And all the songs are sweet.
21
Twenty-four hours into the homeward flight, almost caught up on his sleep, Francis Krake made a discovery. The discovery was that there was something new and strange in the air inside the waveship Golden Hind.
The discovery puzzled Francis Krake. It kept nagging at him as he tried to identify just what it was—as he listened to smiling Sue-ling Quong rapturously reporting on the progress of her patient; as he saw the contentment on the face of Moon Bunderan, patting and cosseting her beloved (and wonderful!) pet Taur; as he watched the ecstatic Litlun tagging after the nymph while she delightedly explored all the parts and businesses of the spaceship; as he heard grinning Marco Ramos and happy Daisy Fay McQueen boast about the wonderful stories they would have to tell to the Earthbound humans when they got back. Everybody seemed so different ... so, well, happy.
When Krake saw that he sat up straight, blinking in surprise. Why, of course! How could he not have seen it before?
There was certainly something new and different all around them now, and the name of that new feeling that pervaded the waveship was simply joy.
What startled him most of all was that he was beginning to feel that same unfamiliar emotion himself.
It was not surprising that he didn't recognize joy when it struck him. There had been very little of anything joyous in Krake's life for a very long time. Not much in the South Pacific, even less as he was being interrogated by the Turtles, very little in those years when he did the Turtles' work as pilot of their wavecraft. There had been one interlude, yes. . . . But that sweet, swift, joyous moment with Sue-ling Quong had ended almost as soon as it had begun.
Krake accepted the truth about that. It was a wonderful memory, but it was gone. He knew that where Sue-ling gave her love was for no one but Sue-ling to decide. He was even able really to rejoice with her when finally Sork/Kiri (or Kiri/ Sork) at last opened his eyes for her. That was only for a moment; and it was true that those eyes were crossed, and he barely seemed to recognize Sue-ling's anxious face as it hung over him. The event delighted her beyond measure nevertheless, and she promised all who would listen that he would be up and walking in a week—well, no more than a month at the outside.
And in much less than a month—just a few days, really— they would be back on Earth. There every facility of any hospital would be at Quintero's service. There a whole new life would open ahead for them all, and it would all be very soon. After The Golden Hind's mind-shaking voyages of billions of years, through far-off universes, the trip of a few thousand years to the "present" they had left behind seemed like nothing. A breeze, Krake thought, like everyone else on The Golden Hind abandoning himself to contentment and to pleasurable anticipations. . . .
Until second thoughts began to set in.
He was at the control board, finishing a meal, when Marco and Daisy Fay came purposefully into the room. He hadn't heard them coming, because he'd been idly listening to the distant, interminable squawks and raucous yowls that came from Litlun and his precious nymph as they roamed around the Hind.
Krake chuckled. "Listen to them," he said, grinning. "I guess that's what Turtle courtship sounds like. Are you hungry? Thrayl will get you something if you like, though God knows what it will be." He smiled at them as he said it, because it was amusing that the only foods left on the Hind were the bores and oddities that no one had particularly wanted to eat before—principally dried redfruit and a few obscure desserts. They would not starve before they got back to Earth, but they would surely get tired of their diet.
From the other board Moon Bunderan murmured, "I don't think they're hungry, Francis."
Then Krake looked more closely at the two. The expressions of the faces on their belly plates were unexpectedly solemn.
"What's the matter?" he asked.
Marco spoke first. "We've been thinking," he said, in a tone which said that what they had been thinking had not given them pleasure.
"About those aiodoi and the Sh'shrane," Daisy Fay added, equally grave.
"Ah, yes," Krake said, nodding, thinking he understood. "They were certainly pretty weird, but they're nothing to get upset about. We don't have to worry about the Sh'shrane any more. The aiodoi promised that they won't ever be let out again. As far as the aiodoi themselves are concerned—" His voice trailed off as he shook his head. Not in worry—he hadn't begun worrying yet—but simply at the unexpected marvel of those timeless and eternal beings.
"Thrayl says we won't see the aiodoi again," Moon put in. "They won't interfere in anything people like us do; the only reason one of them got involved at all was that what was happening was their own fault."
"No," said Krake, pursuing the discussion, "but we'll always know they're there, won't we?" He thought for a moment of the implications of that, chewing his leathery dried redfruit. "It's going to be hard for some people to take," he went on, meditating. "Knowing that there's something up there that's always there, knows everything, can do anything—"
He tugged at his beard, suddenly silent. He was frowning as he tried to capture some fleeting understanding that was hovering just on the verge of making itself clear to him when he saw the look of impatience on Marco's image. "That isn't what we've been thinking about," Marco said, interrupting. "It's the Sh'shrane."
"And the aiodoi, too," said Daisy Fay. "We mean, the way they got to be the way they are. They started as the same race, and they changed so terribly."
"And, most of all," Marco finished, "what weVe been thinking about is whether such a thing could ever happen to us."
That really startled Krake. "What are you talking about?" he demanded. "We're all one race, aren't we? I mean, not counting the Turtles and the Taurs."
"I'm not talking about the Turtles and the Taurs."
"Well, then what? What happened with the aiodoi and the Sh'shrane was that some of them began supplementing their bodies with machine parts, and after a while— Oh," he said, staring at his machine-crew, with their machine-tentacles waving around their bright machine-bodies and their machine-made images on the belly plates patiendy waiting for him to comprehend. "Oh, my God."
"That's right, Francis," Daisy Fay said, sternly sympathetic. "What we're afraid of is ourselves. What are we, Francis? Do you think it's possible that people like us could be just the beginnings?"
That was a notion that Francis Krake had never wanted to have. It lingered with him all through the day. Sh'shrane and aiodoi. . . . Why, he remembered, there had been an old story, an old human story, about something like that. He dredged it out of his memory: The Time Machine, by the Englishman H. G. Wells. The human race growing and evolving and, ultimately, splitting from two classes into two separate races, the sweet, mindless Eloi with their sunlit flowers and songs, while below ground there lurked the terrible, equally mindless Morlocks, who crept by night to the surface to feast on their distant cousins.
Krake shuddered.
Of course, he told himself, the aiodoi were nothing like those empty-headed flower children of Wells's invention. On the contrary. They were not merely intelligent, they were all but godlike in their powers. . . .