The Crucible of Time

by John Brunner

  From the corner of her eye she detected the house's defenses tensing, gathering pressure to snare her if, by failing to respond, she identified herself as a mindless beast. Hastily she forced out, "My name is Chybee! I've come to hear the lecture! Never say I've missed it!"

  Modern and talented as the house was, that exceeded its range of responses; she had to wait for a person to answer. Eventually the thorny barrier blocking the entrance drew aside and revealed an elderly woman wearing a stern expression.

  "The professor's lecture began at sundown," she said. "It is now halfway to midnight."

  "I know!" Chybee cried, with a glance towards what little of the sky was visible through the overarching branches of this and other nearby homes. By chance the moon was framed by those and by a ring of thin cloud; it was just past the new, and its dark part was outlined by sparkles nearly as bright as those which shot continually through the upper air ... a constant reminder, Chybee thought, of the rightness of her decision.

  She went on pleadingly, "But I've come from Hulgrapuk to hear her! It's not my fault I've been delayed!"

  "Hulgrapuk?" The woman's attitude softened instantly. "Ah! Then you must be one of Professor Wam's students, I suppose. Come in quickly, but be very quiet."

  Injunctions to be quiet struck Chybee as rather silly when the hordes of the city made such a terrible droning and buzzing noise, sometimes punctuated by loud clanging and banging from the factories whose fumes made the air so foul, but she counted herself lucky not to have been turned away, and did as she was told.

  Wondering who Professor Wam might be.

  The woman indicated that she should follow an upward-slanting branchway towards the crest of the house, and there she found at least five-score folk gathered in a roughly globular bower. At its focus, comfortably disposed on large and well-smoothed crotches, were three persons of advancing age whose exudations indicated they were far from happy to be in such proximity. The rest of the attendance consisted of a few males scattered among numerous females, mostly young, who were trying hard not to react to their elders' stench; that was plain from their own emanations.

  Recordimals had captured Ugant's voice for her many supporters around the planet. Chybee recognized it the moment she entered, and was so excited to hear her idol in reality that she bumped against a boy not much older than herself as she sought for space to perch.

  Instantly: "Chhht!" from half a score of those nearby.

  But the boy curled his mantle in a grin as he made room alongside him. Muttering thanks, she settled down and concentrated ... rather to the boy's disappointment, she gathered, but she was here for one purpose and one purpose only: to hear Ugant's views in her own words.

  It was clear that the formal lecture must long be over, for she was engaged in debate, either with those flanking her or with some doubter elsewhere in the bower. She was saying:

  "... our researches prove conclusively that the fall of the civilization which bequeathed to us most of our modern skills—indeed, which unwittingly gave us this very city, changed though it now is out of recognition by those who created it as a sea-going entity!—was due to the impact of a giant meteorite, whose traces we can only indirectly observe because it fell into deep water. Given this indisputable fact, it can only be a matter of time before another and far larger impact wipes us out too. It's all very well to argue that we must prepare to take the folk themselves into space, with whatever is necessary for their survival. I don't doubt that eventually this could be done; we know how to create life-support systems that will sustain us for long periods on the ocean bed, and they too have to be closed. We know, more or less, how to shield ourselves against the radiation we are sure of meeting out there. But I contest the possibility of achieving so grandiose a goal with the resources available. I believe rather that we, as living creatures, owe it to the principle of life itself to ensure that it survives even if we as a species cannot!"

  Suddenly there was uproar. Confused, Chybee saw one of Ugant's companions turn her, or possibly his, back insultingly, as though to imply: "What use in arguing with such an idiot?" Meantime a few clear voices cut through the general turmoil; she heard "True! True!" and "Nonsense!" and then, "But the folk of Swiftyouth and Sunbride will hurl more missiles at us to prevent it!"

  That was so reminiscent of what she was fleeing from, she shivered. Mistaking her response, the boy beside her said, "She does underestimate us, doesn't she?"

  "Uh—who?"

  "Ugant, of course!"—in a tone of high surprise. "Going on all the time about how we can't possibly succeed, and so we have to abandon the planets to bacteria! You should have been here sooner. Wam made sludge of her!"

  "Wam?"

  "On the left, of course! From Hulgrapuk, no less! How many scores-of-scores of padlonglaqs did she have to travel to be here this dark? That shows her dedication to the cause of truth and reason!"

  I bet she had an easier journey than I did ... But Chybee repressed the bitter comment, abruptly aware that she was hungry and that this bower was festooned with some of the finest food-plants she had ever set eye on.

  Instead she said humbly, "And whose back is turned?"

  "Oh, that's Aglabec. Hasn't dared utter a word since the start, and very right and proper too. But I'm afraid a lot of his supporters are here. I hope you aren't one of them?" He turned, suddenly suspicious.

  "I don't think so," Chybee ventured.

  "You don't know you aren't? By the arc of heaven, how could anybody not know whether giving up reason in favor of dreamness is right or wrong? Unless they'd already decided in favor of dreamness!"

  Aglabec...? The name floated up from memory: it had been cited by her parents. Chybee said firmly, "I'm against dreamness!"

  "I'm glad of that!" said the boy caustically. But they were being called on to hush again. Wam was expanding her mantle for a counterblast.

  "There is one point on which Professor Ugant and myself are entirely in agreement! I maintain that her scheme to seed the planets with microorganisms is a poor second-best, because what we must and can do is launch ourselves, or our descendants, and our entire culture into space! But we unite in despising those who spout nonsense about the nature of other planets totally at odds with scientific reality, those who claim that they can make mental voyages to Swiftyouth and Sunbride and indeed to the planets of other stars! Such people are—"

  What carefully honed insult Wam had prepared, her listeners were not fated to find out. A group of about a score of young people, with a leavening of two or three older, outshouted her and simultaneously began to shake the branches. Resonance built up swiftly, and those around cried out as they strove to maintain their grip. The slogans the agitators were bellowing were like the one Chybee had caught a snatch of a few moments earlier, warnings that the folk of other planets were bound to drop more rocks from heaven if any plan to carry "alien" life thither were put into effect. But who could respect them if they were capable of slaughtering fellow beings for their own selfish ends...?

  Chybee caught herself. There was no life on Swiftyouth and Sunbride; there couldn't be. Modern astronomy had proved it. Fatigue and hunger were combining to drive her into dreamness herself ... plus the shock of realizing that she could never go home again. Had she really gambled the whole of her future life on this one trip to Slah, which her budder had forbidden?

  Indeed she had, and the knowledge made her cling as desperately to rationality as to her swaying branch.

  She barely heard a new loud voice roaring from the center of the bower, barely registered that Aglabec the leader of the agitators had finally spoken up, and was shouting:

  "You're wasting your efforts! You'll never shake this lot loose from their grip on the tree of prejudice! Leave that to the folk of other worlds—they'll act to cure such foolishness in their own good time!"

  Disappointed, his reluctant followers ceased making the branches thrash about. But at that point Chybee could hold her peace no longer.

 
; Rising as best she could to full height on her swaying perch, she shouted back, "There aren't any folk on other worlds, and there never will be if you get your way! We can't live there either! Our only sane course is to hope that the seeds of life can be adapted to germinate and evolve elsewhere!"

  What am I saying? Who am I saying it to?

  Mocking laughter mingled with cheers. She slumped back on the branch, folding her mantle tightly around her against the storm of noise, and heard at a great distance how the company dispersed. Several in passing discourteously bumped against her, and she thought one must have been the boy from the adjacent perch. It was a shame to have made him dislike her on no acquaintance, but after what Aglabec had said ... after what her parents had tried to force down her maw ... after...

  She had imagined herself young and strong enough to withstand any challenge the world might offer. The toll taken by her journey, her emotional crisis, her lack of food, maybe the subtle poisons some claimed to have identified in the air of Slah, proved otherwise. Her mind slid downward into chaos.

  II

  Reacting to the reek of hostility that permeated the bower, Wam snapped, "I knew it was a crazy idea inviting Aglabec to take part in a scientific debate!"

  She swarmed down from the crotch she had occupied during the meeting and gazed disconsolately at the departing audience.

  "You can't have thought it was that stupid if you came so far to join in!" Ugant retorted, stung.

  "Oh, one always hopes..." Wam admitted with a sigh. "Besides, the dreamlost are gathering such strength at Hulgrapuk, even among my own students, and I imagined that things might be better here. Apparently I was wrong. What do we have to tell these folks to convince them of the doom hanging over us all?"

  "Beg pardon, Professor!" a diffident voice murmured, and old Fraij, Ugant's maestradomi, slithered down to join them. "You mentioned your students just now. The one who spoke up at the end hasn't left with everybody else. I think she's been taken ill."

  "Hah! As if we didn't have enough problems already ... Well, it's up to you to look after your own." Ugant turned aside with a shrug, scanning the available food-plants in search of anything particularly delicious.

  From a pouch she wore on a baldric slung about her, Wam produced a spyglass and leveled it at the other remaining occupant of the bower. After a moment she said, "She could be of a Hulgrapuk strain, I suppose, but clasped around her branch like that I can't be sure. At any rate I don't recognize her."

  Fraij said uncertainly, "I'm sorry. She said she'd come specially from Hulgrapuk, so naturally I assumed..."

  "I'm afraid your assumption was wrong," Wam murmured, and joined Ugant in her quest for refreshment, adding, "Whatever I may think of your views, by the way, I find no fault with your hospitality. Many thanks."

  But Ugant was snuffing the air, now almost cleansed as the roof-leaves flapped automatically to scour away the remanent pheromones.

  "I do recognize her ... I think. Fraij, do you remember a message from some youngling in that area saying her parents had gone overside into the psychoplanetary fad, and she needed arguments to combat them? About a month ago. Wasn't the trace on that very much like hers?"

  Fraij hesitated, and finally shook her mantle. "I'm afraid I can't be sure. You have to remember how much correspondence I deal with that you never get to see because it's a waste of tune. However that may be," she added with a touch of defiance, "I'm not inclined to turn her out into the branchways before I know whether she can fend for herself."

  "Well, she did sound comparatively sensible..." Ugant crammed her maw with succulent funqi and swarmed over to where the girl was lying. Another sample of her odor, and: "Hmm! I was right! Her name's something like Chylee, Chy ... Chybee! I don't know why you haven't met her, Wam. From her message she seemed like just the sort of person you want for your campaign against the—You know, we need a ruder and catchier nickname for the psychoplanetarists. It might help if we persuaded our students to invent one. Ridicule is a powerful weapon, isn't it?"

  By now the girl was stirring, and Wam had no chance to reply. Maw full, she too drew close.

  "I think she's hungry," she pronounced. "Fraij—?"

  But the maestradomi had already signaled one of her aides, a gang of whom had appeared to clear the bower of what litter the audience had left which the house could not dispose of unaided. It was another point of agreement between those who supported Ugant and those who followed Wam that Aglabec and his sympathizers were disgustingly wasteful ... to which charge the latter always retorted that what the planet offered it could reabsorb, and in any case the age of psychic escape would dawn long before it was too polluted for life in a physical body to continue. However that might be, some of them had left behind odds and ends of heavy metal and even bonded yellowite, and those could harm the germ-plasm of a house. Had they done it deliberately, or out of laziness? One would wish to believe the latter, but certain rumors now current about their behavior hinted at sabotage....

  The girl pried herself loose from the branch, exuding shame from every pore. Fraij gave her a luscious fruit, and she gulped it down greedily; as though it were transfusing energy directly into her tubules—which it should, given that Ugant's home had been designed by some of the finest biologists of modern times—she shifted into a mode of pure embarrassment.

  Touched, Ugant settled beside her and uttered words of comfort. And continued as she showed signs of reacting:

  "You're not one of Wam's students? No? So why did you come all the way from Hulgrapuk?"

  "To hear you! But I had to run away from home to do it."

  "Why so?"

  "Because my parents are crazy."

  "What do you mean by that?"—with a look of alarm aimed at Wam.

  "Their names are Whelwet and Yaygomitch. Do you need to know any more?"

  On the point of reaching for another clump of funqi, Wam settled back on her branch and uttered a whistle of dismay.

  "Even you must have heard of those two, Ugant! Of all the pernicious pith-rotted idiots...!"

  "But she didn't identify them in her message," Ugant muttered. "Chybee—you are called Chybee, aren't you?"

  Excited, she tried to rise, but lacked pressure. "So you did get my note! I was afraid it had been lost! You never answered it, did you?"

  Fraij said, "Girl, if you knew how many messages the professor gets every bright—!"

  "That will do, Fraij," Ugant interrupted. "Chybee, I promise that if I'd only realized who your family are, I'd ... Well, I can scarcely say I'd have come running, but I would certainly have told Wam about you."

  "But—!" She sank back, at a loss. For the first time it was possible to see how pretty she was, her torso sleek and sturdy, her claws and mandibles as delicate as a flyet's. Her maw still crowded, she went on, "But I always thought you and Professor Wam were enemies! When I heard you were giving a lecture and she had agreed to reply to you, I couldn't really believe it, but I decided I had to be present, because you're both on the other side from my parents. They are crazy, aren't they? Please tell me they're crazy! And then explain how you two can be acting like friends right here and now! I mean," she concluded beseechingly, "you don't smell like enemies to each other!"

  There was a long pause. At last Wam sighed. "How wonderful it is to meet somebody who, for the most naive of reasons, has arrived at a proper conclusion. I thought the species was extinct. Shall we attempt the real debate we might have had but for your mistake in inviting Aglabec?"

  For a moment Ugant seemed on the verge of explosion; then she relaxed and grinned. "I grant I didn't bargain for the presence of his fanatical followers and their trick of trying to shake the audience off the branches. I'm not used to that kind of thing. With respect to your superior experience of it, I'll concur. Who's to speak first?"

  All of a sudden the enormous bower became small and intimate. Far above, the roof continued to flutter, though less vigorously because—as Chybee's own weather-sense indicated�
��rain was on the way, and shortly it might be called on to seal up completely. But, to her amazement and disbelief, here were two globally famous experts in the most crucial of all subjects preparing to rehearse for her alone the arguments she had staked everything to hear.

  She wanted to break down, plead to be excused such a burden of knowledge. But was she to waste all the misery she had endured to get here? Pride forbade it. She took another fruit and hoped against hope that it would be enough to sustain her through her unsought ordeal.

  Wam was saying, "We don't disagree that it should shortly be possible to launch a vehicle into orbit."

  "It could be done in a couple of years," Ugant confirmed, accepting more food from one of Fraij's aides.

  "We don't disagree that, given time, we could launch not just a vehicle but enough of them to create a self-contained, maneuverable vessel capable of carrying a representative community of the folk with all that's needed to support them for an indefinite period."

  "Ah! Now we come to the nub of the problem. Do we have the time you're asking to be given? Already you're talking about committing the entire effort of the planet for at least scores of years, maybe scores-of-scores!" Ugant made a dismissive gesture. "That's why I claim that our optimal course is to use what's within our grasp to launch not interplanetary landing-craft, but containers of specially modified organisms tailored to the conditions we expect to encounter on at least Swiftyouth and Sunbride, and maybe on Steadyman and Stolidchurl, or their satellites, which if all else failed could be carried to their destinations by light-pressure from the sun. If then, later on, we did succeed in launching larger vehicles, we could at least rely on the atmospheres and biospheres of those planets being changed towards our own norm, so—"