Cosmic Engineers

by Clifford D. Simak

  “Look here,” said Gary. “It really doesn’t matter, does it? I mean, whether you are robots or independent entities. You serve the same purpose, you follow the same dictates of conscience, you create the same destiny as things that move and act through the very gift of life. In many ways, to my mind, a robotic existence might be preferable to a human existence.”

  “Perhaps it doesn’t really matter,” agreed the Engineer. “I told you once that we were a proud people, that we had inherited a great trust, that we had carried out that trust. Pride might have kept us from telling you what we were, but now I am glad I have, for the rest will be easier to understand.”

  “The rest,” said Tommy in surprise. “Is there more?”

  “Much more,” said the Engineer.

  “Wait a second,” rumbled Kingsley. “Do you mean that all you Engineers were created by a race that flourished three billion years ago, that you have lived through that space of time?”

  “Not all of us,” said the Engineer. “My people made only a few of us, a few to man each ship. We ourselves have made others, copies of ourselves. But in each new creation we have tried to inculcate some of the factors which we find missing in ourselves. Imagination, for one thing, and greater initiative, and a greater scope of emotional perception.”

  “You yourself are one of the original robots made back on Pluto?” asked Caroline.

  The Engineer nodded.

  “You are eternal and immortal,” suggested Kingsley.

  “Not eternal nor immortal,” said the Engineer. “But with proper care, replacement of worn-out parts, and barring accident, I will continue to function for many more billions of years to come.”

  Billions of years, thought Gary. It was something a man could not imagine.

  A human mind could not visualize a billion years or a thousand years or even a hundred years. Man, in general, could visualize not much beyond the figure four.

  But if the Engineers had lived for three billion years, how come they had been unable to create a hypersphere, why hadn’t they probed out beyond the universe to learn the laws of inter-space? Why must this work wait for the arrival of the human mind?

  “I have answered that before,” said the Engineer, “and I will answer it again. It is because of imagination and vision… the ability to see beyond facts, to probe into probabilities, to visualize what might be and then attempt to make it so. That is something that we cannot do. We are chained to mechanistic action and mechanistic thought. We do not advance beyond the proven fact. When two facts create another fact, we accept the third fact, but we do not reach out in speculation, collect half a dozen tentative facts and then try to crystallize them. That is the answer to your question.”

  Gary looked startled. He hadn’t realized that the Engineer could read his undirected thoughts. Caroline was looking at him, a smile twitching the corners of her mouth.

  “Did you ask him something?”

  “I guess I did,” said Gary.

  “Did you ever hear from the other Engineers?” asked Kingsley. “The ones who were in the other ships?”

  “No,” said the Engineer, “we never did. Presumably they have by now found other planets where they are doing the same work as we. We have tried to get in touch with them, but we have never been able to do it.”

  “What is your work?” asked Gary.

  “Why,” said Caroline, “you should know that, Gary. It is to prepare a place for the Engineers’ people to live. Isn’t that right?” she asked the Engineer.

  “It is right,” said the Engineer.

  “But,” protested Gary, “those people are dead. There is no sign of them in our solar system and they certainly didn’t start out looking for some other planet. They died off on Pluto.”

  He remembered the chiseled masonry that Ted Smith had found. The hands of the Engineers’ creators had cut those stones, billions of years ago… and today they still were on Pluto’s surface, mute testimony to the greatness of a race that had died while the solar system’s planets still were cooling off.

  “They are not dead,” said the Engineer, and his thoughts seemed to have a particular warmth in them.

  “Not dead,” said Gary. “Do you know where they are?”

  “Yes,” said the Engineer. “I do. Some of them are in this very room.”

  “In this room,” began Caroline, and then she stopped as the significance of what the Engineer had said struck home.

  “In this room,” said Herb. “Hell, the only people who are in this room are us. And we aren’t your people.”

  “But you are,” declared the Engineer. “There are differences, to be sure. But you are much like them, so like them in many ways. You are protoplasmic and they were protoplasmic. Your general form is the same and, I have no doubt, your metabolism. And above all, the way your mind works.”

  “That,” said Caroline, “was why we could understand you and you could understand us. Why you kept us here when you sent the other entities back to their homes.”

  “Do you mean,” asked Kingsley, “that we are the direct descendants of your people… that your people finally took over the planets? That seems hardly possible, for we know we started from very humble beginnings. We have no legends, no evidence pointing to such a genesis.”

  “Not that,” said the Engineer. “Not exactly that. But I suppose you have wondered how life got its start on your planet. There are many planetary systems, you know, where life is entirely unknown. Planets that are fully as old as yours that are barren of all life.”

  “There is the spore theory,” said Kingsley, and as he said the words he pounded the table with his massive fist.

  “By Lord, that’s it,” he shouted. “The spore theory. Your people out on Pluto, only a few of them left, with the planets still unfit for habitation, knowing that they faced the end… couldn’t they have insured life on the young planets by the development and planting of life spores?”

  “That,” said the Engineer, “is what I thought. That is the theory that I hold.”

  “But if that were the case,” objected Caroline, “why should we have developed as we did? Why should a life form almost duplicating the Engineers’ people have developed? Surely they couldn’t have planted determinants in the spore… they couldn’t have seen or planned that far ahead. They couldn’t possibly have planned the eventual evolution of a race re-creating their own!”

  “They were a very ancient people,” said the Engineer, “and a very clever people. I do not doubt that they could have planned it as you say.”

  “Interesting,” said Herb. “But what does it make us?”

  “It makes you the heir of my people,” said the Engineer. “It means that what we have done here, all we have, all we know is yours. We will rebuild this city, we will condition it in such a manner that your people can live here. Also that whatever the other Engineers may have found or done is yours. We want nothing for ourselves except the joy and the satisfaction of knowing that we have served, that we have done well with the trust that was handed to us.”

  They sat stunned, scarcely believing what they heard.

  “You mean,” asked Kingsley, “that you will rebuild this city and hand it over to the people of our solar system?”

  “That is what I mean,” said the Engineer. “It is yours. I have no doubt that you descended in some manner from my people. Since you came here I have studied you closely. Time and again I have seen little actions and mannerisms, little mental quirks that mark you as being in some way connected with the people who created us.”

  Gary tried to reason it out. The Engineers were handing the human race a heritage from an ancient people, handing them a city and a civilization already built, a city and a civilization such as the race itself would not achieve for the next many thousand years.

  But there was something wrong, something that didn’t click.

  He remembered Herb’s comment that the city looked like a place that was waiting for someone who had never come. He
rb had hit upon the exact situation. This city had been built for a greater race, for a race that probably had died long before the first stone had been laid in place. A race that must have been so far advanced that it would make the human race look savage in comparison.

  He tried to imagine what effect such a city and such a civilization would have upon the human race. He tried to picture the greed and hate, the political maneuvering, the fierce trade competition, the social inequality and its resultant class struggle… all of it inherent in humanity… in this white city under the three suns. Somehow the two didn’t go together.

  “We can’t do it,” he said. “We aren’t ready yet. We’d just make a mess of things. We’d have too much power, too much leisure, too many possessions.

  It would smash our civilization and leave us one in its stead that we could not manage. We haven’t put our own civilization upon a basis that could coincide with what is here.”

  Kingsley stared at him.

  “But think of the scientific knowledge! Think of the cultural advantages!” he shouted.

  “Gary is right,” said Caroline. “We aren’t ready yet.”

  “Sometime,” said Gary. “Sometime in the future. When we have wired out some of the primal passions. When we have solved the great social and economic problems that plague us now. When we have learned to observe the Golden Rule… when we have lost some of the lustiness of our youth. Sometime we will be ready for this city.”

  He remembered the ancient man they had met on Old Earth. He had said something about the rest of the race going away, to a far star, to a place that had been prepared for them.

  That place the old man had spoken of, he realized now, was this very city.

  And that meant that the Old Earth they had visited had been the real Earth… no shadow planet, but the actuality existing in the future. And the old man had spoken as if the rest of the race had gone to the city but a short while earlier. He had said that he refused to go, that he couldn’t leave the Earth.

  The time would be long, then. Longer than he thought. A long and bitter wait for the day when the race might safely enter into a better world, into a heritage left to them by a race that died when the solar system was born.

  “You understand?” he asked the Engineer.

  “I understand,” the Engineer replied. “It means that we must wait for the masters that we worked for… that it will be long before they come to us.”

  “You waited three billion years,” Gary reminded him. “Wait a few million more for us. It won’t take us long. There’s a lot of good in the human race, but we aren’t ready yet.”

  “I think you’re crazy,” said Kingsley, bitterly.

  “Can’t you see,” asked Caroline, “what the human race right now would do to this city?”

  “But magnetic power,” wailed Kingsley, “and all those other things. Think of how they would help us. We need power and tools and all the knowledge we can get.”

  “You may take certain information with you,” said the Engineer. “Whatever you think is wise. We will watch you and talk with you throughout the years, and it may be there will be times that you will wish our help.”

  Gary rose from the table. His hand fell on the Engineer’s broad metal shoulder.

  “And in the meantime there is work for you,” he said. “A city to rebuild. The development of power stations to use the fifth-dimensional energy.

  Learning how to control and use that energy. Using it to control the universe. The day will come, unless we do something about it, that our universe will run down, will die the heat death. But with the eternal power of the inter-space, we can shape and control the universe, mold it to our needs.”

  It seemed that the metal man drew himself even more erect.

  “It will be done,” he said.

  “We must work, not for Man alone, but for the entire universe,” said Gary.

  “That is right,” said the Engineer.

  Kingsley heaved himself to his feet.

  “We should be leaving for Pluto,” he said. “Our work here is done.”

  He stepped up to the Engineer. “Before we go,” he said, “I would like to shake your hand.”

  “I do not understand,” said the Engineer.

  “It is a mark of respect,” Caroline explained. “Assurance that we are friends. A sort of way to seal a pact.”

  “That is fine,” said the Engineer. He thrust out his hand. And then his thoughts broke. For the first time since they had met him, in this same room, there was emotion in his voice.

  “We are so glad,” he said. “We can talk to you and not feel so alone. Perhaps some day I can come and visit you.”

  “Be sure to do that,” bellowed Herb. “I’ll show you all the sights.”

  “Are you coming, Gary?” asked Caroline, but Gary didn’t answer.

  Some day Man would come home… home to this wondrous city of white stone, to marvel at its breathtaking height, at its vastness of design, at its far-flung symbol of achievement reared against an alien sky. Home to a planet where every power and every luxury and every achievement would be his. Home to a place that had grown out of a dream… the great dream of a greater people who had died, but in dying had passed along the heritage of their life to a new-spawned solar system. And more than that, had left another heritage in the hands and brains of good stewards who, in time, would give it up, in fulfillment of their charge.

  But this city and this proud achievement were not for him, nor for Caroline, nor Kingsley, nor Herb, nor Tommy. Nor for the many generations that would come after them. Not so long as Man carried the old dead weight of primal savagery and hate, not so long as he was mean and vicious and petty, could he set foot here.

  Before he reached this city, Man would travel long trails of bitter dust, would know the sheer triumphs of the star-flung road. Galaxies would write new alphabets across the sky, and the print of many happenings would be etched upon the tape of time. New things would come and hold their sway and die, Great leaders would stand up and have their day and shuffle off into oblivion and silence. Creeds would rise and flourish and be sifting dust between the worlds. The night watch of stars would see great deeds, applaud great happenings, witness great defeat, weep over bitter sorrows.

  “Just think,” said Caroline. “We are going home.”

  “Yes,” said Gary. “At last, we’re going home.”

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