protoplasmic form.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Kingsley.
“Boy,” said Herb, “you’re topnotch robots, if I do say so.”
Gary snarled at him across the table. “Pipe down,” he warned.
“Maybe you aren’t robots any more,” Caroline was saying. “Maybe through all
these years you have become real entities. Your creators must have given
you electrochemical brains, and that, after all, is what the human brain
amounts to. In time those brains would become real, almost as efficient,
probably in some instances even more efficient than a protoplasmic brain.
And brain power, the ability to think and reason, seems to be all that
counts when everything is balanced out.”
“Thank you,” said the Engineer. “Thank you very much. You are so kind to
say so. That is what I have tried to tell myself.”
“Look here,” said Gary. “It really doesn’t matter, does it? I mean, whether
you are robots or independent entities. You serve the same purpose, you
follow the same dictates of conscience, you create the same destiny as
things that move and act through the very gift of life. In many ways, to my
mind, a robotic existence might be preferable to a human existence.”
“Perhaps it doesn’t really matter,” agreed the Engineer. “I told you once
that we were a proud people, that we had inherited a great trust, that we
had carried out that trust. Pride might have kept us from telling you what
we were, but now I am glad I have, for the rest will be easier to
understand.”
“The rest,” said Tommy in surprise. “Is there more?”
“Much more,” said the Engineer.
“Wait a second,” rumbled Kingsley. “Do you mean that all you Engineers were
created by a race that flourished three billion years ago, that you have
lived through that space of time?”
“Not all of us,” said the Engineer. “My people made only a few of us, a few
to man each ship. We ourselves have made others, copies of ourselves. But
in each new creation we have tried to inculcate some of the factors which
we find missing in ourselves. Imagination, for one thing, and greater
initiative, and a greater scope of emotional perception.”
“You yourself are one of the original robots made back on Pluto?” asked
Caroline.
The Engineer nodded.
“You are eternal and immortal,” suggested Kingsley.
“Not eternal nor immortal,” said the Engineer. “But with proper care,
replacement of worn-out parts, and barring accident, I will continue to
function for many more billions of years to come.”
Billions of years, thought Gary. It was something a man could not imagine.
A human mind could not visualize a billion years or a thousand years or
even a hundred years. Man, in general, could visualize not much beyond the
figure four.
But if the Engineers had lived for three billion years, how come they had
been unable to create a hypersphere, why hadn’t they probed out beyond the
universe to learn the laws of inter-space? Why must this work wait for the
arrival of the human mind?
“I have answered that before,” said the Engineer, “and I will answer it
again. It is because of imagination and vision… the ability to see beyond
facts, to probe into probabilities, to visualize what might be and then
attempt to make it so. That is something that we cannot do. We are chained
to mechanistic action and mechanistic thought. We do not advance beyond the
proven fact. When two facts create another fact, we accept the third fact,
but we do not reach out in speculation, collect half a dozen tentative
facts and then try to crystallize them. That is the answer to your
question.”
Gary looked startled. He hadn’t realized that the Engineer could read his
undirected thoughts. Caroline was looking at him, a smile twitching the
corners of her mouth.
“Did you ask him something?”
“I guess I did,” said Gary.
“Did you ever hear from the other Engineers?” asked Kingsley. “The ones who
were in the other ships?”
“No,” said the Engineer, “we never did. Presumably they have by now found
other planets where they are doing the same work as we. We have tried to
get in touch with them, but we have never been able to do it.”
“What is your work?” asked Gary.
“Why,” said Caroline, “you should know that, Gary. It is to prepare a place
for the Engineers’ people to live. Isn’t that right?” she asked the
Engineer.
“It is right,” said the Engineer.
“But,” protested Gary, “those people are dead. There is no sign of them in
our solar system and they certainly didn’t start out looking for some other
planet. They died off on Pluto.”
He remembered the chiseled masonry that Ted Smith had found. The hands of
the Engineers’ creators had cut those stones, billions of years ago… and
today they still were on Pluto’s surface, mute testimony to the greatness
of a race that had died while the solar system’s planets still were cooling
off.
“They are not dead,” said the Engineer, and his thoughts seemed to have a
particular warmth in them.
“Not dead,” said Gary. “Do you know where they are?”
“Yes,” said the Engineer. “I do. Some of them are in this very room.”
“In this roorn,’ began Caroline, and then she stopped as the significance
of what the Engineer had said struck home.
“In this room,” said Herb. “Hell, the only people who are in this room are
us. And we aren’t your people.”
“But you are,” declared the Engineer. “There are differences, to be sure.
But you are much like them, so like them in many ways. You are protoplasmic
and they were protoplasmic. Your general form is the same and, I have no
doubt, your metabolism. And above all, the way your mind works.”
“That,” said Caroline, “was why we could understand you and you could
understand us. Why you kept us here when you sent the other entities back
to their homes.”
“Do you mean,” asked Kingsley, “that we are the direct descendants of your
people… that your people finally took over the planets? That seems hardly
possible, for we know we started from very humble beginnings. We have no
legends, no evidence pointing to such a genesis.”
“Not that,” said the Engineer. “Not exactly that. But I suppose you have
wondered how life got its start on your planet. There are many planetary
systems, you know, where life is entirely unknown. Planets that are fully
as old as yours that are barren of all life.”
“There is the spore theory,” said Kingsley, and as he said the words he
pounded the table with his massive fist.
“By Lord, that’s it,” he shouted. “The spore theory. Your people out on
Pluto, only a few of them left, with the planets still unfit for
habitation, knowing that they faced the end… couldn’t they have insured
life on the young planets by the development and planting of life spores?”
“That,” said the Engineer, “is what I thought. That is the theory that I
hold.”
“But if that were the case,” objected Caroline, “why should we have
developed as we did? Why should a life form almost duplicating the
Engineers’ people have developed? Surely they couldn’t have planted
determinants in the spore… they couldn’t have seen or planned that far
ahead. They couldn’t possibly have planned the eventual evolution of a race
re-creating their own!”
“They were a very ancient people,” said the Engineer, “and a very clever
people. I do not doubt that they could have planned it as you say.”
“Interesting,” said Herb. “But what does it make us?”
“It makes you the heir of my people,” said the Engineer. “It means that
what we have done here, all we have, all we know is yours. We will rebuild
this city, we will condition it in such a manner that your people can live
here. Also that whatever the other Engineers may have found or done is
yours. We want nothing for ourselves except the joy and the satisfaction of
knowing that we have served, that we have done well with the trust that was
handed to us.”
They sat stunned, scarcely believing what they heard.
“You mean,” asked Kingsley, “that you will rebuild this city and hand it
over to the people of our solar system?”
“That is what I mean,” said the Engineer. “It is yours. I have no doubt
that you descended in some manner from my people. Since you came here I
have studied you closely. Time and again I have seen little actions and
mannerisms, little mental quirks that mark you as being in some way
connected with the people who created us.”
Gary tried to reason it out. The Engineers were handing the human race a
heritage from an ancient people, handing them a city and a civilization
already built, a city and a civilization such as the race itself would not
achieve for the next many thousand years.