The Seeds of Time

She just looked at me a little sadly, and shook her head slowly.

The next day, after we had fed on more of the candies that were not candies, and drunk an elusively flavoured milky stuff, she led the way into the hall, and towards the chairs. I stopped.

‘Can’t we walk?’ I said. ‘It’s a long time since I walked.’

‘Why, yes, of course,’ she agreed, and we turned towards the doorway.

Several people spoke to her, and one or two of them to me. There was curiosity in their eyes, but their manners were kindly, as though to set a stranger at ease. It was evident that they knew I was not Hymorell, yet apparently I was not sensational. Outside, we walked across rough grass and found a path leading through a spinney. It was quiet, peaceful, Arcadianly beautiful. To me, now feeling the very ground beneath my feet as something precious, everything had the freshness of spring. The blood livened in my veins in a way that I had forgotten.

‘Wherever it is, it’s lovely,’ I said.

‘Yes, it is lovely,’ she agreed.

We walked on in silence for a while, then my curiosity came back.

‘What did you mean by “the other end of the race”?’ I asked her.

‘Just that. We think we are coming to the end, finishing. We are practically sure of it-though there is always chance.’ I looked at her.

‘I have never seen anyone more healthy, or more beautiful,’ I said.

She smiled.

‘It’s a nice body,’ she agreed. ‘My best, I think.’

For the moment I ignored that baffling addition.

“Then what is happening-it is infertility?’ I asked.

‘No. There are not a great many children, but that is more a result than a cause. It is that something in us is failing to reproduce-the thing that makes us human instead of just animal-we call it malukos.’

The word gave me an impression akin to a spirit or a soul, yet not quite either.

‘Then the children ?’

‘They nearly all of them lack that. They are-feeble- minded,’ she said. ‘If things go on this way they will all be like that one day-and then it will be over.’

I pondered that, feeling that I was back in the dream again.

‘How long has this been happening?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know. One doesn’t think of the salany arithmetically-though there is the perimetrical approach.’

I let her have best over that.

‘Surely there are records?’ I said.

‘Oh, yes. That is how Hymorell and I learned your language. But there are very big gaps. Five times at least the race all but destroyed itself. There are thousands of years missing from the records at different salany.’

‘And how long is it going to be before it is all finished?’ I asked.

‘We don’t know that, either. Our task is to prolong it because there is always chance. It may happen that the intelligence factors will become strong again.’

‘How do you mean, “prolong it”? Prolong your own lives?’

‘Yes, we transfer. When a body begins to fail, or when it is fifty years old or so, and getting past its best, we choose one of the feeble-minded, and transfer to that. This,’ she added, holding up her perfect hand, and studying it, ‘is my fourteenth body. It’s a very nice one.’

I agreed. ‘But do you mean you can go on and on transferring?’ I asked.

‘Oh, yes-as long as there are bodies to transfer to.’

‘But-but that’s immortality.’

‘No,’ she said, scornfully, ‘nothing like it. It is just prolongation. Some day, sooner or later, there’ll be an accident -that’s mathematically inevitable. It might have been a hundred years ago, or it might be tomorrow ‘

‘Or a thousand years hence?’ I suggested.

‘Exactly, but one day it will come.’

‘Oh,’ I said. That seemed pretty near immortality to me. I did not for a moment doubt that she was telling me the truth. By this time I was prepared for any fantastic thing. All the same, I revolted against it. I had an instinctive sense of disapproval-prejudice, of course, the same prejudice which made me disapprove of the soft, flowing garments and the soft, easy manner of life: there is a hangover of the old Puritan censor in all of us. I couldn’t help feeling that the process she spoke of was allied to cannibalism-in some symbolic fashion. She must have read my expression, for she said, explaining, not excusing:

‘This body wasn’t any good to the girl who had it. I don’t suppose she was really even conscious of it. It was being wasted. I shall look after it. I shall have children. Some of them may be normal human children, then when they grow old they will be able to transfer. The urge to survival still exists, you see-something may happen, someone may make a discovery to save us even now.’

‘And the girl who had this body? What happened to her?’

‘Well, there wasn’t very much there beyond a few instincts. What there was changed places with me.’

‘Into a body aged fifty?-Losing thirty years of life?’

‘Can you call it loss when she was incapable of using it?’

I did not reply to that, for a thought had struck me like a sudden illumination.

‘So that’s what Hymorell was working on! He was trying to extend this transference-to operate it at, well, long range. That’s it, isn’t it? That’s why I’m here?’