Collision with Chronos

“No, I hadn’t known – not until tonight,” Heshke murmured.

They hovered over the spot for a few minutes, watching the wrecked jet burn itself out. Finally one of the three remaining jets put down beside it. The other two continued the journey as the sun rose, whistling toward a destination that still had not been divulged to Heshke.

3

At the city of Cymbel they transferred to a fast intercontinental rocket transport. On board Heshke was given breakfast, but Brask said little during the two-hour journey. Once he went forward to the guidance cabin to receive a radio message and returned looking pensive.

They had chased the twilight zone on their five thousand mile trajectory, so it was still early morning when they arrived at their destination. The rocket transport put down at what was evidently a private landing strip. A car drove up to take them to a low, massive concrete building a few hundred yards away.

Once inside the building Heshke found himself confronted with the usual Titan combination of efficiency and bustle. The corridors literally hummed – he didn’t know from what source. Symbols whose meanings he did not understand signposted the way to various departments. He turned to Brask.

“What is this place?”

“A top secret research station.”

“Is the artifact here?”

Brask nodded. “That’s why this centre was set up – to study the artifact.”

Heshke’s eyebrows rose. “Then how long ago was it found?”

“Just over five years.”

“Five years? And you’ve kept quiet about it all that time?”

Brask smiled distantly. “Patience, Citizen. You’ll understand everything shortly.”

They came to a heavy door guarded by two armed Titans. Brask presented a pass; the door opened with the sigh of a pneumatic lock.

Beyond the guarded door the atmosphere was quieter and more calm. “This leads to the main research area,” Brask told him. “I’ll introduce you to your new colleagues shortly. They begin the day here with an ideological session – would you care to drop in on it? It must be nearly over now.”

Resignedly Heshke nodded. Brask led him down a corridor and they entered a small auditorium. An audience of about two hundred white-smocked men and women faced a large screen which illustrated a commentary by means of a succession of pictures.

The visualisation, Heshke noted, was skilled and professional. The scene at the moment was a soulful one of the sun setting over the forest-clad hills; in the foreground a deep blue sea lapped against a rocky, encrusted shore.

But smoothly the picture merged into a slow collage of viruses and soil bacteria. The sudden transition from the expansive world of forest, sea and sun to the invisible, microscopic world at the boundary of life was, Heshke thought, effective. It caught his attention right away, and he listened with interest to the mature, persuasive voice that accompanied the vidtrack, knitting the brief scenes together into a coherent whole.

“Here we have the germinal essence,” purred the voice on the audtrack. “In these primary particles of life the spirit and essence of the planet Earth has concentrated all its being. By means of a mighty distillation from the potentiality of rock and soil, sun, ocean and lightning, were created these seeds of all future things. From this moment Earth, which before was barren, has produced DNA; and from this DNA, like a giant rising from the sea, there inevitably springs in due season the culmination of the entire process: the entity for which all the rest of Terrestrial life is but a platform. This is known as the culminating essence, or the human essence.”

The pictures that illustrated this speech were swift and dizzying. The virus forms vanished; momentary images of DNA helices, dancing chromosomes and dividing cell nuclei appeared one after the other, interspersed with a swift procession of diverse living species as the stages of evolution unfolded.

At the end of the sequence, to coincide with the speaker’s last words, appeared the image of a young, naked male, godlike both in proportion and feature (and posed no doubt by a suitable Titan). The figure stood with arms outstretched, light streaming around his silhouette from a point source in the background, slowly fading into a picture of Earth swimming in space.

“It follows,” continued the voice soberly, “that evolution is not a series of arbitrary accidents but a whole process, tending toward a predestined end. It follows that by nature Earth produces but one supreme species, this being her destiny, and it follows that this is a law holding for all planets throughout the universe. Earth is our mother, our home, our sustenance. From Earth’s soil we draw our blood. We are her sons; no one shall take her from us.”