Classic Audiobook Collection - The Chapter Ends by Poul Anderson ~ Full Audiobook [scifi]

Episode Date: March 15, 2023

The Chapter Ends by Poul Anderson audiobook. Genre: scifi Set tens of thousands of years in the future, The Chapter Ends finds Earth reduced to a quiet backwater - a beautiful, half-forgotten cradle of humanity where a few million people live simple lives while the wider human civilization thrives among the stars. That fragile peace shatters when offworld authorities decide that Earth must be cleared, a decision driven less by sentiment than by distant, cold interstellar politics. Sent to oversee the final evacuation is Jorun, a star-traveler and psychotechnician whose implants and training let him read the currents of belief, fear, and loyalty in the people he has been ordered to move. On the ground, he meets Julith, a young woman pulled between curiosity about the greater universe and love for the only world she has ever known. And he faces his hardest case in Kormt, an old local leader whose stubborn refusal to leave is not mere defiance, but a worldview rooted in soil, memory, and the meaning of home. As departure day approaches, Jorun must decide what can be persuaded, what must be honored, and what is lost when a civilization turns the page on its own birthplace. For ad-free listening try our premium subscription Chapters (Approximate) (00:00:00) Chapter 1 (00:11:56) Chapter 2 (00:24:52) Chapter 3 (00:42:33) Chapter 4 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

The chapter ends by Paul Anderson, Part 1. No, said the old man. But you don't realize what it means, said Joran. You don't know what you're saying. The old man, carmpt of Huerdar, Girlog's son, and speaker for Solis Township, shook his head till the long, grizzled locks, swirled around his wide shoulders. I have thought it through, he said. His voice was deep and slow and implacable.

You gave me five years to think about it, and my answer is no. Joran felt a weariness rise within him. It had been like this for days now, weeks, and it was still like trying to knock down a mountain. You beat on its rocky flanks till your hands were bloody, And still the mountain stood there, sunlight on its high snowfields and in the forest that rustled up its slopes, and it did not really notice you. You were a thin, brief buzz between two long nights, but the mountain was forever. You haven't thought at all, he said with a rudeness born of exhaustion.

You only reacted unthinkingly to a dead symbol. It's not a human reaction, even. Even it's a verbal reflex. Kormp's eyes meshed in crowfeet were serene and steady under the thick gray brows. He smiled a little in his long beard, but made no other reply. Had he simply let the insult glide off him, or had he not understood it at all? There was no real talking to these peasants. Too many millennia lay between, and you couldn't shout across that gulf.

"'Well,' said Joran, "'the ships will be here tomorrow or the next day, and it'll take another day or so to get your people aboard. You'll have that long to decide, but after that it'll be too late. Think about it. I beg of you. As for me, I'll be too busy to argue further.' "'You are a good man,' said Comte,

and a wise one in your fashion. "'But you are blind. There is something dead inside you.' He waved one huge gnarled hand. Look around you, Joran, O Fulchus. This is Earth. This is the old home of all humankind. You cannot go off and forget it.

Man cannot do so. It is in him, in his blood and bones and bones and soul. He will carry earth within him forever. Joran's eyes traveled across the arc of the hand. He stood on the edge of the town. Beneath him were its houses, low, white, half-timbered, roofed with thatcher red tile, smoke rising from the chimneys, carved galleries overhung the narrow, cobbled, crazily twisting streets. He heard the noise of wheels and wooden clogs, the shouts of children at play, beyond that were trees and the incredible ruined walls of Saul City.

In front of him the wooded hills were cleared, and a gentle landscape of neat fields and orchards rolled down toward the distant glitter of the sea. Scattered farm buildings, drowsy cattle, winding gravel roads, fence walls of ancient marble and granite, all dreaming under the sun. He drew a deep breath. It was pungent in his nostrils. It smelled of leaf mold, Ploughed Earth baking of the warmth, summery trees and gardens, a remote ocean odor of salt and kelp and fish. He thought that no two planets ever had quite the same smell, and that none was as rich as terrors.

This is a fair world, he said slowly. It is the only one, said Kormt. Man came from here, and to this in the end he must return. turn. I wonder. Joran sighed. Take me. Not one atom of my body was from this soil before I landed. My people lived on focus for ages and changed to meet its conditions. They would not be happy on Terra. "'The atoms are nothing,' said Karmt. "'It is the form which matters, and that was given to you by Earth. Joran studied him for a moment. Karmt was like most of this planet's ten million or so people, a dark, stocky folk,

though there were more blonde and red-haired throwbacks here than in the rest of the galaxy. He was old for a primitive untreated by medical science. He must be almost two hundred years old, but his back was straight and his stride firm. The coarse, Jutnosed face held an odd strength. Jorin was nearing his thousandth birthday, but couldn't help feeling like a child in carmst presence. That didn't make sense. These few dwellers on Terra were a backward and impoverished race of peasants and handcraftsmen. They were ignorant and unadventurous.

They had been static for more thousands of years than anyone knew. What could they have to say to the ancient and mighty civilization, which had almost forgotten their little planet." Karmt looked at the declining sun. I must go now, he said. There are evening chores to do. I will be in town to-night if you should wish to see me. I probably will, said Joran.

There's a lot to do, readying the evacuation. You're a big help. The old man bowed with grave courtesy, turned, and walked off down the road. He wore the common costume of Terran men, as archaic in style as in its woven fabric material. Hat, jacket, loose trousers, a long staff in his hand. Contrasting the drab blue of carmst dress, Jorin's vivid tunic of shifting rainbow hues was like a flame.

The psychotechnician sighed again watching him go. He liked the old fellow. It would be criminal to leave him here alone, but the law forbade force, physical or mental, and the integrator of Corizuno wasn't going to care whether or not one aged man stayed behind. Their job was to get the race off Terra. A lovely world. Jorin's thin mobile features, pale-skinned and large-eyed turned around the horizon. A fair world we came from. There were more beautiful planets in the galaxy's swarming myriads, the indigo-world ocean

of Loa, jeweled with islands, the heaven-divying mountains of Sharang, the sky of Jarab that seemed to drip light, oh, many and many, but there was only one earth. Joran remembered his first sight of this world, hanging free in space, to watch it after the grueling ten-day run, thirty thousand light years from Corizuno. It was blue as it turned before his eyes. A burnished turquoise shield blazoned with the living green and brown of its lands, and the poles were crowned with a flimmering haze of Aurora. The belts that streaked its face and blurred the continents were cloud, wind, and water, and the gray rush of rain like a benediction from heaven.

Beyond the planet hung its moon, a scarred golden crescent, and he had wondered how many generations of men had looked up to it, or watched its light like a broken bridge across moving waters. Against the enormous cold of the sky, utter black, out to the distant coils of the nebula, thronging with a million frosty points of diamond-hard blaze that were the stars. Earth had stood as a sign of haven. To Joran, who came from Galactic Center and its uncountable hosts of suns, heaven was bare. This was the outer fringe where the stars thinned away toward hideous immensity.

He had shivered a little, drawn the envelope of air and warmth closer about him, with a convulsive movement. The silence drummed in his head. Then he streaked for the North Pole rendezvous of his group. Well, he thought now, we have a pretty routine job. The first expedition here five years ago prepared the natives for the fact they'd have to go. Our party simply has to organize these docile peasants in time for the ships. But it had meant a lot of hard work, and he was tired. It would be good to finish the job and get back home.

Or would it? He thought of flying with Zarek, his team-mate, from the rendezvous to this area assigned as theirs. Plains like oceans of grass, wind rippled, darkened with the herds of wild cattle whose hoof-beats were a thunder in the earth, forests, hundreds of kilometers of old and mighty trees, rivers piercing them in a long steel gleam, lakes where fish leaped, spilling sunshine like warm rain, radiance so bright it hurt his eyes, cloud shadows swift across the land. It had all been empty of men, but still there was a vitality here, which was almost frightening

to Jorren. His own grim world of moors and crags and spindrift seas was a niggered beside this. Here life covered the earth, filled the oceans, and made the heavens clangorous around him. He wondered if the driving energy within man, the force which had raised him to the stars, made him half-god and half-demon, if that was the legacy of terror. Well, man had changed. Over the thousands of years, natural and controlled adaptation had fitted him to the worlds he had colonized, and most of his many races could not now feel at home here. Jaron thought of his own party, round amber-skinned chuli from a tropic world, complaining bitterly about the cold and dryness, gay young Cluthay, gangling and bold-chested,

sophisticated Tullyuvena of the flowing dark hair and the lustrous eyes. No, to them, Earth was only one more planet out of thousands they had seen in their long lives. and I am a sentimental fool. End of Part 1. Part 2 of the chapter ends by Paul Anderson. He could have willed the vague regret out of his strain nervous system, but he didn't want to. This was the last time human eyes would ever look on Earth, and somehow Joran felt that it should be more to him than just another psychotechic job.

Hello, good sir. He turned at the voice, and forced his tired lips into a friendly smile. Hello, Judith, he said. It was a wise policy to learn the names of the townspeople at least, and she was a great-great-granddaughter of the speaker. She was some thirteen or fourteen years old, a freckle-faced child with a shy smile and steady green eyes. There was a certain awkward grace about her, and she seemed more imaginative than most of her stolid grace. She curtsied quaintly for him, her bare foot reaching out under the long smock, which was daily female dress here. "'Are you busy, good sir?' she asked.

"'Well, not too much,' said Jorin. He was glad of a chance to talk. It silenced his thoughts. What can I do for you?' "'I wondered,' she hesitated then, breathlessly. I wondered if you could give me a lift down to the beach. For only an hour or two. It's too far to walk there before I have to go home.

And I can't borrow a car or even a horse, if it won't be any trouble, sir. Hmm. Shouldn't you be at home now? Isn't there milking or so on to do? Oh, I don't live on a farm, good, sir. My father is a baker. Yes, yes, so he is. I should have remembered.

Joran considered for an instant. There was enough to do in town, and it wasn't fair for him to play hooky while Zarek worked alone. Why do you want to go to the beach, Joleth? We'll be busy packing up, she said, starting tomorrow, I guess. This is my last chance to see it. Joran's mouth twisted a little. All right, he said I'll take you. You are very kind, good sir, she said gravely.

He didn't reply, but held up. out his arm, and she clasped it with one hand, while her other arm gripped his waist. The generator inside his skull responded to his will, reaching out and clawing itself to the fabric of forces and energies which was physical space. They rose quietly and went so slowly seaward that he didn't have to raise a windscreen. Will we be able to fly like this when we get to the stars? She asked. I'm afraid not, Joleth, he said.

You see, the people of my civilization are born this way. Thousands of years ago, men learned how to control the great basic forces of the cosmos with only a small bit of energy. Finally, they used artificial mutation, that is, they changed themselves slowly over many generations, until their brains grew a new part that could generate this controlling force. We can now even fly between the stars by this power. But your people don't have that brain, so we had to build spaceships to take you away. I see, she said. Your great-great-great-grandchildren can be like us if your people want to be changed,

thus, he said. They didn't want to change before, she answered. I don't think they'll do it now, even in their new home. Her voice held no bitterness. It was an acceptance. Privately, Joran doubted it. The psychic shock of this uprooting would be bound to destroy the old traditions of the Terrans. It would not take many centuries before they were culturally assimilated by galactic civilization. Assimulated. Nice euphemism. Why not just say eaten? They landed on the beach. It was broad and white, running in dunes from the thin, salt-streaked grass to the roar and tumble of the surf. The sun was low over the watery horizon, filling the damp, blowing air with gold.

Joran could almost look directly at its huge disc. He sat down. The sand gritted tenily under him, and the wind rumpled his hair and filled his nostrils with its sharp, wet smell. He picked up a conch and turned it over in his fingers, wondering at the the intricate architecture of it. If you hold it to your ear, said Joleth, you can hear the sea." Her childish voice was curiously tender around the rough syllables of Earth's language.

He nodded and obeyed her hint. It was only the small pulse of blood within him. You heard the same thing out in the great hollow silence of space. But it did sing of restless immensities, wind and foam, and the long wave of the long wave marching under the moon. I have two of them myself, said Joleth. I want them so I can always remember this beach. And my children and their children will hold them to and hear our sea talking.

She folded his hands around the shell. You keep this one for yourself. Thank you, he said, I will. The comers rolled in, booming and sprouting against the land. The Terrans called them the horse-es-and-y-horse. of God. A thin cloud in the west was turning rose and gold. "'Are there oceans on our new planet?' asked Julith. "'Yes,' he said.

"'It's the most earth-like world we could find that wasn't already inhabited. You'll be happy there.' But the trees and grasses, the soil and the fruits thereof, the beasts of the field and the birds of the air and the fish of the waters beneath, form and color, smell and sound, taste and texture, everything is different. Is alien. The difference is small, subtle, but it is the abyss of two billion years

of separate evolution, and no other world can ever quite be Earth. Judith looked straight at him with solemn eyes. Are you folks afraid of Hulduvians? She asked. Why, no, he said, of course not. Then why are you giving Earth to them? It was a soft question, but it trembled just a little.

I thought all your people understood the reason by now, said Joran. Civilization, the civilization of man and his non-human allies, has moved inward toward the great star clusters of galactic center. This part of space means nothing to us anymore. It's almost a desert. you haven't seen starlight till you've seen by sagittarius now the hulduvians are another civilization they're not the least bit like us they live on big poisonous worlds like jupiter and saturn i think they would seem like pretty nice monsters if they weren't so alien to us that neither side can really understand the other they use the cosmic energies too but in a different way and their way interferes with ours, just as ours interferes with theirs, different brains, you see.

Anyway, it was decided that the two civilizations would get along best by just staying away from each other. If they divided up the galaxy between them, there would be no interference. It would be too far from one civilization to the other. The Hildovians were really very nice about it. They were willing to take the outer rim, even if there are fewer star, and let us have the center. So, by the agreement, we've got to have all men and manlike beings out of their territory before they come to settle in, just as they'll move out of ours. Their colonists won't be coming to Jupiter and Saturn for centuries yet.

But even so, we have to clear the serious sector now, because there will be a lot of work to do elsewhere. Fortunately, there are only a few people living in this whole part of space. the serious sector has been an isolated prim a quiet region since the first empire fell fifty thousand years ago julith's voice rose a little but those people are us and the folks of alpha centauri and proxion and syrius and oh hundreds of other stores yet all of you together are only one tiny drop in the quadrillions of the galaxy don't you see julith You have to move for the good of all of us." Yes, she said, yes, I know all that. She got up shaking herself, let's go swimming.

Joran smiled and shook his head. No, I'll wait for you if you want to go. She nodded and ran off down the beach, sheltering behind a dune to put on a bathing suit. The Terrans had a nudity taboo in spite of the mild intergalactic climate, Typical primitive irrationality. Jaron lay back, folding his arms behind his head, and looked up at the darkening sky. The evening star twinkled forth, low and white, on the dusk blue horizon.

Venus, or was it Mercury, he wasn't sure. He wished he knew more about the early history of the solar system. The first men to ride their thunderous rockets out to die on unknown hell worlds. the first clumsy steps toward the stars. He could look it up in the archives of Corizuno, but he knew he never would. Too much else to do, too much to remember. Probably less than one percent of mankind's throngs even knew where Earth was today, though for a while it had been quite a tourist center,

but that was perhaps thirty thousand years ago. Because this world, out of all the billions, has certain physical characteristics, he thought, my race has made them into standards. Our basic units of length and time and acceleration, our comparisons by which we classify the swarming planets of the galaxy. They all go back ultimately to Earth. We bear that unspoken memorial to our birthplace within our whole civilization, and we bear it forever, but has she given us more than that? Are our own cells, body and minds and

dreams? Are they also the children of earth? Now he was thinking like Comte, stubborn old Comte, who clung with such a blind strength to this land simply because it was his. When you considered all the races of this wonder-footed species, how many of them there were, how many kinds of man between the stars, and yet they all walked upright. They all had two eyes and a nose between and a mouth below. They were all cells of that great and ancient culture which had begun here, eons past. With the first hairy half-man who kindled a fire against night, if Earth had not had darkness and cold and prowling beasts, oxygen and cellulose in Flint, that culture might never have gestated.

I'm getting unlogical, too tired, nerves worn too thin, psychosomatic control slipping. Now Earth is becoming some obscure mother symbol for me, or has she always been one for the whole race of us? A seagull cried harshly overhead and soared from view. The sunset was smoldering away and dusk rose like four, fog out of the ground. Juleith came running back to him, her face indistinct in the gloom.

She was breathing hard, and he couldn't tell if the catch in her voice was laughter or weeping. I'd better be getting home, she said. End of Part two. Part three of the chapter ends by Paul Anderson. This Libravox recording is in the public domain. Part three. They flew slowly.

back. The town was a yellow twinkle of lights, warmth gleaming from windows across many empty kilometers. Joran set the girl down outside her home. "'Thank you, good sir,' she said, gritsying. "'Won't you come into dinner?' "'Well.' The door opened, etching the girl black against the ruddyness inside. Joran's luminous tunic made him like a torch in the dark. Why, it's the star man, said a woman's voice. I took your daughter for a swim, he explained. I hope you don't mind.

And if we did, what would it matter? Grumbled a bass tone. Joran recognized, Comte, the old man must have come as a guest from his form on the outskirts. What could we do about it? Now, Granthor, that's no way to talk to the gentleman, said the woman. He's been very kind. Won't you come eat with us, good sir?' Jaron refused twice in case they were only being polite, then accepted gladly enough.

He was tired of cookery at the inn where he and Zarek boarded. Thank you. He entered, ducking under the low door. A single, long, smoky-rafter room was kitchen, dining-room, and parlor. Doors led off to the sleeping quarters. It was furnished with a clumsy elegance. skin rugs, oak wains coating, carved pillars, glowing ornaments of hammered copper. A radium clock, which must be incredibly old, stood on the stone mantle above a snapping

fire. A chemical-powered gun, obviously of local manufacture, hung over it. Joleth's parents, a plain, quiet, peasant couple, conducted him to the end of the wooden table, while half a dozen children watched him with large eyes. The younger children were the only Terrans who seemed to find this removal and adventure. The meal was good and plentiful. Meat, vegetables, bread, beer, milk, ice cream, coffee, all of it from the farms hereabouts. There wasn't much trade between the few thousand communities on Earth. They were practically self-sufficient.

The company ate in silence. as was the custom here. When they were finished, Joran wanted to go, but it would have been rude, to leave immediately. He went over to a chair by the fireplace across from the one in which Compt sprawled. The old man took out a big, bold pipe, and began stuffing it. Shadows wove across his seamed brown face. His eyes were a gleam out of darkness. "'I'll go down to City Hall with you soon,' he said. I imagine that's where the work is going on." "'Yes,' said Joran.

"'I can relieve Zarek at it. I'd appreciate it if you did come, good sir. Your influence is very steadying on these people.' "'It should be,' said Compt. "'I've been there speaker for almost a hundred years.' "'And my father, Gerlog, was before me, and his father, Compt, was before him. He took a brand from the fire and held it over his pipe. pipe, puffing hard, looking up adjourned through tangled brows.

Who was your great-grandfather? Why, I don't know. I imagine he's still alive somewhere, but I thought so. No marriage, no family, no home, no tradition." Carp shook his massive head slowly. "'Hi pity you, Galactics. Now, please, good sir. Damn it all, the old Clod Hopper could get as irritating as a faulty computer.

We have records that go back to before man left this planet. Records of everything. It is you who have forgotten. Carpnt smiled and puffed blue clouds at him. That's not what I meant. Do you mean you think it is good for men to live a life that is unchanging? That is just the same from century to century, no new dreams, no new triumphs? always the same grubbing rounds of days?

I cannot agree. Joran's mind flickered over history, trying to evaluate the basic motivations of his opponent. Partly cultural, partly biological, that must be it. Once, Terra had been the center of the civilized universe. But the long migration starward, especially after the fall of the First Empire, drained off the most venturesome elements of the population. That drain went on for thousands of years.

Saul was backward, ruined, and impoverished by the remorseless price of empire, helpless before the storms of barbarian conquest that swept back and forth between the stars. Even after peace was restored, there was nothing to hold a young man or woman of vitality and imagination here, not when you could go to our galactic center and join the new civilization building out there. Space traffic came ever less frequently to Saul. Old machines rusted away and were not replaced. Best to get out there while there was still time. Eventually there was a fixed psychosomatic type,

one which lived close to the land in primitive changeless communities and isolated farmsteads, a type content to gain its simple needs by the labor of hand, horse, or an occasional battered engine. a culture grew up which increased that rigidity so few had visited earth in the past several thousand years perhaps one outsider a century stopping briefly on his way to somewhere else that there was no challenge or encouragement to alter the terrans didn't want more people more machines more anything they wished only to remain as they were you couldn't call them stagnant their life was too healthy, their civilization too rich in its own way, folk art, folk music, ceremony, religion, the intimacy of family life which the Galactics had lost, for that term, but to one who flew between the streaming suns, it was a small existence.

Corp's voice broke in on his reverie. Dreams, triumphs, work, deeds, love and life and finally death, and the long sleep in the earth, he said. Why should we want to change them? They never grow old. They are new for each child that is born. Well, said Joran and stopped, you couldn't really answer that kind of logic.

It wasn't logic at all, but something deeper. Well, he started over after a while. As you know, this evacuation was forced on us, too. We don't want to move you, but we must. "'Oh, yes,' said Karmt. "'You have been very nice about it. It would have been easier, in a way, if you'd come with fire and gun and chains for us like the barbarians did long ago.

We could have understood you better then.' "'At best it will be hard for your people,' said Joran. "'It will be a shock, and they'll need leaders to guide them through it. You have a duty to help them out there, good sir?' "'Maybe.' "'Carped blew a series of smoke. Rook rings at his youngest descendant, three years old, who crowed with laughter and climbed up on his knee.

But they'll manage. You can't seem to realize," said Jorin, that you are the last man on earth who refuses to go. You will be alone. For the rest of your life! We couldn't come back for you later under any circumstances, because there will be holduvian colonies between Saul and Sagittarius which we would disturb in a passage. You'll be alone, I say."

Corempt shrugged. I'm too old to change my ways. There can't be many years left me anyway. I can live well, just off the food stores that'll be left here. He ruffled the child's hair, but his face drew into a scowl. Now, no more of that, good, sir, if you please, I'm tired of this argument. Doren nodded and fell into the silence that held the rest. Terrans would sometimes sit for hours without talking, content to be in each other's nearness. He thought of Comte, Gerlaug's son, last man on earth, all together alone, living alone, and

dying alone, and yet he reflected, was that solitude any greater than the one in which all men dwelt all their days? Presently the speaker set the child down, knocked out his pipe and rose. "'Come good, sir,' he said, reaching for his staff. "'Let us go.' They walked side by side down the street, under the dim lamps, and passed the yellow windows. Becobbles gave back their footfalls in a dull clatter. Once in a while they passed someone else, a vague figure which bowed to Comte. Only one did not notice them, an old woman who walked crying between the high walls.

They say it is never night on your worlds, said Kormt. Jaron threw him a sidelong glance. His face was a strong jutting of highlights from sliding shadow. Some planets have been given luminous skies, said the technician, and a few still have cities, too, where there is always light. But when every man can control the cosmic energies, there is no reason for us to live together. most of us dwell far apart.

There are very dark nights on my own world, and I cannot see any other home from my own, just the moors. It must be a strange life, said Karmt, belonging to no one. He came out on the market square, a broad, paved space walled in by houses. There was a fountain in the middle, and a statue dug out of the ruins had been placed there.

It was broken, one arm gone, but still the white, slim, figure of the dancing girl stood with youth and laughter forever under the sky of earth. Joran knew that lovers were wont to meet here, and briefly, irrationally, he wondered how lonely the girl would be in all the millions of years to come. The city hall lay at the farther end of the square, big and dark, its eaves carved with dragons and the gables topped with wings-spreading birds. It was an old building. Nobody knew how many generations of men had gathered here.

A long, patient line of folk stood outside it, shuffling in one by one to the registry desk, emerging they went off quietly into the darkness, toward the temporary shelters erected for them. Walking by the line, Joran picked faces out of the shadows. There was a young mother holding a crying child, her head bent over it in a timeless pose, murmuring to soothe it. There was a mechanic still sooty from his work, smiling wearily at some tired joke of the man behind him. There was a scowling, black-browed peasant who muttered a curse as Joran went by. The rest seemed to accept their fate meekly enough.

There was a priest, his head bowed, alone with his God. There was a younger man, his hands clenching and unclenching, big, helpless hands, and Jaron heard him saying to someone else, If they could have waited till after the harvest, I hate to let good grain stand in the field. Jorin went into the main room toward the desk at the head of the line. Hulking, hairless, Zarek was patiently questioning each of the hundreds who came had in hand before him. Name, age, sex.

occupation, dependence, special needs or desires. He punches the answers out on the recorder machine. Half a million lives were held in its electronic memory. Oh, there you are. His base rumbled. Where have you been? I had to do some concy work, said Joran. That was a private code term among many others.

Concy conciliation. Anything to make the evacuation go smoothly. Sorry to be so late. I'll take over now." All right. I think we can wind the whole thing up by midnight." Sarik smiled at Kermt. Glad you came, good sir.

There are a few people I'd like you to talk to. He gestured at half a dozen seated in the rear of the room. Certain complaints were best handled by native leaders. Kormt nodded and strode over to the folk. Duren heard a man begin some long-winded explanation. He wanted to take his own plow along. He'd made it himself, and there was no better plow in the universe. But the starman said there wouldn't be room.

They'll furnish us with all the stuff we need, son, said Kormt. But it's my plow, said the man, his fingers twisted his cap. Kormt sat down and began soothing him. The head of the line waited a few meters off, while Jorin took Zarek's place. Been a long grind. said the latter. About done now, though, and will I be glad to see the last of this planet?' "'I don't know,' said Joran.

"'It's a lovely world. I don't think I've ever seen a more beautiful one.' Zerick snorted. "'Me for fun bar. I can't wait to sit on the terrace of the scarlet sea. Fern trees and red grass all around, a glass of oil in my hand, and the crystal geysers in front of me. You're a funny one, Joran."

The Fokysian shrugged slender shoulders. Zerick clapped him on the back and went out for supper and sleep. Joran beckoned to the next Terran and settled down to the long, almost mindless routine of registration. He was interrupted once by Comte, who yawned mightily and bade him good-night. Otherwise it was a steady, half-conscious interval in which one anonymous face after another passed by. He was dimly surprised when the last one came up.

This was a plump, cheerful, middle-aged fellow with small, shrewd eyes, a little more colorfully dressed than the others. He gave his occupation as merchant, a minor tradesman, he explained, dealing in the little things that it was more convenient for the peasants to buy than to manufacture themselves. "'I hope you haven't been waiting too long,' said Joran. "'Conty's statement. Oh, no, the merchant grinned.

I knew those dumb farmers would be here for hours, so I just went to bed and got up half an hour ago when it was about over. Clever! Jarin rose sighed and stretched. The big room was cavernously empty. Its lights a harsh glare. It was very quiet here. Well, sir, I'm a middle-in smart chap.

If I say it as shouldn't, and you know I'm a little. I'd like to express my appreciation of all you're doing for us." Can't say we're doing much." Jaron locked the machine. Oh, the apple knockers may not like it, but really good, sir. This hasn't been any place for a man of enterprise. It's dead. I'd have got out long ago if there'd been any transportation.

Now, when we're getting back into civilization, there'll be some real opportunities. I'll make my pile inside of five years, you bet. Joran smiled, but there was a bleakness in him. What chance would this barbarian have even to get near the galactic work of civilization, let alone comprehend it or take part in it? He hoped the little fellow wouldn't break his heart trying. Well, he said good-night and good luck to you. Good-night, sir.

We'll meet again, I trust. Joran switched off the light and went out into the square. It was completely deserted. The moon was up now, almost full, and its cold radiance dimmed the lamps. He heard a dog howling far off. The dogs of Earth, such as weren't taken along, would be lonely, too. Well, he thought, Hajab's over. Tomorrow or the next day the ships come.

End of Part 3. Part 4 of the Chapter Ends by Paul Anderson. This Librevox recording is in the Pops. public domain. Part 4 He felt very tired, but didn't want to sleep, and willed himself back to alertness. There hadn't been much chance to inspect the ruins, and he felt it would be appropriate to see them by moonlight.

Rising into the air, he ghosted over roofs and trees until he came to the dead city. For a while he hovered in the sky like dark velvet. A faint breeze murmured around him, and he heard the remote noise. of crickets and the sea. But stillness enveloped it all. There was no real sound. Saul City, capital of the legendary First Empire, had been enormous. It must have sprawled over forty or fifty thousand square kilometers when it was in its prime, when it was the gay and wicked heart of human civilization and swollen with the life-blood of the stars. And yet those who built it had been men of taste. They had sought out genius to create it for them. The

city was not a collection of buildings. It was a balanced hole, radiating from the mighty peaks of the central palace, through colonnades and parks and leaping skyways, out to the temple-like villas of the rulers. For all its monstrous size it had been a fairy sight, A woven lace of polished metal and white, black, red stone, colored plastic, music, and light. Everywhere, light. Bombarded from space, sacked again and again by the barbarian hordes, who swarmed maggot-like through the bones of the slain empire, weathered, shaken by the slow sliding of earth's crust, pried apart by patient, delicate roots, dug over by hundreds of generations of archaeology,

treasure-seekers, the idly curious, made a quarry of metal and stone for the ignorant peasants who finally huddled about it. Still, its empty walls and blind windows, crumbling arches and toppled pillars, held a ghost of beauty and magnificence which was like a half-remembered dream, a dream the whole race had once had. And now we're waking up. Jaron moved silently over the ruins. Trees growing between tumble blocks, dappled them with moonlight and shadow. The marble was very white and fair against darkness. He hovered by a broken karyatid, marveling at its exquisite leaping lightness.

That girl had borne tons of stone like a flower in her hair. Further on across a street that was a lane of woods, beyond a park that was thick with forest, lay the nearly complete outline of a house only its rain-blurred walls stood but he could trace the separate rooms here a noble had entertained his friends robes that were fluid rainbows jewels dripping fire Swift, cynical interplay of wits, like sharpened swords rising above music and the clear sweet laughter of dancing girls. Here people whose flesh was now dust had slept and made love and lain side by side in darkness to watch the moving pageant of the city. Here the slaves had lived and worked and sometimes wept. Here the children have played their ageless games under willows between banks of roses. It had been a hard and cruel time. It was well gone, but it had lived. It had embodied man,

all that was noble and splendid and evil and merely wistful in the race, and now its late children had forgotten. A cat sprang up on one of the walls and flowed noiselessly along it hunting. Jorin shook himself and flew toward the center of the city, the imperial palace. An owl hooted somewhere, and a bat fluttered out of his way like a small damned soul blackened by hellfire. He didn't raise a windscreen, but let the air blow around him, the air of earth. The palace was almost completely wrecked, a mountain of heaped rocks, bare bones of eternal metal, gnawed thin by steady ages of wind and rain and frost, but once it must have been

gigantic. Men rarely build that big nowadays. They don't need to, and the whole human spirit had changed, become ever more abstract, finding its treasures within itself. But there had been an elemental magnificence about early man and the works he raised to challenge the sky. One tower still stood, a gutted shell white under the stars, rising in a filigree of columns and arches which seemed impossibly airy, as if it were built of moonlight.

Joran settled on its broken upper balcony, dizzily high above the black and white fantasy of the ruins. A hawk flew shrieking from its nest, then there was silence. No, wait, another yell ringing down the starways. A dark streak across the moon's face. Hia! Jorin recognized the joyful shout of young Cluthy, rushing through heaven like a demon on a broomstick, and scowled in annoyance.

He didn't want to be bothered now. Well, they had as much right here as he. He repressed the emotion and even managed a smile. After all, he would have liked to feel gay and reckless at times, but he had never been able to. Jorin was a little older than Cluthy, a few centuries at most. But he came of a melancholy folk. He had been born old.

Another form pursued the first. As they neared, Joran recognized Tallyavina's supple outline. Those two had been teamed up for one of the African districts, but they sensed him and came wildly out of the sky to perch on the balcony railing and swing their legs above the heights. "'Are you?' said Cluthy. His lean face laughed in the moonlight. "'Who-hoo! what a flight!' I'm all right," said Joran.

You threw in your sector. Uh-huh. So we thought we'd just duck over and look in here. Last chance anyone will ever have to do some sightseeing on Earth. Tullyovina's full lips drooped a bit as she looked over the ruins. She came from Eunith, one of the few planets where they still kept cities, and was as much a child of their soaring arrogance as Joran of his hills and tunders and great empty seas.

I thought it would be bigger," she said. Well, they were building this fifty or sixty thousand years ago," said Cluthie. Can't expect too much. There is good art left here," said Jorring. Pieces which for one reason or another weren't carried off, but you have to look around for it. I've seen a lot of it already in museums, said Tallyuvena. Not bad.

Come on, Talley, cried Cluthy. He touched her shoulder and sprang into the air. Tag, you're it!" She screamed with laughter and shot off after him. They rushed across the wilderness, weaving in and out of empty windows and broken colonnades, and their shouts woke a clamor of echoes. Joran sighed. I'd better go to bed.

He thought it's late. The spaceship was a steely pillar against the low gray sky. Now and then a fine rain would drizzle down. blurring it from sight. Then that would end, and the ship's flanks would glisten as if they were polished. Clouds scutted overhead like flying smoke, and the wind was loud in the trees. The line of Terrans moving slowly into the vessel seemed to go on forever. A couple of the ship's crew flew above them, throwing out a shield against the rain. They shuffled without much talk or expression, pushing carts filled with their little possessions.

Joran stood to one side, watching them go by, one face after another, scored and darkened by the sun of earth, the winds of earth, hands still grimy with the soil of earth. Well, he thought, there they go. They aren't being as emotional about it as I thought they would. I wonder if they really do care. Juleith went past with her parents. She saw him and darted from the line and curtsied before him. Goodbye, good, sir, she said looking up. She showed him a small and serious face. Will I ever see you again?

Well, he lied. I might look in on you sometime. Please do. In a few years, maybe, when you can. It takes many generations to raise the people like this to our standard. In a few years, to me, she'll be in her grave. I'm sure you'll be very happy, he said." She gulped.

Yes, she said so low he could barely hear her. Yes, I know I will. She turned and ran back to her mother. The raindrops glistened in her hair. Zarek came up behind Joran. I made a last-minute sweep of the whole area, he said, detected no sign of human life. So it's all taken care of except your old man. Good, said Joran.

tonelessly. I wish you could do something about him." So do I. Zarek strolled off again. A young man and woman, walking hand in hand, turned out of the line not far away and stood for a little while. A spaceman zoomed over to them. Better get back, he warned you'll get rained on.

That's what we wanted, said the young man. The spaceman shrugged and resumed his hovering. Presently the couple re-entered the line. The tale of the procession went by Joran, and the ship swallowed it fast. The rain fell harder, bouncing off his force-field like silver spears. Lightning winked in the west that he heard the distant exuberance of thunder. Karmt came walking slowly toward him. Rain streamed off his clothes and matted his long gray hair and beard.

His wooden shoes made a wet sound in the mud. Joran extended the force field to cover him. I hope you've changed your mind," said the Fulchisian. No, I haven't," said Cork. I just stayed away till everybody was aboard. Don't like goodbyes." "'You don't know what you're doing,' said Joran for the thousands time. It's plain madness to stay here alone.

I told you. I don't like goodbyes,' said Cormt harshly. "'I have to go advise the captain of the ship,' said Joran. You have maybe half an hour before she lives. Nobody will laugh at you for changing your mind." I won't. Carpnt smiled without warmth. You people are the future, I guess.

Why can't you leave the past alone? I'm the past." He looked toward the far hills hidden by the noisy rain. I like it here, Galactic. That should be enough for you. Well then, Jarn held out his hand in the archaic gesture of Earth. Good-bye. Good-bye."

Karmt took the hand with a brief, indifferent clasp. Then he turned and walked off toward the village. Jorin watched him till he was out of sight. The technician paused in the airlock door, looking over the gray landscape and the village from whose chimneys no smoke rose. Farewell, my mother, he thought, and then, surprising himself. Maybe Kermt is doing the right thing after all. He entered the ship and the door closed behind him.

Toward evening the clouds lifted and the sky showed a clear, pale blue as if it had been washed clean, and the grass and leaves glistened. Kormt came out of the house to watch the sunset. It was a good one, all flame and gold. A pity little Juleth wasn't there to see it. She'd always liked sunsets. But, Judith was so far away now that if she sent a call to him, calling with the speed of light, it would not come before he was dead.

Nothing would come to him. Not ever again. He tamped his pipe with a horny thumb and lit it, and drew a deep cloud into his lungs. Hands in pockets he strolled down the wet streets. The sound of his clogs was unexpectedly loud. "'Well, son,' he thought, "'now you've got a whole—' world all to yourself to do with, just as you like. You're the richest man who ever lived.

There was no problem in keeping alive. Enough food of all kinds was stored in the town's freeze vault to support a hundred men for the ten or twenty years remaining to him, but he'd want to stay busy. He could maybe keep three farms from going to seed, watch over fields and orchards and livestock, dust and wash and light up in the evening. A man ought to keep busy. He came to the end of the street, where it turned into a gravel road, winding up toward

a high hill, and followed that. Dusk was creeping over the fields, the sea was a metal streak very far away, and a few early stars blinked forth. A wind was springing up, a soft murmurous wind that talked in the trees. But how quiet things were! On top of the hills stood the chapel, a small, steepled building of ancient stone. He let himself in the gate and walked around to the graveyard behind. There were many of the demure white tombstones, thousands of years of Solis Township men and women

who had lived and worked and begotten, laughed and wept and died. Someone had put a wreath on one grave only this morning. It brushed against his leg as he went by. Tomorrow it would be withered, and weeds would start to grow. He'd have to tend the chapel yard, too, only fitting. He found his family plot, and stood with feet spread apart, fists on hips, smoking and looking down at the markers, Gerlorg Karmett's son, Arna Hott's daughter. These hundred years had they lain in the earth.

Hello, Dad, hello, mother. His fingers reached out and stroked. the headstone of his wife, and so many of his children were here, too, sometimes he found it hard to believe that tall girlog and laughing-stom and shy, gentle Juan were gone. He'd outlived too many people. I had to stay, he thought. This is my land. I am of it, and I couldn't go.

Someone had to stay and keep the land, if only for a little while. I can give it ten more years before the first. forest comes and takes it darkness grew around him the woods beyond the hill loomed like a wall once he started violently he thought he heard a child crying no only a bird he cursed himself for the senseless pounding of his heart gloomy place here he thought better get back to the house he groped slowly out of the yard toward the road the stars were out now Kermt looked up and thought thought he had never seen them so bright.

Too bright. He didn't like it. Go away, stars, he thought. You took my people, but I'm staying here. This is my land. He reached down to touch it, but the grass was cold and wet under his palm. The gravel scratched loudly as he walked, and the wind mumbled in the hedges, but there was no other sound.

Not a voice called, not an engine turned, not a dog barked. No, he hadn't thought it would be so quiet. And dark. No lights. Half to tend the street lamps himself. It was no fun not being able to see the town from here, not being able to see anything except the stars. Should have remembered to bring a flashlight, but he was old and absent-minded, and there was

no one to remind him. When he died, there would be no one to hold his hands. No one to close his eyes and lay him in the earth, and the forests would grow in over the land and wild beasts would nuzzle his bones. But I knew that. What of it! I'm tough enough to take it. The stars flashed and flashed above him.

Looking up against his own will, Hornt saw how bright they were, how bright and quiet, and quiet, and how very far away. He was seeing light that had left his home. before he was born. He stopped, sucking in his breath between his teeth. No, he whispered. This was his land. This was Earth, the home of man.

It was his and he was its. This was the land and not a single dust-boat, crazily reeling and spinning through an endlessness of dark and silence, cold and immensity. Earth could not be so alone. The last man alive. The last man in all the world. He screamed then and began to run. His feet clattered loud on the road.

The small sound was quickly swallowed by silence, and he covered his face against the relentless blaze of the stars, but there was no place to run to. No place at all. End of Part 4. End of the Chapter 4. Ends by Paul Anderson.