Jack Williamson - Ultimate Earth.pdf - Jack Williamson - margozap

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First published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Dec. 2000

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First published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, Dec. 2000

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He loved Uncle Pen. The name he gave us was too hard for us to say, and we made it Sandor Pen. As

early as we could understand, the robots had told us that we were clones, created to watch the skies for

danger and rescue Earth from any harm. They had kept us busy with our lessons and our chores and our

workouts in the big centrifuge, but life in our little burrow left us little else to do. His visits were our best

excitement.

He never told us when he was coming. We used to watch for him, looking from the high dome on the

Tycho rim, down across the field of Moondust the digging machines had leveled. Standing huge on the

edge of it, they were metal monsters out of space, casting long black shadows across the gray waste of

rocks and dust and crater pits.

His visit on our seventh birthday was a wonderful surprise. Tanya saw him landing and called us up to

the dome. His ship was a bright teardrop, shining in the black shadow of a gigantic metal insect. He

jumped out of it in a sleek silvery suit that fitted like his skin. We waited inside the airlock to watch him

peel it off. He was a small lean man, who looked graceful as a girl but still very strong. Even his body was

exciting to see, though Dian ran and hid because he looked so strange.

Naked, his body had a light tan that darkened in the sunlit dome and faded fast when he went below.

His face was a narrow heart-shape, his golden eyes enormous. Instead of hair like ours, his head was

capped with sleek, red-brown fur. He needed no clothing, he told us, because his sex organs were

internal.

He called Dian when he missed her, and she crept back to share the gifts he had brought from Earth.

There were sweet fruits we had never tasted, strange toys, stranger games that he had to show us how to

play. For Tanya and Dian there were dolls that sang strange songs in voices we couldn’t understand and

played loud music on tiny instruments we had never heard.

The best part was just the visit with him in the dome. Pepe and Casey had eager questions about life on

the new Earth. Were there cities? Wild animals? Alien creatures? Did people live in houses, or

underground in tunnels like ours? What did he do for a living? Did he have a wife? Children like us?

He wouldn’t tell us much. Earth, he said, had changed since our parents knew it. It was now so different

that he wouldn’t know where to begin, but he let us take turns looking at it through the big telescope.

Later, he promised, if he could find space gear to fit us, he would take us up to orbit the Moon and loop

toward it for a closer look. Now, however, he was working to learn all he could about the old Earth, the

way it had been ages ago, before the great impacts.

He showed it to us in the holo tanks and the brittle old paper books, the way it was with white ice caps

over the poles and bare brown deserts on the continents. Terraformed, the new Earth had no deserts and

no ice. Under the bright cloud spirals, the land was green where the sun struck it, all the way over the

poles. It looked so wonderful that Casey and Pepe begged him to take us back with him to let us see it

for ourselves.

“I’m sorry.” He shook his neat, fur-crowned head. “Terribly sorry, but you can’t even think of a trip to

Earth."

We were looking from the dome. Earth stood high in the black north, where it always stood. Low in the

west, the slow Sun blazed hot on the new mountains the machines had piled up around the spaceport,

and filled the craters with ink.

Dian had learned by now to trust him. She sat on his knee, gazing up in adoration at his quirky face.

Tanya stood behind him, playing a little game. She held her hand against his back to bleach the golden

tan, and took it away to watch the Sun erase the print.

Looking hurt, Casey asked why we couldn’t think of a trip to Earth.

“You aren’t like me.” That was very true. Casey has a wide black face with narrow Chinese eyes and

straight black hair. “And you belong right here."

“I don’t look like anybody.” Casey shrugged. “Or belong to you."

“Of course you don’t.” Uncle Pen was gently patient. “But you do belong to the station and your great

mission.” He looked at me. “Remind him, Dunk."

My clone father was Duncan Yarrow. The master computer that runs the station often spoke with his

holo voice. He had told us how we had been cloned again and again from the tissue cells left frozen in the

cryostat.

“Sir, that’s true.” I felt a little afraid of Uncle Pen, but proud of all the station had done. “My holo father

has told us how the big impacts killed Earth and killed it again. We have always brought it back to life.”

My throat felt dry. I had to gulp, but I went on. “If Earth’s alive now, that’s because of us."

“True. Very true.” He nodded, with an odd little smile. “But perhaps you don’t know that your little

Moon has suffered a heavy impact of his own. If you are alive today, you owe your lives to me."

“To you?” We all stared at him, but Casey was nodding. “To you and the digging machines? I’ve

watched them and wondered what they were digging for. When did that object hit the Moon?"

"¿Quién sabe?" He shrugged at Pepe, imitating the gesture and the voice Pepe had learned from his

holo father. “It was long ago. Perhaps a hundred thousand years, perhaps a million. I haven’t found a

clue."

“The object?” Pepe frowned. “Something hit the station?"

“A narrow miss.” Uncle Pen nodded at the great dark pit in the crater rim just west of us. “The ejecta

smashed the dome and buried everything. The station was lost and almost forgotten. Only a myth till I

happened on it."

“The diggers?” Casey turned to stare down at the landing field where Uncle Pen had left his flyer in the

shadows of those great machines and the mountains they had built. “How did you know where to dig?"

“The power plant was still running,” Uncle Pen said. “Keeping the computer alive. I was able to detect

its metal shielding and then its radiation."

“We thank you.” Pepe came gravely to shake his hand. “I’m glad to be alive."

“So am I,” Casey said. “If I can get to Earth.” He saw Uncle Pen beginning to shake his head, and went

on quickly, “Tell us what you know about the Earth impacts and how we came down to terraform the

Earth and terraform it again when it was killed again."

“I don’t know what you did."

“You have showed us the difference we made,” Casey said. “The land is all green now, with no deserts

or ice."

“Certainly it has been transformed.” Nodding, Uncle Pen stopped to smile at Tanya as she left her game

with the sun on his back and came to sit crosslegged at his feet. “Whatever you did was ages ago. Our

historians are convinced that we’ve done more ourselves."

“You changed the Earth?” Casey was disappointed and a little doubtful. “How?"

“We removed undersea ledges and widened straits to reroute the ocean circulation and warm the poles.

We diverted rivers to fill new lakes and bring rain to deserts. We engineered new life-forms that

improved the whole biocosm."

“But still you owe us something. We put you there."

“Of course.” Uncle Pen shrugged. “Excavating the station, I uncovered evidence that the last impact

annihilated life on Earth. The planet had been reseeded sometime before the lunar impact occurred."

“We did it.” Casey grinned. “You’re lucky we were here."

“Your ship?” Pepe had gone to stand at the edge of the dome, looking down at the monster machines

and Uncle Pen’s neat little flyer, so different from the rocket spaceplanes we had seen in the old video

holos. “Can it go to other planets?"

“It can.” He nodded. “The planets of other suns."

Tanya’s eyes went wide, and Pepe asked, “How does it fly in space with no rocket engines?"

“It doesn’t,” he said. “It’s called a slider. It slides around space, not through it."

“To the stars?” Tanya whispered. “You’ve been to other stars?"

“To the planets of other stars.” He nodded gravely. “I hope to go again when my work here is finished."

“Across the light-years?” Casey was awed. “How long does it take?"

“No time at all.” He smiled at our wonderment. “Not in slider flight. Outside of space-time, there is no

time. But there are laws of nature, and time plays tricks that may surprise you. I could fly across a

hundred light-years to another star in an instant of my own time and come back in another instant, but

two hundred years would pass here on Earth while I was away."

“I didn’t know.” Tanya’s eyes went wider still. “Your friends would all be dead."

“We don’t die."

She shrank away as if suddenly afraid of him. Pepe opened his mouth to ask something, and shut it

without a word.

He chucked at our startlement. “We’ve engineered ourselves, you see, more than we’ve engineered the

Earth."

Casey turned to look out across the shadowed craters at the huge globe of Earth, the green Americas

blazing on the sunlit face, Europe and Africa only a shadow against the dark. He stood there a long time

and came slowly back to stand in front of Uncle Pen.

“I’m going down to see the new Earth when I grow up.” His face set stubbornly. “No matter what you

say."

“Are you growing wings?” Uncle Pen laughed and reached a golden arm to pat him on the head. “If you

didn’t know, the impact smashed all your old rocket craft to junk.”

He drew quickly back.

“Really, my boy, you do belong here.” Seeing his hurt, Uncle Pen spoke more gently. “You were cloned

for your work here at the station. A job that ought to make you proud."

Casey made an angry swipe across his eyes with the back of his hand and swallowed hard, but he kept

his voice even.

“Maybe so. But where’s any danger now?"

Uncle Pen had an odd look. He took a long moment to answer.

“We are not aware of any actual threat from another impacting bolide. All the asteroids that used to

approach Earth’s orbit have been diverted, most of them steered into the Sun."

“So?” Casey’s dark chin had a defiant jut. “Why did you want to dig us up?"

“For history.” Uncle Pen looked away from us, up at the huge, far-off Earth. “I hope you’re try to

understand what that means. The resurfaced Earth had lost nearly every trace of our beginning. Historians

were trying to prove that we had evolved on some other planet and migrated here. Tycho Station is proof

that Earth is the actual mother world. I’ve found our roots here under the rubble."

“I guess you can be proud of that,” Casey said, “but who needs the station now?"

“Nobody, really.” He shrugged, with an odd little twist of his golden lips, and I thought he felt sorry for

Casey. “If another disaster did strike the Earth, which isn’t likely at all, it could be repeopled by the

colonies."

“So you dug us up for nothing?"

“If you knew what I have done,” Pen leaned and reached as if to hug him, but he shrank farther away.

“It wasn’t easy! We’ve had to invent and improvise. We had to test the tissue cells still preserved in the

cryostat, and build new equipment in the maternity lab. A complex system. It had to be tested.” He

smiled down into Tanya’s beaming devotion. “The tests have turned out well."

“So we are just an experiment?"

“Aren’t you glad to be alive?"

“Maybe,” Casey muttered bitterly. “If I can get off the Moon. I don’t want to sit here till I die, waiting

for nothing at all?"

Looking uncomfortable, Pen just reached down to lift Tanya up in his arms.

“We were meant for more than that,” Casey told him. “I want a life."

“Please, my dear boy, you must try to understand.” Patiently, Uncle Pen shook his furry head. “The

station is a precious historic monument, our sole surviving relic of the early Earth and early man. You are

part of it. I’m sorry if you take that for a misfortune, but there is certainly no place for you on Earth.”

Sandor Pen kept coming to the Moon as we grew up, though not so often. He brought tantalizing gifts.

Jack Williamson - Ultimate Earth.pdf

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