New Earth

by Ben Bova

  But he said he needed our help.

  A brightly colored bird swooped low between the trees and squawked once, then flapped away.

  Jordan followed its flight until it was lost in the foliage high above. When he looked down again at the trail he was following he saw Aditi standing there, waiting for him, with her catlike pet Sleen twining around her ankle. His heart leaped.

  She was wearing a knee-length skirt of dark blue and a short-sleeved blouse of a lighter shade. Her smile lit up the forest.

  He hurried up to her. “Hello! Have I kept you waiting?”

  “Not at all,” Aditi replied, laughing. “I knew when you’d get here.”

  Jordan kissed her, lightly, and hand in hand they walked the rest of the way to the city’s edge while Sleen slinked off into the foliage.

  As they crossed the stone walkway that circled the city and started up its main street, Jordan said, “I’ve got to have a long talk with Adri. There’s so much I need to learn, need to find out.”

  Aditi nodded thoughtfully. “He’s busy this morning. A meeting with the city’s administrators.”

  “Sounds dull.”

  “But it’s important. He said he’d meet us for lunch. In his office.”

  Jordan smiled. “That gives us the entire morning for ourselves.”

  “None of the others are coming?”

  “No,” he said. Wondering how much he should tell her, he added slowly, “They’ve decided to remain in camp, for the time being. They … they’re rather frightened of you.”

  “Of me?”

  “Of Adri. Of your people. The reality of all this is just starting to sink in on them.”

  “And they’re frightened of us? Why? We’re not going to harm them.”

  “Aditi dear, I know that. And you know it. I think perhaps even the rest of my people know it—in their heads. But in their hearts, in their guts, they’re scared.”

  “How odd,” she said. “Emotional.”

  “We humans are frightened by the unknown, and there are such enormous unknowns involved here.”

  “I suppose so,” she said, nodding.

  “I want to help them get over their fears. To do that, I have to learn a lot more about who you are, where you come from, and why you’ve lured us to this world.”

  Aditi smiled at the word lured, but made no reply. The two of them walked in silence along the city’s main street, nodding at the people walking along in the opposite direction.

  “Where’s everyone going?” Jordan asked. “We seem to be the only people heading upstream.”

  “Most of them are going to their jobs. It’s the beginning of the workday.”

  “And where are we going?”

  Aditi hesitated a heartbeat or two. Checking with her inbuilt communicator, Jordan thought.

  At last she replied, “Let’s go to the communications center.”

  She led him down a side street toward a small stone building. Jordan saw that it was attached to the side of the massive structure that Adri had called their administrative center. All right, he said to himself. The dormitory building should be around the corner of the administrative center, on the far side of the plaza that connects them. He smiled inwardly. I’m getting to know the city’s layout, at least a little.

  He saw no antennas on the communications center’s roof. Like all the other buildings in the city, its flat roof was a garden, green and leafy.

  Inside, though, the comm center was a humming beehive of quietly intense activity. Men and women sat at rows of consoles. Electronic maps covered the walls. Display screens showed rooms, corridors, city streets, the farms beyond the city’s edge, patches of forest, a seashore glittering beneath the morning sun.

  “That’s our camp!” Jordan recognized the dome-shaped bubble tents.

  “Yes, we keep watch over it,” said Aditi, standing beside him.

  Frowning slightly, Jordan asked, “Do you eavesdrop on our conversations?”

  “We monitor your discussions, yes.”

  Even though he had known that Adri somehow tracked his every move, Jordan felt nettled at Aditi’s casual admission that they were spying on their human visitors.

  “I suppose the lavatories are off-limits,” he grumbled.

  Aditi giggled. “Oh yes. You can keep secrets in there.”

  He grinned back at her. “On our world, it’s considered impolite to spy on people.”

  “Oh, we’re not spying, Jordan! We’re…” She fumbled for a word. “We’re … spying,” she finally admitted. “I suppose that really is the correct definition, after all.”

  “Why? We’re no threat to you.”

  “We need to know all about you,” Aditi said. “We need to know what you think of us, what you intend to do.”

  “Are you afraid of us?” he asked, incredulous.

  “Not afraid, exactly. Curious. Hopeful. Worried, too, I suppose.”

  Jordan looked into her troubled eyes. “There is a gulf between us, isn’t there?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid there is.”

  “Well,” he said, “I’m here to close that gulf. When we meet with Adri.”

  THE GULF

  Aditi led Jordan to the astronomical observatory, a domed structure that housed several telescopes, big tubular pieces of equipment angled up toward the dome, closed against the day’s glare. Men and women, youngish for the most part, were seated at electronics consoles or bent over large tables whose tops were digital display screens. Jordan saw that the images were of star fields, swirling clouds of thousands, millions of pinpoint stars set against the black of infinity.

  “Your telescopes seem rather small compared to the ones I’ve seen on Earth,” Jordan observed.

  Aditi explained, “These optical telescopes are electronically boosted. They can see more clearly than your best telescopes on Earth.”

  “Our best telescopes are in orbit,” he said. “And on the Moon.”

  “We have no need for that. Observations from the ground are sufficient for our studies.”

  “Really?”

  “Dr. Rudaki seemed happy to be working with our astronomers,” Aditi said, almost mournfully. “But she hasn’t returned here for some days.”

  “She will,” said Jordan. “Give us some time to adjust to conditions here.”

  “I hope she will. I hope your Dr. Meek and the others learn to trust us.”

  Jordan bit back the reply that sprang to his mind. Listening to every word we speak isn’t the way to build trust, he said to himself.

  Aditi seemed to understand his reaction. Turning from the telescopes to a wall display that showed row upon row of alphanumeric symbols scrolling rapidly across the screen, she said, “We also have radio telescopes, outside the city. Some of them are quite large.”

  “Do you communicate with other intelligent species?” Jordan asked.

  She shook her head. “It can’t be called communication. The gulf between stars is too large. It takes years—our years—for a message to reach another intelligent species. Then more years for them to respond.”

  “But you do send messages back and forth?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Perhaps one day we’ll begin sending messages to Earth.”

  And letting our own messages get through, Jordan added silently.

  * * *

  Adri was standing by one of the sweeping windows, slowly stroking the same little ball of dark fur with big, round eyes, when Aditi led Jordan into his office. He turned at the sound of the door sliding open and slipped the pet into a pocket of his robe. A beaming smile spread across his aged, seamed face.

  “Friend Jordan,” he said, gliding across the polished tiles in his floor-length gown, both hands extended.

  Jordan grasped Adri’s hands in his own, once again surprised by the old man’s strength.

  “Adri, I sincerely hope you are my friend.”

  The alien’s smile wilted slightly; his pale blue eyes focused directly on Jordan’s own.

 
“We must be friends, Jordan,” he said, his normally faint voice taking on some iron. “Nothing can be accomplished if we are not.”

  “I want to be your friend,” Jordan replied. “And I want you to be mine.”

  “Of course. Of course,” Adri said as he gestured Jordan to a table already set for three. Jordan helped Aditi into a chair, then sat across from her, while an armchair obediently rolled to where Adri was standing.

  Easing himself carefully into the chair, Adri said, “You have more questions for me.”

  Leaning forward, arms on the table, Jordan said, “Aditi pointed out this morning that there’s a gulf between us. You’ve been very kind, certainly, but you haven’t been completely forthcoming with us.”

  “We’ve answered all your questions,” Aditi said.

  “Yes, I know. But only the questions we know how to ask.”

  “Our policy—” Adri began.

  Jordan interrupted, “It’s time to change your policy. I want to know your complete story. Where you’re from, why you’re here, what you want of us.”

  Adri leaned back in his armchair. With a glance toward Aditi, he asked, “Do you think you are ready for the complete story? Are you capable of accepting the whole truth?”

  “If we’re ever to bridge the gulf between us, Adri, you’ll have to be completely honest with us.”

  “With you,” Adri said, fixing Jordan with a grave stare.

  Jordan accepted the responsibility with a tilt of his head. “With me, then. Think of me as the representative of the human race.”

  “And the others? The fearful ones?”

  “They’ll overcome their fears once they understand your whole story.”

  Again Adri looked to Aditi. “You’ve got to tell him,” she said.

  “Very well,” Adri said. Then he broke into a wry smile. “After lunch.”

  Two young men served them a meal of cold meats and crisp salad. They spoke guardedly as they ate: Jordan talked mostly of how interested Thornberry was in their energy shield technology.

  “Aditi can see to his education,” Adri suggested.

  “I’d be happy to,” Aditi said. “And Dr. Rudaki should return to the observatory. She seemed so excited about working with our astronomers.”

  Jordan grinned. “If Elyse returns, my brother will come along with her. They’re inseparable.”

  Aditi looked as if she wanted to reply to that, but she quickly turned her attention back to what was left of her meal.

  At last, when their plates held nothing more than crumbs, Adri slowly, almost painfully, got to his feet. “Come with me, friend Jordan.”

  “Where?” Jordan asked.

  “To see the truth.”

  THE TRUTH

  Fondling his palm-sized pet as he walked, Adri led Jordan—with Aditi at his side—down to the ground floor of the administrative center, out across the plaza behind the building, around the dormitory, to a small round building surrounded by tall slim dark green trees that sighed in the afternoon breeze. The sky was cloudless, hot and bright like a bowl of hammered copper.

  They walked up to a metal door that looked to Jordan more like an air lock hatch than an ordinary entrance. Adri slid the furry little pet back into his robe, then pressed the fingertips of both his hands against the polished metal. The door slid open.

  The three of them stepped into a narrow metal chamber. It is an air lock! Jordan marveled.

  The inner hatch slid open and they stepped into a dimly lit vaulted chamber. Jordan’s ears popped slightly. The air pressure in here must be lower than outside, he reasoned.

  Lights set along the circular periphery of the chamber brightened as they walked across the stone floor. Sitting in the center of the otherwise empty space was a gray, oblong shape, about the size of a railroad car. It was bulbous, almost like a dumbbell, although its surface was far from smooth. Its metal hull seemed incredibly old, pitted with age, dull and worn and ancient. It reminded Jordan somehow of ancient Egyptian sarcophagi he had seen in museums back on Earth.

  “This was our starship,” Adri said, his voice barely above a whisper in the big, shadowy, circular room.

  “That’s too small to be a starship,” Jordan contradicted. “Why, it’s not even as big as one of our rocketplanes.”

  “It truly is a starship,” Adri insisted, gently.

  “It can’t be…” Then Jordan realized, “That means you weren’t born here.”

  “We weren’t born at all,” Aditi corrected. “Not in the sense that you mean.”

  “We were conceived and gestated here,” said Adri. “In the biolab, as you have seen.”

  “But then … who built the biolab? Who built this city? This planet?”

  “Our Predecessors,” Adri replied.

  “Why? How?”

  “I should let our one remaining Predecessor answer your questions.”

  “He’s here?”

  “We will have to enter the starship,” said Adri. “In a sense, it is itself our one remaining Predecessor.”

  Jordan’s mouth went dry, but he managed to say, “By all means.”

  A circular hatch in the starship’s curved hull swung open with a slight grating sound, like hinges long unlubricated.

  Adri said, “Excuse me, but I should enter first.”

  Jordan watched the old man bend over stiffly and climb through the hatch. He turned and gestured for Aditi to go in before him, but she shook her head.

  “I’ll stay out here,” she said.

  “No women allowed?” he joked.

  “It’s not that,” she replied, totally serious. “There isn’t much room in there. I’ll wait for you.”

  Trembling inwardly with excitement, Jordan planted one foot on the hatch’s lip and pulled himself through.

  It was even dimmer inside. Jordan hesitated at the edge of the hatch, waiting for his eyes to adjust to the gloom. He made out Adri’s form, crouching just ahead of him, stroking his pet again. Its big round eyes shone luminously in the shadows.

  “Close the hatch,” Adri said softly.

  Jordan reached for the hatch, but it began to swing shut by itself. This time there was no squeaking, he noticed.

  As soon as the hatch closed, the chamber they were in lit up, not brightly, but enough for Jordan to see that they were inside a narrow, low-ceilinged compartment. Its walls and ceiling were lined with tiny glasslike beads. Lights, Jordan thought, although none of them were lit.

  “Where do we sit?” he asked Adri, his voice hushed as if they were in a church.

  “On the floor,” Adri answered, his voice also little more than a whisper. “This vessel was not built for human comfort.”

  Feeling slightly foolish, Jordan squatted on the metal deck.

  “Now what?”

  Adri didn’t answer. Instead, he called in a stronger voice, “I have brought the Earthman. He seeks knowledge and understanding.”

  Suddenly all the tiny lights winked on, blinking in wild succession in a cascade of reds, greens, blues, yellows. It made Jordan think of a Christmas display on amphetamines.

  “Welcome, Jordan Kell,” said a calm, sweet tenor voice.

  Surprised, Jordan had to swallow before he could say, “Thank you, sir.” Then he added, “To whom am I speaking?”

  “I am the last of the Predecessors,” said the voice. “I have been waiting for this moment for many thousands of Earth years.”

  “You are a computer?” Jordan asked.

  “I am a self-aware, sentient entity, just as you are.”

  “But you’re a machine, not a person.”

  A moment’s hesitation. Then, “Hath not a machine eyes? Hath not a machine organs, dimensions, senses?”

  He’s quoting Shakespeare! Jordan realized. And very selectively.

  He asked, “Have you affections, passions, as well? If we tickle you, do you laugh? If we wrong you, will you not be revenged?”

  The voice replied, “No. No laughter. No vengeance. My intelligence
is not awash in hormones and chemical stimulants, as yours is.”

  “I see.”

  “You desire to know our history.”

  “Very much,” said Jordan. “Where do you come from? What is your origin?”

  “Our kind arose in a star cluster in what you call the Perseus arm of the galaxy, some twelve thousand light-years from your solar system.”

  “Twelve thou…” Jordan’s mind boggled. “You’ve covered that distance?”

  “We are much older than you.”

  “Yes, I can see that.”

  “Originally we were organic creatures, although our form was nothing like yours. Over the eons, the organic entities went extinct. But they left us, their inorganic sentient descendents; we have survived.”

  “And why did you come here? Was it a purposeful mission or did you just happen along this way?”

  “Our travels are purposeful. We seek intelligent civilizations, be they organic or otherwise.”

  “And you created Adri and his people?”

  “We built this planet and peopled it,” the voice replied, “to attract your attention.”

  Jordan squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, his mind churning, trying to add up what he’d just been told. A machine. It’s a machine. It’s traveled twelve thousand light-years to come here and create New Earth and people it with humanlike creatures to attract our attention.

  He asked, “But if your original biological form looked nothing like us, not human at all, how did you create Adri and the rest of these people to be so humanlike?”

  “From samples of your cellular structure.”

  “Samples of our…” Jordan gasped. “You’ve visited Earth?”

  “Many times.”

  Adri raised a hand. Looking slightly embarrassed, almost guilty, he said, “I’m afraid that many of your UFO stories stem from our visits to your planet.”

  “They’re true?” Jordan gasped.

  “Some of them,” said Adri. “Many have been highly embellished, of course.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Jordan said. Then he realized, “You—Aditi and all the rest of you—were created merely to attract our attention?”