Identity Theft and Other Stories

  But, with the battle in the future over, the Morlocks couldn’t simply leave the Eloi to make their own way in the past. After all, once the Morlocks had traveled forward, the Eloi would venture underground. Oh, surely not at first—months or even years might elapse before the Eloi decided the Morlocks really were gone before any of those timid, frail creatures would dare to climb down the ladders on the inside of the access wells, thereby entering the underworld. But eventually they would—perhaps, Grach thought, led by that bold female who had narrowly survived accompanying the giant during so much of his visit—and just as the Morlocks were now about to regain the surface, so the Eloi would regain what had once been theirs, as well: equipment and tools, technology and power.

  Simple experiments with the time machines had proven that changes made in the past would eventually catch up with the future. The time machines, because of their temporal alacrity, allowed one to arrive in the future ahead of the wave of change barreling through the fourth dimension at a less speedy rate. But eventually effect caught up with cause, and the world was remade to conform to its modified past. And so though the beach might now appear as Grach and the others wished it to, there was still a chance that reality would be further modified.

  And that could not be allowed; the meek could not be permitted to inherit the Earth. For although Morlocks enjoyed violence, Grach and the others couldn’t imagine the Eloi ever fighting amongst themselves or with anyone else. No, with all aggression long ago bred out of them, their new technological culture might endure for millions of years—meaning they could still be alive, and hideously advanced, by this time, the time of the beach, the time of the crabs. If the Morlocks didn’t take care of that loose end, that dangling thread in the tapestry of time, before permanently moving to the perpetual ruddy twilight of the future, then the Morlocks might find that future becoming a world dominated by Eloi with millions of years of new technology in their hands.

  No, now that the crabs were dealt with, it was time to return to the past, time to launch the second offensive of this war.

  Grach and the other Morlocks returned to the distant past, to the year that, according to the display they’d all seen on the original Time Traveler’s machine, had been reckoned by him to be some 800,000 years after his point of origin.

  Their fleet of time machines re-appeared whence it had been launched, one after the other flicking into existence inside the giant hollow bronze pedestal of the great marble sphinx, still arrayed in their orderly rows and columns, for although the journey through the fourth dimension had been prodigious, there had been no movement at all in the other three. Of course, there were only 117, instead of 120, machines reappearing. The others were sitting undamaged in the far future, but their riders had been casualties in the battle with the crabs.

  There was barely enough room for all the time machines and their passengers within the sphinx’s base, but although little air slipped in through the cracks around the upper edges of the vertical door panels, it still seemed richer than the thin atmosphere of the far future.

  Naturally, they didn’t have to wait until dark. Rather, they had timed their arrival to occur at night. No sooner had the last of the Morlocks returned here than the great bronze panels on either side slid down, opening the interior of the giant pedestal to the elements. The Morlocks spilled out into the night. Grach allowed himself a brief look back over his rounded shoulder; in the starlight he could see the white face of the great sphinx smiling on their venture.

  Brandishing clubs, they clambered through the circular portals into the large houses in which the Eloi slept. The Eloi were used to the night-time raids, to a handful of them being plucked each time to be food for the Morlocks. Those selected did not resist; those not selected did nothing to help the others.

  But tonight, the Morlocks didn’t want to carry off just a few. Tonight they wished to eradicate the Eloi. The weaklings’ skulls yielded juicily to pummeling rods. To that, some Eloi did react, did try to defend themselves or get away—the brighter of these creatures clearly understood that all previous patterns were to be discarded this night.

  But even the strongest of the Eloi was no match for the slightest Morlock. Those that had to be chased down were chased down; those that had to be hit with hands were hit with hands; those that had to be strangled had their larynxes crushed.

  It didn’t take long to dispatch the thousand or so Eloi, and Grach himself happened to be the one to come across that female who had associated herself with the original Time Traveler.

  She, at least, had the backbone to look defiant as Grach’s rod descended upon her.

  The return to the far future had gone well. Many Morlocks had clutched infants or children of their kind as they’d ridden forward on the copies of the giant’s machine. Others had carried supplies and goods salvaged from the deep prison that bright light had trapped them in.

  As time wore on, Grach got used to the thinner air and to the red glow of the now-ancient sun. Mankind, the Morlocks had always known, had started on the surface, and only well into its tenure on Earth had one faction moved underground. Now the Morlocks had reclaimed their birthright, their proper station in the world.

  Grach looked out over the beach. Morlocks had feasted on crabs legs and the meat from the invertebrates’ rounded bodies. But after that bounty had been exhausted, the broken carapaces were gathered together, making a monument to that glorious battle, and a reminder to any of the crab-beings who might consider reclaiming this beach what fate would await them if they tried.

  Of course, Grach knew the world was eventually doomed. He had not made the journey himself, but others had told him of trips to the very end of time, when the sea would freeze and the sun, although bigger even than it was now, would give off almost no light and even less heat.

  But that future was far, far beyond even this advanced time. For the remainder of the habitable span of the world, generation after generation of Morlocks would live here. Yes, there might have been an interregnum during which the crabs had been dominant, but that was over now. Morlocks ruled again, and, until the sun’s red light finally faded for good, they would continue to do so.

  Still, new changes were propagating forward. The large white butterfly-like creatures were now gone. Perhaps, mused Grach, just as the giant’s kind had once metamorphosed into Morlocks and Eloi, so the Eloi themselves, flighty creatures at the best of times, had here in the far, far future, literally taken wing. But with no more Eloi in the past, of course no descendants of them could exist. A pity: the flying things had been delicious.

  Grach looked out again at the blood-red beach, and he thought about the original Time Traveler, that giant from ages past. Had he found whatever it was he’d been seeking when he came forward from his time? Perhaps not in that year he’d numbered about 800,000. The injustice, after all, of the best of mankind being damned to a subterranean existence surely must have disappointed him. But, Grach thought, if the Time Traveler knew what his machine had ultimately made possible—this wondrous moment, with the very essence of humanity on the surface—surely he would be pleased.

  The Eagle

  Has Landed

  Like everyone who loves space travel, I was devastated by the loss on February 1, 2003, of the space shuttle Columbia. And, as writers always do, I worked out some of my feelings about that on the printed page—in this little piece that appeared in Mike Resnick’s anthology I, Alien.

  I freely admit that this isn’t my best story—but it is my favorite one to read aloud. I do impressions of the famous people whose speeches are quoted, and the audiences and I always have a good time. But, still, because of the tragic inspiration that led to me writing it, thinking about this one always leaves me a little sad.

  I’ve spent a lot of time watching Earth—more than forty of that planet’s years. My arrival was in response to the signal from our automated probe, which had detected that the paper-skinned bipedal beings of that world had split the atom. The probe ha
d served well, but there were some things only a living being could do properly, and assessing whether a lifeform should be contacted by the Planetary Commonwealth was one.

  It would have been fascinating to have been present for that first fission explosion: it’s always a fabulous thing when a new species learns to cleave the atom, the dawn for them of a new and wondrous age. Of course, fission is messy, but one must glide before one can fly; all known species that developed fission soon moved on to the clean energy of controlled fusion, putting an end to need and want, to poverty, to scarcity.

  I arrived in the vicinity of Earth some dozen Earth-years after that first fission explosion—but I could not set down upon Earth, for its gravity was five times that of our homeworld. But its moon had a congenial mass; there I would weigh slightly less than I did at home. And, just like our homeworld, which, of course, is itself the moon of a gas-giant world orbiting a double star, Earth’s moon was tidally locked, constantly showing the same face to its primary. It was a perfect place for me to land my starbird and observe the goings-on on the blue-and-white-and-infrared world below.

  This moon, the sole natural satellite of Earth, was devoid of atmosphere, bereft of water. I imagined our homeworld would be similar if its volatiles weren’t constantly replenished by material from Chirp-cluck-CHIRP-chirp, the gas-giant planet that so dominated our skies; a naturally occurring, permanent magnetic-flux tube passed a gentle rain of gases onto our world.

  The moon that the inhabitants of Earth called “the moon” (and “La Lune,” and a hundred other things) was depressingly desolate. Still, from it I could easily intercept the tens of thousands of audio and audiovisual transmissions spewing out from Earth—and with a time delay of only four wingbeats. My starbird’s computer separated the signals one from the other, and I watched and listened.

  It took that computer most of a smallyear to decipher all the different languages this species used, but, by the year—being a planet, not a moon, Earth had only one kind of year—the Earth people called 1958, I was able to follow everything that was happening there.

  I was at once delighted and disgusted. Delighted, because I’d learned that in the years since that initial atomic test explosion had triggered our probe, the natives of this world had launched their first satellite. And disgusted, because almost immediately after developing fission, they had used those phenomenal energies as weapons against their own kind. Two cities had been destroyed, and bigger and more devastating bombs were still being developed.

  Were they insane, I wondered? It had never occurred to me that a whole species could be unbalanced, but the initial fatal bombings, and the endless series of subsequent test explosions of bigger and bigger weapons, were the work not of crazed individuals but of the governments of this world’s most powerful nations.

  I watched for two more Earth years, and was about to file my report—quarantine this world; avoid all contact—when my computer alerted me to an interesting signal coming from the planet. The leader of the most populous of the nations on the western shore of the world’s largest ocean was making a speech: “Now it is time,” he was saying, “to take longer strides”—apparently significant imagery for a walking species—“time for a great new American enterprise; time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in space achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth…”

  Yes, I thought. Yes. I listened on, fascinated.

  “I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade”—a cluster of ten Earth years—“is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth…”

  Finally, some real progress for this species! I tapped the ERASE node with a talon, deleting my still-unsent report.

  At home, these “Americans,” as their leader had called them, were struggling with the notion of equality for all citizens, regardless of the color of their skin. I know, I know—to beings such as us, with frayed scales ranging from gold to green to purple to ultraviolet, the idea of one’s coloration having any significance seems ridiculous, but for them it had been a major concern. I listened to hateful rhetoric: “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!” And I listened to wonderful rhetoric: “I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal.’” And I watched as public sentiment shifted from supporting the former to supporting the latter, and I confess that my dorsal spines fluttered with emotion as I did so.

  Meanwhile, Earth’s fledgling space program continued: single-person ships, double-person ships, the first dockings in space, a planned triple-person ship, and then…

  And then there was a fire at the liftoff facility. Three “humans”—one of the countless names this species gave itself—were dead. A tragic mistake: pressurized space vehicles have a tendency to explode in vacuum, of course, so someone had landed on the idea of pressurizing the habitat (the “command module,” they called it) at only one-fifth of normal, by eliminating all the gases except oxygen, normally a fifth part of Earth’s atmosphere…

  Still, despite the horrible accident, the humans went on. How could they not?

  And, soon, they came here, to the moon.

  I was present at that first landing, but remained hidden. I watched as a figure in a white suit hopped off the last rung of a ladder and fell at what must have seemed to it a slow rate. The words the human spoke echo with me still: “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

  And, indeed, it truly was. I could not approach closely, not until they’d departed, but after they had, I walked over—even in my environmental sack, it was easy to walk here on my wingclaws. I examined the lower, foil-wrapped stage of their landing craft, which had been abandoned here. My computer could read the principal languages of this world, having learned to do so with aid of educational broadcasts it had intercepted. It informed me that the plaque on the lander said, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon, July 1969, A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.”

  My spines rippled. There was hope for this race. Indeed, during the time since that speech about longer strides, public opinion had turned overwhelmingly against what seemed to be a long, pointless conflict being fought in a tropical nation. They didn’t need quarantining; all they needed, surely, was a little time…

  Fickle, fickle species! Their world made only three and half orbits around its solitary sun before what was announced to be the last journey here, to the moon, was completed. I was stunned. Never before had I known a race to turn its back on space travel once it had begun; one might as well try to crawl back into the shards of one’s egg…

  But, incredibly, these humans did just that. Oh, there were some perfunctory missions to low orbit, but that was all.

  Yes, there had been other accidents—one on the way to the moon, although there were no casualties; another, during which three people died when their vessel depressurized on reentry. But those three were from another nation, called “Russia,” and that nation continued its space efforts without missing a wingbeat. But soon Russia’s economy collapsed—of course! This race still hadn’t developed controlled fusion; indeed, there was a terrible, terrible accident at a fission power-generating station in that nation shortly before it fell apart.

  Still, perhaps the failure of Russia had been a good thing. Not that there was anything inherently evil about it, from what I could tell—indeed, in principle, it espoused the values that all other known civilized races share—but it was the rivalry between it and the nation that had launched the inhabited ships to the moon that had caused an incredible escalation of nuclear-weapons production. Finally, it seemed, they would abandon that madness…and perhaps if abandoning space exploration was the price to pay for that, maybe, just maybe, it was worth it.

  I was in a quandary. I had spent much longer here than I’d planned to—and I’d as yet filed no report.
It’s not that I was eager to get home—my brood had long since grown up—but I was getting old; my frayed scales were losing their flexibility, and they were tinged now with blue. But I still didn’t know what to tell our homeworld.

  And so I crawled back into my cryostasis nest. I decided to have the computer awaken me in one of our bigyears, a time approximately equal to a dozen Earth years. I wondered what I would find when I awoke…

  What I found was absolute madness. Two neighboring countries threatening each other with nuclear weapons; a third having announced that it, too, had developed such things; a fourth being scrutinized to see if it possessed them; and a fifth—the one that had come to the moon for all mankind—saying it would not rule out first strikes with its nuclear weapons.

  No one was using controlled fusion. No one had returned to the moon.

  Shortly after I awoke, tragedy struck again: seven humans were aboard an orbital vehicle called Columbia—a reused name, a name I’d heard before, the name of the command module that had orbited the moon while the first lander had come down to the surface. Columbia broke apart during reentry, scattering debris over a wide area of Earth. My dorsal spines fell flat, and my wing claws curled tightly. I hadn’t been so sad since one of my own brood had died falling out of the sky.

  Of course, my computer continued to monitor the broadcasts from the planet, and it provided me with digests of the human response.

  I was appalled.

  The humans were saying that putting people into space was too dangerous, that the cost in lives was too high, that there was nothing of value to be done in space that couldn’t be done better by machines.

  This from a race that had spread from its equatorial birthplace by walking—walking!—to cover most of their world; only recently had mechanical devices given them the ability to fly.