Transience Read online

  Transience

  Arthur C. Clarke

  The forest, which came almost to the edge of the beach, climbed away into

  the distance up the flanks of the low, misty hills. Underfoot, the sand was

  course and mixed with myriads of broken shells. Here and there the

  retreating tide had left long streamers of weed trailed across the beach.

  The rain, which seldom ceased, had for the moment passed inland, but ever

  and again large, angry drops would beat tiny craters into the sand.

  It was hot and sultry, for the war between sun and rain was never-ending.

  Sometimes the mists would lift for a while and the hills would stand out

  clearly above the land they guarded. The hills arced in a semicircle along

  the bay, following the line of the beach, and beyond them could sometimes be

  seen, at an immense distance, a wall of mountains lying beneath perpetual

  clouds. The trees grew everywhere, softening the contours of the land so

  that the hills blended smoothly into each other. Only in one place could the

  bare, uncovered rock be seen, where long ago some fault had weakened the

  foundations of the hills, so that for a mile or more the sky line fell

  sharply away, drooping down to the sea like a broken wing.

  Moving with the cautious alertness of a wild animal, the child came through

  the stunted trees at the forest's edge. For a moment he hesitated; then,

  since there seemed to be no danger, walked slowly out onto the beach.

  He was naked, heavily built, and had course black hair tangled over his

  shoulders. His face, brutish though it was, might almost have passed in

  human society, but the eyes would have betrayed him. They were not the eyes

  of an animal, for there was something in their depths that no animal had

  ever known. But it was no more than a promise. For this child, as for all

  his race, the light of reason had yet to dawn. Only a hairsbreadth still

  separated him from the beasts among whom he dwelt. The tribe had not long

  since come into this tribe, and he was the first ever to set foot upon the

  lonely beach. What had lured him from the known dangers of the forest into

  the unknown and therefore more terrible dangers of this new element. he

  could not have told even had he possessed the power of speech. Slowly he

  walked out to the water's edge, always with backward glances at the forest

  behind him; as he did so, for the first time in all history, the level sand

  bore upon its face the footprints it would one day know so well.

  He had met water before, but it had always been bounded and confined by

  land. Now it stretched endlessly before him, and the sound of its labouring

  beat ceaselessly upon his ears.

  With the timeless patience of the savage, he stood on the moist sand that

  the water had just relinquished, and as the tide line moved out he followed

  it slowly, pace by pace. When the waves reached towards his feet with a

  sudden access of energy, he would retreat a little way toward the land. But

  something held him here at the water's edge, while his shadow lengthened

  along the sands and the cold evening wind began to rise around him.

  Perhaps into his mind had come something of the wonder of the sea, and a

  hint of all that it would one day mean to man. Though the first gods of his

  people stay lay far into the future, he felt a dim sense of worship stir

  within him. He knew that he was now in the presence of something greater

  than all the powers and forces he had ever met.

  The tide was turning. Far away in the forest, a wolf howled once and was

  suddenly silent. The noises of the night were rising around him, and it was

  time to go.

  Under the low moon, the two lines of footprints interlaced across the sand.

  Swiftly the oncoming tide was smoothing them away. But they would return in

  their thousands and millions, in the centuries yet to be.

  The child playing among the rock pools knew nothing of the forest that had

  once ruled all of the land around him. It had left no trace of its

  existence. As ephemeral as the mists that had so often rolled down from the

  hills, it too, had veiled them for a little while and now was gone. In its

  place had come a checkerboard of fields, the legacy of a thousand years of

  patient toil. And so the illusion of permanence remained, though everything

  had altered save the line of the hills against the sky. On the beach, the

  sand was finer now, and the land had lifted so that the old tide line was

  far beyond the reach of the questing waves.

  Beyond the sea wall and the promenade, the little town was sleeping through

  the golden summer day. Here and there along the beach, people lay at rest,

  drowsy with heat and lulled by the murmur of the waves.

  Out across the bay, white and gold against the water, a great ship was

  moving slowly to sea. The boy could hear, faint and far away, the beat of

  its screws and could still see the tiny figures moving upon its decks and

  superstructure. To the child - and not to him alone - it was a thing of

  wonder and beauty. He knew its name and the land to which it was steaming;

  but he did not know that the splendid ship was both the last and greatest of

  its kind. He scarcely noticed, almost lost against the glare of the sun, the

  thin white vapour trails that spelled the doom of the proud and lonely

  giant.

  Soon the great liner was no more than a dark smudge on the horizon, and the

  boy turned again to his interrupted play, to the tireless building of his

  battlements of sand. In the west the sun was beginning its long decline, but

  the evening was still far away.

  Yet it came at last, when the tide was returning to the land. At his

  mother's words, the child gathered up his playthings and, wearily contented,

  began to follow his parents back to the shore. He glanced once only at the

  sea again. Without regret he left them to the advancing waves, for tomorrow

  he would return and the future stretched endlessly before him.

  That tomorrow would not always come, either for himself or for the world, he

  was still too young to know.

  And now even the hills had changed, worn away by the weight of years. Not

  all the change was the work of nature, for one night in the long forgotten

  past something had come sliding down from the stars, and the little town had

  vanished in a spinning tower of flame. But that was so long ago that it was

  beyond sorrow or regret. Like the fall of fabled Troy or the overwhelming of

  Pompeii, it was part of the irremediable past, and could rouse no pity now.

  On the broken sky line lay a long metal building supporting a maze of

  mirrors that turned and glittered in the sun. No-one from an earlier age

  could have guessed its purpose. It was as meaningless as an observatory or a

  radio station would have been to ancient man. But it was neither of these

  things.

  Since noon, Bran had been laying among the shallow pools left by the

  retreating tide. He was quite alone, though the machine that guarded him was

 
watching unobtrusively from the shore. Only a few days ago, there had been

  other children playing beside the blue waters of this lovely bay. Bran

  sometimes wondered where they had vanished, but he was a solitary child and

  did not greatly care. Lost in his own dreams, he was content to be left

  alone.

  In the last few hours he had linked the tiny pools with an intricate network

  of waterways. His thoughts were very far from Earth, both in space and time.

  Around him now were the dull, red sands of another world. He was Cardenis,

  prince of engineers, fighting to save his people from the encroaching

  deserts. For Bran had looked upon the ravaged face of Mars; he knew the

  story of its long tragedy and the help from Earth that had come too late.

  Out to the horizon the sea was empty, untroubled by ships, as it had been

  for ages. For a little while, near the beginning of time, man had fought his

  brief war against the oceans of the world. Now it seemed that only a moment

  lay between the coming of the first canoes and the passing of the last great

  Megatheria of the seas.

  Bran did not even glance up at the sky when the monstrous shadow swept along

  the beach. For days past, those silver giants had been rising over the hills

  in an unending stream, and now he gave them little thought. All his life he

  had watched the great ships climbing through the skies of Earth on their way

  to distant worlds. Often he had seen them return from those long journeys,

  dropping down through the clouds with cargoes beyond imagination.

  He wondered sometimes why they came no more, those returning voyagers. All

  the ships he saw now were outward bound; never one drove down from the skies

  to berth at the great port beyond the hills. Why this should be, no one

  would tell him. He had learned not to speak of it now, having seen the

  sadness that his questions brought.

  Across the sands the robot was calling to him softly. "Bran," came the

  words, echoing the tones of his mother's voice,"Bran - its time to go".

  The child looked up, his face full of indignant denial. He could not believe

  it. The sun was still high and the tide was far away. Yet along the shore

  his mother and father were already coming toward him.

  They walked swiftly, as though the time was short. Now and again his father

  would glance for an instant at the sky, then turn his head quickly away as

  if he knew well that there was nothing he could hope to see. But a moment

  later he would look up again.

  Stubborn and angry, Bran stood among his canals and lakes. His mother was

  strangely silent, but presently his father took him by the hand and said

  quietly, you must come with us Bran. Its time we went. The child pointed

  sullenly at the beach. "But its too early. I haven't finished".

  His father's reply had no trace of anger, only a great sadness. There are

  many things Bran, that will not be finished now. Still uncomprehending, the

  boy turned to his mother. "Then can I come again tomorrow"?

  With a sense of desolating wonder, Bran saw his mother's eyes fill with

  sudden tears. And he knew at last that never again would he play upon the

  sands by the azure waters; never again would he feel the tug of the tiny

  waves about his feet. He had found the sea too late, and now must leave it

  forever. Out of the future, chilling his soul, came the first intimation of

  the long ages of exile that lay ahead.

  He never looked back as they walked silently together across the clinging

  sand. This moment would be with him all his life, but he was too stunned to

  do more than walk blindly into a future he could not understand.

  The three figures dwindled into the distance and were gone. A while later, a

  silver cloud seemed to lift above the hills and move slowly out to sea. In a

  shallow arc, as though reluctant to leave its world, the last of the great

  ships climbed towards the horizon and shrank to nothingness over the edge of

  the Earth.

  The tide was returning with the dying day. As though its makers still walked

  within its walls, the low metal building upon the hills had begun to blaze

  with light. Near the zenith, one star had not waited for the sun to set, but

  already burned with a fierce white glare against the darkening sky. Soon its

  companions, no longer in the scant thousands that mankind had once known,

  began to fill the heavens. The Earth was now near the centre of the

  universe, and whole areas of the sky were an unbroken blaze of light.

  But rising beyond the sea in two long curving arms, something black and

  monstrous eclipsed the stars and seemed to cast its shadow over all the

  world. The tentacles of the Dark Nebula were already brushing against the

  frontiers of the solar system....

  In the east, a great yellow moon was climbing through the waves. Though

  mankind had torn down its mountains and brought it air and water, its face

  was the one that had looked upon Earth since its history began, and it was

  still the ruler of the tides. Across the sand the line of foam moved

  steadily onwards, overwhelming the little canals and planing down the

  mangled footprints.

  On the sky line, the lights in the strange metal building suddenly died, and

  the spinning mirrors ceased their moonlight glittering. From far inland came

  the blinding flash of a great explosion, then another, and another fainter

  yet.

  Presently the ground trembled a little, but no sound disturbed the solitude

  of the deserted shore. Under the level light of the sagging moon, beneath

  the myriad stars, the beach lay waiting for the end. It was alone now, as it

  had been at the beginning. Only the waves would move, and but for a little

  while, upon its golden sands.

  For mankind had come and gone.

  THE END

 

 

  Arthur C. Clarke, Transience

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