Childhood's End - Arthur C. Clarke [95]
Jan had always been a good pianist-and now he was the finest in the world.
Chapter 24
It was Rashaverak who brought him the news, but he had already guessed it. In the small hours of the morning a nightmare had awakened him, and he had not been able to regain sleep. He could not remember the dream, which was very strange, for he believed that all dreams could be recalled if one tried hard enough immediately after waking. All he could remember of this was that he had been a small boy again, on a vast and empty piain, listening to a great voice calling in an unknown language.
The dream had disturbed him; he wondered if it was the first onslaught of loneliness upon his mind. Restlessly, he walked out of the villa on to the neglected lawn.
A full moon bathed the scene with a golden light so brilliant that he could see perfectly. The immense gleaming cylinder of Karellen's ship lay beyond the buildings of the Overlord base, towering above them and reducing them to man-made proportions. Jan looked at the ship, trying to recall the emotions it had once roused in him. There was a time when it had been an unattainable goal, a symbol of all that he had never really expected to achieve. And now it meant nothing.
How quiet and still it was! The Overlords, of course, would be as active as ever, but for the moment there was no sign of them. He might have been alone on Earth-as, indeed, in a very real sense he was. He glanced up at the moon, seeking some familiar sight on which his thoughts could rest.
There were the ancient, well-remembered seas. He had been forty light-years into space, yet he had never walked on those silent, dusty plains less than two light-seconds away. For a moment he amused himself trying to locate the crater Tycho. When he did discover it, he was puzzled to find that gleaming speck further from the centre line of the disc than he had thought. And it was then that he realized that the dark oval of the Mare Crisium was missing altogether.
The face that her satellite now turned towards the Earth was not the one that had looked down on the world since the dawn of life. The Moon had begun to turn upon its axis.
That could mean only one thing. On the other side of the Earth, in the land that they had stripped so suddenly of life, they were emerging from their long trance. As a waking child may stretch its arms to greet the day, they too were flexing their muscles and playing with their new-found powers.
***
"You have guessed correctly," said Rashaverak. "It is no longer safe for us to stay. They may ignore us still, but we cannot take the risk. We leave as soon as our equipment can be loaded-probably in two or three hours."
He looked up at the sky, as if afraid that some new miracle was about to blaze forth. But all was peaceful; the Moon had set, and only a few clouds rode high upon the west wind.
"It does not matter greatly if they tamper with the Moon," Rashaverak added, "but suppose they begin to interfere with the Sun? We shall leave instruments behind, of course, so that we can learn what happens."
"I shall stay," said Jan abruptly. "I have seen enough of the universe. There's only one thing I'm curious about now-and that is the fate of my own planet."
Very gently, the ground trembled underfoot.
"I was expecting that," Jan continued. "If they alter the Moon's spin, the angular momentum must go somewhere. So the Earth is slowing down. I don't know which puzzles me more- how they are doing it, or why."
"They are still playing," said Rashaverak. "What logic is there in the actions of a child? And in many ways the entity that your race has become is still a child. It is not yet ready to unite with the Overmind. But very soon it will be, and then you will have the Earth to your own."
He did not complete the sentence, and Jan finished it for him.
"If, of course, the Earth still exists."
"You realize that danger-and yet you will stay?"
"Yes. I have been home