The Sterile Millennia

 

The fragment ends. How Floyd Milton’s life continued is not recorded; nor need we think that such a record would necessarily be of interest.

Milton was a broken man — broken not so much by the war as by those conflicts produced by the war in his own mind. The conflicts were beyond his mastering; hence his despair. Despair is one of that curious category of emotions experienced frequently by individuals but rarely by entire communities. Milton despaired; man did not. War continued; man continued.

A point exists in war after which the conflict seems to protract itself almost of its own accord. For when men have lost homes, wives, families, businesses, or whatever else they hold dear, they can see nothing but to fight on, either through hatred or indifference. Year succeeded year. Sometimes the killing was slight, sometimes heavy. The gains were always negligible.

At the same time, the power alignments altered as nations switched allegiances. What had begun as a struggle between opposed ideologies developed into something more ugly: a full-scale colour war.

For four thousand years the colour war lasted, sometimes punctuated by centuries of exhaustion or propagandizing, armistice — or threat-making. At the end, the last strongholds of white resistance were overcome. The white races made their final stand on the moon; in the holocaust that followed, their stock was almost entirely obliterated and the moon converted into a nuclear bonfire which smouldered for the next hundred thousand years.

After this doubtful victory for the blacks there followed a curious period when little exhausted groups of people isolated themselves from their fellows, either intentionally or through indifference. Not only were the dark-skinned races decimated; they were emasculated. Mental and physical exhaustion is the hallmark of the ensuing long Sterile Millennia. Even those drives which up until now had seemed to play a dominant part in man’s affairs — the erotic and the predatory — suffered diminution. Everywhere silence fell.

Various attempts at recovery were made. The tottering economic-agricultural system was propped for several centuries by a vast array of robots, which drew from the land all that the land was capable of yielding. Outlying or self ruling communities were brought under one stringent control. The notorious Mating Centre was set up, governing all marriages and births; only an age without hope could have tolerated its arid regimen.

But mechanical ingenuity was not enough — as it had never been enough — to ward off disaster.

Time unrolled itself like a long carpet, down which man ambled toward extinction.

 

It was the last day of summer in the last year of the eighty-third century AD.

Humming to itself high in the stratosphere, a vane carried J Smithlao, psychodynamician, over the 139th sector of Ing Land. It began to dive. It sank down, finally levelling out to hover over Charles Gunpat’s estate, selecting its course without attention from Smithlao.

For Smithlao this was a routine errand. He had come, as Gunpat’s psychodynamician, to administer a hate-brace to the old man. His dark face was bored as he stared at the replica of outside on his telescreens. Oddly enough, as he did so he caught a glimpse of a man approaching Gunpat’s estate on foot.

“Must be a wild man,” he muttered to himself.

Under the slowing vane, the landscape was as neat as a blueprint. The impoverished fields made impeccable rectangles.

Here and there, one robot machine or another kept nature to its own functional image: not a pea podded without cybernetic supervision; not a bee bumbled among stamens without radar check being kept of its course. Every bird had a number and a call sign, while among each tribe of ants marched the metallic teller ants, telltaling the secrets of the nest back to base. When rain fell, it had its allocated dropping place. The old, comfortable world of random factors had vanished under the pressure of hunger.

Nothing living lived without control. The countless populations of previous centuries and the leechings of war had exhausted the soil. Only the severest parsimony, coupled with ruthless regimentation, produced enough nourishment for a sparse population. Billions had died of starvation; the hundreds who remained lived on starvation’s brink.

In the sterile neatness of the landscape, Gunpat’s estate looked like an insult. Covering five acres, it was a little island of wilderness. Tall and unkempt elms fenced the perimeter, encroaching on the lawns and house. The house itself, the chief one in Sector 139, was built of massive stone blocks. It had to be strong to bear the weight of the servomechanisms which, apart from Gunpat and his mad daughter Ployploy, were its only occupants.

It was as Smithlao dropped below tree level that he saw the human figure plodding toward the estate. For a multitude of reasons, this was a very unlikely sight. Since the great material wealth of the world was now shared among comparatively few people, no one was poor enough to have to walk anywhere. Man’s increasing hatred of Nature, spurred by the notion that it had betrayed him, would make such a walk purgatory — unless the individual were insane, like Ployploy.

Dismissing the figure from his thoughts, Smithlao dropped the vane onto a stretch of stone in front of the building. He was glad to get down; it was a gusty day, and the piled cumulus through which he had descended had been full of turbulence.

Gunpat’s house, with its sightless windows, its towers, its endless terraces, its unnecessary ornamentation, its massive porch, lowered at him like a forsaken wedding cake.

His arrival stimulated immediate activity. Three wheeled robots approached the vane from different directions, swivelling light weapons as they drew near.

Nobody, Smithlao thought, could get in here uninvited. Gunpat was not a friendly man, even by the unfriendly standards of his time; the disgrace of having a daughter like Ployploy had served to accentuate the morose side of his melancholy temperament.

“Identity?” demanded the leading machine. It was ugly and flat, vaguely resembling a toad.

“I am J Smithlao, psychodynamician to Charles Gunpat,” Smithlao replied; he had to go through this procedure every visit. As he spoke, he revealed his face to the machine. It grunted to itself, checking picture and information with its memory. Finally it said, “You are J Smithlao, psychodynamician to Charles Gunpat. Purpose?”

Cursing its monstrous slowness, Smithlao told the robot, “I have an appointment with Charles Gunpat for a hate-brace at ten hours,” and waited while that was digested.

“You have an appointment with Charles Gunpat for a hate-brace at ten hours,” the robot finally confirmed. “Come this way.”

It wheeled about with surprising grace, speaking to the other two robots, reassuring them, repeating mechanically to them, “This is J Smithlao, psychodynamician to Charles Gunpat. He has an appointment with Charles Gunpat for a hate-brace at ten hours,” in case they had not grasped the facts.

Meanwhile, Smithlao spoke to his vane. The part of the cabin containing him detached itself and lowered wheels to the ground. Carrying Smithlao, it followed the other robots toward the big house,

Automatic screens came up, covering windows, as Smithlao moved into the presence of other human beings. He could only see and be seen now via telescreens. Such was the hatred — (equals fear) — man bore for his fellow man, he could not tolerate their regarding him directly.

One following another, the machines climbed along the terraces, through the great porch, where they were covered in a mist of disinfectant, along a labyrinth of corridors, and so into the presence of Charles Gunpat.

Gunpat’s dark face on the screen of his sedan showed only the mildest distaste for the sight of his psychodynamician. He was usually as self-controlled as this; it told against him at his business meetings, where the idea was to cow one’s opponents by splendid displays of rage. For this reason, Smithlao was always summoned to administer a hate-brace when something important loomed on the day’s agenda.

Smithlao’s machine manoeuvred him within a yard of his patient’s image, much closer than courtesy required.

“I’m late,” Smithlao began, matter-of-factly, “because I could not bear to drag myself into your offensive presence one minute sooner. I hoped that if I left it long enough, some happy accident might have removed that stupid nose from your — what shall I call it? — face. Alas, it s still there, with its two nostrils sweeping like rat holes into your skull.”

Observing his patient’s face carefully, Smithlao saw only the faintest stir of irritation. No doubt about it; Gunpat was a hard man to rouse. Fortunately, Smithlao was an expert in his profession; he proceeded to try the insult subtle.

“Why, when it was your turn to go to the Mating Centre, you didn’t even realize that it’s the one time a man has to come out from behind his screen. You thought you could make love by tele! And the result? One dotty daughter — one dotty daughter, Gunpat! Doesn’t it make you weep? Think how your rivals at Automotion must titter at that. ‘Potty Gunpat and his dotty daughter,’ they’ll be saying. ‘Can’t control your genes,’ they’ll be saying.”

The taunts were having their desired effect. A flush spread over the image of Gunpat’s face.

“There’s nothing wrong with Ployploy except that she’s a recessive; you said that yourself!” he snapped.

He was beginning to answer back; that was a good sign. His daughter was always a soft spot in his armour.

“A recessive!” Smithlao sneered. “How far back can you recede? She’s gentle, do you hear me, you with the hair in your ears? She wants to love! He bellowed with ironic laughter. “Why, it’s obscene, Gunnyboy! She couldn’t hate to save her life. She’s no better than a primitive. She’s worse than a primitive — she’s mad!”

“She’s not mad,” Gunpat said, gripping both sides of his screen. At this rate, he would be primed for the conference in ten more minutes.

“Not mad?” the psychodynamician asked, his voice assuming a bantering note. “No, Ployploy’s not mad; the Mating Centre only refused her the right to breed, that’s all. Imperial Government only refused her the right to a televote, that’s all. United Traders only refused her a Consumption Rating, that’s all. Education, Inc., only restricted her to beta recreations, that’s all. She’s a prisoner here because she’s a genius, is that it? You’re crazy, Gunpat, if you don’t think that girl’s stark, staring mad. You’ll be telling me next, out of that grotesque, flapping mouth of yours, that she hasn’t got a white face.”

Gunpat made gobbling sounds.

“You dare to mention that!” he gasped. “And what if her face is — that colour?”

“You ask such fool questions, it’s hardly worth while bothering with you,” Smithlao said mildly. “Your trouble, Gunpat, is that you’re totally incapable of absorbing one single simple historical fact. Ployploy is white because she is a dirty little throwback. Our ancient enemies were white. They occupied this part of the globe until our ancestors rose from the East and took from them the ancient privileges they had so long enjoyed at our expense. Our ancestors intermarried with such of the defeated as survived, right?

“In a few generations, the white strain was obliterated, diluted, lost. A white face has not been seen on earth since before the terrible Age of Overpopulation — fifteen hundred years, let’s say, to be generous. And then — then little Lord Recessive Gunpat throws one up neat as you please. What did they give you at Mating Centre, Gunnyboy, a cave woman?”

Gunpat exploded in fury, shaking his fist at the screen.

“You’re fired, Smithlao,” he snarled. “This time you’ve gone too far, even for a dirty, rotten psycho! Get out! Go on, get out, and never come back!”

Abruptly, he bellowed to his auto-operator to switch him over to the conference. He was just in a ripe mood to deal with Automotion.

As Gunpat’s irate image faded from the screen, Smithlao sighed and relaxed. The hate-brace was accomplished. It was the supreme compliment in his profession to be dismissed by a patient at the end of a session; Gunpat would be the keener to reengage him next time. All the same, Smithlao felt no triumph. In his calling, a thorough exploration of human psychology was needed; he had to know exactly the sorest points in a man’s make-up. By playing on those points deftly enough, he could rouse the man to action.

Without being roused, men were helpless prey to lethargy, bundles of rag carried around by machines. The ancient drives had all but died out.

Smithlao sat where he was, gazing into both past and future.

In exhausting the soil, man had exhausted himself. The psyche and a vitiated topsoil could not exist simultaneously; it was as simple and as logical as that.

Only the failing tides of hate and anger lent man enough impetus to continue at all. Else, he was just a dead hand across his mechanized world.

“So this is how a species becomes extinct!” thought Smithlao, and wondered if anyone else had thought about it. Perhaps Imperial Government knew, but was powerless to do anything; after all, what more could you do than was being done?

Smithlao was a shallow man — inevitable in a caste-bound society so weak that it could not face itself. Having discovered the terrifying problem, he set himself to forget it, to evade its impact, to dodge any personal implications it might have. With a grunt to his sedan, he turned about and ordered himself home.

Since Gunpat’s robots had already left, Smithlao travelled back along the way he had come. He was trundled outside and back to the vane, standing silent below the elms.

Before the sedan incorporated itself back into the vane, a movement caught Smithlao’s eye. Half-concealed by a veranda, Ployploy stood against a corner of the house. With a sudden impulse of curiosity, Smithlao got out of the sedan. The open air stank of roses and clouds and green things turning dark with the thought of autumn. It was frightening for Smithlao, but an adventurous impulse made him go on.

The girl was not looking in his direction; she peered toward the barricade of trees which cut her off from the world. As Smithlao approached, she moved around to the rear of the house, still staring intently. He followed with caution, taking advantage of the cover afforded by a small plantation. A metal gardener nearby continued to wield shears along a grass verge, unaware of his existence.

Ployploy now stood at the back of the house. The wind that rustled her long dress blew leaves against her. It sighed around the weird and desolate garden like fate at a christening, ruining the last of the roses. Later, the tumbling pattern of petals might be sucked from paths, lawn and patio by the steel gardener; now, they made a tiny tide about her feet.

Extravagant architecture overshadowed Ployploy. Here a rococo fancy had mingled with a genius for fantastic portal and roof. Balustrades rose and fell, stairs marched through circular arches, grey and azure eaves swept almost to the ground. But all was sadly neglected. Virginia creeper, already hinting at its glory to come, strove to pull down the marble statuary; troughs of rose petals clogged every sweeping staircase. And all this formed the ideal background for the forlorn figure of Ployploy.

Except for her delicate pink lips, her face was utterly pale. Her hair was black; it hung straight, secured only once at the back of her head, and then fell in a tail to her waist. She looked mad indeed, her melancholy eyes peering toward the great elms as if they would scorch down everything in their line of vision. Smithlao turned to see what she stared at so compellingly.

The wild man he had observed from the air was just breaking through the thickets around the elm boles.

A sudden rain shower came down, rattling among the dry leaves of the shrubbery. It was over in a flash; during the momentary downpour, Ployploy never shifted her position, the wild man never looked up. Then the sun burst through, cascading a pattern of elm shadow over the house, and every flower wore a jewel of rain.

Smithlao reflected on what he had thought in Gunpat’s room about the coming end of man. Now he considered that it would be so easy for Nature, when parasite man was extinct, to begin again.

He waited tensely, knowing a fragment of drama was about to take place before his eyes. Across the sparkling lawn, a tiny tracked thing scuttled, pogoing itself up steps and out of sight through an arch. It was a perimeter guard, off to give the alarm, to warn that an intruder was about.

In a minute it returned. Four big robots accompanied it; one of them Smithlao recognized as the toadlike machine that had challenged his arrival. They threaded their way purposefully among the rosebushes, five differently shaped menaces. The metal gardener muttered to itself, abandoned its clipping, and joined the procession toward the wild man.

“He hasn’t a dog’s chance,” Smithlao said to himself. The phrase held significance; dogs, having been declared redundant, had long since been exterminated.

By now the wild man had broken through the barrier of the thicket and come to the lawn’s edge. He pulled a leafy branchlet off a shrub and stuck it into his shirt so that it partially obscured his face; he tucked another branch into his trousers. As the robots drew nearer, he raised his arms above his head, a third branch clasped in his hands.

The six machines encircled him, humming and chugging quietly.

The toad robot clicked, as if deciding on what it should do next.

“Identity?” it demanded.

“I am a rose tree,” the wild man said.

“Rose trees bear roses. You do not bear roses. You are not a rose tree,” the steel toad said. Its biggest, highest gun came level with the wild man’s chest.

“My roses are dead already,” the wild man said, “but I have leaves still. Ask the gardener if you do not know what leaves are.”

“This thing is a thing with leaves,” the gardener said at once in a deep voice.

“I know what leaves are. I have no need to ask the gardener. Leaves are the foliage of trees and plants which give them their green appearance,” the toad said.

“This thing is a thing with leaves,” the gardener repeated, adding, to clarify the matter, “the leaves give it a green appearance.”

“I know what things with leaves are,” said the toad. “I have no need to ask you, gardener.”

It looked as if an interesting, if limited, argument would break out between the two robots, but at this moment one of the other machines said something.

“This rose tree can speak,” it declared.

“Rose trees cannot speak,” the toad said at once. Having produced this pearl, it was silent, probably mulling over the strangeness of life. Then it said, slowly, “Therefore either this rose tree is not a rose tree or this rose tree did not speak.”

“This thing is a thing with leaves,” began the gardener doggedly. “But it is not a rose tree. Rose trees have stipules. This thing has no stipules. It is a breaking buckthorn. The breaking buckthorn is also known as the berry-bearing alder.”

This specialized knowledge extended beyond the vocabulary of the toad. A strained silence ensued.

“I am a breaking buckthorn,” the wild man said, still holding his pose. “I cannot speak.”

At this, all the machines began to talk at once, lumbering around him for better sightings as they did so, and barging into each other in the process. Finally, the toad’s voice broke above the metallic babble.

“Whatever this thing with leaves is, we must uproot it. We must kill it,” it said.

“You may not uproot it. That is a job only for gardeners,” the gardener said. Setting its shears rotating, telescoping out a mighty scythe, it charged at the toad.

Its crude weapons were ineffectual against the toad’s armour. The latter, however, realized that they had reached a deadlock in their investigation.

“We will retire to ask Charles Gunpat what we shall do,” it said. “Come this way.”

“Charles Gunpat is in conference,” the scout robot said. “Charles Gunpat must not be disturbed in conference. Therefore we must not disturb Charles Gunpat.”

“Therefore we must wait for Charles Gunpat,” said the metal toad imperturbably. He led the way close by where Smithlao stood; they all climbed the steps and disappeared into the house.

Smithlao could only marvel at the wild man’s coolness. It was a miracle he still survived. Had he attempted to run, he would have been killed instantly; that was a situation the robots had been taught to cope with. Nor would his double talk, inspired as it was, have saved him had he been faced with only one robot, for the robot is a single-minded creature.

In company, however, they suffer from a trouble which sometimes afflicts human gatherings: a tendency to show off their logic at the expense of the object of the meeting.

Logic! That was the trouble. It was all robots had to go by. Man had logic and intelligence; he got along better than his robots. Nevertheless, he was losing the battle against Nature. And Nature, like the robots, used only logic. It was a paradox against which man could not prevail.

As soon as the file of machines had disappeared into the house, the wild man ran across the lawn and climbed the first flight of steps, working toward the motionless girl. Smithlao slid behind a beech tree to be nearer to them; he felt like an evildoer, watching them without an interposed screen, but could not tear himself away; he sensed that here was a little charade which marked the end of all that man had been. The wild man was approaching Ployploy now, moving slowly across the terrace as if hypnotized.

She spoke first.

“You were resourceful,” she said to him. Her white face carried pink in its cheeks now.

“I have been resourceful for a whole year to get to you,” he said. Now that his resources had brought him face to face with her, they failed, and left him standing helplessly. He was a thin young man, thin and sinewy, his clothes worn, his beard unkempt. His eyes never left Ployploy’s.

“How did you find me?” Ployploy asked. Her voice, unlike the wild man’s, barely reached Smithlao. A haunting look, as fitful as the autumn, played on her face.

“It was a sort of instinct — as if I heard you calling,” the wild man said. “Everything that could possibly be wrong with the world is wrong. Perhaps you are the only woman in the world who loves; perhaps I am the only man who could answer. So I came. It was natural; I could not help myself.”

“I always dreamed someone would come,” she said. “And for weeks I have felt — known — you were coming. Oh, my darling...”

“We must be quick, my sweet,” he said. “I once worked with robots — perhaps you could see I know them. When we get away from here, I have a robot plane that will take us away — anywhere; an island, perhaps, where things are not so desperate. But we must go before your father’s machines return.”

He took a step toward Ployploy.

She held up her hand.

“Wait!” she implored him. “It’s not so simple. You must know something... The — the Mating Centre refused me the right to breed. You ought not to touch me.”

“I hate the Mating Centre!” the wild man said. “I hate everything to do with the ruling regime. Nothing they have done can affect us now.”

Ployploy clenched her hands behind her back. The faint colour had left her cheeks. A fresh shower of dead rose petals blew against her dress, mocking her.

“It’s so hopeless,” she said. “You don’t understand...”

His wildness was humbled now.

“I threw up everything to come to you,” he said. “I only desire to take you into my arms.”

“Is that all, really all, all you want in the world?” she asked.

“I swear it,” he said simply.

“Then come and touch me,” Ployploy said.

At that moment Smithlao saw a tear glint in her eye, bright and ripe as a raindrop.

The hand the wild man extended to her was lifted to her cheek. She stood unflinching on the grey terrace, her head high. And so his loving fingers gently brushed her countenance. The explosion was almost instantaneous.

Almost. It took the traitorous nerves in Ployploy’s epidermis but a fraction of a second to analyse the touch as belonging to another human being and to convey their findings to the nerve centre; there, the neurological block implanted by the Mating Centre in all mating rejects, to guard against just such a contingency, went into action at once. Every cell in Ployploy’s body yielded up its energy in one consuming gasp. It was so intense that the wild man was also killed by the detonation.

Just for a second, a new wind lived among the winds of Earth.

Yes, thought Smithlao, turning away, you had to admit it was neat. And, again, logical. In a world on the brink of starvation, how else stop undesirables from breeding? Logic against logic, man’s pitted against Nature’s — that was what caused all the tears of the world.

He made off through the dripping plantation, heading back for the vane, anxious to be away before Gunpat’s robots reappeared. The shattered figures on the terrace were still, already half-covered with leaves and petals. The wind roared like a great triumphant sea in the treetops. It was hardly odd that the wild man did not know about the neurological trigger; few people did, barring psychodynamicians and the Mating Council — and, of course, the rejects themselves. Yes, Ployploy had known what would happen. She had chosen deliberately to die like that.

“Always said she was mad!” Smithlao told himself. He chuckled as he climbed into his machine, shaking his head over her lunacy.

It would be a wonderful point with which to rile Charles Gunpat the next time he needed a hate-brace.