The Sentinel - Arthur C. Clarke [22]
Stormgren shook his head in amused disagreement.
“Your explanation, as usual, is much too ingenious to be true. Though we can only infer its existence, there must be a great civilization behind the Supervisor—and one that’s known about Man for a very long time. Karellen himself must have been studying us for centuries. Look at his command of English, for example. He taught me how to speak it idiomatically!”
“I sometimes think he went a little too far,” laughed van Ryberg. “Have you ever discovered anything he doesn’t know?”
“Oh yes, quite often—but only on trivial points. I think he has an absolutely perfect memory, but there are some things he hasn’t bothered to learn. For instance, he only understands English, though in the past two years he’s picked up a good deal of Finnish just to tease me. And Finnish isn’t the sort of language one learns in a hurry! I think he can quote the whole of the Kalevala whereas I’m ashamed to say I know only a few dozen lines. He also knows the biographies of all living statesmen, and sometimes I can spot the references he’s used. His knowledge of history and science seems complete: you know how much we’ve already learned from him. Yet, taken one at a time, I don’t think his mental gifts are quite outside the range of human achievement. But no man could possibly do all the things he does.”
“That’s more or less what I’d decided already,” agreed van Ryberg. “We can argue round Karellen forever, but in the end we always come back to the same question—why the devil won’t he show himself? Until he does, I’ll go on theorizing and the Freedom League will go on fulminating.”
He cocked a rebellious eye at the ceiling.
“One dark night, Mr. Supervisor, I’m going to take a rocket up to your ship and climb in through the back door with my camera. What a scoop that would be!”
If Karellen was listening, he gave no sign of it. But, of course, he never did.
Stormgren slept badly that night, and in the small hours of the morning rose from his bed and wandered restlessly out on to the veranda. It was warm, almost oppressive, but the sky was clear and a brilliant moon hung low in the southwest. In the far distance the lights of London glowed on the skyline like a frozen dawn.
Stormgren raised his eyes above the sleeping city, climbing again the fifty miles of space he alone of living men had crossed. Far away though it was, the beautiful lines of Karellen’s ship were clearly visible in the moonlight. He wondered what the Supervisor was doing, for he did not believe that the Overlords ever slept.
High above, a meteor thrust its shining spear through the dome of the sky. The luminous trail glowed faintly for a while: then only the stars were left. The reminder was brutal: in a hundred years Karellen would still be leading mankind towards the goal that he alone could see, but four months from now another man would be Secretary-General. That in itself Stormgren was far from minding—but there was little time left if he ever hoped to learn what lay behind that darkened screen.
A naturally reticent man himself, the reasons for Karellen’s behavior had never worried Stormgren once its initial strangeness had worn off. But now he knew that the mystery which tormented so many minds was beginning to obsess his own: he could understand—in time he might even share—the psychological outlook which had driven many to support the Freedom League. The propaganda about Man’s enslavement was just—propaganda. Few people seriously believed it, or really wished for a return to the old days of national rivalries. Men had grown accustomed to Karellen’s imperceptible rule; but they were becoming impatient to know who ruled them.
There was a faint “click” from the teletype in the adjoining room as it ejected the hourly summary from Central News. Stormgren wandered indoors and ruffled half-heartedly through the sheets. On the other side of the world, the Freedom League had thought of a new headline. “IS MAN RULED BY MONSTERS?” asked the teletype, and went