The Seeds of Time

‘No, but the next civilization did. They found Mars too old for us, and Venus too young. You had a dream of men spreading out over the universe; I’m afraid that never happened, though it was tried again later. They bred men specially for it as they bred them for all kinds of things. In fact they produced some very strange men and women, highly specialized. They were even more zealous for order than your people-they would not admit chance, which is a great foolishness. When their end came it was disastrous…. None of the specialized types could survive. The population dwindled down to a few hundred thousand who had enough adaptability left to start over again.’

‘So you have come to distrust order-and standards?’

‘We have ceased to think of society as a structural engineering problem, or of individuals as components for assembly into some arbitrary pattern.’

‘And you just sit and wait supinely for the end?’

‘Oh dear, no. We preserve ourselves as materials for chance to work on. Life was an accident in the beginning, survival has often been an accident. Perhaps there’ll be no more accidents-on the other hand, there may be.’

‘That sounds very near defeatism.’

‘In the end, defeat, and the cold, must come. First to the system, then the galaxy, then the universe, and the rest will be silence. Not to admit that is a foolish vanity.’ She paused. ‘Yet one grows flowers because they are lovely-not because one wishes them to live for ever.’

I did not like that world. It was foreign in its very thought-streams. The strain to understand was constant and wearisome-it was also unprofitable. All the comfort and ease I had there were centred in Clytassamine. For her I pulled down the barriers I had so bitterly erected around myself in the last few years, and I fell the more deeply in love on account of them.

Thus there was a second reason not to let things happen tamely as Hymorell had envisaged. Even Clytassamine could not make the place heaven, but I had got out of hell, and intended to stay out. It was on account of that that I spent unnumbered hours poring over the transference machine, learning all I could of it. My progress was slow, but some idea of the way it operated did begin at last to come to me.

But I could not settle. The feeling of transience would not leave me, and the days began to pass in long nagging uncertainty. There was no way of telling whether Hymorell would be successful in getting all the parts he needed. I had a haunting, mind’s eye picture of him in my wheel-chair working away all the time on the contrivance which would condemn me to suffering in that broken body again. As the weeks went by the strain began to affect me, and I grew nervy. I began to reach the point where I was afraid to go to sleep lest the next time I woke I should find myself back in that chair.

Clytassamine, too, began to look worried. I wished I could be quite sure what she was worried about. Her emotions must have been confused. She undoubtedly had some affection for me-with a slightly maternal flavour to it, and an air of responsibility. Her genuine sympathy over my distress at the idea of going back was cut across by her feeling for Hymorell who must now be suffering what I had. There was also the point that my mental strain wasn’t doing my temporary mortal tenement any good, either.

And then, when six uneventful months had begun to give me hope, it happened. It did so without sign or warning. I went to sleep in the room of the great green building: I woke back home-with a raging pain in my missing leg. All was just as it had been-so much so that I reached right away for the dope bottle.

When I grew calmer I found that there was something there which had not been before. It was on the table beside me, looking like a radio-set partially assembled. I certainly had not built it. But for that, the whole thing might have been a dream.

I leant back in my chair, considering that mass of wiring very carefully. Then I started to examine it closely, touching nothing. It was, of course, crude in construction compared with the transference machine I had studied in the place that Clytassamine had called Cathalu, but I began to see similarities and notice adaptations. I was still looking at it when I fell asleep. By the hours I slept I reckoned that Hymorell must have been driving my body at considerable pressure.

When I awoke, I began to think hard. My spell of soundness and health had left me with one firm decision-I would not remain as I was now. There were two ways out. The first had always been there for the taking-and still was. But now, there was the transference instrument. I did not understand a lot about it. I doubted whether I could successfully re-tune it if I tried-and I did not wish to try. For one thing, little as I liked that other world, Clytassamine would be there to help me; for another, what I had learned made me think that I might easily land in circumstances even less desirable. So I left it on HymorelFs setting.

The chief difficulty I foresaw was that the machine must remain. He had had to leave it, but never guessed, I suppose, that I should be able to use it. And if I were to use it, I should have to leave it there for him to use again. My object must be to stop him doing that. It would be risky to set the machine to destroy itself. The process is to some extent hypnotic, and by no means instantaneous. Something very queer indeed would be likely to happen if it were destroyed while the transmission was in progress. Besides, he would be able to build another. As long as he existed he would be able to build another…. That made the answer fairly obvious….