The Foundations of Paradise - Arthur C. Clarke [107]
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She was still calling when the sun came up, and its first rays caressed the summit of the mountain that had once been sacred. Far below, the shadow of Sri Kanda leaped forth upon the clouds, its perfect cone still unblemished despite all that man had done.
There were no pilgrims now to watch that symbol of eternity lie across the face of the awakening land. But millions would see it, in the centuries ahead, as they rode in comfort and safety to the stars.
Epilogue:
Kalidasa’s
Triumph
In the last days of that last brief summer, before the jaws of ice clenched shut around the equator, one of the Starholme envoys came to Yakkagala.
A Master of the Swarms, It had recently conjugated Itself into human form. Apart from one minor detail, the likeness was excellent; but the dozen children who had accompanied the Holmer in the autocopter were in a constant state of mild hysteria, the younger ones frequently dissolving into giggles.
“What’s so funny?” It had asked in perfect solar. “Or is this a private joke?”
But they would not explain to the Starholmer, whose normal color vision lay entirely in the infrared, that the human skin was not a random mosaic of greens and reds and blues. Even when It had threatened to turn into a Tyrannosaurus Rex and eat them all up, they refused to satisfy Its curiosity. Indeed, they quickly pointed out—to an entity that had crossed scores of light-years and collected knowledge for thirty centuries!—that a mass of only a hundred kilograms would scarcely make an impressive dinosaur.
The Holmer did not mind. It was patient, and the children of Earth were endlessly fascinating, in both their biology and their psychology. So were the young of all creatures—all, of course, that did have young. Having studied nine such species, the Holmer could now almost imagine what it must be like to grow up, mature, and die—almost, but not quite.
Spread out before the dozen humans and one non-human lay the empty land, its once luxuriant fields and forests blasted by the cold breaths from north and south. The graceful coconut palms had long since vanished, and even the gloomy pines that had succeeded them were naked skeletons, their roots destroyed by the spreading permafrost. No life was left upon the surface of the Earth. Only in the oceanic abyss, where the planet’s internal heat still kept the ice at bay, did a few blind, starveling creatures crawl and swim and devour each other.
Yet to a being whose home had circled a faint red star, the sun that blazed down from the cloudless sky seemed intolerably bright. Though all its warmth had gone, drained away by the sickness that had attacked its core a thousand years ago, its fierce, cold light revealed every detail of the stricken land, and flashed in splendor from the approaching glaciers.
For the children, still reveling in the powers of their awakening minds, the sub-zero temperatures were an exciting challenge. As they danced naked through the snowdrifts, bare feet kicking up clouds of powder-dry, shining crystals, their symbiotes often had to warn them: “Don’t override your frostbite signals!” For they were not yet old enough to replace new limbs, without the help of their elders.
The oldest of the boys was showing off. He had launched a deliberate assault on the cold, announcing proudly that he was a fire-elemental. (The Starholmer noted the term for future research, which would later cause It much perplexity.) All that could be seen of the small exhibitionist was a column of flame and steam, dancing to and fro along the ancient brickwork. The other children pointedly ignored this rather crude display.
To the Starholmer, however, it presented an interesting paradox. Just why had these people retreated to the inner planets, when they could have fought back the cold with the powers that they now possessed—as, indeed, their cousins were doing on Mars?
That was a question to which It had not received a satisfactory answer. It considered again the enigmatic reply given by ARISTOTLE, the entity with which It most easily communicated.