Henry Kuttner

“ The two men had left their fires and the giant figure, and were moving toward Weston.
He tore free and went running across the moss, running as hard as he could toward the time-door by the pool, under the bright, timeless noonday sky.
Then out of the moss a subtle rustling stirred again, and suddenly Weston felt his feet caught and held. He pitched forward and slid along the ground.
When he sat up, he was looking around at a ring of incredible tiny beings—not human or insect or animal. Brightly tinted little beings that shimmered around their edges with an unreal glimmer. ”

“ There’s no twilight here, Weston thought. Only burning daylight, and then the darkness. As it will be for man!
He talked to her.
“Serena. Listen to me. The Knowledge told me—listen! I know you’re not—not intelligent; you have a different instinct. But if I could make you realize that—”
They plodded on. He kept glancing at her placid, lovely face.
“Call it tropism, Serena. Tropism that makes plants turn toward light. Or taxis, that guides insects. Insects have a perfect life, in a way. Instinct tells them exactly what to do and they can no more resist doing it than they can help being alive. ”

“ He found himself looking for some human understanding to go with the more than human wisdom it seemed to have—some friendliness!—behind that shining panel, and of course there was nothing like that at all. A radio-atomic brain, keyed to perform certain functions, but without initiative, to give the humans knowledge as they needed it.
Weston got his answers at last.
After a time he stepped outside to get some fresh air. He felt stifled. He could see Serena and the others working away at their unearthly fires, and overhead was the burning sunlight of mankind’s long noon. ”

“ This was the first night it would illumine—but the mind could not grasp the concept of the countless nights to come through which it would burn. Millions upon millions upon millions of nights and days, while the seas shrank and the tides of time rolled relentlessly over the planet. While mankind found paradise and sank into the long, terribly perfect noontide of the human race.
And after that somehow, sometime, it must waken, for it was the first of its superhuman, alien race. After man it would come. And part of it was Serena.
“Serena!” Weston breathed. ”

“ John Weston balks death—but not destiny—when
he tries to save Serena, mindless perfect
woman, from the Flame Blossom!
When he looked up from the pool, the garden was—different. In the water Weston had seen the reflection of blue sky and sunset clouds, and the shape of a plane going over. The deep buzzing of the engines had suddenly died. It had been sunset; now it was noon—and he was no longer in Versailles.
It had taken months. But the miracle was that it had happened at all. People who search for miracles seldom find them. ”

“ Weston knew that he had to increase his lead fast, so that he could circle back and hunt for the time-door before the giant learned to coordinate. It was burning noon. Time seemed to be playing queer tricks. He let Serena down after a while, but he kept tight hold of her wrist. She had a sort of homing instinct, though the fires were out of sight by now.
After a few hours Weston lost his bearings completely. The world of that time was a park. Nothing changed. The whole world, indeed, seemed to be a highly developed machine for the support of the human race.... ”

“ The skippers of a few trading ships know that John Weston once lived there. They used to bring supplies, food and equipment and the luxuries a wealthy man need not be deprived of, even though he lives in the middle of the South Pacific. But no ships anchor there any more. As for the Kanaka boys, no one pays attention to their drunken stories. And they will not go back. They are afraid.
Weston lived on the island for nearly thirty years.
He was in love with Serena, you see. She was the ultimate perfection of the human race. ”

“ A machine—yes, a radio-atomic brain, a mechanical colloid that was the culmination of the thinking machines of Weston’s own time. It could answer questions. Serena’s race had come to need a radio-atomic brain, because they had lost a certain human factor, over the long, long ages. ”

“ No man would ever know the secret of its power or the nature of the alien life that burned in its heart, dormant, sleeping—not yet ready to waken and inherit the earth, to waken from man’s eternal, doomed noon into the bright morning of its unimaginable future. ”

“ Weston went after Serena, feeling baffled. She had gone into one of the buildings. It was an amazing place, Weston found. There were corridors and little irregular rooms and floors like balconies, and all the partitions were translucent, like the walls. Lights came in green, deep blue, and ocean-purple.
The glass globe Serena carried was translucent and glowed with a strange greenish light
When Weston caught up with the girl, he saw that she was carrying a globe of glass. ”

“ He stood up. “Wait,” he said. “I’ll go with you, but let’s make quite sure first. There’ve been mistakes enough already. Come back with me to The Knowledge, and listen to what it says when I question it.” ”

“ A dreamy sort of horror grew slowly upon him. The men seemed to be working so fast. Their blind tropism, their ancient, inbred instinct drove them. Weston stumbled on around the little pool, dragging Serena—
Then he was in the Versailles garden, by the pool, again, and a plane was droning overhead, and he still gripped Serena’s wrist. He had brought her back through time, from noon to morning.
And that was his damnation—and hers.
South of Suva a coral island stands in the empty seas. Once there were natives there, Kanaka boys, but not now. There is a walled garden, and a deserted house ”

“ Ants and bees were found in fossil form a million years old, exactly like ants and bees today. And the ordinary cockroach is a hundred million years old in its form. When it achieved perfection, absolute adaptation to its environment—it stopped. As the human race had stopped, too.
Noon....
Weston looked for Serena. He still couldn’t quite believe that she was—what she was. He saw her working with the two men, and amid the fires a giant figure stood motionless. Weston called to the girl. ”