Across A Billion Years

And so on for several minutes. After a while Dr. Horkkk ventured to mix up the now-familiar words, rearranging them into new patterns to give a pretense at conversation: “Ruuu mirt dihn ahm” and “Korp ruuu chlook korp mirt” and so forth. This had the virtue of showing the robot that Dr. Horkkk was something other than some kind of recording machine, but it must have been puzzling to it to be getting these gibberish responses to its statements.

Then the robot turned on the globe. The scene that took form about us was the sequence of the construction of the vault, begi

That seemed intelligible enough. The robot was telling us that it realized, from the astronomical changes it observed, that a vast span of time must have elapsed since it had been sealed into the vault.

The robot now made some adjustment on the globe, and the scene of the High Ones’ city appeared. For several minutes we watched once more the High Ones moving solemnly and gracefully through their wonderland of cables and dangling structures. The robot cut it off, pointed again to the stars, pointed to Dr. Horkkk, pointed to itself, pointed to Dr. Horkkk.

Abruptly the robot turned and strode into the vault. It did something at one of the instrument panels in the rear; then it beckoned unmistakably to us. We hesitated. The robot beckoned again.

“Possibly it turned off the lightning field,” Pilazinool said.

“And possibly it didn’t,” said Dr. Horkkk. “This may be a trick designed to make us go to our deaths.”

“If the robot wanted to kill us,” I pointed out, “it wouldn’t need to trick us. It’s got weapon attachments in its arms.”

“Certainly,” said Pilazinool. “Tom’s right!”

Still, none of us went into the vault. The robot made its beckoning gesture a third time.

Dr. Horkkk found another pebble and pitched it across the threshold of the vault. No blast of lightning. That was reassuring.

“Shall we risk it?” Pilazinool asked.

He started forward.

“Wait,” I heard myself saying, as another fit of heroism rushed through my brain. “I’m less important than the rest of you. Let me go, and if I make it—”

Telling myself that at the worst it would be a quick, clean finish, I leaped up on the fallen door, stepped into the vault, and lived to tell the tale. Pilazinool followed me; then, somewhat more cautiously, Dr. Horkkk. Mirrik remained outside at Pilazinool’s suggestion; in case this did turn out to be a trap, we needed a survivor to explain what had happened to the others.

Instinctively we stayed close to the entrance of the vault and made no sudden moves that might alarm our huge host. We still didn’t know if the robot’s intentions were friendly. Much as we wanted a close look at those complex, cluttered instrument panels on the rear walls of the vault, we didn’t dare approach them, for that would have required us to get between the robot and its instruments. The robot might not have liked that.

It turned to the instruments itself and touched one of the controls. Instantly images burst forth: the same sort of screenless projection that came from our globe.

We watched a kind of travelog of the High Ones’ supercivilization. The scenes were different from those out of the globe, but similar in feeling, showing us all the magnificence and splendor of these people. We saw shots of High Ones cities that completely eclipsed the earlier one — cities that seemed to occupy whole planets, with patterns of aerial cables shifting and crossing and interlocking and apparently slipping in and out of dimensions. We saw grandees of the High Ones moving in stately procession through lofty, glittering halls, each being surrounded by dozens of robot servants of all sizes, shapes, and functions, catering to the smallest whim. We looked through tu

Temples and libraries, museums, computer halls, auditoriums — who knew the purposes to which those colossal structures had been put? When the High Ones gathered to watch a gyrating point of light, as we saw them do, what kind of beauty did they comprehend? How much information was stored in those glistening data banks, and information of what kind? The star-ships that moved so effortlessly, seemingly without expenditure of fuel — the elegance of the house furnishings — the incomprehensible rituals — the dignity of the people as they went serenely through their day’s activities — all of this conveyed to us a sense of a race so far beyond the attainments of our era that our pride in our own petty accomplishments seemed to be the silly posturing of monkeys.

And yet… they are gone from the universe, these great beings, and we remain. And, little creatures that we are, we still have managed to find our way through the stars to this place and to set free the guardian of this ancient vault. Surely that is no small achievement for a species only a million years or so away from apehood. Surely the High Ones, whose time of greatness had lasted a century to each of our minutes, would agree that we have done well for ourselves thus far.

And there was irony in watching this humbling display of glittering greatness, and in knowing that the makers of that greatness had vanished into extinction hundreds of millions of years ago.

“Ozymandias,” said Mirrik gently, looking at the images from outside the cave.

Exactly so. Ozymandias. Shelley’s poem. The “traveler from an antique land” who finds “two vast and trunkless legs of stone” in the desert, and beside them, half sunk in sand, the shattered head of a statue, still wearing its “sneer of cold command” —

And on the pedestal these words appear: “My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!” Nothing beside remains. Round the decay Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare The lone and level sands stretch far away.

Precisely so. Ozymandias. How could we tell this robot that its fantastic creators no longer existed? That a billion years of rock covered the ruins of their outposts on dozens of planets? That we had come seeking a mystery locked in a past so distant we could barely comprehend its remoteness? While this robot waited here, the patient, timeless servant, ready to show its movies and impress the casual wayfarer with the might of its masters… never dreaming that it alone was left to tell the tale and that all its pride in that great civilization was a waste.

The projections ended. We blinked as our eyes adjusted to the sudden dimming of that brightness in the vault. The robot began to speak again, slowly, enunciating clearly, using the same sort of tone we would use in speaking to a foreigner or someone who is slightly deaf or a little dull in the skull. “Dihn ruuu… mirt korp ahm… mirt chlook… ruuu ahm… hohm mirt korp zort…” As before, Dr. Horkkk patched together some sentences in reply, with random combinations of dihns and ruuus and ahms. The robot listened to this in what struck me as an interested and approving way. Then it pointed several times to the inscription node Dr. Horkkk was carrying and spoke in an apparently urgent ma