by John Brunner
“Why did not the Yan foresee this? Perhaps it did. If it did not, then the reason must lie here. The Yan was never a scientist. It was an artist. In the terms we invented to accommodate the symbology of the Mutine Epics, it was a dramaturge, whose highest ambition was to convert the universe into a work of art. But if it can be one, then it is one already, and all we can be is the audience for it.
“Regardless of whether the Yan knew all along that its plan was doomed, we can be sure that it realised the truth when the end drew near. And it did something which I’m terribly glad I shall never have to do. We’re lucky, we humans. We don’t bear, each of us, a total responsibility in our dying. We can accept the knowledge that we exist sub specie aeternitatis—against the perspective of all time and all space—because there are more of us to carry on.
“The Yan, though, had to decide, under the shadow of its terrible failures, whether or not it wanted to be remembered, and how to ensure that it would be. Think! That had to be settled once for all, in the counterpart of the twinkling of an eye.”
A chill seemed to pass through the hall, as though Time himself had brushed them with his dusty ragged robe.
“And it chose yes… if only because its choosing to do so might serve as an example to us when our time comes. The saying goes that ‘it’s a big galaxy’—but it’s one of an uncountable number, and one lifetime is a minuscule fraction of the span of the universe. Nonetheless, there’s room in one lifetime to do amazing things!
“It could have chosen not to be remembered, you know. It wanted not to be remembered, not even to have been heard of. It was itself no more than was Gregory Chart, who on scores of planets has cobbled together the foundations for true culture out of snippets and scraps, jokes and nursery rhymes and folklore! And to have found that one man among millions had already undertaken what it had needed millennia to accomplish…
“But that was its one lifetime, and it could not bear to have nothing to mark its passing. Even a failure, so it reasoned, on the scale of the universe, might be better than oblivion.
“So, for the first time, we have seen a species pass away. It grew old. It had done its best. It wanted to be remembered for its best. And even if in the end it leaves no trace but a few poems, those will carry on, in their fashion.”
He sat down.
There was silence for a while. Eventually the delegates, without a signal, began to rise from their desks and disperse; so too did the witnesses on the platform. Marc remained in his chair, feeling curiously weary, as though he had stood for a long time under a vast burden without realising how big it was until he had relinquished it.
He found, eventually, that Dr Lem was looking at him, and started up, apologising for his rudeness. But the old man brushed the words aside.
“What I want to know is this,” he said. “How can a person as young as you understand so clearly what it is to be old?”
“Because Yan was old.”
“Yes, it was… Once you understand what it is to be old, you can never recapture what it was like to be young. You realise that?”
“I think so.”
“Do you resent it?”
“No. I feel there’s a purpose to it I feel there’s a reason.”
“Oh, come now! We at least aren’t being whipped by some collective overlord towards a goal we can’t imagine, as the Yanfolk were…”
Dr Lem’s voice trailed away under Marc’s steady gaze. He said at last, “Are we?”
“If we are,” Marc said, “I hope neither you nor I will ever have to know. Because the purpose might turn out to be futile, mightn’t it?”
“Yes,” Dr Lem said, his eyes focused on a fearful future. “Yes, of course it might.”
“Time will tell,” Marc said. “And when it does, I shall refuse to listen.”
He took Dr Lem’s arm and began to lead him out of the hall.