Jack Williamson - Ultimate Earth

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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.

Exotic fruits that had to be eaten before they spoiled. New games and difficult puzzles. Little holo cubes

that had held living pictures of us, caught us year after year as we grew up from babies in the maternity

lab. He was always genial and kind, though I thought he came to care less for us as we grew older.

His main concern was clearly the station itself. He cleared junk and debris out of the deepest tunnels,

which had been used for workshops and storage, and stocked them again with new tools and spare parts

that the robots could use to repair themselves and maintain the station.

Most of his time on the visits was spent in the library and museum with Dian and her holo mother. He

studied the old books and holos and paintings and sculptures, carried them away to be restored, and

brought identical copies back to replace them. For a time he had the digging machines busy again,

removing rubble from around the station and grinding it up to make concrete for a massive new retaining

wall that they poured to reinforce the station foundation.

For our twenty-first birthday, he had the robots measure us for space suits like his own. Sleek and

mirror-bright, they fitted like our skins and let us feel at home outside the dome. We wore them down to

see one of our old rocket spaceplanes, standing on the field beside his little slipship. His robots had dug it

out of a smashed hangar, and he now had them rebuilding it with new parts from Earth.

One of the great digging machines had extended a leverlike arm to hold it upright. A robot was replacing

a broken landing strut, fusing it smoothly in place with some process that made no glow of heat. Casey

spoke to the robot, but it ignored him. He climbed up to knock on the door. It responded with a brittle

computer voice that was only a rattle in our helmets.

“Open up,” he told it. “Let us in."

“Admission denied.” Its hard machine voice had Pen’s accent.

“By what authority?"

“By the authority of Director Sandor Pen, Lunar Research Site."

“Ask the director to let us in."

“Admission denied."

“So you think.” Casey shook his head, his words a sardonic whisper in my helmet. “If you know how to

think."

Back inside the air lock, Pen had waited to help us shuck off the mirror suits. Casey thanked him for the

gift and asked if the old spaceplane would be left here on the Moon.

“Forget what you’re thinking.” He gave Casey a penetrating glance. “We’re taking it down to Earth."

“I wish I could come."

“I’m sorry you can’t.” His face was firmly set, but a flush of pleasure turned it a richer gold. “It’s to

stand at the center of our new historic memorial, located on the Australian subcontinent. It presents our

reconstruction of the prehistoric past. The whole story of the pre-impact planet and pre-impact man.”

He paused to smile at Tanya. Flushed pink, she smiled back at him.

“It’s really magnificent! Finding the lunar site was my great good fortune, and working it has been my life

for many years. It has filled a gap in human history. Answered questions that scholars had fought over for

ages. You yourselves have a place there, with a holographic diorama of your childhood."

Casey asked again why we couldn’t see it.

“Because you belong here.” Impatience edged his voice. “And because of the charter that allowed us to

work the site. We agreed to restore the station to its original state, and to import no genetic materials

from it that might contaminate the Earth. We are to leave the site exactly as it was before the impact,

protected and secured from any future trespass."

We all felt sick with loss on the day he told us his work at the site was done. As a farewell gift, he took

us two by two to orbit the Moon. Casey and I went up together, sitting behind him in his tiny slipship. We

had seen space and Earth from the dome all our lives, but the flight was still an exciting adventure.

The mirror hull was invisible from inside, so that our seats seemed to float free in open space. The

Moon’s gray desolation spread wider beneath us, and dwindled again to a bright bubble floating in a gulf

of darkness. Though Pen touched nothing I saw, the stars blazed suddenly brighter, the Milky Way a

broad belt of gem-strewn splendor all around us. The sun was dimmed and hugely magnified to let us see

the dark spots across its face.

Still he touched nothing and I felt no new motion, but now Australia expanded. The deserts were gone.

A long new sea lay across the center of the continent, crescent-shaped and vividly blue.

“The memorial.” He pointed to a broad tongue of green land thrust into the crescent. “If you ever get to

Earth—which I don’t expect—you could meet your doubles there in the Tycho exhibit."

Casey asked, “Is Mona there?"

Mona Lisa Live was the professional name of the woman Casey’s father brought with him when he

forced his way aboard the escape plane just ahead of the first impact. We knew them only from their

holo images, he with the name “El Chino” and the crossed flags of Mexico and China tattooed across his

black chest, she with the Leonardo painting on her belly.

Those ancient images had been enough to let us all catch the daring spirit and desperate devotion that

had brought them finally to the Moon from the Medellin nightclub where he found her. From his first

glimpse of her holo, Casey had loved her and dreamed of a day when they might be together again. I’d

heard him ask my holo father why she had not been cloned with us.

“Ask the computer.” He shrugged in the fatalistic way he had when his voice had its dry computer

undertone. “It could have been done. Her tissue specimens are still preserved in the cryostat."

“Do you know why she wasn’t cloned?"

“The computer seldom explains.” He shrugged again. “If you want my own guess, she and Kell reached

the Moon as unexpected intruders. The maternity lab was not prepared to care for them or their clones."

“Intruders?” Casey’s dark face turned darker. “At least DeFort thought their genes were worth

preserving. If I’m worth cloning, Mona ought to be. Someday she will be."

Back in the station dome, Pen made his final farewell. We thanked him for that exciting glimpse of the

far-off Earth, for the space suits and all his gifts, for restoring us to life. A trifling repayment, he said, for

all he had found at the station. He shook our hands, kissed Tanya and Dian, and got into his silvery suit.

We followed him down to the air lock. Tanya must have loved him more than I knew. She broke into

tears and ran off to her room as the rest of us watched his bright little teardrop float away toward Earth.

“We put them down there,” Casey muttered. “We have a right to see what we have done."

When the robots left the restored spaceplane standing on its own landing gear, the digging machine crept

away to join the others. Busy again, they were digging a row of deep pits. We watched them bury

themselves under the rubble, leaving only a row of new craters that might become a puzzle, I thought, to

later astronomers. Casey called us back to the dome to watch a tank truck crawling out of the

underground hangar dug into the crater rim.

“We’re off to Earth!” He slid his arm around Pepe. “Who’s with us?"

Arne scowled at him. “Didn’t you hear Sandor?"

“Sandor’s gone.” He grinned at Pepe. “We have a plan of our own."

They hadn’t talked about it, but I had heard their whispers and seen them busy in the shops. Though the

space-bending science of the slipship was still a mystery to us, I knew the robots had taught them

astronautics and electronics. I knew they had made holos of Pen, begging him to say more about the new

Earth than he ever would.

“I don’t know your plan.” Arne made a guttural grunt. “But I have seen the reports of people who went

down to evaluate our terraforming. They’ve never found anything they liked, and never got back to the

Moon."

"¿Qué importa?"Pepe shrugged. “Better that than wasting our lives waitingpor nada ."

“We belong here.” Stubbornly, Arne echoed what Pen had said. “Our mission is just to keep the station

alive. Certainly not to throw ourselves away on insane adventures. I’m staying here."

Dian chose to stay with him, though I don’t think they were in love. Her love was the station itself, with

all its relics of the old Earth. Even as a little child, she had always wanted to work with her holo mother,

recording everything that Pen took away to be copied and returned.

Tanya had set her heart on Sandor Pen. I think she had always dreamed that someday he would take

her with him back to Earth. She was desolate and bitter when he left without her, her pride in herself

deeply hurt.

“He did love us when we were little,” she sobbed when Pepe begged her to join him and Casey. “But

just because we were children. Or just interesting pets. Interesting because we aren’t his kind of human,

and people that live forever don’t have children."

Pepe begged again, I think because he loved her. Whatever they found on Earth, it would be bigger than

our tunnels, and surely more exciting. She cried and kissed him and chose to stay. The new Earth had no

place for her. Sandor wouldn’t want her, even if she found him. She promised to listen for their radio and

pray they came back safe.

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ThisebookispublishedbyFictionwisePublicationswww.fictionwise.comExcellenceinEbooksVisitwww.fictionwise.comtofindmoretitlesbythisandothertopauthorsinScienceFiction,Fantasy,Horror,Mystery,andothergenres.Copyright©2000byJackWilliamsonFirstpublishedinAnalogScienceFictionandFact,Dec.2000Fictionwisewww.fi...

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