by Ben Bova
Gita fairly snarled, “What about the tigercat that attacked us?”
“We shocked it and drove it away.”
“I thought that I—”
Without a hint of condescension, the avatar said, “The charge on your pistol is too low to affect the beast. We protected you.”
“I see.” Gita looked and sounded thoroughly put down.
“You’ve been observing us all the while,” Ignatiev repeated, feeling angry and defeated.
“There is no limit to our observational capabilities. We knew what you were up to, despite your efforts to hide your thoughts from us. We decided to allow you to wander around the area—”
“You allowed us the illusion that we were free of you.”
The avatar corrected, “We allowed you to behave as if you were free. It was an experiment to learn what you would do with such freedom.”
Downcast, Ignatiev muttered, “We didn’t get very far.”
“We are afraid,” the avatar agreed, “that the predator cut our experiment short.”
Gita said, “We might as well go back to the others.”
“It is still only early afternoon,” said the avatar. “Would you like to examine the ruins of our biological forefathers’ civilization?”
“Yes!” Ignatiev and Gita snapped in unison.
* * *
Across the grassy meadow the three of them walked, toward the green hills that rose before the steeper, more rugged mountains. The pale orange sun rose higher in the soft bluish sky, the afternoon grew warmer. Ignatiev turned up the cooling system of his suit; he heard water gurgling through the thin pipes built into the suit’s fabric but felt precious little relief from the heat.
As they walked, it struck him as incongruous that the machines didn’t whisk them to their destination in some sort of mechanical device. He almost laughed at the incongruity of it: They can read my mind but they don’t provide taxi service.
The pain from his encounter with the predator slowly eased away, however. Reluctantly, Ignatiev admitted to himself that the physical exercise must be doing him some good.
At last the avatar stopped them a few hundred meters in front of a gently rising hillside, covered with vines and mossy growth.
“This was the site of our biological forebears’ largest city,” said the avatar.
Ignatiev saw nothing but junglelike growth.
“This?” he asked.
“Look carefully,” the avatar said, pointing toward the overgrown greenery.
Ignatiev stared. Something was stirring amidst the vines and undergrowth. Then a small furry gray-green animal scampered out into the open, froze at the sight of the three human figures, and quickly dashed back to the safety of the tangled greenery.
“Look!” Gita exclaimed, pointing. “Isn’t that a stone wall?”
Ignatiev peered in the direction she was pointing. Yes, a wall or some sort of structure. It looked like stone, but it was so overgrown that he couldn’t be sure.
The avatar began to walk toward it. “This way,” it said.
Gita and Ignatiev followed. It was a wall of some sort, so draped and festooned with ancient twining branches and shrubbery that you had to know it was there before you could distinguish it from among the plants growing over it. Like Angkor Wat in Cambodia, Ignatiev thought, when the Europeans first stumbled upon it.
Slowly, carefully, they followed the avatar toward the wall. It glided through the tangled undergrowth like a specter; Ignatiev and Gita had to hack at the vines and twisted, tangled tree limbs with their energy-beam guns.
Puffing from the effort, at last they stood at the base of the wall. No windows were in sight, no doors. It looked old, ancient and decayed, crumbling.
“This was a temple of knowledge,” said the avatar. “What you would call a university. It was destroyed when the death wave swept over our world.”
Gesturing to the ruin, Ignatiev said, “The death wave didn’t cause this destruction.”
Expressionless, the avatar replied, “Quite true. More than thirty million years of neglect has caused the deterioration you see.”
A sudden blur of motion in the shrubs above them made Gita jump, startled. Ignatiev saw a monkeylike creature swinging among the vines high overhead.
“The animals here will not harm you,” the avatar soothed. “They are more frightened of you than you are of them.”
“No predators?” Ignatiev probed.
With a shake of its head, the avatar said, “None that would attack a creature of your size.”
Gita asked, “You machines existed when the death wave wiped out the organic life forms?”
“Yes, early forms of our type survived the time of great dying.”
“Couldn’t you have helped them?” she went on. “Did you know the death wave was on its way?”
“We did not. Our organic forebears had no inkling that it was sweeping toward us.”
“Your organic forebears had no inkling,” Ignatiev said, frowning with suspicion. “But did you?”
The avatar shook its head, very humanlike. “None whatever. You have to realize that the machines of that early era were little better than the organics themselves. We have evolved considerably since those days.”
Gita reached out a gloved hand and touched the age-encrusted wall. “A whole civilization, destroyed. Wiped out.”
“But not before it gave rise to a superior civilization. Evolution is not restricted to organic life forms. In fact, machines often evolve much faster than organics.”
“Moore’s law,” Gita said.
Shaking his head, Ignatiev said, “Moore’s law has been proven to be inexact, an approximation, at best.”
“True enough,” said the avatar.
Gita asked, “Can we get past this wall? Can we see what’s on the other side?”
“There is very little to see,” replied the avatar. “Millions of years have taken their toll.”
“Still…”
The humanlike figure closed its eyes briefly. Ignatiev got the impression it was discussing the question with its fellow machines.
At last it said, “This way,” and gestured down the length of the wall.
With the avatar leading them, Gita and Ignatiev struggled through the tangled vines and foliage until at last they came upon an opening in the wall. A doorway, Ignatiev saw. The doors themselves had long since decayed into dust, but the stone doorway remained. It was large enough for all three of them to pass through it at once.
“No one has come this way in ages,” said the avatar as they stepped through.
They stopped a few paces on the other side of the wall. Nothing to see but more tangled undergrowth, and then a wide, flat meadow. Not a sign of civilization. Ignatiev could not even make out the outlines of building foundations in the grassy, rock-strewn ground.
“This was once a university?” he asked, in a hushed voice.
“Long ago, yes.”
“It’s so sad,” Gita breathed. “Nothing is left.”
“We are here,” the avatar said.
The meadow was fairly flat, covered with bright green blades of grass. Rocks and pebbles were everywhere, covered with spongy-looking moss. Ignatiev sniffed inside his plastiglas helmet. He could smell nothing, but he sensed a vast decay, the rot of devastation.
“The death of an intelligent race,” he muttered.
“And the beginning of a new civilization,” the avatar reminded him.
Beyond the far edge of the meadow rose the green hills that eventually gave way to the rocky mountains that soared high into the bright sky. Ignatiev could not hear a sound: no hoots or growls, no calls from one beast to another, not even the buzzing of insects.
“Is this area haunted?” he asked no one in particular.
“Our presence has frightened the local fauna. They are not accustomed to visitors.”
“So they hide,” said Gita.
“Yes. That is their natural reaction.”
But then
Ignatiev saw something move, out at the far end of the level ground, where the ground began to rise.
He blinked, then squinted. A sizable body, brownish fur, moving slowly, carefully on four limbs.
Gita saw it too. “What’s that?” She pointed.
The avatar replied, “One of the local denizens. It is harmless, not a predator.”
As if to prove the point, the animal sat itself down in a patch of foliage and began peeling leaves off their stems and chewing on them.
“We should keep our distance,” said the avatar, “and not disturb it.”
Gita slowly pulled her camera from its pouch on her belt and raised it to her eyes. She gasped.
“Alex, look!” she whispered.
Ignatiev fumbled with his own camera, nearly dropped it, at last got it up to eye level. The automatic focus control showed the animal clearly.
He gasped. “It looks…”
The creature was slim, covered with short, light brown hair. It was using its forelimbs to tear at the leaves surrounding it. Its head bore two eyes, a crest running from its brow to the nape of its neck. Its jaws were working constantly on the leaves it was chewing.
“It looks almost human,” Gita said.
“Four limbs, human in size and shape,” Ignatiev agreed.
Suddenly the creature got to its feet and stared directly toward them. It blinked once, twice, then turned its back to them and started walking slowly away.
“It’s a humanoid,” Gita whispered, awed.
“It has a low order of intelligence,” said the avatar. “We have been watching its development for some time now.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
Ignatiev stared at the avatar. “You mean you’ve been studying a protohuman species?”
“We have been observing its evolution. Two million years ago it was a small, undistinguished mammal. It has grown larger and more intelligent. It lives in a small group, using caves and other natural shelters for protection. They seem to be developing a language of sorts.”
“We saw nothing like this in your biosphere facility, underground,” said Gita.
“There are no specimens of this species in the facility. They require a much larger range for their development.”
Ignatiev said, “So they’re developing here on the surface.”
Dispassionately, the avatar remarked, “A few of their members have begun to eat meat. They have built crude traps to ensnare small animals.”
“They could become human,” Gita said, her voice hollow with awe.
“That is not likely,” said the avatar. “Not with the death wave approaching.”
“You can’t let them be killed!” Ignatiev snapped.
“Why not?” the avatar replied. “Organic life forms are transient.”
“But they could evolve into true intelligence! They could become like us! Human!”
“The death wave will destroy them.”
“That’s genocide!” Gita said.
“That is evolution,” the avatar countered. “Survival of the fittest.”
Trembling with anger, Ignatiev growled, “So you survive and they die.”
“Your attitude is inconsistent,” said the avatar. “You were not so upset at the thought of the other animals and plants being destroyed by the death wave.”
Ignatiev started to reply, but caught himself and hesitated. The damned machine is right, he said to himself. I’m reacting emotionally. But a blood-hot voice within him argued, Of course you’re reacting emotionally. He’s talking about allowing a species that could become human to be snuffed out while the damned machines do nothing to save them.
He sucked in a deep breath, then said to the avatar, “I think we’ve seen enough.” Turning to Gita, he suggested, “Let’s return to the others.”
Clearly troubled, Gita nodded unhappily.
They walked in silence with the avatar through the lengthening shadows of late afternoon, each of them wrapped in their own thoughts.
* * *
They reached the hilltop rendezvous point before any of the others returned. Ignatiev wondered if the other subgroups would run across protohumans too, but as they showed up in their teams of two and three, none of them spoke of seeing the humanoid animals.
“Just miles and miles of nothing but miles and miles,” said Hans Pfisterman, sinking tiredly to the grassy ground. “How about you, Professor? Did you see anything special?”
Before Ignatiev could reply, Raj Jackson piped up, “We recorded about a zillion different plants and animals. We’ll spend weeks sorting them all out.”
“We’ll have to compare them to the species in the bio facility,” Ulani Chung said as she dropped to a sitting position between the two men.
Gita spoke up. “We saw a sort of protohuman. Like Homo habilis on Earth, sort of.”
“What?”
“Like a prehuman?”
“Where?”
Ignatiev looked at the avatar, which remained silent, so he said, “A few hours north of here. Our host”—he nodded graciously at the avatar—“showed us the remains of an ancient city, and there in the middle of the ruins sat a creature that looked very humanlike.”
“No!”
“Really?”
“What did it look like?”
Ignatiev turned to Gita, who pulled out her camera and set it to project a three-dimensional image of the humanoid.
The others gaped at it, then everyone tried to speak at the same time. Ignatiev heard the excitement in their voices, saw the eagerness in their faces.
“We’ve got to study them!”
“How far did you say it was?”
“It certainly looks like an analog to a prehuman species.”
“How many of them did you see?”
“It could evolve into a human analog, in time!”
“Time we don’t have,” Ignatiev told them. “In two hundred years the death wave will annihilate every living thing on the surface of this planet.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
“It doesn’t have to happen that way!” said Raj Jackson, his dark face wide-eyed with excitement. “We could deploy the energy screens, shield this whole planet—”
Ignatiev raised a cautioning hand. “If the machines allow us to.”
Every human eye turned to the avatar, which stood in their midst, calm, unperturbed.
“We do not interfere with the natural processes of evolution,” it said, as coolly as if it was commenting on the weather.
“You’ll let the death wave wipe them out?”
“A potentially intelligent species?”
“That’s inhuman!”
Untroubled, the avatar pointed out, “We are not human.”
“But—”
Feeling the heat of impotent rage rising within him, Ignatiev said to the others, “The machines are interested in their own survival, not the survival of the organic creatures that live here.”
With maddening composure, the humanlike figure slowly turned to survey the ten people sitting, kneeling, standing before it. “Our interest is in protecting ourselves. We aim at survival, and our continuing evolution. The organic creatures who share this planet with us are not strong enough to survive. We have been through this before, with earlier death waves. Organic life is brief, machine life may well be immortal.”
Still standing, Ignatiev replied angrily, “So you save a sampling of the organic species in your underground facility and repopulate the surface after the death wave passes.”
“Yes.”
“Why? Why go to that trouble?”
The avatar hesitated a moment. Then, “To see how organic evolution responds to the process.”
“Does it always evolve intelligent species?”
“Always is the wrong term.”
With deliberate patience, Ignatiev rephrased, “Does it often evolve intelligent species?”
“Never,” said the avatar.
The wave of disappointment among the humans was palpable.
“Then how did intelligent species evolve in the first place?” Jackson demanded. “How did we evolve on Earth?”
“The intervals between death waves are growing shorter. The history of your own planet shows that waves of dying are becoming more frequent. The core of the galaxy is becoming more unstable.”
Pointing an accusing finger at the humanlike apparition, Ignatiev practically snarled, “Then you have allowed death waves to destroy earlier protohuman species?”
“Yes.”
“When you could have saved them?”
“To what purpose? Organic species die out eventually. Death waves have scoured planets in the past and will do so again in the future. Organic life is transient. Machine life survives. The aim of evolution is survival. We survive.”
Gita objected, “And the organic species die.”
“Yes,” said the avatar. “I realize that this is hard for your emotion-driven intelligence to accept, but this is the way evolution works. Organics die, machines survive. And learn.”
Ignatiev nodded inside his fishbowl helmet. “And when the death wave reaches this planet…”
“Organic creatures will be annihilated.”
“Including us.”
“You and any descendants you will have created in the meantime.”
“And you will stand by and allow us to be wiped out.”
“That is the natural process of evolution at work.”
Dead silence from the humans. Ignatiev looked around at them. They seemed shocked, thunderstruck, at the machines’ indifference.
All our lives, Ignatiev thought, we have considered ourselves the apex of evolution. No matter what the biology texts tell us. Each and every one of us automatically assumes that human intelligence was the goal that evolution had been aiming for through all the long ages of the past.
Now we face an intelligence of a different kind, an intelligence that is totally indifferent to our attitudes, our dreams, our needs.
Unbidden, a quatrain from Khayyam’s Rubaiyat came to his mind:
The moving finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,