Fred Saberhagen - The Arrival

VIP免费

2024-12-08 0 0 460.67KB 194 页 5.9玖币

侵权投诉

THE ARRIVAL

GENE RODDENBERRY'S EARTH: FINAL CONFLICT

Fred Saberhagen

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirtheen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

AFTERMATH

The first in a series of novels based

on the hit television series from the creator of Star Trek™.

"So, what did you think of your first Taelon?" Doors asked his father.

Jubal Doors sat down opposite him. "If you mean the fella you got here"—a nod

toward the newly occupied guest house—"he's not."

Jonathan blinked. "Not the first Companion you've seen?" Doors thought back to the

landings that had been reported, and didn't remember one near his father's home.

"There was a landing in Charleston, then? I hadn't heard about that one."

"No, there wasn't. Charleston somehow got left out."

"No? Then what.:.?"

"Son, the first Taelon I ever saw was sight here in California, but it wasn't this

morning. No, it was a good long time before you were born. Back in 1936."

"From its carefully crafted introduction, to its gripping conclusion, it is difficult to

fault the sheer enjoyable escapism of this hovel. It provides a detailed back story for

Jonathan Doors, and is an enjoyable work in its own right."

—Dream Watch

GENE RODDENBERRY'S

EARTH: FINAL CONFLICT

Books from Tor Books

The Arrival by Fred Saberhagen

The First Protector by James White

Requiem for Boone by Debra Doyle and James D. Macdonald

Visit the Earth:- Final Conflict Web sits at

vwvw.efc.com

THE ARRIVAL

FRED SABERHAGEN

TOR®

ATOM DOHERTY ASSOCIATES BOOK NEW YORK

This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are

either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

GENE RODDENBERRY'S EARTH: FINAL CONFLICT—THE ARRIVAL

Communications Inc.

"GENE RODDENBERRY'S EARTH: FINAL CONFLICT" and all associated names,

"ALLIANCE ATLANTIS" with stylized "A" design is a registered trademark of

"Tribune Entertainment" is a registered trademark of Tribune Entertainment

Edited by James Frenkel

A Tor Book

Published by Tom Doherty Associates, LLC

175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY 10010

www.tor.com

® Tor is a registered trademark of Tom Doherty Associates, LLC.

ISBN: 0-812-56888-5

First edition: December 1999

First mass market edition: October 2000

Printed in the United States of America

For Joan

THE ARRIVAL

Chapter One

^ »

Midnight had come, and the day that was now beginning would be unlike any that the

human race had ever known, in the many thousands of years of its existence. A great

invisible boundary was being crossed between the old world and the new. Jonathan

Doors met the tremendous transformation standing on the flagstoned rear patio of his

mansion in the hills of central California, with his wife beside him reclining in her

wheelchair. For the past hour their two sets of eyes had been searching the starry sky

for some sign of the eagerly awaited new arrivals, the unknown and mysterious

entities who called themselves Taelon, or the Companions.

For nearly a year now, Taelon messages had filled the media around the world, but

their senders were still virtually unknown to the native inhabitants of planet Earth.

When first received, those incoming radio and television signals, the soft voices

speaking in flawless English and half a dozen of the most widely spoken other earthly

tongues, had been almost universally assumed to be some kind of elaborate prank.

But not for long. In a matter of days, scientific observers, using Earth's finest radio

telescopes, had proven with mathematical certainty that the sources of those signals

were in the outer reaches of the solar system. They were out there on the fringe of

truly interstellar space, but they were moving very swiftly in the direction of the

inner, minor planets, at diminishing velocities calculated to match the speed and—

location of the moving Earth. And that correspondence was calculated to take place

on the very day that the soft voices themselves predicted their arrival.

And the messages promised many wondrous things.

Their authors proclaimed that they were coming across the immense gulfs of space in

peace and brotherhood, and that they intended from now on to be Companions to the

people of Earth.

They asked no permission for their planned landings. They ignored the warnings and

threats beamed out to them by the militant leaders of some smaller nations. They

simply spelled out the symbolic pattern in which they intended to alight upon our

world. The first Companion ships were to touch down just west of the International

Date Line, and just past the hour of local midnight. From there the pattern would

march on west around the Earth, so that the new day and the Taelon presence would

arrive together in every city and every nation.

As Doors and his wife intently scanned the skies, looking for the first sign of a

Companion presence in California, television and radio reported that Vladivostok and

Tokyo were already engaged in a mild verbal feud as to which of them had been first

to welcome the newcomers.

It seemed there were going to be between fifty and a hundred landings altogether.

Australia and Asia, Africa and Europe, had entirely entered the new world, and the

front of transformation had now swept completely across the Americas, except for

Alaska. Now, at midnight in California, the great event was about three-fourths

accomplished.

Doors, a stocky, powerfully built man in his mid-fifties, stood leaning his thick, well-

kept hands on the stone balustrade of his enormous house. He was conservatively,

casually dressed, in a turtleneck pullover and dark slacks. His beloved wife Amanda,

her brown hair neatly styled, was almost fully reclined in her motorized wheelchair,

wearing warm slippers and a quilted dressing gown against the coolness of the night.

She was dying slowly, of cystic fibrosis, and at the moment a nasal tube was feeding

bottled oxygen into her ravaged lungs. Most people would have thought her a few

years older than her husband, though in fact he was ten years her senior.

Here at the dawn of the Third Millennium, earthly medicine could do very little for

her beyond making her somewhat more comfortable.

Beginning with their very first messages, the Taelons had been promising that the

wonderful gifts they were bringing Earth included very powerful help in humanity's

endless war against disease and death. Doors, like everyone else on earth with a loved

one blind, or crippled, or visibly in danger of death, had known a sudden fierce pang

of new hope.

A chill breeze, born over the Pacific miles away, wandered over the patio, and Doors

reached to pull up a blanket around Amanda's shoulders. Her eyes opened in her pain-

worn face.

Doors said to her gently, "I thought you'd fallen asleep on me, lover."

"Who can sleep at a time like this?" Once Amanda had been widely considered a

great beauty; now perhaps there was only one man left on earth who would have

judged her so. She showed her husband a wan ghost of a smile.

"Want a pill?" he asked, concern showing in his voice.

"No, not yet. Not just now. I want to keep my mind clear for a little longer."

"I understand. Let me know when you're ready."

Light from the bright interior of the house shone out through the open French doors,

onto the flagstone pavement of the dark patio. A babble of excited voices spilled out

too. A small crew of Doors's most trusted aides, his close business assistants and

associates, were in there, keeping watch on the elaborate communications gear that

never slept, connecting the far-flung components of his multibillion dollar empire. A

few minutes ago, Doors himself had suddenly felt tired of looking at familiar screens

and the new holographic presentations, and had stepped out of doors to take a look at

the universe for himself.

Now the dark silhouette of a young man, one of his employees, appeared in the

lighted doorway. "We should start seeing landings in our longitude any time now,

chief," the man said.

"Thanks." Except to glance now and then at his wife, Doors could hardly tear his eyes

from the clear sky. A great fever of excitement had been gradually growing in him for

weeks, and over the past few hours the fever had risen toward climactic intensity.

As if by reflex, Doors unhooked his personal communicator from his belt and

checked its tiny screen. Now, for half a day and half a night, the news reports from

around the world had concentrated entirely on a story unprecedented in human

history. They were chronicling an event that could never be repeated, even if the

human race endured for another million years.

As the Companions' ships approached the inner reaches of the solar system—such

radar measurements as could be taken put them all now within the Moon's orbit—the

dominant mood of humanity in most of the nations of the earth had been one of

celebration, though some people and a few governments were preparing as for a

hostile invasion. Scientists observing the ships' progress from the destination world

could only speculate as to what kind of propulsion could produce the kind of flight

that they were watching.

In the Middle East, still ravaged, still literally smoking in places from the latest war,

one or two ground-to-air missiles had been launched, with no discernible effect on the

darting, blue-white ships that served as the vehicles of the Arrival. If any manned

interceptor aircraft had left their runways, no one was talking about it in open

communications. Nowhere, so far, were there any reports of armed conflict, once the

Taelons and humans had actually come face to face. Once on the ground, the peaceful

visitors were everywhere being greeted peacefully, most often actively welcomed, if

usually not without some suspicion.

Doors had his own cynical doubts about the public picture thus presented. Surely,

among Earth's uncountable madmen, at least a good handful must already have

launched themselves, or ordered their fanatical supporters, in one violent effort or

another at this target more tempting than any president or monarch could ever be. But

any such attempts that might have been made so far had evidently been suppressed by

other humans, with quiet and possibly ruthless efficiency.

"Is it going to work, Johnny?" Amanda asked. She made a feeble attempt to take her

husband's hand.

He reached out and squeezed hers as firmly as he dared. After thirty years, he had no

need to ask what she meant. "It damn well better work. One or two more wars like the

last one, and…" He let the sentence trail off. The latest computer simulations

indicated that nuclear winter, the fatal blocking of sunlight by explosion-raised dust

clouds, would not be as hard to achieve as had been thought.

"Yes, it had better," Amanda added softly. "For Joshua. And for those grandkids you

and I look forward to being able to spoil some day."

Doors nodded his agreement. Months ago, he had gone public with his personal

opinion regarding the Companions, had expressed his own cautious optimism about

the whole tremendous happening. He dared to hope it possible that at least some of

the glorious Taelon promises to humanity might be fulfilled in real accomplishment.

"Is there a risk in taking these aliens' promises at face value?" he had asked

rhetorically, in a famous interview only a few days ago. "Sure, there's a risk But

there's a damn sight greater risk in turning this into a hostile confrontation. We're

already pretty good at making war, and what we need to learn above all is how to

make peace. Our new millennium has become a new era of nuclear war. Humanity on

this planet may not be given many more chances to survive."

Meanwhile, Jonathan Doors had no shortage of practical matters to occupy his

attention. In effect, a new world was being born, and every facet of his worldwide

enterprises was going to have to be rethought. The room just indoors from the patio

was filled with communications gear that allowed the owner to keep in touch with

governments, workers, and customers everywhere around the planet.

Listening now to the bursts of excited babble from inside, he gathered that his helpers

had established some kind of betting pool among themselves as to how close the

nearest Taelon landing would be to this house.

"Johnny." Amanda's voice was low and stressed. "Maybe you should get me a pill."

"Sure, lover." He quickly located the little box. Extracting a single tablet, he brought

it to his wife with a glass of fruit juice. It was a medicine that eased the working of

the lungs, but it could not be repeated often, and the effects were temporary.

"There's got to be one in ell-ay," said a voice of one of the workers inside the house,

in the tone of someone recapitulating a series of accepted facts.

"San Francisco, for sure," a coworker replied, in the same mode.

Then the first voice again, in a sudden query, in a tone that had abruptly turned to

current business. "What's coming in now, Bess?"

Bess was the radar operator currently on duty at the nearby small private landing

strip, owned and operated by Doors International, and her latest communication to the

boss was an eye-opener. Suddenly her voice was on the speaker-phone, and she was

saying: "Chief, it looks like there's gonna be one a whole hell of a lot closer than ell-

ay."

Doors turned, moved toward the lighted doorway. "What do you mean? Where?"

Bess's answer filled the space around him. "I think your house is sitting just about on

ground zero."

Doors turned away from the light and automatically looked up. By luck he was just in

time to see it coming, a darting, blue-white presence in the sky, an insectoid shape,

openly, gaudily bright with its own interior lights. To Doors it seemed to be saying:

Here I am, Earthfolk. Take a shot at me if you choose, if you want to waste your

energy that way. The Taelons, it seemed, had nothing to hide, and no need to be afraid

of anything the warlike folk of the third planet from the Sun might try to do to them.

Not knowing the size of the visiting spacecraft made it hard to be sure, but as nearly

as Doors could judge the ship was coming down within a hundred yards of his house,

just below the orchard whose leafy treetops formed an irregular surface at eye level

when he looked out from his patio. The approach was swift, smooth, and startlingly,

almost frighteningly silent.

Bending beside the wheelchair, he murmured, "Mandy, I think we've got visitors."

"Oh, Johnny. We may get to see them, talk to them."

To be thus singled out for alien attention was of course surprising. But Jonathan

Doors was not utterly astonished; in the back of his mind he had been half-expecting

something of the kind. He was, after all, one of the most influential people on the

planet, and it was not to be wondered at that the newcomers, well-educated in our

ways, should choose to approach him soon after their arrival.

The trees in the small orchard below the broad stone patio displayed spring blossoms.

Doors was already moving, going down to meet the visitors to his property halfway.

Amanda called something after him just as he was leaving the patio, but in his single-

minded haste he had not tried to understand her, or respond.

Moving quickly and decisively as usual, he descended so rapidly to ground level that

none of his employees were able to catch up in time to accompany him; and so he was

alone under the flowering trees of his small apple orchard when he came face to face

with two visitors from beyond the stars.

How beautiful, was his first thought, when he got his first good look at the two

bipedal beings who came walking gracefully toward him. Not far behind them their

ship sat, looming, glowing. They themselves were not that much different from

human beings, but he knew with his first glimpse of the visitors that he would never

mistake one species for the other. And that first thought was followed quickly by

another: How appropriate, this time and place for this meeting.

The two were considerably taller than Doors, both, he judged, well over six feet.

Doors thought the Taelons were a good match for the pictures of themselves they had

been transmitting for almost a year now. Their heads, uncovered and practically

hairless, looked slightly larger than any human heads he could remember seeing.

What he was able to observe of their skin was pale in the uncertain light, their faces

handsome. Their limbs, inside close-fitting blue costumes, were willowy without

appearing weak, and the way they carried themselves suggested models, or monarchs.

One of them seemed to be wearing a kind of backpack, while the other was

unburdened by any baggage or equipment.

In an open space between rows of trees, facing the star travelers from fifteen feet

away, the human stopped.

He said, "I am Jonathan Doors, and I bid you welcome to our world." As he spoke, he

extended both arms in an open gesture. This tentative offer of an embrace, or a

handshake, was graciously declined.

The Taelons stopped where they were. One spoke, introducing first himself and then

his companion. His voice was almost seductive, of great unthreatening tenderness. He

gave his name as Va'lon, and introduced his companion, who was wearing the

backpack, as Namor. As some of the recent radio messages had suggested, single

names were apparently the rule, at least when visiting alien worlds.

"We are grateful, Mr. Doors, for your hospitable reaction to our intrusion," Va'lon

said. "Most of our landings have not been on private property, but in your case there

were important reasons why we did not choose to wait through all the intricacies of

diplomacy."

Moving back a step, Doors gestured with a wide sweep of one arm. "Come into my

house." When they were walking, the three of them more or less together, he added, "I

suppose your 'important reasons' have something to do with economics? In my

experience, most important reasons do."

"Something, indeed, Mr. Doors. There will be many matters of trade to be discussed.

But that is not the over-riding reason for our presence here at your house tonight."

As Doors and his visitors approached the house, two or three of his employees were

hurrying to meet them, down the stairs that led from patio to orchard. The humans

began a babble of questions as soon as they caught sight of their chief, but instantly

fell into awed silence when their eyes fell on the two who walked just behind him.

No sooner had the two Companions walked onto the patio than they discovered

Amanda in her chair, and immediately approached her. Everyone else was

temporarily ignored. Before anyone had time to make a speech—not that anyone

seemed eager to do so—Va'lon and Namor were bowing graciously over the lady of

the house and introducing themselves. Almost in the same breath, or so it seemed,

they began to press her with solicitous questions about the reason for her being

incapacitated, and her prospects for recovery.

"You must not suppose that our curiosity is idle," Va'lon hastily assured her when she

seemed bewildered. Moments later, when Amanda only closed her eyes and nodded

faintly, the Companion turned to her husband. "No, Jonathan—may I call you

Jonathan—?"

"You may."

"—I believe it quite possible that your wife's health can be fully restored."

Doors, feeling suddenly light-headed, looked around for some patio furniture, spotted

the nearest chair, went to it and sat down. For just a moment, the great events

affecting the whole population of the earth would have to wait.

"Do I understand you correctly?" he got out at last. Looking halfway across the

flagstoned space, he met Amanda's dark eyes with his own. "You think she can be

cured?"

Namor's head moved immediately in a small, tilting nod, obviously a sign of

agreement It would seem he had been practicing earthly gestures as well as speech.

The Companion said, "Of course I will be able to speak with greater authority when I

have conducted a thorough examination. The case appears somewhat difficult at first

sight, but I think we may safely promise that at least a great improvement in her

condition is attainable."

"If you could do that…" Doors got to his feet again.

"We can do many things that you will find surprising," Va'lon assured him.

One of Amanda's regular nurses had come out onto the patio, and more introductions

were in order.

At that point Amanda said that she was feeling tired, and wanted to be taken inside.

While that was being managed, Va'lon managed to steer his host away from the

French doors and to one side of the darkened patio, where for the moment the two of

them were quite alone. But there the Taelon seemed content for the moment to gaze at

the stars, leaving it up to the human to decide what to do with this first real chance for

private conversation.

Jonathan cleared his throat. "So, Namor is a physician. It seems that may be very

fortunate for Amanda and me."

"Yes." Again the gesture of agreement.

"And you?" Doors asked. The Taelon had not been shy about asking blunt questions,

so he thought he too might as well be direct. "A space pilot, perhaps?"

Va'lon turned to him with the same gentle smile. "No, my real profession—to use the

nearest term for it that I can find in your language—is something else entirely."

He paused for a moment, as if considering the best way to approach his subject. "It is

generally considered, among our people, that one of the surest indicators of an

advanced civilization is its willingness, even eagerness, to seek out intellectual

engagement with other—perhaps, though not necessarily—lesser cultures. By such

engagement I mean not only direct contact, but an involvement through collection,

preservation, study."

Jonathan took a moment to think that over. "Ah, I see. Or I think perhaps I do. You

mean you are something like a museum curator?"

"That is very close to what I have in mind." And once more Va'lon performed the

modest, almost self-effacing bow.

Doors wasn't sure what he would have predicted as an opening topic of conversation,

had someone asked him yesterday, but it would not have been this. But then, he

supposed there was no reason to expect minds from beyond the stars to be

predictable.

"Well, if museums are your chief interest," he said at last, "you've come to the right

planet. Here on earth, as your thorough preliminary studies have doubtless informed

you, we have a great many such institutions, and some of them are very good. One

variety specializes in what we call natural history. Others are devoted to

anthropology, or to specific kinds of technology…"

"I understand." The Taelon was giving him keen attention.

"… while many more, I suppose a majority, concentrate on art, in one form or

another."

Va'lon moved closer by half a step, and his face, his whole being, seemed to open up.

"I have been on your world only a few minutes," he said, evidently well pleased.

"And we have come already to a subject that I find truly fascinating."

"I'm very glad to hear it—though I must say I am a little surprised at the turn the

conversation has taken.

文档加载中……请稍候！
如果长时间未打开，您也可以点击刷新试试。

下载文档到电脑，查找使用更方便

5.9 玖币 0人已下载

立即下载 VIP免费下载

摘要：

THEARRIVALGENERODDENBERRY'SEARTH:FINALCONFLICTByFredSaberhagenContentsChapterOneChapterTwoChapterThreeChapterFourChapterFiveChapterSixChapterSevenChapterEightChapterNineChapterTenChapterElevenChapterTwelveChapterThirtheenChapterFourteenChapterFifteenChapterSixteenChapterSeventeenChapterEighteenChapt...

展开>> 收起<<

Fred Saberhagen - The Arrival.pdf

共194页,预览10页

还剩页未读，继续阅读

声明：本站为文档C2C交易模式，即用户上传的文档直接被用户下载，本站只是中间服务平台，本站所有文档下载所得的收益归上传人(含作者)所有。玖贝云文库仅提供信息存储空间，仅对用户上传内容的表现方式做保护处理，对上载内容本身不做任何修改或编辑。若文档所含内容侵犯了您的版权或隐私，请立即通知玖贝云文库，我们立即给予删除！

Fred Saberhagen - The Arrival

相关推荐

开通VIP享超值会员特权

作者详情

相关内容

热门标签

举报选择: