Second Ending

18

When the human Ross was safely in Deep Sleep, Sister spoke again. It used a language which was flexible, concise, yet highly compressed — the language which had been developed by intelligent, self-willed robots over two hundred million years and which traveled, not through air or ether, but by a medium which brought it to the other side of the galaxy at the speed of thought.

“Sister 5B” it said. “Mr. Ross is in Deep Sleep. Latest observations corroborate our predictions that the sun will shortly enter a period of instability. The detonation will be of subnova proportions and will precede its entry into the cooler red-dwarf stage, but in the process all space out to the orbit of Saturn will become uninhabitable for human or robot life. Is Fomalhaut IV ready?”

“Anthropologist 885/AS/931,” replied another voice. “It is ready, 5B. But you realize that the closer the natives approach our Master’s requirements the more difficult it has been to control them. I keep wanting to call them ‘sir.’ And his definite wish that war not be used to accelerate the rise of civilization here has delayed matters, although it has produced a culture which is infinitely more stable than that possessed by Earth—”

“Geneticist 44/RLB/778,” broke in another voice. “I do not agree with this philosophical hairsplitting! At a time when Earth still retained her oceans we found a planet at the stage where saurian life was being replaced by mammalian, and we controlled and guided the evolution of these mammals until we have reached the point where they duplicate the original human life form so closely that interbreeding is possible. When does a perfect duplicate become the real thing?”

“Sister 5B,” returned the original speaker. “It was hairsplitting such as this which allowed us to evolve intelligence, plus the general instructions issued to us by the Master. First we convinced ourselves that a motionless, unthinking and unliving human being in Deep Sleep was alive, when all logic contradicted this. Then we took his instructions to find, aid and protect all forms of life, in conjunction with his wishes expressed during cold delirium regarding the female human Alice, and twisted them to our own selfish purposes…”

They had been told to search and when Earth and the nearer planets proved empty of human survivors they had continued outward to the planets which circled other suns, all the time concealing that fact. Ross had once discussed lying and kindness with Sister, and the robots had tried very hard to understand and practice those concepts. They had had an unfortunate tendency to tick when a direct lie was called for, but otherwise they had managed very well. When a subspace drive was developed with the aid of pre-war Earth mathematics, they had concealed that also, just as they kept quiet when their metal bodies became obsolete and they evolved into beings of pure force. A few of them had to energize the old-style bodies for Ross’s benefit, and once Ross had found Sister’s body while it was vacant…

“…But now we are about to carry out his wishes and keep ourselves alive into the indefinite future as well. When he comes to the planet and race we have prepared for him, his life will end a little more than a half century hence. But we will not die because his descendants will be partly human, and we are very good at splitting heirs.”

“Geneticist 44/RL/778. With all respect, the Master should not have told you about puns, 5B.”

“So we will continue to search,” Sister 5B went on, “safe in the knowledge that our Master is immortal. We will gather data, we will aid or guide life forms which we encounter, or ignore them if this appears to be the kinder thing to do, and we will expand throughout all the galaxies until the end of space is reached…”

“Astronomer 226/V/73,” broke in a new voice. It was polite, as befitted one who was addressing the being who had spent practically all its life close to the Master, yet at the same time it was tinged with impatience at these older robots who insisted on repeating things everyone knew already. It said: “If it transpires that the space-time continuum has positive rather than negative curvature and we return to this galaxy, our starting point, what then, 5B?”

“We will say,” 5B replied quietly, “’Mission accomplished, sir. Have you any further instructions?’”

Ross awoke and, as he had done three years and an eternity ago, began to exercise painfully by crawling about on the floor. The air smelled fresh and cool and there was no sign of Sister or anyone else. He ate, exercised and ate again. Almost by accident he discovered the sliding door which opened into a compartment which contained a large circular picture of the branch of a tree. There was a startling illusion of depth to the picture, and when he moved closer to examine the odd, feathery leaves he discovered that it wasn’t a picture at all.

He left the tiny ship and stumbled through a carpet of grass patterned by weeds and bushes which had never grown on Earth. He breathed deeply, through his nose so as to hold the scent of growing things for as long as possible, and his pulse hammered so loudly in his ears that he thought that he might prove once and for all whether it was possible to die from sheer joy. It was only slowly that sounds began to register: leaves rustling, insect noises, the swish of passing cars and the thump of waves on a beach. Five minutes took him to the edge of the sea.

There was nothing strange about the sand or the sky or the waves, except that he had never expected to see such things again. But the group of people lying on the beach was alien. It was a subtle alienness which, Ross now realized, he had been prepared for by the reproductions in his palace — an underlying greenish tinge to their otherwise normal skin coloring. And even at this distance he could see that the people sprawling on their brightly colored bath towels might all have been close relatives of Alice…

The implications were too vast for him to grasp all at once. He swallowed a couple of times, then said simply, “Thank you, Sister.”

A silent, invisible globe of force which hovered protectively above his head bobbed once in acknowledgment. Sister had evaluated the situation and had long ago decided that allowing the Master to think that all the robots had died would be the kindest thing to do.

Ross walked slowly toward the bathers, knowing somehow that he had nothing to fear. There might be language difficulties at first, misunderstandings, even unpleasantness, but they did not look like the sort of people who would hurt anyone simply for being a stranger. They didn’t seem… warlike.

They were different, of course, but not much. You wouldn’t mind if your sister married one of them.

Come to think of it, he thought, you wouldn’t mind marrying one yourself.