system for a new home without success, and had not yet developed the time technology to search other galaxies. Then it was suggested that our only chance for survival was to move underground, or actually under the ocean. We had the technology so we did it in a miraculously short time. And very soon after we moved, the world as we knew it was consumed in deadly radiation, asteroidal bombardment, and geological upheaval. It was a close call even under the protective layer of the ocean, because at one point the ocean came close to boiling away from the intense heat. All life forms on earth were destroyed except for some primitive bacteria, some viruses, and a bit of blue-green algae.”
Suddenly the screen went blank and the illumination in the room returned.
Everyone was quiet.
“Well, there you have it,” Arak said. “A concentrated capsule of Interterran history and scientific fact. Now, I’m sure you’ll have questions.”
“How long did the Dark Period last?” Suzanne asked.
“A little more than twenty-five thousand years,” Arak answered.
Suzanne shook her head in amazement and disbelief, yet it all made a certain amount of scientific sense. And most important, it explained the reality she presently found herself in.
“But you stayed under the ocean,” Perry said. “Why didn’t your people return to the earth’s surface?”
“For two main reasons,” Arak said. “First, we had everything we needed and we’d become accustomed to our environment. And second, when surface life evolved anew, the bacteria and viruses that developed were organisms to which we had never been exposed. In other words, by the time the climate would have permitted our reemergence, the biosphere was antigenically inimical to us. Perhaps deadly is a better word, unless we were willing to go through a strenuous adaptation. And so here we remain, very happy and content especially since here under the ocean w
e are not at the whim of nature. Of all the universe we have visited thus far, this small planet is the best suited to the human organism.”
“Now I understand why we had to go through such a strenuous decontamination,” Suzanne said. “We had to be microorganism-free.”
“Exactly,” Arak said. “And at the same time you had to be adapted to our organisms.”
“In other words,” Suzanne continued, “evolution occurred twice on earth with essentially the same outcome.”
“Almost the same outcome,” Arak said. “There were some differences in certain species. At first we were surprised about this, but then it made sense in that the original DNA is the same. Multicellular life evolved from the same blue-green algae in both instances and with approximately the same climatic conditions.”
“Which is why you refer to yourselves as first-generation humans,” Suzanne said, “and to us as second-generation humans.”
Arak smiled with satisfaction. “We counted on your understanding all this as rapidly as you have, Dr. Newell,” he said.
Suzanne turned to Perry and Donald. “Scientific studies confirm some of this,” she said. “Both geological and oceanographic evidence suggest there was an ancient single continent on earth, called Pangaea.”
“Excuse me,” Arak said. “I don’t mean to interrupt, but that’s not the same as our original continent. Pangaea formed de novo during the latter part of the Dark Period geological upheavals. Our continent suffered complete subduction into the asthenosphere prior to that.”
Suzanne nodded. “Very interesting,” she said. “And that must be the reason the fossil record of the first evolution is not available.”
Arak smiled contentedly again. “Your grasp of these basic fundamentals is heartening indeed, Dr. Newell. But we had anticipated as much even before your arrival.”