Robert Silverberg - Hanosz Prime Goes To Old Earth

The whole thing got arranged, with surprising ease, in short order at long range.

Hanosz Prime of Primeyoung again and feeling restless, beginning his new life in startling new ways, eager to travel, suddenly desirous of seeing historic old Earth while it was still there to be seencaused word to be sent ahead by hyperwave, using diplomatic channels, in order to get himself invited to be a house-guest at the palatial home of one of the grandest and most famous of Earths immortal aristocrats, the distinguished and celebrated Sinon Kreidge. Prime had good social connections in more than one galaxy.

And so the message went forth, pretty much instantaneously across two million light-years, through an elaborate interface of official intermediaries spanning half a dozen stellar systems, and the answer came back in a tricea favorable one. Sinon Kreidge and his daughter Kaivilda have heard a great deal about the distinguished and celebrated Hanosz Prime of Prime, or at any rate they claim that they have, and will be happy to entertain him during his stay on Earth. And so the visit was arranged. Quick, quick, back and forth across the galaxies!

Its an age of miracles, the Ninth Mandala that is the era of Prime and Sinon Kreidge. Our own accomplishments are as nothing beside theirs, nothing. To the people of the Ninth Mandala, all we are is pathetic ignorant smelly primitives, mere shaggy shambling creatures from the dawn of timecomputers, color televisions, space satellites, and all.

By the time of Hanosz Prime of Prime, nine mandalas and a bunch of cycles and encompassments from now, theyll have faster-than-light starships powered by devices that dont exist even in concept right now. Itll be a simple deal to travel quickly and cheaply and easily not just between cities or continents or planets or solar systems but between whole galaxies, faster than it would be for you or me to get from New York to Kansas City. Diplomats and tourists will pop back and forth across millions of light-years in hardly any time at all, say a week or two from here to the quasar 3C 279 without giving it a second thought. Intergalactic messages will move even more quicklyby sub-etheric telephone, lets say, or hyperwave communicator, or some such thing. I know, it all sounds pretty damned improbable. But stop to think a moment. Were talking about millions of years from now. The Ninth Mandala may very well be a lot farther in our future than the dinosaurs are in our past. A lot of impossible things can get to be possible in that many years.

The dinosaurs, remember, didnt know anything about anything. They were masters of the planet, but they didnt have the simplest form of technology, not a smidgeon. Hell, they couldnt even spell their own names. Look how far weve come, technologically speaking, in a mere sixty-five million years. We have computers and color television and orbiting space satellites, all of them invented just a microsecond or two ago on the geological scale of things.

And for us the age of miracles is only just beginning.

So now Hanosz Prime is on his way to the threatened planet that once again calls itself Earth. Great wonders and strangenesses await him on the mother world of all humans.

His departure was uneventful. We see him aboard his elegant little ship as it plunges Earthward at incomprehensible velocity. Manned by an invisible crew, it has swiftly made its tumble through windows and wormholes, sliding down the slippery planes, through the thin places of the cosmos, descending by sly side-passages and tricksy topological evasions across the vast reaches of the dusty intergalactic darkness. Onward it goes across the light-years (or around them, whenever possible) skimming through nebulas aglow with clotted red masses of hydrogen gas, through zones where the newest and hottest stars of the ancient universelatecomers, lastborn of the dying galaxy, never to run their full cycle of lifevaliantly hurl their fierce blue radiance into the void; and now the journey is almost over.

The small golden sun of Earth lay dead ahead. Around it danced Earths neighboring planets, whirling tirelessly through the changeless darkness along their various orbits, filling his screens with the brilliance of their reflected light.

Is that Earth? he asked. That little blue thing?

That is exactly what it is, replied the voice of Captain Tio Patnact, who had traveled from Aldebaran to Procyon and from Procyon to Rigel in the time of the Fifth Mandala, when that was a journey worth respecting. Captain Tio Patnact was what we would call software now, or what an earlier age than ours would probably have called a ghost. It isnt all that little, either. Youll see when you get there.

Youve been there, right?

Quite a while ago, yes.

But it hasnt changed much since your time, has it?

It will have changed in small details, said Captain Tio Patnact, after a time. But not in any of the large ones, I suspect. They are a fundamentally conservative people, as very wealthy people who know they are going to live forever tend to be.

Hanosz Prime of Prime considered that. He regarded himself as wealthy, as anyone who had ruled and essentially owned most of an entire planet might be thought justified in doing. Was Captain Tio Pacnact being sarcastic, then, or patronizing, or simply rude?or trying to prepare him for the shock of his life?

How wealthy are they? he asked, finally.

They are all grand lords and ladies. Every one of them. And every one of them lives in a magnificent castle.

And yet they are doomed, Prime thinks. The grand immortals of glittering Earth, living under the shadow of unanticipated destruction. Prime is fascinated by that idea. It seems so appropriate, somehowso interestingly perverse. Earth, of all places, about to be sucked into some mysterious and absolutely unstoppable vacancy that has opened in the middle of nowhere! What is it like, he wonders, if you are one of those immortal onesenvied by all, the high aristocracy of the cosmos!and you suddenly discover that you are going to die after all, immortal or not, when your part of the galaxy gets swallowed up by this hungry hole?

(The truth is that the curiosity he feels about precisely this thing is one of the motives that has pulled him across two million light-years to Earth. He wants to see how the immortals are handling their death sentence. Will they flee? Can they flee? Or will theymust theyremain on Earth to its very last moments, and go bravely down with the ship?)

So its true, the stories people tell about the Earthfolk, how rich and splendid they all are. And theyre all perfect, too, arent they? said Hanosz Prime of Prime. Thats what Ive been hearing about them forever. Everything in balance, harmonious and self-regulating. A perfect world of perfect people who never have to die unless they want to, and even then its not necessarily permanent. Isnt that so, Tio Patnact?

In a manner of speaking, yes.

What does that mean?

It means that they think they are perfect, and that you may very well think so too.

Ah, said Hanosz Prime, ex-ruler of Prime. He never knew when Captain Tio Patnact was having some fun with him. That was one of the problems of being only a couple of centuries old, more or less, in a time when most people tended to be very long-lived indeed and certain highly privileged ones like the people of Earth were capable of living forever.

Brooding, Prime paces the length and breadth of the ship. Its quite a fine ship, but it isnt very big. Prime keeps it for his personal use, for jaunts between the planets of the Parasol system and occasionally to nearby star-groups. Hes never taken it this far before.

Curving inlays of silver and burnished bronze brighten the walls. Heavy draperies of azure velvet flocked with gold add that little extra touch of regal splendor. Along the sides of the main cabin are holographic portraits of previous members of the royal family, twenty or thirty of them selected at random from the royal portrait gallery. Prime hadnt put them there; they came with the ship, and he had always felt it would be rude to pull them down. The most impressive portrait of the bunch is that of Primes formidable grandfather, the fierce old undying tyrant who had finally relented and sired an heir in his six thousandth year, and then had lived another thousand anyway, so that Primes father had had the throne hardly more than a cycle or two. The old mans deep-set eyes burn like suns: he seems ready to step down from the wall and take command of the ship.