The Tenth Planet (7 page)

Another person came into his area of vision. An old man with white hair.

“Greetings, Idris Hamilton. I am your psycho-surgeon and you have been my life’s work. When you were brought to Minerva—no more than a handful of desiccated tissue—I was a young man. I dreamed the impossible dream. I dreamed of restoring you to full consciousness. I have spent my life to that end. It has been a long, hard task. There were many disappointments, many set-backs. It is strange, is it not, that a man should devote his life to bringing another man back from the dead? The ethical problems involved are insoluble. If I have done wrong, forgive me. I can only say that the project seemed worthwhile.”

Idris was silent for a while. Silent and humble. He tried to comprehend the immensity of nearly fifty-four centuries. He could not. He tried to visualize a young man who would devote decades of his own life to the task of establishing contact with the five-thousand-years-old brain of a dead spaceman.

At length, he said: “Sir, I am grateful. I am also angry, humiliated, horrified. My existence now is nightmarish, grotesque. Surely, you can understand that?”

The old man nodded. “It will not always be so. I ask you to be patient, to give us a little more time. If you still
believe that we have been wrong, that we have violated your right to oblivion, the project can be terminated.”

Idris laughed. “An interesting situation! The brain you have spent your life resurrecting is granted the right to suicide. But what if I am morally incapable of suicide? What if I simply continue to endure in anguish or madness. Have you the guts to murder me?”

The old man sighed. “We have considered all such problems, Idris Hamilton. They weigh heavily upon us. There are no clear-cut answers. I, personally, believe that the project is worthwhile. But I could be wrong … You have been greatly excited—over-extended—by the information we have given you. The monitors indicate abnormal neural activity, and we do not wish to take risks. Therefore, it is my decision that you will rest for a while.”

Idris tried to say something, but the voice would not carry his words. Then vision faded. He tried desperately to think. But his thoughts seemed to be engulfed in jelly. He slipped rapidly into unconsciousness, almost welcoming it.

I
T LOOKED LIKE
the master’s cabin on the
Dag
, and yet it was not. But it was a good simulation. There were the two chairs, the desk, the bunk, the communications panel, the pictures on the wall, and even what looked like bond-fuzz on the deck.

The old man sat in one of the chairs, the girl in the other.

“Greetings, Idris Hamilton,” said the old man. “While you rested, we have made changes. We thought you would appreciate a familiar environment. Also we have made your eye mobile. It is a great technical achievement. By act of will, you can use your eye as you would use a living eye. Also, by act of will, you can take the camera to any position you wish. It will give you an illusion of movement. But I recommend caution until you have learned to completely control your new powers.”

“Thank you. I like the changes.” Idris ignored the fact that he was a brain in a nutrient tank and willed his head to turn. The eye responded somewhat jerkily, but it enabled him to look all round the cabin. He saw a length of cable that led to a shiny metal cabinet. There had been no such thing in his cabin.

“What is that?”

The old man smiled. “That is where you live. The other end of the cable is attached to your mobile eye.”

“Is it possible for me to see my brain?”

“Certainly. I do not think it advisable. But it is possible. Do you really wish to see a mass of grey matter in which countless electrodes have been implanted? That, surely, would be the ultimate nakedness. Be guided by me. It would not be a beneficial experience.”

“Perhaps you are right,” said Idris tightly. “Dammit, I don’t like my voice. Can you modify it?”

“Easily. Whenever you wish.”

“I want something that sounds more like me—like I used to sound. But that will wait. First, more questions. What about Suzy Wu? Were you able to resurrect her?”

“Alas, no. The deterioration of tissue was too great. I do not know how much you understand of physics. But you, fortunately, were in a unique position. The normal evaporative processes were inhibited by the perfect seal of your space suit. You see, in vacuum even a solid will—”

“Skip that. What of the cargo? We had twenty children and two teachers in suspended animation.”

Zylonia spoke. “Captain Hamilton, we managed to resuscitate eleven children and one teacher. Five of the children have suffered some brain damage; but the remaining six and the teacher—though they still do not function at optimum performance, perhaps—are in excellent condition. When their suspended animation systems failed they were already at near-zero, as you know. Their air-tight caskets helped to retard evaporation loss, just as in your case. You will meet them presently.”

“Let it be soon,” said Idris. “Let it be very soon. They are my only link with the world I have lost. Who knows—they may even manage to keep me sane.” He looked at the old man. “You, sir. You who are my psycho-surgeon. You know all about me, but I know nothing of you—except that you have wasted much of your life trying vainly to reconstruct a human personality out of a lump of cerebral debris. Do I call you Doctor, or do you have a name?”

“Forgive me. I should have introduced myself earlier.” He smiled. “You may call me Doctor, if you wish. But I also have a name. It is Manfrius de Skun.”

“So, Doctor Manfrius de Skun. I have learned that I am on the planet Minerva, the tenth solar planet. In my day, its existence was only a theoretical possibility used to explain irregularities in the orbit of Neptune and the terrestrial approach of Halley’s Comet.” He laughed. “But I’ll take your word for its existence—just as I take your word for mine … Now, what of Earth? What has happened in more than five millenia?”

Manfrius de Skun and Zylonia exchanged glances. The girl gave a faint shrug.

Dr. de Skun turned to gaze squarely at Idris Hamilton’s eye. “So far as we know, Earth is totally devoid of human life.”

“And the moon? Earth’s satellite?”

“Dead also.”

“What about Mars? We knew the moon colony might not be able to go it alone. But we placed all our hopes in Mars. It must be a very flourishing planet after five thousand years. Earth gave all it could to Mars. There is—was—a planetary engineering programme that would give it a breathable atmosphere, fertile soil, enough water …” He stopped, seeing the look on Manfrius de Skun’s face. “What happened to Mars?”

“I am sorry, Captain Hamilton. To you the young colony on Mars is like yesterday. To me it is ancient history. Mars is dead. My ancestors were refugees from its internecine wars. They lifted off the planet shortly before the final atomic holocaust.”

“
I
don’t believe it!
”

“I wish
I
did not believe it, but it is so.”

“
I
don’t believe it!
” His electronic voice, giving vent to explosive emotion, filled the simulated cabin with thunder, causing its two occupants to put their hands over their ears, while their faces distorted with pain.

“Please, Captain Hamilton! You are hurting us!” pleaded Zylonia. “You must exercise control, otherwise we shall have to introduce an automatic cut-out into your sound system.”

He did not seem to have heard; but his voice became
quieter.

“To think of the billions who perished so that man might make a new start on Mars, avoid the old idiocies … To think of Suzy and Leo and Orlando blown to glory … And all for nothing … I can’t believe it. I can’t … You have to be lying, both of you. It has to be some kind of conspiracy … They can’t have died for nothing. The entire history of the human race can’t have ended like that!”

“Idris Hamilton, look at me, please,” said Dr. de Skun softly. “Bring your eye close and look at my face. Tell me what you see.”

“I see white hair, wrinkles, the face of an old man. I see tears on your cheeks.”

“Look for deceit and conspiracy. Tell me if you find any.”

“I see tears, unhappiness. Why do you cry, Dr. de Skun?”

“May I not also weep for the human race, for the brave and gallant people, long dead, who tried to give it a second chance? The last refuge of mankind, Idris Hamilton, is the tenth solar planet, Minerva. Here we do not try to build empires, we have no dreams of conquest, we live in harmony. Harmony, you might say, is our fundamental law, our basic commandment. We are a stable colony of some ten thousand people.”

“Ten thousand! All that is left of a race that once numbered ten thousand million!”

“Biologically, it is sufficient,” said Manfrius de Skun. “If it is yet again our destiny to breed millions, we have sufficiently diverse genetic material.”

“What is your destiny, Dr. de Skun? Here on Minerva, what do your ten thousand survivors propose to do?”

The old man gave a faint smile. “To survive, Idris Hamilton, to endure. That is our main purpose. Simply to endure until we know enough about ourselves, about the nature of man, to avoid making the tragic mistakes of previous civilisations. But now, also, we have the
Dag Hammarskjold
project—the survivors from the age of disintegration. I will be frank. You and the others we have managed to resuscitate
are to us living fragments of history. You are from the Twilight Period. Perhaps, by studying you, we shall learn what went wrong in human development. Perhaps the information we gain will enable us to define our own development programme.” He glanced at the girl. “Zylonia de Herrens is an officer in our Mental Health Department. She has volunteered to live with you, to orientate you in our ways, to give you companionship, to learn from you. I hope you will find her a pleasing companion. I believe you will.”

“Live with me!” Idris laughed grimly. “How can she live with me? I am just a piece of debris in a tank.”

“We made this facsimile of your cabin, Idris Hamilton, as a reality-anchor. Zylonia is also to be used as a reality-anchor. She will stay with you, talk to you, learn from you, sleep in the bunk you used to occupy. As a woman, she will do her best to please you. As a scientist, she will do her best to understand you. Later, when you understand our society better, there may be a less passive role for you to play. That is all I can say now. For the time being, I will leave you, Idris Hamilton. Be assured that we are doing our best for you.”

Zylonia said: “Idris, I want to please you very much. Believe that I think of you not as a brain in nutrient solution, but as a man. I have my own dreams, just as you have yours.”

Idris Hamilton uttered a great electronic sigh. “Then we must each take consolation from our dreams. Thank you for volunteering to keep me company. It is almost an act of love.”

Zylonia tossed back her hair. “It
is
an act of love,” she said.

T
HERE WERE TWO
clocks in the cabin. One was the actual clock taken from the bulkhead of the master’s cabin on the
Dag
, miraculously persuaded to work once more after an interval of five thousand years. The other was Zylonia’s—a much evolved replica of a Swiss cuckoo-clock. She had had it since she was a child. Evidently it was a kind of talisman.

They were both twenty-four hour clocks; but they did not often tell the same time. The Martian day being longer than the terrestrial day, each Martian minute was almost one and a half seconds longer than each Earth minute. Idris amused himself briefly by calculating that once every forty-three days—Earth days—the clocks ought to tell the same time.

The standard Martian day, he learned, was still used to regulate the passage of time on Minerva, though the planetary period of rotation was almost exactly twenty terrestrial hours. It was used for sentimental, traditional and practical reasons. It was used because the first colonists brought Mars time with them, and lived by it. It was used because a twenty-four hour day—even allowing for the slight Martian variation—corresponded to the ancient cycle of human metabolism. It was used because night and day on Minerva were almost meaningless abstractions.

The planet, nearly six billion miles from the sun, existed in perpetual night. It was a frozen world. The sun, the brightest star in its sky, was too far away to afford any life-giving
warmth, any appreciable increase of light. The surface of Minerva was permanently frozen in permanent darkness. The first colonists had burrowed beneath its surface to establish underground refuges, which later expanded into small cities. They had returned to the surface as little as possible, though they maintained a few scientific and technological installations amid the wastes of rock and frozen gasses, and even a small space-port.

The space-port serviced and maintained five small ferry rockets, used chiefly for short planetary shoots and for exploratory shoots to Minerva’s only satellite, an irregular lump of cosmic debris no more than five hundred kilometres in diameter which orbited the planet at a mean distance of seventy-three thousand kilometres. There was also one ancient deep-space vessel, carefully maintained but rarely used. It was three thousand Earth-years old and had been part of the original exodus fleet from Mars. It had been repaired and refurbished so often during its long existence that hardly any of the original components remained. The last time it had been used was when radio and visual telescopes had tracked the wreck of the
Dag Hammarskjold
. Then the
Amazonia
had lifted off from Talbot Field to effect the most dramatic space rescue in the whole of human history.

According to legend and the known facts of Minervan history, the bulk of the fleet that had brought the Martian refugees to Minerva had been destroyed on the orders of Garfield Talbot, its commander. The exodus fleet, hastily assembled, badly equipped, was originally destined to shoot for the nearer stars—Alpha Centauri, Sirius, Altair, Procyon. But, to Garfield Talbot, an intensely religious man, the discovery of the tenth planet had seemed like a sign. The fact that it could be made to support human life, even if only subterraneously, seemed like an invitation. He argued that it was better for the refugees from devastated Mars to accept an austere but certain future on Minerva than to try to cross the light-years in the hope of discovering systems that might not exist.