Childhood's End

by Arthur C. Clarke

  For food vanished from the freezer in a slow, steady stream; yet Jennifer Anne never moved from her cot.

  The rattling had ceased, and the discarded toy lay on the nursery floor where no one dared to touch it, lest Jennifer Anne might need it again. Sometimes she caused the furniture to stir itself into peculiar patterns, and it seemed to George that the fluoropaint on the wall was glowing more brilliantly than it had ever done before.

  She gave no trouble; she was beyond their assistance, and beyond their love. It could not last much longer, and in the time that was left they clung desperately to Jeff.

  He was changing too, but he still knew them. The boy whose growth they had watched from the formless mists of babyhood was losing his personality, dissolving hour by hour before their very eyes. Yet sometimes he still spoke to them as he had always done, and talked of his toys and friends as if unconscious of what lay ahead. But much of the time he did not see them, or show any awareness of their presence. He no longer slept, as they were forced to do, despite their overwhelming need to waste as few as possible of these last remaining hours.

  Unlike Jenny, he seemed to possess no abnormal powers over physical objects — perhaps because, being already partly grown, he had less need for them. His strangeness was entirely in his mental life, of which the dreams were now only a small part. He would stay quite still for hours on end, his eyes tightly closed, as if listening to sounds which no one else could hear. Into his mind was flooding knowledge — from somewhere or some-when — which soon would overwhelm and destroy the half-formed creature who had been Jeffrey Angus Greggson.

  And Fey would sit watching, looking up at him with tragic, puzzled eyes, wondering where her master had gone and when he would return to her.

  * * *

  Jeff and Jenny had been the first in all the world, but soon they were no longer alone. Like an epidemic spreading swiftly from land to land, the metamorphosis infected the entire human race. It touched practically no one above the age of ten, and practically no one below that age escaped.

  It was the end of civilisation, the end of all that men had striven for since the beginning of time. In the space of a few days, humanity had lost its future, for the heart of any race is destroyed, and its will to survive is utterly broken, when its children are taken from it.

  There was no panic, as there would have been a century before. The world was numbed, the great cities stilled and silent. Only the vital industries continued to function. It was as though the planet was in mourning, lamenting all that now could never be.

  And then, as he had done once before in a now-forgotten age, Karellen spoke for the last time to mankind.

  Chapter 20

  “My work here is nearly ended,” said Karellen’s voice from a million radios. “At last, after a hundred years, I can tell you what it was.

  “There are many things we have had to hide from you, as we hid ourselves for half our stay on Earth. Some of you, I know, thought that concealment unnecessary. You are accustomed to our presence; you can no longer imagine how your ancestors would have reacted to us. But at least you can understand the purpose of our concealment, and know that we had a reason for what we did.

  “The supreme secret we kept from you was our purpose in coming to Earth — that purpose about which you have speculated so endlessly. We could not tell you until now, for the secret was not ours to reveal.

  “A century ago we came to your world and saved you from self-destruction. I do not believe that anyone would deny that fact — but what that self-destruction was, you never guessed.

  “Because we banned nuclear weapons and all the other deadly toys you were accumulating in your armouries, the danger of physical annihilation was removed. You thought that was the only danger. We wanted you to believe that, but it was never true. The greatest danger that confronted you was of a different character altogether — and it did not concern your race alone.

  “Many worlds have come to the crossroads of nuclear power, have avoided disaster, have gone on to build peaceful and happy civilisations — and have then been utterly destroyed by forces of which they knew nothing. In the twentieth century, you first began to tamper seriously with those forces. That was why it became necessary to act.

  “All through that century, the human race was drawing slowly nearer to the abyss — never even suspecting its existence. Across that abyss, there is only one bridge. Few races, unaided, have ever found it. Some have turned back while there was still time, avoiding both the danger and the achievement. Their worlds have become Elysian islands of effortless content, playing no further part in the story of the universe. That would never have been your fate — or your fortune. Your race was too vital for that. It would have plunged into ruin and taken others with it, for you would never have found the bridge.

  “I am afraid that almost all I have to say now must be by means of such analogies. You have no words, no conceptions, for many of the things I wish to tell you — and our own knowledge of them is also sadly imperfect.

  “To understand, you must go back into the past and recover much that your ancestors would have found familiar, but which you have forgotten — which, in fact, we deliberately helped you to forget. For all our sojourn here has been based on a vast deception, a concealment of truths which you were not ready to face.

  “In the centuries before our coming, your scientists uncovered the secrets of the physical world and led you from the energy of steam to the energy of the atom. You had put superstition behind you; Science was the only real religion of mankind. It was the gift of the western minority to the remainder of mankind, and it had destroyed all other faiths. Those that still existed when we came were already dying. Science, it was felt, could explain everything; there were no forces which did not come within its scope, no events for which it could not ultimately account. The origin of the universe might be forever unknown, but all that had happened since obeyed the laws of physics.

  “Yet your mystics, though they were lost in their own delusions, had seen part of the truth. There are powers of the mind, and powers beyond the mind, which your science could never have brought within its framework without shattering it entirely. All down the ages there have been countless reports of strange phenomena — poltergeists, telepathy, precognition — which you had named but never explained. At first science ignored them, even denied their existence, despite the testimony of five thousand years. But they exist and if it is to be complete any theory of the universe must account for them.

  “During the first half of the twentieth century, a few of your scientists began to investigate these matters. They did not know it, but they were tampering with the lock of Pandora’s box. The forces they might have unleashed transcended any perils that the atom could have brought. For the physicists could only have ruined the Earth; the paraphysicists could have spread havoc to the stars.

  “That could not be allowed. I cannot explain the full nature of the threat you represented. It would not have been a threat to us, and therefore we do not comprehend it. Let us say that you might have become a telepathic cancer, a malignant mentality which in its inevitable dissolution would have poisoned other and greater minds.

  “And so we came — we were sent — to Earth. We interrupted your development on every cultural level, but in particular we checked all serious work on paranormal phenomena. I am well aware of the fact that we have also inhibited, by the contrast between our civilisations, all other forms of creative achievement as well. But that was a secondary effect, and it is of no importance.

  “Now I must tell you something which you may find very surprising, perhaps almost incredible. All these potentialities, all these latent powers — we do not possess them, nor do we understand them. Our intellects are far more powerful than yours, but there is something in your minds that has always eluded us. Ever since we came to Earth we have been studying you; we have learned a great deal, and will learn more, yet I doubt if we shall discover all the truth.

  “O
ur races have much in common — that is why we were chosen for this task. But in other respects, we represent the ends of two different evolutions. Our minds have reached the end of their development. So, in their present form, have yours. Yet you can make the jump to the next stage, and therein lies the difference between us. Our potentialities are exhausted, but yours are still untapped. They are linked, in ways we do not understand, with the powers I have mentioned — the powers that are now awakening on your world.

  “We held the clock back, we made you mark time while those powers developed, until they could come flooding out into the channels that were being prepared for them. What we did to improve your planet, to raise your standards of living, to bring justice and peace — those things we should have done in any event, once we were forced to intervene in your affairs. But all that vast transformation diverted you from the truth, and therefore helped to serve our purpose.

  “We are your guardians — no more. Often you must have wondered what position my race held in the hierarchy of the universe. As we are above you, so there is something above us, using us for its own purposes. We have never discovered what it is, though we have been its tool for ages and dare not disobey it. Again and again we have received our orders, have gone to some world in the early flower of its civilisation, and have guided it along the road that we can never follow — the road that you are travelling now.

  “Again and again we have studied the process we have been sent to foster, hoping that we might learn to escape from our own limitations. But we have glimpsed only the vague outlines of the truth. You called us the Overlords, not knowing the irony of that title. Let us say that above us is the Overmind, using us as the potter uses his wheel.

  “And your race is the clay that is being shaped on that wheel.

  “We believe — it is only a theory — that the Overmind is trying to grow, to extend its powers and its awareness of the universe. By now it must be the sum of many races, and long ago it left the tyranny of matter behind. It is conscious of intelligence, everywhere. When it knew that you were almost ready, it sent us here to do its bidding, to prepare you for the transformation that is now at hand.

  “All the earlier changes your race has known took countless ages. But this is a transformation of the mind, not of the body. By the standards of evolution, it will be cataclysmic — instantaneous. It has already begun. You must face the fact that yours is the last generation of Homo sapiens.

  “As to the nature of that change, we can tell you very little. We do not know how it is produced — what trigger impulse the Overmind employs when it judges that the time is ripe. All we have discovered is that it starts with a single individual — always a child — and then spreads explosively, like the formation of crystals round the first nucleus in a saturated solution. Adults will not be affected, for their minds are already set in an unalterable mould.

  “In a few years, it will all be over, and the human race will have divided in twain. There is no way back, and no future for the world you know. All the hopes and dreams of your race are ended now. You have given birth to your successors, and it is your tragedy that you will never understand them — will never even be able to communicate with their minds. Indeed, they will not possess minds as you know them. They will be a single entity, as you yourselves are the sums of your myriad cells. You will not think them human, and you will be right.

  “I have told you these things so that you will know what faces you. In a few hours, the crisis will be upon us. My task and my duty is to protect those I have been sent here to guard.

  Despite their wakening powers, they could be destroyed by the multitudes around them — yes, even by their parents, when they realise the truth. I must take them away and isolate them, for their protection, and for yours. Tomorrow my ships will begin the evacuation. I shall not blame you if you try to interfere, but it will be useless. Greater powers than mine are wakening now; I am only one of their instruments.

  “And then — what am I to do with you, the survivors, when your purpose has been fulfilled? It would be simplest, and perhaps most merciful, to destroy you — as you yourselves would destroy a mortally wounded pet you loved. But this I cannot do. Your future will be your own to choose in the years that are left to you. It is my hope that humanity will go to its rest in peace, knowing that it has not lived in vain.

  “For what you will have brought into the world may be utterly alien, it may share none of your desires or hopes, it may look upon your greatest achievements as childish toys — yet it is something wonderful, and you will have created it.

  “When our race is forgotten, part of yours will still exist. Do not, therefore, condemn us for what we were compelled to do. And remember this — we shall always envy you.”

  Chapter 21

  Jean had wept before, but she was not weeping now. The island lay golden in the heartless, unfeeling sunlight as the ship came slowly into sight above the twin peaks of Sparta. On that rocky island, not long ago, her son had escaped death by a miracle she now understood all too well. Sometimes she wondered if it might not have been better had the Overlords stood aside and left him to his fate. Death was something she could face as she had faced it before; it was in the natural order of things. But this was stranger than death — and more final. Until this day, men had died, yet the race had continued.

  There was no sound or movement from the children. They stood in scattered groups along the sand, showing no more interest in one another than in the homes they were leaving forever. Many carried babies who were too small to walk — or did not wish to assert the powers that made walking unnecessary. For surely, thought George, if they could move inanimate matter, they could move their own bodies. Why, indeed, were the Overlord ships collecting them at all?

  It was of no importance. They were leaving, and this was the way they chose to go. And then George realised what it was that had been teasing his memory. Somewhere, long ago, he had seen a century-old newsreel of such an exodus. It must have been at the beginning of the First World War — or the Second. There had been long lines of trains, crowded with children, pulling slowly out of the threatened cities, leaving behind the parents that so many of them would never see again. Few were crying; some were puzzled, clutching nervously at their small belongings, but most seemed to be looking forward with eagerness to some great adventure.

  And yet — the analogy was false. History never repeated itself. These who were leaving now were no longer children, whatever they might be. And this time there would be no reunion.

  The ship had grounded along the water’s edge, sinking deeply into the soft sand. In perfect unison, the line of great curving panels slid upwards and the gangways extended themselves towards the beach like metal tongues. The scattered, unutterably lonely figures began to converge, to gather into a crowd that moved precisely as a human crowd might do.

  Lonely? Why had he thought that, wondered George. For that was the one thing they could never be again. Only individuals can be lonely — only human beings. When the barriers were down at last, loneliness would vanish as personality faded. The countless raindrops would have merged into the ocean.

  He felt Jean’s hand increase its pressure on his in a sudden spasm of emotion.

  “Look,” she whispered. “I can see Jeff. By that second door.”

  It was a long way away, and very hard to be certain. There was a mist before his eyes which made it hard to see. But it was Jeff — he was sure of that; George could recognise his son now, as he stood with one foot already on the metal gangway.

  And Jeff turned and looked back. His face was only a white blur; at this distance, there was no way of telling if it bore any hint of recognition, any remembrance for all that he was leaving behind. Nor would George ever know if Jeff had turned towards them by pure chance — or if he knew, in those last moments while he was still their son, that they stood watching him as he passed into the land that they could never enter.

  The great doors began to close. And in
that moment Fey lifted up her muzzle and gave a low, desolate moan. She turned her beautiful limpid eyes towards George, and he knew that she had lost her master. He had no rival now.

  * * *

  For those who were left there were many roads but only one destination. There were some who said: “The world is still beautiful; one day we must leave it, but why should we hasten our departure?”

  But others, who had set more store by their future than the present, and had lost all that made life worth living, did not wish to stay. They took their leave alone, or with their friends, according to their nature.

  It was thus with Athens. The Island had been born in fire; in fire it chose to die. Those who wished to leave did so, but most remained, to meet the end among the broken fragments of their dreams.

  * * *

  No one was supposed to know when the time would be. Yet Jean awoke in the stillness of the night, and lay for a moment staring at the ghostly glimmer from the ceiling. Then she reached out to grasp George’s hand. He was a sound sleeper, but this time he woke at once. They did not speak, for the words that were wanted did not exist.

  Jean was no longer frightened, or even sad. She had come through to the calm waters and was beyond emotion now. But there was one thing still to be done, and she knew that there was barely time to do it.

  Still without a word, George followed her through the silent house. They went across the patch of moonlight that had entered through the studio roof, moving as quietly as the shadows it cast, until they came to the deserted nursery.

  Nothing had been changed. The fluoro-patterns that George had painted so carefully still glowed on the walls. And the rattle that had once belonged to Jennifer Anne still lay where she had dropped it, when her mind turned into the unknowable remoteness it inhabited now.