A Billion Days of Earth Read online

  A BILLION DAYS OF EARTH

  Doris Piserchia

  www.sfgateway.com

  Enter the SF Gateway …

  In the last years of the twentieth century (as Wells might have put it), Gollancz, Britain’s oldest and most distinguished science fiction imprint, created the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series. Dedicated to re-publishing the English language’s finest works of SF and Fantasy, most of which were languishing out of print at the time, they were – and remain – landmark lists, consummately fulfilling the original mission statement:

  ‘SF MASTERWORKS is a library of the greatest SF ever written, chosen with the help of today’s leading SF writers and editors. These books show that genuinely innovative SF is as exciting today as when it was first written.’

  Now, as we move inexorably into the twenty-first century, we are delighted to be widening our remit even more. The realities of commercial publishing are such that vast troves of classic SF & Fantasy are almost certainly destined never again to see print. Until very recently, this meant that anyone interested in reading any of these books would have been confined to scouring second-hand bookshops. The advent of digital publishing has changed that paradigm for ever.

  The technology now exists to enable us to make available, for the first time, the entire backlists of an incredibly wide range of classic and modern SF and fantasy authors. Our plan is, at its simplest, to use this technology to build on the success of the SF and Fantasy Masterworks series and to go even further.

  Welcome to the new home of Science Fiction & Fantasy. Welcome to the most comprehensive electronic library of classic SFF titles ever assembled.

  Welcome to the SF Gateway.

  Contents

  Title Page

  Gateway Introduction

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter i: The New Men of Earth

  Chapter ii

  Chapter iii

  Chapter iv

  Chapter v

  Chapter vi

  Chapter vii

  Chapter viii

  Chapter ix

  Chapter x

  Chapter xi

  Chapter xii

  Chapter xiii

  Chapter xiv

  Website

  Also by Doris Piserchia

  Dedication

  About the Author

  Copyright

  prologue

  Had it just then been born? The creature didn’t know. It crawled up out of the volcanic crater, hung there on the lip and stared about. It saw a small thing hopping in the tumbleweeds at the foot of the mountain.

  “Help!” it cried.

  The animal in the tumbleweeds came to a halt with its short, broad ears perked. It was a tare and it was a descendant of an animal called a rabbit that had been extinct for a billion days. Long-legged, brown-furred, it weighed approximately twenty-five pounds. It was subnormal in intelligence because it wanted to find sense in this world of Three Million, A.D.

  “Who calls?” The tare had sufficient intelligence to speak, but he had never before communicated with anything but another tare.

  “Who calls?”

  The tare was puzzled. “This isn’t Echo Valley so why do my words come back to me?”

  “Me?”

  “You’re a silly echo, wherever you come from.”

  “You?”

  “I, you, he, we, you, they,” said the tare. “I’m here, you’re there, we’re both somewhere. Are you up in that dead volcano? Who are you?”

  There was a pause, then, “I am I. I want. I am in need.”

  Grinning up at the mountain, the tare said, “Ask and receive, ignorant child.”

  “Take my heart that we shall be one.”

  “Certainly. Would it be to your liking if I trundled up the side of your happy home and flung myself over?”

  “That will not be necessary. I will come to you.”

  The tare saw a thin length of silver slide over the high lip of the mountain and flow downward, and his amusement at the situation changed to uneasiness. “Good Lord, you really do live in that hole. I think I’ll get out of here.”

  “You would abandon me, then, a babe in the woods?”

  Pausing to look back, the tare saw more of the strange material edge over the mountain. He gasped and threw his paws over his eyes. “The sheen! I can’t see!” For only a moment was he blinded. “Now I’m all right,” he said in relief. “But you’re still too bright. You look exactly like a stream of mercury.”

  There was a great deal of the creature. Its front end was already in the grass, but still it poured from the volcano in a steady flow.

  “I like that word of yours,” it said, as it advanced. Wherever its words originated, they came from no mouth or any other opening. All of it seemed to be speaking and the words were real sounds. It talked without a voice box, it thought without experience, it existed without purpose. Or so the tare assumed.

  “I like that word of yours,” the creature said again. “It touches an inner chord within me. I will make it my name. From this moment onward, I am Sheen.”

  “Don’t come any closer,” said the tare. “To what genus do you belong?”

  “The genus of Sheen. I have love for you.”

  The tare was flattered in spite of his fright. “What a crazy thing you are. We’re not the same, so how can you love me?”

  “I don’t know. You came and your coming inspired me to wakefulness. My thoughts are directed toward you.”

  Again the tare was amused. This creature was naive, behaved as if it had just been born. “You can’t focus your affections on me. You have to set your sights on something like yourself. By the way, what are you besides Sheen?”

  “I am I.”

  “What kind of answer is that?”

  “There is much to learn, but I am quick. I love you.”

  “There you go again. I’m a tare while you’re a liquid-solid thing, the likes of which I never saw before, and you can’t love me.”

  “Why?”

  “It’s against the rules. Gods love Gods, men love men, tares love tares. That’s the way it is.”

  The front portion of Sheen rose in the air and seemed to look about. Earth appeared peaceful. The sky was blue, the sun was orange, the grass was richly green. Without eyes, Sheen saw. His mind touched everything. A mile away, a family of tares made a new burrow in the side of a hill. The mother and father took turns guarding the young and widening the excavation. They would remain together all their lives and have many children. In a few days they would gather with all the mature tares in their area and confer with one another. They would discuss the weather, food, enemies, life. Five miles away, the grass ended and desert began. Sheen looked no further. He was too busy now.

  “Do you love nothing in all infinity but tares?” he said.

  “Yes, of course, but that isn’t the same thing.”

  Sheen swayed. He no longer came down the mountain but lay across the valley in a thin coil. His head, which had no features, was raised several feet straight up in the air. “I don’t understand.”

  “It’s confusing no matter what you are, I guess,” said the tare. “One way you can tell what you love is by eliminating everything repulsive to you. You love what’s left.”

  “Nothing is repulsive to me.”

  “Then you must be very inexperienced. As you go along you’ll find plenty to turn your stomach. In fact, most of your life will be spent avoiding those things.”

  The head and neck of Sheen lowered and coiled at the tare’s feet for a moment and then quickly shot into the air like an alert snake. “Enough. Take my heart that we shall be one.”

  “You said that before.” The little tare trembled
. “I’m trying to move. There’s something wrong with my damned legs. Don’t come any closer.”

  “I think we will merge.”

  “I don’t know what that means, but I don’t like the sound of it. I don’t want to.”

  “Yes, you do.”

  “No!”

  Sheen stopped. “Why do you stand there if you want to run?”

  “You know why. Release me.”

  “I’m not in contact with you.”

  The little beast opened frightened eyes and saw it was true. “You hold me with invisible hands. They’re in my mind, pulling at me like magnets.”

  “Have these hands a voice?”

  “A confounding one. No lover ever sounded more alluring. You can’t keep so many promises. You lie.”

  “I’ve said nothing.”

  “Lord, lover, companion, tutor, haven! You lie, Sheen! Why do you lie? And why pick on me? See there in the grass, the creature with the shell? It’s a jare. Take it and let me go.”

  “Ah, well, go, if you insist. I choose the lesser creature.”

  The tare bit himself. “You’re holding me!”

  “I swear I’m not.”

  “Don’t you know yourself? Take away the picture you’ve planted in my mind. How can I think straight with that dangling in front of me?”

  “Describe the picture, please.”

  “I don’t believe it. Nothing could be that beautiful. This is still the same damned dirty world around us.”

  Sheen swayed gracefully. “Is life so full of disillusionment?”

  “Nothing is the way it should be. Even the elements conspire against me. It’s a terrible world full of cruelty.”

  “Sad, sad.”

  The furry face twisted, the mouth drooped. “Tares are stupid and hard. No wonder men regard us as nonentities. Poverty, misery, ignorance; what do tares care as long as they have their carrots and their tail every night? Animal comforts are all they’re concerned with.”

  “You have my sympathy,” said Sheen.

  “The way they behave isn’t as bad as the way they think! A person could go mad trying to make sense of that. The world of reason is a terrifying place.”

  “I can see you’re worried.”

  “Anyone would be. You never know what they’re thinking. You knock yourself out trying to please them and they treat you like dirt.”

  “I know what you mean.”

  “They never give you a chance! Everything is geared to the almighty carrot. Goddamn it, there are other things worth living for. Just because a fellow has had a few hard knocks and is having trouble getting onto his feet is no reason to consider him inferior.”

  “I agree,” said the shiny one.

  “If they would only tell me what they want! If they’d Just sit down with me and make a list of do’s and don’t’s. I’d work my ass off learning the rules. By God, they’d have to go a million miles to find somebody willing to work harder.”

  Sheen glittered, swayed in the air. “Come to me, tare, and I will give you peace.”

  “No.”

  “Then give me back my picture. I didn’t offer it. You took it.”

  The tare spoke to the picture in his mind. “Go, before you become my downfall.” At once it began to fade. The tare felt a pang of sorrow. The picture contained every fragment of his dreams. Now he knew reality was as drab as he had suspected. As the picture drifted farther from him, he experienced panic. Terror at life’s grayness captured him.

  He snatched the picture close again, glared at Sheen. “It’s mine! Give it to me with no strings attached. I need it.”

  “I am I and greater than you,” said Sheen. “I see the difference between having my cake and eating it, too. You will be my first conquest.”

  “I don’t want to die,” whimpered the tare.

  “You won’t die. You’ll live.”

  “It will be a living death. No one but you could do such a thing.”

  “I repeat, you are free to go.”

  “I can’t give it up.” The words came through chattering teeth. The tare’s eyes rolled back in his head and his body convulsed. “Somebody tell me what to do!”

  “Come,” said Sheen, and reached.

  “No!” screamed the tare. Even as he said it, he was surrendering.

  The gleaming figure hovered in the air. “Poor little bunny; a living, breathing conflict. The living and the breathing will continue but the conflict will cease.”

  The tare’s face was a rigid mask. “Come closer,” he moaned, and Sheen touched his shoulder, flowed. “Draw nearer that I might feel the sheen of you. How cold, how glorious. Know me as no long-lashed lover could ever know me. Fill my body with pleasure and my mind with joy.” He gave a weak scream as the silver covered him. “No, I can’t give that up! You didn’t explain! Take me, but don’t take that!”

  Sheen consumed the tare’s will.

  “How could I possess one without the other?” he said, and his tone was puzzled. “Didn’t it know they were one and the same?”

  There was no response to his remarks. He was alone.

  Presently the tare began to walk; or so it seemed. Actually it was Sheen who moved and left the large remainder of his self in the field of grass. Inside an exterior of silver, the tare dwelt in a dream of his own making.

  By and by, Sheen approached the jare. It was the descendant of a turtle. Nearly three million years of evolving had given it the ability to open or close its thick shell whenever it pleased. Large and black and intelligent, it lay with its bare back exposed to the sun. Like the tare, this creature had never, until today, conversed with anyone other than its own kind.

  “I love you,” said Sheen.

  “Oh, go on with you,” said the embarrassed jare. It slowly closed its shell, just in case. “I’m not that attractive. Besides, you’re a tare and we don’t fraternize with your kind. By the way, what kind of tare are you with that fancy coat of silver? I’ve never seen anything like you.”

  “I am Sheen. Take my heart that we shall be one.”

  Such a simple conquest it was. The ego-eater quickly conned the jare and consumed his will. Figuratively smacking his lips, Sheen then looked about for something else of the planet to sample.

  Over his head, a cloud in the sky began a lazy descent to the ground, moved toward a spread of soft grass. A large brown creature stepped foot to earth and gestured for the cloud to ascend to its former place in the sky. Sheen observed with interest as the big creature stretched out on the ground. His curiosity increased when the brown one did nothing more than begin a casual search through the high clover.

  He approached to within feet of the dark head. All at once he knew. Here was the offspring of Homo sapiens, a species that long lay moldering in the grave. Was this brown personage Homo Superior? Obviously the brown one considered himself at least that, since he and his kind called themselves Gods.

  “Come no closer,” said the God, not lifting his attention from the grass. “Stand off or you’ll burn yourself on my protective energy shield.”

  “What are you doing?” said Sheen.

  “Looking for four-leaf clovers.”

  “Good Lord, why?”

  “It amuses me.”

  “I love you.”

  The God raised his head. His eyes were dark and fathomless. “Not today, Sheen. You’re in your infancy and haven’t the power to beguile me.”

  “It’s only the energy that separates us. I’ll learn how to penetrate it and show your mind a vision of perfection.”

  The God’s eyes were still. “I have lowered the shield. Assault me at once.”

  It was no assault at all. A fleck of down couldn’t pierce steel. The astute Sheen learned his lesson. “You are not yet for me. Sheen would starve with only Gods to feed upon.”

  He went away and left the brown monarch to his clover hunting. There were degrees of greatness. A novice shouldn’t set his sights too high. That which reigned directly beneath the Gods would be fai
r game.

  Sheen turned back toward his birthplace, the Valley of the Dead, and by and by he drew near his mountain. To his surprise he saw a figure busily chopping off pieces of his volcano. The silver being knew things without understanding how he knew them. His mind was like a tightly rolled scroll. Confrontations with reality caused it to loosen, to play out a bit. Knowledge was there in his mind, startling and irrefutable. One day the scroll would be completely unwound. Until then, he would learn himself and the world a little at a time.

  He knew something about the creature who was hacking at his mountain. Without ever having seen one, he knew what the thing was. It called itself Homo sapiens. In this, it was mistaken. The Gods were the descendants of man. The creature with the ax looked a good deal like Homo sapiens: It had hair on its head, in its armpits and groin; it had two arms and legs, a nose, two eyes, a mouth, a small jaw and a large cranium. It was cunning, omnivorous, and it built cities. It possessed a conscience. But it had no hands. Instead it had paws. Attached to its wrists were metal appendages which it used as hands.

  “Hail!” said Sheen. He expected no response, but the creature surprised him by dropping the ax and whirling.

  “Upon my soul! What an incredible day. What an incredible fossil.”

  “Who, me?”

  “Indeed! You bear a remarkable resemblance to the Effu.”

  “The what?”

  “An extinct serpent. It required uranium to survive, and there simply wasn’t enough of it around.”

  “I am Sheen. Who might you be?”

  The creature bowed. “Professor Blok, Archeological Institute at Osfar, at your service, sir.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “What are you?”

  “I told you. Sheen. New genus.”

  “If I might have a piece of you to take away with me? I’d love to examine you under a scope.”

  Sheen shrugged. “We’ll see. But first, pray tell, you’re an inferior type of your species, are you not?”

  Blok’s eyebrows rose. “As a matter of fact, I’m not an inferior man. My health is only fair, but I’m above average in intelligence and I hold an important position in my society.”