Chapter X

Consciousness came back to him, bringing a cloudy surprise. Rough rocky walls were around him. This was an artificial cavern crowded with neo-biological equipment, most of which he could recognize. He lay firmly on a hard couch contrived of planks and a folded blanket, part of the latter covering him. A pair of dungarees and a mended shirt had been tossed casually across his bare torso.

Someone who looked like a young medico laughed near him.

“One week’s time, Dukas--that’s all we need now for a major transformation,” he said. “You must have thought that we were all goners; it would have seemed like that to you. But it was just a freak attempt at sniping from the hills, with a Midas Touch focused to a thin beam. Whoever tried it must have been aiming at our chief’s shelter. Only he wasn’t there! Still down in miniature, you were caught in the backlash of the blast. But it only knocked you out and singed you a little. You kept holding onto some solid object. Your wife and the equipment were scarcely hurt at all. Then Prell showed up again. They talked with our chief the way you did before. They engineered the transformation. I thought you’d want to know all this quickly.”

The youthful android looked good-humoredly awed. “They just stepped out,” he added. “They’ll be back in a minute.”

Ed began to slide into his dungarees. He was grateful for his return to something like what he had been. His memories of an interlude when people were mountain tall were clear, yet they didn’t seem quite to belong to himself.

He thought briefly of how he must have been brought back to normal size--his micro-form in one of the vats of similar proportions acting as a pattern, electronic brain and all. In another vat, which Freeman’s specialists had connected, the gelatins must have filmed and solidified slowly, taking shape, while in brain cells and filaments--different from electronic swirls but capable of assuming the same connecting arrangements--a personality was reproduced without destroying the pattern. With Barbara and Prell it had been the same.

“The world goes on, I see,” Ed remarked.

The android biologist smiled wryly. “Some of that is your fault, Dukas,” he said. “A matter of advertising. You made enough old-timers half believe that the Earth will go on being theirs. That cooled them off some. As for our kind, what you said started lots of them thinking again along what ought to be a natural track. Certainly the prompt departure of almost all of us is the only answer that can really solve anything. Yes, if that isn’t far too large an order! Though I rather wish it were possible ... Here come Prell and your lady. I’ll disappear.”

They looked almost as they used to look--before anything about them was changed. Blame the loss of some trifling birthmark or scar here and there on the simplification of details that had occurred during a step down to smallness. Yet Mitchell Prell’s china-blue eyes were as good-humored as ever and Barbara’s smile as bright and warm.

“So here we are, Eddie,” she said gaily. “And what we recently were are still around somewhere--alive and aware, and the same as we were, though not quite us any more. Separate, but still helping, I’m sure. And if we all get through all right, well, their universe is as wonderful and even vaster than ours.”

Prell scowled for a moment, as if he envied his lesser likeness the continued chance to study the structure of matter, down where molecules themselves seemed bigger and nearer. But then his shoulders jerked almost angrily, as if to shake off the scientist’s woolgathering. “Come on, Ed,” he snapped. “Abel Freeman has been pushing the idea you expressed, talking it around the world to all the androids. He says that, crazy though it is, he’ll encourage it.”

They emerged from the cavern into the afternoon sunshine of the camp. A sudden quiet had come over it. Eyes were staring up toward the east, while bodies tensed for a dive for whatever shelter was at hand. Something moved there with seeming slowness, though its gray hue, like a distant mountain peak, told that it was seen through all the murky heights of the atmosphere and was in free space beyond. Its motors were inactive. High sunshine brought metallic glints from its prow. It was certainly miles in length. Its presence could mean doomsday. But it was magnificent! If it could set human blood to coursing more swiftly, how must it affect an android?

“The star ship!” someone shouted. Others took up the cry: “The star ship ... The star ship...”

Now Abel Freeman’s voice boomed from a sound system: “Yep, you’re right. I sent a call for it to come in from the asteroids. Figured it would be good for all our tough-gutted breed to look at! Uh-huh, tough gutted, I said, but might be I’ll have to take that back. Anyhow, a man made for a mule loves a mule on sight. So how about men and a ship made for the stars? But might be you ain’t that kind of folks--you only seem that way. Might be you can only see the mud on the ground and not the sky. I dunno. Moving all of us fast would take an awful lot of insides. But ain’t she a beauty? I figure that the folks that brought her here didn’t like to disobey orders, but they figured that letting us see was necessary. Maybe they’re Phonies, too. I figure that Harwell, who bossed her construction, would be that now. Her kind of purpose demands it. But maybe you ain’t up to what she’s for. And you folks of the old kind, what do you say? What if we did leave you alone on Earth? What if you gave us this first star ship and let us build more, out on a moon of Saturn where you don’t go much? Let’s hear some answers!”

Obviously, Abel Freeman’s words were also being broadcast. Meanwhile the star ship glided into the sunset. Someone spoke briefly from her by radio. Harwell?

“I hope you convince everybody, Freeman. I believe it does make sense. Not a cinch, though, even for us.”

That, too, came out of the address system, as the ship headed back toward its base.

In his newer self, here on Earth, Ed breathed again, and his breathing was rapid. Once more the unseen future was a thrill. Yet he must not let glamour gild harsh uncertainties too much.

He looked at the faces around him. Some were stern, some grinned in bravado under Abel Freeman’s challenging sarcasm, but in most of them there was a special, eager light, almost avid. It looked as if Freeman’s talk and the great craft that had come with it were turning the trick. But these were trivial dramatics, too. The real source of success--if it was that--was in a basic kinship of android vigor with the stars. Awakened, it could relinquish the Earth without regret. These people could feel a little like lesser gods now. Their strength and endurance matched the next step of progress. Now the fantastic gulf of distance didn’t seem as wide as Freeman had once thought.

From scattered android camps, messages came in, pointing generally toward deeper space. Yes, doubts were expressed.

“Shall we leave our homes without even an argument? Are we complete fools?”

“Yes, fools if we don’t leave. We can make a mass departure. And remember that this is the only solution. Are they still too primitive for us to live with? The same fault might be ours. I wonder what they will say to our proposition?”

Communications also flashed back and forth among the old race:

“ ... They look like us but aren’t. Their disguise and their powers hold a warning. No wonder so many of us think of them as something like medieval demons. Can we trust what they say? Or is it a trick to disarm us? How can we know? Yet they intrigue us. Man has always sought to borrow strength and permanence from the rocks and hills. Are they that achievement? And we ourselves have wanted the stars.”

Crouched over the small receiver in Freeman’s restored shelter during that still-ominous afternoon, Ed and Barbara listened and waited. Around them they found both humor and pathos. In another shelter, dug into the rocks and soil, they located Les Payten, whose misfortunes with the Phonies had been many. His bitter frankness had won him dislike here. He had been put under restraint. There was the bearish tenderness and nursing of the gorgeous and powerful Nancy, Freeman’s daughter, who stood beside him now, her big blue eyes expressing a mixture of soulful devotion and hunger about as rapacious as that of a starved hound-dog six inches from a fat rabbit. Les didn’t seem to appreciate it at all. But he still tried to be a friend to his companions of a lost youth. “Babs! Ed!” he exclaimed at sight of them. “So you got back--to size, anyhow! But you could go back to where you began, as natural creatures! Damn, once we were young idiots, dazzled by a sense of wonder into too much tolerance. I don’t want to be something synthetic! Can’t you two realize the fundamental truth of that--for yourselves? Good Glory! Wake up!”

Ed’s grin was one-sided. “For one thing, I suspect that going back all the way wouldn’t quite work, Les,” he said mildly. “We are what we are now, that’s all. There’s a cloudy sort of limit on switching bodies. There can never truly be two of anyone. Besides, we like being what we are. And should I remind you that, in common with all animals, man is a natural machine? As for being synthetic, I assure you that both love and poetry are there as well. So what do you imagine that we lack that the old timers always had? A taste for turkey or cake? Just lead us to it! We’re human, Les--our forms and ideals and feelings are as they always were. We’re not devils. We’re not truly separated from the old race in any part of sympathy. We’re just people gone on--I hope!--a little further.”

Ed spoke gently, as he must to a tired, confused friend. Or was it to a whole, vast section of humanity, dumfounded by hurtling technology, proud and stubborn about what had seemed its eternal self, and dreading any change which could seem so darkly drastic?

Barbara tried, too. “Why don’t you join us, Les?” she urged. “If you became like us, you would know! Besides, even if all the androids leave the Earth, the knowledge of how to mold vitaplasm won’t be taken away with us. People here will continue to be destroyed in accidents, as has always happened. So that knowledge will be needed and used. Besides, some persons will change willingly. Some people may want to shut themselves away from such realities. But I don’t think that they can. They’ll have to learn to accept facts.”

Les Payten looked at his old companions oddly, as if tempted by an old soaring of the fancy. Then the light died in his eyes. “Nice logic,” he said coldly. “I could almost trust it if I didn’t remind myself. A mechanical treachery. My Ed Dukas and Barbara Day are dead.”

His tone was calm, yet there was a quiver in it--perhaps of revulsion for these imponderable likenesses before him, whose hearts he thought he could not--or did not--want to see.

Ed was exasperated before a stubbornness of thought habit which was partly fear, though Les Payten was no coward. Some human minds were quick to adjust, taking even the radical newness of the last half century in their stride. But there had always been many others who were slow. Perhaps it was a childish taint, a resisting of maturity. And how could they keep pace now? But right there, Ed had to remind himself not to be too sure of himself. The next day or minute might trip him up.

There seemed no further way to argue with Les. Ed could only express his sincere thanks for a favor, offer good wishes, and shrug lightly and in some mockery, for one who refused what seemed a simple truth. If that shrug was superficially unkind, perhaps it was also a goad in the right direction. A favor to a pal.

An hour later, when Ed told Freeman of Les Payten’s reactions, the colorful android leader had a similar comment: “There’s maybe billions like that--one reason why we got to leave. They’ll change. But right now, who cares to take the ornery kid brothers fishing? Give ‘em time to grow up a little more, first. It won’t be so long. Just now we got our own problems and jobs. They ain’t small, and nothing’s certain. There’s no hole to jump into that’s as deep as deep space! I thought once that it couldn’t happen. But now it looks as if we’re gonna get the chance to try!”

Abel Freeman was right. That evening a message came from the World Capital: “Let us meet and confer with android representatives and earnestly apply ourselves to a binding solution.”

That was the beginning. It seemed that reason had won out after all. Freeman and Prell were flown to the Capital. Ed did not go, for he foresaw a bleak conference with the single purpose of getting an arrangement made as soon as possible. This proved to be true. To the androids went the first star ship, its asteroid base, provisions to be delivered regularly over a ten-year period, supplies and equipment of all kinds, and the use of Titan, largest of distant Saturn’s moons.

To the vast majority of the androids this was enough. To the few grumblers there would be scant choice. Let them view themselves as exiles, borne along by the eager mass of their kind.

When Freeman and Prell returned to camp after the signing of the treaty, Les Payten had already left for the City. For a while Nancy Freeman would look wistful. She was strong and beautiful, and perhaps not as wild as her personal legend. Briefly, Mitchell Prell’s eyes rested on her. Then he chuckled.

“Sirius,” he said. “Nine light-years away. Not the nearest star, and not perfect. But the best bet of the nearest. Alpha Centauri is a binary, too. Bad for stable planetary orbits. But in the Sirian System, at least we know now that there are many planets. Come on, Freeman. There are more plans to straighten out.”

Preparations began, and the weeks passed. Once Ed even went shopping with his wife--for the pretty things, symbols of the luxury and sophistication of Earth, that she wanted to take with her into the unknown. Was that the crassest kind of optimism before the harshness that could be imagined?

Ed, Barbara and Prell would be among the many thousands to be packed into the first star ship for the first long jump. They had earned the privilege of choice. Abel Freeman had elected to stay behind, to help direct operations on Titan.

Interplanetary craft were moving out in a steady stream, transporting migrants and the prefabricated parts needed to set up a vast glassed-in camp that few of the old blood could ever have tried to build. The androids might even have endured the cold poison of Titan’s methane atmosphere without protection. But they had inherited, and could not easily throw off, earthly conceptions of comfort. And they had their rights. The countless things needed to build other star ships would soon begin to follow them.

The first group of interstellar migrants didn’t have to go anywhere near Titan. The star ship came to Earth again, to orbit around it. Small rocket tenders were there to bring the passengers up to the boarding locks.

At the take-off platforms, Ed Dukas saw his parents for the last time. Jack Dukas, who had chosen to remain on Earth with his wife, shook Ed’s hand warmly. Let them try their simple life of thatched stone houses on hillsides, Ed thought, let them defy what seemed a too involved civilization. Perhaps after the android exodus, some few would even make it work--on Venus, if not at home.

Ed hugged his mother. They had memories. Now Ed stretched optimism considerably. “At last there can be a lot of time, Mom,” he said. “Enough so that we might even see each other again, someplace...”

Soon he and Barbara were up there in the great ship. To his touch, her arm was as smooth and soft as ever. Her hair was dark and thick, her eyes were bright with adventure, her skin a golden tan. And was it a loss that she could have bent crowbar with her bare hands, or have braved a vacuum at near absolute-zero temperature without harm?

“You’re insulting me in your mind, Ed,” she joshed gaily. “Not that I’m much bothered. So the robot stoops to conquer, eh? Of course we have no souls, Eddie.”