Arthur C. Clarke - Transience.pdf

(62 KB) Pobierz
381120229 UNPDF
Transience
Arthur C. Clarke
The forest, which came almost to the edge of the beach, climbed away into
thedistance up the flanks of the low, misty hills. Underfoot, the sand was
courseand mixed with myriads of broken shells. Here and there the
retreatingtide had left long streamers of weed trailed across the beach.
The rain, which seldom ceased, had for the moment passed inland, but ever
andagain large, angry drops would beat tiny craters into the sand.
It was hot and sultry, for the war between sun and rain was never-ending.
Sometimes the mists would lift for a while and the hills would stand out
clearlyabove the land they guarded. The hills arced in a semicircle along
thebay, following the line of the beach, and beyond them could sometimes be
seen, at an immense distance, a wall of mountains lying beneath perpetual
clouds. The trees grew everywhere, softening the contours of the land so
thatthe hills blended smoothly into each other. Only in one place could the
bare, uncovered rock be seen, where long ago some fault had weakened the
foundationsof the hills, so that for a mile or more the sky line fell
sharplyaway, drooping down to the sea like a broken wing.
Moving with the cautious alertness of a wild animal, the child came through
thestunted trees at the forest's edge. For a moment he hesitated; then,
Page 1
 
sincethere seemed to be no danger, walked slowly out onto the beach.
He was naked, heavily built, and had course black hair tangled over his
shoulders. His face, brutish though it was, might almost have passed in
humansociety, but the eyes would have betrayed him. They were not the eyes
ofan animal, for there was something in their depths that no animal had
everknown. But it was no more than a promise. For this child, as for all
hisrace, the light of reason had yet to dawn. Only a hairsbreadth still
separatedhim from the beasts among whom he dwelt. The tribe had not long
sincecome into this tribe, and he was the first ever to set foot upon the
lonelybeach. What had lured him from the known dangers of the forestinto
theunknown and therefore more terrible dangers of this new element.he
couldnot have told even had he possessed the power of speech. Slowly he
walkedout to the water's edge, always with backward glances at the forest
behindhim; as he did so, for the first time in all history, the level sand
boreupon its face the footprints it would one day know so well.
He had met water before, but it had always been bounded and confined by
land. Now it stretched endlessly before him, and the sound of its labouring
beatceaselessly upon his ears.
With the timeless patience of the savage, he stood on the moist sand that
thewater had just relinquished, and as the tide line moved out he followed
itslowly, pace by pace. When the waves reached towards his feet with a
suddenaccess of energy, he would retreat a little way toward the land. But
somethingheld him here at the water's edge, while his shadow lengthened
alongthe sands and the cold evening wind began to rise around him.
Perhaps into his mind had come something of the wonder of the sea, and a
hintof all that it would one day mean to man. Though the first gods of his
Page 2
 
peoplestay lay far into the future, he felt a dim sense of worship stir
withinhim. He knew that he was now in the presence of something greater
thanall the powers and forces he had ever met.
The tide was turning. Far away in the forest, a wolf howled once and was
suddenlysilent. The noises of the night were rising around him, and it was
timeto go.
Under the low moon, the two lines of footprints interlaced across the sand.
Swiftly the oncoming tide was smoothing them away. But they would return in
theirthousands and millions, in the centuries yet to be.
The child playing among the rock pools knew nothing of the forest that had
onceruled all of the land around him. It had left no trace of its
existence. As ephemeral as the mists that had so often rolled down from the
hills, it too, had veiled them for a little while and now was gone. In its
placehad come a checkerboard of fields, the legacy of a thousand years of
patienttoil. And so the illusion of permanence remained, though everything
hadaltered save the line of the hills against the sky. On the beach, the
sandwas finer now, and the land had lifted so that the old tide line was
farbeyond the reach of the questing waves.
Beyond the sea wall and the promenade, the little town was sleeping through
thegolden summer day. Here and there along the beach, people lay at rest,
drowsywith heat and lulled by the murmur of the waves.
Out across the bay, white and gold against the water, a great ship was
movingslowly to sea. The boy could hear, faint and far away, the beat of
itsscrews and could still see the tiny figures moving upon its decks and
superstructure. To the child - and not to him alone - it was a thing of
Page 3
 
wonderand beauty. He knew its name and the land to which it was steaming;
buthe did not know that the splendid ship was both the last and greatest of
itskind. He scarcely noticed, almost lost against the glare of the sun, the
thinwhite vapour trails that spelled the doom of the proud and lonely
giant.
Soon the great liner was no more than a dark smudge on the horizon, and the
boyturned again to his interrupted play, to the tireless building of his
battlementsof sand. In the west the sun was beginning its long decline, but
theevening was still far away.
Yet it came at last, when the tide was returning to the land. At his
mother'swords, the child gathered up his playthings and, wearily contented,
beganto follow his parents back to the shore. He glanced once only at the
seaagain. Without regret he left them to the advancing waves, for tomorrow
hewould return and the future stretched endlessly before him.
That tomorrow would not always come, either for himself or for the world, he
wasstill too young to know.
And now even the hills had changed, worn away by the weight of years. Not
allthe change was the work of nature, for one night in the long forgotten
pastsomething had come sliding down from the stars, and the little town had
vanishedin a spinning tower of flame. But that was so long ago that it was
beyondsorrow or regret. Like the fall of fabledTroy or the overwhelming of
Pompeii, it was part of the irremediable past, and could rouse no pity now.
On the broken sky line lay a long metal building supporting a maze of
mirrorsthat turned and glittered in the sun. No-one from an earlier age
couldhave guessed its purpose. It was as meaningless as an observatory or a
radiostation would have been to ancient man. But it was neither of these
Page 4
 
things.
Sincenoon , Bran had been laying among the shallow pools left by the
retreatingtide. He was quite alone, though the machine that guarded him was
watchingunobtrusively from the shore. Only a few days ago, there had been
otherchildren playing beside the blue waters of this lovely bay. Bran
sometimeswondered where they had vanished, but he was a solitary child and
didnot greatly care. Lost in his own dreams, he was content to be left
alone.
In the last few hours he had linked the tiny pools with an intricate network
ofwaterways. His thoughts were very far from Earth, both in space and time.
Around him now were the dull, red sands of another world. He was Cardenis ,
princeof engineers, fighting to save his people from the encroaching
deserts. For Bran had looked upon the ravaged face of Mars; he knew the
storyof its long tragedy and the help from Earth that had come too late.
Out to the horizon the sea was empty, untroubled by ships, as it had been
forages. For a little while, near the beginning of time, man had fought his
briefwar against the oceans of the world. Now it seemed that only a moment
laybetween the coming of the first canoes and the passing of the last great
Megatheriaof the seas.
Bran did not even glance up at the sky when the monstrous shadow swept along
thebeach. For days past, those silver giants had been rising over the hills
inan unending stream, and now he gave them little thought. All his life he
hadwatched the great ships climbing through the skies of Earth on their way
todistant worlds. Often he had seen them return from those long journeys,
droppingdown through the clouds with cargoes beyond imagination.
Page 5
 

Plik z chomika:

Inne pliki z tego folderu:

Inne foldery tego chomika:

Zgłoś jeśli naruszono regulamin