The Singers of Time

1

The individual was known as Chief Thunderbird, and he was a Turtle—at least, that was the name human beings had given their benefactors from space. Chief Thunderbird wasn't his actual name, either. That too was simply what human beings generally called him. Properly he was addressed by his title, which was Proctor for Human Oversight. In his own language he had a name, of course, but that didn't matter to human beings. Human people had no hope of pronouncing the shrill squawks and high-frequency hisses of the Brotherhood.

The Proctor turned one wandering eye to gaze down at his companion and gestured with one sinuous, webby claw. "Now, Younger Brother," he said benignly, or as benignly as a Turtle's screech could ever sound, "this will be your main post of duty as Facilitator."

The Younger Brother allowed both his eyes to roam without pleasure over the vista before him. This was the Brotherhood's largest compound on Earth, with its hundreds of human workers and busy trains of materiel converging at the foot of the skyhook. "You will do good business with these beings," the Proctor promised. "Trade is just beginning to expand, now that we have completed the orbit elevator." One eye turned admiringly to gaze up at the cable of the skyhook, receding to infinity overhead. "When I first came here, we had to use actual spacecraft for all lifting in and out of orbit. Of course, the freight costs cut very heavily into the profits."

"It's very wet here," the Younger Brother complained.

Chief Thunderbird was not famous for tolerance toward subordinates. What little compassion he had was rapidly running out. This newcomer did not even look like a proper member of the Brotherhood. He was short. Where Chief Thunderbird stood nearly three meters tall, his carapace sleekly glistening silver and black in the yellow sunlight of this world called "Earth," this new one was half a meter shorter. And he was ugly. Even the color of his carapace was hideous. What could he have been eating to give it that hideous rusty-orange hue? It did not gleam at all. Taking everything together, the best word to describe this Younger Brother was "scrawny." It was hard to believe that he and the Proctor were of the same brood.

Unfortunately, the Proctor reflected sadly, such things happened. When a Mother came to the end of her fertility cycle there was always the probability that some of her last get would be—well—inferior.

The implications of that thought saddened the Proctor. It meant that the Mother—who was his own Mother, too— would have to be replaced soon. But that was the way the world went.

Chief Thunderbird drew himself up and looked around his dominion with—not with pride, no, but with contentment. Senior members of the Brotherhood did not suffer from pride. They had no need for it. They were simply well aware that their great Brotherhood spanned a thousand star systems and brought their treasures to share with lesser races like these humans—profiting greatly from such transactions, of course.

Even on this sorry, soggy little planet the Brotherhood's transactions were vast. Tens of thousands of tons of raw materials filled the cargo carts that climbed into orbit each day along the three great elevators of the skyhook. Of course, those materials were not particularly precious. They were common enough in space; this very solar system had a swarm of asteroids orbiting out past its third planet that were rich in metals and minerals. But it was a great convenience to have a planet of intelligent—well, fairly intelligent—beings to collect them and bring them here to the cargo terminals.

"They look so soft," the Younger Brother complained. "Wet, too."

The Proctor turned both eyes on the new arrival. Didn't they teach cubs any manners any more? It was a great condescension for a Proctor to show a newcomer to the planet around in this way—though a welcome one, since it meant his own eventual release.

He made an effort to be indulgent. "Yes, they are repulsive, but you will have no trouble with these humans. They are eager for trade with us."

"Why should I have trouble?" the Younger Brother asked, sounding perplexed. The Proctor for Human Oversight diverted his second eye to glare at him. This cub was simply not civilized. It was not a fitting way to speak to an Elder Brother, particularly one as distinguished as the Proctor.

Anger led the Proctor to say something that was not called for: "I remind you, Younger Brother," he snapped, "that not every creature the Brotherhood has encountered has been as agreeable as these humans."

That found its mark. The Younger Brother looked away with both eyes, shocked and embarrassed at the reminder of the ancient, but never forgotten, Sh'shrane. He muttered, "I had not forgotten, Elder Brother."

The Proctor gave him a brief nod, then waved at the compound with one hard-plated arm, allowing his eyes to roam independently. It was a busy scene, with the endless commerce of the space ladder flowing down to the base from orbit, and thence out to the world of human beings. He gestured at the human laborers and said, "The natives are entirely organic, you know."

The new Facilitator glanced around distastefully at the hurrying humans. "I know. Fragile and wet and primitive, like the Taurs."

"Almost like the Taurs, yes," the Proctor agreed. "Both species are very wet, and in some ways their physical structures resemble each other. But these Earth humans don't have those disgusting Taur superstitions."

"One hopes not," the Facilitator said fervently, gazing upward reverently with both eyes. "So they do not require improvement?"

"Well, not in the same way as the Taurs, anyway," the Proctor said thoughtfully. The Taurs had presented some serious problems to the Brotherhood, until they had found a way of preventing those problems from arising any more. "These creatures do have superstitions of their own, I'm afraid. You'll see. But they're anxious for trade, and very desirous of our machines—and very impressed, too, by our space technology." He waved an arm toward the majestic space ladder. "Now that this is completed our commerce can really develop, with cargoes leaving all the time. The humans will help us in this. They are quite teachable, with some technological help we can give them. Even without it, some of the humans have even been allowed to operate waveships."

The Facilitator looked shocked, but was now too chastened to say so. He only said, "In the wisdom of the Mother no errors are possible." His tone caused the Proctor to look at him sharply, but the Facilitator was not pursuing the subject. He was staring around him with both his eyes, each roaming independently to take in part of the view, none of it very appealing to the new Younger Brother. "It's so hot and wet here," he complained again.

The Proctor, who knew just how much hotter and wetter it was likely to become as the seasons changed, hid his amusement. "You'll get used to it. Be pleased that you are assigned to work in this compound. The bases for the other two legs of the ladder are even worse. They had to be located in what this planet calls its tropical zone."

The Facilitator sighed, contemplating the years ahead in this soggy, steamy climate. "And this place was one of their 'cities'?" he said, shuddering slightly.

"Yes, they are disgusting," Chief Thunderbird agreed. The mere idea of a "city" was unpleasant: imagine a race that settled itself in vast structures, when the proper purpose of any being is to quest for new gifts for his Mother.

But of course, the humans were deficient in that respect. They did not have a single Mother. "This place was called 'Kansas City,'" the Proctor went on, forming the human words in a way no human could have understood. "It was severely damaged in one of their wars and, really, there was no point in trying to restore it. But it still had transportation facilities available, so we based one leg of the ladder here."

"Wars!" the Facilitator grunted. It was like an epithet.

"Oh, yes, they fought wars. Of course, we've put a stop to all that sort of wasteful physical combat."

"Of course." The Facilitator diverted one yellow-red eye to gaze at the Proctor. "Is there further wisdom you must impart to me in this place?" he asked.

Chief Thunderbird rolled one eyestalk heavenward. "Does the Younger Brother already know everything?" he demanded.

"No," the Facilitator admitted, attempting respect.

"Then the Younger Brother may ask whatever questions arc on his mind," the Proctor said benevolendy.

The Facilitator groaned inwardly, glancing around. He pointed at a group of workers unloading a flatcar of scrap metal. "I see both humans and Taurs working there, Elder Brother," he said. "Would it not be more efficient to have only whichever race is best at the task employed?"

The Proctor twined his eyestalks negatively. "The Taurs are best at heavy lifting," he informed his companion, "but the humans are more intellectual in some ways. Actually, the humans like Taurs very much, not only for labor but for meat. Nearly all humans now eat Taur flesh."

"But didn't they eat meat before we came?"

The Proctor made a tolerant gesture. "Yes, of course, the meat of their kindred animals. But those animals were not intelligent at all, not even as intelligent as a Taur. They could not be instructed to present themselves for slaughter when ready. They wasted resources, too, since they ate the same grains as humans, whereas the Taurs can of course eat anything that grows as long as they also have a few redfruit in their diet. And, by the way, the humans also enjoy our red-fruit—"

But the Younger Brother was showing signs of distress. "I don't much care what the animals eat, Elder Brother," he gasped. "It is very wet here."

The Proctor turned both eyes on the Facilitator. But all he said was, "Very well. We will go inside one of the buildings, where it is drier, and I will show you how we care for these humans."

The new Facilitator was doing his best to be courteous to an Elder Brother of high rank. His best wasn't very good. He couldn't help it, though. He was in distress. The physical conditions on this Mother-forsaken planet were appalling, for a Brother used to the waterless comforts of the Mother worlds.

And then there was his own special problem.

The Facilitator was one of the last of the present High Mother's litter. He knew he was physically very marginal among the Brotherhood. Eggs that tested very little farther below standard than his own had not been permitted to develop.

But, although the Facilitator was very young, he was not stupid. That would have been impossible. Physical blemishes were tolerated among the Brotherhood, but intellectual ones never. No Brother with impaired mentality was allowed to survive his first hatching year. The Facilitator was also wholly dedicated to the service of the Brotherhood and the sacred Mother, but of course that went without saying.

All the same, the new Facilitator was not entirely pleased with the assignment he had drawn. Like every young Brother, molting into his final grown-up carapace, he had dreamed of more exciting work for the Mother. To travel around the stars in a waveship, opening new lanes of commerce, finding new treasures to bring home to the Mother—that was what every young Brother aspired to. Not this! He could not help feeling that if he had been just a little more physically prepossessing, his selection would have been entirely different, and much better. To be assigned to this muggy, swampy world to ride herd on a few billion unpleasant aliens was—well, it was the sort of thing you got assigned to, he knew, when you were just a little under par.

Which told him something he was too intelligent to say about the Elder Brother who was showing him around: Just what was the flaw in the Proctor that had landed him in this ghastly place?

The Facilitator could see that the Proctor was getting restive. He understood that perfectly. He was getting as bored as his guide, and hungry, too. He was about to suggest a refreshing half hour in the radiation chamber when the Proctor led him into a low building that seemed to be occupied entirely by the soft-bodied aliens. He paused at the door and waved inside. "You will want to observe this institution. It is a hospital," the Proctor explained. "For humans. It is one of the things we have done for them, giving them the benefit of our expertise in medicine and anatomy."

The Facilitator was surprised. "Didn't they have hospitals of their own? I mean, I understood they had machines, and even primitive spacecraft—"

"Oh, human machines," the Proctor said, dismissing them all with a wave of one homy claw. "Very crude. Not anything like as good as what we have given them. Their spacecraft, for example, used chemical rockets to rise from the surface of the planet to orbit—you can imagine how weak and wasteful they were, before we brought them the elevators on the space ladder. And their medicine was quite crude. Come inside and you will see for yourself."

It was better in the building than out of it, less warm, less humid, but there were surprises there too. The Facilitator stared at a couple of quiet young Taur males who were working at cleaning, carrying, doing routine jobs, their horns just beginning to bud. "I didn't expect to find Taurs here," the Facilitator said in surprise.

"Oh, yes," the Proctor said, with satisfaction. "Actually, Taurs are one of our most successful exports to this world. The humans like them for manual labor, and of course for food. The humans have been taught all they need to know about how to treat Taurs," he said proudly, "and they are careful to follow our instructions."

"The Mother be thanked for that," said the Younger Brother, with heartfelt sincerity.

"Of course. Now I will show you some of the ways in which we have helped the humans. For instance, this building is a hospital."

"Do they not have their own repair facilities?"

"Of course, but not as good as ours. Here we perform essential services for human beings that they cannot perform for themselves—High Mother!" he finished, with a startled squawk. One of the passing humans had stopped and clutched at the Proctor's claws. The Facilitator's first impulse was alarm, but then reason reassured him that the Proctor had nothing to fear from these moist savages. The human being was proudly showing the Proctor his forclimb, where a crude drawing of some sort of beast appeared to be made directly on the skin.

The Proctor recovered his calm, adjusted the transposer on his arm and spoke to the human. The Facilitator shuddered at the sounds that the Proctor was making. It was an analogue of human language, or as close as the Brotherhood's vocal apparatus could manage. He was going to have to learn that himself, he knew dismally. He could barely hear the corresponding sounds that came out of the transformer, stepped down to frequencies humans could hear. When the human replied, it was only an unpleasant noise.

To the Facilitator's surprise, the Proctor was laughing.

"What is amusing my Elder Brother?" the Facilitator asked, clawed hands submissively bent in the gesture of respect —you didn't have to feel it to show it, and he was aware that the Proctor was annoyed with him.

"This human is a new arrival in our compound," the Proctor explained. "See, he doesn't even have a memo pocket in his skull yet. I suppose that's why he's here, for the operation to install it."

"Memo pocket?" the Facilitator asked.

Complacently, the Proctor touched the spot in his armor where the skull reached the edge of the platen, where his kind inserted data disks to help them with their technological works. "Humans do not possess our natural ganglionic loci, Younger Brother," he explained. "So in order for them to use the memo disks, they have to have one created surgically. That was the first great challenge our anatomists faced, but, fortunately, the specimens our first scouts acquired gave us a good deal of experimental material."

"I do know about the specimens that were collected, Elder Brother," the Facilitator said, wishing the Proctor would get on with it. "Some still exist, I believe."

"I am not speaking of the surviving specimens. I am speaking of those specimens which were too severely damaged for reanimation when acquired by our scouts. By dissecting them, our anatomists learned how to implant memory chips in humans. After that it was simple to perform various kinds of surgery that were beyond the skills of the humans themselves. That is what this hospital is for."

The Facilitator groaned, but not aloud. There was simply no stopping this Elder Brother. The Facilitator had not journeyed all the way from home without cramming his very large and able brain with every fact he could find about his new posting. Humans had possessed only explosive-propelled spaceships and knew nothing of the wave-drive? Of course. Only the Brotherhood had waveships—well, the Brotherhood and that one other galactic race that was best forgotten. The orbital tower that was their elevator to space? Naturally the Brotherhood had made it a high priority to install one as quickly as possible. How else could you carry on large-scale interstellar business?

He raised one scaled claw, hoping against hope to cut off the flow of educational lecture. "One thing I do not understand, Elder Brother," he said humbly. "What is it about these humans that amused you?"

The Proctor turned both eyes on him. "It is simply that they love us so," he said, gazing down affectionately at the human. "Do you see this thing on his arm? It is called a 'tattoo.' He has decorated his skin with this picture which he believes resembles one of us."

"It is a very poor likeness," the Facilitator complained, darting both eyes at the faded lines of the drawing.

"Oh, it is not really of one of our Brotherhood. The tattoo depicts an Earthly beast which is called 'turtle.'" Of course, his vocal cords made a hash of the human word. "It is what they call us, the 'Turtles.'"

The Facilitator was scandalized. "They are so offensive that they name us after a dumb beast?"

"You do not understand," the Proctor sighed. "Humans have an old tale in their religious lore which speaks of a race between a 'turtle' and a 'hare.' Although the hare can run much faster, it was the turtle which won the race—so, you see, it is a term of respect."

"If the Elder Brother says so," the Facilitator grumbled.

"I do say so. Don't you see? We win the race, in spite of everything," the Proctor said proudly. "We always do."

"Always," agreed the Facilitator, happy to have something to agree with the Proctor on. The Brotherhood always did win. In every contest they ventured to undertake. Or some members of the Brotherhood did, at least. . . .

And it was the Facilitator's fervent intention to be the one who conquered in the next, and most important, one.

At least now they were moving again, the Proctor leading the way. He said, "There are several complex surgical operations now in progress—they come from all over to be helped by the procedures we have brought to their planet. Come, we will observe one of them."

Unwillingly the Facilitator trailed the Elder Brother to what was called an "operating room." He observed a cluster of humans in white, green and lilac robes surrounding a table where another human lay. Then he took a closer look. "But those are humans performing this operation," he said. "Did the Elder Brother not say that this hospital was reserved for cases so difficult that only the skills of the Brotherhood made them possible?"

The Proctor nodded reluctant approval. "You are quick to observe, at least," he said grudgingly. "Yes, those are human surgeons, but the skills they use are those of the Brotherhood. Note the memo disks in their skulls. They are needed, because this is indeed a particularly difficult operation." He turned one eye expectantly on the Facilitator. "Observe the patient. Do you notice anything strange?"

The Facilitator studied the subject, then waved an arm negatively. "What should I notice?"

"It is a femalethe Proctor said gleefully. "Half of the humans are female!"

The Facilitator shuddered; the thought of an intelligent race with more than one active female was vaguely repellent, though he had been taught to expect this. "What is wrong with her?"

The Proctor said, "She is 'pregnant.' It is her unborn young that need attention. These creatures bear their young live, like Taurs, and sometimes things go wrong. In this case, she has two young ones developing inside her, but they are malformed. It is what humans call 'Siamese twins.' They are joined at the brain."

"At the brain!"

"Yes," said the Proctor with pride, "but with our memo disk the surgeon will be able to separate them in utero and they will develop normally. That is why she has come here from one of their cities."

"Cities," the Facilitator repeated, shuddering. "Disgusting!"

The Proctor said fairly, "Even the humans find their cities unlivable, with all their noise and dirt. Therefore it is a good place for us to secure memmie helpers—especially when, like this one, they are in difficulties."

The Facilitator said impatiently, "Why do we trouble with such things? Why not let them deal with it themselves?"

"Oh, Facilitator," the Proctor said in dismay, "have they taught you nothing? It is because we do things for these humans that our relations are so successful. We have given them so many things: machines, medical techniques, the Taurs for servants and food, the redfruit to replace their native vegetation, the opening to space through our ladder. These things are our trading stock! We can show the humans that our technology is better than theirs, and in that way cause them to give up their heretical notions."

The Younger Brother squinted up at his superior. "What heretical notions?"

"Fantastic distortion of the Mother's truth," the Proctor told him somberly, "woven into the pseudosciences they call 'physics' and 'astronomy'—that is," he explained, "their own weird ideas of the stars."

The Facilitator was astonished. "What do these beasts know about the stars?"

"They are not really beasts," the Proctor acknowledged justly. "But they do have strangely mistaken notions. Even blasphemous violations of the Mother's laws. Notions of such strange things as multiple dimensions in space-time, as they call it, and something they call 'quantum reality.'"

The Facilitator shuddered. "We must stamp that out!"

"Indeed yes. That program has already begun. Ultimately these heresies will die away, along with those other nasty customs of these humans, like 'nations' and wars."

The Facilitator sighed. "But this will take a long time," he said dismally.

"Oh, no doubt," said the Proctor, at last beginning to feel at ease. "But you have the time. And now," he said, beaming, "I think you have all the indoctrination you need. Now you can take up your duties and I—I will spend the rest of my duty tour in the orbital station, far from this damp, miserable surface!"

The aiodoi seldom sing of twentieth-century Earth humans, but among those humans is a scientist. This scientist does not know that he is also an aiodos. Nevertheless, at times he sings most poetically to his students, like any aiodos. Then in his songs are certain things the aiodoi also sing:

"Now, pay attention, class, because we're going to try to understand what Stephen Hawking means when he says he no longer believes in the Big Bang.

"What Hawking says is that the universe is infinite in time. It has lasted forever. It will go on lasting forever.

"Please understand that this isn't the old Hoyle-Gold idea of continuous creation, which we took up last month. Hawking doesn't believe in creation at all. What he does say is that, every once in a while in the eternal history of the universe, there is a sort of vacuum fluctuation which produces a tempo-

rary flux of particles. 'Temporary' doesn't necessarily mean something that lasts for only a short time. It can be quite a long time—I would say, perhaps, in this case for as long as ten to the sixty-sixth years or more. These particles appear, they expand, they condense into galaxies and stars and planets and you and me. Then, over time, they subside again. The vacuum energies return to the zero state and the universe goes on unchanged—until the next eruption.

"Are you following me? Maybe a picture would make it clearer. You can draw it in your notebooks, if you want to.

"For your picture, think of the whole universe as an endless, one-dimensional line.

"Then think of that endless line as hollow. Like a very narrow hose. Better still, think of it as an extremely long, extremely skinny anaconda, and imagine that the anaconda has just swallowed a pig. From outside the anaconda, you can see the bulge in the snake's belly, where the pig is being digested—

"But the pig can't see that bulge in the snake's belly. The pig can't see the anaconda at all, because it is inside that infinitely long snake.

"Now think of ourselves as living within that pig inside that snake. Think of us as some smart, tiny bacteria that live in the pig's gut. Maybe we could be something like that favorite, harmless intestinal bug we all carry around called Escherichia coli, only a lot more intelligent. In fact, if we E. coli are intelligent enough, we might possibly be able to invent some kind of instruments—call them 'radio telescopes,' or something of the sort—that might let us explore the entire pig. We may even be able to deduce, from studying the pig's structure, that there was a 'beginning' to the pig. That would be the point in the snake's body where the curvature of the swallowed pig first begins to appear. We might call that 'the Big Bang.' Perhaps we can speculate that there will also be an end, when the last trace of the pig will be gone and the snake will resume its endless, one-dimensional stretch.

"We can imagine all that. But what we intestinal bacteria can never do is see past the outer limits of the pig we live inside, for the body of that pig is our whole perceivable universe.

"If one of us pig-gut fauna happens to be like Stephen Hawking, he may theorize that there could be a lot more of the snake than the pig's body occupies, even if we can't see it. Nevertheless, what we can never do, ever, is have any personal encounter with anything before or after the pig. Those areas are forever hidden from us. There may be other pig-universes elsewhere along the snake from its previous meals and later ones, but we can only guess about that. We will never be able to see them, or communicate with them, or have direct proof that they exist.

"For that reason, our bacterial Stephen Hawking will call these other possible universes 'imaginary.'

"In just that way, the living Stephen Hawking of our own world, in fact, describes everything before the Big Bang as 'imaginary time,' along with everything that follows after that temporary swelling of space and time which we perceive as our whole universe. He calls the time we live by—clock time; the time by which we measure our heartbeats and the recession of the galaxies and the rotation of the Earth—'real time,' because it seems real to us . . . since it's the only one we can ever detect.

"But, Hawking says, the universe runs on 'imaginary time.' What appears to us as real is only a deficiency in our ability to see beyond our slowly digesting pig.

"That's all for today, class. Bring your notes tomorrow, because we're going to have an open-book quiz."

Thus sang the ancient Earth scientist, who was also a poet, and the aiodoi heard. But here is what one aiodos sings:

"Which is the first particle in a flux of infinitely varied particles that has gone on forever?

"Every one is.

"For when each particle first comes to exist, it is, for itself, the first particle that ever existed.

"And what does 'cannot' mean?

" 'Cannot' has only one meaning, and that is that 'cannot' cannot ever be."