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"I'll not do it again," she said, "and I know you couldn't. The aloneness is almost unbearable."
"Yes," he replied.
"They warmed us both alive last time. I came around first and told them to put you back to sleep. I was angry then, when I found out what you had done. But I got over it quickly, so often did I wish you were there."
"We will stay together," said Jarry.
"Yes, always."
They took a flier from the cavern of sleep to the Worldchange installation at Deadland, where they relieved the other attendants and moved the new couch up to the third floor.
The air of Deadland, while sultry, could now be breathed for short periods of time, though a headache invariably followed such experiments. The heat was still oppressive. The rock, once like an old Normform waving, had lost its distinctive outline. The winds were no longer so severe.
On the fourth day, they found some animal tracks which seemed to belong to one of the larger predators. This cheered Sanza, but another, later occurrence produced only puzzlement.
One morning they went forth to walk in Deadland.
Less than a hundred paces from the installation, they came upon three of the giant caterpillars, dead. They were stiff, as though dried out rather than frozen, and they were surrounded by rows of markings within the snow. The footprints which led to the scene and away from it were rough of outline, obscure.
"What does it mean?" she asked.
"I don't know, but I think we had better photograph this," said Jarry.
They did. When Jarry spoke to Station Eleven that afternoon, he learned that similar occurrences had occasionally been noted by attendants of other installations. These were not too frequent, however.
"I don't understand," said Sanza.
"I don't want to," said Jarry.
It did not happen again during their tour of duty. Jarry entered it into the log and wrote a report. Then they abandoned themselves to lovemaking, monitoring, and occasionally nights of drunke
"The green birds are dying," said Sanza, putting aside a report she had been reading.
"Oh?" said Jarry.
"Apparently they've done all the adapting they're able to," she told him.
"Pity," said Jarry.
"It seems less than a year since we came here. Actually, it's a thousand."
"Time flies," said Jarry.
"I'm afraid," she said.
"Of what?"
"I don't know. Just afraid."
"Why?"
"Living the way we've been living, I guess. Leaving little pieces of ourselves in different centuries. Just a few months ago, as my memory works, this place was a desert. Now it's an ice field. Chasms open and close. Canyons appear and disappear. Rivers dry up and new ones spring forth. Everything seems so very transitory. Things look solid, but I'm getting afraid to touch things now. They might go away. They might turn into smoke, and my hand will keep on reaching through the smoke and touch--something...God, maybe. Or worse yet, maybe not. No one really knows what it will be like here when we've finished. We're traveling toward an unknown land and it's too late to go back. We're moving through a dream, heading toward an idea...Sometimes I miss my cell...and all the little machines that took care of me there. Maybe I can't adapt. Maybe I'm like the green bird..."
"No, Sanza. You're not. We're real. No matter what happens out there, we will last. Everything is changing because we want it to change. We're stronger than the world, and we'll squeeze it and paint it and poke holes in it until we've made it exactly the way we want it. Then we'll take it and cover it with cities and children. You want to see God? Go look in the mirror. God has pointed ears and green eyes. He is covered with soft gray fur. When He raises His hand there is webbing between His fingers."
"It is good that you are strong, Jarry."
"Let's get out the power sled and go for a ride."
"All right."
Up and down, that day, they drove through Deadland, where the dark stones stood like clouds in another sky.
It was twelve and a half hundred years.
Now they could breathe without respirators, for a short time.
Now they could bear the temperature, for a short time.
Now all the green birds were dead.
Now a strange and troubling thing began.
The bipeds came by night, made markings on the snow, left dead animals in the midst of them. This happened now with much more frequency than it had in the past. They came long distances to do it, many of them with fur which was not their own upon their shoulders.
Jarry searched through the history files for all the reports on the creatures.
"This one speaks of lights in the forest," he said. "Station Seven."
"What...?"
"Fire," he said. "What if they've discovered fire?"
"Then they're not really beasts!"
"But they were!"
"They wear clothing now. They make some sort of sacrifice to our machines. They're not beasts any longer."
"How could it have happened?"
"How do you think? We did it. Perhaps they would have remained stupid--animals--if we had not come along and forced them to get smart in order to go on living. We've accelerated their evolution. They had to adapt or die, and they adapted."
"D'you think it would have happened if we hadn't come along?" he asked.
"Maybe--some day. Maybe not, too."
Jarry moved to the window, stared out across Deadland.
"I have to find out," he said. "If they are intelligent, if they are--human, like us," he said, then laughed, "then we must consider their ways."
"What do you propose?"
"Locate some of the creatures. See whether we can communicate with them."
"Hasn't it been tried?"
"Yes."
"What were the results?"
"Mixed. Some claim they have considerable understanding. Others place them far below the threshold where humanity begins."
"We may be doing a terrible thing," she said. "Creating men, then destroying them. Once, when I was feeling low, you told me that we were the gods of this world, that ours was the power to shape and to break. Ours is the power to shape and break, but I don't feel especially divine. What can we do? They have come this far, but do you think they can bear the change that will take us the rest of the way? What if they are like the green birds? What if they've adapted as fast and as far as they can and it is not sufficient? What would a god do?"