“If I seem to be dwelling on this it’s because it is one of the reasons I’m here. To warn you of what is about to happen. I’m sorry, I don’t even know if you can do anything about it. After all, to me, to my father’s memories, it has already happened. But perhaps a time stream can be diverted? It is your—our—only hope.”
Again she paused, placing the fingers of one hand to her brow for a few seconds. “I don’t think I need to go into great detail about what happened next. The gaps can be filled in later—where I can. Other nations became involved. The world dissolved into war and chaos remarkably easily and quickly. Weapons appeared that were supposed to have been destroyed long ago.
“A nuclear winter descended upon the Earth, partly due to the amount of smoke and dust liberated by the initial cometary impact—after all, a similar impact may have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, sixty-five million years ago—but exacerbated by the war, in which nuclear weapons were used. There were dark ages during which men and women had no time for anything but survival, when there was only suspicion, fear, brutality, hunger and disease, including radiation sickness....
“I would rather not dwell on this period, because it offends every fiber of my being. Suffice it to say that it was a hundred years or more before sanity regained control, and people began to cooperate and collaborate on building a new world. But there came other collapses—economic, political. Artificial upheavals which to my people seem, frankly, stupid and incomprehensible, but which I, as one of you, can of course understand—as much as any scientist can understand the workings of the Stock Market! I suppose I really have been schizophrenic, in a way, for I have had these other people locked away in my brain for nearly eighty years.
“Where was I? Oh yes. Gradually, a better world was built. It seems that sometime in the first half of this century the first scientifically tested and proven examples of the power of the mind appeared.”
Beaumont’s head, which had been bowed as he listened, jerked sharply upward.
“Of course, powers of ESP have been claimed for centuries, but it has always seemed impossible to prove the existence of such extrasensory powers—or to use them at will, in such a way that there could be no doubt of their effectiveness. If it was some sort of human mutation, it was a very elusive one. But, as I said, the first incontrovertible proof appeared—well, will appear—any time now.”
She frowned. “Ah. I think I’m beginning to see a paradox.”
This time she paused for so long that her audience began to wonder if she were feeling ill. Then she straightened. “I think I’d better get back to my ‘future history’. It’s safer ground.
“It seems that a portion of the human race has always possessed some type of psi talent. Could it be that some part of humanity is descended not from Cro-Magnon Man but from some other branch of the anthropoid family? I’m not qualified to say. Just maybe, many tens of thousands of years ago, we used these faculties much more widely, but with the advance of technology they became atrophied. However, some people still have them—my husband for one, with his dowsing ability.” She looked over at him fondly, and again smiled, though with an obvious effort.
“The fact that some people don’t have the slightest trace of these abilities may explain why, though always most of my audiences were affected by my musical performances, a few were not.” She did not look at Minako. “Those who were affected received powerful mental images from my mind, released in this case by the music.
“Mental powers are not exactly as most people seemed to expect. And they re-developed very slowly. During the Black Ages I told you about they were suppressed almost completely, and when they did reappear it took literally thousands of years before they were fully understood and mature, so that it became possible to train children in their use as a commonplace part of education. Training is essential, by the way, for the abilities to be used consciously, and I was far too young ever to receive any—which is no doubt why my own talents are so...unpredictable.
“Reverting to my father’s time, the future, talents like teleportation and telekinesis of actual objects are still very rare—and highly prized, and interbred. Oh, yes, I’ll come to the genetic experiments later. Telepathy is common, but most mental powers are used almost exclusively for healing, therapeutics, the care and treatment of the body and mind. And for education. Medicine, as you know it, is almost unknown.
“My people have almost completely forsaken technology and science—again, as you know them. But this didn’t come about because of some sort of conscious or even unconscious backlash against the forces which almost destroyed your—our—world. We use technology wherever it is essential—for transportation, for instance, by land or air, and occasionally by water. Oh, sometimes for pleasure too—people still enjoy flying, and sailing.... And of course it’s used for providing services such as electrical power and the pumping of water. Well, you can imagine others, I’m sure.
“But a form of telekinesis is commonly used on a sub-molecular level. The controls of the...vehicle we found in Noctis Labyrinthus operate mentally. The mind is able to operate submicroscopic switches and servos, and even affect power outputs directly. Again, even in the twentieth century limited experiments were carried out on influencing, with the mind alone, such tiny quantities as the particles in random radiation counts.
“In about two thousand years from today, science will concentrate on modifying the human body. This will be done partly by using mental powers, again at a microscopic level, but also by a form of what I suppose you’d call genetic engineering combined with nanotechnology, but using the most sophisticated and beautifully tuned microsurgical techniques, of which you have as yet barely an inkling. A type of—serum?—will also be developed. Actually it’s a meld of drugs and hormones.... No, that’s not right. I don’t think I can explain it now, but the information can probably be accessed....”
The child of two worlds took another sip of water. She was beginning to look wan.
“The end result will be that in my time the majority of humanity customarily live to an age of four or five hundred years, often even more. Virtual immortality is the ultimate aim, but seems elusive; some sort of entropy appears to be built into the human system, and degeneration occurs quite rapidly during the last few years of life. We have Old People’s villages, where most elderly citizens end their days happily without reminding the rest of the populace of their own inevitable end. But this is quite voluntary; and most families, with their children, visit older members frequently and joyously.
“Most people, but not all, have automatic self-defenses against almost every disease, bacterial or viral, and can regenerate limbs or organs when those are accidentally damaged. Those who cannot—and they seem to be the ones who themselves have little or no psi ability—can almost always be helped by mental physicians.
“You will have noticed that our toes have been allowed to atrophy. After all, we no longer need fingers on our feet! I’m sure, too, that you have all wondered—as I did myself—why the people of mine we have seen look so similar, especially in hair and eye coloring.”
At this point Orlov, who was standing at the video camera, deliberately zoomed in on Aurora so that her dark oval face with its violet eyes, framed by long blonde hair, filled the screen dramatically.
Beaumont, noticing, grinned and nodded approvingly.
“I’m sorry,” she continued, ignoring this, “but I don’t know the answer. I’m not sure that anyone knows the answer, even in my day. Normally, the genes for light hair and pale eyes are recessive. Considering the amount of interbreeding between races that has taken place, one would expect darker features to predominate. But the genetic manipulation which took place around the year 4100—and it had nothing at all in common with Nazi-like schemes for an ideal race, I can assure you!—apparently reversed that, probably quite unintentionally. Although, as you have seen, our skin color is actually quite dark; this isn’t a suntan—it’s been a very long time since I�
�ve had a chance to sunbathe, here on Mars!”
She seemed pleased to be able to lighten her narrative with a small joke, and stretched a little, shifting position in her chair. But she still looked pale and strained, and Lundquist prepared to put a stop to the proceedings. She could continue at a later time. There was no need for her to put herself through what was obviously an exhausting ordeal any longer....
“About ten thousand years ago—or in as many years’ time, it makes little difference which way I say it, there was another glacial period—another resurgence of the Ice Age—and it caused a great redistribution, and reduction, of the Earth’s population. It was beyond the technology of the day to take much effective action; the power of ice is great. The survivors were often those who were not only physically fit but possessed the strongest mental and regenerative powers. So a sort of process of natural selection operated.
“But long before that happened, part of the human race had moved away.
“To Mars.”
* * * *
The transmission continued the next day, Lundquist and Beaumont having finally insisted that Aurora take a rest, despite her protestations that she was quite able to continue.
“Somewhere around the year 2500, humanity, which had once again started making tentative voyages into space—I’m sorry, guys, but most of our achievements on this mission seem to have become lost or forgotten!—took the decision to terraform Mars, to convert it into an Earthlike planet, habitable by humans. Having established that there was no indigenous life, and apparently never had been any, many people wanted to get away from Earth, with its blackened, ruined cities and radioactive wastelands, and start a new life with an entirely new lifestyle.
“Plenty of plans were considered. As you know, there are almost two thousand cubic kilometers of water locked inside the polar caps of Mars. That’s enough to cover the planet with an ocean fifty centimeters deep. But most of Mars’s water lies frozen deep below the crust.
“So the first method used was a rather crude one. Five ice asteroids, each ten to fifteen kilometers in diameter, were diverted from their orbits in the outer Solar System and steered carefully towards Mars so that they would impact in the basin of Hellas. That’s already the lowest area on Mars, and was covered by an ocean millions of years ago. They made it an ocean once more. The impacts caused some disruption of the surface of Mars, but not as much as you might expect—Mars has a thick crust, or the asteroid which created Hellas in the first place would have gone right through that crust!
“You can imagine what a maelstrom it must have been, though, as the ice was converted almost instantly into plasma, then superheated steam, finally condensing into thick grey clouds which rose high into the atmosphere, perhaps even precipitating rain....
“Meanwhile, a mass-driver—an electromagnetic launcher—was set up on Phobos to eject the dark, carbonaceous material the moon’s made of onto the Martian poles, increasing their absorption of infrared radiation—heat. This also increased the polar energy flux, but the process was accelerated by placing mirrors in orbit. Made of a very thin, metallized material similar to Mylar, these reflected sunlight to warm the polar caps and release carbon dioxide, water vapor, oxygen and nitrogen from the crust. A greenhouse-effect cycle was started.
“Then, genetically engineered plant life was introduced into the system, forming a tundra-like landscape. Carbon dioxide was converted into oxygen. The temperature slowly rose, until it was above freezing point, and then to ten degrees Celsius. Can you imagine the transformation? The sky became deep blue. The Hellas Ocean was seeded with plankton which absorbed carbon dioxide. As it was fed by rivers and streams, the ocean grew in size. Another ocean grew in the northern lowlands—the Boreal Sea. Forests of evergreen trees spread from its borders.
“The crust of the planet contains all the essential elements for life. The ecology became self-sustaining; and, now that the atmosphere had been established, Mars had sufficient mass to retain it for tens of millions of years. It was generally known as the Second Home.
“The first real city—the planet’s capital, if you like—was built on the Tharsis Bulge, high above any water-line. The Two Mountains—the volcanoes of Ceraunius and Uranius—were chosen as its site, apparently mainly for aesthetic reasons. They were the right size, and their relative outlines, seen from above, were felt to mimic those of Earth and Mars. That ‘figure-of-eight’ symbol has been significant to the inhabitants ever since. It was seen everywhere. You will even notice its echo in the shape of the device we found and called the Beacon, although actually it serves a number of purposes: remote control, transmitter, marker, key, confirmer of identity.... One of our greatest strokes of luck on this expedition was that my genetic material is so similar to that of my parents, otherwise we might not have been able to enter the ship. Indeed, the Beacon, and that glowing light we first saw, might never have been triggered in the first place.”
Aurora paused and looked down at some notes she had prepared so that she would not lose her thread.
“The psibot—the Beacon—had been buried for nearly eighty years, and after we’d discovered it, it misbehaved at first. It was intended to project a...‘hologram’ is as near as I can describe it, which would lead searchers to the ship. But the human shape took a while to...cohere. It’s interesting that the Beacon was triggered by the airship on one occasion. Perhaps it confused the Blimp’s shape with one of my people’s craft?
“Anyway, the two civilizations, one on Earth and the other on Mars, became quite separate. The one on Earth became almost entirely pastoral. The cities were kept, along with all the machinery and technology they housed, as museums of humanity’s past—and, to a large extent, of its follies. Science was not exactly banned, but it was excluded by common consent except where it was required for purely practical considerations, as I have already explained.
“The inhabitants turned to the Arts: to painting, sculpture, literature, poetry, music—to all pursuits of the mind, which they raised to incredible new heights. But they did not neglect the body, for all forms of dance were assimilated into the musical and visual arts, creating a whole new art form. I wish I could show you; perhaps I may even be able to give you some idea when I return to Earth and can communicate more directly. And gymnastics and sports, especially team sports—though less violent than, say, football—were also popular.”
Aurora looked into the camera and smiled slightly. She shifted position yet again; sitting still so long for the video was arduous. “The life of the Martians, as they were of course known, followed a similar pattern, but certain types of scientific experimentation and development did continue—pursued mainly for their aesthetic value. Science and mathematics were seen as elegant, beautiful manifestations of Nature, and of human thought. There was rarely any sort of commercial end-product, though should one appear it would not necessarily be rejected.
“Life on both planets could be said to have approached as closely to that of a Utopia as could be imagined. But their inhabitants went about their pursuits sublimely unaware that a visitor was about disrupt their idyllic lives, never to allow them to return to their former perfection.”
ACT FOUR
THE VISITOR
A star was drifting through space. Once, it had been a normal star and had waltzed in a stately dance with a partner, bound to it in the marriage of gravitation. But its mate had become greedy and demanding. It had stolen the outer, hydrogen layers of this star, leaving it stripped and naked, with only its helium core to glow against the eternal night of space.
Its consort had paid the penalty of its greed, though; had grown fat and bloated, and had finally disrupted. Its brightness increased 300 million times as it disintegrated in a final cataclysmic blast of helium, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen....
A supernova.
Released from its unequal marriage partner, but greatly impoverished, the star had become a White Dwarf. It was hurled away from its former mate by the force of the explosion, and
now sailed through interstellar space. The chances of it intercepting another body were remote; but a chance remained.
So it was that, after millions or billions of years of roaming alone, the star felt the faint tug of gravity from another sun. This was a commonplace yellow star, but it was surrounded by a retinue of planets, and, at a distance of 50,000 astronomical units, by a vast cloud of a hundred billion insubstantial balls of ice and rock—comets.
The interloper disturbed the orbits of a few of these, which headed inward towards their own sun, to blaze briefly in the skies of the two inhabited worlds of this system like portents of doom. As well they might, for the star which had broken the peace and loneliness of the Oort Cloud was now also on its way towards the center of their system, intent on wreaking a terrible revenge for its own maltreatment.
The white dwarf drifted in at a sharp angle to the ecliptic. The intruder had a diameter of only about 6,500 kilometers, smaller even than the now red-and-green planet known as Mars. But the material of which it was made was so dense that its gravitational force was not far short of that of the Sun itself.
The visitor headed toward the Sun. It passed it at a distance of just over three million kilometers—and the Sun reached out a gravitational hand, spun it around and converted its headlong flight into an extended ellipse. Both stars were affected by the tidal friction as the latest member of the Solar System sped around its new partner and retreated once more into space, to prepare for another embrace in a thousand years’ time.
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