The Collected Stories of Arthur C. Clarke (44 page)

‘Karellen,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ll draft out the statement and send it up to you for approval. But I reserve the right to continue pestering you, and if I see any opportunity, I’ll do my best to learn your secret.’

‘I’m perfectly well aware of that,’ replied the Supervisor, with a suspicion of a chuckle.

‘And you don’t mind?’

‘Not in the slightest—though I draw the line at atomic bombs, poison gas, or anything else that might strain our friendship.’

Stormgren wondered what, if anything, Karellen had guessed. Behind the Supervisor’s banter he had recognised the note of understanding, perhaps—who could tell?—even of encouragement.

‘I’m glad to know it,’ Stormgren replied in as level a voice as he could manage. He rose to his feet, bringing down the cover of his case as he did so. His thumb slid along the catch.

‘I’ll draft that statement at once,’ he repeated, ‘and send it up on the teletype later today.’

While he was speaking, he pressed the button—and knew that all his fears had been groundless. Karellen’s senses were no finer than Man’s. The Supervisor could have detected nothing, for there was no change in his voice as he said goodbye and spoke the familiar code-words that opened the door of the chamber.

Yet Stormgren still felt like a shoplifter leaving a department store under the eyes of the house detective, and breathed a sigh of relief when the airlock doors had finally closed behind him.

‘I admit,’ said van Ryberg, ‘that some of my theories haven’t been very bright. But tell me what you think of this one.’

‘Must I?’

Pieter didn’t seem to notice.

‘Is isn’t really my idea,’ he said modestly. ‘I got it from a story of Chesterton’s. Suppose that the Overlords are hiding the fact that they’ve got nothing to hide?’

‘That sounds a little complicated to me,’ said Stormgren, interestedly.

‘What I mean is this,’ van Ryberg continued eagerly. ‘
I
think that physically they’re human beings like us. They realise that we’ll tolerate being ruled by creatures we imagine to be—well, alien and superintelligent. But the human race being what it is, it just won’t be bossed around by creatures of the same species.’

‘Very ingenious, like all your theories,’ said Stormgren. ‘I wish you’d give them Opus numbers so that I could keep up with them. The objections to this one—’

But at that moment Alexander Wainwright was ushered in.

Stormgren wondered what he was thinking. He wondered, too, if Wainwright had made any contact with the men who had kidnapped him. He doubted it, for he believed Wainwright’s disapproval of violent methods to be perfectly genuine. The extremists in his movement had discredited themselves thoroughly, and it would be a long time before the world heard of them again.

The head of the Freedom League listened in silence while the draft was read to him. Stormgren hoped that he appreciated this gesture, which had been Karellen’s idea. Not for another twelve hours would the rest of the world know of the promise that had been made to its grandchildren.

‘Fifty years,’ said Wainwright thoughtfully. ‘That is a long time to wait.’

‘Not for Karellen, nor for humanity,’ Stormgren answered. Only now was he beginning to realise the neatness of the Overlords’ solution. It had given them the breathing space they believed they needed, and it had cut the ground from beneath the Freedom League’s feet. He did not imagine that the League would capitulate, but its position would be seriously weakened.

Certainly Wainwright realised this as well, as he must also have realised that Karellen would be watching him. For he said very little and left as quickly as he could; Stormgren knew that he would not see him again in his term of office. The Freedom League might still be a nuisance but that was a problem for his successor.

There were some things that only time could cure. Evil men could be destroyed but nothing could be done about good men who were deluded.

‘Here’s your case,’ said Duval. ‘It’s a good as new.’

‘Thanks,’ Stormgren answered, inspecting it carefully none the less. ‘Now perhaps you can tell me what it was all about—and what we are going to do next.’

The physicist seemed more interested in his own thoughts.

‘What I can’t understand,’ he said, ‘is the ease with which we’ve got away with it. Now if
I’d
been Kar—’

‘But you’re not. Get to the point, man. What
did
we discover?’

Duval pushed forward a photographic record which to Stormgren looked rather like the autograph of a mild earthquake.

‘See that little kink?’

‘Yes. What is it?’

‘Only Karellen.’

‘Good Lord! Are you sure?’

‘It’s a pretty safe guess. He’s sitting, or standing, or whatever he does, about two metres on the other side of the screen. If the resolution had been better, we might even have calculated his size.’

Stormgren’s feelings were very mixed as he stared at the scarcely visible deflexion of the trace. Until now, there had been no proof that Karellen even had a material body. The evidence was still indirect, but he accepted it with little question.

Duval’s voice cut into his reverie.

‘You’ll realise,’ he said, ‘that there’s no such thing as a truly one-way glass. Karellen’s screen, we found when we analysed our results, transmits light about a hundred times as easily in one direction as the other.’ With the air of a conjuror producing a whole litter of rabbits, he reached into his desk and pulled out a pistol-like object with a flexible bell-mouth. It reminded Stormgren of a rubber blunderbuss, and he couldn’t imagine what it was supposed to be.

Duval grinned at his perplexity.

‘It isn’t as dangerous as it looks. All you have to do is to ram the muzzle against the screen and press the trigger. It gives out a very powerful flash lasting five seconds, and in that time you’ll be able to swing it around the room. Enough light will come back to give you a good view.’

‘It won’t hurt Karellen?’

‘Not if you aim low and sweep it upward. That will give him time to accommodate—I suppose he has reflexes like ours, and we don’t want to blind him.’

Stormgren looked at the weapon doubtfully and hefted it in his hand. For the last few weeks his conscience had been pricking him. Karellen had always treated him with unmistakable affection, despite his occasional devastating frankness, and now that their time together was drawing to its close he did not wish to do anything that might spoil that relationship. But the Supervisor had received due warning, and Stormgren had the conviction that if the choice had been his Karellen would long ago have shown himself. Now the decision would be made for him—when their last meeting came to its end, Stormgren would gaze upon Karellen’s face.

If, of course, Karellen had a face.

The nervousness that Stormgren had first felt had long since passed away. Karellen was doing almost all the talking, weaving the long, intricate sentences of which he was so fond. Once this had seemed to Stormgren the most wonderful and certainly the most unexpected of all Karellen’s gifts. Now it no longer appeared quite so marvellous, for he knew that like most of the Supervisor’s abilities it was the result of sheer intellectual power and not of any special talent.

Karellen had time for any amount of literary composition when he slowed his thoughts down to the pace of human speech.

‘Do not worry,’ he said, ‘about the Freedom League. It has been very quiet for the past month, and though it will revive again, it is no longer a real danger. Indeed since it’s always valuable to know what your opponents are doing, the League is a very useful institution. Should it ever get into financial difficulties I might even subsidize it.’

Stormgren had often found it difficult to tell when Karellen was joking. He kept his face impassive.

‘Very soon the League will lose another of its strongest arguments. There’s been a good deal of criticism, mostly rather childish, of the special position you have held for the past few years. I found it very valuable in the early days of my administration, but now that the world is moving along the lines that I planned, it can cease. In the future, all my dealings with Earth will be indirect and the office of Secretary-General can once again become what it was originally intended to be.

‘During the next fifty years there will be many crises, but they will pass. Almost a generation from now, I shall reach the nadir of my popularity, for plans must be put into operation which cannot be fully explained at the time. Attempts may even be made to destroy me. But the pattern of the future is clear enough, and one day all these difficulties will be forgotten—even to a race with memories as long as yours.’

The last words were spoken with such a peculiar emphasis that Stormgren immediately froze in his seat. Karellen never made accidental slips and even his indiscretions were calculated to many decimal places. But there was no time to ask questions—which certainly would not be answered—before the Supervisor had changed the subject again.

‘You’ve often asked me about our long-term plans,’ he continued. ‘The foundation of the World State is of course only the first step. You will live to see its completion—but the change will be so imperceptible that few will notice it when it comes. After that there will be a pause for thirty years while the next generation reaches maturity. And then will come the day which we have promised. I am sorry that you will not be there.’

Stormgren’s eyes were open, but his gaze was fixed far beyond the dark barrier of the screen. He was looking into the future, imagining the day he would never see.

‘On that day,’ continued Karellen, ‘the human mind will experience one of its very rare psychological discontinuities. But no permanent harm will be done—the men of that age will be more stable than their grandfathers. We will always have been part of their lives, and when they meet us, we will not seem so—strange—as we would do to you.’

Stormgren had never known Karellen in so contemplative a mood, but this gave him no surprise. He did not believe that he had ever seen more than a few facets of the Supervisor’s personality—the real Karellen was unknown and perhaps unknowable to human beings. And once again Stormgren had the feeling that the Supervisor’s real interests were elsewhere.

‘Then there will be another pause, only a short one this time, for the world will be growing impatient. Men will wish to go out to the stars, to see the other worlds of the Universe and to join us in our work. For it is only beginning—not a thousandth of the suns in the Galaxy have ever been visited by the races of which we know. One day, Rikki, your descendants in their own ships will be bringing civilisation to the worlds that are ripe to receive it—just as we are doing now.’

Karellen had fallen silent and Stormgren had the impression that the Supervisor was watching him intently.

‘It is a great vision,’ he said softly. ‘Do you bring it to all your worlds?’

‘Yes,’ said Karellen, ‘all that can understand it.’

Out of nowhere, a strangely disturbing thought came into Stormgren’s mind.

‘Suppose, after all, your experiment fails with Man? We have known such things in our own dealings with other races. Surely you have had your failures too?’

‘Yes,’ said Karellen, so softly that Stormgren could scarcely hear him. ‘We have had our failures.’

‘And what do you do then?’

‘We wait—and try again.’

There was a pause lasting perhaps ten seconds. When Karellen spoke again, his words were muffled and so unexpected that for a moment Stormgren did not react.

‘Goodbye, Rikki!’

Karellen had tricked him—probably it was too late. Stormgren’s paralysis lasted only for a moment. Then he whipped out the flash-gun and jammed it against the screen.

Was it a lie? What
had
he really seen? No more, he was certain, than Karellen had intended. He was as sure as he could be of anything that the Supervisor had known his plan from the beginning, and had foreseen every moment of it.

Why else had that enormous chair been already empty when the circle of light blazed upon it? In the same moment he had started to swing the beam, but he was too late. The metal door, twice as high as a man, was closing swiftly when he first caught sight of it—closing swiftly, yet not quite swiftly enough.

Karellen had trusted him, had not wished him to go down into the long evening of his life still haunted by a mystery he could never solve. Karellen dared not defy the unknown power above him (was he of that same race, too?) but he had done all that he could. If he had disobeyed Him, He could never prove it.

‘
We have had our failures
.’

Yes, Karellen, that was true—and were you the one who failed, before the dawn of human history? Even in fifty years, could you overcome the power of all the myths and legends of the world?

Yet Stormgren knew there would be no second failure. When the two races met again, the Overlords would have won the trust and friendship of Mankind, and not even the shock of recognition could undo that work.

And Stormgren knew also that the last thing he would ever see as he closed his eyes on life, would be that swiftly turning door, and the long black tail disappearing behind it.

A very famous and unexpectedly beautiful tail.

A barbed tail
.

Time’s Arrow

First published in
Science-Fantasy
, Summer 1950

Collected in
Reach for Tomorrow