by James White
And then suddenly his newly achieved mood of calm and solemn acceptance of his fate was shattered, by that same memory. He began to tremble violently as the realization grew in him that he might, just possibly, not have to die at all. On that September day he had been given more than he knew: He had been given his life. Oh, Alice… he thought.
Behind him Sister was expressing concern over his shivering and making determined efforts to take his temperature. This struck him as being excruciatingly funny and he began to laugh. Sister became even more concerned. “I’m all right,” he said, sobering. In a voice which was still far from steady he gave his orders. All search robots were to be recalled for a special project. He gave minutely detailed instructions regarding it to Sister, and made her repeat them back, because he would not be available himself when they arrived. Finally, immediate preparations must be made to put him into Deep Sleep…
Four hours later he was lying in the padded, coffinlike container with the section above his face hinged back to reveal the glittering lenses of Sister staring down at him. The cold had passed the uncomfortable stage and was becoming almost pleasant.
“Now remember,” he said for about the fourth time, “if the idea doesn’t work out I don’t want to be awakened. You’d be wakening me only to let me die of starvation…”
“I understand, sir,” said Sister. “Have you any other instructions?”
“Yes…” began Ross, but lost track of what he said after that. The chill was accelerating through his body and he must have been in a kind of cold delirium. Soon the entire room and its contents would be similarly refrigerated as a precaution against a breakdown of his container, a point which he had forgotten until a few hours ago. He kept seeing the ludicrous picture of three Path Sisters dissecting the cuffs of his old tweed trousers. Swim or walk, sea or park, death or life. He wanted Alice. “I’m sorry, sir.”
The flap closed with a gentle click and the cold was like an explosion within him that engulfed his mind in icy darkness. But deep inside him there was a spot of warmth which had no business being there, and a light which grew until it pained his eyes. Faulty equipment, he thought disgustedly, or they’ve muffed it. When his vision cleared he glared up at Sister, too angry and disappointed to speak.
“Do not try to move, Mr. Ross,” the Sister said sharply. “You are to undergo a half-hour massage, after which you should be able to walk unassisted. Are you ready…?”
It might be massage to Sister, Ross thought as he gritted his teeth in agony, but to him it felt like the treatment received in the worst of the old-time concentration camps rather than something of therapeutic value. At the end of the longest half-hour of his life Sister lifted him to a sitting position, and he succeeded in gathering enough breath to speak.
“What happened? Why did you wake me up…?”
“Can you stand up, Mr. Ross, and move around?” asked Sister, ignoring him. Ross could, and did. The robot said, “I suggest we go to the surface, sir.”
Noting the “sir,” Ross snarled. “So I’m not your patient anymore, somebody you could order about and beat half to death? Now I’m the boss again, and I want some straight answers. What went wrong, why did you halt the cool-down? Have you found an edible food cache…?”
“You have been in Deep Sleep,” said Sister quietly, “for forty-three thousand years.”
The reply left Ross mentally stunned. He was unable to speak, much less ask further questions during the trip to the surface, and there he received a greater shock.
12
The sun shone clear and yellow and incandescent out of a pale blue sky, and from his feet a rippling sea of green stretched to the horizon. Five miles away the hills which he had not been able to see since his first Deep Sleep had a misty look, but it was the pale shimmer of a heat haze rather than windblown smoke. The air tasted like nothing he had remembered, so clean and fresh and sparkling that he seemed to be drinking rather than breathing it. Ross closed his eyes and with heart pounding madly in his throat turned a half circle; then he opened them.
Pale blue sky and deep blue sea were separated at the horizon by a distant range of white cumulus. The bay was filled with whitecaps and the biggest rollers that Ross had ever seen burst like liquid snow onto a beach that was clean yellow sand for as far as the eye could see.
Suddenly visibility was reduced to nil by a mist in his eyes, although Ross never felt less like crying in all his life.
“It took much longer than you had estimated,” the Sister’s voice came from behind him, “for the grass grown from your seedlings to make the change from interior cultivation in artificial UV to surface beds covered by transparent plastic, and even longer before they would grow unprotected on the surface. This was due to finely divided ash in the atmosphere having a masking effect on those sections of the solar spectrum necessary for the growth of plant life. However, time and natural mutational changes had produced a strain capable of surviving surface conditions.”
Without pausing. Sister went on, “While this strain was developing the ash was gradually being absorbed by the sea and land surface, causing an increase in sunlight. This accelerated the spread of the grass, which in turn hastened the fixing of ash into the soil. And as the grass had no natural enemies or competing life forms, its spread across the planet was, relatively, quite rapid. But it required an additional several millennia for it to evolve, and for us to isolate, edible grains suitable for processing into food.
“This has now been done,” Sister concluded, “and your food-supply problem is solved.”
“Thank you,” Ross mumbled. He couldn’t take his eyes off the bright yellow sand on the beach. Wind, rain and salt water — mostly the salt water, he thought — had brought about chemical changes which had given the once-grimy beach this freshly laundered look. All it had needed was a little time.
Forty-three thousand years…!
Even the ghosts of the past were dead now, and the proud works of Man, with the exception of this one, robot-tended hospital, were so many smears of rust in the clay. Ross shivered suddenly.
Sister began speaking again, interrupting what was becoming a very unpleasant train of thought.
She said, “Your present physical condition is such that, although you cannot be classified as a patient, an immediate return to full-time duties is to be avoided. I suggest, therefore, that you do not concern yourself with our various progress reports just yet, and instead that you take a vacation…”
There was a clap of thunder that went on and on. Ross looked around wildly, then up. He saw a tiny silver arrowhead at an unguessable altitude drawing a dazzling white line across the sky. As he watched the vapor trail developed a curve and the ship went into a turn which would have converted any flesh-and-blood pilot into strawberry jam. It lost speed and altitude rapidly and within minutes was sliding low over the valley and heading out to sea again. The noise made it hard for Ross to think, but it seemed that the ship had slowed to far below its stalling speed. Then a shimmering heat distortion along its underside gave him the explanation: vertically mounted jet engines. It came to a halt above the beach and began to sink groundward. For a moment it was lost in a sandstorm of its own making; then the thunder died and it lay silent and shining — all two hundred feet of it!
He hadn’t mentioned vertical-takeoff models to the robots, Ross told himself excitedly; this was something they must have worked out for themselves, probably with the help of books…
“Now that it is possible, we thought you might like to travel during your convalescence,” Sister resumed, “and the robot which you see on the beach contains accommodation for a human being. If you feel up to it I would suggest—”
Ross laughed. “Let’s go!” he shouted, giving Sister a slap on her smooth, unfeeling hide. He stumbled twice on the way down, but it was sheerest pleasure to fall onto that long, sweet-smelling grass, and the too-hot sand which burned his bare feet was like a sharp ecstasy. Then he was climbing into the cool interior of t
he ship and looking over the accommodation.
The observation compartment was small, contained a well-padded chair and gave an unobstructed view ahead and below. There was a larger compartment opening off it, containing a bunk, toilet facilities and a well-stuffed bookcase. Ross would not have minded betting that the books were all light, noncerebral works.
’’You’ve thought of everything,” he said, spontaneously.
“Thank you, sir,” said the aircraft, speaking through a grille behind the observation chair. In a pleasant, masculine voice it went on, “I am Searcher A17/3, one of five models designed for long-range reconnaissance and search-coordination duties. On this assignment, however, the maneuvers and accelerations used should cause you the minimum of physical discomfort. Where would you like to go, sir?”
Later, Ross was to remember that day as being the happiest of his life…
At altitudes of ten miles down to a few hundred feet, and at speeds ranging from zero to Mach Eight, Ross looked at his world — his fresh, green world. He did not think that he was being conceited for regarding it as his own, because he had found it a blackened corpse and he had brought life to it again. For the grass, which had originated from a few tiny seedlings caught in the cuffs of his trousers, covered all the land. Ross was happy, excited, stunned by the sheer wonder of it.
In equatorial Africa and around the Amazon Basin the grass was a tangle of lank, vivid green. The old-time grasslands were emerald oceans which stretched, unrelieved by a single tree or bush, to the horizon. Sparse and wiry, the grass struggled to within twenty miles of the Arctic ice, and on the highest mountains it stopped just short of the snowline. There were seasonal changes of color, of course, and variations due to increasing altitude and latitude, but they were too gradual to be easily apparent. To Ross it looked as though someone had gone over the whole land surface with a paintbrush, coating everything with the same, even shade of green. Sometimes an inland lake, or a desert, or a snowcapped range of mountains would suddenly break the monotony of land- or seascape, and Ross would tell himself smugly that although his world might run heavily to unrelieved blue and green, that was a much nicer color scheme than gray and black.
Late afternoon found him flying above the Caribbean. When he saw the island. It was one of many, a small, flat mound of green ringed by a white halo of surf, and Ross did not know why he picked it in particular. Perhaps it was the tiny bay. which gleamed like a yellow horseshoe on its western shore which caused him to order the aircraft to land. Certainly he had been feeling like a swim for the past few hours.
Sister raised no objections beyond reminding him that he was not to overexert himself, that in the time since his last exposure to sunlight the mechanics of stellar evolution had brought about a significant increase in solar radiation, and that in all the world there remained not one usable tube of sunburn lotion. Nodding soberly, Ross told her that he would bear all these points in mind. Then he wheeled and went charging down the beach and, with a wild yell, dived into a monster wave which was just beginning to curl at the top.
After the swim he moved inland to where the sand gave way to long, hot grass, and lay down to dry off. The sun was very hot, despite its being only an hour before sunset. A great, drowsy happiness filled Ross, and a quiet optimism for the future of his world, his robots and his race. He was too sleepy and contented at the moment to work out details, but, considering what he had already accomplished, he felt very confident. Sighing, he rolled onto his back, and his fingers unconsciously went through the motions of pulling a long stem of grass and placing it between his teeth. He began to chew.
At that point Sister informed him that the grass he was chewing was not one of the edible strains, but that its use in small quantities would not prove harmful. Ross laughed, then climbed to his feet and headed toward the aircraft. There he made a sizable dent in its food store and a somewhat larger one in its bunk. And so ended the happiest day of his life.
Ross awoke next morning to find the ship airborne and climbing to avoid a hurricane which was sweeping in from the southwest. An hour later, two hundred miles west of Panama, he spotted the vapor trail of another A17 and spoke with it briefly without diverting it from its search duties. He had barely finished speaking when he saw a long, whitish smudge on the surface of the sea close to the horizon. Within minutes it had resolved itself into the most awe-inspiring sight that Ross had ever seen.
Next to his grass, that is.
Spaced out in perfect line abreast at intervals of half a mile, close on one hundred long, low, angular ships battered their way through the long Pacific swell like some gigantic battle fleet. Five hundred feet long, excessively low in the water, their superstructures covered with a random outgrowth of bumps, girders and angular projections, they were like no ships that history had ever seen. Devoid of such purely human necessities as decks, ports and lifeboats, their bizarre aspect was perhaps explained by the fact that they were ships which sailed rather than ships which were being sailed. Their wakes boiled and spread dazzlingly astern as if each ship were towing a thin white fan, until the sea turned almost to milk before the turbulence died. One hundred ships, identical but for the numerals painted on their bows, all holding a formation which would have sent the most exacting admiral in history into paroxysms of joy.
“The Pacific search fleet,” Sister explained. “They are equipped with every method of underwater detection mentioned in the literature available to us, together with some which seemed to us to be a logical development of that data. They are accompanied, at a depth of five hundred feet, by ten auxiliary vessels capable of making a close investigation of any find down to a depth of one mile. Below that their pressure hulls implode and special equipment is necessary.”
“Let’s go down for a closer look,” said Ross.
For half an hour he flew up and down that tremendous line of ships, communicating with some, but often just staring spellbound at the breathtaking perspective and at the way they seemed to even pitch and roll with the waves in unison. He, Ross, had been responsible for bringing this vast fleet into existence, and the thought made him feel a little drunk. He had a sudden urge to make them re-form into triple lines ahead, or concentric circles, or to make them spell out his name across fifty miles of ocean, but conquered it. Then shortly afterward Sister suggested that they fly southwest; she wanted to show him the interplanetary search project…
That also was a happy, exciting day, but his pleasure was being spoiled by a constant and growing restlessness. He wanted to get back to work and Sister wouldn’t let him. If he tried to give instructions to some of the search robots Sister countermanded them, and if he asked for detailed reports on anything she stopped that, also, with the brisk reminder that he was on vacation. Hitherto the robot had treated him in one of two ways — as a patient, when she didn’t do anything he told her, or as the Boss who was obeyed implicitly. Now she had seemingly developed a third alternative in which she did some of the things he asked and argued him out of the rest. At first he had suspected a malfunctioning which might have been due to the absence of Sister’s data-storage trailer — he had thought that she had left it behind because of its awkwardness inside the aircraft. But then Sister informed him that she had not had to use the thing for the past ten thousand years, that sub-miniaturization and new data-indexing techniques had rendered it obsolete.
And so for two weeks Ross lazed and swam and collected a suntan on all the famous beaches of the world, until Sister indicated that he was fit to resume work by saying, “The search reports are kept at the hospital, sir. Do you wish to return?”
Again happily, Ross went back to work. Except for short breaks when he swam or went for a walk across the valley, all his time was spent in an enlarged control room which he had ordered built overlooking the sea. Between watching pictures relayed from search subs on the ocean beds or gray, static-riddled views of the lunar Alps, he worked at bringing himself up to date.
13
The lan
d surfaces of the planet had been searched, thoroughly, to within a few hundred miles of the poles. One thousand, seven hundred and fifty-eight underground installations had been discovered and examined, which included launching bases, hospitals, underground towns and single residences, and mines converted into bomb shelters. In the sea seventy-two military or naval establishments had been examined up to the present, but two thirds of the Pacific and much of the Indian and South Atlantic Oceans had yet to be searched. So far three bases had been discovered on the moon, but none of them had been able to survive the warheads sent against them.
The search had uncovered vast quantities of usable metal, all of which had been salvaged, and many functioning robots and other servomechanisms of the nonthinking type. Millions of books of all kinds, engineering blueprints and various pictorial forms of data had been scanned, absorbed and stored in special memory banks, where they could be reproduced at will. As a result of this his robots had become much more adaptable, and gained tremendously in initiative. Now his most general and loosely worded instructions, even wishes he had left uncompleted, would be acted upon correctly and as quickly as was possible.
Altogether a tremendous achievement. But on the negative side…
No human survivors had been found, no animal life of any kind. Birds that flew, insects that crawled, worms that burrowed: none. The sea, lifeless.
Looking out of his dome, Ross began to hate the grass which rolled away on three sides of him. Apart from himself, it was the only thing which was originally alive oh the whole planet, and the only thing which he had gained by his last sleep was a well-stocked larder.
He took to wandering about the valley and throwing himself down on the grass at a different spot each day. He would lie for hours at a time, staring at the sky and praying just one spider or earwig or ladybird would crawl across his arm or leg. He began speaking to the robots less and less, which distressed Sister considerably. She began looking for ways and means of interesting him, and one day she actually succeeded.