EVOLUTION'S END by Robert Arthur

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EVOLUTION'S END

Thrilling Wonder Stories April by Robert Arthur (1909-1969)

Aydem was pushing the humming vacuum duster along the endless stone

corridors of the great underground Repository of Natural Knowledge when

Ayveh, coming up quietly behind him, put her hands over his eyes.

He whirled, to see Ayveh's laughing face, mischief dancing on it.

"Ayveh!" he exclaimed eagerly. "But what are you doing here? It is

forbidden any woman—"

"I know." Ayveh threw back her head, her long hair, richly golden,

rippling down her shoulders to contrast with the pale apple-green of the

shapeless linen robe she wore—a robe identical to Aydem's, the universal

garb of the human slaves of the more-than-human Masters who ruled the

world. It was an underground world. Generations since, the Masters,

their great, thin-skulled heads and mighty brains proving uncomfortably

vulnerable to the ordinary rays of the sun, had retreated underground.

"But Dmu Dran wishes to see you, Aydem," the girl Ayveh went on, "and

he sent me to fetch you. There are visitors arriving, and you must

convey them from the tube station to his demonstration chambers. They

are very important visitors."

"But why did he not transmit the order to me by directed thinking?"

Aydem asked, puzzled. "He knows that even out here, in the Exhibit

Section, I would receive it."

"Perhaps he sent me because he knew I wished to see you." Ayveh

suggested happily. "And because he knew you hungered for the sight of

me. There are times, Aydem, when Dmu Dran actually seems to understand

what feelings are."

"A Master understand feelings?" Aydem's tone was scornful. "The

Masters are nothing but brains. Great machines for thought, which know

nothing of joy or sorrow or hunger for another."

"Shh!" Frightened, Ayveh put her fingers to his lips. "You must not

say such things. Generous as Dmu Dran is, he is still a Master, and if

his mind should chance to be listening, he would have to punish you. It

might even mean the fuel chambers."

Aydem kissed the fingers that had stopped his speech. Then, seeing the

mingled fear and longing in her face, he drew her close and kissed her

savagely, tasting the sweetness of her lips until a pulse was beating

like a hammer in his throat.

Shaken, Ayveh freed herself and looked about, fearful that someone

might have seen. There was no one. The corridors of the exhibit chambers

of this tremendous museum of natural history of which their Master, Dmu

Dran, was curator, wound endlessly away in darkness except for the tiny

lighted area that enclosed them.

"There is no one to see," Ayden reassured her. "I alone tend the

exhibit chambers, and only I am permitted to leave the Master's quarters

without orders. And if any did see, who would tell?"

"Ekno," the girl whispered. "He would tell. He would like to see you

sent into the fuel chambers, because he knows that we—that we—"

Her voice faltered and trailed off at the look of grimness in the

man's face. Aydem stared down at her, at her loveliness, before he

spoke. He himself stood nearly six feet tall, and his dark hair was a

shaggy mane dropping almost to his shoulders. He was beardless, for all

facial hair had been removed by an unguent when he was a youth—a whim of

Dmu Dran's, though many Masters were less fastidious.

His body held the sturdiness of the trunk of an oak—which he had never

seen. And though his duties were light in this mechanized, sub-surface

world to which man's life on Mother Earth had retreated with the

evolution of the Masters, muscles corded his body and were but lightly

hidden by the green robe that swathed him.

And there was a tension in those muscles now, as if they would explode

into action if only they had something to seize upon and rend and tear.

"Ayveh," he said, "I have seen the mating papers. I took them from the

machine to the Master a period ago. Our request to be assigned as each

other's mate has been denied. On the basis of the Selector Machine

rating, I have been assigned to Teema, your assistant in overseeing the

Master's household, and you to Ekno, who tends to minor repairs."

"That ugly hairy one?" Horror almost robbed Ayveh of her voice. "Who

smells so bad and is always looking after me when I pass? No! I—I would

rather kill myself first."

"I"—there was savagery in Ayden's words—"would rather kill the

Masters!"

"Oh, no!" the girl whispered in terror. "You must not speak it. If you

harmed Dmu Dran—if it became known even that you wished to—we should all

be destroyed. Not in the fuel chambers. We should go to the example

cells. And we would not die—for a long time."

"Better that," Aydem said stonily, "than to be slaves, to be mated to

those we despise, to keep forever our silence and obey orders, to live

and die like beasts!"

Then, at Ayveh's sudden gasp of terror, Aydem whirled.

His own features paled as he drew himself to attention. For Dmu Dran,

their Master, had come silently up behind them as they spoke, the air-

suspended chair which carried him making no sound.

And Dmu Dran, his great round face blank, his large popping eyes

unreadable, stared at Aydem with an unusual intensity. Yet no thoughts

were coming from the mind within the huge globular, thin-walled skull

over which only a little wispy hair, like dried hay, was plastered.

Had Dmu Dran heard? Had he caught the emanations of violent emotion

which must have been spreading all over the vicinity from Aydem? Was he

now probing into their minds for the words they had just spoken? If he

knew or guessed them, their fate would be a terrible one.

But when Dmu Dran spoke—for mental communication with the undeveloped

slave mind was fatiguing for a Master—his voice was mild.

"I fear," he said, in a thin piping tone, "that my servants are not

happy. Perhaps they are upset by the mating orders that have arrived?"

Aydem of course was supposed to know nothing of the contents of the

orders, having in theory no ability to read. But since Dmu Dran

evidently knew he could read—he had been taught in his boyhood by a wise

old slave long dead—boldness seemed the only course.

"Master," he said, "the girl Ayveh and I hoped to be mates. It is true

we are not happy, because we have been assigned to others."

"Happiness." Dmu Dran spoke the word reflectively. "Unhappiness. Mmm.

Those are things not given us to feel. You are aware emotion is not a

desirable characteristic in a slave?"

"Aye, Master," Aydem agreed submissively.

"The selector machine," Dmu Dran went on, "shows both you and the girl

Ayveh to be capable of much emotion. It also indicates in both of you a

brain capacity large for a slave. It is for these reasons you have been

denied each other. It is desired that slaves should be strong and

healthy, intelligent, but not too intelligent, and lacking in emotion so

they will not become discontented. You understand these things, do you

not?"

"Aye, Master," Aydem agreed in some astonishment. Ayveh pressed close

to him, frightened by the strange conduct of Dmu Dran—for no Master ever

spoke so familiarly with a slave.

Dmu Dran was silent, as if thinking. While he waited, Aydem reflected

that Dmu Dran was not exactly as other Masters were. To an untrained

eye, all Masters looked much alike—a great, globular head set upon a

small neckless body, the neck having disappeared in the course of

evolution of the great head, so that the weight might be better rested

on the stronger back and shoulder muscles.

But Dmu Dran was perceptibly taller than other Masters Aydem had seen.

Aydem had not seen many—there were only some thousand of them, and they

lived in small groups in far-flung underground Centers, if not entirely

alone, as did Dmu Dran. Dmu Dran's cranium was also slightly smaller in

diameter.

Now an odd expression touched the flat countenance of the Master.

"Aydem," he said, "You have seen the contents of these halls many

times. But Ayveh has not. So come with me now, both of you. We have a

little time, and I wish to view some specimens. It is many years since I

last examined them."

He turned his chair, and Aydem, exchanging a look of puzzlement with

Ayveh, followed him down the corridor between the great, glass-enclosed,

hermetically sealed exhibits.

As they went, light sprang on alongside them, activated by the heat of

their bodies on thermocouples, and died away behind them. The Master led

them several hundred yards, and halted at last in a section devoted to

ancient animals of the Earth's youth.

There were here many beasts, huge and ferocious in appearance,

reproduced in their natural environment, seen, save by Aydem, not more

than half a dozen times a year. Only six or eight Masters were born each

year, just enough to keep the total of a thousand from dwindling. They

visited the Repository of Natural Knowledge in the course of their

educational studies.

In the glass cases that lined the miles of corridors were exhibits,

many of them animated so cunningly that the artificial replicas of man

and animal of the past seemed endowed with life, encompassing all the

natural history of the world from the mists of the unknown, millions of

years before, to the present day. But since the great brains of the

Masters needed to be apprised of a fact but once to make it theirs

forever, there was never really occasion for a Master to come here

twice.

Now Dmu Dran, Aydem and Ayveh stood before a great, orange-colored

beast with black stripes, a snarl frozen upon his features, huge fangs,

many inches in length, protruding from his jaws. Even though he was but

a model of a beast dead many millennia, Ayveh instinctively drew closer

to Aydem, as if the creature were indeed about to leap, and as if they

were part of that group of men and women, much like themselves, that

faced it in desperation with long, pointed sticks in their hands.

"The saber-tooth tiger," Dmu Dran said. "When it reigned on this Earth

uncounted years ago, it was Master of Aiden, the world above, a scourge

feared and hated by all other animals. For many thousands of years it

grew more and more powerful, its dominance contested by few. By its

great teeth it was known—terrible weapons for rending and tearing its

prey. But in the end it ceased to be. Why did a beast like that, which

no natural enemy could oppose, die, think you?"

"It must indeed have been a fearful opponent that conquered it,

Master," Ayveh ventured uncertainly.

What might have been a smile, had a Master known smiling, rippled over

the pale moonface.

"Nature killed it," Dmu Dran informed them. "Nature destroyed it by

her very generosity. Those tusks you see that gave it its name—Nature

continued to add to their length and strength. But, alas! In her

enthusiasm, she made them so long in the course of time that their

possessor could not close its mouth, could not eat, and so eventually

starved to death. Aye, Nature evolved her great and dread child right

out of existence."

"That was indeed strange." Aydem frowned. "I do not understand. Why

did she do so?"

"Nature has curious ways." Dmu Dran shrugged. "And having an infinity

of time, she can afford an infinity of experiments. What she is not

satisfied with, though she has made it supreme, she destroys."

Dmu Dran shot his chair a few yards to the left.

"And here," he said, "is another great beast that was once master of

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EVOLUTION'S END by Robert Arthur

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